I’m thinking of all the evangelical leaders who say ridiculous and harmful things, and wondering if all the ordinary Christians who listen to them know that they don’t have to – that just because someone is a pastor or has a big following (or a lot of media attention) and claims the Christian name doesn’t mean that what they are saying is true or good or helpful.

Drawing on my last post, about God empowering ordinary people, I think God wants us to be empowered to use our brains and hearts and human compassion and empathy – and our own reading of Scripture with all these things in mind – to determine what kinds of leaders we choose to follow.

Answer To

I’d like to know 
what kind of god you answer to

behind that smile 
you grab to coat your face
before you leave the house,

your real thoughts locked away 
on shelves 
beyond my reach―

and all of this, you say,
is leadership.

I’d like to know, because
if he is not a god 

who shares himself in humbleness,
who gives himself in tenderness
and sees the ones 
who cry to him for justice, 

then I want nothing 
to do with him.

If he, like you, knows only 
how to smile and not to weep, 

and if he laughs at things that 
make me want to turn the tables 
on their heads in holy anger―

if he does not bleed a screaming 
river from his side 
as you wield scripture like a knife,

I’d like to know―

because, if so, 
this god you answer to
is not a god I want to know.

And, surely, with the sureness 
in my soul,

I do not answer to you.