Christian Mythbusters

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

With the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe coming up this Friday, I want to talk about a part of the Christian tradition that makes a lot of people—especially non-Catholics—a little uncomfortable: visions of Mary. For some, these stories feel strange at best, manipulative at worst. The myth I want to take on today is the idea that these kinds of visions mainly exist to prop up church authority and control people through fear or superstition.

Now, you don’t have to believe in Marian apparitions at all to notice something fascinating about the pattern they follow. Even if you take a completely historical or symbolic view of them, one thing is remarkably consistent: when Mary shows up in these stories, she almost never appears to powerful religious leaders. She appears to ordinary people with no status, no influence, and often no protection.

Take Guadalupe as an example. In 1531, in what is now Mexico, a poor Indigenous farmer named Juan Diego claims that Mary appeared to him and asked that a church be built. The colonial and church authorities didn’t immediately jump on board. They were skeptical, slow to act, and frankly dismissive of him at first. That alone tells you something important: this wasn’t a vision that conveniently originated from those already in charge.

But when, through the miracle of roses and the image of Mary that appeared on Juan Diego’s cloak, the bishop could no longer deny something was happening, the vision was affirmed. And by affirming that vision, the indigenous and mestizaje people were also affirmed and ennobled by a church that had been—until then—very colonial. 

The same thing happens in other well-known stories. At Lourdes in France, Mary appears to a sick, impoverished teenage girl collecting firewood. At Fatima in Portugal, she appears to children watching sheep. In Ireland at Knock, it’s ordinary villagers who claim the vision during a time of deep suffering and political oppression. Again and again, the pattern is the same: God’s presence—symbolized by the mother of God, Mary, appearing, whether you interpret it literally or symbolically—shows up among the poor and the overlooked… not the powerful.

Several years ago, I stumbled into this pattern myself when I was preparing an Advent Quiet Day on visions of Mary. I expected to be dealing mostly with devotion, art, and tradition. What surprised me was how consistently these stories carried a prophetic edge. Over and over again, the message attached to these visions wasn’t “protect your privilege” or “bless the status quo.” It was repentance. Justice. Conversion. Solidarity with suffering people. And just as consistently, the authorities were slow to affirm what was happening.

What finally clicked for me was how closely this matches the Mary we meet in the Bible. In the Gospel of Luke, Mary sings the Magnificat—a radically political prayer that says God lifts up the lowly, brings down the powerful, feeds the hungry, and exposes the illusion of wealth and control. Whether you believe in later visions or not, that biblical Mary is already a voice of disruption, not of institutional comfort.

So here’s the deeper Mythbusters point: you don’t have to be Roman Catholic, and you don’t have to accept Marian apparitions as literal events, to recognize the theological truth they all keep circling around. God consistently sides with the powerless. God consistently chooses messengers the world would ignore. And God consistently speaks words that make the powerful uncomfortable.

That’s true at Guadalupe. It’s true in the Gospels. And it’s still true today.

So as the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe approaches this week—even if you usually scroll right past things like that—maybe the real invitation isn’t to debate visions, but to wrestle with this deeper question: If God still chooses to speak from the margins, are we actually listening?

Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember: protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

One of the big myths this time of year is that Advent is basically “Christmas, but for a whole month.” We crank up the carols, deck the halls, schedule the parties, and treat these four Sundays as a long on-ramp to December 25—a kind of extended holiday season with a light religious glaze on top. But in the older, deeper tradition of the Church, Advent is something very different. Advent is not Christmas stretched out. Advent is preparation stretched deep.

Even those little Advent wreaths many of us use have shifted meaning over time. A lot of modern churches talk about the candles of Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. Those are all beautiful virtues, and they certainly have a place in Christian life. But traditionally, Advent wasn’t focused on those four themes. It was focused on what the Church has long called the Four Last Things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell.

Now that might sound a bit intense, especially when the rest of the world is piping “Jingle Bells” into every store and pushing us to be relentlessly cheerful. But the wisdom of this older pattern is that it takes the real world seriously. It acknowledges that the world is dark—and that sometimes we are complicit in that darkness.

Advent in this traditional key says: don’t rush past that. Don’t put shiny wrapping paper over a creation that is still groaning. Don’t cover your own grief, or anxiety, or guilt with another layer of tinsel and pretend you’re fine. Instead, let God meet you in the truth.

