SOUL SICKNESS
Rev. Cameron Trimble writes here of the "soul sickness" that has infected our society and what we must do to heal.
"The fall of every empire begins with a legal document. A decree, an amendment, a ruling that trades justice for control. The language sounds righteous, but the intent is clear: protect the powerful, punish the vulnerable, preserve the illusion of order. This is how law becomes idolatry.
In her latest article,¹ attorney and activist, Sherrilyn Ifill, names what so many refuse to see: that the scaffolding of white supremacy—once partially dismantled by Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Movement—is being rebuilt in full daylight. The constitutional infrastructure meant to expand the moral circle of belonging is being dismantled by those who never believed in that expansion to begin with.²
"The same soul-sickness that once sanctified slavery and segregation has found new life in a culture addicted to hierarchy. The old lie—some lives are worth more than others—has simply changed its costume.
The Hebrew prophets warned of this moment. “Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees,” Isaiah cried, “who write oppressive statutes to turn aside the needy from justice.” The law, in their time as in ours, had become a tool of domination rather than protection. They understood that legality is not the same as morality, and that a nation can die with its laws intact.
If justice is what love looks like in public, then white supremacy is sin codified — an idolatry that worships power over communion, control over covenant. Every system that enshrines fear as policy desecrates the image of God in human form.
"We cannot meet this moment with the old comforts of neutrality. To claim that the current crisis is about economics, or “cultural anxiety,” or partisan gamesmanship, or “wokeness,” is to hide from the truth: it feels like a war, but it’s really a reckoning, a struggle for the soul of our shared life, for the imagination that can still see every human being as kin.³
The work of our time is twofold: to resist the machinery of injustice and to refuse the spiritual corruption that fuels it. Resistance without reformation of the soul becomes vengeance; contemplation without resistance becomes complicity. We are called to both.
"Perhaps this is the moment for a new Reconstruction—not merely of laws, but of love. The civil rights movement was never just about access; it was about belonging. It was about recognizing that democracy is not an institution but a covenant, a shared promise to honor the image of God in one another. The question now is whether we will keep that promise." —Rev. Cameron Trimble
Rev. Cameron Trimble writes a daily medication that I've recently been turned onto and highly recommend it. She takes a deeper look into our current affairs.
Piloting Faith Archives
Back to Blog