Ch 4 The Existential Bad of the Good News

It is conventional wisdom that in life the bad has to be received along with the good, that is, since the good doesn’t exist apart from the bad. This prominent thinking has guided the collective conscience of human contexts, which often include Christian participants and even church contexts. This realistic mindset, however, must not be a basis for thinking in political theology.

In the reality of the human condition, political theology can’t avoid the bad and just focus on promoting the good, notably the common good. Yet, receiving the bad and adapting to it in life is contrary to rejecting the bad and transforming it. This involves the essential difference between the “good and bad” that evolved from the primordial garden, and the “bad and good” news composing the paradox of the whole gospel constituted by the Word’s strategic action illuminated in the Word’s whole picture. In the Word’s whole gospel, the good news does not circumvent the bad news, because the bad is a precursor of the good—the good that has to supplant the bad or the bad remains to render the good news fake. Conversely, the bad cannot circumvent the whole gospel, because the gospel’s first priority is to change the bad in order for the good to emerge. Crucial also for this understanding is that the good in the gospel is not related to “good and bad,” but this good is related directly to the good of creation (Gen 2:18, as discussed in Chap 2).

The wisdom of political theology guides the human conscience to decisive action just on the irreducible and nonnegotiable basis of the paradox of the Word’s gospel, who transforms the existential bad in life in order for the good of new life to become the reality for humanity. According to the Word, the bad news must always be rejected in its existential function in our way of life for the change necessary to be freed from its constraints, so that the good news can be claimed for new life together in wholeness. Therefore, the good news becomes fake news and the gospel becomes a virtual reality, when the bad news is omitted or redacted.

One of life’s basic lessons teaches us that the bad keeps evolving, not always explicitly devolving but typically evolving in subtle ways that often fall below the human radar of awareness or even recognition of what’s bad. Currently, the COVID-19 pandemic is slowly teaching us that this bad virus is mutating. Recent research has discovered mutations different from the UK variant, notably which originated in California to likely be the main cause of its accelerated surge. How much this variably robust virus keeps mutating will determine how far it will infect us—even without knowing for how long—especially as variants circumvent antibodies, vaccines and related measures. Having no definitive measure of this bad condition leaves us susceptible to prolonged infection and mounting deaths, with less certainty of hope for a cure.

This painful lesson directly applies to all the bad of life that keeps evolving, with its mutations spreading infection throughout the human context without a cure—notably as it circumvents any tentative measures currently addressing it, especially by Christians and churches. The infectious condition of the bad in life needs better critical assessment in order to have the measurement necessary to fully address, properly deal with, and significantly change the bad.

From the beginning in human life, measuring the bad has been on a spectrum of measurement ranging from bad, poor, biased, average, impartial, precise to incisive. This spectrum measures the reality of the bad on a reality scale weighing perceptions as a false-denied reality, a virtual reality, a reality of life, or a hard reality. How the bad is measured on the spectrum can converge with different perception points on the scale to make variant what the bad is and thus make variable where the bad is. The how, the what and the where have evolved from the beginning to render ambiguous the bad in human life; and the ambiguity of the bad keeps evolving as the bad is reinforced, and sustained by three circumventing phenomena: (1) the “halo effect” of the bad, (2) the “balancing act” of the bad, and (3) the “immunity escape” of the bad. And underlying the variant totality of this interrelated process is the evolving reality of “truth decay,” which prevents different views and opposing sides from agreeing on existing facts (not alternative) common to all of them. This urgently faces all Christians and churches with the surrounding reality—enveloped in fog and shrouded in darkness—that all of the above need to be understood in order to embrace the bad of the good news, and thereby to receive the Word’s whole gospel with a legitimate claim.

In the world of today, not past or future, what do you think is the difference between totalitarianism, authoritarianism, democratic nationalism, and democratic extremism? The obvious difference is their view of democracy as being either bad or good. OK, then what is the common thread running through all of them that weaves each of their views together, as well as ties them all together? Less obvious is the common measurement used by all of them for how they each define what is bad and good, and where the bad and good are. Much less obvious, even unapparent to many, this common thread unwinds from the same spool of “the knowledge of good and bad” from the beginning (Gen 3:5-6), which has been the evolving basis that has mutated variants of good and bad from past to present to further construct conventional wisdom and the collective conscience. This is the common thread of the human condition, which has infected all dimensions of human life for which democracy cannot claim to be its panacea.

The reality of truth decay intensifying our polarized times is certainly bad, which Christians would agree is bad for the integrity of truth—even though they may participate in it or be complicit with it. Part of the discrepancy or contradiction with truth involves the measurement of bad implied in the condition of polarization. Richard Beck, professor and chair of the Department of Psychology at Abilene Christian University, reflects more deeply on what is called “affective polarization,” which is different from issue polarization. Beyond the conflict of opposing views,

“affective polarization concerns the feelings we have about the people on the other side of the political aisle…how affective polarization poisons the political well. Affective polarization explains why political conversations are so difficult, tense and unproductive. The possibility of compromise evaporates when seeking common ground is experienced as a moral failure, caving in to the forces of evil.”[1]

Would you conclude that affective polarization is the good result of the truth or the bad consequence of truth decay?

The reality of affective polarization is unavoidable for Christians and churches in our everyday practice and confronts the truth composing our theology. Affective polarization also exposes the reality of how Christians determine our public way of life based on how we measure the bad and thus define good. Beck concludes from the evolving dynamic of affective polarization that “politics is becoming our new religion: the repository of our values, the focus of our concerns, the arena of our actions, and our hope for a better future.”[2]

In the existential reality of our feelings today, the truth of “Where are you?” unfolds inescapably from the measurement of bad and good that is explicit or implied in “What are you doing here?” Therefore, directly countering the defining reality of truth decay—whose measurements of bad and good mislead and misguide our journey of discipleship in covenant relationship together—we need to implement the qualitative-relational compass intrinsic to the Word’s uncompromised Rule of Law. The qualitative-relational compass is vitally calibrated to clearly distinguish what is irreducibly and nonnegotiably primary in God’s creation (original and new) from all the secondary occupying human life. This vital compass is irreplaceable for all Christians to navigate the present with the nexus for the future, (1) in order that the existential bad is fully addressed in human life, (2) so that the good news of the Word’s whole gospel is claimed to prevail in the human order—nothing less for the bad and no substitutes for the good.

However, whenever our measurement of the existential bad does not coincide with the bad news of the gospel, the only news that can be accurately claimed is the bad subtly recycling or overtly repeating.

In the discipleship of Jesus’ first disciples, what was the common thread that connected their desire to be the greatest one in this inaugural group (Lk 9:46; Mk 9:33-34; Mt 18:1), and the fact of their not really knowing Jesus’ person (Jn 14:9)? First of all, perhaps not surprising in retrospect, the reality of these two situations reflects this unique group’s own spin imposed on discipleship, whether intentionally or unintentionally. How is this possible since following Jesus was new for them and to all in the surrounding context? This new for them was certainly good or better than what they experienced in life, or else they wouldn’t just follow something new, not to mention uncommon to them. Yet, what to them was obviously good directly correlated to their measurement of the bad, which illuminates how the ambiguity of the bad evolves.

