It was the unseen interview seen “round the world.” On The Late Show Tuesday night, Stephen Colbert told viewers that CBS told him an interview he taped with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico could not be aired. According to Colbert, CBS was concerned about an FCC rule requiring broadcasters to give “equal time” to opposing candidates when an interview is broadcast with one of them.

The network, however, flatly denied Colbert’s claim, stating, “The Late Show was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview.” It added that the network “provided legal guidance” and “presented options for how the equal time for other candidates could be fulfilled.” The show then presented the interview through its YouTube channel, where FCC rules do not apply.

As of this morning, it has been viewed more than 7.4 million times, roughly triple what the CBS program draws each night. Mr. Talarico also reported that he raised $2.5 million in campaign donations in the first twenty-four hours after the interview.

You may side with Mr. Colbert in this ongoing dispute, you may side with CBS, or you may not care. But it’s worth noting that Mr. Colbert’s show will end in May. We might wonder if the fact that he has little to lose in his conflict with the network contributes to his willingness to stage it.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Stephen Colbert’s ongoing dispute with his CBS bosses →

Republicans have been trying to pass some version of voter ID laws for years, with the latest attempt set for a vote in the Senate coming soon. Few expect the bill to pass, though, despite overwhelming popular support. And the reasons why have less to do with the ID requirements than with the rest of what the law is trying to change.

Why it matters: Election integrity remains a focal point for the Trump administration and many in the Republican Party. If Democrats continue to oppose the SAVE America Act, it could prompt Republicans to remove or alter the filibuster in ways that would have a profound impact on how laws are passed down the line. Or, if the bill stalls, President Trump has promised to push it through via executive order, even though a similar attempt was already deemed illegal last year. Either way, the issue doesn’t appear to be headed toward a resolution anytime soon.

The backstory: Third time’s a charm?

For the third consecutive year, the House of Representatives has passed a version of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE Act for short. So far, it has died in the Senate each time without even getting a vote. Senate Majority Leader John Thune promised that it would not happen again, given that he now has the support necessary to bring it to the floor and force representatives to go on record as either supporting or rejecting it.

Still, few expect the law to pass. It would need sixty votes unless Republicans either get rid of the filibuster—a step leadership has repeatedly said they will not take—or change the requirements to oppose the bill. There’s a lot of risk either way, though, and it’s unclear if Thune will be willing to take that step.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Why are the new voter ID laws so controversial? →

An Ash Wednesday reflection on what matters most in life

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, described by the New York Times as America’s “most influential Black figure in the years between the civil rights crusades of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the election of Barack Obama,” died yesterday morning at the age of eighty-four. He was hospitalized last November with a severe neurodegenerative condition; his family said he “died peacefully.”

Rev. Jackson was with Dr. King when he was assassinated in 1968, eventually formed the National Rainbow Coalition, and ran for president in 1984 and 1988. Both times, he secured millions of votes in the primaries and delivered speeches at the Democratic National Conventions that electrified those in attendance. In 2000, President Clinton bestowed on him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our nation’s highest civilian honor.

Another death making headlines this week was the passing of famed actor Robert Duvall at the age of ninety-five. He was especially known for his roles in The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, and Tender Mercies (for which he won the Best Actor Oscar). He also starred in the TV miniseries Lonesome Dove; his costar Tommy Lee Jones said after his death, “Even though I have lost a friend, Bob’s work will be with us indefinitely.”

I appreciate his kind tribute, but let’s think about his words for a moment.

The eighty-six-year-old actor Ian McKellen recently told an interviewer, “I have accepted that I’m not immortal.” It is vital that you and I accept the same fact, for reasons that reveal what matters most in life.

When most people died of an infectious disease

Even if Jesse Jackson had been elected president of the United States, his earthly work would not have been immortal. As President George W. Bush noted in his Presidents’ Day tribute to Gen. George Washington, our first president’s humility in stepping down from office helped define that office. He also built a mansion at Mt. Vernon that I and millions of others have toured.

However, neither the nation he helped birth nor the mansion he constructed will stand forever.

Robert Duvall likewise acted in some of our most iconic films and will be seen in them long after his death, but his films will not live forever.

There was a time when we understood the fact of our mortality better than we do now. As Susan Wise Bauer reports in The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy, we are only four or five generations removed from a world where most people, most of the time, died of an infectious disease.

As examples, she discusses plague, typhus, smallpox, typhoid, influenza, polio, tuberculosis, dysentery, scarlet fever, cholera, measles, and malaria. The fact that medical science has defeated most of them does not make us any less mortal, a lesson the COVID-19 pandemic should have taught us.

There was also a time when we understood the temporality of our world better than we do now. But as I noted yesterday, materialism has convinced many that this world is all there is. Rather than using this life to prepare for the next, we ignore the latter and focus myopically on the former.

How death is like anesthesia

Could this be one reason God allows the reality of physical death? He could take us deathlessly from this world to the next, as he did with Enoch and Elijah. But he chooses to allow our bodies to die, in part to remind us of our finitude in the face of infinity and our mortality on the precipice of immortality.

When we die, we obviously have no agency by which to determine what happens to us next. At death, we are like a patient under anesthesia. What happens to us depends not on us, but on those who have power over us we no longer possess.

This fact should lead us to trust God not just with our lives beyond life but with our lives in this life.

As C. S. Lewis noted in Mere Christianity, humans were designed to depend on God as the “petrol” on which our “car” runs. Accordingly, he wrote, “It is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

“Destinations of which the traveler is unaware”

How, then, are we to live most effectively for eternal purposes? I don’t know the answer for my own life, much less for yours.

The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber observed, “All journeys have destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” This is especially true with regard to God’s omniscient purposes for his people, plans our finite and fallen minds cannot fully comprehend (cf. Isaiah 55:8–9).

I would guess that Paul considered the individuals he won to Christ during his missionary journeys to be his most lasting legacy. His letters were “task theology” written to specific congregations and people for specific purposes. But it was these letters that became his global contribution to God’s eternal kingdom.

I would also guess that John thought his public ministry was over when he was exiled to Patmos. He had written a Gospel and three letters, so he presumably had no regrets. Accordingly, when he was worshiping Jesus “in the Spirit” on the Lord’s Day, he had no idea he would receive the Revelation that completed the New Testament (Revelation 1:10–20).

Our Father will lead us into our most impactful lives if we leave the choice with him. Every moment spent in his perfect will is obedience that echoes in eternity. If we choose to measure success in this world by significance for the next, and we ask Jesus to make our choice a reality, he will always answer our prayer.

“You became what you were not”

On this Ash Wednesday, as Christians around the world begin a season focused on Jesus’ suffering and death for us, we can join them in contemplating such sacrificial love. And we can respond by committing our lives to serving and glorifying such a Savior.

To this end, we can pray with Martin Luther:

“Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You took on you what was mine, yet set on me what was yours. You became what you were not, that I might become what I was not.”

How grateful are you for such grace today?

Quote for the day:

“A Christian knows that death shall be the funeral of all his sins, his sorrows, his afflictions, his temptations, his vexations, his oppressions, his persecutions. He knows that death shall be the resurrection of all his hopes, his joys, his delights, his comforts, his contentments.” —Thomas Brooks (1608–80)

Our latest website resources:

• Why are the new voter ID laws so controversial?
• George Washington and the future of the “United” States
• Can caffeine and video games protect against dementia?
• James Van Der Beek’s death and the path to true hope
• Notre Dame professor advocates for abortion: Responding to her argument with scientific facts and a grieving heart

Denison Forum

I am writing this article on “Presidents’ Day,” but I am doing so under protest. George Washington was born on February 22, 1732. In 1879, the United States made his birthday a federal holiday. In 1968, however, Congress passed the “Uniform Monday Holiday Act” that moved the celebration of Washington’s birthday to the third Monday of February.

Since Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, many states have combined the two into “Presidents’ Day,” which is the case in my home state of Texas. Fortunately, in my view, numerous states still recognize this day as “George Washington Day” or “Washington’s Birthday.” In the city of Laredo, Texas, the Washington Birthday Celebration lasts the entire month.

With all due respect to Mr. Lincoln and our other presidents, George Washington deserves to be recognized by our nation on a specific day. Were it not for him, there likely would not be a “United” States of America to do so.

The reasons speak not only to our past but especially to our future.

 “Separate them if it be better”

By any measure, George Washington occupies a unique place in our national story.

As commander in chief of the Continental Army, he led his troops to eventual victory over the unquestioned superpower of the day. This despite the fact that most of his soldiers were farmers and merchants with no formal military training; the British fielded much larger numbers of professional soldiers along with the world’s strongest navy.

After winning our independence, Gen. Washington presided over the Continental Congress that created our Constitution, then became our first president (the only person ever elected by unanimous vote of the Electoral College).

However, the nation he led was not sure it was a nation. The thirteen colonies were widely disparate in culture and economics, united primarily in their opposition to King George III and their quest for independence from his despotic rule.

Our Declaration of Independence was titled, “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America” (note the lower case “united” and upper case “States”). The resolution adopted the declaration, “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” Independence did not, in fact, create one nation, but thirteen.

During the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, the West threatened to secede from the East. At the end of Thomas Jefferson’s first term, New England threatened to secede over his economic and political stances. He responded: “Whether we remain in our confederacy, or break into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I do not believe very important to the happiness of either part.” He added, “Separate them if it be better.”

Blue cities within red states

We live in a day that seems as divided by partisan politics and cultural issues as ever. We are not just “blue” states and “red” states but blue cities and towns within red states and vice versa. A record-high 80 percent of US adults believe Americans are greatly divided on the most important values, while only 18 percent believe our country is united.

There was a day when Americans could find unity in their shared religiosity, but a smaller percentage of us now claim a church membership than ever before. Those with no religious preference outnumber any other single religious demographic.

Additionally, a recent poll reported that two-thirds of US adults believe this is the lowest point in our nation’s history that they can remember; 76 percent said the future of the nation is a significant source of stress in their lives.

Do these facts correlate with our declining religious commitment?

I believe George Washington would say so.

An annual tradition worth emulating 

Since 1896, it has been an annual tradition for a current member of the US Senate to read Gen. Washington’s Farewell Address in honor of his birthday. I believe this is something every American would profit from doing as well.

There was no constitutional requirement for President Washington to step down after two terms, and he faced significant pressure not to do so. To announce his decision not to seek a third term, he presented his Farewell Address in a newspaper article on September 17, 1796. In it, he stated:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.

His reasoning is compelling: a consensual democracy requires a consensual morality. The Dutch diplomat Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) noted more than a century earlier:

A man cannot govern a nation if he cannot govern a city; he cannot govern a city if he cannot govern a family; he cannot govern a family unless he can govern himself; and he cannot govern himself unless his passions are subject to reason.

However, can our “passions” be “subject to reason”? Our first president would say no. Continuing with his Farewell Address:

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be sustained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of particular structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Why was he right?

How Americans can “unite” today

After the Fall, the “will to power” has dominated human nature (cf. Genesis 3:5). We will therefore use the political process as a means to our ends. We will place our state ahead of the federal, our community ahead of the state, and ourselves ahead of all.

Consequently, America will remain a “united” nation only if we learn to subject our personal ambitions to the national good and serve a cause greater than ourselves. And we can consistently do this only when we experience the unconditional, selfless love of God and then share it with others: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19; cf. Galatians 5:22).

In this light, is knowing Christ and making him known not the single greatest service we can render our nation? Is experiencing his love and then paying forward his grace not the most transforming gift we can give?

In 1789, George Washington issued America’s first “Thanksgiving Proclamation.” In it, he called on Americans to render their gratitude to God as “the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.”

He believed that our disparate nation would then “unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country.” And that we would “unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations” (my emphases).

Can the “United” States of America flourish unless we embrace our first president’s wisdom?

