“Only God satisfies, he infinitely exceeds all other pleasures”
Bible sales are up 22 percent in the US through the end of October compared with the same period last year. By contrast, total US print book sales were up less than 1 percent in the same period.
What accounts for the rising popularity of God’s word?
According to Jeff Crosby, president of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, “People are experiencing anxiety themselves, or they’re worried for their children and grandchildren. It’s related to artificial intelligence, election cycles … and all of that feeds a desire for assurance that we’re going to be OK.”
Cely Vasquez, a twenty-eight-year-old artist and influencer, recently bought her first Bible, explaining: “I felt something was missing. It’s a combination of where we are in the world, general anxiety, and the sense that meaning and comfort can be found in the Bible.”
Much of what worries us in the world hasn’t changed. As Paul Powell observed, “It’s not that people are worse—the news coverage is just better.”
At the same time, a world facing the threats of nuclear annihilation, global war, and runaway artificial intelligence is objectively more dangerous. And American society possesses fewer tools for dealing with such crises than ever before.
“Its peripheries were ready to peel away”
Journalist Timothy Burke notes that the Soviet Union was an empire rather than a nation, meaning that “the Soviets did not aim to integrate the country’s diverse peoples and cultures into a single unified national identity” (his emphasis). As a result, once Russia itself was visibly weakened, “its peripheries were ready to peel away,” leading to the collapse of the USSR.
By contrast, Yuval Levin observed that America’s founders united our disparate states and cultures around a constitutional system rather than autocratic rulers. As John Adams stated, America is “a government of laws, not of men.”
However, the founders knew that no nation could construct enough laws or employ enough police officers to legislate morality. Human laws cannot change human hearts, which is why, despite enacting some three hundred thousand federal statutes across our history (there are so many that no one knows the precise number), crime still persists.
It was the same in the biblical era. The Ten Commandments led to 613 recognized laws in Judaism. Written laws were later interpreted by oral laws that were eventually compiled into the sixty-three tractates of the Babylonian Talmud; the English version fills a shelf and a half in my library.
And yet it remained (and remains) true that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). This is why America’s founders were so adamant that, in the famous words of John Adams, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Now that postmodern relativism has jettisoned objective truth and biblical morality, like the Soviet empire of old, our “peripheries” have “peeled away,” leaving us with a broken culture that has no means of repairing itself and no inherent hope of a better future than the chaotic present.
“More than they wanted or hoped for”
However, my purpose today is not to discourage you but to encourage you, and in the most paradoxical way.
Paul noted, “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20). Because this world is not our home, nothing that happens to Christians in this life can keep us from the paradise that awaits us in the next.
To the contrary, as the third-century bishop St. Cyprian wrote:
When the day of our homecoming puts an end to our exile, frees us from the bonds of the world, and restores us to paradise and to a kingdom, we should welcome it. What man, stationed in a foreign land, would not want to return to his own country as soon as possible?
St. Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–74) explained that on that day,
The blessed will be given more than they wanted or hoped for. The reason is that in this life no one can fulfil his longing, nor can any creature satisfy man’s desire. Only God satisfies, he infinitely exceeds all other pleasures. That is why man can rest in nothing but God. As Augustine says: “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart can find no rest until it rests in you.”
How can we be sure? Because of Christmas.
“What wondrous love is this”
Is it less a miracle for a Savior to save us when we die (John 14:3) or for a King to return in triumph to our planet (Revelation 19:16) than for the omnipotent God to become a fetus? If the Creator of the universe would be born as a helpless baby and die on a Roman cross, what won’t he do for you? What temptation won’t he defeat? What sin won’t he forgive? What need won’t he meet? What grief won’t he lift? What pain won’t he heal?
To see the love of Christ at Christmas, turn from the cradle to the cross and remember Jesus’ anguished cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Quoting this text, Max Lucado asks,
“Why did Jesus scream these words? Simple—so that you’ll never have to.”
If Christ is your Lord, the beloved hymn is your story:
What wondrous love is this,
O my soul! O my soul!
What wondrous love is this!
O my soul!
What wondrous love is this!
That caused the Lord of bliss!
To send this precious peace,
To my soul, to my soul!
To send this precious peace
To my soul!
Then, one day you will testify:
And while from death I’m free,
I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,
And while from death I’m free,
I’ll sing on.
I’ll sing and joyful be,
And through eternity
I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on,
And through eternity
I’ll sing on.
This is the Christmas promise of God.
Wednesday news to know:
*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.
Quote for the day:
“God proved his love on the cross. When Christ hung, and bled, and died, it was God saying to the world, ‘I love you.’” —Billy Graham
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