“The Holy Spirit was tangible in the room. Chains were broken, confession happened, and God was praised as holy, holy, holy.” This is how one student described the Asbury revival, which began last Wednesday at Asbury University in central Kentucky.

This evangelical school of 1,639 students has been known through the years for a number of great revivals beginning in February 1905. A revival that began in February 1970, for example, lasted for 144 hours of unbroken worship services. Some two thousand witness teams went out from the school to churches and 130 college campuses around the nation.

A student confession during the close of chapel in March 1992 turned into 127 consecutive hours of prayer and praise. A student chapel in February 2006 led to four days of continuous worship, prayer, and praise.

The 2023 Asbury revival

Now the Holy Spirit seems to be moving in an extraordinary way again at Asbury.

During a call to confession on February 8, at least one hundred people fell to their knees and bowed at the altar. Since then, the campus has experienced an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that was still continuing yesterday.

People have been giving testimonies, reading Scripture, worshiping God, and praying. Students, professors, and local church leaders have been participating. Students from multiple colleges have been drawn to the Asbury campus as well.

Unlike previous campus revivals, people are watching the current movement of the Spirit through the lens of social media. This has drawn a broader audience to witness what is now happening in Kentucky.

Tim Keller on revival in America

In his thoughtful Atlantic article, “American Christianity is Due for a Revival,” Tim Keller cites the classic book Habits of the Heart by sociologist Robert Bellah. According to Keller, the book “showed that the social history of the United States made it the most individualistic culture in the world. American culture elevates the interests of the individual over those of family, community, and nation.”

Here’s the good news, according to Keller: “For two centuries, Americans’ religious devotion counterbalanced this individualism with denunciations of self-centeredness and calls to love your neighbor. The Church demanded charity and compassion for the needy, it encouraged young people to confine sexual expression to marriage, and it encouraged spouses to stick to their vows.”

However, “Bellah wrote that American individualism, now largely freed from the counterbalance of religion, is headed toward social fragmentation, economic inequality, family breakdown, and many other dysfunctions.”

Bellah’s book was published in 1985. Have the last four decades proven him right?

According to Keller, “The modern self is exceptionally fragile. While having the freedom to define and validate oneself is superficially liberating, it is also exhausting: You and you alone must create and sustain your identity. This has contributed to unprecedented levels of depression and anxiety and never-satisfied longings for affirmation.”

Asbury revival student: “He is radically transforming lives”

America needs revival not just because our culture is broken but because Americans need to know how much God loves them. In fact, it is because Americans do not know how much God loves them that our culture is broken.

By contrast, the common experience being shared from the Asbury revival now taking place is a deep sense of God’s loving presence as he draws people to himself. For example, Elena Overman, a sophomore from Dallas, said, “Throughout the past three days, the Lord has revealed himself and his unfailing love and faithfulness to everyone who has stepped through the doors of Hughes Auditorium. He is radically transforming lives. The Holy Spirit is at work in this place and all around the world through our prayers, and he’s not stopping anytime soon. All glory to God.”

On this Valentine’s Day, named for the patron saint of engaged couples and happy marriages, let’s celebrate both the fact and the reason that we are loved unconditionally by the God of the universe.

The fact of his love is clear: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). There is literally nothing you can do to make God love you any more or any less than he already does.

This is because of the reason for his love. In his essay “Membership,” C. S. Lewis offers this observation: “The infinite value of each human soul is not a Christian doctrine. God did not die for man because of some value he perceived in him. The value of each human soul considered simply in itself, out of relation to God, is zero. As St. Paul writes, to have died for valuable men would have been not divine but merely heroic; but God died for sinners.

“He loved us not because we were lovable, but because he is love.”

“Let it begin in me!”

Lewis is right: God loves you because “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Stated bluntly, he cannot not love you.

If you will respond to his love by loving him with “all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30), you will also “love your neighbor as yourself” (v. 31). Your neighbor will learn that God is love by experiencing God’s love in yours.

And you will be a catalyst for the revival our culture needs so desperately.

Please join me in praying for God to bless, protect, and use the Asbury revival to spark revival across our land. And let’s pray, in the words of the old hymn, “Let it begin in me!”

Denison Forum

The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Philadelphia Eagles in yesterday’s Super Bowl, overcoming three “curses” to do so.

First, their quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, won the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award again this season. Since 1999, nine MVPs made it to the Super Bowl; none won it. Second, Canadian rapper Drake bet $700,000 on the Chiefs, but nearly all his large sports bets in recent years have failed. Third, Chiefs fans have been placing team apparel on the Rocky Balboa statue in Philadelphia. When fans did this in the 2015 and 2018 playoffs, their teams lost to the Eagles.

In more serious news, Chiefs fan John Gladwell donated a kidney to Eagles fan Billy Welsh more than two years ago. The pair met more than twenty years ago when they both served in the Marines. They sat together yesterday at the game, but Welsh was worried about a Chiefs victory since he has a “Chiefs kidney”: “I don’t know how my body will react if the Chiefs win.” There is no news so far on his medical response.

The rest of us might be concerned about the outcome for a different reason: over the previous fifty-six Super Bowls, stocks do better when the NFC team wins. Also, the Chiefs won by a last-minute field goal, but the best years for markets have come when the game is decided by a large margin.

Why is football so popular?

If you didn’t watch yesterday’s game (at least for the ads), you were a cultural outlier: the NFL estimates that 208 million-plus viewers saw last year’s Super Bowl, approximately two-thirds of our population. While the Super Bowl is unique, football games in general were eighty-two of the top one hundred highest-rated shows on television last year.

Why is football America’s most popular sport?

Consider a psychologist’s contrast between the sport and baseball, formerly our “national pastime.” Writing for Psychology Today, Thomas Hendricks notes that “baseball is largely an individual sport” in which batters face the pitcher alone and defensive players occupy isolated positions on the field. Football, by contrast, “is more thoroughly collective” since “every teammate is involved in the design and execution of every play.”

Hendricks then observes, “More thoroughly social, contemporary people accept that group cohesion is the foundation of individual success. Football heroes are covered up in helmets and pads. Individuals become soldiers, elements in a great collective striving.”

When our team wins, “we” win

As a cultural apologist, I would add that the parallels between watching American football and participating in American religion are noteworthy.

On a typical Sunday, 100 million Americans (30 percent) watch an NFL game, roughly the same percentage as attend worship (28 percent). Most who participate in either activity engage in a transactional experience.

I have noticed that when a football team wins, their fans will say “we” won; when a team loses, their fans often say “they” (not “we”) lost. Very few fans have the players first in mind or even know an NFL player personally. The players and coaches are a means to the end of our entertainment and vicarious victory (we hope). If they lose, we are angry with them; if they win, we are excited for ourselves.

Many American Christians engaged in worship in a similar way yesterday. We inherited the cultural religion of our Greco-Roman ancestors who placed sacrifices on altars so gods would bless their crops or otherwise give them what they wanted. Worship was a means to their end, as it often is to ours.

Reflect on the last time you needed God’s help. If he did not do what you wanted, were you angry with him? If he did, were you excited for yourself?

“God doesn’t want to be used”

Imagine a marriage where one partner seeks a relationship with the other primarily for what their spouse can do for them. Is this how the “Bride” of Christ (Revelation 19:7) is treating our Groom today?

By contrast, we are told to “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:28). Does this describe your last worship experience?

Dr. Derwin Gray is a former NFL player, a pastor, and the author of God, Do You Hear Me? He observes, “When we deduce prayer to be a mantra or a spiritual ATM or superstition, we’re really not praying. We’re actually using God and God doesn’t want to be used. God wants to be worshiped. Because when we worship, we become who we were created to be.”

Who were we “created to be”?

In The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren writes: “God’s ultimate goal for your life on earth is not comfort, but character development. He wants you to grow up spiritually.” Thus he “gives us our time on earth to build and strengthen our character for heaven.”

Warren adds: “Jesus did not die on the cross just so we could live comfortable, well-adjusted lives. His purpose is far deeper: he wants to make us like himself before he takes us to heaven.”

“Our greatest privilege”

As the winners of Super Bowl LVII, the Kansas City Chiefs are being granted “football immortality” by our culture this morning, but this is a myth. Do you remember who won the title even ten years ago?

By contrast, the more you seek to know Christ for no reason except to know Christ, the more you will become like Christ and the more you will make him known. According to Rick Warren, being like Christ is “our greatest privilege, our immediate responsibility, and our ultimate destiny.”

Do you agree?

Denison Forum

In their own words, “He Gets Us has an agenda.”

“How did the story of a man who taught and practiced unconditional love, peace, and kindness; who spent his life defending the poor and the marginalized; a man who even forgave his killers while they executed him unjustly—whose life inspired a radical movement that is still impacting the world thousands of years later—how did this man’s story become associated with hatred and oppression for so many people? And how might we all rediscover the promise of the love his story represents?”

Such questions motivate those behind the ministry called He Gets Us and, if you haven’t seen their ads or billboards yet, the Super Bowl this Sunday night will offer the perfect chance to change that.

What is He Gets Us?

But what is the He Gets Us campaign? And why are they spending roughly $20 million for ninety seconds of airtime this weekend—with plans to invest about a billion dollars over the next three years in similar efforts? Surely, some argue, there are better ways to use that much money.

It’s a question people like Hobby Lobby co-founder David Green and the other—largely anonymous—donors behind the He Gets Us ministry have asked themselves on multiple occasions. Yet, as Lora Harding, an associate professor of marketing at Belmont University, noted, outside of major events like the Super Bowl, “There just aren’t ways to reach an attentive, engaged audience that size anymore.”

Their short videos are certainly attention-grabbing and engaging.

However, they’ve also been somewhat controversial

With taglines like “Jesus was a refugee” and “Jesus felt alone, too,” He Gets Us leans heavily into the human side of Jesus’ story. In so doing, they invite us to engage with the Christ who stood beyond any of the stereotypes and preconceived notions with which people—Christians and non-Christians alike—have often attempted to define him for the better part of two thousand years.

But, as Religion News Service‘s Bob Smietana described, while they hope to help everyone encounter that Jesus, their target audience appears to be “spiritually open skeptics, which are people who might be OK with religion but aren’t really excited about Christians.” And that description fits an increasingly large percentage of the population.

He gets us because he became one of us

Phil Boone, the Director of Generosity for the He Gets Us campaign, recently mentioned on the Denison Forum Podcast that research shows as many as 150 million people—58 percent of the American population—are either skeptics or cultural Christians.

