Jen Hatmaker, President Trump, and the Incarnation

So many directions I could go I this morning. That train derailment is horrible and fascinating. Something or other is happening in Austria. I cut my finger wrapping presents (no link, sorry, it didn’t make the news). I should offer up a heartfelt apology for not podcasting yesterday (sorry, didn’t wake up, then had to shop and shop and shop). Haven’t seen the Last Jedi yet so can’t legit say anything on that subject. Ohio might ban abortion for down syndrome babies. And let’s see, what else. Oh yes, Jen Hatmaker’s life this year has been really tragical. I guess that seems as good a place to land as any, in the absence of any new high profile revelations about men behaving appallingly.

I did just have a thing to say, which won’t surprise you. It’s one thing in many parts, and that is, in a general plea for rationality charity,
Can y’all please stop it with the death threats? Whoever you are.

Seriously. I know this must apparently now be counter intuitive, but if you threaten someone with violence you’re disqualifying yourself from having an opinion about whatever the issue might be. Mailing someone their books back with pages torn and burned, accompanied by vile threats of violence and death, indicates that you’re, how shall I say it gently, dumber than a bag of hammers. Not to malign hammers.

I think what’s so discouraging to me about the past two years is the darkening confusion about speech and action. And this confusion gets to the heart of every single trouble that’s besetting American culture right now.

Talking is one thing, and acting is another thing. The two go together, so often, and they should. But they aren’t the same exactly. On the whole, talking–communicating with the pen and voice, or even the keyboard or thumbs–has been the principle way that civilization has held itself together. Rather than shooting at each other, we talk about it. And, of course, that breaks down and very often we begin the shooting. And then, after a while, realizing that that’s worked out poorly, we begin to talk again.

But in order for talking to be worth anything the people involved have to have some back bone. You have to see that it is, in fact, so much better than shooting. That if you can keep doing it, even if it’s painful, you will, for instance, get to still be alive. But somehow, the pain and hurt of trying to talk and of being misunderstood seems to have risen up to the level of Noah’s flood. It’s just too hard any more, and so speech is starting to be treated as if it were actually violent, as if it were the same as shooting. Which is not.

Indeed, just to pull in the wonder of Jesus for a minute. He’s the only one who managed to perfectly join the Word part with the Being and Action part. His words were embodied perfectly in his walk to the cross where he suffered our violence. But that’s another blog post–every other blog post probably.

If you don’t like what Jen Hatmaker is saying and writing, use words to refute her ideas calmly and rationally. There are plenty of words you could muster, but if you don’t bother, and just try to hurt her personally, you’re not #winning.

Because, honestly, its at the level of words, of the Word, that so much could be said. Jen Hatmaker seems to have looked at the scripture and decided that her experience of humanity can over ride what she sees there on the page. Her active experience of knowing people is more valuable to her than anything that God said. I happen to think this makes a mockery of God, who not only speaks perfectly, but who also knows and experiences our humanity perfectly, and knows what is good for his creatures and his world. That we don’t understand what he knows is not his fault. He created us and we should trust him. We are not infinite and holy. We are finite and sinful. It is the height of impertinence to tell God that what he has revealed isn’t good enough, isn’t useful, isn’t true.

And then it’s a sleight of hand to conflate that with loving or not loving Mr. Trump. Plenty of decent and lovely christian people voted for Mr. Trump, not because they wanted to, but because they looked at the other person running and couldn’t fathom that kind of future. Sure, many others voted enthusiastically for him, and continue to think he’s the best thing ever, and many of them self identify as Evangelical Christians, and I do find that rather problematic, but that’s not why so many Evangelical Christian People consider Jen Hatmaker to have wandered pretty far beyond the boundary of orthodox belief.

The question is, and it always has been, how best can I as a Christian love God and other people? The answer to that question does not reside in myself, in the world, in politics, in Politico, on Twitter, in the White House, or anywhere on this earth except tucked into the pages of the book that I have sitting next to me. The words in that book are the supernatural revelation of the God who not only loves me, but also loves other people whom he has also made. He knows whereof we are made, that we are but dust. I must not trust myself. I must trust the scripture–these words that are so difficult, but so old and so true, that God self identifies his person with them, stepping out of eternity and onto the page.

In other words, observe how I am using my words to call Jen Hatmaker to reconsider the glory of the text, to submit her theology, her teaching, her life to this terrible and fearful book, to listen to what Christians are saying about why they think she has gone outside of the door of the church in its biggest and grandest and most broken sense. Leave Trump out of it, he needs to try to see what’s on the page too, but he might need to have someone read it to him.