Note: I want to thank Dr. Ryan Denison for writing the Daily Article last week while my wife and I were traveling. It is a great privilege to partner with him in sharing this ministry with you.
Two stories are leading the news for obvious reasons. But the connection between the two may not be obvious to many, which points to my point today.
First, pro-life supporters are strongly opposing a Trump administration decision to approve a new generic version of the mifepristone abortion pill. Two weeks ago, federal officials said they were conducting a review of the safety of the pills, a decision the activists welcomed. However, the FDA later stated that it “has very limited discretion in deciding whether to approve a generic drug.” One pro-life leader called the announcement “a wildly disappointing decision.”
Second, mediators are set to meet in Egypt today for indirect peace talks between Hamas and Israel. The talks come after Hamas has accepted some parts of a twenty-point US peace plan, including freeing hostages and handing over Gaza governance to Palestinian officials.
According to Axios, “This is the closest Israel and Hamas have come to ending the war since the October 7 attacks almost exactly two years ago.” However, senior Hamas officials stated that there are still major disagreements that require further negotiations. And their statement made no mention of Hamas disarming, a key Israeli demand included in the US proposal.
“A society operates under two sets of rules”
In his new book, The Origin of Politics: How Evolution and Ideology Shape the Fate of Nations, the Cambridge graduate and science journalist Nicholas Wade writes:
A society operates under two sets of rules. One is the rules of human nature—the inherited behaviors selected by evolution because of their survival value. The other is the rules of the society’s political system. When the two sets of rules conflict, a crisis is likely to follow, which the society must resolve on pain of collapse.
In reading his book as a cultural apologist, I substituted the biblical theme of inherited sin nature for his description of inherited evolutionary behavior. This theme is foundationally manifested in the Garden of Eden, where our first parents sought to be their “own god” (Genesis 3:5). From then to today, the “will to power” has dominated our fallen nature.
Since, as Wade notes, “Political scientists generally agree that the roots of politics lie in human nature,” our will to power dominates our politics as well. He adds that “human nature is often most evident when proponents of a political ideology try to modify or suppress it.” When political means are used to modify our basic drive for self-interest and power, our self-interest ultimately prevails.
George Washington made a similar observation: “It is a maxim founded on the universal experience of Mankind, that no Nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest, and no prudent Statesman or politician will venture to depart from it.”
It was because the founders recognized our fallen self-interest that, as John Adams noted, they sought to create “a government of laws, not of men.” But human laws cannot change human hearts. As the weekend shooting at South Carolina State University tragically illustrates, laws against murder do not prevent all murders.
“The moral miracle of redemption”
Pro-life supporters will be grateful whenever government officials act in ways that uphold the sanctity of life. But as today’s news shows, we must not depend on them always to do so. The same is true for political leaders engaged in war and peace. Each side in the Israel-Hamas conflict has its own self-interest and will act in line with it.
Why do political and legal structures not change the human condition?
Consider an analogy: You would not expect me to be able to speak words that raise the dead. The reason the crowds were astonished when Jesus did this (cf. Luke 7:11–11; John 11:38–45) was that such an act was indeed miraculous.
Here’s the problem: fallen humans are just as dead spiritually and morally as if we were dead physically.
Because “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), we are “dead in our trespasses” (Ephesians 2:5) since our self-reliance cuts us off from the resurrecting and transforming power of our Creator. As Oswald Chambers explains in My Utmost for His Highest, “The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrongdoing, but the disposition of self-realization—I am my own god.”
The good news, as he added in today’s reading, is this: “The moral miracle of redemption is that God can put into me a new disposition whereby I can live a totally new life.” This happens when we yield to God’s Spirit, allowing him to recreate “the disposition that was in Jesus Christ.”
Here we discover one way God redeems the moral failures that dominate each day’s news: as Chambers notes, God cannot work this miracle of transformation in my life “until I am conscious I need it.” Our Father cannot change our hearts without our hearts’ consent.
“When Christ calls a man”
This is why the first beatitude is foundational to the Sermon that follows: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). When we honestly recognize our abject spiritual poverty, we abdicate the throne of our hearts and enthrone God as our king.
As a result, we experience the “kingdom of heaven,” that realm where God’s will is done “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).
Imagine such a life-transforming, grace-infused, love-centered world. Now decide if you will pay the price to experience it personally.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously observed,
“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
Is Jesus calling you today?
Quote for the day:
“A day must come in our lives, as definite as the day of our conversion, when we give up all right to ourselves and submit to the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ.” —Watchman Nee
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