Galatians 4 - my attempt to translate/paraphrase it in contemporary English.

I tell you that if a young child inherits an estate, he has no more authority over it than a slave even though it all belongs to him.  Instead, he is under the authority of people appointed to care for him and the estate until he reaches maturity.  So also, when we were spiritual children, we were under the authority of the world's basic rules for human behavior.  But when the right time had come, God sent his Son to be born like one of us, born of a human mother, under the authority of God's basic rules.  The Son was sent to emancipate us from our slavery to these rules so that we could be adopted as God's children.  Now that you are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, so you, like the Son, can call out to him, "Daddy, Father!".  Instead of being a slave, you are now also a son, and because of the work of God's Son, our Champion, you also are one of God's heirs.

 

Before you knew God, you were slaves to things which are not really gods at all.  But now that you know God and he has become intimate with you, why would you abandon him to become slaves again to those weak and pathetic things?  You act as if the most important thing is to properly celebrate the various holidays.  I am afraid that all the work I have done for you might have been wasted.

 

Please, fellow teammates, join with me as I have with you.  Far from rejecting me, the first time I preached the Good News to you (though you could easily have despised me because of my illness), you received me as a messenger of God, or even as Jesus our Champion.  There was joy in you then, and, had you been able to, you would have even plucked out your own eyes and given them to me.  Are we now enemies because I have told you the truth?  The teachers you are now listening to enthusiastically pursue you, but not for a good cause.  They want to alienate you from me, so that you may pursue them alone.  Enthusiasm is only good when it's for a good cause, and then only if you keep it up when I'm away.

 

My dear children, I had thought that I was finished with the labor of bringing you to birth in Christ, but it seems that I have to do it all over again.  I long to be with you, so I wouldn't have to talk this way.  What happened to you?

 

Those of you who want to be bound again to follow God's basic rules, do you realize what those rules say?  In the authoritative writings we read that Abraham had two sons, one born of a servant and one of a free woman.  The servant's son was born by human effort alone, but the free woman's son was born as a result of God's promise.  These are physical representations of spiritual truths, for they represent God's two covenants.  The servant woman, Hagar, represents Mount Sinai in Arabia, where God's people were bound under the authority of the covenant to live according to his basic rules.  She is like the old Jerusalem, and those who still seek to live by those rules are her spiritual children and so are bound in slavery like her.  But the free woman, Sarah, is like God's heavenly Jerusalem, set free by God's promised new covenant and the mother of all who have been so freed.  And there will be many of them, for God tells us in his authoritative writings: "Celebrate your family, you childless single woman who has never given birth, for you will have more children than the married woman."

 

Like Sarah's son Isaac, we, fellow teammates, are children of God's promise.  But then as now, the child born solely of human effort persecuted the child born by the work of God's Spirit.  But the authoritative writings say to us "Send away the servant and her son, for the son of the servant will not inherit with the son of the free woman."  And we, fellow teammates, are not spiritual children of a servant, but of the free woman, with the inheritance that follows.

Colossians 1 - my attempt at a paraphrase/translation in common English.

1. Paul, appointed by God as a representative of the Champion, Jesus, together with Timothy our teammate,
2. to the Champion's faithful teammates in Colossae:  May you know the gracious acceptance and peace of God our Father.
3. Whenever we pray for you, we thank God, the Father of our Commander, Jesus the Champion,
4. for we have heard about your confidence in the Champion Jesus and your love for his team,
5. Your confidence and love spring from the anticipation you have for all the good prepared for you in heaven, which you learned about from the authoritative source, the Good News,
6. which is changing lives throughout the world even as it has changed your lives since you truly grasped the message of God's generosity
7. which our much-loved coworker Epaphras delivered to you.  He serves the Champion faithfully by serving you
8. and has told us about the love God's Spirit has created in you.
9. Ever since he told us, we have asked God in our prayers to give you all the spiritual wisdom and understanding needed to fully know His will,
10. so you will be able to live the kind of lives that reflect well on the Commander, pleasing him in every way, accomplishing all the good that he intends, and coming to know God better and better.
11. May the Father, out of his magnificent resources, strengthen you with all the power you need to joyfully and patiently persevere,
12. as you thank him for allowing you to share in his team's shining inheritance.
13. He has rescued us from the control of darkness and placed us under the rule of the Son he loves,
14. who has freed us from our debt by securing the forgiveness of our unmet obligations to God.
15. Though we can't see God, His Son, whom he has placed in charge of creation, shows us what God looks like.
16. For through the Son and for his sake God created everything in the spiritual and physical realms, whether visible or invisible, including every kind of spiritual power.
17. The Son is the foundation of everything, and he holds everything together.
18. He is the head of his team, the church.  Everything has its beginning in him, including life after death, so he towers over everything.
19. Everything that God is, the Son also is,
20. and it was by bleeding and dying on the cross that the Son ended creation's rebellion and made peace between God and his creation.
21. You, who were part of that rebellion, rejecting God and doing what he hated,
22. are included in the peace that the Son made through his death on the cross, so you are now clean and innocent and fit for God's presence---
23. if, of course, you keep relying confidently on the Son to secure for you the good that is promised in the gospel that was announced to you and to all creation, the gospel that I, Paul, serve.
24. This service involves suffering for your sake, which I am glad to do, for it completes the work that the Champion's suffering did for the sake of his team, the church.
25. God gave me the responsibility of serving you, his church, by fully and accurately delivering to you his message,
26. which reveals to us, his team, a secret that has been unknown until now.
27. God has decided to tell us that he is offering something of immeasurable value and beauty to everyone regardless of nationality, namely the presence of the Champion in them, enabling them to look forward with anticipation to all of the good that heaven offers.
28. We tell everyone about him, doing our best to warn and encourage them, so that we may present them as well trained members of the Champion's team.
29. I work hard at this, laboring with all the energy which he pours into me.

