Yes I have hearing aides, annoying but a courtesy to those with whom I desire to keep close in my life.
In a recent conversation, I was also informed that loss of hearing, if unattended, can have neurological implications.
I know, that's answers a lot of your concerns here lately. Ha!
After that conversation, my friend got to thinking and sent me the following.
Note the spiritual parallels:
"A friend of mine just got hearing aids. Newly prescribed, first time wearing them. And like a lot of people in that situation, he’s adjusting—to the new sounds, to the discomfort, to the realization that his brain has to relearn how to process what it hasn’t been hearing.
And then he finds out something surprising.
If you don’t wear your hearing aids—if you let that hearing loss go untreated—your brain starts losing the ability to interpret sound.
Not just the volume, but the meaning. The neural pathways that once processed words, tones, and patterns?
They weaken.
They get repurposed.
And after a while, even if you put the hearing aids back in, your brain struggles to make sense of what it’s hearing.
It’s not just about hearing. It’s about understanding.
And that’s when it hit me.
Isn’t this exactly what’s happening to the American church?
For years—maybe decades—the church has been tuning things out.
The cries of the poor.
The voices of the marginalized.
The warnings of the prophets.
They turned the volume down, maybe because it was uncomfortable, maybe because it didn’t fit the narrative, maybe because it just wasn’t convenient.
And at first, maybe they could still hear a little. But over time? The silence set in.
And here’s where it gets dangerous: when you stop listening long enough, you don’t just go deaf—you lose the ability to even recognize what you’re supposed to be hearing.
So now, when something blatantly anti-Christ shows up—when political leaders embody everything Jesus stood against—there’s no reaction.
No pushback.
No prophetic voice calling it out.
Because they can’t hear it anymore.
And here’s the part no one wants to hear:
This didn’t just happen to the church.
The church let it happen.
Maybe it was fear. Maybe it was comfort.
Maybe it was the slow drift of choosing power over truth, certainty over humility, empire over the Kingdom.
But whatever the reason—this wasn’t done to the church. The church allowed this.
And let’s be clear: this isn’t about winners and losers in elections.
This isn’t about party lines or politics-as-sport. This is about culture.
About the kind of people we are becoming. About whether the church actually believes its own self-proclaimed mission—to spread the love of Christ—or if that was just a slogan that looked good on a mission statement.
Because history tells us where this leads.
The Pharisees, so obsessed with their religious order, cozied up to Rome and missed the Messiah standing right in front of them.
The early church, once a movement of radical love and resistance, traded its soul for political influence under Constantine.
And Nazi Germany? The church didn’t just stay silent—it sang louder to drown out the cries from the train cars.
And now?
The American church finds itself in a similar place—deaf to injustice, numb to hypocrisy, and, in some cases, outright celebrating leaders who embody the exact opposite of Jesus’ teachings.
The longer this goes on, the harder it will be to recover.
Because at some point, the damage becomes permanent.
Unless.
Unless they put the hearing aids back in. Unless they start listening again. Listening to the voices they’ve ignored, the cries they’ve silenced, the God they claim to follow.
Or—maybe more realistically—until a generation of Bonhoeffers stands up.
Because maybe the church as an institution won’t fix itself. Maybe it’s too far gone, too tangled up in power and nostalgia and the illusion of influence.
Maybe the silence has set in too deep.
But there are always those who refuse to play along.
Those who still hear.
Those who refuse to let the Gospel (the love demonstrated in the life of Christ) be hijacked by empire and power and fear.
And if history tells us anything, it’s this:
When the church stops listening, God starts speaking through the ones it tried to silence.
And maybe that’s where the hope is."
Thinking I'll keep these pesky pieces of plastic in my ears!!
A preacher told me 30 years ago the day will come when you will have to decide if you’re a Christian or a Methodist. That day arrived fall of 2024. After a nasty lawsuit against the UMC and numerous churches in western North Carolina my church voted almost 3 to 1 to leave the UMC and a few weeks later voted to go independent
Very authentic and truthful.