Clarifying words from Brian Zahnd

On April 2, 2026 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faith, life togetherLeave a comment

There are theologian-writers out there who consistently challenge me, inspire and compel me to prayerful change. Brian Zahnd is one of those. Although I’m including his entire post here, first written in October of 2025, I encourage you to support his ministry and click on his original here.

As Jesus came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

–Jesus (Luke 19:41)

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Whether or not slavery was the direct cause for the first shots fired upon Fort Sumter in April of 1861 is a matter of scholarly debate. What is undeniable is that the fuel that caused the American Civil War to ignite into a conflagration that resulted in 750,000 deaths was two-and-a-half centuries of slavery. From its Jamestown beginnings, the American colonies—and later the United States—practiced one of the most brutal forms of slavery the world has ever known. The preservation of an institution that systematically dehumanized millions of people for the sake of economic gain was not a thing that made for peace! Inevitably that kind of cruel exploitation would overflow its cup and unleash death and hell, bringing everything that is the opposite of peace. During the horror of the American Civil War, the land of the free became a burning Gehenna. Thirty percent of Southern men of fighting age were slain on battlefields that saw the birth of modern warfare. From then on, war would be totalized and mechanized. The four horseman of the Apocalypse galloped across America leaving a wake of war, disease, famine, and death.

But in tragic irony the spiritual revival of the Second Great Awakening had swept through America during the decade before the Civil War. Americans flocked to churches and evangelistic meetings. This was especially true in the more religious South, where Christianity was embraced with greater fervency than in the less zealous North. Across the country revival was on, churches grew, conversions multiplied. People got saved, praised Jesus, and talked about heaven. Then they went to hell. Or at least the same kind of hell Jesus had warned Jerusalem about during his final days. Despite a great revival, a nation of Christians was thrust into a hell of cannonballs, Gatling guns, field hospitals, and amputation saws. Great cities were set aflame and fields were littered with thousands of rotting corpses. The fires were not quenched and the maggots did not die. What had gone wrong? Millions had accepted Jesus and shouted hosanna, but they did not know the things that make for peace. They prayed a sinner’s prayer, “got right with God,” and kept their slaves. They had a faith that would justify the slave owner while bringing no justice to the slave. They had faith that gave them a ticket to heaven and a highway to hell. The religious fervor in the conservative churches of the South only served to convince them that they were blessed by heaven. They were quite certain God smiled upon their deep devotion to their southern-fried Jesus. If they had to go to war to preserve their freedom, so be it—God was on their side. They were sure of it. But there would be hell to pay.

To help you comprehend how wrong the conservative churches of the Antebellum South were despite flaunting their faith in Jesus and clutching their well-worn Bibles, I’m going to enlist the help of someone who was there and saw it all—Mark Twain. In the chapter entitled “You Can’t Pray a Lie” in Twain’s beloved novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn has helped hide Miss Watson’s runaway slave, Jim. But Huck thought he was committing a sin in helping a runaway slave. Huck had learned in Sunday school “that people that acts as I’d been acting goes to everlasting fire.” So in an act of repentance in order to save his soul, Huck wrote a note to Miss Watson and told her where she could find her runaway slave. Now Huck was ready to pray his “sinner’s prayer” and “get saved.”

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world and the only he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see the paper. It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming.

Huck Finn had been shaped by the Christianity he’d found in his Missouri Sunday school—a Christianity focused on heaven in the afterlife while preserving the status quo of the here and now. Huck thought that helping Jim escape from slavery was a sin, because that’s what he had been taught. He knew he couldn’t ask God to forgive him until he was ready to “repent” and betray Jim. Huck didn’t want to go to hell; he wanted to be saved. But Huck loved his friend more, so he was willing to go to hell in order to save his friend from slavery.

Twain did a masterful job of showing us how wrongheaded Christians can be about what constitutes salvation. For Huck to act according to justice, he had to think he was committing a great sin. For Huck to act Christlike, he had to think he was forsaking Christianity. For Huck to love his neighbor as himself, he had to think he was condemning his soul to hell. Think about that a while!

Mark Twain used his skillful pen to skewer the conservative Christianity of the American South. Though Mark Twain wasn’t a believing Christian (and he wasn’t)—he was a prophet to the prevailing Christianity of his day. This was a compromised Christianity in desperate need of a prophetic voice. In seeking to preserve an economy dependent upon slave labor, Southern churches had embraced a fatally distorted faith. Probably without even knowing what they were doing, these Christians had quite effectively used Jesus and the Bible to validate their racist assumptions and protect their vested interests. They went to church on Sunday. They got saved. They loved Jesus. They waved their palms and shouted hosanna on Palm Sunday. But like the crowd in Jerusalem eighteen centuries earlier, they didn’t know the things that made for peace. And Jesus wept over an America headed to hell. The churches were full and slavery continued—until the Civil War, that is. Then 750,000 people died for the sins of America.

