“For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election. He tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob reached the Capitol.” This is how President Biden explained the January 6 riots in a speech marking their one-year anniversary yesterday.

Many agree, identifying what they call a “coup plot” comprising a “deliberate effort to overthrow our democracy.” Others disagree, stating that there was not a “concerted, planned attempt to overthrow the government, let [alone] a terrorist insurrection.”

Sixty-eight percent of Republicans say the January 6 attack has gotten too much attention; only 23 percent of Democrats agree. While 87 percent of Democrats say the attack was extremely or very violent, only 39 percent of Republicans agree.

Descriptions and assignments of culpability matter as we seek to understand past tragedies lest we repeat them in the future. But I have seen no political explanations that focus on the real heart of the issue.

The Book of Common Prayer includes this intercession:

To my humble supplication,
Lord, give ear and acceptation.
Save thy servant, that hath none
help nor hope but Thee alone.

Why is this prayer so vital to transforming hope in the new year?

Father gunned down while carrying daughter’s birthday cake

The percentage of Americans who say they are more fearful about the coming year has risen from 36 percent in 2021 to 54 percent in 2022. A quick check of the news shows us why.

• A one-month-old baby was orphaned after his parents, both sheriff’s deputies, died by suicide within days of each other.
• A father in Texas was gunned down at Chuck E. Cheese as he carried his daughter’s birthday cake.
• Eight children and two mothers are among the dead at a Philadelphia house fire Wednesday.
• COVID-19 cases are topping one million daily in the US.
• An “adored” Catholic priest was killed in a car crash Monday, one day after his fifty-third birthday.

In the face of our obvious fragility and mortality, we might expect even secular Americans to admit our need for help and hope beyond ourselves. We obviously cannot prevent death or enable our own survival beyond it. But our scientific and medical advances have improved life expectancy and inoculated us from the reality of death to a degree unsurpassed in human history.

Nor can we remedy the sin problem at the heart of all our relational and political divisions. But, once again, we have found an alternative approach.

Vladimir Putin asked two questions with regard to political violence: “Who? Whom?” What matters is who performs the action and upon whom it is performed, he claimed. When we are the who, we see our actions against the whom as justified, from January 6 rioters in Washington to street violence after George Floyd’s murder.

However, as theologian Terence Sweeney notes, “The whom you attack is a who in reality. Just as you are a self, so too are they a self.”

Three empowering daily steps

In an 1816 letter to Thomas Jefferson, John Adams wrote: “Power always thinks it has a great soul, and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God service, when it is violating all his laws.”

The solution to our mortal frailty and to our political animosity is the same: admitting to God that we “hath none help nor hope but Thee alone.” I encourage you to join me in these practical and empowering steps each day across this year:

One: Invite the Holy Spirit to empower and control your life.

Ephesians 5:18 commands us to “be filled with the Spirit.” As my latest video explains, this is a daily act of confession and surrender that positions us to experience God’s best.

When we do, we can trust our Lord with the day before us. Charles Spurgeon asked: “If God cares for you, why need you care too? Can you trust him for your soul and not for your body?” He added: “He has never refused to bear your burdens; he has never fainted under their weight. Come, then, soul! Have done with fretful care and leave all thy concerns in the hand of a gracious God.”

Two: Walk in the power and peace of the Spirit.

Max Lucado was right: “The Holy Spirit is central to the life of the Christian. Everything from Acts to Revelation is a result of the work of the Holy Spirit. . . . After Jesus ascended into heaven, the Holy Spirit became the primary agent of the Trinity on earth. He will complete what was begun by the Father and the Son. ‘Keep in step with the Spirit’ (Galatians 5:25). He directs and leads: you must obey and follow.”

In my latest personal blog, I explain how we can experience the Spirit’s peace amid our hurried lives, his purpose amid our challenges, his calm amid our distractions. Claim God’s promise: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).

Three: Pray for courage and then serve with courage.

When facing growing animosity, the early Christians ask God to “grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29). As a result, “When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness” (v. 31).

In My Daily Pursuit, A. W. Tozer wrote: “Because God has been reduced in the minds of people, they do not have that boundless confidence in his character that used to be prominent among Christians. Confidence is necessary to respect. You cannot respect a man in whom you have no confidence. Extend that respect upward to God and if you cannot respect God, you cannot worship him. You cannot have confidence in him, because where there is no respect there can be no worship. Worship rises and falls in the church depending upon whether the idea of God is low or high; so we must begin with God where everything begins.

“God needs no rescuing, but we do, and we must rescue our concepts from their fallen and frightfully inadequate condition so that boundless confidence in him can reign once again.”

How much “boundless confidence” do you have in God today?

Denison Forum

The US Capitol is the focus of global attention today. Police riot shields have been placed near doorways. Metal detectors stand outside the House of Representatives chamber. Capitol police officers are out in force in larger numbers and with heavier equipment than before. Fencing is in place in some locations.

All of this is in preparation for the first anniversary of the January 6 assault on the Capitol.

A year ago I wrote a Daily Article special edition as the crisis was unfolding titled “Chaos in Washington.” Millions of us watched on television as lawmakers were evacuated from the House and Senate chambers. Fox News‘ Chad Pergram stated, “This is the most significant breach of an American government institution since the British burned the Capitol after the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24, 1814.” Former President George W. Bush called the attack “a sickening and heartbreaking sight.”

The next day, I asked our readers to join me in praying for our leaders and people to seek reconciliation and peace, for Christians to respond with truth and grace, and for more Christians to be engaged in our democracy. You and I need to continue offering such intercession as much today as we did a year ago.

And we urgently need to renew our commitment to the most transformational yet countercultural way we can answer our prayers for our nation.

If I were Satan

The ultimate answer to every problem humans face is found in a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. He alone can forgive our sins, empower us to truly forgive others, and make us the “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) we must become to experience abundant life in this fallen world (John 10:10).

Satan knows this as well as we do.

As a result, if I were Satan, I would try to convince all Americans to be atheists. The twentieth century saw firsthand the consequences of the denial of God, with one hundred million deaths due to atheistic communism around the world. Erwin Lutzer was right: “It is said that after God died in the nineteenth century, man died in the twentieth. For when God is dead, man becomes an untamed beast.”

If I could not convince Americans to be atheists, I would try to convince them to be agnostics. This is because the practical consequence is usually the same. I have never met an agnostic—someone who is not sure God is real—who acted as if he is.

Satan is having moderate success on both fronts: according to Pew Research Center, the share of Americans who identify as atheists has risen from 2 percent in 2009 to 4 percent in 2019. The share who call themselves agnostic has increased from 3 percent a decade ago to 5 percent today.

What should be done about the remaining 91 percent who persist in some form of faith in God?

A masterful satanic strategy

If I could not convince Americans to abandon faith entirely, I would have a third strategy ready: to have faith in faith. To be “spiritual but not religious.” To believe that so long as we have faith in a “higher power,” a spiritual feeling of some sort, that is all the “religion” we need.

Our enemy is having great success here. As I reported yesterday, 63 percent of American adults believe “having faith matters more than which faith you have.” This is a quintessential postmodern approach: we can be tolerant of all faiths while requiring none. We think we can derive the benefits of believing in God or the gods without choosing any particular religion and its demands on us.

Imagine, however, applying this logic to any other dimension of our lives. So long as you have faith in medicine, it doesn’t matter which medication you take. So long as you have faith in roads, it doesn’t matter which one you travel. So long as you have faith in people, it doesn’t matter which one you marry. Where in life does “faith in faith” work?

This is a masterful strategy by Satan. It causes us to be “inoculated” by faith in a way that keeps us from getting the real thing. We get to live by moonlight in the dark without being exposed to the light of the sun.

There is only one road to heaven, but there are many roads to hell. This is one of the most popular today.

When Christianity works

Lest we shake our heads at the “faith in faith” mentality that is so popular and deceptive, let’s consider its insidious attraction for Christians as well. If Satan cannot get us to boycott worship services, Bible studies, prayer, and other spiritual activities, he’ll tempt us to make them an end instead of a means—to think we’ve checked the “God box” by going to church on Sunday and spending a few minutes in religious activities during the week.

If we are not entering his transforming presence in worship, hearing his voice in his word, and connecting intimately with him in prayer, we are placing our faith in faith. We are substituting religion for relationship. And we are missing the empowering, daily encounter with the living Christ that is our only path to being “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

In addition, if we fall prey to the “faith in faith” delusion, we will sidestep the biblical call to evangelism (Acts 1:8) that our culture brands as “intolerant” since other people have their own “faith” as well. As I noted in my latest personal blog, this is an enticing way to appear tolerant in a post-Christian culture. But it victimizes those who need the salvation we have experienced and consigns them to an eternity separated from God.

If we want an end to the political animosity and divisiveness of our day, faith in political leaders and parties is not enough. If we want to prevent another January 6 riot, faith in law enforcement is not enough. If we want true hope in the midst of a pandemic, true peace in the midst of rising geopolitical threats, true joy in the midst of economic pain, faith in faith is not enough.

In her latest blog, my wife wrote these important words: “Christianity works when Christians allow God to work through their lives.” I would add that America works best when Christians do the same.

We can have faith in faith, or we can have faith in Jesus, but we cannot have both.

Which would he say you have chosen today?

Denison Forum

By popular acclamation, Betty White was “America’s sweetheart.” I first became acquainted with her on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and laughed along with most of America at her Rose Nylund portrayal in The Golden Girls. She was terrific in Boston Legal and The Proposal among other projects.

Now we have learned that the famed actress filmed a tribute to her fans just ten days before her death. She was participating in a documentary special titled “Betty White: 100 Years Young—A Birthday Celebration” that would play in theaters across the country. The feature-length special will still debut on January 17, but it will be retooled to be a celebration of her life and career. It has been retitled to “Betty White: A Celebration.” 

Her popularity is well deserved and not just for her television career. By one account, she supported twenty-six different charitable causes, from the American Heart Association to the Red Cross and Special Olympics. Her devotion to animals was especially passionate and noteworthy. 

Given her remarkable life, I would imagine many of you cringed at my title for today’s article. Of course someone who was as beloved and did as much good as Betty White would go to heaven, many people will say. 

To even raise the question is to seem intolerant, the worst thing a person can appear to be today. It feels unkind to ask such a question about a cultural icon like Betty White, doesn’t it? 

What did Betty White believe? 

That’s because it’s conventional wisdom that “all good people go to heaven.” Only one in three Americans affirm the statement, “When you die you will go to heaven only because you have confessed your sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior.” By contrast, 63 percent of adults believe “having faith matters more than which faith you have.” 

According to a substantive Probe Ministries study, over 60 percent of Born Again Christians believe Muhammad, Buddha, and Jesus are all valid ways to God. Pew Forum reports that 39 percent of Americans say even people who do not believe in God at all can go to heaven. Only 2 percent of Americans think they are going to hell. 

