Night owl that I am, these thoughts began composing in my mind at the stroke of midnight, just as the U.S. government closed (many of) its doors. I began imagining the anxiety, even panic, hundreds of thousands of federal employees who are furloughed (and now, maybe, fired). Hundreds of thousands considered “essential” to protect lives and property — and more than 1 million members of the military — now working without pay.
These fraught facts came just hours after the president, lecturing hundreds of military generals and admirals, said our nation’s enemies “are within” our borders rather than from without. He urged military commanders to pursue “training exercises” within urban areas, using “full force.”
Ken Sehested
Newly minted Secretary of War Pete Hegseth promised the military’s “warrior spirit” would be “reawakened.” This, from a part time former Fox News anchor, frequently accused of drunken behavior on the job, who had to promise the Senate he would become a teetotaler in order to receive their confirmation.
Both Hegseth and Trump promised to eliminate every vestige of the military’s “rules of engagement” protocols, which governed the extent of lethality needed to accomplish a mission. In other words: No more moral compasses, not even the pretense of wartime’s “justifiability” criteria. Think “kill them all and let God sort them out,” variation of the Latin phrase describing the rules of engagement in the 13th-century Cathar Crusade.
The shutdown pivots on the soon-to-be abolished subsidies of the Affordable Health Care Act and a massive purging of Medicaid rolls. An estimated 15 million people’s health insurance would either rise dramatically or disappear altogether.
The downstream fallout will hit hospitals hard, particularly those in small town and rural areas. Republicans say these health care concerns can be remedied before year’s end. Democrats (correctly, I believe) are convinced no such remediation will occur in the time left before recent budget restraints take effect.
“How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods, sees a neighbor in need, yet refuses?”
Scripture’s scrutiny of bootleg piety is never more unambiguous than this one sentence in John’s first epistle (3:17): “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods, sees a neighbor in need, yet refuses?”
The threats to our small-d democratic institutions, policies and norms — and the headlong rush to authoritarian and oligarchic rule — are too numerous to summarize, too vast even to say grace over.
Three in 10 U.S. citizens now say political violence may be necessary to get the country back on track. And that number has grown significantly since the previous poll in April 2024. Nearly two-thirds of citizens now say our nation’s political system is beyond repair. Which means tens of millions who, although not participating in political violence, nevertheless would not lift a finger to stop it.
If one change in federal data collection reflects the current administration’s character, it was the announcement last month of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s decision to cease issuing its annual Household Food Security Report. Why? Surely to hide the fact that, with the implementation of Congress’ “big beautiful bill,” about 4 million citizens already enduring food insecurity will become ineligible for receiving food stamps.
While that report rarely if ever was the cause of national repentance, it did, at least one day per year and one day’s news cycle, hold up a mirror displaying the results of our predatory economy’s grievous impact. In a nation where accumulated wealth is the standard of worth and value, being poor means being a sinner. Out of sight, out of mind.
“It’s time to get a grip, cast off the easy comfort of optimism and welcome being roughly tutored by the Spirit as to the true and wasted places where hope emerges.”
So, what are we to do, and how are we to respond? Here are seven commendations for your consideration.
- Avoid practicing magical thinking, professions of unicorn sightings, cushioned parlor games of fantastical daydreaming, delusional reverie rising from hot tub bemusement.
- Acknowledge that our desperation (whether occasional or constant) reveals how privileged we are, in relation to the unnumbered, both within our nation and without, who have lived in despondence long before now and still do. For those of us who do not fret about where tomorrow’s food will come, despair is a form of narcissism resulting in a self-imposed debility.
- It’s time to get a grip, cast off the easy comfort of optimism and welcome being roughly tutored by the Spirit as to the true and wasted places where hope emerges, where water flows from rock and manna appears in drought-impaired landscapes; where impossibilities are reversed, valleys of despair are raised and spirits restored, heights of arrogance are humbled and brought low.
- It is our duty to be informed. But not consumed. Doomscrolling is a kind of self-mutilation which serves the interests of those who want us distracted, agitated and frantic, unable to apply the modest weight of our convictions in campaigns of mass reconstruction.
- It is essential that we be grounded in real-world events, cognizant of the brute facts of seemingly incorrigible and corrupt patterns of power. But we are also called to practice what John Paul Lederach, in his book The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace. calls “moral imagination,” which is “the capacity to imagine something rooted in the challenge of the real world yet capable of giving birth to that which does not yet exist. … The moral imagination believes and acts on the basis that the unexpected is possible. It operates with the view that the creative act is always within human potential, but creativity requires moving beyond the parameters of what is visible, what currently exists, or what is taken as given.”
- As Wendell Berry counsels, it is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are. We need communities of conviction, starting with one that is locally grounded, but also to which we are connected at a distance. Such communities must facilitate boundary-crossing connections with those not of our caste, class, ethno-nationalities. Following Archbishop Hélder Câmara, outspoken critic of the U.S.-backed military junta that ruled Brazil for more than two decades, we are called to throw off confusion “in order that we may be free to the point of being able to deliver ourselves from ourselves and be able to give ourselves to others.”
- More than anything else, the Little Flock of Jesus’ vision and mission must sustain impervious resistance to imperial dominance. In these days, here and now — at historic levels — the community of faith in the way of Jesus (and other communities of faith as well) is threatened by the corruption of its purpose, its promise, its provision. The source of our confusion is the assumption that we can ride out this storm on our own.
As has been said, there are fates worse than death. Should our small-r republican polity be superseded by unabated authoritarianism, those on the Jesus Road have historically been a resilient community. Attempted repression has often led to our thriving. Some would go so far as to say we are at our best on the run.
What is most fearful is the work of the Confuser (one alternative rendering of Satan, the Prince of Darkness, Deceiver, Father of Lies). There are those who believe Jesus would have been prudent to accede to the three wilderness promises of the devil. One who could turn rocks into bread would surely be universally hailed, could be crowned sovereign of all the kingdoms of the world, should be immune to physical threat and bodily harm.
As Jesus said later, those to be feared are not those who can kill the body but those who can kill the soul (See Matthew 10:38).
Ken Sehested is the author and editor of prayerandpolitiks.org, an online journal at the intersection of spiritual formation and prophetic action.