William Cronnon was eating lunch at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in April 2014. His waitress accidentally refilled his glass with a mixture of water and Eco-San, a commercial-grade bleach.

According to his attorney, Cronnon went to the emergency room for treatment and developed gastrointestinal issues I won’t describe here. The attorney stated that Cronnon’s injuries were “severe and persistent enough” that he could no longer work. The case went to trial, where a jury awarded Cronnon compensatory damages totaling $4.3 million and punitive damages of $5 million.

I can find no evidence that the waitress intended to harm him or that he intended to be harmed. She sincerely thought she was refilling his glass with water. He sincerely thought he was drinking water. 

But both were sincerely wrong.

Former policeman indicted in death of his mother

This week we’re exploring ways to relate redemptively to our broken society. On Monday, we discussed New York Times columnist David Brooks’ compelling description of America as “falling apart at the seams.” Yesterday, we identified three reasons to choose compassion in responding to those who reject biblical truth and morality.

Today, let’s take an additional step into such solidarity.

Some sins are obviously intentional and deserve the opprobrium of society. An example is the former New York police officer who has been indicted in the death of his mother, who was found nearly decapitated in her Queens home last year. 

At other times, those who suffer are not at fault and deserve our full sympathy and support. An example is the disaster in Tonga caused by the largest volcanic eruption in more than thirty years and the resulting tsunami waves it sent crashing across the Pacific. Clearly, no one on the island could have caused or prevented the destruction they experienced.

Two compelling calls for compassion

Most who reject biblical truth and morality fall in the latter category for two reasons, both of which relate directly to followers of Jesus today.

One: They need our help in understanding spiritual truth.

Scripture teaches: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14). This is why non-Christians need Christians to teach and model biblical truth in ways that are accessible and relevant to them.

Much of our Christian vocabulary is foreign to those outside our faith; words like sin and lost feel pejorative to those who have no context for understanding their true meaning. Evangelism feels to them like the unfair imposition of our opinions on them. They view attending our churches in the same way you and I would view attending a Muslim mosque or a Buddhist temple.

They need precisely what you and I needed before others helped us understand and accept the truth of God’s word. They are sincerely lost, but they don’t know they’re lost. They need and deserve someone to show them the path to life in a spirit of compassion and grace.

Two: They are the victims of the true enemy.

Yesterday, I referred to 2 Corinthians 4:4. Here is the full verse: “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” This is why “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

As a result, the first step in influencing the lost is interceding for the lost. It is praying for the Spirit to defeat the work of Satan in their minds and hearts. It is asking God to lead them to himself, to guide and use us to that end, and to protect them from the deceptions and antagonism of our fallen culture.

While some people clearly understand and yet reject biblical truth and are willing accomplices in Satan’s work of deception, the vast majority do not know what they do not know. They do not understand that they are lost and in need of salvation. They do not understand that they are the victims of the enemy of their souls and that they desperately need our intercession and compassion.

A hymn I encourage you to pray

Millions of people in our lost culture are sincerely drinking “water” that leads to death rather than “living water” that leads to life (John 4:14). This is because they need Christians to explain and model biblical truth in relevant and empowering ways while interceding for the lost to hear and respond to the gospel in the power of the Spirit.

If I am holding the only flashlight in a dark room, whose fault is the darkness?

Rather than condemning those who need my witness and intercession, should I not renew my commitment to both?

To have God’s heart for the lost, however, I must first experience God’s heart for myself. I must encounter his loving grace, his transforming mercy, his empowering presence and peace. To that end, I’ll close with a hymn I came across recently that greatly encouraged me. It was written by Charles Wesley, the brother of John and co-leader of the Methodist movement.

Charles wrote the words for more than 6,500 hymns, including “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” He could make such a profound impact on his culture and on Christian history because Jesus was so real in his heart, a fact he expressed in words I encourage you to pray slowly to God right now:

Jesus, my all in all thou art;
My rest in toil, my ease in pain,
The medicine of my broken heart,
In war my peace, in loss my gain,
My smile beneath the tyrant’s frown,
In shame my glory and my crown:

In want my plentiful supply,
In weakness my almighty pow’r,
In bonds my perfect liberty,
My light in Satan’s darkest hour,
My help and stay whene’er I call,
My life in death, my heav’n, my all. Amen.

