According to a new report (PDF) by the nonprofit child advocacy group Common Sense Media, 73 percent of US teenagers seventeen years of age or younger have viewed online pornography. Fifty-four percent of those age thirteen or younger have seen online porn. On average, they first consumed pornography when they were twelve years old. Nearly one-third of all teens reported that they had been exposed to porn during the school day.

A majority who have viewed pornography also indicated that they had been exposed to aggressive and/or violent forms of pornography; 52 percent saw depictions of rape, choking, or someone in pain.

I have warned frequently about the “plague of pornography (PDF)” sweeping our nation and the damage it is doing to those who view it. Singer Billie Eilish is one example: she says porn “destroyed my brain” after she began watching graphic online movies while she was still in elementary school. She added that she still suffers from night terrors and sleep paralysis as a result of some of the porn she watched.

Brad Salzman, founder of the New York Sexual Addiction Center, responded to her story: “Parents aren’t paying attention and [porn exposure] can affect [their children] for the rest of their lives. It totally colors their perception of what normal sexuality is supposed to look like and it changes the way they think that they’re supposed to interact.

“They can begin seeing other people as sex objects as opposed to human beings.”

Therein lies my point today.

A factor I had not considered

It is a tragic fact that our secularized postmodern culture has desacralized life from conception to death. It was once conventional wisdom that children in their mother’s womb were gifts from God to be cherished; now they are seen as inconvenient impositions to be disposed of as easily as possible. The elderly and infirm were once valued equally with the rest of humanity; now they are being euthanized more widely and efficiently than ever.

Sexuality was once seen as part of God’s design for his image-bearers (Genesis 1:27); now LGBTQ advocates are doing all they can to normalize their ideology among children. From the federal government down, teachers, administrators, and school nurses are being urged to adopt LGBTQ curriculum and endorse transgender identity.

Seen in this light, the ever-spreading plague of pornography is unsurprising. When a culture abandons biblical morality and objective ethics, tolerance becomes the de facto rule of the day. As D. A. Carson has perceptively shown in his masterful book, The Intolerance of Tolerance, “tolerance” used to mean that we allowed people the right to be wrong. Now it means that there is no such thing as wrong, pornography included.

But there’s another dimension to the story, one I had not considered until I began writing this Daily Article.

Of all our moral failings, pornography especially dehumanizes humans. It turns people into pictures, humans into bodies to be used. And the more pervasive and powerful this becomes, the more easily those affected by pornography transfer this desacralizing of humans to all other aspects of human experience, from birth to death.

In a culture where people are a means to our ends, we should not be surprised when lying, property theft, and violent crime are on the rise. Nor should we be surprised when an “epidemic of loneliness” spreads across our land. Pornography is teaching millions of Americans, beginning as children, that people are commodities, nothing more.

The courage of Michael Gerson

The good news is that the good news of the gospel gives meaning to life that can be found nowhere else.

Michael Gerson is an example.

I was privileged to know Mr. Gerson, former Chief Speechwriter for President George W. Bush and well-known Washington Post columnist who died last November at the age of fifty-eight. He was the featured speaker at a Dallas Baptist University event in which I participated five years ago; we spent much of the evening together.

I found him a person of great humor, winsome charm, and personal warmth. At no point did he tell me that his physical health had been torturous for many years. According to his good friend Peter Wehner, Gerson struggled with depression since his twenties and suffered a heart attack in 2004 at the age of forty. He developed kidney cancer in 2013 and suffered from debilitating leg pain that probably resulted from surgical nerve damage. The kidney cancer spread to his lungs; he developed Parkinson’s disease and metastatic adrenal cancer, then metastatic bone cancer in multiple locations.

You would never have known the pain he suffered. As Wehner explains, Gerson was grateful “for the life he was able to lead and for the people who loved him and were able to travel his journey with him. He was in pain, but he was in peace.”

What was the source of such courage? Wehner explains: “Mike’s views reflected what he called a ‘Christian anthropology’—a belief in the inherent rights and dignity of every human life. It led him to solidarity with the weak and the suffering, the dispossessed, those living in the shadows of life. His faith was capacious and generous; it created in him a deep commitment to justice and the common good.”

Michael Gerson knew that his life, no matter its sufferings and challenges, possessed eternal and inestimable value. The same is true of every person on our planet. Including you.

“The core truth of our existence”

Henri Nouwen was right: “Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the ‘Beloved.’ Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”

Do you know that you are the Beloved of God?

Does this fact constitute the “core truth” of your existence today?

If not, why not?

Denison Forum

 “The eyes of the Lᴏʀᴅ range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 16:9 NIV).

The Georgia Bulldogs repeated as national champions last night with their 65–7 win over the TCU Horned Frogs. Only eight schools have won repeat national championships since the start of the modern era in 1936. The current playoff format only dates to 2015, but college football has named national champions going back to 1869 (when Princeton and Rutgers were the only two teams and split their series, so they were named co-champions retroactively).

The championship game is currently played each year in the month of January, which is named for Janus, a Roman god who is typically depicted with two faces—one looking into the past, the other into the future. The other eleven months were also named by the Romans, giving a stability to the calendar that far outlasted their empire.

We name months for the same reasons we want our teams to win national championships: we name what we seek to control (time, in this case) and we feel like winners when our teams win. These sentiments reveal a truth that is foundational to our lives, our democracy, and our future.

“The worst form of government”

The House of Representatives reconvened last night to pass a set of House rules as Speaker Kevin McCarthy cleared his first major test. However, the contentious nature of the process portends much conflict ahead; lawmakers nearly came to blows during the final votes that eventually elected him to the office.

In other news, Gallup reports that majorities of Americans predict negative conditions in 2023 across twelve of thirteen economic, political, societal, and international arenas. (The one positive: a majority think Russian power will decline this year.)

But our democracy is not the only one making headlines for challenging reasons.

Israel’s new government has been in the news with regard to its relations with the Palestinians. However, I was in Israel when Itamar Ben Gvir visited the Temple Mount last week and can tell you that it was largely a nonevent in Jerusalem. The issue my Israeli friends are all focused on has to do with proposals to give the Knesset (their parliament) power over Israel’s judicial High Court (corresponding to our Supreme Court).

Post-election riots in Brazil over the weekend continue to make headlines; British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is warning that the UK’s problems will not “go away” this year. All that to say, Winston Churchill was prescient when he observed: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

The “twin pillars of our democracy”

Our problems with democracy go back to its very foundations.

Jennifer Szalai reviewed Costica Bradatan’s In Praise of Failure: Four Lessons in Humility for the New York Times. At one point she reports: “Bradatan recounts how ancient Athenians were so committed to democratic rules that public officials were chosen by random lots. Their reasoning was straightforward enough: Elections, which we consider a mainstay of democracy, would have allowed such variables as wealth and charisma to come into play.”

However, Bradatan noted, “a fetish for institutions didn’t protect Athenian democracy from mob rule.” For example, “There were supposedly 501 Athenians on the jury that condemned Socrates to death. According to the political logic of the day, it would have been impossible to corrupt them all; the majority decided he should die, and so their decision was institutionally flawless.”

In other words, democracy (“the power of the people”) requires that the people be worthy of the power entrusted to them. But the “will to power,” the perennial temptation to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5), is ever with us. And it undermines our democracy at every turn.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently identified the “twin pillars of our democracy” as “truth and trust.” He explained: “Without being able to agree on what is true, we don’t know which way to go. And without being able to trust one another, we can’t head there together. And everything big and hard needs to be done together.”

Here’s what Friedman’s analysis leaves out: we cannot trust one another if we have no objective basis for such trust. And such an objective basis by definition requires objective truth. As a result, we must have truth in order to have trust.

However, our “post-truth” culture, by rejecting the former, undermines the latter.

“Religion and morality are indispensable supports”

It is unsurprising, therefore, that our trust in government today is a third of what it was in 1958 (before postmodern relativism became conventional wisdom). Or that 90 percent of Americans expect 2023 to be a “year of political conflict.”

To chart our future in such chaotic times, it is helpful to look to our past.

Last Saturday marked the 233^rd anniversary of America’s first-ever State of the Union address. In it, George Washington noted the need for the American people “to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last.”

His remarks were amplified eight years later in his Farewell Address when he stated, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” Our first president added: “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

In short, democracy requires “national morality,” which requires “religious principle.” This is not just a fact of history but a biblical truth: “The eyes of the Lᴏʀᴅ range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 16:9 NIV).

Can God strengthen our democracy today?

Can he start with you?

Denison Forum

“When you put real love out into the world it comes back to you 3x’s as much. The Love has been overwhelming, but I’m thankful for every single person that prayed for me and reached out. We brung the world back together behind this. If you know me you know this only gone make me stronger. On a long road keep praying for me!”

This was how Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin thanked the world on Instagram for praying for him after he nearly died last Monday night during a game with the Cincinnati Bengals. His progress bolstered his team as they wore a special “3” patch on their uniforms yesterday. In “a play that seemed plucked from a movie,” they returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown in front of a packed house and went on to defeat the New England Patriots. Hamlin’s jersey was the most purchased among all athletes across all sports.

In my opinion, Dallas Cowboys chaplain Jonathan Evans, the associate pastor of NextGen Ministry at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, sounded the most enduring note from Hamlin’s near-death crisis. Quarterback Dak Prescott quoted Evans’ message to the team last week: “Your age, you’re not old or young off of your birth date but off your death date.”

An “irrational atavistic impulse”?

Barton Swaim began his Wall Street Journal editorial on Damar Hamlin by referencing “the question of when prayer on public grounds is and isn’t permissible.” He noted that “Americans, especially American liberals, have been obsessed with the question for more than sixty years.”

However, he added, “The idea that prayer is improper at big-time sporting events was forgotten on Monday night.”

After Hamlin collapsed on the field, Swaim writes, “Suddenly prayer was back on the list of things anybody could talk about or do on camera.” Signs and social media posts called for the nation to “pray for Damar.” ESPN commentators actually prayed for him on air. In the days following, NFL players across the league prayed for him and for each other.

Is this unequivocally good news? Swaim sounds a cautionary note: “I’m not entirely comfortable with so many ecumenical pleas for the favor of an undefined deity. Are all these thousands of social-media posters urging their followers to #PrayForDamar actually praying and, if they are, praying to the one true God? I’m not so sure.”

Grieving over calls to prayer

What are critics of religion thinking about this national response? According to Swaim, “They will consider the whole pray-for-Damar episode a mass expression of some irrational atavistic impulse. . . . Let the fans ‘pray’ if that’s what gives them comfort, but it changes nothing.”

In one sense, I agree with them.

