A Bad Tree Cannot Bear Good Fruit
if things stay the same how can anything change?
I saw a hummingbird this morning on my regular morning walk. A near zero (Celsius) temperature, combined with a thick ice fog made for a strange and beautiful setting. The sun shone brightly through the icy mist, reminding us that hope exists, if we can have eyes to see it.
This particular time of year always feels like a grief anniversary sh1t sandwich for me. The time passes and creates more distance between myself and the awful reality of the deaths of loved ones, yet the pain of grief lingers. In 2016, My co-parent, Martin, with whom I spent 18 years of my life, hung himself from a soccer goal post in a local Vancouver park near where he lived. He chose to end his life a couple days before our son’s 30th birthday. A year later, on the anniversary of MLK’s birthday, my father died after a difficult battle with an unpleasant illness.
I spent several years angry in grief and a heavy bitterness. My mother’s death in 2022 seemed to transfigure that ball of rage inside me somewhat. Henri Nouwen wrote about the way the love of our most intense relationships can undergo a renewal and metamorphosis after the loved one dies; I did feel as though mum left me a massive and merciful and endless gift of love at her death. Suddenly I understood her even more completely than I ever did in my life.
Time does blunt the intensity of the grief, and for that I feel grateful. Yes, grateful that I can have the clarity of vision to celebrate those whom I’ve lost and who I dearly miss. My parents feel closer to me than ever. For Martin, I cannot disentangle my grief from my sorrow over his suicide death. And it’s taken me these ten years to grapple with my rage at what he did to our son, and to himself. I sometimes think I a thing and think that it would be cool to talk to Martin about it, and still know that we had moved on from one another in life, after the divorce became final.
So, seeing a hummingbird on a frosty Vancouver morning seemed like a joyful and hopeful message and reminder — a welcomed one.
Before heading out for my walk, I had waded through some social media contentiousness and dissension about political things — Trump, ICE, Minneapolis. The echo chambers that have come to house public discourse have impeded our ability to engage in meaningful constructive dialogue. We talk at each other from across a line we drew in the sand. We see ourselves and others through an ideological lens. We judge harshly, we offer no mercy. We refuse to repent or accept the repentance of others. It is never good enough and we wallow in the misery of this divisive rancourous swamp in which we find ourselves. We become like Gollum, in his cave network with his precious, Sauron’s ring of power.
When I stare into that abyss for too long, I can become unmoored from perspective and float into the waters of despair, and even become engulfed in despair. Going outside reminds me that the world extends beyond these spiritual and intellectual dead zones. His mercies are new every day. I wouldn’t have expected to see a hummingbird on such a cold morning. Hope finds a way, if we unlock the doors to our heart. Our eyes need to be open, continually.
What we focus on grows, and social media culture has made that very clear to me recently. I don’t know what happened. I just know that I’m disgusted and saddened by the shallow and twisted and hurtful discourse that dominates social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. I’m turned off by the platform mentality that exudes from every space on these apps.
I’m unimpressed by what poison presents itself to us as connection through social media culture. The doom scrolling. The wondering what’s real and what’s fake. The meanness and cruelty from total strangers. The jostling and the rage baiting, fear mongering, manipulative tactics that always operate in the background. The way facts don’t move those who choose to believe on ideological grounds. The way people you thought you knew turn out wildly different and connections you valued become burdensome and futile.
Let’s take the situation unfolding in the Twin Cities. Dehumanisation has entered the chat. The rhetoric has become so toxic that many people in the ultra conservative Trumpian community and the conservative Christian community react with indignation when you attempt to humanise anti ICE protesters or worst, immigrants, or (gasp) undocumented immigrants. Immediately we get the diatribe about illegality blah blah blah. No one wants to talk about the illegality of those 34 convictions the convicted felon in the White House has got himself. No one wants to talk about the white collar crime that’s common in the upper echelons of society. No one wants to talk about the illegality of the Epstein thing. Etc.
Should Jonathan Ross have killed Renee Good? She had it coming, she tried to run him over. She recklessly disregarded the law. Should Don Lemon and the anti-ICE protestors he led have crashed a worship service at Cities Church because David Easterwood, director of the ICE field office in St. Paul, Mn, holds a pastor position there at the church? We’re dealing with truly evil people. Only Satan disrupts the saints worshiping. Okay. Saints? Really? Sigh. I would find it Monty Python funny if not for the fact that it’s real, someone actually thinks this.
What about interrupting the idolaters worshipping the golden calf? Do we have thoughts about that? It’s one thing to consider non religious or anti religious people crashing a worship service in protest. What if some of these protesters belonged to the Christian faith? What if they belonged to the Baptist church? Does that change how we view their act of protest?
In a comment on a Substack Notes post that posed this question I wrote the following response.
