More than one hundred Palestinians were killed, with hundreds more injured, after Israeli troops opened fire in a chaotic situation surrounding the disbursement of food in Gaza yesterday. It had grown increasingly unlikely that the ceasefire President Biden hoped to see this weekend was going to happen, but the chances are all but gone in the wake of this war’s latest tragedy.

While details are still emerging, Israeli officials have said the soldiers issued only warning shots and that the casualties were the result of the ensuing panic and looting. Conversely, Dr. Mohammed Salha, the acting director of the Al-Awda Hospital, said that most of the 161 wounded patients that his facility received “appeared to have been shot.”

As with most stories in this war, the truth is difficult to discern and, ultimately, of little consequence to the way nations will respond.

• For more on the situation in Israel, please see Dr. Jim Denison’s The War in Israel, an online resource he recently updated to cover the rising threat of groups in addition to Hamas and where the war is likely to go from here. You may also download the full, updated ebook for free.

However, the Middle East is not the only place where the truth often falls victim to the narrative nations would prefer to believe.

Why haven’t we heard more about India’s religious persecution

As countries continue to group into what appears to be an increasingly clear separation between America and its allies on one side, with China, Russia, and those nations more sympathetic to their leadership on the other, India has thrived by maintaining some semblance of neutrality. While they are part of the BRICS group alongside China and Russia and have been among the largest buyers of Russian oil, India has also grown as one of America’s more important partners in the areas of technology and trade.

In the process, they have become a nation that developing countries look to—particularly in the global south—as an alternative model to what’s seen in the West or East.

Perhaps that’s why there has been relative silence from global leaders in the face of a dramatic increase in religious persecution throughout the nation.

India is a “restricted nation”

The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) is an organization that tracks persecution faced by Christians around the world, placing nations that are antagonistic to the faith into one of three categories: area of concern, hostile, or restricted. India recently joined China, Iran, and others as a “restricted nation,” VOM’s most severe classification of persecution.

Among the reasons given were:

• Policies that forbid the conversion of Hindus in several Indian states. These laws have been used to target pastors, church planters, and evangelists.
• Reconversion ceremonies—sometimes forced—for Indians who have left the Hindu faith.
• A growth in extremist groups that seek to “forcibly unite” and “purify” India under Hinduism.

India is roughly 80 percent Hindu, 10 percent Muslim, and 5 percent Christian. With a population of 1.4 billion people, that still amounts to roughly 70 million Christians within the nation’s borders.

So, given the difficulties they face, how have the local Christians reacted to their country’s new designation?

4 matters of concern in India

In a recent article for Christianity Today, Surinder Kaur interviewed six religious freedom advocates, four of whom minister in India, “to learn if this label helps or hinders outsiders in their understanding of the situation in India,” as well as to what degree it impacts the church and Christians in the country. And while their responses varied to a degree, a few themes kept coming back up:

• The situation is more complex and varied by region than a national designation represents.
• The government has enabled, though not necessarily sanctioned, many of the most troubling trends over recent years.
• Due to India’s geopolitical position, the recent designation is unlikely to alter the government’s approach to religious minorities.
• Because of these factors, they must look to God and one another if they are to find the hope and strength to endure well the suffering they face.

That last point in particular is relevant to Christians far beyond India’s borders.

Our ultimate source of hope

This week we have been exploring ways to find hope in the midst of difficult times. We’ve discussed how to find hope in God rather than ourselves and the impact of truly understanding that his love is not based on our accomplishments or circumstances. We then saw how God’s redemption enables us to find hope in the midst of pain and how our job is to then share that hope with others.

Today I’d like to conclude that discussion with this reminder:

Our ultimate source of hope in this world is the fact that something far better awaits us on the other side of it.

Now, that hope is not intended to devalue the importance of this life or to minimize the trials we face as we navigate it. But it can put those troubles in perspective and give us the strength we need to persevere in spite of them.

The apostle Paul put it this way: “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).

You see, Paul worked to support himself, invested in relationships with those around him, and genuinely appreciated the opportunities that God brought his way. But none of that became his source of hope, identity, or purpose. Those he kept securely fixed in the life to come.

As a result, God was able to do truly remarkable things through him and help others experience the power and presence of Christ in ways that drew them to the Lord.

The question we have to ask ourselves—and I mean truly wrestle with—is to what degree can we say the same? Are your hopes and dreams more at home in heaven or on earth?

If we want to know the peace of God and learn how to embrace the hope that only he can provide, then we have to remember that such hope is not at home in this world. But, then again, we shouldn’t be either.

Where do you feel most at home today?

Denison Forum

The Beaver Moon lunar eclipse that occurred early this morning lasted around 21,693 seconds (six hours and two minutes). I know this because I read it on the Time and Date website, which seems authoritative. However, I did not stay up to time the event and can offer no independent confirmation of this claim.