I grieved in Israel last week as I heard the Adhan broadcast from minarets calling Muslims to pray to Allah rather than to Christ. I know that Jesus alone is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) and that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

The power of faith resides not in its act but in its object. We can take the wrong road in faith that it is the right road, but we will still be lost. We can take the wrong medicine in faith that it is the right medicine, but our faith will not make it so.

At the same time, our instinctive response to pray when confronting a crisis we cannot solve with human resources reveals something important about us.

The nation does not pray when a football player sprains an ankle or suffers a concussion since our doctors can treat such injuries. We do not flood sanctuaries for prayer meetings when an airplane crashes. But when terrorists flew airplanes into buildings on 9/11, we packed church buildings for prayer. After we began learning the identity of our enemy and gained confidence in our ability to prevent further attacks, crowds in churches returned to normal.

A “relentless parade of atmospheric rivers”

One of Satan’s most subtle ploys is to focus us on what we can do rather than on what we cannot do.

We do not fear death since medical science can often postpone it, but medical science cannot prevent it. Our technological capacities exceed anything known to human history, as the advent of the iPhone on this day in 2007 demonstrated, but we cannot stop the “relentless parade of atmospheric rivers” pounding California. According to a new survey, 3.3 million US adults were displaced by natural disasters last year. None of us can prevent the disasters sure to come this year.

Here’s my point: every one of us, every moment of every day, is Damar Hamlin.

Jonathan Evans is right: “You’re not old or young off of your birth date but off your death date.”  Each of us is one heartbeat from eternity. Each of us needs help and hope beyond ourselves. We were made to depend on our Maker, not just on Sunday or in a recognized crisis, but every moment of every day.

“When you don’t see the whole staircase”

So begin your day with your Lord as Jesus did (cf. Mark 1:35). (Our ministry’s morning devotional, First15, is designed to help you experience God each day.)

End your day with your Lord. (To this end, I highly recommend my wife’s new resource, Wisdom Matters, a devotional word of biblical encouragement you can read or hear at the end of each day.)

Turn every challenge to God in prayer (for help, see my latest blog, “How to live victoriously in Christ”).

And have faith that the one true God hears you and will always do what is best in response. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was right: “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

What staircase will you begin to climb today?

Denison Forum

I’ll admit, my initial reaction when I realized that I would need to write about the second anniversary of the Capitol riots was somewhere between “not this again” and “I just don’t care.”

That’s not to say that the breach of the Capitol lacked significance or was in any way an appropriate or moral response to the 2020 election. As Dr. Denison wrote in the days following those events, “what we saw [on January 6] was abhorrent and sinful.” However, it was also not, as President Biden described it, “The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

The truth is that most Americans think what happened that day was wrong, but far fewer think it is worth continuing to dwell on or investigate going forward. So, if that’s the case, why am I writing about it today?

In short, it’s because it provides a good opportunity to think about a larger cultural question that continues to impact all of us, regardless of our political affiliation: Why is it that we so often feel the urge to push views to the extreme?

And, as we’ll see in a bit, the answer to that question has a profound impact on the way we should see evangelism as well.

Why people are pushed to extremism

With the Capitol riots, we see this trend in those who, like President Biden, exaggerate the historical significance of the attacks. However, we also see it from those who view the breach of the Capitol as a patriotic defense of liberty.

Both are minority positions that seem unreasonable to those who do not hold them. However, for those who do, they quickly become the only viable lens through which the events can be viewed.

But why are people drawn to such extreme views in the first place?

One reason is that extreme events push people to choose a side rather than remain in the middle, a fact that can exert a powerful pull to those who care a great deal about a particular issue. But while such an approach may help to garner support to some extent, it can also push those who reject such extremism—on either side of a subject—to extreme apathy.

As David French discussed in a recent article, if you do not hold what could be considered an extreme position on a subject, then engaging with those who do is often not worth the time. As French describes, “you instantly experience a cost-benefit analysis. Do I want to end my relationship with a beloved aunt or uncle over an issue I can’t impact? Or do I choose discretion, decide to maintain the relationship, and move on?”

After all, it can be just as difficult—if not more so—to have a rational conversation about an event when those involved assign it different levels of significance than when they hold fundamentally opposed views.

For example, the person who sees the January 6 riot as the greatest assault on democracy since the 1800s likely has more common ground for discussion with the person who sees it as a righteous protest against a stolen election than either does with someone who thinks it’s really not worth fussing about two years after the fact. The reason is that the first two participants are more likely to feel invested in the conversation while the apathetic person will probably look for a way out shortly after the dialogue begins.

Most of us probably don’t have to think back very far to remember such a conversation.

Whether it was about politics, sports, family events, or any number of other issues, we all get trapped in discussions we’d prefer to avoid from time to time. And remembering what that feels like is important when it comes to sharing our faith.

Knowing when to speak

If you have a personal relationship with Christ and your life has been transformed by his grace, chances are that you see the gospel as profoundly more important than those with whom we are called to share it.

There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, we should be the ones most fired up about telling other people about Jesus. That purpose is central to what it means to be a Christian (Matthew 28:18–20).

However, that reality also means that we are likely to be seen as the extremists by those who accord faith and religion a less essential place in their lives. As such, we shouldn’t be surprised when it feels like non-Christians just don’t care as much as we think they should.

If someone has shown that they have little interest in the gospel and seem to check out every time you bring it up, continuing to press them about it is unlikely to prove productive. That doesn’t mean we should give up on them, but people can get to the place where continuing to hit them over the head with God’s word—figuratively speaking—can do more harm than good to their long-term prospects of accepting Jesus.

When people reach that point, it’s all right to give them space when it comes to the subject of spirituality. We should absolutely continue to live out the gospel around them and make sure they know that we are available to talk should they ever want to do so, but it’s all right to leave it up to them.

Ultimately, God knows their heart and their mind better than we can. He understands when the gospel will be welcome and when it will be ignored. And while his word promises that it will never return void, that is only when it is sent out according to his will (Isaiah 55:11).

That’s why it’s so important that we rely on the Holy Spirit to guide our interactions with others and to respond in obedience when he prompts us to share our faith with them. He has a way of redeeming hardships and using the events in a person’s life to help them assign faith a higher level of importance, even if that shift is fleeting.

Will you be ready the next time God gives you that opportunity?

Denison Forum

Ukraine has claimed responsibility for a missile attack on a temporary military barracks in the Russian-occupied region of Donetsk that killed scores of Russian soldiers. The Russian defense ministry blamed the use of mobile phones by its soldiers, stating that this allowed Ukraine to track the soldiers’ location.

Pro-war Russians are increasingly blaming Moscow for its demonstrated military failings in the conflict. The pressure on Vladimir Putin to win the war by any means is steadily increasing. For example, Ukraine is warning that Russia is likely to respond to its latest setback by stepping up the use of Iranian-made exploding drones. Some experts are concerned that if Russia continues to lose, Putin may launch a nuclear strike on Kyiv to affect regime change by killing the Ukrainian government.

Against this escalating backdrop, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping met recently to strengthen their partnership. China has repeatedly refused to condemn Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, consistently blaming the conflict on NATO and the United States instead. Putin said of their relationship, “We share the same views on the causes, course, and logic of the ongoing transformation of the global geopolitical landscape.” Xi said that the two countries should “strengthen strategic coordination” to oppose “bullying” by other nations.

This growing partnership is of obvious concern to the US and the West. However, it should especially alarm all Americans for two less than obvious reasons.

“The equivalent of tactical nuclear weapons”

Niall Ferguson has been called “the most brilliant British historian of his generation.” A Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a senior faculty fellow at Harvard, he is the author of an illuminating and frightening new essay published by Bloomberg. In it, he warns that “Cold War II could become World War III in 2023.”

And he explains why the US is in a precarious position to fight such a war.

Ferguson notes that war is “about the mobilization of real resources” needed by combatants to sustain the conflict while providing for their populations and powering their industries. In World War I, these resources were “coal, iron, and the manufacturing capacity to mass-produce artillery and shells, as well as steamships.” In World War II, they were “oil, steel, aluminum, and the manufacturing capacity to mass-produce artillery, ships, submarines, planes, and tanks.” After World War II, “it was all of the above, plus the scientific and technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons.”

Today, he notes, “the vital inputs are the capacity to mass-produce high-performance semiconductors, satellites, and the algorithmic warfare systems that depend on them.” Such systems are “the equivalent of tactical nuclear weapons” in their devastating capacities.

We depend on 61,000 ships

Ferguson explains that this is a major problem for the US, for two reasons.

One: Russia clearly lacks the algorithmic warfare systems that the US and our allies have been supplying to Ukraine, which means that Vladimir Putin may eventually be driven to use actual nuclear weapons to avoid losing the war he started. Such a scenario could lead to nuclear escalation that could threaten the US and the world.

Two: Ferguson notes that China “is dominant in the processing of minerals that are vital to the modern economy, including copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium. In particular, China controls over 70 percent of rare earth production both in terms of extraction and processing. These are seventeen minerals used to make components in devices such as smartphones, electric vehicles, solar panels, and semiconductors.”

In addition, “the US long ago ceased to be a manufacturing economy,” now importing much of what we need from the rest of the world. Most of these internationally traded goods are imported in six million containers transported in approximately sixty-one thousand ships. And China’s Shanghai Westwell Lab Information Technology Co. “is rapidly becoming the leading vendor of the most advanced port-operating systems.”

As a result, a conventional war with China could severely cripple our ability to produce the technological devices our military needs and import the goods our people require.

Dr. King’s definition of “true peace”

Ferguson’s article is further illustration of the fact that peace has been elusive for humans since Cain murdered Abel at the dawn of history. This is because we pursue peace as an object, a goal, when it is actually a consequence of prior priorities.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.”

King David knew much about war and peace. He noted, “Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven” (Psalm 85:11 NKJV). With this result: “Righteousness shall go before [the Lord], and peace shall be a pathway for his feet” (v. 13, BCP).

Here we see that peace comes from righteousness (the Hebrew word means to do what is right and honest), which comes from knowing and doing the truth. And, as Jesus made clear, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32).

“No God, no peace”

Imagine a world in which everyone lived by the truth of God’s word. Imagine the personal and corporate righteousness that would result.

Now imagine the consequences for a world in which each person and nation loved their neighbor as themselves (Matthew 22:39) and treated others only as they wished to be treated (Matthew 7:12), to cite just two biblical truths. How would this change the war in Ukraine? China’s threats against Taiwan? Crime in your city? Conflict in your home?

Peace does indeed come from righteousness, which comes from knowing and obeying the truth.