As a result, most Americans think Betty White’s personal religious beliefs are irrelevant to the question. She was reportedly a member of the Unity Church, which describes itself as being “for people who might call themselves spiritual but not religious.” Its “five principles” state: 

1. God is all there is and present everywhere. This is the force of love and wisdom that underlies all of existence.
2. Human beings are divine at their core and therefore inherently good.
3. Thoughts have creative power to determine events and attract experiences.
4. Prayer and meditation keep us aligned with the one great power in the universe.
5. It is not enough to understand spiritual teachings. We must live the Truth we know.

I could find no evidence that the Unity Church teaches the need for people to confess their sins and turn to Christ as their Savior and Lord. 

By contrast, as you know, the Bible clearly teaches that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Since “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), it is vital that we “believe in the Lord Jesus” to be saved (Acts 16:31). Scripture teaches, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). God’s word proclaims, “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12, my emphasis). 

Is Christianity “worth bothering with”? 

Does this mean that Betty White did not go to heaven? I have no way to know that, of course. I did not know her personally and, even if I did, I could not see her heart. I could find no evidence that she believed what Scripture teaches regarding saving faith, but it is not for me to judge the state of her soul. 

What I do know is that she went to heaven only if she had trusted in Christ as her Savior. The same will be true for you and me one day. 

However, my larger point relates less to her and more to you: Is this conversation unsettling for you? I assume you agree with Jesus’ testimony, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). But do you often consider the eternal destiny of those who do not? 

C. S. Lewis wrote: “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.” 

Billy Graham agreed: “If Christianity is important at all, then it is all-important. If it is anything at all, then it is everything. It is either the most vital thing in your life, or it isn’t worth bothering with.” 

Don’t cheat yourself out of spiritual victory” 

I am praying that today’s article will be a catalyst for us to pray more passionately for those we know who, to our knowledge, do not have a saving relationship with Jesus. I am praying that we will then respond to our prayers by sharing our faith more diligently, winsomely, and courageously with them. 

And I am praying that we will seek in this new year to be the change we wish to see: Christ-followers others can follow to Christ. 

Dr. Graham continued his admonition with the warning: “So don’t give the lie to the Christian faith by professing Christ without possessing him. Don’t lock the church door with the key of inconsistency and keep the lost from coming to Christ. Don’t hinder revival by your unbelief and prayerlessness. Don’t cheat yourself out of spiritual victory by allowing sin to imprison you.” 

Then he added: “The supply of heaven is adequate for the demands of our spiritually starved world. Will we offer that supply to the hungry masses?” 

Who among the “hungry masses” do you know today?

NEW AND NOTABLE: The Denison Forum Podcast has launched! We’re excited to bring you this new, long-form weekly podcast featuring Dr. Mark Turman and me, as well as guests in the future. Throughout this month, you’ll be treated to an inside look at my forthcoming book, The Coming Tsunami. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Also, know that The Daily Article Podcast will continue as a daily podcast narration of this Daily Article email. The Denison Forum Podcast is a new offering from us that goes in-depth on today’s most pressing issues.

Denison Forum

You know the year has gotten off to a strange start when you read the headline: “Residents of East Texas town report fish falling from sky.” It seems this happened during a storm last Wednesday in Texarkana, a city on the northeast border of Texas and Arkansas. 

Experts say fish can rain from the sky when waterspouts pick them up from lakes and ponds and then drop them back to the ground. However, meteorologists can find no evidence of waterspouts in the area last Wednesday or of fish landing near bodies of water. One meteorologist said, “We’re kind of confused as to how it happened as well, to be honest.” The good news is that no injuries due to falling fish have been reported. 

The same cannot be said of another natural phenomenon: the “biggest Mid-Atlantic snowstorm in years” placed twenty-nine million people under winter alerts yesterday. Thousands of flights have been canceled or delayed as a result. 

Omicron continues to escalate as well. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has tested positive; CNN reports that “the omicron wave is ravaging local communities” with overwhelmed hospitals, staffing shortages, and business closings. Even progress comes at a cost: BlackBerry software will be switched off today, ending an era in mobile technology. 

People of faith are obviously not immune to the challenges of our day: a stray bullet killed a pastor’s wife as she attended a Bible study in an Alabama church. A suspect has been arrested and charged in her death. 

Annie Dillard was right: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Given the unpredictability of the future and the fragility of life, what is the best way to manage our days this year? 

“There’s no such thing as time management” 

Let’s begin with an answer that reframes the question. Writing for Christianity Today, award-winning author Jen Pollock Michel notes that “there’s no such thing as time management.” She explains: “The minutes are not ours to multiply. We receive them as a gift. What we can do, however, is cultivate the ability to inhabit those minutes with attention, or undiluted unfragmented presence.” 

David would agree, as his prayer demonstrates: “My times are in your hand” (Psalm 31:15). Times translates the Hebrew for “occasion, opportunity, season.” He states that they are in God’s hand, his provision and providence. Not they were or they will be, but they are, right now. 

Of course, our secular culture disagrees. As David noted, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses” (Psalm 20:7a). What are our “chariots” and “horses” today? 

Many put their trust in medical science, or technological advances, or political leaders and parties, or our capitalistic economy, or our superpower military status, or their own abilities and resources. But if 2021 taught us anything, it should have been that these “chariots” and “horses” are not enough. 

I am deeply grateful for medical science, but the mortality rate is still 100 percent. I am thankful for technological advances, but they can be used for pornography, sex trafficking, and a myriad of other sins. I am grateful for those who serve in political office, but even the greatest leaders cannot solve the innate problem of sin that plagues the human condition. 

I’m glad to live in the American economic system, but its inequities continue to widen and worsen. I’m deeply thankful for our military and their service, but they cannot protect us from ourselves. I’m grateful to God for my abilities and resources such as they are, but “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), myself included. 

What to do when you lack wisdom 

David knew his chariots and horses were not enough. That’s why he continued, “But we trust in the name of the Lᴏʀᴅ our God” (Psalm 20:7b). Today, I’m encouraging you to do the same. 

We should begin every day and repeat all through the day the prayer, My times are in your hands. Then we should partner with God in redeeming our times for his greatest glory and our greatest good. “My utmost for his highest,” as Oswald Chambers famously noted, should be our motto and our mantra. 

Scripture consistently calls us to pray throughout every day for the needs of every day: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (James 1:5). We are encouraged: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7). 

Then, as we work, God works. As we do our utmost for his highest, we experience his power, peace, and purpose in our lives and days. And each day leads us to that day when we hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:23). 

Courage I will never forget 

The best way to prepare for the hard times sure to come is to place our lives in God’s hand today and each day as each day comes. We’ll close with proof of this fact in an experience I will never forget. 

Dr. Gary Cook is the longtime president and now chancellor of Dallas Baptist University and one of my best friends in the world. For many years, I admired his steadfast faith and faithfulness as he led the university from near bankruptcy to a place of great success, significance, and flourishing. But I saw Gary’s faith on display several years ago in a way that would mark me for the rest of my life. 

He had not been feeling well, so he went to the doctor. They ran tests and became alarmed. Gary called me, I called my wife, and we met him and his wife at the hospital. We were sitting together when the doctors came in with the results: he had acute myelogenous leukemia, the disease that took Dallas Cowboys Coach Tom Landry’s life some years earlier. 

Gary would not be going home—he would be checking into the hospital that day to begin chemotherapy that night in a fight to save his life. 

After the doctor left the room, Gary turned to us and said, “Well, my times are in his hand.” As long as I live, I will not forget the courage, peace, and serenity I saw on his face and in his soul. He had made this decision a long time before. Now, in the moment of crisis, it sustained him and continued to do so through his weeks of treatment. It still does today. 

Our culture thinks our times are in our hands. Wise people place their times in God’s hands. 

How wise will you be today?

Denison Forum

Betty White’s television career spanned seven decades. The 2014 edition of Guinness World Records certified hers as the longest career ever for a female entertainer. The winner of multiple Emmy Awards, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1988 and was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1995. When she hosted Saturday Night Live in May 2010, the show enjoyed its highest ratings in a year and a half. 

In preparation for her one hundredth birthday on January 17, People magazine featured her on its cover last week with the headline, “Betty White Turns 100!” Then, as you know, the famed actress died Friday morning at the age of ninety-nine. Some blamed the magazine for jinxing Ms. White. One person disagreed, tweeting, “I think Betty White would enjoy having made one last epic joke.” 

Of course, Christians know that life and what comes next are no joke: “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). But there is something in us that doesn’t want to admit that it’s true for us. We understand in our conscious minds that death is real and that the mortality rate is 100 percent. We know that Jesus could return tomorrow, or we could go to him today. 

But as you read these words, do they feel real to you? Are you living in the same certainty that you could die today as that the sun will set tonight? If not, why not? And why does the question matter so powerfully as we begin this “new year” together? 

Why is today “January the third”? 

For what reason is this a “new year”? The trees and birds don’t know the difference. The sun rose on January 1 just as it did the day before. Why do we call today “January the third”? Why do we call it anything at all? 

There are practical reasons for assigning numbers and names to days, of course. Imagine planning for the future without such a practice, from making airline reservations to setting deadlines for school and work. But there’s a larger, deeper force at work here. 

Naming things began in the garden of Eden: “Out of the ground the Lᴏʀᴅ God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name” (Genesis 2:19). 

God had earlier told humans: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28). Part of having “dominion” over something is naming it. Thus parents name their children and children name their pets. 

Why Davy Crockett named his rifle 

There is a useful function here, of course: parents can call their children away from a busy street more easily if they use the name their child recognizes as uniquely theirs. Astronomers name stars and planets so they can study them with greater precision. Botanists do the same with plants, as do entomologists with insects. 

But there is an underlying psychological and very human force at work here as well. We want to name the stars above us whether we are astronomers or not. We want to know the names of plants and animals even if we are not botanists or veterinarians. 

Psychologists say we name people and things to infer power over them. Brand experts call this “taming,” bringing the object closer to ourselves and forming emotional bonds with it. We give names to machines to feel that they work for us, such as Davy Crockett’s naming his rifle “Old Betsy.” And we name things we cannot control in nature to nonetheless feel some power over them, such as Hurricane Katrina and the “Wolf Moon” coming on January 17. 

In this sense, we named the “year” that began Saturday “2022” to identify it for contracts, to date events, and so on, but also to “tame” it, to give ourselves a sense of control over the future it represents. 

Welcome to the year 5782 

The Jewish people do not do this. The Hebrew names for the days translate simply to “First Day,” “Second Day,” and so on. The seventh day is Shabbat, the Sabbath, which translates the Hebrew for “rest” or “cease work.” It is the only day that receives its own nonnumerical name since it is the day when God “rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done” (Genesis 2:2). As a result, their days remind them of God’s creation of each day. 

