The Good Spell Has Become The Bad Spell
Telling the difference between good and bad, real and fake, love and hate
The word “Gospel” comes to us from the Anglo-Saxon “good-spell” (often written as Godspell), meaning a Good Story. For us of course, “spell” can mean listing out the letters that make a word, or taking a break from work, or an incantation that causes some kind of magic to happen. But in this older usage it also could mean Story. There’s significant wisdom nestled there because stories have power to shape us and operate on us much the way any short phrase muttered by Merlin might, even (maybe especially) in ways that don’t make sense otherwise. It is just this sort of spell that many Christians are under and the only explanation I can think of for their inexplicable behavior.
The Good Spell the Anglo-Saxons were talking about was the core Story of Christianity: that God had come in the flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, a person who went about doing good, healing the sick, setting people free from evil powers, even restoring dead people to life, teaching everyone about God’s (who he called Papa) revolutionary and inclusive love for all people, and training followers to order their lives around sharing that love. All this goodness ran Jesus afoul of those in power who had him killed (as he predicted would happen) but Papa’s love proved so revolutionary that it raised Jesus back to life and that same love energized his apprentices to carry on the work of sharing Papa’s love near and far to all people, bridging all the barriers and barricades people erect against each other, accepting and loving all manner of difference and diversity. It really is a Good Story and none the less for being true.
But somewhere along the way, a retelling of the Good Story cropped up, and this version isn’t good at all. In this revision, Jesus didn’t come to show us and train us in the Way of Papa’s revolutionary and inclusive love. Instead, Jesus came solely to be a human sacrifice to appease a God (who is decidedly not Papa) angry with humans, not so much for injustice and awfulness to each other, but because of a curse God put on everyone after the first pair of humans committed a single act of disobedience, plunging the entire human race onto a path to eternal damnation. The only thing to prevent a person from spending eternity being tortured, so this story goes, is to agree that Jesus is God’s Son and died in our place, taking on himself the punishment we deserve. Those who buy that story are safe, everyone else burns in hell forever. If you grew up in an American evangelical, Pentecostal, fundamentalist, Mormon, or conservative Catholic Church (and I’m sure I’m leaving a few others out here, and yes all of this is U.S. specific though it reaches beyond our orders too), you’ve heard this tale and it has kept you up at night, and maybe scarred you for life. It’s a Bad Story and has become quite the Bad Spell, quite a curse.
When I say it’s a bad story. I don’t mean it isn’t compelling, it sure is that. It’s easy to tell, its internal logic makes sense, and it really stays with you after you hear it. It’s not good in that it gets everything wrong. The God in this story can’t be good or just. This God is irrationally angry, excessively punitive, and rules by caprice not justice. What this God says is: “someone has to pay for this, someone has to die for this,” — and this can make sense to us because all too often that’s the way the world works. But just before his arrest, Jesus declared that “the ruler of this world has been condemned.” Jesus assigned the opposite meaning to his death than what the Bad Story tells. The Cross wasn’t sending a message that someone has to pay for this. The Cross tells us that the Good Story of revolutionary, inclusive love puts the Bad Story of someone-has-to-pay so far out of its reckoning that those under the Bad Spell sometimes resort to violence to make someone pay anyway. Forcing the Cross under that logic turns the Good News into the Bad News, turns the Gospel into the Curse.
The Evangelical gospel is a Bad Spell — it puts violent, vindictive rule back on the throne and trains people into allegiance and submission to it. It is very effective at training and even controlling people, and having gotten Good and Bad reversed, the Bad Spell renders a person unable to make good moral decisions. This is at the root of the widespread sexual predation committed by pastors and clergy — and all the coverups of those evils by complicit church leaders. This is the logic behind white Christian nationalism and authoritarianism — those under the Bad Spell aren’t opposed to a capricious, spiteful, strongman autocrat, that’s what they imagine God to be like, so why not a king after the same fashion? These are extreme and vague examples, so let me give a couple of specific examples (the latter no less extreme than these).
