The Custody Battle for Jesus

by

Perspectives

Special to United Methodist Insight | Jan. 21, 2026

One year ago yesterday, I watched a man place his hand on a Bible and swear an oath I don’t believe he understood to a God I’m not sure he’s met. That’s not me being snarky; it’s a simple theological observation.

An anniversary offers a chance to reflect on how time has unfolded, how the world has changed. A year in, I’ve stopped believing that we’re just having a “family argument.”

For a long time, I told myself it was. You know, different emphases, different applications, but I mean, surely we were reading the same book, following the same Jesus. Right?

We were just disagreeing about tactics, weren’t we?

The Thanksgiving-table version of faith: heated words, but eventually someone passes the potatoes and we remember we’re related, don’t we?

I don’t believe that anymore.

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What this year has revealed isn’t some kind of new division, but a fracture that’s always been there, just beneath the surface.

But we shouldn’t be shocked. The flood in Noah’s day didn’t create the violence. It exposed a world already soaking in it.

When a Christian nationalist and I both say “Jesus,” it’s become pretty clear to me that we’re not even having a disagreement about the same person. We’re fighting a custody battle over a name.

Their Jesus baptizes power, blesses deportation, and measures faithfulness by who you’re willing to hurt.

The Jesus I met in flannelgraph stories and gold spray-painted macaroni art touched lepers, centered the poor, and got himself executed because he wouldn’t stop insisting that God’s realm belongs to the people the empire’s always throwing away.

Same name, but let’s not kid ourselves: we’re talking about vastly different faiths.

And so I grieve. Not so much the grief of losing an argument, but more like the grief of discovering the marriage was already dead, the family was already split, and what I thought was a shared inheritance was merely irreconcilable differences wearing matching clothes.

Some of the people who showed me this faith have apparently traded it for a date to the political prom. They taught me that character counts, that truth matters, that whatever you do to the least of these, you do to Jesus himself. I’ve watched as they share obvious lies on Facebook and explain away everything that used to disqualify a person from leadership. (Not two weeks ago, I watched some of the best of them shrug at a young mother’s murder, while some of the worst just laughed.)

I wasn’t wrong about Jesus. But apparently, I was wrong about them. And that’s a different wound.

Then there’s the rage. Directed less at the toddler king than at his chaplains, the ones who know better, who studied Greek, who can quote the prophets but still twist them into permission slips for destruction. They’re not confused ... they’re complicit.

And the fact that I once had such respect for some of them makes the betrayal hit that much harder.

The thing is, I don’t know who wins a custody battle like this. There’s no court to render a verdict, no judge both sides would recognize as having jurisdictional authority. There’s no bar of adjudication to which we may repaire for a verdict. They’ll say they have the real Jesus. I’ll say the same.

But here’s what I think: The verdict isn’t ours to render. The world is watching, and it’ll be the world that decides.

And, turns out, the world’s not breathlessly awaiting our theology papers or our proof-texts before making up its mind. Not by how loudly we say his name or how many Jesus fish we slap on the back of the SUV. The world is going to judge between us by watching what we do.

They’ll see which Jesus feeds the hungry and which one tells them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

They’ll see which Jesus welcomes the stranger and which one cheers the raids.

They’ll see which Jesus weeps at tombs and which one mocks the grieving.

Every day, both versions are on display.

When immigrant families are separated at the border, which Jesus is in the room?

When queer kids are bullied and told they’re an abomination, which Jesus is speaking?

When those with sufficient economic insulation blame the poor for their poverty and then deny the sick care, which Jesus is being preached?

The watching world doesn’t care even a tiny bit about our intramural debates, but about whether the Jesus we claim makes any discernible difference in how we treat the people in front of us.

So, we can’t wait for a verdict. We have to try to live one.

I’m exercising this faith as best I can, with the people who’ve stuck around this long. It’s certainly a smaller cultural house than we used to live in.

But we’re placing our bet on the Jesus who shows up in Matthew 25: hungry, thirsty, a stranger, sick, and imprisoned. Remember? The one who told us that whatever we do to the least of these, we do to him? The one who never confused God’s realm with any nation’s claims?

Yeah, that Jesus. That Jesus is still worth it.

And every day we get to show the world who he is.

Even if that means some folks won’t be coming with us.

The Rev. Derek Penwell is Senior Minister at Douglass Blvd Christian Churchin Louisville, Kentucky. This is a free post from the Rev. Derek Penwell's Facebook page. Click here to read the rest of his Substack essay.