One of my dearest friends was born in a kibbutz two miles from Gaza. His village was able to evacuate when Hamas launched its murderous assault last Saturday. However, a neighboring kibbutz called Kfar Aza was targeted by the terrorists.

Yesterday, my friend forwarded to me a survivor’s description of what happened:

A thriving community of one thousand people, men and women, was brutally crushed within forty-eight hours. Whole families, parents, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, and grandmothers were murdered in cold blood. Their houses were turned into piles of earth and ashes, and their lives as they knew them—destroyed. They lost their homes, their livelihoods, and all their property. They lost neighbors, both relatives and beloved friends, in one of the greatest terrorist attacks in history. Those saved from the slaughter were trapped for two days under fire until they were rescued with only the clothes on their backs.

An Associated Press reporter quotes an Israeli army general who stood amid the wreckage of the village: “You see the babies, the mothers, the fathers in their bedrooms and how the terrorists killed. It’s not a battlefield. It’s a massacre.”

Harvard students blame Israel

The Israeli death toll has passed 1,100 at this writing. President Biden confirmed yesterday in his address to the nation that fourteen US citizens were killed in the conflict and that Americans are known to be among the hostages held by Hamas.

And yet . . .

• A coalition of thirty-four Harvard University student organizations signed a statement that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” and added that “the apartheid regime is the only one to blame.” A Columbia University student group also celebrated Hamas’s “historic” massacre of Israeli civilians.
• A pro-Hamas rally held Sunday in Manhattan’s Times Square praised the slaughter of Israeli civilians.
• Demonstrators in London launched fireworks in the direction of the Israeli embassy and British student groups praised the attacks as mobs around the UK cheered One demonstrator called the attacks “beautiful and inspiring.”
• Crowds in Germany celebrated the terrorist raids.
• The United Nations Human Rights Council held a moment of silence for the “loss of innocent lives in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere,” nowhere mentioning the Israeli victims who were slaughtered.
• Horrifically, a group gathered in Sydney, Australia, to celebrate the attacks chanted, “Gas the Jews.”

From Egypt’s genocide in the time of Moses to the devastation by ancient Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and Rome, to Hitler’s “Final Solution” and its slaughter of six million Jews, the scourge of antisemitism has persisted for millennia.

Why do so many people hate the Jews today?

“Bad ideas have victims”

With regard to Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel, three explanations are relevant.

First, as I explained in my book, Radical Islam: What You Need to Know and in my latest website paper, Hamas and their fellow jihadists would answer by claiming that the State of Israel stole its land from the rightful Palestinian owners and that its citizens are complicit in this “theft” by participating in their democracy. They believe they are required by the Qur’an (2:190, 192) to defend Islam by attacking Israelis and destroying Israel. Many have become convinced that Jews are in fact hostis humani generis, the enemies of mankind itself.

Second, those influenced by Critical Theory (which includes the Harvard and Columbia students and many of the West’s intellectual, academic, and cultural elites) would answer that Israel is a majority oppressor of the Palestinian persecuted minority. They claim that the only answer is for the oppressed to reverse the equation by oppressing their oppressor.

Third, many of Iran’s leaders believe the existence of Israel constitutes the “greatest barrier” to the reappearance of the Mahdi (a messiah-like figure). They therefore seek the eradication of the Jewish nation to hasten his arrival.

These are three tragic examples of a statement by my friend John Stonestreet that I quote often: “Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims.” In this case, the victim is Israel.

“There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness”

In this battle for the future of Israel, we are called by Scripture to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6) and to “seek [her] good” (v. 9).

This means that we repudiate the sin of antisemitism, a plague that is rising in the US and Europe today. It means that we pray for Israel’s leaders and people to be safe from their enemies and resolute in defending their country. It means that we seek practical ways to support those in Israel and around the world devastated by these atrocities, knowing that our God “comforts the downcast” (2 Corinthians 7:6) and calls us to do the same (2 Corinthians 1:3–4).

And it means that we do all we can to lead everyone we can to the only One who can truly heal our broken world.

When Christ is our Lord, we serve only one master. We serve him and not ourselves, whatever the cost to ourselves. We serve him by serving others whether they serve us or not. And we serve out of love for the One who first loved us (1 John 4:19).

John Piper was right: “Faith in Jesus Christ frees you from the slavery of sin for the sacrifices of love.”

How strong is your “faith in Jesus Christ” today?

Denison Forum

“Babies, women, the elderly were dragged outside of their homes, were taken hostage. Civilians were shot and most were massacred in cold blood walking on the streets. This is something that, I mean, is truly unprecedented.” This is how Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan described the surprise attack Hamas launched on Israel by air, land, and sea early Saturday morning.

“This is our 9/11,” he added.

At this writing, more than 700 Israelis and about 413 Palestinians have died in the conflict; more than 2,200 have been injured. After declaring war for the first time since the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Israel launched retaliatory strikes against military compounds and locations connected to Hamas’s leadership in Gaza. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) announced this morning that it has retaken control of all communities around the Gaza Strip.

I have led more than thirty study tours to Israel, taught world religions at several graduate schools, and written books and numerous articles on Israel and Islam. In this context, I will view this tragedy with you today through the prism of geopolitical and religious narratives. Let’s ask why this is happening, then close with a practical and urgent way we must respond today.

Why did Hamas attack Israel?

Hamas called its attack “Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge” and claimed it was acting in retaliation for Israel’s “desecration” of the Temple Mount, but we should look beyond its words to its foundational beliefs.

“Hamas” is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement.” The terrorist group is part of a movement of radical jihadists who claim that the State of Israel stole its land from its rightful Muslim owners. They believe the Qur’an requires them to defend Islam by attacking Israel and anyone who supports the Jewish people (cf. Qur’an 2:190; 9:5). Since Israel is a democracy, they view its Jewish citizens, whom they consider “apes and swine” (Qur’an 5:60; see 2:65; 7:166), to be complicit in this “attack” on Islam.

Hamas has therefore been in conflict with Israel since seizing control of Gaza in 2007. Its goal is more than aggression against Jews, however.

Hamas published its official charter in 1988, calling for the destruction of Israel and raising “the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.” Its founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, stated that “reconciliation with the Jews is a crime” and claimed that Israel “must disappear from the map.”

To accomplish this goal, Hamas would need to do three things.

One: Prevent Muslim nations from supporting Israel.

The Abraham Accords brought the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain into normalized relations with Israel in 2020. More recently, Saudi Arabia has been considering steps to normalize relations with Israel in exchange for a defense pact with the US.

Saturday’s attacks were clearly intended to sabotage such talks. They apparently achieved their goal, at least in the short term, when the Saudi government issued a statement blaming the conflict on “the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights.”

Two: Provoke a response that draws other Muslims into the conflict.

Hamas says its attacks are only the beginning and stated, “It is possible that the battle would involve regional parties.” How could this happen?

By committing horrific atrocities, including taking dozens of hostages, Hamas is inciting a response it can characterize as an attack on all Palestinians and Muslims. Since the Qur’an requires Muslims to defend Muslims (4:75; 22:39), Hamas apparently hopes other Muslims in the region will then join its war on Israel.

This could include Hezbollah, a heavily armed militant group controlling southern Lebanon that briefly exchanged artillery and missile fire with Israel after the attacks began. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the north and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the West Bank are other jihadist groups that could join the conflict.

A former Israeli security advisor warned that Israel will face an “existential threat” if Hezbollah, Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria, and Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank join the fighting. It will be crucial to see if the conflict with Israel expands beyond Hamas in the coming days.

Three: Engage other nations in the widening conflict.

Senior Hamas and Hezbollah members said Iranian security officials helped plan the attack on Israel and gave it the green light last Monday. According to the Wall Street Journal, these officials described their broader plan to create the multi-front threat I described above.

Many Iranian leaders believe the Mahdi (the Twelfth Imam, their version of a Messiah) will appear to govern the world for Islam after the Muslim world destroys the Jewish state. Some believe that this war with Israel will occur after a world war, viewing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as this necessary prelude.

However, Iran does not stand alone: its military and economic ties with Russia have strengthened significantly since the latter invaded Ukraine. How could the war with Israel benefit Russia? New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman noted: “If Israel is about to invade Gaza and embark on a long war, Ukraine will have to worry about competition from Tel Aviv for Patriot missiles as well as 155-millimeter artillery shells and other basic armaments that Ukraine desperately needs more of and Israel surely will, too.”

Friedman quoted Vladimir Putin’s statement last Thursday that Ukraine was being propped up “thanks to multi-billion donations that come each month.” Putin added, “Just imagine the aid stops tomorrow.” In that case, Ukraine “will live for only a week when they run out of ammo.”

Last, there is China, whose relations with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine are now at a “historic high.” China clearly seeks to take Taiwan and its high-tech manufacturing so essential to the global economy. According to Atlantic writer Graeme Wood, “If war breaks out generally around Israel, and questions arise about Israel’s very survival, the United States will have to start counting its ammunition. How much is left for Israel, after Ukraine has taken its share? And what about Taiwan, now third in line?

“These are hard questions, and Iran, Russia, and China would be thrilled, collectively and separately, to force them on the United States.”

“A Pearl Harbor and a 9/11 all together”

We will obviously continue this conversation tomorrow. For today, I will close by asking you to join me in praying urgently for the innocent victims of this horrific war.

I have very dear friends of many years living in Israel; one of them has a grandson who began his military service just a week ago. A pastor friend and a group of university colleagues were also in the country when the attacks began; I am praying for their safety and safe return.

They are just a few of the multitudes of people who are affected by this war. Hundreds are dead, thousands are wounded, and the atrocities by Hamas now being reported are horrifying. A spokesman for the IDF said, “We have had the worst day in Israeli history when it comes to casualties. . . . In American terms, this is a Pearl Harbor and a 9/11 all together.”

God’s call to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6) has never been more urgent than it is today.

Denison Forum

Did Taylor Swift join Travis Kelce for his birthday yesterday? Will she attend his game this weekend? Heinz has created a custom sauce in response to a viral photo of her at a recent Chiefs game. Their friends say she is “really enjoying getting to know Travis” and that he is “completely smitten” with her.

Now you know everything I know and don’t know about this “pop cultural moment,” as the NFL describes the couple and its coverage of their reported romance.

Now consider these headlines on this morning’s Wall Street Journal website: “Violent Crime Is Surging in DC”; “US Jet Shoots Down Turkish Drone Over Syria”; “GM Has at Least 20 Million Vehicles With Potentially Dangerous Air-Bag Parts”; “Army Plans Major Cuts to Special-Operations Forces”; “China Is Becoming a No-Go Zone for Executives.”

