Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻

Follower of Jesus, love my big crazy family, enjoy the church we're planting & yes I'm a loyal Cleveland Browns, Indians & Cavs fan...

[Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻 @jtonsofun]

@NeilShenvi Unroll

[Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻 @jtonsofun]

All of this and I’d post it twice if someone would let me …

[Beth Moore @BethMooreLPM]

I share this post in earnest and (what may prove a naive) hope that a few people caught in the situation I’m about to describe will hear instead of rushing to the usual tropes, criticisms and caricatures. For what it’s worth, I offer this in good faith.

Between 2016 and 2022, I faced a test of the genuineness of my faith so large and consequential, I’m almost at a loss to think of the right adjectives to describe it. It might not have been so big to someone else but it involved so much of my Christian identity, it was all but existential. Well more than that. It was a dying.

It is this test that helps me understand why people who seem deeply devoted to the Lord Jesus and hold the scriptures in highest esteem also hold to a system, institution or leader no matter what they do and defend a side or individual to a degree that is baffling.

I can tell you why because I had to face every bit of it. Identity, community, camaraderie, what we’ve known and loved, what part of it we still love, the people we loved, the people we still love, reputation, what people will think, how you will be judged and condemned and thrown over to the other side who doesn’t want you either. And to whom you also do not align and would not belong. Friendships. How you will be misunderstood and misrepresented. How adrift and alone you will feel. How disliked.

And then there’s this and it would be a mistake to minimize it: your JOB. Your source of income. Your vocation.

This is the part of the crisis I most write these words to convey because I think they are most in play for many right now, whether in media, ministry or politics.

Let me try to put this in the words that were constantly resonant in my spirit in those years. And to this day.

Though you have no other place to go, Beth, and no place to fit and it not only MAY have financial repercussions but WILL have financial repercussions to the ministry and to your family and will also make them targets and none of it will ever look the same or be the same, will you choose what you believe to be right and put everything else in your vocational life at risk?

This is what is at risk for many people whose professional reputations and positions are tied up with leaders, institutions and political parties. Mine was, too. The cost is enormous and the options are often untenable. And so there we are.

Having to cast ourselves on the mercy of God. Not for a third way. But as THE ONLY WAY. The only truth. The only life.

I’ve made multiple errors in judgment. Jumped too quickly to condemn. Spoken wrongly. Remained silent wrongly and confusingly. I never get it completely together.

But what I will tell you is that I believe we are meant first and foremost to call out our own house, our own side, and our own identity group for its mind-boggling hypocrisy. These were my people. Evangelicals. Conservatives.

Claim what you will but I know who I am:

I am pro life from conception to casket.
I am pro small government.
I am pro godliness and the pursuit of a holy life.
I am pro marriage and family and pro-those God calls to remain single and sanctified and I’m deeply thankful for them.
I am pro traditional sexual ethics.
I am pro love of God and love of neighbor and the dignity of every person as an image bearer of Christ.
I am pro love all.
I am pro church. I believe in the community of the saints.
I am pro Bible study to the death and believe the aim of all discipleship is to know and love and follow and emulate Jesus Christ.
I am pro gospel. Dear God in heaven, I am pro gospel. I believe there is one name by whom we must be saved. Jesus.

What I am not is pro Trump.

Wasn’t pro Clinton. Wasn’t pro Biden. But those were not the candidates many in the world that I loved so much were cheering on.

I accept that Donald Trump is my president. I pray for him on a regular basis. I’m a law abiding citizen and pay my taxes. But I believe Trump fosters something in people that makes them lose their way.

[Dylan Allman @dylanmallman]

We are living through a moment where a group of people do not just disagree, they do not even acknowledge a shared fundamental reality.

There is no common frame of reference, no mutual set of facts from which discourse can even begin. They can watch the same video, from multiple angles, and walk away convinced they saw a completely different event.

They exist inside a narrative so deeply entrenched that to question it, to even acknowledge a contradiction, is to commit some sort of ideological treason.

This is a deliberate, conditioned immunity to contradiction. It is a cultivated resistance to evidence. They have developed a mind so thoroughly welded to its chosen reality that it will alter, discard, or fabricate whatever it must to maintain coherence.

They can be shown, in real time, the unraveling of their worldview, and they will patch over the holes with fantasy rather than face any doubt whatsoever.

Politics has turned knowledge itself into a partisan weapon. The expectation is no longer to seek truth, but to defend your team at all costs.