A plan for helping the homeless

My plan is like a salmon ladder. Getting salmon over a dam in the river in a single leap is impossible, but give them a series of smaller steps that they can take and they can get into the lake above. So my steps from unemployment toward self-sufficiency would look something like this:

1) Set aside safe areas (a fenced-in field, parking lot, or the like), for homeless tents so they're not living on the streets. Patrol those areas to keep them drug free and minimize crime. Provide latrines, showers, basic medical care (particularly addressed towards eliminating substance addictions) and food. Periodically clean things up so that vermin aren't attracted. Men and women (with children) would be given separate safe areas. Anyone found sleeping in any other public place would automatically be taken to one of these safe areas and given an 8x8 piece of ground where he can put his stuff and sleep for the night.

2) Evaluate all of the people in the safe area for their potential to take on responsible living. Those who are capable of doing so would get jobs doing the work that the area requires (preparing food, cleaning the latrines, patrolling the area to minimize the crime, etc). As payment for their work, they would get to sleep in a small (8x8) private room (like a KOA camper cabin) in the safe area with a bed and space for their possessions and would get a small stipend with which they could purchase items they need. Mothers with children would be given a double room with beds for the children.

3) The people living in the rooms would be coached on caring for their private space and faithfully doing their jobs. Any personality traits that would make it difficult for the person to hold down a job would be addressed and, if possible, resolved. If the person was successful caring for his space and doing his job, he would be given job skills training and assisted in applying for available jobs that require those skills.

4) Upon getting a job, government funded housing would be obtained for the person close to the job site and public transportation. If necessary a portable tiny home (like this: https://www.thespruce.com/super-affordable-tiny-homes...) would be set up for the person in a nearby parking lot. While living in this housing the person would save up for a deposit on an apartment and to purchase a car (if needed).

5) Continued periodic counseling would be supplied to help the person deal with any other issues that might arise and plan for the future. At the end of one year (more or less), the person would either begin paying for his housing (if it is a permanent apartment not the tiny home) or move into a place of his own.

Only step 5 has a specific timetable associated with it. A person could stay and any of the lower steps for as long as necessary or desired. If someone proved incapable of living appropriately at any step, he would be dropped back to the next lower step. People who dropped out of step 1 would go either to a mental institution or to jail, depending on their reasons for dropping out.

How to destroy a society

• A group with a socially unacceptable lust/desire/passion is identified (or identifies itself).
• Their lust/desire/passion is renamed with a term that has a positive spin and lacks the connotations/baggage the old name had.
• Any known harm caused by the lust is minimized/papered over or spun as a reason for pity, and anything that can be construed as a positive attribute of the lust is magnified.
• The group dominated by the lust is defined in terms of the lust, and it is deemed an essential part of their character.
• The lust group is identified as a minority group and so subject to protection.
• Any social resistance to the lust is defined as oppression, so the minority group is now considered to be oppressed.
• Any opposition to the lust or efforts to remind people of the known harms of the lust is deemed to be hate speech or lust-phobia and thereby suppressed.
• People who oppose the lust are labeled as prudes, bigots and/or oppressors.
• Advocates of the lust self-identify with previous successful and popular liberation groups so as to legitimize their own efforts.
• People in academia publish papers that declare that the lust is actually healthy and a normal part of human society and therefore to be supported and encouraged.
• Exercise of the lust is defined as a human right, and thereby subject to human rights protection.
• Government support is given to the exercise of the lust, in the form of tax benefits, special protections and other endorsements.  Existing programs are specifically amended to include support for the lust.
• Tolerance education is formalized to instruct people (including young children) on how to support and advocate for those possessed by the lust.
• People who still refuse to endorse the lust are subjected to mandatory tolerance education and threatened with loss of employment, deplatformed, or otherwise ostracized.
• Businesses that do not endorse the lust are sued, boycotted, threatened with loss of certification or tax exampt status (if relevant), and slandered on social media.
• Schools adopt tolerance education as part of their curriculum and train up children in tolerance of the lust.

Repeat until done …

Response to Laura Mayo

I have lots of questions about Laura Mayo's article What if white Christians had a more realistic image of Jesus, a dark-skinned, religious-minority refugee?

• How does Natifa know that the man who attacked her is a Christian?  Or is Natifa making the mistake common among people who come from a non-Christian country of assuming all Americans are Christians and judging Christianity accordingly?  If the man is a Christian, what church does he go to?  Is he representative of that church's membership as a whole?
• How many Christians does Natifa encounter in a day?  How many mistreat her?  We are told to not judge Islam by the actions of its extremists (such as those who flew the airplanes into the twin towers and those who routinely persecute and kill Christians in many countries).  Is the author willing to extend the same courtesy to conservative Christians (who appear to be the target of her displeasure) and refrain from judging them by the actions of extremists who call themselves Christian?
• If Natifa were a young white woman wearing a MAGA hat who was attacked by a member of Antifa who claimed to be Christian, would the author feel the same shame on her behalf and the same need to apologize to her?  Would she want her to be safe and feel welcome?
• The author appears to think that people react against Muslims exclusively because of their skin color.  Does she think that there are no other rational grounds for criticizing their beliefs and lifestyle?  Can one criticize Islam (say by pointing out that sharia law is strongly anti-woman, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and anti-LGBTQ) and not be accused of Islamophobia?
• If the Byzantines (who had similar features to the Jews of Jesus' day) were the first to depict Jesus as white, should we not assume that their reason for doing so had nothing to do with race?  Would it not be more plausible to believe that Jesus' whiteness was a way of portraying his sinlessness (per the Psalms and other passages)?  If so, are European Christians to be blamed for adopting it as a standard in their own portrayals of Jesus?
• The author criticizes "the dominant Christian" culture for twisting the story of Jesus to justify their beliefs and lifestyle.  Is she not also doing the same kind of twisting when she declares that Jesus was persecuted for his religion and gender?  Jesus' family was forced to flee to Egypt not because he was a male Jew, but because Jesus was born King of the Jews.  The man who restored the Jewish temple to magnificence would scarcely have persecuted Jesus for his Jewishness or maleness; he persecuted Jesus because he saw him as a competitor for the throne.
• What sort of "unfair and cruel treatment of LGBTQ persons" does the author have in mind?  Does this include opposition to gay marriage?  Or resistance to having biological males use women's restrooms or compete in women's sports?  Is it unfair and cruel to not want our children to have drag queens read to them in public libraries?  Is it permissible to oppose having children be given sex change operations?
• Is Paul marginalizing and oppressing LGBTQ persons when he says in 1 Corinthians 6:
• 9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, passive homosexual partners, practicing homosexuals, 10 thieves, the greedy, drunkards, the verbally abusive, and swindlers will not inherit the kingdom of God. 11 Some of you once lived this way. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
• What if the saving grace of Jesus is meant to deliver us from slavery to these kinds of behaviors; washing us clean of them rather than affirming us in them?
• Is it not hateful to tell people that they are free to persist in lifestyles that God has clearly said disqualify them from heaven?  Are we not consigning them to hell by doing so?
• Is it OK to see Jesus' race as largely irrelevant, as this song encourages us to do?  Some Children See Him by James Taylor

