Tag: capitol riot

Can there be Reconciliation without Repentance?

I had no intention of writing another blog just one week after my last post, but a lot has happened in one week. It feels like the week that won’t end.

I don’t know what the incursion on the Capitol felt like to you as you watched it going down. To me, it was so surreal that it was hard to process emotionally. It felt almost like an absurd carnival – like a group of clowns who were acting crazy but would do no real harm. The reality of what took place didn’t really hit me until, on the following day, I began to listen to some of the in-person testimonies from members of congress and their staffers who had lived through it. Hearing the audio recordings of the mob beating at their barricaded doors, or of the representatives being commanded to take cover behind the seats in their chamber, or of the thugs chanting, “Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!” – it chilled me to the bone. Only then did I put myself into the shoes of those who were in the Capitol and sense the true terror that the protestors had wrought.

At about the same time, I began to read the spin that Republicans and the conservative media were putting on the story. A figurative wave of what-about-ism was being unleashed. “The breach on the Capitol was wrong, but the frustration was warranted,” I heard commentators contending. “What about the supposedly peaceful Black Lives Matter protests this summer? Now THEY wreaked havoc!”

One of the early protestations that proliferated was the conspiracy theory that the real damage in the Capitol was not done by the right wing protestors at all, but by Antifa sympathizers who dressed up in disguise. It was astounding how quickly the nonsense took hold. Within hours Sarah Palin was threatening, “To any insincere, fake DC ‘patriots’ used as PLANTS — you will be found out.” Rudy Giuliani implied the same. In a tweet condemning the violence he went on to state, “Antifa involvement is no excuse.” He didn’t need to state directly that Antifa was responsible – just putting the bait out there would suffice. Most of the crowd, he asserted, were good people. After all, in the hour that the gates were being stormed, President Trump could only bring himself to gently cajole the marauding mob: “This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home, we love you, you’re very special.”

Let me be clear. Not all of the protestors who attended the “Save America” rally were violent – not even close. The vast majority were peace-loving citizens who simply believed the assertion that the election was stolen and came to show their support for the President. I can understand that many of them might take offense at being lumped in with insurrectionists. And it is not my intent to do so.

But I also believe that the response of many enablers – those who through their support of the President’s disinformation campaign helped to ignite the spark of violence – has not been righteous. Many of them are Christians and believe with all their hearts that “righteousness exalts a nation,” yet their reaction to the grave sin of insurrection, incited by our own President, has been an insipid call for national unity. That’s how their colleagues across the aisle describe it.

Please understand. I pray with all my heart for unity in our nation. The partisan divide is a blight that prevents our leaders from truly governing and constantly squeezes them into playing a zero sum game in which their win necessitates their opponent’s loss. The legislators themselves hate it. Many of them hearken back to a time when genuine friendships with members of the opposite party were not only possible, but the norm. This tragedy can indeed be a catalyst for genuine bipartisanship to take root.

One Representative who had been escorted off to the undisclosed secure location was asked the next day what his most vivid memory from the night before had been. He said that it was the sight of McConnell and Pelosi, huddled together toward the middle of the room, discussing the plans about how to move forward with the electoral vote confirmation once the ordeal was over. That was an image he would not forget. And that is an image we should not forget. We are soldiers in a common battle, not enemies on opposite sides.

So a call for unity is warranted. But that call will remain feckless and insipid if there is no admission of guilt. Speaking as a Republican, I appeal to my fellow citizens: We must admit the harm that our party has wrought. Senator Chris Coons of Delaware expressed in an interview yesterday that reconciliation is absolutely necessary, but “there can be no reconciliation without repentance.” We fellow Christ followers must utter a solemn “Amen!”

In a time of national crisis, we must behave as citizens, not as partisans. When the House and the Senate reconvened on Wednesday night, one can understand from a partisan point of view that many Republican leaders felt they must persist in their efforts to challenge the election. But from a citizen’s point of view, it was breach of honor. It was an unnecessary, bull-headed, theatrical performance that served no purpose other than to show servile allegiance to the delusions of a distressed President. It is no wonder that Senator Coons calls for repentance before reconciliation. It is the Christian mandate… and it is the only pathway that can lead to unity.

Not only do the members of the Republican caucus need to repent. Many Christ followers have done grave harm to our nation by propagating a lie. We may not have recognized it as a lie, but we could have and should have. We allowed the idol of nationalism to cloud our vision. History will demonstrate that it was a powerful lie, indeed: one sparked by the President of the United States, fanned into flame by multiple media organizations, perpetuated in our social media accounts, and sadly in some cases, preached from our pulpits. Our calls for unity within our nation will ring as hollow as empty soda cans if they are not accompanied by genuine, sorrowful repentance for the harm we have done. We must repent for helping to propagate a lie.

