The church is the cross that Christ was crucified on.

Grow a garden, give food away, resist the temptation to give into hate, change it up and try peacemaking for once, love your neighbor, love your enemy.

Look for a church that might ask that you become poor. A church that is more concerned with showing love to those in need rather than a terrified little church who thinks they "won" because their favorite politician became president.

I don't think anyone is committing idolatry by wanting to live in any part of the world where they can enjoy the basic necessities of life. Granted, many of us here, in the U.S., have well beyond what constitutes basic necessities.

I am not going to say that people who enter the military are doing anything wrong. As I often jokingly tell my students, "Many of my best of friends are in the military!" But it's true. Perhaps not in the Aristotelian sense of the word "friendship" but on so many other levels that matter, we are truly friends.

Many people who live in the USA feel blessed to live in a free country with many opportunities. For this reason, many try to come to the USA, and few ever wish to leave it.

I hope God does not look like a bunch of wealthy white European dudes who are going to script the justification for the subjugation and legal ownership of other human beings based upon the construction of race as a biological phenomenon.