I held on to this Word of Grace for over a week. I have been so disgusted at the U.S. presidential campaign (a bipartisan disgust), that to talk about any issues has been hard for me after my long time off. I talk about a difficult issue in this message that I deal with every day — the current round of anti-discrimination legislation aimed at Christian colleges and universities. There are various views on the subject swirling around out there and some of those views are advanced with a fierce shrillness that makes having a reasonable discussion difficult to impossible.

These messages are intended to say positive things about God and his active presence and role in our everyday lives and work. In surrendering my life to Jesus Christ and daily seeking to leave it in his hands, Christ has taught me many things from his Word and my experience that have softened my heart and sharpened my mind. I have been humbled and humiliated over and over during the process of conversion of my life to his possession, a process that continues.

To become Christ’s servant is to obey Christ’s will. This obedience does not necessarily follow neat, pre-determined lines. Christ’s will can sometimes greatly vary from the expectations, rules and traditions of the religio-political culture that has conditioned us. Grace is the power of God for our salvation and for living. Grace means that everyone and everything belong to a God whose law is love and whose justice is mercy. Jesus Christ is a God of limitless love. This frankly scares us because we cling to self-imposed limits as to the acceptable and unacceptable as part of our human desire to control and attain power over our circumstances and relationships.

That said, persons of faith congregate with other persons who share that faith. These congregations become churches and denominations. Of human necessity, the denominations establish doctrinal formulations, and rules are made to set a standard for membership. Over time, it can become more convenient to refer to the rule in administering the community, than to ask God. Each successive generation tends to drift further from the source even if they are hanging on to the formulations and rules which are dead without the Holy Spirit that inspired them.

But the U.S. Constitution protects the freedom of religion, of expression and association, meaning that people of faith have a recognized right to congregate and run things their own way within their own community and institutions. Protecting that right is my task as an attorney regardless of whether or not I agree with how that right is being exercised. Religious liberty is something the founders of the nation valued because it helps keep the civil peace, where as religious intolerance and coercion nevitably descend into violence.

I first glimpsed the shape of Devils Tower in the 1977 science-fiction movie, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,”  when the actor Richard Dreyfuss playing the character of Roy Neary, an Indiana electrical lineman who had an encounter with an alien spaceship, obsessively sculpted his mash potatoes into the shape of the Tower which he had never seen and didn’t recognize until he later saw it on a television news program.  His wife and three children were distressed by his obsession which finally was resolved in an encounter with a UFO and the aliens at the real Devils Tower.

This surprising landmark was the first declared a U.S. National Monument receiving that designation from President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906. It is geologically described as a laccolithic butte, an intrusion of igneous rock into the surrounding sedimentary rock as a result of volcanic action.

The hot volcanic magma cracked into hexagonal and octagonal columns as it cooled giving the formation a unique striation. I have seen the same kinds of geometrical columns at the Devils Postpile National Monument near Mammoth Mountain in the California Sierras, a beautiful place I have visited several times. Such formations are rare and unique.

The Tower is 867 feet tall from base to summit, the equivalent of an 80 story building. The path around its base is only 1.3 miles long. I hiked it on a pleasant fall morning while watching numerous free climbers scale the columns all the way to the top.

Native American tribes have considered the rock a sacred place of prayer for centuries. The Lakota Sioux refer to it as “The Bear Lodge,” and other tribes like the Kiowa, Arapahoe, and Cheyenne have similar names for it. Lieutenant Colonel Richard Irving Dodge of the U.S. Army led a surveying expedition past the Tower in 1875. Apparently his interpreter translated the Indian name to “Bad God’s Tower” and Dodge had the name recorded as Devils Tower much to the anger and distress of the Indians.

The tribes have tried to have the U.S. Congress officially change the name back to “Bear Lodge”. The local business community and Wyoming legislators oppose the change because “Devils Tower” has a certain tourist cachet. The Native Americans consider the name to be a sacreligious desecration.

The Native Americans’ distress is understandable. What if someone changed the name of your place of worship to “Devils Sanctuary”?

Colonel Dodge had a long and distinguished military career, but he was very much a man of his times. He visited the Tower a year before  Custer’s losing battle with the Sioux just a short distance away at Little Big Horn. The Indian Wars were at their height. Dodge was not likely to have respected either the Indians nor their religion. Citizenship was not extended to Native Americans in those days. It was common for members of the white race to think of Native Americans as savages and subhuman.  It would be easy for such a man as Dodge to attribute Native American worship practices and their place of worship to the devil and for others to follow that lead whether the designation was accurate or not.

This story makes me think of the human tendency to demonize what and who we don’t understand or can’t control.

For instance, Jesus’ critics were quick to demonize him. After he explained his mission as the good shepherd willing to give his life for his sheep, many in his audience said, “He has a demon and is out of his mind. Why listen to him?” (John 10:19).

When he explained to the Jews that his failure to fit their religious mold was causing them to look for opportunities to kill him, they retorted, “You have a demon, who is trying to kill you?” (John 7:20) Their question would be answered soon enough.

There is a human temptation to try to eliminate those who disagree with us or challenge us. This is the sad way of our broken sinful world. People are demonized to justify their elimination or to justify doing something against their will.

Jesus told the Jews their legalism was spiritually ineffective and they needed him as their Savior. Their response was to label him. “Are we not right in saying you are a Samaritan and have a demon?”  When he replied he did not have a demon but only sought his Father’s glory and to do his will to bring them salvation and eternal life, they responded, “Now we know you have a demon — Abraham died, and so did the prophets, yet you say, ‘Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.’ Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? The prophets also died. Who do you claim to be? (John 8:48-52).

