The second summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un begins later today. The two are scheduled to meet Wednesday night in a one-on-one session (with translators) before moving to a private “social dinner” and more meetings tomorrow.

We can look for the negative as the summit unfolds. NPR reports, “While talks may hold off the immediate threat of a military conflict, they also give North Korea time to continue to develop its arsenal.”

Or we could look for the positive. One example: the two leaders are meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam. I remember when news coverage from Vietnam showed bloody images of American soldiers fighting and dying in its jungles. We could not have imagined then that the US and Vietnam would be diplomatic and economic partners today.

“God can help you, he really can.”

I told the story yesterday of Craig Coley’s thirty-nine years in prison for crimes he did not commit. Rather than focus on the negative, Coley told New York Times reporters that he often talks to people about the power of perseverance: “People that are down and out or having a hard time, my message to them is don’t give up, tell the truth about everything because the truth will always come back and support you.”

He adds: “Lies never do. And God can help you, he really can.”

We can focus on the horrendous crimes Vatican Cardinal George Pell has been found guilty of committing. But we can also be grateful for the courage of clergy abuse victims who have told their story, intensifying the spotlight on such sins today.

We should be horrified by reports of sex trafficking that have surfaced in the wake of Robert Kraft’s arrest. But we can also support International Justice Mission and other organizations working to end sex trafficking and other forms of slavery.

We should be appalled by YouTube videos that offer children instructions on how to commit suicide. But we can be grateful for Christian Parenting and other ministries that help parents raise godly children.

In short, we can decide that the world is only getting worse. But, as the Wall Street Journal reports, in significant ways it is getting much better.

“She is not dead but sleeping”

Unfortunately, many in our secular culture consider faith to be neither a cause for the good nor a solution for the bad. Young Americans are especially less inclined to identify as religious or attend regular services. Studies consistently show that religion is declining in Western Europe and North America while growing everywhere else.

As our culture becomes increasingly secularized, more and more people agree with Karl Marx that religion is “the opium of the people” which must be abolished so that “the illusory happiness of the people” can be exchanged for “their real happiness” (his italics).

According to Marx, “Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man so long as he does not revolve around himself.” Of course, he learned how wrong he was the moment he died and faced the God whose existence he denied (Hebrews 9:27).

Marx was the prisoner of presuppositions that blinded him to realities he could not then see. He was not the first or the last.

In Exodus 5, Moses and Aaron said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go’” (v. 1).

But the Egyptian ruler responded, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord” (v. 2). In Pharaoh’s view, what he had not experienced could not exist.

When Jesus told those mourning the death of Jairus’ daughter, “She is not dead but sleeping” (Luke 8:52), “they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead” (v. 53). Because they had not seen Jesus raise the dead, they assumed that he could not raise the dead.

Two ways to demonstrate the relevance of our faith

Before we can expect the pharaohs of our day to believe that our God is real and relevant, they must see that he is real and relevant for us. Consider two principles.

One: Do not judge your future by your past.

Exodus 6:23 tells us that Aaron, the future high priest, was married to the daughter of Amminadab. Ruth 4:18–19 tells us that Amminadab was descended from Perez. Genesis 38:29 tells us that Perez was the child of Tamar, who pretended to be a prostitute and became pregnant by her father-in-law.

Nothing that has happened in your past need determine what happens in your future. Only Jesus can forgive the past, empower the present, and redeem the future. When you seek and follow God’s “good and pleasing and perfect” will (Romans 12:2 NLT), others will be inspired to do the same.

Two: Give Monday to God.

Jesus becomes irrelevant to our lives when we separate him from our lives. A Sunday faith must be a Monday reality.

Oswald Chambers: “Abandon to God is of more value than personal holiness.” Here’s why: “When we are abandoned to God, He works through us all the time.” When he is King of every part of our lives, others will see that he is King of all of life.

According to C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, God desires for us “the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water.”

David echoed this joyous fact more simply: “This I know, that God is for me!” (Psalm 56:9).

Do you know that God is for you today?

Denison Forum

Craig Richard Coley was twenty-three years old when he moved to Simi Valley, California. A Vietnam veteran and the son of a retired Los Angeles police officer, he was newly married with no criminal record.

Coley managed several restaurants over the years. After a divorce, he dated for a time Rhonda Wicht, a twenty-four-year-old waitress who shared an apartment with her four-year-old son, Donald.

On November 11, 1978, Wicht and her son were killed in their beds. Coley, who had broken up with her, was arrested and charged with their murders. After two trials, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Both of his parents died while he was imprisoned.

Talking to an innocent man

Meanwhile, Michael Bender had started a career as a police officer. In 1989, he looked into the Coley case and was shocked by what he found. Coley’s alibi seemed strong; there were viable suspects who were never pursued; and hair and fingerprint evidence was not analyzed properly and then went missing.

Two years later, Bender met Coley in prison and knew he was talking to an innocent man. “In dealing with a lot of bad guys over the years, there are mannerisms and body language you come to know. He didn’t have that,” Bender explained.