When we meditate on the Four Last Things, we’re not meant to sink into fear; we’re meant to wake up. Death reminds us that our time is limited and precious—that every act of love or cruelty really matters. Judgment reminds us that God cares about justice, that what we do to “the least of these” is not forgotten. Heaven keeps before us the promise that God’s final word is restoration of all things… and joy. And yes, hell—however we understand it—forces us to confront the reality of choices that destroy us and others, the ways we can stubbornly cling to selfishness instead of surrendering to love.

Taken together, that’s not morbid. It’s clarifying. It keeps us from using Christmas as a distraction and instead invites us into a holy longing for something more—for a world actually healed, for lives actually transformed, for a love that doesn’t just decorate the darkness but drives it away.

At my parish, St. John’s Episcopal, we lean into that Advent depth in a few particular ways. One of them is liturgical: at our regular Sunday worship during Advent—the 8:30 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. services—we use Rite One from the Book of Common Prayer. The language in Rite One is more formal, a little older, and yes, a bit more penitential. It talks frankly about sin, about our unworthiness apart from God’s mercy, and about our need for grace.

We don’t do that to be nostalgic or fussy. We do it because Advent is about feeling that distance between the world as it is and the world as God has promised it will be—and then crying out, “Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.” Rite One helps us feel that ache. It slows us down, sobers us, and makes space for repentance and hope.

We also offer a quieter, more contemplative way to walk this Advent road: Compline by Candlelight each Sunday night at 8:00 p.m. Compline is the Church’s traditional bedtime prayer, a short service of scripture, confession, quiet, and blessing. In the soft light of candles, with gentle music and silence, you’re given permission to exhale—to admit where you’re tired, where you’re worried, where the world feels too heavy.

That’s very Advent. In a culture that shouts over our pain with canned cheerfulness, Compline by Candlelight says: bring your fatigue, your grief, your questions. Sit in the dark with other people who are also waiting. And together, we watch for the Light that the darkness cannot overcome.

So instead of treating Advent as a month-long Christmas party, I want to invite you into its older, tougher, and more beautiful truth: a season that refuses to deny the world’s brokenness or your own, and that teaches you to long—really long—for Christ’s coming, in judgment and mercy, in justice and joy.

Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember: protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

With the Thanksgiving celebrations of this week, I want to take on a myth many Christians assume without thinking: the idea that Thanksgiving is, in its origins, a Christian holiday—something the Church established, shaped, and handed down the way we did Christmas or Easter. Growing up, many of us were taught a simple story: that the Pilgrims came to America searching for “religious freedom” and that their peaceful feast with their Indigenous neighbors set the pattern for a harmonious and God-favored nation.

But when we look closely, that story quickly unravels—starting with the Pilgrims (or should I say the Puritans) themselves. These were not people seeking the kind of broad religious liberty we value today. They were separatists who believed the Church of England—my own Anglican tradition—was, in their view, far too broad, allowing for too much diversity of belief and practice, and making room for people with more catholic or more protestant perspectives to live and worship together.

In contrast, the Pilgrim’s version of “religious freedom” was not the freedom for all to worship according to conscience. It was their own freedom to build a society governed strictly by their own religious convictions, in which dissent was not only discouraged but punished. They left England because they faced persecution, yes—but that was because they wanted a Christianity that was much more narrow. And then they proceeded to create communities in the New World where those who disagreed with their theology could be fined, banished, or worse. Our contemporary vision of a pluralistic society would have been entirely foreign to them.

And then there is the story of their relationship with Indigenous peoples. The myth we often tell—of Pilgrims and Wampanoag neighbors joyfully sharing a peaceful feast—allows us to feel warm and morally tidy. But the real history includes forced alliances, land theft, broken treaties, massacres, and the devastation of entire nations through disease and warfare. By the mid-1600s, Puritan militias were engaged in military campaigns that today we would rightly describe as genocidal. Entire villages were destroyed. Indigenous people were enslaved, displaced, or coerced into conversion. The so-called “peace” represented in the First Thanksgiving was brief, fraught, and overshadowed by a much larger pattern of violence and domination. The myth smooths out that violence and tells us a story of innocence that does not belong to us.