Which story would you rather think about today?

A world that is all about us

In Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, the American writer and educator Neil Postman warned that television was transforming our engagement with the world from one in which we process information actively to one in which we experience entertainment passively. He argued that a particular medium can only communicate a particular kind of idea. Print is essential for rational inquiry and argument, in his view, while televised images are most useful for evoking emotions and entertaining viewers.

He pointed to television news as an example, with its use of theme music, journalistic actors, and highly produced images and videos. The result for viewers is less that they are informed than that they are entertained and thus susceptible to consuming what is being advertised, which is the real goal of such programming.

Postman issued his critique in 1985. What would he say of a culture dominated by social media and TikTok videos?

Now add the influence of consumption-driven capitalism: consumer spending accounts for about 70 percent of the entire US economy, which means our financial system depends on convincing us that we need to buy what advertisers are selling. From morning to night, we live in a culture that centers on us as the customer. We get to choose the news we consume, the entertainment we experience, the products we buy and use.

Paradoxically, however, we feel more anxious, depressed, and lonely than ever. In a world that’s all about us, why is this?

“Until the nation pays homage again to God”

Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920) was Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 1901 to 1905. Previously, he served as a newspaper editor and Parliament member before founding the Free University of Amsterdam, which took the Bible as its foundation for every area of study and knowledge.

His famous declaration answers our question: “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’” In his book To Be Near Unto God, he explained:

The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality, in the full and vigorous prosecution of our life. It must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perception, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence.

Consequently, Kuyper described the ruling passion of his life:

That in spite of all worldly opposition, God’s holy ordinances shall be established again in the home, in the school, and in the State, for the good of the people, to carve as it were into the conscience of the nation the ordinances of the Lord, to which Bible and Creation bear witness, until the nation pays homage again to God.

“Lord, open the King of England’s eyes”

The Bible resoundingly proclaims that our God is the Lord and ruler of every dimension of every part of the universe in every moment of every day. You and I were created by our Creator for a holistic relationship with him. The splitting apart of soul and body, spiritual and secular, religion and the “real world” that so dominates Western life originated with pagan Greek philosophers, not biblical truth.

Consequently, when we make the world about us rather than our Maker and segregate him to the merely “religious” moments of our week, we take up a weight we cannot bear. We become our own Atlas, the Greek god whose task of holding the sky on his shoulders was a punishment rather than a privilege.

Is it any wonder that we choose the distractions of pop culture over the hard work of responding thoughtfully and redemptively to the critical issues we face?

What we need is a holistic, unifying life mission, a purpose that gives meaning to every moment and dimension of our lives. God has such a calling for us, one that unites body and soul, mind and spirit, and infuses us with joy-filled abundance no matter the challenges we face.

Consider William Tyndale, the man more responsible than any other for the English Bible you and I read today. Condemned for his efforts to give his people a version of God’s word they could read for themselves, he was strangled on this day in 1536, then his dead body was burned at the stake. His last prayer was “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”

And God did: three years later, Henry VIII required every parish church in England to make a copy of the English Bible available to its parishioners.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, “If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, in a sense he is not fit to live.”

Are you “fit to live” today?

Denison Forum

The Forbes 400 is out, listing the wealthiest Americans in 2023, and unless you’re worth $2.9 billion, you’re not on it. Here’s another reason to feel excluded: according to a recent Barna survey, only a third of young adults are more likely to support a nonprofit organization with Christian values. Nearly the same percentage said having Christian values would make them less interested in supporting a nonprofit.

This after a Texas LGBTQ advocacy group claimed a federal judge cannot be “fair and impartial” because of his Christian beliefs. And 47 percent of adults in an Associated Press survey said liberals have “a lot” of freedom to express their views on college campuses, while just 20 percent said the same of conservatives.

Yesterday we discussed the urgency of declaring and defending biblical sexual morality, not just because it is biblical but because our Creator’s principles are best for every person he creates. The more our culture rejects biblical beliefs, the more urgently we need to share them. The sicker the patient, the more urgent the treatment.

Here’s the problem: it is human nature when facing opposition and rejection to oppose and reject those we face. The “fight or flight” response is our automatic physiological reaction to events that are perceived as stressful or frightening. Psychologists say this response increases our chances of survival in threatening situations. But it is precisely the wrong way for Christians to respond to our cultural opponents.

And it is precisely the way our spiritual enemy wants us to react to them.

Ronald Reagan had no enemies

When Jesus drew near to Jerusalem, knowing that its people would reject him and the city would be destroyed as a consequence, “he wept over it” (Luke 19:41). When Paul addressed the Ephesian elders, he told them that he had served the Lord “with all humility and with tears” (Acts 20:19).

When Nehemiah learned that his hometown of Jerusalem was “broken down” and “its gates [were] destroyed by fire,” here was his response: “As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven” (Nehemiah 1:3–4).

Foreseeing the judgment of his nation, Jeremiah wrote: “My joy is gone; grief is upon me; my heart is sick within me” (Jeremiah 8:18). He added: “For the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded” (v. 21).

President Ronald Reagan reminded his staff that they did not have political enemies, only opponents. Our true enemy is the one who has deceived our spiritual and cultural opponents (2 Corinthians 4:4) and seeks their death and destruction (John 10:10).

Is your “heart wounded” for them today?

Paul’s pointed question

Our first practical step in responding to our broken culture is to grieve for it, praying for the “gift of tears” so that what breaks our Father’s heart breaks our heart as well.

Our second is to be godly so we can call others to be godly.

Paul asked pointedly: “You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?” (Romans 2:22). For example, heterosexuals who oppose homosexual sin must not commit heterosexual sin. We need to be the change we wish to see, or our sin normalizes and encourages sin for others: “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you” (v. 24).

Our third step is to build relational bridges of grace. Jesus wants to make us “fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19), which requires us to go to those we are to “catch” for Christ. What is your strategy for reaching those God has entrusted to your influence? How are you investing your time and compassion? With whom are you sharing God’s love and truth these days?

Our fourth step is to pray for the Spirit to change the hearts of those we know. Human words cannot save human souls. But the Spirit “will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8), including the lost people you know. For whom are you praying by name?

“This is the identity you have to accept”

St. Augustine testified: “I shall recall the straying; I shall seek the lost. Whether they wish it or not, I shall do it. And should the brambles of the forests tear at me when I seek them, I shall force myself through all straits; I shall put down all hedges. So far as the God who I fear grants me the strength, I shall search everywhere. I shall recall the straying; I shall seek after those on the verge of being lost.”

To share God’s love with those who reject his word, it helps to remember that our personal worth is not determined by their response. Henri Nouwen reminds us: “Your true identity is as a child of God. This is the identity you have to accept. Once you have claimed it and settled in it, you can live in a world that gives you much joy as well as pain. You can receive the praise as well as the blame that comes to you as an opportunity for strengthening your base identity, because the identity that makes you free is anchored beyond all human praise and blame.

“You belong to God, and it is as a child of God that you are sent into the world.”

Where in the world has God sent you today?

Denison Forum

House lawmakers voted to remove Kevin McCarthy as speaker yesterday afternoon, the first time in US history that a speaker has been voted out. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R–NC) was then named the new temporary leader of the House. He closed the chamber and set a goal of voting on the next speaker next Wednesday. House business has been put on hold until then.

This while Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial continues in Manhattan, the first time a former US president has ever faced such charges.

Meanwhile, another unprecedented event is unfolding away from the headlines with ramifications that are even more foundational for biblical Christians in a secularizing culture.

Pope signals support for blessing same-sex unions

After five conservative cardinals challenged Pope Francis to affirm current Catholic teaching on homosexuality ahead of an upcoming major synod, he issued a response which the Washington Post described this way: “Francis wrote that there are ‘situations’ that may not be ‘morally acceptable’ but where a priest can assess, on a case-by-case basis, whether blessings may be given—as long as such blessings are kept separate from the sacrament of marriage.”

The pope’s statement contradicts a 2021 Vatican statement confirming a ban on blessing same-sex couples because “God cannot bless sin.” It was welcomed by an LGBTQ+ advocate: “The allowance for pastoral ministers to bless same-gender couples implies that the church does indeed recognize that holy love can exist between same-gender couples, and the love of these couples mirrors the love of God.”

In other words, so long as we continue to teach the biblical doctrine that marriage is between one man and one woman, we can “bless” marriages that violate this doctrine, or so the pope seems to believe. This is the first time in church history that a pope has taken such a position on sexuality and marriage.

This on the heels of the Unconditional Conference held last weekend at Andy Stanley’s megachurch in suburban Atlanta, an event that generated such controversy that Rev. Stanley addressed it in his Sunday sermon. As Dr. Ryan Denison reported yesterday, the pastor stated clearly that “biblical marriage is between a man and a woman.” However, he noted, many same-sex couples “choose a same-sex marriage,” and now the church must decide “how we respond to their decision.”

His position is to uphold biblical marriage while welcoming into the congregation those who do not: “We don’t draw lines—we draw big circles. . . . We aren’t condoning sin, we are restoring relationships and we are literally saving lives.”

“If the trumpet does not sound a clear call”

One of my life texts is the exhortation to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). The ESV Study Bible notes: “By the time that Jude wrote his letter, ‘the faith’ had already been fixed and established in the apostolic teaching of the early church, and therefore could not be changed, but was under attack and in need of defense.”

This apostolic teaching clearly addressed sexual sins: “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:24–25).

Consequently, “Their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” (vv. 26–27). (For more on the Bible and homosexuality, please see my website article here.)

In light of such clear truth, we must “contend” for biblical faith even—and especially—when it is unpopular. We must not blur the truth for the sake of tolerance or inclusion. While Andy Stanley wants to “draw big circles,” there are some biblical lines we must not cross: “If the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle?” (1 Corinthians 14:8 NIV).

This is not just to “make a defense” of our faith (1 Peter 3:15)—it is also for the benefit of those who disagree. If “God is love” (1 John 4:8), his instructions are for our good, serving as guardrails that keep us from veering off the road to our own destruction.

Therefore, we are not being gracious when we “encircle” and condone what he forbids.

“Its power will wrong desires destroy”

Tomorrow I plan to discuss practical ways we can respond. For today, let’s embrace the hope of Christ that can forgive any sin and transform any heart.

Jesus “loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood” (Revelation 1:5). Now we can “die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24) since “in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7). However, like any other gift, forgiveness must be sought and received to be experienced.

Here’s a succinct way to make my point today: Our Father loves us as we are, but he loves us too much to leave us there.

The British hymn writer J. R. Peacey captured well the hope we offer the world:

Let in the light; all sin expose
To Christ, whose life no darkness knows.
Before the cross expectant kneel;
That Christ may judge, and judging heal.

