Bending the Arc

This essay was written by Pastor Quincy Worthington of Highland Park, IL on September 10, 2025 and is reposted here with permission from the author:

I can already tell there’s something I have to get off my chest if there’s going to be any hope of sleep tonight. It’s going to be long. You can read it, or you can scroll past. I’m not sure it really matters anymore, but I’m writing this to you. Yes, you—the one who cares enough to be reading.

Just this week in America, I saw a video of a precious child of God who fled her country devastated by war. She came here, to the U.S., because she was told we were free and safe. And then I watched her board a bus and be brutally and horrifically stabbed to death. Here in America. One more precious child of God…

This week in America I saw another precious child of God sitting in front of a large crowd. Someone shot that precious child of God. I was told his wife and children were in attendance. Everyone is speculating on reasons and motives. Some say he had it coming, that he was radicalizing college students. But I can’t help but wonder if a more effective way of radicalizing students is to have them watch the public assassination of a precious child of God in front of his own family… Here in America. One more precious child of God…

Shortly after that, the news broke of yet another school shooting, where more precious children of God were harmed; not just physically, but spiritually and emotionally. I’ve sadly seen firsthand the trauma and damage, the loss of safety and reality, that a mass shooting inflicts on a community. I’ve held those hands. I’ve said those prayers. I’ve walked with those ghosts. I still pray every day that you never have to. Here in America. More precious children of God than I can count…

This week I’ve seen the vans and the masked men. I’ve seen the terror as a vehicle screeches to a stop and a precious child of God is grabbed and disappears. I’ve seen the footage of where they’re taken. I’ve heard the stories of what happens to them. And while I know many are here illegally, when I look into their eyes, when I see their photos, I just see another person. I just see a precious child of God who deserves decency, fairness, and the most basic human rights. But those seem to remain ideals rather than reality here in America.

This week in America I saw our President post what he calls a joke; one that, at least to me, implied going to war with a city I love and spend time in. A city where I generally feel safe. I didn’t find the joke very funny. To be honest, I found it alarming. It scared me. The President — who is also a precious child of God — scared me. I try to remind myself that just last year people tried to kill him. Twice. They too tried to extinguish a precious child of God. And I had to watch people mourn that they missed. I can understand wanting to come down hard on crime. But sometimes what the President says and does scares the absolute hell out of me. Here in America…
This week I’ve seen my friends, my friends, my friends… Some of you I know quite well, and some of you I’ve never actually met… I saw you tear each other apart and say hurtful, accusatory things to one another… and to me. I tell myself it’s the price I pay for having friends from such diverse backgrounds and lives. Life would be utterly boring to me if you agreed with me on everything I said or believed. I really try to take people as they are. I really try to see everyone, including you, as a precious child of God.

God, listen: I’m not perfect. I get things wrong. I make awful mistakes. I’ve done things I really regret and wish I hadn’t done. I say things I shouldn’t. I sometimes believe things that are harmful to myself and to others. I stay awake some nights thinking about how I fail to live up to my own standards, let alone Christ’s or God’s. The only thing that brings me consolation in these dark nights of despair is God’s grace. There’s a part of me that wonders if I just NEED a God of Grace and this is just some desperate wish for forgiveness I don’t deserve. Yet, in my heart of hearts I know that God of grace exists. Because I need that grace so badly and because I sometimes feel it so deeply, I feel like the very least I can do is extend it to others. Leaning so heavily into grace means that I have friends who say and do things I disagree with, even things I find abhorrent. But when I look at them, I can’t help but see a precious child of God. I see the same thing when I look at you.

It’s getting harder, if I’m brutally honest. This week changed me in ways I didn’t want to be changed. My faith in God hasn’t been this strong in a long time, but my faith in humanity is at an all-time low. For the first time in my life, I’m asking myself: what happens if all my faith in humanity disappears? Can someone be a minister if they don’t have any faith in humanity? Is faith in God alone enough? Am I going to join the legions of ministers who just can’t take it anymore and leave?