Their desire to be the greatest among them—whether a friendly competition or not is not known—exposes how they defined good by a variant of what is bad. To seek this quantitative distinction of the greatest has to involve a comparative process that thereby presumes the others to be unavoidably less in one way or another. The inevitable relational consequence of this quantitatively-based comparative process was the overriding distinction of inequality, which becomes systemic, structural and institutionalized culturally and politically to establish the inequity in the human order. All of this is implied in the disciples’ measurement of bad, which the disciples certainly would have rejected if their cultural and political bias had not reshaped the bad to seem good or at least better than the bad. This subtle reshaping of the bad is what has commonly evolved as the “halo effect” of the bad to make it appear better or even seem good. Does the halo effect become familiar to you from dynamics in the primordial garden?

The relational consequence of human inequality is intrinsic to human inequity, so the latter is never resolved without resolution in the former. Addressing human inequality, however, in its most obvious shape of the bad—for example, racial, class and gender inequality—has long proven to be insufficient to bring resolution to this relational condition. This exposes the limited measurement of the bad that has prevailed culturally and politically, which has prevented the resolution of human inequality and thus has sustained human inequity. Here again, even more subtly, the halo effect reshapes the bad by mutating the created qualitative-relational significance of relationships in likeness of the Trinity to the dominant variant of relationships now shaped by relational distance. Consequently, the created significance of what’s “not good to be apart” in relationships together hereby is no longer the prevailing measurement of bad and good; rather the halo effect of the bad subtly makes relational distance not only acceptable in relationships but its dominant condition, even for Christians and the church.

Jesus’ disciples weren’t immune from this dominant variant that has infected the human relational condition since the beginning. Thus, they imposed this cultural-political bias of relational distance on Jesus to spin their discipleship of following him—notably demonstrated by Peter at his footwashing. The Word, however, clearly distinguished the relational imperative for any and all of his followers: “Whoever claims the distinction to serve me, must follow me by its relational nature, and where I am as a person, there will my distinction-less follower be also in the depth of reciprocal relationship together” (Jn 12:26). Therefore, even the greatest cannot follow Jesus’ whole person, because their relational distance will limit their involvement with him to merely occupying the same space together and to just the distinction of serving without the primacy of relational involvement person to person. Because their persons kept relational distance from Jesus’ person, the relational consequence was “and you still do not know me.”

Relational distance is innate to human inequality, the relational consequences of which are intrinsic to human inequity. As long as relational distance is minimalized by the halo effect of the bad, it will remain the prevailing shape of the spin that we put on all our relationships—including in the church, in families and marriages; such relational distance is accepted as the norm or justified as a matter of convenience. As long as quantitative distinctions are minimalized by a reduced theological anthropology, the halo effect of the bad will continue to embrace most variants of human inequality. For example, how has spiritual-gift distinctions reinforced inequality in the church (according to 1 Cor 12:4-7), and how have the so-called greatest gifts sustained inequality with relational distance among members for an inequity presumed to be OK or even good for the church (in conflict with 1 Cor 12:14-26)? The relational consequence certainly evolves in recycling human inequality with its innate relational distance, whereby human inequity cannot be expected to have resolution.

To counter the dominant human inequality and prevailing relational distance of his followers’ cultural-political bias, Jesus had a little child stand among them. Then, he told them the bad news of their truth decay: “Truly I tell you without any halo effect, unless you change”—that is, from the consequences of “their” measurement of the bad—“and become like children without those quantitative distinctions, you will never belong to my kingdom. Whoever becomes humble without distinctions like this child is the greatest in my kingdom” (Mt 18:2-4); “for the least among all of you is the greatest” (Lk 9:48). The Word did not, however, reverse the systemic structural process of comparative human relations to institute an inverse human order. The Word confronted the hard reality of their dominating human inequality and prevailing relational distance to resolve their bad news for the good news of human equity to be claimed.

The bad news of the Word’s whole gospel always confronts minimalized measurement of the existential bad, the most subtle of which is the widespread halo effect of the bad that infects the culture and politics of human life in general as well as the discipleship journey of Christians and churches in particular. For example, capitalist democracy is presumed to be good, thus job inequity and income inequality are seen with the halo effect of the bad, which renders them not necessarily good but also not needing to be corrected as bad. Consequently, job inequity and income inequality—with all their racial and gender variants—simply come with the territory of what is arguably good in a democratic system. Therefore, the halo effect makes the bad:

2. Also be redefined by a weak composition of sin that reduces human identity and function to variants of inequality and inequity, whereby the bad is minimalized for the sake of promoting so-called good news.

The effects of the halo effect keep evolving—ongoingly misleading and misguiding, of course, by the subtle and seductive counter-relational workings of reductionism.

Culturally and politically, the fact of truth decay as a pandemic (or endemic) condition along with the reality of spiraling affective polarization are hard realities that are illuminated only on the Word’s reality scale. Without the Word’s illumination, false-denied reality and virtual reality are circumvented by the ambiguity of the bad. Christians and churches are accountable for where on the reality scale their current mindset measures the reality of what and where the bad are. What the disciples enacted above is a common thread existing also among us today, woven more tightly through our identity and function in our way of life and its human order.

However the bad is measured, the consequences of the bad will never be less but as much and likely more. Just as the latest discoveries have found that current variants of the coronavirus have increased virulence—the power of the virus to cause much more damage—variants of the bad have similar power. At one extreme, the damage from violence has become more widespread, the damage of which has conflated violence as an end in itself and violence as a means to an end. Typically, for example, domestic violence has been focused primarily on its damage to families and marriages. The recent variants of the bad have spread domestic violence to the community-at-large and throughout the nation, under the assumption that its good end justifies the use of such means—means which norm-ally would be considered bad but now are redefined for a good purpose by rotating norms. The evolving ambiguity of the bad further reinforces and sustains the circumvention of the bad news. Christians and churches commonly proclaim the good news in public without also claiming the bad news both publically and personally. Wherever you are on this cultural-political spectrum indicates your measurement level of the bad

In the consuming climate of polarization today, misinformation, disinformation, fake news and conspiracy theories have darkened the environment, churned up its waters and raised the heat—much like climate change. Surrounding climate conditions have been evolving as the bad descends deeper into ambiguity, especially as conditions are dismissed or denied. The underlying dynamic driving this unavoidable climate is the evolvement of truth decay into pervading mutations of truth gymnastics and its bonded cohort of norm gymnastics. The halo effects of the bad are sufficient to render the bad ambiguous in our way of life. The balancing act of the bad, however, is also decisive in establishing this ambiguity throughout our way of life and its human order. This dynamic balances the ambiguity of the bad with the good, in order for the bad to circumvent its restrictions by flipping around &/or over the truth and rotating norms to form the balanced routine for the bad to prevail. Based on its defining nature, the workings of truth gymnastics could seem reasonable and norm gymnastics could appear normal—namely as the new normal keeps evolving. This would certainly be evident in times of affective polarization and in periods of minimalist disorder.