The same article states that the last time a partial lunar eclipse lasted that long was on February 18, 1440. The next time a partial lunar eclipse will reach the same overall length will be on February 8, 2669. However, since I was not alive for the former and will not be alive for the latter, once again I am forced to take these assertions by faith.

Upon reflection, it seems to me that nearly everything we read in the news must be approached in the same way. We can only be in one place at a time, and thus we can witness personally only the tiniest sliver of all that happens in our universe on a given day. Even when televised news covers a distant event, the fact that we are watching that particular televised event means we are not watching any others at the same time.

And even when we witness an occurrence first-hand, we often require the help of those who are more expert on the subject to understand it more fully. I can know that I’m running a fever, but I need a doctor to tell me why.

“When All the Media Narratives Collapse”

I say all of that to make this point: if we cannot depend on the objectivity of those whose reporting and opinions we require, our ability to engage with the world is severely affected.

And that is where we are today.

Andrew Sullivan is a British-American writer, editor, and blogger. He has written for The New Republic, TIME, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, New York, and other publications. He is openly gay, married to a man, and a practicing Catholic. He describes himself as a political conservative, though his positions on a variety of social issues have provoked opposition from many conservatives.

Whatever our views on his views, I found his recent newsletter to be profoundly important and disturbing. Titled, “When All the Media Narratives Collapse,” it lists example after example of ways the mainstream media (MSM) have gotten significant recent stories wrong in significant and often indefensible ways.

For example, he links to a New York Times (NYT) article published the morning after the killings for which Kyle Rittenhouse has been on trial this week. Neither the article nor subsequent reporting by the NYT included the possibility that Rittenhouse may have shot assailants in self-defense. Thus, when one of his pursuers admitted on the witness stand that Rittenhouse shot him only after the man pointed his gun directly at Rittenhouse’s head a few feet away, people were shocked.

According to Sullivan, the NYT‘s coverage and videos of the event omitted key elements that only came to light during the trial this week. He cites other examples regarding the Steele Dossier, the Covington boys, Russian bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan, the lab-leak Covid theory, Jussie Smollett’s claims, a gang assault at UVA, white supremacists targeting Asian-Americans, Hunter Biden’s laptop, the escalation in inflation, the seasonality of the migrant border surge, and claims that Critical Race Theory is not being taught in high schools at all. He links to relevant stories in the MSM and shows that each has been proven highly inaccurate.

Sullivan concludes: “I still rely on the MSM for so much. I still read the NYT first thing in the morning. I don’t want to feel as if everything I read is basically tilted toward wish-fulfillment, narrative-proving, and ideology. But with this kind of record, how can I not?” (his emphasis).

“The truth will set you free”

My purpose today is not to lambast the media for its bias, whether on the right or the left. (In an earlier article, I explained this bias in some detail.) Nor is it to paint all journalists with the same brush. Some, like this reporter in Dallas whose article on our website was insightful and compelling, are working sacrificially to tell the truth as objectively and professionally as possible.

Rather, it is to note that in a post-truth culture, truth claims are likely to be a means to the ends of personal and professional agendas. Including yours and mine.

This is why knowing God and then making him known is so urgent. Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He promises that if we would “abide” in his word, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32).

He prayed for his followers that his Father would “sanctify them in the truth” and added, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17). His Spirit will “guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). His word is “a lamp to [our] feet and a light to [our] path” (Psalm 119:105).

However, as we noted yesterday, you and I are tempted to make people a means to our ends, an object to our subject. We are just as tempted to do this with God.

How to get along with God

Transactional religion, from the Greco-Roman world to today, treats God’s word and power as instruments to be used for our purposes. We pray so God will meet our needs. We worship on Sunday so God will bless us on Monday. We read the Bible so its insights will help us succeed in life.

We need to measure the news and everything else we experience in this fallen world through the prism of God’s unchanging, authoritative, completely true word. We need to read, pray, and worship for God’s glory rather than our own, to live for his honor above our own, to commune with our Creator for no reason except to be with our Father, to love our Lord and our neighbor for their sakes rather than ours.

Anything less makes the King of the universe a means to our end. This is idolatry, and it is dangerous. As a wise friend once told me, “If you want to get along with God, stay off his throne.”

We can denounce the media for its personal biases and the culture for its self-promotional secularism, but we cannot control either. What we can control is the degree to which we submit our biases and self-promotion to our Lord each day in repentance and faith. We can control the degree to which God is our King and not our hobby (1 Timothy 1:17), the depth of our surrendered and grateful submission to his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), the passion of our sacrificial love for every person Jesus loves (John 3:16).

Here is a way to know if God is a means to your end or the King of your heart: When last did reading the Bible, praying, or worshiping God change your life? When last did they cause you to do something you did not want to do or stop doing something you did?

Will they today?

Denison Forum