2025 New Years Aspirations

Resolutions are predictable and, as many will learn after January, not easily controllable.

Resolutions are predictable and, as many will learn after January, not easily controllable.

So let’s try Aspirations instead.

This isn’t any year for typical resolutions or aspirations. This is the first year of an American autocracy. The incoming president’s first term was as a wannabe autocrat, but there were some guardrails in place—even from some of the people around him. This time there are no internal guardrails. And it remains to be seen how resilient to an autocrat American society will be. Will Congress? Civil society? Churches? And how far will the autocrat want to go? Only time will tell.

Without knowing what is ahead, here are my suggested five aspirations.

1. Take some time for a devotional after you wake each morning even before reading or listening to the news (and even before you do you word games). Start the day with some silence, prayer, Scripture, mindfulness. Then see what is happening in the country and the world. I have found Lectio 365 helpful to begin the day. With my sons, I am also reading A Year with C.S. Lewis. And given the time we are in, I am also reading A Year With Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

2. Be attentive to when, where, and how you can stand up for those who will need protection—the most vulnerable and marginalized among us. We need to prepare for the threats of mass deportation of up to 11 million undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers. We must be ready to act—especially white Christian’s and churches—to defend non-white immigrants. Black and brown parents and pastors are very fearful of racialized policing especially against their young people. How white parents and pastors can stand in solidarity with their Black and brown brothers and sisters in Christ should also be planned. If and when those in government try to take away hard earned civil rights, everyone must speak out and stand up in opposition. Autocrats always go after racial minorities first, then other “enemies within” as this newly elected president has also threatened to do. A quote for this new year comes from German resistance pastor Martin Niemöller in the 1930’s:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out -

Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out-

Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me- and there was no one left to speak for me.

3. Learn how to tell the truth and oppose the lies going on all around us. Teach your children not to lie, then demonstrate truth telling to them in big and little ways. In your small family and friend circles, be diligent and vigilant in telling the truth amidst lies. In Bible study and prayer groups, keep pointing to truth when the society is losing the truth to lies. Be personally and financially supportive of journalists and media that do try to tell the truth against poilitcal propoganda. Give courage to pastors to be truth-tellers in their pulpits when autocraric government tries to undermine the very idea of truth itself. People of faith must insist on being truthful in this world and make their best effort to live by truth.

4. Act. Don’t just talk. Avoid just being content to use your words and share your complaints with your circle of friends and your own social bubbles and silos. Taking action is the best anti-dote and alternative to the cynicism and despair which comes from just talking to those who are the same as you. And take action for the common good of your neighborhoods and cities, practical good that your fellow neighbors also see as good and necessary for everyone’s sake not just your own self-interest.

5. Remember the core of all our faith traditions—the summation of the law and spirit—to love your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength; and to love your neighbor as yourself. And recall the Good Samaritan Parable that teaches that the neighbor we must love is the one different from us. There are no “others,” no “us and them,” if we are followers of Jesus. That is true faith which must be separated from the false and idolatrous religion that is nationalist, prosperous, and most concerned with power. Confessing Christ across color lines is the real future of faith. Only a remnant church of minorities can only save us on national and global scales. And in a time of great polarization, we must remember Jesus’ hardest teaching of all—to love our enemies—not by submitting to their agendas, but by winning them over instead of winning over them, and even by non-violent resistance and civil disobedience.

I am going to try to live by these aspirations in the year of our Lord 2025. If you think they might be helpful to you, let’s try them together.

May God bless us in this new year.