Sometimes I sit on the fact (and it is mostly a fact) that the wickednesses we witness casually #onhere are not representative of increasing depravity but, simply, increasing visibility (and broadcasting) of depravity. Then I think about all the depravity since the world began.

It’s not a light thing. In Chicago, there’s this regular slew of random violence, and I can’t help but put myself in the shoes of those whose kids are gunned down, by pure accident. I’m horrified, honestly; and then I think about millennia of pillaging, violence, rape, slavery...

There’s violence “out there” there’s violence “in those days” there’s violence “here” there’s violence “in these days”... ... ... there’s a mounting weight of violence, of blood crying from the ground, of those who would deny that blood’s angry voice, of those who would avenge...

Some days I think about the heat death of the universe, and, before that, the conflagration of the Earth in the implosion of the Sun. All this violence over; will humanity have been worth it? Will our lives have been valued?

All this is why I cling to the Gospel, y’all. I’m tired of evangelicals cheapening the Gospel by starting off their messages with how they feel bad feelings about the opposite sex (or the same sex, if that’s the theme of the conference): start off w history as the Bible tells it.

We sit on a ball of rock flying through space and infested with beings who could delight and joy in the goodness of God, but instead invent new ways to brutalize one another, who put all their energy into working injustice against each other, who create technologies of oppression

They stare into the eyes of their fellow human beings and cannot comprehend that being as sharing like flesh as their own. They take and own each other; they claim their neighbor’s flesh as though it were their own flesh. They use novel tools: their own bodies, screens, rent...

The sane person who looks fully at the depths of history is undone by it. I think of Georges Bataille here, who stared at the tortured body of a prisoner to try to understand the experience of being tortured; I’m haunted by that, because I feel those experiences too. It is weight

“Who shall rescue me from this body of death?” Bodies are not just corporeal; they are communal. “I live among a people of unclean lips.” This system of racial hatred, of sexualization of bodies, of dehumanization, of brutalization, is a body which our bodies take part.

I need to be honest: the more I’ve been thinking about the weight of history, the more I need a theology of resurrection, and the harder it gets to believe in the resurrection. I need a resurrection that is more than a band-aid over brutalization; it needs to transform it all.

I’m out of favor with weak gospels that paper over wickedness in order to salve the wounds of indiscretions: I need, instead, the Body and Blood of Jesus that promises redemption for the blood of righteous Abel on the ground. All the hidden sins on the earth, O Lord, how long?

All the while these weak gospelizers and phony evangelists concentrate on the pre-formed guilt-consciousnesses of those who have never accounted for real evil in the world; I’m tired of it. When faced with darkness, do such gospels last? Talking with the de-churched, it doesn’t.

So, I come back to the original thing: I’m clinging to the Gospel, the Gospel that declares victory over Hell, and Death, and the Grave. I don’t really trust it all the time, but goshdarnit, where else can I go? You, O Lord, have the words of life.