Loss

At least it's decisive

The typical early November pattern of falling asleep and waking again after one sleep cycle has set in. I wake and wonder if I am hungry, if I should eat something and go back to bed or not. On Wednesday morning, I woke every hour watching the New York Times prediction of the Presidential race tick closer and closer to Trump and lay awake hating myself for believing anything but the truth — that this was the America I left, that what I thought had been Christianity was actually just Nationalism. Of course it was all along. People want to believe in a God that controls it all: we said when we he got shot that it was over, that there was no way he could lose. Why did we hope.

When Bush won in 2004, I remember my father saying something condescending about how at least it was decisive. This time, I feel the same way, yes, at least it is clear who he was and who you wanted. The bug is actually the feature, we get that, it’s good that we’re all saying it out loud now. It never was about unborn babies, it is about the wrath of God poured out on the people that you want to see punished, the illegals, it’s right there in the word. It’s about hell: it was never about accepting a theology of hell, it was about choosing a theology of hell. Heaven is made for you by the suffering of your enemies in hell.

Over the last month, I've published the journals I kept while I was a missionary in Japan as part of an explanation for why I left the Christian faith. In the things I didn’t write about, the most important one was a trip we took to a summer camp with all the children we were teaching, where one night a group of theology students from Tokyo built a bonfire, and then told the kids about hell. Until that night, I had blamed the Americans for all the weaknesses I had seen in the mission there, but these were three young Japanese people, men and women, who did this to the children. The theology was the problem, because if there was actually a hell, as painful as it was, they were doing the right thing to talk about it. And at the time, I agreed, I thought they should do it, what was salvation if it wasn’t salvation from something. But I wanted, desperately, for it to not be real. I didn’t want anyone to actually suffer, I don’t want to be saved unless everyone is saved.

My younger girls were shocked by the Trump result: how could this happen? How do we have men, another man, who does everything we know he has done, who is so incompetent. How does he still win with all the misogyny and racism and hate, how can you choose that when it is directed at me, how can you say you love me. But the eldest, who had been in the States over the summer, had seen it. Everyone loves Trump there. It’s not even a question. How do these nice people want this — it’s a mystery until you’re there and then it is not a mystery.

When Jesus is your personal Lord and Saviour, then it is really only about you, isn’t it. You want yourself to feel redeemed, but it doesn’t matter if anyone is actually redeemed. That’s their business, not yours. This is what a theology of self gives you: a God inside of your heart, a God that becomes indistinguishable from you. This is America, I’m sorry. At least it’s decisive.