Boone was quick to point out, though, that “skeptic” is not a negative term. Rather, it refers to people who are “just not sure about all this, but they want to know more. They want help in raising their children. They want help in having a healthier emotional condition. They want help in providing for their family.” And the cultural Christians “have a lot of those same desires.”

These are practical issues, and they require a practical response.

That’s why He Gets Us doesn’t start with topics like human depravity or deep, theological truths. They start with the story of Christ and, in so doing, help people meet a God who gets us because he became one of us.

They understand the other stuff is important too, which is why anyone who engages with He Gets Us is eventually pointed toward resources that can help them go deeper and, if they choose, connected with one of 6,500 partner churches that have signed up across the country to help people find a local community of faith.

But they don’t start there, and that’s all right.

As Boone pointed out, it’s often “people’s expectations to have the whole thing presented and wrapped up in a nice package. And that’s the problem.”

Instead, He Gets Us is more focused on introducing people to Jesus and then partnering with the body of Christ to help them dive deeper into that relationship.

It’s a strategy that has already borne fruit for more than 115,000 people over the last nine months, with countless more sure to come given that roughly two-thirds of American adults are likely to tune in this Sunday.

Are you a skeptic?

While He Gets Us may target religious skeptics, it is often the skeptics who are already part of God’s kingdom that can be the greatest impediment to its advance.

What was your first reaction upon hearing about the strategy and financial decisions of the He Gets Us campaign? Did part of you share the concerns of those who question whether that money could be better spent in other ways? Did you want to push back against the idea of starting a presentation of the gospel without any mention of sin, hell, or repentance?

If you answered yes, that’s all right. I’ll admit, part of me was a bit skeptical when I first encountered the videos and began researching the campaign.

But in the time since, I feel like God has used their ministry to remind me that I’m not immune to trying to put him in a box either.

Videos that might not appeal to me could be exactly what the Holy Spirit will use to lead others into a saving relationship with Jesus. And theological questions that I consider essential to a right understanding of the Lord can easily be irrelevant to those who do not already have a relationship with him.

So the next time you pass by a billboard or see an ad aimed at helping people identify with the God who loves us so much that he left heaven to become one of us, make sure your first response is to pray rather than judge.

Pray that the Holy Spirit will work through those images and videos to break down barriers and call people to take a fresh look at Jesus. Pray that the Lord will guide the believers who are engaging with the lost that reach out as a result of what they’ve seen. And pray that God will help you and your church know in what ways you might be called to join them.

Helping the lost know Christ requires strategies as diverse as the humanity he’s endeavoring to save.

Are you doing your part today?

Denison Forum

According to American intelligence officials, China’s spy balloon program is part of a global surveillance effort to collect information on the military capabilities of countries around the world.

Surveillance balloons, like China’s spy balloons, have advantages over satellites: they can fly closer to the earth and drift with wind patterns that are not as predictable to militaries and intelligence agencies. They can also hover over areas and their cameras can produce clearer images than those on orbital satellites. We now know that Beijing has used such airships to probe American airspace in the past—one other time under President Biden and three under former President Trump. China’s spy balloons have been spotted over five continents in total.

Did China’s spy balloons break international law?

Unlike satellites which travel in space, balloons are like other aircraft in that they are subject to international aviation law. According to such law, a nation’s airspace is sovereign territory that cannot be entered without express permission. As a result, surveillance balloons are clear violations of national sovereignty when they enter another country’s airspace.

In other news, Dutch prosecutors said yesterday that it was likely that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed off on a decision to supply missile systems to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The long-range anti-aircraft missiles were then used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July of that year, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

This attack was an obvious violation (PDF) of international law, one for which individuals and states are both responsible.

“If everybody got their time from somebody else”

These stories illustrate this fact: laws do not have the intrinsic power to change character. For example, America has more laws than ever, but murder rates are 30 percent higher than they were in 2019; other kinds of crime, including thefts and robberies, increased last year as well.

Laws can prevent illegal activity so long as they can be proactively enforced, but they do not by themselves alter human nature. Individuals and nations will still do what they consider to be in their best interest. Most will adhere to laws that prevent or alter their intentions only when they must.

Do you obey speed limits because you have an intrinsic desire to do whatever the authorities advise or because you don’t want to get a ticket for speeding?

Of course, the alternative to laws we feel to be arbitrary and invasive is to have no laws at all.

In my sermon last Sunday, I quoted Dr. Paul Powell: “Man needs some authority in his life. Without duly recognized authority, chaos would soon result in every realm of life.” He cited the Bureau of Standards in Washington, DC, without which we would have no objective measure of weights and measurements. Without these standards, he noted, “inches and pounds would soon shrink or expand according to the wishes of the person doing the measuring. It would not be long until daily business could not be transacted.”

He then pointed to the Naval Observatory, also in Washington, DC, which gives us the correct astronomical time every day at 12 o’clock. What if we did not have such a standard? Dr. Powell answered: “If everyone got their time from somebody else, pretty soon we would have no idea as to what the time really was.”

Is this where our culture is morally?

Four transforming facts

David prayed, “O Lᴏʀᴅ, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!” (Psalm 39:4). From his prayer we can discern the following facts:

1. We do not know how fleeting our lives really are or how dependent we truly are on our Maker.
2. Only God can reveal this to us in a way that transforms us, which is why David’s words are a prayer rather than an observation.
3. If we will not ask God to show us our need for his help, we will waste our time and our lives.
4. If we will make David’s prayer ours, we will use our time and lives well in response.

For example, as a result of his prayer, David could say to God, “I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers” (v. 12). This is a powerful metaphor for life on this transitory planet. We are all guests here. Accordingly, we must not invest our souls where they will not live permanently.

I often note that self-sufficiency is spiritual suicide. The contrary is true as well: Spirit-sufficiency is spiritual victory.

“Never interpret your numbness as his absence”

When Abraham offered Isaac (Genesis 22), God intervened and Isaac became a progenitor of the Jewish nation. The theologian Origen (c. 185–c. 253) noted: “Abraham offered to God his mortal son who did not die; God gave up his immortal Son who died for all of us.”

Will you trust such a loving God with your life today?

In Revelation 3, Jesus tells his people, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (v. 20). Commenting on this transforming promise, Max Lucado writes: “The world rams at your door; Jesus taps at your door. The voices scream for your allegiance; Jesus softly and tenderly requests it.

“Which voice do you hear? There is never a time that Jesus is not speaking. There’s never a room so dark that the ever-present, ever-pursuing, relentlessly tender Father is not there, tapping gently on the doors of our hearts—waiting to be invited in.

“Few hear his voice. Fewer still open the door. But never interpret your numbness as his absence. He says, ‘Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age’ (Matthew 28:20). ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’ (Hebrews 13:5). Never” (his italics).

Will you open your life to his lordship today?

Denison Forum

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fell asleep during President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped up a copy of President Trump’s 2020 speech after he finished his address. And networks cut away from President Clinton’s 1997 address to air the OJ Simpson verdict.

I saw no such noteworthy events last night during (or after) President Biden’s speech, in which he highlighted progress during his years in office and sought to sell Americans on his economic plans for the future.

However, if the past is prologue, the president should not expect to see significant results from his speech. According to Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones, “Historical data suggests these speeches rarely affect a president’s public standing in a meaningful way, despite the amount of attention they receive.”

And yet the Washington Post reports that the president had “the largest audience any US politician will have all year, absent some catastrophe that would require him to give a very different kind of prime-time address.”

Why do so many of us watch? The answer is actually relevant far beyond last night’s speech.

“You gave your word to his boss”

In Clear and Present Danger, a 1994 movie adapted from a Tom Clancy novel, Harrison Ford plays CIA analyst Jack Ryan. In one scene, he relates troubling news he has discovered regarding governmental corruption to National Security Advisor Jim Greer, played by James Earl Jones. Ryan says, “I’m afraid if I dig any deeper no one’s going to like what I find.”

Greer responds, “You took an oath, if you recall, when you first came to work for me. And I don’t mean to the National Security Advisor of the United States. I mean to his boss, and I don’t mean the president. You gave your word to his boss: you gave your word to the people of the United States.”

Jim Greer was right. Unlike 70 percent of the world living under dictatorships, in the United States, our president and other elected leaders work for the people who elected them. That’s why the president tried last night to impress us with his work and why we watched his speech to decide whether or not we agree.

The annual State of the Union address illustrates the “golden rule” in our fallen world: “Whoever has the gold makes the rules.” In the case of democracy (“the power of the people”), the people have the “gold” of cultural authority and thus make the cultural “rules.” And as Jesus said, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required” (Luke 12:48 NRSV).

Self-governance requires the ability to govern the self. Therein lies our system of government’s greatest opportunity and its greatest challenge.

“Truth has stumbled in the public squares”

In a recent survey, 81 percent of Americans said humankind is inherently good. As a result, our postmodern culture believes we should tolerate another person’s moral choices so long as they do not harm others. However, as Scripture notes, “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7). This is why Jesus said we must be “born again” (John 3:3).

In Isaiah 59 the prophet states, “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God” (v. 2). He then identifies specific consequences of this “separation.” Do any of these describe our culture?

• “Your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity” (v. 3a). Does this bring abortion to mind?
• “Your lips have spoken lies” (v. 3b). Does this relate to our “post-truth” culture and our redefinitions of marriage and gender identity?
• “No one enters suit justly; no one goes to law honestly” (v. 4). Does this describe our escalating governmental and corporate corruption?
• “Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood” (v. 7). Does this relate to racial injustice today?

Consequently, “We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight” (v. 10).  This is because “truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter” (v. 14).

The prophet then states our only hope: “A Redeemer will come to Zion” (v. 20).

“Leave the rest to God”

Numerous retrospectives on President Ronald Reagan were published Monday on the 112^th anniversary of his birthday. One article, written by a columnist who worked for the former president, identified “the secret of who he was” in his life motto: “Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, leave the rest to God.”

Of course, to do the first four well, we need the help of the One to whom we “leave the rest.” As we noted yesterday, we must know Christ before we can truly make him known. This is why a daily encounter with the living Lord Jesus is so vital for our souls and for our society.

John Eldredge writes: “Henri Nouwen once asked Mother Teresa for spiritual direction. Spend one hour each day in adoration of your Lord, she said, and never do anything you know is wrong.” To do the second, we need the power of the first.

If “one hour each day” seems unrealistic, how much time will you spend in “adoration of your Lord” today?

