Love’s Rebellion

The Age of Fear, Part 5: The End of Control

TL;DR: The only rebellion worth living is love. Fear builds The Machine through control, performance, and exhaustion. But love refuses the game entirely. Love waits. Love rests. Love resonates.

Series Note: This final post closes The Age of Fear, the first movement in The World’s Wound. We’ve traced how fear shapes our systems and our souls — and how love still heals what fear has built.

Other Posts in this Series:

1. The Gospel of More

We live in an age addicted to progress.
To be still feels like failure.
To rest feels like weakness.

The Machine hums beneath it all,
The endless pursuit of more:
More productivity,
More efficiency,
More results,
More relevance.

Even in the church.

I used to think the Kingdom of God was measured in metrics,
Attendance, baptisms, budgets.

I didn’t realize I’d baptized The Machine.

Andrew Root calls it the culture of innovation,
The belief that if we can just create more programs,
More content,
More activity,
We can manufacture revival.

“The church became obsessed with keeping itself alive.
But the God revealed in Jesus is not found in our capacity
to make something happen, but in our willingness to wait.”
— Andrew Root

The Machine doesn’t know how to wait.
It only knows how to produce.

But love doesn’t perform;
Love abides.

2. The Religion of Performance

We live in a culture where the whip of the master
Has been replaced by the voice inside our own heads
Saying, you can do more.

We have become both slave and master,
Driven and depleted,
Willing participants in our own exhaustion.

“The subject of achievement is free and bound at the same time.
It exploits itself until it burns out.”
— Byung-Chul Han

That’s how The Machine maintains control.
Not through overt domination,
But through self-imposed pressure to never stop.

Even prayer can become performance.
Even rest can feel like rebellion.

3. When Fear Becomes Exhaustion

The Machine thrives on exhaustion
Because tired people are easy to control.

When you’re too weary to feel,
You stop resisting.

Without the spiritual practices of
Sabbath & silence,
Solitude & simplicity,
Slowness & soul-care,
We forget who we are.

Without sacred rhythms,
We lose the resonance that keeps us human.

The Sabbath was never about legalism,
It was about liberation.
It was resistance to Pharaoh’s empire of production,
A refusal to measure worth in output.

In the words of Walter Brueggemann,

“Sabbath is resistance.”
— Walter Brueggemann

4. Love’s Rebellion

Fear builds walls.
Love breaks them.

Fear seeks control.
Love releases it.

Fear dominates.
Love descends.

Every act of love is a small insurrection
Against The Machine.

When you forgive instead of retaliate,
That’s rebellion.

When you rest instead of perform,
That’s rebellion.

When you show up open instead of armored,
That’s rebellion.

“Resonance is not a strategy for mastering the world,
but for being transformed by relationship.”
— Hartmut Rosa

Love’s rebellion is not loud.
It’s not angry.
It’s not violent.
It’s vulnerable.
Patient.
Open.

Because uncontrolling love is the one power
That cannot be co-opted by fear.

“Love is the supreme form of revolution.”
— Brian Zahnd

5. The Uncontrollable God

At the heart of the gospel
Is a God who refuses to be managed.

God will not be domesticated by our systems.
God will not be summoned by our strategies.
God will not be reduced to our outcomes.

God waits.
God resonates.
God loves.

And this uncontrollable love
Is the end of every empire
And the beginning of every resurrection.

6. The Practice: Waiting as Resistance

Today, let love interrupt your rhythm.
Turn off the noise.
Step outside the current of efficiency.
Breathe.

You don’t have to fix the world’s wound.
You only have to stay near it.

Waiting is not passivity.
It’s participation in a deeper rhythm.

“The task is not to build the kingdom,
But to wait with God for it to come.”
— Andrew Root

This is love’s rebellion,
To live as if presence is enough.
Because it is.

Let’s Talk!

• Where do you feel The Machine demanding more?

• What would it look like to resist by waiting?

• How might love’s uncontrollable presence rewrite your rhythm today?

Leave a comment

Prayer

God of uncontrolling love,
In a world obsessed with progress,
Teach us the holy art of waiting.
Where fear drives us to produce,
Slow us with grace.
Where control tempts us to dominate,
Free us to trust.
Let love resonate deeper than fear’s hum,
Until our striving ceases,
And our hearts learn to rest again in you.
Amen.

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The False God of Control

The Age of Fear, Part 4: Fear’s Gospel and Love’s Resistance

TL;DR: Fear always preaches control as salvation — but the gospel of control cannot heal the wounds it creates. Love does not conquer through domination; it heals through resonance. To follow Jesus is to unlearn control and live open to love’s uncontrollable presence.

Series Note: This five-day series, The Age of Fear, is the first movement in The World’s Wound. Each post explores how fear shapes our world and how love — uncontrolling, resonant love — still heals what fear has built.

Other Posts in this Series:

This reflection came out of my own struggle to release control — in ministry, in grief, and in faith. It’s about learning to trust the love that won’t be managed.

1. The Gospel of Control

I remember the day I realized I had made control my savior.

Sitting in my office, staring at a spreadsheet of outcomes,
Attendance, baptisms, budgets …
The very things I once believed proved faithfulness.
But the more I managed, the less alive I felt.

Control was a god that demanded endless sacrifice.

The Machine preaches:
If you let go, everything will fall apart.
If you rest, you’ll lose your worth.
If you love, you’ll get hurt.

Fear always preaches the same gospel:
If you can manage it, you’ll be okay.

It’s The Machine’s oldest lie,
A promise that control will save us.
That if we build strong enough walls,
Perfect enough systems,
Predictable enough lives,
We can keep suffering at bay.

But the gospel of control is counterfeit.
It offers safety without love,
Order without joy,
Certainty without trust.

Much of the modern church has confused activity for faith,
As if busyness itself could substitute for grace.

Faith is not performance.
It is presence.
It’s the courage to wait in love,
Even when nothing seems to be working.

The more afraid we are,
The more we worship control.
And control always requires sacrifice.

We sacrifice time at the altar of productivity.
We sacrifice people at the altar of efficiency.
We sacrifice peace at the altar of certainty.

We trade intimacy for mastery.
We trade mystery for management.
We trade relationship for predictability.

And yet, control never delivers what it promises.

2. The Illusion of Mastery

Control tells us that if we can just manage reality,
We’ll finally feel secure.
But the more we tighten our grip,
The more life slips through our fingers.

We’ve built a culture that confuses mastery with meaning.

We know how to make things work,
But we’ve forgotten how to make them sing.

We’ve replaced
Ritual with achievement
Wonder with exhaustion.

We’ve turned even our spirituality into self-optimization.

The world, like love, resists being managed.

You can dominate a system,
But you can’t compel relationship.

Love does not respond to force.
Grace cannot be engineered.

Love must be received, not achieved
Like breath,
Like beauty,
Like a gift.

That’s what makes love both terrifying and holy.
You can’t make it happen.
You can only open yourself to Love.

3. The Machine’s Great Fear

The Machine fears what it cannot predict.
It fears freedom.
It fears weakness.
It fears the uncontrollable.

But the uncontrollable is the very space
Where love is born.

God’s love —
Uncontrolling, cruciform, relational —
Refuses to manipulate or coerce.

“God’s power is the power of love’s uncontrolling invitation.”
— Thomas Jay Oord

This is the scandal of the gospel:
The universe is held together, not by control,
But by communion.

Christ holds all things not by domination,
But by relationship,
The pulse of love that vibrates through creation,
Calling every wound toward healing.

In Jesus, God doesn’t speak from above the world,
God enters it,
Dwells within it,
Feels it from the inside.

Every healing,
Every silence,
Every touch
Was love resonating back into the wound of the world.

Incarnation is the sound of God saying:
“I will not control you.
I will be with you.”

4. The Power of Surrender

Fear says, keep it together.
Jesus says, let it go.

Fear says, prove your worth.
Jesus says, you are already beloved.

Fear says, win.
Jesus says, lose yourself and you will find life.

Control is the refusal to trust love.
And yet love only works through trust.

“What you cling to, you lose.
What you let go of, grows.”
— Richard Rohr

When we surrender control,
We become open to the kind of life
That cannot be managed or measured,
Only received.

That’s what Jesus called the Kingdom of God.
Not a system to run,
But a relationship to receive.

5. Love’s Resistance

Every act of love is an act of resistance
Against The Machine’s illusion of control.

When you forgive instead of retaliate,
You resist the gospel of fear.

When you rest instead of produce,
You declare that being is enough.

When you listen instead of manage,
You make space for grace.

To follow Jesus is to unlearn control
And live open to love’s uncontrollable presence.

Jesus embodied this kind of resistance,
The holy vulnerability of God.

He touched what others avoided.
He washed the feet of those who would betray him.
He trusted love’s power even as the world tried to crucify it.
And the world did.

But love still resonated.
It still does.

“Love is not the weak alternative to power;
it is the power that remakes the world.”
— Brian Zahnd

6. The Practice

There comes a moment when control slips through our fingers.
When every plan unravels,
And the illusion that we were ever in charge dissolves into light.

In that moment, I hear a whisper,
Not of failure, but of freedom:
You don’t have to hold what only love can heal.

So I breathe.
I release my need to fix what was never mine to manage.
I let go of the stories I’ve told myself about how it should go,

And listen for the quiet pulse beneath everything,
The hum of grace that keeps the world alive.

Trust is messy.

It’s the trembling courage to stay open when I can’t predict the outcome.
It’s learning to recognize presence in the unplanned,
And to believe that redemption has never depended on my control.

Uncontrolling love is not distant.
It moves through me,
Slow and steady,
Turning my grasping into giving,
My fear into freedom.

And maybe that’s the beginning of healing,
When I stop trying to master life
And start letting it sing through me again.

Today, notice where control is masquerading as safety.

Ask yourself:

What am I trying to manage that love is asking me to trust?

Breathe.
Release.
Open.

Let go of what you cannot hold.
Listen for what still holds you.
Love is alive.

Can you hear it?

Let’s Talk!

• Where do you see the gospel of control at work in your world?

• What have you sacrificed to The Machine — time, joy, rest, love?

• What would it mean to let love be uncontrollable again?

Leave a comment

Prayer

God of uncontrolling love,
You are not a god of mastery,
But of mercy.
Unmake the idols of certainty within us.
Loosen our grip on the illusion of control.
Teach us the holy art of surrender,
The freedom of trust,
The joy of presence.
May our hearts vibrate again
With the music of your love,
Until all creation joins the song.
Amen.

