Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with “aggressive” prostate cancer, according to a statement his office made yesterday. The statement added that his diagnosis included “metastasis to the bone.” Characterized by a Gleason score of nine out of ten, it is classified as “high grade” and could spread quickly. Mr. Biden and his family are reportedly reviewing treatment options, though his office added that the cancer is hormone-sensitive, meaning it likely can be managed.

President Donald Trump responded on his social media platform Truth Social that he and First Lady Melania Trump were “saddened” to learn the news and added, “We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family, and we wish Joe a fast and successful recovery.” Numerous other political leaders voiced their support as well.

“Questions about things that matter always”

Theologian and novelist Frederick Buechner wrote:

We are much involved, all of us, with questions about things that matter a good deal today but will be forgotten by this time tomorrow—the immediate wheres and whens and hows that face us daily at home and at work—but at the same time we tend to lose track of the questions about things that matter always, life-and-death questions about meaning, purpose, and value. To lose track of such deep questions as these is to risk losing track of who we really are in our own depths and where we are really going.

There was a day when avoiding life-and-death questions was nearly impossible. Most people died at home surrounded by their families, many from illnesses that are curable today or accidents that are now preventable. World wars forced millions of people to fight in conflicts they never anticipated and hundreds of thousands to die on battlefields they never imagined.

Today, however, people more often die in antiseptic hospital rooms far removed from the rest of us. When they die, mortuary professionals prepare their bodies to render them lifelike, then families bid them farewell in cemeteries before the rest of us gather for “memorial services” where they are present only in memory.

We even speak of death in ways that shelter us from frightening realities. People do not “die,” they “pass on” or “depart.” If they die in ways that don’t seem threatening to us personally, we all too easily dismiss their reminder of our own mortality. If someone has a heart attack but I don’t have heart disease, or dies from cancer I don’t face, their death seems less relevant to me.

It is the same with tragedies in places we don’t live, from Russian drone attacks on Ukraine, to “extensive” Israeli ground operations in Gaza, to a suicide bomber who killed at least ten people in Mogadishu yesterday. There is something in us that seeks a way to reframe news of mortality to make it less relevant to us.

Then comes the announcement that a former president of the United States has “aggressive” cancer that could prove fatal. He presumably has the best health care possible. Yet his age cannot be reversed, nor can the fact of his humanity.

When we read of his diagnosis, whatever our partisan positions, we are saddened for him and his family. And we are forced to face the fact that his story is in some way our story.

“Making mud pies in a slum”

Here we find one way an all-loving God redeems death: by using it to prove our mortality and thus lead us to live this life for the life to come.

If left alone, we will try to make a paradise of this world. We will make the best we can of what we have, ignoring all that awaits God’s children in his paradise. As C. S. Lewis noted,

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

The best circumstances in this fallen world cannot begin to compare with the glories that await God’s people in the world to come. For us, death is but the door to eternity, the path out of the car into the house, the necessary means to a glorious destination.

When God has been most real to me

But why does an all-loving God allow so many people to die in pain and suffering?

The means of our deaths do not change their outcome or larger purpose. Why, then, does our Father so often permit us to suffer as we do? Across more than four decades of pastoral ministry, for every church member I have known who “died peacefully in their sleep,” many others suffered before they died, some terribly, and many have suffered as they died.

Here we find a second way an all-loving God redeems tragedy: by using it to draw us to himself in faith we would not choose if it were not so necessary.

Paul learned through his “thorn in the flesh” to trust a Power greater than his own (2 Corinthians 12:7–10). When he and Silas sang hymns to God at midnight in a Philippian jail, they were freed miraculously and their jailer was converted to Christ (Acts 16:25–34).

The times God has been most real to me have been those times when I needed his reality the most—the early death of my father, the cancer diagnoses of our son and grandson, those days of deep discouragement in the spiritual deserts and “dark nights of the soul” that Christians sometimes face.

