Why should you care that today is the National Day of Prayer? You know the correct answers to the question, of course:

• You are to pray for our leaders and thus for our nation (1 Timothy 2:1–2).
• You are in fact to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
• You want God’s best for our country and her people.
• It is a patriotic privilege to join with other Christians in interceding for America.

All good responses, obviously. Here’s one more:

Americans find themselves, and there is no reasonable way to deny this, in a moment of profound crisis. The country is changing, and the substance of that transformation is not clear. Americans are divided, and those divisions go well beyond ideological differences. They cut to the marrow of the bone. Too often we see each other as enemies. Disagreement is saturated with contempt. Mutuality drowns in the bitterness of our public discourse. The sense of common purpose and public good has been thrown into the trash bin as we huddle in our silos.

Is this the doomsaying of an extremist ranting on social media to get clicks and likes?

Actually, these are the observations of Dr. Eddie S. Glaude Jr., the James C. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University and former president of the American Academy of Religion. His solution to our crisis frames the discussion I’d like us to have today:

The salvation of democracy itself . . . requires that we understand that democratic flourishing cannot be, in John Dewey’s words, “separated from the individual attitudes so deep-seated as to constitute character.”

Then Dr. Glaude makes this point in italics:

We must be the kinds of people democracies require.

How can we be such people today?

Using a fly swatter to play golf

It is a category mistake to use something for a purpose it was not intended to fulfill. You wouldn’t use a fly swatter to play golf or a bicycle to travel to Hawaii.

Neither should we expect temporal strategies to satisfy eternal needs. The psalmist spoke for us all when he testified, “I am a sojourner on the earth” (Psalm 119:19).

Jesus identified the path to the transformation Americans need for the sake of America: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

St. Cyril of Alexandria (AD 376–444) commented on Jesus’ statement:

Just as the trunk of the vine gives its own natural properties to each of its branches, so, by bestowing on them the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, the only-begotten Son of the Father, gives Christians a certain kinship with himself and with God the Father because they have been united to him by faith and determination to do his will in all things. He helps them to grow in love and reverence for God, and teaches them to discern right from wrong and to act with integrity.

What does this mean in practical terms?

Courageous prayer and the courage to pray

The Bible says Abraham “grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God” (Romans 4:20). There is a reciprocal relationship at work here: The more I glorify God, the stronger I grow in my faith. Then, the stronger I grow in my faith, the more I glorify God. The closer I am to the “light of men” (John 1:4), the more I reflect his light and am changed by it. And the more I am changed by it, the more I reflect it.

When King Darius commanded the Babylonians to pray only to him, Daniel courageously defied this idolatrous edict by continuing to pray to the one true God (Daniel 6:6–10). What we might overlook in reading this story is the possibility that Daniel’s continued prayer gave him the courage to defy the edict. The more he prayed, the more he was empowered to pray.

How does this conversation relate to today’s National Day of Prayer?

The more we pray for our nation, the more our connection with God through prayer will empower and encourage us to pray for our nation. And the more we are empowered to pray, the more we will want to pray.

Then, when we have been thus empowered by the Spirit, we are more equipped and enabled to be the answer to our prayers:

• As we pray for Americans to come to Christ, we are more likely to lead them to Christ through our witness and example.
• As we pray for our leaders, we are more likely to engage with them personally and to enter public service ourselves.
• As we pray for our nation to turn to biblical truth and morality, we are more likely to become the change we wish to see.

In short, praying for our nation on this day—and every day—is one of the most patriotic ways we can serve our nation. As a result of such a commitment, we will “be the kinds of people democracies require.”

May it begin with me.

And with you.

Thursday news to know:

• In Israel, Blinken pushes Netanyahu for sustained aid into Gaza
• Hundreds of protesters arrested at college campuses across the US
• US officials are bracing for another summer of dangerous heat. These maps show where it’s most likely to happen
• Immigration ranks as top issue for Americans for longest consecutive monthly stretch in past 24 years: poll
• On this day in 2011: Osama bin Laden killed by US forces

Quote for the day:

“The whole reason why we pray is to be united into the vision and contemplation of God to whom we pray.” —Julian of Norwich

Denison Forum

“In this moment the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire is Hamas.” This is how US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described a ceasefire proposal that he called “extraordinarily generous on the part of Israel.”

