Israel conducted a strike in Iran early this morning in what appears to be its first military response to Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel last weekend.

Fars news agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, reported that explosions were heard in the city of Isfahan in central Iran near an air force base. Iranian state TV also reported that several drones were shot down by air defenses in the city.

Climbing down “the escalation ladder”?

The limited scale of the attack and Iran’s muted response both seem to signal a successful effort by diplomats working to avert all-out war after Iran’s drone and missile attack on Israel last Saturday. Tehran is playing down the incident and indicates it has no plans to respond. In fact, they referred to the incident as an attack by “infiltrators” rather than by Israel, obviating the need for retaliation.

According to Israeli officials, their leaders came close to ordering widespread strikes in Iran on the night Iran attacked. However, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to American President Joe Biden, and because the damage was limited, the war cabinet postponed a decision.

Rather than launching a response that would intensify the conflict with Iran, Israel chose a limited action aimed at military targets. Its response was reportedly intended to show Iran that Israel can strike within its borders, but without provoking a larger escalation. In turn, Iranian state-run media sought to minimize the incident, airing footage of an otherwise peaceful Isfahan morning.

“As long as Iran continues to deny the attack and deflect attention from it and no further hits are seen, there is space for both sides to climb down the escalation ladder for now,” according to Sanam Vakil, the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House.

“Nations do not have permanent friends or enemies”

We can be grateful that leaders in Israel and Iran have apparently chosen the path of de-escalation, since an all-out war between their nations would affect the world in a number of dire ways:

• Oil supplies would be threatened, sending oil prices skyward and damaging the global economy.
• A conflict could trigger a sell-off in the global stock market, with oil-based sectors such as automobiles, transportation, and aviation taking the greatest hit.
• Such a war would likely bring Hezbollah more fully into the conflict, threatening all of Israel with its rocket and missile systems and formidable ground forces.
• And Iran could develop nuclear weapons, a step it has avoided thus far through fear of military escalation with Israel and the US.

However, we should not interpret the motives of Iranian and Israeli leaders so altruistically.

In his perceptive book Why Politics Fails, Oxford professor Ben Ansell writes:

The basic model underlying political economy is that everyone is selfish, or at the very least self-interested. You have a set of things that you want, and you’ll do your utmost to get them. Self-interest is everywhere. It explains why we do what we do. And why we should expect others to do that as well.

This is why, as British Prime Minister Henry John Temple stated in the mid-1800s:

“Nations do not have permanent friends or enemies, only interests.”

His sentiment was echoed most famously by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, but it applies to all nations across all of history.

Leaders in democracies are elected to advance the interests of the people they serve. However, it is in their self-interest to do so effectively enough to be reelected. Leaders in autocracies typically act to their personal benefit. In both cases, if we can determine what is in their self-interest, we can typically predict their behavior.

It is in Israel’s self-interest not to escalate conflict directly with Iran while it confronts the existential threat of Hamas in Gaza along with Hezbollah on its northern border, militias in Syria and Iraq, jihadists in the West Bank, and the Houthis in Yemen. It is in Iran’s self-interest to wage its war with Israel through proxies rather than in ways that directly endanger its military and economy.

Thus, the long-running “shadow war” between the two nations has apparently returned to its previous status quo—at least for now.

How to discover if you are a servant

What is true of national leaders is also true of individual humans. It is in my self-interest to write an article this morning that you will find helpful to the degree that you continue to read what I write and support the ministry that enables me to do this work. It is in your self-interest to read this article to the degree that it meets your personal needs on some level.

There is only one way to escape the “will to power” by which we strive to be our own god (Genesis 3:5), and that is to experience the transformation by which God’s Spirit remakes us in the image of God’s Son so that we manifest the character of the God who “is” love (1 John 4:8). The “fruit” of this Spirit in our lives is “love,” translating the Greek agape, which refers to the unconditional, self-sacrificial commitment to put the other person first (Galatians 5:22).

When we submit our lives every day to the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), he enables us to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). He empowers us to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). With his help, we can break the cycle of retribution by forgiving as we have been forgiven and loving as we are loved.

Today’s news highlights the binary choice I discussed yesterday: to treat people as instrumentally valuable to the degree that they are means to our ends, or to treat them as intrinsically valuable as sacred bearers of the imago Dei (Genesis 1:27).

The former perpetuates the wars between nations and conflicts between people that have blighted humanity across our history. The latter is the path to God’s best for ourselves and our world as we emulate the One who “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).

To discover if you are truly a servant, see how you respond the next time someone treats you like one.

Denison Forum

The FBI arrested an eighteen-year-old in Idaho after discovering what it termed a “truly horrific” and “violent plot” to attack churches this past weekend on behalf of ISIS. According to an FBI investigator, “his attack plan involved using flame-covered weapons, explosives, knives, a machete, a pipe, and ultimately firearms.” The would-be terrorist also stated “his intention to die while killing others on behalf of ISIS.”

In related news, FBI Director Christopher Wray told an American Bar Association luncheon in Washington, DC:

The foreign terrorist threat and the potential for a coordinated attack here in the homeland, like the ISIS-K attack we saw at the Russia Concert Hall a couple weeks ago, is now increasingly concerning. Oct. 7 and the conflict that’s followed will feed a pipeline of radicalization and mobilization for years to come.

Why is this the case?

Geopolitical analyst George Friedman popularized the concept of the “metanarrative.” As I explained in a podcast on the subject, this is a nation or group’s cultural DNA or overall purpose. Understanding it is essential to interpreting their past and predicting their future.

Several years ago, ISIS made their metanarrative clear. In explaining why it hates the West, the group listed the West’s disbelief in Islam, the prevalence of secularism, atheism, “transgressions” against Islam, military operations, and tactical incursions. The group added that even a complete withdrawal from the Middle East would not stop its violence because “our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam.”

For America to confront this metanarrative effectively, it is vital that we return to ours.

Why we need a “coherent national community”

Michael Lind is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin who has previously taught courses on American democracy and foreign policy at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Virginia Tech. In a deeply researched article published this week in Tablet, he notes: “Most Americans—though not all—from 1776 onward have shared and continue to share a common language, a common culture, and common values that transcend particular religious groups.”

While we are a “melting pot” composed of people from around the world, our democracy works because we share what Lind calls a “coherent national community” in which we embrace foundational values that transcend our governmental charter.

By contrast, our secularized “post-truth” insistence upon tolerance as our supreme value is rapidly producing an atomized culture in which we are bound only by our laws. But Lind warns that if the larger “elements of a common American culture are thrown out” by our society, “what remains is more likely to be a failed state along the lines of Lebanon or Somalia than a flourishing democracy.”

If public polls are any indication, we’re already heading in that direction.

According to Pew Research Center, public trust in our institutions has fallen from near 80 percent in 1964 to less than 20 percent today. A recent Gallup survey charts a precipitous decline in “Americans’ satisfaction with the way things are going in the US” from more than 70 percent in 2004 to 23 percent today. In my view, these findings are linked.

If you were to ask an American of my parents’ World War II generation why our nation exists, they would likely have said that we serve to protect and promote democracy around the world. If you ask an American today, what would they say? Would any two answers agree?

“The finest of the wheat”

Our God is a loving Father who wants to bless us, who invites us to “open your mouth wide, and I will fill it” (Psalm 81:10). He desires to “feed you with the finest of the wheat” and to “satisfy you” with “honey from the rock” (v. 16).

However, a holy God cannot bless that which is unholy and remain holy. Nor can a loving Father bless that which harms his child. Consequently, no nation’s unity or flourishing is guaranteed, as today’s anniversary of the beginning of the US Civil War demonstrates.

Michael Lind’s essay reinforces my argument this week:

1. Our national future requires the consensual morality upon which our democracy depends.
2. Consensual morality requires changed hearts, not just enforced laws.
3. Changed hearts require the transforming agency of the Holy Spirit.

This means that evangelism is not the imposition of personal opinion but the sharing of life-giving truth. Spiritual formation is not the religious hobby of some but the indispensable path to flourishing for all. Serving Christ is vital to serving America.

Stated succinctly:

Being people God is able to bless is essential to being a nation God can bless.

Oswald Chambers noted: “If I obey Jesus Christ in the seemingly random circumstances of life, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God.”

How fully will you “see the face of God” today?

NOTE: When our culture increasingly demands that Christians stand down, how can you stand firm in your faith? In our newest book, Between Compromise and Courage (2nd ed.), we look at 8 hot-button topics from a biblical perspective. To read more about AI, gun control, the end times, and more, request our latest book today.

Friday news to know:

• J. Simpson, football star whose trial riveted the nation, dies at 76
• Iranian attack expected on Israel in next two days
• US, Japan military-to-military relationship reaches “new heights”
• Astronauts watched the eclipse from ISS Space Station and grabbed some cool pictures and video
• On this day in 1963: Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed in Birmingham

Quote for the day:

“The proximate result of obedience to God is inward conformity to the divine image.” —Charles Hodge

Denison Forum

As Israel’s war with Hamas passes the six-month mark, here are some updates:

• The IDF is withdrawing troops from the southern city of Khan Younis; Hamas rejected an Israeli ceasefire proposal and Israel set a date for an offensive into Hamas’s last stronghold in Rafah.
• Israel and the US are preparing for a significant attack by Iran in response to Israel’s strike in Damascus last week.
• Israel is also preparing for a second war on its northern border with Hezbollah.
• Iran is arming fighters in Iraq to join Hezbollah in an attack on Israel.
• The UN recently adopted what Israel’s envoy to the group called the body’s 105^th anti-Israel resolution.

Despite all the hardships Israelis are facing these days, Gallup’s recent World Happiness Report lists their country as the fifth-happiest nation on Earth, behind Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. The US ranks twenty-third.

Why, in the midst of a battle for its very existence, surrounded by enemies on all sides and confronting the escalation of anti-Semitism around the world, are Israelis so happy?

And how is the answer relevant to Christians in our secularized culture?

“An intimate society that runs on trust and generates hope”

Gil Troy is an American presidential historian and senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, he explains the difference between Israel and the US: “Amid unspeakable suffering, Israelis have found comfort in one another and a higher calling. Too many Americans feel lonely and lost.”