Romans 8 in rhyme

From condemnation, accusation

the truth of the gospel frees us

We're freed from the claw of death’s dead law

By the life-giving law of Jesus

What God has done through the Christ His Son

the law in the flesh can’t achieve

Vanquishing sin that corrupts within

Making righteous the ones who believe

Our minds will show where our bodies go

To the flesh or to the Spirit

But life in the flesh results in death

A terrible fate; we should fear it

The Spirit gives life that's free from strife

It’s the only peace we can know

God spurns the plans of the fleshly man

He who follows the world is God’s foe

If our hearts we give to Christ we'll live

For we have his Spirit within

Though in sin we're dead, we need not dread

In the Spirit we are saved from sin

The power that raised Christ from the grave

Will give life to our bodies too

The Spirit, God's breath, saves us from death

Those he dwells in he raises up new

So follow the One who raised the Son

The things of the flesh all decay

Kill every lust, place all your trust

In our God, let us walk in his way

The Spirit now leads the people God's freed

Adopted as His own children

Set free, we're not slaves, no more afraid

But sons of our Father in heaven

As sons we’re heirs, so the Spirit swears

Enjoying Christ’s inheritance

But first comes the cross, with all its loss

Then glory from God’s vast abundance

Life hurts a lot, but it’s just a dot

In the ocean of joy we’ll see

Creation waits for God’s promised date

Longing to finally be set free

Lord, set us free from futility,

Rescue us from corruption

Creation groans, and with it we moan

Impatient to have our adoption

The Spirit sprouts, there’s never a doubt

He’ll redeem our bodies someday

We can’t see it now, but still somehow

We’ll walk patiently along God’s way

We’re too weak to pray, no words to say

The Spirit breathes groans in our stead

But God knows his groans, they are his own

They’re exactly what He would have said

If we love the Lord, all things reward

We are called, and he’s not yet done

From the start he knew what he would do

To make us look like Jesus his Son

A great family is what we’ll be

With Jesus our king and our brother

He’s summoned us near, freed us from fear

And given us glory and splendor

There’s no more to say, God took away

All reasons to send us to hell

He gave us his Son and isn’t yet done

Ev’ry good thing He gives us as well

The people God chose, no more his foes

He washes them, they're clean indeed

Christ Jesus who died is by his side

To ask from God ev’rything they need

Though fear, pain and grief come like a thief

To steal from us the love of God

The powers will see our victory

Creation will rise up and applaud

Though they slay us now, we will somehow

Overcome by means of God’s love

The rulers will fail, Christ will prevail

And unite us with heaven above

Wedding message - Jared and Rachel

The following message contains references to Isaiah 40:6-8, Ephesians 5:22-33, and the hymn "I know that my Redeemer lives" that were read/sung during the service.  Their full text is at the bottom of this document.

In the Roman empire, when a general won a significant victory, a great parade would be staged in his honor.  The general would ride through the streets of Rome on an elaborately decked out chariot, wearing the finest of clothes and accompanied by the highest-ranking prisoners whom he took captive.  But to prevent him from getting too caught up in himself, a slave rode with him in his chariot and whispered in his ear “Remember, you are mortal” throughout the parade.

Jared and Rachel, when I saw the Bible verses that you had selected for your wedding, I was reminded of this slave.  Isaiah 40:6-8 is not a passage normally chosen for a wedding, and it sets a tone somewhat like the slave’s reminder: “Remember, you are mortal.”  In a day of celebration like that of a Roman general’s victory parade, you want us to hear a Bible passage that reminds us that we are mortal, that our lives are brief, and we wither quickly compared with the eternal glory of God.

What is the answer to this reminder of our frailty?  Do we seize the moment, grab every pleasure we can, and enjoy ourselves to the hilt because you only go around once?  Is the answer to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die?  Surely there will be food and merriment enough at the reception tonight; is that the answer to our mortality?

If that’s all there is, then why would anyone make the vows you are about to make to each other?  Why promise to be faithful to each other “for better, for worse” if the point of life is to maximize our pleasure?  Shouldn’t we do like so many people do these days, and preserve our freedom to jump from one relationship to another if that makes us happy?  A lot of bachelor/ bachelorette parties these days seem calculated to try to persuade the engaged couple that the singles life that they’re leaving is more fun and better than the married life that they’re embarking on; why not stay single if the point of life is to fill it with as much fun as possible before you die?

But most of us know in our hearts that this is not the best response to our mortality.  That’s why we celebrate weddings.  We know that a life of throw-away relationships and endless chasing after pleasure is not satisfying or sustainable.  We know that having someone in your life who has promised to hang with you in good times and in not-so-good times is a precious thing, and we may even realize that one of the most satisfying things we can do with the gifts and talents that God has given us is to invest them in another person.

All of these are excellent reasons to get married, but they don’t necessarily make our mortality any easier to face; in fact they may make it harder.  We get married, we invest our lives in another person, we learn year by year how to live better with each other and how to love each other through thick and thin, then it ends.  Even if we do it all right and our marriage thrives and grows, there will come a time when the phrase “till death do us part” takes a real and painful meaning for us.