Hebrew months were originally numbered beginning with the month in which the Exodus occurred. Thus, any month reminded them of the Exodus: “six months since the month of the Exodus,” and so on. Names were added only after the people returned from the Babylonian exile and wanted to continue using names to which they had become accustomed. 

Jewish years are calculated from the creation of the world in common tradition; 2022 is 5782 in their calculation. But this did not begin until the twelfth century when the Jewish philosopher Maimonides established the timeframe for the traditional date of Creation. 

As a result, every day reminds the Jewish people of its relation to their Sabbath; every month reminds them of their Exodus from slavery into the Promised Land by divine grace; every year testifies to their creation and the providential design of God. They name the year not to control it but to honor and serve the God who makes each day and controls our future. 

A promise to learn and claim 

We’ll continue this discussion tomorrow. For today, let’s choose to be Jewish about 2022. Let’s begin a year filled with uncertainties and fears not by naming and “taming” our future but by submitting our lives and moments each day to our Creator and King. 

To this end, I invite you to claim and even memorize with me this promise as a theme for all that lies ahead: “This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lᴏʀᴅ never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:21–23). 

Why do you need the steadfast love, unending mercy, and great faithfulness of Jesus today? 

Denison Forum

There’s a “candy cane crisis” in America. Logistical issues caused by the pandemic and weakness in peppermint crops are causing shortages in the industry.

In other news, a COVID-19 outbreak forced Saturday Night Live to air without an audience. The show sent home most of its cast and crew, airing mostly pre-taped sketches. The NFL postponed three games over the weekend.

And these stories are just the beginning of what is coming.

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas 2020”

Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN yesterday that the omicron variant is “going to take over” the country. He predicted that “it is going to be a tough few weeks to months as we get deeper into the winter.”

Coronavirus cases are already skyrocketing across the country. In New York City, for example, cases escalated from 8,266 on Monday to 21,908 on Friday, more than any other single day of the pandemic. The New York Times reports that the nation’s coronavirus testing capacity is facing “enormous new pressure” with long lines, overworked laboratories, and at-home diagnostics “flying off pharmacy shelves.”

With coronavirus hospitalizations increasing 20 percent nationally over the last two weeks, doctors and nurses are “living in a constant crisis,” as one medical director stated. Forbes reports that as COVID-19 restrictions are hitting the retail sector, “it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas 2020.” Offices are closing and holiday parties are being canceled. Countries across Europe are imposing new travel restrictions and curfews. Harvard is going remote again, as are other schools across the nation. President Biden will address the nation tomorrow to respond to the spread of the omicron variant.

It is especially hard to face this crisis in the days just before Christmas. However, Christmas offers the paradoxical hope we need most in these hard days.

A Christmas thought I had not considered

I read a message recently by Pope St. Leo the Great (AD 400–461) that made a point I had never considered before. He stated, “Unless the new man [Jesus], by being made in the likeness of sinful flesh [Romans 8:3], had taken on himself the nature of our first parents, unless he had stooped to be one in substance with his mother while sharing the Father’s substance and, being alone free from sin, united our nature to his, the whole human race would still be held captive under the dominion of Satan.”

He added: “The Conqueror’s victory would have profited us nothing if the battle had been fought outside our human condition.”

I knew that death was the debt we owed for our sins—the consequence of our sinful choices—since sin cuts us off from the God who is our only source of life and life eternal (Romans 6:23; John 14:6). And I knew that only a sinless person could pay the debt of our sins with his death; otherwise, his death would atone for his sins but not for ours (cf. Hebrews 4:15). Thus, I knew that Jesus came to earth to die for our sins (cf. 1 John 4:10) so we could be forgiven (1 John 1:9) and receive eternal life (John 3:16).

However, it had not occurred to me that Jesus would have to be human himself to pay this debt for humanity.

The love proven by Christmas

This is why the sacrifice of animals on the altar of the temple was not enough. Hebrews 10 states, “Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God” (vv. 11–12).

No other species could pay this debt because no other species owed it. Humans alone of all God’s creation are made in his image and likeness (Genesis 1:26) with the capacity to choose whether to obey or disobey his word (cf. Joshua 24:15). As a result, we are the only species that “sins.”

The only way the debt humanity owes for our sin could be paid was if a human paid it. This explains Christmas: the decision by God to become man, to enter fully into the human condition, to face every temptation we face yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15), to be forsaken by his Father on the cross (Matthew 27:46) so we could be forgiven by his grace (Ephesians 2:8–9; Hebrews 2:14–15).

The necessity of Jesus’ humanity also adds even greater significance to his Father’s decision to create the human race. God knew before he made the first man and woman that they would sin against him and that their sins would separate them from himself. The Father therefore knew before he created humans that his Son would one day have to become one of them to die for them.

This explains why the Bible calls Jesus “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8 NIV). And it is why the love proven by Christmas is the hope we need today.

“Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part”

I was taught in counseling classes not to tell someone “I know how you feel.” That’s because, even if my circumstances have been identical to theirs, I cannot understand their personal feelings as they face them.

But Jesus can.

Because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus experienced hunger (Matthew 4:2), thirst (John 19:28), weariness (John 4:6), grief (Mark 3:5), temptation (Matthew 4:1–10), rejection (John 15:18), and death (Mark 15:37).

He has faced all we face and felt all we feel. In addition, because he knows our inmost thoughts (cf. Luke 6:8) and we are in his hand right now (John 10:28), Jesus truly knows how we feel at this very moment.

So, let me encourage you to go to the Christ of Christmas with your secret sins and private guilt. Trust him with your inmost fears, grief, and pain. Tell him what you can tell no one else and trust him for the help and hope only he can give.

Because God is love, he loves you where you are, as you are. And because Jesus became one of us, we can be one with him.

Philip Yancey observed, “Grace, like water, flows to the lowest part.”

Where do you need the grace of Christmas today?

Denison Forum

The twelve remaining members of a group of seventeen North American missionaries kidnapped in Haiti two months ago were released yesterday. Five of the hostages had been let go earlier.

In other news, a man in Western Kentucky played the gospel hymn “There’s Something about That Name” on a piano amid the wreckage of his home caused by last weekend’s tornadoes. He did not know that his sister was capturing the video, which has now gone viral.

We can use such good news amidst the hard news of the day:

• Five children were killed and another four critically injured in Australia after they fell thirty-two feet from a bouncy castle lifted into the air by wind.
• A Florida-bound jet crashed in the Dominican Republic on Wednesday, killing all nine people aboard.
• Two days ago, hurricane-force thunderstorm gusts impacted at least eighty million people from the Rockies to the Great Lakes.
• A powerful typhoon forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people in the Philippines yesterday.
• Hundreds of millions of enterprise and consumer devices are at risk from state-sponsored malware hackers.
• The US is facing a “double coronavirus surge” as omicron advances amid the ongoing delta pandemic. Understandably, according to a new survey, most Americans say they are “worn out” by COVID-19.

Why did Jesus do it this way?

Hard news always seems harder when it comes during the Christmas season. However, paradoxically, difficult times are precisely why Christmas happened the way it did.

We know that Jesus came at Christmas because “God loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10) so we could receive forgiveness (1 John 1:9) and eternal life (John 3:16) as the children of God (John 1:12).

So, Jesus came to earth to die for us. But why did he have to die the way he did?

Crucifixion is the most horrific, brutal form of tortured execution ever devised. Why did Jesus not die by hemlock like Socrates or a lethal injection such as is common today? “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5), which shows that you will never face greater physical pain than Jesus bore for you. He died on a cross in solidarity with your suffering and mine.

But why did Jesus not go directly to the cross? Why his three years of public ministry?

Our Lord spent this time “teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people” (Matthew 5:23). Because he healed the sick and raised the dead, we can know that he is our Great Physician today.

But why did Jesus not come to earth at the age of thirty to launch this ministry? Why come as a baby who grew as a child into a man (cf. Luke 2:52)?

“In every respect [he] has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Because Jesus experienced the full gamut of humanity, he faced every temptation we face and can empower us to achieve victory whenever we are tempted today (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:12).

But why did Jesus come, not just as a baby, but as an infant born to a peasant teenage girl in a cow stall outside an inn in an out-of-the way village?

In The Hungering Dark, Frederick Buechner wrote: “Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of man. If holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there too.”

“It’s more challenging to serve him when times are bad”

Christmas proves that the creator and ruler of the universe (Colossians 1:16) is aptly called “Immanuel,” a name which means “God with us” (Matthew 1:23). If you need forgiveness, you can go to your crucified Savior. If you need healing, you can go to your Great Physician. If you are facing temptation, you can go to your sinless High Priest. If your circumstances are difficult, you can go to the manger-born Child of Christmas.

However, an unbelieving world doesn’t know what we know. For them to turn to Jesus for the grace they need, they must see his grace at work in us.

Rev. Wes Fowler is the pastor of First Baptist Church in Mayfield, Kentucky. After a tornado devastated their town last Friday night, the Associated Press reports that he and his church members immediately began the work of ministry, mobilizing to “provide whatever they can to help survivors cope with the disaster’s aftermath and stay afloat—gift cards, food, generators, water, a listening ear, and more.”

The congregation quickly formed three teams: one to help affected church members, a second to work on repairing the church campus, and a third to serve the broader community and coordinate offers of aid.

Pastor Fowler said, “It’s easy to serve the Lord when things are good. It’s more challenging to serve him when times are bad, and I think that’s really when people are looking to see if our faith is genuine, if our faith is true.”

Because of Christmas, we know that the Object of our faith is genuine and true. However, we must experience his reality if we would lead others to experience his reality. As Patty Hammond noted, “Your ministry will never be bigger than your vision of Jesus.”

How big is your vision of Jesus today?

Denison Forum

Elizabeth Elyce Fatoma’s middle name is a story worth knowing.

Her mother was driving herself to the hospital to deliver her but found she was going into labor in her car. Her 911 call was answered by dispatcher Elyce Rivera, who talked her through the delivery of a healthy baby girl. Fatoma then named her baby in honor of the operator. The two women met for the first time Tuesday on the Today show.

Carl Sandberg was right: “A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.”

“LA Schools Hold LGBT Club For 4-Year-Olds”

Children are a “heritage from the Lᴏʀᴅ” (Psalm 127:3) of whom Jesus said, “To such belongs the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14). I am grateful every day to be a father of two amazing sons and the grandfather of four perfect (at least in my opinion!) grandchildren.

That’s why these headlines grieve my heart today:

• “LA Schools Host LGBT Club for 4-Year-Olds“
• “School District of Philadelphia Allowing Students to Identify as ‘Non-Binary’ Without Parental Consent“
• “Billie Eilish Says She Started Watching Porn at Age 11: ‘It Really Destroyed My Brain‘”

We are living in a day when “tolerance” has been weaponized, and our children are its victims.

In The Intolerance of Tolerance, biblical scholar D. A. Carson identifies a “subtle” shift in the way our society defines tolerance. He writes: “This shift from ‘accepting the existence of different views’ to ‘acceptance of different views,’ from recognizing other people’s rights to have different beliefs or practices to accepting the differing views of other people, is subtle in form, but massive in substance.”