Where do you most need peace with God, others, and yourself?

The old truism is still true: No God, no peace. Know God, know peace.

How will you choose the latter today?

Denison Forum

 “The last five hundred years have witnessed a breathtaking series of revolutions. The earth has been united into a single ecological and historical sphere. The economy has grown exponentially, and humankind today enjoys the kind of wealth that used to be the stuff of fairy tales. Science and the Industrial Revolution have given humankind superhuman powers and practically limitless energy. The social order has been completely transformed, as have politics, daily life and human psychology.”

So writes Yuval Noah Harari in his bestseller, Sapiens. To illustrate his point, the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the world’s largest technology conference, begins tomorrow in Las Vegas.

Among the many innovations on display, we will see a smart refrigerator with a touchscreen display where you can control home devices, watch videos, and make shopping lists for Amazon delivery. Mops that wash themselves, window-cleaning robots, and robots that climb stairs are expected. As are electric cars with multiple touch screens and built-in video gaming.

Temple Mount visit called an “unprecedented provocation”

From new technology to the latest in a very old conflict: Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

Ben Gvir has long challenged the status quo by which Muslims are allowed to visit the site and pray with few restrictions while Jews can visit only during limited time slots and are not allowed to pray there. As a result, the Jerusalem Post reports that the Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Ministry condemned the visit as an “unprecedented provocation.”

Jordan likewise denounced Ben Gvir “in the severest terms [for] the storming of the Al Aqsa Mosque and violation of its sanctity.” Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia all criticized the visit as well. Even newly reelected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned in the past that “Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount, though it sounds like a reasonable thing, I know it would have ignited the Middle East.”

And so, in the view of skeptics, we have another example of the danger posed to our advanced secular society by antiquated religion. But is the world really this simple?

“Human life has absolutely no meaning”

Let’s return to Harari’s analysis of our cultural moment. After describing the remarkable innovations that have changed our lives, he asks: “But are we happier? Did the wealth humankind accumulated over the last five centuries translate into a new-found contentment?”

His short answer is no.

He explains why: “Happiness is not the surplus of pleasant over unpleasant moments. Rather, happiness consists in seeing one’s life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile. . . . A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is.”

Here’s the problem, in his atheistic and secularist view: “As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan . . . Hence, any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just a delusion” (his emphasis).

What is the color of a C scale?

Harari, brilliant as he is, makes a basic logical error known as a “category mistake.” We make this mistake when we ask how much the number three weighs or the color of a C scale. Harari does the same when he assumes that a “purely scientific viewpoint” is the only viewpoint from which to assess the meaning of our lives.

Of course we cannot determine the meaning of life through scientific means. How would a chemist measure the strength of his marriage in a lab? How would a physicist evaluate her friendships through mathematical formulas?

Secularists make a similar mistake known as an “association fallacy” when they point to the acts of a single person or religion as typifying all religion. Having led more than thirty study tours to Israel, I can testify that Itamar Ben Gvir categorically does not represent all Israelis, nor are his views regarding the Temple Mount the consensus among Jews. Nor are Jewish beliefs on any subject necessarily typical of the beliefs of Christians, Muslims, and so on.

The most logical way to discover the design of an object is to consult its designer. Similarly, the best way to find the purpose of your life is to consult the One who created you.

“The greatest discovery you will ever make”

Let’s not make a category mistake with our souls this year. No matter how advanced our technology becomes, Harari is right: we will never find lasting happiness through temporal comfort and convenience. And let’s avoid an association fallacy that confuses formal religion with a personal relationship with our Maker.

Jesus taught us: “Abide in me, and I in you. . . . Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4–5). So let’s “abide” in Christ by beginning each day with him in prayer, Bible study, and worship, then walk through the day with him in prayer and obedience. And let’s measure success by whether or not we are bearing “much fruit” for Christ.

Scripture warns us, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:10). So ask yourself: Will this attitude, statement, or action glorify God? Will this decision bring honor to his name? Will he be pleased with this day when it is done?

Billy Graham observed, “This is the greatest discovery you will ever make: You were created to know God and to be his friend forever.”

Will you be God’s friend today?

Denison Forum

Damar Hamlin (PDF) is a twenty-four-year-old safety for the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League. Nine minutes into last night’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals, he tackled a Bengals receiver who appeared to collide with him in the head and chest area.

Hamlin quickly stood up, took two steps, collapsed backward, and his body went limp.

Medical personnel administered CPR and cared for him for ten minutes while visibly upset players from both teams watched. Some shed tears while others circled together to pray.

The Bills said later that Hamlin had suffered cardiac arrest on the field; his heartbeat was restored and he was taken to a Cincinnati hospital. According to the team, “He is currently sedated and listed in critical condition.”

The NFL postponed the game; rescheduling discussions have not yet occurred.

A picture that brought tears to my eyes

The reaction in prayer was immediate and profound.

A photo of players and coaches from both teams praying on their knees brought tears to my eyes. Christians from around the league were quick to respond as well.

Robert Griffin III tweeted the image of the praying players and wrote, “Please don’t share the video of the Damar Hamlin play. Share this because we are all praying for him and his family.” Star quarterback Josh Allen tweeted: “Please pray for our brother.”

Patrick Mahomes tweeted, “Praying hard.. please be okay man.” Tim Tebow added, “Please join me in prayer for Damar Hamlin.”

If you don’t believe in Zeus

I’m sure their calls for prayer will be criticized by skeptics, as they usually are when “thoughts and prayers” are offered during a crisis. Critics want us to do something concrete and practical about the issues we face, believing that words spoken to God (if he exists) are insufficient and often used as a substitute for action.

Such criticism is understandable from their point of view. If you don’t believe in Zeus, you will discount prayers to him in a crisis when practical responses are needed. If those who pray to him don’t then take action, you’ll dismiss their prayers as a pious evasion of personal responsibility.

But if you believe in the God to whom Christians prayed last night, you know that asking for his help is the most practical thing we can do. Why would you not want an omnipotent God to intervene in a health emergency? Why would you not ask him to heal Damar Hamlin as Jesus healed so many others in Scripture?

And you know that praying to God in a crisis, rather than distracting us from taking action, empowers us to respond in ways we could not otherwise. This is why John Bunyan observed, “You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.”

Our real problem with prayer

Our real problem with praying in a crisis is not that we do it but that we don’t do more of it. The Bible says, “You do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2). Jesus assured us, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find, knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).

Criticism of prayer unmasks the self-sufficiency at the heart of our secularized culture. But crisis unmasks the irrationality of such self-sufficiency. We think we don’t need God anymore, that our scientific and medical advances have made faith in him obsolete and irrelevant. Then we face an emergency our human resources cannot solve and we are faced with our need for Someone beyond ourselves.

For example, this morning’s news tells us about another earthquake and massive flooding in California, a death in a house fire, fatalities and injuries from car crashes, and snowmobile accidents that killed a professional driver and severely injured a Hollywood actor.

Each story demonstrates again our finitude and frailty in a broken and fallen world.

Three practical steps

The right response to Damar Hamlin’s life-threatening injury and to the other crises in our world is to do what sports analyst and former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho tweeted: “Join me in praying for: Damar Hamlin’s full recovery. Peace for his family and loved ones. Wisdom for doctors and physicians in contact with Damar right now.”

Then he added, “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective (James 5:16b).”

First, be sure you are a “righteous person” by renewing your commitment to Christ as your Lord and submitting to the sanctifying power of his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). For practical ways to experience the power of God in prayer, please read my latest blog, “The key to success is to ‘sit in one chair.’”

Second, pray specifically for Damar Hamlin and any other crises in the news and in your life. Ask God to work in power and grace.

Third, look for ways to help answer your prayers by meeting needs in God’s name. For example, a toy drive sponsored by Damar Hamlin with a goal of $2,500 had raised more than $3,170,000 as of this writing. Find a way to help a hurting person with the compassion of Christ.

One way God redeems our crises is by using them to turn us to himself. Pope Benedict XVI modeled such faith from his deathbed when he spoke his last words: “Lord, I love you.”

How will you express your love for your Lord today?

Denison Forum

Lebanon, Pennsylvania, dropped a giant package of bologna to mark the new year. Tallapoosa, Georgia, dropped a possum. Boise, Idaho, unsurprisingly dropped a giant potato. And, as everyone knows, New York City staged its iconic “ball drop” once again as around a million people packed the Times Square area and millions more watched on television.

When you think about it, watching a giant ball descend to bring in the new year is a rather strange custom. Who thought of this? Why do we still do it?

From “hangxiety” to “God’s merciful dealings”

Before the twentieth century, timekeeping was much less precise. Sailors and ship captains needed to know the exact time so they could chart their navigational courses.

So Robert Wauchope, a captain in the British Navy, created the time ball in 1829. Raised balls visible to ships along the British coastline were manually dropped at the same time each day, allowing ships to set their chronometers to the accurate time.

The devices fell out of fashion by the 1880s due to the availability of self-winding clocks. But the New York Times, looking for a way to celebrate the New Year in 1907 after fireworks had been banned, decided a lighted midnight ball drop was a good way to honor the occasion.

Now comes the ironic part. So many drunken revelers woke up yesterday with hangovers that a term has been coined for them: “hangxiety.” By contrast, Capt. Wauchope, the inventor of the event they were celebrating, titled his autobiography A Short Narrative of God’s Merciful Dealings.

“Hangxiety” or “God’s merciful dealings”—how can we make the latter our story this year? How can we find a larger purpose that will give the new year empowering and joyful significance?

“Permacrisis” chosen as “word of the year”

Collins Dictionary has chosen its word of the year: “permacrisis.” The dictionary defines the word as “an extended period of instability and insecurity” and says it chose the word as it “sums up quite succinctly how truly awful 2022 has been for so many people.”

Now we are beginning the new year with news of the deaths of Barbara Walters and Pope Benedict XVI. From the horrors of war to massive storms and floods to holiday loneliness and financial struggles, we are reminded daily that we are broken people living in a broken world.

However, your Creator has a paradoxically hopeful perspective for your life.

I was reading Hebrews 2 recently and came across a statement I had never considered. Speaking of Jesus’ crucifixion, the author noted that “through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (vv. 14–15, my emphasis).

Consider the thought for a moment: the “fear of death” subjects us to “lifelong slavery.” Why is this?

“The quest never ends till life itself does”

When we fear what will happen to us when we die, we try to make the most of life while we can. We therefore invest this world with more meaning than it possesses: “Behold, joy and gladness, killing oxen and slaughtering sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine. ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (Isaiah 22:13).

