In twenty-five years of writing the Daily Article, I have never begun by asking you to click on a link, but I’ll do so today. A painting by Mark Rothko just sold at auction for $37.8 million. Please take just a moment to look at it, then we’ll proceed.

With all due respect to Mr. Rothko, do you wonder if you could have painted this yourself? Perhaps that’s the point.

When I taught philosophy of religion at various seminaries, I always included a section on art history in the belief that artists reveal our culture to us in ways we often cannot see otherwise. Rothko is Exhibit A.

The Russian-born painter emigrated to the US in 1913 at the age of ten. His father’s death a few months later left the family without financial support and led Rothko to sever ties with his Jewish religion. Fluent in four languages, he was a brilliant though erratic student who viewed art as a vehicle for emotional and religious self-expression.

In his lifetime, he experienced the Great Depression, faced antisemitism, and lived through two world wars and the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. Heavily influenced by Nietzsche’s emphasis on the tragedy and emptiness of life, the dark colors and abstract expressionism of his later work focused on transcending the individual and an almost mystical sense of the unknown.

Long preoccupied with darkness, death, and mortality, Rothko died by suicide in 1970.

When you look at the painting that just sold at auction, you see and feel what you bring to the painting, not what it brings to you. It is but a window permitting and even inviting you into your inner self. You discover the meaning that exists and, in a sense, are “painting” the painting yourself.

And that, Rothko wants us to believe, is the only meaning there is.

Warren Buffett’s three best investments

According to Jean-Paul Sartre, “Man is nothing other than what he makes of himself.” Millions of other existentialists and people who have never read him nonetheless agree. It is conventional wisdom today that truth is personal and subjective, that there are no absolute truths (which is an absolute truth claim), and that we are free (or condemned) to find our own purpose in this world.

The good news is that a new generation is coming to see this deception for the lie it is.

At a time when the American dream of affluence is falling apart, when Americans trust each other less and many do not know their neighbors, when we feel as untethered as an astronaut floating in space and struggle from chronic stress so viscerally that some adults are now sleeping with stuffed animals, many young adults are choosing a different path.

According to a Free Press profile, “zoomers” (adults under thirty years of age) are “quitting the rat race, skipping the $8 lattes, and buying homes in towns you’ve never heard of.” In choosing family over career, many are leaving cities for smaller communities and rural living.

They know what happiness research has resoundingly concluded: healthy relationships are the key to flourishing. Billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett could have told us this long ago. He still lives in the same Omaha house he purchased in 1958, calling it the third-best investment he’s ever made. The top two? His and his wife’s wedding rings.

“Gen Z is finding religion”

What young Americans are learning about meaning in life is turning many toward the Lord.

While secularism has been on the rise among younger generations for some time, we are now seeing a religious resurgence among young men, religious revivals on college campuses, and more students than ever reading the Bible. Newsweek reports a surprising rise in religiosity in their generation, along with a decline in secularism, while Vox headlines, “Gen Z is finding religion.”

Even Silicon Valley, long a bastion of millennial secularism, is witnessing a spiritual revival of surprising proportions.

None of this should surprise us. One way the Lord redeems the brokenness of our fallen world is by allowing it to show us the darkness of the human condition without Christ and resulting need for light beyond ourselves. After decades of sexual “liberation” and the plague of pornography, adultery, and broken homes it has produced, many want a better way.

Abby Laub is director of communications at Asbury University, the site of a sixteen-day, around-the-clock worship service that drew fifty thousand visitors and included students from over two hundred schools. She explained: “If you look at the world, and you look at what is going on and what Gen Z is facing, I just think they are absolutely desperate for something other than what the world is giving them right now.”

Popular atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens assured us that we don’t need God to live with meaning and purpose, but the consequences of their influence are proving them wrong. From the nihilism of abortion to the hopelessness of euthanasia, a society that commodifies and commercializes life is finding death in its place.

Mark Rothko’s art, especially his later work, is popular in large part because it holds a mirror to the bleakness and hopelessness of the culture that drove him to despair. Now it’s our turn to offer that culture a better way.

“If Jesus did it for me, he’ll do it for you”

My fear for Gen Z is that they will turn to religion about Jesus rather than experiencing a transforming relationship with him. Having faith in faith is nothing new; “the demons also believe, and shudder” (James 2:19 NASB).

As I noted yesterday, Jesus intends to make us not just better people but new people. Yet embracing the new requires us to release the old. Confessing and repenting from sin is essential to being forgiven for it. Admitting we need the transformation only Christ can make and then drawing closer to him through regular Bible study, prayer, worship, and obedience takes time and discipline.

If Gen Z and other Americans are to pay the price of transforming Christianity, you and I must lead the way. When we choose to obey our Father, his Spirit makes us like his Son (Romans 8:28). As we submit to his Spirit and live with holistic holiness (Ephesians 5:18), we become the “light of the world” amid the darkness of our day (Matthew 5:13–16). And as I often say, the darker the room, the stronger and more attractive the light.

I passed a church sign recently that declared, “If Jesus did it for me, he’ll do it for you.”

What has Jesus done for you lately?

