Engineering My Faith

According to a 2016 psychological study, an effective apology has six components:

1. an expression of regret for the offense
2. an explanation of why the violation occurred
3. an acknowledgment of responsibility for the offense
4. a declaration of repentance
5. an offer of trust repair
6. a request for forgiveness

The authors studied apologies that comprised just one of these six components, three of the six in various combinations, or all six. They found that all six components were needed for a truly effective apology. Three components were particularly important:

• An Explanation for why the violation may have occurred, which is an effort by the violator to affect the victim’s sense‐making about the violation in a way that might make the violation seem more understandable, less intentional, or less dissonance‐creating to the victim.
• An Offer of Repair, which may restore the tangible or economic damage that occurred as a result of the violation.
• An Acknowledgement of Responsibility, in which the violator assumes responsibility for having created the violation, hence limiting the number of alternative explanations for why the violation occurred.

Over the past ten days, many of us have been wondering what the path forward is. On January 6, 2021, a rally led by President Trump evolved into a riot, culminating in an attack on the US Capitol while Congress was debating challenges to the Electoral College votes from Arizona. Details are still coming into view, but a few facts are clear:

• There was a portion of the crowd who arrived at the rally intending to attack the Capitol. They had plans, weapons, and other equipment needed for such an attack.
• Prior to the rally, President Trump and his allies spent months saying first that the election would be stolen, then that the election had been stolen. They stated clearly that it was incumbent on Trump’s supporters to “STOP THE STEAL.”
• In encouraging people to attend the rally, Trump tweeted, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
• Multiple speakers at the rally used language about violence. From the full transcript of Trump’s remarks, “We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.” Rudy Giuliani said, “But if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. Let’s have trial by combat.”

While Trump himself did not participate in the violence, he bears some culpability for encouraging his supporters. So do his allies like Giuliani, and so do members of Congress like Senator Josh Hawley (who unfortunately represents my state).

There have been calls from Republicans for “unity.” “It is past time for all of us to try to heal our country and move forward,” said Senator Lindsey Graham. The question is, how best to achieve this healing? For guidance, let’s look at the apology steps listed above. I have seen no indication from President Trump, or any of his close allies, of ANY of the six steps.

The two predominant approaches to wrongdoing are retributive and restorative justice. Retributive justice is most familiar to us, and comes down from the ancient law of Moses and Code of Hammurabi: an eye for an eye. In modern jurisprudence, crimes are committed against the state. Criminal cases are always brought on behalf of “the people.” Offenders are punished, both as retribution and deterrence. In restorative justice, the emphasis is on restoring what was lost, both the actual loss (e.g., the value of something stolen) and the loss of harmony in the community. Restorative justice is a relatively new concept in Western law, though it was prevalent in pre-modern societies such as among Native Americans.

The most widely known example of restorative justice is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, 1996-2003. This commission was instrumental in the transition from apartheid to legal equality for all races. I had the privilege of seeing F. W. de Klerk speak on campus a few years ago. He was the transition leader, the last white president of South Africa. He spoke at length about the importance of both aspects of the TRC: truth first, reconciliation second. There is no hope for peace without both. To the extent that the TRC failed to achieve all of its objectives, the failures were primarily in the lack of truth: offenders concealing some aspects of their crimes in order to receive unearned amnesty.

The second aspect of TRC, reconciliation, depends upon repentance, the fourth component of an apology listed above. “Repentance” is commonly taken to mean a confession of wrongdoing, but actually means a turning: turning away from wrong actions, turning towards right actions. Repentance is essential for a community.

¹⁵ “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. ¹⁶ But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. ¹⁷ If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

Matthew 18:15-17

Jesus counsels us to first confront an offender in private, then with witnesses, and then before the whole community. If they still will not repent, they are to be expelled for the good of the community. The message doesn’t end there, though:

²¹ Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” ²² Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

Matthew 18:21-22

Jesus calls us to repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. If a person sins against the community, our goal is to restore them to full status, full membership in the kingdom of God. If the person truly repents, they are to be welcomed back with total forgiveness, no matter how often they sin. But if they will not repent, they are to be excluded for the good of the community.

So what are we to do with President Trump and his supporters? I am willing to forgive them, despite their attack on democratic norms and the very foundation of our republic. However, there must be true repentance first. There must be all six components of an apology: only after fulfilling all of their obligations to restore what they have broken are they to be welcomed back as full participants in society. As long as they continue to assert that the election was stolen, that they were right to threaten our political stability, and that their words were unrelated to the violent actions taken on January 6, they are not ready to be forgiven. Until they declare unequivocally that they support our duly-elected new president, Joe Biden, and take actions to prevent future undemocratic acts, their calls for unity are simply attempts to avoid the bright light of Truth that must precede Reconciliation.

Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual teacher and author of the bestseller The Power of Now. In his work, he quotes from many traditions. Just as in Stillness Is the Key, a book I wrote about recently, Tolle makes the point that all traditions ultimately teach the same thing: live in the present.

¹⁴ Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵ and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Mark 1:14-15

I often reference Jesus’s mission statement in Luke 4:18-19. That was his statement about what he would do, what we should do, and what the kingdom of God would be like. But Jesus’s fundamental message was this: The kingdom of God has come near, or is at hand. What is this kingdom?

At the time, the Jewish people were being brutally oppressed by the Roman Empire. A significant faction believed that a Messiah would come to vanquish the Romans and establish a new kingdom on earth similar to David’s kingdom. Israel would be restored to its ancient glory, with no sovereign but God.

That wasn’t Jesus’s message. Instead, he preached that the kingdom of God is here, right here, close to us, waiting for us to reach out and join it.

The kingdom of God is not in the past. What’s past is gone forever. Each moment flies by, never to be seen again. Some good and some bad happened in that past; we should learn from both and make ourselves, individually and collectively, better now because of our experiences. But we cannot change the past. No amount of wishing things had gone differently, or claiming “that’s not what I meant,” can make the past any better or any worse.

The kingdom of God is not in the future. It is not some promise that will only come true when we die, or when Jesus returns, or when the right politicians are elected. As Yogi Berra once said, “Making predictions is hard, especially about the future.” We cannot know what is coming. Remember when 2019 ended and we thought 2020 would be better? How wrong we were! Maybe we’ll be right about 2021 being better than 2020; I won’t make any predictions either way, after such a rocky start.

The kingdom of God is here and now. It is in what Tolle calls “the eternal Present.”

It’s in you. It’s in me.

It’s in us, when we come together with open hearts.

Our nation has had a rough year or so, what with the impeachment and COVID-19 and the failed insurrection. The days ahead are looking grim, too, with likely another impeachment and a pandemic that will get worse before it gets better and a growing number of believers in conspiracy theories. All we have is today; indeed, all we have is right now.

What will you do to experience God’s kingdom Now?

Have you made your New Year’s resolutions yet? I have, in a way. A few days ago, I went through an annual planning exercise from Monk Manual, You Are Here. The principle behind the Monk Manual is that who we are and what we do are intimately linked. If you are not intentional about what you do, it’s easy to look back on a day, a week, or a life wasted. The Monk Manual is a planner, but not in the conventional sense. Each day, you not only plan your most important tasks, but also identify what you are grateful for and ways you can give. Then at the end of the day, you identify your highlights, when you were at your best, and ways you can improve tomorrow. There is a weekly aspect to the process, and a monthly, and now an annual.

The Monk Manual is very much in the spirit of Atomic Habits, which I believe I have written about before. The principle of Atomic Habits is that goals are less important than the habits you develop that make you the kind of person who achieves those goals. Teams don’t win championships because they want to—every team wants to. They win because they develop the daily practices that turn them into a championship-caliber team.

In a similar vein, I am listening to an audiobook, Stillness Is the Key, by Ryan Holiday. Holiday writes that basically all philosophical and religious traditions—Buddhism, Christianity, Stoicism, etc.—emphasize stillness of mind, body, and spirit. Stillness is not the same as inaction. It is thinking deeply, loving deeply, and living simply.

As John Lennon wrote, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” If you don’t pay attention, your days slip away. Wisdom and joy come from living intentionally. Develop a routine that includes habits of mind, body, and spirit that will make you a better person.

The “You Are Here” exercise results in four “doing” goals and four “being” goals. That’s about right: achieving more than four things in a year requires too much division of focus. These are big goals; of course, there may be little tasks or goals along the way. For example, one of my “doing” goals is to re-start the grant-advise-publish cycle in my research program. That means I need to write multiple proposals, get one or more funded, advise several students through graduation, recruit one or more new graduate students, and get their work published. Lots of tasks, lots of intermediate goals, all building towards one overarching goal.

“Being” goals require attention to daily disciplines. For example, one of my goals is to be Spirit-led. That won’t just happen. I need to cultivate my mind and spirit to be attuned to the leading of the Holy Spirit. How? By introducing spiritual disciplines and by feeling for the Spirit’s feedback as I try things.

The challenge, as with all New Year’s resolutions, is to keep going. Starting is easy; maintaining is hard. A recent nugget of wisdom from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, was, “The more disciplined your environment is, the less disciplined you need to be. Don’t swim upstream.” Clear’s insight about developing a habit is to make it easy, make it obvious, and make it rewarding. I am working hard to identify not only what I will do, but when, where, and how. For example, I have started meditating, but not on my own—with Headspace, an app that has guided meditations and daily reminders. The why also matters. My larger goals will keep me motivated to stick with the habit on those hard days, when I’m tired, stressed, or busy.