Sliding “from the old tolerance to the new”

Carson explains: “To accept that a different or opposing position exists and deserves the right to exist is one thing; to accept the position itself means that one is no longer opposing it. The new tolerance suggests that actually accepting another’s position means believing that position to be true, or at least as true as your own.”

With this result: “We move from allowing the free expression of contrary opinions to the acceptance of all opinions; we move from permitting the articulation of beliefs and claims with which we do not agree to asserting that all beliefs and claims are equally valid. Thus we slide from the old tolerance to the new.”

In the “old tolerance,” various religions were free to believe that their beliefs were uniquely true and to share them with others. In the “new tolerance,” no beliefs are more valid than others, and sharing them is imposing our views on others.

Carson notes that Voltaire exemplified the “old tolerance” with his famous maxim: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” I would add that the “new tolerance” illogically counters: “I consider what you say to be intolerant, so I will not tolerate your saying it.”

Percentage of self-identified Christians falls 12 points

I am addressing this theme today in light of a story from the Pew Research Center that is dominating headlines: “About Three-in-Ten US Adults Are Now Religiously Unaffiliated.” The subhead adds: “Self-identified Christians make up 63 percent of the US population in 2021, down from 75 percent a decade ago.”

The study also reports that fewer than half of US adults (45 percent) say they pray on a daily basis, down from 58 percent in 2007 and 55 percent in 2014. Roughly one-third of US adults (32 percent) now say they seldom or never pray, up from 18 percent in 2007.

This despite Harvard University research documenting that regular worship attendance corresponds to a 47 percent lower risk of divorce, 33 percent lower risk of mortality, and 29 percent lower risk of depression. Gallup is reporting that Americans’ mental health declined 9 percent from 2019 to 2020, with only one exception: those who attend religious services weekly, whose mental health improved 4 percent in that time. Another study showed that highly religious individuals and evangelicals in America suffered less distress last year than other groups.

Why would the tolerance of unbiblical morality and the intolerance of biblical morality be skyrocketing when the latter has such positive, proven outcomes? Why would more people than ever claim no religious affiliation when such affiliation brings such significant benefits?

“The surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”

The answer is both simple and profound: Our secular society has exchanged Christ for Christianity. It has traded a personal, transformational, very real experience with the very real Jesus for a religion about him.

The Bible calls us to “know” Jesus (John 17:3); the Greek word means to know personally through experience. Paul testified, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8), a personal encounter that changed his life and changed history as a result (cf. Acts 9:1–31).

However, rather than knowing Christ in a concrete but deeply intimate way, many think the Christian faith is about rules and regulations, clergy and church buildings, doctrines and traditions. Such a religion was always destined to falter, because Christianity without the living Christ is a car without fuel, a laptop computer without batteries, an airplane without wings. As a house built on sand, it will always fall in the storm (Matthew 7:24–27).

Here’s my point today: If you and I want our culture to value biblical morality, we must demonstrate personally the liberating power of biblical morality through a transforming, daily encounter with the person of Jesus. If we want more people to identify as Christians, we must exhibit the real and living Christ in us. If we want more Americans to pray, we must show them what happens when we connect personally and powerfully with Christ in prayer.

I recently found this hymn and invite you to join me in praying its words as our daily commitment:

Lord God and Maker of all things,
Creation is upheld by you.
While all must change and know decay,
You are unchanging, always new.

You are man’s solace and his shield,
His Rock on which to build.
You are the spirit’s tranquil home,
In you alone is hope fulfilled.

To God the Father and God the Son
And Holy Spirit render praise:
Blest Trinity, from age to age
The strength of all our living days.

Who or what is your “strength” today?

Denison Forum

Denzel Washington stars in The Tragedy of Macbeth, which opens widely on Christmas Day. In an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, this son of a Pentecostal minister said he asks himself this question: “What I do, what I make, what I made—all of that—is that going to help me on the last day of my life? It’s about, Who have you lifted up? Who have you made better?”

He explained: “This is spiritual warfare. So, I’m not looking at it from an earthly perspective. If you don’t have a spiritual anchor, you’ll be easily blown by the wind and you’ll be led to depression.”

He’s right on both counts.

9-year-old girl photographed before storm killed her

Last Friday night, nine-year-old Annistyn Rackley was sheltering in the bathtub with her two sisters as storms raged near their southeast Missouri home. She was photographed clutching her favorite doll just minutes before a tornado ripped her home to shreds and killed her.

Victims in Kentucky ranged from two months to eighty-six years old and came from at least eight counties. Among them were eight night-shift workers at a candle factory in Mayfield, a city of about ten thousand in western Kentucky. There were 110 employees inside the facility when a tornado closed in late Friday night. One of the survivors said, “I definitely had the fear that I wasn’t gonna make it. It’s a miracle any of us got out of there.”

In other news, omicron has now been reported in seventy-seven countries and is spreading at a faster rate than previous coronavirus variants. According to Washington Post figures, the US has surpassed fifty million coronavirus infections and is nearing eight hundred thousand fatalities at this writing.

As omicron spreads, the New York Times headlines: “Across the world, covid anxiety and depression take hold.” The article quotes a French epidemiologist who said, “We no longer know when we will get back to normal.”

Meanwhile, Oxford Economics reports that the “misery index,” an economic indicator used to measure the average person’s economic well-being, has grown to recession-like levels.

The anniversary of my father’s death

Are we being “blown by the wind” and “led to depression” today? If so, what does this say about our “spiritual anchor” or lack thereof?

One reason many struggle to make God their anchor in the storm is that they blame him for the storm. If he is all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful, why are tornadoes allowed to kill little girls clutching their dolls? Why are pandemics allowed to ravage the planet?

I have struggled with this question personally.

My father died on this day in 1979 at the age of fifty-five. He did nothing to cause the heart disease that took his life. Over the years since, I have known many people to experience what the factory survivor in Kentucky called a “miracle.”

Why did God not perform a miracle for my dad?

If he spared anyone in the storms last Friday night, why not Annistyn Rackley?

“The uncompromised mastery of YHWH”

In Creation and the Persistence of Evil, Jewish theologian Jon D. Levenson writes: “We can capture the essence of the idea of creation in the Hebrew Bible with the word ‘mastery.’ The creation narratives, whatever their length, form, or context, are best seen as dramatic visualizations of the uncompromised mastery of YHWH, God of Israel, over all else.”

And yet, as the psalmist complains, this God permits unspeakable tragedy to afflict his people: “You have cast off and rejected; you are full of wrath against your anointed. You have renounced the covenant with your servant; you have defiled his crown in the dust” (Psalm 89:38–39).

The biblical response is two-fold. With regard to the future, Levenson notes that the Hebrew Scriptures look forward to a day when “the Lord Gᴏᴅ will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from the earth” (Isaiah 25:8).

In the meantime, with regard to the present, we are to join God in the stewardship of his creation as we “work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Levinson writes: “The creative ordering of the world has become something that humanity can not only witness and celebrate, but something in which it can take part.”

Jail officer led inmates to safety before dying in tornado

I do not know all the reasons why God allows innocent suffering. But I do know one way he redeems tragedy: by calling us to join him in responding to it with courageous compassion. As Adam partnered with God to cultivate the garden before the Fall, so we are to work with him in repairing it after the Fall.

John asked, “If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” (1 John 3:17).

This Christmas season, may I ask you how you plan to serve your “brother in need”?

In my community, Unite DFW is inviting Christians and churches to help every school, staff member, student, and family in our area receive the support they need. (For more, I urge you to read Rebecca Walls’ informative and moving article on our website.) In your community, there are undoubtedly ways you and your congregation can make a practical difference in the lives of hurting children and families. If you do not know of such partnerships, why not do what you can to create one?

Robert Daniel, a veteran corrections officer at the county jail in Mayfield, Kentucky, led seven inmates to safety when warning sirens went off Friday night. He then went back to look for others who might need help. After the storm passed, his body was found under the shattered building. The workers he had ushered to safety survived.

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

What price will you pay to offer someone the “spiritual anchor” they need today?

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Is it true that Santa Claus’ red costume was created by the Coca-Cola Company for publicity?

Italian Bishop Antonio Stagliano reportedly made this comment during a recent religious festival at which he also said Santa does not exist. Now his diocese in Sicily is apologizing to outraged parents. Apparently, the bishop was trying to underline the true meaning of Christmas and the story of St. Nicholas, a Christian leader who gave gifts to the poor and was persecuted by a Roman emperor.

While I would never want to be on the wrong side of Santa Claus, I also appreciate the bishop’s desire to ground the hope of Christmas in truth and history. We clearly need such hope today.

Pastor and wife shot at vigil

The Kentucky governor stated yesterday afternoon that Friday night’s tornado outbreak killed at least seventy-four people in his state. With around eight hundred thousand deaths from the coronavirus pandemic in the US, the New York Times reports that one in one hundred older Americans have died from the virus.

Britain is battling an Omicron “tidal wave” as infections double every two or three days and the first death from the variant was recorded. And CNN reports that cities across the US are breaking all-time homicide records this year.

One example stands for the rest: a pastor and his wife were shot while attending a vigil in the Houston area being held by a mother for her son, who was killed at his home a couple of weeks ago. The drive-by shooting Sunday evening killed one person and injured at least thirteen others.

Napoleon Bonaparte observed, “Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.” Psychologists tell us that hope is essential to managing stress and anxiety as we cope with adversity.

In these difficult days, where can we turn to find the hope our hearts need most?

The 4 “comings” of Jesus

I was privileged to talk with Chris Brooks on his national radio show yesterday. We discussed the tornado outbreak and the recent high school shooting in Michigan that occurred not far from the church where he serves as pastor.

Chris made the profound point that God uses suffering to point us beyond this world to the next and to call us from our finitude to his omnipotence. I agreed and noted that “Advent” (from the Latin adventus, “coming”) is a season when the church has historically focused not just on Jesus’ first coming but on his Second Coming as well.

In fact, as I noted with Chris, there are four “comings” of Jesus in our world:

• The first was at Christmas when God “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).
• The second is when Christ comes into believers’ lives by his Spirit at salvation (Ephesians 1:13–14).
• The third is when, if his return to earth tarries, he comes for us at death to bring us with him to heaven (John 14:3).
• The fourth is when he comes back to this fallen planet (Acts 1:11) as our King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16).

If you are a Christian, you are living between Jesus’ second coming and his third or the fourth. Every day that passes is one day closer to that day when we go to him or he comes for us. In the meantime, it is vital that we share the compassionate grace of our suffering Savior wherever and whenever we can. Each day’s news proves again that “you do not know what tomorrow will bring” (James 4:14), which is why “now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).

Every day is God’s invitation to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), remembering with Mark Dever that “today is what the Lord has prepared you for.”