Tomorrow

The conclusion of the Age of Fear

Love’s Rebellion
The End of Control

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Trauma at Scale

The Age of Fear, Part 3: Our Unhealed Wounds Institutionalized

TL;DR: The Machine is trauma at scale. Fear doesn’t stay inside us—it builds the systems we live in. Our unhealed pain becomes policy, economy, and culture. But love still enters the wound, not to control it, but to heal it.

Series Note: This five-day series, The Age of Fear, is the first movement in The World’s Wound. Each post explores how fear shapes our world and how love — uncontrolling, resonant love — still heals what fear has built.

Other Posts in this Series:

1. Trauma Becomes Structure

Every empire begins as a coping mechanism.

Rome feared chaos.
Capitalism fears scarcity.
AI fears limitation.

Even religion, when driven by fear, begins to fear freedom.

As Brian Zahnd often says, empire is what happens when trauma becomes policy,
The cross unmasks this collective madness and begins the world’s healing.

That’s what I mean by trauma at scale,
When pain organizes itself into policy,
And wounds harden into the way things are.

“What is not transformed is transmitted,”
— Richard Rohr

What we don’t heal, we hand down.

Our collective nervous system has become mechanical,
Stuck in a cycle of anxiety and control.

Modernity, as Hartmut Rosa writes, is marked by a deep desire to make the world controllable — and yet the faster we run, the more it slips from our grasp.

The Machine hums beneath it all,
Translating fear into metrics,
And pain into productivity.

2. The Dehumanizing Logic of Fear

When fear organizes power,
it always turns people into parts.

The Machine doesn’t see faces.
It sees functions.
It sorts, ranks, and rewards.

It asks not, Who are you? but What can you do for me?

That’s how The Machine deforms.
It’s how it dehumanizes.
It’s how it oppresses, not only by violence,
But by reducing souls to usefulness.

When we measure worth in output,
We forget how to love what cannot be measured.
And when we forget that,
We stop seeing one another as sacred.

“Every form of injustice is rooted in people not being treated as image-bearers of God.”
— Stephen Mattson

3. Debelonging

The Machine doesn’t only wound.
It isolates.
It convinces us that belonging is earned,
That value is conditional,
That weakness is failure.

It whispers,
“Don’t let them see you struggle.”
“Don’t admit you’re tired.”
“Don’t ask for help.”

We begin to curate our wounds instead of confess them.
To hide the cracks instead of let light through.

Rosa names this isolation as the central pathology of late modern life,
A world where we are surrounded by everything,
But touched by almost nothing.

“Resonant experiences provide meaning in a modern existence permeated with distance, coldness, and unresponsiveness.”
— Hartmut Rosa

Fear teaches us to manage our image.
Love invites us to reveal our heart.

That’s why vulnerability is The Machine’s great enemy,
Because weakness doesn’t lead to control.
But it does lead to healing.

What begins as inner disconnection
Becomes outer domination.
Fear that isolates the heart
Eventually codifies itself into law.

“The church must be present to the wounds of the world, for it is itself wounded. The acknowledgment of our wounds is the beginning of our healing.”
— William Cavanaugh

4. When Fear Becomes Law

Every empire baptizes its fear.
It tells us this is for safety,
For order,
For the greater good.

That’s how oppression takes root,
In noble intentions that forget love.

We build walls for protection
That become prisons.
We build armies for defense
That become engines of domination.
We build economies for provision
That become machines of exploitation.

“The God revealed in Christ is cruciform, not coercive… not the manager of violence, but the healer of creation”
— Brian Zahnd

When fear becomes law,
Love becomes rebellion.

And yet, Jesus still enters the wound.
He doesn’t build new walls.
He breaks the ones that divide.
He doesn’t create new hierarchies.
He sits at the bottom of them all.

5. Healing the World’s Wound

Jesus didn’t heal from a distance.
He touched what everyone else avoided.
He entered the wound.
He felt the pain of the system in his own body.

As Greg Boyd teaches,
The cross reveals that God’s power is not coercive but cruciform,
The non-coercive power of self-giving love.

The cross isn’t divine control.
It’s divine consent.
Love, refusing to dominate.
Love, entering trauma with presence, not power.

Uncontrolling love always resonates,
Not by fixing,
But by holding,
By staying,
By suffering-with.

That’s how healing begins:
Not through force,
But through presence.

Love resonates like wind through trees,
Unseen but unmistakable.
One heart moves,
And another bends toward it.
Before long,
The whole forest is breathing again.

“Love is not the weak alternative to power; it is the power that remakes the world.” — Brian Zahnd

6. The Practice

Today, notice where pain echoes in your world.
Where do you see unhealed wounds institutionalized?

Maybe in your workplace,
Your church,
Your neighborhood,
Or your own body.

Don’t rush to fix it.
Pause.
Name it.
Bring it into presence.

And whisper this prayer:

God, teach me to meet pain with presence, not control.
May love find resonance even here.

The Machine thrives on control.
But healing begins when love refuses to play by its rules.

“Healing is hard work, but what was meant to destroy you may become the making of you.”
— Sarah Bessey

Let’s Talk!

• Where do you see trauma at scale in your world?

• How has fear shaped the systems you live within?

• What would it look like for love to resonate there?

Leave a comment

Prayer

God of the wounded and the weary,
You enter our fear,
Not to conquer it,
But to heal it.
Where the Machine deforms,
Restore our humanity.
Where it de-belongs,
Weave us back into community.
Where it rejects weakness,
Teach us to trust vulnerability again.
Let your uncontrolling love
Move through us like wind through trees,
Until all creation breathes again.
Amen.

Tomorrow (Part 4):

The False God of Control
Fear’s Gospel and Love’s Resistance

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The Machine Within

The Age of Fear, Part 2: How Fear Builds Systems

TL;DR: The Machine doesn’t just surround us, it lives in us. What we call “normal” is often fear made visible. Systems are stories that have hardened into habits, and love is the only force that can rewrite them.

Series Note: This five-day series, The Age of Fear, is the first movement in a larger project called The World’s Wound. Each post explores how fear shapes our world and how love still heals what fear has built.

Here is the first post in this series:

1. Beneath the Circuits

Yesterday we named The Machine as fear made visible;
Today we look inward,
At how fear builds the very systems we inhabit.

The Machine isn’t just made of code and commerce.
It hums inside
Our calendars,
Our conversations,
Our churches.

Every system begins as a story.
And every story starts with fear.

I saw it early in my ministry.
Every year, our district gathered for church assemblies
Where awards were handed out,
For attendance, baptisms, and stewardship dollars.

It felt oddly like the business world I’d just left.
The corporate world of the church and the corporate world of commerce
Were telling the same story,
Singing the same liturgy of success.

And as a young pastor,
I’d leave those meetings with a private vow:
Next year, I’ll win the awards.
Just like I did before — in business.

The Machine hums beneath both worlds.
And what was missing in my heart
Was resonance,
The love that can’t be controlled by programs,
Strategies,
Or gimmicks.

And every year that I didn’t win the award,
The fear metastasized.

This is the culture we live in,
The fear of not keeping up,
The fear of not improving,
The fear of not producing.

We call it efficiency,
But it’s often the fear of wasting time.
We call it growth,
But it’s often the fear of scarcity.
We call it safety,
But it’s often the fear of pain.

That’s how The Machine takes root,
Not in silicon or steel,
But in the stories we tell about survival.

We inherit its logic
Until fear feels normal
And control feels holy.

When fear becomes our organizing principle,
We stop responding to the world.
We start managing it.

And every time we manage instead of meet,
The distance grows.

2. The Shape of Fear

I’ve built my share of little Machines.
Staff meetings where spreadsheets mattered more than souls.
Sermons crafted to manage outcomes instead of open hearts.

Fear was always the fuel,
Fear of failing,
Of letting someone down,
Of being exposed as not enough.
I called it excellence. It was really anxiety with a theology degree.

If The Machine had a liturgy,
It would sound something like this:

Be productive.
Be efficient.
Be indispensable.
Never rest.

It’s a creed written on our calendars,
Recited in boardrooms,
And echoed from pulpits.

We measure worth by output,
Faithfulness by busyness,
Love by usefulness.

And yet, beneath all the movement,
There’s a quiet despair.

We can’t stop.
Because if we stop,
We might have to feel
How afraid we really are.

Rosa calls this the “high-speed trap”:

“The faster we go, the more the world escapes our grasp.
What we gain in control, we lose in resonance.”
— Hartmut Rosa

3. Fear Becomes Form

Fear doesn’t stay abstract.
It builds architecture.
It shapes economies.
It forms algorithms.
It structures religion.

That’s what Walter Wink meant
When he said the Powers are both visible and invisible,
The outer forms of inner fears.

The Machine within becomes The Machine without.

A hospital built to heal
Can become a business built to bill.
A church called to love
Can become an organization built to perform.
A government meant to protect
Can become a system built to control.

Every Power begins with good intention
But bends toward fear when it forgets love.

“The Powers are not evil by nature, but they become demonic when they refuse to fulfill their divine vocation of serving life.” — Walter Wink

The Machine deforms and dehumanizes,
Pressing people into roles that serve its fear rather than love’s freedom.

When fear becomes law, love becomes dangerous.
That’s when The Machine begins to oppress.

What started as protection turns to domination.
The Powers stop serving life and start demanding loyalty.
And out of fear, fear of losing control,
Of being on the wrong side, we participate.
We become both victims and keepers of The Machine.

That’s why Jesus didn’t just preach repentance;
He enacted it,
Disrupting systems,
Restoring outcasts,
And reminding the powerful
That every structure exists for people,
Not people for the structure.

4. The False God of Control

The more afraid we are,
The more we worship control.
And control always requires sacrifice.

We sacrifice time
At the altar of productivity.

We sacrifice people
At the altar of efficiency.

We sacrifice peace
At the altar of certainty.

And yet, the cross of Christ reveals a different kind of power…

The power:

• of surrender,

• of vulnerability,

• of love that refuses to dominate.

The world says, Keep it together.
Jesus says, Let it go.

The world says, Prove your worth.
Jesus says,You are already beloved.

Fear builds systems to avoid suffering.
Love enters suffering to bring healing.

5. When Love Resonates

Philosopher Hartmut Rosa says

The opposite of control isn’t chaos, it’s resonance.

Resonance happens when life vibrates back,
When love meets the world and the world responds.
When love resonates.

That’s what Jesus did with every breath:
Jesus resonated with reality.

He met fear with presence.
He met power with compassion.
He met violence with forgiveness.

Love,
In its purest form,
Is the unlearning of control.
Love resonates.

calls it “uncontrolling love”:
Love that refuses to dominate,
Love that moves through freedom,
Love that shapes us not by force, but by invitation.

