I fought through the tension of the clear call and example of Jesus to live life with people that the religious establishment calls “sinners” or “bad people” and the pressure of that religious establishment to tow a certain ideological line with our actions. That establishment would affirm my desire to follow in the footsteps of Jesus to befriend “sinners”, but not too far. It was critical, to the establishment, that everyone knew that I didn’t agree with these people. It was imperative that I treat them like friends, but not too much like friends because, otherwise, people might get the wrong ideas about me, my theology, and my friends. And, if we’re really going for it, people might get the wrong idea about my church. God forbid.

What Jesus is saying is that you can look all fine on the outside. You can memorize all the Scriptures, know all the songs, go to all the events, give money to the poor, have a quiet time, serve at your church, do street evangelism, whatever, but it doesn’t matter. When the storm comes, when your life gets hard, then we’ll see what you’re really basing it on - the words and person of Jesus, or something else. When you get bad medical news, when you lose your job, when the people of God are mean to you and cast you out, when you’re abused by those who should know better, when your grandmother dies, when your friend is shot, when you get old, when your kid won’t listen to you, when your spouse doesn’t care, and when anything unexpected or shocking comes your way, will the house of your faith stand or will it fall?

It’s no secret that the ancient Israelites failed to shoulder the burden. But what you might not know is that God didn’t give up on them. Jeremiah was not the first or the last prophet that God sent to speak to his people. Jeremiah was not the first or the last prophet to re extend the invitation to the people of God to shoulder the burden of his words to humanity. And Jeremiah was not the first or the last prophet to be completely disregarded by the people of God. They didn’t want to listen to him. In fact, another prophet, Isaiah, was told by God himself that the people that he was going to talk to would not listen to him (Isaiah 6:9-13).

Now, these circumstances on their own might not be so bad. I mean, the headphones and intentional ignoring of me still happens, but at least I know who I’ve talked to before and what they look like. But the combination of minimized recognizable facial features and complete sonic isolation made it nearly impossible to interact with or get to know anyone. Not to mention the general social phobia that ran rampant during the pandemic and is still somewhat at play three years on from it.

I’m going to do my best not to get distracted here. I have so many thoughts about things that happened during the pandemic that nobody talked about and we all just kind of accepted. A lot of nuance is needed and I don’t know that I fully understand it all, but one thing I’m really confident about is this: people were not made to live alone.

And, if you’ve lived in the world for longer than five minutes, you’re going to realize that bad things just happen. It doesn’t matter how good you are or how many rules you follow. Sometimes bad things happen to you when you don’t do anything to earn them. Sometimes bad things happen to you when you actively work against them. This world is not as it should be and bad things just happen, even without cosmic interference.

While I’m not sure that I’m exactly grateful to be a mom, I’m grateful for the opportunity to have had it out with God. Never before had I been in a position where I clearly thought that he was treating me unfairly. There was no one to blame, but him. So, if I was going to be angry, there was only one person to direct it at. And you can bet that I did. But it was in that season of incredible isolation, fear, and pain that I learned something really important about God: he can take it.

Some days I wake up and think I’ve wandered into someone else’s daydream: simple home, working with your spouse, healthy child, and no responsibilities outside of work and home life. The normalcy of it is my nightmare.

They’re really good at making you think that life with Christ is just great and it’s all an adventure. They’re really good at salesmanship. And, if you ask them, they’ll never talk too much about the messy part of following Jesus. Once you meet him, onward and upward, friends. If you really met Jesus, you’d never stumble, never fall, never slide backwards into old habits and lifestyles. And, if you do, someone might be concerned about you, but they won’t be willing to walk with you in the mess. That takes too much time. That doesn’t fill up newsletters. That doesn’t garner donor or parental support.

For the sake of argument, let’s say my stretchy pants are evil. Getting rid of my stretchy pants doesn’t make the men who look at me with lust in their hearts good. It eliminates an opportunity for objectification and temptation, but it doesn’t make them or me, for that matter, good. It eliminates a problem with their thought life, but it also eliminates the opportunity to learn self-control and to truly master their impulses towards lust.

When someone speaks to you out of both sides of their mouth, it’s more than a lie. It’s a deception wrapped in words, actions, and emotion. In order to successfully talk out of both sides of your mouth, you have to have some measure of trust from the person you’re talking to. You can lie to anybody and they may or may not ever find out, but you can’t talk out of both sides of your mouth unless someone trusts you. It’s worse than a lie. It’s a betrayal. When you’ve been duped like that, you start to question reality. You go back in time and revisit every conversation, interaction, and encounter and wonder what you missed. You wonder where it all went wrong. And, if the liar is particularly adept, you start to blame yourself. Because you could never blame them, that would ruin the illusion.