A daughter’s tribute to her fallen father

To prove that God can empower us to share his love in the most painful of circumstances, I’ll close with a tribute I will never forget.

My community has been grieving the death of Richard Houston II, a twenty-one-year veteran of the police department in Mesquite, a suburb of Dallas. He was fatally shot December 3 while responding to a domestic dispute.

Officer Houston received forty-eight letters of commendation during his career, two Life Saving Awards, and one police commendation bar. But his greatest achievement was the way he lived for Jesus. The married father of three “walked with God each day,” as Mesquite Assistant Police Chief Doug Yates stated at his funeral.

His eighteen-year-old daughter Shelby exemplified her father’s faith with a tribute I urge you to watch. At one point she stated:

“I remember having conversations with my dad about him losing friends and officers in the line of duty. I have heard all the stories you can think of, but I’ve always had such a hard time with how the suspect is dealt with. Not that I didn’t think there should be justice served, but my heart always ached for those who don’t know Jesus—their actions being a reflection of that.

“I was always told that I would feel differently if it happened to me. But as it’s happened to my own father, I think I still feel the same. There has been anger, sadness, grief, and confusion. And part of me wishes I could despise the man who did this to my father. But I can’t get any part of my heart to hate him.

“All that I can find is myself hoping and praying for this man to truly know Jesus. I thought this might change if the man continued to live. But when I heard the news that he was in stable condition, part of me was relieved. My prayer is that someday down the road, I’d get to spend some time with the man who shot my father, not to scream at him, not to yell at him, not to scold him. Simply to tell him about Jesus.”

The same Spirit who empowered Shelby to speak these miraculous words lives in you as well. Would you ask him to give you the compassion and the courage to share the hope of Jesus with someone today?

Denison Forum

There were at least fifty tornado reports during a horrific outbreak this weekend. More than eighty people are feared dead in Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee. Kentucky was hit especially hard: homes were demolished, businesses were leveled, and rescuers scrambled to find survivors. A massive Amazon warehouse in Illinois was also smashed by a tornado, killing at least six people.

Wes Fowler, pastor of First Baptist Church in Mayfield, Kentucky, walked through what remained of his church building Saturday morning and said: “What I’ve already told our church is we teach and preach it and now we have to live it—the campus and facility is not the church. It’s the people.”

He added, “I really think the Lord will somehow use this tragedy for good. I just don’t know how yet.”

“Why, O Lᴏʀᴅ, do you stand far away?”

Tragedy is a tragic fact of life. From horrific events such as the truck crash in Mexico that killed fifty-five migrants Thursday evening to the escalating loneliness epidemic that now affects 31 percent of Americans every day, it is normal and natural for us to ask with the psalmist, “Why, O Lᴏʀᴅ, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1).

But the fact is, God does not hide himself in times of trouble. He grieves as we grieve (cf. John 11:35) and walks with us through the “waters,” “rivers,” and “fire” of our broken world (Isaiah 43:2). Because “the Lᴏʀᴅ is near to the brokenhearted” (Psalm 34:18), you and I can claim the fact that “the Lᴏʀᴅ is near to all who call on him” (Psalm 145:18).

God proved his solidarity with suffering humanity when he entered the human race. Unique among the world’s religions is the Christmas miracle whereby “Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:6–7).

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis explained the incarnation this way: “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.”

Henri Nouwen experienced the miracle of such grace: “It is hard to believe that God would reveal his divine presence to us in the self-emptying, humble way of the man from Nazareth. So much in me seeks influence, power, success, and popularity. But the way of Jesus is the way of hiddenness, powerlessness, and littleness. It does not seem a very appealing way. Yet when I enter into true, deep communion with Jesus, I will find that it is this small way that leads to real peace and joy.”

“Let us now hold onto the Word”

Our greatest gift we can give suffering people is to invite them to share Nouwen’s experience by pointing them to the Christ of Christmas.

John the Baptist understood well the privilege and urgency of this calling. When invited to claim the status of Messiah for himself, he was adamant: “I am not the Christ” (John 1:20). Rather, he said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said” (v. 23).

In a sermon on John the Baptist’s ministry, St. Augustine noted: “John [was] a voice; the Lord, however, in the beginning was the Word (John 1:1). John a voice for a time, Christ the eternal Word from the beginning. Take away the word, and what is a voice? Where there is no meaning, it’s just an empty noise. A voice without the word knocks at the ear, it doesn’t build up the intellect. . . .

“So the sound, having conveyed the word to you, doesn’t the very sound seem to say, ‘It is necessary for him to grow, but for me to diminish’? The sound of the voice rang out to perform its service, and departed, as if saying, ‘This joy of mine is now complete’ (John 3:30, 29).

“Let us now hold onto the Word, let us not lose the Word conveyed in the very marrow of our minds.”

“Christianity or Christ?”

St. Augustine is right, of course: we must “hold onto the Word” personally if we are to convey him to others.

This fact was made clear to me recently in an account of the Shantung Revival of the 1930s in China, one of the greatest movements of the Holy Spirit in the twentieth century. C. L. Culpepper’s stirring account of this remarkable awakening begins with the desperation of the people. Seventy churches had died; many others were dying.

The best-known evangelist in the region, on the point of despair, expressed his fear that more than a thousand church members “had been converted to Christianity, not to Christ.” In response, Christians began to call on God for a mighty movement of his Spirit, and the revival was the result.

If Satan cannot keep us from becoming Christians, he will do all he can to lead us to be committed to Christianity rather than to Christ. He knows that the key to the spiritual transformation we need so desperately is not a religion about Jesus but an intimate, transforming relationship with him.

Are you being tempted in this way? Would the Holy Spirit say you are committed to Christianity or to Christ?

“Our firm anchor still holds fast”

Our best Christmas gift for hurting people is helping them experience Christ. Who do you know who needs the Jesus you know? How will you give them what has been given to you?

What trials and tempests are you facing personally? Will you name them and bring them to the One who came at Christmas just for you?

The hymn writer offers us the hope our storm-tossed souls need:

In the world’s despair and turmoil
One firm anchor still holds fast,
God is on his throne eternal,
He alone the first and last.

Who or what is your anchor today?

Denison Forum

A World War II bomb exploded at a construction site in Munich on Wednesday, injuring four people, one of them seriously. According to the Associated Press, such bombs are still found frequently in Germany seventy-six years after the end of the war.

This is just one way events in the past can still profoundly affect the present.

Another is the discovery in the US Constitution of a right to abortion by seven members of the Supreme Court in 1973. Since that time, more than sixty-two million babies have been aborted in the US. Forty-one times more babies die from abortion each day than from all other causes combined.

In response to Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing that could determine the future of legalized abortion in the US, I have defended on biblical, scientific, and secular grounds my assertion that abortion takes a human life. Today, we’ll take up my second claim: that abortion should therefore be illegal.

I am writing today’s Daily Article for those who agree with my first assertion but question the second. If you are in their number or know someone who is, I hope what follows will persuade you to defend the cause of life with compassionate courage.

4 arguments separating life and legality

A few months ago, I was discussing the abortion issue on Equipped with Chris Brooks. Chris is a brilliant thinker and pastor and one of my favorite radio hosts. During our conversation, a listener called in to make the statement, “I disagree personally with abortion, but I also believe it should be the decision of the mother rather than the government.” Over the years, I have met many people who would agree. Let’s identify and respond to some of their arguments.

1: A woman should be free to make her own healthcare and reproductive decisions. “My body, my choice” is a mantra we often see on signs at pro-abortion rallies. However, the state does not allow women to make all their own healthcare choices—the decision to use illegal drugs is an example—since it has a compelling interest to protect them from physical harm.

In addition, those who agree that abortion takes a human life should logically agree that the government has a compelling interest to protect that life. This interest obviously extends to female babies (around 140 million women are believed to be “missing” around the world, the victims of gender-biased abortion). “My body, my choice” is a claim an aborted child is not permitted to make.

Chris responded to the caller by asking if she supported the mother’s right to end her newborn baby’s life. She assured him that she did not. He then asked what changes biologically with the baby when it moves from inside the mother’s womb to outside it. She agreed that nothing changes. Why, then, he asked, would you support her right to kill her baby before it is born but not afterward?

2: Men should not be making personal decisions for women. Some would say that as a male, I have no right to speak to this issue. I would offer three responses. First, seven male Supreme Court justices legalized abortion when they voted for Roe v. Wade. One of the current court’s strongest abortion supporters is a male (Justice Breyer). Second, abortion affects male babies who are aborted, the biological father, males in the extended family, and men in society at large. Third, to be consistent, we must then segregate all legal issues into strictly male or female categories regarding those affected, a highly implausible strategy.

3: The state should not legislate personal morality. For example, while most would agree that adultery is immoral, it is not therefore illegal. However, as I noted yesterday, all laws are in some sense a legislation of morality. And the right to life itself is “unalienable,” as our Declaration of Independence notes: a bedrock, fundamental human right. Should the state not then legislate its protection?

4: The Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade recognized abortion as a fundamental right of women. This assertion was repeated by an attorney arguing against the Mississippi abortion law before the court. As a Christian, I am commanded to “be subject to the governing authorities” (Romans 13:1). Thus, some claim that I should not seek to make abortion illegal even though I object to the practice personally, any more than I should seek to make Muslim worship illegal even though I disagree with Islamic theology.

However, the apostles refused to obey laws that conflicted with biblical morality and their missional commission (cf. Acts 5:29). Christians such as William Wilberforce led the fight to overturn legal slavery. Ministers such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led the fight to overturn legal segregation and racial discrimination. In his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Dr. King quoted St. Augustine: “An unjust law is no law at all.”

Two fascinating Washington Post articles

My articles this week have focused on the abortion issue from biblical and secular perspectives. Let’s close with two practical imperatives for believers.

1: Continue using our influence to engage the culture.

Jesus’ call for us to be “salt” and “light” is clear and unequivocal (Matthew 5:13–16). Neither functions unless it is applied where it is needed.

Is America advancing toward biblical morality or receding from it? Does our culture desperately need courageous, compassionate Christians who speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15)? Given the examples of Joseph, Mordecai, Nicodemus, William Wilberforce, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and many others, does God call his people into political leadership, legal and judicial service, and other places of enormous cultural influence?

If them, why not you?

2: Find ways to serve those in need and trust God to use your influence for good.

I was gratified to read in the Washington Post that evangelicals in Texas are creating a “maternity ranch” and finding other life-affirming ways to help pregnant women. I was also deeply impressed to read in the Washington Post about the racially inclusive congregation of Bethlehem Apostolic Temple in Wheeling, West Virginia.

Its pastor, Rev. Darrell Cummings, notes: “We’re not a Black church or a white church. We’re just a church.” The article adds that the church “floods social services into the community.” Rev. Cummings explains: “We’re just showing love.”

The Washington Post is a highly influential but highly “progressive” platform. If evangelical Christians can catch its eye by serving those in need, God can use your influence in cultural ways that might surprise you.