Denison Forum

In the midst of all the bad news in today’s news, I thought you might like to hear about something a little different this morning. As you’re making plans for next week’s Valentine’s Day, here’s an option you may not have considered: you can donate $10 to the San Antonio Zoo. For that amount, they will name a cockroach after anyone you designate and feed it to an animal.

Their annual “Cry Me a Cockroach” is intended for “exes who just won’t bug off,” as CNN reports. The annual event received more than eight thousand donations last year from all fifty states and over thirty different countries.

This expression of animosity is relatively innocuous (unless someone names a cockroach for you, I suppose). Here’s a more dramatic example of the enmity pervading our culture: According to Pew, 77 percent of Americans say our country’s partisan divide is deeper now than it was before the pandemic, as compared with a median of 47 percent in thirteen other nations surveyed. Even worse, support for the use of political violence is rising in our society.

Gallup recently conducted a “confidence in institutions” survey. Their polling included the church or organized religion, the military, the Supreme Court, public schools, the police, the criminal justice system, small business, big business, large tech companies, banks, the medical system, newspapers, television news, Congress, and the presidency.

What do these fifteen institutions have in common?

Public confidence in every one of them fell last year.

“I know my own and my own know me”

James described his first-century world in terms that seem eerily accurate today: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:1–2).

By contrast, the creative brilliance and power of the One who made us is on display everywhere we turn, if only we have eyes to see. For example, a recent galactic photo shoot captured more than three billion stars and galaxies. Astoundingly, this is only .15 percent of the two trillion galaxies in the universe.

Your Lord made all of that and holds it in the palm of his hand (Isaiah 40:12).

From the transcendent to the immanent: according to National Geographic, your circulatory system is more than sixty thousand miles long (this is more than twice the equatorial circumference of our planet). Your heart beats one hundred thousand times a day, forty million times a year, up to three billion times in your lifetime.

Jesus made all of that when he made you: “By him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” (Colossians 1:16). What’s more, his omniscience and omnipotence are available to all who seek his wisdom and strength.

This is because, unlike every other figure of history, the living Lord Jesus can be known personally by any who make him their Savior and Lord.

Buddhists do not claim that they can know the Buddha; Muslims do not claim to know Muhammad. But Jesus assured us, “I know my own and my own know me” (John 10:14). We can “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). Paul’s life purpose was to “know him” (Philippians 3:10).

“All the thrills of religion”

Here’s the problem: we all too often settle for knowing about Jesus when we can know Jesus. Consider an analogy.

I was taught algebra in the eighth grade, but I remember almost nothing of what I learned. So I turned today to a Wikipedia article on the subject. Here I discovered that the word algebra comes from the title of a book by the ninth-century Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. I learned that its roots can be traced to the ancient Babylonians and that at least twelve different areas of mathematics have “algebra” in their name.

The article taught me much about algebra, but it did not teach me how to do algebra. This is how many of our religious activities function: they teach us about Jesus, but do they lead us to experience Jesus?

If not, why not?

To be confessional, I know one answer: it is easier to tell you about Jesus than to know him and then make known what I know. When I seek to know him personally, I experience his presence in ways that can be more than uncomfortable. I see the stains of my sins in the light of his holiness. I hear him calling me to accountability and submission to his authority.

However, if I spend my time teaching people about Jesus, I can avoid all of this while maintaining the appearance of religiosity. I can teach a passage of Scripture without having to deal with the One who inspired it. I can engage in religious practices without risking the repentance that is likely to be required by relational intimacy with Christ.

To quote C. S. Lewis, “All the thrills of religion and none of the cost.” Except this: avoiding the cost of knowing Christ costs me everything that matters most to my soul.

“We are bound to be captured”

Br. Keith Nelson of the Society of St. John the Evangelist writes: “In the sea of this life, we are bound to be captured sooner or later. The waters are full of other nets, bristling with hooks. If we don’t give our consent to be caught by Christ, something else will encircle our freedom and determine our choices. We need our attention to be captured by the one who longs for our transformation and wholeness.”

To shift the analogy, Jesus testified: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). With regard to your present significance and eternal rewards, “much fruit” or “nothing” are your two options.

Which do you choose today?

Denison Forum

Three stories making headlines this morning offer a case study into human nature.

First, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked southeastern Turkey and northern Syria this morning, toppling hundreds of buildings and killing more than 1,300 people. The death toll is expected to rise as rescue workers comb through mounds of wreckage for people still trapped under rubble.

Second, Navy divers are searching for debris from the Chinese spy balloon a US fighter jet shot down Saturday off the coast of South Carolina. According to the New York Times, the shooting down of the balloon “introduced a new phase in the increasingly tempestuous relationship between the United States and China.”

Third, the New York Times is reporting that “an even deadlier pandemic could soon be here.” The article explains that bird flu, known formally as avian influenza, “has long hovered on the horizon of scientists’ fears.” This pathogen, especially the H5N1 strain, has not often infected humans. However, when it has, 56 percent of those known to have contracted it have died. This contrasts with a mortality rate of 1 to 2 percent for COVID-19 prior to vaccines.

Here’s why bird flu is now so frightening: a mutant H5N1 strain has been infecting minks at a fur farm in Spain and is most likely spreading among them, which is unprecedented for mammals. “This is incredibly concerning,” says Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London. “This is a clear mechanism for an H5 pandemic to start.”

This is because the mink’s upper respiratory tract is especially well suited to act as a conduit to humans. If different strains of flu infect the same person at the same time, they can swap gene segments to give rise to new, more transmissible ones.

As a result, according to the Times, “If a mink farmworker with the flu also gets infected by H5N1, that may be all it takes to ignite a pandemic.”

The “fight or flight” response

If you’re like me, you’ll want to know more today about the earthquake in Turkey and Syria and the Chinese spy balloon story. However, you’d like to think about anything but another pandemic. This is not just because we’re still dealing with the worst public health crisis in a century. Nor is it simply that we are not (speaking for myself) scientists who can do anything practical to prevent such a crisis.

There’s a third factor also at work here: the “fight or flight” response that is part of our innate human nature. In response to acute stress, psychologists tell us, “the body’s sympathetic nervous system is activated by the sudden release of hormones,” resulting in “an increased heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate.” This response better enables us to fight the threat we face or flee from it. In the case of “an even deadlier pandemic,” since we cannot fight it, we instinctively turn our attention to something else.

The “fight or flight” response has enormous spiritual implications. Not every problem we face requires divine assistance, of course. But some do. When we face temptation, choosing between “fight” and “flight” is vital for our souls.

Take Job as an example.

“Does Job fear God for no reason?”

In one of the most remarkable compliments paid to anyone in Scripture, God asked Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” (Job 1:8).

Satan responded, “Does Job fear God for no reason?” (v. 9).

The Enemy proceeded to describe God’s many blessings in Job’s life and predicted that if Job faces severe suffering, “he will curse you to your face” (v. 11). Satan said this because it is usually true. Crisis does not produce character—it reveals it.

Job turned out to prove God right and Satan wrong: after losing his children and all his possessions, he “fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return. The Lᴏʀᴅ gave, and the Lᴏʀᴅ has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lᴏʀᴅ” (vv. 20–21).

The narrator adds, “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” (v. 22).

Don’t become Patient Zero

The devil cannot attack God, so he attacks God’s people. At issue is whether God’s character will be defamed by God’s servants.

My character reflected on my father just as my sons’ character reflects on me. Consequently, one of Satan’s most effective ways to turn people from considering the love of Christ is to focus them instead on the failings of Christians.

Here’s my point: when you and I face temptation, we should remember that far more is at stake than our own integrity. Our response honors or dishonors our Savior. It draws those we know closer to him or pushes them further away from him.

The solution is to choose “flight” over “fight.” Do not try to defeat your spiritual enemy in your strength since he is far better at tempting than we are at resisting. Instead, go immediately to Jesus. Name your temptation and ask him for the strength, wisdom, and resolve to refuse it. If you have fallen to temptation, come immediately to him in repentance, asking him to forgive you and restore you before your spiritual virus spreads.

If H5N1 becomes a global pandemic, the first person who contracts the virus and transmits it to others will be known as Patient Zero.

With the next temptation you face, you can choose flight or fight. You can turn to the power of the Lord, or you can become a spiritual Patient Zero.

The reputation of your Savior and the spiritual condition of those you influence are at stake.

Denison Forum

The old cliché that something went “the way of the dodo” could soon have a very different meaning.

As Antonio Regaldo writes for the MIT Technology Review, scientists at Colossal Biosciences in Austin, Texas, are currently working to resurrect the bird that has become synonymous with extinction. If your mind is trending toward Jurassic Park flashbacks as you read, you’re not too far off base.

Is the dodo bird coming back?

Colossal’s process works by genetically altering the Nicobar pigeon—the dodo’s closest living relative—to gradually turn it into its long-dead ancestor. This process is made possible by the research of Beth Shapiro and her team at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who recently recovered the extinct bird’s DNA from the five-hundred-year-old remains of a dodo at a museum in Denmark.

However, the dodo is not the only creature that Colossal is trying to bring back to life. By 2029, Ben Lamm, Colossal’s CEO, estimates that they will have successfully turned an elephant into a wooly mammoth, with the Tasmanian tiger also on their list of current projects.

Still, with any of the experiments it remains unclear just how many changes will be needed before one could actually say the extinct creature exists once more.

As Mike McGrew, an avian biologist at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, noted, “That is one of the big questions. At what point is your editing done? Is it hitting a hundred genes or one thousand genes?”

Whatever the answer may be, the possibilities of what such incremental changes could bring about have piqued the interest of an interesting assortment of people. Billionaires like Thomas Tull and Robert Nelson, as well as the CIA’s venture capital arm, have all decided to back Colossal’s efforts.

I bring this story up today, however, not because I’m overly excited about the possibility of seeing a dodo anytime soon—though a wooly mammoth may be a different story—but rather because the technique of relying on small changes rather than large leaps to accomplish something extraordinary offers some important parallels for Christians today.

“The best way to address social problems”

In a recent article for Persuasion, Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox approached this conversation from a more philosophical point of view.

The pair discussed the idea of incrementalism, claiming that it represents “the best way to address social problems in a climate where it is difficult to agree on basic facts, let alone expensive, large-scale government interventions.”

The foundation of their argument is that big plans often fail because they require “access to high-quality information, agreement about underlying values, and effective decision-making on the part of government planners” at a time when none of those conditions tend to exist in the real world. By focusing instead on small changes that build on one another, over time we can actually accomplish more than by trying to do everything at once.