In 1991, his superiors ordered him to stop pursuing Coley’s case or face termination, so he quit his job and became a theft investigator. In 2003, he moved his family to Carlsbad, California, where he continued to pursue the case in his spare time.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Christian receives $21 million after 39 years in prison →

In a surprise, Green Book won last night’s Academy Award for Best Picture. Rami Malek and Olivia Colman won for Best Actor and Best Actress in a Leading Role; Mahershala Ali and Regina King won for Best Actor and Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

For everyone who won an Oscar, last night’s ceremony was a pinnacle moment that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

For the rest of us, however, the transience of awards like last night’s Oscars is noteworthy. Who won last year for Best Actor? Best Actress? Best Picture? Who won the year before that?

We’ve already had the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Critics’ Choice Awards, and the Grammys. Do you remember who won what? We could ask the same question about past winners of the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Stanley Cup, and so on.

There’s a reason our culture pays so much attention to short-lived successes.

“Wealthy, successful and miserable”

Richard Rorty was one of America’s most influential thinkers. The longtime Princeton and Stanford professor was a leading voice for the relativism that has captured our culture. He claimed: “There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.” He added that “truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.”

If we reject the supernatural, the only prism by which to see the world is the natural. And the natural cannot see beyond itself. Like rose-colored glasses that turn everything rose-colored, we assume that all we see is all that exists.

Continue reading Denison Forum – What the Oscars teach us about significance →

A new study has compared America’s fifty states using forty-three indicators of immorality. The data set ranges from violent crimes to excessive drinking to gambling disorders.

Unsurprisingly, Nevada ranks first, primarily because of “greed” and “lust.” Florida comes in second because of “jealousy,” “lust,” and “vanity.” The rest of the top (or bottom) ten in order: California, Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, and Arizona. The least sinful states in order are Vermont, Maine, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Idaho.

Sin may be measured collectively, but it is committed personally. And it never stays secret.

A Minnesota man was eating a hot dog at a hockey game last month. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and tossed the remains in the trash. Authorities then used DNA on the napkin to tie him to an unsolved murder from 1993.

In similar news, DNA from a genealogical database has led authorities to arrest a Colorado man for the murder of an eleven-year-old girl in 1973. Last fall, DNA evidence led to an arrest in a 1997 murder.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in the Jussie Smollett case say they have the $3,500 check used by the actor to pay two brothers to stage his assault last month. Smollett was arrested yesterday for allegedly filing a false report about the January 29 incident. After paying a $10,000 bond, he was released and is due back in court on March 14.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson alleged yesterday that the brothers’ motive for helping Smollett was money. “There was never a thought in their mind that we would be able to track them down,” he added.

Scripture warns us: “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23).

Why temptation is so tempting today

There’s something about temptation that causes us to think this warning doesn’t really apply to us. We will get away with it. No one will know, no one will be hurt, no consequences will follow. Or so we think.

Here’s why the temptation to yield to temptation is especially tempting in our culture.

Our post-Christian, relativistic society has jettisoned the concept of absolute truth and morality. In such a worldview, “sin” is a subjective idea rather than an objective reality.

What the Bible calls a “baby” (as when Elizabeth’s “baby leaped in her womb,” Luke 1:41), Planned Parenthood calls a “product of conception.” What the Bible calls “men committing shameless acts with men” (Romans 1:27), our culture calls “marriage equality.”

As a result, sins are no longer objectively sinful. It’s easier for Satan to tempt us to sin if we don’t believe in sin.

“There is no such thing as the devil”

It’s also easier for Satan to tempt us to sin if we don’t believe in him. A Barna survey found that nearly 60 percent of American Christians believe the devil “is not a living being but is a symbol of evil.”

An article in Psychology Today was blunt: “There is no such thing as the devil, just as there is no such thing as fairies, imps, or goblins. The two largest religions in the world–Christianity and Islam–teach that there is a devil. And they are wrong. There is no evidence for such a thing. Not a shred. It is simply something that germinated from the unscientific, irrational minds of early humans.”

Of course, that’s just what the devil wants us to think.

(For more, please watch Does Satan exist?, the most recent YouTube video from our new series, “Biblical Insight to Tough Questions.”)

The two categories of sin

The first step in defeating temptation is to admit that sin exists and the tempter is real. The second is to understand his strategy.

In essence, there are two categories of sin.

The first includes those temptations you and I can defeat in our ability. For instance, I happen not to be susceptible to illegal drugs. (I’m not boasting–there are other temptations to which I am far less immune). You can name sins that are easy for you not to commit.

The second category includes those temptations you and I cannot defeat in our ability. When we face these attacks, we need to turn immediately to God for help, knowing that “he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey” (Mark 1:27).

Here’s the problem: Satan seeks to mask these temptations so that we think they belong to the first category. That way, we’ll try to resist them in our strength rather than turning to God for his help. Satan wants to draw us into spiritual quicksand a foot at a time until we are trapped.

The solution is for us to take all temptation immediately to God, asking for his strength to refuse. Here’s how: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

Submit and you can resist. Resist and you will win. Every time.

If you think you’re getting away with sin

Let’s close with two additional life principles.

One: Satan is playing the long game.

When we defeat him with God’s help, he will bring this temptation against us again later. He wants us to think we didn’t win the victory since we’re facing the same temptation.