God’s power is the power of love’s uncontrolling invitation.

We can’t manage this love.
We can only receive this love.
And when we do, it changes everything.

Love forms us into the same pattern,
A life that resonates back with love.

We were born into the hum of The Machine.
None of us chose it, and none of us can escape it alone.
But love doesn’t shame us for living here; love moves through the cracks,
Reminding us that resonance begins with compassion, even for ourselves.

“The good life is not a life of control,
But a life in which we are touched by the world and respond to it.”
— Hartmut Rosa

Love resonates like wind through trees, unseen but unmistakable.
One life moves, and another bends toward it.
Before long, the forest is alive with the sound of belonging.

6. The Practice

Today,
Before you check your notifications,
Take one deep breath.
Notice where fear is trying to manage your day.
Notice what you’re trying to hold together.

And whisper this prayer:

I don’t need to control what love already holds.

You don’t have to fix everything.
You don’t even have to understand it all.

You just have to stay open
To the hum beneath the hum,
The sound of love
Still resonating beneath The Machine.

Let’s Talk!

• What systems, personal or social, feed your fear?

• How have you confused control with care?

• What might resonance look like in one ordinary moment today?

Leave a comment

Prayer

God of love,
We confess that fear has shaped our rhythms
And control has shaped our days.
Unclench our hearts.
Slow our breathing.
Re-teach us resonance,
That sacred connection
Where love moves freely again.
May your Spirit meet us
In the noise,
In the pace,
In The Machine within.
Amen.

Tomorrow (Part 3):

Trauma at Scale
Our Unhealed Wounds Institutionalized

Subscribe now

How Control Became Our Religion

The Age of Fear, Part 1

TL;DR: Fear has become the air we breathe. We’ve built our lives, and even our faith, around managing it. But control can’t heal the wound it hides. Only love can.

Series Note: This post begins a new five-day experiment called The Age of Fear, the first movement in a larger project, The World’s Wound. Together, we’re exploring how fear shapes our world and how love can still heal what fear has built. Each day traces another facet of fear’s hold and love’s quiet resistance.

You’re invited to read slowly, to linger, to breathe between the lines.

1. The Hum Beneath Everything

I’ve been easing my way back to work these past few weeks,
Answering emails in slow batches,
Catching up on what’s been waiting.

But grief doesn’t keep office hours.

Even as I try to focus,
I can feel the hum of anxiety underneath everything.

The fear that I’ll never catch up.
The fear that the world has kept spinning
While I’ve been standing still.

I felt it again this week,
Sitting at a red light
With my phone glowing in my hand.
I wasn’t late.
But I still felt behind.

That low hum of hurry never quite goes away.
It’s the soundtrack of our time,
The sound of a world trying not to fall apart.
We call it stress or busyness,
But it’s older than that.

It’s fear: collective, contagious, inherited.

Fear that we’re running out of time.
Fear that we’re falling behind.
Fear that if we let go, everything will collapse.

We’ve learned to baptize fear in the language of progress.
But what we’re really building
Is a religion of control.

2. Fear, the Hidden Faith

When I read Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth,
A writer, farmer, and former environmental activist
Who now wrestles with the spiritual costs of modern progress,
I kept nodding in painful recognition.

Kingsnorth names what many of us sense:
The world’s pace,
The noise,
The restlessness,
It’s all being driven by something deeper than technology.

He calls it The Machine.

Kingsnorth describes The Machine as:

The totality of the human system we have built —
The economy, the political order, the culture, the ideology —
Everything that seeks to replace the natural world with a human-made one.

It is, in his words,

“A being struggling to be born.”

In other words,
The Machine isn’t a single invention.
The Machine is a way of being human.

The Machine is the combination of all the cultural systems
That shape our lives and society:
Capitalism and consumerism,
Nationalism and progress,
Politics and technology,
Artificial intelligence, globalism, competition, productivity, social media, and more.

The Machine is the collective force
That drives us east of Eden,
Farther and farther from peace,
From presence,
From one another.

You don’t have to be a philosopher to recognize The Machine.
You can feel it in the pressure to be productive,
In the endless scroll that numbs instead of nourishes,
In the way our worth gets measured in clicks, likes, or output.
It’s the hum of life lived on autopilot,
Faster, louder, busier,
Until we forget how to simply be.

The Machine is what happens when fear
Becomes the organizing principle of our lives.

I’ve seen The Machine up close.
Years ago, our family lost health insurance
In the middle of my cancer treatments.

One day I was a patient;
The next I was a policy number
That was costing them too much money.
We hired a lawyer,
But we were tiny compared to the size of The Machine.

Love became paperwork.
Healing turned into negotiation.
The whole time we knew there was something sinister
Lurking within the hum of the system
That had forgotten its soul.

That’s what fear does,
It organizes itself inside us,
Until we mistake control for care.
And trust for transaction.

And when you’re on the receiving end,
You feel it in your body,
The tightening in your chest,
The quiet panic of realizing
You’re no longer seen as human.

When I speak of The Machine,
I don’t mean technology itself,
But the spirit behind it,
A way of being human shaped
By fear, control, and disconnection.

It’s not a device or an economy;
It’s the story we live by,
When we forget that love,
Not mastery,
Not money,
Not merit,
Is what makes us whole.

And because it’s a human story,
It can be rewritten.

Beneath the circuitry and the screens,
The Machine is not a thing we built,
It’s what we became.

The Machine is our attempt to master creation,
To insulate ourselves from weakness,
To become our own gods.

A system that promises mastery
But delivers disconnection.

The problem isn’t what we’ve built.
The problem is the story we believe,
About who we are
And how the world works.

Kingsnorth’s critique is prophetic,
But his solution — to escape, to withdraw — feels hollow.

Fear doesn’t leave us when we run from it.
Fear follows us into silence.

Kingsnorth’s diagnosis is hauntingly accurate,
But his response falls into the very trap he’s trying to escape.

He sees only two options:

1. Join The Machine

2. or reject The Machine entirely.

But life,
And love,
Are rarely that simple.

The gospel always offers a third way,
Not withdrawal, but redemption;
Not escape, but transformation.

3. Every Power Has a Soul

— The Powers and the Third Way

Theologian Walter Wink,
Best known for his Powers trilogy,
Named this third way clearly.

When Wink spoke of the Powers,
He meant the spiritual dimension of every system,
The inner spirit that animates institutions, economies, and cultures.

Every Power has a soul.
And like every soul,
It can lose its way.

Scripture calls them the “principalities and powers”
That shape our world.
Wink saw them
As the spiritual dimension of human systems,
Created good,
Fallen through fear,
Yet still redeemable through love.

Greg Boyd reminds us
That these Powers can act with real demonic intent,
Opposing God’s healing work.

He describes them not as mere metaphors,
But as active spiritual agents
That war against the purposes of love.

I hold both truths together.
Evil is personal and pervasive,
But love is still ultimate.

Even the Powers that wound the world
Can, in Christ,
Be unmasked, disarmed,
And transformed.

“Every Power is good, fallen, and redeemable.”
— Walter Wink

Which means the point is never to flee or to fight,
But to participate in love’s work of redemption,
Even here,
Even now,
Even in The Machine.

What Kingsnorth calls satanic,
Wink would call fallen,
Wounded by fear,
Yet still held within God’s redeeming love.

It began with good intention,
The human longing for order,
Creativity,
Survival,
But twisted
When fear became its operating system.

And that is where
The Machine begins to hum inside us.
Not just in corporations or governments,
But in bodies that tighten under anxiety,
In families that confuse control with care,
In churches that mistake performance for faith.

Fear doesn’t just build empires.
Fear builds habits.
Fear builds hearts.

4. Trauma at Scale

The Machine isn’t something “out there.”
It’s what happens when fear organizes itself.
It’s trauma at scale,
Our unhealed wounds institutionalized.

Every empire starts as a coping mechanism:
Rome, afraid of chaos.
Capitalism, afraid of scarcity.
AI, afraid of limitation.

We invent systems to keep us safe from pain,
And then those systems begin to feed on our fear.

It’s not evil by design.
It’s what happens when we forget
That safety is not the same as love.

5. The Gospel According to Control

Fear always preaches the same gospel:
If you can manage it, you’ll be okay.

We trade intimacy for efficiency,
Trust for predictability,
Mystery for management.
Even faith becomes performance,
Measured, managed, branded.

But Jesus shows us another way.

Jesus never built walls of certainty.
He lived from trust, not control.
He walked straight into storms and said,
“Peace, be still.”

The antidote to fear isn’t courage.
The antidote to fear is communion.

The peace of Christ isn’t the absence of chaos;
The peace of Christ is the presence of love in the middle of it.

6. The Invitation

Before we heal the world’s wound,
We have to name it.

We are afraid.
And our fear has become our faith.

This week is about unlearning that faith,
Learning again what it means
To live as people held, not haunted.

So today, before you scroll,
Speak,
Or react,
Pause.
Breathe.
Notice where control masquerades as peace.

And ask:
What if I trusted love here instead?

Every act of trust
Is a small rebellion against The Machine.
And in that rebellion,
The world begins to heal.

Fear may hum beneath everything,
But love is still the deeper sound,
Even here,
Even in grief that doesn’t keep office hours.

Let’s Talk!

• Where do you feel fear most in your body or daily routine?

• What forms of control have you mistaken for safety?

• What might happen if you trusted love in one of those places today?

Leave a comment

Prayer

God of peace,
We confess that fear has become our faith.
We cling to control,
Forgetting that safety is not the same as love.
Unmake our illusions.
Untangle our anxious hearts.
Teach us to rest in your presence,
Until love, not fear,
Becomes the rhythm of our days.
Amen.

Tomorrow (The Age of Fear, Part 2):

The Machine Within
How Fear Builds Systems

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A New Week, A New Experiment: The Age of Fear

When fear builds the world, love must learn to heal it.

Friends,

We just finished Rethinking Heaven & Hell,
A series about the God who renews all things.

Before we turn toward Advent,
I’ve been sensing another question rising in me:

What, exactly, is God healing us from?

That question has been haunting me as I read Paul Kingsnorth, Walter Wink, Hartmut Rosa and others, writers who diagnose our modern condition not in political or technological terms, but in spiritual ones.

They all name the same undercurrent: fear.

So starting tomorrow, I’m trying something new.

A short, five-day experiment called The Age of Fear, the opening movement of a broader project I’m calling The World’s Wound.

It’s more philosophical than my usual reflections,
But it grows from the same heartbeat,
Helping us see how love heals what fear builds.

