That’s when this scene found me again.
In the Gospel of John, the disciples are out on the water at night. The wind is howling, the sea turning restless, their small boat straining against waves that don’t care who they are or what they believe.
Jesus isn’t with them–or so they think.
Then they see something. A figure walking toward them on the water. And instead of relief, they feel fear. Because in the dark, even the presence of the divine can look like a threat.
I keep returning to that scene—not as a distant miracle, but as a mirror. Because if there’s any modern nation that feels like it’s rowing hard against unseen currents, squinting into the dark for meaning, it’s the United States of America today.
We often say the problem is the "absence of light," the absence of Christ, the absence of moral clarity. But that reading might be too simple, too convenient. The deeper disturbance in the story is this: Jesus was never absent.
He was there. They just didn’t recognize Him anymore. That changes everything.
Maybe the American spiritual crisis we’re witnessing is not just about losing faith—but about misrecognizing it. About seeing something approach in the storm and mistaking it for salvation… or mistaking salvation for something else entirely.
In today’s American landscape, that confusion is playing out in full view. The collision between faith and power has become so entangled that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Faith in the Shape of Power
Take Donald Trump—a figure who, for many, represents strength, defiance, even a kind of chosen instrument. And yet, for others, embodies the very opposite of the teachings associated with Jesus Christ.
That tension sharpened when Trump circulated an image portraying himself in Christ-like terms—an act that sparked backlash across the world. Not just political outrage, but something deeper: a spiritual discomfort, as if the lines between symbol and self has been crossed too boldly.
And still, many inside the “boat”—those who identify as followers of Christ—did not recoil. They defended. They affirmed. They stood firm.
Among them, Franklin Graham, a prominent voice in conservative Christianity, who publicly supported Trump’s action.
As Huffpost reported, a religion expert breaks down how Graham's reasoning over Trump's controversial AI image might have revealed more than he intended. Graham wrote:
"There were no spiritual references—no halo, there were no crosses, no angels. It was a flag, soldiers, a nurse, fighter planes, eagles, the Statue of Liberty, and I think this is a lot to do about nothing."
This is where the question stops being rhetorical and becomes unsettlingly real: What does it mean when those who claim to follow Christ do not recognize when His image is being desecrated? Or worse—when they accept the desecration?
A scholar, Deepak Sarma, described this moment as a kind of drift— “conceptually and ethically” away from the core of Christian tradition. But even that word, "drift," feels too gentle. "Drift" suggests passivity, like something carried slowly by tide.
What we’re seeing looks more like navigation. Deliberate. Justified. Explained.
For many, this isn’t a betrayal of faith—it’s an expression of it. A belief that power can be a vessel for righteousness. That flawed men can still serve divine purposes. That the storm requires a certain kind of captain.
And that’s what makes this moment so complex. Not hypocrisy—but conviction.
Serving Two Masters, Quietly
It echoes an old warning from the Gospel of Matthew: “No one can serve two masters.”
We often read that as a clean divide—God on one side, worldly power on the other. But lived reality is rarely that neat. People don’t wake up and choose one while rejecting the other in clear terms. They blend them. They reconcile them. They convince themselves the two are aligned.
Until they’re not.
Until the figure walking toward the boat no longer looks like the one they were waiting for. And fear sets in—not because evil has arrived, but because faith and certainty have collapsed.
Back on that dark sea, the turning point wasn’t the calming of the storms. It was recognition.
Not a command to conquer the waves. Not a lecture on courage. Just an invitation to see clearly. To know. To discern.
Fear, in that moment, was born not from danger—but from misreading what stood before them. That might be the most unsettling parallel of all.
Not that people have lost their faith—but that they may be placing it in something they have not fully recognized.
Not that the storm is overwhelming—but that in the chaos, the lines between truth and illusion, between symbol and substance, have blurred.
And when that happened, even the familiar can become frightening. Even the sacred can be mistaken.
So, the question that lingers is not political, not even purely theological.
It is deeply personal.
In the middle of our own storms—of power, identity, belief—when something rises before us and claims authority over our fears, do we actually know what we are looking at?
Or are we, like those in the boat, gripping the oars, hearts racing, afraid—not because God is absent, but because we no longer recognize Him?
Content & editing put together in collaboration with ChatGPT
Head image created by ChatGPT; art design by Canva
Still photos courtesy of Catholic Daily Reflections, BBC, X.com, Vecteezy, Freepik, & USA Today
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