After Jesus defeated him in the wilderness, the devil “departed from him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). He does the same with us. Every time we face temptation, even the same temptation, we must “submit” and “resist.”

Two: The time to repent is now.

If you think you’re getting away with sin, you’re not. The enemy might be waiting until you climb further up the ladder so that your fall will hurt even more people as you plummet down.

“Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19) is a present-tense imperative, an ongoing command for each of us.

Is it relevant for you today?

Denison Forum

Michael Gerson was President George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter and senior policy advisor and is now a nationally syndicated columnist with the Washington Post. It was my privilege to meet him and to work together at a recent Dallas Baptist University event.

He has been named one of the “25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America” and is one of the most popular and respected conservative voices in American culture.

He also suffers from clinical depression.

Gerson preached last Sunday at Washington National Cathedral. His sermon was adapted into a Washington Post article titled “I was hospitalized for depression. Faith helped me remember how to live.” It is one of the most moving and illuminating articles I have ever read.

If you have time, I encourage you to stop and read it before continuing with this Daily Article. If you do not, I hope you’ll read it as soon as you can.

“Despair can grow inside you like a tumor.”

Gerson describes his disease: “The brain experiences a chemical imbalance and wraps a narrative around it. So the lack of serotonin, in the mind’s alchemy, becomes something like, ‘Everybody hates me.’ Over time, despair can grow inside you like a tumor.”

There are times when the body is incapable of healing without medical intervention. God calls medical professionals just as he calls pastors and missionaries. Faith is a key part of the solution, but depression and other clinical conditions require clinical responses as well.

That’s why Gerson offers this crucial advice: “I’d urge anyone with undiagnosed depression to seek out professional help. There is no way to will yourself out of this disease, any more than to will yourself out of tuberculosis.”

However, as he adds, “Those who hold to the wild hope of a living God” find help and grace in him.

I found myself wondering, are there resources the God of Scripture offers that no other source can?

Help for the past

Much of the despair of life comes from guilt over the past.

We know that we need forgiveness from those we have hurt. However, we don’t even know all the people we have hurt.

Nor can we ask forgiveness from everyone we know we have hurt. Some are deceased. Others might be injured further by our attempt to make amends (as Step Nine of the Alcoholics Anonymous “Twelve Steps” program notes).

But God is different.

David prayed after his affair with Bathsheba, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:4). He did not mean that his adultery with Bathsheba and the death of her husband were not sins against them. He meant that his sin was ultimately against the holy God who made him and who rules the universe.

The good news is that this God can and will forgive every sin we confess (1 John 1:9). He then separates our sin from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12), buries it in the depths of the deepest sea (Micah 7:19), and will “remember [our] sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12).

No one else can make this promise.

Help for the present

Much of our discouragement comes from struggles in the present. We carry burdens too heavy to bear and face obstacles too high to climb.

But Jesus knows what you are feeling today. He was rejected by his hometown and mocked by his own family. He experienced overwhelming stress in the Garden of Gethsemane, horrific pain and torture after he was betrayed by his friends, and abandonment beyond anything we can understand (Matthew 27:46).

Now he is praying for us with empathy and passion (Romans 8:34) and assures us, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

No one else can make this promise.

Help for the future

Much of our despair comes from fears about the future. But God testifies, “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come” (Isaiah 46:10 NIV).

Our timeless Lord sees tomorrow better than we can see today and promises to lead us “in paths of righteousness” (Psalm 23:3).

No one else can make this promise.

“My name is Lazarus”

Let me repeat Michael Gerson’s statement: Depression is a medical condition requiring professional treatment. But for those suffering from depression–and for the rest of us on this fallen planet–there is help and hope in Jesus that we can find nowhere else.

In testifying to the transforming power of his conversion to Christ, Gerson quotes G. K. Chesterton’s poem, “The Convert”:

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

Gerson then cites “God’s promise”: “That even when strength fails, there is perseverance. And even when perseverance fails, there is hope. And even when hope fails, there is love. And love never fails.

“So how do we know this? How can anyone be so confident?

“Because we are Lazarus, and we live.”

Denison Forum

While walking on the Gulf Shore near Corpus Christi, Jim and Candy Duke found an unusual bottle. It contained a note explaining that the bottle had been released in 1962 by scientists studying the role of water currents on the movement of shrimp.

Here’s the good news: if the person finding the bottle completed and mailed the enclosed postcard, they would receive “a fifty cent reward.”

The current lab director offered to pay the Dukes as promised, though it would cost the agency fifty-five cents for a stamp and three dollars to print the check.

What was the most powerful computer in 1962?

I’ve been thinking about some of the changes to our culture since 1962.

Technological advances are an obvious example. In 1962, the most powerful computer in the world was the Ferranti Atlas. It filled a room, took six months to assemble, and was difficult to keep running for ten minutes at a time.

Technology has revolutionized our lives, but its advances are a double-edged sword: they have put mobile computing in our pockets but also fueled the plague of pornography and provided a platform for terrorist recruiting.

In 1962, the Civil Rights Act was still two years away. Governmental legislation soon advanced the biblical mandate to reject racism (cf. Galatians 3:28), but other legislation has overturned centuries of biblical morality regarding marriage, gender, and the sanctity of life.

The Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1962 celebrated groundbreaking discoveries “concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.” This work was foundational to genetic advances that are revolutionizing medicine today. However, these advances could also enable eugenic alterations that would redefine and threaten the future of our species.

In 1962, President Kennedy announced the goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was a landmark event in science, history, sociology, and philosophy. Global travel was making the world smaller for cultural exchange and educational advancement.

However, the academic rejection of absolute truth and objective morality was also gaining momentum. The “sexual revolution” was one manifestation of such relativism. As Mary Eberstadt has documented, this “massive experiment in chaos and confusion” has radically and negatively impacted our culture.

What problem is the root of our problems?

Many of the technological, legislative, medical, and academic achievements of the last fifty-seven years have clearly improved our lives. But have they improved our souls?

Are humans more moral as a species today? Would you say that the overall moral trajectory of our culture is positive or negative?

What is the problem at the root of our problems?

The answer is a reality our culture considers so outdated and Puritanical that we seldom discuss it. But ignoring something makes it no less real and can make its consequences even worse.

The Bible diagnoses our root issue: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The problem of sin cannot be solved by technology, legislation, medicine, or scholarship. We can regulate it through laws and meliorate some of its effects through education, medicine, and technology.

But we cannot change the underlying human condition: “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a). The consequences of our sin nature are spiritual, emotional, relational, and–eventually–eternal death.

Here’s the solution: “But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23b).

How can temporal work bear eternal fruit?

If healing bodies could save souls, the apostles with their miraculous healing ministries would have gone into health care (cf. Acts 3:1-10; 5:15-16; 20:9-10). If technology could save souls, Jesus would have used his divine omniscience to revolutionize carpentry and other industries (cf. Mark 6:3).

If scholarship could save souls, Saul of Tarsus would have continued with his remarkable academic career (Acts 22:3). If laws could save souls, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus would have sought political leadership through their roles in the Sanhedrin (Mark 15:43; John 3:1).

Let me be clear: God calls his people into medicine, technology, academics, and legislative service today. These are vital and valuable roles in our society. But they cannot save souls. Nor can the sentences I’m typing right now or the words I spoke in church last Sunday.

Only the Holy Spirit can convict of sin and save sinners (John 16:8). Only God has the miraculous power to make us a “new creation” so that “the old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

As a result, the most valuable way to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39) is to share Jesus with them. The greatest gift you can give is the good news of God’s saving grace and transforming love. You’re not forcing your beliefs on others–you are offering them the only antidote to the deadly poison of sin, the only chemotherapy that cures spiritual cancer, the only path that leads to eternal life.

If you and I see our vocations as opportunities to model and share Jesus’ transforming love, our temporal work will bear eternal fruit. But only then.

When will the moon be destroyed?

The largest “supermoon” of the year was visible last night. At 221,734 miles from earth, it is closer to us right now than it will be at any other time this year.

However, our relationship with our closest celestial companion is not permanent. According to one scientist, the earth and moon will be destroyed in about five billion years when the Sun swells enough to incinerate them both.

When (or if) that happens, eternity will only have begun.

Denison Forum

Gary Montez Martin went into his local Circle K convenience store to buy a few cigars last Friday. He did this almost every day. Store clerks said he seemed fine. Hours later, he learned he had been fired from his job and allegedly shot five co-workers to death.

We’re now learning more about his victims.

One was Josh Pinkard, who sent his wife this text: “I love you, I’ve been shot at work.” He did not survive, leaving his wife and three children. Vicente Juarez was a father of three and grandfather of eight. Russell Beyer had a daughter and a son and would have turned forty-eight this Thursday. Clayton Parks left his wife and a young son.

And Trevor Wehner was a student at Northern Illinois University who began as an intern that day. He was scheduled to graduate in May.

The company is determining if anything can be done in the future “to ensure this horrible incident is never repeated.”

“Pessimism is a mark of superior intellect”

Since the Parkland shooting on February 14, 2018, there have been nearly 350 mass shootings in the US–nearly one a day.

Whether the issue is crime and violence, disasters, or disease, when we look at the future through the prism of the present, it’s easy to abandon hope.

Socrates taught us that the key to knowledge is to “know thyself.” From then to now, Western civilization has focused on the individual. Our existentialist worldview limits our experience to ourselves. Jean-Paul Sartre claimed that “man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

As a result, we cannot believe in a future we cannot see in the present. That’s why Nietzsche could say, “Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.” Economist John Kenneth Galbraith: “We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.”

Cyrano de Bergerac claimed that “a pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.” Actually, the opposite is true: a pessimist is a man who decides the truth prematurely. As Robert Schuller noted, “Pessimism drops the curtain on tomorrow.”

“The famine was severe in the land”

I’ve been studying the biblical story of Joseph lately. In Genesis 43, we learn that “the famine was severe in the land” (v. 1). This was the seven-year famine Joseph predicted years earlier. To prepare for it, Pharaoh elevated him to second-in-charge of the nation.

Those suffering from the famine had no way to know that God was using this disaster for a larger redemptive purpose. They could not know that the famine would lead Joseph’s family to join him in Egypt, where they would be saved. They could not know that Joseph’s family would establish the nation from which the Messiah of the world would one day come.

