Are you scared or angry? Look around. Catch the news. Everywhere you hear people talking worry, resentment, disgust. How about you?
I recently asked this question in a talk for a homecoming gathering at Upper Columbia Academy (UCA) in Washington State. Then I veered off course. I was so thankful, I said, for my time at the school. But my first morning hadn’t been good. I was called out of English class, where I met, along with my English teacher, the boys’ dean—who had bloodshot eyes.
My roommate had brought along some old electronics equipment. He was a tinkerer and earlier that morning had run a wire to the doorknob to our room. Checking our room, the hall monitor would get a small shock. Well, the prank hadn’t worked out so well. Clothes and bedding—lots of it—were ruined; everything smelled of smoke.
But the school year got better and better. No more fires. The dean and faculty were kind. My roommate and I finished the year successfully. I said again how glad I was for my time at UCA.
But then (as now), I returned to questions about the wider world.
Newspaper columnist David Brooks offers his take on how Americans feel these days. He wonders, first: Why are we so mean?From cable news to social media, from workplace anger to political hatred to crime, there’s lots of name-calling and revenge-taking out there, lots of scamming and cheating, lots of aggression, threat-making, trigger-pulling.
Brooks’s second question is: Why are we so sad?America has so much going for it. But everywhere you hear about mental health gone haywire, people feeling lonely, fewer making firm connections—fewer getting married, or participating in church life, or even sustaining close friendships. You hear, too, about heedless escape-from-sadness strategies—booze after hours or all day, drug-taking, abusive sex, binge television, endless scrolling through other people’s shiny self-presentations on social media. Meanwhile, “deaths of despair”—death by suicide, alcohol, and drugs—have been rising, especially among teenagers.
With so many people mean and sad, there’s good reason to be scared and angry.
But why are some people not like this? Why do some people find a way through life’s hard parts without being jerks or fools or tiresome unhappy campers? Why do some people still project helpfulness and positivity, so that in their company you feel blessed?
What Should We Do?
I don’t know all the answers, nor would I want to pass harsh judgment on anybody. But for the help it may offer, I want to explore the astonishing moment of church beginnings described in Acts. At one point people “cut to the heart” (somehow uneasy, somehow unsettled) pose a question: “Brothers, what should we do?” (Acts 2:37).1 “What now? What shall we do with Jesus now?”
Today that question feels urgent, not just because of difficulties I’ve been mentioning, but also because of the growing unpopularity of conventional religion. The so-called nones are on the rise. Not the nuns, who teach in Catholic schools, but those who don’t belong to any organized Christian (or other kind of) religion. Disdain for religion is now a trend, likely affecting even students in our schools. What shall we do with Jesus now?
As the story in Acts begins, Jesus has “presented himself alive” (Acts 1:3). It is Pentecost, the annual commemoration of the partnership between God and the Jewish people established at Mount Sinai. Jerusalem is teeming with worshippers, some visiting from so far away they don’t speak the local language. A crowd gathers when a group of 100 or more Galileans (verse 15; 2:7) is able to communicate with these Jewish foreigners. It’s astonishing, though some sneer and say these Galileans are drunk (Acts 2:12, 13).
Now Peter raises his voice. These people are not drunk; what you “see,” he tells the crowd, is that of which the prophet Joel spoke long ago: in the “last days” God will pour out His Spirit on “all flesh,” the young, the old, slaves, women—“all flesh.” These “last days,” Peter declares, have now arrived. Jesus is alive again. The outpouring out of the Holy Spirit is happening. Jesus has been installed at God’s “right and” and made “both Lord and Messiah” (verses 16-36).
I don’t know if it was as hard then to believe all this as it may be now. But Peter stopped a lot of listeners in their tracks. What now?Peter declared in Acts 2:38:“Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
Luke, the book’s author, means to bring his readers up short. His story addresses us. What am I to do? Repent? That sounds “churchy” and “pious,” but repentance is the beginning of all moral seriousness.Yes, I need to slam the brakes on self-satisfaction and self-deceit. Nothing is harder, but I need to face up to my flawed reality, and turn from it. Be baptized?Yes, that, too. I need to join the Jesus movement. Or if I already have, I need to stick with my commitment.
And all this so my sins may be forgiven. The story is telling us that those following Jesus enter an atmosphere of forgiveness. What if I forget that? Then, falling short of my goals, I feel defeated or guilt-ridden. I worry that God is eager to condemn me. But that’s wrong. If God in Christ sets before us a difficult responsibility, set before us also is the kindness and patience at the heart of divine love. When I take sides with Jesus, the context is forgiveness. Whenever the church forgets this, it is like a railroad coach misaligned with the tracks: it goes nowhere!
And I receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.Young or old, woman or man, I receive God’s presence in my life. God’s gifts of new strength and insight lift me up. I can go forward.
Do What With Jesus?