6 All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
7 The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.

If our flesh is the whole of who we are, if our entire existence is bound up in these bodies, made up of frail skin and bones, muscles and organs, then we are nothing.  We fade like the California wildflower superbloom under the desert sun, an indistinguishable blip in the age of the universe, and we are gone.  But the Bible assures us that we are more than flesh, and our life is more than biochemistry.

We are also spiritual, and the spiritual life in us is more fundamental to who we are than the bodies in which it dwells.   In Genesis 2:7 we are told, “the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”  We are bodies made of dust from the ground enlivened by a spirit breathed into us by God.  And the breath with which God breathed life into us is the same breath with which He speaks His word, which is eternal.

But if our spirit is eternal, why do we die?  We die because humanity has lost the immortality we once had.  Not long after they were created, Adam and Eve rebelled against God’s command to not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  Though God had warned it would kill them, they ate anyhow, and they died.  Their death was not biological; their bodies continued to live for many more years, but spiritual.  From the moment they ate the fruit, their connection to God’s Spirit was lost and they became spiritually dead.  And just as a mother can pass on a drug addiction to her child, Adam and Eve passed on their spiritual death to their children, so we are born spiritually dead.

This is a terrible place to be.  Spiritual death cuts us off from God and makes it impossible for us to live in true harmony with him, with each other, or even with ourselves.  The evils of this world are the result of spiritually dead people like ourselves rebelling against God and hurting other people.  And there’s nothing we can do on our own to fix it.  Dead people cannot resuscitate themselves.  We need a rescuer who can raise dead people to life.  That rescuer is Jesus Christ.

In his life on earth, Jesus Christ raised dead people back to life.  He himself was nailed to a cross and died a horrible death.  On the third day after he was laid in a tomb, he rose to a new and glorious eternal life which he still lives today, sitting on the throne of heaven with God his Father.

And he offers that life to us.  We, who are like wildflowers that bloom in a day then die, may participate now in the life that Jesus has, and, after we die, may be raised to the eternal life that we were made for, to live forever with Jesus in the glory and delight that he enjoys with God.  For this to happen, we must be united with Jesus, and the way we are united with Jesus is in a wedding.

In chapter 21 of the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, the author John gives us a hint of what this wedding will look like, where he writes:

21:1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

In the end, God makes everything new.  Jerusalem, the city of the people of God, is made new and glorious, and God brings it like a bride to her husband, who is Jesus Christ.  Other places in the Bible describe the church as the bride of Christ; here we see their wedding.

Jared and Rachel, this wedding ceremony is patterned in part after that great and glorious celebration on the day when heaven and earth are made new.  Rachel, you in your beauty are giving us a tiny glimpse of the beauty the people of God will have as the new Jerusalem, and your father was cast in the role of God as he brought you to Jared.  And Jared, you are playing the part of Jesus Christ, as you receive your bride from the hand of her father.  This tradition that we follow in conducting weddings is not merely a beautiful way of bringing people together in marriage, it is a profound illustration of how God unites himself with his people in Jesus Christ.

And the roles that you are playing here don’t end when you walk down the aisle.  Jared, you will still have the role of Christ to Rachel, and Rachel, you will still have the role of the church to Jared throughout your married life.  The passage from Ephesians 5 that was read earlier in this service shows us how this is to be done.

Jared, your part is to love Rachel as Christ loved the church.  Your model is Christ washing his disciples’ feet, Christ feeding them, Christ teaching them, Christ dying for them.  As Paul told us in Philippians chapter 2,

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Your goal in all of this is nourish her and cherish her; to help her to thrive, that she might be as beautiful as God intends for her to be.  This is what Christ did for his people, at great cost to himself, and this is what you are to do for Rachel, whatever it may cost you.

Rachel, your part is to submit to Jared’s leadership.  The word “submit” has become so toxic these days that it is scarcely possible for some to hear it without clenching up inside.  It feels like being defeated, vanquished, abused, and even humiliated.  Though it should not be necessary to say this, this is not what Paul is asking of wives, nor what a husband who is loving his wife as Christ loves the church would ever think of doing to his wife.

It may help us to think of a really good swing dancing team.  When we watch two swing dancers on the floor, we see the man leading the woman, and she in turn following his lead, not because she has been defeated, abused or humiliated, but because she trusts the man to be leading in a way that will make her look good.  This is what Christ is doing for his church, seeking to “present the church to himself in splendor”, and it is what Jared will be seeking to do for you.  Your job is to follow his lead, and to use the service that he offers you to do beautiful things that would never be possible on your own.

But both of you will find that all of this is impossible on your strength alone.  We are not good enough, wise enough, strong enough or patient enough to love our wives as Christ loved the church or to submit to our husbands as unto the Lord.  It is only because “your Redeemer lives”, as we sang in that hymn, and he is working in your lives to make this kind of goodness possible that you have any hope of success in this endeavor.

So this is my charge to you, Jared and Rachel, as frail children of a mighty God who has taken you up into his life – find your strength in the Lord, and press on.  Excel still more.  Learn to love each other better, to serve each other better, to respect and cherish each other better.  Keep looking for reasons to be grateful for what the Lord is doing in your lives and what your spouse is doing for you, then say thanks for those good things.  Press on with the hope of the glory set before you, the glory of the wedding supper of Jesus Christ, in which His church, of which you are a part, will be united with Him forever in a joy that transcends even the joy that you feel today.   Do all of this to the glory of the God who saves you, and for the blessing of His people, who will see in you a hint of his love for us.

I Know That My Redeemer Lives

I know that my Redeemer lives
What comfort this sweet sentence gives
He lives, he lives Who once was dead
He lives, my ever living Head

He lives triumphant from the grave
He lives eternally to save
He lives, my mansion to prepare
He lives to lead me safely there

He lives and grants me daily breath
He lives and I shall conquer death
He lives, and while He lives I'll sing
He lives, my Prophet, Priest and King

He lives, all glory to His Name
He lives, my Jesus still the same
And oh, the sweet joy this sentence gives
I know that my Redeemer lives

Isaiah 40:6-8

40:6 A voice says, Cry!
And I said, What shall I cry?
All flesh is grass,
and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
7 The grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the Lord blows on it;
surely the people are grass.
8 The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.