• Monday, Part 1 — How Control Became Our Religion: We’ve built a world around managing fear, baptizing control as virtue. But fear can’t heal the wound it hides. Only love — uncontrolling, resonant love — can.

• Tuesday, Part 2 — The Machine Within: Fear doesn’t just live in our hearts; it organizes our world. The Machine is what happens when unhealed fear becomes culture, but love still hums beneath it all.

• Wednesday, Part 3 — Trauma at Scale: What’s unhealed in us becomes policy, economy, empire. The Machine deforms, dehumanizes, and de-belongs — but love enters the wound to begin redemption.

• Thursday, Part 4 — The False God of Control: Control always demands sacrifice: time, people, peace. But Jesus reveals a different kind of power, the vulnerability of love that refuses to dominate.

• Friday, Part 5 — When Love Resonates: The opposite of fear isn’t courage, it’s communion. Resonance is what happens when love meets the world and the world vibrates back. Love still heals what fear has built.

Think of this series as a deeper dive into the atmosphere we’re living in:
How fear became our religion, and how love still whispers another way.

You’ll still receive your Intersections readings and weekly rhythm as usual below.

This is simply an invitation to listen with me,
To look beneath the surface of the world’s noise and notice how fear shapes us,
And how love might set us free.

The Machine is what happens when fear organizes itself.
Love is what happens when God does.

Join me tomorrow for:

The Age of Fear, Part 1:
How Control Became Our Religion.

Grace + Peace,

Paul

Intersections Readings for the Week Ahead

Year C – Proper 27, Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost

• Monday – Gospel: [Luke 20:27-38]

  • Jesus confronts the Sadducees’ obsession with control, teaching that resurrection life is rooted not in fear of death but in trust of the living God.

• Tuesday – New Testament: [2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17]

  • Paul urges believers not to be “quickly shaken or alarmed,” but to stand firm in Christ’s love and strength.

• Wednesday – Old Testament: [Haggai 2:1-9 or Job 19:23-27a]

  • God speaks courage into weary builders; Job speaks hope into suffering—the promise that divine glory will fill what fear has emptied.

• Thursday – Psalm: [Psalm 145:1-5, 17-21 • Psalm 98 • Psalm 17:1-9]

  • Songs of praise that re-center the anxious heart in the steadfast goodness and justice of God.

• Friday – Finding the Intersections:

  • How do these passages meet in the space where fear gives way to faith? Where resurrection trust, divine steadfastness, and the rebuilding of what was broken converge in Christ?

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Happy Lies: A Shallow Critique of Deep Questions

Why Melissa Dougherty’s Book Misses the Mark, and Where to Go Instead

Melissa Dougherty’s Happy Lies: How a Movement You (Probably) Never Heard Of Shaped Our Self-Obsessed World wants to sound the alarm. She claims that New Thought, a philosophy blending metaphysics, self-help, and prosperity gospel, has seeped into modern Christianity, distorting biblical truth. It’s a provocative premise. And she’s right to be concerned about how theology can be co-opted by consumerism.

But Happy Lies ultimately fails to offer a faithful or nuanced path forward.

At the heart of Happy Lies is a troubling assumption: that any theological perspective outside of a narrow, Calvinistic strain of evangelicalism must be heresy.

Dougherty consistently frames the landscape of Christian belief in strict binaries, either you preach penal substitutionary atonement or you’ve fallen for New Thought; either you reject contemplative spirituality or you’re compromising truth. This either/or framing flattens the vast and beautiful diversity of historic Christianity. She never seriously engages with the theological richness of the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, or Wesleyan traditions, many of which have long affirmed inner transformation, emotional healing, and spiritual practices without compromising orthodoxy. By ignoring that complexity, Dougherty doesn’t just critique error, she erases entire expressions of faithful Christianity.

Before diving into critique, it’s worth saying: Dougherty’s concerns aren’t without merit. The blending of self-help ideology with Christian language has led many to a faith that centers comfort over cross, self-actualization over surrender. That drift deserves thoughtful examination. But Happy Lies struggles not because the questions are wrong, but because the responses are too rigid, too reductive, and too reactionary.

1. Oversimplification of Complex Theology

The book draws stark lines between “truth” and “heresy,” often collapsing the entire spectrum of spiritual formation, contemplative practice, or emotional healing into a category she considers dangerous. Dougherty tends to equate any form of Christianity that centers healing, liberation, or inner transformation with the influence of New Thought, even if those practices have deep historical roots in Christian theology.

For example, she critiques the phrase “you are enough,” framing it as self-centered and theologically hollow. But this reading overlooks the way many Christian writers (from Henri Nouwen to Brené Brown) use that phrase not to deny sin, but to affirm the core identity of belovedness rooted in being created in the image of God.

2. Misrepresenting Authors and Movements

One of the more frustrating elements of the book is its repeated name-dropping of authors like Glennon Doyle, Brene Brown, and others without meaningful engagement. Dougherty offers little to no summary of their actual arguments, instead labeling them as examples of theological drift. This undermines her credibility as a fair critic and turns the book into more of a catalog of perceived dangers than a theological conversation.

This is where theological generosity matters. Not every phrase used by a popular author should be treated as a doctrinal statement. Not every disagreement signals heresy. Part of Christian maturity is learning to listen, really listen, before labeling. To sit with perspectives that challenge us without immediately reaching for the alarm bell.

Take Richard Rohr, for example. Dougherty critiques him with a single sweeping quote, labeling his work as a gateway to deception. But Rohr’s theology spans decades of writing, grounded in Franciscan spirituality, deep Christology, and a profound engagement with Scripture and tradition. While one might disagree with certain aspects of his language or framework, to dismiss his entire body of work based on a soundbite is neither fair nor intellectually honest. His reflections on union with Christ, the Trinity, and spiritual maturity have helped countless Christians move from fear-based religion toward a deeper, more intimate relationship with Jesus.

Her brief treatment of progressive Christianity, for instance, reads more like an indictment than an invitation to discernment. Rather than distinguishing between various streams within the movement, she collapses them into one amorphous threat.

3. Rigid, Literalist Approach to Scripture

Dougherty’s interpretive approach to Scripture leans heavily on literalism and what she considers a “plain” reading of the text. While she’s right to caution against using Scripture to support any and every idea, her approach leaves little room for nuance or the diversity of interpretation found across Christian history.

She is particularly suspicious of allegorical or contemplative readings, seeming to equate them with a desire to control or rewrite biblical truth. But that perspective ignores centuries of Christian tradition, from Augustine and Gregory the Great to Teresa of Ávila and John Wesley, where allegory, symbolism, and prayerful reading were considered core to spiritual formation.

4. Fear-Based Framing Instead of Constructive Theology

The tone of Happy Lies is consistently combative. While Dougherty expresses concern for those who may be “deceived,” she rarely addresses the real questions people bring to their spiritual lives with empathy. Her theology is primarily reactive: defending boundaries, naming threats, and calling for vigilance.

This fear-based posture leaves little room for grace, questions, or growth. There’s minimal acknowledgement that spiritual hunger, emotional wounds, or even therapeutic language can be pathways into deeper faith when guided by the Spirit. Instead of inviting readers to deeper trust in Jesus, the book warns them to stay within a tightly controlled theological structure.

Throughout Happy Lies, the core question is, “Is this biblical?” That’s important, but perhaps the better question is:

“Does this reflect the heart of Jesus as revealed in the whole of Scripture, the witness of the Church, and the movement of the Spirit?”

That’s a deeper way of testing truth, one that accounts for genre, history, tradition, and above all, love.

Final Verdict: A Missed Opportunity

Melissa Dougherty raises real concerns about how self-help ideology can distort Christianity. But Happy Lies doesn’t meet the moment with theological depth, historical awareness, or pastoral imagination.

Instead of equipping readers for faithful engagement, it reinforces fear, division, and rigidity.

⭐ Final Rating: 2/5

🟢 The Good:

• Names the real problem of self-centered spirituality.

• Highlights how pop-theology can obscure biblical truth.

🔴 The Bad:

• Oversimplifies complex theology.

• Misrepresents authors and movements.

• Rejects historic interpretation methods.

• Offers fear instead of formation.

🧭 Want Better Resources?

Here’s where I recommend starting instead:

✅ This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley (Belovedness + Justice)

A luminous exploration of dignity, story, embodiment, and spiritual resilience. Riley invites readers to rediscover the image of God in themselves and their communities through contemplative storytelling rooted in Black Christian tradition.

✅ The Making of Biblical Womanhood by Beth Allison Barr (Historical Theology)

A clear-eyed historical analysis that dismantles patriarchal theology while upholding orthodoxy. Barr shows how church tradition has been shaped more by culture than by Christ, and how reclaiming Scripture requires looking deeper.

✅ The Blue Parakeet by Scot McKnight (Dynamic Scripture Engagement)

An invitation to read the Bible with both reverence and honesty. McKnight challenges rigid literalism and offers a fresh framework that honors the Bible’s diversity, context, and ongoing relevance.

✅ Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God by Brian Zahnd (Christ-Centered Gospel)

A courageous reframe of fire-and-brimstone theology. Zahnd holds up Jesus—not fear, as the lens through which we interpret Scripture, salvation, and the heart of God.

✅ Inspired by Rachel Held Evans (Theology + Sacred Imagination)

Engages the Bible with wonder, curiosity, and literary care. Evans blends memoir and theology to help readers appreciate the Bible as both divine and deeply human, without needing to defend every line as literal.

✅ Reading While Black by Esau McCaulley (Biblical Justice + Theological Depth)

A masterful work showing how Black ecclesial tradition reads Scripture with a deep hunger for justice and a firm belief in its authority. McCaulley demonstrates that faithful biblical interpretation and social justice are not at odds, they belong together.

✅ With Open Hands by Henri Nouwen (Spiritual Formation)

A gentle and powerful introduction to contemplative prayer. Nouwen’s work affirms human vulnerability and belovedness, countering the distorted “self-help gospel” Dougherty critiques, without losing theological depth.

✅ God Can’t by Thomas Jay Oord (Open & Relational Theology)

Offers a loving, relational vision of God that takes suffering, free will, and divine love seriously. A helpful contrast to the rigid determinism assumed in some critiques of New Thought theology.

For those who read Happy Lies and felt unseen, silenced, or accused: you’re not alone. There is a wide, deep river of Christian tradition that embraces transformation, healing, contemplation, and justice, without losing Jesus. Keep going. Keep seeking. Love is not the enemy of truth. It’s how we know we’ve found it.