The problem I have, the thing that’s really upsetting me, is it’s never our fault. It’s always their fault. We always blame someone else for how it got like this. They’re the ones who are ruining everything. It’s never me. It’s never my team. You might be reading this thinking the same thing. Others are probably just looking for ammunition to prove it’s my fault. Lord knows, it feels like some of my friends only comment on my posts to disagree with me and tell me it’s my fault. And they’re right. It is. It’s your fault too. We’ve either actively participated in, or stood by and watched, while it happened. And that’s why my faith is wavering. It’s our fault. All of us. But for some reason we refuse to really examine what role we’ve each played in this. I can’t help but think we’ve royally messed this up, and my faith that we can fix it is almost gone. That’s where this whole God of grace thing trips me up…
There’s this story about a precious child of God who they say was literally God’s son. You can believe it or not. That doesn’t matter for my point. What I believe is that the Divine didn’t just live in him; he embodied it so fully that he and the Divine were indistinguishable. He taught things I still find crazy and hard to do: to love enemies, pray for those who persecute you, and care for those who are marginalized and discarded. He taught me that every single person is a precious child of God, even the anonymous ones across the screen, like you.

Honestly, it sounds impossible but what really blows me away is something I don’t think we talk about or point out enough.  I know I haven’t. Jesus didn’t just preach this radical love; he actually lived it out. He cared for the agents of the empire oppressing his people. He even healed the soldier who came to arrest him, after one of his closest friends cut off the man’s ear in defense. He knew that arrest would lead to his own death. He healed their children too. He embodied a radically inclusive love. That love started changing people. So they killed him for it. Publicly. Horrifically. In front of his family. A precious child of God…

It’s an awful and really depressing story, maybe even a cautionary tale, if it ended there.  But they write about a resurrection.  Some people think he literally raised up. Others say it was metaphorical. They blame the other side for getting it wrong and messing up our faith too. I’ve been on both sides of that argument. But one of the writers says at the very beginning: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.” These are precious, precious words to me. Literal or metaphorical, it makes the story of the Resurrection real and true for me.  That one small phrase “the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it” has seen me through my best when I’m being the light and through my absolute worst when I’ve tried to snuff it out.

And tonight, after all that’s happened this week, I’m clinging to those words like a drowning man clinging to a rope. Because I don’t want to lose my faith in you. I don’t want to lose my faith in us. I don’t want to lose my faith in Humanity. And somehow, when I shut out the noise of the world and my own mind and just focus; when I beg this God of grace to guide me back toward the light, I find that John was right. That little light, that last kernel of hope and faith and love and grace, is still there. Even in what feels like a cold, dark heart, that fleck of the divine is still calling me to try again.

Liberal, conservative. Democrat, Republican. There’s enough blame to go around for all of us. It’s all our fault. Mine too. And for that, I am truly sorry.

But no matter how bad, no matter how dark it gets, I still believe the light shines in the darkness. I still have enough faith left in you, in us, in humanity to believe we can fix this. Maybe not on our own… but with God’s help. And I think the first step is to repent. Repent of not viewing each other as human, let alone as God’s precious children. Even if you don’t believe in God and think I’m full of [expletive] — just try. Pretend, if you must. Treat each other as precious children. And even if we do that and love each other, we’ll still get to argue and disagree. And that’s ok. [A good friend] and I disagree on a ton of stuff and I still freaking love that guy! But let our disagreements be about finding the path forward and how to best work together. Let them lead us back to being more than just a flicker of light in the dark. Let us become again that shining city on a hill, reflecting the ideals we all long for.
I believe, almost against every fiber in my body, that the light still shines in the darkness. Here in America. And that light is carried by the precious children of God…

If you’ve made it this far, I’m impressed. This was longer than I thought. But like I said at the beginning, I just had to get it off my chest before I could sleep. It may be asking a lot after making you read all this, but I ask you to at least consider it with some of the same care, faith, grace, and love I tried to write it with.