We already noted earlier a period of Peter’s minimalist disorder, which then evolved in a time of affective polarization. Together with other disciples, this formative body had to navigate the contending establishments of the Jewish nation and the Graeco-Roman Empire; this involved having to adjust to their pervasive cultural and political norms that interacted to shape the prevailing way of life. It was in this public context that these ordinary disciples were commissioned to be the Word’s witnesses (Acts 1:8). And it was in this contentious cultural-political climate that affective polarization made them susceptible to truth and norm gymnastics in order to balance the bad for the sake of their witness for the gospel. This would also affect their qualitative-relational compass to navigate their journey as distinct witnesses of the Word.

Peter’s witness was highlighted in the formation of the early church, perhaps even assuming its lead. Yet, his discipleship was challenged in the surrounding cultural-political climate, which made evident some dubious practices that diluted, compromised or even contradicted his witness of the Word’s whole gospel. For this specific purpose, Luke records in his Gospel the Word’s essential imperative: “See to it, then that the light within you is not darkness” (Lk 11:35). Luke was concerned about the equality of the Gentiles and their equal access to the gospel. Thus, he highlights in his Book of Acts this need for equity in the church, for which Peter’s witness was problematic.

Peter vocally took the initial lead in proclaiming the gospel (Acts 2-3); and along with John, his witness certainly demonstrated no hesitation standing up to the local establishment (Acts 4:8-12, 19-20). Peter’s full witness, however, had issues navigating discipleship’s narrow road in that context, because his qualitative-relational compass was not aligned accurately with the Word. The Word’s witness (martys) denotes one who has firsthand knowledge of the facts of the gospel, therefore who can confirm the truth of the whole gospel’s good news by first bringing to light the bad news of the gospel. Thus, a major issue with martys is the language barrier created by any other connotations making variable what martys denotes. Any martys deficient in the integral knowledge of the gospel’s facts cannot adequately proclaim the whole gospel, because it lacks in its claim of the bad news on which the good news is contingent. With that deficiency, martys navigates a wider easier road that is commonly engaged with truth and norm gymnastics. This is where Luke located Peter in his discipleship journey, of which Luke personally was aware as an ongoing participant with the apostles.

In spite of Peter’s early boldness in proclaiming the gospel, he minimalized the good news as he engaged in balancing the bad; this essentially revised the bad news that Peter had yet to fully claim. During a meditative moment Peter had, the Word intruded on him that evoked this strong response from Peter—likely expressed from his provoked minimalist disorder: “I have never embraced anything that is profane or unclean” (Acts 10:9-14). His measurement of what was bad further evidenced his cultural-political bias, which he earlier also strongly expressed to the Word before the cross happened: “This shall never happen to you” (Mt 16:22, NIV) and “you will never wash my feet” (Jn 13:8). Peter’s cultural-political bias not only defined what was bad but also determined where the bad was. Based on a variant rule of law, his bias labelled all non-Jews as bad and thus to keep relational distance with in unequal relations, the inequity of which certainly revised the bad news of his bias and misrepresented the good news in the gospel that Peter tried to balance with his measurement of the bad. At the point of the Word’s intrusion, Peter appeared to understand that “God has shown me that I had no valid basis to call anyone bad” (Acts 10:28), because “I truly understand that God shows no partiality based on outer-in distinctions” (10:34). Yet, the journey continues.

This prevailing human inequality obviously spread into the church, which now evolved with human inequity that deeply concerned Luke. In the otherwise exciting formative days of the church, Luke highlights the inequality that Hellenists (those embracing Greek culture and politics) had with the dominant Hebrew segment of the church, and the inequity they experienced in their presumed shared life together in the church’s structure and system (Acts 6:1). Later at the ruling council of the church directly addressing the inequality between Jews and non-Jews, Peter supported their equality because “God has made no distinction between them and us” (15:9).

It appeared that Peter learned from the Word and turned around due to the Word’s correction. That turnaround, however, depended on how deeply Peter paid attention to the Word and took to heart the Word’s feedback (cf. Mk 4:24; Lk 8:18). If Peter earlier had listened carefully to the Word about ingesting what’s bad (Mt 15:15-20; Mk 7:17-19), then he wouldn’t have responded to the Word’s intrusion by declaring “I have never….” Because Peter still balanced the bad with his cultural-political bias, the tension in the church between Jews and non-Jews stirred up his affective polarization to try to appease the Jews at the expense of the truth of the whole gospel (as Paul exposed in him, Gal 2:11-14). Peter’s truth gymnastics revised the gospel’s bad news, which minimalized the good news as he engaged in norm gymnastics for the church—sadly, an influential practice that rendered his and others’ witness hypocritical (i.e. hypokrisis), that is, by wearing a mask as if he were playing a different role in the church.

This role-playing practice or hypokrisis (originating in ancient Greek theatre), however, is not unique to Peter and his historical climate, since it is evident as a common maneuver in the human narrative of church history. Currently, in the prevailing “black and white” cultural-political climate enveloping surrounding contexts in fog, the good and bad are conflated. This subtle conflation operates with balancing the bad; and thus it commonly mixes some existential bad parts in with the good and some good parts in with the existential bad, whereby those parts become redefined accordingly into stereotypes contrary to their true nature. While the black-and-white mindset prevails, the quantitative distinction of white rules at the heart of human life and its human order.

What Peter demonstrated is the common gap between the heart and the mind. With his theology having been corrected by the Word, Peter may have had no intentional thought to flip over the truth of the gospel and to rotate norms for the church. Yet, the critical issue is not about mere cerebral function, because the mind is easily misled and misguided, as well as commonly deceived, especially when the brain is conditioned by feelings from the heart. This is why the responses generated by affective polarization to tense situations and circumstances can be subconscious, causing reaction somewhat like a reflex response—a default reaction which the integrated mind and heart of the whole person would not enact (cf. Rom 7:21-23). We cannot underestimate the disparity between our minds and our hearts that everyday human life can make, which good intentions do not negate. Nor can we overestimate the qualitative-relational consequences from this disparity that ongoingly tries to balance the bad in order to adapt to tense situations and circumstances—adapting, that is, to progress and succeed as the fittest. For Peter, the reality was that his balancing act reinforced and sustained inequality between church members and inequity in their relationships together as the presumed new creation family. This common dynamic, of course, reflects the human relational condition that Christians and churches also enable or are complicit with—whereby they become enablers of injustice and disablers of justice.

This reality among us must not be underestimated, nor can we overestimate its impact on our way of life, personally and collectively. Therefore, emphatically the Word exclaims: “Woe to those who call bad good and good bad, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isa 5:20, NIV). Furthermore, the Word deeply intrudes with the Spirit to illuminate any darkness within us (as in Lk 11:34-35): “And all the churches will know that I am the one who searches minds and hearts, and I will give to each of you as your practice in everyday life warrants” (Rev 2:23).