This is more than a recitation of history; there’s a lesson to learn here. When we don’t know the things that make for peace, we can barrel down the highway to hell, all the while singing about how much we love Jesus and how wonderful it is to be saved. This should disturb us. How can it be that generations of religiously observant people can say all the right things about Jesus and still be on the wrong road? How can we know the things that make for a good church service but not know the things that make for peace?

Jesus said that something has hidden the peaceful way from our eyes . . . and more often than not, it’s a flag. If patriotism simply means the pride of place that inspires civic responsibility, so be it. But if patriotism means “my country right or wrong,” it’s a kind of groupthink blindness that hides the things that make for peace. Unfurled flags of nationalism have a long history of hiding the things of Christ that make for peace. Whether they are Roman, Byzantine, Spanish, French, English, German, Russian, or American flags, when they hide the things that make for peace, they are no longer the innocent banners of a benign patriotism.

So what are the things that make for peace? What is it we need to perceive if we are to avoid the bloody boomerang of a self-inflicted hell? Jesus told us when he said:

In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it. –Matthew 7:12-14

The things that make for peace are the two great commandments: love of God and love of neighbor, but especially the second command. (Love of God is only validated by a cosuffering love of neighbor.) The “golden rule” of evaluating our actions through the eyes of our neighbor is the narrow and difficult road that leads to life and peace. The golden rule is the narrow gate. The narrow gate is not a sinner’s prayer; the narrow gate is the practice of the Jesus way. The narrow gate is fulfilling the law and the prophets by empathetic love of neighbor in imitation of Jesus. When we hate and vilify others for ideological reasons, when we demonize and dehumanize others for nationalistic reasons, when we use and exploit others for economic reasons, we are on the highway to hell—we have chosen the well-worn road that leads to war and destruction. The deeply disconcerting thing is that it is entirely possible to cruise down the broad road of impending doom while singing songs of praise to Jesus. It happened on the first Palm Sunday. It happened a hundred and fifty years ago in America. It continues to happen today. If we think Jesus shares and endorses our disdain and enmity for our enemies, we don’t know the things that make for peace, and we are headed for an inevitable destruction, even if it takes a generation or two to arrive at our horrible destination. If we console ourselves with the promise of heaven in the afterlife while creating hell in this present life, we have embraced the tawdry religion of the crusader and forsaken the true faith of our Savior.

The road of nonviolent peacemaking is not an easy road, it’s not a popular road, and it’s certainly not a road for cowards. The road of “God is on our side, and he shall surely smite our enemies” is a wide road. A lot of parades have gone down that road. It doesn’t take much courage to travel that road; just fall in step and follow the crowd. A marching band is usually playing. But it’s also the road that leads to burned villages, bombed cities, and solemn processions of flag-draped coffins. Until the self-professed followers of Jesus are willing to forsake the wide road for the narrow way, the popular sentiment for the unpopular conviction, the easy assumptions for the hard alternatives—Jesus will continue to weep while his disciples shout hosanna.

I won’t pretend I have perfected the art of following Jesus on the narrow way that leads to life and peace instead of traipsing down the broad way that leads to death and war. Far from it. I’m a newcomer to the steep and narrow path of peacemaking. If I’m not careful, I can find myself trying to climb the path of peacemaking in a far too unpeaceable way. Which means I am falling on my face—or even tumbling back down the steep path. But still I know it’s the right path. I would not have found, much less chosen to travel, this hard and demanding path unless Jesus had led me on to it. I wasn’t going to be led onto the path of peacemaking by Gandhi or Rumi—as admirable as those men were. If today I’m trying to walk the narrow path of nonviolent peacemaking, its only because its where I find the footsteps of Jesus. It’s an uncrowded path, perhaps at times a lonely path. But it’s worth traveling, because I keep catching glimpses of Jesus farther up the road.

P.S. I wrote this thirteen years ago. This is an excerpt from A Farewell to Mars.

