When the morning news is dominated by multiple fatalities from a dust storm in Illinois, tornadoes in Virginia and Florida, a Hollywood writers strike, and the death of legendary singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, it’s uplifting to find stories of heroism as well. For example, a Michigan seventh grader recently took control of his school bus after the driver lost consciousness. He stepped to the front of the bus and used the hand brake to ease it to a stop.

He told his parents later that he knew what to do because he watched the driver do it every day. None of his fellow students was injured in the incident.

The news report nowhere speaks to the young man’s religious beliefs or lack thereof. Of course, none of us would claim that he would have to be an active Christian to do what he did. Being kind to others is instinctual for most humans since, according to social scientists, kindness clearly raises personal happiness. Living with meaningful purpose in the world is similarly linked to positive mental health and well-being. These facts are facts regardless of one’s religious commitments, if any.

“People are selfish; deal with it.”

Yesterday we noted a recent Pew Research Center report in which 65 percent of Americans agree that “it’s not necessary to believe in God to be moral.” Such a claim is popular because its underlying lie is popular: morality is what you believe it to be, so you need no divine assistance in defining your moral standards or achieving them.

We are watching this worldview undermine the very foundations upon which our democracy was built. The Founders declared that “all men are created equal” and thus possess “inalienable rights” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” However, if all truth is subjective and personal, the Declaration of Independence can be just the Founders’ truth. I am free to live by my own truth. And if my truth is that the world and everyone in it is a means to my end, who are you to tell me I’m wrong?

In this context, I found David Brooks’ latest column in the New York Times to be both relevant and disturbing. He warns about “a kind of nihilism that you might call amoral realism” and explains: “This ethos is built around the idea that we live in a dog-eat-dog world. The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Might makes right. I’m justified in grabbing all that I can because if I don’t, the other guy will. People are selfish; deal with it.”

According to Brooks, “People who live according to the code of amoral realism tear through codes and customs that have [been] built over the centuries to nurture goodness and foster cooperation.” In their world, “cruelty, dishonesty, vainglory, and arrogance are valorized as survival skills.” As a result, “Other people are not possessors of souls, of infinite dignity and worth; they are objects to be utilized.”

Brooks applies his thesis to national and international politics and politicians, but we are watching it in the news every day. From street violence to mass shootings, sex trafficking, and the rising popularity of abortion and euthanasia, the ethos that other people are “objects to be utilized” is spreading like a moral and spiritual cancer in our culture.

Three urgent steps

You and I are just as temptable as anyone else, just as subject to the fallen human condition in which we exert our “will to power” over others as we seek to be our own god (Genesis 3:5). In fact, Satan employs a subtle deception for evangelical Christians by which we are tempted to separate our public moral stands from our private moral failures. Accordingly, God is calling us to take three urgent steps today.

One: Settle for nothing less than holistic holiness.

Scripture declares: “Blessed are those who keep [God’s] testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways!” (Psalm 119:2–3, my emphases). What is your “heart” condition today?

Two: Seek an intimate, transforming relationship with Jesus.

Years ago, some pastor friends and I were discussing the plague of pornography in our churches. One of them said, “Our biggest problem is that our people don’t love Jesus. If they did, they would hate what he hates and love what he loves.” The pastor was right: “If we walk in the light, as [God] is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). How fully are you walking “in the light” today?

Three: Trust Christ for victory over sin.

Charles Spurgeon reminded us that just as we are saved by grace, we can be sanctified only by grace. Our works were of no benefit for our salvation (Ephesians 2:8–9); neither will they enable us to achieve the holiness we desire.

The psalmist testified, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26). When we turn to God, “They who wait for the Lᴏʀᴅ shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31). And we will say with Paul, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).

When we bring God our persistent temptations and sins, he often leads us to counselors or trusted friends who can help us. He gives us guidance in his word by his Spirit. But ultimately, we must ask him for the victory we need and trust him to provide it.

“You are a fire ever burning”

Is it possible for us to know Christ with such transforming intimacy? St. Catherine of Siena (1347–80) did. She prayed, “You are a mystery as deep as the sea; the more I search, the more I find, and the more I find the more I search for you. But I can never be satisfied: what I receive will ever leave me desiring more. When you fill my soul I have an even greater hunger, and I grow more famished for your light. I desire above all to see you, the true light, as you really are.”

As a result, she could say to God, “You are a fire ever burning and never consumed, which itself consumes all the selfish love that fills my being.” And she could add, “You are the garment which covers our nakedness, and in our hunger you are a satisfying food.”