Can you?

Denison Forum

It’s a sign of our times when a movie is so sexually immoral that even reading reviews of it can veer toward the pornographic. But such is the case with Wuthering Heights, the film adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel that was released Friday to a very mixed reception.

One reviewer calls the film an “abomination.” Another calls it an “insult” to the novel’s characters and describes its sex scenes as “truly exhausting.” The New Yorker portrays some of these scenes in ways I will not reproduce here and hope you won’t read.

To switch “art” forms: the latest Sports Illustrated “Swimsuit Edition” is out. The magazine has been doing this since 1964, sometimes in nearly pornographic ways. This year’s edition does something new, however: it features six wives and girlfriends of prominent NFL players. Among them is Brittany Mahomes, whose husband is an iconic superstar widely considered one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time.

As with Wuthering Heights, I will neither link to the images nor view them myself. One reason is obvious: Jesus warned us that “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). We are therefore told to “flee from sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6:18), a command I intend to obey.

But the other reason is less obvious and constitutes the theme of my article today.

The three marks of a revolution

Last Thursday, I referred to the LGBTQ advocacy strategy I have been describing for years in books and articles: normalize unbiblical immorality, legalize it, stigmatize those who disagree, and criminalize such disagreement.

A reader responded by pointing me to a similar way of describing this strategy that I had not seen. In Reinventing Liberal Christianity, the British theologian Theo Hobson describes the three marks of a revolution:

1. What was universally condemned is now celebrated.
2. What was universally celebrated is now condemned.
3. Those who refuse to celebrate are condemned.

As a means to advancing such a “revolution,” the first step is to normalize “what was universally condemned.” We are reticent to celebrate what we consider aberrant, so we must be convinced that what we thought was aberrant is actually normal.

With regard to sexual immorality, the enemy does this in two ways.

From models to mothers

The first is modeled by the women modeling very revealing swimwear in Sports Illustrated. In the past, athletes, actresses, and professional models have typically been the subjects of the annual publication. This year, however, the magazine chose wives and girlfriends of athletes, some of whom are known for their public roles as wives and mothers.

One result is the supposition that if “normal” people engage in activities we would have considered immoral, it must be normal for us to do the same.

The second way immorality is normalized is illustrated by Wuthering Heights and its extremely aberrant sex scenes. Even reading the reviews, it is clear to me that these are activities “normal” people would not even consider.

My concern is not that those who see the movie are now more likely to do what the characters did. It is that they will think, “If people do things like this, my more ‘normal’ sins must not be as sinful as I thought.”

And when any activity becomes normalized in society, we can expect society to want it to be legalized. We saw this with marijuana legalization, which the New York Times strongly advocated but now admits has “caused a rise in addiction and other problems,” with widespread hospitalizations and chronic psychotic disorders.

Nonetheless, it is natural for us to want to legalize what we consider normal behavior, then to stigmatize those who disagree and even to criminalize such disagreement. As Hobson noted, in this third stage of a revolution, “Those who refuse to celebrate are condemned.”

Two practical responses

Given the extreme pervasiveness of sexualized images and behavior in contemporary culture, spanning the gamut from advertising to music to television to movies to Super Bowl halftime shows (again, I won’t link to examples), how are Christ followers to respond?

First, we should see all temptations as a step from what seems “normal” and innocuous into what will become disastrous and deadly. Jesus warned us that “everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). And “sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:15). Lust becomes adultery, which becomes the destruction of our family and the ruin of our public witness and ministry.

As I heard a pastor say and often quote: sin will always take you further than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you wanted to pay. If you think you’re exempt from this satanic strategy, you of all people are most susceptible to it.

Our second response is to turn to the only source of true victory: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16, my emphasis). Jesus taught us, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all” (John 6:63). Paul was blunt: “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:8).

Clearly, we cannot rely on our sinful nature to defeat our sinful nature. How then do we “walk by the Spirit”?

• We begin the day by submitting our lives to him (Ephesians 5:18), reading God’s word so the Spirit can use it to shape our minds and guide our steps (Hebrews 4:12), and drawing close to Christ in worship so he can make us like himself (2 Corinthians 3:18).
• We “walk” through the day by practicing his presence: we pray about all we encounter (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and turn every temptation immediately to him for his strength and help (1 Corinthians 10:13; Romans 13:14).
• If we fall, we immediately seek his forgiveness and restoration (1 John 1:9).

When we “walk in the light, as he is in the light” (1 John 1:7), we experience our Father’s best in every dimension of our lives (cf. Galatians 6:7–8). As the biblical scholar Spiros Zodhiates noted,

“Peace of heart is the natural outcome of purity of heart.”

Will you experience such “peace” today?

Quote for the day:

“If your goal is purity of heart, be prepared to be thought very odd.” —Elisabeth Elliot

Our latest website resources:

• James Van Der Beek’s death and the path to true hope
• Notre Dame professor advocates for abortion: Responding to her argument with scientific facts and a grieving heart
• Is your church a part of the friendship recession? How biblical, covenantal friendships can help
• Super Bowl recap, AI shakes Wall Street, Trump’s Obama video, Epstein fallout & Winter Olympics
• Should churches use AI? What role does Artificial Intelligence play in the church, and what are the risks?

Denison Forum

How biblical, covenantal friendships can help

Friendships are on the decline, in quantity, but especially in quality. Due to the rise of social media and digital communication, modern relationships often lack depth, commitment, and longevity. The world seems to value individual preference, side hustles, pets, social media appearances, and hobbies over friendships.

These values can infiltrate the church, but so can prioritizing family and spouses at the expense of healthy, deep, covenantal friendships. First, let’s discuss the so-called “friendship recession,” then we can unpack how you and your church can combat it.

The friendship recession

This shift has occurred rapidly, although the phenomenon likely predates the technology. From 1975 to 2000, there was a 35 percent drop in having friends over and a 58 percent drop in club meeting attendance. This decline in America’s social fabric is only exacerbated by social media and casual friendships.

Unlike the friendships of previous generations, which often formed through shared life experiences, community engagement, and long-term interactions, friendships today tend to be more transactional and fleeting. The number of Americans with no close friends quadrupled from 4 percent to 12 percent over the period from 1990 to 2021. This decline has been called the “friendship recession.”

Broadly speaking, people who go to church regularly fare better in the friendship department. Church can be a wonderful place to make close relationships. Church involves a social gathering where folks have shared values—namely, the gospel—and engage in common activities like singing and discussing the Bible. Unfortunately, churches haven’t always capitalized on this fact.

Instead, the friendship recession has affected not only personal relationships but also how friendships are perceived within the church. Rather than being viewed as a crucial aspect of spiritual growth and Christian living, friendships have become secondary to romantic and familial relationships.

This modern neglect of deep, covenantal friendships has significant implications for the church.

When friendships are not prioritized or nurtured, churches can become fragmented, with individuals forming small, insular groups rather than functioning as a unified body. This lack of deep connection weakens communities, making it easier for people to leave their church for minor reasons or to seek fulfillment elsewhere.

If friendships were viewed through a covenantal lens—similar to the biblical examples of David and Jonathan, or even Jesus and His disciples—churches would foster a stronger sense of commitment, accountability, and support among their members.

Biblical examples of covenantal friendship

The Bible presents numerous examples of friendships that transcend cultural expectations and personal circumstances. Jonathan and David, for example, model the biblical picture of covenantal friendship. There are several moments when David and Jonathan show brotherly affection and make lifelong commitments to friendship, but this passage from 1 Samuel stands out:

Then Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace, because we have sworn both of us in the name of the Lᴏʀᴅ, saying, ‘The Lᴏʀᴅ shall be between me and you, and between my offspring and your offspring, forever.’” (1 Samuel 20:42)

This kind of commitment has the potential to transform both individual lives and church communities. Their friendship was marked by unwavering loyalty, self-sacrifice, and deep emotional connection, demonstrating the power of covenantal love. Jonathan risked his own safety and position for David’s well-being, showing that true friendship often requires personal sacrifice.

In addition to David and Jonathan’s friendship, Jesus Himself modeled deep relational bonds with His disciples. He did not merely serve as their teacher; He called them friends (John 15:15). His love for them was sacrificial and enduring, as seen in His commitment to walking with them in their weaknesses, encouraging them, and ultimately laying down His life for them.

Similarly, the early church exemplified communal friendship in Acts 2:42-47, where believers devoted themselves to fellowship, shared their resources, and supported one another in radical ways.

These examples remind us that friendships in the Christian faith are not meant to be optional or superficial but integral to spiritual growth and community flourishing.

Does every friendship need to be covenantal?

Does every friendship need to be covenantal? In short, absolutely not.

Friendship is not a single category. We use the same word to describe people we occasionally see, people we share activities with, and people who carry our inner lives—but not all friendships are meant to hold the same emotional weight.

The difference between them is not primarily time spent, proximity, or shared interests; it is emotional posture: how open, exposed, and responsible two people are willing to be with one another.

Covenant friendship is not a higher-value human being but a deeper shared agreement. It cannot exist unilaterally. Close and covenant friendships only form when both people—implicitly or explicitly—agree that the relationship carries the next level of responsibility.

When intimacy is assumed without mutual clarity, it becomes high-liability rather than life-giving. Covenant friendship, at its core, is not about intensity or constant access, but about mutual commitment to presence, repair, and care across seasons of change.

As Proverbs 18:24 says, “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” While it’s important for every believer to have one to a few covenantal friendships, there’s no need to stress about making everyone into that kind of friend! It’s a rare, treasured thing that should be protected, cultivated, and celebrated.

How can your church encourage covenantal friendships?

Often, friendships within the church remain segmented along lines of age, marital status, or shared interests, rather than functioning as a holistic, intergenerational community. When friendships are not intentionally cultivated, they can lead to feelings of isolation and disconnection, weakening the overall fabric of the church.

However, if churches were to intentionally cultivate and encourage friendships across different groups—between singles and married couples, across generations, and even across cultural backgrounds—there would be a greater sense of unity and mutual encouragement in the body of Christ.

A culture of covenantal friendship would encourage members to commit to one another in love, fostering an environment where spiritual growth, accountability, and encouragement thrive. This shift would strengthen the church and provide a countercultural witness to a world that often undervalues deep, committed relationships.

To cultivate these kinds of friendships, we need to take practical steps:

• First, churches should actively teach about the value of covenant friendships, incorporating it into sermons, Bible studies, and discipleship programs.
• Second, believers should commit to spending intentional time with one another, prioritizing friendship in their schedules rather than relegating it to occasional interactions.
• Third, accountability should be a natural part of these relationships, where friends encourage one another in faith, challenge each other to grow spiritually, and walk through trials together.
• Lastly, churches should create spaces where friendships can naturally develop, such as small groups, mentorship programs, and intergenerational gatherings.

Reclaiming the biblical vision of covenantal friendship is essential for both personal and communal flourishing. Friendship, when understood as a covenantal relationship rather than a casual association, has the power to transform the church into a more unified, supportive, and spiritually mature body. By looking to biblical examples and intentionally investing in deep, Christ-centered friendships, we can cultivate a church community that reflects the eternal, relational joy of the kingdom of God.

As marriage fades away in eternity, friendships will remain, demonstrating the enduring nature of covenantal love. In a culture that often isolates individuals and prioritizes independence over interdependence, the church has the unique opportunity to reclaim friendship as a foundational element of Christian life. By doing so, we offer a glimpse of heaven: a

community united in love, bound by faith, and strengthened through covenantal friendship.

To whom can you offer that glimpse of heaven today?

Denison Forum

The El Paso airport was shut down late Tuesday night after the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) fired an anti-drone laser at an object flying near the border. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered all flights grounded and closed the airspace up to eighteen thousand feet for a period of ten days in response. Or at least that was the plan until the FAA reversed course eight hours later and reopened everything.

