So for the past few weeks I’ve been exploring a series of video essays around “Finding God in a Restless Age.”
If you know me or track with me thinking, you know one of the quandaries I’m most fascinated by in our present moment is how anyone is meant to navigate all the restless churning around us.
You’ve got politics and new cycles.
You’ve got international incidents and global protracted conflicts.
You’ve got unrelenting scandals and abuses of power.
And all of this of course is crashing into the church, intersecting with the church, to the point that anyone paying attention at all would be forgiven for wondering, “Is this really the way its supposed to be?”
Surely the church was meant to be “better” than the world.
Surely church leaders were not meant to fail in the shocking, prolific, very public ways that they do?
I’ve been holding this question especially close the past five years since my own proximity to the scandals and fallout that took place at Willow Creek Community Church. And part of my doctoral research was trying to lean in and make theological sense of what felt so unexpected and overwhelming.
Why do celebrity pastors fail?
In this video, I of course do not have a definitive answer. But I do have a theological exploration, offered by St. Augustine and his Confessions.
Part of the painful reckoning we must face if we will brave such questions, is that none of us really can escape the restlessness that churns inside.
But maybe, just maybe, if we face our own restlessness, we can begin to glimpse a truer rest in God.
With hope,
John
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