In its first phase, Hamas would release as many as thirty-three hostages in exchange for a pause in hostilities in Gaza and the release of Palestinian prisoners. A second phase, described as the “restoration of sustainable calm,” would include the exchange of the remaining hostages, captive Israeli soldiers, and the bodies of hostages for more Palestinian prisoners.

If Hamas accepts the proposal, will this bring peace to the Middle East?

Tragically not, so long as Hamas remains pledged to Israel’s complete destruction. If your neighbor publicly vowed to murder your family and burn down your house, I doubt you’d invite him to dinner.

If the protesters went to Gaza

While no one would blame you for defending your family, activists across our country continue to blame Israel for doing the same.

Student protesters at Columbia University declared this morning that they had taken over a building on the campus after defying a deadline to disperse. Protesters and police clashed yesterday at the University of Texas in a confrontation that resulted in dozens of arrests. The number of arrests at campuses nationwide is now approaching a thousand.

Imagine, however, what would happen if these activists actually went to Gaza: women would be subjugated, while gay and transgender individuals would likely be imprisoned or executed.

Ironically, the protesters would be far safer in the hands of the IDF in Gaza than with Hamas.

The Israeli soldiers whose work in Gaza is being so roundly condemned actually have a strong claim to being the most moral army in the world. In strong contrast with Hamas, the IDF operates by a clear code stating that “every individual is of inherent value, regardless of their ethnicity, religion, nationality, gender, or status.” Women and LGBTQ individuals are not their victims—they actually fight in their army.

But what about Palestinian civilian casualties?

According to one analysis, for every Hamas combatant eliminated, approximately 1.5 civilians have been tragically killed. Since the United Nations estimates that civilians typically make up 90 percent of the casualties in a war, this is an impressive ratio.

Given that Hamas hides its soldiers behind the Palestinian civilians it was elected to serve, it is even more so.

What students at Columbia are reading

You may be wondering why you don’t hear these facts from university protesters and the mainstream media. There’s a reason for that.

Many of the professors and journalists supporting the current activists were students in an era forged by Vietnam War anti-government protests, the rise of the sexual revolution, and the postmodern rejection of absolute truth and objective morality. Now, as George Packer notes in the Atlantic, their revisionist ideas are “so pervasive and unquestioned that they’ve become the instincts of students who are occupying their campuses today.”

To illustrate: New York Times columnist Ross Douthat explored the syllabus at Columbia for a course titled “Contemporary Civilization.” He reports that its focus for the twentieth century “narrows to progressive preoccupations and only those preoccupations: anticolonialism, sex and gender, antiracism, climate.” Unsurprisingly, the now-popular “colonialist occupier” caricature of Israel makes it an easy target for opposition and Hamas an exemplar of revolution.

If students who represent our cultural future are this militant in imposing their ideology on their campuses, what will they do when they graduate into places of corporate, cultural, and political leadership? Will their identity politics that divides humanity into oppressors and oppressed and views Christians as bigoted and dangerous become even more pervasive?

When non-Christians believe the gospel

By contrast, one reason the Christian gospel is such “good news” is that its news is good for everyone. Whether you are Arab or Jew, Palestinian or Israeli, Black or White or Latino, Democrat or Republican or Independent, whatever your sexual orientation and gender identity, you are the creation of the Father and loved unconditionally by the Savior.

Here’s the catch:

Non-Christians typically believe the gospel to the degree that Christians live the gospel.

This week we’re responding to our perilous times by remembering that Jesus is “the light of men” (John 1:4) and the corresponding fact that his “light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (v. 5).

Today, the transforming light of Christ shines through you and me when we demonstrate his inclusive love by our inclusive compassion and walk so closely with Jesus that others will know we walk with Jesus (cf. Acts 4:13).

St. Irenaeus (AD c. 120–c. 203) said of the Christians of his day:

Just as God’s creature, the sun, is one and the same the world over, so also does the Church’s preaching shine everywhere to enlighten all men who want to come to a knowledge of the truth.

Now it’s our turn.

Tuesday news to know:

• US to test ground beef in states with bird-flu outbreaks in dairy cows
• 4 law officers serving warrant are killed, 4 wounded in shootout at North Carolina home, police say
• Less is more: The case for “slow productivity” at work
• Deadly tornadoes rip through Oklahoma leaving thousands without power
• On this day in 1993: World Wide Web (WWW) launches in the public domain

Quote for the day:

“A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God’s truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.” —John Calvin

Denison Forum

Are campus protests a picture of our cultural future?