It was a strange event, and a good bit of digital ink has been spilled in the time since attempting to get to the bottom of what caused the shutdown. As of now, here’s what we know:

• The Department of Defense (DOD) has been testing new anti-drone technology at Fort Bliss, which sits just outside of El Paso, TX.
• The DOD failed to inform the FAA that it would use this technology—a high-powered laser—creating a problem, as anti-drone weapons could potentially affect commercial aircraft that fly in and out of El Paso. Or, at least, that was the fear.
• After the laser was used to target what Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy described as a cartel drone incursion into American airspace—other reports say it was actually just a party balloon—the FAA shut down the airport for ten days.
• The ten-day shutdown appears quite excessive until you consider that the Pentagon and FAA officials were set to meet on February 20—one day before the shutdown was originally scheduled to end—to discuss the safety implications of testing those weapons so close to a commercial airport.
• The Pentagon had previously told the FAA about the lasers and how they planned to use them, but reports indicate the FAA did not receive enough information to be comfortable keeping the airspace open.

So, given those details, what are we to make of their decision, and are we likely to see further shutdowns in the future?

What’s the real problem?

The speed at which the FAA removed the restrictions, coupled with the specific timeframe of the initial closure, makes it sound as though the shutdown was more to get the DOD’s attention than because they truly feared for the safety of the aircraft flying in and out of El Paso. That the FAA neglected to tell either the White House or the Pentagon of its decision further points to safety being a secondary concern.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Why did the government shut down El Paso’s airport? →

Four biblical responses when Christians are stigmatized

Jennifer Welch was an Oklahoma City-based interior designer and reality show actress before launching a podcast in 2022. Titled “I’ve Had It,” her podcast now has 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube and 4.5 million followers across social media. She has interviewed former President Barack Obama, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), then-Vice President Kamala Harris, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, among many others.

Known for her profane rants against conservatives—she claims the 2024 assassination attempt on President Trump was “totally staged,” for example—she has now turned her ire on evangelicals.

Bonnie Kristian reports in the Free Press that Welch recently called us “the worst people in our country” and said in May, “I detest, with every molecule . . . in my being, evangelical Christianity. I think it is a dumb factory.”

Welch claims that “evangelical Christianity is the biggest racket on the planet” and repeatedly uses the epithet “cancer” to describe us. In her view, “Until we start dealing with this horrific cancer that is white evangelical Christianity in this country, we’re going to continue to have these problems.”

Kristian notes that “scorn heaped on evangelicals is not new.” She cites Yale University legal scholar Stephen L. Carter, who wrote in 1994 that secular progressives saw evangelicals as “wide-eyed zealots.”

Political scientist Ryan Burge explains: “People on the left side of the political spectrum need an enemy. They need to personify what the other side is, and because white evangelicals are so prominent in America, they have become the totem for all the liberal ire against conservatives in America.”

As corrosive to the common good as Welch’s rhetoric is, it is also a signal of something even more systemic, a trend we must recognize clearly so we can respond redemptively.

The four-part strategy continues

My wife and I watched a television show this week in which one of the female characters develops a romantic relationship with another woman. The other characters respond with delight that their colleague has finally “found someone” and hope their relationship lasts.

I was reminded again of the LGBTQ strategy that has been developed and followed over recent decades: normalize unbiblical immorality, legalize it, stigmatize those who disagree, and criminalize such disagreement.

However, the apparent chronological staging of this strategy is deceptive. Those who follow it will continue their efforts to normalize such immorality until they convince us that it is not immoral. Many will continue their work to legalize their immorality, as with current efforts to protect and legalize pedophilia. And they will continue stigmatizing those who disagree until there is no one left to disagree, all the while criminalizing such opposition in the service of the first three stages.

Jennifer Welch’s profane diatribes against evangelicals are obviously in the service of the stigmatizing stage. If Dr. Burge is right (and I think he is), we should not assume that there will not be others, or that criminalization of evangelicals who defend biblical morality is not in our future.

Numerous efforts have already been mounted to threaten our religious liberty, as the so-called Equality Act that passed the House twice demonstrates. Christianity Today reports that “across Western Europe, Christians report ‘discrimination and bullying’ and in some instances even ‘loss of employment’ for expressing faith-based opinions in their workplaces.” Some have even faced repercussions for views they expressed in private conversations or posted on private social media accounts.

Of course, such persecution does not begin to rise to the opposition believers face in North Korea, China, Cuba, and parts of the Muslim world. But when evangelicals are so blatantly stigmatized on one of the most popular podcasts in America, we should take note of where things are and where they may be going.

An “anonymous Christian” is a contradiction in terms

At this point, you might be discouraged by what you’ve read. My purpose, however, is just the opposite.

Jesus assured his followers, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matthew 5:11, my emphasis). Our Lord warned us that we would be persecuted just as he was persecuted, which makes sense: those who saw him as a threat would see his followers as a threat. If they opposed him for proclaiming truth, they would oppose his followers for doing the same (cf. Acts 5:17–40).

A simple way out of this, of course, is to be silent about our faith as we hide our beliefs from those who would oppose them. However, an “anonymous Christian” is a contradiction in terms. If a “Christian” is a “Christ imitator” (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:1; 1 John 2:6), we cannot imitate our Lord and be anything but vocal and courageous in speaking his word and advancing his kingdom (cf. Acts 4:19–20).

As a result, the more we are stigmatized for our faith, the more we can know that we are being appropriately public with our biblical beliefs. And the more we can know that Satan himself is using those willing to be used as he fights truth with lies.

Four practical responses

In this sense, it is an odd compliment when someone like Jennifer Welch castigates us so profanely and hatefully. Our response should be to expect such attacks, then to redeem them for God’s glory.

Here’s how the Bible teaches us to respond to those who oppose our faith:

1. “Forgive others their trespasses” (Matthew 6:14), choosing to pardon rather than to punish in the knowledge that we have been forgiven much as well (cf. Luke 7:47).
2. “Pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44), recognizing that the more they reject biblical truth, the more they need it.
3. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27), seeking tangible ways to meet their needs so as to earn the right to share Christ with them.
4. “Be strong and courageous” (Joshua 1:9), asking God to help us “continue to speak your word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29).

In all things, we must remember that we are not “culture warriors” for whom people like Jennifer Welch are our enemies, but cultural missionaries for whom they are our mission field. The good news, as my wife writes in her latest blog, is that God’s Spirit can fill us with the same agape love that God’s Son has for us.

Then, as Janet notes, “we can love like Jesus.”

Whom do you know who needs such love today?

Quote for the day:

“The good man has his enemies. He would not be like his Lord if he had not. If we were without enemies, we might fear that we were not the friends of God, for friendship of the world is enmity to God.” —Charles Spurgeon

Our latest website resources:

• Notre Dame professor advocates for abortion: Responding to her argument with scientific facts and a grieving heart
• Transgender care is changing, how should Christians respond?
• How should Christians think about economics, capitalism, and government policy?
• Should churches user AI?
• How to help kids process disturbing news in a digital age

Denison Forum

A man was released from custody early this morning after being detained for questioning in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie. He said he had been in his car last night when police officers asked him for his name and then detained him. He was held for several hours, he said, before he was released with wrists swollen from handcuffs.

The news came after the FBI released video Tuesday showing a masked person with a handgun holster outside Ms. Guthrie’s front door the night she disappeared.

In other Tuesday headlines, seven people were found dead in a shooting at a high school in Tumbler Ridge, a remote community in British Columbia. Among them was a person believed to be the shooter, who died from an apparent self-inflicted injury.

Another person died while being transported to the hospital from the school; twenty-five people suffered injuries that were not life-threatening. Two other people were found dead in a local residence that police believe is connected to the shooting.

Jefferson, Lincoln, and the “will to power”

Since the Fall, vice has been a feature rather than a bug of human nature. From Cain to today, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The two phrases and experiences are connected and causal: “The wicked boasts of the desires of his soul, and the one greedy for gain curses and renounces the Lᴏʀᴅ. In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 10:3–4).

In reading Joseph J. Ellis’s American Dialogue: The Founders and Us, I found two examples that make the psalmist’s point.

The first concerns Thomas Jefferson, without question one of the most brilliant of our presidents. Yet according to Ellis, Jefferson “regarded it as self-evident that ‘blacks are inferior to whites in the endowments of both mind and body.’” As a result, he could not see an end to slavery: he was convinced that any mixing of blacks and whites would produce an inferior American race, so freed slaves would have to be deported from the US, but Jefferson could not identify a plausible way to do so.

The second concerns Abraham Lincoln, usually ranked by historians as the greatest of our presidents. Yet Ellis reports that he also considered a deportation scheme for freed slaves to be enacted after the Civil War, even dispatching a presidential commission to Panama to explore the viability of a black homeland there.

Both presidents illustrate the perennial fact that the “will to power” inflames and empowers fallen human nature (cf. Genesis 3:5). But Jefferson was right to write: “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

Is there a way forward?

Ben Sasse on the source of meaning

In a perceptive new Wall Street Journal article, former Sen. Ben Sasse reminds us: “America works only if we remember that government is the source neither of our rights nor the meaning in our lives.” Given that Mr. Sasse is dying of pancreatic cancer, his wisdom resonates with particular urgency.

He is right: If our hope lies within us, we have no real hope. But if we will use the discouragements of the news and our culture to turn from ourselves to our redeeming Lord, he will do in us what we cannot do in ourselves.

While “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9), our Maker will give us a spiritual heart transplant: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you” (Ezekiel 36:26). When we trust Christ as our Lord, we “become children of God” (John 1:12) and a “new creation” as “the old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

However, if you’re like Paul (and me), you still struggle with temptation: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19).

The good news is that there is no sin we must commit (1 Corinthians 10:13). And there is a practical way we can experience “victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” every day (1 Corinthians 15:57).

“We need to reprogram our mind and heart”

In a recent Wisdom for Each Day devotional, Billy Graham likened our minds to computers that are programmed at the factory. Unfortunately, much of what programs us comes from our fallen culture and corrupts us. Dr. Graham therefore advised that “we need to reprogram our mind and heart; we need to replace the bad things that have taken root there with good and true things.”

The key is the word “replace.”

Years ago, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote an important article titled “How People Change.” He cited a “trove of research suggesting that it’s best to tackle negative behaviors obliquely, by redirecting attention toward different, positive ones.”

Erasmus (c. 1469–1536) had similar advice, encouraging us to use temptation as an opportunity to trust more fully in God’s power to defeat it. He noted that Satan hates nothing so much as for evil to be used for good.

In practical terms:

• When we see something in the news that discourages us, pray for those involved. Ask Jesus to make himself real to them. Pray for God to use his people to make a difference where they have influence. Ask the Spirit to replace our fear with the “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,” knowing that it “will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7).

• When we face temptation, pray for the strength and wisdom to replace sin with godliness. Identify a positive action that would benefit us and others. Then ask Jesus to make himself real to us as he empowers us to be “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

The key is both simple and profound:

“Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

How fully will you be “transformed” into your Father’s image today?

Quote for the day:

“Be killing sin, or it will be killing you.” —John Owen (1616–83)

Our latest website resources:

• Transgender care is changing, how should Christians respond?
• How to help kids process disturbing news in a digital age
• Bad Bunny, the Grammys, Super Bowl outrage, Don Lemon arrest & Epstein update
• White House video depicts the Obamas as primates: A biblical and personal response
• Who is Jelly Roll? The rapper-turned-country artist shares his faith at the Grammys

Denison Forum

The American alpine ski racer Lindsey Vonn has been one of the most compelling stories at the Winter Olympics. A gold medalist at the 2010 Games, she retired in 2019 after a variety of injuries and underwent a partial knee replacement in 2024. After the surgery, she felt so healthy that she decided to return to her sport and prepared at the age of forty-one to compete in the current Games.

