Confession: This picture is misleading. I actually cooked this cornbread New Year’s Eve to go with the lentil soup I made for the family before scrambling to pack my car for a last-minute NYE gig 45 minutes away in Springfield.
I post this picture because – while I do have opinions and a life outside of cornbread – the Facebook algorithm generally does not approve of it. The “Insights” link on my opinion photos tells me “This post has lower views than your typical post. Your posts about Food & Drink tend to perform 34% better.”
Can I really blame you, though? LOOK AT THAT CORNBREAD!!!
Alas, I am far more than just a Jiffy Connoisseur. Jiffy does not pay my bills. Shoot… I barely even pay my bills…
As we roll into 2026, I am feeling an increasing need to show up fully and rebuke the temptation to “shrink” myself to accommodate others’ discomfort. Don’t get me wrong; I love cornbread; I adore my mother; and I am a hell of a pianist. If you think that’s the extent of my substance, you have sorely misread me.
Even more… chances are you are selling yourself short as well.
My biggest desire for the Church is the same thing I desire for myself: Spiritual healing. Guess what? That’s not something I can do for myself. Don’t get me wrong; I can (and should) do something, but that isn’t it. Spiritual healing comes about by actively and intentionally turning toward Jesus, but not necessarily in the way people might think.
It is not about who screams “Jesus” the loudest, shouts the mightiest praise, or is the most performative. Matthew 15:8-9 says “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.” Turning toward Jesus – repentance – is a heart posture backed up by action. Without that heart-posture, nothing we do means mean anything.
“Christ is Lord!” does not mean a damn thing spoken through the lips. Even Satan can say it and rest assured, he is sitting up in church – and in some cases, pulpits – every Sunday screaming it into the rafters. No… “Christ is Lord!” can only be proclaimed from the heart and through the action of imitating and embodying the person of Jesus and grafting Him onto our being.
The Gospel cannot be wielded through brute force and certainly not through the tools of the Empire. Jesus said in Luke 4:18-19 that He has come to release us from oppression, not to turn around and condone our oppressing others… in His name!
No… The Gospel cannot be wielded by force; it must be yielded through the Holy Spirit. Only through the power of the Holy Spirit can we be healed and sanctified. Only through the Holy Spirit does the Gospel even mean anything!
I say “in 2026”, but this is the direction that I have been moving for years and will likely continue until I leave this world. When we take up idols – be they of image, money, power, etc. – they gain power over us. We place them at the cost of everything: values, integrity, truth, justice, righteousness, ourselves, and – yes – Jesus.
Society – “the world” – encourages us to take up its idols. It encourages us to pursue money, sex, and power. It encourages us to take advantage of others and pillage their knowledge, resources, and energy. It “rewards” us for looking the right way, amassing obscene wealth, and being with the “right people.” It says there is nothing wrong with hating our neighbors, marginalizing those “not like us”, and enacting rules – both explicit and unwritten – to benefit ourselves at the expense of others.
“The world” tells us that the best way to deal with the sin in our lives is to pretend it does not exist. It says that when we sin against our neighbors, that we deny, disavow, and direct it back against those we harmed. It says that we have free reign to take advantage of position, power, and privilege to do whatever we want to anyone we want and they are not allowed to complain, much less express their anger. It imputes false “righteousness” to the powerful by reason of their position and denies justice to the poor, the widow, the orphan, the marginalized, the minority, and so on.
I wasn’t talking specifically about Christian nationalism… yet I am also talking about Christian nationalism. There’s nothing Jesus-like about mortal men deciding who belongs and doesn’t belong in Jesus’s name. Jesus decides and He does not give a [insert expletive of choice; I’m fluent in them] about what anyone He created thinks.
The mindset that yielded this idolatry – of the image of Christ to pseudo-sanctify a mortal power grab – was birthed the moment the Church married the dark powers and principalities that once hunted it and called it Jesus. It is a recurrent sickness that has never gone away and one that can only be overcome by actively, intentionally, and continually turning away from it and toward the One to which it is betrothed.
Jesus turned down worldly power for a reason; the cost meant bowing down to Satan.
The Gospel must be yielded, not wielded.
TKP
1/3/26