Awake, and rise up from the dead,
And Christ his light on you will shed.
Its power will wrong desires destroy,
And your whole nature fill with joy.

Why do you need such power?

With whom will you share it today?

Denison Forum

The Unconditional Conference hosted by Andy Stanley and North Point Community Church concluded last Friday, and details are beginning to emerge about what was taught across the two-day event.

The conference was billed as a chance “for parents of LGBTQ+ children and for ministry leaders looking to discover ways to support parents and LGBTQ+ children in their churches.” It appears fulfilling that promise was the focus as, in Stanley’s words, the event was more “pastoral” than theological in nature.

Yet, as someone who attended the conference described, underlying that guidance was a consistent assumption that the best response to those who identify as LGBTQ+ is “affirming them for who they are, in order to retain ‘influence’ and a relationship with them.”

And while it is difficult to speak to specifics since video and audio recordings were strictly prohibited, Stanley spent Sunday’s sermon explaining the church’s stance and speaking to the controversy that surrounded the event.

“We don’t draw lines—we draw big circles”

While the sermon, like the conference, was not broadcast, recordings were made by some in attendance. North Point has said they will release the full recording this week—until then, it can be found in the link below—and it’s worth listening to when made available. While there is much with which I disagree regarding the implications of Stanley’s message, hearing the heart with which he said it is helpful for responding to it in a way that is fair and honors God.

In the sermon, Stanley stated, “Every instruction in the Bible regarding marriage references or assumes a husband and a wife, a man or a woman. So biblical marriage, biblical marriage is between a man and a woman. We’ve never shied away from that.”

However, he went on to say that while many LGBTQ+ attendees of their church “pray that God would change them so they can experience that” kind of biblical marriage, “for many, that is not sustainable. So they choose a same-sex marriage. Not because they’re convinced it’s biblical . . . [but] for the same reason many of us do. Love, companionship, and family.”

To his credit, Stanley described well the practical difficulties many LGBTQ+ individuals face in following Christ and adhering to the biblical view of marriage. Giving credence to those struggles is an area where many of us could do better.

However, he didn’t stop there.

Stanley went on to declare, “This is the important thing I want you to hear me say—it’s their decision. Our decision is to decide how we respond to their decision. . . . And we decided 28 years ago: we draw circles; we don’t draw lines—we draw big circles. . . . We aren’t condoning sin, we are restoring relationships and we are literally saving lives.”

Ultimately, saving lives and restoring relationships sounds good. And much of what he discussed on Sunday is biblical. The problem is that if you take his stance of affirming a biblical view of marriage as the ideal while minimizing the practical significance of diverging from that path—even if the goal is to help people accept Jesus—then you end up in a dangerous place.

Holding each other accountable

Eight years ago, I wrote this:

I want to affirm homosexuality. I really do. I want to tell people that have struggled their entire lives with the feeling that they were attracted to someone of the same gender that it’s alright to embrace those emotions. That it’s alright to live the life that feels most right to you. I want to say the same to the people that feel like they were born into the wrong bodies. I want to tell them that the surgeries and the hormone therapies will make their lives better and allow them to find the peace and sense of belonging that they want so badly. I want to say all of those things and I think every Christian should. But I can’t. We can’t. At least, not unless someone can show us how our understanding of God’s word is wrong.

I still feel that way. And I’m still just as confident today as I was then—if not more so—that God’s prohibitions against any kind of sexual activity except that between a husband and wife are clear and remain just as relevant today as when they were first given.

And it is crucial that we hold not only ourselves to that standard but other believers as well.

You see, there should be a difference in how we speak about issues like biblical sexuality with non-Christians and the way we speak about them with other followers of Christ.

When Christians choose to speak about biblical sexuality without regard for the degree to which the other person accepts the Bible as a source of authority, we’re likely to do more harm than good. However, when that fear causes us to either ignore the conversation altogether or move outside of a biblical view of sexuality to the place of affirming what the Bible condemns, the results can be just as problematic.

Biblical relevance isn’t dependent on cultural acceptance

What we see in the example of Jesus—the “big circles” approach as Stanley calls it—is someone who meets people where they are and does not expect the lost to act like a person who is saved. However, what Stanley either ignores or does not give enough credence to is the way that Jesus also held those who should know better accountable for that knowledge.

In describing the religious leaders of his day, Christ quoted the prophet Isaiah, saying, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Matthew 15:8–9).

I want to believe that Andy Stanley and those who agree with his teachings on this subject have hearts that are not far from the Lord’s. And I do think Stanley genuinely believes that he’s helping people get closer to Christ by lowering the standards of the faith to something more easily embraced by those who struggle to accept a biblical view of sexuality. But it doesn’t change the fact that his teachings on this subject are still far closer to the commandments of men than the commandments of God.

Biblical relevance isn’t dependent upon cultural acceptance, and Jesus was clear that we don’t get to pick and choose the parts of God’s word that we will follow.

That’s true for megachurch pastors like Andy Stanley, but it’s equally true for you and me as well. So while we should not be afraid to point out when other believers stray from the truth of God’s word, we must be sure not to make the same mistake in our own lives.

It may not be in the context of biblical sexuality, but all of us have some area where we tend to stumble. And when we do—which is inevitable this side of heaven—let’s embrace the accountability meant to draw us back into a right relationship with the Lord.

Will you?

Denison Forum

Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce caught six passes as his Chiefs defeated the New York Jets last night in a game that was closer than many expected. However, all eyes were on one particular fan in the stands.

Taylor Swift has been generating headlines for years, but now that she and Kelce are dating (or so it seems) and she is attending his games, public attention is riveted on her in a whole new way. She’s apparently not interested in him for his money; his annual salary is $12.3 million, but her US Eras Tour brought in $13 million per night from ticket sales.

Such numbers are unfathomable for most of us. Many are just glad the government averted a shutdown that could have harmed the economy further. Americans continue to be frustrated by inflation and slow economic growth and worry about rising crime and illegal immigration. As historian George H. Nash notes, we yearn for freedom, virtue, and safety. Fully two-thirds of us believe the nation is “off on the wrong track.”

But there’s a deeper story at work here.

Why we seek “a new, optimistic future”

Richard Haass, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes that “the global outlook appears bleak and is about to get bleaker.” For example, “the UN’s most important component, the Security Council, is sidelined and will remain so, given that one of its veto-holding members is waging a war that violates the UN Charter’s most fundamental principle.”

Gerard Baker, Editor at Large of the Wall Street Journal, observes that the “new moral order” built on “globalism, climate-change alarmism, and cultural self-annihilation” is “already crumbling.” British Home Secretary Suella Braverman recently warned against the “failed dogma of multiculturalism” and predicted that British culture will “disappear” without migration controls.

Closer to home, Americans blame both political parties for the current situation. In the view of the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley A. Strassel, voters want to be “inspired by a new, optimistic future.”

Here’s a fact you won’t find in the secular media: this “future” begins not with secular culture but with spiritual rebirth. And that cannot begin in our culture if you and I do not take two vital steps today.

Golfing advice from a bad golfer

The God who made us loves us passionately. He “waits to be gracious to you” (Isaiah 30:18) and sent his Son so we “may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

Here’s the problem: people judge Christ by Christians. They will not follow our faith unless we follow it. In Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America, Russell Moore writes: “We see now young evangelicals walking away from evangelicalism not because they do not believe what the church teaches, but because they believe the church itself does not believe what the church teaches.”

I would not accept golfing advice from a bad golfer or dental care from a person with bad teeth. Would you hire a financial advisor who is bankrupt or an attorney who is in jail?

Here’s the point: If we speak against the sins of our culture, we must take heed lest we commit similar sins ourselves. After describing in detail the sins of the decadent Roman culture (Romans 1:24–32), Paul asked his fellow Christians, “Do you suppose, O man—you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself—that you will escape the judgment of God?” (Romans 2:3).

For example, we should stand against homosexual sin (cf. Romans 1:26–27), but heterosexual sin is just as sinful (cf. Matthew 5:28). “It is time for judgment to begin at the household of God” (1 Peter 4:17). We earn the right to warn against the failures of our day by living in a way that demonstrates the difference our faith makes in our lives.

However, my purpose today is not to exhort you simply to try harder to do better.

The myth of the self-made hero

The self-made hero is one of the enduring myths of Western culture. Indeed, God calls us to exercise “self-control in all things” (1 Corinthians 9:25) and to “live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” (Titus 2:12).

However, “self-control” is a “fruit” of the Spirit (Galatians 5:23). Therefore, here’s the first key to the spiritual renewal our culture needs so desperately: “Walk in the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). Here’s the second key: we “walk in the Spirit” most effectively when we do so in accountable community.

A coal taken from the fire goes out. We are told to love our Lord and our neighbor (Matthew 22:37–39) because each empowers the other.

If we want our “manner of life” to be “worthy of the gospel of Christ” (Philippians 1:27a), we must “[stand] firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel” (vv. 27b). Stated differently: “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24–25).

For the sake of our spiritual and national future, let me ask you: Who is encouraging you to “walk in the Spirit”?

Whom will you encourage today?

Denison Forum

Rex Colubra is a Wisconsin diver who has developed a unique relationship with a wild, smallmouth bass he named Elvis. Colubra was exploring a lake in 2021 when “all these fish were coming up to me,” he explains. “I noticed one was sticking closer than the rest.” When he returned to the lake a few weeks later, he brought crawfish snacks for his new friend.

Since then, he has visited Elvis about a dozen times, documenting their reunions for his 174,000 TikTok followers. “He’s completely obsessed with me,” Colubra states. “He follows me around and just stares me in the eyes.” Skeptics might wonder how the diver knows Elvis from the other fish, but he says the fish has a “unique mouth disfigurement,” likely from a fishing hook.

Colubra refers to Elvis as “my underwater lover,” “aqua puppy,” and “buddy beneath the waves.” In a November 2022 Instagram post, he states, “My closest friend is a fish.”

Loneliness is as dangerous as cigarettes

New York Times columnist David French reports that between 1990 and 2021, the percentage of Americans reporting that they had no close friends quadrupled. Almost half of all Americans surveyed reported having three close friends or fewer.

The Wall Street Journal notes that 27 percent of respondents to a recent survey reported symptoms of an anxiety disorder, up from 8 percent in 2019. Half of eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds report anxiety or depression symptoms.

What is the source of our discontent?

Our political divisiveness is one factor: 65 percent of us say we always or often feel exhausted when thinking about politics. Rising crime and violence are another: Target has closed nine stores in four states because of rampant crime, for example. Financial fears are another contributor: the markets have been falling in September, as they often do; on this day in 2008, the Dow suffered the largest single-day drop to that point in its history.