All this because “your Holy Spirit has given me the desire to love you.”

Would you ask the Spirit to do the same for you today?

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George Washington claimed (PDF) that “religion and morality” are each “indispensable supports” of democracy. John Adams was certain that our Constitution was “made only for a moral and religious people” and is “wholly inadequate to the government of any other” (my emphasis).

According to 65 percent of US adults, these Founding Fathers were wrong.

In a recent Pew Research Center report, two-thirds of American respondents claimed that “it’s not necessary to believe in God to be moral.” They can make this claim because our secularized culture has convinced them that morality is personal and subjective. Like the archer who fires an arrow and then paints the target around the place it lands, we get to choose what is moral for us and need no help from God in achieving it.

However, the mass shooting in Texas, the deadliest Russian attack on Ukraine in months, the first US mass evacuation effort from Sudan, and widespread discouragement about the future are windows into how well our subjective morality is working for us. And what do we do when your definition of morality and mine directly contradict each other? When you think abortion on demand is a moral “reproductive right” and I think it is the immoral killing of an unborn child? When you think marriage has no gender and I think it should be reserved for one man and one woman?

This debate is not only foundational to the future of our democracy—it is especially urgent for the souls of evangelicals like me.

My Apple Watch is incompetent

I walked on my treadmill last Friday morning for my usual three miles, setting the pace at 4.2 mph, which equates to 14.17 minutes per mile. My Apple Watch disagreed, however, claiming that I finished my first mile in 13.58. It tracked my second mile at 13.57. I then increased my speed to a 4.3 mph pace, which equates to 13.57 minutes per mile. My Apple Watch, however, reported that I finished that mile in 15.27.

My point is not that my Apple Watch cannot track my walking pace competently, though that is consistently true. My point is that I want to believe that the fastest time is accurate and the slowest time is a technological aberration.

It was the same when I played golf and tennis: I believed that my best shots were “normal” and my other shots were anomalies or bad luck. This is an example of the “slothful induction fallacy,” which occurs when “sufficient logical evidence strongly indicates a particular conclusion is true, but someone fails to acknowledge it, instead attributing the outcome to coincidence or something unrelated entirely.”

My purpose is not to complain about my Apple Watch or to claim unwarranted athletic prowess. Rather, it is to note that what I did on the treadmill, I am constantly tempted to do with my soul. My sins are aberrations, “deviations from the mean” as it were, while my virtuous acts reveal my true character.

If only that were true.

How Satan uses our morality against us

According to Scripture, “secret” sins do not exist: “God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14). The psalmist said of God, “You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence” (Psalm 90:8).

Dwight Moody was right: Character is what you are in the dark.

This fact is especially relevant for evangelical Christians in the context of sexual morality. Many of us have incurred the wrath of our fallen culture by standing publicly for biblical marriage and sexuality. However, Paul warns us: “In passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things” (Romans 2:1).

For example, when evangelicals condemn homosexual sexual sin but commit heterosexual sexual sin, we sin just like those whose sin we oppose. Our sin may not be as public—a same-sex married couple is obviously living unbiblically, while a heterosexual married couple may or may not be sinning sexually—but it is no less real.

Nonetheless, Satan uses our biblical stance against us by tempting us to believe we are justified in our sins since we condemn the sins of others. He also wants us to think that our sins are less damaging if they are less public. But, as always, Satan is “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

Private pornography, for example, is addictive and destroys mental health and dating and marriage relationships. Sex before marriage weakens the marriage; sex outside of marriage can obviously destroy marriage.

Satan also ensures that our “private” sins inevitably become public and then uses them to disparage our Father and our faith. Paul warned his Jewish Christian readers that because of their sins, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (Romans 2:24). In a recent survey, “the hypocrisy of religious people” was the top reason people of no faith gave for doubting Christian beliefs.

“The utter joy of being forgiven”

Tomorrow we’ll identify three practical ways to respond biblically and redemptively. For today, let’s decide that we want to. Let’s decide that we want to be as holy as God can make us. Then, let’s admit to God our need for his transforming power.

Br. Geoffrey Tristam of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Boston writes: “Until we acknowledge our need for God, we will never experience the utter joy of being forgiven, healed, restored, and empowered. Once we have experienced that grace, there’s no going back to a life where we trust in our own power and strength. Once we have known God’s hands upholding us and strengthening us, nothing else will do.”

Will you experience the “utter joy” of God’s sanctifying grace today?

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