They allow that “we still need dreamers and visionaries and rabble-rousers who want to pursue moon-shot goals like curing cancer and ending hunger. But our default setting should be to admit the obvious: our problems are big and our brains are small,” so our solutions to those big problems should start small as well.

What if small changes are the most lasting changes?

What would it look like if we took a similar approach to trying to change our culture for Christ?

Granted, it would be great if we could set forth a plan that would result in a sweeping spiritual awakening and see our culture turn back to God. But that’s not likely to happen, and we can’t afford to wait for such an opportunity to arrive.

By contrast, an incrementalist approach to sharing our faith and shaping society means each of us must take advantage of the opportunities the Lord brings our way to help people know him better. It means making sure that our lives match up with the message we’re sharing. And it means being satisfied with the knowledge that we’ve done our part even if it doesn’t always appear to make an immediate difference.

Such an approach may lack the appeal of big changes and historic impact, but history shows it’s actually more likely to make the kind of difference we’d really like to see.

None of the spiritual awakenings in modern times began with Christians making a five-step plan to change the world, and they certainly did not include any reliance on government intervention to save the day. Rather, they started with believers who felt a burden for their culture and that burden led them to pray. Those prayers resulted in Christians starting to take their faith more seriously, and only then did non-Christians begin to take notice.

The same pattern holds true today as well.

From ordinary to extraordinary

While history may highlight the big movements and leaders that made an outsized difference, the most important work was often done by those who remain anonymous to everyone but the Lord.

If we can learn to be content with that fact, not allowing our ambition to grow larger than our calling, then we can begin to make the incremental changes that could eventually result in the kind of spiritual awakening and cultural renewal that often seems out of reach today.

Christianity is never going to go the way of the dodo and God will always have his remnant. But you and I can begin to make a difference simply by taking advantage of the incremental opportunities the Lord provides to share both his love and his truth with those around us.

As Oswald Chambers once remarked, “All of God’s people are ordinary people who have been made extraordinary by the purpose he has given them.”

Christ made our purpose clear in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16–20).

How will you fulfill it today?

Denison Forum

NFL quarterback Tom Brady announced his retirement from the sport yesterday. (For an excellent analysis of his decision and its life lessons for us, see Dr. Ryan Denison’s article, “Tom Brady retires again: The cost of holding on to success for too long.”)

Brady’s decision is unusual on three levels.

First, it comes a year to the day after he retired last year only to change his mind and return for his twenty-third season. Not many people retire twice from the same job.

Second, most players retire because they can no longer play the game well enough to compete as they once did. Not so with Brady: Even though he was the oldest active player in the NFL this season, he threw for 4,694 yards, the third most in the league, while completing 66.8 percent of his passes.

Third, it would seem that Brady was no longer satisfied with the direction of his life and career. This makes him an outlier in our society.

According to Gallup, 85 percent of Americans are satisfied with their personal lives. This contrasts with only 17 percent who are satisfied with the direction of their country (the number has recently risen to 23 percent).

What explains this wide disparity between the way we view our country and the way we view our personal lives?

The “big thing” a society must get right

David Brooks responds to our question in The Atlantic: “My basic take is that life in America today is objectively better than it was before but subjectively worse. We have much higher standards of living and many conveniences, but when it comes to how we relate to one another—whether in the realm of politics, across social divides, or in the intimacies of family and community life—distrust is rife, bonds are fraying, and judgments are harsh.”

However, Brooks believes that, despite all the gloom about our nation at present, “a society can get a lot wrong as long as it gets the big thing right. And that big thing is this: If a society is good at unlocking creativity, at nurturing the abilities of its people, then its ills can be surmounted.”

Next he surveys the ways America has been “unlocking creativity” in her people, from raising productivity and living standards to investing in education, helping people live healthier, longer, and more energetic lives, and creating an excellent innovation infrastructure.

Brooks notes: “If there is one lesson from the events of the past year, it is that open societies such as ours have an ability to adapt in a way that closed societies simply do not. Russia has turned violent and malevolent. China has grown more authoritarian and inept. Meanwhile, free democratic societies have united around the Ukrainians as they battle to preserve the liberal world order.”

“Pushed from the public square”

Brooks’ claim that humans are satisfied with our lives if we have an opportunity to unlock our creativity is both reasoned and biblical. You and I were created in the image and likeness of our Creator (Genesis 1:27) and called to “work” and “keep” his creation (Genesis 2:15). While work became more difficult as a result of the fall (Genesis 3:17–19), partnering with our Creator by advancing his creation was always part of his plan for us.

The problem comes when we decouple this partnership. Satan tempts us every day to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5) by taking over God’s creation as if it were our own and doing with it what we wish, all the while refusing to acknowledge the One who owns all that exists.

As one example, the London School of Economics will remove Christian words from its calendar next year. Christmas break will be “winter break,” Lent term will be “winter term,” and Easter break will be “spring break.”

Simon Calvert, deputy director at The Christian Institute, responded: “We have been warning for years that Christians are being pushed from the public square, yet the problem is getting worse.” He added, “Christians and those with traditional views often find themselves silenced or bullied. It’s particularly ironic when this happens at institutions that were originally founded on Christian principles and with endowments from Christian benefactors.”

“When he appears we shall be like him”

How can you and I resist this Satanic and secular pressure to fulfill our creative desires apart from our Creator? One key is to recognize that we are still being created.

If you have trusted in Christ as your Lord, his Spirit dwells in you as God’s temple (1 Corinthians 3:16) so that “Christ is in you” (Romans 8:10). Now your Father wants Christ to be “formed in you” (Galatians 4:19, my emphasis) so that you are “conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29, my emphasis).

We are not complete until we are completely like Christ. This will not happen until Jesus comes for us: “When he appears we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). On that day, “just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:49).

In the meantime, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). If you want to be more like Christ today than you were yesterday, spend time worshiping Christ today. Then ask the Holy Spirit to make you like Jesus. He will reveal sins to be confessed, steps to be taken, and service to be rendered. And he will empower you to do all he leads you to do.

A binary choice

Every day, you and I face a binary choice with eternal consequences: we can seek to be like God’s Son, or we can seek to be our own God. As fallen human beings, if we are not intentionally seeking the former, we are by default choosing the latter.

Max Lucado noted, “Our highest pursuit is the pursuit of our Maker.”

How passionately will you pursue your Maker today?

Denison Forum

A Georgia police officer named Jacob Kersey made this post to his personal Facebook account earlier this month: “God designed marriage. Marriage refers to Christ and the church. That’s why there is no such thing as homosexual marriage.” The next day, his supervisor informed him that someone had complained about the post and instructed him to take it down.

When Kersey refused, the supervisor warned him that failure to delete the Facebook post could result in his termination. He was placed on paid administrative leave for a week, then told he could not share personal opinions on social media that someone might find offensive.

Next, Kersey received a letter explaining that “if any post on any of your social media platforms, or any other statement or action, renders you unable to perform, and to be seen as [unable] to perform, your job in a fair and equitable manner, you could be terminated.” By this logic, any statement made by any person on any subject that another person deems not to be “fair and equitable” is grounds for dismissal.

Realizing that he could continue his career with the department only if “I compromise my values, morals, and deeply held religious beliefs,” Kersey resigned his position.

“The core of who I am”

You and I cannot control what secular authorities do about our biblical beliefs. But we can control how we respond to what they do.

One option is to pay any price to serve Christ as our Lord. After he chose this approach, Jacob Kersey explained his response: “I am grateful for the opportunity that I was given to be a police officer. I do not take that honor and responsibility lightly. However, my integrity and Christian beliefs are at the core of who I am, and I will not abandon them.”

The other option is to succumb to cultural pressure to privatize our faith, treating Jesus less as our Lord and more as a means to our ends.

This temptation is more subtle and attractive than we may think.

“Honest but reluctant taxpayers”

C. S. Lewis likened Christians who engage in religious activities to “honest but reluctant taxpayers. We approve of an income tax in principle. We make our returns truthfully. But we dread a rise in the tax. We are very careful to pay no more than is necessary. And we hope—we very ardently hope—that after we have paid it there will still be enough left to live on.”

His analogy seems especially appropriate these days as tax preparation companies inundate the airwaves with ads seeking our business. However, I think an even better analogy for religious engagement in our culture is paying for insurance.

We buy a policy to obtain the benefits we wish to receive. We make our payments each month to keep these benefits available to us. We then draw on them as needed—medical bills, house expenses, etc.

But few people have a personal relationship with their insurance providers. I have no idea the names of those who insure our family, for example. We pay what is required (and hopefully no more) to receive the benefits we seek.

“Only pay for what you need”

I have written often over the years about this transactional religion so common to our culture. From the ancient Greeks and Romans to today, our society thinks we can give God (or the gods) what they want (going to church on Sunday, praying, reading the Bible, donating money, and so on) so that God (or the gods) will give us in turn what we want.

But I think there’s something even more foundational behind our impulse to treat God like an insurer whose benefits we procure by our religious “payments.”

You may have seen the insurance commercials on television these days with the pitch, “Only pay for what you need.” This is a tempting way to relate to God in that it limits his activity in our lives to what we want him to do in our lives. When we need forgiveness for our sins or direction for our decisions, he’s waiting on the other side of our prayers, or so we think. But if he wants to point out sins we don’t want to stop committing or lead us in directions we don’t want to go, that’s another matter.

Here’s the problem: God knows our needs far better than we do. Limiting his benevolence to our ignorance is unwise for us and grieves our Father.

“The deepest desires of your heart will be fulfilled”

To return to our insurance analogy, imagine that your insurers know the future better than you know the present. Consequently, they know about the storms that will damage your roof next spring, the leaking water heater that will flood your garage next fall, and the broken water pipes that will ruin your carpet the following winter. They therefore offer you insurance you don’t know you need.

Now, to extend the analogy further, suppose that they are willing to pay the premiums themselves. All you need to do is to ask for their best and trust their answers.

Would you make that decision?

If so, I invite you to make Henri Nouwen’s prayer your own:

I so much want to be in control.
I want to be the master of my own destiny.
Still I know that you are saying:
“Let me take you by the hand and lead you.
Accept my love
and trust that where I will bring you,
the deepest desires of your heart will be fulfilled.”
Lord, open my hands to receive your gift of love.

Amen?