As a reflection of culture, our music is getting sadder. Gen Z loneliness is so bad that some young adults are spending thousands of dollars trying to make friends through social clubs and gym memberships. Research shows that people who are socially disconnected have a 29 percent higher risk of heart disease, a 32 percent greater risk of stroke, and a 50 percent increased risk of dementia for older adults.

According to a recent advisory from the US Surgeon General’s office, loneliness can increase the risk of premature death as much as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.

“When men choose not to believe in God”

Here’s what I think is going on: our secularized worldview is victimizing us.

Gerard Baker said it well in the Wall Street Journal this week: “Over the past thirty years, the values of Judeo-Christian belief that had inspired and sustained Western civilization and culture for centuries have been steadily replaced in a moral, cultural, and political revolution of the postmodern ascendancy. But the contradictions and implausibilities inherent in this successor creed have been increasingly exposed.”

He points to the rejection of national borders, a “quasi-biblical belief in climate catastrophism,” and a “wholesale cultural self-cancellation in which the virtues, values, and historic achievements of traditional civilization are rejected.” There’s more to his profound article than I have space to report, but I want to elaborate theologically on his third sociological factor.

We were made for relationship with God and each other. This is why St. Augustine’s famous prayer—“Our heart is restless until it rests in you”—strikes such an evocative chord in our souls. And it is why Satan does all he can to lead us into sin, knowing that it will drive us away from God (Genesis 3:8) and each other (v. 12).

Now that we are living in a culture that rejects the very notion of “sin,” our enemy must be very pleased. When there are no speed limits, lane markers, or guardrails, crashes are inevitable. The Belgian author and poet Émile Cammaerts was right: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing. Then they become capable of believing in anything.”

“Consequences have compound interest”

Commenting on the prophetic warning, “They sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7), Max Lucado writes: “Consequences have compound interest. You determine the quality of tomorrow by the seeds you sow today.”

No matter how far our secularized society drifts from God, it is still true that the gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). It is the only power of God for salvation. It is the only spiritual chemotherapy for the spiritual malignancy that afflicts every human being.

Therefore, as spiritual oncologists, it would be malpractice for us to offer any other therapy but this. Our job is to show people they have cancer, point to the only therapy that can save them, and teach them how to receive and share it.

If you and I were medical oncologists, we would know that our work is urgent for saving lives. As spiritual oncologists, we can know that our work is even more urgent for saving eternal souls before they perish into eternal separation from God in hell.

To recast Robin Williams’ observation in biblical terms: The greatest gift is eternal life, and the greatest sin is to return it unopened.

With whom will you share it today?

Denison Forum

Last night, Janet and I watched the second Republican presidential debate. The seven participants took aim at each other, President Biden for his perceived failings, and former President Donald Trump for not attending. While our ministry does not endorse candidates, I will say how grateful I felt to live in a country where candidates must go through such a rigorous process to be elected. Across much of human history and in much of the world today, last night’s event would never have occurred.

In light of the value of our democracy, it is odd to me that so many people these days—men, especially—seem to be fascinated with the Roman Empire. Even when it was a republic, Rome was never anything like the democracy we embrace and appreciate. Colonial Americans went to war to remove themselves from the power of a despotic ruler whom many of Rome’s emperors would have recognized and celebrated.

However, a noted historian of the Empire explains that “ancient Rome is a kind of safe place for macho fantasies. It’s where men can pretend to be macho men.” Another historian adds that “the display of might—especially when backed up by color, clamor, and overpowering architecture—can be stirring, even thrilling.”

Cultural edifices aside, there is an even more urgent parallel between Rome and America, one to which Christians need to respond with passion today.

“The fall of an empire and the fate of America”

I have long been fascinated by the ancient Greco-Roman world. I’ve led more than forty study tours to various parts of the Roman Empire and did my doctorate in philosophy of religion with special emphasis on ancient philosophy.

I was especially interested some years ago in Cullen Murphy’s Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America. Here are similarities he notes between their empire and our nation:

• Both built the most powerful military in their world, by far (America invests as much in military expenditures as the next ten nations combined).
• The Roman road system, stretching some fifty-three thousand miles, was about the length of the US interstate system.
• The Roman Empire and its Mediterranean Sea would fit neatly inside America’s lower forty-eight states.
• Both cherish a glorious past and embrace a Manifest Destiny. Rome claimed to be an imperium sine fine (empire without end), while America’s dollar bill proclaims us to be a novus ordo (new order).

Of course, dissimilarities are conspicuous as well:

• Rome never left the Iron Age; America has evolved from the agricultural to the industrial era to the Information Age.
• Slaves made up half of the Empire (some emperors owned twenty thousand or more), while America eventually rejected slavery.
• Rome had no middle class; the middle class is America’s core sociological fact.
• As noted earlier, Rome was never remotely as democratic as America.

“If it is female, cast it out”

Here’s the intersection that I believe especially deserves our notice and response: the parallel between abortion today and infanticide in ancient Rome.

Folk remedies and herbs such as silphium and pennyroyal were used as abortifacients in the ancient world. However, unwanted pregnancies were much more often resolved by abandoning the children after birth.

In a fascinating and troubling article on abortion and the “repaganizing” of our culture, Louise Perry quotes the anthropologist David F. Lancy, who describes the “far more common pattern”: “Among the ancient Greeks and Romans sickly, unattractive, or unwanted infants were ‘exposed’ or otherwise eliminated.” For example, we have a letter from a Roman soldier named Hilarion to his pregnant wife Alis in 1 BC: “Above all, if you bear a child and it is male, let it be; if it is female, cast it out” with the trash.

As I noted yesterday, infanticide is the logical extension of reasoning for abortion: no unwanted children should be born (or allowed to live), mothers should make birth (or parenting) decisions in light of their circumstances, and society has no right to tell mothers whether or not to choose abortion (or infanticide).

Perry cites Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer as recognizing the logical parallels between the two: “Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time,” he explains. “So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living.” In Perry’s view, the decline of Christian influence in our culture is escalating such a paganized rejection of the value of life.

“All this wealth has been laid waste”

Ancient Canaanites often worshiped their god Molech through child sacrifice. The Lord sternly prohibited such atrocities: “There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering” (Deuteronomy 18:10). When the Jewish people rejected his command and “slaughtered my children and delivered them up as an offering by fire,” God destroyed their nation in judgment (Ezekiel 16:21).

As we have seen, Rome likewise endorsed and practiced the wholesale killing of preborn and newborn children. Theirs was the most powerful and wealthy empire the world had ever seen (cf. Revelation 18:16), but when God’s judgment came, “in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste” (v. 17). This text is in God’s word as a warning to all who would follow.

Are we listening?

Denison Forum

US Senate leaders have revealed a plan that would avert a government shutdown for seven weeks. If such efforts are unsuccessful by Sunday, hundreds of thousands of federal workers will be furloughed and a wide range of services will be suspended.

Some airports may experience disruptions and delays, roughly ten thousand children could lose access to childcare starting next month, and disaster relief funds could be depleted. Current members of the military would not receive paychecks. Security at the southern border could be further imperiled. Additional aid to Ukraine could be affected.

Ironically, lawmakers would continue to receive paychecks, but other federal workers would not.

Here we find another example of the fact that what happens in the halls of power affects people far from them. Let’s reflect on this reality in light of the most urgent moral issue of our time.

“It’s time to change the conversation”

Yesterday we discussed the ongoing efforts to normalize unbiblical immorality in our culture. Here is the best (or worst) example I have seen recently: the National Network of Abortion Funds has produced a video titled “Everyone Loves Someone Who Had an Abortion.” It claims:

In order for abortion to be truly an option, it must not only be legal, but actually available, without the shame. It’s time we worked together towards a world where all people have the power and resources to care for and support their bodies, identities, and health—for themselves and their families. We need to take the hassle, hustle, and harassment out of healthcare. It’s time to change the conversation about abortion, to make it a real option, available to all people without shame or judgment. We all love someone who has had an abortion, whether we know it or not.

This strategy and others like it are working: popular support for abortion has risen after Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022, and abortion rights have won in every election where they have been contested since that time.

The logic of abortion is persuasive for many: no unwanted child should be brought into the world; the state has no right to legislate personal morality; and a woman must be permitted to make pregnancy decisions in light of her health, the circumstances leading to her pregnancy, and her other life challenges.

Here’s the point I’d like you to consider today: each argument works equally well for infanticide.

The change that occurs at birth

If no unwanted child should be brought into the world, should one be allowed to continue to live in it? If the state cannot legislate personal morality, why does it have the right to forbid infanticide? If a woman should be able to make pregnancy decisions in light of her health and life circumstances, why does this right end when she gives birth?

The only change that occurs at birth is that the preborn baby moves a few inches from inside the womb to outside it. Inside the womb, it has its own autonomy, brain, nervous system, and blood circulation. From the moment of conception, it has its own chromosomes and unique genetic blueprint. It is as distinctly a human being as its mother or father.

Some abortion advocates support the right to end the preborn baby’s life prior to “viability,” its ability to live outside the womb (around twenty-three weeks into pregnancy). But is a newborn baby truly viable? How long can it live without the nurture and protection of its caregivers?

In summary: if we oppose infanticide (as we obviously and adamantly should), we should oppose abortion. A mother has no more logical right to kill the preborn baby living in her womb than a homeowner has the logical right to kill a guest living in their house.

“The man who moves a mountain”

Here’s the problem with my reasoning: I am reasoning. I am employing logic in response to a deeply emotional and personal issue. But this can be a “category mistake” like asking how much a circle weighs or the color of the number 7.

While it’s vital that we defend the cause of life in reasoned terms (cf. 1 Peter 3:15–16), it’s also vital that we help women facing unplanned pregnancies deal with the very real pressures they face. The No. 1 reason women choose abortion is that they are “not financially prepared.” “Not a good time” comes in second, followed by “issues with partner,” “need to focus on other children,” “interferes with future plans,” and “not emotionally or mentally prepared.”

The church can help with each of these issues. We can support pregnant women financially, relationally, socially, and personally. We can help them raise their children or choose adoption. We can be pro-life, not just pro-birth.

Where to begin? The artist Agnes Martin noted, “Your path is at your feet, whether you realize it or not.” Confucius advised, “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” Pray for women considering abortion and for those who have chosen it in the past. Encourage your pastor and other faith leaders to be bold, courageous, and compassionate on this issue. Pray for local pro-life ministries and support them financially. Encourage adoption and consider it personally.