I know that some of my new practices won’t stick, but I don’t know which ones. Part of the Monk Manual philosophy and approach is to be reflective, always evaluating what is working and what isn’t. We have just ended a year in which everyone’s daily routine changed, perhaps several times. I expect such changes to continue. My life is strongly driven by the academic calendar, so I know that what I’m able to do this week will be harder in a couple weeks when classes begin. So be it. The important thing is to “just keep swimming,” as Dory said. Some changes are beyond my control, so I’ll just adapt.

What are your plans for 2021? How will you end 2021 as a better person than you are today?

As you may know, I am the advisor for Common Call Campus Ministry. Below is the message I shared with them earlier today.

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Merry Christmas! This has been quite a year and quite a semester, one unlike any other. I would like to share just a few thoughts with you.

The start of a new year is often a time of reflection and planning. As the pandemic rages on, such reflection and planning takes on special meaning. Now is a time to consider what is really important to you. A friend of mine, who has three kids each in multiple sports and other activities, commented that this pandemic has meant a time to rest. Her evenings are no longer crammed with running to this practice and that game. When the restrictions ease, her family will need to decide which activities to add back in. Perhaps you have had the same experience: lots of activities have been canceled; when they come back, which ones really matter?

I can’t tell you what to choose, or even how to choose. But I believe that God leads each of us to the right decisions, if we pay attention and listen closely. That means spending time in prayer and contemplation, but also trying things and feeling which ones bring life and joy. I would also assert that connections to other people are fundamental, whether to a significant other with whom you spend your life, or to your family, or friends, or colleagues, or community.

One method for finding your path is the daily examen. This is a spiritual practice linked to the Jesuits, but used in many Christian traditions. A form of this is built into the Monk Manual, a life planner that I use.

The turning of the year is also a good time to add spiritual practices to your life. Daily examen, other daily prayer, daily devotions, or daily scripture study. Weekly worship, weekly sabbath-keeping, or weekly service. Please prayerfully consider what you might add to your life that would bring you closer to God. In the past, I have used the Bible in One Year app. This year, I think I will use a different approach to reading the Bible in a year created by a fellow Presbyterian and published by Westminster John Knox Press. If reading the WHOLE Bible is too heavy a lift for you, perhaps a shorter daily reading such as UKirk Daily is more appropriate. (UKirk is the college ministry arm of the Presbyterian Church (USA).) It has a psalm and New Testament reading each day, with a prayer. It is targeted at college students and young adults.

Perhaps also you might like to change your reading habits. Patheos has a number of blogs organized into channels; I subscribe to the Progressive Christian daily update. I recently discovered RELEVANT, an online magazine about Christianity that targets 20- and 30-somethings. If you are interested in politics, I highly recommend The Flip Side, which presents both left-leaning and right-leaning opinions culled from many publications about a particular topic each day. If you’re looking for productivity and life management tips, I highly recommend James Clear’s 3-2-1 Thursday, “Working to deliver the most wisdom per word of any newsletter on the web.”

Whatever you do, I wish you a better 2021 than 2020 has been. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

At a recent Common Call meeting, we discussed ideas from this blog post that contrasts conservative and progressive perspectives on the Gospel. The underlying questions are: Can there be communal sin without personal sin? If so, can there be communal reconciliation without individual repentance?

When I was young, my dad gave me a sound piece of advice: Beware of making a series of small decisions that add up to a big one. The specific context was career-related, but I think it applies more broadly, including to communal sin. Let’s consider the exploitative conditions that undergird Walmart’s business model. I may claim that I am opposed to the maltreatment of workers in China, or the use of underpaid undocumented immigrants in agriculture, or Walmart’s business practices that destroy smaller businesses. But at the end of the day, I decide every week to buy groceries at Walmart because they’re cheaper, they have everything I want to buy, and their service is excellent. So do millions of other Americans. In principle, I could choose not to shop there, but that would have little to no impact on Walmart, so out of self-interest, I decide—today—to accept the moral compromise.

A similar dynamic plays out in racial segregation of neighborhoods and schools. In many (most? all?) large cities, predominantly Black neighborhoods still exist for historical reasons. Sinful actions were taken in the past that established them, and now a series of individual decisions perpetuate them. Such neighborhoods tend to be poorer and with worse schools. A parent would be foolish to choose to live in a neighborhood with bad schools if they could afford to live in a neighborhood with good schools. And so, the status quo remains, or more often, the gap grows.

I think the answer to my first question above is yes. I did not create the conditions that lead to profoundly different educational outcomes between races, nor did my parents or their parents. I did benefit from them, though. So the second question is still open. Do I need to repent of our nation’s collective history? Does everyone else?