THE ANTI-GREED GOSPEL: Final Reflections

Living What’s Possible

Chapters 8 & Epilogue: Learning in Public

As the final chapters unfold, Malcolm Foley moves from dismantling systems to building new ones. He invites us not just to believe differently but to live differently, to structure our churches, relationships, and entire communities around the logic of the Kingdom, not the logic of domination.

Where earlier chapters exposed greed and racial capitalism as powers of death, these final pages light the path of resurrection. Foley doesn’t let us settle for spiritualized hope or abstract charity. He calls us to embodied, communal, imaginative love.

This is not the end of the book. It’s the beginning of a new way of life.

Chapter 8: The Creative Kingdom

Foley urges the church to move beyond reactionary resistance into proactive embodiment of God’s reign. He critiques the tendency of Christian tradition to sidestep Jesus’ most radical commands, especially in the story of the rich young ruler. Rather than take Jesus at his word, many early theologians (Clement, Augustine, and others) reinterpreted his call to “sell your possessions and give to the poor” as symbolic.

Foley says that move neuters the gospel.

Jesus wasn’t proposing a metaphor. He was unveiling a new economy. An economy not built on accumulation or charity, but on divine solidarity, the kind where wealth is redistributed, needs are met, and no one is left behind.

To make this concrete, Foley points to Basil the Great and the Basiliad, a Christian community where property was shared, the sick were healed, and the poor were dignified through material provision. For Basil, withholding from the poor wasn’t frugal, it was theft. This was no small social experiment. It was a direct outworking of Acts 2 and 4.

Foley’s message: this isn’t optional for the church. It is our witness.

Three Key Ideas from Chapter 8

• Christian love must take material form, or it isn’t love.

• Jesus didn’t spiritualize poverty; he stood in it.

• The Kingdom is not future-only, it’s among us now.

Epilogue: Show the World What New Can Be

The Epilogue is not an afterthought, it’s a benediction. A sending.

Foley reminds us that the gospel isn’t just a story of personal salvation. It’s the proclamation that something cosmic has already happened. The powers have been defeated. Death has been disarmed. And the church’s task is to embody that reality until the world sees it.

He declares plainly that race is not just a flawed idea. It is a strategic lie, invented to justify and sustain systems of greed, slavery, and domination. But it’s not eternal. Like greed and violence, race is a construct that can die. And it must.

We aren’t called to save the world. We are called to bear witness to the fact that it has already been changed.

Foley anchors this radical hope in the cross, where Jesus did not dominate but submitted. He defeated death not by escaping it but by entering it. And that pattern—of sacrificial love—remains our model for resistance today.

Final Takeaways from The Anti-Greed Gospel

1. Greed is a Power, Not Just a Vice.

   It isn’t something we manage. It’s something we resist.

2. The Church Must Become an Alternative Economy.

   Acts 2 and 4 aren’t nostalgic, they’re prophetic blueprints.

3. Love Is Always Material.

   Justice and generosity are how we worship with our lives.

4. Race Is a Lie That Justifies Exploitation.

   Truth-telling is spiritual warfare. We dismantle lies by living the truth.

5. We Made This World. By Grace, We Can Make a New One.

   This isn’t just critique, it’s invitation. To solidarity. To joy. To resurrection.

Final Reflection Question

Where is Jesus calling you to show the world what new can be, in your family, your finances, your faith community?

And what one practice, however small, can you begin this week to say “yes” to that call?

Posts in this Series:

THE ANTI-GREED GOSPEL: Chapter 7 (Learning in Public)

Chapter 7: Truth or Lies?

Chapter Summary

In this piercing chapter, Malcolm Foley moves us from resisting greed and violence to resisting something even more insidious: the lies that make exploitation possible in the first place. At the center is one foundational lie, the lie of race, a fiction created to justify domination, to uphold economic exploitation, and to divide those who might otherwise stand together in love and solidarity.

Foley argues that if greed is the heart of the system, and violence is its hands, then lies are its legs. They carry the system forward, keeping it moving. They justify brutality. They make inequality seem inevitable. They convince us that our neighbors are threats, not kin.

In response, Foley calls the church to become a community of truth-tellers, not just in our private thoughts or political opinions, but in how we shape our communities, teach our children, run our churches, and love our neighbors.

He draws heavily on Ida B. Wells, who risked everything to name the lies at the heart of lynching. She did not respond to horror with silence. She told the truth clearly, courageously, and consistently. That, Foley says, is spiritual warfare.

The devil traffics in deception. But the gospel gives us lungs strong enough to speak.

Three Takeaways That Stirred Me

1. Racial reconciliation is an oxymoron.

This line stopped me cold. We’ve used the phrase “racial reconciliation” so often in the church, but Foley confronts it head-on. You can’t reconcile something that was never whole.

There was no Eden we can return to, at least not on this side of history. America’s racial hierarchy was not a rift in a previously equal community. It was constructed from the beginning to uphold greed, justify slavery, and rationalize exclusion.

So rather than patch up a lie, Foley calls us to imagine a whole new community, one built not on the illusion of race, but on the truth of our shared humanity and mutual belonging.

And that doesn’t come through photo ops or surface-level diversity. It comes through solidarity, through naming sin, and through building something better together.

2. Race is a lie that keeps us from seeing our neighbors as neighbors.

Foley reminds us that Jesus wasn’t interested in theoretical categories. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the point wasn’t “Who qualifies as my neighbor?” The question is flipped: Who acted like a neighbor?

When race becomes a lens for measuring worth, safety, or morality, it blinds us. It turns people into caricatures. It distorts our ability to see the Imago Dei in each other.

The church’s job isn’t to be colorblind. It’s to see clearly, to name the structures that dehumanize, and to live into a radical ethic of love where neighborliness is our default mode.

3. The battle against lies is much simpler: tell the truth and shame the devil.

In a world addicted to nuance and complexity, Foley offers us something disarmingly simple: tell the truth.

We don’t need degrees in critical theory or the perfect language for every conversation to begin living truthfully. We need courage. We need clarity. And we need community.

The devil’s primary strategy, Foley reminds us, is deception. That’s why telling the truth, about race, greed, empire, history, and hope, is not just political. It’s spiritual warfare.

We reclaim our theological imagination when we remember who God is: a truth-telling, justice-bringing, death-defeating Savior who never played nice with lies.

A Poll for Us

What lie do you hear most often in the world around you?

Sacred Conversation

Foley writes:

“We made it this way. We can make it something else.”

• What lies have become “normal” in your community: your church, your workplace, your family, that need the light of truth turned on them?

• What truth needs to be spoken aloud, and what might resurrection look like on the other side?

Posts in this Series:

THE ANTI-GREED GOSPEL: Chapter 6 (Learning in Public)

Chapter 6 - Love or Violence

“We Cannot Serve God and Mammon”

Malcolm Foley writes with a pastoral heart, but he doesn’t flinch. Chapter 6 feels like both a scalpel and a spotlight, exposing how greed hides in plain sight, how it shows up in the very systems we’ve grown used to. And especially how it shows up in the church.

Greed is a gospel issue.
And Mammon is not just a word for ‘money.’
Mammon is the name Jesus gives to a spiritual power
That seeks to dominate and destroy.

Foley is not content to call greed a vice we ought to manage. He calls it what it is: a power that must be resisted. And the church, if it is to remain the church, cannot remain neutral.

Greed Doesn’t Just Distract—It Destroys

Early in the chapter, Foley dismantles the notion that greed is merely personal, or even just economic. He shows that greed is a force that undergirds violence, racism, and empire.

The logic of greed is not simply a financial one. It is a logic of domination.

He reminds us that this logic is ancient—and that Christians have been co-opted by it more than we’d like to admit. The Roman Empire, European colonialism, American slavery, and contemporary capitalism all tell the same story: profit over people, wealth over justice, security over solidarity.

Mammon makes us lie to ourselves. It tells us that generosity is a threat to our security. That justice will cost us too much. That freedom is a zero-sum game.

In the church, we’ve sometimes baptized these lies. We’ve built financial “prudence” into our budgets while cutting justice ministries. We’ve praised philanthropy while ignoring economic repentance. We’ve taught stewardship but forgotten what Jesus actually said about money: You cannot serve both God and Mammon.

Divine Philanthropy

Foley turns us toward Jesus, not as an abstract ethic, but as an embodied economic disruption.

Jesus did not merely tolerate the poor. He identified with them. He did not give from his abundance. He gave from his very life.

He calls this divine philanthropy, not top-down giving, but shared life. The kind of generosity that doesn’t just soothe the conscience, but restructures the table.

And it’s not optional. It’s discipleship.

“Jesus is actually about obedience—obedience enabled by grace. He says, ‘If you love me, keep my commands.’”

The gospel of grace is not a get-out-of-obedience-free card. It’s an invitation into a new kind of economy, one not rooted in fear or hoarding, but in love and justice.

A Quote to Hold On To

“The most practical way to resist greed is to recognize that the greatest return on our investment comes from our investment in the poor.”

That’s not prosperity gospel.
That’s sanctification.
We become more like Christ
When we give like Christ.

What Hit Me Hard

This:

“The deepest problem with exploitation is not that it is unfair but that it kills.”

Foley isn’t being metaphorical. Economic systems built on greed don’t just impoverish, they shorten lives, destroy neighborhoods, and enable violence.

He references Milton Friedman: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.” Behind every “invisible hand,” there’s often an actual weapon.

We’ve been trained to see wealth as neutral. But Foley helps us see what Jesus saw: wealth gathered at the expense of the poor is not blessing, it’s bloodshed.

The Role of the Church

So what is the role of the church?

Only the church can operate by the logic of the kingdom of God.

We keep looking to governments, philanthropists, or tech companies to fix inequality. But only the church has been given the Spirit of Jesus. And Jesus didn’t climb up, he came down.

Foley reminds us that the church is not called to admire the poor. We are called to join them.

To restructure our lives.
To share what we have.
To refuse the myth of redemptive violence.
To resist Mammon.

A Poll for Us

Which of these feels hardest to imagine in your current church context?

Sacred Conversation

Foley writes:

“We made it this way. We can make it something else.”

What are the “this is just the way things are” narratives in your life, your church, or your neighborhood that need to be reimagined?

What might resurrection look like there?

Posts in this Series:

THE ANTI-GREED GOSPEL: Chapter 5 (Learning in Public)

Chapter 5: Solidarity or Greed?

This chapter took me apart, in the best way.

Malcolm Foley doesn’t just name greed as a personal sin. He exposes it as the spiritual engine behind racial violence, economic exploitation, and systemic domination. And then, he calls the church to be something truly countercultural: an alternative economy.

This isn’t charity. This isn’t a seasonal campaign. This is the radical generosity of Jesus, a divine generosity that dismantles the logic of empire and replaces it with koinōnia, shared life.