No amount of the balancing act of the bad will survive to be the fittest of the Word’s witnesses, nor progress to be the greatest of his followers. The Word’s narrow difficult road cannot be widened and made easier by circumventing the whole gospel’s bad news; no good news can emerge from this minimalized source. Those journeying on this wide road “keep listening but do not comprehend; keep looking, but do not understand” (Isa 6:9)—“always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of truth” (2 Tim 3:7, ESV). And truth gymnastics prevents their compass to be correctly aligned to navigate nothing but a wide road.

Nevertheless, in these days of crisis for humanity, balancing of the bad is an evolving reality among Christians and churches, mutating in variants of a new normal composed by rationalizing truth gymnastics and justifying norm gymnastics. In this oft-subtle process, any variant condition flips around our everyday identity and rotates our public function. The longer these variants are allowed to exist, the more resistant they will be to change, that is, the change necessary that will incisively turn around (from inner out) this infectious condition of human life and its reducing effects on the human order.

Circumventing the bad news integral to the whole gospel—which the halo effect and balancing act of the bad reinforce and sustain—allows the bad in everyday life to circumvent the good news that constitutes the other half of this uncommon gospel. The consequence for this gospel is to transpose its composition from the experiential truth to a mere doctrinal truth, from its relational reality to merely a virtual reality—consequences which can evolve even from good intentions. Christians and churches can claim and proclaim a transposed gospel (the common gospel in use), but they cannot claim and proclaim the whole gospel until the existential bad in our human relational condition is dealt with as a hard reality. This essential action, however, becomes even more difficult when the existential bad can circumvent the measures taken to eliminate it.

For their theology and practice, along with listening carefully to the Word, Christians and churches need to learn acutely from recent discoveries coming to light in these dark days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mutated variants of the coronavirus are not only increasing in number and spread but also may flourish as novel variants are able to circumvent antibodies, vaccines and related measures, whereby they can effectively escape immunity and continue both to more easily infect and also to further mutate. What’s illuminating for us to take to heart is the parallel reality that the existential bad can also flourish as it circumvents modes or inadequate measures to stop it. Under cover of existing fog, the genius of Satan continues his ceaseless counter-relational work to amplify the halo effect, accelerate the balancing act, and intensify the evolution of the existential bad, so that its variants can circumvent common measures by a resistant immunity escape that will further subtly infect our way of life and surreptitiously mutate variants of our human order and its rule of law.

Therefore, as with the coronavirus, the interrelated issues of immunity escape facing all Christians and churches are this:

1. Until the bad news of the whole gospel is fully claimed, the bad in human life will continue to circumvent the good news and thereby reduce its significance for humanity.

2. Inseparably, even as the bad news is received, as long as the measures used to address it are weak, the bad will prevail in this critical fight and thereby continue to infect humanity, reduce persons and relationships from their created integrity, minimalize their quality of life, and diminish any light from the gospel to render the good news without significance or simply irrelevant.

The reality of the bad’s immunity escape will continue to face us until these issues are resolved. And this hard reality is made more difficult to face when we explicitly or inadvertently serve as enablers or complicitors. Moreover, merely having good intentions to face up is also insufficient, because by default the bad news is still not fully claimed to change the bad first within ourselves. The bad’s immunity escape has existed (subtly or not) in Christians and churches from the beginning; and the good news has been insufficient to change our human relational condition because the bad news hasn’t been fully claimed.

In the big picture of the COVID-19 pandemic, hopeful signs are emerging as research has discovered mutating coronavirus variants (and strains), from which they can learn when variants escape immunity measures and what measures can best stop this evolution. This highlights how critical measuring the bad is for fighting its immunity escape, and that the deeper and more complete our measurement, the better we can change the bad. From the gospel’s roots, there is illuminated this reality:

The gospel’s bad news holds all Christians and churches accountable for this deep and complete measurement of the bad; this essential measurement determines how to fight the bad, so that the gospel’s redemptive change constituting the good news will be the experiential truth and relational reality of our human relational condition, whereby we can proclaim its whole significance for the human relational condition of all persons, peoples, tribes and nations.

If we are serious about following the Word and make our discipleship the priority, then we must not make assumptions about our measurement of the existential bad as Peter did. Certainly, our measurement becomes more difficult as truth decay evolves and as our perceptions are distorted by affective polarization, which make us susceptible to minimalist disorder. As we navigate all this with the qualitative-relational compass, however, it should become obvious that these dynamics bias how we see the bad, what we define as bad, and where we determine the bad is. Further witnessed in Peter and demonstrated in the range of opinions about COVID-19, measuring the existential bad has not only been difficult but a problematic adventure, a bewildering mystery, and an incompatible paradox—all of which make the bad too ambiguous to recognize in its depths and track completely. A weak view of sin always minimalizes the existential bad, even if our theology composes referential information about the bad. Such referential information does not get to the qualitative depth of the bad to measure its relational consequences completely. That always leaves the door open for weak measurement, which widens the path for bad variants to circumvent detection and thus escape immunity measures addressing a more shallow and incomplete bad. Underlying immunity escape is the genius of Satan, whose commonly undetected counter-relational work was exposed by Paul to illuminate the bad’s most subtle variants (2 Cor 11:13-15).

When you focus directly on our current human relational condition, how good do you think our measurement of the existential bad is? And when you consider the relational consequences existing among us, between us and around us, how would you rate our relational condition based on that measurement? Is it compatible or incompatible, congruent or incongruent with the good news of the gospel? The bad news in the whole gospel is neither incompatible nor incongruent but indeed compatible and congruent with the good news. How so? The Word embodied the Light of the Truth, the Way and the Life in order for the Word’s whole gospel to illuminate the bad news, so that the good news could shine fully without being dimmed and minimalized. Again, because of Luke’s dedication to human equality and equity, he echoed in his Gospel and Acts the relational Word’s resounding imperative: “See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness.” In any degree of darkness, the bad continues to evolve in immunity escape.

No one wants to dwell on the bad news and disconnect from the hope of any good news, unless they’re depressed. Yet, the paradox of the whole gospel requires us to deeply sharpen our focus on the depths of the bad news to fight its breadth in human life. This is neither optional for the good news nor negotiable for those who aren’t depressed. Therefore, any redaction of the bad news will always have relational consequences for the good news.

This is demonstrated in the recent news of the military coup in Myanmar, which turned around its transition to a democracy. The consequence of this bad news for the so-called good news of democracy should not be surprising, not so much because of the fragility of democracy and its tenuous notion. More so because Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning champion of democracy, effectively tried to balance the bad with truth and norm gymnastics—albeit with likely good intentions for the sake of advancing democracy. She then by default became an enabler and complicitor of the oppression of the Rohingya Muslims by doing almost nothing to protect them in her country, her quasi-democratic country. Truth and norm gymnastics in any manner simply redacts the bad news to prevent or distort the composition of good news.

