Hello, friends.

Maybe you've had some similar thoughts in these past few days. So I share mine with you here in this essay. I'm with you.

"No, actually. God is *not* in control."

In the past week, so many people have shared a statement, a posture that has been offered as some sort of quasi-comfort in some cases and a mandate in others. It goes like this (or similar): “God is in control.”

My mind immediately goes to the Twila Paris song from the 1990s in my heyday of Contemporary Christian Music and my own staunchly conservative evangelical and pentecostal beliefs.

I’ve been deeply bothered by the way this statement has been used by white evangelicals in their overwhelming (81%) support of someone so unlike Jesus and the Way he taught and lived. But I’ve been equally bothered by progressive Christian leaders, even my own denomination – the UCC, sharing such a sentiment.

My friends. God is not *in* control. God is in love.

This notion of a controlling cosmic higher than our ways male (white) God is a big part of what has led us to this moment. The idea of a God who lords, rules, reigns, commands, and forces comes from an old understanding. An understanding forged in the fires of people trying to make sense of war, famine, empire, and oppression. An understanding before Jesus came and taught a different understanding altogether. An understanding that has been used to shirk personal and collective responsibility.

When we awaken to Spirit and when we better understand the words and ways of Jesus (Yeshua) from his Aramaic language and culture, we see a very different picture. Then we come to understand and know that God is Sacred Unity. Love. Love when translated that is like a fire kindled and carefully kept going in the hearth, as my Celtic women ancestors would have done in their home, lovingly gathering and gently covering coals in the evening so they would not burn out and bringing them back to full flame in the morning.

I’ve watched and read analysis after analysis of how we got here. The racism and sexism, the ostracization of working-class people, and more. But missing from the narrative is what I believe to be the most subversive and root-level catalyst of these issues and more. We are infected by a deeply spiritual problem in the United States of America, and especially and profoundly within the white evangelical church who overwhelmingly aligned their votes with those of self-described white nationalists, leading to what we now face.

“God is in control.” This theology brought us to this reckoning. Voting for more control over bodies, more lordship over how we love, how we birth, how we learn, and how we live, and move and have our being.

In the same vein, the evangelical church has so often approached theodicy, or the problem of pain existing in the world contrasted with a loving God by contributing this problem to “free will.” Free will, that they say – is given by God.

However, in the last few decades the church has moved away from free will into “our will be done. On earth as (we think) it is in heaven.”

Yet again we see the problem with the root of the belief that “God is in control.” Kingdom over kin-dom of mutuality, love, and support – which is what we find in better and more accurate translations of what has been called “the Lord’s prayer.” Instead, the mis-understanding of the prayer of Jesus, one rooted in empire – finds its way to our lips and into our hearts, furthering our convictions of a controlling male God.

The misuse of many misunderstood words and teachings has led the US white evangelical church to do what my friends Brandi and Marcus so eloquently captured - that these Christians “shook the Bible til all the love fell out.”

Out of this fall out, we also see domination of the planet and people. Women are ordered to submit and be controlled while the verse just before the one that’s used to justify this is ignored. “Submit to one another.” Controlling has been equated and associated with loving in everything from abusive marriages to women’s healthcare to LGBTQ+ rights and more. A disgusting warping designed for maintaining control and dominance.

So what then must we do? How can we move away from this harmful theology? For some, the answer has been to leave, reject, and burn it down. But this leaves a void and neglects the deep need we have for something better instead of something less.

We need a love revolution. As Lenny Kravitz sang, it’s time. And it is time for a new constitution built on that love.

Love must lead us to mutual aid. To connections, to activism, to dismantling oppression. Love must lead us to assert with our hearts and our hands that this is – as Valerie Kaur teaches – “not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb.”

We must labor and breathe.

We must begin to revolutionize, reconstitute, and restructure our spiritualities and spiritual communities - to become what Brian McLaren described as “schools or studios of Love” – teaching and helping us all to love better.

We must begin to understand and redefine faith beyond belief and into love lived through action and connection to Sacred Unity. We must work for spiritual renewal and awakening in ourselves, in our loved ones, and in our communities.

I didn’t sleep much the night of the election. I spent a very long time lying in the dark, crying, sick to my stomach, and clinging to my wife.

“What are we going to do?” I whispered, much afraid.

Today, I better understand the role I’m here to do. I better know how I want to show up. As truth, as hope, as peace, and as LOVE.

And I understand today that I am deeply committed to this work and my work in the world in teaching and coaching for spiritual renewal, for inclusion, and for empowerment and connection with nature. To shine my light as a star in the sky. To not concede in this fight for justice. In this building of the kin-dom through love.

I know today you might not know or even want to think about your own role. But I am here with you. And we will move forward in love. If you have thought about your own role, I’d love to hear back about it. You can respond to this email. And please, send this to someone who needs it.

With so much Love,

Charity

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