In 2018, a pro-Kremlin journalist asked Russian President Vladimir Putin in what scenario Russia would use nuclear weapons. He replied: “If someone decides to destroy Russia, then we have a legal right to respond.” He admitted that “for humanity it will be a global catastrophe” but added perilously: “Still, as a citizen of Russia and the head of the Russian state, then I want to ask myself the question: ‘Why do we need such a world if there is no Russia there?’”

Putin claimed that Russia would launch a nuclear weapon only if it detected the launch of missiles headed for Russia, but he did not clarify if Russia would respond only in the case of nuclear warheads or non-nuclear missiles in general.

Fast-forward to the present. Putin signed the final papers yesterday to illegally annex four regions of eastern Ukraine as Russian territory. Ukraine is continuing its offensive in some of these areas, forcing widespread Russian retreats. Ukrainian guided missiles supplied by the US and the UK have been instrumental in changing the course of the war against Russia.

Will Putin now see such missile strikes against his forces in annexed Ukrainian regions as missile launches against Russia?

A Cold War historian explains the current crisis

This scenario is just one reason Cold War historian Michael Dobbs, author of a definitive account of the Cuban Missile Crisis, is warning that the conflict in Ukraine “presents perils of at least equal magnitude” to that confrontation.

There are other reasons for grave concern as well: Dobbs points to the possibility that “a stray shell from either side could cause an accident at a nuclear power plant, spewing radioactive fallout over much of Europe.” Russia could bungle an attempt to interdict Western military supplies to Ukraine, slipping over into NATO countries like Poland and triggering an automatic US response. Or a Russian decision to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukrainian troops could escalate into a full nuclear exchange with the West.

Dobbs adds that in 1962, US President John Kennedy and his Kremlin counterpart Nikita Khrushchev possessed “an intuitive understanding of the peril confronting not just their own countries but the entire world if the crisis was allowed to escalate.” This was because both had experienced the horrors of World War II and knew nuclear war would be many times more destructive.

In light of Putin’s question, “Why do we need such a world if there is no Russia there?” we are left to wonder if he shares their understanding of the peril facing the globe today.

A new “Scooby-Doo” movie character is a lesbian

In other news, a new “Scooby-Doo” movie portrays the lead character as a lesbian. A senior member of the British parliament says the Church of England must embrace same-sex marriage or face mounting pressure from the government.

Samford University, a Baptist school in Alabama, is facing protests and criticism for affirming its commitment to biblical sexuality and marriage. And a New York trial judge has ruled that polyamorous relationships are entitled to the same legal protections given to two-person relationships.

Here’s what these stories have in common with Vladimir Putin’s Russia-centric nuclear threat: they each illustrate the conviction that I have a right to what I want, no matter the consequences for those who disagree.

In this view, if Russia believes its territory (legitimate or not) is under attack, it can respond however it chooses. LGBTQ ideology must be embraced by every segment of society even at the cost of First Amendment religious freedoms. If you disagree, you are dangerous to society and undeserving of legal or cultural protections.

Unfortunately, this is familiar ground, a growing attack on conservative Christians I have documented often in the past (for a larger discussion in historical and biblical context, see my book, The Coming Tsunami). Today, I’d like to make a point on this urgent issue I’ve not made before, one that applies as fully to me as to anyone who opposes my biblical worldview.

“My claim to my right to myself”

For nearly thirty years, I have read Oswald Chambers’ classic, My Utmost for His Highest, as part of my morning devotional time. Yesterday I read again his definition of sin as “my claim to my right to myself.” This time, his explanation struck me as it had not before.

Chambers observed: “The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of self-realization—I am my own god. This disposition may work out in decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has the one basis, my claim to my right to myself.”

This claim is at the foundation of everything that is wrong with our culture. But it is prevalent in “moral” people as well, as Chambers notes: “When our Lord faced men with all the forces of evil in them, and men who were clean living and moral and upright, he did not pay any attention to the moral degradation of the one or to the moral attainment of the other; he looked at something we do not see, viz., the disposition.”

In other words, those of us who uphold biblical morality and religious freedom can be as sinful as those who reject it if our motives are “my claim to my right to myself.” This is a binary choice: I can love and serve my Lord and my neighbor (Matthew 22:37–39), or I can love and serve myself. I can make God my god, or I can make myself my god (Genesis 3:5).

But I cannot do both. Neither can you.