However, as commentator Ray Stedman noted, this fear of death “creates the frantic restlessness found in so many. That unsatisfied restlessness, that yearning for what cannot seem to be found, is at least partly what the writer [of Hebrews] means by slavery.

“Like a slave bound to a cruel master, human beings find themselves forced to keep searching for what they never attain. They try everything, but nothing satisfies. There is pleasure and fun—but seldom peace and contentment. Soon everything palls and the search must begin again. It is a lifelong bondage, for the quest never ends till life itself does” (his emphases).

But when we remember that the worst that can happen to us leads to the best that can happen to us, we are set free from the fear of death and its enslavement to this fallen world. When we remember that our Lord owns “the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:18), we are free to serve him fully and joyfully—whatever he asks, whatever it takes, wherever he leads.

“Right in those, he led me well”

Spurgeon’s observation is worthy of reflection: “Let us rest assured that we have already experienced more ills than death at its worst can cause us.”

Pope Benedict XVI would have agreed. In his final spiritual testament, released by the Vatican on Saturday evening, he urged the faithful to “stay steady in the faith” and voiced his confidence that, even in our secularized world, “the rationality of faith has and will emerge again.”

And he wrote: “Retrospectively, I see and understand that even the dark and tiresome traits of this journey were for my salvation and, right in those, he led me well.”

As 2023 begins, if you will “stay steady in the faith,” unconditionally committed to your King and Lord, when the year ends (if the Lord tarries) you will be able to look back and say, “He led me well.” And “God’s merciful dealings” will be the theme of your life.

This is the promise, and the invitation, of God.

Denison Forum

Pelé, called the “global face of soccer” by the New York Times, has died after a battle with cancer. After canceling more than 2,300 of its flights yesterday, Southwest Airlines plans to return to normal operations today “with minimal disruptions.” As Ukrainians face freezing winter temperatures, Russia has launched what appears to be one of its largest strikes to date on their energy infrastructure.

Police in Buffalo, New York, arrested ten people for looting amid the deadly winter storm that buried much of western New York. And 85 percent of rural land in California is now at a “high” or “very high” risk for wildfires, according to a new analysis.

Why did I begin today’s Daily Article with these stories? I never watched Pelé play soccer. I have no current plans to fly on Southwest Airlines. Nor do I live in Ukraine, western New York, or rural California. But you and I were made by God as empathetic, communal beings: “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). The happiness or pain of some is experienced as happiness or pain by the rest of us.

The same is true of experiences long past. Millions will sing “Auld Lang Syne” tomorrow evening with its question, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?”

And we seek happiness not just in the present and from the past but for the future. We will wish each other a “Happy New Year,” all the while wishing we could do more than wish for such happiness.

It turns out, we can. But only if we look in the right place.

Our souls need “seven rests”

According to an American Psychological Association survey, more than a quarter of Americans say they are so stressed most days that they cannot function. And more than one in five Americans report feeling serious anxiety or depression.

How should we respond?

Counselors tell us that some of our anxieties are avoidable and are due to hunger, sleep deprivation, being over-caffeinated, and medical issues. We can take practical steps such as addressing burnout and enhancing our well-being through a workout. We can free ourselves from “task paralysis” by breaking tasks down into small, tangible steps and rewarding ourselves when we complete them, and we can identify our wellness nonnegotiables such as coffee in the morning.

We are encouraged to face our crises with people we can trust who are navigating the same issues. And psychologists advise us to seek “seven rests”: physical, mental, sensory, emotional, social, creative, and spiritual.

The last “means connecting on a deeper level with something greater than ourselves,” which “can mean adding prayer, meditation, or purpose to our lives” through “a church, a volunteer program, community outreach, or even nature retreats.”

Life as a chest of drawers

In my survey of news sources regarding happiness, I was struck by their secularity. Even the paragraph on spirituality in the article on “seven rests” points us to “something greater than ourselves” with no suggestion that this “something” could be a Someone.

In Jesus the Great Philosopher: Rediscovering the Wisdom Needed for the Good Life, Jonathan T. Pennington notes that “our modern lives are often built like a chest of drawers, with distinct compartments for each area. Even as we keep our socks, underwear, exercise clothes, and jeans in different drawers . . . so too our lives have distinct compartments—health, relationships, money, education, leisure, religion.”

He adds: “Christian people have a specific drawer for Jesus. For some it is a low-placed half drawer that is only opened once a week or maybe twice a month on Sundays. For others—especially pastors and missionaries—the Jesus drawer is big and probably at the top of the cabinet with well-oiled rollers. Most Christians’ ‘Jesus drawers’ are somewhere in between.”

Pennington cites theologian Peter Leithart, who observed that many Christians are dualists, mistakenly living our lives like a layered cake with supernatural truths on the top layer of an otherwise natural cake. In this worldview, according to Leithart, the “church adds a spiritual dimension to my life but leaves my natural world more or less intact.”

While we have a “Jesus drawer” others do not, it is only one drawer among many.

How to “experience meaningful happiness”

Our culture has been compartmentalizing us into body, soul, and spirit since the ancient Greeks. Why is this bad for us?

According to Pennington, “Humans are organic beings who thrive only when the many parts of our lives are connected together. . . . We cannot treat our lives as if the various parts are unrelated and expect to experience meaningful happiness and the flourishing life that Jesus talks about.”

So, if we want happiness for ourselves and others in the coming year, we will need to travel the ancient pathway: “Delight yourself in the Lᴏʀᴅ, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). How do we do this? The psalmist explains: “Commit your way to the Lᴏʀᴅ; trust in him, and he will act” (v. 5).

Your “way” in the Hebrew refers to your “journey” today. When you “commit” or surrender it to God, you can “trust in him” to “act” in ways that “give you the desires of your heart.” C. S. Lewis was therefore right to claim, “God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

James Clear advised us: “You just need to have the courage to eliminate everything that doesn’t directly feed what you really want.”

What do you “really want” in the coming year?

Denison Forum

New York Representative-elect George Santos recently made his first televised appearance since the New York Times revealed that he lied about several elements of his résumé. It did not go as well as he’d hoped.

As a brief overview of the controversy surrounding Santos, he defeated Democrat Robert Zimmerman in November’s election, running on a campaign built largely around his story of rising from poverty to prominence. Yet, as he admitted to the New York Post, several elements of that story were false.

Among the most problematic lies relate to his Jewish heritage—he clarified that he is “Jew-ish” rather than Jewish because his grandmother was Jewish before converting to Catholicism. This despite claiming to be a “proud American Jew” in campaign materials sent to Jewish constituents. The Republican Jewish Coalition has since stated that he “misrepresented his heritage” and “will not be welcome at any future RJC events.”

In addition, he claimed that he graduated from Baruch College when he never even attended and holds no college degree. He also said that he worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup when he was never employed by either.

He has since referred to these errors as “embellishing my résumé” and apologized.

The nature and sincerity of that apology were at the forefront of questions he faced from former representative Tulsi Gabbard, who filled in for Fox’s Tucker Carlson in the interview.

“What does the word integrity mean to you?”

In her first question, Gabbard asked Santos, “What does the word integrity mean to you?”

After being pressed further for a definition rather than a rote response, he replied that “it means to carry yourself in an honorable way. And I made a mistake, and I think humans are flawed and we all make mistakes.”

He’s right, but it’s what we do after our mistakes that matters most, and when asked by Gabbard why people should trust him moving forward, Santos’ response left much to be desired: “Tulsi, I can say the same about the Democrats and the party. Look at Joe Biden. Joe Biden’s been lying to the American people for forty years and he’s the president of the United States. Democrats resoundingly support him.”

As Gabbard then pointed out, “This is not about the Democratic party, though. This is about your relationship with the people who’ve entrusted you to go and fight for them.”

The interview included other notable points as well, but I’d like for our focus to remain on this part for today.

The government we deserve

George Bernard Shaw once remarked that “democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.”

Prior to bringing Santos on, Gabbard made the point that he is hardly the first politician to lie about their résumé or heritage. She pointed to Richard Blumenthal’s false claims of military service in Vietnam and Elizabeth Warren’s remarks about her Native American ancestors as examples.

Her point in doing so, however, was not to excuse Blumenthal, Warren, or Santos. Rather, it was to explain why “no one should be surprised that the American people don’t trust these politicians” and have “no faith that those in Washington are actually working for the people when they’re so clearly working for themselves.”

I suspect many agree with her—myself included, if I’m being honest.

Unfortunately, our anger and disappointment at their moral failures often stop with them when the real problem hits much closer to home.

Holding ourselves to a higher standard

If our response to our own mistakes is to minimize the gravity of the sin and point out the hypocrisy of others, then we’re not really very penitent. After all, “I’m sorry, but . . . ” is not a real apology, and that’s just as true for you and me as it is for elected members of Congress.

Santos is right that politicians frequently lie in service to their ambitions. That he could say so knowing that there are large swaths of the populace who are willing to tolerate such behavior if it means getting another vote on their side of the aisle is why our government is the way that it is.

But if we want the government to change, then we need to change.

Politicians never have been and never will be the moral compass for the nation, and our situation will not improve until the people voting for them—that would be all of us—hold ourselves to a higher standard.

Fortunately, God longs to help us do just that.

There may be times when we have reasonable explanations for the sins we commit and could point to countless others who have made the same mistakes. But they are not our standard. God is (Matthew 5:48).

If we are truly meant to be the light of the world and a city on a hill that guides the lost around us back to the Lord, then we need to genuinely repent of our sins rather than try to justify or minimize them.

So the next time you sin, ask the Lord to help you practice real repentance and own your mistake.

Who knows? Maybe you’ll inspire someone else to do the same.

Denison Forum

In a televised special tonight, Amy Grant will become the first contemporary Christian music star to be recognized at the Kennedy Center Honors. This distinction is well deserved: her total career album sales have exceeded thirty million with over one billion global streams. She has received six Grammy Awards and twenty-six Dove Awards, including four Artist of the Year Awards.

I have followed her career since it began and have been grateful for the way she brought contemporary Christian music to the attention of the larger culture. However, she is also in the news today for a less positive reason: she told the Washington Post that she and her husband, Vince Gill, are planning to host her niece’s same-sex wedding at their farm, which will be her family’s “first bride and bride” nuptials.

She explained, “Honestly, from a faith perspective, I do always say, ‘Jesus, you just narrowed it down to two things: love God and love each other.’ I mean, hey—that’s pretty simple.”

In other news, thousands of flights have been canceled this week as a major storm has stranded travelers around the country. A doctor who has practiced for three decades in China says he has never seen anything like the crisis confronting the nation as the COVID-19 pandemic is overwhelming their hospitals.

And the United Nations is warning that nuclear war is “back within the realm of possibility.” Russian state television announced that the Pentagon, Camp David, Jim Creek Naval Radio Station in Washington, Fort Ritchie in Maryland, and McClellan Air Force Base in California would be their first targets.

“The interrelated structure of reality”

These disparate stories illustrate a common theme, one I will explain by illustration.

According to Amy Grant, we are to “love each other,” a biblical command that, in her view, includes same-sex marriage. Her position is more or less relevant to you depending on whether, like her, you care for someone engaged in same-sex sexual relationships.

The story about mass flight cancelations interests you more or less personally depending on whether one of these flights was yours. The escalating crisis in China matters more or less to you depending on whether you live in China and/or care personally for someone who does. The UN warning about nuclear war becomes even more threatening if you live near one of the Russians’ first targets.

But Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was right: “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” He called this “the interrelated structure of reality.” John Donne famously observed, “No man is an island entire of itself . . . Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

I wonder, would Amy Grant extend her defense of her niece’s same-sex wedding to include polygamy? Popular support for this practice has increased fourfold in the last decade and a half. What about “genetic sexual attraction,” otherwise known as incest? A Virginia university professor was placed on administrative leave just last year for insisting that it isn’t necessarily immoral for adults to be sexually attracted to children.

If “love is love,” as we so often hear these days, where do we draw the line? How many innocent people will this unbiblical ethic continue to harm? And what will happen to the religious freedom of those who uphold biblical sexuality?

How many families’ holidays were disrupted when family members were unable to travel to be with them? China’s escalating pandemic crisis will result in economic damage for the world because China is a major producer of goods. It will also mean that there will be fewer medical supplies available because China is their major producer but now needs the supply.

And of course, a nuclear attack on any city in America is an unthinkable crisis for all Americans.

How to “easily judge the character of a man”

We noted yesterday the urgency and privilege of sacrificial compassion as our primary medium of witnessing to a post-Christian, skeptical culture. This opportunity is only enhanced by an existentialist society that measures all news through the prism of the personal. In a day when people care primarily about what affects them directly, you and I will stand out when we extend God’s grace to those who cannot repay us or otherwise affect us.

Malcolm S. Forbes observed, “You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.” By this standard, Jesus Christ had the highest character of any person in all of human history.

We could “do nothing for him,” but he chose to do everything for us. C. S. Lewis explained his incarnation: “The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a fetus inside a woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.”

Jesus’ compassion for tax collectors, Samaritans, and lepers earned him only the opprobrium of Jewish society. His crucifixion was the most horrific form of execution ever devised.

“What greater grace could God have made”

St. Augustine reminded us of the significance of such grace: “You would have suffered eternal death, had he not been born in time. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh, had he not taken on himself the likeness of sinful flesh. You would have suffered everlasting unhappiness, had it not been for this mercy. You would never have returned to life, had he not shared your death. You would have been lost if he had not hastened to your aid. You would have perished, had he not come.”

He then asked, “What greater grace could God have made to dawn on us than to make his only Son become the son of man, so that a son of man might in his turn become son of God?”

Will you share such grace with “those who can do nothing” for you today? And will you respond to your Father’s love with the worship of your heart?

Our joyful praises sing
To Christ, that set us free;
Like tribute to the Father bring,
And, Holy Ghost, to thee.

Denison Forum

An artificial intelligence (AI) tool called ChatGPT can respond to a question or topic with an essay that looks deceptively like it was written by a human. One college professor expects a “flood” rather than a “trickle” of plagiarism problems in the near future as a result. Such technology is being called “a turning point with artificial intelligence,” one that prompts the question, “How can we use these tools ethically and safely?”

Now consider this: half of the ten most-read stories in the New York Times this year dealt with shootings, abortion, or insults. Four others dealt with death, disasters, or aging. (“Wordle is a love story” was the lone exception.)

Given our fallen nature, how confident are you that we will master AI before it masters us? What about the other problems that plagued us last year and are likely to do so in the year to come?

Clearly, we need a Savior to save us from our sins. But, paradoxically, one of the sins from which we need to be saved is the sin of rejecting our need for a Savior.

Legend, liar, lunatic, or Lord?

Yesterday we noted that 52 percent of American adults believe that Jesus was a great teacher and nothing more. Such a supposition is not new. In 1942, C. S. Lewis responded to this assertion in what later became the most famous paragraph in his classic, Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

From this paragraph derives what is known as the “trilemma”: Jesus must be either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord.

There’s a fourth option, however. We also noted yesterday that 53 percent of Americans believe the Bible “is not literally true.” If they are right, perhaps Jesus did not really claim to be Lord. Perhaps this idea is a legend that grew up over the centuries (a claim Dan Brown made famous in his bestseller, The Da Vinci Code).

If this is the case, we are not forced to choose among Lewis’s three options, since all of them arise from the supposedly faulty presumption that Jesus claimed divinity for himself.

“A hymn to Christ as to a god”

I have taught seminary classes and written extensively on this subject (see my Wrestling With God, for example). To summarize the remarkable extrabiblical evidence for Jesus:

• Thallus the Samaritan (AD 52) referred to the darkness of the crucifixion of Jesus.
• Mara bar Serapion (writing after AD 70) noted that Jesus’ followers considered him to be their king.
• Tacitus (AD 55–120) described early Christian belief as a “most mischievous superstition,” referring to faith in the supernatural or miraculous rather than simply following a human teacher.
• In AD 112, a Roman administrator named Pliny the Younger wrote that Christians “were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ as to a god.”
• And the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (AD 37/38–97) reported that early Christians called Jesus the “Christ,” the Messiah, and believed him to have been raised from the dead.

So, since Jesus’ claim to divinity was not a legend that grew up centuries afterward but a first-century assertion accepted by his followers, we are back to Lewis’s three options: liar, lunatic, or Lord.

However, a postmodern relativist will likely shrug his shoulders and say, “That’s just your truth. I have my own truth.” What do we do then?

“Lord, do not hold this sin against them”

2 Chronicles 24:20 reports that “the Spirit of God clothed Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest” (this was not the biblical prophet by the same name), and he called the people to repent of their idolatry and immorality. However, “they conspired against him, and by command of the king they stoned him with stones in the court of the house of the Lᴏʀᴅ” (v. 21). Here was his response: “And when he was dying, he said, ‘May the Lᴏʀᴅ see and avenge!’” (v. 22).

Fast-forward eight centuries to the Book of Acts, where we find a similar story. This time the person who was empowered by God’s Spirit was named Stephen (Acts 6:5). Like Zechariah, he exposed the idolatry and immorality of the people (Acts 7:2–53). And like Zechariah, he was stoned to death as a result (vv. 58–59). But unlike Zechariah, “he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’” (v. 60).

What explains the difference?

Stephen knew the example of Jesus’ vicarious atonement and his prayer from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). And while Zechariah was “clothed” by God’s Spirit, Stephen as a Christian was indwelt by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16).

As a result, he could manifest the “fruit of the Spirit,” the first of which is “love” (Galatians 5:22). His forgiving grace was witnessed by “a young man named Saul” (Acts 7:58), who soon came to encounter Stephen’s Lord and make him his personal Lord as well (Acts 9:1–18).

Here’s the point: the best way to show skeptics that Jesus is Lord is to show them that he is our Lord. And the best way to show them that he is our Lord is to love them as he loves us.

How will you imitate Stephen today?

Denison Forum

More than one million Americans and Canadians were without power over the weekend as a “bomb cyclone” wreaked havoc with snow, strong winds, and freezing temperatures that affected nearly 250 million people.

But I’m happy to report that Santa Claus was not one of them.

US military officials assured anxious children that the arctic blast that disrupted US airline traffic would not prevent Santa from making his annual Christmas Eve flight. A spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which tracks the yuletide flight, explained: “We have to deal with a polar vortex once in a while, but Santa lives year-round in one at the North Pole, so he’s used to this weather.”

My four grandchildren confirmed the military’s report by opening numerous presents from Santa yesterday morning.

Santa Claus has an official address

Of course, rationalistic skeptics might view both the military’s statement and my grandchildren’s testimony as somewhat fanciful. In their view, anything that defies human logic and experimental corroboration must be considered myth and tradition, nothing more.

This is especially the case if they can find rational explanations for the events in question.

For example, according to the United States Postal Service (USPS), Santa Claus’s official address is 123 Elf Road, North Pole, 8888. The USPS reports that letters sent to this address are received, personal information is redacted, the letters are published online, and generous people “adopt” them and ship gifts to the letter writers. This practice provides a naturalistic explanation for many gifts from “Santa.”

Another factor is the bedrock principle of scientific discovery that an experiment’s results must be capable of verification by others who perform the same experiment. Philosopher Antony Flew offered a similar approach called “falsification”: essentially, if a truth claim cannot be proven wrong, it cannot be proven right.

If I claim to have met with Santa Claus on his nocturnal visit Saturday evening, you will want evidence: Did anyone else see him with me? Did I take his photo or get other empirical evidence of our encounter? Can you speak with him? If the answer to these and any other investigatory questions is no but I still insist that my story is true, you will obviously dismiss my assertion.

And so it is that many view Santa’s “visit” on Christmas Eve with unbridled skepticism. Tragically, millions view the other event we celebrated this weekend in the same way.

Was Jesus a great teacher but nothing more?

According to a recent survey, 52 percent of American adults believe that Jesus was a great teacher but nothing more. In their view, it is as mythical and irrational to claim that the Christ of Christmas is the Son of God as it is to claim that Santa visited my home last Saturday evening.

I believe I understand their reasoning:

One: Since 53 percent of Americans believe that the Bible “is not literally true,” they do not allow clear biblical claims for the divinity of Christ (cf. John 1:1, Colossians 2:9, Hebrews 1:3, John 8:8) to change their minds.

Two: Since we live in a postmodern, relativistic culture where many people consider all truth claims to be personal and subjective, they are not persuaded by the extraordinary extrabiblical evidence for the deity of Christ. (For a survey of such evidence, see my “Is Jesus really God?”)

Three: If Jesus is only a “great teacher,” they are no more bound to do what he said than they are to obey the teachings of Buddha, Confucius, or any other “great teacher.”

Four: Thus they can choose which teachings of the “great teacher” they will obey and reject the others in order to live however they wish to live.

“The site of God’s surprising presence”

The illogical nature of this reasoning deserves a larger response than I have room left to offer today, so we’ll pick up the story tomorrow. For now, let’s close by focusing on the billions of people who do accept the biblical claim that the Baby of Bethlehem was and is the divine Son of God.

