On understanding providence rightly.
“Vulgar providentialism sees the smile of heaven in any happy occurrence and its absence whenever things—whether in reality or from our own perspective—go wrong. Worse, such convenient providentialism can become confirmation bias projected onto history: When my guy wins, when my policy passes, when my promotion goes through, I know that I was right because God is telling me so. Of course, when my guy loses or my policy fails or my promotion stalls, I don’t assume I was wrong all along. I know that life is not that simple.
“Here’s the difficult truth: The sheer fact that something has happened—that God willed or allowed it to happen—tells us nothing whatsoever about the thing itself. It may be a cause for celebration or lament or, more likely, a mixture of both. On their own, events are illegible. We may never know in the moment what God is up to, much less how God might work good out of some bewildering or shocking occurrence.
“Wise discernment and faithful response are a long game, so long that you and I may not live to know the answer. Sifting history for the work of God is thus a task for a community, not an individual, over a span of centuries, not weeks or months or the few moments it takes to post on social media. At any given time, what seems like a very good thing may turn out for ill, just as a very bad thing may turn out for blessing. The people of God must be patient. Spiritual hindsight is the prerogative of the church, and even then it’s touch and go.”
[From “Our Strength and Consolation” by Brad East in Christianity Today (November/December 2024) p.86-87]
Trump’s “might makes right” foreign policy
“Trump is showing what raw coercion looks like. Rather than negotiate with Canada and Mexico, impose U.S. demands with tariffs; rather than strengthen NATO, undermine it and threaten a conflict with one of its smallest, most benign member countries; rather than review aid programs for their efficacy, shut them down, slander the people who make them work, and shrug at the humanitarian catastrophe that follows. The deeper reason for the extinction event at USAID is Trump’s contempt for anything that looks like cooperation between the strong and the weak. ‘America First’ is more imperialist than isolationist, which is why William McKinley, not George Washington or John Quincy Adams, is Donald Trump’s new presidential hero. He’s using a techno-futurist billionaire to return America to the late 19thcentury when the civil service was a patronage network and great-power doctrine held that ‘might makes right.’ He’s ridding himself and the country of restraining codes—the rule of law at home, the rules-based order abroad—and replacing them with a simple test: ‘What’s in it for me?’ He’s unilaterally disarming America of its soft power, making the United States no different from China, Russia, or Iran. This is why the gutting of USAID has received propaganda assistance and glowing reviews from Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran.”
[From “The Era of Might Makes Right” by George Packer in The Atlantic (April 2025) p. 15.]
Boycotts as Christian faithfulness
“For this Lent, the Rev. Jamal Bryant, the pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta, didn’t urge the 10,000 members of his congregation to give up chocolate or coffee. Instead, he called for a 40-day ‘fast’ from shopping at Target because of its decision to pull back on its commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion. Other influential African American congregations across the country followed suit, and now over 150,000 people have signed up to participate. They’ve joined activists who are boycotting a growing list of companies, including Walmart and Starbucks…
“… Actions like boycotts are a form of pastoral ministry for those who feel ignored or forgotten. They show that churches care about whole persons and the communities in which we live…
“Part of self-respect is remembering one’s own agency. In that sense, it does not matter whether Target accedes to the demands to stay true to its D.E.I. commitments in the short term. It matters that we remember the power of collective action, the sense of self that arises when we act on principle…
“Dr. Dates explained how a boycott could be a spiritual practice. ‘Jesus talked about money more in the Gospels than any other subject other than love. Jesus seemed to say to us that the pocketbook is the clearest indication of the health of the soul,’ he told me. ‘We have the opportunity to use the very medium of which Jesus spoke to accomplish the most immediate change our nation needs.’
“Dr. Bryant also linked the boycott to spiritual principles. He said: ‘Justice is biblical. Justice work is faith work because Jesus was often on the side of the marginalized.’”
[From “It’s Time for a Boycott,” by Esau McCaulley, professor of theology at Wheaton College in The New York Times (March 23, 2025).]
The problem with a neoliberal capitalist economy
“When I say our current economy is neoliberal, I mean that our economy atomizes us, telling us that individual fulfillment and attainment are the most important ends. One pastoral theologian describes neoliberalism as ‘a cultural project,’ ‘a way of organizing human society based on the principles of individualism and competition.’ It’s best to consider this way of thinking not in terms of a particular political policy but in terms of what it says about human beings. A neoliberal economy tells us that we are fundamentally competitive, self-interested individuals. As such, anything that restricts us, whether individuals or the government, from making as much of a profit as we can is a threat.
“Neoliberalism keeps us from thinking of our neighbors as neighbors. It’s obviously at odds, then, with the way we have been called to live in Christ. If society is based on individualism and competition, then I am the one who matters; you matter only insofar as your existence and deeds are beneficial to me. A society built in this way keeps us from caring for and even caring about one another. How does such a lack of care practically reveal itself? Most clearly in our regard for public goods or the common good in general. The government is viewed primarily as an obstacle to ‘flourishing’—to unmitigated profit making. You can easily understand, then, how taxes are perceived as a burden rather than as a way to provide goods for the general population. Neoliberalism squashes communal questions, convincing us there is no good in common, only what’s good for ‘me.’
“The neoliberal project also teaches us that those who suffer do so because they have failed to be competitive enough. If they had just worked harder, they would be flourishing like the rest of us. Theologian Bruce Rogers-Vaughn describes this notion as the toxic air we breathe every day, infecting us with what he calls ‘third-order suffering.’
“First-order suffering is the suffering we all experience as humans: death, disease, natural disasters, and the like. Second-order suffering is the suffering that other humans inflict on us. Think of murder, sexual assault, theft, war, and oppression. The thing about first- and second-order suffering is that one can point to their causes. Much of our suffering today, however, is not of this sort. In a political economy and a culture that isolate and pressure us, the causes of the stress and anxiety that saturate our lives are hard to identify. No one person, nation, or institution is to blame. Third-order suffering is the frustration and ill feeling that students and employees experience even at a workplace or school whose policies and processes exhibit no explicit bias. Such suffering can be traced to the reality that a majority of our institutions have bought into a broader economic logic—namely, that the private is better than the public, that what matters is what one can achieve as an individual, and that one’s primary relationships are competitive in nature.
“It is extremely tiring to compete all the time.”
[From The Anti-Greed Gospel: Why the Love of Money Is the Root of Racism and How the Church Can Create a New Way Forward by Malcolm Foley (Grand rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2025) p. 29-30]
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