God of Good Lies

Who is God on this Inauguration Day? And what does god have to do with me?

Photo by Benji Aird on Unsplash

Today I can only say that the midwives Shiphrah and Puah kept Hebrew boy babies alive in defiance of Pharaoh and cheerfully lied to Pharaoh’s face when he asked them why they were not more efficient in bringing about their own genocide. And God was with them at the birthing stools, and God was with them in the Pharaoh’s court, and God cheerfully prospered Shiphrah and Puah all of their days for their living and their good lies.

This is the God I can get with; the God who is flexible enough to bless a good lie and protects resistance.

Sometimes I think I am worshiping somebody else’s god, the way I see the same Jesus that fills my prayers, dripped from the mouths of tricksters and murder-mongerers. If Jesus is pleased by the ashes of innocents in Gaza, the starving of people in Congo, the desensitizing violence plaguing American children, or poverty anywhere—just so some billionaires can scorch the earth for a few more bucks before they colonize the stars? Keep that god.

Rich men don’t save the world. There is no Bruce Wayne outside of the comics (and he was quite problematic anyways). The ascent of wealthy people is the bellwether of doom, always. But people cry out for their kings and volunteer to be mascots and jesters and soldiers and slaves, because they love to be ruled, or because limitless power titillates them so they pretend at proximity and the fantasy of attainment.

The rich don’t even see us. They see marks to exploit. In America, that exploitation is uninhibited in its calculated violence. A “healthcare” system that barely covers its people. A food system that exploits the undocumented, excludes low-income neighborhoods, and sprays poisonous pesticides on crops, made by the same companies that ply the population with pills for profit. A “justice” system with for-profit prisons that farm out Black bodies to make bras for Victoria’s Secret, fight wild fires, or flip burgers, while revoking the right to vote; doling out different brands of justice for the wealthy, the white, and everyone else. An employment system that rewards greedy stockholders and CEOs and squeezes employees, punishing them for daring to desire living wages. A tax system that begs little from the wealthy yet bullies the poor. I really can go on and on about how ridiculous The American Dream is for too many Americans, and yet too many Americans, ever hopeful, would rather preserve their right to potentially exploit in the future, than risk a single dollar helping some nigger or some illegal today. They will cut themselves as long as “those people” bleed to death first.

Today, the nakedness of government’s submission to greed is laid bare like an unconscious woman taken advantage of, and many of America’s people gather to gaze upon it withe lurid eyes. They don’t want healing; they hope to grab a piece and pray she stays asleep. Yes, pray. Today’s events are steeped in prayer to mammon and to white supremacy, to misogyny and to nativism. They pray to the god of all these things—who I heard is the American christian god. That god who blessed the vessels of kidnapping and increased white christian wealth through rape, murder, maiming, enslavement, culture-repressing, imprisonment, dehumanizing, segregating, and wealth-stealing from humans that share my hue and origins. That American christian god who is most incensed by trans people or feminized churches or the wrong people immigrating and giving birth (always the obsession with who is giving birth), but turns a blind eye to people denied good healthcare, the injustice system, cruelty to immigrants, grotesquely unchecked greed, and wealth inequality.

I haven’t written in a while because I have only rage to share, and I know that the god that is worshiped most vigorously here in America finds my rage delicious. I also want to honor the God of Shiphrah and Puah and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Harriet Tubman and Sonia Massey¹ (who should still be here). I wanted to share good news with you. I wanted to bear tidings of comfort and joy. But alas, here we are. California is burning and so many people without celebrity attache are suffering. Historic Black neighborhoods have been reduced to memory and ashes. We get to help them, because a Trump administration certainly won’t.

I have not found the balance—but I am looking. I am not spiritually transcendent. I am shoring up my strength, though. Fortifying myself with stories of resistance from the African diaspora. Rediscovering God through the stories of quiet and loud protest within the Bible’s pages. You will not find me seeking the latest news about our government/the cabal of billionaires designing scarcity and mercilessness. I need to protect my mind, my blood pressure, my telomeres. They mean to exploit or kill us.

They don’t see me; I won’t watch them.

Today, in our house, we will be remembering the complexities and beauty of Martin Luther King, Jr. today, our brother in the cloud of witnesses of the God of Shiphrah and Puah and Harriet and Sonia.

In the coming days, months, years, I will be loving and praying and exercising and orgasming and doing everything a body that is free in Christ ought to do. I encourage my Black sisters to live into every one of our senses, to enjoy everything, because we have fought so hard and so well, and have borne so much hatred in fighting to align America with her ideals.

Y’all, she wants to stay asleep.

We were made for love. We were made to discover and taste and feel and witness and breathe and connect and empower and realize and we can’t wait for the right time. Now’s the time to learn the earth again and grow your food. To sign up for that class at the gun range (mmhmm yeah I said it because this book has me in a chokehold). To learn that foreign language. Now is the time to do just enough at work in order to pour your ambitions into your own business; that job doesn’t deserve the marrow of you, your health. Now’s the time to remove yourself from spaces where you feel exhausted and exploited, and get yourself to the places where dreaming comes more easily. Now’s the time to protect and love your bodies with nourishment, movement and loving. Now’s the time to pray and connect to the divine—in community as well as alone, because our collective curiosity and wisdom feeds the soul. I pray we experience the favor of God unfiltered.

If you are like me and were brought up in a Christ-centered faith but find yourself wondering if you’ve been had, ask God to find you in the world around you. God is a generous granter of wisdom. Because the God I know seeks consent before offering presence and guidance. The God I know sent messages of love for the poor and the widow and orphan and foreigner and said our treatment of them would be reflections of true worship. The God I know was willing to risk it all for that message to be sent loud and clear. Not everybody who names the name of Jesus knows Him, and that’s been shown true in the United States too many times to count. Jesus is never the one throwing us in the street to be stoned, withholding bread when we are hungry, ignoring us until another man is present, or advocating for our silence or relegation to domestic service. When we see folks doing these things in His name, they don’t know Him. Jesus is the one rebuking the powerful, shaming the greedy, and offering drowning to the deceitful. Remember that. American christian god wants you asleep to the truth. Stay woke.

1. I speak her name because she is a martyr. She possessed the discernment of God and was murdered in her housedress in her home for being Black, female, and naming the evil for what it was. She believed in God and God communed with her. I wish God had spared her life; I won’t pretend I am not angry and disappointed about this. I sit with the reality that these forces killed Jesus, too.