Denison Forum

Let’s start with the good news: the White House announced yesterday that the US plans to end the coronavirus public health emergency on May 11. According to the New York Times, this is “a sign that federal officials believe the pandemic has moved into a new, less dire phase.”

Now to the bad news: A report released yesterday by the world’s largest humanitarian network states that the world remains “dangerously unprepared” for the next pandemic, which could be “just around the corner.” The World Health Organization is currently monitoring nine “priority diseases” that pose the greatest public health risk. One of them is labeled “Disease X,” acknowledging that “a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease.”

I found this news disconcerting but personally less relevant since there is nothing I can do about “Disease X” or any other pathogen. However, this headline also caught my eye: “Tens of Thousands of Americans May Have This Deadly Disease—and Not Even Know It.” I quickly read the story to discover the nature of this “deadly disease” and whether I might have it.

And I saw an online life expectancy calculator in today’s news and immediately took it myself.

Why I changed my sermon last Sunday

The brevity and uncertainty of life is on my mind and heart today because of something that happened two days ago at the Chapel where I speak on Sundays.

I was about to begin my message when our executive pastor told us that someone was in need of special prayer. It turned out, a couple in the service had received word that their thirty-six-year-old son had just died. He left three small children.

We gathered around the couple to pray for them and to grieve and weep with them. After they left to be with their family, I changed my message to a conversation about trusting God with our worst fears and grief.

We began by acknowledging the shock we all felt. Children are supposed to bury their parents—parents are not supposed to bury their children. This is every parent’s worst nightmare and greatest fear.

It’s something we think could never happen to us, until it does.

Filtering the world through two prisms

This is how many people approach the subject of death itself.

I was troubled about VEXAS, the “deadly disease” in the news, until I learned that I don’t have its symptoms. But I’m choosing to ignore the pandemic which could be “just around the corner” since there is nothing I can do personally to prevent it.

I think most of us respond to such threats in a similar fashion. We filter them through two prisms: Do they affect us personally? If so, is there anything we can do about them personally? If the answer to both questions is not yes, we find something else to think about.

This is because most Americans are pragmatists, measuring truth by what works for us. In fact, the philosophical school called “pragmatism” (from the Greek pragma, “action”) originated in the US and has been deeply influential on our culture.

Some pragmatic philosophers even believe that “a claim is true if and only if it is useful.” Since the story about the next pandemic is not useful to most of us, we feel free to ignore it if we wish.

You and I are not Jesus

The biblical worldview is far different.

In God’s eyes, every person is valuable as a bearer of his image (Genesis 1:27), someone for whom Christ chose to die (Romans 5:8). As a result, I should be concerned for those who have VEXAS whether I have the syndrome or not. And I should be troubled about the global consequences of the next pandemic whether I can prevent it or not.

The good news is that our Savior feels everything we feel, whether others empathize with us or not. In fact, he “loves each of us as if there were only one of us,” as St. Augustine said.

Now he wants to do the same through his church, the “body of Christ,” as we continue his earthly ministry today (1 Corinthians 12:27). However, you and I are not Jesus. We cannot feel as deeply as he feels for even one person, much less everyone in the news and in our lives.

But if we will ask, he will direct us to a hurting person we are to help in his name. He will give us his heart for this person until we “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15) and incarnate his grace in our compassion.

I believe he has such a person for each of us to love today. Will you ask him for yours?

The gospel on five fingers

Here’s the rest of the story: as we share Christ’s presence with hurting people, we experience Christ’s presence more deeply in our souls.

When people asked Mother Teresa why she loved the poor so much, she would point them to Jesus’ statement, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). But she did so in a very personal fashion: she took their hand and slowly wiggled one finger at a time as she said, “You-did-it-to-me.”

What will you do to Jesus today?

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Denison Forum

On a weekend with another mass shooting in California and grief and outrage over the video of Tyre Nichols’s horrific death, watching the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs win their playoff games yesterday was a welcome distraction for many.

Meanwhile, another story in the news is more culturally significant than it may seem.

A golden, eight-foot female sculpture wearing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s signature lace collar now stands over the state courthouse in New York City. According to the New York Times, the sculptor titled her work “NOW” because “it was needed ‘now,’ at a time when women’s reproductive rights were under siege after the US Supreme Court in June overturned the constitutional right to abortion.”

Art history professor Claire Bishop called the sculpture “a magical hybrid plant-animal” and hoped that “maybe she can help channel us back to reinstating Roe v. Wade.” Critics see the sculpture in a very different light, some calling it a “hideous abortion idol” and even “demonic.”

“You shall have no other gods before me”

Idolatry is by definition “the worship of someone or something other than God as though it were God.” This sin violates the first of the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3).

“Other gods” originally took the form of a “carved image” (v. 4). Today, our idols are seldom as visible as they were in Moses’ day. Nonetheless, we all have an “ultimate concern,” as philosophical theologian Paul Tillich observed.

If it is not the one true God, anything we serve in his place is our idol. From material success and financial prosperity to cultural popularity and a host of other “deities,” we are all tempted to worship something or someone who is not God.

Paradoxically, the more God meets our needs and blesses our lives, the more we tend to choose other gods to serve.

“We do not recognize the scale of his generosity”

St. John Fisher (1469–1535) was an English Catholic bishop, cardinal, and theologian who also served as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In a biblical commentary, he observed:

“God freed the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt with many signs and wonders. Then he led them across the Red Sea dry-shod; in the desert he fed them with food from heaven in the form of manna and quails; when they were thirsty he gave them an inexhaustible spring of water bubbling from the rock. He gave them victory over enemies that attacked them; he made the Jordan flow backwards for them; he took the land he had promised them and divided it between them according to their tribes and clans.

“Although he had dealt with them so lovingly and generously, the ungrateful people abandoned the worship of God, as if they had utterly forgotten everything, and shackled themselves with the crime of idol-worship—not once but many times.”

Consequently, in words that describe our culture even more than his, Fisher noted that we are “supremely ungrateful: we have gone far beyond the boundaries of all previous ingratitude. We pay no attention to God’s love, we do not recognize the scale of his generosity, but we spurn the source and giver of all these good things and practically hold him in contempt.

“Not even the outstanding mercy he shows to sinners moves us to order our lives and actions according to his holy law.”

“Status threat and envy”

Why do we do this?

A basic fact of our fallen nature is that we all seek to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5), to be in charge of our lives so we can do as we wish. As a result, we resist authority of any kind that tries to tell us who we are or how we should live.

This has never been more true than today. Our “post-truth” culture assures us we can define truth however we wish, do with our bodies (including those carrying unborn babies) whatever we wish, define gender and marriage as we wish, and end our lives whenever and however we wish.

In addition, psychologists report that when we receive help from those we perceive to be more competent than ourselves, “status threat and envy” arise and we are “likely to undermine help givers.” We “bite the hand that feeds us” because we resent our dependence on this “hand” and the control this dependence creates.

The passion of Christ’s love for you

The solution is both horizontal and vertical.

If you’re thinking only about your own best interests, ask yourself: Does it make sense to refuse the guidance of an omniscient Father who sees your future better than you can see your present? To refuse the help of an omnipotent Lord who can meet your every need by his grace?

Now let’s turn from our interests to our Savior. Reflect upon his decision in the Garden of Gethsemane to die to purchase your salvation. Consider the fact that, if you have trusted in him as your Savior and Lord, you will spend eternity in heaven rather than hell only because of his grace. Remember the last sin he forgave, the last prayer he answered.

Now take a moment to focus on Jesus himself. Envision him at the right hand of the Father as he intercedes this very moment for you (Romans 8:34). Feel the passion of his love for you.

To worship and serve anyone before Jesus is to choose idolatry and thus to “bite the hand that feeds you.” To love Jesus with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to serve him as your ultimate concern is to trust the hand that was crucified for you.

How will you respond to the outstretched hand of your Savior today?

Denison Forum

January 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It was designated as such by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005 to mark the date when the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated sixty years prior. The hope is that the day of remembrance can commemorate the victims of the Nazi regime, promote education about the Holocaust, and inspire people to work to prevent further genocide.

But while nations around the world will set aside time today to remember those who died, the proper form of that remembrance remains a matter of some debate. And as those in charge of Amsterdam’s Resistance Museum (Verzetsmuseum) have learned recently, some can be very vocal when they believe the memory of those who passed has not been honored correctly.

Humanizing the heroes and the villains

The Resistance Museum has existed in Amsterdam since 1985. For most of that history, the displays focused on highlighting the efforts made by the Dutch resistance movement to subvert the Germans across the five years they occupied the Netherlands. However, the museum’s new offering represents a slightly different approach.

The new exhibit highlights the role that one hundred individuals played in the Netherlands during World War II. But whereas such exhibits often traditionally focus on people who resisted the Nazi occupation, the museum has chosen to feature those who collaborated with the Germans as well.

Liesbeth van der Horst, the museum’s director, told reporters “We are offering new perspectives, a different emphasis. By showing the choice these people made [to collaborate] you highlight how courageous it was to choose to resist.”

But, as Nina Siegal writes, not everyone sees it that way. And, given that nearly 75 percent of Dutch Jews were deported and murdered by the Nazis during the war—by far the largest percentage in western Europe—it remains an emotional subject for many.

Jalda Rebling, whose family was part of the resistance, argued that by humanizing both the heroes and the villains of the story, “the whole wartime disappears into a grayish state.”

However, if that’s the case, van der Horst does not seem to mind.

More than “monsters and heroes”

“We don’t just have monsters and heroes,” the museum’s director notes. Rather, “people are people and you have many shades between good and bad.”

Van der Horst went on to add that “we show pictures of some Nazis, especially Dutch Nazis, because they are also part of our history. The bad sides of history also have to be included.”

To that end, the exhibit includes short vignettes on people like Hannie Schaft—a law student who “sabotaged German military operations and shot Nazis”—right next to that of Emil Rühl, who worked for months to catch her before ultimately handing her over to be killed by the Germans.

Wim Henneicke, who led a “Jew hunting” group, and Gerard Mooyman who, as a teenager, was “so impressed” by German propaganda that he joined up and served on their front lines, are other examples of people who would not have previously made the display but now feature prominently alongside resistance fighters.

Forcing people to grapple with that side of their history was an integral part of the exhibit’s purpose.

As van der Horst described, they wanted their audience to recognize that “in the face of a threatening dictatorial regime, it’s not easy to just act. Sometimes people judge too easily, in hindsight. They say, ‘More people should have been involved in the resistance,’ and ‘They didn’t do enough.’ Of course, it’s true, they didn’t do enough, but it was not that easy to do enough. . . . You cannot expect resistance from everybody.”