Chapter Overview

Foley argues that race functions as a smokescreen, a cover for the deeper project of exploitation. The real issue? Greed.

And that means the church’s resistance must go deeper than anti-racism. It must be anti-greed, embodying what Foley calls an economy of solidarity.

He paints a vision:

• A church where no one is in need

• Where resources are held open-handedly

• Where equality of outcome, not just opportunity, is the norm

• Where Acts 2 and 4 aren’t just remembered - they’re repeated

This isn’t revolution through coercion, it’s transformation through Spirit-empowered generosity, anti-violence, and truth-telling. This is what it looks like to resist Mammon and bear witness to the Kingdom of God.

Wrestling With the Chapter

This chapter connected my theology to my wallet. And to my church. And to my neighbor.

“Jesus did not come to maintain the status quo. He came to reveal it and dismantle it.”

“Greed is not just an individual vice - it’s a system of scarcity, exploitation, and domination disguised as success.”

Foley doesn’t let us off the hook with vague ideals. He presses into how sanctification, becoming more like Jesus, isn’t just about personal piety. It’s about power, economics, and solidarity.

He writes:

“American Christianity sometimes looks like an attempt to prove Jesus wrong when he says we cannot serve God and Mammon.”

Oof.

How often do we hedge our faith in favor of economic safety? How often do our churches quietly mirror the systems of the empire we’re meant to resist? How often do we treat generosity as moral superiority rather than an invitation to family?

The generosity of God isn’t about charity; it’s about family. And family means no one gets left behind.

Foley doesn’t shame, he convicts. He calls us not to guilt, but to the joy of shared life. The joy of mutual love. The radical beauty of a community where power and privilege are given away, not hoarded.

A Poll for Us

Which part of an economy of solidarity feels most urgent in your church or community?

Conversation

Foley challenges us to stop asking,

“How will this affect me?”
and start asking,
“How will this uplift the poor and oppressed?”

What would change if this question guided our church budgets, sermons, and small group discussions?

Let’s talk.

Posts in this Series:

THE ANTI-GREED GOSPEL: Chapter 4 (Learning in Public)

Lessons of Resistance from Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells is one of the most courageous and fierce justice warriors I was never taught about in school. But her voice - bold, clear, unapologetically prophetic- refuses to be buried. And thanks to Malcolm Foley’s brilliant framing in Chapter 4, she rises here as the moral compass in a time of national rot.

When lynching was defended from pulpits and newsrooms, Wells told the truth.
When Black men and women were blamed for their own deaths, she told the truth.
When others lost hope or clarity, she told the truth.

And in telling the truth, she called the powers to account.

Seeing Through the Lie

Wells’s moral clarity sharpened after the lynching of her friend Tommie Moss in 1892. His “crime”? He dared to open a grocery store that competed with a white-owned business. That was all it took.

In that moment, Wells saw what others couldn’t, or wouldn’t.
Lynching wasn’t about punishment. It wasn’t even about fear.
It was about profit.
It was about control.

“The white man’s dollar is his god.” ~ Ida B. Wells

She saw that lynching functioned as a kind of sacrament to Mammon, America’s real deity. And her response wasn’t sentimental. It was strategic.

She fought with journalism.
She fought with education.
She fought with calls for economic resistance - boycotts, mutual aid, migration.
And yes, at times, she called for armed self-defense.

Wells wasn’t reckless. She was resolved. She knew the stakes. And unlike Grimké, who slipped into despair, or Haygood, who slid into paternalistic justification, Wells never lost sight of her people’s humanity - or her God’s justice.

Wrestling With the Chapter

What hit me hardest? Her refusal to accept the lie.

• The lie that violence is ever justice.

• The lie that people must deserve dignity.

• The lie that Christianity can coexist with white supremacy.

She saw that economic disruption - not just moral persuasion - was the most powerful tool. Her call for migration after the Memphis lynching wasn’t escape, it was resistance. If the economy ran on Black labor, then pulling that labor away was rebellion. That’s prophetic economics.

She didn’t just resist with truth. She resisted with tactics.
And she refused to let America forget.

In our time, we don’t face public lynchings, but we still live in a world shaped by the logic of Mammon. We see systems that prioritize profit over people. We see racial narratives still used to justify economic inequality. And the Church still too often chooses comfort over confrontation.

Wells doesn’t just call us to remember.
She calls us to see clearly.
She calls us to act boldly.
She calls us to resist faithfully.

Quotes to Hold On To

“The white man’s dollar is his god.” ~ Ida B. Wells

“If the American church and clergy were only half Christianized… a scream of horror, shame, and indignation would rise to Heaven.” ~ Frederick Douglass (introducing Wells’s work)

“The appeal to the white man’s pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience.” ~ Ida B. Wells, Southern Horrors

“It is the white man’s civilization and the white man’s government which are on trial.” ~ Ida B. Wells

“No human being is worthy of the violence lynching unleashes - no matter the accusation.” ~Paraphrase of Wells’s moral logic, echoed by Foley

“The main issue with lynching wasn’t ultimately its lawlessness, it was that it was evil.” ~ Malcolm Foley

“Mammon demands human life. And that idol tempts each of us now.” ~ Malcolm Foley

A Poll for Us

Which of these resistance strategies do you think the church is most equipped to embody right now?

Conversation

Ida B. Wells refused to accept that violence could ever be justice, no matter the accusation.

How can we develop a “clear sight” like hers today, especially when so many injustices are still wrapped in religious or patriotic language?

Leave a comment

Let’s talk.

Posts in this Series:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Thunderbolts* Movie Review

Sometimes the way forward is through the pain, not around it.

I didn’t expect to care this much.

Going into Thunderbolts*, I knew the roster: a mix of morally gray, underused, or underdeveloped characters from previous MCU films and Disney+ series. Frankly, I wasn’t emotionally invested in many of them. But this film changed that.

It gave them dimension, and it did so with surprising tenderness.

The film takes its time, unafraid to let silence speak, to let characters break rather than just break things. It weaves together themes of mental health, trauma, regret, and childhood wounds in a way that feels both honest and rare for a genre that often chooses bravado over vulnerability.

Each character is carrying more than what’s on the surface. But what makes this story so compelling is how these characters learn to enter each other’s sorrow. There’s something sacred in that, watching people who have been trained to survive finally learning how to live.

To feel. To heal. Not alone, but together.

There’s a kind of liturgy to the way the film unfolds. A movement from isolation to connection. From numbness to tenderness. From fear to trust. It doesn’t tie everything up with a bow, but it does suggest that healing happens in proximity, when someone chooses to sit with you in the pain, rather than try to erase it.

And that’s where the film shines most: in its characters.

• Yelena Belova (Black Widow, Hawkeye) still carries her razor-sharp sarcasm, but here we see the grief she hides beneath it, and how much she fears falling into the void.

• Bucky Barnes (Captain America, Falcon and the Winter Soldier) quietly anchors the team. His trauma isn’t just backstory—it’s present-tense, and this time, he’s not just managing it. He’s learning to trust again. And he is a politician.

• Red Guardian (Black Widow), once comic relief, is now a man trying (and often failing) to reclaim purpose and dignity, with surprising moments of heartfelt reflection.

• Ghost (Ant-Man and the Wasp) gets her most honest and human portrayal yet. Her pain is raw, but she’s finally allowed space to name it.

• John Walker, the flawed and deeply conflicted U.S. Agent (Falcon and the Winter Soldier), is still wrestling with what heroism actually is, and the film doesn’t give him an easy answer.

What’s remarkable is that I left the theater caring about each of them—some for the first time. That’s no small feat.

Sometimes the way forward is through the pain, not around it.

The writing deserves praise. Thunderbolts* manages to hold humor and heaviness in the same breath. It’s funny - really funny at times, but the jokes never undercut the emotional weight. If anything, the humor becomes a survival instinct, a defense mechanism, a way for characters to shield themselves from wounds too deep to name.

And the lines of meaning in this film—wow. There are quotes about purpose, goodness, guilt, evil, and the fragile line between survival and morality that hit hard without ever sounding preachy. And yes, there is even a Søren Kierkegaard quote in the movie:

This film doesn’t reinvent the genre, but it does redeem it a little—reminding us that:

Stories of superhuman strength are most compelling when they show human vulnerability.

Thunderbolts* isn’t just a team-up. It’s a breakdown and rebuild.

A group of loners, liars, and lost souls step into each other’s sorrow, and somehow, slowly, begin to become more whole. That kind of story sticks with you.

THE ANTI-GREED GOSPEL: Chapter 3 (Learning in Public)

Lessons of Despair from Francis Grimké and Atticus Haygood

Some chapters demand more than reflection, they ask us to sit in discomfort. Chapter 3 of The Anti-Greed Gospel does just that. It’s not just about lynching. It’s about the moral and theological failures that surrounded it, and how even faithful Christians were caught in the talons and tendrils of racial capitalism.

Malcolm Foley brings us face to face with two men:

• Francis Grimké, a Black Presbyterian pastor whose sermons against lynching began in hope and ended in despair.

• Atticus Haygood, a white Methodist bishop whose “brotherly” concern masked a deeply racist and paternalistic theology.

Both believed they were acting faithfully.
Both were ultimately overcome, one by grief, the other by superiority.

Two Ways to Be Captured

Grimké begins as a prophet. He names the violence. He decries the domination. He calls the Church to rise. But after years of watching Black men and women burned, brutalized, and discarded, something in him shifts.

His final word on lynching?

“There is only one effective way of dealing with a mob and that is to shoot it to death; to meet it in the same spirit of violence in which it comes.” - Francis Grimké

His earlier call for education and justice had wilted under the relentless terror. Hope, once grounded in Scripture and the Spirit, had been overtaken by retaliation.

Atticus Haygood, on the other hand, never sees the evil clearly. He calls Black Americans “brothers,” but views them as childlike, unfit for full equality. After the horrific lynching of Henry Smith, where a 17-year-old was tortured for nearly an hour before being burned alive, Haygood’s concern was not for the boy’s life, but for the rule of law.

His response?

“Sane men who are just will consider the provocation… They will think also of a white baby, four years old… outraged with demoniacal cruelty and then taken by her heels and torn asunder in the mad wantonness of gorilla ferocity.” - Atticus Haygood

Rather than condemning the lynching, Haygood defends the mob’s rage.
Rather than grieving, he rationalizes.

This is what happens when Christian imagination is overtaken by the tendrils of supremacy.

Wrestling With the Chapter (& Quotes)

What haunts me in this chapter isn’t just the lynchings, it’s the theology.