“The source of national purpose”

John F. Kennedy stated: “I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, human liberty as the source of national action, the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas.”

Let’s speak the truth in love to all four, to the glory of God.

Denison Forum

Around 385,000 babies are born each day worldwide. On November 14, Analia Acevedo Castañeda was one of them. She was, however, the only one I know of to be born on an airplane.

Her mother went into premature labor an hour into their flight heading home to North Carolina from Mexico. A nurse on board helped her for more than three hours until the plane landed at the Atlanta International Airport. First responders then found the mother lying on the floor in the back of the plane and decided to deliver the baby there. When she was born, one of the flight attendants took the microphone to announce, “We have a baby girl.”

If the mother had chosen abortion, her “baby girl” would have become a “fetus” and her life would have ended in a legally protected act. If, however, her mother had been murdered and the unborn child had died, that child would have been recognized as a legal victim as well.

Whether the “baby girl” was murdered with her mother, her mother aborted her, or her mother gave birth to her, nothing whatsoever about Analia herself would have changed.

Herein lies the tragic contradiction inherent in Roe v. Wade and the abortion license it grants.

What happened at the Supreme Court

As you know, the US Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday regarding a Mississippi law that bans abortion after fifteen weeks. According to CNN, the court “seemed poised” to uphold the law, “but it is less clear if there is a clear majority to end the right to abortion nationwide.”

After the hearing, Fox News’ Bill Mears suggested the court would support Mississippi’s ban and remove the “viability” standard from Roe (see more on this below) as the constitutional standard. This would mean “Roe would neither be struck down in its entirety or upheld in its entirety.”

The New York Times reports that the justices will cast tentative votes at a private conference in the coming days. If there is a majority, the senior justice in that majority will write the majority opinion or assign it to a colleague. Draft opinions will be prepared and exchanged. A final decision is not expected until late June or early July, when major rulings tend to arrive.

Pro-life supporters should be praying for the justices in these crucial days of personal and private deliberations (1 Timothy 2:1–2), asking God to guide their minds and, where necessary, change their views and hearts (cf. Proverbs 16:9).

In the meantime, how can we persuade others that preborn life is sacred and should be safeguarded?

Six secular arguments

My position on abortion can be stated in two phrases: Abortion takes a human life and therefore abortion should be illegal. Yesterday, we discussed biblical and scientific evidence for the first phrase. Today, we’ll consider other relevant secular arguments; tomorrow, we’ll focus on the logical imperative of the second phrase.

1: The stare decisis (“to stand by things decided”) argument is that Roe is settled law and thus should be allowed to stand. This was the reasoning of three conservative justices who voted to uphold Roe in 1992. However, the Supreme Court has overturned previous decisions 230 times over its history, including the horrific Dred Scott decision that protected slavery.

2: The viability argument is that the unborn child should be protected by law once it could survive outside the womb but can be aborted prior to this point. This was the reasoning in the court’s 1992 Planned Parenthood vs. Casey ruling that kept the core of Roe but changed its trimesters approach to a “viability” standard. However, as Russell Moore and Ross Douthat convincingly demonstrate, this standard also applies to small children, those with significant developmental challenges, the elderly infirm, those battling severe disease, and so on. It is a slippery slope to devaluing all life based on its utility to those who do the valuing.

3: The imposing morality argument claims that the state should not legislate ethical standards on this issue, leaving the decision to the mother. But every law is an imposition of morality, from speed limits to seatbelt laws to prohibitions against murder. If a mother is to be free of all such “impositions,” should said freedom extend to infanticide? Where are such lines to be drawn?

4: The “no unwanted children” argument claims that a woman who does not want to bear a child will be an inappropriate or ineffective mother if the child is born. The mother is more closely involved with the fetus than any other individual and is the best person to determine whether or not this child is wanted and will receive proper care. However, it is hard to argue seriously that an unwanted child would rather be aborted than given life. This approach would also apply to infanticide and all forms of euthanasia. And it overlooks the positive and life-giving alternative of adoption.

5: The rape and incest argument claims that pregnancies resulting from these despicable crimes should be subject to legal abortion for the sake of the mother. However, just 1 percent of women obtain an abortion because they became pregnant through rape; less than 0.5 percent do so because of incest. Seventy-four percent of abortions are chosen because “having a baby would dramatically change my life”; 73 percent are chosen because the mother “can’t afford a baby now.”

6: The health of the mother argument claims that since the mother is clearly a person under the Constitution, her physical life, emotional health, and quality of life should take precedence. However, the medical risks posted by abortion should be considered as well as the guilt and long-term mental anguish reported by many who abort their children. Legalized abortion also subjects women to pressure from others to end their pregnancies. While pro-life advocates uniformly agree that pregnancy can be morally terminated to save the life of the mother, only 4 percent of abortions relate to her physical health problems.

“Our mouths wide open at his love”

Legalized abortion is a tragic symptom of the foundational spiritual disease of our culture. The fact that we are even having this debate and that I needed to outline the arguments above shows how far our culture has moved from biblical truth.

According to the word of God, every human is created in our Creator’s image and likeness (Genesis 1:27). Each of us can say with the prophet, “The Lᴏʀᴅ called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name” (Isaiah 49:1). Our Lord loved us “while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8) and rejoices over us “with gladness” today (Zephaniah 3:17). He has a unique and providential purpose for each of us from the moment of our conception (cf. Jeremiah 1:5).

If we viewed life as he does, rather than debating the status of preborn children, we would be celebrating the miracle of their lives and ours with them.

Brennan Manning was right: “We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that he should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at his love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.”

When last were you “bewildered” by your Father’s love for you?

How will you share that love with someone today?

Denison Forum

Ariana Grande made her Broadway debut at the age of fifteen, starred on Nickelodeon’s Victorious two years later, and has released six studio albums, five of which peaked at #1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. She is also the newest judge on NBC’s hit show, The Voice.

Now she is in the news for a different reason. During a recent appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, she revealed that she has had a “weird” manifestation gift her entire life.

In case “manifestation” is an unfamiliar concept for you, I’ll let Oprah Winfrey explain: “You control a lot by your thoughts, and we control a lot by our joined thoughts . . . by what I [and we] believe. When I started to figure that out for myself, I became careful of what I think and what I ask for. I was like what else can I do? What else can I manifest, because I have seen it work. I have seen it happen over and over again.”

Four victims were Milwaukee Dancing Grannies

On this Thanksgiving eve, it can be hard to be grateful in a fallen world filled with tragedy and suffering.

For example, we now know that four of the five people killed in the Waukesha Christmas parade attack on Sunday were part of a group of older women called the Milwaukee Dancing Grannies. The attack is just one example of a growing trend of vehicles used as weapons for mass killing.

In other news, Washington, DC, has recorded its two-hundredth homicide of the year, a mark not seen since 2003. Dozens of San Francisco area stores and pharmacies have been hit by mobs of smash-and-grab looters. And a bus carrying North Macedonian tourists crashed in flames in Bulgaria before daybreak yesterday, killing at least forty-five people, including twelve children.

In a world that feels more chaotic than ever, strategies to gain personal control will always be popular, “manifesting” among them.

“You have God potential and power”

This concept was the focus of the 2006 bestselling book, The Secret. It claims: “You are the master of your life, and the Universe is answering your every command.” This is because “you are God in a physical body. You are Spirit in the flesh. You are Eternal Life expressing itself as You.

“You are a cosmic being. You are all power. You are all wisdom. You are all intelligence. You are perfection. You are magnificence. You are the creator, and you are creating the creation of You on this planet. . . . You have God potential and power to create your world.”

The author adds: “We are the creators not only of our own destiny but also of the Universe. . . . Your life will be what you create it as, and no one will stand in judgment of it, now or ever. You are the master of the Universe. You are the heir to the kingdom. You are the perfection of Life.”

As a result, “You can have, be, or do anything you want.” Here’s how: “Decide what you want to be, do, and have, think the thoughts of it, emit the frequency, and your vision will become your life.” This is because “all good things are your birthright! You are the creator of you.”

Is this biblical? The author claims: “Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Jesus were not only prosperity teachers, but also millionaires themselves, with more affluent lifestyles than many present-day millionaires could conceive of.” You can join them, or so the book says.

“Shut up I’m manifesting”

Now this promise has been made into a process that is exploding in popularity.

Vox reports that “a new generation is discovering its central thesis” on social media: “On TikTok, teenagers share stories about how ‘scripting,’ or repeatedly writing down a wish,” is working for them. Vloggers on YouTube are leading tutorials on “how to properly manifest your dream future.” Instagram and Twitter are being used to “manifest” as well.

During one five-month period last year, Google searches for “manifesting” skyrocketed 669 percent; “shut up I’m manifesting” was one of the defining memes of the year. The article explains that “manifesting” was especially attractive during the pandemic quarantine, giving people “a way to accomplish something we have control over in a time when we’re mostly powerless to effect any real change.”

It adds, “There is also a lower barrier to entry than almost any other activity: All you need are your dreams and to think about how nice it would be if they all came true.”

Why “manifesting” doesn’t work

According to German academic and NYU psychology professor Gabriele Oettingen, the advice espoused in books like The Secret is demonstrably false. She states: “The more positively people dream about the future, the better they feel at the moment. People relax and their blood pressure goes down. But you need the energy to implement your wishes, and over time, they actually get more depressed, partly because they’re putting in less effort and have less success.”

Substantiating her concern, the Vox article points to “decades of scientific research and dozens of studies proving that, often, positive thinking actually makes us more complacent and therefore less likely to muster the effort to achieve our goals.”

Of course, the larger issue with The Secret and the “manifesting” phenomenon it has sparked is theological. Satan’s central lie from Eden to today is the same: “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). But there can be only one God in your life. There is room for only one occupant on the throne of your mind and heart. If you choose yourself, you substitute your fallen mind for divine omniscience, your finite capacities for divine omnipotence, and your sinful attitudes and actions for the sanctifying and empowering Holy Spirit.

If you resign from your throne today and enthrone Jesus as your authoritative King (Matthew 28:18), surrendering your life and day to his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) and asking him to guide and use your life for his glory and our good (Proverbs 3:5–6), you will have great cause for thanksgiving this day and every day.

You can attempt to “manifest” your desires for your purposes, or you can ask Jesus to manifest himself and his perfect will in your life and influence (Romans 12:1–2). But you cannot do both.

“Only one sermon to preach”

Vance Havner testified, “If I had only one sermon to preach, it would be on the Lordship of Christ. When we get right on that point, we are right all down the line. God honors the exaltation of his Son.”

Keith Green was right: “Making Jesus Lord of our life is not something passive. It’s not a state of being, it’s a state of doing.” Watchman Nee added: “A day must come in our lives, as definite as the day of our conversion, when we give up all right to ourselves and submit to the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ.”

Has that day come for you yet?