And yet, here is where Christian faith can offer something different—not by baptizing the myth, but by grounding our thanksgiving in truth. In the Episcopal Church, Thanksgiving is indeed a Major Feast in our Prayer Book. But the feast we keep is not a celebration of national mythology. It is a moment to practice gratitude rooted in honesty: to give thanks for God’s providence while also acknowledging the sins of our ancestors, the suffering of Indigenous peoples, and the long shadow of religious authoritarianism and racial injustice that still shapes our world.

So perhaps this year, part of our thanksgiving should be gratitude for the historians and Indigenous voices who have insisted on telling the real story, even when it disrupts our comfort. Gratitude for those who have called us away from our darker impulses—our religious rigidity, our fear of the other, our willingness to marginalize people who do not share our background or beliefs. And gratitude for the opportunity, in our own generation, to ask a better question than the myth ever asked: What would it look like to actually build the kind of society the First Thanksgiving story pretended to describe—a society marked by mutual respect, shared abundance, justice, and genuine peace?

That, I think, would be a thanksgiving worthy of the Gospel.

Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember: protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

And as someone who comes from what many would call a more “progressive” expression of Christianity, I know the assumption that sometimes gets made: “Oh, he must think all religions are basically interchangeable.” But that’s just not true. I cherish interreligious dialogue. I value the deep wisdom found in many traditions. I believe we need partnerships across faith lines to meet the challenges of our world. 

Yet I am a Christian by choice. I’ve chosen this particular path of following Jesus because it is the story, the way of understanding God, that to me makes the most sense and, when followed faithfully, I believe connects me most deeply to the divine and my neighbor.

So, this week switch things up a bit by breaking the progressive myth that all religions are basically the same. 

The idea that all religions are “basically the same” usually comes from the outside, from people who haven’t actually lived inside these traditions. From afar, you can see some common moral themes—compassion, justice, humility, generosity—and those similarities matter. They point to the ways human beings across cultures have intuited the sacred, sought connection with the divine, and tried to shape a meaningful life. But once you step into the interior logic of each religion, you realize they are not interchangeable. They have profoundly different understandings of God, the human person, salvation, liberation, suffering, the meaning of history—just to name a few.

One of the best resources for thinking about this is the theologian S. Mark Heim, particularly his book The Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends. Heim argues something far more interesting than the simple “all religions are one” or the harsh “only one religion has truth.” He says religions actually aim at different spiritual ends—not different paths up the same mountain, but different mountains altogether. What I appreciate about Heim is that he takes other religions seriously. He doesn’t flatten them into carbon copies of Christianity. He listens to them long enough to understand that they have their own goals, their own visions of fulfillment, and their own experiences of the divine.

For example, the Christian understanding of salvation is not merely enlightenment or moral improvement or escape from suffering. It’s participation in the life of the Triune God—what the Eastern Orthodox call theosis, the Roman Catholics all the Beatific Vision, and most other Christian traditions simply call heaven. This is our full our union with God in Christ through the Spirit and it is inseparable from entering into perfect love of neighbor. That is a unique claim. 

Likewise, Buddhism’s aim of liberation from suffering by overcoming attachment is not the same thing as Christian salvation. Christianity doesn’t seek the elimination of desire or attachment, but their transformation—inviting us to attach ourselves ever more deeply and faithfully to God and neighbor, and to discover in suffering not quite a problem to be escaped but a place where God, in Christ, has chosen to dwell with us.

The truth is, when we say, “All religions are the same,” we’re not actually honoring these traditions. We’re erasing them. We’re implicitly silencing their distinct voices, their unique treasures, their hard-won wisdom.

A better approach—and the one I try to take as a Christian—is to say: All religions are not the same, but many religions contain truth, goodness, and beauty. And Christians are called to listen and learn without surrendering the particularity of our own story.

For me, following Jesus is not about believing my religion is the only container that holds truth. I can find echoes of Christian truth in the insights of other religions just as much as their distinctive approaches to God and the world can help me be curious about my own faith commitments. 

To be a Christian is about affirming that Christianity is the story I trust with my life—the story of a God who enters human vulnerability, who refuses to meet violence with violence, who rises from death not with vengeance but with peace, and who draws all creation toward reconciliation and renewal. That is the story that claims me even as I claim it. That’s why I’m a Christian—not by inertia or accident, but by discernment, because this is the path where I have found God.

Interfaith partnership does not require pretending that deep differences don’t exist. And it doesn’t require us to collapse everything into one bland universalism. Genuine dialogue happens when we’re honest about who we are, when we can admire the gifts of another tradition while still affirming our own convictions, and when we recognize that God is bigger than any single religion’s imagination—even our own.

Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember: protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

You’ve probably heard someone say, “My faith is personal. I don’t need organized religion.” 

I know I’ve heard it—and sometimes even wanted to say it myself. But the idea that the life of faith can be a solo journey is, in the end, a myth for most people. It just doesn’t line up with how spiritual growth usually happens. So, let’s break it.

Let’s be clear, I completely understand the impulse. Many people have had painful experiences in the church—communities that judged instead of welcomed, leaders who failed to live what they preached, or systems that seemed more interested in maintaining control than nurturing souls. After enough disappointment, it’s no wonder some decide to walk away and focus on their “own” relationship with God.

But that phrase at the beginning—“personal relationship with Jesus”—is part of the problem. For decades, much of American Christianity has emphasized the individual side of faith: Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Savior? Do you know where you’ll go when you die? Those questions assume an individualized faith and have overshadowed something essential: Christianity was never meant to be a solo act.

Of course, a personal relationship with God matters deeply. Your prayer life, your moments of grace and doubt—all of that is sacred. But faith was always meant to be lived in community. From the very beginning, followers of Jesus gathered together—breaking bread, praying, serving, and learning as one body. The New Testament doesn’t tell the story of isolated believers; it tells the story of the Church.

Many of my friends who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” haven’t actually abandoned community. They’ve built circles of connection—friends who support one another and live out compassion and justice. And that’s beautiful. If that’s you, maybe don’t say you’ve given up on church, but be intentional about claiming the alternative church you’ve built—the people who walk with you in love and accountability. That’s still community.

But it’s also worth asking what might be missing. Because a robust church community offers something deeper. In church, you gather with people who are different—different ages, backgrounds, and perspectives. You pray, eat, and wrestle with Scripture together. That kind of community—rooted in worship and shaped by a tradition older and wiser than any one of us—stretches your soul and keeps your faith honest.

Church, at its best, offers more than friendship. It offers formation. You get to draw on two thousand years of people figuring out how to follow Jesus—through the wisdom of Scripture, the rhythm of prayer, and the grace found in sacraments, where God meets us in bread and wine, in water and oil, in the ordinary stuff of life.

Now, I’m not saying you have to go to church to get into heaven. That whole “go to church or go to hell” framing misses the heart of the gospel entirely. Heaven isn’t a prize for good attendance—it’s the fullness of God’s love that will, in the end, I believe heal and restore all things… and all people.

But if you want to grow closer to God—to become more loving, courageous, and Christlike—a healthy, authentic Christian community can take you farther than a solo faith ever will.

And if you’re thinking, “That doesn’t sound like my church,” maybe that’s the Holy Spirit nudging you. Because if your current community isn’t helping you love God and your neighbor more deeply, it might be time to find one that does. None of us can do this alone. We need people—and the wisdom of faith—to help us grow into the person God created us to be.

Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember: protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

A few years ago, a parent stopped into my study to talk to me, feeling a bit anxious.

“Father Jared,” she said, “my child told me they’re not sure they believe in God. I don’t know what to do.”

I smiled and said, “You know what? Sometimes, I don’t know if I believe in God either.”

She laughed nervously. “Father Jared, you cannot tell me that!” But I explained that this is simply part of the life of faith. Every one of us—including clergy—sometimes struggles with doubt. Because doubt isn’t a defect in the Christian life; it’s built into it.

We’ve sometimes been taught to treat doubt like a disease to cure, but maybe it’s more like a companion on the journey—one that keeps faith from growing rigid or self-satisfied. Any faith that can’t survive questioning probably isn’t faith at all—its fear dressed up in religious clothes.

So, when someone tells me they’re not sure what they believe, I don’t hear a problem to solve. I hear an invitation—to conversation, to honesty, to relationship. That’s why atheists and agnostics are welcome at my church. Because what matters most isn’t whether you can recite the Creed without crossing your fingers; it’s whether you’re willing to wrestle with the divine, to be open to wonder, to build community around love and truth.

John’s Gospel gives us two of my favorite examples of this: Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.