All the world knew was that “the famine was severe in the land.”

To whom will the world “belong tomorrow”?

Much of what God is doing to redeem tragedy is not apparent at the time. Think of the forty years Moses spent in the desert before he led his people out of Egyptian slavery. Remember the forty years they spent in the wilderness until a new generation was ready to enter their Promised Land.

Think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as they were condemned to the fiery furnace. Or Daniel as he was thrown into the lions’ den. Or Peter in prison the night before he was to be executed by Herod. Or Paul in a Philippian jail. Or John exiled on Patmos.

None of them could know when and how their suffering would be redeemed by God’s providential omnipotence. When we’re in the darkness of night, we cannot see the brightness of day.

If “the world will belong tomorrow to those who brought it the greatest hope” (Teilhard de Chardin), how can we offer our culture a realistic path to hope for the future? How can we find such hope for our souls?

One: Expect God to do what is best.

Frederick Buechner once met an Episcopal laywoman who had a ministry of faith healing. Here was the essence of her message: “You had to expect. You had to believe. . . . It was faith that unbound the hands of Jesus so that through your prayers his power could flow and miracles could happen, healing could happen, because where faith was, healing always was too, she said, and there was no power on earth that could prevent it.

“Inside us all, she said, there was a voice of doubt and disbelief which sought to drown out our prayers even as we were praying them, but we were to pray down that voice for all we were worth because it was simply the product in us of old hurts, griefs, failures, of all that the world had done to try to destroy our faith.”

Is that voice speaking to you this morning?

Two: Trust that the present will be used for a redemptive future.

Oswald Chambers: “At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God’s hand until we learn to hear Him.”

Chambers also notes that “God does not give us overcoming life; He gives us life as we overcome” (his italics). He adds: “If we will do the overcoming, we shall find we are inspired of God because He gives life immediately.”

What do you need to overcome today?

Three: Offer someone hope for the future in the present.

Henri Nouwen: “The fragmentation of humanity and its agony grow from the false supposition that all human beings have to fight for their right to be appreciated and loved.” This “false supposition” seems to make the news daily.

If you and I offer someone the appreciation and love of God’s inclusive grace, how much hope will we infuse into their soul? And ours?

Denison Forum

News broke yesterday afternoon that President Trump will sign a border security compromise package that averts another government shutdown. However, this package does not include all the funds Mr. Trump has requested for continued construction of a barrier along our southern border.

ABC News reports that the president plans to announce today his intention to spend about $8 billion on the border wall with a mix of spending from congressional allocations, executive action, and an emergency declaration.

As a nonpartisan ministry, my purpose is not to offer a personal opinion on the political issues involved here. Nor is it to focus on the border wall itself, a subject I addressed recently.

Rather, my goal today is to consider the divisive response to these developments.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders: “The president is once again delivering on his promise to build the wall, protect the border, and secure our great country.”

Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer responded: “Declaring a national emergency would be a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency and a desperate attempt to distract from the fact that President Trump broke his core promise to have Mexico pay for his wall.”

Being Baptist and working for IBM

There are clearly significant debates dividing Americans today. Many of us are fundamentally opposed on foundational issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia.

Continue reading Denison Forum – President to announce $8 billion for border wall →

If you’re planning to get married today in Las Vegas, you can apply for your marriage license here, then pick it up at the baggage claim area at the airport. Alternately, if you or your travel partner is named “Valentine,” you can get free air travel to Iceland today.

A “Smooches from Pooches” kissing boooth is waiting for you at Asheville Regional Airport in North Carolina. Master violinist Patrick Contreras will serenade you at Fresno Yosemite International Airport in California. If you forgot to get a Valentine’s Day card for your loved one, you might head to Chicago Midway Airport, where they’re distributing free cards today.

“Love others like God loves them.”

As Janet Denison noted in her blog, the history and legends surrounding Valentine’s Day remind us that today is “a perfect holiday to allow God to use you as a witness to his perfect love. Love God with everything in you. Love others like God loves them. Let people know you are a Christian this Valentine’s Day by sharing God’s perfect love with them.”

God’s word repeatedly calls us to love as we are loved:

• “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34; cf. John 15:12).
• “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8).
• “Love one another with brotherly affection” (Romans 12:10).
• “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly” (1 Peter 4:8).

Continue reading Denison Forum – How to get a marriage license at baggage claim →

The good news: A newborn baby was pulled from a storm drain in South Africa on Monday. Emergency responders heard a baby crying from deep inside the concrete structure. After working four hours to dig up the area and chisel into the drain, they were able to rescue the baby.

The bad news: according to the Associated Press, paramedics say “it is unclear why the baby was ‘dumped’ and . . . police are investigating.”

The good news: Smithsonian Magazine reports that “Southern California will soon see another booming superbloom.” If rains continue, the desert landscape will come alive with blossoming wild poppies, verbena, lilies, primroses, prickly pear, and dozens of other species of ephemeral native spring wildflowers. Rare species that only bloom every few years or decades may appear.

The bad news: the “superbloom” will result from recent, massive wildfires that created the heat and smoke necessary for the flowers to germinate.

The good news: tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, a wonderful day of celebration with those we love.