In her Sunday New York Times article, Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren explains what this truth claim means for them: “Because God took on a human body, all human bodies are holy and worthy of respect. Because God worked, sweating under our sun with difficulty and toil, all human labor can be hallowed. Because God had a human family and friends, our relationships too are eternal and sacred. If God became a human who spent most of his life in quotidian ways, then all our lives, in all of their granularity, are transformed into the site of God’s surprising presence.”

What does the incarnational miracle of Christmas say to the hurting and lonely? Warren continues: “God knows the depths of human pain not in theory but because he has felt it himself. From his earliest moments, Jesus would have been considered a nobody, a loser, another overlooked child born into poverty, an ethnic minority in a vast, oppressive, and seemingly all-powerful empire. We have tamed the Christmas story with overfamiliarity and sentimentality—little lambs and shepherds, tinsel and stockings—so we fail to notice the depth of pain, chaos, and danger into which Jesus was born.

“God identifies himself most with the hungry and the vulnerable, with those in chronic pain, with victims of violence, with the outcasts and the despised.” When Jesus was born, “it was not into a posh home in a cozy Christmas movie but instead into a place of hardship and sorrow.”

A time for choosing

You and I can dismiss the incarnational miracle of Christmas, or we can believe that “to us a child is born, to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:7). We can trust that Son with our greatest fears and failures, worries and burdens. And we can invite those we influence to do the same.

Warren concludes: “The hope of Christmas is that God did not—and therefore will not—leave us alone.” But we can leave him alone and miss the miracle of Christmas in our daily lives.

The day after Christmas is a time for choosing what Christmas will be to us the rest of the year.

Choose wisely.

Denison Forum

No one knows exactly when Jesus was born because the Bible doesn’t give us a specific date.

And the Bible doesn’t tell us, in large part, because the first generations of Christians just didn’t really care. Celebrating births was seen as more of a pagan tradition and something that, for the first few centuries, the church tried to distance itself from.

The Epiphany, the date that commemorates the coming of the wise men, was actually a much more significant day for much of Christian history, even after people started celebrating Christmas.

For example, the old English carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas” actually begins on December 25 and culminates on January 6, with the largest celebrations historically reserved for the latter date.

But if the Bible doesn’t tell us when Jesus was born and it took Christians a few centuries to start celebrating his birth, how did Christmas end up on December 25?

Was Jesus born in the fall?

There are good reasons to believe that Jesus was actually born sometime in late September to early October.

For example, it is thought that Zacharias—the Father of John the Baptist—likely entered the temple to burn incense in mid-June, which would have put John’s conception later that month.

Given that Elizabeth was six months pregnant when the angel came to see Mary (Luke 1:26), that would put Christ’s birth in the fall of the next year. However, because Scripture doesn’t tell us when Zacharias encountered the angel and we are left to rely on tradition for that dating, there is room for disagreement.

The earliest dating of December 25 goes back to the 200s, when a tradition began to circulate that Jesus was conceived on the same day that he was crucified.

Since Tertullian dated the crucifixion to March 25, nine months after that would have meant that Jesus was born on December 25. The idea that Jesus was conceived on the same day that he died is also not found in Scripture, but it became popular enough that most accepted it without giving it too much thought. By the time of Augustine, that belief had become common knowledge, and he incorporated it into his treatise On the Trinity.

However, our celebration of Christmas on December 25 is not due solely—or even primarily—to this theological quirk.

Sharing a birthday with the gods

In addition to the dating from Christian sources, December 25 has been an important day for cultures throughout much of human history.

The winter solstice was often celebrated around that time—which is the origin, in some ways, of our Christmas trees—and, by the first century, two significant Roman feasts occurred on December 25.

The first was the Feast of Saturnalia. Saturn was the Roman sun god, and, since the solstice commemorated the days beginning to get longer, people feasted and shared gifts in his honor.

The second major feast was the birthday of Mithra.

By the third century, Mithraism was quickly becoming one of the most popular mystery cults in the Roman world and was especially significant in the army. Mithra was their sun god, and they actually had several traditions in common with Christians.

For example, they practiced baptism—though by the blood of a bull instead of water—as a way of initiating new members. They believed in the “unconquered one” who served as a mediator between the light and the darkness, while also functioning as a revealer of truth. And they had a fairly well-developed theology of the afterlife, which was not overly common back then.

Both of these celebrations are important for the dating of Christmas because when Constantine—the Roman emperor who legalized Christianity—ascended to the throne and began encouraging people to convert, making a bigger deal out of Christmas was part of his approach. Because Romans already had significant festivals in place worshiping the birth or rebirth of some of their gods on December 25, it was easier to ask them to keep the parties but make them about Jesus than give up a popular celebration altogether.

So, in 336, Constantine formally declared that the celebration of Christ’s birth would occur on December 25. For the most part, it’s stayed that way ever since.

Accommodating the culture for Christ

Does knowing a bit more about the pagan and theologically questionable background to our celebration of Christmas on December 25 change the way you see the holiday?

For some, it might.

The Puritans, for example, essentially banned any large celebrations of Christmas because of those connections, and their hesitance persisted until the mid-to-late 1800s for most Americans.

But Christians have been taking pagan or cultural beliefs and recontextualizing them in ways that point people back to Jesus for much of our history, often to great effect.

Rather than dwelling on the degree to which Constantine’s motivations for setting the date diminish Christmas, let’s focus instead on whether aspects of our culture could be used for a similar purpose.

With Halloween, for example, giving out tracts with candy—and note I said with candy rather than in place of candy—or hosting trunk-or-treats the weekend before at our churches can be a great way to take a fun celebration that has little to do with Jesus and use it as a way to share the gospel.

It’s certainly possible to go too far with such efforts and cross into heresy—which is why allowing God to guide our plans is so important—but we could do far more for the kingdom if we looked for ways to accommodate the culture rather than asking the culture to accommodate us.

Denison Forum

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Washington, DC, yesterday on his first trip outside his homeland since it was invaded by Russia exactly three hundred days ago.

He met with President Biden in the afternoon and addressed a joint session of Congress last night. Prior to his arrival, President Biden announced that he is sending nearly $2 billion in additional security assistance to Ukraine. Congress is poised to pass more than $44 billion in additional military and economic aid to Ukraine as part of its omnibus funding bill.

I thought President Zelensky’s address to Congress was especially stirring. He spoke movingly of the sacrifices his people are making: “In two days we will celebrate Christmas. Maybe candlelit. Not because it’s more romantic, no, but because there will not be—there will be no electricity.”

To those who question our financial support of Ukraine, he said, “Your money is not charity. It’s an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.” He also declared, “The struggle will define in what world our children and grandchildren will live in.”

The same day, Russian President Vladimir Putin presided over the launch of a major new Siberian gas field to help drive a planned surge in supply to China. His country is obviously an existential threat to Ukraine and its neighbors, and his nuclear capacities make him a danger to the world. However, Russia is not yet the clear and present danger to the United States that the old Soviet Union represented.

This is good news for our country. But is it bad news for our faith?

Three reasons for the decline of American Christianity

Pew Research Center estimates that Christians could make up a minority of Americans by 2070. According to sociology professor Stephen Bullivant, a practicing Catholic who teaches in London and Sydney, there are three main reasons for this decline in religious commitment and the concomitant rise of the nonreligious: the Cold War, 9/11, and the internet.

The Cold War pitted Christian America against godless communism in the eyes of many Americans. However, in response to 9/11, a “new atheism” rose to prominence: public figures such as Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins claimed that religion produces terrorists and gave intellectual respectability to religious skepticism. Along the way, the internet has provided support for people who are questioning their faith by offering community with fellow doubters.

Bullivant admits that cultural issues such as abortion and gay marriage have played a factor in the current exodus from the church, but he notes that denominations such as the Episcopal Church have adopted progressive theological positions but still lost members in droves.

His analysis aligns with a narrative we have seen in the decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union: the USSR gave the US an external enemy that united our disparate cultural blocs in a common cause. Confronting the existential threat of nuclear annihilation forced our political parties to work together in ways we have not since the USSR fell. Apart from a brief moment of patriotism after 9/11, we have not experienced such unity for decades.

If, in fact, our unity was based on external enemies more than internal cohesion, it’s hard to see what could unify us again apart from a cataclysmic crisis.

How the world changes

Architect, writer, and inventor Buckminster Fuller observed, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

From the printing press to the iPhone, cultural history has proven him right. But Fuller’s thesis was never more powerfully demonstrated than it was twenty centuries ago in a manger in a tiny town south of Jerusalem.

The world into which Jesus was born was as divided and divisive as ours. While the “Pax Romana” prevailed through military force and subjugation to the Empire, the culture of the first century was conflicted and confused in the extreme.

A plethora of religions and worldviews competed with each other, including Greek and Roman mythology, mystery cults, Judaism, and philosophical schools such as neo-Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Cynicism, and Skepticism. Jewish society was divided into supporters of Rome such as the Sadducees, zealots plotting to overthrow the Empire, legalists like the Pharisees, and those who were caught in the midst of their conflicts.

Into this dark and divided culture came the “light of the world” (John 9:5). His movement transcended the cultural and spiritual divides of his day with a new hope unlike any the world could offer. He promised his followers, “Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).

Of course, the key is to “follow” Jesus.

The only path to true peace

St. Ambrose (340–397) was one of the greatest theologians in Christian history and a seminal contributor to the conversion of St. Augustine. Referring to our bodies as God’s temple, he urged us to “maintain this house, sweep out its secret recesses until it becomes immaculate and rises as a spiritual temple for a holy priesthood, firmly secured by Christ, the cornerstone.”

Ambrose also noted: “Christ is the image of God and so any good or religious act that a soul performs magnifies that image of God in that soul, the God in whose likeness the soul itself was made. And thus the soul itself has some share in its greatness and is ennobled.”

Billy Graham made the same point more simply but no less profoundly: “In the same proportion that the world has trusted Christ, it has peace.”

Is your heart at peace today?

If not, why not?

Denison Forum

Note: Thank you to Dr. Ryan Denison for writing today’s Daily Article. He is the Denison Forum Senior Editor for Theology and has written more than four hundred articles for Denison Forum.

One of my favorite parts about the Christmas season is the diverse ways in which people celebrate it. Sure, there are probably some time-tested standards that apply to most of us—putting up decorations, church on Christmas Eve, maybe a party or two—but Christmas is also the season when people tend to get a little creative with their family traditions.

In a recent article from The Atlantic, writers asked readers to send in some of their favorite family traditions for the holiday season. While the responses vary from the patently absurd to the heartwarming and inspiring, they clearly hold a special place in the lives of those who carry them out each year.