In the recent midterm elections, Pastor Raphael Warnock ran for reelection against Hershel Walker. Pastor Warnock has pastored for over 25 years and is the Senior Pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the church Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pastored in his time. By all accounts, Pastor Warnock is a faithful Christian, a good pastor, a thoughtful leader, and an eloquent communicator. Warnock was John Lewis’ pastor and carries on the heritage of the Civil Rights Movement that has been so important for renewing the American experiment. By sharp contrast, Hershel Walker is observably not fit to serve as one of 100 U.S. senators. He often doesn’t make sense, talking about vampires, China air, and even saying of himself, “I’m not that smart.” He has greatly exaggerated (to say the least) about being a sheriff, an FBI agent, an administrator of six hospitals, and valedictorian of his college graduating class (he didn’t graduate). The stories of many children and abortions are too numerous to even keep track of, as are his ever-changing explanations of them. His entire candidacy is evidence of the cynicism and disdain that far-right political operatives have for government in general. It is clear to everyone, including his supporters, that if elected, Walker will merely do and vote as he’s told. Georgians can’t expect any leadership or policy solutions from Walker. Most other Georgians were able to make this easy choice, but 88% (!!) of white evangelicals voted for Walker instead of Baptist PASTOR Warnock. Pause and think about what it takes to get 88% of tens of thousands of people to fall for the same ruse. They are so under the Bad Spell, they can’t tell a real sheriff’s badge from a child’s toy. They are sure to vote in like numbers in the run-off election in two weeks. Hopefully, there are enough people in Georgia not spellbound.
This past Saturday night, Club Q, an adult-oriented gay & lesbian nightclub in Colorado Springs became the site of the 600th mass shooting in the U.S. this year. Five people were murdered and seventeen more wounded by a gunman wielding an AR-15. Mass shootings have become daily life in America (there was another one last night at a Wal-Mart in Virginia). But a couple of things set the Club Q massacre apart. First, it comes right on the heels of that same midterm election in which so many far-right candidates (including our own Florida governor) vilified LGBTQIA+ people, targeting them intentionally and specifically as a way to appeal to a certain subset of voters — that same 88% of white, Georgia evangelicals and their counterparts across the nation. This tactic isn’t new. North Carolina Republicans used it in 2016 with their ridiculous “Bathroom Bill.” The fear mongering isn’t subtle, it’s obvious to see — for anyone not under the Bad Spell, but the control the Bad Spell has (88%!!), combined with demographics and surgical gerrymandering, has made this a strategy that works for those cynical and callous enough to use such an Unforgivable Curse.
The other thing that sets the Club Q massacre apart is the conversation that has ensued since Saturday night. I made a Facebook post Sunday after I heard the news, lamenting what had happened. Not long after, a friend added a comment basically saying the victims got what they deserved. Mortified, I deleted it immediately hoping none of my queer friends had seen. And in the days since, I have seen and read similar sentiments made again and again, often by Christians. On Twitter (which is becoming more of a hellscape than ever), theo-bros are flooding post after post with vile comments lauding and applauding the murders of queer people. Tucker Carlson threatened on national television that these killings will continue, and I don’t think I’m going too far in imaging Fox News watching white American Christians nodding in agreement with him. I’m old enough to remember hearing preachers refer to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s as God’s judgment upon gay men. They preached it with relish, and many an amen from the congregation, fitting it right into the Bad Spell — “someone has to pay for this, someone has to die for this,” except they wouldn’t let the blood sacrifice of Jesus apply to these people, not even their own children and loved ones sitting right there in the pews next to them being traumatized in real time. These people were Other, they were Queer, for them it isn’t enough just to buy into the Bad Spell, they could only escape violence and torture by also not being who they are, not loving who they love. This excusing and even praising of the outright murder of people is the nadir of the Bad Spell at work.
This is why deconstruction is necessary — and often has to include a time of detoxification. When a person has lived their whole life under the Bad Spell, had their thinking and feeling and prejudices shaped by it, it takes a lot of work to unravel, to get free of all that baggage. It’s nothing short of a lifelong effort. So many Christians are so far removed from the Good Spell of the Jesus Story, they can’t tell real from fake, good from bad — or love from hate. I’ve seen so many times lately people posting this, and even wearing it on tee shirts: “there’s no hate like Christian love.” That’s the Bad Spell right there. It’s what we’ve come to be known for. It’s going to take a lot to break the Bad Spell.
I’m still convinced the Good Spell is stronger than the Bad Spell. I’ve seen it at work, it has a depth of power and a spreading energy far beyond what the Bad Spell can muster. We must not underestimate the power of the Bad Spell (88%!!) but we must not be afraid of it either, not shy about calling it what it is. Yes, it holds seats of power (in Christian publishing companies and seminaries for instance), it is inclined to do that. But there are many voices telling the Good Spell and it’s never been easier to share than it is now (even on Twitter). Most of all, there’s nothing better than living under the Good Spell of revolutionary, inclusive love and sharing that with every neighbor we meet. This is a Better Story, the Good Spell. It really is a Good Story and none the less for being true.