The bad news: tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, a difficult day of grief for those who have lost someone they love.

A day I’ll never forget

This week, we’ve been discussing the painful issue of innocent suffering. From clergy abuse scandals to natural disasters and diseases, such suffering makes the news every day. Judging by the response of our readers, this is an issue that resonates deeply with us all.

On Monday, we prayed for victims of clergy sexual abuse. Yesterday, we focused on ways God can redeem our suffering as we trust him in hard places.

Today, I’d like us to consider one of the most significant yet overlooked ways our Lord helps those who hurt.

When my father died ten days before Christmas during my senior year of college, a friend from school drove across town the next day and spent the day with me. He didn’t offer advice or theological wisdom. He was just there. I’ll never forget his presence.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Why was a newborn baby in a storm drain? →

Stories about innocent suffering make the news daily.

Five watercolor paintings attributed to Adolf Hitler failed to sell at auction last weekend, reminding us that the Nazi dictator was a failed artist before inciting the deaths of six million Jews and twelve million other victims in World War II.

Nearly one hundred children have died in Africa from the second-deadliest outbreak of Ebola in history. More than eight hundred people have reported symptoms.

And the appalling report about clergy sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention continues to make news today.

Tragically, no organization is immune to such abuse. The Roman Catholic Church continues to respond to reports of clergy abuse over the last several years. Sexual abuse scandals have rocked the Presbyterian Church USA, the Boy Scouts, gymnastics, swimming, hockey, college football, and political leaders as well.

A study found that nearly five hundred schoolteachers were arrested in 2015 on sexual abuse charges. Shockingly, about 10 percent of children in eighth through eleventh grades were found to have been subjected to some form of sexual abuse by an adult at school (most often a teacher or coach).

Where is God when such tragedies occur?

“Why have you forgotten me?”

Job 9 poignantly describes the pain innocent victims feel when God seems to fail them.

Job pictures the omnipotence of the One “who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea . . . who does great things beyond searching out, and marvelous things beyond number” (vv. 8, 10).

But this omnipotent God seems impervious to Job’s cries for help: “If I summoned him and he answered me, I would not believe that he was listening to my voice. For he crushes me with a tempest and multiplies my wounds without cause” (vv. 16-17). In fact, according to Job, “When disaster brings sudden death, he mocks at the calamity of the innocent” (v. 23).

Continue reading Denison Forum – Victims of innocent suffering: Biblical help and hope →

Virginia continues to deal with scandals engulfing its top three leaders.

Gov. Ralph Northam is facing renewed calls to resign today over a racist photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook. Attorney General Mark Herring has admitted that he wore blackface at a college party in 1980.

And a college professor, Dr. Vanessa Tyson, is accusing Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexually assaulting her at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. He denies the allegation.

Meanwhile, Gucci has apologized for marketing a sweater that appears to mimic blackface. It looks like a black turtleneck that is worn over the nose, with a red-lined cutout for the mouth. After a public outcry, Gucci removed the product.

In other news, President Trump spoke yesterday morning at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. The president stated, “We must build a culture that cherishes dignity and sanctity of innocent human life.” He added: “All children, born and unborn, are made in the holy image of God. Every life is sacred, and every soul is a precious gift from heaven.”

What do these stories have in common?

“An affront to human dignity”

Russell Moore is an ethicist and president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. In a very perceptive article on the Ralph Northam scandal, Dr. Moore notes that both racism and abortion “are rooted in the counter-Christ idolatry that sees human dignity and lives worth living defined by power.” He states that “abortion and racial injustice are alike an affront to human dignity, and to the image of God.”

Continue reading Denison Forum – What do racism, sexual abuse, and abortion have in common? →

Here’s the most objective story about Donald Trump I could find in today’s news: his childhood home in Queens, New York, is on the market. For $2.9 million, you can purchase the house where Mr. Trump lived until he was four years old. It comes with a life-size cardboard cutout of the president.

It’s hard to open a news feed without finding polarizing stories about the president. Watching reactions to his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, you would think that two separate nations inhabit the same country.

But we’ve been here before.

“A repulsive pedant”

George Washington was the only president ever elected unanimously by the Electoral College. Anyone who believes our politics are polarized beyond repair has not studied the election of 1800. (A Thomas Jefferson surrogate called John Adams a “repulsive pedant,” while an Adams surrogate warned that electing Jefferson would create a nation where “murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced.”)

The founders knew that complex issues would require complex solutions that can be achieved only through sometimes-contentious debate, compromise, and perseverance. That’s why they created a federal structure with three branches and a complicated system of checks and balances.

Reflecting the diversity of the new nation, political leaders soon formed the first two political parties. And a two-party system has basically dominated our political process ever since.

Whose nomination took 103 ballots?

There is no question that America’s two parties are intensely opposed to each other today. According to Pew Research Center, 45 percent of Republicans consider the Democratic Party “a threat to the nation’s well-being”; 41 percent of Democrats view the Republican Party the same way.

Continue reading Denison Forum – How much does Donald Trump’s childhood home cost? →

President Trump delivered the 2019 State of the Union address last night before a joint session of the 116th Congress. I watched the address, then surveyed coverage of it this morning. It is as if there were two different speeches delivered.