Yesterday, I was clever…

On March 18, 2026 By robertalanrifeIn Beauty, faithLeave a comment

The Story of a Song – Learning to “Unleash Our Goodbyes”

On March 10, 2026March 10, 2026 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, faithLeave a comment

To tell this story I must first connect you with a blog post from 2011. Read this first…

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My oldest son, Calum, and his songwriting partner, Eli, recently wrote a love song entitled The Highs of Hellos. It is a love song of sheer genius on more than one level (but, of course, as a shameless stage Dad, what would you expect me to say?). The opening lyrics paint a black-and-white Casablanca type scenario of longing for love but also of its elusive quality:

“She says hello, monotone,

staring over the glass of a cocktail an hour old.

She says there’s no need to explain,

But then a restroom break turned into a departing plane.

And that bar piano man, he started playing…”

My point is not to depress everyone with sad love songs. What I will say is that, when facing the unspeakable ache of leaving with beloved faces in the rear-view mirror, songs with uncertain endings often make for good travel companions. Elton John once wrote that sad songs say so much. For one who is sad, a truer statement cannot be found. But sadness isn’t always what songs and poetry say it is. There is a good, almost welcome sadness in the wake of friendships, forever sealed but never forgotten, that must endure parting.

Sadness gets a bad wrap in a culture hooked on the elusion of a happiness bought and sold. It has come under hard times since our hope for anything but pushes us to cloak it with…well, anything we can find. It is seen as the hooded marauder, seeking whom it may destroy rather than a potential friend if we could just sit with it long enough to say hello and get acquainted. The sadness of which I speak isn’t the dire hopelessness of unrequited love. Instead it is the bittersweet angst of a love, of necessity, left behind – at least physically.

The last time I wrote of this was upon my return from this year’s grad school January Residency. At that time I admitted to a certain lost-ness birthed of the realization that it was the last of three such residencies and potentially the penultimate meeting of our beloved “Conspirators.” This weekend marked the end of a three-year foray into the wilderness, both mysterious and hopeful, of a Master of Arts degree in Spiritual Formation and Leadership, now complete. As I’ve shared previously, these 18 other dear souls know far more about me than is either comfortable or reasonable given the rather edgy and dangerous personal territory into which we have frequently traveled.

This is the result of all our seeking. It is both reason and end of our doctrine. It is the direction our lives must take if the painstaking journey of vulnerability wed to authentic community life is to yield her ripest fruit of hope. Recognizing that most of the people I know and work with have perhaps never experienced community and awareness of the mutuality of love as I have enjoyed these brief three years creates a fire within me to be a catalyst for it in the community to which I now return.

That and that alone is what turns the “highs of hellos” into the possibilities of learning to unleash goodbyes…

“Where did you go, my darling?

Where did you go, my old friend?

What she did not know,

Is that shot boy with his hands in his pockets,

You were all he ever wanted – somebody to hold,

Life’s just a series of goodbyes with the highs of hellos.”

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Now, in 2026, these words hold as true as ever. We are not islands. We are an archipelago, a unity of each other’s lives; of our stories and shared experiences, of our failures and victories, hard fought and won. In the connective tissue of mystical faith we are never really apart. Instead, we learn quite simply to Unleash Our Goodbyes.

"Conspirators." Our master's graduating class for whom the song was written. — “Conspirators.” Our master’s graduating class for and about whom the song was originally written.

The Gospel of the Wild Messiah

On February 24, 2026 By robertalanrifeIn Christian spirituality, Christianity, life together1 Comment

The Gospel of the Wild Messiah

The Story of a Song

On February 13, 2026 By robertalanrifeIn Christianity, Creative Process, Life of Rob, sacramental living, Story1 Comment

I’m a musician.

More specifically, a songwriter, a composer of three to five-ish minute stories, sung exposés of heart and soul, guts and grime, faces and places. Sometimes they squeeze out of me like toothpaste from the tube, globular and grotesque until they shape up, shine up, or ship out. Sometimes they feel like a Rubik’s cube – confused and mystifying until the right colours align and the palette finds its rightful place. Sometimes they are a town made of Legos, uninhabitable ghettos, angular, sharp, hard on the feet, until the final block snaps into place and home comes into view.

In rare moments, they arrive complete. Finished. No edits required. A gift that asks only to be notated, promptly sung, and properly introduced to whomever might be interested.

This song is one of those.

2015. It came to me while sitting in my reading room at our home in Yakima, Washington. What follows is the story of its (and my own) emergence.