When Jesus told the Jewish leaders he only sought to glorify God his Father, and “Before Abraham was, I am,” they totally lost control in their anger and picked up stones to kill him right then and there. (John 8:54-59). Yes, we  demonize those whom we would kill in our self-righteousness.

As Jesus’ movement grew with more and more demands on his time, his critics condemned his passion and his 24/7 commitment to ministry. His family said, “He is out of his mind” (Mark 3:21). The Scribes watched him and said, “He is devil possessed, and by the ruler of demons, he casts out demons.”

That evoked Jesus’ famous response, How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, it will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man, then indeed the house can be plundered.” He went on to say that those who slander the Holy Spirit by attributing its work to the Devil have committed the unpardonable sin. (Mark 3:23-30).

Jesus also observed that those who demonize him will demonize his followers as well (Matt 10:25). Those whose faith is in God are offensive to those who seek to mold the popular will or to conform to it. Reason, persuasion and reconciliation all involve hard work of relationship and community building, and fidelity to truth. It is so much easier to condemn rather than to build-up, to attack rather than to seek to understand, to demonize rather than to heal and restore, to lie rather than stick to the truth.

I defend the rights of Christian schools to operate according to the beliefs of the Christian denominations that founded and operate them. It was not long ago that the schools of Christians and other faiths were an accepted part of American life, able to operate freely because it was popularly accepted that faith and virtue contribute to the civil good, and religious tolerance contributes to the public order and peace.

But politicians reached out to Christian leaders and offered to champion their moral concerns in return for the votes of their Christian followers. Grand alliances were formed and announced, but the political process with its trade-offs and compromises is ill-suited to the proclamation of the Gospel. The constitutional goal of keeping religion out of  government and government out of religion was trampled in the process. Trying to coerce a Christian culture by law and public policy is not what Jesus said his followers were to accomplish by loving service and self-sacrifice. The result of this effort has led non-believers to think of Christianity as just one more political ideology.

Relying on the power of polls and the ballot box has weakened Christian witness through an us-versus-them mentality.  It has exposed Biblical morality and Christian virtues to attack as expressions of hate, Christians as haters, and Christian institutions governed by such morality and virtues to be strongholds of hate. Christians are demonized as bigots and haters. For our part we protest that is not so, but if we have condemned whole classes of people and their behaviors and have tried to keep them marginalized by law, are we all that surprised when they try to do the same to us when they gain political power?

Popular concepts of religious liberty are increasingly fragmented and ineffective. Conservative politicians use the traditional family like a human shield for any rhetorical shots they want to take about alternative lifestyles and other religions. Progressive politicians wield political correctness and the word “tolerance” like swords to eliminate dissenting viewpoints and dissenters. Liberal politicians have stopped referring to freedom of religion and instead speak of freedom of worship which is a much smaller category of freedom generally meaning believers have a right to attend church but must stay silent in the public square. Politicians of any stripe offer no solutions for Christians. For us to keep seeking political solutions is idolatry.

Christian colleges and universities, and secondary schools to a lesser degree, are facing increasing and explicit attempts to eliminate their very existence as the enemy of what is deemed to be the public good. The activists believe the public good is the elimination of “intolerant” Christians, or at least, the institutions that educate them.

Representatives of major national civil liberties organizations have told California legislators that Christian colleges and universities need to be eliminated or secularized in order to end bigotry and hate against women, gays, lesbians, transgender, queer persons, and Muslims, etc. There is a dearth of evidence that such bigotry or hate is being displayed on the Christian campuses, but the perception is promoted in spite of the facts for political purposes and because of anti-Christian animus.

In defense of my clients, I argue that the Christian colleges and universities are a major contributor of creativity and energy to social service. These faith-based schools offer unparalleled opportunities to low-income and minority students. Fairness and kindness hold sway on Christian campuses because of a Christian world view of transforming love and service. The First Amendment rights of free exercise of religion and freedom from establishment of religion through religion’s control of government or government’s interference in religion bar the government from overriding religious policies and practices on campuses.

My clients have not retreated into isolation. They seek improved dialogue with those who disagree with them. They explain their policies in rational language, and have sharpened their processes for fairness. They do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, but they do hold to Biblical standards of sexual purity and fidelity applicable to all students and employees.

These bridging efforts have not brought about a resolution.Those who do not believe in a living God expressed in Jesus Christ have no sympathy for the followers of Christ. We are now reaping the results of decades of dalliance between the Christian culture and the political culture and the credibility of our witness has suffered.

Those who appeal to the ballot box for power will identify political enemies. But Christ has told us to love our enemies and do good to those who treat us badly. To consider others to be our enemies is to become enemies ourselves. Our demonization of others becomes our own demonization. Only a love of a different kind, a love that originates in the life of Christ resident in us, has a chance of reversing this cycle and even then not on a mass scale.

I hike around The Bear Lodge renamed Devils Tower. I see the colorful Native American prayer bundles tied to the aspens. I don’t understand them, but I respect them. The gospel of Christ teaches us to love everyone and let Christ sort all of us out in the end.

Freedom is an essential element of love. Demonization of anyone declares that person unworthy of freedom and unworthy of love. Jesus freed people from their demons. I cease to be a follower of Christ when I cease to love and I dare not go in that direction.

With a quiet heart, and better directional bearings I had when I came here, I walk away from Devils Tower and return to the road.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him.

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent