A Little Behind the Scenes…
My friends,
Every so often, one of your messages makes me stop whatever I am doing and remember just how much is at stake in this little ministry.
Someone is finding their way back toward Christ. Someone is beginning to trust again. Someone who has spent decades in the Church has discovered something in Scripture they were never taught, and suddenly a familiar passage opens into a fuller understanding of the God who loves them.
One reader wrote something that has stayed with me since:
“You took me into your community when things were really rough for me. They still are, but you have guided me with your wisdom and kindness and are helping me become closer with the Lord.”
That has become a guiding light for this ministry. I know God doesn’t just snap His fingers and fix our problems. He accompanies us through them, and ministry is one of the ways God chooses to embody that grace.
This is one of the places where the Holy Spirit is working. I just know it.
And I want us to have years to keep ministering to God’s people together.
That is what I see when I think about where Message From the Margins is going. The weekly podcast has already given us more time to follow a story and meet the people who helped shape our faith. When our live Bible studies begin on September 29, you will be able to bring your questions into the conversation as we explore the text together. I am looking forward to hearing what you notice, especially the things Father has managed to overlook.
Soon, I will also be traveling to Rome to film features for you. We have spent so much time talking about the history of Christianity; I want to bring you into the places where that history unfolded, where the people we discuss lived, worshipped, struggled, and left something behind for us.
Then, on November 29, our “A Walk With” series begins, featuring A Walk With Jesus of Nazareth and A Walk With the Great Women of the Bible. My hope is that these will give us room to accompany people whose stories deserve more than a passing mention, and to discover how their encounters with God might help us recognize our own.
Through all of this, your emails and DMs keep arriving. I answer them because I know that sometimes writing to a priest takes courage. The question may have been bothering you for years. You may be wondering whether there is still a place for you in the Church, or whether you can say what you actually think without somebody showing you the door.
You should be able to ask. You should receive an answer from someone who cares.
That is why these essays, the podcast, and our pastoral conversations are available without a paywall. Your messages tell me what that means in your lives. They also make me determined to build something dependable enough to remain here when you need it.
But I need your help to give this ministry that future.
The work ahead requires equipment we still need to buy, including a new camera or two, lights, and microphones for the Rome features. The software bills keep arriving, often with the cheerful announcement that they will now be larger. And behind everything you receive is the time it takes to research, write, film, edit, teach, and answer the next person reaching out.
I believe deeply in what we are building. I also have to make sure we can afford to keep building it.
If Message From the Margins has become part of your life, will you become a supporting member today?
About ten dollars a month helps keep this work going. That is roughly the cost of a Taco Bell meal. I hope we provide at least as much nourishment, though I concede that the absence of a drive-through is a weakness in our business model.
If you can choose an annual membership for $99, you will save compared with paying monthly and give the ministry resources we can use now to prepare the work coming your way. That ability to plan ahead makes a real difference when I am deciding what we can responsibly take on.
If money is tight, please remain here without guilt. Read, listen, ask your questions, and let this community care for you too.
For those who have room to help, I am asking you to take that step now. Help me make this a place we can return to through the changes, questions, and difficult seasons the coming years will bring.
We have a Gospel to share, vulnerable people to care for, and yes, some dirtbags to contend with along the way. I would like to be doing all of that with you decades from now.
Will you help carry this mission?
Yes, I’m In. Let’s Build This Together.
With enormous gratitude,
There was a time when the most consequential claim I expected from a pillow salesman was that I would wake up with less neck pain.
I miss that arrangement.
Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow and a familiar face from television advertisements, became one of the loudest promoters of Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Somewhere between the bedding and the republic, he expected us to accept him as an authority on voting machines.
The election was not stolen. Trump lost. In Georgia, a statewide hand count confirmed the winner reported by the machines. In the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News, the judge found that the challenged statements about Dominion’s supposed role in stealing the election were false. The lie had a president promoting it, television programs broadcasting it, and people willing to defend it long after the evidence should have settled the question. Georgia’s audit; the Dominion ruling.
Lindell supplied accusations of his own. In June 2025, a federal jury found that he had defamed Eric Coomer, a former Dominion employee, and awarded $2.3 million against Lindell and his media platform. Coomer testified about the damage to his career and personal life. Associated Press.
I can make jokes about the pillow guy. He provides an exhausting amount of material, and I am never short on snark myself. But Eric Coomer had to live with what was being said about him after the rest of us finished laughing.
Then consider Alex Jones.
Jones used his broadcasts to spread the lie that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax. Parents whose children had been murdered were subjected to threats and harassment by people who believed the conspiracy theories. In court, Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son Jesse was killed, addressed Jones with three words that should never have been necessary:
“My son existed.” Trial reporting.
A mother had to defend the existence of her murdered child because people found a broadcaster’s lies more compelling than her grief.
Those people also had to live their lives beyond the conspiracy. Not only did they have to grieve their horrific loss and trauma, they had to endure the social cost of his lies. They bought groceries, went to work, and spoke to other people who may have trusted their judgment. The person repeating someone’s monstrous accusation does not necessarily look monstrous. Sometimes the accusation arrives via the facebook feed of a respected neighbor whose other messages are photographs of the grandchildren and bible quotes.
Believe it or not, pun entirely intended, Scripture has quite a bit to say about trusting con men. That was the slightly mischievous thought that started this essay. The version in my head was more colorful, but the pursuit of Christian virtue occasionally manages to get a word in.
What has stayed with me, though, is how insistently the Bible turns toward the audience.
What responsibility do we bear for the lies we choose to keep believing?
The commandment has a neighbor in it
Most of us remember the commandment against bearing false witness. We may remember it as the religious version of the rule our parents gave us after discovering which sibling actually broke the living room lamp. (My family had three boys, broken decor items were relatively common in our house. It was always my brothers’ fault, for the record)
But the commandment concerns testimony against your neighbor. Somebody can be condemned, deprived of justice, or put in danger because of what another person says. Truthfulness protects a human being.
Exodus makes that connection remarkably explicit. After the Ten Commandments, the book gives Israel instructions for the practical life of the community being formed after liberation from Egypt. Worship has consequences for lawsuits, property, work, and the treatment of strangers. But God has opinions about what happens after the religious service ends.
Among those instructions are these:
“You shall not spread a false report. Don’t join your hand with the wicked to be a malicious witness.
“You shall not follow a crowd to do evil. You shall not testify in court to side with a multitude to pervert justice.”
I bet you’re starting to see where Father is going.
Look at who is being addressed. The warning reaches the person spreading the report and joining the crowd.
Ahem, January 6th. Ahem Ahem.
“I heard it from someone else” does not answer the moral problem. Neither does “Everyone I know believes it.”
Then the passage becomes even more inconvenient. A few lines later, Israel is told to return an enemy’s wandering animal and help the overloaded donkey of someone who hates them. The same section protects the poor from injustice and forbids oppression of the foreigner.
Our neighbor’s claim upon us survives our dislike of them. We still owe them truthful testimony. We still have to help with the overloaded donkey.
I appreciate how thoroughly Scripture anticipates my attempts to find an exception.
An ancient court and a family group chat are different places. But both depend upon what people will accept as testimony, and both can become places where a person’s reputation is destroyed. Today, someone can distribute an accusation to thousands of people without ever standing before a judge or meeting the person being accused.
Our free speech rights are a beautiful thing, but having the freedom to speak does not exempt us from the responsibility that comes with it.
Imagine receiving a story alleging that a teacher, an immigrant family, or a political opponent has done something terrible. The accusation fits what your favorite commentator has been saying. Other people are already furious. Passing it along feels like helping.
Exodus asks us to recognize the person whose life our participation may make harder. Before joining the crowd, we owe that person something better than our satisfaction at finding a story that fits.
Why the lie tastes so good
Proverbs understands that destructive speech can be attractive. In chapter 26, gossip is compared to delicious morsels. Later, a malicious person’s appealing words receive this warning:
“When his speech is charming, don’t believe him.”
Read that within verses 24–26, and the concern is clear: compelling speech can conceal malice. Pleasant delivery gives us no guarantee about the person speaking or the purpose their words serve.
Now, you may reasonably object that Alex Jones is about as charming as a smoke alarm at three in the morning.
But flattery can sound angry. It can tell us that we are the few people brave enough to see what everyone else has missed. It can assure us that our suspicions prove our intelligence, that our resentment is righteous, and that anyone challenging us has already been fooled.
The appeal is belonging to the people who know.
St. Paul recognizes a related danger in his letter to the Christians in Rome. Near its conclusion, he warns them about people whose smooth and flattering speech deceives the innocent. He measures their teaching against the faith the community received and urges discernment about whom they follow. Being receptive and well-intentioned does not make someone immune to manipulation. Romans 16:17–19.
