God presides in the great assembly; he renders judgment among the gods.
The house we took for granted is infested with carpenter ants. The gods of power, greed, privilege, fear and favor undermine the framework of the good, the true, and the beautiful, the aspirational foundations without which the house crumbles.
I watch in horror as a deranged man of White privilege claps back at the adoring crowd and wonder why real farmers in tractor hats leave their fields to applaud a city-slicker Godfather wearing a $4k Oxxford suit, red Armani silk tie, and a red tractor hat, like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood wearing sheep skin to have Grandma for lunch. If there is a God surrounded by the gods, why the trail of unjust judgments?
Then I remember Jesus’ parable of a last judgment in Matthew 25, where the Sovereign of the Universe separates the sheep and the goats, and hear the cry of the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, hanging on the cross: “Why have you forsaken me?” “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.” And I wonder.
Where is the thunder that will split the veil of religion and empire? Every day I awaken to the knowledge of my helplessness to help. I am a kindergartner in a bully’s world, asking for the gift of daily bread— enough to make it through another day of MAGA madness, another day with hearts turning to stone, another hour watching a sociopath twist law into pretzels. I have seen the crimes. I have gasped at the lies and heard his voice echoing in a swelling chorus of voices cheering on the gods who are not God, silencing the still small voice.
Where is the God who convenes the council of the gods? Where is the God who judges the gods we confuse with God?
How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked?
The “wicked”? Seriously? The wicked? I don’t believe in an impenetrable wall between the wicked and the righteous, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats. I have met the wickedness that lurks in me.
Confession
“The prestige of the wicked” and the wickedness of prestige lead me to confess my exaltation of prestige. I have confused the ladder of success with Jacob’s ladder until the wind blew me off the ladder into shame. The climb to the top has been wicked. I have learned how easily the search for excellence inflates the ego and overtakes the gift of authenticity in flesh and blood mortality. Life has a way of knocking the pretense of prestige off the ladder, and, if we’re lucky, we realize that we had it wrong.
Jacob’s ladder is not a ladder for us to climb up; it’s a stairway on which the angels (divine messengers) descend to be with us.
I know the ladder of success. I have climbed it and fallen off. I have also met the divine messengers who pick me up when I’ve fallen.
Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.
This is not a suggestion. It’s an order! — the Sovereign’s order to the assembly of gods. In the Hebrew Bible and in our own experience, the nations are gods. This word from the Most High God addresses the gods of greed, privilege and nationalism.
Saint Patrick’s Day at the Irish Pub: A Festive Celebration
It’s the day for green beer, corned beef and cabbage, and the wearing of the green. The television monitors in the pub are broadcasting a rally in Dayton, OH. “I don’t know if you call them [i.e., migrants crossing the southern border] people,” says the man in the MAGA hat. “In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion. But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say.”
“I don’t know if you can call them . . . people. In some cases, they’re not people.”
The poor and oppressed fleeing tyrannical regimes, drug cartels, and gangs in El Salvador, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Honduras are not people? The people now seeking refuge on American soil are not the Jews, gypsies, and “homosexuals” Hitler loaded into cattle cars for a one-way trip t to Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald for “poisoning the blood of our country,” but they are the same: the less than human ones, the non-Aryans, animals. “Now, if I don’t get elected, . . . there’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” There will be no rescue for the weak and needy under his watch. Rescuing the weak and the needy is the work of the woke and the weak. We have to be strong.
Jesus’ rebuke: “Woe to you!”
I hear Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” I am haunted by the curse of the Strong Man that has fallen over the world. I am not digging a mass grave in Ukraine. I am not homeless. I am not searching for food for my starving child in Gaza, Mariupol, or Calcutta. When will the rebuke — “Woe to you” — thunder across the world?
The gods are neither ignorant nor uncomprehending
Ignorant and uncomprehending, they wander in darkness, while the foundations of the world are tottering. I had thought, “Are you gods, are all of you sons of the Most High?”
Are the gods that troll us ignorant? Are they uncomprehending? No. They are crafty. They are willful. They are calculating. Andrei Navalny did not die of natural causes. He was murdered. The regime that poisoned him knew what it was doing. The gods of power, greed, violence, and war are neither ignorant nor uncomprehending. Aries and Mars are alive and well. They live in our heads. They tell us what to do, leaving Ukrainian and Palestinians to search through the rubble and step over the dead. Here at home a megalomaniac cut from the same cloth as Vladimir Putin threatens a bloodbath if he is not elected. The crowd chants and cheers.
Hearing Voices Inside and outside the hospital for the criminally insane
I am at the maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane in Saint Peter, MN. I’ve come to see Mary, who turned to the Legal Rights Center for legal counsel. Her lawyer has asked me to visit as a pastor.
Was Mary ignorant or uncomprehending the day she stabbed her nine-year old son nearly 100 times in broad daylight on Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis? Did she mean to kill her son? Or were the voices in her head responsible?
Mary had gone off her meds the day the voices told her that her son was the Devil and that she should kill him. “Not guilty by reason of insanity” sent her to the hospital for the criminally insane. The day I am with her, she is groping in the darkness. The foundations of her world are tottering. Suicide is an option. Which is why I am here.
Driving home to Minneapolis, I hear voices like the ones Mary heard. Aries and Mars are speaking on talk radio. To one degree or another, everyone out here is insane, just a short step from the Hospital for the Criminally Insane. The gods are driving us to collective madness.
I had thought, “Are you gods, are all of you sons of the Most High?” No! You will die as human beings do, as one man, princes, you will fall.
The Mortality of the gods
Are you gods children of the Most High? Or are you as mortal as we? Are you destined to fall, like princes and tyrants? Will you be thrown from the thrones that rule our hearts? Will the shouting and clapping fall silent? Without the language of the heart, only the impostor gods, the carpenter ants, remain to eat away the foundations of compassion and sanity. The impostor god of national supremacy may look different in “Mother Russia” than it does in the USA, but it is the same.
The World and the god of Nationalism
Arise, God, judge the world, for all nations belong to you.
Among the gods gathered for judgment, nationalism has no peer. “If I don’t win this election, we won’t have a country anymore.” He places his right hand over his heart. The crowd does the same. The sound system broadcasts the January 6 chorus of imprisoned “hostages” he promises to pardon singing the national anthem. I hear a still small voice in Alexander Hamilton’s prescient letter to President George Washington in 1792.
The truth unquestionably is that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security. …
When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.
Like the psalmist, I cry out, “Arise, O God!” Deliver us from the gods of criminal insanity.”
Gordon C. Stewart, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, July 22, 2024.
Views from the Edge 