I’m not a fan of protesting worship service. However I’m absolutely opposed to anyone holding a pastoral position whilst being the field director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in St. Paul, MN. Or any other ICE field operations office.
I wonder about the fact that some Christians are more outraged that a worship service was protested than that a Christian leader, a pastor, oversees ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in MN. At what point are we concerned about worship of the golden calf? Don Lemon says he is a Christian with roots in the southern black church. Easterwood wasn’t there, apparently, which makes one wonder.
What was the motive? Attention seeking PR stunt or addressing a legitimate concern? There surely would be more constructive ways to address the concern?
The person who posted the original note liked my comment. Some anonymous bot replied “bite me.” While I appreciate the invitation to engage, I graciously declined. I would rather bite a spring roll, tbh.
I read two full Substack essays and 1 Substack note about the Cities Church protest. One essay, written by a recovering Christian fundamentalist, endorsed the protest that happened at the SBC church in St. Paul, Mn. The other essay, written by a self described Christian Zionist, expressed horror at the Cities Church protest and referred to the protesters as having gone “from being protesters to terrorists.” The note expressed a middle-of-the-road response to the Cities Church protest.
I find the middle-of-the-road response most constructive and merciful. It invites a dialogue where an exchange of ideas can take place. I also appreciate both sides of the issue. I concede that, on its face, it seems to cross a line and compromise religious freedom to bust into a church during worship service and protest an (absent at the time) pastor on staff at that church being the field director of the state ICE office. As I wrote in my comment, (shared above), I question the motive behind the protest and wonder if protesters could have chosen a more constructive approach to address their legitimate concern.
I have much much stronger thoughts and feelings about my disapproval of the conflicting roles of pastor and ICE field office director. And I wonder why the Christians who reacted with righteous indignation and put on the cloak of the persecuted don’t express concern that a church pastor has a leading role in an institution that commits violence against people on behalf of the state. ICE murdered Renee Good execution style for her participation in an anti-ICE protest. ICE has killed many others across the USA. Jesus was executed by the state. So was Paul. So was Peter. So was Polycarp, who was a disciple of John the Theologian (apostle of Jesus).
In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other,” (Matthew 6:24). He also warned “Beware false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits,” (Matthew 7:15). Earlier in His Sermon on the Mount, (Matthew 5:17), Jesus said that He came not to abolish the law or prophets, rather He came to fulfil them.
Exodus 22 and Leviticus 19 each utter the command to treat the גֵּר stranger with kindness, you shall not wrong or oppress a stranger … strangers who reside with you shall be to you as citizens; you shall love each one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. The word ger describes a newcomer, a temporary dweller, a sojourner. Much like us.
As Jason Micheli preached in his recent sermon, “there’s no distinction between [the Old Testament G-d and Jesus] … I’m saying the hand that inscribed the law onto tablets of stone had a hole in it.”
There’s that word, again: גֵּר alien, sojourner, stranger. Remember, nothing belongs to us in this Creation. G-d created us to live in His Creation. We live as guests in this life. This life is but a sojourn, we are temporary dwellers. Did we forget that? “I live as an alien in the land, do not hide your commandments from me,” writes the Psalmist in Psalm 119:19.
“Beware false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.”
Jesus doesn’t want your opinion, He wants your obedience. Jesus is not the Secretary of Afterlife Affairs. Jesus does not rescue you from the burden of being a Christian. — Jason Micheli
What fruits do we see this tree named David Easterwood bearing?
An elderly man dragged out of his home, wearing only shorts and Crocs.
These are just some of the fruits that David Easterwood’s tree has borne. Beware false prophets … You will know them by their fruits.
We cease to be when we disobey G-d
photo caption: ICE agents mistook American citizen with no criminal record ChongLy “Saly” Scott Thao for one of two sex offenders they were hunting down. ICE agents dragged him out of his home at gunpoint and drove him around and fingerprinted him and then realised he was not who they were looking for and they returned him to his home. The sex offenders ICE was looking for remain at large. It would seem they had an old address, because Thao lives with his adult son’s family, and none of them have any knowledge of the offenders ICE agents seek to apprehend. You can read about ICE’s abusive treatment of this Hmong man here. The DHS has lied about this incident, like it lied about Renee Good.
Therefore, to disobey the LORD’s commandments is not to violate a rule and thereby stir his anger; it is to lose our humanity. To sin is to frustrate your neighbor’s ability to delight in God— it’s hard to praise the LORD with tear gas in your eyes. — Jason Micheli
Beware false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. A bad tree cannot bear good fruit.
How can you discern a false prophet?
As Rachel Starr Thompson writes, false prophets will lead you away from loyalty to G-d and goodness and truth toward loyalty to idols and false gods and lies. They claim to belong to the flock and in fact do not. They’re beyond deluded, in fact they intend to deceive you.
A false prophet will give you thistles and thorns, when you seek grapes and figs.