lies
LIVING IN THE United States in the first months of Donald Trump’s presidency often feels surreal, disorienting, and overwhelming, including to some people in positions of considerable responsibility and influence.
There are, of course, many reasons for this, and those who regularly read my columns can no doubt list many of the things that most perturb and anger me about this administration. Many of us are focused on our solidarity and support for those who are most vulnerable in the face of the new political realities. We have lifted up the Matthew 25 Pledge movement aimed at protecting undocumented immigrants threatened with deportation, African Americans and other people of color threatened with racialized policing, and Muslims threatened with xenophobic hatred and discrimination.
But a unifying theme of all of Trump’s outrages and threats is his brazen assault on the very concept of truth and objective, knowable facts. Amid everything that’s going on, consuming and interpreting the news each day is considerably more exhausting than it should be because it has never been more difficult to sort fact from fiction. While this isn’t entirely Trump’s doing, his almost daily falsehoods have the large platform and weight of the presidency to prop them up and pound the American people with persistent and pervasive lying.
This spring, the news cycle was thrown into turmoil for more than a month by Trump’s evidence-free allegations that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had illegally wiretapped Trump Tower during the campaign. The president lied, accusing his predecessor of a serious crime with no justification or evidence. Rather than retracting it and apologizing, Trump has tasked his administration and the intelligence community with finding any shred of evidence to retroactively justify his lie.
Former Trump 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former campaign official Rick Gates appear in front of U.S. Magistrate Deborah A. Robinson in U.S. Federal Court Oct. 30, 2017. REUTERS/Bill Hennessey
Yesterday, we saw the first wave of what is expected to be a much longer investigation into possible Russian collusion. And while reporters and pundits dig into the timeline, what struck me the most about the revelation is that the downfall of those named was lying — lying to federal agents about money and lying about contacts between representatives of the Russian government and representatives of the Donald Trump presidential campaign.
Image via Burlingham / Shutterstock
There is nothing we can do to reduce the growing number of mass shootings in America, except get more people to have guns.
Unbelievably, that’s what conservative spokespersons and Republican presidential candidates are saying after the latest college massacre in Oregon which killed 10 and wounded 7 others.
Unacceptable.
Gil C/Shutterstock
Sojo editors looked back at the blogs of 2013 and found that these were the 10 most widely read Sojourner blog articles of the past year.
Prayer can feel good, but it’s a myth that Christians are always happy Dennis Kuvaev/Shutterstock
There’s an unhealthy expectation within many faith communities that we’re always supposed to be joyful, as if being anything other than a smiling, peaceful, and jolly spiritual cheerleader is detrimental to Christianity.
“Being a good witness” is often the Christian way of saying, “act the part.” But while contentment and happiness is a spiritual virtue, it should never come at the expense of honesty, transparency, and truthfulness. We shouldn’t pretend to be happy and use the facade of joy as an evangelism tool.
God desires reconciliation and renewal, and this often means confronting broken relationships and dealing with sin within our lives. Asking for forgiveness, admitting addiction, confronting abuse, seeking justice, requesting help, and serving others often makes you the opposite of happy — and that’s OK.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. Photo by Lisa Sharon Harper for Sojourners.
Have you ever heard of healing prayer?
Richard Foster writes about it in his seminal book, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home. Healing prayer is different than prayers of supplication or intercession — the kind of prayer where we get to ask God for stuff. It’s different from contemplative prayer — the kind where we get to sit and soak in the presence of God.
Healing prayer goes deep into the soul of the prayer with one purpose — to heal hearts and souls broken by life. In healing prayer, the one on their knees invites Jesus to go deep — to reveal core lies she or he has believed about themselves, God, the world, their relationships; to identify the point when that lie took root in the soul; and then to renounce the lie and invite in the truth.
I was in the middle of my second year as a volunteer staff member with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship in 1996, when I had my first experience of healing prayer. It was a hard year for various reasons, so a good friend offered to pray for me. She starting by asking Jesus to come a join our circle of prayer — to sit with us and talk with us in the spiritual realm.
Then she got down to it: “Reveal the lies, Jesus,” she prayed.
We met weekly for spiritual surgery. One by one over the course of a year, Jesus revealed lie after lie that I had believed about myself, God, and my relationships. And the good doctor (Mark 2:17) took out the scalpel and cut that cancer from my soul and replaced lies with truth. The affect was dramatic.
Today (Jan. 16), we celebrate the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — a man who called America to face the lies embedded in its soul.