“All that borrows life from Thee”

The forces aligned against life—from our nation’s capital to local abortion providers—are powerful and well-funded. But they do not have our Father’s blessing. They do not have access to his omnipotent strength, omniscient wisdom, and omnibenevolent compassion. So long as we are on his side, we are on the winning side.

In the words of Isaac Watts:

There’s not a plant or flower below,
But makes Thy glories known,
And clouds arise, and tempests blow,
By order from Thy throne;
While all that borrows life from Thee
Are ever in Thy care;
And everywhere that we can be,
Thou, God, are present there.

Denison Forum

A leaked Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) training video instructs staff to confirm that men can get pregnant and encourages them to refer to a pre-born baby as an “embryo” or “fetus,” to a “fetal heartbeat” as “embryonic or fetal cardiac activity,” and to a “mother” as a “veteran” or “person.”

When I saw the story, I then checked some other taxpayer-funded agencies for similar language. I found this statement on the National Institutes of Health website: “The term chestfeeding or bodyfeeding can be used alongside breastfeeding to be more inclusive” for “nonbinary or trans people.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website similarly includes COVID-19-related information for “pregnant and recently pregnant people” (not “women”). The website later refers to “people who are pregnant,” presumably in deference to pregnant biological women who do not identify as women.

The VA training video correctly states, “Language has a profound impact on what people hear and learn.” Therein lies my point today.

A pervasive four-part strategy

One of my persistent frustrations across decades of cultural engagement has been the degree to which our opponents have weaponized euphemisms in service to their various causes.

Early in the abortion struggle, for example, those of us who are “pro-life” were labeled “anti-abortion” while those who supported abortion were labeled “pro-choice.” Who doesn’t want to be for choice? And who wants to be “anti” anything?

Now our “pro-choice” opponents call themselves advocates for “reproductive justice” or “reproductive freedom” and caricature us as part of a “war on women.” Again, who doesn’t want to be for “justice” or “freedom”? Who wants to be part of a “war” on half the human population?

We can see the same strategy at work all around us. Euthanasia advocates are for “death with dignity.” Those of us who defend biblical sexual morality are labeled “homophobic” or “transphobic.” What started out as “gay pride” is now simply “pride.” The rainbow was co-opted from a biblical symbol of new life to a cultural symbol of “inclusion” that actually endorses and embraces destructive behavior.

As I have warned before, this is all part of a four-part strategy to normalize unbiblical immorality, legalize it, then stigmatize those who disagree and ultimately criminalize their disagreement. Where my warning may be misleading, however, is that these are not stages through which society progresses. We are ever in the normalizing phase as our opponents seek to indoctrinate new generations (thus Pride Month preschool cartoons, Legos and other “affirming” games, children’s books extolling same-sex parents, and so on). It’s not enough in their view to grant LGBTQ persons civil rights—we must agree with their ideology and actively promote their cause or we are dangerous homophobes and worse.

Lessons from pine trees

This theme has been on my mind because of a storm that blew through our area Sunday night. My wife Janet and I woke up Monday morning to shingles blown off our roof and branches scattered across the backyard. That was all repairable. Here’s what was not: a large hardwood tree was snapped over and lay sprawling across our front yard. However, the pine trees surrounding it, though they are much taller, escaped the storm with no damage.

This is for two reasons: they have deep roots, and their trunks are flexible. As a result, they can withstand gale-force winds by staying connected to the ground in which they are planted while bending rather than breaking in the storm. Pine trees are evergreen as well, shedding their needles only when they age and quickly replacing them.

All of this reminds me of the person who is “like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers” (Psalm 1:3). His secret? “His delight is in the law of the Lᴏʀᴅ, and on his law he mediates day and night” (v. 2). By contrast, “the wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away” (v. 4).

To yield “fruit in its season” with a “leaf” that “does not wither,” stay rooted in the word of God. Spend time every day “meditating” on it—the Hebrew word means to “ponder, ruminate, reflect upon.” Do this “day and night,” not just on Sunday and during brief devotional times.

When we do this, we give the Holy Spirit tools he can use in helping us to “understand the time” and know what our nation “ought to do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). The more we immerse our minds in Scripture, the more we are able through the “powers of discernment” to “distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:14).

Lessons from bank tellers

Think biblically, and you will act redemptively. And you will live a life God can bless and use with enduring fruitfulness in this world and the next. Like bank tellers in training who handle so much genuine currency that they can intuitively spot fakes, we are “transformed by the renewal of [our] mind” so that we can “discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).

In response to Jesus’ question, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?” (Luke 6:46), Billy Graham wrote: “Always ask yourself these questions about your plans: ‘Can I ask God’s blessing on it? Can I do this to the glory of God? Or will this be a stumbling block to me or someone else?’

“Are you calling Jesus ‘Lord’ but not doing what he wants?”

How would you answer Dr. Graham’s question today?

Denison Forum

A reporter for the New York Post attempted to gain entrance to some of New York City’s finest restaurants while wearing shorts and a hoodie, only to be turned away at the door by each establishment. The reason for his experiment: he was wearing attire that Sen. John Fetterman (D–Pa.) has made famous (or infamous) in our nation’s capital. The senator’s preferred clothing generated national headlines a few days ago when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that he was relaxing the Senate’s longstanding dress code requirement that its members wear a suit on the floor.

The backlash was immediate and bipartisan. Sen. Fetterman then replied to the furor in a crude statement, agreeing to “save democracy” by wearing a suit on the Senate floor if House Republicans pass a government funding bill and support Ukraine.

New York Times columnist Rhonda Garelick noted that “dress codes are a marker of social, national, professional, or philosophical commonality.” Accordingly, a dress code for the Senate “does remind senators and everyone around them (including the general public) of the still-noble goal of consensus. A sum greater than its parts.”

And Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan perceptively identified a larger cultural narrative at work: Americans “want to be respected but no longer think we need to be respectable.” In her view, “We are in a crisis of political comportment. We are witnessing the rise of the classless. Our politicians are becoming degenerate. This has been happening for a while but gets worse as the country coarsens. We are defining deviancy ever downward.”

“A man is always a teller of tales”

David Brooks recently quoted philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre: “A man is always a teller of tales. He lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them, and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story.”

By passing the Bill of Rights on this day in 1789, the US Congress told the story that our infant nation would be a democracy for all its residents. In as stark a contrast as I can imagine, hundreds of people who identify as dogs gathered in Berlin recently, communicating only by howling or barking at each other.

Colorado Buffaloes head coach Deion Sanders has become a national celebrity by virtue of his personal story as “Coach Prime” (though his team’s resounding loss to Oregon on Saturday may dim his light just a bit). And Amanda Gorman, America’s first National Youth Poet Laureate, told another story that typifies our self-reliant culture: “We are the good news that we have been looking for, demonstrating that every dusk holds a dawn disguised within it.”

A nation “planted on good soil”

In Ezekiel 17, God told a story about the people of Israel as a vine “planted on good soil by abundant waters, that it might produce branches and bear fruit and become a noble vine” (v. 8). When I read this parable, I thought immediately of America’s founding declaration that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Here’s the “good soil” in which we were planted: there is a God; we are created equal by him; we each have an “unalienable” right to life, liberty, and “the pursuit of happiness” (not happiness itself, which the Founders did not guarantee). Would the cosigners of this Declaration recognize the society we have become?

It’s difficult to imagine John Adams or Thomas Jefferson wearing shorts and hoodies to conduct the nation’s business. But it’s equally difficult to imagine that they intended the country they birthed to reject our Creator and our status as his creation. Or that they would have endorsed the monstrosity against life that is abortion on demand, the assault on liberty that is our escalating rejection of religious freedom, or the undermining of the pursuit of happiness that is our rampant secularism and sexual immorality.

God warned that the consequences of Israel’s apostasy would “pull up its roots and cut off its fruit” (v. 9) so that the nation would “utterly wither when the east wind strikes it” (v. 10). Will this be how our story ends as well?

A wise pastor’s reminder

Let’s begin this week by returning to the “good soil” on which we were planted as creatures of our Creator: “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lᴏʀᴅ, our Maker! For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand” (Psalm 95:6–7).

Have you knelt before your Maker yet today?

Then let’s advance life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for ourselves and our nation by telling our Savior’s story in words and deeds. Let’s make him the Lord of every dimension of our lives every moment of this day. And let’s pray and work to help those we influence do the same.

Over the weekend, I attended a board retreat at which a wise pastor and friend of many years reminded us of the time Jesus and his disciples were in a boat on the Sea of Galilee when a “great storm” arose (Matthew 8:24). Jesus then “rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm” (v. 26).

The pastor noted: “Jesus wants to be the Captain, not the cargo, in your boat.”

Which would your Lord say is true for you today?

Denison Forum

As Andy Stanley’s church and public profile have grown, the pastor has become an increasingly controversial figure in Christian life. His attempts to make the gospel attractive to the lost appear to come from a genuine desire to help people know the Lord, but too often he crosses boundaries that end up drawing people to a god that stands in contrast to the God of Scripture. As such, perhaps it should not come as a surprise that he and his church are in the news once again in the buildup to the Unconditional Conference that they will host next week.

The Unconditional Conference is an event “for parents of LGBTQ+ children and for ministry leaders looking to discover ways to support parents and LGBTQ+ children in their churches.” They promise that those who attend “will be equipped, refreshed, and inspired as you hear from leading communicators on topics that speak to your heart, soul, and mind,” adding that “no matter what theological stance you hold, we invite you to listen, reflect, and learn as we approach this topic from the quieter middle space.”

How they define that “middle space” has been the primary point of contention for many.

“Normalizing the LGBTQ+ revolution”

Al Mohler, the president of Southern Baptist Seminary, remarked that “the promise of ‘the quieter middle space’ might appear attractive, given the volatility of cultural discourse on LGBTQ+ issues, and a conference designed to help parents of LGBTQ+ children and ministry leaders work through these issues in clearly Biblical terms would be a welcome development. But the advertising for the Unconditional Conference indicates clearly that this event is designed as a platform for normalizing the LGBTQ+ revolution.”

Mohler went on to point out that many of the event’s speakers—such as David Gushee, Justin Lee, and Brian Nietzel—have made clear their stance on this issue. As such, Mohler argues that “this conference is not really ‘quiet,’ nor is it ‘middle space.’ It is structured as what most evangelicals would quickly recognize as a departure from historic normative Biblical Christianity.”

And it is difficult to disagree with his assessment. While the list of breakout sessions and description of the event make it seem as though the event truly is focused on giving parents and ministers advice on relating to LGBTQ+ youth, it also appears that such advice will be given from a foundation of acceptance for that lifestyle.