When the embodied Word forcefully enacted cleaning out the temple, and also emphasized his coming as distinguished “not to bring common peace but a sword” (Mt 10:34), he didn’t invalidate the good news composed by the gospel using the means of truth and norm gymnastics. Rather, the Word validated the paradox of his gospel that constitutes its wholeness when the good news is directly correlated to the bad news. This essential correlation precludes intervening variables from preventing the gospel to fulfill its qualitative-relational outcome for human life, its qualitative equity for all persons, and its relational equality in the human order. Anything less and any substitutes of the bad news become intervening variables that disrupt the direct correlation between the good and bad news, which then prevents the relational outcome of the whole gospel.

Since the Word’s gospel is rooted in covenant relationship, the bad news evolved as the roots of covenant relationship were displaced and variant branches replaced the qualitative-relational heart of covenant relationship. This evolving bad news is integrated by the gospel into its composition in order that its variant roots and branches can no longer displace and replace the good news of the gospel’s new covenant relationship together. Thus, the gospel’s integration of the bad news is by its nature comprehensive, encompassing the counter-relational workings of sin as reductionism; and anything less and any substitutes continue to allow its variants to displace and replace the gospel’s good news.

The Word’s theological trajectory and relational path enacted the whole gospel to “proclaim justice to all persons, peoples, tribes and nations…until he brings justice to victory” (Mt 12:18-20). By necessity, this required integrating all the bad news of injustice into his proclamation of the gospel in order for the relational outcome of justice to be the experiential truth and relational reality. Beside blatant variants and other obvious symptoms of the bad, the existential subtlety of what’s bad is the key issue in the bad’s infection avoiding detection and sustaining its immunity escape; this subtle process then reinforces and sustains what’s blatantly and obviously bad. When the measurement of the bad doesn’t encompass its existential subtlety, the bad news is redacted.

We need to understand the subtlety evolving from the beginning that reinforces and sustains the scope of the bad—the existential bad which emerged from the primordial garden simply as reductionism: the counter-relational work against the whole of God and the wholeness of God’s creation that subtly works to reduce the human person, their relationships, the breadth of human life and the depth of the human order from their wholeness.

The subtle variants of reductionism keep evolving, which make the bad more ambiguous to be detected and thus more capable of immunity escape. For example, in the formative tradition of God’s people, the Sabbath has been a key outer-in identity marker to distinguish them from other persons, peoples, tribes and nations. What should have been integral, however, for who, what and how they are as persons and in covenant relationship together became fragmenting of their created ontology (inner-out identity) and function. Consider carefully the Sabbath in God’s Rule of Law, which constituted the climax essential to creation (Gen 2:1-3). The Creator enacted the whole of God’s righteousness in what is right and whole, and this is how human persons are to function in likeness—function contrary to the pressure and demands of self-determination to measure up and succeed, and that preoccupy us with secondary matters at the expense of the primary. This contrary function from the primordial garden got embedded in human tradition and became entrenched in the status quo of human life, which reflect the workings of truth and norm gymnastics. As a consequence, the Sabbath has been converted into a mere day lacking justice.

Whatever variable practice of the Sabbath we’ve encountered or engaged in, the Sabbath is integral to justice as constituted by creation. As the whole ontology of God converged in the Sabbath (“God blessed the seventh day and distinguished it uncommon”) and the function of the Creator was integrated whole (“God rested from all the work that he had done in creation,” Gen 2:3), likewise the Sabbath integrates human life. That is, integrated in what makes human ontology whole and how to function whole—integrally in likeness of the Creator—notably in a human context that defines persons by the extent of what they do (whether or not in self-determination). Human life and function are fragmentary without the integration of the Sabbath, which is why the Sabbath is imperative for persons to be in created likeness to God’s ontology and function. If we observed God on the seventh day of creation, we would not know that he had just created the universe and all life; this observation is critical to make because God’s whole ontology and function is neither defined by nor reducible to what God merely does—even as immeasurable as creating the universe (or multiverse). When the Sabbath eliminates the human distinctions of what we do, it equalizes all persons before God and thus with each other as persons created in God’s likeness. Otherwise these outer-in distinctions become defining in life.

In the created justice of God’s Rule of Law, the Sabbath is the central privileged right[3] that must be claimed in created uniqueness (only in the image of God) in order for the vested rights[4] of persons to unfold to fulfill our inherent human need. Thus, the Sabbath demands from us that anything less and any substitutes in our ontology and function must cease (cf. rapah, Ps 46:10), in order to restore us to the wholeness of our person and our relationships (Dt 5:12-15; Eph 2:8-10, cf. Mt 9:13; 12:7-8). Yet, the Sabbath became and remains variable in theology and practice, observed today with variants of a new normal. Variants range from a day without distinction like any other day in the week, to a day off to do anything else, to a rigid religious day as an end in itself. In spite of our traditions and evolved variants, the reality of the Sabbath continues to be the culmination of creation and the key essential to define what is primary and necessary for the created order of human life to be whole. In this created order, the human person was not at the top but at the center, in order to integrate all of creation in its wholeness (as Paul highlighted, Rom 8:19-21)—to integrate and not to dominate or misuse creation to satisfy our self-interest needs. God’s justice emerging from the Sabbath is the outworking of the created order for its wholeness in likeness of the whole-ly Trinity.

Therefore, the Sabbath we use will lead to the human need-rights we get, which will determine the justice or injustice we practice (see Isa 56:1-2; 58:13-14).

The Sabbath signifies the most transparent stage in the creation of all life, in which we see God just being God. In the context of the world, God’s whole ontology and function just is, without any other action or activity in this moment. On this unique day, God’s relational message is “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps 46:10). At this perspicacious point of just being God, God constituted whole-ly the relational context and process of what is primary of God and who is primary to God for the whole-ly relational outcome of all persons coming together in the primacy of face-to-face relationship. The whole of God blessed the Sabbath with the definitive blessing of the triune God’s face (Num 6:24-26)—the primary of God for the primacy of face-to-face relationship with the persons primary to God. Only this relational outcome is the just-nection of creation, that is, the right order of relationship together created by the triune God for whole persons having the right relational connection in his likeness. Accordingly, this qualitative relational God made the Sabbath holy in order to perspicuously distinguish the uncommon from the common prevailing—and notably preoccupying us in the secondary—so that all persons and relationships would be whole-ly (integrally whole and holy/uncommon) in everyday human life.

Therefore, God’s justice is distinguished and God’s peace is experienced just in the relational dynamic of just-nection: The relational connection required for justice of the human order in the created whole-ly likeness of God (as created in Gen 2:18).