There is a lingering obligation to have an opinion on everything, to be informed at all times, to adopt the correct stance. And so, they improvise. They adopt prefabricated opinions handed down by their faction. They fill in the gaps with instinctive loyalty rather than demonstrating any semblance of independent thought.

The game is rigged, and they know it. Two parties, two choices, two sides that everyone is herded into, and neither is worth the loyalty demanded of them.

But to acknowledge this would be to admit powerlessness, to admit that they are trapped in an illusion of choice. So they cope. They retroactively justify their allegiance by turning their side into something righteous, infallible, and necessary. The alternative is too terrifying.

It is a coping mechanism turned mass psychosis. And it is escalating. When reality itself is dictated by allegiance, when loyalty outranks reason, when every fact must be bent into submission to fit the tribe’s chosen narrative, the outcome is inevitable: war.

When factions exist in separate realities, they cannot coexist. They cannot negotiate, they cannot reason, they cannot even comprehend the other side as anything but a threat.

This is irreconcilable. We cannot function like this. A society cannot sustain itself when its people are no longer individuals but ideological husks, possessed by abstractions, fighting battles for masters who do not even know their names.

You are not your faction. You are not your party. You are not an extension of a collective mind.

The moment you outsource your thinking, the moment you allow yourself to believe that your side must be right because the alternative is unbearable, you have ceased to be an individual. You have become another interchangeable pawn in a game that does not need you to think, only to obey.

Wake up. This war for reality is not one you want to be drafted into.

[Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻 @jtonsofun]

Not a Left or Right issue -

[Libertarian Party @LPNational]

The 2nd Amendment For Dummies – @MrColionNoir

[I am Ken @Ikennect]

I am sure this will not be one of my most successful posts. Posts like this rarely are.
I don't care.
This will be one of the most important I ever posted.

Listen to Alistair Begg - How will you get to heaven?

[Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻 @jtonsofun]

@BethMooreLPM https://t.co/AaOoXQCHfJ

[Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻 @jtonsofun]

The lights are on, H&R Block offices are open, and we are ready to file your taxes. Let’s ring in Tax Season with your biggest refund possible – TODAY. Book an appointment: https://t.co/bHu6FAE5Lx

#TaxSeason #LoveMyJobAtBlock

[Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻 @jtonsofun]

@NFL_DovKleiman Ozzie Newsome

[Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻 @jtonsofun]

@cdotcombrowns A - all day

[Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻 @jtonsofun]

@erichoke just saw Black Coffee Consulting - looks great!

[Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻 @jtonsofun]

@jason_hampton I hope you are well friend … I am grateful for your faithful service to Jesus, and your love for those he loves the found and the lost.

[Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻 @jtonsofun]

@erichoke Meant every word - recommended to a friend this week.

[Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻 @jtonsofun]

@scottsauls thank you for today’s blog … you have modeled well the third way; conviction with grace, and love with lines.

[Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻 @jtonsofun]

@timkellernyc Unroll

[The Walk @accessthewalk]

Join TreVeyon Henderson & Gee Scott Jr. for a FREE youth football camp at Arlin Field in Mansfield, OH! 🏈✝️

Open to kids (any school district!) grades K-8!

Camp Info / Register: https://t.co/FEzKhAJUur

[Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻 @jtonsofun]

@3YearLetterman @SpeakerJohnson @mikepiazza31 @KmartFashion @CaptainDs @montelljordan @TonyDanza @BILOSuperSaver @BillGothard @OfficialFBOP @Whitesnake Smells like Trump cologne all across the nation …

[Jerry Funston🇺🇦🌻 @jtonsofun]

I have found @erichoke extremely helpful during my personal journey of vocational—>biv-vocational—>co-vocational … and am excited for his podcast and the ways it can help others along the way.

[Eric Hoke @erichoke]

Official Podcast Launch Day!

Your Best Work - Career, Calling, Identity

16 episodes are live!
Listen to an episode today:

Spotify - https://t.co/qgUYYKbgGW
Apple - https://t.co/yOT8AJtTFm
Wherever else you get your podcasts.

Subscribe and follow my work here: https://t.co/MhYDMc0h4u

Thanks for your support.

[Eric Hoke @erichoke]

Official Podcast Launch Day!

Your Best Work - Career, Calling, Identity

16 episodes are live!
Listen to an episode today:

Spotify - https://t.co/qgUYYKbgGW
Apple - https://t.co/yOT8AJtTFm
Wherever else you get your podcasts.

Subscribe and follow my work here: https://t.co/MhYDMc0h4u

Thanks for your support.

[Chris Koerner @mhp_guy]

Every few months I check in on this incredible Reddit thread.

Below are my 9 favorite answers of boring and unique businesses that print money: