Hello, my friends,

With thanksgiving coming up this week, I know it can be a very complicated time for many of you, especially post election. Please know I am praying for you and thinking of you as you navigate this next week.

This is also part of the reason I wanted to think with you about Jeremiah 8:4-13 today. I don't know about you, but I have had a lot of fellow Christians downplay, gaslight, and even mock my concerns about the years ahead. So, I wanted to reflect on that topic with you today in hopes of giving you encouragement and resolve as you head into the holiday season and perhaps encounter folks who may try to do the same to you.

But before we get into that, here are some resources to consider:

The season of Advent began December 1st! This season extends an annual invitation for us to reorient our hearts toward Jesus as we approach Christmas. I have written a daily devotional for this season in hopes of stoking greater hope, peace, joy, and love in our hearts as we journey together toward Jesus from Advent to Christmas. Details: What: An "ebook" of 25 daily scripture-based devotionals, designed to conclude on Christmas Day, to be downloaded and read on your favorite device. When: It is available to download now. How: Purchase access to this daily devotional by clicking the button below. $20.00 Arrival: Daily Reflections For The Season of Advent Crafted to begin on December 1st and end on Christmas Day, each of these 25 daily readings will focus on a passage from... Read more Download here! ​

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​"On Tyranny: 20 lessons from the 20th Century." by Timothy Snyder. I recently read this short book and found it both insightful and practical. It was only an hour listen on audible and it was read by the author. Snyder also has a longer book called "On Freedom," that I have also recently begun and have found it helpful as well. I think you will too.

​-The Spirit of Justice True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance by Jemar Tisby. One of the best things a lot of us Christians can do to prepare for the days ahead is to learn the stories of those who have been oppressed and marginalized in our nation's history and how they persevered and resisted. Tisby is an award winning author and someone I consider a friend. I highly recommend this book and frankly, all his work.

​-We Survived the End of the World: Lessons from Native America on Apocalypse and Hope by Steven Charleston. Pandemics and war, social turmoil and corrupt governments, natural disasters and environmental collapse--it's hard not to watch the signs of the times and feel afraid. But we can journey through that fear to find hope. With the warnings of a prophet and the lively voice of a storyteller, Choctaw elder and author of Ladder to the Light Steven Charleston speaks to all who sense apocalyptic dread rising around and within. I am about to start this book myself so let me know if you do as well.

​-The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism By Karen Armstrong. Armstrong is one of my favorite religious historians who doesn't gloss over any detail. In the late twentieth century, fundamentalism has emerged as one of the most powerful forces at work in the world, contesting the dominance of modern secular values and threatening peace and harmony around the globe. Yet it remains incomprehensible to a large number of people. In this book, Armstrong brilliantly and sympathetically shows us how and why fundamentalist groups came into existence and what they yearn to accomplish.

Okay, onto today's topic:

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Gaslighting Is Not A Fruit Of The Spirit.

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Jeremiah 8:4-13 (The Message)

To Know Everything but God’s Word

4-7

“Tell them this, God’s Message:

“‘Do people fall down and not get up?
Or take the wrong road and then just keep going?
So why does this people go backward,
and just keep on going—backward!
They stubbornly hold on to their illusions,
refuse to change direction.
I listened carefully
but heard not so much as a whisper.
No one expressed one word of regret.
Not a single “I’m sorry” did I hear.
They just kept at it, blindly and stupidly
banging their heads against a brick wall.
Cranes know when it’s time
to move south for winter.
And robins, warblers, and bluebirds
know when it’s time to come back again.
But my people? My people know nothing,
not the first thing of God and his rule.

8-9

“‘How can you say, “We know the score.
We’re the proud owners of God’s revelation”?
Look where it’s gotten you—stuck in illusion.
Your religion experts have taken you for a ride!
Your know-it-alls will be unmasked,
caught and shown up for what they are.
Look at them! They know everything but God’s Word.
Do you call that “knowing”?