A life-changing paragraph

Inside the Bible I used as a pastor, I taped a paragraph where I could see it each Sunday before I preached. Its words from Watchman Nee’s The Normal Christian Life stirred my soul again when I read them today:

“A day must come in our lives, as definite as the day of our conversion, when we give up all right to ourselves and submit to the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ. There must be a day when, without reservation, we surrender everything to him—ourselves, our families, our possessions, our business, and our time. All we are and have becomes his, to be held henceforth entirely at his disposal. From that day we are no longer our own masters, but only stewards.

“Not until the lordship of Jesus Christ is a settled thing in our hearts can the Holy Spirit really operate effectively in us. He cannot direct our lives effectively until all control of them is committed to him. If we do not give him absolute authority in our lives, he can be present, but he cannot be powerful. The power of the Spirit is stayed.”

Will the Spirit be “powerful” or “stayed” in your life today?

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Legendary country singer and songwriter Loretta Lynn passed away yesterday at the age of ninety. The Washington Post calls her “a trailblazer for other female country performers” and notes that she was the first woman to win the Country Music Association’s award for entertainer of the year.

Speaking of historic deaths, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs passed away on this day in 2011. In a 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, he offered this now-famous advice: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” He added: “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

By following his “heart and intuition,” Jobs reinvented the music industry with the iPod and iTunes (Apple Music now has over one hundred million songs), reinvented personal communications with the iPhone, changed the way we consume media with the iPad, made computers accessible to non-technical people with Macintosh, changed the way software and hardware are sold, and built Apple from nothing into what is today the world’s most valuable company with a market cap of $2.347 trillion.

“You should have a target on your back”

I thought about the courage of Steve Jobs and Loretta Lynn in light of an article by evangelical cultural commentator Dr. Michael Brown titled “If you’re a Christian, you should have a target on your back.” He offers specific examples:

• “If you speak up for the unborn, you will be targeted.
• “If you uphold marriage and family as God intended, you will be targeted.
• “If you claim salvation is only through Jesus, you will be targeted.
• “If you resist LGBT activism in the schools, you will be targeted.
• “If you preach the word of God with brokenness and humility but without compromise or dilution, you will be targeted.”

He cites Paul’s assertion: “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12) and states, “If we’re not being persecuted, resisted, or targeted on some level for our godly living and preaching in Jesus, then something is wrong.”

Jesus warned his followers, “Because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19).

Does the world hate you today?

This week, we’ve explored both secular and biblical responses to the antagonistic secularism of our day. Today, let’s seek the courage to employ both in service to our Lord and our culture.

One: Pray for sacrificial courage.

It is not easy to be vilified for believing what Christians have believed for twenty centuries, but that’s where we are today. No one likes being called intolerant and bigoted.

But we can claim the fact that “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7). And we can pray now for the courage we will need today.

Two: Choose courage for the sake of those who need biblical truth.

The gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). As a result, when we share our faith, we are not imposing our values on others—we are giving them the greatest gift they will ever receive. Conversely, if we cower before their opposition, we dishonor our Lord and harm the very people we are called to serve.

Pope St. Gregory the Great (AD 540–604) observed: “Pastors who lack foresight hesitate to say openly what is right because they fear losing the favor of men. . . . [They] are not zealous pastors who protect their flocks, rather they are like mercenaries who flee by taking refuge in silence when the wolf appears.” He added, “The word of reproach is a key that unlocks a door, because reproach reveals a fault of which the evildoer is himself often unaware.”

Three: Love people whether they love our Lord or not.

John warned us: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). We are called to stand for biblical truth because we love those with whom we share it. The more they reject it, the more they need it.

The sicker the patient, the more urgent the physician.

Cornel West observed: “You can’t lead the people if you don’t love the people. You can’t save the people if you don’t serve the people.” As Erma Bombeck noted, loving our children enough to let them hate us is “the hardest part of all.”

“The world cannot hate us”

Today is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It is considered the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people. They will spend it fasting from food and water as they face their wrongdoings and seek forgiveness.

We can join them by taking time for our own introspection and confession. Are there areas of your life where you are compromising with the standards of the world? Where you are less than courageous in your public faith? Where you are hiding your light (Matthew 5:15) rather than shining as a light in the world by “holding fast to the word of life” (Philippians 2:15–16)?

Let’s pray today for the courage of our convictions. And let’s trust God to answer our prayers as we choose to stand boldly for our Lord.