Some of us may have hoped that the protestations of our president against the election results were justified, but credible witnesses debunked the idea over and over again. Instead of paying careful attention to the evidence, we were swayed by the noise. We chose to believe President Trump over Brad Raffensperger, Rudy Giuliani over Christopher Krebs, Sydney Powell over John Poulos. There can be no healing until there is the admission: “We allowed ourselves to be deceived.”

Some were convinced by prophets who prophesied that Trump would ascend to his next term; those prophets will be shown to be false. Hopefully, by God’s grace, the prophets themselves will sorrowfully bend the knee.

Some preachers have laughed and scoffed at the idea that Biden will assume the presidency on January 20th; their laughter will be a badge of shame they wear in penance.   

Do I sound like an unhinged street preacher, railing against the sins of the world? Please forgive me if that is the case. But this is deadly earnest for me… and for all of us who are followers of the Way. We are in grave danger of losing any shred of credibility before a watching world.

The Evangelical church’s loss of moral authority among the under-thirty population is well documented. David Kinnaman and others pointed to the decline over a decade ago. In the meantime, the under-thirty population has become the under-forty population. Conservative, bible believing Christians never were a moral majority, but they are considerably less so now than in the seventies when the phrase was coined. There are many reasons for that, but our embrace of a populist agenda that seeks to guard the old cultural hierarchy is one contributor. Our lack of intellectual vigor is another.

Robert K. Vischer recently wrote: “When we post a meme about Dr. Anthony Fauci or Bill Gates plotting to distribute the mark of the beast through a vaccine, our following post about eyewitness testimony regarding the life of Jesus will get the same response as the first: This person is not trustworthy on questions that matter.” https://religionnews.com/2020/12/01/eric-metaxas-and-the-losing-of-the-evangelical-mind/ Another commentator observed that if someone proclaims faith in both the Easter bunny and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it won’t be surprising when their associates question the veracity of their truth claims. Yet that is precisely the result when Christians proclaim without evidence that Trump won the election in a landslide and that the angel armies will rally to his defense.

Can anything be done to regain our footing… to demonstrate moral authority before a skeptical audience? Yes! But it is not a task that can be accomplished quickly. It requires slow and steady Jesus-like behavior. It requires becoming agents of reconciliation, as the Apostle Paul enjoined. “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” (2 Corinthians 5:18)  But there can be no reconciliation without forgiveness. And forgiveness requires repentance. Reconciliation costs a great deal. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”(v. 21) To purchase our reconciliation, it cost Jesus everything.

There are many images of last week’s fateful day and night in the Capitol. Most of them are disturbing, but a few are beacons of hope. A picture that has gone viral shows New Jersey Representative Andy Kim, cleaning up debris left by the on the floor of the Rotunda. When asked about his motivation for seeking out a garbage bag and going to his knees, Kim responded, “When you see something you love that’s broken you want to fix it. I love the Capitol … It really broke my heart and I just felt compelled to do something.”

That’s it, right? “When you see something you love that’s broken you want to fix it.” That’s at the heart of being a minister of reconciliation. That’s why the watching, skeptical world responded so warmly to Kim’s servanthood. At the very core, his actions were Jesus-like.

Reflecting on the intruders who had broken into the Capitol hours earlier, Kim said, “If someone feels the ability to desecrate our Capitol, to bring a Confederate flag into that building and proudly wave it around, this is someone, these are people, that do not respect government. They do not have that same humility that we need to have. These are people that are not inspired by this building, and do not understand what went into building it, what went into preserving it.”

Again, Kim nails it. He didn’t thrash the intruders. He observed a key element: “They do not have that same humility that we need to have.” If there is a pathway that will help the Evangelical church to reestablish the respect it has lost in the eyes of so many, this is it – the pathway of servanthood. Jesus taught his disciples the same. If we want to really make a difference in the world, we must take up the towel and basin… and bend the knee.  

Postscript: I have come across some helpful resources that I highly recommend, in case you’d like to explore the topic further.

For information regarding the integrity of the election and the disinformation campaign:

For input on how the church ought to respond to political challenges, anything from https://thedispatch.com/ is solid journalism.

For a glimpse into the mindset of a disaffected former Christ follower, I recommend this article by Sarah Jones. It gives me greater understanding into the perspective of many under-40 people I come in contact with.  https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/white-evangelicals-made-a-deal-with-trump-now-what.html