Denison Forum

You’ve probably heard Black Friday horror stories, like when Wal-Mart employee Jdimytai Damour was trampled and killed in 2008 by crazed shoppers, or when, more commonly, shoppers break out into fights.  

While these horrific stories are fairly rare—and with the rise in online shopping such accidents will hopefully decrease—such Black Friday dashes show an ugly underbelly to American consumerism. 

You may think that “battleground” is hyperbolic or overdramatic. Before you judge the title too harshly, listen to the apostle Paul’s statement on spiritual warfare: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

Satan, who is the “accuser,” the “slanderer,” actively strategizes against us. It seems that Satan would leverage subtle methods to undermine our walk with Christ whenever he can.

That poses the question, what battlegrounds exist in America? 

While some are obvious, and we write on them at Denison Forum frequently, some are perhaps a bit more subtle. 

The subversive element of Jesus’ teaching is that we don’t wrestle with “flesh and blood” (i.e., people themselves) as Paul says. We are called to love and not to fight them, to turn the other cheek. But that doesn’t mean we don’t battle against the powers of spiritual darkness. 

Interestingly, the Greek word for “authorities” or “powers” in Ephesians 6:12 has the root word ousia, which means wealth. 

Consumerism presents a battleground where it appears that Satan continues to gain ground on Christians. Perhaps consumerism gains ground because it is so widespread. Let’s unfold some of Satan’s schemes and common temptations that plague our consumerist culture. 

Consumerism as a battlefield 

Consumerism is “a social and economic order that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.”

The attitude of consumerism refers more to the idea that consumer goods and material possessions lead to happiness. Our culture of consumerism seems particularly driven by instant gratification. The lockdown during the pandemic meant a rise in e-shopping and online sales. While online sales were already overtaking malls and brick-and-mortar stores, COVID quickened America’s spending habits to rely on online shopping. Though convenient, and something I use frequently, online shopping helps feed consumerism. 

I recently heard a phrase that was incredibly helpful: “Lifestyle creep.” The more money we make, the more we tend to spend to match what we picture our lifestyle “should be” given that salary. Many never grow out of the adolescent desire to pose with more expensive name brands that don’t accurately reflect one’s level of wealth. 

All of this deepens an itch for more wealth or more things. When we catch the itch and try to scratch it, we find that the itch persists.

Both natural social pressures and advertisements push us artificially into needs that don’t truly exist or into wants that lead us astray. That social pressure comes from our friends. And that’s a great question to ask in self-reflection: Are your friends influencing you toward lifestyle creep?

Is money your master? 

The sin comes not in buying things, nor in wealth. Rather, it bursts through the door when material possessions or money become the chief thing we glorify, or the chief thing that we long for—when it becomes our master. 

This is why, although getting money is never deemed a sin in the Bible, Jesus teaches, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24 emphasis mine). 

This is one of the hardest sayings from Jesus. We can make masters out of family, friends, children, politics, social status, sex, alcohol, food, clothing, intellectual pursuits, fame, money, or anything else that isn’t the one true Lord. Whatever we make our master becomes an idol, and our worship of it becomes sin. 

If the supply chain problems persist, inflation continues to rise, and some planned purchases are out of reach, what will your response be? 

Even though most (though not all) Americans can live comfortable and secure lives, it seems that the worry around money is only increasing. Even as our wealth increases, Americans are incredibly anxious about money. 

Money was the number one cause of stress for Americans in 2021, higher than personal relationships or work. According to Gallup, America is in the top ten most stressed countries, yet America’s GDP per capita is thirteenth in the world. 

Wealth cannot satisfy us. 

I say all of that to say that each of us tends to put some things over the other. Satan exploits those as best he can, but Jesus redeems them with his ultimate power. 

When I look across our culture, one of the weak spots Satan uses is in that pursuit of more. That dangerous desire looks not to reasonable goals, wise stewardship, or healthy money management, but always to more. 

In that way, consumerism consumes us. 

How Black Friday works

Though everyone knows these facts mentally, it’s still easy to be fooled.

Companies make money from Black Friday deals—they’re not doing it for charity. Ask yourself: When shopping for a particular Black Friday deal, did you stop to buy extra things? At the end of the day, are you actually saving money? 

The truth is that Black Friday sales will come around next year, and often better deals for the same products will roll around soon after Christmas. Here are a few psychological tricks Black Friday uses according to CNBC: 

• Buying things at a deal is satisfying. 
• We have a fear of missing out on “limited time offers” (though they’re usually not limited).
• Shopping momentum makes us buy multiple unrelated items.
• Shopping can be an escape from the stress of Thanksgiving.

I was recently at a conference where the speaker referred to both financial “savers” and “spenders” for couples. Most couples are a mix of saver and spender. The ones who are both spenders the speaker jokingly called “broke,” and the couples who were both “savers” he called “boring.” 

I’m not advocating for being boring. I’m advocating for sober-mindedness and holding money lightly. Have fun with your purchases, but don’t let consumerism play your heartstrings.

Just remember that a sober-minded perspective will rarely come easily. That mindset is constantly opposed by social pressure and targeted advertising. Consumerism falls under Paul’s idea about the human tradition of empty deceit and philosophy. (Colossians 2:8). 

Like many struggles in life, the solution to overcoming consumerism will vary from person to person. The best general answer to these questions are “good judgment,” or “wisdom.” 

That being said, there are a few pointers from God’s word, as well as a freebie from my experience. 

How to stand firm 

First, become more content in Christ. 

David writes in the psalms, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” (Psalm 42:1–2). 

Second, actively stay aware and awake to the temptation.

While we “cast all our anxieties” on Jesus, we also must “be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:7–8). 

Third, buy what you’d already intended to buy.

I’ll share a practical tip that helps me. Only use Black Friday deals if you were planning on buying the thing in the first place. For instance, in researching for this, I ran across the fact that Apple Watches will go on sale. In the past, I’ve personally decided against buying one. (I’ll stick to my hardy ten-dollar CASIO watch.) 

Yet I have to admit, seeing the deal almost sucked me in.

Interestingly, it seems that both penny-pinching and egregious spending are cut from the same cloth: the worship of money. 

Act with an open hand around money, be generous, and be sober-minded around a season that can hijack our hearts to consume. Stand firm against worldly powers and philosophies, living in peace with the circumstances Christ has given us. 

And of course, remember to be thankful. 

Denison Forum

As we begin Thanksgiving week, this story seems appropriate: a Harvard Medical School professor has identified gratitude as vital to happiness.

Sanjiv Chopra has studied those who win the lottery, concluding that at the end of the year, they’re back to their “baseline” happiness and “some are less happy.” He explains that hedonic adaptation causes us to grow accustomed to what we win or otherwise possess, so it becomes familiar and loses its ability to make us happy.

What, then, makes us happiest? Finding a purpose in life that leads to flourishing, giving to others, and expressing gratitude. Chopra cites research showing that “if you express gratitude on a regular basis, you’ll be happy, you’ll be more creative, you’ll be more fulfilled—you might even live ten years longer.” In fact, research shows that you can increase your happiness 25 percent by the regular practice of expressing gratitude.

Such thanksgiving need not be religious, according to the Washington Post. The act of “saying grace” over a meal or otherwise feeling grateful brings benefits on its own, we’re told.

But there’s a flaw in this reasoning that we need to remedy in order to experience the true power of gratitude today.

A grandmother’s accidental invitation

President Biden pardoned two turkeys on Friday, continuing a long-standing presidential tradition. As the New York Times noted, Peanut Butter and Jelly will be “boosted, not basted,” living out their natural lives at Purdue University.

If these turkeys could express thanksgiving for their pardons, should they be generically grateful? Or shouldn’t they be grateful to those who spared them from someone’s dinner table?

Wanda Dench sent a text inviting her grandson for Thanksgiving dinner. However, he had changed his phone number and the text went to a student named Jamal Hinton instead. He notified her of the mistake, but she ended up inviting him anyway. Six years later, the two are continuing the tradition.

Should Jamal be generically grateful for Wanda’s generosity? Or shouldn’t he express his thanks to and for her?

As our society continues its post-Christian slide into secularism, holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas have become secularized as well. One can go the entire Christmas season without seeing a mention of Christ’s birth in secular culture; Thanksgiving has become far less about gratitude to God and far more about football and feasting.

Thus we should not be surprised when even gratitude becomes generically secularized. But we should not overlook the illogic of this trajectory nor the power of thanksgiving when it is properly directed.

The source of your next breath

“Thanksgiving” is obviously the combination of “giving” and “thanks.” A gift requires a recipient; otherwise, it remains unopened. Thus, by definition, thanksgiving should be given to someone. It is less a feeling than an action prompted by another action we have received.

The holiday we call Thanksgiving is not just intentional but vertical. We are told by Scripture to “give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). As a result, Thanksgiving reminds us that we are creatures of a Creator, finite and fallen beings whose very lives are not fully our own (cf. Genesis 3:16–19).

From a Baltimore woman who was murdered inside her church, to a former NFL player who died of ALS at the age of fifty-seven, to a pregnant woman and her unborn child who were gunned down after she left her baby shower, to the mounting death toll from fentanyl, to the rising death toll from COVID-19 (2021 US pandemic deaths have now passed 2020 fatalities), every day reminds us of our mortality. John F. Kennedy was assassinated on this day in 1963; on the same day, famed apologist C. S. Lewis died.

Every day we live is a day for which we should give thanks to the God of life (John 10:10).

Your next breath comes from his providential provision. Your capacities were given by his creative grace. Did I earn the right to be born in America rather than North Korea? To have loving parents who encouraged me rather than brutal parents who abused me?

Think back over the key moments that have most shaped your life. How many of them were the sole product of your autonomous achievement? How many were opportunities provided by God and others in grace?

How “life becomes rich”

True thanksgiving not only positions us appropriately as creatures rather than the Creator—it also empowers our relationship with our Creator. We “enter his gates with thanksgiving” (Psalm 100:4). Gratitude for his grace positions us in worship and prayer to experience his presence and love. The more time we spend in thanksgiving to our Father, the more his Spirit can transform us into his best for our lives and cultural impact.

So, let’s eschew the generic gratitude that pervades our secular culture during the Thanksgiving season. Let’s spend time each day giving thanks to God intentionally and sincerely for specific gifts he has given to us. Let’s see each moment as his provision, each day as his gift. And let’s enter his gates with thanksgiving that we might experience his empowering presence.

If we do, we will learn the truth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s observation, “It is only with gratitude that life becomes rich!”

How rich will you be today?

Denison Forum

A ten-point buck sought shelter inside a southern Michigan church on Monday, the opening day of the state’s firearm deer hunting season. A video shows the animal wandering around the church auditorium, at one point climbing stairs to a balcony. It eventually leapt through a window and back out into the wild.

Unfortunately, not everyone is finding the same sanctuary inside churches these days. 

