In just a few months I will have a 76th birthday. I am certainly looking forward to it. That said, however, I often wonder – particularly when seeing my reflection in the mirror while shaving each morning – how it is that all the years have so quickly gone.
Other wonderings occur to me as well.
While most of my wonderings are filled with a sense of gratitude for the blessings of life and great thanksgiving for the privilege of living, there are those wonderments which haunt my mind and spirit.
I wonder how it is that The Church which once I experienced as so very enriching and in which I invested so much of my life energy while seeking to contribute to that enrichment, has become such a socially impotent shadow of itself?
I am aware of many studies offering explanations for the decline of the once significant voice and place of the mainline congregations in America. I have also lived and worked amid the changing social realities which have eroded what once was the ecclesiastical case for the American Mainline. So, I am not an uninformed wonderer.
But that said, the reality of what is now the case for aging congregations whose heritage is within the institutional mainline church, certainly haunts me with a wondering at the speed, rate, loss, and result of the dismemberment and overall spiritual brokenness of the Church.
Indeed, seeing “for sale” and “closed” signs in front of decaying and empty church buildings in urban, suburban, and rural environments all across America that not long ago housed a vital congregation, is a painful wonderment.
I wonder too how it is that we have come to a point in our country when so many of us accept voices bearing false witness? I wonder how it is that NOTHING seems to be disqualifying of candidacy for public office or elected leadership, for instance, of those voices? I wonder how it is that many of us not only accept voices bearing false witness but also proclaim religious righteousness in our support for voices willfully and knowingly bearing false witness.
I wonder how it is that a presidential candidate can woefully and falsely demonize groups of people and promise to use American armed forces to round up and expel them from our country is not disqualifying? I wonder how it is that admitting to telling lies and promoting false, hateful, racist, white supremacist narratives is not disqualifying especially when citizens living in such communities as Springfield, Ohio, are put at physical risk by those lies and endless false witness? I wonder how it can be that millions of us are invoking the name of Jesus Christ and his Gospel of love to support and promote such abominable false witness?
I wonder how a presidential campaign IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA where one candidate and his sycophants support the goals of Christian Nationalism in Project of 2025, and such fearsome realities as eliminating access to health care, the Department of Education and The Civil Service Administration is thought to close to call?
Most of all as of late, I wonder what our collective lives and life will be like should the MAGA people win the November election? Should such be the outcome on November 5th, what will it be like to live in a willfully discarded Republic come January?
I wonder what it will it be like to be a disciple of Jesus in a country where the sought after and unconstitutional establishment of a religion is an enormously racist, bigoted, biblically twisted, and socially restrictive Christian Nationalism? I wonder what will it be like to live in an America where law enforcement is directed to detain citizens who lawfully voiced opposition to the established MAGA Administration?
I wonder, should the personalities and voices of MAGA who promise what fearsome things they will do should they win this November, what that will mean for how we live out our citizenship beginning in January?
I wonder what The United States of America will be like when I am looking forward to being 80.
I wonder.