According to Troy, “Israelis pursue happiness through family and community, by feeling rooted and having a sense of purpose.” He adds: “Despite disagreeing passionately, Israelis live in an intimate society that runs on trust and generates hope. Israelis feel that they’re never alone, and that their relatives and friends will never abandon them.”

After leading more than thirty study tours to Israel over the years, I can attest personally to the truth of his description. The Israelis I know are indeed some of the most optimistic, gracious, and family-centered people I have ever known.

By contrast, Troy says of anti-Israel progressive students in the US:

These illiberal liberals trash traditional families, religion, and America’s noble story of a flawed nation becoming “a more perfect union.” These campus commissars are among the unhappy Americans the surgeon general sees in the depths of loneliness and despair.

Israelis didn’t seek this war—but when attacked, they unleashed a patriotism, idealism, self-sacrifice, and grit that today’s regressive progressives scorn. Israelis’ resilience, duty, and love of life explain how this often polarized and besieged society remains such a happy place. Rather than demonize these heroes, protesters could learn from Israelis about the art of living—not only for their sake but for America’s too.

Secularized Americans can indeed learn from Israelis about “resilience, duty, and love of life.” But both are missing a factor that should cause Christians to be an even greater model for “the art of living.”

The gospel before the Gospels

Witnessing yesterday’s solar eclipse, I was reminded of the biblical report that on Good Friday “there was darkness over the whole land” from noon until 3:00 PM (Luke 23:44–45). The ancient historian Thallus the Samaritan attempted to explain this darkness as an eclipse of the sun. The church father Julius Africanus showed that Thallus was mistaken since Passover always occurs at the time of the full moon, but a full moon cannot come between the earth and the sun.

I mention this discussion because Thallus wrote his account around AD 52, likely before any of the canonical Gospels. Here we find fascinating, early non-biblical historical evidence for Jesus’ existence and crucifixion.

Of course, the best evidence for Jesus’ existence in the first century and relevance in the twenty-first century is the changed lives of his followers.

Think of it: the God who made you now lives in you (Colossians 1:27). His Spirit indwells you (1 Corinthians 3:16) and is working to make you more like Christ every day (Romans 8:29). You are literally the “body of Christ” in the world (1 Corinthians 12:27), continuing his earthly ministry through your own.

Here’s the point:

The more we become like Christ, the more we will draw the world to Christ.

“The condescension of compassion”

To this end, let’s close by reflecting on the miracle of Jesus’ incarnation. Pope St. Leo the Great wrote:

[Jesus] took the nature of a servant without stain of sin, enlarging our humanity without diminishing his divinity. He emptied himself; though invisible he made himself visible, though Creator and Lord of all things he chose to be one of us mortal men. Yet this was the condescension of compassion, not the loss of omnipotence. So he who in the nature of God had created man, became in the nature of a servant, man himself. . . .

Beyond our grasp, he chose to come within our grasp. Existing before time began, he began to exist at a moment in time. Lord of the universe, he hid his infinite glory and took the nature of a servant. Incapable of suffering as God, he did not refuse to be a man capable of suffering. Immortal, he chose to be subject to the laws of death. . . .

One and the same person—this must be said over and over again—is truly the Son of God and truly the son of man.

Because Jesus became one of us, we can be one with him.

How fully will you seek to know him and make him known today?

Tuesday news to know:

• Trump says abortion law should be left to the states
• Biden announces new student debt relief plan for millions of borrowers
• The Vatican says surrogacy and gender theory are “grave threats” to human dignity
• UConn dominates Purdue to capture back-to-back national championships
• On this day in 1865: Robert E. Lee surrenders

Quote for the day:

“Christlikeness is not produced by imitation, but by inhabitation.” —Rick Warren

Denison Forum

When an event won’t happen again where I live until 2317, of course I’m writing on it today. Total solar eclipses occur every eighteen months, but at any given location, it can be centuries between appearances.

When the “totality” occurs this afternoon in Texas, the moon will completely cover the sun for about four minutes, the temperature will noticeably drop, and birds and other wildlife will become quiet, changing to their nighttime behavior. They’re not alone in responding to today’s unusual event:

• Umbraphiles (“shadow lovers” in Latin) have booked hotels in my area and across the path of totality for months if not years.
• Those traveling to see the eclipse will bring a financial boost of as much as $6 billion to communities across a dozen states.
• Some will travel up to thirty hours in the air to see the eclipse from the sky.
• Four NASA pilots will remain in the path of totality for seven minutes to observe the eclipse at an altitude of fifty thousand feet, one of numerous ways scientists will be studying the event.
• Product releases tied to the eclipse include donuts, cookies, juices, chips, pizza, chicken, and other restaurant offerings.

A 105-year-old man who has witnessed twelve solar eclipses is ready to watch his thirteenth today. He is aware that this might be his last: “They don’t come but one or two, every couple of years. . . . I may not see any more eclipses.”

The same is true for you and me.

“God is the most ancient of things”

Today’s eclipse reminds us of both our Maker’s omnipotence and our finitude. He created the sun and the moon (Psalm 148:3, 5); we did not. He rules the universe (Isaiah 40:22); we do not. From the earthquake that rattled New York City last week, to the nor’easter that cut off power to hundreds of thousands, to the critical fire threat in the Central US, to the avalanche that killed three people in Switzerland and the falling tree that took the life of a woman in a storm, we are reminded daily of human frailty.

We can’t even look at today’s eclipse without the right protection for our eyes.

However, one of the hallmarks of our fallenness is our steadfast attempt to deny our fallenness. When the philosopher Thales predicted a solar eclipse using empirical rather than religious reasoning six centuries before Christ, he became known to history as the “first scientist.” While Thales also called the universe “the work of God” and claimed that “God is the most ancient of things, for he had no birth,” many who followed in his scientific footsteps have sided with the French mathematician Laplace who is reputed to have said of God, “I have no need of that hypothesis.”

Let us not fall victim to the same self-reliant temptation.

When humans die, they obviously cannot produce life beyond the grave for themselves. Death is the final, irrefutable proof of the fact that we can do nothing in our own capacity to survive death. The psalmist asked the question facing us all: “What man can live and never see death? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol?” (Psalm 89:48).

There is only one Answer to his question.

“They heard him and saw the signs that he did”

Here’s the problem: The same temptation to self-reliance that keeps secularists from depending on God can keep Christians from depending on his Spirit. When we fall to this satanic deception (Genesis 3:5), our fallen culture pays the price.

Why is Christianity declining in popularity and influence in the West at the same time it is growing dramatically in the Muslim world, Iran, Cuba, the underground church in China, and other places where it is persecuted so fiercely? Self-dependence amid prosperity robs us of the Spirit’s power, and without his power, we cannot convict a single sinner of a single sin or save a single soul. However, Spirit-dependence amid opposition empowers Christians to be used in transformative ways to change hearts and win multitudes to Jesus.

We read in Acts 8 that “the crowds with one accord paid attention to what was being said by Philip, when they heard him and saw the signs that he did” (v. 6). It was not just his words but his Spirit-empowered deeds that persuaded them.

The great need of our day is for more Philips. For this reason, let us note today:

Self-reliance is spiritual and cultural suicide.

In response, let us use today’s solar eclipse as an invitation to worship the One who made the sun and the moon and measures the universe with the palm of his hand (Isaiah 40:12). And let us begin today and every day by asking his Spirit to empower and use us to advance his kingdom through our influence (Ephesians 5:18).

When we do, the Son of God will eclipse the Moon of our fallenness and bring us from the shadow of sin into the sunlight of grace.

“It made me feel the majesty of the universe”

Leticia Ferrer has been chasing solar eclipses around the world for several decades. She’s seen twenty in total and every one since 1998. But she’ll never forget her first one in 1991: “It made me feel the majesty of the universe,” she said.

Her experiences have shown her the immensity of the universe but also her personal finitude. She says of her eclipse viewing: “I’m the most blessed person in the world, but yet I’m a minuscule little ant.”

When we understand the latter, we can embrace the former, to the glory of God.

Monday news to know:

• South Carolina caps perfect season with NCAA championship
• The world steels for a Middle East escalation
• Experts warn about rise in gambling addiction thanks to legal sports betting
• Dutch woman, 28, to be euthanized over mental illness
• On this day in 2013: Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister, dies

Quote for the day:

“Trying to do the Lord’s work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you.” —Corrie ten Boom

Denison Forum

In the wake of the Israeli air strike that killed seven aid workers in Gaza, President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke yesterday to discuss the future of the war, including the role America will play in Iran’s proxy war. Over the course of that tense conversation, Biden threatened “to condition future support for Israel on how it addresses his concerns about civilian casualties and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, attempting for the first time to leverage American aid to influence the conduct of the war against Hamas.”

And while Biden stopped short of directly stating that he would cut Israel off from further munitions and aid, the implication was clear: his concerns over Israel’s present course can no longer be ignored.

The relationship between the two leaders has steadily frayed over recent months and, given Israel’s dwindling list of allies, it can ill-afford to lose the United States. That fact has been made even more apparent by the escalating tensions with Iran and its “Axis of Resistance,” which essentially constitutes the legion of proxy armies through which they have attacked Israel for decades.

• For more on the quandary Israel faces, see Dr. Jim Denison’s update on “what Israel should do now.”

And those tensions have reached new heights in the wake of Israel’s deadly attack on the building next to Iran’s embassy in Damascus, Syria earlier this week.

A fundamental shift

While Israel’s latest war with Hamas in Gaza has lasted for nearly half a year now, the attack on Monday was one of its most aggressive moves to date and could mark a fundamental shift in how the rest of this conflict will play out.

You see, everyone knows that Iran is funding, supporting, and guiding various groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis as they repeatedly attack Israel and its American allies. However, prior to Monday, Iran had remained relatively free from the consequences of those actions. The puppets rather than the puppet master took the brunt of Israel’s response.

That is no longer the case.

Three of the highest-ranking members of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), along with four other IRGC officers, were killed in the strike.