Missionary and martyr Jim Elliot wrote in his biography, “The world cannot hate us, we are too much like its own. Oh that God would make us dangerous!”

Will you be dangerous today?

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Trust seems to be a scarce commodity these days.

For example, the would-be winners of almost $29,000 at an Ohio fishing tournament were disqualified recently after it was discovered that their fish were stuffed with lead weights and fish fillets.

On a much more somber note: as of this morning, the death toll from Hurricane Ian has risen to at least 103. Part of the problem is that the storm was predicted until the last thirty-six hours to strike Florida further north than where it landed. As a result, many in the Ft. Myers region were unprepared for the violence of the hurricane when it hit their area.

The main American forecast model insisted for days that the storm would strike the Florida Panhandle or Big Bend areas as a Category 2 storm. The European model, which uses faster supercomputers, consistently signaled a more southernly and stronger storm track for Florida. (Its prediction ended up being far closer to the actual outcome.) The National Hurricane Center then split the difference, leading to a predicted landfall north of where the storm came ashore.

In other news, an Indonesian police chief and nine elite officers were removed from their posts after at least 125 people (including thirty-two children) were killed in a soccer stadium crush. And the polls were wrong once again, this time in Brazil, where the incumbent president received more votes than had been predicted and is now in a runoff with his leading challenger.

Each day’s news provides more proof that we are fallen people living in a fallen world. Why, then, is it hard to convince secular people that they need more than secular society can provide?

Moving the Overton window

If lost people understood that they needed Christ, they would turn to him. The fact that they do not shows that they do not believe they need any more “spirituality” than they already have. Thus, as we noted yesterday, they must want what we know they need.

We might think that disasters like Hurricane Ian would turn many toward God since such tragedies clearly show us our finitude and frailty. They force us to confront the mortality we are otherwise so good at ignoring. And they prove that we need to be ready today for what might come tomorrow.

However, for many, natural disasters are invitations to question the love, power, or even the existence of God. And they align with a cultural narrative that reinforces self-reliance. As the Stoic Epictetus said, “No man is free who is not master of himself.” His words could be the mantra of our day.

Consequently, the spiritual Overton window (the range of what is socially acceptable) has moved the cultural center to the left. The younger you are, the further to the left you have moved.

If I do not believe I have cancer

Now, for the first time in American history, a majority of Americans reject biblical truth on a wide range of moral issues. For many, “morality” is defined as “doing whatever you want to do that doesn’t harm someone else.” This is a logic trap: for me to disagree causes you harm and thus crosses this line.

Why is this definition of morality so appealing?

Consider an example: the LGBTQ population is at most 5.6 percent of American society. But if we decide that the Scriptures and/or Christian tradition are wrong on LGBTQ issues that do not affect 95 percent of us personally, we can then decide that they are wrong on other issues that do.

Once we determine that Christianity is wrong about homosexuality, we can decide that it is wrong about abortion. Or premarital sex, or cohabitation, or pornography, or euthanasia, or a host of other decisions.

This relativistic view of morality rejects the only solution for our problem: “You know that [Christ] appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin” (1 John 3:5). If I do not believe I have cancer, I will not consult an oncologist, much less consent to the chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery she prescribes.

How can we respond biblically to such deception? How can we speak the truth in love when such truth is so unpopular?

One: Pray with passion

Because “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 4:4), “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against . . . the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). This is a spiritual conflict that must be fought with spiritual weapons. Thus, praying fervently for spiritual awakening and moral renewal is priority one for Christians.

Two: Guard your heart

We must be the change we want others to adopt. Here’s where to start: David testified, “I will ponder the way that is blameless” (Psalm 101:2). To become “blameless,” make this commitment: “I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless” (v. 3, my emphasis).

If we do, we must deal with it immediately. Like cancer, denying sin permits it to metastasize: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). Ask the Spirit to show you anything you need to confess, then confess what comes to your thoughts and claim God’s forgiving grace (v. 9).

Three: Seek the power of God

Are you living and working in supernatural power? God is “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20). In these critical days, we dare not limit his power by our faith. Settle for nothing less than his best.

God will never ask you to do something he will not enable you to do. “He remembers that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14) and thus empowers our frailty with his omnipotence and our finitude with his omniscience. You can do “nothing” without Christ (John 15:5) but “all things” with him (Philippians 4:13).

Theologian R. C. Sproul observed, “The issue of faith is not so much whether we believe in God, but whether we believe the God we believe in.”

Do you?

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