Some scholars divide John’s Gospel into believers and unbelievers—and say only the believers are invited into the kingdom. But that’s not what the story shows. Nicodemus, who first came to Jesus under cover of night, and Joseph, who followed in secret for fear of the crowds, are the only disciples who appear when Jesus dies. When all the “faithful” have fled, it’s the half-believers who come. They carry his body, wash it, anoint it, wrap it lovingly in cloth, and place it in the tomb.

They don’t proclaim the resurrection. They don’t yet understand it. It is beyond what they can hope for in this world, given their experience of it perhaps. But they love. And that love, John seems to say, is enough for now—because love is the ground in which faith and hope can grow again.

That’s what I find so moving about these stories. They remind us that God doesn’t wait for perfect belief before showing up. The honesty of the doubter, the humility of the half-believer, the persistence of the one who loves even when they don’t understand—these are all holy things. Sometimes the most faithful act isn’t confident preaching, but quiet care for what feels lost.

So, if your faith feels thin, if your prayers come out more as questions than answers, don’t give up. Keep showing up. Keep tending to love. Because when we dare to love, even through our uncertainty, God has a way of turning that fragile love into resurrection life.

And if you need a place to practice that kind of love (no matter what or if you believe), find a community that makes room for folks like you. I’d naturally suggest the nearest Episcopal Church, but there are certainly other open communities and traditions around you. Here at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, we don’t ask for perfect belief—we invite open hearts and curious faith. We pray together, sing together, wrestle together, and try—however imperfectly at times—to love God and to love our neighbor. 

Some weeks your faith may feel like fire; other weeks, like smoke. Either way, you still belong and you always belong. Because in the end, the Church isn’t a club for the certain—it’s a home for the searching.

Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember: protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

One of the most persistent myths I hear in my office—especially from those walking through deep pain—is the idea that God sends suffering to teach us lessons. I’ve sat across from people who have lost a child, whose bodies are failing, whose relationships have shattered. They ask me through tears, Why is God doing this? What is God trying to teach me? And sometimes, in that sacred and sorrowful moment, the only honest thing I can say is, I don’t know.

Because the truth is, Scripture never presents God as a cosmic teacher who assigns suffering like homework to shape us into better students. That image may give us a sense of control, a reason for the pain, but it also risks turning God into an abuser—someone who wounds us for our (supposed) own good. I don’t believe that’s the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

When Job’s world fell apart—his children dead, his wealth gone, his body covered in sores—his friends tried to tell him his suffering must have a reason. They insisted he must have done something wrong or that God was trying to teach him something. But Job refused that narrative. He demanded an audience with God, not a tidy theological answer. And when God finally spoke, the divine response wasn’t an explanation but an invitation—to see the vastness of creation, to recognize that human understanding will never be enough to hold the mystery of suffering.

The writer of Ecclesiastes echoes that humility: “Time and chance happen to them all.” The rain falls on the righteous and the wicked alike. Life under the sun, he says, often makes no sense. But rather than despair, he urges us to eat, drink, and find joy in the simple gifts of existence—to live gratefully, even in the midst of what we cannot explain.

The New Testament takes that mystery a step further. It tells us that God does not send suffering but enters into it. In Jesus, the Word made flesh, God takes on our pain, our loneliness, our grief. On the cross, Christ cries out the same question so many of us have whispered: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And yet even there, in that abandonment, God is present. The crucifixion does not explain suffering; it redeems it. It proclaims that nothing—not even death—can separate us from the love of God.

The mystics of the Church understood this well. St. John of the Cross wrote of the “dark night of the soul,” not as punishment, but as the stripping away of everything that is not God. It is not that God causes the darkness but that God meets us in it, guiding us toward a love deeper than comfort, a faith that trusts even when it cannot see. Teresa of Ávila once quipped to God, “If this is how you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so few!”—but she still kept walking with Christ through the shadows.

So perhaps the lesson isn’t that God sends suffering, but that no suffering is wasted. The lessons, if they come, emerge not because God imposed pain, but because God refuses to abandon us in it. The wounds we bear may become, in time, the places where grace seeps through—where compassion grows, where we learn to walk with others in their darkness.

I cannot tell you why you are suffering. But I can tell you that you are not alone. The God who hung on a cross walks beside you still, carrying your pain into the heart of divine love until the day when every tear is wiped away and all things are made new.

Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember, protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

Earlier this week, I joined a Rapid Response to ICE training in Grand Haven. We began by reviewing the principles that guide those who organize immigrant solidarity efforts. One statement especially caught the room’s attention: We reject the legality of ICE and the current immigration enforcement system.