Just-nection, then, is the unequivocal and irreplaceable antithesis that distinguishes justice from what encompasses the common denominator of injustice:

The relational distance, separation or brokenness that fragment the human order and reduce persons to outer-in distinctions and thus to any and all relational disconnection contrary to their created likeness to God, which is consequential for preventing fulfillment of the inherent human need as well as for being entrenched in human inequality and shrouded in human inequity (as experienced in Gen 3:7-8,10).

Since Jesus came to fulfill God’s Rule of Law for justice to be whole (Mt 5:17-20), he didn’t make the Sabbath optional for persons to use as they wish. That would make justice optional also—shaping it by variable thinking and variant practice, as demonstrated in truth and norm gymnastics. Having this option would render human-need rights to relative enforcement, even if permissible rights[5] allowed for such practice. In the created justice of God’s irreducible and nonnegotiable authority, the Sabbath constitutes a privileged right that we must claim in just our created uniqueness in order for the vested rights of justice to be enforced—irrevocably both for ourselves and others.

Therefore, Jesus made it essential that his whole gospel is embodied and enacted as follows, and imperative to be claimed and proclaimed accordingly:

The bad news of the gospel unfolds on an intrusive relational path to expose the injustice of tradition and similar conventional practices, in order that the good news emerges irreducibly ‘whole in justice’ and unfolds nonnegotiably ‘uncommon in peace’; and the gospel’s intrusive relational path encompasses exposing the shame of the status quo composed by the dominant views of theology (or related ideology) and the prevailing norms of practice, both of which are under the shaping influence of the common—notably in the subtle engagement of truth and norm gymnastics.

This whole gospel emerges only in its qualitative depth and to its relational breadth, when its bad news is not redacted. Yet, claiming and proclaiming the whole gospel is not the rule but the exception among the status quo of Christians and churches—the status quo in which truth and norm gymnastics are the rule and not the exception.

The status quo in many sociocultural contexts is maintained by an honor-shame code of behavior that controls persons to function mainly by avoiding shame. The shame, however, in an honor-shame framework has primarily an outer-in focus and thus revolves around secondary matters. Though this focus assumes it has primary consequences of being considered bad, wrong, unfair or unjust, it is insufficient shame to get to the roots of the human condition. The depth of shame (bosh) from the primordial garden is what has composed and will always compose the status quo of human life at all levels of its human condition. This level of shame goes deeper than what’s quantified from outer in and gets down to the qualitative-relational consequences at the heart of shame (the bosh contrasted in Gen 2:25 and 3:7). Bosh signifies the primary consequence from reductionism that is intrinsic to the common denominator of injustice. This depth is the shame of the status-ing in quo that the bad news of the gospel exposes in the status quo’s oft-subtle lack of just-nection.

The status quo represents the existing state of the human relational condition in general and our human relational condition in particular. In our surrounding contexts, there emerges a conventional thinking (wisdom) that establishes (formally or informally) a collection of normative values and practices, which explicitly or implicitly maintain the existing state of our human relational condition with this collective conscience. These norms define the parameters for how to think, see human life, and act daily. Since they are based on limited knowledge or biased information, however, the status-ing in quo limits how we think, distorts how we see, and constrains how we act. Depending on the surrounding context, that particular status quo enforces permissible rights to the extent that its normative framework allows, or which norm gymnastics justifies. The true shame of the status quo emerges when vested rights are denied and privileged rights are prevented—in spite of the extent of permissible rights—which is consequential for persons fulfilling their inherent human need, including even being seduced by illusions of virtual fulfillment (as in Gen 3:6). Christians and churches often appeal to their permissible rights (e.g. for free speech, and religious liberty) in the status quo without being accountable or even aware of vested and privileged rights. This variable condition is the consequence whenever vested rights are reduced and/or privileged rights are renegotiated—both of which evolve from persons in reduced ontology and function, those comprising the status quo. Whatever the variant state of this existing condition, the status quo consists of the (our) human relational condition needing to be made right and thus of persons (individually and collectively) needing to be transformed at all levels of human life.

The good news of the gospel alone is insufficient to address the status quo. The reality is that the proclamation of the good news has made little change (if any) on status-ing in quo—likely because an existing cultural-political bias doesn’t perceive the status quo as needing change. Only the unredacted bad news of the gospel exposes the shame of the status quo and its need to be changed at its core roots. This is the whole gospel that targets the common denominator of injustice to raise up the just-nection required to fulfill the inherent human need. The gospel’s relational outcome enforces the vested and privileged rights of all persons, all of which elude the status-ing in quo in practice if not also in theology.

As discussed earlier, this was Nicodemus’ awakening when he pursued the gospel as a key member of the status quo (Jn 3:1-15). Like many Christians today, his affirmation of God’s authority and rule of law was composed by referential language, which merely quantified God’s terms to the limits and constraints of the outer in that were cultivated by norm gymnastics (e.g. Mt 15:8). So he was shocked by Jesus’ relational language that he needed to be transformed in order to be right under God’s rule. Yet, his normative framework limited how he thought and distorted how he saw Jesus’ imperative for him to be transformed, making the gospel incredulous for him: “How can these things be?” Jesus shook up the status quo with the bad news to expose his shame: “You are a teacher of the status quo and yet you do not understand these things?”

The status quo involves the most subtle extension of the original shame of the inaugural persons in creation. They shifted from the primacy of their whole persons in relationship together in likeness of the triune God (“both naked and were not ashamed,” Gen 2:25) to the secondary of their persons from outer in, which thereby reduced them to human distinctions in fragmenting comparative relations (“they were naked and covered the primary with the secondary in order to hide their shame,” Gen 3:7,10). This shame breaks the just-nection created in God’s likeness and thereby disables persons from fulfilling their inherent human need. Any yearning for its fulfillment or dissatisfaction from being unfulfilled is readily distracted or suspended by the preoccupation with normative values and practices of the status quo—ongoingly rendering persons and relationships in virtual illusions.

The shame of the status quo is subtle and rarely acknowledged, because this normative framework is advocated, supported or sustained with complicity by the majority (notably a moral majority of Christians today). Yet, the prevailing shame of persons in reduced ontology and function, who lack justice in the human order of relationships, is always consequential for denying or squandering the vested and privileged rights of God’s Rule of Law. Thus, the bad news of the Word’s gospel always holds status-ing in quo accountable and intrusively exposes its shame of broken just-nection, so that the good news of the whole of justice can emerge and its uncommon peace will unfold—with nothing less and no substitutes in our theology and practice as the sentinels of human life.

The reality of the status quo facing us, and hopefully the reality challenging us to change, is the normative framework shaping or even composing our theology and practice. For example, what forms the identity of our persons and our function in daily life (not just at church), and where do we get our model for everyday relationships? Conventional sources for these shape how we see and think about right-wrong, good-bad, fair-unfair, and just-unjust. If you examine your personal experiences and knowledge of others, what shapes how you see and think about them? The reality unavoidably facing us and challenging us is this: How we live everyday either falls within the normative framework of the status quo or claims the Word’s whole gospel—the latter then countering the status-ing in quo of the former, which Nicodemus would testify shakes up the status quo at the core of its theology and practice. In other words, we cannot claim Jesus’ gospel without the bad news, and to only assume we have claimed the good news is to live within the status quo of our theology and practice—which can be the status-ing in quo’s spectrum encompassing conservatives, progressives and liberals.