Quote for the day:

“The Bible was not given for our information but for our transformation.” —Dwight L. Moody

Our latest website resources:

• 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
• A letter to motherless mothers
• New reasoning Ais “lie” and “hallucinate” more: The spiritual dangers of AI
• 3 reasons why churches fail at mental health

Denison Forum

The world’s first mass-produced flying car prototype has made its public debut. It transforms from a car to an aircraft in under two minutes and will cost between $800,000 and $1 million. You can buy yours in the first quarter of next year.

With the way things are going at the nation’s airports, you may want one.

Flights to Newark Liberty International Airport were delayed yesterday by as much as seven hours. The airport’s problems first made headlines on April 28 when a technical outage caused more than a thousand flights to be canceled or delayed. Radios went dead for thirty seconds during the outage, giving air traffic controllers no way to tell pilots how to avoid crashing their planes into one another. More disruptions are expected, causing officials to reduce the number of flights in and out of Newark for the next several weeks.

In related news, hundreds of flights were delayed Sunday at Atlanta’s airport because of a runway equipment issue. In recent months, airplanes have bumped wings in San Francisco and Washington, DC. A number of commercial flights have aborted landings at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport as well.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has announced plans for a new air traffic control system, which will take three to four years to build and cost billions. In the meantime, unless we own a flying car, those of us who fly will have little choice but to trust people we don’t know and never see. When we step onto a plane, we abandon all personal agency. We are in the hands of pilots who fly the plane, controllers who direct them, and those who maintain the equipment upon which we risk our lives.

There’s a principle here that applies not just to air travel but to every dimension of our lives.

“I do not do the good I want”

Why do I so readily trust people I don’t know with my life and yet struggle to trust the God I do know?

Lost people who don’t believe God exists would obviously not trust him any more than you and I would pray to Zeus for help. But I’m thinking of all the times I know the living Lord Jesus wants me to do something—or not do something—but I struggle to choose his will over my own.

Today’s article is motivated by a verse in Numbers 15 that struck me recently: “Remember all the commandments of the Lᴏʀᴅ, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after” (v. 39, my emphasis). When I “follow” my “heart” (internal inclinations) and “eyes” (external appearances) more than God’s loving heart and omniscient knowledge, he considers my decision to be spiritual adultery.

It’s not hard to see why.

The Bible says Christians are “married” to Christ as his “bride” (cf. Revelation 19:7; 21:2). Any time we choose to trust and serve someone else, it’s as if we have made them our spiritual spouse instead of Jesus. Imagine your feelings if someone were to treat you in this way. Now imagine if you gave up a heavenly throne to die on a Roman cross for them and they still rejected you for another.

Our problem is not that we don’t already know all of this. When we’re tempted, you and I know our sins will grieve our Savior. Why, then, are we sometimes “inclined to whore after” our desires rather than our Lord’s perfect will?

It’s as if the FAA has warned us that the airplane we’re about to board is going to crash, but we take our seats anyway. We would rather go down with the plane we choose than flourish on the flight God intends for us.

Paul understood our dilemma (Romans 7:14–23) and asked, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (v. 24).

Why we are “more than conquerors”

Now comes the good news: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v. 25). Why? Because “the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2).

Christians have the indwelling power of the Spirit to free us from our own fallen inclinations and the sins into which they would lead us. Now we are “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (v. 37).

How do we experience this spiritual victory?

Paul explains: “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (v. 6). We “set the mind on the Spirit” when we begin the morning by submitting to him (Ephesians 5:18), “long for the pure spiritual milk” of God’s word (1 Peter 2:2), commune with him in prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and live in community with God’s people (Hebrews 10:25).

Then the Spirit changes the inclinations of our hearts, and we become the change our fallen culture desperately needs to see.

When God produces a “new kind of man”

In his first homily as pope, Leo XIV rightly noted that “there are many settings in which the Christian faith is considered absurd, meant for the weak and unintelligent. Settings where other securities are preferred, like technology, money, success, power, or pleasure.” He added that even many baptized Christians do not experience the risen Christ in transforming ways and thus “end up living, at this level, in a state of practical atheism.” (For more, see my website article, “My first pastoral sermon and Pope Leo XIV’s first homily.”)

If we want our skeptical post-Christian culture to believe Jesus makes a real difference in those who trust in him, we must demonstrate that difference in obvious ways. It’s not enough to be nicer and more moral than others. C. S. Lewis was right:

Mere improvement is not redemption, though redemption always improves people even here and now and will, in the end, improve them to a degree we cannot yet imagine. God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man.

This “new kind of man” does not merely try harder to do better—he has a “new heart” and a “new spirit” (Ezekiel 36:26). The Spirit molds us into people who want what God wants more than what we want. Then we choose godliness because our hearts yearn for it. We love Jesus more than we love sin. And we manifest the living Lord Jesus as his “body” in the world and draw the world to him (1 Corinthians 12:27).

Jesus promised,

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).

Will you “see God” today?

Quote for the day:

“I want to change my circumstances. God wants to change me.” —Rick Warren

Our latest website resources:

• 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
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• 3 reasons why churches fail at mental health

Denison Forum

Today’s news, like every day’s news, fits into two categories.