A few participants raised their eyebrows. One person said, “Wait—isn’t the problem that ICE violates the law and people’s constitutional rights? Shouldn’t we be saying ICE should obey existing laws?” The trainers acknowledged that concern but explained their stance goes deeper. They believe the entire legal framework—how we criminalize migration, how ICE operates with minimal accountability—is itself unjust and must be rejected on moral grounds.

That conversation has stayed with me, especially as I read about protests in Chicago last week, where clergy and community members stood in the street to demand justice. One pastor was struck by a pepper ball as police moved in on demonstrators. The image of a pastor—collar on, hands raised in nonviolent protest and prayer, hit by a projectile fired by the state—reminded me how far we’ve strayed from understanding what faithful citizenship really looks like.

Many people assume Christians are supposed to be law-abiding citizens. Romans 13 gets quoted a lot: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.” Some use that verse to suggest obedience to civil law is a Christian virtue. But that interpretation ignores both context and history. Paul wrote those words to a tiny, vulnerable community in the Roman Empire that had no vote, no legal recourse, and no safety. His point was about survival, not blind obedience.

If we read the Bible as a whole, it’s full of holy lawbreakers. Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah defied Pharaoh’s order to kill newborn Hebrew boys. The prophets routinely disobeyed kings. Daniel prayed when it was illegal. The apostles said to their rulers, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.” And Jesus himself? He broke Sabbath restrictions to heal, challenged temple systems that exploited the poor, and was executed as a political criminal by the state.

Faithful Christians have always wrestled with unjust laws. During the civil-rights movement, clergy and laypeople filled jails because they believed segregation was immoral even if it was “legal.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., from his Birmingham jail cell, wrote that one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws, defining justice by whether a law uplifts or degrades human personality.

That’s why the training’s rejection of ICE’s “legality” struck me not as problematic but as profoundly Christian. Our immigration system didn’t always treat border crossing as a crime; it was once a civil matter. It wasn’t even that 100 years ago. ICE itself was created only in 2003, after 9/11. The idea that families fleeing violence and poverty should be detained, deported, or separated isn’t ancient law—it’s recent policy. Christians committed to the Gospel of welcome have every reason to resist it.

Nonviolent resistance is not chaos; it is disciplined love in action. It refuses to mirror the violence of the oppressor yet also refuses to comply with evil. It’s the ethic Jesus modeled on the cross and the ethic that has powered movements for justice ever since.

So the next time someone tells you “good Christians follow the law,” remember: our highest allegiance isn’t to Caesar or to a flag—it’s to the kingdom of God, where strangers are welcomed, captives are freed, and love is the only law that truly matters.

Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember, protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

For centuries, if you walked into a church in the West, you’d likely see stained glass or paintings of Jesus with pale skin, flowing light-brown or even blond hair, and blue or hazel eyes. He might look more like a Renaissance prince than a peasant from the Galilee. Those images have shaped the imagination of countless Christians, sometimes so deeply that people even get defensive if you suggest Jesus might have looked different. 

But here’s the truth: Jesus was a first-century, Middle Eastern Jewish man. He was born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth, in the rugged land of Palestine under Roman occupation. His skin would not have been pale. His eyes and hair would not have been light. He looked like a Galilean Jew of his time: brown-skinned, dark-haired, Semitic features.

So this week we’re breaking the myth that Jesus was a white, European-looking man.

Why does this matter? Isn’t it just about art and symbolism? Well, it matters because how we picture Jesus shapes how we understand God. If we only ever see Jesus as white and European, we are subtly—sometimes not so subtly—encouraged to equate God with whiteness and Europeanness. And that has real consequences. It has reinforced systems of colonialism, racism, and exclusion. It has allowed Christians to imagine themselves in the image of God while marginalizing those who look different.

This isn’t just about history; it’s about justice. Think about what is happening right now in our world. The war between Israel and Gaza continues to devastate lives, with brown-skinned men, women, and children paying the heaviest price. Here in our own nation, racial profiling continues to plague people of color. For a while now, it has been those who look Middle Eastern, Arab, or Muslim. Most recently it’s been explicitly allowed for people who are Latinx—even though Jesus himself would likely be mistaken for any of those by modern security officers. To insist on a white Jesus in this context isn’t just inaccurate; it is spiritually dangerous. It erases the real human identity of the God who became flesh and aligns him instead with systems of power he came to overturn.