To claim the bad news of the whole gospel, however, is not a simple choice today, because what is measured as bad has become so ambiguous in the existing status quo. The underlying reality facing all of us, which we are widely exposed to and likely influenced by in some way, is the implied utilization of what in effect becomes the status quo app. This app is the perceptual lens and interpretive framework that are shaped by the existing status quo, which becomes the prevailing application used status-ing in quo. This consuming app, like other apps, makes it easier to engage in status-ing in quo in order to effectively masquerade that bad, so that its detection is minimalized and better able to escape immunity measures.

The status quo app is not the work of modern technology—though such apps do reinforce and sustain the bad in human life—but the genius of Satan, who epitomizes masquerading the bad in the midst of status-ing in quo (the evolving reality of 2 Cor 11:14-15). Accordingly, the status quo app is a subtle and seductive key that gives us access to the wider easier ways of life propagated by status-ing in quo; and its use redacts the bad news, by which then the good news is rendered to misinformation, disinformation or fake news. Those who claim such rendered good news become myopic in their lens of the bad news, the good news myopia which not only keeps them from claiming the bad news but also misleads them to be absorbed into it.

Balancing the bad in human life certainly has been a reality, the facts of which have accumulated notably in democracies. The bad has routinely been rendered less urgent and burdensome, or even denied. Frankly, to accomplish this purpose and survive fit, free people have become experts in truth and norm gymnastics. Without objective truth as the essential basis in life, truth as the definitive source about life is lost. Then, any truth presumed as the necessary guide for life becomes merely relative. It is the relativity of truth that enables norm gymnastics to rotate relative norms as deemed important to fulfill its need, desires or related self-interests. This underlying reality becomes the playbook manifested whenever and wherever people have had the opportunity to exercise these gymnastics.

Thus, this expertise has been critical to survive as fittest in a human context that is inherently bad, even though the intrinsic good also exists in the human context. Christians and churches have been in the middle of the current polarizing climate; and how, not if, they have engaged identity and partisan politics reveals whether they have been absorbing the bad news or claiming it. This is a crossroads facing all of us today, which any connection to the Word’s gospel will not allow us to avoid or oversimplify. And the good news myopia common among Christians and churches will not exempt any from their accountability; in fact, this myopia confronts them of the reality indicating already absorbing the bad news. The consequences of the status quo app demand our urgent attention and decisive action.

Notably in polarizing times like today, locally and globally, political theology should be at the heart of the public life of Christians and churches by providing the qualitative-relational compass to navigate their discipleship journey. From this essential perspective of the Word’s experiential truth and relational reality, the theology and practice from tradition and/or the spectrum of conservatives, progressives and liberals (including the related politics) comprising the status quo raise this pivotal question: What is reinforced and sustained in everyday life, and what in life itself is being changed? Without much conscious thought, the first half of the question would be answered with the assumption that the existing norms are either neutral enough to reinforce (explicitly or implicitly) or positive enough to sustain. The latter half calls for consciously examining existing norms without assuming the false distinction of neutrality, and then challenges negative norms to be changed. For example, technology itself may be neutral but the use of technology is not, and negative norms of technological usage (demonstrated on the internet and in social media) need to be changed rather than reinforced or sustained. Jesus’ whole gospel raises this pivotal question and ongoingly holds accountable all who claim the gospel, notably those who proclaim it—accountable namely because of not first claiming the bad news before proclaiming the good news.

Like most Christians, the early disciples used a reduced theological anthropology to define their identity and determine their function by what they do and have from outer in. In our Christian contexts, we may not be asking which of us is the greatest (or first and foremost), but if we use such a reduced theological anthropology, we embed our persons in an inevitable comparative process with others (notably about resumes). This comparative process measures persons on the basis of their achievements, successes and accumulated resources, or potential thereof, and makes distinctions of persons accordingly (e.g. consider an academic vita or a ministry portfolio). These distinctions construct a human order between persons to stratify them to a level justified by the comparative system, which unavoidably fragments their relationships to an inequality that cannot experience just-nection, even at the upper strata.

What Jesus exposed with the gospel’s bad news was the existing stratified order enforced by power relations. These power relations also function covertly, for example, by the paternalistic actions of “so-called benefactors” who control others by their subtle manipulations under the illusion of the common good. This inequality is the expected consequence for those engaged in the human comparative process; this evolves for any of Jesus’ followers from both (1) their theological anthropology reflecting and reinforcing reduced ontology and function, and (2) their shallow understanding of sin without its roots in reductionism and thus sustaining reductionism—each in contradiction to his gospel. Such persons are subtle disablers of justice who become misguided enablers of injustice.

So, where does this leave his followers as church leaders and as those working for justice and peace?

This brings us back to the crossroad of the narrow gate-road and the wide gate-road, to the junction of Jesus’ uncommon path and the common path, to the disjuncture between the irreducible and nonnegotiable just-nection and the common denominator of injustice. The bad news of Jesus’ gospel always brings person to this critical intersection of life, which is why claiming the bad news is indispensable and not optional. One of the critical problems facing us at this crossroad is that each alternative may have a similar presenting appearance, and the distinction between them will not become apparent until the roots of each are exposed by the depth of reality in everyday life. This critical problem is addressed by Jesus in his manifesto for his followers (Mt 7:24-27). There are common illusions about the construction of a human order, about building conventional structures in a society, community and family, even about the development of churches and ministries, whose foundations appear to be on the right basis until the hard realities of life expose their shortcomings (e.g. about persons, relationships and sin), bring down their bad assumptions (e.g. about the common good), and crumble their misplaced (false) hopes and practices (e.g. about peace and justice).

The Word enacted the created justice of God’s Rule of Law, which embodied the nonnegotiable Way, the invariable Truth and the irreducibly whole Life from inner out for the primacy of reciprocal relationship together with the whole-ly Trinity (Jn 14:6-7). Based on this relational process, his sentinels are to (1) listen carefully to “the word from my mouth” (Eze 3:17, cf. Mk 4:24) and (2) “act on them in your daily practice” (Mt 7:24) and (3) “you shall give others warning from me” (Eze 33:7), thus (4) to function as shepherds of God’s flock (as in Jer 23:3-4). This relational process became the functional model for church leaders to grow both in their own development and for the church as family in the primacy of just-nection. This growth requires redemptive change from the prevailing norms of the status quo and related tradition, in order for that old to die and the new to emerge truly as new (as in Lk 5:33-39; 2 Cor 5:16-17; Eph 4:22-24). This relational process and outcome of the gospel is predicated on claiming the unredacted bad news contrary to being absorbed by its redaction.