First, there are stories that are relevant to everyone reading this article. This morning’s announcement that the US and China will suspend most tariffs is an example. After weekend talks in Geneva, the US will drop its tariff on China from 125 percent to 10 percent; China will do the same. The reductions will last for ninety days as the two sides begin further negotiations.

At this writing, stocks are surging around the world on the announcement. Since the economy obviously affects all of us, this news is significant for all of us.

Second, there are stories that are only relevant to a portion of us. Some examples:

• A Soviet spacecraft crashed back to Earth Saturday. Because it plunged into the Indian Ocean and not on your house, you are likely reading this news with only passing interest.
• America’s largest cities are sinking due to groundwater extraction. You probably want to know if your city is on the list before deciding how much you care.
• A supercomputer has predicted the exact year life on our planet will end. Unless you plan to be living on Earth in the year 1,000,002,021, you are presumably not alarmed.

However, there’s a forgotten third category in the news, one that you and I overlook to our peril and that of our nation.

Those who “call evil good and good evil”

I was reading Isaiah 5 over the weekend and found some statements that seemed as relevant to our culture as if they were written yesterday.

For example, the Lord pronounced “woe” on greedy people “who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is no more room” (v. 8) and on those “who rise early in the morning, that they may run after strong drink” (v. 11) but “do not regard the deeds of the Lᴏʀᴅ” (v. 12).

A few verses later, this warning especially caught my eye: God pronounces “woe” on those “who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (v. 20) and on those “who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!” (v. 21).

In response, the Lord will remove his “hedge” of protection from Judah and “it shall be devoured” and “trampled down” (v. 5). His prophetic warning came to pass when the Babylonians destroyed the Jewish temple, pillaged the country, and took many of its people into captivity (vv. 13, 26–30).

God is “not wishing that any should perish”

When the sins of the nation brought divine judgment, every inhabitant was affected, not just those who committed these sins. This is because the consequences of sin always affect the innocent, which is one reason Satan tempts us as he does.

I do not know when God will bring judgment on America for our sins. But I do know that because his nature does not change (Malachi 3:6), he must judge sins today as he has judged sins in the past. For example, Peter reminded us that God turned “the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes” and “condemned them to extinction” so as to make them “an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly” (2 Peter 2:6).

I also know that our present prosperity, like that of Judah in Isaiah’s day, is no guarantee of God’s future blessing. As he warned Judah, “Surely many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant” (Isaiah 5:9). On that day, “the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude will go down . . . and the eyes of the haughty are brought low” (vv. 14–15) while “nomads shall eat among the ruins of the rich” (v. 17).

And I know that God delays his judgment only because he is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). However, “the day of the Lord will come like a thief . . . and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed” (v. 10).

Three biblical responses

How should we respond biblically?

First, resolve to be part of the solution rather than the problem:

The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires (Romans 13:12–14).

How much “provision for the flesh” will you make today?

Second, speak biblical truth to the immorality of our day:

Is not my word like a fire, declares the Lᴏʀᴅ, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? (Jeremiah 23:29).

You and I cannot convict a single sinner of a single sin or save a single soul. But when we declare God’s word, his Spirit uses his truth to change hearts and transform nations. From Jonah in Nineveh to spiritual awakenings stirring in surprising ways today, his word always accomplishes his purpose (Jonah 3; Isaiah 55:10–11).

How will you use your influence to share biblical truth on the crucial issues of our day?

Third, point people beyond ourselves to our Savior.

Like modern-day John the Baptists, our motto should be simple: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). In Leo XIV’s first sermon after becoming pope, he closed his homily by describing his new role as leader of a congregation of over 1.4 billion people:

It is to move aside so that Christ may remain, to make oneself small so that he may be known and glorified, to spend oneself to the utmost so that all may have the opportunity to know and love him.

For what purpose will you “spend” yourself “to the utmost” today?

“God’s grace is not infinite”

I know that today’s article is not easy to read. It was not easy to write.

However, I am convicted that too many of us are too unconcerned about the sins of our culture, “at ease in Zion” in the belief that if we don’t commit such sins, we are safe from their consequences (Amos 6:1). I hope today’s article has convinced you that this is not true, that we need to pray and work for moral transformation and spiritual awakening with passionate urgency before it is too late for our nation and God’s judgment affects us all.

The noted theologian R. C. Sproul observed:

“God’s grace is not infinite. God is infinite, and God is gracious. We experience the grace of an infinite God, but grace is not infinite. God sets limits to his patience and forbearance. He warns us over and over again that someday the ax will fall and his judgment will be poured out.”

How will you respond to this warning today?

Quote for the day:

“When the day of recompense comes, our only regret will be that we have done so little for him, not that we have done too much.” —George Müller

Our latest website resources:

• A letter to motherless mothers
• VE Day and my father’s sacrificial love for America: A reflection on duty, gratitude, and the kingdom of God
• New reasoning Ais “lie” and “hallucinate” more: The spiritual dangers of AI
• 3 reasons why churches fail at mental health
• Media Bias, the Met Gala, gorilla vs man debate & an Alcatraz theory

Denison Forum