Ephesians 5:22-33

22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Memorial service message

Welcome to the memorial service for R.  A memorial service is a time for remembering and reflecting.  We remember the life that R lived and reflect on the implications of his death for all of us.

R mattered to people.  His military service mattered to those he worked with.  His work as a mechanic mattered to those whose equipment he repaired and maintained.  His motorcycle racing made him a significant part of that community, and his love for being around people and helping them when he could made a difference in many people’s lives.  For these things we can be grateful.  It strengthens our community and enriches our lives to have people around who are willing to fix what’s broken, to give counsel where they can, and to invest a portion of their lives in military service to defend our country.

But R is dead.  No longer can he do the things that he did to contribute to people’s lives.  As his cancer was killing him, it was taking away his ability to make a difference in these ways.  This is a loss.  Some of you have felt this loss for a while, as the man who loved to help people, to fix things, to grill, to ride his motorcycle and to go to the movies gradually disappeared.  And the more you appreciated his contributions to your life, the more painful it will be to see that taken away.  When love is deep, grief will also be deep, for we must come to grips with the loss of much good that we had enjoyed in having a person in our lives who is no longer there.

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There are other reasons for grief as well.  You may have wanted something from R that there is now no hope of ever receiving.  You may have wanted to give him something that he is now no longer able to receive.  Whatever the cause, grief is a natural and normal response to someone’s death, and it is important to acknowledge this.  And sometimes grief comes before the person dies, as we see the effects of the fatal disease taking its toll and suffer the loss of much of what made that person special to us before the person actually dies.  We may do our grieving ahead of time, and when the funeral comes, we may be largely done with grief.

So, as we remember R, and we reflect on the implications of his death for us, we may experience both gratitude for what his life meant for us and grief for the lost possibilities resulting from his death.  Beyond that, we are forced to come to grips once more with the fact that this story is repeated in every one of our lives.  We are born, we have a chance to enjoy life for a while and make whatever contribution we can to the lives of others, then we die and all contributions we make by our life are over.  The great prophet Moses, who lived over three thousand years ago, described it this way in in the Bible in Psalm 90:

The days of our lives add up to seventy years,

or eighty if one is especially strong.

But even one’s best years are marred by trouble and oppression.

Yes, they pass quickly and we fly away.

…

So teach us to consider our mortality,

So that we might live wisely.

Three thousand years later, our life expectancy hasn’t changed much at all; we get seventy or eighty years on this earth, and then it’s over.

But it isn’t over when it’s over.  The upcoming Easter holiday teaches this, for it is not so much about eggs and bunnies as it is about the commemoration of Jesus Christ, who, after being crucified and buried in a grave, rose from the grave in a new and transformed life which he makes available to his people.  This short, troublesome life that Moses describes is only prologue, a first small step of our vast existence which will continue forever in the life to come.  When we fly away from this world, we are entering a deeper reality, for we are flying into the presence of the creator of the universe, God himself, and his son Jesus Christ.

Even now, R is having this encounter.  We don’t know much about what this experience will be like, but we do know that it will be awesome; far more awesome than meeting Oprah, or Mark Zuckerberg, or LeBron James, or the president or the pope.  There’s no meeting we could have with anyone in this life that would be nearly as awesome as meeting God.  The last book of the Bible, Revelation, tells of one such meeting in which John, the author, describes Jesus this way:

14 His head and hair were as white as wool, even as white as snow, and his eyes were like a fiery flame. 15 His feet were like polished bronze refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters.

John was blown away, and we would be too by such an encounter.

How do we approach such a God as this?  We can’t even approach the powerful people in this life so easily; they live in gated communities with walls around their homes and body guards keeping little people like us away.  How then do we approach God?

Even with the powerful people of this world, there are little people who can approach them, namely their children.  President Trump’s children have ready access to him. So do Mark Zuckerberg’s.  If you’re part of the family, you belong, and you can have access that no one else gets.

So it is with God; if you’re part of His family you get access to him.  Jesus Christ, God’s Son, gets complete access to God.  What’s more, Jesus makes it possible for us to be adopted into God’s family so we can be God’s children too and get the same access he does.

But how are we adopted into God’s family?  It can’t be by paying our way in.  If a child on the street came up to me and said, “Here’s $50, I want to be adopted into your family,” I’d say, “No way – go home to your own family.”  And that’s what God will say to us if we tell him, “Here’s all the good stuff I did, now adopt me into your family.”  But if we become friends with God’s son Jesus Christ, and he goes to his Father and tells him, “this person is a friend of mine and I want him to be adopted into our family,” then God listens to him and will adopt us into his family.

A thief who was crucified along with Jesus shows us how this is done, for he could say to another criminal being crucified, “We are getting what we deserve for what we have done, but this man [he’s talking about Jesus] has done nothing wrong.”  Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And Jesus said to him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

He told Jesus that he deserved punishment for the bad things he had done and asked Him to remember him.  This was how the thief became friends with Jesus, and it will be how we do it too.  And if we are friends of Jesus, and through Jesus are adopted into God’s family, then God will welcome us into his household when this life is over, and we will enjoy his company and the company of his family forever.  And it will be wonderful.  Nothing in this life can be compared with the joy of that experience.  If you combine the joy of a wedding, the Super Bowl celebration, the victory day parade after WWII and a super graduation party and then multiply it all times a thousand, you might get a hint of what heaven’s joy will be like.  It will be filled with love and beauty, God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and all the sorrow and heartache we have ever felt will be swallowed up in an endless celebration of the goodness and magnificence of God.

So in this memorial service for R, not only do we remember the life that R lived and reflect on its significance for us, but we look forward with hope to a glorious celebration to which all who are invited who are friends of Jesus.  Let us pray.

Plot synopsis

A priest's younger brother runs off with a woman from a gang.  They live together, she gets pregnant and then both of them get sick from a dangerous disease that is going around.  The baby gets born with serious disfiguring deformities and, with his last breath, the brother asks the priest to care for the baby.  Having no wife and no good place to keep such a child as this, the priest still agrees and cares for and instructs the boy as he would his own son.  Knowing that the boy would attract hostility because of his deformities, he keeps him in the church, and warns him that it would be dangerous for him to go outside because of the way people would treat him.