• The sermons that justified violence.

• The pulpits that explained away injustice.

• The ways both men, despite wildly different experiences, were shaped by the same demonic system.

Grimké tried to fight the talons but was eventually worn down.

Haygood never even noticed them, because he saw from the bird’s eye view.

As Foley writes:

“Domination can’t be out-dominated; it must be disarmed.”

And:

“Racism is not a sin of ignorance; it is about pride and greed.”

Grimké knew something was deeply wrong, he named the greed, the violence, the systemic domination. But eventually, his imagination was narrowed by despair.

Haygood claimed love while refusing equality. He spiritualized hierarchy and called it virtue. His theology never confronted the violence, it only feared its social messiness.

Foley helps us name what’s at stake:

“When we can no longer conceive of a better world, we lose something necessary to our humanity.”

This is the slow death of imagination, the very space where the Gospel takes root.

“The only progress we ought to be concerned with is progress in breaking the cycle of domination.”

We can’t theologize our way past that truth. We must build our faith around it.

A Poll for Us

In the face of racial injustice, where do you find yourself?

Sacred Conversation:

Grimké’s descent into despair and Haygood’s rationalization of lynching show us two ways we can go astray: retaliation and theological justification of evil.

Which do you find more tempting in your context, the pull to give up in despair, or the pull to explain injustice away?

Let’s talk about it. Honestly.

Leave a comment

Next up: Chapter 4: Lessons of Resistance from Ida B. Wells

A flicker of hope, Ida B. Wells, saw clearly, spoke boldly, and refused to bow to despair or domination. Until then, may our moral imagination be stirred by love, not dulled by fear.

OTHER POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

Learning in Public: The Anti-Greed Gospel

Chapter 2: The Talons and Tendrils of Racial Capitalism

Chapter 2 Overview

If Chapter 1 showed us how greed gave birth to race, Chapter 2 reveals how violence raised it.

Malcolm Foley draws on the visceral image of talons and tendrils, one that tears flesh, the other that chokes imagination, to name the violent machinery of racial capitalism. The focus here is lynching: not just as a horrific historical practice, but as a systemic, calculated tool used to uphold white supremacy for economic and political gain.

Lynching, Foley argues, was never just about hatred. It was spectacle. It was theater. It was a demonic ritual of social control, one used to terrify Black communities into economic and geographic submission after Reconstruction. From the brutal murder of Jesse Washington in 1916 to the massacre of entire Black communities in Colfax (1873) and Tulsa (1921), the message was clear: “Stay in your place.”

What’s perhaps even more jarring is Foley’s insistence that lynching didn’t end because America repented. It ended because it stopped being profitable. The Great Migration weakened the South’s economy, and business leaders recalibrated. Lynching became bad for business, bad for image. So the tactics changed. The greed remained.

And through it all, Foley doesn’t let us off the theological hook. He names lynching for what it was: an unholy liturgy. But even in this darkness, he points to resistance—prophetic voices like Francis Grimké and Ida B. Wells, who bore witness, spoke truth, and refused to be silent.

Wrestling With the Chapter

This chapter made my stomach churn. Not just from the brutality of the stories, but from the realization of how public and recent they are. These weren’t isolated moments of rage. They were orchestrated performances. Crowds gathered. Children watched. Photos were printed on postcards. And people defended them as just.

The image of tendrils might haunt me more than the talons. If Chapter 1 exposed the architecture of greed, this chapter reveals how violence enforces that structure, not just through blood, but through belief. Systems of racialized violence persist not because they are hidden, but because they are normalized. Sanitized. Spiritualized.

Foley’s framing of lynching as “an offering to the powers and principalities of greed and power” struck a nerve. It reminds me that sin is never just private or abstract. It’s ritualized in society, in courtrooms, in economies, in mobs.

And this truth: lynching didn’t stop because we changed our hearts. It stopped because we risked losing labor and global respect. That’s the kind of historical realism that resists the redemption arc so many of us want to cling to. If our collective “transformation” only happens when profit is threatened, what does that say about what we truly worship?

Quotes by Malcolm Foley

“If a system like lynching faded for these reasons, what is really being said is that lynching began and continued because of greed—and it ended for the same reason.”

“Lynching was fundamentally a tool of social control… not merely for the sole purpose of domination. White mobs also used lynching to discipline their labor. The rope and the stake were the post-slavery whip.”

“Racial violence has always killed in two ways: with sharp talons and with constricting tendrils. In fact, demonic powers employ both means… These cosmic powers of evil seek to kill our bodies and our minds.”

“Lynching was not really new. It was a violent continuation of a violent status quo. It played the role that the lash had played in slavery: the role of discipline.”

“Progress is more elusive than we think. As comforting as it might be to think that political ‘victories’ against racism evidence moral progress, the material circumstances of history suggest otherwise.”

“Our racist society did not get better. It just got smarter.”

A Poll for Us

How have you learned about lynching and racial violence in America?

Questions I’m Sitting With

• What rituals of violence and control still shape our society today—though they now wear different names?

• If greed was the fuel of lynching, what are we willing to confront when it still fuels injustice today?

• How has the church historically participated in or resisted these “demonic rituals” of racial capitalism?

• What would it look like for discipleship to include grieving and truth-telling about America’s violence?

• If lynching ended because it was unprofitable, what injustices continue because they remain profitable?

Sacred Conversation

Foley writes that lynching was not merely a form of hate, but a “tool of social control” in a system built on greed and racial hierarchy.

How does this understanding reshape the way you view both history and justice work today?

Leave a comment

Looking Ahead to Chapter 3

Chapter 3 — Who Then Can Be Saved?

Foley turns our attention toward resistance: to those who refused to look away and those who tried—but fell short. We’ll meet figures like Francis Grimké, Ida B. Wells, and Atticus Haygood. But rather than romanticizing resistance, Foley pushes us to ask harder questions about how we confront evil—and how we sometimes accommodate it instead. If Chapter 2 showed us the power of the mob, Chapter 3 asks: What will we do when the mob marches in our direction?

Other Posts in this Series:

THE ANTI-GREED GOSPEL: Learning in Public

Chapter 1 - How Greed Gave Birth to Race

Chapter Overview

Malcolm Foley begins his argument with a bold claim: that greed, not hatred, gave birth to race. He traces the emergence of capitalism alongside colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade, showing how the thirst for profit necessitated systems of domination and exploitation. To justify this system morally and spiritually, the concept of race was created, not because Europeans believed Africans were inferior, but because they needed a rationale for stealing land, labor, and lives.

Foley defines capitalism as an economic system based on private ownership, wage labor, and market exchange, and argues that its logic has evolved into neoliberalism (hyper-individualism, competition, commodification) and financialization (wealth without goods). These systems, he says, have baptized greed and normalized oppression. In this framework, greed is not incidental, it's foundational. Race became a myth used to justify exploitation.

Rather than being born of ignorance, racism was a convenient tool: a system invented to make injustice look reasonable. As Foley writes, the horror is not that people believed others were subhuman, but that they knew they were human and enslaved them anyway.

Wrestling With the Chapter

This chapter undoes much of the storytelling I've inherited about race, history, and economics. It's not just that we were racist and then built a system to support that; we built the system for profit and then found a story to justify it.
That hits hard.

I've heard people say race is "just a social construct," but Foley pushes deeper: if it's a construct, we should ask why it was constructed. And the answer? To exploit. To dominate. And to soothe the conscience of those doing it.

That reordering messes with me because it reframes racism not as a heart issue, but as a power issue. And if it's a power issue, then the solution isn't just about changing hearts, it's about dismantling systems.

I'm wrestling, too, with how neoliberal capitalism has discipled me, not just as a citizen, but as a pastor.

• Have I unconsciously baptized self-interest?

• Have I structured ministry around measurable output, rather than mutual belonging?

And finally, there's this haunting truth: we've made peace with greed. We rarely confess it. We rarely confront it. But according to Jesus, it's one of God's greatest rivals (Luke 16:13). Maybe this is why Foley's words feel like both an indictment and an invitation.

Quotes to Hold On To

“For people who just want to get rich, we live in a golden age. But for those who ascribe to a faith in which riches and wealth are articulated as God’s greatest rival, we live in an age of horror. Ours is an age when Mammon is eager to sink its talons into our hearts and stretch its tendrils around our throats.” (Malcolm Foley)

"The horror of racial capitalism does not lie in the notion that some identified others as less than human and so enslaved them. Rather, the horror comes in the fact that slavers knew full well that slaves were human… and yet enslaved them." — Jonathan Tran (quoted by Foley)

Race "is an ideology that places a person in a racial category and a hierarchy in order to exploit them. It is not merely “the categorization of biological differences into natural kinds, where equity requires fair treatment along lines of diversity.” Lest you think this is simply a Black/white issue, racialization, as an exploitative process, is equal opportunity: if it can’t find a place for you, it will make a place for you. In the United States, because of its economic founding on slavery and expropriation of land from Indigenous peoples, racialization had and still has its crosshairs on Black people in ways that are uniquely violent. But it victimizes all of us.” (Malcolm Foley)

“The primary reason we think about one another racially is that we have been taught to do so. Children are not born with conceptions of race; they are taught.” (Malcolm Foley)

“Our ultimate goal as Christians, then, is actual, sweeping, life-giving justice. A world without race and racism is not the only world we want. … we ought to desire a world devoid of unjust suffering and free of exploitation and domination, a world where we all can eat, live, and share our resources without fear. Race and racism are obstacles to that world.“ (Malcolm Foley)

A Poll for Us

The Conversation

In this chapter, Foley reframes race as something created after exploitation, not before.

How does this shift in timeline challenge or deepen your understanding of racism and its roots?

Up Next: Chapter 2
The Talons and Tendrils of Racial Capitalism

If Chapter 1 revealed how greed created race, Chapter 2 shows how violence enforced it. Foley takes us into the brutal reality of lynching, not just as hate, but as a tool of economic control.

With the image of talons and tendrils, he explores how racial violence tore through bodies and imaginations alike. This chapter is hard, but essential, both historical and theological.

And we begin to meet the voices of resistance—those who refused to look away.

Other Posts in this Series:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5 Stars: A Prophetic Alarm for the Church

Money, Lies, and God by Katherine Stewart

Reviewed by Pastor Paul Dazet | A Wounded Healer’s Journal

There are books you read to learn.
There are books you read to argue with.
And then, there are books you read and realize: this explains the ache you’ve been carrying in your soul for years.

Katherine Stewart’s Money, Lies, and God is that kind of book.