In general, most of us like to think that we would stand up to evil when given the opportunity. Yet, history shows repeatedly that the vast majority of people will not. There are shades of gray to every person, and one of my favorite parts about reading the Bible is that it does not shy away from that fact.

Present faithfulness does not guarantee future obedience

Whether it’s the villains or the heroes, it’s rare for a biblical character to be completely good or completely evil.

For example, with the exception of Jesus, Scripture does not include any infallible heroes, and I believe there are two primary reasons why that’s the case.

First, acknowledging that even the most important figures in biblical history were fallen people helps us to realize that there is no reason we cannot follow God as well.

Prominent figures like Gideon and Moses, for example, tested the Lord repeatedly before agreeing to serve him (Judges 6; Exodus 3). And the disciples failed Jesus on countless occasions before going on to become the leaders of his burgeoning church. It can be reassuring to remember that the Lord can use us just as readily as he used them if we are willing to follow his will.

Second, by humanizing its heroes, God’s word cautions us that present faithfulness does not guarantee future obedience. Every choice we make presents us with the opportunity to follow God’s will or our own, and the consequences of either choice can be profound.

David, for example, was a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14) through whom the Lord accomplished truly amazing feats. However, decades of faithfulness did not stop him from assaulting Bathsheba, arranging her husband’s murder, and then trying to cover it all up (2 Samuel 11). Nor did it keep him from becoming a negligent father (2 Samuel 13), an impotent leader (2 Samuel 15), or a vindictive old man (1 Kings 2).

If David could fail so absolutely after starting so strongly, you and I can as well.

At the same time, even the villains in the Bible are rarely without some redeeming quality.

The religious leaders during the time of Christ, for example, were mostly well-intentioned people who just wanted to help their fellow Jews follow the Lord. And Paul was much the same prior to his conversion. They were sincere in their belief that opposing Jesus was an act of service to God. That they were utterly wrong in that belief does not change that there was often some pious motivation behind it.

Ultimately, none of us are so good that we are beyond the need for God’s help or so bad that we are beyond his redemption. And though there is room to disagree with the Dutch Resistance Museum’s approach to teaching people about their people’s history, the exhibit does a good job of reminding us of that fact.

Every day brings the chance to be a hero or a villain in God’s story.

Choose wisely.

Denison Forum

This morning’s headlines include former Vice President Mike Pence’s discovery of classified documents in his Indiana home; House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s decision to block two Democrats from serving on the Intelligence Committee; the firing of several Ukrainian officials in an anti-corruption purge; the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Google; another mass shooting in California; and storms that inflicted extensive damage to communities near Houston.

Since none of these stories directly affects me in Dallas, Texas, I read the first four with interest and the last two with sorrow, but none of them with existential concern.

Will FCA clubs be barred?

By contrast, these stories feel very different to me:

• A UK army veteran was fined for praying silently near an abortion facility.
• A Christian charity worker in Malta could face jail time after stating publicly that his faith enabled him to turn from a homosexual lifestyle he no longer wanted.
• A group of pro-abortion and freedom-from-religion activists demonstrated at the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Sunday evening to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
• A Michigan state law is threatening a Christian medical nonprofit for operating according to its Christian beliefs.
• A federal appeals court will decide whether Fellowship of Christian Athletes groups should be barred from high school campuses in San Jose, California, since the club does not permit LGBTQ students to serve as club leaders.

Do these stories feel more personal to you as well?

One reason we responded as we did is that attacks on another person’s Christian faith could obviously become attacks on ours as well. A rising tide raises—or damages—all boats.

Another is that we are members of the global body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27). A hand or foot in pain is obviously felt by the entire body. It is—or should be—the same with the body of Christ.

But there’s a third dimension to these stories and the rising tide of anti-Christian animosity they illustrate, one that is foundational to the others and a factor that tempts Christians as much as it tempts our opponents.

“Don’t hide behind religion”

Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov chose not to wear a rainbow jersey during warmups for the team’s recent Pride Night. He cited his religious beliefs as the reason: “I respect everybody, and I respect everybody’s choices. My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion.” He also said that he is Russian Orthodox.

Interestingly, his jerseys sold out online in the days following.

Nonetheless, one sports pundit called on the National Hockey League to fine the Flyers $1 million over Provorov’s “insulting” comments. Another said the Russian-born player should go back to his homeland and join the war against Ukraine. A third called the player out for previously participating in the Flyers’ military appreciation event: “Ivan Provorov is more than happy to play pregame dress-up when it does align with his belief system.” A fourth warned him, “Don’t hide behind religion.”

Their reaction makes my point: our culture is convinced that religion is so private, personal, and subjective that it should have no bearing on our public lives or society. This conclusion has become conventional wisdom in Western society, whether in the UK, Malta, or the US.

“In Israel, Judaism is the prevailing culture”

By contrast, the Jerusalem Post notes that “in Israel, Judaism is more than a building or a property. In Israel, Judaism is more than prayer. In Israel, Judaism is even more than God. In Israel, Judaism is the pervading culture.”

Having led more than thirty trips to the Holy Land, I can attest that this is true. From Shabbat laws that restrict working (and even pushing elevator buttons) on the Sabbath to kosher dietary restrictions in restaurants across the nation, Judaism dominates every dimension of Israeli life.

I have traveled widely in Muslim and Asian countries and can tell you that the same is true there. From the five pillars of Islam to the Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism, religion is not separate from the “real world”—it forms and frames it.

In our culture, by contrast, religion is to be kept separate from public life. It is viewed as a personal hobby, nothing more. As such, it is to be given no more weight or warrant in public life than any other hobby.

I like watching car auctions on television and listening to classical music, but I obviously have no right to make you watch or listen to what I prefer or tell you that your personal tastes are wrong. In the same way, our culture thinks, a Christian should not pray in front of an abortion clinic, discuss in public the impact of his faith on his sexuality, or seek to live by his faith convictions as an attorney, physician, or high school athlete.

When we make faith a hobby

My purpose today is less to critique secular society for treating our faith like a hobby than it is to warn Christians that we must not follow suit.

Jesus taught us: “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). If Jesus is not Lord of every dimension of our lives, he cannot bless, redeem, and use every dimension of our lives. A painter cannot paint a room she is not permitted to enter.

When we make faith a hobby, we lose all an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful Father can do for his children.

Will you bear “much fruit” today?

Denison Forum

The Lunar New Year has begun. Celebrated by Asian cultures around the world, the holiday marks the first new moon of the year and continues for around fifteen days until the first full moon of the year. As National Geographic reports, the holiday focuses on themes of reunion and hope and is “a time for family reunions, plenty of food, and some very loud celebrations.”

It was therefore especially horrific that a gunman killed ten people and wounded ten others at a California ballroom dance club Saturday night following a Lunar New Year celebration. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna identified the shooter as seventy-two-year-old Huu Can Tran and said he took his own life last night in a van after law enforcement surrounded the vehicle in a parking lot.

Authorities are still searching for a motive at this writing.

“Man is the noblest of all animals”

Aristotle noted, “At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.”

Tragedies like this should convince us all that we need God, for at least four reasons:

1. Clearly, human laws are not enough to restrain human evil—we need a transforming power beyond ourselves.
2. When we lose someone we love, we seek help and hope we cannot produce or give.
3. The fact that human lives can be taken by other humans demonstrates our finitude and mortality.
4. The suddenness of such a tragedy illustrates the fact that tomorrow is promised to no one and that eternity is one day closer than ever.

These facts combine, we would think, to lead secular people to reconsider their secularity. And they often do, at least when the tragedy is fresh. Churches were crowded after 9/11. People, no matter their religiosity, often cry out to God in moments of distress. As the saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes.

But over time, the pain and shock fade and we return to the “real” world in which religion is outdated and irrelevant.

Why is this?

Building a house of sand

Oswald Chambers observed, “Troubles nearly always make us look to God; his blessings are apt to make us look elsewhere.” It is a fact that the more prosperous a society becomes, the more irreligious it becomes.

The peril of prosperity conspires with the lure of self-reliance. If we think we achieved what we have, we will think we can continue to achieve what we need.

From Socrates’ dictum to “know thyself” to the present, Western society has been built on the individual. Our foundational premise is that we can discover truth and improve the world if we will only try hard enough for long enough.

God or the gods can certainly help, or so the Greeks and Romans thought. Thus they built altars to their various deities and engaged in transactional religion whereby they gave the god what it wanted so the god would give them what they wanted. We do the same when we go to church on Sunday so God will bless us on Monday.

However, secular Americans now “know” that all gods are myths. As Richard Dawkins notes in The God Delusion, “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

So, when tragedy strikes, after we move past our initial religious reaction, we soon begin seeking human solutions. President Bill Clinton captured our cultural ethos when he declared in his 1993 inaugural address, “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.” When a shooting tragedy strikes, we turn to debates about gun laws. When natural disasters strike, we debate climate change.

Then the next wave hits and our house of sand is washed away. But before long, we start building it again.

“What’s wrong with the world today?”

As you and I know, the only One who can transform a sinful human heart is Jesus: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Why, then, don’t more people learn from tragedy to turn to him?

The problem with Christianity is Christians.

The Times of London is said to have posed this question in the early 1900s to several prominent authors: “What’s wrong with the world today?” The well-known author G. K. Chesterton reportedly responded with a one sentence-essay:

Dear Sir,
I am.
Yours, G. K. Chesterton.

I could say the same. I cannot persuade secular people that Jesus can change their lives until he first changes me. Just as we will not believe an obese diet “expert” or a dentist with bad teeth, why would non-Christians want Christ if Christians are no different than anyone else?

Here’s the good news: when the living Lord Jesus transforms us, others will see the difference. If we are loving toward those who do not love us; if we are calm in the storm, courageous in the crisis, moral in an immoral age, others will see our light in the dark (Matthew 5:16). And they will be drawn to the One who is “the light of men” (John 1:4).

This is why, as Oswald Chambers noted, “The one thing for which we are all being disciplined is to know that God is real.” He is not just the subject of the sermon you heard yesterday or the article you are reading now, but he is alive, powerful, and transforming.

No one can truly experience the God of the universe in faith, prayer, Scripture, and worship and stay the same.

Has Jesus changed your life yet today?