Still, it would be presumptuous to pass firm judgment on the content of an event that has yet to take place, and both Andy Stanley and the group behind the conference have not spoken clearly on the details of those sessions to this point.

It’s possible that we will address the conference once again after it takes place, but for today I would like to focus instead on the way these conversations tend to occur and how we can engage with this subject in a way that does the greatest good for the kingdom.

How do you speak biblically to someone who doesn’t believe the Bible is true?

One of the most common mistakes Christians make when discussing LGBTQ+ issues is speaking the same way to non-Christians as we would to fellow believers.

When writing to other Christians, as Al Mohler was doing, grounding our argument for a biblical view of sexuality in the truth of Scripture is both right and relevant. We should be able to assume—though it is, unfortunately, not always the case—that those who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior will give weight to his word. We can have honest disagreements about how certain passages should be interpreted and applied to a modern context (see “What does the Bible say about homosexuality?”), but a basic foundation of biblical authority should provide common ground for discussion.

With non-Christians, however, that is not the case.

The lost are unlikely to be convinced by an argument for a biblical view of sexuality that is based primarily in Scriptures that they do not see as relevant or authoritative. Moreover, it should not come as a surprise when God’s truth is difficult to accept for those whose minds “the god of this world has blinded” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

We should be prepared to speak the truth about what the Bible teaches regarding sexuality and to do so with the confidence, love, and grace that Christ showed throughout his ministry, but we also shouldn’t linger on the subject any longer than we have to.

The truth is, until a person embraces God, they have little reason to care about what his word says on this—or any—subject. As such, helping them to know and accept Jesus needs to be our primary focus.

So how can we do that?

A true test of your (digital) character

The most important step we can take in helping people come to accept Christ as their savior is to live a life that draws people to him.

Maintaining such a witness doesn’t mean achieving a perfection that is, ultimately, impossible this side of heaven, but there are steps each of us can take that could help and blind spots we must address.

Take social media, for example. We may like, share, and post content with little thought to how it might impact the way other people see us. The truth, however, is that our digital persona is often the primary expression of who we are for most of the people we know. After all, how many magnitudes more friends do you have on Facebook than you interact with in real life?

To better understand the impact of your digital profile, ask a friend or family member to spend a few minutes going through your Facebook page, X (Twitter) feed, or other social media as if you were a stranger to them. Then ask for an honest assessment of how they would characterize the person whose content they’d just read.

How easy would it be for the person they described to tell someone about the love and grace of Christ? What would the gospel sound like coming from them?

Whether it’s issues of sexuality, politics, or any other controversial topic, endeavor to make sure that the person you present to others—either in person or online—is someone who could present the good news of Jesus without the words sounding foreign or hypocritical to those who need to hear them. And while we must never shy away from defending biblical truth, we also need to recognize that we can’t have those discussions the same way with people who don’t care about the Bible.

So the next time you’re given the opportunity to comment on
or discuss a topic where the biblical view stands in contrast to the culturally acceptable perspective, take some time to recognize with whom you’re talking and who else might be around to hear or see it. Then ask the Holy Spirit to guide you to the path best suited to helping others come to know the God of Scripture.

Helping others know Jesus—the real Jesus—must remain our highest priority.

Is it yours?

Denison Forum

Bryan Johnson swallows 111 pills a day, wears a baseball cap that shoots red light into his scalp, and sleeps in a laser face-shield for collagen growth and wrinkle reduction. The multimillionaire tech entrepreneur has spent more than $4 million developing a life-extension system he calls Blueprint. It outsources every decision involving his body to a team of doctors, who then use this data to develop a strict health regimen to reduce what Johnson calls his “biological age.” His goal is to never die.

But what if he has an accident, like the British tourist who plummeted three hundred feet to his death in Austria while climbing an aerial ladder made popular by Instagram photos? Or he is struck by the asteroid Bennu, which NASA scientists predict could strike Earth in the future? Or another virus outbreak starts another pandemic? Or another natural disaster finds him?

Experts asked about Johnson’s quest to live forever were skeptical in the extreme. “There’s absolutely no evidence that it’s possible,” said one, “and there’s absolutely no technology right now that even suggests that we’re heading that way.”

Another added: “If you want immortality, you should go to a church.”

Which is precisely my point today.

“Your soul takes the color of your thoughts”

Marcus Aurelius observed: “The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes the color of your thoughts.” He also said, “Our life is what our thoughts make it.”

Bryan Johnson is passionately pursuing an idea at the cost of other priorities and values. Vladimir Putin is pursuing a fictitious narrative of Russian imperial greatness contrived primarily by his ghostwriter and chief propagandist, Vladimir Medinsky. The recent devastation in Libya was caused not just by flooding but by a breakdown of the civil order there, leading to dam and infrastructure failures that greatly exacerbated the tragedy.

I recorded a podcast yesterday with a Cuban pastor who is one of my dearest friends. He has lived his entire life in the shadow of ideas first propagated by a then-obscure economics philosopher named Karl Marx. Das Kapital and the worldview it espoused have enslaved billions of people to Communist ideology.

In his thoughtful meditation on Psalm 23 titled Life Without Lack, philosopher Dallas Willard noted: “Our ideas form the belief system upon which we base our actions and decisions, and these in turn determine the trajectory of our lives. Living a life without lack involves recognizing the idea systems that govern the present age and its respective cultures—as well as those that constitute life away from God—and replacing them with the idea system that was embodied and taught by Jesus Christ” (my emphases)

How do we do both?

One: View secularism as spiritual warfare.

By multiple measures, American society is less religious and less biblical than ever before in our lifetime. In such a culture, we must expect to face false ideologies and immoral value systems because “the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

In this spiritual battle, we need the “belt of truth” and the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:14, 17). We need to see unbiblical truth claims as attacks by Satan on the minds and eternal souls of everyone we know, including our children and grandchildren. I often quote my friend John Stonestreet in this regard: “Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims.”

Two: Think biblically to act redemptively.

I told my seminary students that the only word God is obligated to bless is his word. I know this because he said of biblical truth, “It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11).

Thus, in every conflict of ideas, turn first to Scripture. Ask what God says on the subject, then act redemptively to bring his word to life.

Three: Know Christ and make him known with excellence.

The wisest man who ever lived (apart from Christ) noted, “The fear of the Lᴏʀᴅ is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). The greatest theologian in history added that in Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).

The omniscient Lord of the universe exhorts us: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lᴏʀᴅ who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth” (Jeremiah 9:23–24).

God wants us to “understand” him intellectually and then to “know” him intimately. One of my mentors noted, “The Holy Spirit has a strange affinity for the trained mind.” C. S. Lewis likewise asserted that God “wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in first-class fighting trim.”

When we have a passion to know Christ and make him known to our fallen culture, we can say with the prophet of old: “As the Lᴏʀᴅ lives, what the Lᴏʀᴅ says to me, that I will speak” (1 Kings 22:14).

And our world can never be the same.

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“Picture this—you’re out going to pick up your lunch and there’s this random guy walking by with a handmade sign. I’m sure like most of us, we’d glance and keep it moving, but I decided to read his sign since I was at a stop light.”

This is how a woman in Jacksonville, Florida, described a recent experience to a local reporter. Here’s what made it newsworthy: The sign read “HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY!!! I LOVE YOU.” The man also held up another sign that read “YOU are RELEVANT.” As the woman snapped a few pictures, the man holding the signs gave her a sunflower. The reporter shared the story with the reminder that the kind messages came during National Suicide Prevention Month.

We need this reminder as much now as ever.

Billy Miller, an actor who played Marcus Specter on Suits and won three Emmy awards for his role in The Young and the Restless, died by suicide last Friday in Austin, Texas, at the age of forty-three. His mother stated that he “surrendered his life” after “a long hard valiant battle with bipolar depression.”

The number of deaths by suicide in the US increased last year to the highest rate ever. Globally, a person dies by suicide every forty seconds. Gallup notes that depression rates in the US have reached their highest levels ever reported.

These facts can seem overwhelming. What can you and I do to make a practical difference in our hurting world? One biblical answer is both counterintuitive and countercultural, but it offers hope we can embrace and share with those who need it most today.

“In its welfare you will find your welfare”

Peter called his fellow believers “sojourners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11). The former describes someone who is a foreigner or stranger; the latter refers to temporary residents. Taken together, they remind us that this world is not our home and that we are only here for a short time.

How are we to live in this foreign land?

The Lord’s letter to his Jewish exiles in Babylon is instructive (Jeremiah 29). It was preserved in Scripture because it has value not just for its original readers twenty-six centuries ago but for all readers across all times and cultures.

It begins: “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce” (v. 5). This is the opposite of what they might have expected. Rather than finding temporary shelter, they were to construct lasting structures in which to “live” (the Hebrew is literally translated as “sit down and remain”). Creating gardens takes time, but they were not only to plant them but to “eat their produce” in the years to come.

In addition, they were to “take wives and have sons and daughters” to fulfill God’s call that they “multiply there, and do not decrease” (v. 6). Rather than allowing their nation to wither in exile, they were to seek to grow and prosper.

Now comes the most shocking instruction of all: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lᴏʀᴅ on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (v. 7). “Seek” means to “run diligently after”; the “welfare” of the city refers to its peace, prosperity, health, and success. The exiles were to do all they could to promote the Babylonian city’s welfare and then to “pray to the Lᴏʀᴅ on its behalf” that he might do what they could not.

The reason was simple: “In its welfare you will find your welfare.”

Three ways to “seek the welfare” of our city

One response to the brokenness of our secularized culture is to withdraw into spiritual “huddles” with little concern for those outside our circle. But this ignores our commission to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). And it impoverishes us while denying others the good we can offer them in Christ.

What are some biblical ways we can “seek the welfare” of our broken culture?

One: “Show kindness and mercy to one another” (Zechariah 7:9). As the sign-holding man in Jacksonville reminds us, we cannot know the larger impact of a single act of encouragement and affirmation.

Two: “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another” (1 Peter 4:10). John Grove argues persuasively in Public Discourse: “We do not need more self-conscious crusaders for the nation or even for Western Civilization, but instead more priests, teachers, businessmen, artists, writers, and parents who perform their own activities faithfully, serving . . . as ‘leaven for the whole lump.’”

Three: “Bring salvation to the ends of the earth” (Acts 13:47). Paul was “not ashamed of the gospel” because it is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). According to Tim Keller, “The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”

How to love well

Christians have a unique gift for our culture today: we alone can demonstrate the kindness of Christ by offering our best service to hurting souls while sharing the good news of God’s love. But we cannot love well until we embrace the fact that we are well loved.