For example, LaRae LaBouff writes about how her family would routinely have fifteen to thirty people gather at their grandparents’ house each year to celebrate Christmas. As a result, once the gifts were unwrapped, the floor was littered with wrapping paper, ribbons, and other vestiges of the festivities.

They would place all the trash in a large can and then her grandfather would climb in and push everything down so that it would fit. The kids would then cover him with ribbons and bows. The tradition was known as “Throwing Pop Away” and became a key part of their Christmas experience.

As LaRae’s grandfather got older and began to suffer from cancer, however, he could no longer make it into the trashcan. Rather than give up the tradition, they began filling a smaller cardboard box so that he could still stand inside and be covered up.

She writes that in the years since his passing, other family members have stepped up to take his place and be wrapped in remembrance of their departed patriarch.

But while not everyone’s traditions are as tender and sweet as LaRae’s, they can still bring joy to those who keep them.

A Grinchy breakfast and a science experiment gone wrong

Nate Ransil writes about how he married into the family tradition of starting Christmas day off with the most absurd breakfast they can create. The tradition originated when his wife’s grandfather decided one year that there was just too much good on Christmas, so there needed to be at least one thing the kids wouldn’t look forward to. To that end, he decided to take their traditional breakfast of eggs, bacon, toast, and orange juice, stick it in a blender, and serve it as breakfast smoothies.

While the idea began as a joke, Nate’s father-in-law thought it was funny and created a challenge whereby certain family members would be responsible for creating the themed Christmas menu each year.

One year they chose The Grinch, crafting a breakfast of Who pudding, rare Who roast beast, toadstool sandwiches, and bananas with a greasy black peel. Another year, the meal was inspired by Elf and featured spaghetti, crumbled Pop-Tarts, and maple syrup. He writes that last year his son and brother-in-law decided to create a science lab with frog legs, lychee fruit “eyeballs” floating in a jar, brains made of Jell-O, and bowls of worms.

While I doubt I’ll be replicating this particular tradition anytime soon, Ransil described how it always leads to a lot of laughter and the knowledge that “nobody else in the world is eating the same thing we are right now.”

When traditions become more important than people

I highlighted these examples because they offer us a good reminder that our Christmas traditions do not need to come from someplace of profound spiritual meaning in order to be meaningful to you and your family. Rather, it’s the sense of joy, unity, and remembrance they inspire that is most important. They have purpose to the extent that they bring us closer to those we love most.

However, if we’re not careful it can be easy for the tradition to become more important than the people who keep it.

In many ways, that was the primary problem Jesus encountered with the religious leaders throughout his ministry. Most of the scribes and Pharisees were well intentioned, spiritually driven individuals who just wanted to help people know God better. The problem was that they had fallen into the trap of thinking that the best way to accomplish that purpose was by adhering so strictly to their religious traditions that they left little room for the Lord to work.

Over time, they robbed God’s people of the joy they should have found in a relationship with him by insisting on a relationship with the law instead. Their traditions became more important than the people they were meant to help.

But, before we judge them too harshly, let us remember that we are far from immune to making the same error today. And there are few times of the year when that mistake can be easier to make than during the Christmas season.

Blessing God by blessing those he came to save

Take a moment to think back on some of your most cherished traditions. Do you know why they were started? Do they still fulfill the same purpose today? In what ways have they evolved over the years to make room for new family and friends to take part? And is there anything the Lord might want to change to help them better accomplish that purpose this year?

The best traditions are those that bring people together and add depth to our relationship with others. And whether they are silly, sacred, or somewhere in between, it’s worth taking the time to make sure that they are still a means to that end rather than the end itself.

So as we draw steadily closer to Christmas Day, let’s endeavor to make sure that every facet of our celebrations and traditions bless God by blessing the people he came to save.

Will yours?

Denison Forum

The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers (2 Corinthians 4:4).

Researchers have identified the US cities with the highest rates of marital infidelity, comparing two hundred of the largest metro areas with regard to relationship satisfaction, life satisfaction, infidelity intent, and affair activities. The results are in: the three most “unfaithful” cities in America, in order, are Dallas, Texas, Fort Worth, Texas, and Houston, Texas.

This news hits close to home for me: I have lived in Dallas since 1998, I worked for many years in Ft. Worth, and I was born and raised in Houston.

We in Dallas refer to ourselves as the “Buckle of the Bible Belt.” We are home to some of the largest churches in America. In fact, Christianity Today once called our city “the new capital of evangelicalism.” But as the infidelity report illustrates, we are clearly living in a cultural mission field.

No matter where you live in America, so are you.

Tax-exempt status “now up for debate”

My wife and I were discussing yesterday’s Daily Article, which focused on ways Christianity is under attack in our society. Janet noted that for years, many of us have been warning that a post-Christian and even anti-Christian day was coming to our nation. Now, she said, it’s here.

Here’s why she is right.

The Supreme Court tragically discovered a constitutional “right” to abortion in 1973 and only overturned that ruling this year, but Christian doctors have not (yet) been required to perform abortions. Euthanasia is available in various forms in ten states, but Christian physicians are not (yet) required to provide physician-assisted suicide.

However, as I noted in yesterday’s article, the so-called Respect for Marriage Act will make an unbiblical and even anti-biblical definition of marriage the law of the land by congressional action. Many fear that this legislation threatens religious liberty on an unprecedented level.

For example, Roger Severino of the Heritage Foundation warns that “the tax-exempt status of religious schools and nonprofits is now up for debate. Additionally, the Left will try to use the bill to sue faith-based adoption agencies and contractors to drive them out of business as they have done in multiple states and localities already.”

Hospital chaplain fired for pro-life beliefs

Rev. Jay McCaig had been a hospital chaplain in Orlando for ten years before he was fired for anti-abortion posts on his personal Facebook page. He says he never spoke about his pro-life views with patients or employees at the hospital.

Earlier this year, a jury in Minnesota ruled against a pharmacist who refused to dispense a morning-after pill on the basis of his pro-life beliefs. The jury decided that the pharmacist had inflicted emotional harm and said the woman who requested the pill should be entitled to $25,000 in damages.

We could go on: the so-called Equality Act that has passed the House of Representatives twice has been called “the most invasive threat to religious liberty ever proposed in America.” According to the Alliance Defending Freedom, a lawsuit filed by the Religious Exemption Accountability Project would “punish religious colleges and their students by stripping them of much-needed financial aid simply because of their beliefs.”

As I have noted often, LGBTQ advocates have been implementing a decades-long strategy to normalize LGBTQ behavior through popular media and culture, legalize it in the courts, stigmatize those who disagree as “homophobic” and “dangerous,” and then criminalize such disagreement. All four phases of this strategy are clearly at work in our society today.

“Learning how to do what he said”

One significant way you and I can respond is to model the incarnational love of God to our broken culture. As I have noted this week, Christmas is God’s gift to us not because we are worthy of his love but because God is love (1 John 4:8). Because we cannot earn his love by what we do, we cannot lose his love by what we do.

When our Savior was born in a feed trough in a Bethlehem cave, he proved that he will be born again in any heart that is open to his grace. That grace will then transform our lives into his Bethlehem and demonstrate his love to our broken world.

Now it is our responsibility to show his love to those who reject it. When we defend biblical morality boldly and courageously but “with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15), we disprove the caricature that Christians are bigoted and hateful. When we remember that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 4:4), we will offer them the compassion we received from those who led us to Christ.

Philosopher and bestselling author Dallas Willard noted: “The idea of having faith in Jesus has come to be totally isolated from being his apprentice and learning how to do what he said.” Here’s what Jesus said: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). Both verbs are present-tense imperatives, unconditional commands to you and me today.

My dear friend’s wisdom

To have the servant heart of the One who “came not to be served but to serve” (Matthew 20:28), submit your life and your day to his Holy Spirit right now (Ephesians 5:18). Ask his Spirit to manifest the “fruit” of love in your life for those you encounter (Galatians 5:22). Then measure success by the degree to which others experience the love of Christ in your compassion.

My dear friend, the Dallas businessman Ray Nixon, shared this truth with me yesterday: “When the mouth is open, the heart is on display.”

What will your heart display today?

Denison Forum

Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, the Communist leader who ruled China after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and presided over a decade of rapid economic growth, died today at the age of ninety-six. His death and the memorial ceremonies to follow come at a perilous moment in China.

Protesters clashed with riot police last night in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, part of a string of demonstrations across the nation against the government’s so-called zero-COVID policy. The restrictions are causing economic hardship and sparking anger over stringent lockdown policies. Protests began last Thursday after a deadly fire at an apartment building in the Xinjiang province. Videos appear to show that lockdown measures delayed firefighters from getting to the victims, at least ten of whom died.

Protests in China are typically directed at local officials. The current demonstrations, however, are aimed at the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and President Xi Jinping. The Washington Post calls the protests “arguably the most serious and widespread unrest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations.” They are being described as the “most severe test” for President Xi since he took power.

CNN has verified twenty-three demonstrations so far across seventeen Chinese cities, including the capital Beijing and the financial center Shanghai. Yesterday, Chinese universities sent students home and police fanned out in Beijing and Shanghai to prevent more protests. Top health officials did acknowledge the impact of their zero-COVID policies and pledged to “reduce inconvenience” to the public by lifting lockdowns “as quickly as possible” following outbreaks. However, this may not be enough to appease the protesters.

The New York Times adds that since China is the world’s largest manufacturing nation, the protests “are injecting a new element of uncertainty and instability into the global economy.” For example, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost nearly five hundred points on Monday and was essentially flat yesterday. Apple could see a six million unit shortfall in iPhones this year amid manufacturing pressures at a key Chinese plant.

My business ethics experience in Beijing

The unrest in China illustrates the simple but profound fact that ideas change the world. As I have written recently, Xi Jinping’s political system is built on Marxist nationalism that asserts the control of the CCP over every domain of public and private life.

In Marx’s view, the individual is a means to the advancement of society, which in turn (he claimed) will benefit the individual. Thus the state can impose a zero-COVID policy on its citizens, whatever the economic or medical consequences.

As one example, the CCP is insisting on using vaccines developed in China rather than importing Western vaccines that are likely more effective. It would rather impose strict lockdowns than change its approach, despite urging from the World Health Organization to alter its method of dealing with the pandemic.

This atheistic system naively ignores the fact that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). To the contrary, it invests autocratic power in the hands of a single ruler surrounded entirely by loyalists. And it sees people as a means to the end of the state rather than as divinely created bearers of the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27).