As was the custom of the city in which the priest lived, an annual festival is underway in which the gangs roam freely through the streets, fascinating people with magic tricks, getting drunk, soliciting sex from strangers and robbing passers-by when the opportunity arises.  Angry about how this kind of behavior had damaged his own family and concerned about the damage it could cause to his community, the priest finally makes up his mind to ask the king to outlaw this festival.

His nephew, having become a very strong adolescent, become restless in his confinement, looks out on the celebration and thinks to himself how much fun it would be to be down there on the streets with all the excitement and activity.  Rebelling against his uncle, he sneaks out of the church and into the crowds.  As his uncle had warned him, the boy is badly abused by a gang and his uncle, hearing about this, at considerable risk to himself, has to go into the crowds to rescue the boy and return him to the safety of the church.  In this he is aided by a young woman in the gang, who feels guilty about the abuse her fellow gang members heaped on the boy.

The priest was not unscathed, however, by this encounter. His close proximity to this attractive young woman, who cared for his son like a mother when others were cruel to him, awakens in him a powerful desire to have her for his own.  He now finds himself consumed with the memory of her presence and struggles to remain faithful to his vows.  She, on the other hand, concerned for the boy and  increasingly uncomfortable with her lifestyle, comes to the priest's church one day to see how he is doing and seek help in finding a different way.  Shocked to see her there, the priest nevertheless recovers himself enough to offer to teach her about the ways of God, but he is unable to conceal the desire that her presence triggers in him.  She, recognizing the signs, flees the church and he, angry at himself and her, warns her never to return.

Torn between his desire for the woman and the demands of his vocation, the priest prays but finds no relief.  Horrified by the power his desire has over him, the priest convinces himself that the woman had used her magic to ensnare him and determines not only to outlaw the festival, but to drive the gangs out of the town and destroy the woman.  He persuades the king to give him a military force for this purpose and sets out on his mission.  Coming to a brothel that is run by the gang members, the priest demands that they turn over the woman to him.  When they refuse, he orders that the place be burned down.  The captain of his military force (who had visited this brothel previously for "recreation") refuses, and the priest, infuriated by the insubordination, strips the captain of his command and has the building burned.

The captain is injured during this encounter and the young woman takes him to the church to seek the boy's help in caring for him and out of a vague hope that the church might provide a sanctuary for them.  When it becomes obvious that she can't stay, she gives the boy a map of where to find her and flees the church.  The priest shows up soon afterwards, suspicious that the boy is sympathetic to the woman, and the boy conceals the captain and denies any involvement with the woman.  Not convinced, the priest decides to trap them by announcing that he knows where she is hiding and will send a force there tomorrow to root them out.  Wanting to warn gang members, the boy and the captain follow the map to their hideout, where they are promptly captured by the gang and sentenced to be hung.  The woman shows up and persuades the gang that the captain and the boy are friends and has them released.  The priest then arrives, having followed the boy and the captain, and he has his force arrest the entire gang.

Having imprisoned both the woman and the captain, the priest then offers to set them both free in return for her company.  Indignant, the woman refuses, and the priest has them both confined together.  The captain tries to persuade her to take up the priest's offer to save her life, while the woman contemplates doing so to save the captain's life.  The following morning, the captain is released and the priest offers the woman one last chance for life on the same terms.  She spits in the priest's face, and he in rage has her burned.  The boy, who has been struggling to find courage to try to rescue the woman, finally runs to the pyre, frees her and takes her back into the church, where she dies after thanking him.  The priest sends the military force into the church to capture them, but they are repelled when the boy pours molten lead from a high window onto them.  The priest, however, is able to enter and he tries to persuade his nephew that all is well and life can continue as it had previously now that the woman is dead, but the boy calls his uncle a monster and throws him out of a high window to his death.

And they close, singing "who is a monster and who is a man?"

Thoughts about John chapter 3 (inspired by this morning's sermon)

In chapter 3 of the gospel of John, Jesus is approached by Nicodemus, a man who is described as a Pharisee (the strictest group of Jews in Jesus' day), a member of the Jewish ruling council (the highest governing body in Jewish society) and "the teacher of Israel" (an esteemed authority on religious matters).  He starts the conversation by saying, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs that you do unless God is with him.”  From his standpoint, he was honoring Jesus by calling him Rabbi (even though Jesus had no official credentials within Jewish academic circles that would entitle him to such a title) while displaying his own credentials as one who represents the top academic circles in Israel, people qualified to make such a judgment about Jesus.

But Jesus knows the hearts of the Pharisees, how they will go toe-to-toe with him over his healing on the Sabbath, how they'll attribute his work to the devil, how they'll excommunicate people who believe in him, and how they'll finally join the chorus of people who demand that he be crucified.  So when Nicodemus, says "We know that you are from God," Jesus pushes back hard by replying, “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born from above [or "born again"], he cannot see the kingdom of God.”  In effect, he's saying, "You guys who think you are qualified to evaluate me as a spiritual teacher can't even see what I'm doing unless you're spiritually reborn."

This knocks Nicodemus back on his heels.  Far from getting appreciation from Jesus for his generous acknowledgement of Jesus' teaching ability, he has been told that he and his peers are utterly unqualified to evaluate Jesus, and have to become spiritual infants in a second birth before they can even begin to understand who Jesus is.  So he reacts with incredulity by parodying what Jesus says; "What do you mean - crawl back into my mother's womb and be born once more?"  Of course he knows that Jesus doesn't mean this, but he wants to deflect the accusation that he's incompetent to evaluate Jesus by making Jesus look silly and this is the best way he can find to do it.

