Faith Works 9-4-21

Faith Works 9-4-21

Jeff Gill

Perverse incentives and faithful response

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Dan Darling was a senior executive with a noted national evangelical organization when he spoke out loud and on the record about his decision to get the COVID vaccine. He didn't tell anyone, his fellow evangelical Christians included, to get the vaccine, but he did say his choice was to do so, and he encouraged people simply to talk to their doctor about the option and to work with them on making a good medical decision.

For doing that, he was accused and found guilty by his employer of having "taken a side" and was fired for not being non-partisan. 

He's offered some further perspective since his termination, and it's not to say what I'm thinking about his former bosses. It's a kind and generous and charitable assessment of how we got here, and he's a better Christian than me for being able to say that.

Dan did go on, in his USA Today essay, to note though that today "There are perverse incentives against unity among Christians, to fail to give the benefit of the doubt, to rush to judgment, to make a name for ourselves by hurting our fellow brothers and sisters."

Perverse incentives is a good phrase. I wish I'd said it first, but I can quote Dan Darling and give him credit while using it. There are perverse incentives out there to being perceived as strong, assertive, defiant, even angry. Maybe especially angry.

Does anger mean authenticity? Is passion a measure of accuracy? Could fury equal facts?

This will displease some of my progressive friends, but in my younger days I spent a fair amount of time and money on sharpshooting (there were awards involved as a youth, and the Marines have a thing about hitting targets which sergeants like to reinforce on the range). One thing that stuck with me is that the first step to hitting the target is not out there, but in here. Inside. As in getting control of your breath, and calming your breathing. Most instructors tell you to exhale and hold a beat before pulling the trigger; others say take in a half breath before final aim and firing, and there we have a long digression before us I'm not going to take.

The point is, even under the stress and strain of hunting or even combat, you can't expect to hit the mark when you're all upset and hyperventilating. If you plan to locate, aim, and hit a distant target, you need to take a deep breath, let it out, and HOLD. Calm down, focus, center.

And in fact, in New Testament terms, the word most often used in reference to sin and sinning is also used as a technical term for "missing the mark," whether in archery or spear throwing. To sin is to misfire, to veer off target, to go at a tangent and miss the point entirely of where your arrow-sharp focus as a faithful disciple should go.

Friends, I could write at length about the faithfulness of Dan Darling, or the wisdom of speaking to your own doctor about what will keep you healthy. What I do want to do with the space I have here this day is to push back against the world's current love (it changes, you know) for perverse incentives. The culture and politics of our day is ever more in love with vehemence and attitude and snark and emotion. A loud angry opinion has much more weight in public discourse, it seems, than calm sensible documented facts.

This is not good. Not good for you, not good for me, not good for the church, yours or mine.

If you have goals and aims and vision for your church, your faith community, your own family, I trust you can hear the passion with which I would calmly argue: everyone needs to calm down a bit. Take a deep breath, reflect over a couple of those, actually. Inhale, exhale, breathe deep, expel all the carbon dioxide you can, and continue taking in the breath of life, maybe even starting to give thanks for each one as you take it in.

You might even have a prayer you use, breathing in, breathing out, blessings and releases, hailing grace and letting go of sin and sorrow. While you do that, you might not attract any attention at all; when you speak up, softly, it might not seem anyone listens.

Someone is, though. Count on it.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's working on his own internal incentive system as we all must. Tell him how you keep centered at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.