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I have never been more disenfranchised from “American Christianity” than I have this year (though the previous 4 years leading up to this are not far behind.).

I have watched as many family and friends have given themselves over not only to blind allegiance to one political party, but to conspiracy theories and the dehumanization of those who disagree.

The religious tradition I grew up in (vanilla wanna-be mega-church influenced by Focus on the Family) often implicitly carried with it the notion that “to follow Jesus was to be Republican,” but that heresy has never been louder than 2020. People claiming to be “Christians” have not only supported the most divisive, vulgar, criminal, sexually immoral, irreligious president of our time (who tear-gassed a crowd of protesters so that he could take a picture with a bible in front of a church or re-tweeted one of his supporters shouting WHITE POWER at people protesting systemic racism) and have called in to question the very election they were counting on, all while claiming that being asked to wear a mask to protect their neighbors is an “infringement” of their rights.

This year has crystallized the heart-wrenching fact that many people cannot tell the difference between Americanism and Christianity, and if you question them, they will say you are neither. “Pastors” are claiming persecution when all they’ve been asked to do is the bare minimum to look out for others. (Read my piece “Love Your Neighbor, Wear A Mask (Americanism Is Not Christianity)”

Al Mohler has led other SBC seminary presidents in an ill-advised crusade against Critical Race Theory while allowing things like ESS (Eternal Subordination of the Son) to be taught in our seminaries. That, on top of a year when Mohler has refused to rename seminary buildings, he has been revealed to have supported chattel slavery, condemned Harriet Tubman, and admitted he has been influenced by the Lost Cause theory of the South. In his bid to become president of the Southern Baptist Convention, he has wholeheartedly given himself to the Republican Party without apology. (Read my piece “MLK, Trump, "White Moderates", Abortion, And Christian Witness In America”)

And all the while, we have seen the emboldenment of (White) Christian Nationalism erupt like Mount Vesuvius. The “Proud Boys” ripped BLM flags off of churches while the police stood by and anyone who believes in Systemic Racism is apparently a Marxist and hates America. (Read my piece “Nationalism is Anti-Christ” // from 2019).

And it’s hard to understand why so many “Evangelicals” continue to endorse this lying, conniving, sexual assaulting, conning, grifting president. The only answer can be that many American Christians have felt their position of cultural influence slipping away. Why else would you be mad if the grocery cashier doesn’t say “Merry Christmas” or if there are nativity scenes on public property? But these are the very things “pastors” like Robert Jeffress (whose church trademarked the “hymn” Make America Great Again) claim to be persecution. (Read my piece “The False Persecution Complex of American White Evangelicals” and yes, this one was technically from 2019).

I don’t know what 2021 will hold, but I don’t see the waters of Evangelicalism calming any time soon. And this makes me thankful and hopeful. God’s Church will prevail and not even Christian Nationalism, MAGA, or a sexual-predator, White-power president overwhelmingly supported by White Evangelicals will change that.

I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but I live in a city without a lot of historical context. When buildings get old, we tear them down and put up a Starbucks. But when we lived in Louisville, there were buildings that had been there for a hundred years and people could tell you the story. Part of that is that I live in one of the youngest states in the Union, but part of it is cultural. Some cultures preserve history better. Tradition.

Some cultures hold on to things better than others.

I won’t talk about grief all of the time. But, as a Hospice Chaplain, it is something I deal with every day. Grief can begin long before a loved one’s death and last long after. It is the price we pay for love. It shows that our hearts are alive, despite our mind’s assertions otherwise.

Grief is something we will all experience and yet we will not all grieve the same. This includes how we finally come to grips with our grief and how we view ourselves in relation to grief. Some people try to “just get over it” and try to just get back to life without really allowing themselves to pass through grief. For some people, grief is viewed as just that time of crying when someone died, and now I’m back to life. But for others, it is the result of love and it is evidence of the hole that is now left right in the middle of our lives. It is something that shapes us.

The question becomes whether we identify grief as part of our beautiful story or whether we try to hide it.

In some cultures, we try to hide our scars. Makeup. Clothing. Plastic surgery.

We try to hide our brokenness.

Some people are more comfortable with brokenness than others. Some of us want to sweep it under the rug and keep on pretending that no one trips over the big pile under the middle of the rug.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer mixed or dusted with gold. Sometimes known as “gold joinery,” “golden seams,” or “gold repair,” this is more than just repair. This method brings new life to pieces by highlighting their brokenness. My Modern says:

Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece. This repair method celebrates each artifact's unique history by emphasizing its fractures and breaks instead of hiding or disguising them. Kintsugi often makes the repaired piece even more beautiful than the original, revitalizing it with new life.

The practice itself arises from several different Japanese philosophical concepts:

Wabi-Sabi: seeing beauty in the flawed or imperfect.

Mottainai: regret when something is wasted

Mushin: the acceptance of change

and

“As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise . . . Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated” (Wikipedia)

What if we treated grief as something not just to “get through” or to bury but understood it as part of life and as part of our beautiful stories? What if we all believed that our stories were beautiful? Kintsugi helps us see how brokenness can be beautiful. But what if we believed it about ourselves?

None of this makes grief easier or diminishes its weight. But I hope it helps give us the perspective that it is part of what makes each one of us so unique. No piece of Kintsugi are the same. No two people are the same. And it is our grief that helps shape us.

Read my follow-up piece Sitting With The Brokenness (More About Grief, Kintsugi and The Art of Precious Scars).