Amen?

Denison Forum

At roughly eleven years old, South Sudan is the youngest country in the world. The Christian-majority nation gained independence from Muslim-majority Sudan in 2011 but has seen little peace in the years since. 

In recent months, jihadists have made a more concerted effort to expand their influence in the area. As Bishop Joseph Mamer Manot relayed to the Barnabus Fund earlier this month, “massive displacement has happened, and the humanitarian situation is alarming as food and other property have been burned down into ashes, leaving survivors with no shelters, no food and no safe drinking water.”

After a recent attack left twenty-eight dead and fifty-seven homes destroyed, a Christian from the area added that “Islam is now invading South Sudan. They’re saying South Sudan is a strategic place and that [it] will be the gate to Africa [so that] Islam can go to all of Africa.” Located in Central Africa, South Sudan shares borders with Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, the DRC, and the Central African Republic. 

That the jihadists’ goal is not simply to persecute Christians is an important component of what’s going on. 

Geography often has as much to do with these attacks as religion. For example, the atrocities committed by Boko Haram and the Fulani Herdsmen against Christians in Nigeria—located roughly 1,500 miles due west from South Sudan—are as much about conflicting ways of life and land as they are about their spiritual differences. At the same time, it is far less likely that those recently killed in South Sudan would be dead if they were Muslims, so the religious component should by no means be dismissed. 

I bring all of this up today, though, for two reasons. 

Praying for the persecuted

First, we can intercede for our persecuted brothers and sisters far more effectively when we understand more about the nature of what they’re facing. 

It’s one thing to pray that God would protect them and bring their attackers to justice. But our hearts and minds engage with their suffering on another level when we know enough about them to better empathize with what they’re going through. 

Taking the time to prayerfully research the events and people about whom we pray will add a level of depth to our intercession and help them remain on our hearts and minds longer than if we simply pray and then go on with our day. Those suffering from the threats of death, starvation, and homelessness deserve that from us. 

And that is true for the tragedies we see closer to home as well, which leads to the second purpose. 

As threats of persecution and discrimination increase closer to home, we must become even more intentional about modeling Christ’s care and concern to those suffering elsewhere.

The human mind has a finite capacity for worry and distress. As the causes for such emotions increase at home, we will have to be more intentional about paying attention to the needs God puts on our hearts and minds from other places as well. It’s not that our hearts won’t still break for the persecuted Christians in South Sudan, but we’re likely to move on much faster than when we had more margin. 

When we get to that point and it feels like we just don’t have the words or energy that our brothers and sisters in Christ deserve, remember that God doesn’t evaluate our prayers by how long they are or how impressive others might find them (Matthew 6:7). And his word promises that when we go to him in prayer, the Spirit will intercede on our behalf, ensuring that God doesn’t need words to understand what’s in our heart (Romans 8:26–27). 

So the next time you see or read something that prompts you to pray, take the time to learn more about the people for whom you are interceding. 

And when it feels like you just don’t have the energy or the words to do justice to their needs, remember that we never pray alone. Find peace and reassurance in the fact that the Spirit prays alongside us, and that God knows what’s in our hearts and minds even when we can’t fully express it.

Denison Forum

Congregation Beth-Israel is a Jewish synagogue in Colleyville, thirty minutes west of my home in Dallas. Saturday morning, the rabbi and three others were taken hostage. Late that evening, FBI agents cleared the building and rescued the hostages. The attacker was killed during the operation.

Yesterday, the FBI identified the suspect, a forty-four-year-old British national named Malik Faisal Akram. His family stated that he was “suffering from mental health issues” but added that they “apologize wholeheartedly” and condemned his action. “There was nothing we could have said to him or done that would have convinced him to surrender,” they said in a statement.