The Blaze headlines: “An astounding number of viewers approved of Trump’s State of the Union speech–here are the results.” A Fox columnist claims that “once again, America saw that Trump on the stump is very, very good.”

By contrast, the Washington Post is carrying a column titled “More Trump fantasyland as the world fries.” CNN has an article titled “Critics laugh off Trump’s mispronunciations once again.” Van Jones claimed that the speech was “psychotically incoherent.”

None of this should surprise us.

Who is neutral about the president?

The New Yorker interviewed a Georgetown University scholar this week who called President Trump “an amateur in the White House” and claimed that he “looks hideously weak.” By contrast, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders recently called Mr. Trump “the most productive President in modern history” and claimed, “It’s indisputable that our country has never been stronger than it is today under the leadership of President Trump.”

It seems difficult to find someone who is neutral about the president. The latest poll shows that 39.9 percent of Americans approve of the job he is doing, while 55.6 percent disapprove. Only 4.5 percent are undecided.

Our divisions over the president reflect a growing partisan divide in our country. Pew Research Center asked more than five thousand people about several specific political issues and found that, on average, there was a thirty-six-point gap between Republicans and Democrats. This is up twenty-one points since Pew began tracking these questions twenty-three years earlier.

Continue reading Denison Forum – The ‘State of the Union’ is divided: How should Christians respond? →

As everyone who doesn’t live on Mars must know, the New England Patriots defeated the Los Angeles Rams to win Super Bowl LIII yesterday.

The game set eighteen records: It was the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in history. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are now the oldest starting quarterback and head coach to win a Super Bowl. It featured the longest punt ever (though the ball rolled much of the way), the fewest touchdowns, and the fewest kickoff returns.

Critics are condemning the Rams and their quarterback today, but they did make it to the game’s biggest stage (albeit after a blown call against the Saints). However, the NFL gives out no trophies for second place.

Legendary driver Dale Earnhardt spoke for our culture: “Second place is just the first place loser.”

Do you remember who lost the Super Bowl last year? The Patriots. Two years ago? The Falcons. The year before? The Panthers. (I had to look it up.)

“A first-grader could have painted that”

In our culture, you’re a winner if you win and a loser if you lose. That’s because a secular culture, by definition, cannot consider spiritual truth. It can see only what it can see. A materialistic society measures success by materialistic means.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Why the Rams’ Super Bowl loss matters today →

When Tom Brady played in his first Super Bowl, there was no iPhone or Android. No Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Spotify, or Gmail. No Uber, Airbnb, or iTunes Store.

Jared Goff, the quarterback who will oppose Brady in this Sunday’s game, doesn’t remember watching Brady win his first Super Bowl. Goff can be forgiven–he was seven years old at the time.

If the Rams win, Sean McVay will become the youngest coach to win a Super Bowl. If the Patriots win, Bill Belichick will become the oldest.

It’s likely that more than one hundred million people will watch Sunday’s game. Last year’s Super Bowl was the most-watched television event in the US, tripling the highest-rated non-football program.

Why is secular spirituality so popular?

The Super Bowl was a metaphor for another very popular activity in the US.

Nearly 90 percent of Americans say they believe in some kind of deity or spiritual force. However, more than a quarter of Americans say they are spiritual but not religious. Their number has grown by 42 percent in the last six years. While nine in ten Americans claim to be spiritual, religious, or both, less than 20 percent regularly attend church services.

Clearly, spirituality is popular in America. Religion, less so.

Why the difference? Let’s examine the Super Bowl for insights into secular spirituality today.

Why is the Super Bowl so popular?

Continue reading Denison Forum – Why the Super Bowl and secular spirituality are so popular →

Last week, a snake catcher in Australia removed a seven-foot python that had slithered through an open door and climbed into the shower. In another Australian home, a woman found a python in her toilet bowl.

The reason for such serpentine domestication: It’s hot in Australia. Record-setting hot. Temperatures hit 117 in Sydney recently, the hottest it has been since 1939. Reptiles are looking for shade and water like everyone else.

Meanwhile, it’s record-setting cold in the northern US. Chicago had a wind chill of negative fifty-two degrees yesterday morning. Nearly ninety million people are likely to experience temperatures at zero or below.

People in Minnesota could get frostbite after five minutes outside. Beer can’t be delivered in some parts of the Midwest because it would freeze before arriving. As I write this Daily Article, the temperature in Madison, Wisconsin, is minus twenty-six degrees.

We can’t have it both ways

Much about today’s news leaves us feeling powerless.

The death toll from the Brazilian dam collapse has risen to ninety-nine, with another 259 missing and feared dead. A gardener in Toronto has pled guilty to killing eight men, some of whom he buried in planters. Floods in Saudi Arabia have killed at least twelve people.

If we believe in an all-powerful God–or even if we don’t–we wonder why he allows so much suffering in his creation. If a car had as many problems as our planet, we’d hold the manufacturer responsible.

Continue reading Denison Forum – The polar vortex, seven-foot pythons, and divine sovereignty →

My mother died of cancer, as did my wife’s father. Our older son survived cancer only through surgery and intensive radiation. Since cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the world, chances are good that you have been touched personally by this terrible disease as well.