A Barna Group survey released Tuesday reports that 38 percent of US pastors have considered quitting full-time ministry in the past year. This percentage is up nine points since Barna asked church leaders the same question at the beginning of 2021. 

A Barna official explains: “All the chaos, all the pressure, the magnifying glass of social media, the pandemic, the politics, the hyperdigital context, it makes sense that you have a lot of pastors saying, ‘Is this really what I signed up for? Is this what I was called into?’” 

Pastors are not alone in needing help these days. Federal researchers reported yesterday that more than one hundred thousand Americans died of drug overdoses in the twelve-month period ending in April, up almost 30 percent from the prior year. Overdose deaths have doubled since 2015 and now surpass the toll of car crashes and guns combined. 

We live in the most advanced technological age in history. We have more wealth and means than previous generations could have imagined. What, then, explains the anxiety epidemic of our age? 

Why Ben Carson is an advocate for life 

Dr. Ben Carson was the keynote speaker for the Twentieth Annual Celebrating Life Luncheon in Dallas yesterday. The event was sponsored by the Council for Life, one of the most effective organizations supporting life I have ever known. I am honored to serve on their Advisory Board and to encourage their mission and ministry. 

The previous evening, the Council held a dinner for board members and invited guests. Matthew West provided worship music for the evening and for yesterday’s luncheon. I was privileged to interview them both as part of the program. 

As you may know, Dr. Carson was an award-winning pediatric neurosurgeon, named by CNN and Time magazine as one of America’s twenty foremost physicians and scientists and selected by the Library of Congress as one of eighty-nine “Living Legends” on its two-hundredth anniversary. He then became a candidate for president of the United States before serving as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He founded and leads the American Cornerstone Institute in promoting and preserving individual and religious liberty and serving all our citizens. 

During our conversation, I asked Dr. Carson how he had come to be such an advocate for life. He explained that he grew up in a very liberal worldview, one that was furthered by his education at Yale, the University of Michigan, and Johns Hopkins. While he told us that he did not agree with abortion personally, he also believed that he had no right to force his belief on women. (This is the most common pro-choice explanation I have heard over the years.) 

However, he came to understand that abortion, which treats an unborn child as less than fully human, is very similar to slavery, which treats a person of a different race as less than fully human. Then he asked himself: “What if abolitionists had taken the same position on slavery that I am taking on abortion? What if they had said, ‘I don’t believe in slavery personally, but I don’t want to force my beliefs on slaveholders?’ Where would I be today?” 

Dr. Carson told our group that this reasoning led him to advocate passionately for all life, beginning at conception.  

Our perennial temptation 

Reflecting on his remarkable observation, I realized that the temptation to make others a means to our ends is endemic to fallen human nature and, therefore, every dimension of human experience. Like our first parents in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:5), you and I face this temptation every moment of every day. 

For example, God intends sexual relations to be the celebration of covenant love between a husband and a wife, while the so-called sexual revolution objectifies others as a means to our sexual pleasure. Our Creator makes each human in his image as a person of sacred worth, while pornography, prostitution, and sex trafficking make them objects of lust and greed. 

If murderers valued their victims as God does, what would be the impact on our homicide epidemic? If liars, thieves, and other criminals did the same, what would be the result? 

Slave traders and owners justified their horrific sin by viewing Africans as inferior to white people. White supremacists similarly denigrate Jews and ethnic minorities today. Over decades of pastoral experience, I have often met church members who objectify their pastor and staff ministers as their employees, measuring their value by their utility rather than their intrinsic worth as God’s children and servants. 

Three prayers that would change the world 

The way forward is found in Jesus’ Great Commandments (Mark 12:29–31), where we are taught to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. On this basis, you and I should pray three prayers every day: 

One: “God, help me to love you fully in response to your unconditional love for me.” 

The more we remember our Father’s sacrificial, passionate, absolute love for us, the more we will want to love him in the same way. 

Two: “God, help me love myself as you love me.” 

The more we remember what Jesus did to restore our relationship with our Father, the more we will find our self-worth, not in our possessions, popularity, or performance but in his never-ending, never-changing love for us. 

Three: “God, help me love my neighbor as you love me.” 

The more we experience God’s transforming love, the more we will be empowered and motivated to share it with every person we can. And the more we will love them as we are loved. 

Imagine the difference it would make in the world if Christians were known for loving others as God loves us. 

Now imagine the difference for the next person you meet. 

Denison Forum

Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church, a megachurch in Washington, DC, held their first-ever “Gas on God” event last Saturday morning, giving 250 drivers $20 each to help pay for gas. The church’s executive pastor explained that “our desire has always been to meet the needs of the community” and hoped the commuters they helped “felt God’s love for them in a tangible way.”

That’s a church I would like to join.

There’s more good news in the news:

• The California School for the Deaf in Riverside, California, has made the New York Times due to their undefeated season as the highest-ranked team in their division.
• Sesame Street debuted Ji-Young, the show’s first Asian-American puppet.
• Chicago billionaire Ty Warner, who manufactures Beanie Babies in China, has responded to supply chain problems by booking more than 150 cargo planes to airlift the toys more than six thousand miles to Chicago for Christmas sales.
• A Jewish community is being rebuilt in Poland nearly eighty years after the Holocaust.
• And an emotional support duck ran the recent NYC Marathon in custom webbed sneakers.

Each story illustrates the same theme: news outlets know that people are grateful when we make public our personal values and victories. With one major exception.

Three seasons in my neighborhood

Walking in my neighborhood early yesterday morning, it seems like we are living in three seasons simultaneously. American flags left over from Veterans Day are still dotting some front lawns. Thanksgiving decorations and pumpkins are much in evidence. And more houses every day are displaying Christmas lights. Not to mention the signs and banners proclaiming allegiances to various high schools and colleges.

Why do we do this? Those inside these houses cannot see what they are displaying outside them. Unlike political posters that are persuasional by design, I cannot imagine that those who put out such holiday displays are trying to make those who pass by more patriotic, thankful, or supportive of Christmas.

One explanation is that there is something in us that wants to make public what matters to us personally. And our culture affirms this practice.

Even though there are more Americans with no religious affiliation than ever before, I am not aware of an effort to ban Christmas decorations lest we offend the irreligious among us. Even though some claim that the Pilgrims did far more harm than good to the Native Americans they encountered, I have not seen a national strategy to cancel Thanksgiving. Some proponents of the 1619 Project view America as endemically racist and flawed from its inception, but no one I know fears offending them by displaying American flags on Veterans Day.

However, if evangelical Christians seek to share their faith in public, a rising tide of opposition brands us as intolerant, discriminatory, and even dangerous.

A very troubling report

It is conventional wisdom today that all truth is personal and subjective. As a result, sharing Christ in public is viewed as the imposition of our beliefs on others. I have no right to tell you that you should like classical music, any more than you have the right to impose your love for ballet on me.

This view of truth extends especially to the claim that non-Christians need to trust Christ to escape hell for heaven (Acts 4:12). Such a claim is increasingly seen as intolerant in the extreme, a view that is affecting and infecting Christians as well as the larger secular culture.

For example, a very troubling Barna report recently showed that 47 percent of practicing Christian Millennials say it is wrong to share our personal beliefs with someone of a different faith in hopes that they will one day share the same faith.

As we move closer to Thanksgiving and Christmas—once religious holidays that are now broadly and deeply secularized—how should Christians respond in ways that draw people closer to Christ?

Balancing boldness with discernment

During his first missionary journey, Paul was stoned in Lystra and left for dead (Acts 14:19), but he revived and “rose up and entered the city” to continue preaching (v. 20). When he faced opposition in Corinth, he nonetheless remained in the city for eighteen months, “teaching the word of God among them” (Acts 18:5–11).

Conversely, when city leaders in Philippi asked the apostle to leave, he complied (Acts 16:39–40). And when crowds erupted against him in Thessalonica, he escaped the city by night (Acts 17:1–10).

Here’s the principle: balance boldness with discernment.

We are to “speak the word of God with boldness” (Acts 4:31) and courage (1 Corinthians 16:13). At the same time, we are to seek God’s leading as to where we go and what we say, knowing that his Spirit will give us the discernment to know when we are in Corinth and when we are in Thessalonica.

We must not be presumptuous, jumping from the temple and expecting angels to catch us (Matthew 4:5–7). But neither are we to shrink from the calling and privilege of sharing the only news that can save souls and change hearts (2 Corinthians 5:17).

If we will seek God’s leading at the start of each day and then through the day, he will guide us, empower us, and use us to speak his truth and model his grace.

When earth is “a part of heaven”

If we truly love Jesus, we will love everyone he loves enough to pay any price to help them love our Lord. We will seek the Spirit’s discernment in showing that love in its most effective ways to those we influence, but we will also testify with Paul, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).

The key factor to remember is that eternity is in the balance here. Every person you meet today will live forever in God’s presence in heaven or separated from him in hell. No price we pay to help them find salvation in our Savior is too high.

In The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis noted: “Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in hell; and earth, if put second to heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of heaven itself.”

Which will be true for you today?

Denison Forum

Russia made news over the weekend when they launched a missile into space and blew up one of their now-defunct Soviet-era satellites. The debris from the downed satellite is expected to remain floating in space for at least the next few years, complicating missions for astronauts at the International Space Station and anyone else who journeys beyond Earth’s atmosphere. 

As General James Dickenson, leader of the U.S. Space Command, described it, “Space activities underpin our way of life, and this kind of behavior is simply irresponsible.” He then added, “Russia is developing and deploying capabilities to actively deny access to and use of space by the United States and its allies and partners . . . . Russia continues to pursue counter space weapon systems that undermine strategic stability and pose a threat to all nations.”

Irresponsible seems like the operative word in that assessment.

You see, we can’t fully know what motivated Russia to launch that missile but, even if we could, it wouldn’t change the practical consequences of their decision. The debris would still be there, and every other country with aspirations of working in space will now have to deal with that new reality. 

The same is often true in our lives. 

Consequences beyond ourselves

It’s been said that we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions. Most of the time, that statement seems to be made in an effort to encourage people to have more grace for the mistakes of others and to try to see things from their perspective. And that’s a valid application. 

It’s also true, however, that it should help us remember that our intentions don’t change the consequences others must face when we make a mistake. It should motivate us to be a bit more introspective and a bit more aware of the fact that every choice we make has consequences beyond ourselves, and we need to be mindful of those consequences when deciding how to act in a given situation. 

As Christians, we are called to “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3—4). 

That “selfish ambition” is not always the result of simply not caring about the needs of others. More often, it comes from an ignorance of the needs of others and how our actions will impact them.

So as you go through your day, ask God to help you be aware of how your decisions will affect those around you. Be intentional about considering the needs of others when assessing how you will act in a given situation. 

While I doubt any of us are planning to launch a missile into space anytime soon, the way that you approach your family at home, the coworker next to you, or the person driving next to you can still have practical implications that extend well beyond whatever your intentions might be. 

Denison Forum