And while global leaders from the Middle East and the UN were quick to denounce the attack given its proximity to Iran’s embassy, Gabriel Noronha—a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and a former special advisor on Iran in the State Department—noted that “If you’re having a bunch of top IRGC generals meeting, you’ve made it a military facility, not a diplomatic facility.”

He went on to add that Monday’s strike could be a sign that “Israel is starting to expand the envelope and say, ‘We’re going to hold the whole proxy network accountable, and we’re going to hold Iran accountable for the actions of its proxies.’”

And according to recent reports, Israel has made America aware of that shift as well, promising that “whoever harms us or plans to harm us, we will harm them.”

Such an approach would be a departure from how the war has played out to date and, if the past is any indication, the way that the United States would prefer for it to play out going forward. After all, despite repeated attacks on US bases by some of those same proxies, the American response never rose to the level of going after the IRGC.

Given our nation’s history—both in recent years and going back decades—of preferring proxy wars to open conflict, it’s understandable that Biden and others may not want to see that position change.

America’s approach to war

You see, the United States has not officially been at war with anyone since World War II.

Those who fought and died in Vietnam, Korea, the Middle East, and across the globe in the decades since would certainly—and rightly—say that they have been to war. However, the Constitution states that only Congress has the power to declare war, and they have not done that since 1942.

Instead, our government—on both sides of the aisle—has grown increasingly reliant on supporting others as they fight, either on our behalf or for the same principles that might otherwise lead us to engage more directly.

That reality is at least part of why Iran’s deputy UN ambassador, Zahra Ershadi, said in response to Monday’s attack that “the United States is responsible for all crimes committed by the Israeli regime,” even though in this particular instance it does not appear that we had any part in the planning or execution of the bombing.

Ultimately, it’s rare for proxy wars not to escalate into something more, and that could be what we’re seeing in real-time across the Middle East.

Of course, the danger inherent to taking on such a role does not necessarily mean that we are wrong to do so. Whether it’s our support of Ukraine in its fight against Russia or Israel in its battle against Iran and its proxies, there are good reasons to take the position that we have. But it would be naïve to assume that such conflicts will never grow into something more.

And, far too often, we see a similar sense of naivety play out in our walk with God as well.

A proxy war approach to sin

It can be tempting, at times, to treat sin the same way nations tend to view proxy wars. We act as though as long as we don’t directly engage in the sin, we haven’t committed it.

However, Jesus holds us to a different standard.

Six times in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus took the typical way his culture—and ours—approached sin and went deeper to address the root causes rather than just the fruit that they bore. And whether it’s anger, lust, or any of the others mentioned in Matthew 5, he calls us to recognize the danger inherent to tolerating sin, even if we never act on it. The God who made us knows how easy it can be for us to cross that line when we make a habit of going right up to it.

So while there may not be much we can do to change what’s going on in Israel—though prayer is a great and necessary place to start—we can reject the temptation to take a proxy war approach to combating the sin in our own lives.

Which of your sins fits that description today?

Denison Forum

Richard Dawkins is one of the most visible atheists in the world. He has not changed his mind in this regard, telling an interviewer recently, “I do not believe a single word of the Christian faith.”

Here’s the part of the story that is making headlines: he also says he identifies as a “cultural Christian.” He stated, “I would not be happy if, for example, we lost all our cathedrals and our beautiful parish churches.” In his view, the UK owes much of its history and heritage to the Christian faith, a fact that should still be valued in our post-Christian day.

However, as T. S. Eliot asked in his Choruses From The Rock, “Do you need to be told that even such modest attainments as you can boast in the way of polite society will hardly survive the Faith to which they owe their significance?” The writer Niall Gooch adds that the great cultural contributions Dawkins appreciates “were not, and could not have been, created by half-believers who found Christianity merely soothing and comforting.”

Esmé Partridge, an MPhil candidate at the University of Cambridge, is right: “Like any organism, Christianity must recover its roots, or it will die—a fact of life which, as an evolutionary biologist, Dawkins ought to appreciate.”

The airstrike that killed aid workers in Gaza

In other global news, reaction continues to the recent Israeli airstrike in Gaza that killed seven aid workers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has acknowledged his country’s responsibility for the attack. The Israeli military chief of staff also said, “It was a mistake that followed a misidentification, at night during the war in a very complex condition. It shouldn’t have happened.” (For much more, please see my new website article, “In its war with Hamas, what should Israel do now?”)

While the escalating Palestinian casualty totals in the Israel-Gaza war are grievous, David Brooks notes in the New York Times that the IDF is seeking to defeat an enemy hiding inside as many as five hundred miles of tunnels built under hospitals, schools, and other civic centers. Hamas spent as much as a billion dollars constructing these tunnels, money that could have gone to building schools and other crucial infrastructure for the people.

As Brooks reports, their strategy is to maximize the number of Palestinians who die and in this way build pressure for Israel to end the war before Hamas is wiped out. For its part, the IDF has done far more to protect civilians than the US did in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to John Spencer, chair of urban warfare at the Modern War Institute at West Point.

If Hamas survives this war, Brooks warns, “it would be a long-term disaster for the region.” The terrorist group would rebuild its military to continue efforts to exterminate the Jewish state, as it promised after its October 7 invasion. This would make it much harder for the global community to invest in rebuilding Gaza.

And, as I have previously noted, Hamas’s survival could convince Israelis that their families are no longer safe in their country. In that case, many are likely to leave, fulfilling the goals of Hamas and Iran to destroy the nation. This is why an Israeli commander said after October 7, “If we do not defeat Hamas, we cannot survive here.”

“Hate cannot drive out hate”

These two stories illustrate my focus this week on the need and opportunity for Christians to manifest the reality of Easter Sunday by our changed lives every other day of every other week of every other year.

When the risen Christ transforms us, the change will be obvious even to atheists and other skeptics. The darker the room, the more apparent the light. And when we love others as Christ loves us, we point them to our only hope for ending war and experiencing genuine peace.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated on this day in 1968, was right:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

Such love is a “fruit” of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). But we can experience this fruit only when we make Christ our Lord and his Spirit comes to live in us (1 Corinthians 3:16), and when we then submit to the Spirit each day (Ephesians 5:18).

Why philosophers and saints are the “real revolutionists”

Author and pastor Paul Powell’s daily devotional recently quoted historian Will Durant: “The only real revolution is the revolution of the individual. The only real revolutionists are the philosophers and the saints.”

Dr. Powell explained:

A person’s basic problem is his heart. It is out of the heart (the moral, spiritual, and intellectual center) that evil comes. To measurably change society, you must seek to change a person’s heart and not just his economics, social habits, and environment.

Changing people is the work of the philosopher and the saint! They deal with ideals, values, and truth. They seek to change others one by one. Changing men and women will ultimately lead to a change in everything these changed people touch.

He added: “This is why Jesus Christ is the greatest revolutionary of all time. His basic concern is with individuals—one by one. As he changes and empowers others he thus can change the world.”

Dr. Powell concluded:

Do you long to see society changed? Do you desire to make America a better place to live? Let Christ change your life by his love and grace, and then give yourself to the work of introducing him to others. You will do more lasting good than all the radicals alive.

Will you do such “lasting good” today?

Thursday news to know:

• Taiwan earthquake briefly halts chip factories that power the global economy
• Powerful storm unleashes severe weather across the US; possible tornado damage assessed
• Israel’s protest movement re-emerges with focus on bringing down Netanyahu
• Patient with transplanted pig kidney leaves hospital for home
• On this day in 1975: Microsoft founded

Quote for the day:

“Men would sooner believe that the gospel is from heaven, if they saw more such effects of it upon the hearts and lives of those who profess it. The world is better able to read the nature of religion in a man’s life than in the Bible.” —Richard Baxter

Denison Forum

US President Joe Biden said this week that he is “outraged and heartbroken” by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza that killed seven aid workers. Israel’s investigation into the incident that killed people working for the World Central Kitchen “must be swift, it must bring accountability, and its findings must be made public,” he added.

The aid workers were traveling in two armored vehicles clearly marked with the World Central Kitchen logo and a third vehicle when they came under fire late Monday night. The convoy was hit even though it coordinated its movements with the Israeli military, the group said. The workers were leaving a warehouse in central Gaza where the team had unloaded more than one hundred tons of humanitarian aid that had arrived by boat earlier that day.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged Israeli’s responsibility for the attack. “Unfortunately, in the last day there was a tragic case of our forces unintentionally hitting innocent people in the Gaza Strip,” he stated. “It happens in war, we are fully examining this, we are in contact with the governments and we will do everything so that this thing does not happen again.”

The Israeli military chief of staff also said in a video, “It was a mistake that followed a misidentification, at night during the war in a very complex condition. It shouldn’t have happened.”

“Spreading terror and delivering death”

Israel clearly should be held responsible for this tragedy. But Hamas should also be held responsible for instigating this war through its horrific October 7 invasion that killed more than 1,130 people. In this number were 695 civilians, including 36 children.

United Nations experts found evidence that Hamas committed sexual assaults that day, including rape and gang rape, and also identified “clear and convincing” evidence that Hamas raped and tortured hostages it took back to Gaza. However, the terrorist group continues to deny these atrocities and claims that it sought to “avoid harm to civilians.” It further blames Israeli helicopters for killing “many” of the 364 civilians massacred at the Nova music festival.

In its view, since “conscription applies to all Israelis above the age of eighteen” and “all can carry and use arms,” Hamas considers all Israelis to be legitimate targets.

In response, Wall Street Journal columnist Matthew Hennessey notes:

The only thing Hamas takes responsibility for is doing what it loves: spreading terror and delivering death. When a bomb goes off in a marketplace, it claims responsibility. When a crazed maniac knifes random people on a bus, it claims responsibility. But when the subject is its failure to give Gazans a better life, Hamas throws up its arms. It didn’t take responsibility for the lies it told about the misfired terrorist rocket that hit Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital in October, or for that matter for using the hospital as a command center. It doesn’t take responsibility for the human calamity it has unleashed on its people with the unspeakable atrocities of Oct. 7.

No. Hamas, in its rhetoric and propaganda, pushes all responsibility for the suffering of Gazans onto Israel—and not just Israel, onto Jews and Americans. Hamas is always innocent, always at the mercy of perfidious forces.