But Jesus won't be deflected.  He drives his message home harder, by saying: “I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit."  Evaluating Jesus is a spiritual matter and must be done by people who have spiritual life in them.  For a person who is only born of water (that is to say, through normal human conception and birth) to judge Jesus would be as hopeless as for a dead person to evaluate a living person.  We are born spiritually dead and, just as we received biological life from our parents, we must receive spiritual life from God before we can evaluate spiritual people like Jesus.  Otherwise their behavior is as mysterious to us as the movement of the wind, for, as Jesus goes on to tell Nicodemus, "The wind blows wherever it will, and you hear the sound it makes, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Nicodemus is now entirely out of his depth, only being able to reply with the weak question, "how can this be?"  He is now where Jesus wants him to be, admitting his inability to understand what Jesus is doing, and Jesus affirms his ignorance with the question, "Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you don’t understand these things?"  But in case Nicodemus think that his ignorance is innocent, Jesus goes on to say that the ignorance of Nicodemus and his peers is is not simply a lack of information, but a rejection of the truth.  "I tell you the solemn truth,", Jesus says, "we speak about what we know and testify about what we have seen, but you people do not accept our testimony."  Nicodemus and his fellow Jewish teachers should have recognized that Jesus was no freelance rabbi needing to be welcomed into the official guild, but that he was far above any official guild and the appointed teachers of Israel needed to sit at Jesus' feet and learn from him.

Jesus then asks Nicodemus, "If I have told you people about earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven – the Son of Man."  The fact that Nicodemus and his peers didn't see how far Jesus was above them was a moral failure on their part and makes it impossible for them to learn from him.  He alone was qualified to teach them about heavenly things, yet they wouldn't even sit at his feet and learn earthly things from him, let alone the things of heaven.

Jesus goes on to say, "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  Jesus must be lifted up in their conception of him before they can truly believe in him in a life-giving way.  This is the thrust of what Jesus goes on to say in his famous statement in John 3:16: "For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life."  Those who believe in Jesus, who see Him as he truly is, lifted up above all things, and are willing to sit humbly at his feet to learn from Him and follow Him, will not perish, but will have eternal life.  But not everyone is willing to do this, for being born again entails becoming small and dependent, losing our prestige and authority, and learning again to humbly receive teaching that we cannot obtain any other way.

 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. 18 The one who believes in him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. 19 Now this is the basis for judging: that the light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For everyone who does evil deeds hates the light and does not come to the light, so that their deeds will not be exposed. 21 But the one who practices the truth comes to the light, so that it may be plainly evident that his deeds have been done in God.

These days it's easy to be a spiritual authority.  We tell one another what we think God would say or do and are taken with complete seriousness.  Everyone is qualified to say "my god would never..." or "of course god wants us to ..." without needing to appeal to any higher authority than our own desires and intuitions.  We freely correct Jesus when he gets something wrong, and are perfectly happy to choose from a smorgasbord of available religious teachings the ones that suit our taste and fancy.  But this is the road to death.  Rather than sit in the light of Jesus' judgment of us, we prefer the darkness of our judgment upon him, perhaps following Nicodemus in magnanimously admitting that Jesus is a teacher from God, or perhaps more critically declaring that his teachings are deficient and others are more worthy of our allegiance.  But only by being reborn in the Spirit can we see Jesus for who he is, the Son of Man come down from heaven, and abandon the folly of passing judgment upon him.  Only as our hearts are made alive in Christ will we see Jesus clearly enough to realize that all of our judgments of him are foolishness, and our right position before him is as a humble student and follower of him, seeking to learn true wisdom from the only one qualified to dispense it.

For those who think abortion is about the women...

Abortion was never about women.  It was mandated by male judges when a large majority of women thought it was wrong.  Four out of five women who are planning to get an abortion change their minds when see the child in their womb via ultrasound.  And Planned Parenthood knows this.  Most women don’t leave their offices with a smile on their faces, relieved that they got their abortion and glad to get on with their lives.  They leave depressed.  They didn’t get an abortion because they wanted to kill their child, but because they saw no way to raise the child.  They’re being pressured into it by their boyfriends, who threaten to leave them to raise the child alone.  If pregnant women knew that the father of the child they were carrying would be a good husband to them and a good father to the child, most women would never get an abortion.

Abortion is not about the women, it’s about the men.  It’s about boyfriends who want the perks of sex but don’t want the responsibility of caring for the mother and child.  It’s about pimps who don’t want their prostitutes getting pregnant.  It’s about child abusers, who want sex with their daughters but don’t want to get caught having made them pregnant.  If men didn’t push women to get abortions, but instead supported and cared for them and their child, Planned Parenthood would go out of business in a shot.

And abortion is cruel - puncturing the skull of the child to suck out its brains, cutting off its arms and legs in the womb.  We’ve seen ultrasounds of the process and it’s terrible.

We need to stand up and say that we will no longer allow this cruelty in the name of sexual convenience.  That we will no longer drive women to do what their hearts tell them is wrong just because we refuse to be responsible for our actions.  That people need to have sex responsibly, just like they need to drink responsibly and use a cell phone responsibly.  The lives of others hang on their actions.  We need to tell each other that if we have sex we need to be prepared for the possibility that the woman might become pregnant and that man will need to act responsibly and care for the mother and child.  It will be hard now, because we’ve raised a generation of men who are used to being able to have sex irresponsibly, but it can be done and it must be done for the welfare of the women and for society as a whole.

Addressing systemic racism (or something like it).

I read awhile back about a city - I think it was Baltimore, but it could have been any of a bunch of cities, I'm sure - where the mayor is black and so is the chief of police. As the city had a tight budget (as do many cities these days), they naturally funded the police department in large part from the fines collected from issuing tickets. In order to maintain the needed income stream, the police were given quotas of how many tickets they had to write each day. On slow days when a policeman wasn't writing enough tickets to meet quota, he quickly learned that he could go to the poor part of town (which was predominantly black, as is typical in large cities) and pick up people for any of a bunch of violations, such as jaywalking, loitering, trespassing, and the like. These people weren't rich enough to hire a lawyer to get them off the hook, so the tickets would stand, the money would come in, and the policeman wouldn't get in trouble for not meeting quota.

