To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. (Rom. 8:6, NRSVue)

This post will be a bit more “autobiographical” as well as reflective.

This past weekend I put up a post because I felt that day may have some significance. I had no idea why, but I just wanted to note that day and leave it as a witness.

I posted it then checked my newsfeeds. Chaos had ensued. The results are HERE.

Reading the news of two lawmakers in Minnesota, a place I had lived for 20 years, was going through this kind of upheaval was something that was grieving my heart. Then, the more I read about the assassin, the more I realized there was too much that was familiar in this story.

This was a world I had spent most of my life… this place where the assassin had come from. He is only two years younger than I am, and his background is simply a very familiar story for people my age and from this type of background.

The assassin is from the conservative, evangelical, and probably Pentecostal/Charismatic stream of American Christianity. He is of a generation that grew up with the big “gospel crusade” mentality. Billy Graham, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, and hearing of the big crusades with Oral Roberts, etc. The “call” to ministry was one of preaching to big crowds.

He is also of the generation that liked to puff up a lot of the resume in a time when the resume couldn’t easily be researched. (A lot of what his web pages claim about his “security expertise” doesn’t actually exist in reality. Shocker.) There are videos of him preaching to big churches in Africa. He claimed at one point to have a missions ministry to Africa. Again, this is from an era where someone could go to a place and take a picture in front of a big crowd and send it home in a newsletter and PRESTO… you had an “international” ministry.

I say this because this is a world I grew up in. This is a world that even as a I grew up in it I had some questions. There were things that didn’t “sit right” as I observed them. Still, I loved Jesus and I was just trying to make my way in life. I certainly would say I had a call to ministry. I still live in that calling. My calling turned out quite a bit different, but I won’t lie: there were times very early on where I had those visions of crowds and big churches. I went to a college that had been the alma mater of Jim Bakker. That college loved him while he gave them money from his PTL empire, and they acted like they never heard of him when PTL came crashing down. I know how this all can get convoluted.

Watching interviews with friends of the assassin, it’s clear this man was very pro-life and was firmly in the evangelical/Republican camp.

All of that doesn’t make him an assassin. Being a young adult in that atmosphere didn’t make him an assassin.

Again, here is where this is very autobiographical for me. Somewhere in there something snapped.

There were two kinds of “snap” as I try and analyze this. And, again, these are all choices.

To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. (Rom. 8:6, NRSVue)

Where is our mind set?

The first kind of “snap” I have witnessed is my own. I had grown up in this kind of atmosphere and most of my life was spent in these types of waters. Along the way I was navigating some sort of new path, still following Jesus, and still appreciative of the history that brought me there. I was navigating away from what I would now call nationalism, but I still knew the reality and power of the Holy Spirit and the reality of Jesus working in this world.

I got tired of the white Republican patriotism (which I now see as nationalism) and the one string banjo we kept playing politically: abortion.

For years, it wasn’t a “snap” for me. It was more of a drift. Yet, I still thought everything was “okay.” What “snapped” for me when I saw the second kind of snap.

After the election in 2016 I was in a meeting with churches from my denomination. It was a regular meeting and it was churches in the inner urban area of the Twin Cities. These were folks I had spent years with in fellowship and conversation. But that January 2017 meeting was different. They were effusive in their praise of the new president and for the first time I heard outright racist comments and anti-immigrant comments. The “snap” I witnessed was like they had been given permission to be crass.

I “snapped.” I left that meeting wondering where I was headed. It would be almost another year before I simply walked away from it all in that denomination.

The assassin in Minnesota had a mental “snap” as well. Something in him that moved him to act violently and viciously.

There are key choices we are all responsible for along the way. Each time we come to these choices, are we choosing the flesh or the Spirit? And we need discernment. We can have someone very influential or “charismatic” or “platformed” (as we now use the term) and just take in what they are saying without discerning everything they are saying. This will lead platformed leaders to keep doing what they’re doing just to keep their audience and eventually they are in danger of not caring about their message and just think the platform is what is the most important thing to keep going. It will then lead to those following them to demand things of that leader and then quit scrutinizing that leader.

If we choose the way of the flesh (even thinking it is the Spirit) we will shove aside discernment at some point and we will then end up in some sort of “death.”

If we choose the way of the Spirit, we will need discernment every step of the way. And there are times we will choose the flesh.

I am not trying to simplify any of this, even if it comes across that way. This is deep and complicated. But looking at what this assassin has done and seeing a bit of his adult background, I am finding some familiarity and this is causing me to reflect.

What I need is to be refreshed in the Spirit. Constantly. I need my mind renewed daily. I need to quit chasing earthly goals and find the Kingdom’s agenda. It is constant and I will continue to get things wrong.

Yet, I also want to have a clear warning in my life: the stuff we call “church” can easily be co-opted into political means and we set our minds on the flesh far too quickly. That doesn’t mean I quit church or Jesus. It just means I lean harder into him, listening for his voice and pouring over his Word as I find fellowship with fellow pilgrims.