This performative helplessness allows Hamas to play the perpetual victim when, in fact, it is a murderous gang of dead-end losers.

“What would you have Israel do to defend itself?”

However, a critic of Israel will point to the tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza who have died as a result of the IDF’s incursion following the October 7 invasion. The local Ministry of Health reports that more than thirty thousand have been killed through the end of February, an estimate confirmed by outside experts.

This in addition to the devastation to hospitals, other buildings, and critical infrastructure in Gaza, along with the humanitarian crisis unfolding as civilians are displaced and many struggle for food, water, and shelter.

Many see this as genocide on Israel’s part. Even some who support the nation’s right to defend itself and the resulting necessity of its incursion into Gaza now believe that the IDF has gone too far and that a temporary or even permanent cease-fire should be enacted.

David Brooks responded in his recent New York Times article, “What Would You Have Israel Do to Defend Itself?” He writes that he talked with security and urban warfare experts and scoured foreign policy and security journals in search of answers to his question.

The “thorniest reality” of the conflict, according to Brooks, is that Hamas constructed between 350 and 500 miles of tunnels where it lives, holds hostages, stores weapons, builds missiles, and moves from place to place. By some Israeli estimates, Hamas spent about a billion dollars building these tunnels, money that could have gone to building schools and starting companies.

Many of its most important military and strategic facilities are built under hospitals, schools, and other civic centers. Its server farm, for instance, was built under the offices of the UN relief agency in Gaza City.

When Israel destroys these tunnels, the buildings above them are often destroyed as a result.

A strategy built on “human ammunition”

Brooks reports: “In this war, Hamas is often underground, the Israelis are often aboveground, and Hamas seeks to position civilians directly between them.” An MIT professor describes this strategy as “human camouflage” or even “human ammunition.” Hamas’s goal is to maximize the number of Palestinians who die and in this way build pressure for Israel to end the war before Hamas is wiped out. Its survival depends on making the war as bloody as possible for civilians until Israel relents.

John Spencer, who serves as chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, served two tours in Iraq and has made two visits to Gaza during the current conflict. He told Brooks that Israel has done far more to protect civilians than the US did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

For example, Spencer reports that Israel has warned civilians when and where it is about to begin operations and published an online map showing the areas to leave. It has sent out millions of pamphlets, texts, and recorded calls warning civilians of operations to commence. It has dropped speakers blasting out instructions about where to go and conducted four-hour daily passes allowing civilians to leave combat areas.

According to Spencer, these measures have telegraphed where the IDF is going to move next and “have prolonged the war, to be honest.”

“There is no magical alternative military strategy”

Brooks reports that the IDF’s strategy has been “remarkably effective against Hamas forces.” It claims to have killed over 13,000 of the roughly 30,000 troops, disrupted three-quarters of Hamas’s battalions so that they are no longer effective fighting units, and killed two of five brigade commanders and nineteen of twenty-four battalion commanders.

As of January, US officials estimated that Israel had damaged or rendered inoperable 20 to 40 percent of the tunnels.

However, as Brooks notes, “Global public opinion is moving decisively against Israel.” In addition, “Israeli tactics may be reducing Gaza to an ungovernable hellscape that will require further Israeli occupation and produce more terrorist groups for years.”

After surveying the options available to Israel, from conducting a much more limited campaign to targeted assassinations of Hamas leadership, a counterinsurgency strategy, and stopping the conflict altogether, Brooks concludes that “there is no magical alternative military strategy.” He writes:

If this war ends with a large chunk of Hamas in place, it would be a long-term disaster for the region. Victorious, Hamas would dominate whatever government is formed to govern Gaza. Hamas would rebuild its military to continue its efforts to exterminate the Jewish state, delivering on its promise to launch more and more attacks like that of Oct. 7. Israel would have to impose an even more severe blockade than the one it imposed before, this time to keep out the steel, concrete, and other materials that Hamas uses to build tunnels and munitions, but that Gazans would need to rebuild their homes.

If Hamas survives this war intact, it would be harder for the global community to invest in rebuilding Gaza. It would [also] be impossible to begin a peace process.

I would add that if Hamas is allowed to survive and thus to continue its terrorism against Israel, the future of the Jewish state itself would be in question. Israel’s enemies know they cannot defeat the IDF through conventional military means. But they also know that the vast majority of Israel’s Jewish citizens could easily thrive elsewhere in the world if they were to leave Israel. If these enemies can mount a war of attrition that convinces the Jewish people that Israel is no longer safe for them and their families, they could provoke an exodus from the Jewish homeland that accomplishes their overall goal of ending Israel’s existence.

What they could not do with soldiers, they could do with terrorists. This is why an Israeli commander said after October 7, “If we do not defeat Hamas, we cannot survive here.”

How should Christians view the war?

Here’s the point I want to make today: each side is acting in accordance with its fundamental values.

After leading more than thirty tours to Israel, I can attest that both observant and secular Jews who live there embrace a biblical worldview that values the sanctity of all human life. Accordingly, as Brooks and others have noted, the IDF has gone to extraordinary lengths to protect civilians in Gaza.

In fact, Col. Richard Kemp, a retired British Army officer who served in Afghanistan, goes so far as to call Israel “the world’s most moral army.”

Hamas, by contrast, embraces a worldview that sees Jews as “apes” and “pigs,” sees all Israelis as complicit in a perceived attack on Palestinians and Islam, views terrorist attacks against them as a justified defense of Islam, and even views Palestinian civilians who die as a consequence of Hamas’s actions as “martyrs” to their cause. For their part, 71 percent of Palestinians support Hamas’s decision to invade Israel and 70 percent are satisfied with the role Hamas has played during the war.

As Christians view this war, it is vital that we adopt Israel’s worldview rather than that of their enemies.

Scripture is clear:

• God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26).
• Accordingly, “God shows no partiality” (Romans 2:11).
• With God, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
• “There is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him” (Romans 10:12).
• In heaven there will be “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9).

Now we are called to love others as God loves us. With God’s people,

“There is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11).

This fact calls us to pray fervently:

• Ask God to protect both Israelis and Palestinians and to provide for their needs.
• Pray for their leaders to seek justice and righteousness for all.
• Intercede for America’s leaders to do the same.
• Pray and work for all Jews and Muslims to turn to Christ as their Messiah who alone can change the human heart and bring true peace to humanity.

Scripture calls us to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6), seeking that shalom that is peace with God, others, and ourselves. Israel and the Middle East especially need such intercession from God’s people now.

Denison Forum

The White House became embroiled in controversy over the weekend after issuing a “Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility, 2024” for Easter Sunday.

Rev. Greg Laurie called the proclamation “a profound insult to the sincerely held religious beliefs of millions of Americans on our holiest day” and added, “It’s time to turn back to God, not turn our backs on God.” Others joined in criticizing the proclamation as assaulting the Christian faith. Proponents noted that the event falls on March 31 every year and only coincidentally aligned with Easter this year.

If the event had been rescheduled so as not to conflict with Easter, criticism would have risen in precisely the opposite direction: proponents would have supported the move while critics would have labeled it discriminatory and likely blamed Christians for being “transphobic.”

This controversy is nothing new: Easter has been dividing skeptics and believers since Jesus rose from the dead. The authorities who arranged Jesus’ crucifixion, when told by the guard of his resurrection, bribed them to lie (Matthew 28:11–15) and continued to persecute his followers (cf. Acts 5:40). While billions of Christians claimed yesterday that Jesus is “risen indeed,” billions more rejected or ignored our claim.

How can we persuade Americans not to “turn our backs on God” but to “turn back to God”?

Monday can be our most persuasive evidence for Sunday.

Would you die for a lie?

The historical evidence for the resurrection is remarkably strong (see my article, “Why Jesus?” for an extensive overview). For example, we know from ancient non-biblical records that:

• Jesus of Nazareth was a real person of history.
• He was crucified by Pontius Pilate.
• His first followers believed he was raised from the dead.
• They worshiped him as God.

We can also point to the empirical evidence of the empty tomb. No other explanation makes sense:

• If the disciples stole the body, how did they overpower the Roman guards, convince five hundred people that he was alive (1 Corinthians 15:6), make his body appear through locked doors (John 20:19) and cook a meal for the disciples (John 21:9–12), then cause his body to ascend to heaven (Acts 1:9)? Would they then all die for a lie, some in gruesome ways? Would you?
• If the authorities stole the body, wouldn’t they produce it when the disciples began preaching the resurrection?
• If the women went to the wrong tomb, wouldn’t the authorities and Joseph of Arimathea, who owned the correct tomb, correct the error?
• If Jesus didn’t really die on the cross, how did he survive a spear thrust that ruptured the pericardial sac of his heart (John 19:34) and an airtight mummified shroud, overpower the guards in his emaciated condition, make his way through locked doors, and then perform the greatest high jump in history at the ascension?

Of course, a postmodern relativist is likely to dismiss all of this with the rejoinder, “that’s just your truth.” We are objectivists with nearly every dimension of reality, from the laws of physics to laws against murder, theft, and the like. But when we confront reality that clashes with our preferences, we retreat to the shelter of subjectivism, claiming that “all truth is relative” (which is an objective truth claim).

The most compelling argument for Easter

You and I can choose today to become evidence for the most compelling argument for Easter in our relativistic culture: the changed lives of Jesus’ followers.

The apostles are our example. Men who abandoned Jesus when he was arrested, denied him when he was on trial, forsook him when he was dying on the cross, and then hid from the authorities behind locked doors soon became catalysts for the mightiest spiritual movement in human history.

Peter is Exhibit A. After boasting that he would never deny his Lord, he denied even knowing him three times. Even after he saw the empty tomb, he returned to his fishing profession (John 21:3). (Note that he went fishing at night, which was what professional rather than recreational fishermen did so they could sell their catch as “fresh” the next morning; cf. Luke 5:5.)

But when he met the risen Lord, he left his fishing nets behind to “fish for men” (Matthew 4:19). The other apostles joined him, spreading out across the Roman Empire to share the good news of Easter at the eventual cost of their lives. There is no other reasonable explanation for their transformed lives except that they met the risen Christ and were never the same again.

“From this, everything begins anew!”

