NOTE: Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter died yesterday at the age of ninety-six. I will be reflecting on her life and legacy in tomorrow’s Daily Article.

On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the US embassy in Tehran and captured fifty-two Americans, holding them hostage for 444 days. I remember the “Iran Hostage Crisis” very clearly. The hostages were headline news seemingly every day. Millions of us prayed for their safety, health, and release. Ten days after they were finally freed, they were given a ticker tape parade in New York City.

On October 7, Hamas terrorists took more than 240 people hostage. Among them are babies, children, women, the elderly, and the disabled.

Unlike the Iranian hostage crisis, Hamas’s hostages have been a back-page story in this unfolding crisis. When four were released and one was rescued by Israeli special forces, their stories made the news briefly, but the world’s attention has been far more focused on Palestinian civilians in Gaza and charges of genocide and brutality leveled against Israel.

Now we are learning that negotiators are nearing an agreement with Hamas to release fifty hostages in exchange for Israel allowing more aid and fuel into Gaza, along with a limited pause in fighting.

Why have the two hostage crises been reported and viewed in such starkly different ways?

What does this question say about our culture on this Thanksgiving week?

“What is the meaning and purpose of life?”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a former senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. She speaks six languages and has written numerous bestsellers. Raised a Muslim, she lived for many years as an atheist before announcing a few days ago that she is now a Christian.

She set her decision in cultural context:

Western civilization is under threat from three different but related forces: the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilize a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fiber of the next generation.

In her view, our secularized society’s response through military, economic, diplomatic, and technological means is failing. She explains why: “We can’t fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question: What is it that unites us?” Ali then answers her question: “The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

She finds in this tradition “an elaborate set of ideas and institutions designed to safeguard human life, freedom, and dignity—from the nation state and the rule of law to the institutions of science, health, and learning.” She cites Tom Holland’s book Dominion to claim that “all sorts of apparently secular freedoms—of the market, of conscience, and of the press—find their roots in  Christianity.”

She adds that she turned to Christianity because “I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable—indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: What is the meaning and purpose of life?”

“Christianity” nowhere appears in the Bible

Ali’s announcement has sparked two very different responses: while many Christians are happy for her and grateful for her endorsement of our faith, others have noted that her article focuses on Christianity as a contributor to society rather than on Christ. She says nothing about a personal experience with Jesus. Her conversion could be described as having faith in faith.

In a subsequent interview, Ali did in fact focus more on the story of Christ and its personal significance for her decision. But her article celebrating the social benefits of Christianity omits this central fact: there is no Christianity without Christ.

The word Christianity nowhere appears in the Bible. In fact, the word Christian is found only three times in Scripture: Acts 11:26; Acts 26:28; and 1 Peter 4:16. The latter two references seem to suggest that the term was used derisively.

By contrast, the word disciple appears in the Gospels and the Book of Acts 261 times. Clearly, biblical Christianity is about following Christ as a learner follows their teacher. When we do this, Jesus produces in and through us the benefits of Christianity that Ali commends. Christians do not change the culture—Christ does.

It is when we are “in Christ” that we become a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). It is “Christ in you” that is our “hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). The Bible says of Christ, “in [him] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). His Spirit produces the “fruit” that our secularized society so desperately lacks, the “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” that we need for cultural flourishing (Galatians 5:22–23).

A vital question to begin Thanksgiving week

When we truly love our Lord, we love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:37–39). People take precedence over politics.

And, with regard to my earlier question, hostages become more important than ideologies.

Tragically, in the decades since the Iranian hostages were released, our culture has been taken hostage by the “woke ideology” Ali describes as “eating into the moral fiber of the next generation.” People have become a means to the end of political narratives and personal advancement. Even among many Christians, as Dallas Willard noted, “The idea of having faith in Jesus has come to be totally isolated from being his apprentice and learning how to do what he said.”

Consequently, across this Thanksgiving week we’ll focus in my Daily Articles on Jesus. We’ll identify reasons to give thanks for who he is every day in every circumstance.

Let’s begin today. When last did you thank Jesus, not just for what he does, but for who he is?

When last did you tell him you love him?

Why not now?

Denison Forum

This week’s economic news was unexpectedly good: inflation is down from 9.1 percent last summer to 3.2 percent now. In response, the Dow closed Wednesday at its highest level since mid-August. Observers think the Federal Reserve will not raise interest rates further, freeing up capital for new investment. Unemployment is still low. According to Forbes, financial strategists largely expect the stock market to continue rising next year as well.

