Research shows that we react more strongly to negative than to positive information, which explains why there’s more bad news than good news in the news. Let’s test this theory. Note your visceral response to these stories:

• The Fed is expected to cut interest rates today.
• New technology can produce drinking water from seawater using solar power.
• Rescuers freed an eleven-year-old boy who was trapped between two boulders for more than nine hours.
• China freed an American pastor after nearly twenty years in prison.
• Research shows that people like us more than we think.

By contrast, what’s your emotional response to these stories?

• AI pioneers are calling for protections against “catastrophic risks.”
• A recent report warns that the US is facing the “most serious and most challenging” threats since 1945, including the real risk of “near-term major war.”
• Infections that are resistant to medications could kill nearly forty million people in the coming years.
• Mosquito-borne diseases are surging in Europe.
• High parental stress is now an urgent public health issue.
• Nearly two in five Americans are at peak stress levels for the year.

Our “fight or flight” instincts may attune us to threats in the news, but new research shows that being “hopeful and forward-looking” is especially effective in combating stress and anxiety.

Philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin observed: “The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.” Similarly, the present belongs to those who give the present generation the same.

How can we be people of hope in a hurting world?

Bridging the “moral empathy gap”

In a fascinating recent experiment, researchers from Stanford and the University of Toronto studied ways we try to persuade others to change their minds. They found that the vast majority of us employ arguments evoking values we favor rather than those favored by the people we seek to influence.

For example, political liberals typically argue for same-sex marriage by pointing to fairness and equality rather than appealing to conservative values such as loyalty and unity. The vast majority of conservatives make the same mistake, appealing to their values while ignoring or denigrating those of their opponents. A better approach is to speak to the values that matter most to those we seek to persuade, thus bridging the “moral empathy gap.”

Here’s the good news: Our Lord faces no such gap in dealing with us. He understands us better than anyone else can. In fact, he understands us better than we understand ourselves:

• “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5).
• “Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lᴏʀᴅ, you know it altogether” (Psalm 139:4).
• “God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:20).

This is not only because our Lord is fully omniscient, but also because his Spirit lives in every believer (1 Corinthians 3:16), feeling all that we feel and knowing all that we know. As a result, he can empathize with us as no one else can.

When you are feeling pain or stress, know that your Father is feeling it as well. Tell him what is burdening your heart and mind. You might consider using the “psalms of lament” (cf. Psalms 6, 10, 38, 42–43, and 130) to make their words your own.

Trust the empathy of God and you will experience its life-giving hope for yourself.

Why “love cures people”

One of the best ways to experience the hope of Christ is to share that hope with others. The famed psychologist Karl Menninger observed:

“Love cures people, both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.”

Here again, the good news is that God can do through us what we cannot do by ourselves.

If Jesus is your Lord, he is living in you today. As Oswald Chambers noted, “By regeneration the Son of God is formed in us, and in our physical life he has the same setting that he had on earth.” You are literally part of the “body of Christ” (1 Corinthians 12:27) as Jesus continues his earthly ministry through you.

Consequently, if we yield our minds and hearts to the Spirit each day (Ephesians 5:18), he will give us God’s mind and heart for those we seek to influence. We will sense insights that are not our own and hear ourselves say words we did not plan to say. We will be led to meet needs we did not know existed and to love with God’s unconditional grace.

Some of us will serve as foreign missionaries. Others will serve as “secret missionaries” in places where Christians are not wanted or welcome. And all of us will serve as cultural missionaries who meet felt needs to meet spiritual needs, earning the right to demonstrate God’s empathy in our compassion.

But note: Our ministry is only transforming if we share the transforming message of the gospel. Otherwise, we meet the needs of the moment while neglecting the needs of eternal souls. Paul asked, “How are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Romans 10:14).

In a world of bad news, we have the best news of all. But good news is only good if it is news.

With whom will you share it today?

Wednesday news to know:

• Exploding pagers targeting Hezbollah kill 11 and wound thousands

• Sean “Diddy” Combs pleads not guilty to sex trafficking and racketeering charges
• White House’s economic adviser says US inflation at turning point, focus should shift to jobs
• Palestinian poll finds big drop in support for Oct 7 attack
• On this day in 1793: George Washington lays the Capitol cornerstone

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.” —John Bunyan

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We’re learning more about Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump:

• The suspected gunman hid near Mr. Trump’s golf course for roughly twelve hours before a Secret Service agent spotted him and opened fire.
• He had a long history of criminal convictions that would have barred him from owning a gun.
• His firearm’s serial number was wiped out, making it difficult for law enforcement to determine how he acquired the weapon.
• The license plate on the SUV he was driving was registered to a truck that had been reported stolen.