A week before competition began, she tore her left ACL during training. She persisted with her dream despite the pain. But she crashed in the downhill final Sunday and fractured her left tibia, an injury that will require multiple surgeries to repair.

“Have the courage to dare greatly”

Lindsey shared a lengthy Instagram post on Monday, in which she wrote:

While yesterday did not end the way I had hoped, and despite the intense physical pain it caused, I have no regrets. Standing in the starting gate yesterday was an incredible feeling that I will never forget. Knowing I stood there having a chance to win was a victory in and of itself. . . .

And similar to ski racing, we take risks in life. We dream. We love. We jump. And sometimes we fall. Sometimes our hearts are broken. Sometimes we don’t achieve the dreams we know we could have. But that is also the beauty of life; we can try.

I tried. I dreamt. I jumped.

I hope if you take away anything from my journey, it’s that you all have the courage to dare greatly. Life is too short not to take chances on yourself. Because the only failure in life is not trying.

I marvel at the discipline and sacrifice that someone like Lindsey Vonn displays. And I feel inspired by her decision to use her platform at this very painful time to encourage the rest of us to follow her example, to “take risks in life” and to “take chances” on ourselves. She deserves our admiration for her courage in competing on behalf of our country.

However, I need to think with you about her last sentence I quoted. Her sentiment is by no means unique with Lindsey. In fact, it expresses powerfully what could be called the defining ethos of our day.

And this fact defines the greatest challenge of our day.

What our “greatest fear” should be

The author and pastor Francis Chan warned: “Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.” This is another way of restating the old parable about the man who climbed the ladder of life only to discover that it was leaning against the wrong wall.

Of course, our postmodern, post-Christian, highly secularized culture has abandoned any notion that there is such a thing as a “wrong” wall. There’s no right or wrong, we’re assured, just what’s right or wrong for you, so do what makes you happy.

In this context, Lindsey’s admonition makes perfect sense: “The only failure in life is not trying.”

But the only failure in life, in a biblical context, is not trying to do God’s will in God’s power for God’s glory.

Why is this?

“A sense of being really at home in earth”

In C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, a chief tempter named Screwtape advises his demonic apprentice that humanity’s quest for prosperity “knits a man to the World. He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it,’ while really it is finding its place in him.”

Screwtape elaborates:

His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth, which is just what we want.

If we do choose faith in the Lord, Lewis adds that Satan wants us to do so “not because it is true, but for some other reason.” Our enemy would rather we manipulate our faith for nefarious ends such as clergy abuse scandals. But he will accept our using faith for good reasons, so long as they are not the best reason, which is intimacy with the Almighty himself.

Anything less than such intimacy cuts us off from the source of life, which is the living Lord Jesus. He alone is the “cornerstone” of our faith (Ephesians 2:20). It is only when we “abide” in Jesus that we can bear “much fruit” (John 15:5).

Nothing we do in our fallen and finite capacities, even for our Lord, can replace what the God who made the universe can do in and through us.

Words I need to pray every morning

This is why Paul prayed that God would grant the Ephesian Christians “to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being” that they might “have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Ephesians 3:16, 18–19).

The apostle could offer his prayer in confidence, knowing that God “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (v. 20, my emphasis). His prayer is recorded in Scripture so it can be ours today.

I have often warned over the years that self-sufficiency is spiritual suicide. I didn’t read that in a book—I learned it personally. Depending on ourselves keeps the Spirit from doing what he can do only in lives fully yielded to him. This is why Satan loves to tempt us with the self-reliance that is so pervasive in our existentialist culture.

And it is why Jesus is knocking at the door of our hearts right now, seeking true intimacy with us (Revelation 3:20). As David said to our Lord, “Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life” (Psalm 23:6, MSG).

The bad news is that I need to pray these words from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer at the start of every day:

To my humble supplication
Lord, give ear and acceptation.
Save thy servant, that hath none
Help nor hope but thee alone. Amen.

The good news is that I can.

So can you.

Quote for the day:

“We are all servants. The only question is whom we will serve.” —R. C. Sproul

Our latest website resources:

• Bad Bunny, the Grammys, Super Bowl outrage, Don Lemon arrest & Epstein update
• White House video depicts the Obamas as primates: A biblical and personal response
• How much do you know about the Super Bowl? The history of football and the practical purpose of Scripture
• Who is Jelly Roll? The rapper-turned-country artist shares his faith at the Grammys
• What does faith have to say about today’s sports culture?

Denison Forum

The popularity of football and “the most infallible sign of the presence of God”

NOTE: A video depicting the Obamas as primates dominated headlines over the weekend. For a biblical and personal response, please see my latest website article.

The Seattle Seahawks won yesterday’s Super Bowl LX over the New England Patriots with a dominant defensive performance. If you’re like the vast majority of us, you don’t live in either team’s media market and thus likely don’t have a personal interest in what I just wrote. But if you’re like more than two hundred million other Americans, you watched the game (or at least part of it) anyway, as did people in over 180 countries in nearly 25 languages.

Perhaps it was the party you attended for which the game was more or less an excuse to go. Perhaps it was gathering with family and friends for this now-annual tradition. Perhaps it was the commercials that interested you more than the game. Those who made them certainly hope you watched, since they spent $8 million on a single thirty-second ad.

Nonetheless, you probably knew the result of the Super Bowl before you read it in my article this morning. I would not necessarily expect the same if I were writing about the World Series, the Kentucky Derby, the Masters, or any other headline sports event. But NFL football and its championship game hold an unrivaled place in our culture.

As I am reflecting on this fact today, I am also wondering why it is so.

And I am wondering if the explanation matters for the rest of the year.

It turns out, the answer to my first question answers the second as well.

“Sentiment, emotion, passion, and allegiance”

Reasons for the popularity of professional football are well known and unsurprising: among other factors, watching the game fosters relationships, tailgating is fun, league parity keeps things interesting, the game is fast-paced, and fantasy football has real stakes.

A game with roots in antiquity, as I noted in my recent website article on the history of the Super Bowl, has become one of the most dominant parts of contemporary culture. Nothing rivals it for viewership, ad revenue, or any other audience metric.

But I think there is another factor at work here, one that is less obvious but even more significant.

The British political philosopher Edmund Burke (1729–1797) is widely considered to be the founder of conservatism. A biographer summarizes his worldview this way:

Human passions are guided by empathy and imagination. Human well-being is grounded in a social order whose values are given by divine providence. Human reason is limited in scope, and insufficient as a basis for public morality. . . .

People cannot reason themselves into a good society, for a good society is rooted not merely in reason but in the sentiments and the emotions.

Burke asserted that “politics ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part.” His biographer therefore notes:

Human reason is a wonderful thing, but Burke insists we are above all creatures of sentiment, emotion, passion, and allegiance, for good or ill. What matters and should matter to us is not abstract liberties, but the liberty to live our lives well alongside others and in our communities.

Burkean philosophy and football

What does Burkean political philosophy have to do with the popularity of the Super Bowl?

“Sentiment, emotion, [and] passion” aptly describe a typical fan’s experience. We feel the highs and lows of the game. We cringe at the physical collisions and marvel at the athletic exploits. None of this is a rational choice or the product of a rational process.

In addition, almost nothing regarding our “allegiance” to our preferred team is the product of reason. I cannot imagine that many fans examine a team’s roster in detail, explore its finances, scrutinize its leadership structure, and then make a rational decision to support it. Our allegiance is the product of where we live and/or other emotional factors that tie us to our team “for good or ill.”

All of this points to the transformational heart of biblical Christianity, a fact that explains its explosive early growth and that compels us to embrace it for ourselves.

“The life was made manifest”

Six decades after he left his father’s fishing boat to follow Jesus (Matthew 4:21–22), John was still not over the experience. He described his relationship with his Lord in these intimate terms:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us (1 John 1:1–2).

After teaching world religions with four seminaries and writing numerous books and articles in the area, I can report that no other religion offers such a personal engagement with the deity it worships. But the living Lord Jesus, God “made manifest to us,” could be “looked upon” and “touched with our hands.” His followers heard his omniscient wisdom, experienced his omnipotent power, and felt his omnibenevolent grace.

Then, when they were “filled with the Holy Spirit” at Pentecost, they were so transformed and empowered that they had to tell “the mighty works of God” and Peter had to preach the glorious gospel of redemption in Christ (Acts 2:4, 11, 14). The movement that resulted worked out its worldview with reasoned brilliance, to be sure, as any reading of the book of Romans will show.

But it was birthed in an intimate engagement with the personal, living Lord Jesus, and never lost its fervor for him.

“The most infallible sign of the presence of God”

The Christians who have made the greatest impact on my life were the believers who were the most passionate about their Lord. Their joy in Jesus was contagious and appealing. Their commitment to Christ, often in the face of great challenges and suffering, made me want what they had.

How can we experience Jesus in such a passionate way?

David said to God, “In your presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11; note the present tense). If we make time today to meet with the living Lord Jesus, to kneel before him in adoration, hear his voice, feel his touch, and give him our lives in profound gratitude for his astounding grace, how can we be the same?

The brilliant philosopher and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin claimed, “Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God.” Julian of Norwich was therefore right to say,

“The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.”

Will you experience such joy today?

Quote for the day:

“No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.” —C. S. Lewis

Our latest website resources:

• Bad Bunny, the Grammys, Super Bowl outrage, Don Lemon arrest & Epstein update
• Who is Jelly Roll? The rapper-turned-country artist shares his faith at the Grammys
• What does faith have to say about today’s sports culture?
• What does the future look like for Israel, Hamas, and Gaza?
• Should I have watched the Grammys? A reflection on cultural engagement and spiritual purity

Denison Forum

Let’s take a break from bad news around the planet by considering a way to escape the planet altogether.

A California-based startup plans to open a hotel on the moon by 2032. Galactic Resource Utilizations Space launched their booking website last month. Construction is expected to begin in 2029, pending regulatory approval. You can book your spot by putting down a deposit of a mere $1,000,000.

Why 2016 is making a comeback

If you’re looking for a less expensive way to manage the stress of our times, however, you can look to history rather than to the heavens. For example, the Wall Street Journal reports that “a severe bout of nostalgia is spreading in America” as “young adults are yearning for the simple days of 2016.”

In the first two weeks of January, the number of user-generated 2016 playlists on Spotify surged nearly 800 percent. A New York Times columnist points to the surge of people posting online content from ten years ago as well.

Some might blame the 2016 election of Donald Trump, but a history professor responded: “Part of it is that we have lost some hope of the future—that’s true of the right and the left. There’s some consolation in looking back.” According to the Journal article, “Some think the nostalgia stems from a shift in the past decade to a darker period of online life, and that celebrating 2016 brings people back to a less dystopian era of the internet.”

For a different way to escape the news, you can join the 213.1 million US adults who plan to watch the Super Bowl this Sunday. This year, 121.1 million intend to throw or attend a party, while another 18.2 million plan to watch the game at a bar or restaurant.

Of course, the “Sunday scaries” will be waiting for you when the game is over and you have to contemplate the week to come. You might even be experiencing lunaediesophobia: an intense fear or extreme anxiety regarding Mondays.

There’s a better way to redeem the stress of our days. In one sense it will cost you nothing, while in another it will cost you everything, but in the end it will bring you a peace and purpose you will find nowhere else.

“We are trying to fill an existential chasm”

Let’s begin with two book reviews.

First, the humanities professor Samuel Goldman reviews for the Wall Street Journal a book titled The Rise and Fall of Rational Control: The History of Modern Political Philosophy. Based on Harvard professor Harvey C. Mansfield’s signature course, it shows how ancient thinkers viewed reason as an end in itself. However, beginning with Machiavelli (1469–1527), modernity made understanding the world a means to changing it.

