In the midst of all the bad news in today’s news, I thought you might like to hear about something a little different this morning. As you’re making plans for next week’s Valentine’s Day, here’s an option you may not have considered: you can donate $10 to the San Antonio Zoo. For that amount, they will name a cockroach after anyone you designate and feed it to an animal.

Their annual “Cry Me a Cockroach” is intended for “exes who just won’t bug off,” as CNN reports. The annual event received more than eight thousand donations last year from all fifty states and over thirty different countries.

This expression of animosity is relatively innocuous (unless someone names a cockroach for you, I suppose). Here’s a more dramatic example of the enmity pervading our culture: According to Pew, 77 percent of Americans say our country’s partisan divide is deeper now than it was before the pandemic, as compared with a median of 47 percent in thirteen other nations surveyed. Even worse, support for the use of political violence is rising in our society.

Gallup recently conducted a “confidence in institutions” survey. Their polling included the church or organized religion, the military, the Supreme Court, public schools, the police, the criminal justice system, small business, big business, large tech companies, banks, the medical system, newspapers, television news, Congress, and the presidency.

What do these fifteen institutions have in common?

Public confidence in every one of them fell last year.

“I know my own and my own know me”

James described his first-century world in terms that seem eerily accurate today: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:1–2).

By contrast, the creative brilliance and power of the One who made us is on display everywhere we turn, if only we have eyes to see. For example, a recent galactic photo shoot captured more than three billion stars and galaxies. Astoundingly, this is only .15 percent of the two trillion galaxies in the universe.

Your Lord made all of that and holds it in the palm of his hand (Isaiah 40:12).

From the transcendent to the immanent: according to National Geographic, your circulatory system is more than sixty thousand miles long (this is more than twice the equatorial circumference of our planet). Your heart beats one hundred thousand times a day, forty million times a year, up to three billion times in your lifetime.

Jesus made all of that when he made you: “By him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” (Colossians 1:16). What’s more, his omniscience and omnipotence are available to all who seek his wisdom and strength.

This is because, unlike every other figure of history, the living Lord Jesus can be known personally by any who make him their Savior and Lord.

Buddhists do not claim that they can know the Buddha; Muslims do not claim to know Muhammad. But Jesus assured us, “I know my own and my own know me” (John 10:14). We can “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). Paul’s life purpose was to “know him” (Philippians 3:10).

“All the thrills of religion”

Here’s the problem: we all too often settle for knowing about Jesus when we can know Jesus. Consider an analogy.

I was taught algebra in the eighth grade, but I remember almost nothing of what I learned. So I turned today to a Wikipedia article on the subject. Here I discovered that the word algebra comes from the title of a book by the ninth-century Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. I learned that its roots can be traced to the ancient Babylonians and that at least twelve different areas of mathematics have “algebra” in their name.

The article taught me much about algebra, but it did not teach me how to do algebra. This is how many of our religious activities function: they teach us about Jesus, but do they lead us to experience Jesus?

If not, why not?

To be confessional, I know one answer: it is easier to tell you about Jesus than to know him and then make known what I know. When I seek to know him personally, I experience his presence in ways that can be more than uncomfortable. I see the stains of my sins in the light of his holiness. I hear him calling me to accountability and submission to his authority.

However, if I spend my time teaching people about Jesus, I can avoid all of this while maintaining the appearance of religiosity. I can teach a passage of Scripture without having to deal with the One who inspired it. I can engage in religious practices without risking the repentance that is likely to be required by relational intimacy with Christ.

To quote C. S. Lewis, “All the thrills of religion and none of the cost.” Except this: avoiding the cost of knowing Christ costs me everything that matters most to my soul.

“We are bound to be captured”

Br. Keith Nelson of the Society of St. John the Evangelist writes: “In the sea of this life, we are bound to be captured sooner or later. The waters are full of other nets, bristling with hooks. If we don’t give our consent to be caught by Christ, something else will encircle our freedom and determine our choices. We need our attention to be captured by the one who longs for our transformation and wholeness.”

To shift the analogy, Jesus testified: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). With regard to your present significance and eternal rewards, “much fruit” or “nothing” are your two options.

Which do you choose today?

Denison Forum

Three stories making headlines this morning offer a case study into human nature.

First, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked southeastern Turkey and northern Syria this morning, toppling hundreds of buildings and killing more than 1,300 people. The death toll is expected to rise as rescue workers comb through mounds of wreckage for people still trapped under rubble.

Second, Navy divers are searching for debris from the Chinese spy balloon a US fighter jet shot down Saturday off the coast of South Carolina. According to the New York Times, the shooting down of the balloon “introduced a new phase in the increasingly tempestuous relationship between the United States and China.”

Third, the New York Times is reporting that “an even deadlier pandemic could soon be here.” The article explains that bird flu, known formally as avian influenza, “has long hovered on the horizon of scientists’ fears.” This pathogen, especially the H5N1 strain, has not often infected humans. However, when it has, 56 percent of those known to have contracted it have died. This contrasts with a mortality rate of 1 to 2 percent for COVID-19 prior to vaccines.

Here’s why bird flu is now so frightening: a mutant H5N1 strain has been infecting minks at a fur farm in Spain and is most likely spreading among them, which is unprecedented for mammals. “This is incredibly concerning,” says Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London. “This is a clear mechanism for an H5 pandemic to start.”

This is because the mink’s upper respiratory tract is especially well suited to act as a conduit to humans. If different strains of flu infect the same person at the same time, they can swap gene segments to give rise to new, more transmissible ones.

As a result, according to the Times, “If a mink farmworker with the flu also gets infected by H5N1, that may be all it takes to ignite a pandemic.”

The “fight or flight” response

If you’re like me, you’ll want to know more today about the earthquake in Turkey and Syria and the Chinese spy balloon story. However, you’d like to think about anything but another pandemic. This is not just because we’re still dealing with the worst public health crisis in a century. Nor is it simply that we are not (speaking for myself) scientists who can do anything practical to prevent such a crisis.

There’s a third factor also at work here: the “fight or flight” response that is part of our innate human nature. In response to acute stress, psychologists tell us, “the body’s sympathetic nervous system is activated by the sudden release of hormones,” resulting in “an increased heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate.” This response better enables us to fight the threat we face or flee from it. In the case of “an even deadlier pandemic,” since we cannot fight it, we instinctively turn our attention to something else.

The “fight or flight” response has enormous spiritual implications. Not every problem we face requires divine assistance, of course. But some do. When we face temptation, choosing between “fight” and “flight” is vital for our souls.

Take Job as an example.

“Does Job fear God for no reason?”

In one of the most remarkable compliments paid to anyone in Scripture, God asked Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” (Job 1:8).

Satan responded, “Does Job fear God for no reason?” (v. 9).

The Enemy proceeded to describe God’s many blessings in Job’s life and predicted that if Job faces severe suffering, “he will curse you to your face” (v. 11). Satan said this because it is usually true. Crisis does not produce character—it reveals it.

Job turned out to prove God right and Satan wrong: after losing his children and all his possessions, he “fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return. The Lᴏʀᴅ gave, and the Lᴏʀᴅ has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lᴏʀᴅ” (vv. 20–21).

The narrator adds, “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” (v. 22).

Don’t become Patient Zero

The devil cannot attack God, so he attacks God’s people. At issue is whether God’s character will be defamed by God’s servants.

My character reflected on my father just as my sons’ character reflects on me. Consequently, one of Satan’s most effective ways to turn people from considering the love of Christ is to focus them instead on the failings of Christians.

Here’s my point: when you and I face temptation, we should remember that far more is at stake than our own integrity. Our response honors or dishonors our Savior. It draws those we know closer to him or pushes them further away from him.

The solution is to choose “flight” over “fight.” Do not try to defeat your spiritual enemy in your strength since he is far better at tempting than we are at resisting. Instead, go immediately to Jesus. Name your temptation and ask him for the strength, wisdom, and resolve to refuse it. If you have fallen to temptation, come immediately to him in repentance, asking him to forgive you and restore you before your spiritual virus spreads.

If H5N1 becomes a global pandemic, the first person who contracts the virus and transmits it to others will be known as Patient Zero.

With the next temptation you face, you can choose flight or fight. You can turn to the power of the Lord, or you can become a spiritual Patient Zero.

The reputation of your Savior and the spiritual condition of those you influence are at stake.

Denison Forum