Here’s reporting I haven’t seen in the news: the lack of reporting in the news when the event happened. I was watching football at the time and don’t remember on-screen alerts, much less reporters breaking into the telecast. When Dr. Mark Turman and I were discussing this fact, he wondered if we have become so hardened to political violence that such events don’t affect us as they once did.

I’m afraid he’s right.

As our broken culture turns down the moral “lights,” we must not allow our spiritual eyes to become adjusted to the dark. We must not allow falsehood to become normalized in our minds and hearts. If we do, we will no longer respond to it biblically and redemptively. Our “salt” will lose its “taste” and thus its transforming effect on our culture (Matthew 5:13).

Consider a case in point with eternal consequences.

“Different languages in order to arrive at God”?

Pope Francis was recently speaking to an interreligious group of young people in Singapore, where he left his prepared remarks to offer some general reflections about religion. In his extemporaneous comments, he stated: “[Religions] are like different languages in order to arrive at God, but God is God for all. Since God is God for all, then we are all children of God.”

He then added:

If you start to fight, “My religion is more important than yours, mine is true and yours isn’t,” where will that lead us? There’s only one God, and each of us has a language to arrive at God. Some are Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, and they are different paths [to God].

There was a day when the pope’s statement would have made headlines as faith leaders voiced their disagreement. Jesus was very clear, stating of himself: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). He also said of himself, “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:18).

After teaching world religions for three decades with four seminaries, I can tell you that Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Orthodox Judaism are similarly convinced that theirs is the right path to salvation, however they understand it. Furthermore, the various religions do not teach the same truth.

For example, while the pope rightly claimed that “there’s only one God,” Hindus recognize millions of deities. While Jews, Muslims, and Christians believe humans live forever as individuals, Buddhists and Hindus believe we ultimately become one with reality. And none but Christians believe Jesus is the Son of God who died on the cross to atone for our sins.

Why, then, did the pope’s statement not receive more attention? Because it aligned with the “tolerance” ethic our secularized society so fully embraces. His words were not at all counter-cultural; to the contrary, he would likely have drawn more scrutiny if he had restated the orthodox Christian doctrine that faith in Christ is essential for salvation.

“He came to make dead people live”

My purpose in addressing this issue is not to criticize the pope or Roman Catholicism; in fact, many Catholics have responded to the pope’s statement by affirming the biblical necessity of faith in Christ. Rather, it is to make a countercultural argument for this countercultural doctrine.

While it may seem tolerant to believe that there are “many roads up the same mountain to God,” those who believe the Bible to be God’s Word do not have this option. We know that Jesus is the only sinless person who has ever lived (Hebrews 4:15) and thus the only person who could die to pay for our sins since he had none of his own for which to atone (Romans 5:8). We know that the God who “is” love (1 John 4:8) needed to provide only one way of salvation since this way is open to everyone who chooses it (cf. Revelation 22:17). (For more, see my website article, Why Jesus?)

So, here’s my question:

If we choose tolerance over truth, are we helping or harming those we influence?

If your doctor discovers a malignancy in your body, which do you want her to choose? If your mechanic finds a defect that will cause your brakes to fail at high speed, which do you want him to choose?

Telling people that salvation requires faith in Jesus requires courage on our part. But compassion often does. So, let us pray for the lost people we know to experience the joy of eternal life in Christ. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to open doors to our witness and give us the words and courage we need to share with them.

And let us bear in mind that their eternal destiny is at stake. My friend, Dr. Duane Brooks, is right: “Jesus Christ did not come into the world, die on the cross, and rise again to make bad people good. He came to make dead people live. Praise God, he is still doing it.”

Whom do you know who needs his saving power today?

Tuesday news to know:

• PM meets with Biden envoy, as chances of Hezbollah escalation grow
• New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s administration is in chaos as federal probes target his inner circle
• How to watch Tuesday’s harvest moon and partial lunar eclipse
• A pipeline explosion sends a towering pillar of flame over Houston’s suburbs
• On this day in 1978: Camp David Accords signed

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“Sin is the second most powerful force in the universe, for it sent Jesus to the cross. Only one force is greater—the love of God.” —Billy Graham

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