In Western context, this quest produced representational government, capitalistic commerce, and a secularized society, all intended to improve our lives by improving our world. But as the current epidemics of depression, loneliness, and “deaths of despair” illustrate, our efforts have been less than successful.

This leads us to our second review, this one in the Telegraph, where the author Stuart Jeffries appraises the latest book by psychoanalyst Adam Phillips. In The Life You Want, Phillips explains why our quest for happiness and fulfillment is so often unfulfilled: we are goaded by our materialistic society and the advertising that engulfs us to make our lives better with things. As Jeffries notes, “We are trying to fill an existential chasm inside ourselves with expensive nonsense.”

This is because, according to Phillips, we do not know what we truly want and thus cannot be truly satisfied. As a result, when we obtain something we think we want, it soon loses its luster. In fact, we often feel worse than before we obtained it.

“As labor pains upon a pregnant woman”

So, if the path to peace and purpose is not to be found within our society or ourselves, where are we to look? I’m sure you know what I’ll suggest, but I’d like to take us there through a route I had not considered before.

In my morning Bible study this week, I came upon 1 Thessalonians 5. Here Paul says of the return of Christ, “While people are saying, ‘There is peace and security,’ then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape” (v. 3). Let’s modify his metaphor for our conversation:

1. We are all “pregnant” with regard to ideas, attitudes, character, and our interior lives: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7 KJV).
2. Like a child in their mother’s womb, that which is within us must inevitably come to “birth” in the world: “Nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known” (Matthew 10:26).
3. When it does, what we have been “growing” in the unseen dimensions of our lives will be obvious to ourselves and to others: “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34).
4. We must therefore form our interior lives in ways that produce the exterior peace and purpose we were created to seek: “If there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. . . . and the God of peace will be with you” (Philippians 4:8–9).

Such formation in God’s plan costs us everything: We must be “crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20) as we give our entire selves to the Lord in a “living” and perpetual sacrifice (Romans 12:1) and take up our cross “daily” (Luke 9:23). In another sense, however, this costs us nothing: our holy Father can accept our surrender not because we are worthy but because his Son paid our debt and purchased our salvation (2 Corinthians 5:21).

We can even ask God to help us submit our lives to God, praying with the despairing father of a demon-possessed boy, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). We can pray for the faith to have faith, the strength to have the strength to yield our lives unconditionally to our Lord.

“The one thing that bears fruit in the life”

When we seek to “abide” in Christ in this holistic way, he assures us: “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit” (John 15:5a). However, he also warns us, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (v. 5b).

Our lives can produce “much fruit” with Jesus, or we can produce “nothing” by ourselves. This is a binary choice with a binary result.

In yesterday’s My Utmost for His Highest reading, Oswald Chambers states:

“This abandon to the love of Christ is the one thing that bears fruit in the life, and it will always leave the impression of the holiness and of the power of God.”

Will you choose this “one thing” today?

Quote for the day:

“When I speak of a man ‘growing in grace’ I mean simply this—that his sense of sin is becoming deeper, his faith stronger, his hope brighter, his love more extensive, his spiritual mindedness more marked.” —J. C. Ryle

Our latest website resources:

• Bad Bunny, the Grammys, Super Bowl outrage, Don Lemon arrest & Epstein update
• What does faith have to say about today’s sports culture?
• What does the future look like for Israel, Hamas, and Gaza?
• Should I have watched the Grammys? A reflection on cultural engagement and spiritual purity
• Alex Pretti’s death, immigration tensions & how Christians can respond with Dr. Ryan Denison

Denison Forum

Savannah Guthrie has withdrawn from hosting the 2026 Winter Olympics opening ceremony to focus on her family. As you know, her mother, Nancy Guthrie, has disappeared in Tucson; police believe she was taken against her will in a “possible kidnapping or abduction.”

Now CBS News is reporting that its Tucson affiliate received a ransom note which “contained specific details about the home and what Nancy Guthrie was wearing that night.” The local sheriff has expressed concern that the eighty-four-year-old needs medication she must take daily, saying, “The clock is literally ticking.”

Ms. Guthrie’s disappearance is tragically not unusual in the US. In addition to abductions, elder fraud and abuse are epidemics, as hundreds of thousands of adults over the age of sixty are abused, neglected, or financially exploited each year.

It’s been said that the way we treat people is the true measure of our character. As we’ll see today, this is both bad news and good news. The choice is ours.

Why “America is awash in vice”

Cultural commentator Aaron Renn’s latest Wall Street Journal article is titled “America Is Awash in Vice.” The subtitle explains his thesis: “Gambling, drugs, and pornography were once held at bay by the country’s Judeo-Christian moral consensus. Not any more.”

Renn notes that we “hear a lot less about the mafia” than we used to, in part because federal law enforcement has worked hard to break up their criminal networks. But he explains the larger reason: “Society has legalized much of what the mafia used to do—gambling, drugs, and pornography.” As a result, “America is now a post-vice society.”

First, he cites gambling, now legal in all but a handful of states. About half of eighteen- to forty-nine-year-old men have online betting accounts, even though sports betting reduces savings and increases bankruptcy and domestic abuse.

Second, he notes the legalization of marijuana, which causes a variety of serious medical problems, and the decriminalization of psychedelic drugs like psilocybin. He also reminds us of the opioid crisis, in which “completely legal drugs sold by legitimate businesses caused hundreds of thousands of American deaths.”

Third, he points to pornography, “now delivered at industrial scale in high-definition video for free online.” This despite the fact that sex trafficking and child sexual abuse are common in the online pornography world.

Renn reports that for much of our history, America had a “softly institutionalized generic Protestantism” that “created an emphasis on moral reform and vice suppression.” As examples, the Comstock Act of 1871 banned the sending of obscene material in the mail, while the Mann Act of 1910 banned interstate prostitution. However, religious adherence and church attendance have declined in recent decades, while “academics and cultural figures called into question the old religious moral framework.”

He concludes:

A new and different public moral order has replaced the old one. This one has no problem with vice.

The mainstreaming of destructive vices is but one unforeseen negative outcome of the decline of Christianity in America. It’s unlikely to be the only one.

Nearly-nude celebrities at the Grammys

Legislation can constrain immorality to the degree that laws can be enforced, but it cannot produce morality. Because fallen humans are motivated by the “will to power,” our drive to be our own god (Genesis 3:5), we will almost always do what is in our own perceived best interest.

Even altruism typically serves our ends: we want to impress others with our compassion, obligate those we serve to serve us in return, and motivate God to reward us for our service.

And temptation will always appeal to our basest instincts.

Nearly-nude celebrities at last Sunday’s Grammys appeared as they did because they wanted to generate the publicity they knew their outfits would produce. Their strategy obviously worked: the internet is still talking about them this morning. They came up to the line of public nudity, which is as far as the law can go, while violating all principles of decorum and good taste in the service of advancing their careers.

Pornographers do the same, coming to the line of what is illegal while producing content that is clearly immoral and damaging both to those who make the content and those who view it. Those in the tobacco industry similarly victimize their customers for the sake of their profits.

Elective abortion is the most obvious and tragic example of all. As Mother Teresa observed, “It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.” Since abortion was legalized in America, more than sixty-five million children in America have died as a consequence of this moral “poverty.”

“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

I am no exception to the principle that laws cannot produce morality. I have spent my entire adult life teaching, preaching, and writing biblical responses to the issues of our day. By virtue of my vocation, I get to spend more time in Scripture each day than nearly anyone I know.

But what I know I should do and what I want to do are not aligned often enough. Paul’s testimony resonates with me: “I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (Romans 7:22–23).

Now comes the good news. After Paul asks, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (v. 24), he answers immediately: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v. 25). The living Lord Jesus will transform my heart and shape my motives as he remakes me like himself (Romans 8:29). He will give me the desire to obey his word and the power to fulfill this desire. He wants to reproduce himself in me and in multitudes of other believers until the “body of Christ” encircles the world and advances his kingdom to the ends of the earth.

The key is to settle for nothing less than such holistic holiness. Being better than our broken culture is not good enough. We must want to be so much like Jesus that our private thoughts and public words and actions please and glorify him every moment of every day.

Do you want such holiness today? If you do, ask Jesus for the empowering of his sanctifying Spirit and then do what he leads you to do.

If you don’t, ask for the faith to have faith, the grace to seek grace.

If you’re a Christian, you have all of God there is.

Does he have all of you there is?

Quote for the day:

“The whole work of sanctification, from its first step to its last period, is all of grace, all must be ascribed to God’s free goodness.” —Thomas Manton (1620–77)

Our latest website resources:

• What does faith have to say about today’s sports culture?
• What does the future look like for Israel, Hamas, and Gaza?
• Should I have watched the Grammys? A reflection on cultural engagement and spiritual purity
• Alex Pretti’s death, immigration tensions & how Christians can respond with Dr. Ryan Denison
• Finding hope after life’s detours

Denison Forum

As the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas enters phase two, many are equally surprised it has held this long and dubious that it will continue. At the heart of those doubts are questions about the Board of Peace, which is meant to oversee much of this transition.

Why it matters

Rebuilding Gaza will take an enormous commitment from the nations that have pledged to help. Anything that leaves room for Hamas to regroup and eventually retake power—or for a group equally committed to Israel’s destruction, even if it comes at the expense of the people in Gaza—could result in even worse warfare than before. This peace needs to last, and it remains to be seen if it can.

The backstory: How we got to phase two and what to look for going forward

Last October, both Israel and Hamas agreed to a 20-point plan that would start with a cease-fire with the hopes that lasting peace could be achieved by the end of it. The first phase of that plan called for Hamas to return all living and dead Israeli hostages, while Israel would release 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. As of last week, the body of the final hostage was returned to Israel.

While both sides have continued to kill one another at various times over the last three months, overall, the violence has lessened to a tremendous degree. Moreover, the UN reports of starvation that proliferated last year have subsided, with 100 percent of Gazans now having their basic food needs met. And the Rafah Crossing from Gaza to Egypt is now open once again, paving the way for an estimated 18,500 people—including 4,000 children—in need of medical care to receive it.

However, phase one was always going to be the more straightforward part of the deal. Now comes the really tricky part.

You see, phase two is where most expect that the cease-fire will fall apart. Israel now has the reward they valued the most—the return of all hostages. Meanwhile, Hamas will now be expected to fully step back from governance and disarm—the requirement they have never fully agreed to live up to.

In place of Hamas, a National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) will pick up the mantle of governance. Ali Shaath has been tapped to lead this group of fifteen Palestinian technocrats as they attempt to guide the rebuilding of the region. A “Gaza Executive Board,” comprised of leaders from Turkey, Qatar, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and the UN, will help to supplement their efforts.

And above them all stands the Board of Peace that President Trump announced at the World Economic Forum last month. Yet, the Board has quickly become the most controversial element of the situation in Gaza, despite the presence of an armed terrorist organization in Hamas and Israel’s continued bombings.

So what is it about the Board that is so controversial? And will it ultimately prove to be more of a help or a hindrance on the path to peace in Gaza?

Has the Board of Peace already lost its vision?

The controversy surrounding the Board of Peace centers primarily on two points: the scope of their mission and who was invited. Let’s start with the mission.

When the Board was first proposed, the idea was that it would serve as an international body of countries committed to supporting Gaza’s reconstruction and development. Most would agree that the scope and scale of that project is far more than any one country could handle. For example, clearing the rubble is projected to take at least three years, so simply making the bulk of Gaza safe for the people of Gaza is a big ask to start with.

That’s why many of the Board’s skeptics were quick to point toward mission creep after President Trump presented his plans for the endeavor at the World Economic Forum. There, he announced that the group would instead seek “to promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict” (emphasis added). “Areas affected or threatened by conflict” pertains to a lot more than just Gaza.