Denison Forum

The United States hit its debt ceiling on Thursday. The Treasury Department responded by taking measures intended to buy more time before the country risks defaulting on its debt. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen predicted that the measures would be sufficient for roughly five months, though she also cautioned that there is “considerable uncertainty” regarding that time frame.

But this is hardly the first time Congress has come to such an impasse, and few believe the government will actually fail to raise the debt ceiling when the time comes. So why all the furor over the present debate?

Given that the markets have largely shrugged off the development, it seems like those who follow the financials most closely see the Republican refusal as political grandstanding rather than seeking genuine reform. In fact, the primary reason the debt ceiling is even an issue is that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy promised to attach spending cuts to any conversation about raising the debt ceiling in order to garner the necessary support to win his position.

Productive negotiations seem unlikely, however, with the White House publicly saying that they will not negotiate over raising the debt ceiling. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated Thursday that it is Congress’ “constitutional duty” to come to a resolution that prevents the government from going into default. Democrats in Congress appear to agree.

While that stance also seems more political than practical, it speaks to an impasse that could have dire consequences were it to continue indefinitely.

So what is the debt ceiling? And why is this annual tradition of fighting over it before ultimately agreeing that it needs to be raised such a big deal?

What is the debt ceiling?

The debt ceiling is, essentially, the legal limit for how much borrowing the American government can do in order to finance the legislation it has already passed.

The last part of that definition is important for understanding the current debate. Any spending cuts negotiated into the eventual settlement will not apply to the current debt. Rather, the debt ceiling is about making sure the government has enough money to cover the legislation currently on the books.

The debt ceiling became a law in 1917 in order to allow Congress to more easily sell bonds to fund its involvement in the first World War. It has been raised seventy-eight times since 1960—forty-nine times under Republican presidents and twenty-nine under Democrats—and twenty times since 2001 alone.

In all that time, only once has America defaulted on its debt, and that was due to an administrative error rather than the failure of Congress. Still, even though the mistake was quickly rectified and pertained only to a small collection of Treasury securities, it raised US borrowing costs by the modern equivalent of $40 billion.

The threat of a similar escalation in how much it costs to borrow money is another key factor in this debate.

Why does America keep raising the debt ceiling?

Currently, our government is able to raise the debt ceiling whenever they want because “American Treasury securities have been viewed as one of the safest, most stable investments in the modern world.” And while $31 trillion in debt is a staggering number, the US still has a better debt-to-GDP ratio than countries like Britain, Germany, Australia, and Greece.

However, should America fail to make the interest payments on our debt, those privileges would quickly go away.

That reality is why neither party has, historically, been willing to risk not raising the debt ceiling. If Republicans were required to let the country default on our debt in order to garner concessions and reduce spending, the higher interest rates would, in all likelihood, wipe out any gains made by spending less or raising taxes.

And though the present debate may seem like a partisan topic, any hesitancy to raise the limits is a relatively recent development.

Many of the same Republicans working against raising the debt ceiling now, for example, showed little hesitancy in doing so during three of the four years that Donald Trump was in office. In 2006, then-senator Barack Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling because of what he termed President Bush’s “reckless fiscal policies.”

Ultimately, it is more politically expedient for both parties to pass legislation that we can’t afford and then fight over the means of paying for it at a later date than it is to fail to pass the legislation in the first place. As such, this is likely to continue to be an issue regardless of which party is in power.

And while there is relatively little we can do to curb such patterns nationally, we can and should learn from their mistakes in order to avoid repeating them in our own lives. And those lessons apply to far more than just money.

We can’t borrow time

While fiscal responsibility is important, an issue that receives far less attention in Christian circles pertains to being responsible with our time.

This side of heaven, there will always be more work we can do to serve the Lord than we have time to do it. As such, it can be tempting to say yes to more things than we should. However, eventually that debt will come due and we cannot borrow time to account for it. That’s why it is so important to allow God to be the one who determines when we say yes and when we decline.

Others may not always understand. They may see their work as the most important way a person could advance the kingdom and, for them, they may be right. But another person’s need does not define your calling. Only God gets to do that.

So the next time you’re presented with the opportunity to give your time to a particular ministry or opportunity, take a moment to pray and ask for the Lord’s guidance before responding.

After all, it’s far better to say no initially than to default on your obligations when the time comes to pay that cost.

Denison Forum

The National March for Life is tomorrow in Washington, DC., followed in two days by Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Both are timed to correspond with January 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision tragically discovered a right to abortion in the US Constitution.

Since that time, more than sixty-three million (PDF) babies have been lost to abortion.

Last June, the Court finally overturned Roe in the case of Thomas Dobbs, et. al. v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. States such as Texas enacted their own bans on abortion as a result.

Now we are learning the practical consequences of these legal decisions, at least in my home state: new data released by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission shows that three abortion procedures were performed in our state in August 2022, compared with 2,596 in June. This is a drop of more than 99 percent. The report also indicates that all three procedures were “medically necessary” abortions.

Between April and August of last year, the number of abortions nationwide declined by 6 percent. If this trend persists, there could be at least sixty thousand fewer abortions this year as a result of Dobbs.

As we can see, five decades of hard work by pro-life legal advocates and their allies is now saving thousands of lives.

Using the secular to serve the spiritual

In yesterday’s Daily Article I noted that “Christians must not depend on the government to do our work for us.” Whatever the courts and legal systems decide about biblical morality, we are still called to declare and defend biblical truth (1 Peter 3:15). The more people reject the truth, the more they need it.

Today, let’s consider the other side of this theme: Christians can—and should—use the government and other secular means to advance the cause of Christ.

Thousands of lives are being saved as a result of Dobbs that likely would not have been saved apart from this legal outcome. Advocates for religious freedom in the US Senate have prevented the draconian so-called “Equality Act” from becoming law, thwarting (so far) what has been called “the most invasive threat to religious liberty ever proposed in America.”

We see a similar theme unfolding across Scripture:

• Joseph becomes prime minister of Egypt and saves his family and thus the Jewish nation through whom one day the Messiah would come.
• King David establishes the Jewish capital in Jerusalem and gives the world the Psalms.
• King Solomon builds the first temple and gives us the wisdom of Proverbs.
• Daniel is promoted to become one of “three high officials” in Babylon (Daniel 6:2); his witness following God’s intervention in the lions’ den (v. 22) leads the king to proclaim to the nation that “the God of Daniel . . . is the living God” (v. 26).
• Esther uses her position as queen to prevent the genocide of the Jewish people in Persia.
• Nehemiah uses his position as the king’s “cupbearer” (a strategic position with access to the king; Nehemiah 1:11) to advocate for rebuilding Jerusalem.
• “Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager” serves as a powerful political figure in Galilee and one of Jesus’ financial supporters (Luke 8:3).
• Zacchaeus, the “chief tax collector” in Jericho, repents of his sin and becomes a public example of Jesus’ mission “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:1–10).

We could add a host of biblical figures who used their wealth and influence to advance God’s kingdom.

Are you a “paid Christian”?

Why are believers in positions of secular influence able to make an impact for the cause of Christ that professional ministers like me are not?

One reason is that the legal separation of church and state has been misinterpreted by our culture as the separation of faith and state. As a result, professional ministers are viewed as irrelevant to secular concerns. But when Christians in the marketplace live for Jesus, the relevance of their faith to the issues of the marketplace becomes clear.

A second factor is the horrific clergy abuse scandal that continues to undermine the credibility of professional ministers. So-called “lay” Christians are not painted with the same brush and have moral authority their pastors sometimes lack.

A third issue is that professional ministers are seen as “paid Christians.” When we advocate for biblical morality, we are only doing our job, or so skeptics say. But when Christians with secular influence stand for biblical truth, especially at a personal cost, they show an unbelieving world that their faith is real and biblical truth is transformative.

“My ministry is ________________”

So, if you are not an ordained member of the clergy, know that you are nonetheless ordained by God to a ministry that is just as vital as mine. You are part of the body of Christ, a “hand” or “foot” doing what no one else can do (1 Corinthians 12:12–27). Whether you are a legal professional advocating for life or a person engaged in other dimensions of secular influence, your work can make an eternal difference.

I encourage you to focus today on your specific calling. If you cannot complete the sentence, “My ministry is _______________,” pray and reflect until you can. Then live every day in alignment with your missional purpose, remembering that “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives” (Annie Dillard).

Wherever God has placed us, whatever our kingdom assignment, our life purpose is to know Christ and make him known.

Will you fulfill this calling more fully today than yesterday?

Denison Forum

In 2021, LGBTQ students filed a class-action lawsuit that would force religious schools to choose between abandoning their biblical beliefs or losing students who would be denied federal financial assistance.

The so-called Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP) claims to represent LGBTQ students at “more than two hundred taxpayer-funded religious schools that actively discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.” In their view, a school that upholds biblical sexuality illegally discriminates against those who disagree.

Since the schools in question receive federal funds, REAP claims that such funding should stop. As I noted in The Coming Tsunami, the schools in question received $4.2 billion in federal student aid in 2018.

Now, in excellent news for religious freedom in America, a federal judge in Oregon has dismissed REAP’s lawsuit.

David Cortman with the Alliance Defending Freedom, the group that represented the Christian schools, applauded the ruling: “A federal district court today rightly rejected an unfounded assault on the religious freedom of faith-based educational institutions. Title IX, which applies to schools receiving federal financial assistance, explicitly protects the freedom of religious schools to live out their deeply and sincerely held convictions.”

Professor dismissed after Muslim student’s objection

In other religious liberty news, the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal by an evangelical Christian former mail carrier in Pennsylvania.

Gerald Groff accused the US Postal Service (USPS) of religious bias after he was reprimanded for refusing to deliver packages on Sundays. He claimed that the USPS violated federal anti-discrimination law by refusing to exempt him from working on Sundays, when he observes the Sabbath.

The case relates to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Under the law, employers must reasonably accommodate a worker’s religious observance or practice unless doing so would cause the business “undue hardship,” which is what the USPS claimed in response to Groff’s lawsuit.

Let’s consider one more news item on our theme: Hamline University in Minnesota recently dismissed a professor for including depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in a world art course.

The course syllabus warned students that they would view images of religious figures, including the Prophet Muhammad, and included an offer to work with students uncomfortable with viewing those images. The teacher also warned the class immediately before showing the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.

Nonetheless, a Muslim student complained to the university that the image violated her faith. The professor’s contract was not renewed following the fall semester. Now the university is under fire from those critical of its decision.