There are certainly cases of such communal and individual repentance. The example that springs to mind is South Africa. In order to transition away from apartheid, they had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. South Africans needed to acknowledge their historical sins, collective and individual, in order to live together.

As I was mulling over the conclusions from the Common Call discussion, I helped record this week’s worship service at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Something in Rev. Lou Ellen Hartley’s sermon struck me. Just as there are communal sins, there are communal fruits of the Spirit.

¹⁹ The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; ²⁰ idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹ and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. ²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. ²⁴ Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ²⁵ Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. ²⁶ Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.

Galatians 5:19-26

Just as each one of us bears some responsibility for the sins of our community, nation, world, and species, each one of us can be a part of the Kingdom of God and enjoy the fruits of the Spirit. It is not just an individual who has love; a community can show love, to each other and to outsiders. Just as structures of sin can be established and perpetuated, structures of kindness and goodness can be established and perpetuated. As James Clear said in a recent email newsletter, “The more disciplined your environment is, the less disciplined you need to be. Don’t swim upstream.” The right kind of community structures make it easy to show love, kindness, and goodness, living in peace without taxing your self-control.

When Sam and I visited Grinnell, we had lunch in their cafeteria. It’s the kind of place where you pay at the front door, then go through the serving area to get to the seating area that surrounds it. The serving area itself is all-you-can-eat. When you’re done, there are several exits. While we were eating, we saw two young women come into the seating area, set down their phones, IDs, and keys, and go back around the corner to get their food. That’s trust. That’s a sign of a community where people watch out for each other, where people care about each other.

The pandemic has torn a lot of communities and organizations apart. As we rebuild, let us seek to build structures that exhibit the fruits of the Spirit, so we may individually experience the peace and joy that comes from loving one another.

I recently listened to an audiobook of The Upswing, by Robert D. Putnam with Shaylyn Romney Garrett. It describes the 20^th century as an upside-down U, or what I might call a hill. By virtually every measure examined, the first half of the century was a time of growing communitarianism, that is, a growing emphasis on true community, equality, and cooperation. Organizations ranging from Rotary to Boy Scouts to the NAACP were created around the turn of the century. Small businesses grew into large corporations. Unions emerged as powerful economic and social forces. Churches grew, education improved, income and wealth gaps shrunk. Somewhere around 1965, all of the progress stopped. The book gives a lot of reasons; I would argue that a significant factor was that the civil rights movement achieved legal equality, which on the one hand lessened the urgency for continued activism from Blacks and on the other hand triggered a backlash against Black equality.

At any rate, America has spent the last 50+ years moving away from healthy community connections. Church membership has been sliding almost as fast as attendance. Membership in many other organizations has become transactional, where a member’s only connection is paying dues. Income and wealth gaps have stagnated or grown, and educational attainment reached a plateau.

As the crowning event of this age, COVID-19 is tearing apart what little is left of community spirit. Anti-maskers will not do even the bare minimum to keep their neighbors healthy. Most activities have gone “virtual,” which in many cases means that they just aren’t happening anymore. For example, some virtual conferences are really just a set of documents to download or videos to watch, with little to no actual conferring together.

I am afraid that many churches will not survive. A church is more than just Sunday morning worship, but without that anchor, there is little to keep people connected to each other. Most other church activities are restricted just as much as congregational worship. Without regular gatherings, people make other plans with their lives. People get used to doing something else each Sunday morning. When churches re-open, will people rearrange their lives to return? Some will, certainly, but just as certainly, some will not.

So, if the 20^th century was a hill that peaked in the 1960s, the pandemic is a river at the bottom of that hill blocking our path. How will we cross that river? Or will we drown in it, or get swept away by it? I wish I knew. All I can do right now is to pray for guidance, for God to show us all a way to ford the river.

Currently, I have three projects in my life that revolve around community-building. One is something I get paid to do: as the interim director of CREE, my job is to foster relationships that can lead to major research initiatives. The second is a ministry that I inherited, so to speak: as the advisor to Common Call Campus Ministry, my objective is to connect with students across campus and help them to grow into an adult faith. The third is a new initiative that I’ve been thinking about and pushing for a year or two now: an LGBTQ community group. All three have been a struggle in the best of times; all three have come nearly to a halt due to the pandemic.

Let’s imagine that everyone gets vaccinated this month, so in January, everything is supposedly back to normal. What can I do now so that these three projects can take off? Alternatively, let’s imagine that the vaccines are ineffective, slow to roll out, or otherwise hampered so that restrictions stay in place until next fall. What can I do to push these projects despite the stiff headwinds? I don’t know. I do know that humans crave relationships, and will pray that I can be a part of our next upswing, a new way of life in community together.