Though the system resulted in a disproportionate number of blacks getting tickets, I'm not sure if it could be called systemic racism - maybe systemic oppression of poor people would be a better description. Whatever we call it, the system is clearly incentivizing police behavior that results in far too many poor/black people getting tickets. In fact the system depended on there being a certain amount of crime so that the police could write the tickets and generate the income, thus discouraging the police from doing anything that would actually reduce the crime rate and so jeopardize their funding.

It seems then that the police department's income stream should not be dependent upon their writing tickets, and police should be evaluated not on the number of tickets they write but on a reduction in the number of crimes reported by the citizens. This would incentivize good behavior from the police, reduce the pressure on them to write tickets, result in lower crime in the city, attract businesses which would otherwise be fleeing the higher crime rates, create more jobs, reduce the number of poor people, improve the tax base for the city, and make life all around better for black people (and everyone else in the city).

This is easily said, but less easily done, as many of these cities have no other funds with which to pay their police. If Kaepernick and Nike used their social clout to help cash-strapped cities find better ways to fund their police departments and to incentivize their police to really reduce crime levels, I'd jump to support them in any way I could. Whether this would actually be addressing systemic racism or not, it would make life better for blacks and reduce the disparity that is evident in how they are treated (even by other blacks) in many cities.

Trump supporters and the corruption of law.

A friend of mine recently asked my opinion of the Atlantic Magazine's article Why Trump Supporters Believe He Is Not Corrupt by Peter Beinart.  The article argues that "What the president’s supporters fear most isn’t the corruption of American law, but the corruption of America’s traditional identity."  It views Trump as a a fascist politician and makes the claim that for Trump supporters corruption is less a matter of breaking the law than of violation of established hierarchies, such as America's racial and sexual norms.  While it is true that Trump supporters tend to favor established hierarchies, this article totally fails to understand the strong concern for the corruption of law that motives those who support Trump.

The first example offered of the Trump supporter's concern for corruption of established hierarchies over and against the corruption of law is Fox's coverage of the alleged murder of Mollie Tibbetts by an undocumented Latino immigrant, Cristhian Rivera.  Beinart claims that what makes this such a hot issue for Trump supporters is not that it violates the law, but that it violates an established American norm that white women must be protected from non-white men.  Frankly, this is nonsense.  As Beinart says a little later in the article, Trump has tweeted nine times about "rule of law" and seven of those mentioned illegal immigration.  This is what makes Tibbetts' murder such a hot issue.  Calling Rivera an "undocumented immigrant" shows where Beinart's sympathies lie, but Trumps supporters call him an illegal alien and wonder why Rivera was allowed into the country, and why he as been allowed to stay now that he is found to be here illegally.  That Rivera remains here and is not deported is a corruption of American law and it is this that Trump supporters are concerned about, not Beinart's "established American norm".

The second example offered by Beinart is how Hillary Clinton is seen by Trump supporters as the more corrupt candidate when "reporters uncovered far more damning evidence about Trump's foundation than they did about Clinton's".  As I am not a subscriber of the Washington Post, I can't read the article linked to substantiate this, but it's not really relevant, as the issues of the Clinton Foundation are only a small fraction of what is viewed as Hillary Clinton's corruption.  Her manipulation of the Democratic Party to secure the nomination over Bernie Sanders, her scheme to circumvent campaign financing laws by routing donations through the state DNC chapters (see also here), her storage of classified emails and work related emails on her email server and perjuring herself in sworn testimony about these issues, etc. are all part of the evidence of Clinton's corruption, and this does not even touch the now evident corruption the FBI, of which she was clearly a beneficiary.  For those who care about corruption of law, these issues are FAR more significant than the management of Clinton or Trump foundations, however significant they may be in other circumstances.  As for the currently hot issue of the payoff of a mistress to get her to keep quiet about Trump, the precedent for that was set by Bill Clinton.  One's sexual behaviors were then deemed to be irrelevant to one's role as president, and to consider them relevant now because Trump is president is hypocritical.

Beyond that, the corruption of the FBI (which used a report drafted by the DNC to obtain a FISA warrant to tap an associate of Trump and by extension Trump himself, and put someone who clearly hates Trump in charge of their investigation against him) now renders any accusations made by the FBI against Trump suspect.  It is clear that they were willing to use unscrupulous means to gather evidence against him, so any accusation they bring against Trump must be scrutinized with extraordinary care to confirm that we don't find in it another fabricated effort to discredit him.  It is this corruption that that Trump supporters care about, and this corruption that they attach to Hillary Clinton as heir apparent to the Obama presidency in which the rot blossomed, for it is clear that had Clinton been elected, absolutely none of this would have come to light, and the weaponization of both the DNC and the FBI to elect pre-selected candidates would have continued unabated, leaving us with the appearance of democratic elections but not the reality.

Beinart's claim that powerful women threatens Trump supporters needs no more refutation than to point to Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Nikki Haley as prominent figures in Trump's administration.  They have earned the admiration of many, and it has been suggested that Nikki Haley in particular could find a place on a future presidential slate if she desires.

None of this is to say that Trump is blameless here.  Had the DNC fielded a less corrupt candidate than Hillary Clinton, the FBI not used its powers to try to influence the election, and previous administrations demonstrated a little more concern to enforce our immigration laws as they are written, then Trump's failures might have been sufficient to disqualify him as president.  Some Trump supporters felt they had to hold their nose while voting for him, but the risks of a Clinton presidency were too great to be scrupulous about what had to be considered secondary issues.

The claim that Trump supporters are more concerned about corruption of norms than they are about corruption of law could only be plausible to someone who has already decided that Trump is fascist and then analyzed his supporters through that lens.  This label has been attached to Trump and his supporters when in fact those on the left, notably the profoundly misnamed "Anti"Fa demonstrate far more fascist tendencies than do even the extremists on the right.  The fascists' tendency to suppress free speech (whether through violence, as with Antifa, legal means (witness California's attack on sexual orientation counseling), or simple power, as with Facebook, Google and YouTube censorship) and their willingness to assault those with whom they disagree simply because they disagree are much more characteristic of the left than the right.  If analogies to fascism can be fruitful in analyzing our current social tensions, Beinart might be better served applying them to the left than to the right.