To that end, let’s close with this intercession from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer: “Help us so to know you that we may truly love you, and so to love you that we may fully serve you, whose service is perfect freedom.”

Will you join me in offering these words from your heart to your Father today?

NOTE: If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health issues, I encourage you to call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or go here. For Denison Forum articles on mental health, please go here.

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Auburn University is the second-largest university in Alabama. Known for its football team and fierce cross-state rivalry with the University of Alabama, the school is making news these days for a completely different reason.

Some time ago, five girls began meeting on campus in Neville Arena to pray. Their group grew to two hundred students. Local ministries became involved and sponsored a worship event last week which around five thousand people attended.

Following the service, a student wanted to be baptized. Crowds then began gathering at a nearby lake, where roughly two hundred people gave their lives to Christ and were baptized. Auburn Tigers head football coach Hugh Freeze, a very public Christian, helped with the baptisms. Now other universities are calling to bring similar programs to their campuses.

One student said she had never seen anything like the mass baptism: “Never in my life. I was even talking to adults who were there that were a part of it, and they said that they had never witnessed anything like that.”

“A new spirit I will put within them”

Yesterday, we focused on the urgency of sharing God’s word with a nation that is sliding ever further from biblical morality. Today, let’s discuss the necessity of living in ways that are so different from our fallen culture as to be both distinctive and attractive.

God said of ancient Israel, “You have not walked in my statutes, nor obeyed my rules” (Ezekiel 11:12a). Rather, they “have acted according to the rules of the nations that are around you” (v. 12b). This is a grievous trajectory for God’s people since “what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God” (Luke 16:15).

Tragically, the vast majority of Americans do not believe that God is the Lord who sees and judges sin. If they think of him at all, they view him as benevolent and ambivalent, the object of their subject. But they are the object of his subject. God is not on trial—we are.

His transforming promise is our only hope: “I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God” (Ezekiel 11:19–20). Human words cannot change human hearts, but God’s Spirit, using God’s word as declared by God’s people, can change any heart today.

By contrast, “As for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord Gᴏᴅ” (v. 21).

Three practical steps

As you can see, it is vital that God’s people live in a way that is distinctive from our fallen culture and yet attractive to those deceived by its lies. How can we do this?

First, decide that you want to be different.

God said of the sinful Roman Empire, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities” (Revelation 18:4–5).

Choose right now to “come out” from your sinfully broken society, whatever the cost.

Second, ask the Spirit to make you more like Christ than you have ever been.

When you asked Jesus to be your Lord, his Spirit took up residency in your life (1 Corinthians 3:16) and you became his “body” in the world (1 Corinthians 12:27). Oswald Chambers thus observed, “In our physical life Jesus has the same setting that he had on earth.” Now we must choose every day to be controlled and empowered by the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) as he conforms us to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).

We are exhorted: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25).

Third, expose the dark to the light.

Paul told his fellow believers, “At one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8a). Consequently, we are to “walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (vv. 8b–11).

Light has always defeated darkness (John 1:5) and always will.

“These words just changed everything for me”

In 2014, Trieste Belmont was struggling with depression and decided to end her life. As she stood atop a high bridge, she says, “I was sobbing and crying and working up the courage to just go through with it.” Then a person in a car behind her shouted, “Don’t jump.”

“Those words just changed everything for me,” she remembered. “Having a stranger care about me in my darkest time made it so that I didn’t jump, and it saved my life.”

She sought support and, with the help of her therapist, family, and friends, her mental health has since greatly improved. But she reflects on that moment as the catalyst for her life moving in an entirely new direction: “Something that I realized is that even if something’s not a huge moment in your life, just the little, small gestures that you can make for other people really do make a difference.”

Now consider the impact of sharing God’s life-giving word in the power of God’s transforming Spirit. And reflect on the urgency of giving this word to a broken culture on the path to moral ruin and divine judgment.

When confronted with this opportunity, Isaiah said to God, “Here I am! Send me” (Isaiah 6:8).

Will you say the same today?

Denison Forum

The number of people in the US living to at least one hundred years old has doubled over the last decade. Ask many centenarians their secret and they’ll credit their positive attitude. But David Watson, a professor emeritus of personality psychology at the University of Notre Dame, disagrees: “I think the effects of just being positive are overrated.”

Dr. Watson claims that the trait most related to longevity is conscientiousness, or being organized and disciplined. This is likely because conscientious people are better at taking care of themselves with regard to eating habits, healthy behaviors, and safe activities.

I wonder if the same trait is vital to the longevity of a nation.

USA Today is reporting that school shootings have hit an all-time high for the second year in a row. The 2021–22 school year saw more than twice the shootings of the previous year, which was itself the highest in two decades. Unsurprisingly, Gen Z (people between nine and twenty-four years old) are struggling with their mental health; only 15 percent said their mental health was excellent, compared with 52 percent of millennials who said the same a decade ago.

Here’s another window into our societal psyche: only 26 percent of Americans are optimistic about the future of the family. And no wonder: only 23 percent believe being married is important to living a fulfilling life, compared to 71 percent who point to “having a job or career they enjoy.” In addition, 58 percent believe a married gay or lesbian couple raising children together is “acceptable”; 53 percent say the same about an unmarried gay or lesbian couple raising children.

The Lord said of ancient Israel, “My people did not listen to my voice” (Psalm 81:11), “so I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels” (v. 12). And we know how that turned out.

“These great pillars of human happiness”

President George Washington laid the cornerstone of the US Capitol building on this day in 1793. He had already helped to lay the cultural cornerstone of our new nation; in his First Inaugural Address, for example, he paid homage to the “Almighty Being who rules over the universe; who presides in the counsels of nations; and whose providential aids can supply every human defect.” He then said of his fellow Americans, “Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”

Washington would later declare in his “Farewell Address,” “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.”

What would our first president think of the “dispositions and habits” of political culture today?

More to the point, what does God?

He said of ancient Israel, “I know the things that come into your mind” (Ezekiel 11:5) and thus knew that “you have not walked in my statutes, nor obeyed my rules” (v. 12). He said of the first-century Roman Empire, “with the wine of sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk” (Revelation 17:2). He warned the superpowers of the day: “Behold, I am bringing punishment on the king of Babylon and his land, as I punished the king of Assyria” (Jeremiah 50:18).

What was true then is true today: “No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13). Americans included.

“To follow truth, and thus to follow thee”

The good news is that the good news of the gospel is still “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). Billy Graham was right: “One of the Bible’s greatest truths is that our lives can be different. No matter what our past has been, Christ stands ready to forgive and cleanse us—and then to make us new.”

This is because “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is not our work but God’s transforming miracle: “All this is from God, who through Christ has reconciled us to himself” (v. 18). Now we are “ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us” (v. 20).

To this end, let’s close by making John White Chadwick’s hymn our prayer:

Eternal Ruler of the ceaseless round
Of circling planets singing on their way;
Guide of the nations from the night profound
Into the glory of the perfect day;
Rule in our hearts, that we may ever be
Guided and strengthened and upheld by thee.

We would be one in hatred of all wrong,
One in our love of all things sweet and fair,
One with the joy that breaketh into song,
One with the grief that trembles into prayer,
One in the power that makes thy children free
To follow truth, and thus to follow thee.

O clothe us with thy heavenly armor, Lord,
Thy trusty shield, thy sword of love divine:
Our inspiration be thy constant word;
We ask no victories that are not thine.
Give or withhold, let pain or pleasure be;
Enough to know that we are serving thee.

Is serving Christ enough for you today?

Denison Forum

When Kim Jong Un makes international headlines, it’s rarely a good thing. That appears to be the case once again after the North Korean despot’s recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. And while no official agreements were made when the pair conversed at Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome—a key Russian spaceport—all indications point to an already precarious relationship becoming even more dangerous.

After all, it was Kim Jong Un’s first trip beyond his borders since 2019, and it’s unlikely he would have made the trip without assurances that it would be worth the journey.

As Mary Trimble and Grayson Logue write, “The pair smiled for cameras, pledged eternal friendship, and likely agreed to exchange munitions (from North Korea) for access to satellite and missile technology (from Russia), in violation of all manner of international sanctions.”

Such an exchange is not unprecedented, but it would mark a reversal of sorts as Russia has rarely been on the receiving end of weapons in its interactions with North Korea. When you look past their history, however, the match makes sense.

Despite the rampant poverty and starvation among its people, the US State Department estimates that North Korea spends a higher percentage of its GDP on its military—roughly 26 percent—than any of the other 170 nations it reviewed. As such, North Korea has plenty of weapons and munitions to spare.

And while the move may be a sign of desperation on Putin’s part, it also seems to indicate that he has little expectation of the war in Ukraine coming to an end anytime soon. Unfortunately, the talks with North Korea are not the only such sign in the news today.

Who is Yuri Sipko?

Yuri Sipko has been a prominent and controversial figure in Russia for many years. However, it would appear that Putin has finally decided that the seventy-one-year-old former president of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists crossed a line recently in his opposition to the war in Ukraine.

After being charged with distributing “knowingly false information” against the Russian military, authorities raided his home, arrested his son—who has since been released—and put Sipko on the wanted list. Sipko, however, had already fled the country and is currently residing in Germany.

He said of the allegations, “This is a lawless law imposed by a lawless regime, against lawful people. The crime is the destruction of Ukraine. Silence, also, is a crime.”

Yet silence is the approach that many of his fellow evangelicals in Russia have chosen to take when it comes to the war. And their reasons are understandable.

As Jayson Casper describes, “Evangelical fear in Russia was legitimate. Accompanying the charges against Sipko was an official media campaign against the broader Protestant community, alleging their status as foreign agents. According to the SOVA Center, Sipko’s sermons were called ‘outright enemy propaganda’ that was developed by ‘American curators.’”

However, for many that hesitancy to view Sipko as a figure worth following is also born from a genuine belief that it is unbiblical to go against the Russian government.

“Dancing on the edge of being loyal”

Many Evangelical Christians in Russia do not want to follow the Russian Orthodox Church’s overt approval of the war in Ukraine. However, the majority also seem unwilling to condemn it.

Peter Mitskevich is one such individual and speaks for many Evangelicals in the country.

Mitskevich is the president of the Russian Baptist Union, which means he leads roughly 1,650 churches and church plants throughout the region. In the wake of the government’s denouncement of Sipko, Mitskevich noted that information was “scant” and asked that people pray for the fleeing pastor while also encouraging “peace among the nations” and pointing to Peter’s admonition to “honor the emperor” in 1 Peter 2:17.

Others are even more direct in their beliefs.