So it can be with you and me. What we do today can show that what we celebrated yesterday is true. When others see the difference Christ makes in our lives, they will be drawn to seek that difference for their lives.

In his Easter message yesterday, Pope Francis proclaimed:

“The tomb of Jesus is open and it is empty! From this, everything begins anew!”

He noted that without the forgiveness of sins, there is no way to overcome the barriers of prejudice, mutual recrimination, and other conflicts that beset our broken world: “Only the risen Christ, by granting us the forgiveness of our sins, opens the way for a renewed world.”

This is “the path that none of us, but God alone, could open,” he stated.

If you and I truly walk this path with the risen Christ today, our world cannot be the same tomorrow.

Monday news to know:

• King Charles shakes hands, chats with crowd at most significant public outing since cancer diagnosis
• Crews carefully start removing the first piece of twisted steel from collapsed Baltimore bridge
• Gunman kills 1, injures 4 at Nashville coffee shop on Easter Sunday
• Seven kids, some as young as 12, wounded in mass shooting at busy Indianapolis mall
• On this day in 1789: First US House of Representatives elects speaker

Quote for the day:

“Fulfillment comes when we live our lives on purpose.” —Simon Sinak

Denison Forum

The 2024 NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments kick off today, so if your office seems a bit more sparsely populated or email responses come slower than usual, now you know why. And the lengths to which some will go in order to watch the tournament’s opening days of chaos speak volumes to the place it has within our cultural psyche:

• A reported 37 percent of Americans are willing to call in sick or skip work to watch March Madness.
• One in five have canceled dates or birthday parties in order to catch the games.
• Those not willing to skip work will watch an average of six hours of tournament play while on the clock (and that was the estimate before working from home became more common).
• For men not willing to fake an injury or illness, March Madness is the most popular time of the year to get a vasectomy and have a legitimate reason not to leave the couch.

One of the primary reasons for the tournament’s popularity—especially its opening days—is the fact that it truly feels like anything can happen in most of these games.

As I wrote last year,

Upsets are common and, unless they happen to your school, we get to embrace the seeming randomness of each game’s outcome without being personally invested in the results. We can root for the underdogs without any sense of disappointment when they lose. There aren’t many other areas of our lives where we can emotionally invest in something without any real risk if it doesn’t go our way.

And considering the ways in which the sport has fundamentally changed over the last few years, this season’s tournament could be as unpredictable as any before it.

NIL money, transfer portals, and the chance to choose

As Billy Witz notes,

Three years ago, under mounting legislative and judicial pressure, the N.C.A.A. changed two major rules. It allowed athletes to make money from so-called name, image and likeness payments, and it eased restrictions on players transferring from one school to another. Those changes — prompted in part by a Supreme Court ruling that weakened the N.C.A.A.’s authority — have upended the top levels of college sports.

As a result, previously unseen levels of parity exist in a sport that used to be dominated by the blue-blood programs that routinely recruited the nation’s best prospects. Now—for better or worse—those players often go to the programs where they can get the most playing time while padding both their résumé and their bank accounts in the process.

While it would be naïve to assume that paying players is new to the sport, the ability to do so in the open has changed the way many of these young men and women have come to view their time in college. And given how much can ride on finding the right fit and opportunity, many of them are better off for it.

Consider this: Of Krysten Peek’s eight players who could help themselves the most in this year’s tournament, five of them started their college careers playing somewhere else. And before the tournament even started, a little more than 10 percent of players on the men’s side of Division I entered the transfer portal with the hopes of finding a better situation for next season.

For some, it will work out well. For others, it will not, with some losing the scholarship they had in the failed pursuit of a better opportunity.

Either way, though, most players seem to relish the chance to make that choice for themselves. And there is an important lesson in that reality for us today.

The consequences of free will

One of the fundamental truths of what it means to be created in the image of God is that we possess the freedom to choose how we will use the life he’s given us.

Now, that doesn’t mean we can do anything, as all free will exists more as a menu of options than the absence of limitations. But our heavenly Father created us to go through life with the ability to decide how we will approach it.

Ideally, we would use that freedom to choose to love and obey him. That is far and away the best approach, and Scripture makes that abundantly clear across its pages. But Scripture is also clear that the gift of freedom requires us to own the results of our decisions (Galatians 6:7–8).

We don’t get to make a choice and blame God or anyone else for how it turns out.

Ultimately, those consequences belong to us, and it’s a sign of maturity—both emotional and spiritual—to be able to accept those consequences and move forward. That doesn’t mean we have to like the results. But whether it’s a busted bracket or something of far greater consequence, when we choose to live in the past, we greatly reduce what the Lord can do through us in the present.

So choose instead to learn from your experiences, then move on to wherever God leads next. That’s how we grow, both as people and in our walk with the Lord.

Where do you need to experience that kind of growth today?

Denison Forum

Who is the “most watched person on earth,” according to Time magazine?

If you’re following the news, you might nominate:

• Taylor Swift, who now has the 1 music film ever on the Disney+ platform
• Princess Kate, who was just spotted in public for the first time in months
• Tom Cruise, ranked the most popular actor of 2023
• Or Lionel Messi, ranked our most popular athlete.

But the answer is twenty-five-year-old Jimmy Donaldson, better known by his online alias MrBeast. His videos have garnered a social media audience of over 425 million fans; he estimates that he appears on a screen somewhere in the world about thirty billion times a year.

Now MrBeast is making news for a deal he struck with Amazon worth as much as $100 million. “Beast Games” will consist of a thousand contestants competing for a $5 million cash prize, the largest single prize ever offered on television or streaming. Donaldson will host and executive produce the show, which will be available in 240 countries and territories.

His secret is not just his entertaining and well-produced videos (Time reports that he shoots as much as twelve thousand hours of footage for a fifteen-minute clip). It’s also the way his viewers are invited to engage with him. At his suggestion, for example, viewers have planted twenty million trees and more than six hundred thousand people donated enough money to help remove thirty million pounds of trash from the oceans.

Grayson Logan, an eleven-year-old who watches MrBeast videos every day at his home in Arkansas, says, “I like him because he’s super nice and he helps people and gives them money.” A digital marketing expert says of Donaldson’s appeal: “His whole perspective is, How do I make the average person extraordinary?”

This question helps explain Donaldson’s astounding popularity, since most of us seek to be “extraordinary” every day. There’s a paradoxical path to our goal available right now, one that transcends anything our media-driven culture can offer.

“My core identity is not that of a consumer”

It was my privilege to hear Rev. Tish Harrison Warren at Dallas Baptist University’s Veritas Lecture Series last night and then to join her on the platform for a conversation.

Her book Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life was Christianity Today’s 2018 Book of the Year (Here’s our review). Her second book, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep was Christianity Today’s 2022 Book of the Year. She was also an opinion writer for the New York Times. I have followed her ministry with great gratitude for her intellectual brilliance, practical relevance, and evangelical yet ecumenical cultural engagement.

In Liturgy of the Ordinary, Tish writes:

Christian worship, centered on Word and sacrament, reminds me that my core identity is not that of a consumer: I am a worshiper and an image-bearer, created to know, enjoy, and glorify God and to know and love those around me.

She also states:

The crucible of our formation is in the monotony of our daily routines.

Our problem is that our faith formation and our “daily routines” so seldom seem to intersect.

Privatizing truth and meaning

You and I live in a “seeing is believing” culture that defines reality as that which is material and measurable. This is one consequence of our scientific, secularized society, “secular” being Latin for “of this world.”

Earlier societies lived with mystery and the reality of the supernatural, from the Greeks and Romans with their pantheon of Olympic gods, to early Christians who sought and lived by the power of the unseen Holy Spirit, to medieval cultures governed by the spiritual rhythms and dogmas of the Catholic Church.

Then came the birth of modern science founded on the scientific method, which focuses only on that which can be measured in some tangible and objective way. Darwinian evolution further removed the mystery of creation, then Freudian psychoanalysis taught us that religion is an infantile neurosis. Now our postmodern, relativistic culture is convinced that all truth claims, including (especially) religious truth claims, are personal and subjective.

But this privatizing of truth and meaning isolates us from others and from the God who made us. It insulates us from our inborn quest to be part of a cause greater than ourselves. It separates spiritual formation from our daily routines. And it commodifies our faith as a means to personal, even selfish ends.

It should not surprise us, therefore, that a video creator who gives viewers a chance to change the world in a collective and tangible sense would be one of the most popular media figures in history.

How to live an extraordinary life

To live an extraordinary life, stay connected to the One who came to give us “more and better life than [we] ever dreamed of” (John 10:10 MSG). Make him your Lord by submitting to his Spirit’s power and leading. When you “steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions,” as a result “you’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met” (Matthew 6:33 MSG).

Tertullian (AD 160–240) noted:

Prayer cleanses from sin, drives away temptations, stamps out persecutions, comforts the fainthearted, gives new strength to the courageous, brings travelers safely home, calms the waves, confounds robbers, feeds the poor, overrules the rich, lifts up the fallen, supports those who are falling, sustains those who stand firm.

Will you experience such victory today?

Wednesday news to know

• No alternative for Rafah invasion, Netanyahu says, as rift with US grows
• Hong Kong lawmakers unanimously approve security law giving government more power to curb dissent
• Nvidia reveals Blackwell B200 GPU, the “world’s most powerful chip” for AI
• MacKenzie Scott donates $640 million to 361 nonprofits
• OTD in 1965: LBJ sends federal troops to Alabama to protect a civil rights march

Quote for the day

“For any person of faith, public engagement must be balanced with times of withdrawal, of silence, prayer, questioning and wonder beyond the reach of words. Otherwise, faith with all its strange and startling topology becomes a flat and sterile thing, something to be dissected instead of embraced. And typically once something is fit only for dissection, it is dead.” —Tish Harrison Warren

Denison Forum

The “Conservative Dad’s Real Women of America” 2024 pinup calendar features female influencers and aspiring politicians. What makes the calendar newsworthy is that the models are posing in what the New York Times calls “old-school images of sexiness—bikinis, a red sports car, a bubble bath.” The article documents the use of profane speech and sexual innuendoes by conservative political figures as well.