While Secretary of State Marco Rubio later clarified that Gaza will “serve as an example of what’s possible in other parts of the world,” that only works if the group can stay committed long enough to actually finish their work in Gaza.

Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that the first term on the Board will start with a three-year interval unless countries choose to pay $1 billion for permanent membership. Essentially, if you want to still be around when the time comes to profit from much of what is being rebuilt, you need to pay up and prove your commitment from the start.

And, given some of the nations that have signed up to do just that, many are dubious of what those efforts will look like in the long run.

Can the Board of Peace be trusted?

The second point of contention many bring up with the Board of Peace and its plans for the future of Gaza is related to the group’s composition. Many of America’s more traditional allies in Europe—France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, to name a few—have declined their invitation to join.

Instead, the Board will be composed largely of the Middle Eastern nations with whom Trump has negotiated heavily since returning to office. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, the UAE, and Israel have all agreed to play a role. Meanwhile, Russia and China have been invited but, as of this writing, have yet to say whether they will take part.

Given Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and China’s ever-present threat of attempting to take Taiwan, inviting them to a group focused on “enduring peace” has understandably raised some eyebrows. That Trump is set to preside over the body even after his term as president ends in 2028 is another point of suspicion for many who doubt that the Board was put together with the good of Gaza in mind.

And the reality of the situation is that the good of Gaza is, most likely, not the Board’s first priority. As Dan Perry points out, though, that may not be a bad thing:

Trump is also driven by a sense of ownership. He remains focused when a project feels like his, and the Middle East is such a project. If the Board of Peace appears to be key to sustaining his sense of ownership — and if it keeps pressure on regional actors, maintaining momentum toward dismantling Hamas’ grip on Gaza — then it may be useful, even if its structure is indefensible.

And Trump is hardly alone in paying more attention to causes from which he can benefit personally. The peace plan in Gaza hinges on everyone involved standing to benefit in some way.

World leaders have rarely—if ever—acted solely out of the goodness of their own hearts. Some opportunity for selfish gain has to be baked into the equation for nations and leaders to sacrifice as much as they’ll need to for Gaza to know true peace and restoration.

Would it be better if these leaders’ primary concern were the people of Gaza? Absolutely. But it also wouldn’t work.

As such, the situation in Gaza and with the Board of Peace speaks to a much larger truth about humanity, as well as the opportunity that truth presents for us to share the gospel.

Spiritual application: Redeeming human selfishness 

Milton Friedman once remarked:

I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.

To put it another way, the temptation toward selfishness is endemic to our fallen nature, and the key is learning to redeem it. In truth, though, it’s been that way from the beginning.

The very first person ever born with inherited sin murdered his brother because he was jealous that God honored Abel’s sacrifice rather than his own. And things didn’t exactly improve from there. Before Adam died, he would see his offspring spread across the land and begin to devolve into such wickedness that God would purge the earth of everyone but Noah and his family.

And even after humanity restarted with Noah, it didn’t take long for things to go downhill once again. However, living in accordance with Christ’s commands stands out all that much more because the world has taught us to expect selfishness and evil from our fellow humans.

And you don’t have to be a politician or world leader for that to be the case. There are selfish people in every walk of life, which means that your example can stand out regardless of where God has called you to work, the community in which he’s called you to live, or even the church in which he’s called you to serve.

Each time we see examples of selfishness or evil in the world, it’s an opportunity to either grow jaded and distraught or to be reminded of just how easy it can be for the gospel to stand out when we follow Jesus well.

Which response will you choose today?

Denison Forum

A reflection on cultural engagement and spiritual purity

The 68^th Grammy Awards were on television last night, an event intended to recognize outstanding achievements in music. My wife and I watched for a few minutes, but the parade of celebrities wearing very little clothing and taking turns disparaging the government soon became wearisome. (Though I must add that Jelly Roll’s acceptance speech, in which he glorified God and emphatically called on the audience to trust in Christ, was a very notable exception.)

In addition, I have heard almost none of the music being recognized and know very little about the performers apart from the headlines they occasionally generate. It was the same with the Emmys last fall, and I assume it will be the same with the Oscars in a few weeks. Thus far, I have seen exactly one of the movies nominated for best picture and am not sure I’ll see any of the others.

This is an odd confession for someone whose calling is to be a cultural apologist. How can I respond to the culture if I’m not more engaged in it?

It’s a question that concerns not just people like me but also people like you. And it has implications far beyond annual awards shows.

Living in a cave atop a tower

With regard to cultural engagement, a spectrum of options presents itself.

On one extreme, we can emulate the desert monastics who retreated from society into lives of complete isolation. They did so in part to prevent being “contaminated” by their fallen society, but also to intercede for that society.

On a study tour of Greece and Turkey some years ago, our group drove through a region noted for its “fairy chimneys.” These are rock formations characterized by tall pillars rising from the valley below. Many are pockmarked with caves. And some of these caves are inhabited by monks who live there for years, some for decades.

These monks are fed and otherwise supported by nearby monastic communities. Some of them will go many years with no contact with the larger world.

I asked our tour guide how Christian ministers could feel they were serving God in such isolation from the world we are called to influence for Christ. We are the “salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13), I noted, but salt has no effect if it remains in the salt shaker.

He explained that these monks dedicate their lives not to escaping the world but to praying for it. They feel that their intercession is a greater service to the global population and its challenges than anything else they could do.

If we believe in the merits of intercessory prayer (cf. Mark 11:24), we should consider the merits of their position.

What percentage of Christians possess a biblical worldview?

On the other extreme, we can engage so fully in our fallen culture that there is little distinction between us and those who do not claim to follow Jesus.

Only 30 percent of self-identified Christians attend church services each week. According to Barna studies, only 9 percent of us possess a biblical worldview. On a variety of issues, many Christians and even many evangelicals are indistinguishable from the larger culture in their beliefs and practices.

You and I likely fall somewhere in the middle. We don’t live in caves, we attend church with some regularity, and we don’t participate in obviously sinful activities such as the near-nudity on the Grammys stage or the profanity of many of the lyrics performed and speeches delivered.

But if you’re not locked into an extreme on a cultural spectrum, you must decide where you should be on each issue as it arises. And you can expect some who differ with you to take exception to your decisions.

Quoting David Brooks

For example, I regularly reference writers with whom I disagree on significant issues. My extended quote from the now-former New York Times columnist David Brooks in today’s Daily Article is an example. I agreed with some of what he wrote in his article so fully that I wanted to reproduce and respond to it. I disagreed strongly with some other parts of the same article, however, just as I sometimes disagree strongly with other positions Mr. Brooks takes on political and cultural issues.

I regularly cite media platforms such as the Times, even though I regularly disagree with their typical editorial slant. On occasion, readers will take exception to such references, fearing that I am endorsing these platforms by citing them.

If, however, I am only to cite platforms with which I completely and consistently agree, I will have no platforms to cite. I don’t even agree with some of my own sermons and writings from years ago. And I acknowledge the fact that I am no more inerrant today than I was then.

It’s virtually impossible to participate in any collective activity or organization without risking an apparent endorsement that might offend someone. For example, we have dozens of staff members at Denison Ministries. Each of them could be seen as endorsing what I am writing right now by virtue of their decision to work with us. Because my wife and I attended church yesterday, someone could accuse us of endorsing anything our pastor says or does today.

All of which makes a cave atop a tower understandably appealing.

“Speaking the truth in love”

As always, Jesus is our model.

He engaged with his fallen culture so fully that critics called him “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (Matthew 11:19). He did so in the knowledge that we must take the gospel to the lost just as salt must contact that which it is to influence.

Yet our Lord refused to participate personally in the sins of his society (Hebrews 4:15). He was in the world but not of it. As the author and professor John A. Shedd noted, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”

When a ship is in the water, all is well. When water is in the ship, all can be lost.

Now Jesus is ready by his Spirit to lead us to those parts of the culture we are to engage by “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). Your call may not be mine, just as mine may not be yours. But we are both called to use our influence for the advancement of God’s kingdom in our world (Matthew 6:33).

As the Spirit leads us, he will equip and empower us. He will give us the discernment to engage with sinners without committing their sins (cf. Hebrews 5:14). He will speak to us and through us (cf. Matthew 10:20).

And he will enable us to love others as he loves us.

“Bad ideas have victims”

My wife often reminds those she teaches that lost people act like lost people. As Paul noted, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

This is because “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). As my friend John Stonestreet says, “Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims.”

This means that you and I are not cultural warriors doing battle with those who disagree with us, but cultural missionaries called to share the love we have experienced in Christ.

Our enemy is Satan, not those he has deceived. Our power is the Spirit who always defeats our enemy. And our hope is as secure as the promises of God.

You are alive when and where you are because you can make a kingdom difference when and where you are. Charles Spurgeon was right:

“It is the whole business of the whole church to preach the whole gospel to the whole world.”

What part of this “business” is yours today?

Denison Forum

American governance and the path to our best future

Anti-ICE protests were staged in cities across the US over the weekend. Bikers also participated in memorial rides for Alex Pretti, who was killed by federal agents in Minneapolis last month. Over two hundred such rides took place across forty-three states.

In other news, the US government partially shut down over the weekend as dozens of federal agencies saw their funding lapse at 12 a.m. Saturday. And President Trump named Kevin Warsh to become Federal Reserve chair, but the process for confirmation by the Senate may be in doubt.

Here’s what these stories have in common: they illustrate features in America’s governance, not bugs. This is a fact that matters far beyond its political implications.

Equality vs. checks and balances

Public demonstrations have long been part of the American story, as the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the recent “March for Life” in Washington, DC, illustrate.  Such events stand in marked contrast to the recent massacre of protesters in Iran and the 1989 murder of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square by the Chinese Communist Party.

Our partial government shutdown occurred because the Senate approved a funding package late Friday, but the House is not expected to vote on it until tomorrow at the earliest. Mr. Warsh’s confirmation by the Senate may be blocked by Sen. Thom Tillis, not because he is opposed to the president’s nominee, but because he wants an investigation into the current Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, to be “fully and transparently resolved” first.

In each case, we are seeing the juxtaposition of America’s founding declaration that “all men are created equal” with the constitutional provision of checks and balances against unaccountable power.

Citizens can seek to persuade our leaders and otherwise catalyze change through lawful protests and public gatherings. The various branches of government can also leverage their influence toward the common good. And even individuals serving in leadership can have an outsized role in our governance.

This system has helped an amazingly disparate and diverse nation achieve a level of solidarity and progress that few Europeans foresaw at its birth. But no nation’s future is guaranteed, including ours.

Our “most grievous cultural wound”

I have long appreciated the work of New York Times columnist David Brooks. I do not agree with all he writes, but I appreciate the reasoned way he seeks to advance his vision of American flourishing.

I was therefore surprised on Friday to read that he is leaving the Times after twenty-two years. In his final column, he diagnoses our cultural condition once more:

Four decades of hyperindividualism expanded individual choice but weakened the bonds between people. . . . As a result of technological progress and humanistic decay, life has become objectively better but subjectively worse. We have widened personal freedom but utterly failed to help people answer the question of what that freedom is for.

The most grievous cultural wound has been the loss of a shared moral order. . . . Without shared standards of right and wrong, it’s impossible to settle disputes; it’s impossible to maintain social cohesion and trust. Every healthy society rests on some shared conception of the sacred—sacred heroes, sacred texts, sacred ideals—and when that goes away, anxiety, atomization, and a slow descent toward barbarism are the natural results.

In other words, we want the benefits of consensual governance without the necessity of a consensual morality. But human laws cannot change human nature. At best, they can restrain some of us from harming others some of the time. They cannot produce the “shared moral order” that leads to the flourishing our Founders envisioned for us.

What can?

