If you could order and pay for food with your palm, would you do it? Panera Bread café is hoping you’ll say yes to palm scanning, but first you should know the conditions: you’ll obtain a MyPanera membership, then link it to an Amazon One account that will use your palm scan as payment. The company will then know your name and your favorite orders at checkout.

What if advances like Panera’s palm-scanning technology were to be used for more than purchasing a meal? What if digital technology were to be employed to monitor everything we do and then to punish those who act in ways the monitors disfavor?

This is happening today.

“The greatest threat of all to our collective future”

The Kremlin is using facial recognition to identify and detain thousands of Russians who disagree with Vladimir Putin’s policies. According to political scientist Ian Bremmer’s The Power of Crisis, China is similarly using digital technology to monitor its citizens, giving them a social credit score in response to their alignment with the Communist regime. More than 2.5 million people have been barred from air travel as a result of poor scores, and ninety thousand have been denied high-speed rail service.

Bremmer notes that the same system could be used for dating sites, buying a home, getting a job and/or a raise, seeing the best doctors, or helping your children secure these advantages. A bad score might send you to jail. This system is already being used to monitor Chinese Christians and to close churches.

You might be thinking that this could never happen in America. But consider these facts from Bremmer’s book:

• The largest companies in American history are already gathering our digital data in “surveillance capitalism.” Every day, Americans generate about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data (2.5 followed by eighteen zeroes). This is feeding algorithms intended to sell us products and services.
• The average American is caught on security cameras 238 times per week; law enforcement is using this data and artificial intelligence (AI) to catch criminals, but this system can be used for other purposes.
• 5G is building the Internet of Things that will capture even more information, including genetic codes, to produce a “true global central nervous system.”
• Quantum computing can make it impossible to protect information via encryption, with ramifications for the security of our nation’s infrastructure from power grids and water systems to food security, public transportation systems, and a stable financial system.

Bremmer warns: “The greatest threat of all to our collective future will come from the unexpected impact of new technologies that change the way we live, think, and interact with other people and will determine our future as a species.”

“A fundamental risk to human civilization”

Yesterday we began discussing the opportunities and challenges inherent in the AI revolution now upon us. As I read further, I realized that this is a topic too large to summarize in a Daily Article, so I wrote a paper for our website: “ChatGPT and artificial intelligence: What you need to know.”

In it I quote a former research and strategy officer for Microsoft who told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that AI “represents mankind’s greatest invention to date.” Friedman agreed that “this is a Promethean moment” that will change every dimension of our lives.

AI presents staggering opportunities, from medical diagnostics and treatments to advancing scientific knowledge and education. However, as the late physicist Stephen Hawking noted, “AI could develop a will of its own, a will that is in conflict with ours and which could destroy us.” Elon Musk similarly warned, “Artificial intelligence is a fundamental risk to human civilization.”

How can followers of Jesus redeem the epochal opportunities and cataclysmic risks inherent in this “Promethean moment”?

“We must attack the enemy’s line of communication”

In Easter 1945, C. S. Lewis delivered a paper on Christian apologetics to an assembly of Anglican priests and youth leaders. He could have just as easily been answering our question.

Given his assigned topic, the preeminent apologist of the century must have surprised his listeners by stating, “I believe that any Christian who is qualified to write a good popular book on any science may do much more by that than by any directly apologetic work.” He explained his reasoning: “We can make people (often) attend to the Christian point of view for half an hour or so, but the moment they have gone away from our lecture or laid down our article, they are plunged back into a world where the opposite position is taken for granted.”

As a result, Lewis noted, “We must attack the enemy’s line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent” (his emphasis). For a materialistic secularist, Lewis predicted, “It is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian.”

Here’s the point: AI in particular, and our broken society in general, desperately need the moral compass of the Christian worldview. To guide culture most effectively, however, we must do so from inside. We need Christians who are charismatic political leaders, brilliant screenwriters, exemplary businesspeople, and superlative athletes. The rest of us need to pray for Christians in such positions of strategic influence.

In the context of today’s article, we need believers who are preeminent computer scientists and will bring Jesus’ moral authority to their work. In the AI age now dawning, bedrock biblical values such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the sanctity of life will be needed as never before.

As I close this article, I sense the words of Isaiah 6:8 in my soul: “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’”

Denison Forum

The death toll from a tornado in Mississippi last Friday has risen to twenty-six people as of this morning. The pictures are horrifically tragic; among the victims were a one-year-old and her father. More severe weather struck the region last night, including a likely tornado in Georgia that injured multiple people and caused significant damage.

In better news from nature, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Uranus will align and display themselves tonight in a row on the western horizon. The best time for viewing will be twenty to twenty-five minutes after the sun has set.