10-12

“‘So here’s what will happen to the know-it-alls:
I’ll make them wifeless and homeless.
Everyone’s after the dishonest dollar,
little people and big people alike.
Prophets and priests and everyone in between
twist words and doctor truth.
My dear Daughter—my people—broken, shattered,
and yet they put on Band-Aids,
Saying, “It’s not so bad. You’ll be just fine.”
But things are not “just fine”!
Do you suppose they are embarrassed
over this outrage?
Not really. They have no shame.
They don’t even know how to blush.
There’s no hope for them. They’ve hit bottom
and there’s no getting up.
As far as I’m concerned,
they’re finished.’” God has spoken.

13

“‘I went out to see if I could salvage anything’”
—God’s Decree—
“‘but found nothing:
Not a grape, not a fig,
just a few withered leaves.
I’m taking back
everything I gave them.’”

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The written word of the Lord.

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​Some Historical Context

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The book of Jeremiah takes place during a time when Judah, the southern kingdom of the split kingdom of Israel, was experiencing crumbling political, social, moral, and religious conditions.

Due to escalating tensions in the region, especially between Babylon and Egypt, and many internal problems as well, Judah was eventually completely conquered and its capital city of Jerusalem was destroyed along with the temple by Babylonian forces in 587 BC. The majority of its inhabitants were taken as exiles into Babylon, where they would stay for generations, while many others, mostly the poor, were left behind. It was one of the most devastating parts of ancient Israel's history,

It is important to keep in mind that Jeremiah was one of many prophets “prophesying” during that time. His ministry is included in the scriptures because his message eventually rang true, while other prophets were found to be false.

Jeremiah even lays partial blame for the siege of Jerusalem on the message of false prophets of his time who were promising that God would bring the exiled people back to Judah, restore their rightful king to the throne, and “break the yoke of Babylon” (Jer 29:1-4). Babylon broke the yoke of Judah instead.

As with many of the prophets, Jeremiah’s words largely fell on closed ears in his time. As it is in our time today, God’s people often prefer the message of “God is on your side!” Rather than “God wants you to repent because this disaster is largely your fault," which is Jeremiah’s essential message in our passage today.

The Text

Our passage begins by pointing to common sense to explain how baffled God is by the actions of God's own people.

God asks, “Do people fall down and not get up?
Or take the wrong road and then just keep going?”

The obvious answer being, “common sense helps people learn from their mistakes. They don’t just keep making the same mistakes over and over again.”

Then God says, "So why does this people go backward, and just keep on going—backward! They stubbornly hold on to their illusions, refuse to change direction.” You can almost hear God's heart ache as a parent wanting what is best for their children, yet their children keep making disastrous choices.

God goes on to assert that even birds know better. Cranes, Robins, Warblers, Bluebirds, they all faithfully follow God’s order and patterns for their lives. Yet God says, “But my people? My people know nothing, not the first thing of God or God’s rule.”

God is asserting that not even conventional wisdom let alone the wisdom of God holds sway among God’s people any longer. Rather, a stubborn, willful commitment to deception rules the day combined with an unwillingness to return, or “repent.”

The Hebrew word fro repent is used twice in verse 4 and three times in verse 5, indicating that the need for repentance is the central issue for God’s people in this passage.

Jeremiah also shows us that God is faithfully attentive and has paid very close attention to the people's daily lives and how they have conducted themselves (v6). What God hears and sees among the people is speech that does not communicate the truth and a complete lack of remorse for blatant evil taking place among them.

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​“No one expressed one word of regret.
Not a single “I’m sorry” did I hear.
They just kept at it, blindly and stupidly
banging their heads against a brick wall.”
​

The original Hebrew here in verse 6 describes this behavior as a “horse charging into battle,” suggesting the people behave abrasive and aggressively without any consideration of the wisdom or consequences of their actions.

God then takes direct aim at the people, the religious leaders, and the teachers of the law in verses 8-13. Systematic corruption instead of faithful covenant to loving God and neighbor is the obvious reason for God’s judgment here. Arrogance and greed dominate God’s people, no matter their high or low status, especially among the religious leaders.