Nearly nine hundred protesters have been arrested on US campuses in recent days, about 275 of them on Saturday. Activists staged a large event outside the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday night, part of a wave of pro-Palestinian protests that has spread across the country and could continue through the summer at political conventions.

Columbia University became the epicenter of the movement due to its proximity to national media in New York and its status as an Ivy League institution. The campus is also home to a large Jewish student population, many of whom have faced harassment or attacks from protesters, fueling more media coverage and political scrutiny.

Columbia made more news when it banned a student protest leader who declared that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” He said with regard to fighting a Zionist (someone such as myself who believes the Jews deserve a homeland in Israel), “I don’t fight to injure or for there to be a winner or a loser, I fight to kill.”

He added, “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

Tragically, that’s already been done.

The “worst day” in modern Israel’s history

In the new edition of Foreign Affairs, the Israeli historian Tom Segev offers a brilliant overview of the modern history of the nation. He begins:

To Israelis, October 7, 2023, is the worst day in their country’s seventy-five-year history. Never before have so many of them been massacred and taken hostage on a single day. Thousands of heavily armed Hamas fighters managed to break through the Gaza Strip’s fortified border and into Israel, rampaging unimpeded for hours, destroying several villages and committing gruesome acts of brutality before Israeli forces could regain control.

Hamas leaders have vowed to repeat these attacks until Israel is destroyed. Consequently, Israel had no choice but to send the IDF into Gaza to destroy Hamas.

More than thirty-one thousand Palestinians have died since the Israel–Hamas war in Gaza began, a tragic fact that is a primary reason for pro-Palestinian protests across our country. In their rhetoric, Israel is completely at fault for these deaths.

However, American legal theory distinguishes between a “proximate” cause and an “actual” cause. The latter is the direct cause of an event, such as the car that runs a red light and crashes into your vehicle. The former is the event that caused the latter, such as the large truck that rams into a car, shoving it into the intersection so that it crashes into your car.

Hamas’s terrorist attack on October 7 is the uncontestable proximate cause of all that has happened since. If Hamas had not launched its invasion and then used Palestinian civilians as human shields, not a single casualty resulting from Israel’s response in Gaza would have been harmed. It is therefore also a fact that, as the Wall Street Journal recently noted, “Those who genuinely care about the Palestinians should hope for Hamas’s defeat.”

MLK on “the hottest place in hell”

The US Army liberated the Dachau concentration camp on this day in 1945. With this sober fact as a historical backdrop, consider a letter written by the chairman of the World Holocaust Remembrance Center to the president of Columbia University. In it, Dani Dayan warns that the ongoing anti-Israel demonstrations at elite US colleges and universities are exactly what happened in Germany in the 1920s, just years before Nazis took over the country.

He therefore called on the president to “take a stand” as “thousands of Columbia faculty, staff, and students call for the elimination of the State of Israel and the abolition of Zionism.” He added: “Not a political stand. A moral stand. When it becomes crystal clear that abolishing the existence of the Jewish State is a prevalent ideology in Columbia, the president of the institution cannot remain silent.”

He then cited the Talmud’s teaching, “Silence is admission,” and reiterated, “Silence inevitably will be interpreted as tolerance or, even worse, consent.” He quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as saying that “the hottest place in hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.”

Dayan concluded his letter with a quote from Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace laureate who called indifference “the most insidious danger of all.”

An unthinkable and horrific future?

If the faculty and students at America’s elite intellectual institutions cannot stand unequivocally against the genocide of the Jewish people, what does this say about our culture?

Has our “post-truth” society become so confused and corrupted that it cannot condemn the rape, murder, and mutilation of innocent civilians at the hand of terrorist invaders pledged to their annihilation?

If so, is Dani Dayan right in warning that we are on the road to an unthinkable and horrific future?

I believe these are truly precarious days for our nation, a peril I plan to discuss with you this week. Each day, we’ll respond with the hope-filled reality that Jesus is “the light of men” (John 1:4, my emphasis), now and always.

For today, let’s embrace and share this fact:

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

It never will.

Monday news to know:

• At least 4 killed in Oklahoma tornado outbreak, as threat of severe storms continues from Missouri to Texas
• Israel open to discussing “sustainable calm” in Gaza after initial hostage release: officials
• US and allies aim to help Ukraine bolster defenses after aid gap
• Birth rates in US hit historic low, CDC data show
• On this day in 2004: World War II monument opens in Washington, DC

Quote for the day:

“The purpose of God and the power of God is available for every man.” —G. Campbell Morgan

Denison Forum