Hello my friends,

I wanted to begin today by sharing some joy with you. Some significant things have happened in my life over the past two weeks. After almost a year of writing, I turned in the manuscript for my first book to my publisher. Rebecca and I celebrated 5 years of marriage together. Our 2 year old son’s creativity and curiosity grew exponentially. Our 10 month old daughter waved and said her first word “hi!” and is standing up on her own. She also slept through the night for several days in a row for the very first time since she was born! This full night’s rest is going to be important, because Rebecca is due to have our third baby in August! We couldn’t be more excited.

Experiencing joys like this in days like these is mixed to say the least. As I celebrate these important moments, I can’t help but think about my big concerns over the future of our country and our world. Yet, I believe joy is not only a choice, but an act of resistance to the darkness. To choose joy, to share joy, and to celebrate the joy of others is to refuse to allow the darkness to define us or our future. It is an intentional act of declaring the moments of beauty and wonder as being more powerful than anything the darkness has to offer.

This is along the lines of what I want to think with you about today. We are going to look at 1 Peter 1 3:8-18, where Peter writes, “do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.” I want to reflect on how those words applied to Peter’s context and how it might help us to settle our own minds and hearts today, in a world where so many seem determined to overwhelm us with chaos.

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​Before we get to that, here are some resources to consider.

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​-Don’t Believe Him the Ezra Klein Show. A friend sent me this last week and I have been sharing it with all my friends, so I thought I'd share it here as well. Ezra brings such needed context and calm to our current situation. It is a similar theme to my newsletter today as well. It is only a ten minute listen and very much worth your time.

​-Kingdom over Empire Peace Talks with Mariah Humphries. I was honored to be a guest on Peace Talks with both Mariah and Katie Mullin for season ten of their podcast. Our conversation centered on the way of Jesus in the midst of all that is happening right now. It really filled my cup and I hope it will do the same for you.

​-How a German Thinker Explains MAGA Morality by David French. I have grown to deeply admire David for his legal expertise, his analysis of current events from his Christian perspective, and his integrity. There have been numerous times where I have been brought to deeper clarity of current events because of his work. I think you will find his work here both insightful and helpful as well.

Okay, onto today’s content.
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Do Not Fear Their Threats

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​1 Peter 3:8-18

“Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.

For, “Whoever would love life and see good days must keep their tongue from evil and their lips from deceitful speech. They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed.

“Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.” But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.”

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One of my hopes with this newsletter is that it deepens your love for scripture. As I read this short passage from 1 Peter 3:8-18 in preparation for today, I was so moved. I couldn’t help but think, “This is such an important text for Christianity in our country today.”

When I read passages like this, my heart grieves at how so many other portions of scripture that are interpreted as being about other people are so much more widely quoted and shared, while ones like this, directed to followers of Jesus, seem to get so little attention. It says a lot about our collective priorities as Christians, doesn’t it? I mean, just imagine if this passage was the first place we Christians started for our political and social engagement, let alone our interpersonal relationships. What an impact that would have on our relationships in our world.

This is really the intention behind the book of 1 Peter. It is a letter that is deeply pastoral, encouraging followers of Jesus to conduct themselves in the way of Jesus. The first chapter tells us it is written to the “resident aliens,” who are scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, which are five Roman provinces in Asia Minor. Throughout the letter, the author describes those he is writing to as exiles, strangers, and recipients of persecution (1–2:10). Peter is encouraging them to remain steadfast in their faith and to continue to act like Jesus, even in spite of their circumstances.

Peter also uses other parts of scripture to do that, which I want to highlight for a moment as I think they both have relevance for us today. The author first quotes Psalm 34:12-16, which beautifully describes those who love life as those who pursue peace, speak with honest sincerity, and be attentive in prayer. Do we Christians have a reputation for “loving life” in this way? Do we Christians have a reputation for supporting others in positions of power who “love life” in this way?

The second passage the author quotes is a powerful verse from Isaiah 8:12, which is translated differently here in 1 Peter. If you look Isaiah 8:12 up right now, it will say “Do not call conspiracy everything these people call a conspiracy; do not fear what they fear, and do not dread it.” Powerful words for our time.

The Greek word we translate into “threats” here is actually "phobos," which depending on the context, can mean (a) fear, terror, alarm, (b) the object or cause of fear, or (c) reverence and respect.