"Everyone’s after the dishonest dollar,
little people and big people alike.
Prophets and priests and everyone in between
twist words and doctor truth."​
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The sin of religious leaders is that they have not paid serious attention to how God’s people are abandoning the primary covenant to love God and their neigbors for selfish, decetful, and hostile behavior instead. They treat this only as a minor flesh wound among God’s people rather than the critical emergency it actually is. They continue to give out band-aides and say, “things will be just fine,” when things are not just fine at all.

One of the worst possible indictments in this passage is how “God’s revelation and word” are manipulated and used to spread deceit and justify their callous behavior.

“‘How can you say, “We know the score.
We’re the proud owners of God’s revelation”?
Look where it’s gotten you—stuck in illusion.
Your religion experts have taken you for a ride!”
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God ends this harsh critique with a chilling picture of God’s people. Even in the face of evil and deeply vile deeds, they have become immune to them. Instead of outrage, God says they are no longer capable of even expressing normal human embarrassment or shame. They don’t even know how to blush anymore in the face of such despicable and loathsome things.

The end of this passage paints a picture of a hopeless yet decisive God.

“‘I went out to see if I could salvage anything’”
—God’s Decree—
“‘but found nothing:
Not a grape, not a fig,
just a few withered leaves.
I’m taking back
everything I gave them.’”

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Fruit is often a metaphor for both bounty and the kind of character one’s actions reveal throughout the Bible. God finding no fruit among God’s people is not only evidence of their neglect of the land God had gifted them, but a representation of the current state of their character and hearts. God’s response to the unwillingness to repent among God’s own people is to withdraw what was given to them. Perhaps this will be the wake up call they need.

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​Prophets Make Christians Uncomfortable.

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Unlike our Jewish brothers and sisters, I don’t think we Christians in America are accustom to let alone comfortable enough with the voice of the prophets speaking to us like this. I love to study the prophets, yet even I will still sometimes get uncomfortable by how harsh the prophets can be towards God’s own people.

But I always ask myself, “What else is accountability supposed to sound in the face of systemic corruption and injustice among God’s people? What other kind of voice would break through to call for repentance among us besides that of a prophet?”

I have been a pastor since 2005. One of the most consistent points of heartbreak for me in all my ministry is the refusal I have found among so many Christians to recognize, let alone acknowledge the things we need to repent from as followers of God. It is heartbreaking because I love Jesus and I love people and it is so agonizing to see people suffer from the consequences of misusing religious and political power with little to no repentance.

I think this is because so much of the “American gospel” is so outward focused. “Sin” is something to be found out in “the world,” but not among us as Christians or in the church. We Christians often act as though the Bible was written against everyone else we don’t like rather than made to be a mirror to hold up to ourselves. We act as though we believe that we alone have been given “God’s Word” and therefore “know the truth.” So we no longer have any need for repentance from sin ourselves, rather, we are the ones sent by God to ensure other people repent from their sins. Then we go and behave accordingly in the world. We become harsh towards the world while refusing and even getting really offended by any prophetic critique towards ourselves or our institutions.

During my time as a pastor, with a heavy heart, I have watched this kind of behavior grow within Christianity in America. I watched as conspiracy theories, disinformation, and an entire industry of “modern day prophesies” have been incessantly spread around by people in the church, both in person and online, and pastors and people in the pews alike. I watched as they became more and more committed to illusions.

"Prophets and priests and everyone in between
twist words and doctor truth."

I grieved as I would hear theological and biblical justifications for demanding aggressive and authoritarian uses of power from both religious and political figures many Christians preferred, all in the name of “standing up for Christian values” against others they considered enemies. Even in the face of immense information at our fingertips, the Bible and Christianity was being used to justify structures of power built on greed and control, rather than loving God and our neighbors as ourselves, which is the greatest commandment given to us by God’s Word in the flesh, Jesus Christ (John 1).

They know everything but God’s Word.
Do you call that “knowing”?

Over the last decade, I grew more and more dismayed by how so many Christians grew complicit or just flat out ignored the vile and outrageous behavior from political and religious figures who they believed were “standing up for them.” How they would go on condemning "the world" even while the worst abuses happened within their own churches a perpetrated by their preferred political leaders.

They didn’t even know how to blush anymore.