Bill Yoder, for example, is a retired church journalist in Russia and believes that Sipko is “better off in the West.” He went on to say, “It is not our task to wish victory for the other side, but Yuri went beyond this, pushing the Ukrainian cause. And theologically, he is dancing on the edge of being loyal to the authorities. . . . I wish Yuri and his family well. I don’t see him as a non-brother, but he has forsaken his church.”

While the belief that Sipko has “forsaken his church” may be a minority opinion among Russian Evangelicals, Yoder likely speaks for more Russian Evangelicals than many in the West might believe.

And the desire to keep it that way seems to be why Sipko is in Germany rather than a Russian jail. After all, if the government had truly been intent on arresting him, then they likely would have found a way to do so. However, such an approach would have run the risk of turning him into a martyr, and a martyr’s message tends to be harder to control.

Conversely, by allowing him to flee to Europe, they are able to portray Sipko and his pro-Ukrainian message as further evidence of a malign Western influence that runs counter to what it means to be a good citizen.

But while it may be tempting for us to look on in judgment at those who would believe that assessment, their response carries an important warning for us today.

Our highest priority

The vast majority of news with which we’re inundated on a daily basis is political in nature, and it’s only going to get worse as next year’s election draws closer. As such, it can be easy to slowly but steadily become more invested in the government than the gospel.

For some, that looks like agreeing with everything your political party preaches while coming to see the other side as the enemy. For others, it’s looking at issues through the lens of national impact rather than kingdom impact.

And even the opposite response of disengaging with politics completely is often born of an apathy that is more centered on the government than the gospel.

Ultimately, God does call us to “honor the emperor” and “be subject to the governing authorities” (1 Peter 2:17; Romans 13:1), but neither is ever meant to take his place as our highest priority and the primary lens through which we see the world around us.

So as politics, elections, and the host of issues that accompany them continue to dominate the news over the coming months, be intentional about going to God and his word first for understanding his will.

Let’s start today.

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Hurricane Lee is prompting hurricane and tropical storm watches for much of coastal New England this morning, with winds from the massive storm expected as early as tomorrow. Six thousand miles away, a massive flash flood in Libya has killed at least 5,100 people; thousands are still missing, and tens of thousands are homeless. In the first eleven days of September, eight devastating flood events unfolded on four continents. The US has already set a record for billion-dollar weather disasters in a year, with four months still to go.

Meanwhile, Apple’s latest product-launch event unveiled even more sophisticated innovations from the world’s most valuable company. But all that the high tech on my desk, in my pocket, and on my wrist can do about the weather is to report the present and attempt to predict the future. Nothing we have invented can deter nature’s unbridled power and ferocity, proving every day the finitude and frailty of humans and our urgent need for power and protection beyond ourselves.

“Let the sea rage, it cannot break the rock”

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the death in AD 407 of St. John Chrysostom, considered by some historians to be “the greatest preacher ever heard in a Christian pulpit.” In one of his messages, he reminded his congregation: “The waters have risen and severe storms are upon us, but we do not fear drowning, for we stand firmly upon a rock. Let the sea rage, it cannot break the rock. Let the waves rise, they cannot sink the boat of Jesus.

“What are we to fear? Death? ‘Life to me means Christ, and death is gain.’ Exile? ‘The earth and its fullness belong to the Lord.’ The confiscation of goods? ‘We brought nothing into this world, and we shall surely take nothing from it.’”

He therefore told his people, “I have only contempt for the world’s threats, I find its blessings laughable. I have no fear of poverty, no desire for wealth. I am not afraid of death nor do I long to live, except for your good. I concentrate therefore on the present situation, and I urge you, my friends, to have confidence.”

What is the pathway to such triumphant faith?

“Let the mists of worldly vanities be dispelled”

Yesterday we focused on the biblical priority of spiritual discernment and the urgency of “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Today, let’s step further in this direction by considering Jesus’ maxim: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).

My attention was drawn to Jesus’ words by this reflection from St. Leo the Great (c. 400–461): “The blessedness of seeing God is promised to the pure of heart. For the eye that is unclean would not be able to see the brightness of the true light, and what would be happiness to clean minds would be a torment to those that are defiled. Therefore, let the mists of worldly vanities be dispelled, and the inner eye be cleansed of all the filth of wickedness, so that the soul’s gaze may feast serenely upon the great vision of God.”

C. S. Lewis made the same point rather more succinctly: “It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.”

How can we “want to”? Let’s take three simple but empowering biblical steps today.

One: Refuse the lure of secular thinking.

An E. coli boil water notice was issued a few days ago where I live after traces of the bacteria were discovered in a water sample. We could not see the danger, but that made it no less real.

We are wise to view secular reasoning in the same way: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2). Scripture is clear: “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong” (Exodus 23:2 NIV) because “friendship with the world is enmity with God” (James 4:4).

The Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho observed: “You have two choices: to control your mind or to let your mind control you.” As fallen people, the latter is our default. As redeemed people, we can make the daily decision to choose the former, which leads to our second step.

Two: Focus your mind consistently on Jesus.

John encouraged us, “If we walk in the light, as [the Father] is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Jesus assured us: “Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).

In Life Without Lack, philosopher Dallas Willard writes: “Once you begin to have an impression of who God truly is, everything else fades into insignificance. When the bountiful sufficiency of God himself and the glorious realm of his kingdom are continually brought before the mind, it puts everything else in its proper place and opens us to a life in which we find God more than capable of supplying everything we need.”

As a result, it is transforming to begin your day by spending time alone with Christ. Begin by saying to him, “Speak, Lᴏʀᴅ, for your servant is listening” (1 Samuel 3:9 NIV). Now read his word, pray, and worship. Then ask him to help you experience his presence through the day. Talk with him as you would with any other friend. Listen to the voice of his Spirit in your mind and heart, which leads to our third step.

Three: Submit daily to the Holy Spirit.

Paul was emphatic: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16). Oswald Chambers similarly noted: “The tiniest thing we allow in our lives that is not under the control of the Holy Spirit is quite sufficient to account for spiritual muddle, and all the thinking we like to spend on it will never make it clear.” Conversely, “When the natural power of vision is devoted to the Holy Spirit, it becomes the power of perceiving God’s will and the whole life is kept in simplicity.”

Marcus Aurelius observed: “Your mind will take the shape of what you frequently hold in thought.”

What “shape” will your mind take today?

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A month ago tomorrow, the historic town of Lahaina was largely destroyed by wildfires. The fire was not declared 100 percent contained until last weekend, as officials continue to investigate the causes of the tragedy. Maui is facing a severe economic downturn and inviting tourists to come to the island, though they are urged not to visit the Lahaina area.

Meanwhile, more than twenty-six hundred miles away, a five-year-old in Seattle has been making a difference. Edison Juel learned of the fires and set up a lemonade stand on his busy street. It sold popsicles, ice cream sandwiches, candy, pink and yellow lemonade, and even some of Eddie’s toys. The sign read: “FOOD & STUFF & LEMONADE FOR LAHAINA.” His stand raised more than $17,000.

Eddie’s mother said she was “struck by how his generosity invited others to be generous.” Therein lies a life principle worth considering today.

Is there “zero evidence” for religion?

The New York Times recently published a letter to the editor from a political science professor at Kent State University who claimed that Americans are “becoming less religious because there is zero evidence to support any of the central claims religious institutions make about God and the supernatural.” Ironically, the professor offers zero evidence for his claim that religious institutions have “zero evidence” for their claims.

I can only assume that he can make such an erroneous assertion (see my article “Why Jesus?” for a brief introduction to enormously persuasive historical evidence for Jesus) because he is writing out of his field and has no personal engagement with his subject. What interests me more is the fact that the Times chose to publish his letter, lending it the paper’s national platform.

When I see stories like this, my instinct is to frame them in the context of our ongoing “culture wars” and do battle in kind. When my faith is attacked, I want to fight back. When people act in adversarial ways, I am tempted to see them as adversaries.

However, the biblical vision for cultural engagement is far less militant and far more redemptive than such a conflictual reaction. The Lord counseled his exiled people in Babylon: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lᴏʀᴅ on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:7).

When you’re called to the stand

I am convinced that the church’s greatest obstacle to influencing our culture is that our culture does not see the church as relevant to its greatest issues. Secular people know what we are against more than they know what we are for. In our defense of biblical morality, we can win arguments and lose souls.

The answer is not merely to try harder to do better.

Consider an analogy I’ve employed before: When you have an opportunity to share your faith or otherwise stand for biblical truth, you can feel as though you’re on trial and the other person is the prosecutor looking for ways to discredit you. In fact, Jesus is on trial; Satan is the prosecutor; the Holy Spirit is the defense attorney; the person you’re engaging is the jury; and you’re simply a witness called to the stand. Your job is to be obedient and leave the results of the trial to God.

Now let’s take this analogy further. I’m no lawyer, but I’ve watched enough courtroom dramas on television to know that the defense attorney typically has a “theory of the case,” an argument she wants to persuade the jury to believe. To this end, she calls you to the stand at the right time to offer testimony that will advance her argument.

Beforehand, she prepares you to answer her questions and to handle cross-examination by the prosecutor. As a result, when you are called to testify, you are ready to do what you can do best to help win the case.

“Love God and do what you will”

In kingdom terms, this analogy means:

One: Identify your kingdom assignment. Know how your gifts, abilities, experiences, education, challenges, and opportunities have formed you to do what only you can do in serving your Lord. Pray and reflect until you can complete the sentence, “My ministry is _______________.”

Two: Submit to the Spirit at the start of each day (Ephesians 5:18). Pray with David: “Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul” (Psalm 143:8).

Three: Worship Jesus each day. We enter his empowering presence with thanksgiving and praise (Psalm 100:4). Take time to read his word, pray, give thanks, and offer your praise.

Four: Pray about the needs you meet. Ask God for his best for hurting people in the news and in your sphere of influence. Make Samuel’s commitment to his nation yours: “Far be it from me that I should sin against the Lᴏʀᴅ by ceasing to pray for you” (1 Samuel 12:23).

Five: Now do what comes naturally. Trust that the Spirit is guiding and using you as his witness in spiritual trials for eternal souls. St. Augustine advised us: “Love God and do what you will.”

“Rivers that will bless to the uttermost parts of the earth”

Imagine the difference in our culture if every Christian took these steps every day. Now let’s be the difference we wish to see.

Oswald Chambers observed, “A river touches places of which its source knows nothing, and Jesus says if we have received of his fullness, however small the visible measure of our lives, out of us will flow the rivers that will bless to the uttermost parts of the earth.”

Consequently, he advised: “Never allow anything to come between yourself and Jesus Christ, no emotion or experience; nothing must keep you from the one great sovereign Source.”

How close to your Source is your soul today?

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