A lie can become particularly difficult to surrender when it has given us friends, purpose, or an explanation for our pain. Admitting error may mean admitting that we accused someone unjustly. It may mean returning to a family member whose warnings we dismissed. There can be a great deal of embarrassment waiting on the other side of an honest sentence.
That helps explain the temptation to keep defending it.
It also helps us understand why correction should leave a person a way back. If someone finally says, “I think I was wrong,” please resist the urge to organize a victory parade through their humiliation. You wanted them to recognize the truth. Give them room to live differently because they have.
The sheep’s clothing is supposed to look convincing
Jesus places His warning about false prophets near the end of the Sermon on the Mount. His listeners have heard Him teach about mercy, enemies, prayer, money, and the treatment of other people. Then He tells them to beware of wolves arriving in sheep’s clothing and to recognize them by their fruit. Matthew 7:15–20.
The disguise is doing a job. Familiar religious language can make a person seem safe. A Bible in the hand or a cross around the neck can encourage us to lower the scrutiny we would apply to someone else.
Jesus directs us toward what the person produces. A few verses later, even impressive claims about deeds performed in His name fail to substitute for doing His Father’s will. The sermon ends with the difference between hearing His words and putting them into practice.
That is a demanding test for religious leaders who lend Christian authority to political power.
At Trump’s 2025 inauguration, Franklin Graham, the evangelist and son of Billy Graham, prayed that God had saved Trump’s life and raised him up with strength and power. At the White House Easter gathering in April 2026, Paula White-Cain, Trump’s spiritual adviser, compared his treatment to Christ’s betrayal and false accusation. Graham’s prayer; White-Cain’s remarks.
When a politician’s struggle for power is told as a sacred story, his followers are given a powerful reason to treat criticism as persecution. A minister should be helping them examine his conduct. Comparisons with the innocent Christ can make that examination feel like disloyalty to God.
Bishop Robert Barron, the Roman Catholic bishop behind Word on Fire and arguably America’s most famous catholic cleric, unfortunately belongs in this examination too. When Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV in April, Barron did call for an apology, but in the same statement, he emphasized the administration’s outreach to believers and described disagreement over the concrete application of Catholic principles as possible among people of good will. Barron’s statement, reported by MPR.
My objection is to what that framing does. Leo was warning against the idolatry of power and the enlistment of God’s name in the service of war and death. Those are grave moral judgments. Reducing the conflict to disrespectful language and differences over application makes the Pope’s prophetic warning easier to put aside. To put it plainly, Bishop Barron appeared to intentionally or unintentionally undermine Pope Leo in the service of Dondald Trump. Leo’s peace vigil address.
We should be especially alert when the religious voice praising our leader is welcome and the religious voice challenging him suddenly needs to stay out of politics.
Which voice are we actually allowing to teach us?
And now, before anybody gets comfortable
Democrats are subject to every word of this. So are progressive commentators, liberal clergy, and the people sharing a false story because it makes Donald Trump look worse.
There is enough documented harm to oppose without inventing another offense. A misleading edit remains misleading when we enjoy the result. A fabricated quotation remains fabricated when it sounds like something the person might have said. The convenience of the accusation does not relieve us of responsibility for checking it.
The people exercising power deserve particular scrutiny because their decisions reach into other people’s lives. That does not confer innocence on their opponents. Nobody gets to leave this examination carrying a certificate that says My Side Has Completed Christianity.
And I have a particular responsibility here. I write about people whose conduct angers me. I want readers to understand the harm I see. That gives me a reason to be especially careful with material that makes my argument easier. If I publish something false, I owe you a correction. My collar does not turn a screenshot into evidence.
In my public ministry, I think I’ve been pretty darn good about sticking to the whole truth, and I hope you agree. In the Instagram reels I forward to my cousin when the collar comes off and the Mets game goes on… maybe less so.
So Father has some work to do too.
We also need to distinguish an initial mistake from a sustained refusal to reconsider. Someone may have trusted a relative, a pastor, or a broadcaster who had never given them an obvious reason for doubt. Information can be difficult to evaluate. Being deceived can involve real betrayal.
But when reliable evidence arrives, we have a decision to make. If we keep disqualifying every source that challenges us, eventually we have arranged a world in which our belief cannot be corrected.
Ask yourself what evidence you would accept. Could the person you admire admit wrongdoing? Could a full recording change your understanding of the clip? Could the people directly affected tell you something your commentator has left out?