The faith to have faith

Perhaps you are in such a “dark night” today. If so, know that Jesus feels what you feel and weeps as you weep (John 11:35). When you cannot find the strength to hold onto him, know that he is holding onto you (John 10:28). When you lack faith, you can pray for the faith to have faith (Mark 9:24) and find a peace you cannot understand that will sustain your heart and mind (Philippians 4:6–7).

If you’re not in such a “dark night,” perhaps you know someone who is. Perhaps you would pray for them right now, asking Jesus to speak to them in their pain and to be the Great Physician of their soul. Perhaps you would join me in praying for President Biden and his family as they step into their own journey with mortality, asking God to redeem their days for his glory and their good.

And when you wonder if you should trust Jesus with your suffering, perhaps you would take a moment to reflect on the unspeakable suffering of soul and body he chose for you. Tim Keller asked:

“If Jesus Christ didn’t abandon you in his darkness, the ultimate darkness, why would he abandon you now, in yours?”

Why, indeed?

Quote for the day:

“Affliction is the best book in my library.” —Martin Luther

Our latest website resources:

• Standing before Magna Carta: A document that changed history—a reflection on the transforming power of holistic holiness
• Reconciling the “Gods” of the Old and New Testaments: Part 2
• A review of Mark Sayers’ “Platforms to Pillars”: Why we all want to live like pharaohs
• Pete Rose now eligible for the Hall of Fame. Will he get in? A reflection on sin, forgiveness, and consequences
• Global deals, air traffic chaos, an NBA conspiracy theory & the Biden cover-up book

Denison Forum

A reflection on the transforming power of holistic holiness

It’s not often that you get to see a document that changed history, but such was my privilege a few years ago in England. While I was teaching a doctoral seminar for Dallas Baptist University at Oxford University, we took a day trip to Salisbury Cathedral, a magnificent structure whose construction began in 1220.

At one point, I saw a long line waiting to enter a side room. Assuming something worth viewing was there, I got in line. Before long, I found myself before one of the only four surviving copies of the original Magna Carta (Latin for “Great Charter”).

On June 15, 1215, King John affixed his seal to a document protecting the rights and property of forty barons who were rebelling against his authority. For example, it contained this pledge signed by the king: “No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised [deprived of land unlawfully], outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

Magna Carta inspired America’s Founders, leading the colonists to believe they were entitled to the same rights as Englishmen, rights guaranteed by the document. Our Fifth Amendment, “No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” comes directly from Magna Carta’s guarantee of proceedings according to the “law of the land.”

Two other copies of Magna Carta are at the British Library, with a fourth at Lincoln Cathedral (150 miles north of London). Now, it turns out we don’t have to go to England to see it.

A copy bought by Harvard University for $27 in the 1940s turns out to be an original worth $21 million. A new analysis found that the handwriting, sizing, and elongated letters are all consistent with the original.

David Carpenter, professor of medieval history at King’s College London, said: “This is a fantastic discovery. Harvard’s Magna Carta deserves celebration, not as some mere copy, stained and faded, but as an original of one of the most significant documents in world constitutional history, a cornerstone of freedoms past, present, and yet to be won.”

Turning the Bible into a cafeteria

One of the ways Magna Carta was so revolutionary was that it guaranteed that the nation’s laws would apply to all of its people all of the time. There would not be one set of standards for the king and another for his subjects. The laws governing the land would prevail every moment of every day for every person in the nation.

This is how laws work when they work best. Imagine a world in which speed limits applied on Sunday but not on Monday, when criminals could lawfully steal your property every Tuesday and Thursday, when the laws against murder didn’t apply on weekends.

The holistic nature of such regulations is especially true of God’s laws, as the psalmist noted: “Righteous are you, O Lᴏʀᴅ, and right are your rules” (Psalm 119:137). Because God is “righteous” (the Hebrew word means one who “acts uprightly and justly at all times”), the “rules” or laws he has given us are “right” as well.

Here’s the problem: our culture and our enemy daily tempt us to partial obedience to God’s unconditional truth.