No one knew the need for personal transformation more profoundly than Paul. The misguided passion of Saul was transformed into his enlightened response to the whole of God (i.e. the pleroma of God, Col 1:15-20; Eph 1:22-23). In his integral fight for the whole gospel and against all reductionism, Paul gathered the leaders of the churches in Ephesus to make irrevocable the imperative of their calling: “For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole saving purpose [boule] of God. Keep watch over, pay close attention, devote yourself vulnerably [prosecho] to your whole person and all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God” (Acts 20:27-28). Since Paul was well schooled in his religious tradition (Acts 22:3; Phil 3:5-6), he was aware of previous shepherds of God’s flock who took care of their self-interests and engaged in making distinctions among persons (as in Eze 34:1-6; Jer 50:6, cf. Jude 11-13). This oft-subtle lack of just-nection was the status quo condition that Jesus ongoingly encountered while proclaiming the gospel (Mt 9:35-36). Contemporary shepherds also encounter this condition in the church, whether they recognize it or not, which makes Paul’s imperative for their calling a valid source of bad news composing the gospel.

The urgent question facing the sentinels of human life is: Will we be shepherds reflecting, reinforcing or sustaining the common denominator of injustice, or will we be shepherds of justice in likeness of the Shepherd (Jn 10:14-16, cf. Eze 34:11-16)?

As evolved from the primordial garden, the pivotal shift of persons from inner out to outer in formed the critical distinction for human persons that constructed human identity and function. From this defining distinction evolved related formative human distinctions (such as race/ethnicity and class, besides gender), which have adapted into the prevailing norms of everyday life such that they pervade even the theology and practice of God’s Rule of Law and its order for life together. Human distinctions were the critical issue underlying the problems in the church that Paul faced, fought against, and worked for transformation, much to Paul’s grief and frustration (1 Cor 1:10-13; 3:1-4,18-22; 4:6-7; 2 Cor 10:12); and this practice countered the bad news and contradicted the good news of the gospel (Gal 3:26-29; Col 3:9-11; Eph 2:14-22).

From creation the whole-ly God did not make distinctions of persons—“both naked and were not ashamed of the whole who, what and how they were” (Gen 2:25). In God’s Rule of Law for human life and its order, the Word made no distinctions in the ontology and function of persons in likeness of the Trinity, which distinguishes the church in its whole identity and function that is fulfilled only in the primacy of relationship together vulnerably equalized without distinctions (as in Acts 15:9). Christian leaders who practice anything less and promote any substitutes are shepherds functioning as disablers of justice as created by God and enablers of injustice composing the common norms of everyday life—the distinctions of those “naked from outer in and covering up the whole who, what and how they are” (as evolved from Gen 3:7,10). Those with such distinctions become mere objects of persons shaped by the prevailing norms, rather than persons as subjects fighting against their reductionist influence.

This then raises key questions needing our urgent response: “Where are you in this human condition?” and “Who tells you that you are naked?” (Gen 3:9,11). The vested and privileged rights for fulfilling the inherent human need of all persons are at stake in our response.

On his intrusive relational path Jesus ongoingly responded to persons denied their human-need rights, yet he was countered by leaders serving as sentinels of the law, shepherds of the flock, who functioned as disablers of justice and enablers of injustice (e.g. Mt 9:1-13,27-34; 12:9-25; Lk 7:36-50; 13:10-17; Jn 5:1-15; 9:1ff). Human distinction-making has always been the underlying issue at the roots of injustice, and a prime symptom of absorbing the bad news. Christian leaders need to recognize the presence of this in their theology and practice or be subject to subtly falling into becoming shepherds and enablers of injustice—those who are disablers of justice even with their good intentions.

Until his transformation, Peter was one of those leaders with good intentions who simply reinforced and sustained the core norms explicit to his tradition and implicit to his surrounding context’s status quo. This made evident his use of the status quo app that masqueraded the bad with his truth and norm gymnastics. By design or default, this entailed having a theology and practice that countered the bad news and contradicted the good news of Jesus’ gospel (e.g. in his theology, Mt 16:21-23, and in his practice, Jn 13:5-8). In anticipation of this condition for Peter and to distinguish the pivotal alternative for his leadership function, Jesus asked Peter face to face:

“Do you involve your whole person with me in the primacy of reciprocal relationship together in likeness of my involvement with you?” “Yes…yes, indeed…of course I do.” Then, “Feed my sheep my words…shepherd them with justice…grow their persons without distinctions so that their vested and privileged rights will be enacted to fulfill their inherent human need to be whole as family together” (Jn 21:15-17).

As the right Shepherd, “I feed and shepherd the flock with justice” (Eze 34:16) and “proclaim justice to all persons, peoples and nations” (Mt 12:18). And he expects nothing less and no substitutes from leaders for their ontology and function in his likeness.

For those in likeness of Jesus, their righteousness and justice must be integrated (just as “righteousness and peace kiss,” Ps 85:10) and be the defining basis for their function (“the foundation of your throne,” Ps 89:14). In other words, the whole of who, what and how they are must be in just-nection in order to “go before them and make the intrusive relational path for their steps” (Ps 85:13). The Word “loves righteousness and justice” (Ps 33:5) but only in the invariable terms of relational language, just as God’s righteousness and justice are invariable and thus are nonnegotiable for those in likeness (cf. Jer 9:23-24).

Therefore, as Jesus’ whole-ly followers, his shepherds cannot function as disablers of justice and his sentinels cannot function as enablers of injustice. They “must follow me in the primacy of reciprocal relationship together in wholeness” (Jn 21:19,22). And Peter evidenced as a defining harbinger for church leadership that the underlying reality surrounding all of us is the pervasive dynamic of distinction-making, the inequality and inequity of which evolve in a comparative system to fragment just-nection for persons and their relationships, both in the church and in the world. If this bad news is not claimed as the hard reality, then it unavoidably, inescapably and inevitably is consequential for absorbing the bad news in one’s own life and therefore reinforcing and sustaining the bad news in all human life.

Make no mistake then, “Woe to those who call bad good and good bad.” Does this make it imperative to examine “…that the light within you is not darkness.”

[1] Richard Beck in “The Hope and the Horror: Reflections for an Election Year,” in FULLER, issue #18, 2020, 70.

[2] Richard Beck, 71.

[3] Defined as the rights unique to all persons created in God’s image, who can claim these nonnegotiable rights just in their created uniqueness, unless the rights are withdrawn or denied only by God. Discussed in my study Jesus’ Gospel of Essential Justice: The Human Order from Creation through Complete Salvation (Justice Study, 2018). Online at http://www.4X12.org.

[4] Defined as the rights from God that are inherent to all persons created in God’s image, irreducible rights which cannot be revoked to prevent fulfillment of the human need.

[5] Defined as the rights available to all persons to the extent that their enactment either doesn’t disrespect, abuse and prevent the fulfillment of their and others’ human need, or that isn’t allowed access to that fulfillment by the normative enforcement of others notably prevailing in a fragmentary majority.