Meanwhile, researchers report that shifting tectonic plates are splitting Africa into two continents. The shift has been ongoing since the East African Rift—a thirty-five-mile-long crack in Ethiopia’s desert—emerged in 2005. However, we’re told the continent will not completely split for another five to ten million years.

A “scaled secession” is happening in the United States

If you’re looking for another continent dividing in real time, you could focus on the United States. Professor Michael J. Lee writes in The Conversation that a “scaled secession” is already taking place within the United States. This is not the “national divorce” that has been recently in the news but “soft separatism” in which communities are distancing from one another in a variety of ways.

Wealthier areas are separating into parallel school districts. Eleven states calling themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries” refuse to enforce federal gun restrictions. Eleven counties in Eastern Oregon support seceding and reclassifying themselves as “Greater Idaho”; Idaho’s state government supports the move. Over two dozen rural Illinois counties, seeking to be free of Chicago’s political influence, have passed pro-secession referendums.

Momentum toward secession is growing on the “left” as well: “Cal-exit” is a plan for California to leave the union. “Sanctuary” cities and states refuse to enforce what they consider to be unfair immigration laws and policies. Some prosecutors and judges refuse to prosecute women and medical providers for newly illegal abortions in their states.

California punishes Walgreens over abortion

Are we dividing over biblical morality as well?

In a recent New York Times column, David French chronicles a host of recent events that impinge on our basic constitutional freedoms. For example, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that his state would not renew a multimillion-dollar contract with Walgreens because the company responded to Republican legal warnings and chose not to dispense an abortion pill in twenty-one “red” states.

In 2018, the Supreme Court struck down a California rule requiring pro-life pregnancy centers to publish information about free or low-cost abortions. An appeals court recently ruled that legislation in New York prohibiting employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of their “reproductive health decision making” may violate the rights of pro-life organizations that require employees not to have abortions and to refrain from extramarital sex.

Public schools sometimes withhold information from parents about a child’s gender transition. California has enacted a statute granting the state broad authority to permit children to receive “gender-affirming health care” in the state, even potentially over the objection of a custodial parent. And the list goes on, in “red” states and “blue” states alike.

Legislation in Israel would jail Christians for evangelism

The Easter season is a great time to discuss the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection and to invite friends to Easter services. So, here’s a thought experiment: What cost would you pay to make your faith public?

In Israel, a bill was introduced in January that would punish Christians who “solicit conversion of religion” with jail time. If they seek to lead an adult to Christ, they would serve a year in jail; if they share their faith with a minor, they would serve two years. Prime Minister Netanyahu announced last week, “We will not advance any law against the Christian community,” indicating that the bill has no chance of becoming law.

But what if it did? What if similar legislation were to pass in the US? What price would you pay to fulfill Jesus’ Great Commission (Matthew 28:18–20) as his witness where you live and around the world (Acts 1:8)?

As the Mississippi tornado demonstrated, we are all one moment from eternity. We have only today to turn to the One who made the planets (Colossians 1:16) and in whom “all things hold together” (v. 17) in our broken world (Romans 8:22). And we have only today to help those we influence turn to him as well.

“Gratitude offered by the saved to the Savior”

The next time it could cost you to share your faith, remember how desperately people need your Lord. The night before he died, Jesus prayed: “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Evangelism does not “impose” your personal beliefs—it shares the only path anywhere in the universe that leads to eternal life.

The more people reject our Savior, the more they need our Savior.

And the next time it could cost you to serve your Lord, remember the price he paid to serve you. Max Lucado wrote: “Worship is a voluntary act of gratitude offered by the saved to the Savior, by the healed to the Healer, and by the delivered to the Deliverer. If you and I can go days without feeling an urge to say ‘thank you’ to the One who saved, healed, and delivered us, then we’d do well to remember what he did.”

If we can “go days without feeling an urge” to serve him by sharing his grace, we’d do well to do the same.

Denison Forum

While news of Donald Trump’s impending arrest dominated headlines earlier this week, the former president remains a free man as of this writing. That reality might come as a surprise, however, for the millions of people who’ve already seen pictures of him thrown to the ground and dragged off by police.

It turns out, those “deepfake” pictures that went viral across social media were the work of an AI art generator following the suggestions of Eliot Higgins, the founder of an open-source investigative outlet called Bellingcat.

As Higgins described, “I was just mucking about. I thought maybe five people would retweet it.” More than 5.5 million views later—not counting all those who have shared the images across other platforms—it’s safe to say that the images have surpassed his initial expectations. And while the original post included the caption “Making pictures of Trump getting arrested while waiting for Trump’s arrest” to clarify that the images were fake, that disclaimer was quickly lost as the pictures spread.

Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) noted that “while it took a few years for the capabilities to catch up, we’re now at a point where these tools are widely available and incredibly capable.” And the more famous the person at the focus of the art, the more realistic the images become since the AI gets better at portraying someone the more often it attempts to do so.