Scripture itself reminds us that God’s choice to become incarnate was not arbitrary. Jesus came into the world as part of a marginalized people, subject to the suspicion of empire and the oppression of the powerful. He lived under Roman occupation. He and his family fled as refugees to Egypt to escape violence. The one we follow knew the vulnerability of being brown and Jewish in a world dominated by whitened imperial ideals.

Representation matters because it opens our eyes to where God is at work today. When we picture Jesus only as white, we risk overlooking him in the very places he promised to be found—in the poor, the stranger, the prisoner, the oppressed. But when we remember Jesus’ true Middle Eastern Jewish identity, it becomes harder to separate our love for Christ from our solidarity with those who suffer under racism, war, and exclusion today.

Breaking the myth of a white Jesus does not mean rejecting the art of past centuries. But it does mean being honest about its limitations and refusing to let it shape our theology uncritically. We can still value those cultural depictions while also lifting up new images—icons, art, stained glass—that show Jesus as the Middle Eastern Jew he truly was. Doing so is not about political correctness. It’s about theological faithfulness. It’s about remembering that God’s incarnation was not in the image of empire, but in the body of a people pushed to the margins.

Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember, protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

One of the most common claims I hear in our polarized culture is that religion and politics should never mix. “Faith,” people insist, “is a private matter. Believe what you want in church on Sunday, but leave it out of the public square.” On the surface, this sounds appealing—it promises a kind of peace where religion doesn’t intrude on politics, and politics doesn’t divide churches. But when you look at Jesus and the early Christian movement, the myth that faith is purely private quickly falls apart—so let’s try to break that myth today.

Think first about Jesus himself. His teachings were profoundly spiritual, yes—but they were never only spiritual. When Jesus stood in his hometown synagogue and declared the words of Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed,” no one heard that as just a private, inward promise. Those words had radical social and political implications. They challenged the unjust economic and political systems of his day. And that’s why, at the end of that very sermon, the congregation drove him out of town and tried to throw him off a cliff!

Jesus consistently proclaimed a kingdom—not just an inward feeling of peace, but a new order where the last are first, the hungry are fed, the grieving are comforted, and the powerful are brought low. When he overturned the tables of the money changers in the Temple, that was not a polite sermon illustration—it was a direct, public protest against corruption and exploitation and marginalization. He was executed, not for encouraging people to be more spiritual, but because he was seen as a threat to the political and religious establishment.

The early church carried this same vision forward. When Christians declared, “Jesus is Lord,” they were making a political statement every bit as much as a spiritual one. In the Roman Empire, the expected declaration was, “Caesar is Lord.” To say Jesus is Lord meant Caesar was not. That conviction led Christians to resist unjust practices, to care for the poor, to adopt abandoned infants, to refuse to worship the emperor, and to stand against systems of domination—even when it cost them their lives.

Now, does this mean Christianity tells you to join one political party or another? Absolutely not. Faith is political in the sense that it shapes how we live together in society. It gives us a vision of justice, peace, and human dignity that transcends partisan labels. The party you choose is more about the methods to get to the ends your faith envisions—and people can certainly have different convictions about what political party is best at getting to those ends. But your faith cannot be reduced to private opinions or personal morality alone.

This is why the prophets of the Old Testament spoke so forcefully against kings and rulers who oppressed the poor. It’s why Jesus told parables about unjust judges, corrupt stewards, and rich men who ignored beggars at their gates. It’s why the Book of Revelation dares to picture the empire itself as a beast that must be resisted by those who follow the Lamb.

In every age, Christians are called to ask: How does my faith shape the way I treat my neighbor, especially the poor, the marginalized, the stranger, the sick, and the oppressed? What does my commitment to Christ mean for how I use my voice, my money, and my vote? To pretend that faith is purely private is to domesticate the Gospel, to turn it into a self-help program instead of a movement that seeks to transform the world with God’s justice, love, mercy, and peace.

So the next time someone tells you, “Faith is private, not political,” remember that Jesus didn’t get crucified for minding his own business. He got crucified because he proclaimed a kingdom that disrupted the unjust powers of his day—and because he invited his followers to live as though that kingdom was already breaking into the world. That’s not a private matter. That’s a public calling.

Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember, protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.