“Honest but reluctant taxpayers”

At this point, you probably expect me to recommend biblical morality as our essential cultural foundation. But here’s the problem: such morality requires our unconditional commitment. The Bible calls us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30, my emphases).

When did you last spend a day loving God with “all” your heart?

I am no different. I am just as tempted by partial obedience as you are. It is appealing to have my cake and eat it as well, to do what God requires to obtain his blessing but no more.

1. S. Lewis observed in his last sermon:

Our temptation is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers. We approve of an income tax in principle. We make our returns truthfully. But we dread a rise in the tax. We are very careful to pay no more than is necessary. And we hope—we very ardently hope—that after we have paid it there will still be enough left to live on.

But partial obedience can lead only to partial benefits. The more unconditionally we are committed to our marriage, our children, our work, or our friends, the more we experience the best such relationships can offer.

It is the same with God. Our Father cannot bless what harms his children, and anything outside his will is sin (James 4:17) that enslaves us (John 8:34) and “brings forth death” (James 1:15). As Lewis noted in his sermon, “When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, [God] claims all.”

How, then, can we give him “all”?

“I have now concentrated all my prayers into one”

Jesus promised, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). “Love” translates agape, the unconditional commitment to place the other before ourselves. When we love Jesus like this, he said, “you will keep my commandments.” Not might, but will.

Here’s the good news: agape is a “fruit” of the Spirit, not of human effort (Galatians 5:22). When we submit ourselves to him daily (Ephesians 5:18), he produces this fruit in our lives daily. The Spirit thus enables us to love our Lord so fully that we naturally and inevitably keep his commandments.

As the pastor and author Erwin Lutzer noted, “When you surrender your will to God, you discover the resources to do what God requires.” And doing “what God requires” positions us to experience his best in and through our lives, advancing the “shared moral order” that Brooks identifies as foundational to our cultural future.

Charles Spurgeon testified,

“I have now concentrated all my prayers into one, and that one prayer is that I may die to self and live wholly to him.”

Let us make his “one prayer” ours today, to the glory of God.

Quote for the day:

“Few souls understand what God would accomplish in them if they were to abandon themselves unreservedly to him and if they were to allow his grace to mold them accordingly.” —St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556)

Our latest website resources:

• Alex Pretti’s death, immigration tensions & how Christians can respond with Dr. Ryan Denison
• The Focus: Reason for hope after the shooting of Alex Pretti
• A review of “The Body Teaches the Soul” by Justin Earley
• Finding hope after life’s detours
• The Challenger disaster and the providence of God

Denison Forum

“A massive Armada is heading to Iran. . . . Like with Venezuela, it is ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary. . . . As I told Iran once before, MAKE A DEAL! They didn’t and there was ‘Operation Midnight Hammer,’ a major destruction of Iran. The next attack will be far worse! Don’t make that happen again.”

That was President Trump’s message to the leaders of Iran earlier this week, though it appears to have fallen on deaf ears. To this point, Iran and the US have passed messages through intermediaries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, but it does not appear that they have talked directly to one another.

Turkey has taken a leading role in those mediations, and Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, arrived earlier this morning for that purpose. So far, at least, neither side appears overly eager to budge, with Araghchi using part of his time in Turkey to decry the European Union’s decision to name Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization for their role in suppressing protests earlier this month. However, those looking for a diplomatic solution may have time, as President Trump does not seem to be in too much of a hurry to act, despite the threats he’s issued.

As of this writing, he has yet to decide on an approach, and that indecision stems largely from the reality that they don’t really have a clear picture of what they hope to accomplish. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has cautioned that regime change in Iran would be “far more complex” than what they carried out in Venezuela, and even there, they appear to be making things up as they go to some extent.

But if they’re hesitant to force a change in leadership, what are their goals? After all, the fleet they’ve positioned within striking distance of Iran was not exactly cheap or easy to relocate.

Four demands, in particular, stand out.

The terms for peace

President Trump’s first demand—and the one he highlighted in his Truth Social post referenced above—is that Iran not only put an end to its nuclear program, but also give up all of its stockpiles of enriched uranium. That may prove difficult, however, since the majority of that uranium is buried underneath the facilities that collapsed following the strikes last summer.

Second, Iran must “stop killing protestors.” He later added that “they are killing them by the thousands.”

While the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a US-based group monitoring Iran, has confirmed 6,126 deaths from the protests, that number does not include the more than 17,000 that are still under investigation or the bodies that were buried by loved ones secretly to avoid government desecration. And, given that the government continues to arrest its citizens for connections to the protest, both numbers could increase over the coming days. Ultimately, we’ll never know an exact number, but something in the tens of thousands appears most likely.

The third demand is perhaps even less likely to be achieved than the first. President Trump called for Iran to limit the range and number of its ballistic missiles to such an extent that Israel would be safe from further attack. Given that those missiles are largely considered to be the primary reason that Israel hasn’t already attempted a regime change in Iran, removing the threat is likely off the table for the Supreme Leader and his government.

Iran’s unwillingness to consider this condition for peace is one of the reasons why these ballistic missile sites are thought to be high on the list of potential targets should the US engage with Iran directly. Israel would, reportedly, be willing to assist in such an attack and has encouraged President Trump to consider going this route if he chooses to engage.

Lastly, the fourth demand is perhaps the easiest for Iran to accomplish: sever all ties with proxy groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. While the regime would be loath to officially cut off all connections with these terrorist organizations, the truth is that sanctions have crippled their economy to the degree that most believe they don’t have much to offer right now anyway.

Yet, as with the others, agreeing to this demand would effectively mark the end of the regime’s influence and respect around the region, even if some of the same people technically remained in power. As such, while a deal between the United States and Iran remains possible, it’s difficult to see where they can find common ground.

So, where does that leave us?

They don’t have the cards

Hopefully cooler heads can prevail, further violence can be avoided, and—most importantly—the lives of the Iranian citizens who have already suffered so much can finally start to get a little better. However, that does not appear to be the direction in which events are heading.

While Araghchi may not have begun speaking directly with his American counterparts, he has been quite vocal about what Iran needs to see before negotiations could begin. Namely, he stated:

Our position is precisely that pursuing diplomacy through military threats cannot be effective. If they want negotiations to take place, they must set aside threats, excessive demands, and the raising of illogical issues. Negotiations have their own principles and must be conducted on equal footing and based on mutual respect (emphasis mine).

That last part about equal footing and mutual respect is essential to understanding why this situation still has a high possibility of escalating into further violence.

You see, the US and Iran are not equals, and Iran has never treated America as an equal. To ask for such treatment now, when their army is already overwhelmed, most of their people have lost all respect and fear of them, and a military force far greater than they can defend against is parked just off its southern coast, is simply foolish.

It makes sense that Iran’s leaders would be hesitant to show weakness, but pretending they are in a position of strength when they’re not is only going to make matters worse for them. Even if their legions of drones and ballistic missiles pose a greater threat than what American forces encountered in Venezuela, those factors likely represent a reason for caution rather than genuine concern.

To use one of President Trump’s favorite analogies, in the end, they just don’t have the cards, and the world knows they’re bluffing. Unfortunately, that’s not a mistake limited to Iran.

Made in whose image?

Throughout Scripture, we find examples of people who lacked the self-awareness to see their situation objectively. King Belshazzar, whose celebration was interrupted by a divine hand scrawling a message of doom as the Persian army was taking his city, seems like a fitting example (Daniel 5). However, he’s not alone.

Generations of Israelites thinking God wouldn’t care if they worshiped other gods, the religious leaders in the Gospels who were so focused on keeping the Law that they rejected its author, and Peter taking Jesus aside to scold him for talking about dying are all good examples of this mistake in action.

The truth is that when we forget who God is, it becomes far easier to forget who we are as well.

From the very beginning, we were meant to find the essence of our identity in the fact that we are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). When our lives are submitted to his will and we see ourselves through his eyes, we don’t have to be afraid of the areas where we’re weak or flawed, because those weaknesses do not define us.

However, when we live as if we are made in our own image instead, strength—or at least the appearance of strength—can easily become foundational to every other aspect of our lives. And when that strength is threatened, everything else becomes threatened as well. Owning our mistakes and understanding when we’re wrong are simply not outcomes we can tolerate very well.

That’s an exhausting way to live, yet it’s the path many people choose to follow.

So, as we finish for today, take a moment to ask the Lord to help you identify any areas where you lack this kind of self-awareness. Is there a part of your life that’s built on a foundation other than your identity in Christ?

If so, today is a great day to repent of that sin and find real, lasting peace in your relationship with the Lord.

Let’s start now.

Quote of the day:

“Self-awareness is indispensable to seeing the lines between what you want to be true and what is actually true.” — Jonah Goldberg

Our latest website resources:

• Alex Pretti’s death, immigration tensions & how Christians can respond with Dr. Ryan Denison | Ep. 54
• A review of “The Body Teaches the Soul” by Justin Earley
• The Challenger disaster and the providence of God
• The Focus: Reason for hope after the shooting of Alex Pretti
• Finding hope after life’s detours

Denison Forum

Does the Lord cause all that happens?

Elizabeth Angle and Gracie Brito were high school sophomores and best friends in Frisco, a suburb north of Dallas. Last Sunday, they were riding on a sled as it was pulled by a Jeep Wrangler. The sled crashed and Elizabeth was killed; Gracie was critically injured and died yesterday.

In a Facebook post, Elizabeth’s mother wrote: “She was a bright light, a fun spirit, a brave soul. We loved her so much. She just got a car and a license and had her whole life ahead of her. It was all taken away so abruptly.” Gracie’s mother called her daughter “a kind and generous soul, full of love, affection, and warmth.” Her family said the days since the tragedy have been “unimaginably difficult.”

I cannot imagine these families’ grief and am so sorry for their loss. I am praying for them, asking God to be their help and peace in these terrible days.

I’m also praying for a mother whose three young sons fell through an icy pond Monday and died. And for the loved ones of those who died in the Challenger tragedy forty years ago yesterday. (For my heartfelt reflections, please see my new website article, “The Challenger disaster and the providence of God.”)

If God is truly sovereign, did he cause their pain?

If not, how can he be truly sovereign?

Either way, how can I trust him to be the Father I hope he is?

“So this is what God’s really like”

There is no biblical doubt that God is indeed sovereign over the universe he created. Jesus taught that not even a sparrow can “fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Matthew 10:29).

It only makes sense that an omnipotent being has the power by definition to do whatever he chooses to do. It is therefore unsurprising that the psalmist would declare, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases” (Psalm 115:3).

However, I don’t want to believe that my Father causes all tragedy and pain. But just because I don’t want to believe something doesn’t mean it’s not true. And part of me worries that because God is sovereign, he must cause all that happens, including all death and suffering.

In this sense, C. S. Lewis spoke for me when he wrote after the death of his wife,

Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him. The conclusion I dread is not “So there’s no God after all,” but “So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”

God’s sovereign choice to limit his sovereignty

However:

• Did God not choose to make humans in his image (Genesis 1:27)?
• Does being made in his image not include the same freedom to choose that he possesses (cf. Joshua 24:15)?
• Does God not then need to limit his sovereignty if he is to honor the freedom he gives us (cf. Deuteronomy 30:19)?
• Is it not an expression rather than a denial of his sovereignty if he sovereignly chooses to honor our freedom in this way (cf. 1 Kings 18:21)?

Consider an example.

Paul wrote that God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). Peter added that God is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). And yet not all people are saved (cf. John 3:18). To the contrary, “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15).

This paradox only makes sense if God sovereignly chooses to limit his sovereignty to permit our free will. As a result, though he passionately wants all people to be saved, not all are.

“His mercies never come to an end”

This discussion encourages me to believe that not everything that happens is the intentional will of God. However, let me hasten to add that he has both a perfect will and a permissive will.