What especially bothered me was the reported escalation of vulgarities by pastors in their sermons and writing. This despite the clear biblical command: “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving” (Ephesians 5:4, my emphasis). As John Piper comments:

Crudeness is the sludge that accrues when the fountain of Godward thanks dries up.

What causes this “fountain” to dry up? The answer is more relevant to evangelical Christians than you might think.

Why Earth’s tilt is so important

Today is the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. The season will actually arrive at 11:06 p.m. EDT with the arrival of the Vernal Equinox. At that moment, the direct rays of the sun will shine down on the equator producing the effect of equal day and night.

From that point forward, the direct rays of the sun will migrate north of the equator, with hours of daylight steadily growing longer. They will finally arrive at the Tropic of Cancer, which is latitude 23.5 degrees north. This will be the summer solstice and the longest day of the year. They will then head south and the days will grow shorter once again.

Right now, you’re no doubt asking why you needed to know any of this. Nothing you just read is actually relevant to your life. These facts don’t change anything about your day.

Or so we think.

It turns out, the earth’s spin axis tilt of 23.5 degrees, which makes possible the changing seasons I just described, prevents temperature extremes that would render our planet uninhabitable. In addition, this tilt appears to be optimal for life to develop and thrive. And it has been essentially constant, likely due to the stabilizing effect of the moon, which is crucial for the development of advanced life.

This is just one of many examples of the “anthropic principle,” the fact that the current structure of the universe and the constants of nature are arranged precisely in a manner that permits life on our planet to exist. In the minds of many scientists, these constants are far too numerous and far too precise to be coincidental.

Rather, they furnish evidence of a Designer who fashioned our universe precisely as the Bible says he did.

The problem of a gift we cannot lose

Now comes my question: How much credit can you and I take for anything we’ve discussed today?

My query is motivated by a professional observation an investment banker once shared with me: the first generation creates the wealth, the second generation conserves it, and the third generation loses it. This is true to human nature: when we receive a gift we didn’t deserve, we typically acknowledge it with gratitude and seek to use it well. Then we take it for granted as though we deserved it. Then we abuse it until it’s gone.

This pattern is especially threatening for evangelical Christians in America today.

Yesterday we discussed the fact that we should fear the Creator more than anything in his creation. One primary way we “fear” and revere God is to acknowledge that he is in fact our Creator and that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).

Of all his gifts, our salvation is the most precious, of course. The eternal life purchased for us by Jesus on the cross saves us from an eternity in hell for an eternity in paradise. We evangelicals especially focus on the fact that this gift is freely given by grace (Ephesians 2:8–9) rather than the result of our good works or merit. And we know that since we cannot earn our salvation, we cannot forfeit it, either.

Here’s the problem: A gift we cannot lose is a gift we can take for granted, then a gift we can abuse.

Whether it’s profanity, or political slander, or pornography, or premarital or extramarital sex, or any number of other moral issues plaguing the evangelical church today, we are tempted to live like the lost people we are called to win. And they are watching.

“My worth to God in public”

The paradox is that those of us who emphasize the grace of salvation should of all people be the most motivated to respond with godliness. Not so God will love us, but because he already does. Not so he will bless us, but because he already has. Anyone who truly grasps God’s grace must respond with gratitude that empowers personal and public holiness.

This is what happens when, to use John Piper’s phrase, the “fountain of Godward thanks” erupts in our souls.

Oswald Chambers noted: “My worth to God in public is what I am in private. Is it my master ambition to please him and be acceptable to him, or is it something less, no matter how noble?”

What is your “master ambition” today?

NOTE: “What does it mean to be a Christian?” If someone asks you that, how will you answer? The gospel of Matthew is a primer on discipleship, and my latest book seeks to help you better understand just how essential it is that we truly understand—and act upon—Jesus’ call to discipleship. Request my cultural commentary on Matthew today.

Tuesday news to know

• Israel sending delegation to Washington to discuss US concerns over Rafah invasion
• Realtors reckon with a seismic shift to how they get paid
• In historic move, EPA bans asbestos nationwide
• Apple’s AI ambitions could include Google or OpenAI
• On this day in 2003: War in Iraq begins

Quote for the day

“It is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Denison Forum

While Congress has been trying to find a way to reign in TikTok for more than three years, the bill passed by the House of Representatives earlier this week seems to have the best chance yet of limiting China’s potential influence through the massively popular social media app.

With a vote of 352 to 65, the legislation was sent up to the Senate with overwhelming and bipartisan support. And while it’s expected to face a more difficult time there, President Biden has already said that he would sign it if the bill makes it to his desk.

So, what exactly would the bill do and why has opposition to the app grown so much in recent years?

Why does Congress care?

Let’s start with why members of Congress on both sides of the aisle seem so worried about TikTok’s pervasive use by Americans:

• The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) requires that all Chinese tech companies surrender any data that the government requests, regardless of privacy laws in the countries where it was originally collected.
• While there is no clear evidence that the CCP has abused that ability in America to date, a former employee of ByteDance—TikTok’s parent company—alleged that the government used the app to “identify and monitor activists in Hong Kong during the pro-democracy protests of 2018.” Many in the American government fear the same capabilities could be used here as well.
• TikTok currently has an estimated 170 million American users and, as Rep. Mike Gallagher, the chair of the House Select Committee on the CCP and co-author of the bill, remarked, “America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States.”
• Whether it was a “Letter to America” from Osama bin Laden that went viral on TikTok last year or the way the app has promoted videos favoring Hamas in the wake of the October 7^th attacks last fall, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi—the bill’s co-author with Rep. Gallagher—noted that “the platform continued to show dramatic differences in content relative to other social media platforms.”
• And, given that it can take users as little as 10 minutes for TikTok to begin recommending shockingly explicit content on subjects like suicide, drugs, and a host of other topics, the threat extends well beyond geopolitical issues.
• Any lingering doubts as to the app’s influence were put to rest when TikTok pushed a notification—one some users could only remove by clicking on it—encouraging them to contact their congressional representatives to oppose the bill. In response, members of congress were quickly inundated with thousands of calls from people expressing a range of responses from anger to threats of suicide if the legislation passed.

And while companies and government entities have taken steps to ban TikTok to some degree, members of Congress appear on the verge of expanding their censorship of the app on a much broader scale.

So what would the bill aim to do?

What’s in the bill?

The basic gist of the bill is that ByteDance has six months to either sell off its American user base or leave it behind entirely, something the CCP has vowed not to do. However, that’s not all it contains:

• To begin, should ByteDance fail to divest itself of TikTok’s American market, the bill is designed to ensure that individual companies will do it for them. After the six months is over, any app store or entity found to host TikTok would face civil penalties of up to $5,000 for each user “within the land or maritime borders of the United States.”
• While the bill names ByteDance and TikTok specifically, the language is such that it would give the president the authority to designate other “foreign adversary controlled” applications as subject to similar censorship.
• Currently, the list of “foreign adversary” countries to whom the bill would apply consists of North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran, though that list could be updated at a later time should the American government deem it appropriate to do so.

That last bit of open-ended legislation is what has many of the bill’s detractors worried. Most see the threat that TikTok poses, but fear that giving the government the authority to impose this level of censorship could set a troubling precedent for the future.

In short, they’re worried that the solution will end up being worse than the problem.

And that’s a concern that extends beyond TikTok and the bill opposing it.

God’s solution: grow up

One of the most difficult aspects of fixing the sin in our lives can be addressing the symptom rather than the root cause of our struggles.

We see that idea play out with the religious leaders throughout the gospels as Jesus continually worked to tear down the man-made laws intended to keep people from sin, but which ended up keeping them from God. That dynamic was at the heart of his Sermon on the Mount, where six times Christ addresses the crowds with some variation of “You have heard it said…but I say to you” (Matthew 5:21–48).

In each case, his goal was to help people understand the ways that they had become so focused on controlling their actions that they had given sin room to take root in their hearts. And, as a result, their solution only made the problem worse.

Instead, Jesus called them to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

Eugene Peterson, in The Message, translates it this way: “In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.”

Christ’s call hasn’t changed. He still expects us to “grow up” and become the people he has created us to be. And a key part of doing so is learning to see beyond the moment to address the real problem without creating a host of others in the process.

Where does God want you to grow up today?

Denison Forum

US intelligence agencies issued their 2024 Annual Threat Assessment this week, warning that our country faces an “increasingly fragile world order.” They could have been reading today’s news:

• As elections begin tomorrow in Russia, President Vladimir Putin says his country is ready to use nuclear weapons if its sovereignty or independence is threatened.
• The US sent Marines to Haiti to help secure its embassy amid rising gang violence.
• Hezbollah launched a hundred rockets on northern Israel in one of the heaviest barrages since the start of the conflict. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is warning that the terrorist group is “dragging Lebanon into a possible war.”
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the IDF will press forward with its military campaign into Rafah amid rising international pressure. Meanwhile, the US Army is sending soldiers to help set up a temporary pier in Gaza for getting more aid and supplies into the territory. An aid ship is sailing to Gaza as well.
• The House of Representatives passed a bill yesterday that would lead to a nationwide ban of TikTok if its China-based owner doesn’t sell its stake; the legislation now goes to the Senate. This amid fears the video app could be used to gather personal information on Americans and to spread false information about US elections or a war.
• Europe’s terror threat is growing from Iran and its proxies in the Middle East.
• Scientists are warning that the H5N1 bird flu virus could be evolving into a greater threat to humans.
• The FBI estimates that cybercrime cost Americans $12.5 billion last year.

Here’s what these stories have in common: they are all examples of what psychologists call “anticipatory stress,” where we feel deep anxiety today about things that could happen to us tomorrow. Each of these stories is existentially challenging as they are; any of them could become much worse seemingly overnight.

One reason anticipatory stress is so debilitating is because repeatedly visualizing an event can have a similar impact on our brain as actually experiencing it. In response, we can ignore the future, but tomorrow is coming whether we like it or not. We can obsess over it, which robs today of its joy while focusing our attention on fears that may never come to pass.

Or we can choose a third, counterintuitive option that will empower us to face all that comes today—and tomorrow.