Now comes an astounding announcement from a team of Israeli scientists: They might have discovered the first true cure for cancer. One of them told the Jerusalem Post, “We believe we will offer in a year’s time a complete cure for cancer.” He added, “Our cancer cure will be effective from day one, will last a duration of a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market.”

The scientists describe their discovery as a kind of cancer antibiotic. It uses a combination of compounds called “peptides” that kill cancer cells in a way that is unaffected by mutations. Their treatment attacks cancer stem cells and targets cancer cells so specifically that side effects are minimized. It can also be tailored to the specific cancer it is fighting.

The company will soon begin clinical trials that could be completed within a few years and would make the treatment available for specific cases.

As a medical officer with the American Cancer Society notes, it is far too soon to know if this revolutionary treatment is the cure its developers hope it will be. But imagine for a moment that it is. If you created such a drug, wouldn’t you want to give it to the world? Wouldn’t cancer patients everywhere want to try it?

The best possible news

“Gospel” translates the Greek word euangelion, meaning “good news.” Jesus began his public ministry by calling people to “repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).

The Christian “gospel” is the best possible news: You can be saved from an eternity in hell for an eternity in heaven as the transformed child of your Father. The God who made you loves you so much he considers your eternal life worth the death of his Son. If you will repent of your sins and believe in this good news, asking Jesus to forgive your sins and make you the child of God, he will always answer your prayer.

Everyone needs to hear this good news. Everyone deserves to hear it.

But there’s a catch.

“Lord, let our eyes be opened.”

As Jesus was traveling toward Jerusalem and the cross, he came upon “two blind men sitting by the roadside” (Matthew 20:30a). When they heard that Jesus was coming, they cried out to him, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!” (v. 30b). The crowd rebuked them, but they repeated their cry to Jesus (v. 31).

Our Lord stopped and asked them, “What do you want me to do for you?” (v. 32).

They replied, “Lord, let our eyes be opened” (v. 33).

And “Jesus in pity touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him” (v. 34).

Lost people are as blind spiritually as these men were physically: “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). But unlike these men, most lost people don’t know that they are lost.

Growing up in a family that never attended church, this was my story. I assumed that if there is a God, my “good” life would be good enough to get me into his heaven. I had no idea I was destined for hell and would have been offended if you told me so.

This is why so many Americans are lost in a country where the gospel is so accessible. If they understood their peril, they would change. This is part of the enemy’s deception.

Four steps to spiritual sight

Spiritual blindness is a good metaphor for our culture. We are all born with such blindness. But like the men on the road to Jerusalem, some of us meet the Great Physician and our eyes are healed. Now it’s our job to “pay it forward,” helping those who are blind meet the One who can do for them what he did for us.

But if a blind man won’t admit that he’s blind, he’s likely to resist and reject our message in the belief that he doesn’t need what we are offering and that we are trying to impose ourselves on him. This is inevitable and logical. We feel the same way when Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on our door.

What would cause such a blind person to welcome our help? Consider four steps.

First: Build a relationship with him so that he knows we care genuinely for him. We must earn the right to tell him what he does not want to hear.

Second: Live in such a way that he wants what we have. If we claim to be sighted but stumble as much as he does, why would he want to be like us?

Third: Be present in his life when the burden of his blindness becomes so great that he is willing to consider our offer of sight.

Fourth: Lead him to the Great Physician. Help him confess his blindness to Jesus and ask for his forgiveness and grace. Then celebrate with our friend as his eyes are opened and his eternity is transformed.

There are only two kinds of people in the world

If you discovered the cure for cancer, you’d do what the Israeli scientists are doing: You’d announce it to the world, believing that everyone deserves what you have found. In fact, you have discovered a far greater cure, one that prevents eternal death and gives eternal life.

What will you do with what you have found?

Craig Denison: “God believes that you are worth the death of his Son, and there is nothing you can do to change his mind.” The same is true for every person you meet today.

There are only two kinds of people in the world: those who are spiritually blind, and those who can see and are therefore responsible to help those who cannot.

Which are you?

Denison Forum

Did you hear about the Pennsylvania man who has a registered emotional support alligator?

Joie Henney says his pet, Wally, likes to give hugs. Henney told reporters that his doctor gave him approval to use the five-foot-long alligator for emotional support rather than go on medication for depression. He frequently takes Wally to senior centers and minor-league baseball games. “He’s just like a dog,” he told a woman recently. “He wants to be loved and petted.”

When I read about Wally, I thought of an Indonesian woman who was keeping Merry, a fourteen-foot crocodile, as a pet. Earlier this month, she was killed and partially eaten by the animal.

There’s an old story about a scorpion and a frog who met on the bank of a stream. The scorpion asked the frog to carry him across the water on its back.

The frog asked, “How do I know you won’t sting me?”

The scorpion said, “Because if I do, I will die too.”

The frog was satisfied, and the two set out across the water. Midstream, the scorpion stung the frog.

As the frog started to sink, knowing they would both drown, it gasped, “Why?”

The scorpion replied: “It’s my nature.”

The danger of euphemisms Continue reading Denison Forum – The key to serenity in a chaotic culture →