Dr. James Dobson passed away yesterday morning at the age of eighty-nine. Best known as the founder of the media ministry Focus on the Family, he was an advisor to five US presidents and one of the best-known Christian leaders of his time.

Many are offering profiles of his life and tributes to his legacy today. However, there is a less-noted dimension of Dr. Dobson’s story that relates to us all, no matter what his direct influence on our lives and families may have been.

From a book to a media empire

Born in 1936 in Shreveport, Louisiana, James Clayton Dobson Jr. was the son, grandson, and great-grandson of Church of the Nazarene ministers. His parents were traveling evangelists, but he studied academic psychology and came to believe that he was called to become a Christian counselor or perhaps a Christian psychologist. He attended Pasadena College, now Point Loma Nazarene University, then began working at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. In 1967, he received his doctorate in psychology from the University of Southern California (USC).

That same year, Dr. Dobson became an Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the USC School of Medicine, where he served for fourteen years. After his teaching career at USC, he spent seventeen years on the staff of the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles in the Division of Child Development and Medical Genetics.

In response to the disintegration of moral principles he witnessed in his clinical practice, he published his bestseller Dare to Discipline in 1970. In 1977, he founded Focus on the Family, leading the organization to become a multimedia empire by the mid-1990s with ten radio programs, eleven magazines, numerous videos, basketball camps, and resources sent to thousands of churches each week. In 1995, the organization’s budget was more than $100 million annually.

At its peak, Dr. Dobson’s daily radio program was carried by more than four thousand stations across North America. His broadcasts were also translated into twenty-seven languages and distributed in more than one hundred and sixty countries. In 2010, after leaving Focus, he created the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute as a smaller but more personal platform to continue his mission with a sharper focus on his personal broadcasts and teaching.

Dr. Dobson was known not only for his family counseling, which influenced generations of Christian parents, but for his political activism as well. He was among the founders of the Family Research Council in 1981, a federal lobbying organization, and the Family Policy Councils, which lobby at the state government level. He strongly opposed gay marriage and nurtured relationships with conservative politicians.

“A strange affinity for the trained mind”

I believe the reach and impact of Dr. James Dobson’s ministry is attributable in significant measure to a factor that is urgently relevant for all American Christians.

Pastors from the book of Acts to today have been called to shepherd families, which includes support for parents amid their challenges. As a pastor for four decades, I met with many families who were struggling in various ways with their marriages, children, and parents. However, I had no secular credentials or academic training to offer them. My background is in philosophy, theology, and biblical interpretation, not psychology or psychiatry. Most pastors are similar to me in training and experience.

By contrast, Dr. Dobson leveraged his secular education, experience, and status to serve spiritual truth and transformation. For someone with his credentials and academic experience to offer Christian resources for parents was somewhat novel and enormously impactful. As an alternative to the highly secularized parenting theories popularized by Dr. Benjamin Spock, Dr. Dobson used his expertise in ways that served millions of families.

His example reminds me of a statement one of my mentors once made: “The Holy Spirit has a strange affinity for the trained mind.” The more trained we are, the more useful we can be. And when we employ reasoning and strategies that resonate with our audience, we are more effective in serving them. A secularized society can be helped to follow Christ and his teachings when we use secular logic and credentials to explain his word and encourage its obedience.

“No one was able to answer him a word”

Paul followed this strategy in Athens at Mars Hill (Acts 17:16–34). Knowing that the Greek philosophers he addressed would not care what the Scriptures say, he quoted their own poets and writers (v. 28) to expose the illogic of thinking that “the divine being is like gold or silver or stone” (v. 29), referencing the idolatrous statues that surrounded them at that very moment.

He was then able to pivot to the resurrection of Jesus, leading “Dionysius the Areopagite,” a “woman named Damaris,” and others to faith in Christ (v. 34). Eusebius, the first church historian, reports that Dionysius then became the first bishop of the church at Athens (Ecclesiastical History III.iv). He is venerated as the patron saint of Athens today.

Intellectual excellence is one of the hallmarks of God’s people across biblical history. For example:

• Joseph’s wise management saved Egypt and his own family from famine (Genesis 41–47).
• In Babylon, God gave Daniel and his three companions “learning and skill in all literature and wisdom” such that “in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that were in all his kingdom” (Daniel 1:17, 20).
• Paul was a student of Gamaliel, the leading teacher of his day (Acts 22:3); even Roman officials noted his “great learning” (Acts 26:24).
• Jesus at the age of twelve was so brilliant that “all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers” (Luke 2:47). As an adult, he debated his opponents so effectively that they “marveled” (Matthew 22:22) and “no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions” (v. 46). In addition, the crowds who heard him “were astonished at his teaching” (v. 33).

Despite the anti-intellectual current of evangelicalism across recent generations, Christians should be the best scholars, the best doctors and lawyers and businesspeople and teachers, the best at whatever we do. This is because Jesus was the most brilliant person who ever lived (cf. Matthew 12:42), and you and I now have “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16) and are “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

What God expects and deserves

The same Spirit who empowered Christ now lives in us to empower us (1 Corinthians 3:16). When we submit our minds and lives to him (Ephesians 5:18), we are enabled to “think about” that which is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, and excellent (Philippians 4:8). Our Master therefore instructs us: “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23). He expects and deserves no less.

