Embodied Integrity Through Beauty and Resistance

Adapted from Beauty and Resistance by Jonathan Walton

In 2 Corinthians 5, we learn that we are Christ’s ambassadors and have been given the ministry of reconciliation. In Acts 1 we read that we will be his witnesses. It is difficult to be an ambassador when we don’t know the message we are bringing, and we would be hard-pressed to be effective witnesses if we didn’t behold the Father, Son, and Spirit with regularity. Practically speaking, it is difficult to resist racism and White supremacy if I am not regularly contemplating my adoption into the family of God. I find it hard to truly be open to learning and not defensive in conversations about patriarchy and masculinity if I am not reflecting on the reality that I do not have to dominate, control, or appear superior in every situation.

If I am not rested and restored, I will choose comfort and convenience through being nonconfrontational, stress eating, and cutting corners on the practices that make my life and household more sustainable for the planet. I will center my own needs over those of others and show the type of favoritism and selfishness Jesus’ brother James warns against in his epistle to the early church. Just like Jesus, I will find myself tempted by my own desires, the way of the world, and the enemy, but unlike him, I won’t be able to turn away.

That is, unless I build a life that allows me to experience the joy of the Lord and give and receive his love in ever-increasing measure. I must build a life around Christ in my context, which is much like his. But since I am not starting from scratch, I need scaffolding. Internal and external thoughts, actions, and patterns will need to change for me and my community to reflect in our hearts and in the world the renewal Jesus has accomplished.

Building a Home

My wife Priscilla and I own a home in New York City. But it is not the first home we lived in here. When I first committed to campus ministry, I lived in a home on the Upper West Side while raising support for my salary and programming budget. In her later growing-up years Priscilla lived in Queens with a front yard and a driveway. Both of these homes were regularly full of people who did not live there. Sometimes they were full of people living there for a season. The common thread for Priscilla’s parents and the family that took me in was that these homes were not theirs but God’s. This was not just an aspiration but an experience.

Their names may have been on the mortgages, but these homes did not exist solely for their pleasure, safety, and opportunity to join a good school district. They were set up in such a way that memories could be made for holidays and traditions kept for their families and neighbors made in the image of God. Food was plentiful because guests were welcome, and extra linens were clean because they needed to be ready to take people in. These families did not function as though they had achieved the American dream but lived as though they had been given a tool for God’s glory.

Priscilla’s childhood friends, church folks she grew up with, and family members talk about meals shared, Scriptures studied, and holidays celebrated around their big dining room table. That circular table is now in our dining room, where new memories are being made and the gospel of Jesus is preached. In the same way a family made space for me, we offer our basement and bedrooms to followers of Jesus committed to ministry and others who need safe places to heal, delight, and taste and see that the Lord is good.

The radical hospitality displayed in the book of Acts is what we want to offer in our home, because our God is one who welcomes. Society suggests the opposite and sets itself up to enforce borders and boundaries, even though if the Sermon on the Mount were practiced, these boundaries would not exist.

For followers of Jesus, our highest aspiration is not to have pleasure and ease for ourselves and our families at the ultimate cost to them and the environment. These are not signs that the kingdom of God has come; they are marks of conformity to the current system of colossal inequality. They are evidence of individuals and institutions beholden to a collective false self.

Mother Teresa said, “God does not create poverty; we do because we do not share.” She is right, and the proper response is repentance through joining God in the renewal of all things and a resistance that permeates every level of our lives. In my life this looks like contemplation, prayerful action, and hospitality as protest through demonstration that another way of being in the world is possible.

The truthful and tragic reality is that White American Folk Religion and coloniality are highly organized, widely practiced, and ever adaptive. So the love and justice of God lived out in the world must be even more persistent, determined, and fiercely kind. God made the world and it was broken by sin. Colonization and imperialists built the world around us, and their ideas and institutions sustain its results. The kingdom of God and followers of Jesus must push back in love and kindness with the same rigor and revolutionary determination with lives scaffolded for beauty and resistance, not oppression and dominance. This revolution is not one we will see on television—not because the media isn’t paying attention, but because it takes place in our hearts in regular encounters with God and communities of love.

Adapted from Beauty and Resistance by Jonathan P. Walton. ©2025 by Jonathan P. Walton. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.  

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Bio: Jonathan Walton is a writer, speaker, and facilitator at the intersection of faith, justice, and emotional health. He leads Beauty and Resistance Cohorts, writes The Crux on Substack, and is a senior resource specialist for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship focusing on political discipleship and civic engagement. He has written five books, including Twelve Lies That Hold America Captive and Beauty and Resistance.

Link to Jonathan’s website: https://www.jonathan-walton.com/

Link to Beauty and Resistance: Beauty and Resistance