Protecting the “right to be wrong”

These cases illustrate the fact that freedom of religion includes freedom from religion.

I am deeply grateful for the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of religion and freedom of speech. But I also recognize that our culture is becoming ever more secularized. As a result, religious beliefs and speech that contradict social norms will become increasingly the minority view and will become increasingly objectionable to the post-Christian majority. And the right of a growing irreligious demographic to be free from such beliefs and speech will gain in popularity.

This is the view of LGBTQ students who claim to be the victims of discrimination at Christian schools. It is the position of the USPS in claiming to protect its workers from the imposition of a single employee’s religious beliefs on his fellow workers. And it is the stance of those who are protesting Hamline University’s decision to dismiss a professor over the religious objections of a single student.

When Christian morality was the majority view, the First Amendment protected our “right to be right.” Now that the opposite is true, the First Amendment is viewed as protecting our “right to be wrong.” But as our society increasingly views us as discriminatory and even dangerous, we can expect our “right to be wrong” to come under increasing attack.

My resolution for this year

Today’s conversation highlights this biblical fact: Christians must not depend on the government to do our work for us.

Whether the courts defend our religious freedoms or not, you and I are instructed to “always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15 NKJV). When the Apostles were called before the Supreme Court of their day and forbidden legally from preaching the gospel, they responded: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19–20).

Christians in Cuba face some of the most intense persecution of any nation in the world. However, I have experienced personally the amazing vitality of their churches and the sacrificial depth of their faith. I often say that visiting Cuban churches is like “walking around in the Book of Acts.”

Of the top ten countries where Christians face the most persecution, nine are Muslim. And yet a spiritual awakening in the Muslim world is bringing more Muslims to Jesus than ever before.

It is vital that Christians in America do what we can to protect and promote our constitutional freedoms. But it is also vital that Christians utilize these freedoms while we have them to lead those we influence to the One who promised, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).

My resolution for this new year is simple: to know Christ and make him known.

Will you join me?

Denison Forum

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is being celebrated across America today, and for good reason.

Here’s a brief synopsis of Dr. King’s life and legacy: he was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of a Baptist minister. He received a doctoral degree in theology and in 1955 helped organize the first major protest of the African American civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The effort he led resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education and outlawed racial segregation in public facilities. Later that year, he became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. Today we remember his life, celebrate his legacy, and commit ourselves to continuing the march for racial equality in America.

As a coincidence of calendar, today is also National Religious Freedom Day. This observance commemorates the day the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was signed on January 16, 1786. Thomas Jefferson’s landmark statute later became the basis for Congressman Fisher Ames’ establishment clause in the First Amendment of the US Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

As a result, each year, by presidential proclamation, January 16^th is declared Religious Freedom Day.

Today’s intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and National Religious Freedom Day illustrates a fact that relates directly to our lives and our national future.

“Man is not the measure of all things”

Dr. King understood that the foundational need in America with regard to racial equality is not legal but moral.

He noted: “Christianity affirms that at the heart of reality is a Heart, a loving Father who works through history for the salvation of his children. Man cannot save himself, for man is not the measure of all things and humanity is not God. Bound by the chains of his own sin and finiteness, man needs a Savior.”

However, Dr. King affirmed the necessity of legal change as we seek moral change: “Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.” This is why the Civil Rights Act and other legislative progress have been so important.

Nonetheless, his movement focused foundationally on changing the hearts and minds of America: “In winning our freedom, we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.” He believed that when we understood the urgency of racial equality for all Americans, we would unite in this cause for the sake of our nation and our posterity.

Was Dr. King wrong?

Just as our nation urgently needed (and needs) a civil rights movement to advance equality for all Americans, so too do we need a spiritual movement to advance morality for all Americans.

Our society has been deluded into believing that Dr. King is wrong: our cultural consensus insists that “man is the measure of all things and humanity is God.” As a result, we have rejected the sanctity of life from conception to death, redefined and undermined marriage and the family, and ignored constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and religion for those who disagree.

This is why the intersection of National Religious Freedom Day with Martin Luther King Jr. Day is so illuminating for our cultural moment. Without religious freedom, Dr. King could not have spoken to America so prophetically and redemptively. His historic “I Have a Dream” address was protected speech despite the animosity of many against his cause.

Imagine an evangelical Christian uttering similar words in front of the Lincoln Memorial today in defense of biblical morality. Would such a message gain a hearing in our secular media except in rebuke and rejection? What would be the “cancel culture” response?

Praying through open windows

Consequently, this day calls Christians to prophetic courage. We are to be as bold in declaring and defending biblical morality as Dr. King was in declaring and defending biblical equality.

We need more John the Baptists speaking truth to the King Herods of our day, whatever the cost to ourselves (Matthew 14:4). We need more Daniels praying through open windows whatever the threat to our future (Daniel 6:10).

We must do so in the humility that recognizes we need the same grace that we are offering to our nation. As Pope St. Clement I wrote to the Corinthians, “We are not justified by our wisdom, intelligence, piety, or by any action of ours, however holy, but by faith, the one means by which God has justified men from the beginning. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

And we can stand in bold confidence that embraces this moment as ours. We are cultural missionaries to where we are and to when we are. God has called us to the challenges and opportunities of this day. We can therefore claim this truth as ours: “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

“A worldview in a single word”

The Jacksonville Jaguars achieved a “stirring, miraculous comeback victory” Saturday night, overcoming a 27–0 deficit to win their playoff game. Afterward, sports journalist Jay Busbee reported that Jaguars head coach Doug Pederson introduced to the team in training camp a philosophy endorsed by motivational speaker and former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink, a worldview in a single word: “Good.”

“When things are going bad, don’t get all bummed out,” Willink has said. “Don’t get frustrated. No, just look at the issue and say: ‘Good.’” After Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence threw four interceptions in the first half of Saturday’s game, a lineman came up to him and said “Good.” Lawrence threw four touchdowns in the second half as his team made history.

Let’s look at the challenges of this day and say “Good.” Then let’s trust and serve our good God.

All of God there is, is in this moment.

Denison Forum

Prince Harry’s autobiography Spare is now the UK’s fastest-selling nonfiction book. I started reading it yesterday and am already glad I’m not part of the royal family.

Closer to home, flights resumed yesterday after a Federal Aviation Administration system failure left pilots, airlines, and airports without crucial safety information for hours. My first thought when the FAA paused flights was to hope their action wasn’t related to terrorism. My second was to be grateful I wasn’t flying that day.

In other news, Goldman Sachs began layoffs yesterday; just over three thousand employees will eventually be let go. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station will be forced to extend their stay for several months after their Russian MS-22 Soyuz spacecraft sprung a leak. The Center for Strategic & International Studies has wargamed a Chinese invasion of Taiwan (Taiwan, aided by the US, wins but at a devastating cost). And a bestselling novel about a fictitious same-sex love affair between the son of the US president and the Prince of Wales will be made into a movie this year.

As with the royal family and air travel, I’m glad I’m not employed by Goldman Sachs, work on the ISS, or live in Taiwan. Nor do I have to read the same-sex romance novel or see the movie.

On the other hand, the World Bank’s warning that the global economy is “perilously close” to a recession does affect me for obvious reasons. And Bloomberg’s report that antisemitism is “seeping into the workplace” deeply grieves me even though I am not Jewish. My love for the Jewish people, bolstered by more than thirty trips to the Holy Land, calls me to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” every day (Psalm 122:6) and to urge you to do the same.

Advice from Ronald Reagan’s daughter

Patti Davis is the daughter of President Ronald Reagan and the author of an autobiography many years ago in which, in her words, she “flung open the gates of our troubled family life.” She now writes in the New York Times that she deeply regrets exposing her family’s private challenges to the public and has learned that “not everything needs to be shared.” She would “respectfully” suggest this lesson to Prince Harry today.

Here’s one reason her advice is worth taking: how we treat others is inevitably how the world will treat us.

Jesus advised us in the so-called Golden Rule, “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:12). He also taught us to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39, quoting Leviticus 19:18).

Over the years, when I have followed his instruction, I have discovered this pattern: when I love my neighbor as myself, I love myself more. This enables me to love my neighbor more, which enables me to love myself more. And on the pattern goes.

My experience is not unique: a new study at Ohio State University shows that people suffering from forms of depression or anxiety may help heal themselves by doing good deeds for others. Evolutionary psychologists would no doubt call this finding an example of the “survival of the fittest”: the more compassionate we are with others, the more we experience their compassion and the more likely we are to survive and flourish.

But what if this pattern is not a coincidental product of chaotic chance but one dimension of our Creator’s design for us and our world?

“Believe the God we believe in”

If this is true, I am wrong to read Spare as though the royal family is not part of the human family and thus my family. I am wrong to care less about flight delays on the days I am not flying or to treat news of layoffs, strandings in space, war scenarios, and sexual immorality as though they do not affect me.

Instead, I need to make agape love, God’s unconditional love for others, my goal. However, since this is a “fruit” of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), I need to submit my thoughts and feelings to the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) so he can manifest such love for others in and through my life.

The more our culture rejects biblical morality, the more you and I will need to pray for such compassion. As my wife brilliantly notes in her latest blog, “If Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world, we shouldn’t condemn the world, either.” Instead, we should “believe the God we believe in” (quoting R. C. Sproul) and thus share his truth with his grace.

It would be human nature simply to write our fallen society off, turning those who reject biblical truth over to the consequences of their sinful choices. But this would contradict the example of the One who came “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). It would ignore the example of the Apostle who wrote of his “great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart” for his unbelieving Jewish brethren (Romans 9:2).

And it would impoverish us personally. The more we love our neighbor, the more we love ourselves and the more we can love our neighbor as ourselves.

“The only way for us to stay well”

Henri Nouwen makes my point better than I can: “I think that we have hardly thought through the immense implications of the mystery of the incarnation. Where is God? God is where we are weak, vulnerable, small, and dependent. God is where the poor are, the hungry, the handicapped, the mentally ill, the elderly, the powerless.”

As a result, he asks: “How can we come to know God when our focus is elsewhere, on success, influence, and power?” Rather, he writes, “The only way for us to stay well in the midst of the many ‘worlds’ is to stay close to the small, vulnerable child that lives in our hearts and in every other human being. Often we do not know that the Christ child is within us. When we discover him we can truly rejoice.”

Jesus would agree. After describing followers who care for those who are hungry, thirsty, unwanted, naked, and imprisoned, he assured us that “the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me’” (Matthew 25:40).

And to yourself as well.

Denison Forum