Pastor and author Jack Hyles noted,

“If a task is worthy of our attention, it is worthy of our best.”

What is worthy of your attention today?

Quote for the day:

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” —Plutarch (AD 40–120s)

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• A review of “Miracle in Progress” by Chip Waggoner: A powerful testimony of God’s redemption
• Public, private, homeschool, or online? A guide for Christian parents

Denison Forum

Parents in Silicon Valley are spending up to $50,000 for new genetic-testing services that include promises to screen embryos for high IQ. In related news, a Chinese scientist who, six years ago, created the world’s first gene-edited babies has now set up a company in the US he’s calling the “Walmart of gene editing” to produce high-IQ babies. A woman who was briefly married to this scientist is also creating a company in New York City to compete with him in creating gene-edited babies.

Moral questions abound, of course, from the ethics of altering genes in ways that will be inherited and thus alter the species, to the fairness of using technology to benefit only those who can pay, to the wisdom of modifying genetics without knowing the unintended consequences of such experimentation.

Here’s what no one seems to be asking, however: Are the embryos being tested and modified human? No one is asking because the answer is so obvious.

And this fact points to the truth I want to highlight today.

Scientists record embryo implanting in a womb

First, let’s consider a second story in the same context. An article recently published on NPR begins this way: “For the first time, scientists have recorded a human embryo implanting into a womb in real time, a feat the researchers hope will lead to new ways to treat infertility and prevent miscarriages.”

The story quotes Samuel Ojosnegros, head of bioengineering in reproductive health at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia in Spain: “Being able to record a movie of something that has never been seen before, which are the early steps of life—of human life—was mind-blowing.” The article then explains, “One of the most important steps in an embryo’s journey to becoming a baby is when the microscopic ball of cells implants in the uterus. But how a human embryo implants in the womb has long been a mystery.”

Here’s what struck me: the article (like others covering this story) consistently refers to the embryo being implanted as “human.” This is because it cannot be anything other. Its DNA, chromosomes, and cells clearly are not those of any other species or entity.

And yet the article states that implantation in the womb is “one of the most important steps” in the journey to “becoming a baby” (my emphasis). The embryo is already “human” but not yet a “baby”?

Abortion, Hamas, and mental gymnastics

This distinction is fundamental to legalized elective abortion. It was cited by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins.” It is the rationale for those who say they are “pro-choice” but not necessarily “pro-abortion”: since “no one knows for sure when life begins,” the choice should be with the mother, or so we’re told.

Consider the logic of such mental gymnastics. A human embryo is by definition human, whatever its stage of development. No one who came to this question with objectivity regarding abortion would think otherwise. A strong bias for elective abortion is required to outweigh and overcome what is otherwise obvious.

We can apply the same reasoning to the pro-Hamas demonstrations that broke out after the terrorist group committed horrific atrocities against Israeli civilians on October 7. Thousands were murdered; many were raped and mutilated; children were massacred. By what logic would we expect students who claim to support the “oppressed” to take the side of the oppressor who instigated such atrocities?

Once again, mental gymnastics are brought to bear. In this case, Critical Theory applies Marxist ideology to paint Israel as the oppressor and colonizer of Palestinians and then to defend any Palestinians who oppress their oppressor in their quest for “justice.” Massacred children and babies are ignored.

Why we committed our last sin

Our ability to justify whatever enables us to do what we want is at the center of the fallen human condition. In this sense, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9).

You and I are not exempt. The last time we sinned, we did what we knew not to do or did not do what we knew to do. But while we knew that “sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:15), we somehow justified our behavior to ourselves.

This fact points to a theme we’ve been discussing all week: our only hope for resolving human conflict and improving human flourishing lies in the transformation Christ brings to the human heart. Ann Voskamp was right: “Peace isn’t a place to arrive at but a person to abide in.” This is why we’ve explored ways we can experience the risen Lord Jesus more intimately in our quest to love God with “all” our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30).

The same principle applies to ways we “love your neighbor as yourself” (v. 31).

I have quoted and preached on Jesus’ statement that we are the “salt of the earth” more times than I can count (Matthew 5:13). But recently I read a commentary on this phrase by St. John Chrysostom (c. 347–407) that gave me insight I had never considered before. He asked:

What do these words imply? Did the disciples restore what had already turned rotten? Not at all. Salt cannot help what is already corrupted. That is not what they did. But what had first been renewed and freed from corruption and then turned over to them, they salted and preserved in the newness the Lord had bestowed. It took the power of Christ to free men from the corruption caused by sin.

“The second most powerful force in the universe”

Human words cannot change human hearts. You and I cannot convict a single sinner of a single sin or save a single soul. This is the sovereign work of God’s Holy Spirit. But we can partner with the Spirit by speaking the words he leads us to speak and doing the things he leads us to do.

As we work, God works.

If we were engaged in editing genes, our work could change our species. If we are engaged in editing souls, our work will change eternity.