If the answer to every possible correction is that the conspiracy has reached another person, the belief has become impossible to examine. We should be frightened by our willingness to live that way.
Sincerity cannot carry the whole moral burden. The person who sincerely believes an innocent neighbor is dangerous can still make that neighbor’s life unbearable. Loving the neighbor requires attention to what is true about them.
The Christian freedom to say, “I was wrong”
One of the most hopeful things Christianity teaches is that our failures can be brought into the light. We confess them to a God whose mercy makes repentance possible. We do not have to spend the rest of our lives defending the worst thing we have said simply because admitting it would hurt.
Ephesians describes Christian life as putting away an old way of living and being renewed. Then comes a very practical instruction:
“Therefore, putting away falsehood, speak truth each one with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.”
The letter addresses a community learning to live as Christ’s body. Falsehood damages people to whom we belong. In the verses that follow, speech should build people up, slander must be put away, and forgiveness is grounded in what God has already done for us in Christ.
There is a life available beyond defending the lie.
It may begin with removing a false post and publishing a correction where the people who saw it can find it. It may require returning to the same family conversation and saying, plainly, that the accusation you repeated was untrue. If you harmed someone’s reputation, repair should reach the people who heard you damage it.
We can also become more deliberate before we share. Read the article behind the headline. Look for the original recording or document. See whether the correction you are dismissing actually answers the claim. Give yourself permission to say, “I don’t know enough to pass this along.”
There will still be plenty of internet left when you have finished checking.
If someone you love is caught in this, speak to the person you know. Ask what convinced them and whether you can examine it together. Challenge the accusation clearly. You can keep a door open without allowing harassment or accepting abuse, and nobody harmed by these lies owes their tormentor another conversation.
The hope is that a person can stop helping the falsehood travel. They can recover the freedom to hear their neighbor.
Scarlett Lewis should never have needed to say that her deceased son wasn’t part of a liberal hoax. A mother’s grief should have encountered people willing to comfort her. Instead, she had to defend her child’s reality against a story other people wanted to believe.
The commandment places us beside that mother. It asks what our words will do to her life.
Before we repeat the accusation, before we add our agreement, before we press share, there is a neighbor to whom we owe the truth.
Let Us Pray
Lord Jesus Christ,
Free us from the need to be right at someone else’s expense.
When a lie flatters us, give us the wisdom to question it. When the truth embarrasses us, give us the courage to receive it. Help us recognize the people who must live with the consequences of our words.
Protect those threatened, slandered, or driven from the life they knew by false accusations. Bring them trustworthy companions, practical protection, and justice. Help those who have repeated lies find the courage to stop and the patience to repair what they can.
Keep Your Church faithful when powerful people offer approval. Keep us faithful when the people we love would rather we agreed with them.
You know our failures, and You have not abandoned us. Teach us to confess without excuses, to correct without cruelty, and to welcome the person who is trying to find a way back.
May the neighbors who encounter us have less reason to fear and more reason to hope.
Amen.
And Now It’s Your Turn
Have you ever changed your mind about a claim because someone helped you examine it? What made their correction possible to hear?
I would also like to know what you do before sharing a story that makes you especially angry or especially pleased. Those may be the stories that deserve our closest attention.
Tell us in the comments. Please keep accusations about private individuals out of the discussion; we can examine our habits without putting another neighbor on trial.
If you know someone trying to challenge a loved one’s belief in a harmful lie without humiliating them, please send this reflection to them.
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Three Episodes, Plenty to Discover
If you have enjoyed exploring Scripture with me here, come spend some time with the Message From the Margins podcast. All three episodes are available now. Start with whichever question catches your attention.
Episode I · How Did the Bible Become the Bible?
Who decided which books belonged in Scripture? Follow the writings, communities, and arguments that helped shape the Bible we hold today. The history has considerably more human involvement than a book arriving from Heaven with a table of contents.
Episode II · How Did the Church Become the Church?
A Roman governor interrogates two enslaved Christian women. Their witness opens a much larger question: how did the movement gathered around Jesus become a Church that could endure? Come meet the communities who had to work that out.
Episode III · The Stone Which the Builders Rejected
A disabled heir receives a summons from the king who occupies his grandfather’s throne. A woman hides spies in Jericho. An Ethiopian traveler sees water and asks what could prevent his baptism. Meet people whose stories challenge the judgments we make about who belongs.