Because he is sovereign, he must at least permit all that happens in his creation. From the sparrow that falls to the ground, to the Challenger disaster forty years ago, to the boys who drowned in an icy pond, to the teenagers who perished in a sledding accident, nothing can take place without his permission.

This fact leads me to close with mystery more than certitude, faith more than proof.

I don’t know why the God who permits disaster doesn’t always prevent it. He permits our free will, to be sure, but as with his miraculous delivery of Peter from Herod’s prison (Acts 12:6–11), he sometimes prevents its consequences.

However, as I noted in my website article on the Challenger tragedy, as a fallen and finite creature, I should not expect to understand the perfect and infinite mind of God any better than I do (cf. Isaiah 55:8–9). And the more I need his providence, the less I am likely to understand it, since challenges that call for his help are likely to be so difficult as to call into question his love.

Conversely, if I reject my Father’s love and grace because I do not understand them, I impoverish myself and forfeit his best in my life.

So I will pray honestly, “Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall!” (Lamentations 3:19). But then I will say:

This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lᴏʀᴅ never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lᴏʀᴅ is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him” (vv. 21–24).

In what—or whom—is your hope today?

Quote for the day:

“Sooner shall a tender mother sit inattentive to her crying infant than Jesus be an unconcerned spectator of his suffering children.” —John Newton

Our latest website resources:

• Alex Pretti’s death, immigration tensions & how Christians can respond with Dr. Ryan Denison
• Reason for hope after the shooting of Alex Pretti
• A review of “The Body Teaches the Soul” by Justin Earley
• Finding hope after life’s detours
• What is the purpose of the Board of Peace? Trusting God when we cannot see him

Denison Forum

Let’s step away from the news today to discuss the way we consume the news. The Guardian asks, “Are we living in a golden age of stupidity?” Here are some reasons for the question:

• American high school seniors’ scores on math and reading tests have fallen to their lowest levels on record.
• Dependence on AI tools erodes critical thinking skills, harms learning and creativity, and increases isolation and loneliness.
• Research shows that overuse of social media, video games, and other digital platforms impairs executive functioning skills, including memory, planning, and decision-making.
• Short-form videos have been conclusively linked to poorer mental health and cognition.
• “Brain rot” has become such an ubiquitous term that Oxford University Press selected it as its 2024 word of the year.

Andrew Budson, a Boston University neurologist who specializes in memory disorders, explains our problem: we are using technology for the wrong purposes.

“Their brains actually shrink”

Dr. Budson reports that “our brains evolved for social interactions.” As a result, “People who become socially isolated, their brains actually shrink, even if they don’t have a disorder, and people who are socially isolated are at increased risk of developing dementia.”

I would amend his observation to say that our brains “were created for social interactions” by our triune God, who is relational by nature and made us in his image (Genesis 1:27). Nonetheless, Dr. Budson’s point stands: When we use technology in ways that isolate us from others, we misuse our brains. And this is by far the primary way we use technology.

Right now, I am sitting alone in my study as I type these words. You are likely reading or hearing what I write by yourself as well. Even if you watch television or a movie today in the company of others, you are unlikely to be discussing or experiencing it relationally. Earbuds and headphones intentionally block out everything else. Screens we can hold in our hands keep our hands from doing anything else.

And research emphatically shows that such isolation causes our brains to shrink, lose neuroplasticity, and otherwise decline in health and function.

So the answer is to engage more fully with the world around us, or so it would seem.

Not so fast.

“A dangerous network of domination”

Henri Nouwen warned in The Way of the Heart: “Our society is not a community radiant with the love of Christ, but a dangerous network of domination and manipulation in which we can easily get entangled and lose our souls.”

Nouwen then explained how we become so entangled:

“Compulsive” is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to the need for ongoing and increasing affirmation. Who am I? I am the one who is liked, praised, admired, disliked, hated, or despised. Whether I am a pianist, a businessman, or a minister, what matters is how I am perceived by my world.

If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a sign of real freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. The compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failing and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same—more work, more money, more friends.

If being isolated from the world harms our brains, but engaging with the world entangles us in its lostness, what is the way forward?

“Loving a holy God is beyond our moral power”

In The Holiness of God, theologian R. C. Sproul observed:

Loving a holy God is beyond our moral power. The only kind of God we can love by our sinful nature is an unholy god, an idol made by our own hands. Unless we are born of the Spirit of God, unless God sheds his holy love in our hearts, unless he stoops in his grace to change our hearts, we will not love him. . . . To love a holy God requires grace, grace strong enough to pierce our hardened hearts and awaken our moribund souls.

1. S. Lewis would have agreed. Commenting on Jesus’ sixth beatitude (Matthew 5:8), he noted: “It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to.”

So, the way forward seems clear:

1. Recognize our need for the grace by which God changes our hearts and transfigures us with his love (2 Corinthians 5:17).
2. Pray for such transformation daily as we submit to the Spirit who alone can sanctify us (Ephesians 5:18; Romans 12:1).
3. Partner with God by refusing conformity to the world and seeking the “renewal of your mind” in Scripture, prayer, and worship (Romans 12:2).
4. Engage in technology and other isolating activities while in conversation with the Spirit as he guides our minds and hearts (John 14:26).
5. Engage in community while in conversation with the Spirit as he speaks through us to draw us closer to our Lord and thus to each other (cf. Matthew 10:20).

In short, “practice the presence of God,” as Brother Lawrence famously advised. What happens when we do?

“Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lᴏʀᴅ”

The Bible reports that “Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him” (Genesis 5:24). The Hebrew for “walked with God” could be translated, “continually conversed and traveled together with the Lord.”

The phrase is used of only one other person: “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God” (Genesis 6:9). I think the latter explains the former: because he “walked” with God, he acquired God’s character and thus was “righteous” and “blameless.”

But an earlier reference explains them both: “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lᴏʀᴅ” (v. 8). “Found favor” could be translated, “received grace.”

So we are back to our pathway to God’s best: receiving the grace of God leads to walking in the presence of God, which leads to being transformed into the character of God, which leads to (in Enoch’s case and ours one day) being taken into heaven with God.

Will you pray for such transforming grace now?

Quote for the day:

“A Christian is never in a state of completion but always in the process of becoming.” —Martin Luther

Our latest website resources:

• Reason for hope after the shooting of Alex Pretti
• Finding hope after life’s detours
• What is the purpose of the Board of Peace? Trusting God when we cannot see him
• “Owning” Greenland and other legal fictions: Why do we seek to possess what can never be truly ours?
• Greenland explained, Indiana’s championship run, Iran updates, Minnesota tensions & Epstein files

Denison Forum

President Trump announced Monday that he was dispatching his border czar, Tom Homan, to Minnesota amid outrage over the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by federal agents. He also suggested in a phone call with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz that he is open to reducing the number of federal immigration agents in the state, the governor said after the call.

As you know, Mr. Pretti, a US Department of Veterans Affairs ICU nurse in Minneapolis, was killed by ICE agents on Saturday. He was carrying a 9mm handgun for which he had a legal permit. The Department of Homeland Security stated, “The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted. . . . Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots.”

However, according to CBS News, video from the scene and witness accounts are “at odds with official statements.” NBC News reports that “some policing experts said the shooting appeared unjustified and one said it amounted to murder.” President Trump told the Wall Street Journal that the administration is “reviewing everything and will come out with a determination.”

Whom do you blame for this tragedy?

• Mr. Pretti, whom Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s homeland security adviser, called a “domestic terrorist”?
• ICE agents, whom critics call “inexperienced” and “minimally trained”?
• Mr. Trump, whom Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called upon to “end this operation”?
• Gov. Walz, whom White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt accused of encouraging “left-wing agitators to stalk and record federal officers in the middle of lawful operations”?
• Democrats who, according to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), “supported Biden’s open border, which created the mess that now must be cleaned up”?

All of the above? None of the above?

How do you know moon rocks are from the moon?

Unless you have information unavailable to the rest of us, my guess is that you are filtering what you read, hear, and see by what you think you already know. Your prior beliefs regarding Mr. Trump, ICE activities, and Democrats are likely governing your view of the present tragedy.

I’m not accusing you of partisan bias: this is how nearly everyone knows nearly everything they know.

I know that Minneapolis exists because I have been there personally. But I had not met Mr. Pretti, have never met an ICE agent, and have no personal relationship with anyone else in this story. How, then, am I to interpret it apart from what I do know and believe?

My two great-aunts were convinced astronauts never went to the moon, that the TV coverage of Neil Armstrong and the rest of it was staged to steal money from American taxpayers. When I asked them about moon rocks I saw in a museum, they asked, “How do you know they’re from the moon?” I hadn’t thought of that.

We learn new words by associating them with our existing vocabulary. If I told you my “mumblephump” was in the shop for repairs, you wouldn’t know if I was talking about my vehicle, my son’s guitar, or my grandfather’s antique watch, among other options. But if I told you that it needed a new transmission and a brake job, you’d know that I was probably using a strange word for a car. This is because you already know what “transmission” and “brake job” mean.

If you’re an average American, you know about six hundred people. The existence, character, and activities of the other 343 million of us are known to you only through sources who know them better than you do.

Why a greenhouse becomes bright

This matters because our “post-truth” culture has abandoned objectivity for subjectivity, so we have no objective means by which to test our biases. In a media world where subscriptions have replaced advertising revenue, causing outlets to focus on producing content their customers want to purchase, our biases become even more entrenched.

As a result, when divisive tragedies such as Mr. Pretti’s death occur, whatever their actual reasons, we have no way to achieve an unbiased understanding of what happened, much less what to do about it. And so our political and cultural divisiveness continues and deepens.

But there is a way Christians can be part of the solution rather than the problem.

Secularism leaves us with no transcendent hope since we have no source of help but ourselves. Religions across human history offer the opposite: a God or gods who do what they do independent of our agency.

By contrast, the heart of Christianity is the claim that Christ can live in our hearts. As Oswald Chambers noted, “The Holy Spirit will make all that Jesus did effectual in me.” C. S. Lewis agreed, writing in Mere Christianity:

The Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because he loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

As God makes us “good,” he manifests himself in our minds, hearts, and lives (Galatians 2:20). We can have his wisdom by which to interpret the events of our world if we seek and submit to his Spirit’s guidance (John 14:26). We can have his compassion by which to love those who do not love us (John 13:34). We can have his character by which to demonstrate the radical difference he makes in our lives (Romans 8:29).

Asking your father for money to buy him a present

The key is to recognize how passionately our Father loves us and then to ask his Spirit to manifest his love for our Father in our hearts in response (Galatians 5:22). It’s like a child who asks her father for money to buy him a Christmas present.

When we love our Father with his love, we love others and ourselves in the same way. We then become the change we wish to see in our broken culture. And neither we nor those we influence can ever be the same.

Diadochos of Photiki (c. 400–c. 486) noted:

Anyone who loves God in the depths of his heart has already been loved by God. In fact, the measure of a man’s love for God depends upon how deeply aware he is of God’s love for him.

How “deeply aware” of God’s love are you today?

NOTE: Dr. Ryan Denison will offer an in-depth analysis of the recent ICE shootings in his weekly newsletter, The Focus, when it is published later today. I strongly encourage you to subscribe, which you can do here.

Quote for the day:

“The greatest honor we can give Almighty God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love.” —Julian of Norwich (c. 1343–1416)

Our latest website resources:

• What is the purpose of the Board of Peace? Trusting God when we cannot see him
• “Owning” Greenland and other legal fictions: Why do we seek to possess what can never be truly ours?
• Greenland explained, Indiana’s championship run, Iran updates, Minnesota tensions & Epstein files
• Faith and politics, yoga and Christian practice, salvation, and hope in a divided culture
• Is Greenland worth what it will cost the United States?

Denison Forum