The ancient Greeks and Romans separated the soul from the body and religion from the “real world.” They had a transactional relationship with their deities, giving them the worship they required in exchange for the gods’ help with their needs and wants. But no one sought a personal, intimate relationship with Zeus and his cohort. Religion was a means to an end; its rules relevant only to the religious parts of their bifurcated culture.

You and I are tempted to approach God’s word and will in the same way, choosing which parts of Scripture to obey in a cafeteria-style buffet. Our culture makes us consumers of all things, including biblical truth. When we are tempted by sins that do not seem to lead to negative outcomes (which is a lie), we all too often believe we can do what we want without consequences.

Why I needed back surgery

By contrast, Paul applauded the Christians in Rome for being “full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another” (Romans 15:14, my emphasis). Note the order: personal integrity and then spiritual knowledge enabled them to “instruct” others (the word means to admonish, warn, reprove). Then Christ worked through them to bring others to biblical obedience (v. 18).

The more holistically we love and serve our Lord, the more holistically he can bless and use us to change the culture. It was because the early Christians loved and served Jesus so fully that they were used to “turn the world upside down” so effectively (Acts 17:6).

Now it’s our turn.

Scripture calls us the “body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27). Your body is only healthy when every part works in coordination with every other part for a unified purpose. When my back stopped functioning properly, surgery was required to stabilize it and bring it back into its proper role in my physical health. So it is with every member of our bodies, every moment of our days.

On my good days, I recognize this need for holistic holiness. I understand that the cost of such spirituality is more than repaid by God’s gracious provision. I know that refusing temptation and choosing obedience is best for me and for everyone I influence. I recognize that when I wear Jesus’ “yoke,” I experience his perfect will and guidance in ways that lead to the abundant life he alone can provide (Matthew 11:29; John 10:10).

On my bad days, I segregate my soul from my body and God’s will from my own in the belief that what I want is best for me, regardless of what God says. On those days, I have learned that a renewed focus on Jesus’ atoning grace can empower a renewed focus on obedience.

Bitten by snakes 200 times

Tim Friede has allowed himself to be bitten by venomous snakes more than two hundred times. As a result, his body has developed antibodies that are being used to develop new antivenom treatments.

Now, consider what Jesus allowed the Romans to do to his body so he could atone for our sins. Remember the scourging, the crown of scalp-piercing thorns, the nails in his wrists and feet, the spear in his side. And remember that he chose all of this for you.

St. Ephrem, a Syrian theologian who died in AD 373, wrote regarding the cross:

Death trampled our Lord underfoot, but he in his turn treated death as a highroad for his own feet. He submitted to it, enduring it willingly, because by this means he would be able to destroy death in spite of itself. . . .

Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death. . . .

Since a tree had brought about the downfall of mankind, it was upon a tree that mankind crossed over to the realm of life. . . .

We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living. We give glory to you who put on the body of a single mortal man and made it the source of life for every other mortal man. You are incontestably alive. Your murderers sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of men raised from the dead.

Come then, my brothers and sisters, let us offer our Lord the great and all-embracing sacrifice of our love, pouring out our treasury of hymns and prayers before him who offered his cross in sacrifice to God for the enrichment of us all.

The pastor and writer Paul Powell said it well: “Thy will, O God, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.”

Do you agree?

Denison Forum

Evangelicals like me have been on the losing side of the culture wars for decades. The sexual “revolution,” rise of LGBTQ ideology, legalization of abortion and same-sex marriage, proliferation of online pornography, legitimization of prostitution and polygamy, escalation of adultery and divorce—the list goes on.

But things are changing.

In his 2024 book The Third Awokening, Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham in England, described his damaging personal experiences with the liberalism and cancel culture of “woke” ideology. A year later, he is able to write a new Wall Street Journal article titled, “Welcome to the Post-Progressive Political Era.”

Dr. Kaufmann documents the retreat of DEI mandates, a “substantial rightward shift among young people from 2021–24,” and a rising backlash against transgender medicine and men in women’s sports. In addition, declining birth rates, crises in youth mental health, and rising deaths of despair show that cultural progressivism is “part of the problem rather than the solution.”