Why, then, are so many Americans so unhappy with America?

In a recent CNN poll, 72 percent said things in the US are going badly. In a Gallup survey, only 19 percent said they are satisfied with the way things are going in our nation. In an ABC News/Ipsos poll, only 23 percent said the country is heading in the right direction.

Economic uncertainty is one factor: the pandemic taught us that things can change seemingly overnight. Prices remain high, and many parts of the country are still struggling in this postindustrial economy.

However, as Jude Russo writes in the American Conservative, “the dysphoria may lie deeper.”

“Economic progress is beside the point”

Russo points to the fact that affiliation with civil society—churches, charities, clubs—is at an all-time low, as are marriage rates. A plurality of Americans are not associated with any organized religion. Confidence in public institutions has declined precipitously as well—Americans trust small business and the military but little else. Crime rates remain far higher than they were in the pre-Covid era.

Then Russo sardonically draws a lesson I was surprised to read in a secular news outlet: “It’s almost as if human flourishing requires more than material prosperity.”

He adds, “In the absence of something like true religion, it’s unclear what there is besides accumulation.” And he concludes, “Until we figure it out, economic progress—if even tenable in a sustained way with declining social capital—is beside the point.”

Russo’s observations are obviously true to Scripture. Paul observed, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evils” (1 Timothy 6:10). We might dismiss his monetary warning since he was not likely to have been a man of great wealth (read 2 Corinthians 11:23–33 the next time you feel sorry for yourself). However, King Solomon was a different story: his income has been calculated as exceeding $1.1 billion a year, and yet he observed, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income” (Ecclesiastes 5:10).

Russo’s conclusions are also true to life: no matter how much wealth we accumulate, we can always lose it today or gain more tomorrow. We can never have enough to have enough.

Why, then, don’t more people agree that “human flourishing requires more than material prosperity”? Why don’t they see that our problem is spiritual rather than material? Why don’t they respond to our “God-shaped emptiness” by turning to God?

Wisdom from a second-century source

My thoughts today were spurred by a homily I read from an unknown second-century pastor. Commenting on the Lord’s lament, “All day long my name is constantly blasphemed” (Isaiah 52:5 NIV), he said:

Why is the Lord’s name blasphemed? Because we say one thing and do another. When they hear the words of God on our lips, unbelievers are amazed at their beauty and power, but when they see that these words have no effect in our lives, their admiration turns to scorn, and they dismiss such words as myths and fairy tales.

They listen, for example, when we tell them that God has said: “It is no credit to you if you love those who love you, but only if you love your enemies and those who hate you.” They are full of admiration at such extraordinary virtue, but when they observe that we not only fail to love people who hate us, but even those who love us, they laugh us to scorn, and the Name is blasphemed.

My guess is that this pastor from nineteen centuries ago would answer my question today in the same way: “We say one thing and do another.” When God’s people make the news for doing ungodly things, skeptics are justified in their skepticism.

This is not true of other messages and messengers. If a physician has a gambling problem, his medical practice can continue. If the CEO of a construction company has an affair, his company can keep building skyscrapers.

But Christians claim that our message leads people to become a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). We claim that God produces “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” in those who live by his Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23). As a result, when we “say one thing and do another,” people won’t care what we say.

In addition, sinners don’t like being told they’re sinners, so if they can reject the messenger, they think they can ignore the message. And Satan knows he cannot defeat the truth, so he seeks to undermine the truth-bearers, which puts Christians in his tempting crosshairs every day.

“Oft what we would we cannot do”

All this to say, the more secularized our culture becomes, the more Spirit-filled we must become. We must be the change we wish to see, but we cannot do this apart from the transforming Spirit of God. The English poet Francis Turner Palgrave’s prayer should therefore be ours:

Whilst Thy will we would pursue
Oft what we would we cannot do.
The sun may stand in zenith skies
But on the soul thick midnight lies.

O Lord of lights, ’tis Thou alone
Canst make our darkened hearts Thine own.

Would you surrender your day to God’s Spirit now (Ephesians 5:18)? Would you ask him to manifest the “fruit” of his Spirit so powerfully that others see Christ in you?

In short, would you ask your Lord to make your “darkened heart” his own today?

Denison Forum