Billy Graham noted,

“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.”

With whom will you share the most powerful force in the universe today?

Quote for the day:

“To be a soul winner is the happiest thing in the world. And with every soul you bring to Jesus Christ, you seem to get a new heaven here upon earth.” —Charles Spurgeon

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Denison Forum

St. Catherine’s Monastery, 275 miles from Cairo in the depths of the Sinai desert, is the oldest continually inhabited Christian monastery in the world. Built at the foot of the mountain where many believe Moses saw the burning bush and subsequently received the Ten Commandments, it has served as a sanctuary of worship, refuge, and scholarship for more than 1,500 years.

I was privileged to visit the monastery some years ago, where I was deeply moved by the monks’ passion for worship, community, and scholarship. They are stewards of some of the world’s oldest biblical manuscripts, treasures they continue to study and make available to the world.

However, their future is now in peril.

In May, an Egyptian court issued a ruling that allows the state to control what is and is not allowed at St. Catherine’s, stripping the monks of all legal authority. The government has already taken control over academic access to the site and continues to undermine its autonomy. With enough pressure, the monks may be forced to abandon the ancient monastery altogether.

Ironically and tragically, this oppression is being conducted in the name of religion. Egypt’s Islamic government is gradually subsuming non-Sunni religious institutions and refuses to shield Coptic Christians, churches, and homes from attacks. It also refuses to permit renovations of churches while pouring enormous sums into building and renovating thousands of mosques.

What is the essence of Christianity?

Oppressing Christianity in the name of religion is nothing new, of course.

Jesus’ greatest persecutors were religious leaders convinced they were serving God by their actions. Saul of Tarsus was similarly certain that by persecuting Christians he was imprisoning heretics (cf. Acts 22:3–5). Jihadist Muslims see Christians as infidels who oppose the one true faith and must therefore be opposed in the name of Allah (cf. Qur’an 2:190).

However, we don’t have to persecute the church to fall prey to the temptation of religion that competes against a genuine relationship with Jesus.

I’m old enough to remember a day when church activities consisted primarily of worship and Bible study. Then churches discovered that they could add buildings and programs to attract the community and hopefully attract them to the Lord. Gymnasiums, family life centers, children’s and youth weekday activities, and need-based programs (AA, divorce recovery, and so on) proliferated. These strategies followed Jesus’ example as he met felt needs to meet spiritual needs, healing bodies to heal souls.

Such programs can be effective ways to reach people who likely would not come to a worship service or a Bible study. I know of pastors and other Christian leaders who reached for Christ through softball leagues, sports programs, recovery groups, and similar ministries.

But the downside of the upside is that we can confuse activities at church with a transforming relationship with Jesus himself. Our Great Commission is clear and simple: the church exists to “make disciples” of Jesus by evangelizing the lost and equipping the saved (Matthew 28:19–20). If we do anything else, we can be many things—but we are no longer the church.

Our Lord was clear: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Not “come to my teachings,” or “come to my movement, “ or “join my church,” but “come to me.”

Experiencing the risen Lord Jesus himself is the essence of Christianity.

“God is the strength of my heart”

In his Confessions, St. Augustine famously prayed, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” The second phrase explains the first.

God made you and me in his own image so we could have a personal relationship with our Maker (Genesis 1:27). This only makes sense. Humans can relate to humans on a level different from our relationship with any other living beings, not to mention inanimate objects.

Because “God is love” (1 John 4:8), he made us for intimacy with himself. This is why we are commanded to love God with “all” our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). Everything “religious” we do is to be a means to this end: We worship God as our “Audience of one,” as Kierkegaard reminded us. We read Scripture to hear “God preaching,” as J. I. Packer noted. We pray to commune with our Lord. We serve others to serve him.

In fact, God says everything we do in life is to be a means to the end of knowing him and making him known:

Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me (Jeremiah 9:23–24).

According to Paul, anything we must give up to know God personally and intimately is a cost worth paying: “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:8).

The psalmist agreed:

Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Psalm 73:25–26).

“Let us run with confidence and joy”

On the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter said, “Lord, it is good for us to be here” (Matthew 17:4 NIV). St. Anastasius, the seventh-century abbot of St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mt. Sinai, commented on Peter’s declaration:

Let us run with confidence and joy to enter into the cloud like Moses and Elijah, or like James and John. Let us be caught up like Peter to behold the divine vision and to be transfigured by that glorious transfiguration. Let us retire from the world, stand aloof from the earth, rise above the body, detach ourselves from creatures and turn to the Creator, to whom Peter in ecstasy exclaimed: “Lord, it is good for us to be here.”

It is indeed good to be here, as you have said, Peter. It is good to be with Jesus and to remain here forever. What greater happiness or higher honor could we have than to be with God, to be made like him and to live in his light?

Therefore, since each of us possesses God in his heart and is being transformed into his divine image, we also should cry out with joy: “It is good for us to be here.”

When last did you “retire from the world” to “turn to the Creator”?

When last was it “good” for you to be with Jesus?

Why not today?

Quote for the day:

“Everything we do for God will be the overflow of intimacy with God.” —Dan Baumann

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Denison Forum