Then he asks: “We are leaving the age of progressive confidence, but what will replace it?”

The question is obviously critical to our national future. You and I can answer it in the only way that changes souls and transforms culture for the glory of God.

“America stands at the crossroads of her national destiny”

Billy Graham once warned:

Christianity to many people has faded into mere form, lost its relevance to life, and holds no central allegiance in our lives. When a nation loses its faith, it loses its character. When it loses its character, it loses its purpose for living. And when it loses its purpose for living, it loses its will to survive.

I am convinced that America stands at the crossroads of her national destiny. One road leads to destruction, and the other leads to prosperity and security. Most are going down the broad road that leads to destruction. We are going the way of Rome rather than the way of the cross.

Many will blame the Republicans or the Democrats. But it is the American people as individuals that should take the blame. We backslide as individuals before we begin to decay as a nation.

Dr. Graham wrote these words in 1958, the year of my birth. Across my lifetime, I have seen our nation slide much further down the moral slope of which he warned, as I noted earlier.

We can blame those who champion such immorality, but it’s a fact that lost people act like lost people. So did you and I. We ought not be surprised: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Suppose, however, that a group of people knows better but does not do better, that God calls them to be the “salt of the earth” but have lost their “taste” and effectiveness by compromising with what they are supposed to be converting (Matthew 5:13). Are they not significantly to blame for the demise of their culture?

If they live by the Bible and share its truth but are rejected, that’s one thing. If they do not do both, the fault is not with the message but with the messenger (or lack thereof).

“When God is all in all”

My purpose today is not to inflict guilt. Rather, it is to point to a way forward by sharing an insight I recently found to be both encouraging and empowering.

On Maundy Thursday, Jesus told his disciples, “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another” (John 13:34a). The famed theologian St. Augustine (AD 354–430) asked, “Wasn’t this commandment already part of the ancient law of God, where it is written ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself?’ Why, then, is it called a new one by the Lord, when it is really so old?”

Then he notes the rest of Jesus’ statement, “just as I have loved you, you are to love one another” (v. 34b) and comments: “This is the love that renews us, makes us new men, heirs of the New Testament, singers of the new song.” When we experience Jesus’ love, we are transformed into his character (Romans 8:29) and empowered to love others “just as” he loves us.

Augustine noted that such people:

…love one another as those who belong to God. All of them are children of the Most High and consequently brethren of his only Son. They share with each other the love with which he leads them to the end that will bring them fulfillment and the true satisfaction of their real desires. For when God is all in all, there is no desire that is unfulfilled.

Imagine Christians around the world experiencing Jesus’ love in such a joyful, transforming way and then loving others as sacrificially, unconditionally, and passionately as Jesus loves us. No wonder he could promise, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

“Remember what you are saved for”

Here’s the practical response to which we are called today:

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you experience Jesus’ love so fully that you love him in return and thus love people as he loves people and hate sin as he hates sin.

We treat well those we love; we typically refuse what we hate. When we hate sin as Jesus does and love people as he loves us, how can our world be the same? How can people not be drawn to Christ in us as they were drawn to Christ incarnate (cf. Matthew 4:25)?

Oswald Chambers was adamant: “Remember what you are saved for—that the Son of God might be manifested in your mortal flesh.” Consider the difference Jesus made in the world by himself. Now imagine if the world had two billion “little Christs,” or two million, or even two dozen.

Why not you and me?

Why not now?

Quote for the day:

“The same Jesus who turned water into wine can transform your home, your life, your family, and your future. He is still in the miracle-working business, and his business is the business of transformation.” —Adrian Rogers

Our latest website resources:

• Pete Rose now eligible for the Hall of Fame. Will he get in? A reflection on sin, forgiveness, and consequences
• Global deals, air traffic chaos, an NBA conspiracy theory & the Biden cover-up book
• How to leave a legacy that matters
• Edan Alexander, last living American hostage, freed by Hamas: A meditation on courage, commitment, and purpose
• My first pastoral sermon and Pope Leo XIV’s first homily

Denison Forum