Even in my most passionate conversations with some church folks, where I would feel like I was finally breaking through, the response to my perspective on the need for Christian repentance would always jar me, by being along the lines of, “yeah, sure they are bad, but the other side is so much worse.”

There was not even a whisper of “we might be wrong.”

Besides the accusations that I am a false prophet, working for Satan, and deserve to go to hell, the most common responses I will receive from fellow Christians who disagree with my urgings for repentance among American Christianity is much like the spiritual gaslighting we heard described in Jeremiah’s words.

They will say, “it isn’t as bad as you are making it out to be.”

“Everything happens for a reason.”

“God is still on the throne, you just need to trust.”

“My people—broken, shattered,
and yet they put on Band-Aids,
Saying, “It’s not so bad. You’ll be just fine.”
But things are not “just fine”!​
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This behavior has only intensified after the election.

For many, it doesn’t seem to matter how extreme the rhetoric is towards immigrants, women, or the marginalized becomes. It doesn’t seem to matter how vile or corrupt the behavior or inexperienced the chosen members are for the upcoming administration are. It doesn’t seem to matter that all the key elements of Project 2025 are being put in place, even though we were told all election cycle to calm down because it wasn’t real. It doesn’t seem to matter that white supremacist groups are celebrating while marginalized groups are scared and grieving. It doesn’t seem to matter that the world seems so much darker for all the people groups Jesus called us to serve, like the poor, the sick, the oppressed, the immigrant, and women, but for the future of the planet as a whole as well.

All these things don’t seem to matter, because what we hear from so many Christians and prominent church leaders, along with their praises towards God for the outcome they wanted, are phrases like:

“it isn’t as bad as you are making it out to be.”

“Everything happens for a reason.”

“God is still on the throne, you just need to trust.”

“They stubbornly hold on to their illusions,
refuse to change direction.
I listened carefully
but heard not so much as a whisper.
No one expressed one word of regret.
Not a single “I’m sorry” did I hear.”

Gaslighting is often the response of those who refuse to repent.
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Conclusion

I don’t know about you, but reading Jeremiah makes me feel like I’m not actually losing my mind. What we are seeing has happened before among God’s people and God through the prophets did not shy away or be quiet at all about calling it out. I believe God is still speaking like this today, if we would only have the ears to hear.

Reading prophets like Jeremiah gives me the language and the context for why it is so important for repentance to be an ongoing part of our relationship with God. Otherwise, we will fall into the kind of complacency, arrogance, greed, and stubborn commitment to illusion we see in our passage today and much of what we are seeing within portions of American Christianity today.

Reading prophets like Jeremiah gives me the courage to continue to call myself and the church towards continual repentance and renewal in the new covenant of Christ Jesus, which is love. Love of God and love of neighbor.

Reading prophets like Jeremiah remind me that while it is so important to call for repentance within Christianity, I shouldn’t allow that call to also distract me from loving God and loving my neighbor as myself. It is a both/and, not an either/or. In fact, I would dare say, calling out the current injustices within American Christianity is a form of loving God, loving my neighbor, and loving the church, wanting it to be what it was called to be and live into the love of Jesus as well.

I believe love is what we read from God in our passage from Jeremiah today. Love for God's people to turn from destruction to peace, from lies to truth, from death to life. Otherwise, God could have simply abandoned them. Instead, God loved them enough to keep calling them back. This is the same love many of us have for Christianity in the United States today.

If the prophets today do not speak, so much of the church will be left to its preoccupation with kings and the power and wealth it can share with them, to the tragic and world-breaking rejection of love, especially towards “the least among us.” The least among us always suffer the most when love is rejected for the sake of illusion, greed, and power.

I pray reading Jeremiah’s words today had a similar positive impact on you and that you remember that even though Judah may have ignored Jeremiah during his time and the message God was speaking through him, they eventually listened and believed, which is why we call Jeremiah's prophecies “scripture” today.

So do not stop calling for God’s people to repent. Do not stop repenting yourself. Do not allow anyone to gaslight you and tell you your concerns aren't valid and to stop speaking them aloud. You are sewing seeds hope for a better future. You are committed to love being the fruit we produce in the world.

May we all work towards love being the fruit God finds among us instead of just "a few withered leaves."