A church music director for most of my adult life, it had been my remit to satisfy front-of-house needs for artistic class, professionalism, cultural relevance (whatever that means), beauty, and involvement in the particular church of my employ. Choral directing, training, and performance; listening endlessly to frequently banal worship songs, pursuing the best ones for consumption; composing and/or arranging new songs; identifying, training, and releasing new musicians; seasonal concerts and performances; hobnobbing with the muck-a-mucks to ensure funding and support to our program; fielding “concerned” emails about my approach, methodology, song choices, or choice of hairstyle (no, really).

I genuinely loved it. I think I’ve been good at it but won’t ask too many questions, just in case…

But, any job, even one as fulfilling as this, can become stretched, insufficiently gratifying to ensure warmth on those cold days of uncertainty and desire for something new. The best tricks up one’s sleeve become well known, even expected, to onlookers. Tricks of the trade, inside jokes, clever banter (at least I thought so) – where once they generated wonder and amazement, now, at best, they go all but unnoticed and, at worst, prompt eye-rolls, chuckles, even groans generally reserved for Dad-jokes.

At least that was my growing perception. I’d spent my last creative dime, so to speak, and was struggling to feel fresh and original. To a dyed-in-the-wool Enneagram 4, that was unacceptable. Diabolical even. It prompted a long period of reconsideration.

A second presenting concern was the resignation of the senior pastor with whom I’d enjoyed years of heady and inspiring co-leadership. Duncan, a young and vibrant Princeton graduate with off-the-charts charisma, energy, creativity, competence, and ideas had joined our staff. I was smitten by his indefatigable creativity, compassionately confident, and compelling leadership. It was, in a word, a bromance.

Duncan and I in 2011

He had hit a wall personally and professionally and felt the need not just to resign from guiding our church, but from ministry altogether (he is now a happy and successful fire fighter). The news hit me like a train. I believed us to be the Simon and Garfunkel, Lennon and McCartney, Plant and Page of our church. By his own admission, he felt similarly. All that, however, was to be no more. I was lost and shouldered it like Apollo’s world-bearing curse. Could I continue doing all this but in brand new ways? Should I do these things but in a new location? Would I find satisfaction doing something else entirely? None of the above? All of the above?

For many, these questions are professional ones, career-defining questions designed to clarify and shape one’s evolving professional life. For me, they were existential and required a deeper dive towards any kind of answer. Let’s try anyway, shall we?

From longing to belonging. Exile to welcome. Banishment to inclusion. Since most of my best writing has arisen from places of the former, it has been exceptionally difficult capturing the latter. A series of essays sought to explore this topic, captured best in the Welsh Celtic notion of “hiraeth.”

Those like me, perpetually wandering melancholics, happiest when a bit sad can feel a little lost as this begins to melt away in the face of…peace. Shalom. How can it be that someone whose cottage industry had been disenchantment and ennui suddenly finds contentment?

After a sabbatical in 2016 to the UK, it was clear that this was where we were truly meant to be. There began a long process of discernment through which we embarked upon a new journey: a move from Yakima, Washington to Edinburgh, Scotland.

“You Want to Fly Again” was my heart’s cry for what we’re currently experiencing. The song had been covertly prophetic of what was yet to come. I was unaware that I’d written a song intended for everyone but which held within it the seeds of an unfolding reality. And that reality is good. Very good.

I encourage anyone who happens upon these words to do so with faith in the God who still works in mysterious and miraculous ways. If this can become our journey, I am bold to say it can be so for you as well.

May it be so.

The Creative Recovery Initiative, episode 11

On January 6, 2026 By robertalanrifeIn Addiction & Sobriety, Life of RobLeave a comment

“The Difference a Year Makes, part 2: So, what now?”

Liam Jerrold Fraser and the Future of “The Kirk”

On October 21, 2025 By robertalanrifeIn Christianity, faith, The Church, Theology / SpiritualityLeave a comment

What is the Church of Scotland for?

Rev. Dr. Liam Jerrold Fraser wrote the book which became my first read upon landing in Edinburgh four years ago to begin our work here. It is entitled, “Mission in Contemporary Scotland.” In depth, concise, well-argued and articulated, and compassionate, this book offered me a foot-in-the-door understanding of what would be our socio-political, religious context in which we would be serving. Since reading this book I’ve become rather a “fan” of this gentleman. His blog continues to provide rich, varied, and challenging conversations around the ecclesiastical quagmire that is currently “the Kirk”, or the Church of Scotland.

I share here the latest piece from that blog which peers into the question haunting most faith collectives: “who are we?” and “why are we here?” Questions I dare say are ones everyone should be asking. Read, comment, agree or disagree at your whim. Follow Liam everywhere. I think you’ll come to value as much as I what he has to say on these important matters.

Grace and peace…R