A phrase I just discovered

This week, we’ve been exploring ways a personal, intimate relationship with the living Lord Jesus transforms our character and empowers our witness. Today, I’d like to explore a phrase I just discovered in my personal study of the book of Job:

“[God] delivers the afflicted by their affliction” (Job 36:15).

What does this mean?

• “Delivers” translates the Hebrew for “pulls out, saves.”
• “Afflicted” renders the Hebrew for being “wretched, poor.”
• “By their affliction” could be translated “by using their affliction.”
• This is an interesting wordplay: “delivers” translates the Hebrew halas, while “affliction” translates

I often state my belief that God redeems all he allows. One way he does this is by using our challenges to rescue us from challenges and our suffering to save us from suffering.

How does he do this?

Where Jesus “breaks through to you”

Solomon, the wisest of all men, wrote: “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things” (Psalm 72:18, my emphasis).

Tragically, despite all that God wants to do in and through our lives, self-sufficiency is the “default position” of our fallen souls. In our secularized, self-centered culture, self-reliance is an attribute praised by society as well.

However, God cannot give what we will not receive or lead where we will not follow.

When we face genuine adversity, we learn that we need God’s word and power in ways we did not admit before. If we then surrender our challenges to his providential grace, we discover that we can testify with Paul, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). And we can pray with the psalmist: “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word” (Psalm 119:67).

Br. Geoffrey Tristam of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Boston notes:

Christ breaks through to you, not in those places where you are strong, where your skills are well-honed and developed, but precisely in those areas in your life where you know failure or weakness. For it is there that you come close to the power of the Cross. It is precisely there that God is waiting to meet you, longing to offer you forgiveness, strength, and renewal, to live and work not in your own strength, but in the strength of Christ.

Where is God “waiting to meet you” today?

Thursday news to know:

• European lawmakers pass AI act, world’s first comprehensive AI law
• Owner of Family Dollar to close 1,000 stores
• How the world’s biggest plane would supersize wind energy
• Four years on, Covid has reshaped life for many Americans
• On this day in 1879: Albert Einstein is born

Quote for the day:

“You don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.” —Tim Keller

Denison Forum

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump each won enough delegates last night to become the presumptive nominees of their parties. A vote is scheduled today in Congress that could lead to a US ban of TikTok. And the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Special Counsel Robert Hur’s testimony before lawmakers yesterday “accomplished a rare feat: Angering all sides of the political world.”

Meanwhile, I’d like to go a different direction this morning by asking: If you could tell the universe one thing about humanity, what would you share?

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“A poem of Europa”

NASA is preparing its Europa Clipper spaceship for an October launch. Six years from now, after a 1.6-billion mile journey, it will begin orbiting Jupiter, making forty-nine close flybys of Europa to determine if the moon has conditions that could support life.

The craft will include a triangular metal plate on which is inscribed what one NASA official calls “the best humanity has to offer across the universe—science, technology, education, art, and math.” Biblical truth is apparently not included, which says something about what the agency considers humanity’s “best” knowledge.

However, an engraving of US Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s handwritten “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem of Europa” will make the flight. Her poem includes these lines:

We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow. . . .

O second moon, we too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.

We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.

Limón is right: our “constant awe” shows that you and I are intended for more than the mundane. In fact, we were made to seek the One who made us. The good news is that when we “call out through the dark,” we can experience the Light.

The urgent news is that we have no other path to the purpose that gives our lives transcendent meaning.

“Continually improved means to carelessly examined ends”

The French philosopher Jacques Ellul wrote a book seventy years ago that could have been published yesterday. Titled The Technological Society, it is considered one of the most important works of the second half of the twentieth century. In it, Ellul explains how our technologically obsessed civilization has become, as the foreword states, “committed to the quest for continually improved means to carelessly examined ends.”

As Ellul argues so compellingly, modern society has commodified not just things but people. Everything—and everyone—is now a means to our personal ends. Even now, you’re tempted to read this article in hopes of profiting personally from it. I’m tempted to write it to profit personally from the fact that you’re reading it.

Here’s my point: our transactional culture tempts us to do the same with the living Lord Jesus.

Oswald Chambers warned: “Beware of an abandonment which has the commercial spirit in it. . . . We have got so commercialized that we only go to God for something from him, and not for himself.”

Instead, he urges us to choose “personal sovereign preference for Jesus Christ himself.”

When “holiness becomes attractive”

Yesterday, we noted that when we know Christ personally, we are compelled to share him publicly. Today, let’s add that this is because knowing the risen Lord of the universe personally must change us personally. The pattern is clear:

• The Gadarene demoniac threatened the people of his community (Mark 5:1–4), but after he encountered Jesus, he shared his new faith with them (v. 20).
• The Samaritan woman was shunned by her neighbors, but after she encountered Jesus, she shared her new faith with them (John 4:29).
• Peter denied knowing Christ, but after he met his risen Lord, he risked his life to share his new faith with the very people who ordered Jesus’ crucifixion.
• All of Jesus’ disciples except John abandoned him at the cross, but after they met their risen Lord, they sacrificed their lives to be his witnesses.
• Saul of Tarsus sought to kill Christians, but after he met the risen Christ, he joined his fellow believers in sharing Christ with the world.

Theologian D. A. Carson wrote:

When you are converted, you want to do what you didn’t want to do before, and you don’t want to do what you wanted to do before. There’s a change in the heart; there’s a cleaning up, a change in orientation.

With this result:

“Holiness becomes attractive, instead of something you have to put up with to figure out what you can get away with.”

Is holiness attractive to you today?

If not, why not?

Wednesday news to know:

• Haiti’s leader to resign as gangs overrun the country
• FAA audit of Boeing’s 737 Max production found dozens of issues
• Inflation picks up to 3.2%, slightly hotter than expected
• Happiness is a habit: New psychology research finds continuous practice is key
• On this day in 1881: Czar Alexander II assassinated in St. Petersburg

Quote for the day:

“Holiness is doing God’s will with a smile.” —Mother Teresa

Denison Forum

Kate Middleton has been in the center of a media firestorm since abdominal surgery on January 16 removed her from the public eye, leading to rampant speculation regarding the severity of her condition. A photo of her with her children posted on Sunday was intended to calm the waters, but media outlets discovered that it had been edited and removed it from their sites, which only fanned the flames. She admitted yesterday that she edited the photo personally and apologized for the confusion.

If you’re like most of us, this is a “tempest in a teapot.” You likely follow news about the Princess of Wales and her family with some degree of interest. But knowing about the royal family and knowing them personally are two very different things.

Satan does everything he can to confine our relationship with Jesus to the former. Choosing the latter is the single most important decision in all of time and eternity. It changes our lives and, through us, our world.

We are not radical enough

The transformation of America must begin with the transformation of America’s Christians. We must prove that biblical morality is relevant today by demonstrating its relevance in our personal lives. We then become our best argument for persuading others to join us. And we are empowered to share biblical truth with bold, courageous compassion as we display the “fruit of the Spirit” to the world (Galatians 5:22–23).

Consequently, you and I need to seek nothing less than a daily, intimate personal experience with the risen Christ.

Substituting a religion about Jesus for a transforming relationship with him is a deception of Satan himself. When we fall for this trap:

• We don’t seek to know Christ more fully (Jeremiah 29:13).
• Rather, we seek to be our own God (Genesis 3:5), in control of our own lives.
• We are inoculated spiritually with just enough of a relationship with God to keep us from experiencing the real thing.
• Our witness is enervated since the world sees no difference between our lives and theirs.

In this way, religion is dangerous, but not for the reasons post-Christian progressives think. It’s not that we are too radical, but that we are not radical enough:

• We should oppose abortion, despite the accusation that we are part of a “war on women,” but we must also love women considering abortion and the children we encourage them to bring into the world.
• We should oppose same-sex marriage, despite the claim that we are “homophobic,” but we must also model biblical marriage by rejecting pornography and adultery while loving all people as Christ loves us.
• We should oppose euthanasia, despite the claim that we oppose “death with dignity,” but we must also care for the infirm and honor the elderly.
• We should bemoan the divisiveness of our politicized culture, but we must also “love [our] neighbor as ourselves” (Matthew 22:39) whatever their political positions.

Why I love to talk about my grandkids

Here’s why today’s conversation is so crucial for our broken culture: when you and I experience the risen Christ in a daily, intimate, transforming way, we must tell the world. Just as Jesus “had” to pass through Samaria (John 4:4), not because this was a geographical necessity but because he was compelled by his love for Samaritans, so the Samaritan woman he led to himself had to tell her fellow villagers about him (vv. 28–30, 39–42).

She was not alone:

• The demoniac healed by Jesus had to tell his fellow residents in the Decapolis “how much Jesus had done for him” (Mark 5:20).
• The disciples on the road to Emmaus, when they had a transforming encounter with the risen Christ, had to tell the apostles “what had happened on the road” (Luke 24:35).
• Early Christians, when they were “filled with the Spirit,” had to share the gospel with the Pentecost crowds (Acts 2:4–41).
• When Peter was “filled with the Spirit,” he had to testify for Christ before the Sanhedrin at the risk of his life (Acts 4:8–12).
• When Paul met the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he had to proclaim Christ in the synagogues there (Acts 9:20).
• When John met the risen Christ on the prison island of Patmos, he had to give the Revelation to the world.

We often see evangelism as a duty and even a chore. But in fact, when we truly experience the risen Christ, we must share him. We cannot help it—we want everyone we know to know the One whose love has changed our lives.

Jesus promised the same: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:38). Like the waters of an artesian well forced by underground pressure to pour up from the ground, so our love for Jesus will flow into our words and actions as we naturally fulfill his commission to “be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8).

Because I love my family, I love talking about them. And, like a typical grandparent, I am always ready to convince you that my grandchildren are perfect (with pictures as evidence). Because I love them, I want you to love them.

So, here’s the question:

Do you want to share Jesus with someone today?

If not, why not?

