GOD CANNOT FIX THIS.  BUT THEY MADE A WAY. 

Another mass shooting motivated by racial hate.

Another elementary school massacre.

Another foreign invasion, escalating civilian slaughter, evidence of war crimes.

Another moment of silence, another flag lowered, another platitude.

Another thought, another prayer, another child in a body bag.

God cannot fix this.

I received an angry message from someone who lives near Uvalde, TX—directed at Christians in general, berating us for doing nothing and for making matters worse, demanding proof for our faith and lashing at the hypocrisy of the church. Where’s this miracle-making God of ours? Why aren’t we out there, performing signs and wonders, and raising the dead?

Why isn’t God fixing this? Why aren’t we fixing this?

I hear the grief beneath the rage. I feel it too.

We cannot fix this.

Not even God can fix this.

God is not a fixer.

And when we become fixers, just look at what happens! Yes, we make it way worse.

Fix it? How? With magic prayer incantations? With louder sermons? With more morality police? With political force? With more guns and bombs? That’s exactly how we broke it in the first place.

God doesn’t fix this because God is not a ‘fixer.’ God doesn’t control or coerce or impose his will on anyone. We know this—just watch the news tonight. God is not that kind of saviour. And when we demand that kind of saviour, or try to vote in that kind of a saviour, or choose to be our own saviour, we create the very problem we need to be saved from.

We hear, “I alone can fix it.” And then we watch the mess get deeper and smellier and deadlier.

If God can’t fix it, what good is our faith?

And this lie slips in—that if God doesn’t intervene to fix our mess, then God can’t save us. That God’s ‘saviour’ label is belied by God’s criminal negligence as heaven passively watches the world burn. The absence of fixes by force feel like God has abandoned us and is ghosting our cries for help.

That’s how it feels.

And now here is the truth. Not a truth or my truth or some theory. I don't have time to waffle with those who demand a fix or fell for the fixers. The truth is that God knows the only way to restore everything and redeem everyone that is lost, broken, damaged, or demented. And God has, in fact, sown that way into the world and shown that way in Jesus Christ.

God says, “You want this fixed? No. It can’t be. But I’ve made a way.”

God has made a WAY to live, to walk, to be, through which all things shall ultimately be made new. That WAY has already been forged by the One who has shown us the path and has sown the seeds that [die to] save the world. That One, Jesus Christ, says no to fixing and yes to following.

If we want to be free—not the ‘freedom’ that says, ‘It’s my right to live as I please’ but freedom from fear for our children from hatred, bullets, guns, and bombs—all we’d need to do is live the WAY Jesus taught us to live in the grace he’s given us to live it. If we trust him enough to actually follow his lead, he will free us from the fear that leads to the hatred that leads to the violence that we expect God to magically force-fix. Even in the midst of this mangled shit-show humanity has created for ourselves.

No, God cannot fix this. But God made a Way. What is it?

The Way is not simply a vague, theological “faith in God and do as you please.”

It’s an actual, prescribed program for a completely nonviolent social revolution that establishes peace on earth (aka “the kingdom of God”).

It IS the grace of God revealed in Jesus' blueprint for the salvation of the world.

If we’re willing. [spoiler alert: we currently aren't]

Essentially, the blueprint is simple. Live the golden rule. “Treat others as you want to be treated.”

The golden rule is so basic to being human that it needn’t be a such a profound revelation—but I guess we needed one, because it appears across the teachings of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, and more. You’d think we’d give it a try.

But Jesus also knew that to get there, we’d need grace to transform us from the inside out. Jesus knew that conformity to external laws without a renewed heart always leads to workarounds and loopholes to skirt God’s eternal law of love (which is all the Jewish Law and Prophets were about, according to Jesus). So to internalize the love rule, in his Sermon on the Mount, the Rabbi from Nazareth added five ‘commandments’ that deepen the ten given at Sinai.  

In chapter six of his foundational book, What I Believe (1884), Leo Tolstoy summarized and explained the five straightforward requirements of the Jesus Way manifesto—what ‘follow me’ meant to Christ, specifically, in practice:

• “Be not angry, do not judge”—hatred in heart and on the tongue are the germ that leads to murder. (Matthew 5:21-26)
• “Do not lust”—coveting another person’s spouse leads to adultery and divorce (5:27-32).
• “Do not swear oaths”—which is a pledge to obeying the disobedient powers (5:33-37)
• “Resist not evil”—retaliation by violence is itself the evil we thought to resist (5:38-42)
• “Love your enemy”—Christ erases boundaries of hostility to the other, from personal animosity to xenophobia against foreign peoples (5:43-48)

Fix this? No. Follow this!

Tolstoy concluded,

If men abstain from practicing any one of these commandments, peace will be violated. Let men practice all these commandments, which exclude evil from the lives of men, and peace will be established upon earth. The practice of these five commandments would realize the ideal of human life existing in every human heart. All men would be brothers, each would be at peace with others, enjoying all the blessings of earth to the limit of years accorded by the Creator. Men would beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and then would come the kingdom of God.

So, no, God does not fix this world, if that means restoration by coercive or magical forces that suspend and thus violate human freedom. God cannot fix this way because God is love.

Instead, God has sent a parade of messengers of peace, including the great prophets in many faiths, and ultimately Jesus… and continues to do so even now. As a would-be follower of Jesus, I can see and say that he established his peaceable kingdom and showed us, in a human life, the Way to bring it about.

Sadly, humanity continues to rush for the opt-out door—and worse, my critic is right: Christians are barging out the exit at the head of the mob-herd. Humankind, including his own movement, continues to reject the Jesus Way and the tragic results are observable.

Yeah, but…

If the Jesus Way requires my participation, what should I do if no one else signs up? If Jesus says, for example, NO WEAPONS OF DEATH, but everyone else says, “I'll give you my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands,” then is it foolish or naive to be the sole exception? What happens if I'm the only unarmed person in the bunch? If everyone else is packing heat, aren’t I defenseless? Don’t I need to be the “good guy with the gun,” just in case? Otherwise, am I not throwing away my life?

You know, like Jesus?

Jesus responds in his sermon, “The wise person hears these words of mine and puts them into practice. It’s the fool who ignores them or justifies disobeying them. Take up your Cross and follow me, because only this narrow road—this minority report—leads to a social environment conducive to life and peace. Follow me because the broad road—the way of the herd—inevitably leads to death.” The way we’ve chosen has been falsified in this escalation of death—of racist massacres, school shootings, and military invasions. The militarized masses have not made us safer—any such claim is falsified by the blood of children.

Only the Jesus Way can lead to life and peace and freedom, even if you’re the only one who takes that path, even if that path includes losing your life to find it (Matthew 16:25).

The problem today is exacerbated by those who claim to follow Jesus while rejecting the requirements he describes as ‘following.’ We’re seeing a public phenomenon where those who retain the Jesus brand are the primary public lobbyists against the Jesus Way.

No wonder my critic lashed out.

I get it. And I can’t fix it.

But I’ve heard there’s a Way.

So now, I begin with the mirror, asking where I’m still walking the Jesus Way and where I’m not. I have my own eye-planks to deal with, starting with malice.

As my friend Jarrod says, “It’s easy to call someone out. Harder to call someone in. But it begins with confession.” So today, I confess. I have not followed Jesus well. This morning, I have stewed on some hate and called my brother “Raca” (lit., worthless, fig., asshole). I have already violated the first of Jesus five amendments to the Decalogue. 

Lord, have mercy. Don’t fix me. But please save me.