My great aunts Daisy and Clella were convinced Americans never went to the moon. They died many years ago believing that the television coverage of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon in 1969 was staged, probably on sand dunes in Arizona. When I asked them about moon rocks I had seen in a museum, they replied, “How do you know they were from the moon?”

I am guessing they would not have been candidates for an unusual auction next week: the Bonhams Space History sale will offer lunar dust collected by Armstrong from the Apollo 11 mission. You can own your own (tiny) souvenir from the moon for a mere $800,000 to $1,200,000.

I have no way to estimate the physical comparison of this dust to the moon from which it came. But I can tell you that our moon is 27 percent the size of our planet and yet our planet is so small that 1.3 million Earths can fit inside our sun. While our sun contains 99.86 percent of the mass in our solar system, it is just one of 200 billion stars in our galaxy. Astrophysicists estimate that our galaxy is just one of between one hundred billion and two hundred billion galaxies in the universe.

And the God who made all of that measures it in the palm of his hand (Isaiah 40:12).

Could aliens see us as “bacteria”?

Scientists recently designed a radio message to be beamed into deep space and reveal Earth’s location. They hope it will be received and understood by an intelligent alien civilization.

This despite Stephen Hawking’s warning in 2015 that aliens could be vastly more powerful than us and “may not see us as any more valuable than we see bacteria.” As a result, he advised that if we receive a signal from another planet, “We should be wary of answering back.”

Our planet has in fact received a message from beyond ourselves. More than a signal, it is an entire book written by the God of the universe. Since he is omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent, living by his revealed truth is by definition the most loving, wise, and empowering way to live (cf. Hebrews 4:12; 2 Timothy 3:16–17).

By contrast, ignoring or rejecting his word comes at our peril, always.

The scientific benefits of gratitude

When humans reject the sanctity of all humans, atrocities such as the slaughter of civilians in Ukraine result along with the authoritarian quest to expand one’s empire that is a perennial feature of human history.

In a secularized culture that has replaced biblical sexuality with the claim that any consenting behavior is therefore moral, David French demonstrates persuasively that such “morality” is “profoundly harmful” and cites several secular writers who are “giving voice to deep pain” in our culture.

When we reject biblical guidance for marriage and family, we should be grieved but not shocked by a CDC report documenting increased drug and alcohol use, reported abuse, and feelings of mental distress among America’s teenagers. “These data echo a cry for help,” according to a CDC official.

A New Yorker article reports that between 1950 and 1988, the proportion of teenagers aged between fifteen and nineteen who died by suicide quadrupled. Between 2007 and 2017, the number of children aged ten to fourteen who died in the same way more than doubled. And research shows that boys without fathers fare worse than boys with fathers on more than seventy different metrics, including the likelihood to commit mass shootings.

By contrast, John Stonestreet and Kasey Leander demonstrate that the biblical value of gratitude can bring “a range of benefits” such as “better sleep, improved interpersonal relationships, better stress and hormonal regulation, and even reduced physical pains.” And the rhythms of spirituality have been shown to correlate significantly with better mental health.

“I have to give glory to God”

In Psalm 18, David testified, “I love you, O Lᴏʀᴅ, my strength” (v. 1). Here’s why: “The Lᴏʀᴅ is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold” (v. 2). Count how many times David uses “my” to refer to his Lord.

Could the depth of his intimacy with God explain the divine omnipotence he experienced?

If we do not believe in an omnipotent God, we will not position ourselves by faith to experience his omnipotence. Then our lack of faith becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy on the path to a heightened secularism that eventually rejects his relevance and even his existence.

However, the converse is true as well. South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said her team’s recent national championship victory was “divinely ordered” and told an ESPN reporter, “I have to give glory to God, glory to God.” Before Jalen Wilson led Kansas to the men’s title, he tweeted, “Thank you God, without your blessings I wouldn’t have any of this.”

I don’t mean to suggest that faith in an omnipotent God guarantees success in life. On the contrary, I mean to suggest that success in life is cause for praise for those with such faith.

“We already have a home”

Henri Nouwen described our Father’s omniscient and omnipotent love for us this way: “You are loved long before other people can love you or you can love others. You are accepted long before you can accept others or receive their acceptance. You are safe long before you can offer or receive safety.”