In the Greco-Roman world, "phobos" was commonly associated with fear of the gods, natural phenomena, or military threats. In the New Testament, "phobos" primarily points to fear or terror, often in response to the supernatural. It can also point to reverence or awe, particularly towards the Lord, which is a profound respect for God's power and holiness. The term can be used both in a negative sense, as in fear of danger or judgment, and in a positive way, as in deep reverence for God.

I think this is such an important concept for our time today. There are so many in high positions of power in our country who are trying to make everyone afraid of how powerful they are. They are using the tactics of shock and awe to overwhelm people into believing that they are kings among us and we should not only fear them, but we should give them our deepest reverence and allegiance.

Yet when you peal back the curtain and look past all the bluster, the most dominant motivation behind these tactics is the desire to make us believe that they are all powerful and worthy of our fear. Their entire identity and power play depends on us believing that narrative about them. So don’t. “Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.” “Phobos” is exactly what those who are obsessed with power want you to do towards them. So don’t.

Instead, as our passage beautifully describes, we are to remember that our primary allegiance is to the way of Jesus. Through Jesus, we are set free to be compassionate, sympathetic, humble, and to persist in doing good in a time where so many seem so obsessed with control, callousness, arrogance, and doing terrible things to others.

The truth is, the gaol behind trying to overwhelm us with displays of power and fear over a multitude of problems to be solved is to try to make us give up and just submit or become complicit in the face of all they are trying to do. They want us to feel powerless in the presence of all their power. It is the goal of making us see them as Lord of all rather than Jesus. This is simply evil and refusing this narrative and insisting on doing good no matter what is one of the greatest forms of resisting evil from overtaking us. When they try to overwhelm us with evil, we who follow Jesus respond by working to overwhelm evil with good all the more.

Kurt Struckmeryer described this so well in “A Conspiracy of Love,” when he said, “At the heart of Christianity is a powerful ethic. It is what the first followers of Jesus called The Way-a way of living based on love and compassion, reconciliation and forgiveness, inclusion and acceptance, peace and nonviolence, generosity and justice. This ethic is what makes Christianity good. Without it, Christians can become rigid and intolerant, self-righteous and condemning, hate-filled and violent, selfish and unjust. In other words, without the ethic of Jesus, Christians can represent the worst humanity has to offer.”

To put it in my own words, without the ethic of Jesus, we simply become just like those who would use power to dominate and conquer rather than to elevate and heal.

I think many of us can feel like “resident aliens” right now. Yet, unlike Peter’s audience, we are in a culture that has been shaped by and privileged Christianity for a long while. So, while we are Christians in a place that centers on Christianity, the political and religious shifts in our own families, friendships, churches, and workplaces have made us feel like aliens in a foreign land, because we aren’t the right kind of “Christian.”

We might often hear our fellow Christians speak so callously about those who do not believe the way they think they should, which may include ourselves as well. We might often hear them parrot the same threats, insults, and conspiracies towards their opponents that their preferred people in power are shouting from their social media platforms. How can this not cause us to feel like strangers in a strange land?

Peter’s encouragement to his audience is one we can take to heart today. No matter our circumstances, the right path forward is to always “be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called.”

Knowing that Christ was also mistreated for doing good and for fiercely loving others, we can be set free then to “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” and what is more, we can do that with "gentleness and respect.” This is the way of Jesus that got the last word over evil and death.

So when they try to overwhelm you with all kinds of threats, do not fear them. Do what they do not want you to do instead. Double down on loving others and doing good all the more. When we all do this together, those who worship power lose their power over us.

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​What To Do

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Something I have been keeping in mind is how much our social media consumption is dictated by algorithms specifically trained to keep our attention on our screens. The more we stay on our devices, the more influence can be won over us and the more things can be sold to us. Once I understood this, I noticed how my feed was just filled with terrifying headline after terrifying headline. I was caught in the vicious cycle of what is called “doom scrolling.” Where I would start scrolling to try and relax only to then get scared or outraged, which would then keep me scrolling in an effort to relax.

To combat this, I have made a mental commitment to refuse to get upset or repulsed by a headline I see while on social media. If it is something that makes me concerned, I will immediately get off social media and go try to find the context of the issue from some other, more reputable source. Or I will write down the issue to look it into later if I don’t have the time in the moment.

This does two main things for me. It prevents social media from making me outraged, which plays right into the hands of those who want me to respond that way, and it keeps me more informed about the context of the issues I really care about. More often than not, once I learn the context of the issue a headline was refereeing to, I have less anxiety over it, more nuance to consider, and productive ways I could engage with the issue with others. I have found this to be a very effective strategy to not participate in the “phobos” of our time. Perhaps you might find it helpful too.