It was surreal to watch the national news cover an event so close to my home. All day, I prayed for God to protect the hostages and bring their attacker safely to justice. If he had surrendered, the Lord would have been able to answer both of my prayers. The attacker apparently did not, so God could not.

This is the nature of free will. God created us to love him and our neighbor (Matthew 22:37–39). However, love requires freedom to choose not to love. When we misuse our freedom to harm others and ourselves, God allows us the consequences of our decisions.

One of the most important articles I have read in years demonstrates the relevance of this fact to our secularized culture today.

“America is falling apart at the seams”

David Brooks has been writing for the New York Times since 2003. Last week, he published an article titled “America Is Falling Apart at the Seams.” It profiles a culture in crisis.

Brooks reports that reckless driving is rising, the number of altercations on airplanes is exploding, the murder rate in cities is surging, drug overdoses are increasing, Americans are drinking more, and nurses say patients are becoming more abusive.

Teachers are facing a rising tide of disruptive student behavior; drug deaths have risen continuously for twenty years but shot up especially during the pandemic. The FBI states that hate crimes have surged to the highest level in twelve years. Meanwhile, giving to charity is steadily declining both to religious and secular causes.

Brooks sees “a long-term loss of solidarity, a long-term rise in estrangement and hostility” and adds, “This is what it feels like to live in a society that is dissolving from the bottom up as much as from the top down.”

“I just know the situation is dire”

Brooks asks what is going on, then answers: “I don’t know. I also don’t know what’s causing the high rates of depression, suicide, and loneliness that dogged Americans even before the pandemic and that are the sad flip side of all the hostility and recklessness I’ve just described.”

He notes that church membership has fallen below 50 percent for the first time in US history and cites a report that our nation has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households. He also cites a Washington Post headline, “America Is a Nation of Narcissists, According to Two New Studies.”

Then he adds: “There must also be some spiritual or moral problem at the core of this. Over the past several years, and over a wide range of different behaviors, Americans have been acting in fewer pro-social and relational ways and in more antisocial and self-destructive ways. But why?”

Brooks concludes his article: “As a columnist, I’m supposed to have some answers. But I just don’t right now. I just know the situation is dire.”

Are we experiencing God’s permissive judgment?

My initial response was to ask: What would you expect in a culture that has been rejecting biblical truth and morality for decades?

• 79 percent of Americans say “people can believe whatever they want, as long as those beliefs don’t affect society.” Only 35 percent believe moral truth is objective and absolute.
• 69 percent say any kind of sexual expression between two consenting adults is acceptable.
• In 2004, 60 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage. Fifteen years later, 61 percent support it.
• The fastest-growing religious demographic in America is those who have no religious affiliation.

God cannot lead those who will not follow or give what we will not receive. Nor can a holy Father bless that which harms his children.

It is clear to me that, as was apparently true with the Colleyville hostage-taker, our culture is in the permissive phase of divine judgment where God allows us the consequences of our decisions. Romans 1 offers an example: “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves” (v. 26). Paul adds: “Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (v. 28).

The results read like Brooks’ article: “They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless” (vv. 29–31).

If we still refuse to repent, we will experience God’s punitive judgment whereby he initiates punishment for sin. The Exodus, as well as the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests of Israel, are biblical examples. The prophet warns us: “The nation and kingdom that will not serve [God] shall perish” (Isaiah 60:12).

“Who has God, lacks nothing”

Tomorrow we will focus on ways to respond with compassionate courage and truthful grace. For today, let’s close by asking whether we are part of the problem or part of the solution.

Would you ask the Spirit to reveal to you any areas of your life where you are experiencing the permissive judgment of God? Are you sheltering any unconfessed sin or unyielded obedience? Are you experiencing less than God’s best because you are giving him less than your best?

St. Teresa of Avila encouraged us: “Let nothing frighten you. Who has God, lacks nothing. God alone is enough.”

Every person who has trusted Jesus as Lord “has God.” 

How fully does he have you today?

Denison Forum