Peter says: Receive all God’s gifts, and take sides with Jesus. Anyone can be mean, sad, scared, angry. But through Jesus, God grants us opportunity to project helpfulness and positivity.Many on that day long ago responded to Jesus. The church was beginning to spring up, a new people, with “glad and generous hearts” (Acts 2:46).
Some days after Pentecost Peter finds himself again in front of a crowd at the temple. He again tells the Jesus story, now adding: “You are the descendants of the prophets and of the covenant that God gave to your ancestors, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your descendants all the families of the earth shall be blessed’ ” (Acts 3:25). As God had put it long before: “I will bless you . . . so that you will be a blessing” (Gen. 12:2).
The Bible thinks of faithful people as God’s partners—Paul (and also Ellen White) says, God’s “colaborers.” The “covenant” is the partnership agreement, the agreement between God and God’s colaborers. And here is its main point: God blesses us on earth so we can bless others on earth. Responding to God’s blessing, I promise to bless others—on earth. Some Christians, it’s true, are so heavenly minded they forget that and treat the earth like a bus stop—we’re just waiting here for something else. But according to the first Christian preacher, life on earth is the focus of our partnership with God.
Peter’s experience reminds us this is not easy. We know from later in Acts—and from a story Paul tells—that Peter struggled to be a blessing for others when the others were different from him. Once he was praying (and hungry) when he fell into a trance and saw something like a large sheet coming down, teeming with all kinds of animals, including reptiles. Peter objected when a voice told him to kill and eat; some of these animals were “unclean.” But the voice warned Peter not to call unclean what God had declared clean. Peter, who had looked down on Gentiles, grasped the lesson: “God shows no partiality. . . . Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all” (Acts 10:34-36). Peter then oversaw the first recorded baptism of a group of Gentiles into the new community. Still, he struggled. Peter even refused, sometimes, to eat at the same table with Gentiles (Gal. 2:11-14). But all along, remember, he was living in the context—the atmosphere—of forgiveness.
Blessing others on earth is not easy, especially when the others are different from us.
What, Then, Shall We Do With Jesus Now?
The path Peter recommends is difficult. Convictions supporting that path may themselves present difficulties, leaving many Christians struggling with doubt. Is all this worth it? Why not follow the new trend, like all the nones? Why not live by my own light?
What if everyone said no to Jesus? Thoughtful people, such as the British historian Tom Holland, are suggesting how disastrous that could be, how the new trend threatens to make our world meaner, sadder, scarier, angrier.2 Through Jesus and the prophets, Holland notes, God turned destructive human traits topsy-turvy. No, it’s not right for big shots to step on little people. No, it’s not right for insiders to hoard all advantage to themselves. No, it’s not right to set aside the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, not right to leave people with only themselves for a “god.” Suggesting to people they can live by their own light is lethally dangerous.
Through Jesus and the prophets, God turned destructive human traits topsy-turvy.
OK, but if I try to walk the Jesus walk, I end up feeling hemmed in and guilty. Feelings like this may owe partly to problems the church has interpreting its own gospel. But circle back to Peter. He said that true Christian life takes place in an atmosphere of forgiveness. Period. Church people need to remember that, just as the dean and faculty at my academy did after the dorm room fire. Did you catch that? My fire story is a reminder of gospel truth in action.
Here is another. One day I looked out my study window and saw my two sons, the older 18 at the time, the younger 5, in the backyard. Both had baseball mitts; they were tossing a tennis ball against the brick wall of the house and retrieving the grounders that shot back. The older one, Jonathan, threw soft line drives. Little Jeremy had to throw high arching flies just to cover the span, 20 feet or so, to the wall.
I saw how pleased both of them were, one the eager coach, the other his eager student. For Jeremy the demand was high, the distance to his older brother’s skill level hard to fathom. Still, no harsh code of do’s and don’ts put him on edge, nor any threat of harsh condemnation. Jonathan was there to coach, not condemn. Jeremy simply wanted to do his best. And that was exactly what his big brother was hoping for.
The whole atmosphere—again this phrase!—was an atmosphere of forgiveness. Judging by Peter’s preaching, an atmosphere like that is what the gospel intends.
Conclusion
What shall we do with Jesus now? Well, threatened as we all are by fears, anger, meanness, and sadness, we can recall the gospel offer of partnership with God. And hearing that offer—“Jesus is alive! Join the movement! Live a life that blesses other lives”—we can remember, too, that forgiveness is its undergirding gift.
Why, then, are some people not deeply fearful, angry, mean, or sad? Why do some people find a way through life’s hard parts without being jerks or fools or tiresome unhappy campers? Why do some people still project helpfulness and positivity, so that in their company people are blessed?
The gospel is a large part of why. God help us receive it—welcome it!—anew.
1 All biblical quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version.
2 Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (New York: Basic Books, 2019).