I experienced this worldview personally when I visited Beijing some years ago to teach a seminar on business ethics. Those who attended wanted me to address the corruption that is so endemic in their system.

They recognized that bribes, identity theft, and manipulation of market outcomes were poisoning their business environment and undermining their future. But their atheistic culture had no objective ethics to stand upon in countering these practices. And they had no sense of the value of the individual as opposed to the authority of the state.

“He who makes rich is made poor”

My purpose today, however, is less to focus on China’s cultural challenges and more to warn that abandoning the biblical worldview is a threat to America’s future as well.

Billy Graham was right: “Many of us have put our faith in money, jobs, status, gadgets, pleasures, and thrills. Many of us—and society as a whole—have tried to bypass God, and now we are paying the inevitable price. We are in trouble because we have left out God; we have left out the Ten Commandments; we have left out the Sermon on the Mount. Now we as individuals and as a culture are reaping the tragic results.”

The answer to our cultural crisis is found at Christmas. As we have noted this week, the gift of God’s Son demonstrates our Father’s love for each of us. Christ came not because we were worthy of such love but because God is love (1 John 4:8). He made us in his image; when we receive his saving love, he remakes us as his children (John 1:12).

St. Gregory Nazianzen (AD 329–390), the Archbishop of Constantinople, explained the Incarnation this way: “He who makes rich is made poor; he takes on the poverty of my flesh, that I may gain the riches of his divinity. He who is full is made empty; he is emptied for a brief space of his glory, that I may share in his fullness.”

“The New Testament example of the Christian experience”

The question is whether we will make the gift of Christmas an annual holiday or a present-tense reality in our lives.

If we choose the former, we are on the road to abandoning the Judeo-Christian moral foundations upon which our nation was built. What is happening in China can happen anywhere fallen, sinful humans exclude God and his word from their lives and their nation.

If we choose the latter, however, our lives are transformed as the One who was born in Bethlehem’s manger reigns in our hearts and lives. Oswald Chambers noted: “The New Testament example of the Christian experience is that of a personal, passionate devotion to the Person of Jesus Christ.” When I commit myself unconditionally to Christ, “I receive from God the gift of the Holy Spirit, who then begins interpreting to me what Jesus did. The Spirit of God does in me internally all that Jesus Christ did for me externally.”

How “personal” and “passionate” is your “devotion to the Person of Jesus Christ” today?

Denison Forum

The biggest active volcano on our planet began erupting last Sunday. Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano had not erupted since 1984, according to the US Geological Survey. However, people on the Big Island had feared this moment for decades since Mauna Loa had been overdue for an eruption after its longest quiet period on record.

Volcanologists have not predicted thus far how long the eruption will last or where the lava might travel, so authorities have opened shelters on the island as a precaution. While the lava is so far contained within the summit and does not yet threaten Hawaiians living downslope, volcanic gases and fine ash may drift their way.

Focus on the Family sign vandalized

If you’re not on the Big Island, this does not mean you’re exempt from Mother Nature.

The Storm Prediction Center is warning of a “significant severe-weather event” later today across parts of the lower Mississippi River Valley. Tornadoes, damaging straight-line winds, and large hail are possible. Nighttime tornadoes are especially a threat for this evening. A strong Pacific storm system will also begin impacting the states of Washington and Oregon tonight with heavy rain and snow along with strong winds.

In other news, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens has confirmed that a person killed in a shooting Saturday night was twelve years old. In all, Metro Atlanta police departments responded to fifteen shootings and stabbings over the Thanksgiving weekend. And a sign outside the Focus on the Family facility in Colorado was vandalized on Thanksgiving Day in response to the Club Q mass shooting that left five people dead and seventeen wounded. Graffiti was left at their facility reading, “Their blood is on your hands five lives taken.”

A key leader on our ministry team lost a family member the day before Thanksgiving. A very dear friend had surgery yesterday. You can add your own stories of challenges this morning.

A theological weathervane

We focused in yesterday’s Daily Article on the fact of God’s unconditional love as demonstrated in the Christmas gift of his Son. As I noted, the Father sent his Son not because we are lovable but because he is love (1 John 4:8). We can do nothing to earn his love, which means we can do nothing to lose it.

Circumstances do not change his character. As God declares in his word, “I the Lᴏʀᴅ do not change” (Malachi 3:6). Scripture says of our Savior, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

A farmer mounted a weathervane atop a barn with the words “GOD IS LOVE.” A pastor walking by thought them inappropriate, believing that the farmer meant to say God’s love changes with the shifting winds. His companion disagreed, suggesting that no matter which way the wind blows God is still love.

But the fact that God’s character does not change may not mean all that we think it does.

“So this is what God’s really like”

In A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis chronicled his personal heartache when his wife, Joy Davidman Gresham, died of bone cancer. At one point he wrote, “Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.’”

When the volcano erupts and lava is headed our way, where is our God? When storms are coming and tornadoes are roaring, what good is prayer? When friends lose loved ones, why intercede to the God who could have prevented their deaths?

The holidays bring these questions into sharp relief. My father died ten days before Christmas in 1979; the Christmas season has been forever different as a result. Many of you have similar stories.

At such times, you have a binary choice to make: you can interpret God’s character through the prism of your circumstances, or you can interpret your circumstances through the prism of God’s character.

“Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”

When we do the latter, everything changes. Like physical eyeglasses that focus the way we see the world, these spiritual eyeglasses help us see what we could not see before.

When we believe no matter which way the wind blows that “God is love,” we learn that we can see his presence with us in the hardest places and times of life. We experience personally his promise, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you” (Isaiah 43:2). We discover that we can say with David, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Psalm 23:4).

And we trust that he is redeeming our pain in ways we may not understand on this side of glory, so we rest in the fact that one day “I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Charles Spurgeon commented: “Satan may plot to enslave us, but if the Lord is on our side, whom shall we fear? The world, with its temptations, may seek to ensnare us, but mightier is he who is for us than all they who be against us. The machinations of our own deceitful hearts may harass and annoy us, but he who hath begun the good work in us will carry it on and perfect it to the end.

“The foes of God and the enemies of man may gather their hosts together and come with concentrated fury against us, but if God acquitteth, who is he that condemneth? Not more free is the eagle which mounts to his rocky eyrie, and afterwards outsoars the clouds, than the soul which Christ hath delivered.”

According to Spurgeon, our response should be one of grateful obedience: “I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds. Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”

Would you make his prayer yours today?

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My wife and I started Season 5 of The Crown over the weekend. Like most viewers, we were surprised to learn that the Sunday Times took a poll in 1991 suggesting that half of the British public wanted Queen Elizabeth II to abdicate in favor of Prince Charles. In response, Charles met with Prime Minister John Major to persuade him to encourage the queen to step down.

Except nothing I just wrote is really true.

According to the Washington Post, the poll was taken in January 1990, not August 1991. It did reveal that nearly half of the public said the queen should consider abdicating in favor of Charles. But the Post reports that “importantly, they said she should consider ‘eventually,’ not necessarily at that very moment. The ‘eventually’ has been left out in the show.” And according to Major, the meeting with Charles portrayed in the show never happened, calling it a “barrel-load of nonsense.”

To continue with royal “news”: a new biography of King Charles III claims that the monarch once “destroyed a sink because he lost a cufflink down the drain.” But as we learn from The Crown, claiming something is true doesn’t make it true.

These stories do raise a personal question: Aren’t you glad no one is publishing a tell-all exposé of your life? That no one knows the secrets you’re keeping from the rest of us?

Actually, someone does.

“HAPPY BIRT, JESUS”

As we move into the Christmas season, this Washington Post headline caught my eye: “A decade’s worth of photos capture Christmas in America, from the joyful to the bleak.” Photographer Jesse Rieser traveled to eighteen states from Oregon to Florida to capture images of Christmas across the country.

The book he published as a result shows us an inflatable Santa Claus looming four stories over a Christmas tree lot, a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex dressed in a Santa costume, and a display of soldiers guarding Santa and his reindeer called “Protecting Dreams.”

Rieser titled his book Christmas in America: Happy Birthday, Jesus. According to the Post, the title originated from “one of Rieser’s favorite photos.” In it, neon red lights spell “HAPPY BIRT, JESUS” over the roof of a white garage, with the missing four letters laying atop the shingles. This is the only reference to our Lord in the Post story.

If you were to publish images of Christmas from Scripture, what verse would be on the cover? My answer is a text that will revolutionize the Christmas season for everyone who takes it to mind and heart today.

“The Lamb slain from the creation of the world”

A preacher once told the story of a mother on her deathbed. Her husband stood on one side, their estranged son on the other. In her last act, she took the hand of the angry father and the hand of the wayward child and brought them together over her body.

In the same way, he said, Jesus on the cross took the hand of a wrathful Father and the hand of sinful humanity and brought them together over his body.

But that’s not what happened.

Recall the most famous verse in Scripture: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). This familiar declaration reminds us of the why behind the what of Christmas and supplies a vital corrective to the way many in our culture view our Father.

In short: Christmas was God’s idea. Jesus was “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8 NIV). As Jesus explained, “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).

From his conception to his crucifixion, Jesus’ incarnation was his Father’s plan for our salvation.

“No creature is hidden from his sight”

Why does the God of the universe love us so much that he sent his Son to die so we could live eternally with him?

Is it because we deserve such love? Categorically not. Unlike a tell-all biographer exposing (or fabricating) the royal family’s secrets, the omniscient God of the universe knows the absolute truth about every single one of us: “No creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13).

Your Father knows not only the deepest secrets of your past—he knows the most grievous sins and failures that are in your future. And yet, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He did this because “God is love” (1 John 4:8). He loves us because it is his unchanging nature to love us. Stated bluntly, he cannot not love us, no matter who we are or what we have done.

Jesus made this fact clear in John 17 when he prayed “that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (v. 23, my emphasis). The Greek is literally translated “and loved them as much as you loved me.”

Think of it: your Father loves you as much as he loves his “one and only Son” (John 3:16 NIV).

“Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!”

Here’s the point: if we had to earn God’s love, we could lose his love. If the Christmas gift of our Father was given on the basis of merit, none of us could receive it or hope to retain it. But because God “is” love, there is absolutely nothing we can do to make him love us any more or any less than he already does.

So, as we step into the Christmas season, let’s make time every day to remember the why of Christmas. Let’s reflect on the unchanging, unconditional love of our Father for us. Let’s respond with the grateful worship of our souls. And let’s pay forward this gift by sharing it with everyone we can.

In response to “the surpassing grace of God,” Paul exclaimed, “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” (2 Corinthians 9:14–15).

Do his words express your heart today?

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