Tuesday news to know:

• Biden attends urgent meeting with Caribbean leaders as Haiti’s violent crisis grows
• US responds to Russia–China plan to put nuclear reactor on moon
• How the AI that drives ChatGPT will move into the physical world
• Indonesian flight veered off course after both pilots allegedly fell asleep in the cockpit
• On this day in 1933: FDR broadcasts first “fireside chat” during the Great Depression

Quote for the day:

“Jesus did not say that the whole world should go to church, but he did say that the whole church should go to the world.” —Greg Laurie

Denison Forum

Oppenheimer won last night’s Academy Awards for best picture, best director (Christopher Nolan), best actor (Cillian Murphy), and best supporting actor (Robert Downey Jr.), as well as for film editing, score, and cinematography. As you know, the movie tells the story of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s quest to build the world’s first nuclear weapons.

One reviewer explained its appeal, calling the film “very much a movie of the moment—a feel-bad hit for our feel-bad age, perfectly calibrated to capture the imagination of an audience perpetually scanning the horizon for the bloom of some new mushroom cloud.”

We don’t have to look far to find such “clouds” in the news:

• Today marks the fourth anniversary of the WHO’s declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic; the global death count from the virus now exceeds seven million.
• The largest wildfire in Texas history was apparently ignited by a power company’s facilities; the conflagration has left at least two people dead, killed thousands of animals, and scorched more than a million acres of land. (For a theological reflection on this ongoing tragedy, please see my new website paper, “The Texas wildfires: What we know, what we don’t know (yet), and what to do with what we know.”
• The proliferation of AI, cloud computing, crypto-mining, and electric vehicles is making unprecedented demands on America’s aging and increasingly inadequate power grid.
• An epidemic of anxiety, loneliness, and technology-induced isolation continues unabated.

But I think an even deeper force is at work in our culture, one to which the gospel can uniquely respond with the hope we long to embrace today.

“There are no national principles”

In an article published Saturday, New York Times contributing opinion writer Christopher Caldwell analyzes America’s shift from a consensual, objective moral worldview to a relativism that is unable to “distinguish facts from wishes.” Using our fracturing response to Russian aggression in Ukraine as an example, he writes:

Fighting a war based on values requires good values. At a bare minimum it requires an agreement on the values being spread, and the United States is further from such agreement than it has ever been in its history—further, even, than it was on the eve of the Civil War. At times it seems there are no national principles, only partisan ones, with each side convinced that the other is trying not just to run the government but also to capture the state.

There was a day when our “national principles” were clear and compelling. As set forth in our founding creed, the Declaration of Independence:

• Truth is “self-evident,” not subjective.
• All people are “created equal” by God, not the product of chaotic or evolutionary coincidence.
• We are “endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights” which the government does not bestow but protects.
• We each have the right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” a claim that contradicts the culture of death embraced by abortion and euthanasia advocates.

These declarations contributed directly to our national character, purpose, and astounding success on the world stage. However, as Ronald Reagan warned:

“We’ve gone astray from first principles. We’ve lost sight of the rule that individual freedom and ingenuity are the very core of everything we’ve accomplished. Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”

The good news is that these “first principles” were not the invention of Founders long dead. To the contrary, they are as available to us today as they were to them.

“For correction or for his land or for love”

As I and many others have noted, our nation was birthed within the consensual morality of the Judeo-Christian worldview. Whether particular Founders were committed Christians or not, they lived in a culture where the biblical principles espoused in the Declaration were prevalent.

Now it falls to us to embrace these principles anew, to think biblically and act redemptively in all we do. When we make this lifestyle commitment, we join our omnipotent Lord as he continues to advance his kingdom today.

Scripture declares: “God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things that we cannot comprehend” (Job 37:5). He does his work in the world for three purposes: “Whether for correction or for his land or for love, he causes it to happen” (v. 13).

• “Correction” in the Hebrew refers to a measuring rod used to convict us of our sins and to guide us into our best lives.
• “His land” refers to the entirety of his creation.
• “Love” translates the Hebrew hesed, referring to God’s unconditional, faithful, passionate love for us (agape is the Greek New Testament equivalent).

By his word and the ongoing work of his Spirit in the world, God continues to correct us, provide for us, and demonstrate his love for us. However, he requires our holistic commitment to holiness and can give only what we will receive with humble dependence on his Spirit: “Justice and abundant righteousness he will not violate. . . . he does not regard any who are wise in their own conceit” (vv. 23–24).

“If you will, you can be healed”

St. Theophilus of Antioch (AD 120–190) wrote:

A person’s soul should be clean, like a mirror reflecting light. If there is rust on the mirror his face cannot be seen in it. In the same way, no one who has sin within him can see God.

But if you will, you can be healed. Hand yourself over to the doctor, and he will open the eyes of your mind and heart. Who is to be the doctor? It is God, who heals and gives life through his word and wisdom. . . .

If you understand this, and live in purity and holiness and justice, you may see God. But, before all, faith and the fear of God must take the first place in your heart, and then you will understand all this.

Will you “see God” today?

Monday news to know:

• Andrea Bocelli and son Matteo Bocelli perform stunning “In Memoriam” tribute at the 2024 Oscars
• Muslims spot Ramadan crescent moon in Saudi Arabia, meaning month of fasting starts Monday for many
• US military airlifts nonessential staff from embassy in Haiti, bolsters security amid ongoing gang violence
• Macron backs “end of life” bill, aims for Parliament debate in May
• On this day in 1985: Mikhail Gorbachev picked to succeed Konstantin Chernenko

Quote for the day:

“Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man” (Oswald Chambers).

Denison Forum

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Nikki Haley plans to suspend her Republican presidential primary bid in a speech later this morning. She won Vermont yesterday and the District of Columbia last Sunday, but former President Donald Trump has won every other primary so far. He could clinch the Republican nomination next Tuesday.

President Joe Biden has won every Democratic delegate awarded thus far (except for American Samoa, where Jason Palmer won three of its six delegates last night) and is poised to clinch his party’s nomination on March 19, setting up a rematch of their 2020 contest.

Your view of these results likely aligns with your larger political beliefs. You want our nation to elect the person who will most likely advance what you consider to be our best future. If you’re like many Americans, however, you view our collective good through the prism of your personal good.

In one sense, this arrangement is as it should be. In another, it contains the seeds of our national demise.

When politics become religion

Americans don’t believe in the “divine right of kings,” the age-old claim that monarchs derive their powers from God or the gods and thus have the right to rule us regardless of our wishes. To the contrary, as our Declaration of Independence states, “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

John Locke, whose views were enormously influential for the Founders, claimed that in a state of nature, no one would have the right to rule over you, nor would you have the right to govern anyone else. Thus, our leaders derive their just right to govern only by the consent of those they govern.

Conversely, by choosing to live in a particular country, we consent to live by its rules. In Plato’s dialogue Crito, Socrates states that he knew the laws of his city-state; though he was free to leave, he chose to reside there and thus took upon himself an obligation to obey these laws.

However, there’s an innate problem with our system of governance: its success depends on the choice of its citizens and leaders to advance the common good even if it conflicts with their personal biases and interests.

When our nation was founded, a consensual sense of objective morality derived from the Judeo-Christian worldview served to forge and guide our national character. Now that our culture has jettisoned objective truth and biblical morality, we have no means whereby to identify, much less choose, the collective good over our personal agendas.

As a result, our politics have become a “zero-sum game” whereby some win while others lose. Compromise is viewed as weakness. Allegiance to partisan agendas takes on a religious fervor since these agendas are invested with securing our preferred future. All things and people are commodified as means to our consumptive personal ends.

Here we find yet another reason to be gravely concerned about the evolution of artificial intelligence, for reasons we’ll explore next.

“Our technology has exceeded our humanity”

As we noted yesterday, AI tools are being weaponized to advance the social and ideological agendas of their developers and users. As we saw Monday, the weaponizing of AI is occurring literally with the advent of lethal autonomous weapons.

Our national and cultural future therefore depend to a significant degree on using AI to advance the common good even at the cost of personal gain. Otherwise Albert Einstein’s warning will become even more accurate: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”

Here’s the good news: when God’s Spirit converts us (John 3:3), he changes us (2 Corinthians 5:17). Jesus calls and empowers us to serve others as he serves us (John 13:14–15). Exhibit A is the apostle Paul, willing to be cursed (Romans 9:3) for the sake of the very people who cursed him and sought his death (cf. Acts 23:12–15).

Jesus calls us, like Paul, to take up our cross “daily” (Luke 9:23), to be “crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20), to “present [our] bodies a living sacrifice” to our Lord (Romans 12:1). As Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously stated, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

But here’s the rest of the story: When we submit our will to God’s Spirit each day (Ephesians 5:18), loving our Lord and our neighbor as our highest priorities (Matthew 22:37–39), we then experience our Father’s “good, pleasing, and perfect will” (Romans 12:2 HCSB). When we pay any price to serve God and others, his Spirit makes our service eternally significant in ways we cannot begin to measure today.

“A banquet, full of gladness and tranquility”

St. Ambrose of Milan (c. 340–397) said of his fellow Christians:

We have died with Christ. We carry about in our bodies the sign of his death, so that the living Christ may also be revealed in us. The life we live is not now our ordinary life but the life of Christ: a life of sinlessness, of chastity, of simplicity and every other virtue. We have risen with Christ. Let us live in Christ, let us ascend to Christ.

How do we do this? Ambrose explained:

Let us take refuge from this world. You can do this in spirit, even if you are kept here in the body. You can at the same time be here and present to the Lord. Your soul must hold fast to him, you must follow after him in your thoughts, you must tread his ways by faith, not in outward show. You must take refuge in him. He is your refuge and your strength.

When we do this, Ambrose assured us,

To rest in the Lord and to see his joy is like a banquet, full of gladness and tranquility.

Will you take your seat at this spiritual feast today?

Wednesday news to know

• Gaza deal in limbo: Hamas insists permanent ceasefire needed for hostage deal
• Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema will not seek re-election
• Jeff Bezos surpasses Elon Musk as world’s richest person
• Liberty University will pay $14 million, the largest fine ever levied under the federal Clery Act
• On this day in 1857: Supreme Court rules in Dred Scott case

Quote for the day

“One of the principal rules of religion is, to lose no occasion of serving God. And, since he is invisible to our eyes, we are to serve him in our neighbor; which he receives as if done to himself in person, standing visibly before us.” —John Wesley

Denison Forum