He notes that such love means “we already have a home” with God. When we grasp this truth, “we may at last have the strength to unmask the illusions created by our fears and continue to return again and again and again.”

When last did you return home?

When next will you?

Denison Forum

One reporter called it “the stuff of sporting legend.” Another called it “borderline surreal.” A director of sports medicine called it “a story that’s just beyond belief.”

They were describing the news that Tiger Woods might play in tomorrow’s Masters Tournament less than fourteen months after a car accident that nearly led to the amputation of his right leg. Woods ended the speculation with his announcement yesterday, “As of right now I feel like I am going to play.” More than thirty-five thousand fans were on the grounds at Augusta National on Monday hoping to get a glimpse of his practice round, and his fellow professionals were more than excited to see him.

Tiger Woods has eighty-two PGA Tour wins, tied with Sam Snead for the most in history. In 2001, he became the first golfer ever to hold all four professional major championships at the same time. He was the youngest Masters champion ever and is the career money list leader.

At age forty-six, Woods is fourteen years older than the average age for a major golf champion. Only two players in the last fifty-four years were his age or older when they won a Grand Slam title. And neither was attempting to come back from a life-threatening accident.

Why would Woods even consider doing this?

The question is actually relevant not just for him but for us all.

Our “collective worship of work”

Carolyn Chen is co-director of the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion at UC Berkeley. In a recent article for the Atlantic, she discusses one of the most fascinating and troubling trends in American culture: our “collective worship of work.”

She cites a McKinsey report that 70 percent of employees said their sense of purpose is defined by their work. In her view, the “invisible religion of work” has “become an unassailable part of our culture.”

According to Chen, “At a time when religious-affiliation rates are the lowest they’ve been in the past seventy-three years, we worship work—meaning we sacrifice for and surrender to it—because it gives us identity, belonging, and meaning, not to mention that it puts food on our tables” (her emphasis).

In her view, “houses of worship” that can compete with the worship of work “would have to claim our time, energy, and devotion like work does. We would have to sacrifice and submit to their demands, as we do for work. We would have to build communities of belonging, together seeking meaning and purpose outside of our productive labor.”

Chen adds that such “houses of worship needn’t be only religious ones; they could also be our co-ops, neighborhoods, unions, reading groups, or political clubs.” The goal would be to build “civic organizations that can help us visualize human flourishing that rises above a company’s bottom line.”

“I am not who I think I am”

I do not know Tiger Woods personally (though I have watched him play at the Masters in person and am in awe of his talent). As a result, I cannot say with any certainty what is motivating his possible return to golf. But I do believe his story is a parable of a culture that defines who we are by what we do.

A man stood on a busy street corner and asked a thousand people as they went by, “Who are you?”

Without exception, every person who responded answered by describing their job: “I’m a doctor,” or “I’m a teacher,” or “I’m a pastor.”

A counselor once explained our culture’s sense of self this way: “I am not who I think I am. I am not who you think I am. I am who I think you think I am.”

And I think you think I am what I do.

By contrast, the Bible defines our identity not by what we do but by Whose we are. We are told that “to all who did receive [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). If our identity is our unchanging essence, this is our identity as Christians. Everything else about us can change, but this cannot. Once we become the children of God, we are a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). We will forever be the children of our Father in heaven.

A penetrating life question

How can Christians convince secularized people to choose God’s grace over our cultural worship of work?

We will need to show our skeptical society that our Father’s way is better than their way. To do this, as Chen notes, we will need to “sacrifice and submit” to God’s claim on “our time, energy, and devotion.”

In other words, we desperately need to reject the Western cultural division between the sacred and the secular, Sunday and Monday, religion and the “real world.” We need to adopt the biblical call to holistic faith that submits our lives as a “living sacrifice” to God every day (Romans 12:1). We need to vacate the throne and enthrone the one true King (Matthew 6:33) by being “filled with the Spirit” every day (Ephesians 5:18).

Then the Spirit can empower and direct us to, in Chen’s words, “build communities of belonging, together seeking meaning and purpose.”

Author James Clear recently asked a penetrating question: “If someone took control of your life tomorrow, what’s the first thing they would change?”

Let’s amend his question: “If God took control of your life tomorrow, what’s the first thing he would change?”

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