It’s a work of investigative brilliance—an unflinching account of how vast financial resources, strategic misinformation, and manipulated religion are being weaponized against the heart of democracy and the soul of the Church. Stewart names names, maps networks, and reveals ideologies not just as abstract forces but as spiritual battlegrounds where truth, justice, and faith collide.

If you’ve ever wondered how we got here—how “Christian” came to be synonymous with power plays, partisan talking points, and culture war crusades—this book lights the path with clarity and conviction.

Where I’m Coming From

As a pastor rooted in a Jesus-centered, Wesleyan-Methodist tradition, I believe faith must always be wedded to love, justice, and truth—not just in personal piety, but in public witness. I’ve watched with grief as corners of the Church have been hijacked by nationalism disguised as theology and capitalism proclaimed as gospel.

Money, Lies, and God doesn’t just confirm those concerns—it deepens them. But it also offers clarity and resolve. It’s not a theological treatise, but it is profoundly theological in what it reveals about how beliefs shape behavior, and how power corrupts when left unchecked.

What Stewart Gets Right

Stewart is a journalist with the soul of a prophet. Her reporting is grounded, patient, and devastatingly thorough. She doesn’t caricature or speculate—she attends conferences, sits in pews, watches political rallies, and tracks the money.

The book is structured in three parts—Money, Lies, and Demons—and each section exposes how carefully coordinated this movement is. From groups like Faith Wins to the infiltration of public schools through the Good News Club, Stewart shows how faith language is being harnessed to advance a political agenda deeply out of step with the Gospel of Jesus.

She writes with urgency, but never panic. Her clarity is a gift.

Three Insightful Observations

1. The Idolatry of Capital

Behind the rhetoric of “religious freedom” lies a well-funded ecosystem committed to dismantling public institutions. Think tanks and mega-donors push a vision where markets are holy and government is the enemy. Stewart lays bare this ideology with sharp insight—and shows how far it is from the biblical call to care for the poor, the widow, and the stranger.

2. The Engine of Disinformation

From election denial to apocalyptic conspiracy theories, Stewart documents how certain religious leaders have become amplifiers of lies. Figures like Julie Green and Lance Wallnau don’t just shape belief—they manufacture alternative realities. Stewart never sneers, but she does confront—and she gives readers the tools to discern.

3. The Rise of Christian Nationalism

Perhaps the most chilling section of the book is her analysis of “spiritual warfare” language being used not metaphorically but politically—to demonize opponents and sanctify violence. This isn’t fringe anymore. And Stewart makes a compelling case that the fusion of religious fervor and authoritarian ambition is one of the gravest threats to both church and state.

Theological Reflection

Though not a theologian, Stewart exposes a deeply theological crisis. When Scripture is reduced to a weapon, when Jesus is co-opted for power, when “Satan” becomes the label for your political opponent—what’s left is not Christianity but a hollow idol in its place.

The result is a religion obsessed with control, allergic to compassion, and blind to its own captivity. Stewart’s work is a call to repentance—not just for the individuals she documents, but for all of us who have remained silent too long.

A Better Way Forward

If Money, Lies, and God names the sickness, then the healing begins with reclaiming our prophetic roots. We need to elevate voices who hold Scripture and democracy with equal reverence—people like Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Robert P. Jones, Lisa Sharon Harper, and others whose work invites both faith and justice to flourish.

Churches must become spaces of discernment again—not echo chambers of partisan talking points, but sanctuaries of spiritual courage. Stewart’s work equips us to do just that.

Final Word

Read this book.
Discuss it with your small group.
Preach on what it reveals.
And most importantly, let it stir your soul.

Because this isn’t just about politics. It’s about whether we will follow Jesus or follow power. Whether we will tell the truth, even when it costs us. Whether we will build communities that love their neighbor or fear them.

Stewart has done the Church a great service. Let’s not waste it.

OTHER BOOK REVIEWS:

The Anti-Greed Gospel: Introduction

Introduction: Breaking the Cycle

Overview of the Introduction

In the introduction to The Anti-Greed Gospel, Malcolm Foley invites us into a theological, historical, and deeply personal exploration of the relationship between race and greed. Rather than framing racism primarily as hate or ignorance, Foley challenges us to see racism as a byproduct of greed—the child of Mammon.

Drawing from the legacy of Ida B. Wells and Martin Luther King Jr., Foley argues that racism is not sustained by irrational hatred alone, but by material desire and economic exploitation. He roots this claim in the biblical language of idolatry: greed is not just bad behavior—it is worship of a false god. Mammon demands blood, and the systems of racialized capitalism we live in have delivered.

This is not just a historical analysis; it’s a call to repentance and reimagination. If the kingdom of God is about Jesus, then the political economy of that kingdom must be defined by love, solidarity, and redistribution—not domination, accumulation, or self-interest.

What I’m Wrestling With

This chapter felt like stepping into a deeper reality I had sensed but hadn’t fully named. I’ve often talked about racism in terms of broken relationships and cultural misunderstanding—but Foley pushes further. He’s asking: What if racism wasn’t primarily about how we see each other, but about what we want to own, control, and protect?

I’m especially struck by his claim that seven of the Ten Commandments are violated by the construction of race. That’s not just a political statement—it’s a deeply theological one. And it forces me to ask: If greed is at the root, how often have I let it hide in plain sight?

This isn’t just a critique of the past. It’s a question about how we live right now. As a pastor, as a neighbor, as someone with power and privilege—how often do I serve Mammon without even realizing it?

Key Quotes from the Chapter

“the white man’s dollar is his god. . . . The appeal to the white man’s pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience.” — Ida B. Wells

“Race is not primarily about hate and ignorance. It’s about greed. It always has been. And the purpose of this book is that you might understand the unholy relationship between race and greed, best understood not as a marriage but in terms of parentage: race and racism are children of Mammon.” — Malcolm Foley

“the book’s primary thrust is to imagine how we can build Christian communities that resist the death-dealing talons and tendrils of racialized capitalism. Such a project begins with this acknowledgment: an anti-racist community is an anti-greed community. An anti-racist community is a community in which the desire for more is excised and replaced with a robust embrace of the communion of the saints. Such a community follows the logic of the kingdom of God: authority and resources are to be shared rather than hoarded.” — Malcolm Foley

“Race is about money, and the kingdom is about Jesus.” — Malcolm Foley

Questions I’m Sitting With

• Where does Mammon still have a grip on my imagination?

• In what ways has greed shaped my understanding of race and justice?

• What would it mean for my church or community to become an anti-greed space?

The Conversation

• When you reflect on racism as a greed problem more than a hate problem, what new questions or emotions surface for you?

Leave a comment

The Week’s Poll

Next Up: Chapter 1

“How Greed Gave Birth to Race”

We’ll dig into how capitalism, colonialism, and slavery set the stage for race to become a powerful myth of justification—and how violence was always greed’s favorite scene partner.

Share

POSTS IN THIS SERIES:

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Learning in Public: The Anti-Greed Gospel

“Race is not primarily about hate and ignorance. It’s about greed.” — Malcolm Foley

Welcome to a new series I’m calling “Learning in Public: The Anti-Greed Gospel.”

This is not a book summary.
It’s not a review.
It’s a wrestling match.

Each week, I’ll work through a chapter of The Anti-Greed Gospel by Malcolm Foley and reflect on how it confronts my faith, my assumptions, and the Church’s calling in our current moment.

I’m not showing up as an expert. I’m showing up as a student. If you’re curious, struggling, hopeful, or heartbroken—this space is for you. Let’s learn together.

What’s This Book About?

Here’s how Foley introduces it:

“Race and racism are children of Mammon.”

This is the core claim of the book—that racism has always been driven by greed more than hate.

The systems of racial violence that have shaped our world were built to protect wealth, power, and profit. Foley doesn’t let us settle for shallow reconciliation. He calls us to the costly work of resistance, redistribution, and real community.

If that makes you feel a little uncomfortable, you’re in the right place.

Why I’m Doing This

• Because I need this.

• Because my church needs this.

• Because I’m tired of conversations that stop at personal bias and never get to economic justice.

• Because I believe the gospel is more than good vibes—it’s good news for the poor.

• Because learning in public is a spiritual practice.

  

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Your Turn: Let’s Start with a Poll

Cast your vote—it’ll shape how we enter the conversation.

What This Series Will Look Like

Each post will walk through one chapter and include:

✏️ A quick summary and key insights

🧵 A section called Wrestling with the Text – where I’ll name what’s challenging me, where I’m unsettled, and how this might show up in my preaching or pastoral life

🔗 Invitations to reflect, share, or respond in the comments

Next up: ✨ Race Is Not Just About Hate—It’s About Greed (Introduction)

The Conversation

What are you hoping to learn or unlearn through this series?
Have you ever connected race and greed before?
Drop a thought, a question, or even just a 🙋🏽‍♂️ if you’re along for the ride.

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📚 Cherished Belonging by Gregory Boyle
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️: A Review by Paul Dazet

Some books don’t just inform—they transform. Cherished Belonging is one of those rare gems. With his trademark blend of compassion, wit, and unflinching truth, Gregory Boyle offers us more than a collection of reflections; he offers a way of being—a path marked by kinship, mercy, and radical love.

At the heart of the book is this simple, gospel-soaked truth:
We belong to each other.

And when we forget that, suffering multiplies—whether in homelessness, addiction, violence, shame, or polarization.

Boyle writes from the margins, among those our world too often discards. But instead of trying to fix people, he accompanies them—bearing witness to the sacred spark within every human soul. “Everyone is unshakably good,” he says. “No exceptions.”

He tells stories of gang members and former inmates who, when finally seen with tenderness, begin to see themselves that way too. One young man describes his day this way:

“Today… I let God hold me by the hand.”

That line undid me. Because isn’t that what we’re all longing for? To know we’re held—not because we’ve earned it, but because we belong.

This is not sentimentality. Boyle is clear-eyed about suffering and trauma. But he insists that judgment is not the way forward—healing is. As he puts it:

“The homies don’t need saving. They need healing.”

Reading this book felt like coming home to the kind of faith I still believe in:

• A faith that stands with the demonized, not the powerful.

• A faith that trades fear for love.

• A faith that creates communities of belonging—no exceptions.

One quote that has stayed with me:
“Sometimes the most difficult stranger to welcome is the one inside of us.” (p. 42)

That line is a mirror and an invitation.

Boyle doesn’t offer easy answers. But he offers a better question:

Are we willing to let love do the healing?

For me, Cherished Belonging was the most meaningful book I read in 2024. It broke my heart in the best way—and then helped piece it back together with hope.

“A community of cherished belonging is God’s dream come true.”

Yes. Yes it is.