Sam Gregory, the executive director of the human rights organization Witness, warns that a time could be fast approaching when realistic but false images made for fun are the least of our concerns: “There’s been a giant step forward in the ability to create fake but believable images in volume. And it’s easy to see how this could be done in a coordinated way with an intent to deceive. . . . The aim may not be to convince people that a certain event happened but to convince people that they can’t trust anything and to undermine trust in all images.”

However, if that outcome were to become a reality, it would not necessarily be the fault of the AI but rather of the people who use it. And we don’t have to look far to see how those decisions are already yielding potentially devastating consequences.

Ten minutes to guns loaded

In a recent study by the group EKO, researchers set up nine new TikTok accounts (PDF), each with a birthday portraying the account holder as a thirteen-year-old, the youngest a user can be to set up an account with the service. Their goal was to see how easy it would be for a child to find explicit videos related to suicide, incel and “manosphere,” and drugs.

After establishing accounts to focus on each of those subjects, they liked and bookmarked—but did not share or comment on—ten videos related to one of those topics. That sample proved sufficient for TikTok’s algorithm to flood their For You Page with videos that promoted increasingly explicit content related to their search.

The results on suicide were particularly troubling.

As the researchers relate, it only took ten minutes of basic viewing for TikTok to begin recommending videos “with guns being loaded and text suggesting suicide, alongside hundreds of comments in agreement and some listing exact dates to self-harm or attempt suicide. Beyond videos explicitly pushing suicide, TikTok’s For You Page was filled with videos promoting content that pushes despondent and hopeless commentary.”

The study’s authors caution that “looking at these videos in isolation might not raise concern. . . . [but] the algorithm seemed to be chasing our researcher with content to keep them on the platform. In this case, the content fed by TikTok’s algorithm was overwhelmingly depressing, nihilistic and otherwise hopeless.” They go on to describe how “even employees at TikTok have been disturbed by the app’s push towards depressive content, that could include self-harm.”

And these issues are hardly limited to TikTok. Most social media platforms have AI-driven algorithms designed to promote increasingly engaging content in whatever areas a user shows interest.

The true problem with AI

It would be easy to look at the findings in the EKO survey or the chaos created by the fake images of Donald Trump’s arrest and conclude that the problem is the technology.

We must remember, however, that AI is not inherently evil. After all, if you go looking for funny animal videos, cooking tips, or sports highlights, it can fill your feed with content that brings happiness and laughter. But if you go with a darker purpose in mind, it can easily exacerbate those intentions as well. And those darker intentions have been around since humanity first left Eden.

Ultimately, the problem with AI is the degree to which it makes feeding our sinful impulses so much simpler. And it can do so in a way that is so subtle that we hardly even notice it’s happening. Again, though, the foundational problem is and always will be our sin.

We can get mad at TikTok or other forms of social media—and such anger or hesitance is by no means unwarranted—but even if they went away tomorrow we would still create new ways to satisfy those same desires.

At the end of the day, people just need Jesus. And as clichéd or preachy as that may sound, it’s the truth.

So be mindful of the power wielded by social media and the artificial intelligence baked into its algorithms, but don’t forget that you are ultimately responsible for its influence in your life. And be sure that when it comes to evaluating that influence, you remember to include God in the conversation.

He is the only One who can save us from the sin that resides at the heart of these problems, both eternally and in the present moment.

Will you seek his help today?

Denison Forum

On a morning when the news is dominated by the Federal Reserve attempting to control the economy and the grand jury investigating Donald Trump, I wanted to focus on something more transcendent. To do so, however, I have to begin with the temporal. Actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s trial over a 2016 ski accident got underway this week. The actress is being sued by a man who alleges that she injured him after she crashed into him on a ski slope and sped off. Paltrow countersued, claiming that the man crashed into her.

More than forty-eight thousand jury trials occur every year in the US, which works out to 192 per weekday. This, however, is the only one of which I am aware that is being streamed, pointing to the power of celebrity in our culture.

In other news, Joe Exotic of Tiger King fame has announced that he is running for president. However, he is serving twenty-one years in prison for his role in a murder-for-hire plot. But once again, we see the power of celebrity to make news.

And Blake Shelton made headlines when he recruited his final contestant on The Voice this week. Shelton has announced his retirement from the singing competition. It is estimated that ten thousand people in the US reach the retirement age of sixty-five every day, but Shelton is the only “retiree” I have seen in the news today.

Beware “Celebrity Worship Syndrome”

One obvious reason Americans are so interested in celebrities is that the media makes them so ubiquitous. It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario: people get famous, which gets them in the news, which increases their fame, which makes them more newsworthy.

A second is that many people live vicariously through the celebrities they follow. When I watch the Masters next month, I will be imagining myself playing on the most famous golf course in the world. When we read about Warren Buffett’s billions, we imagine ourselves with such wealth. Celebrities are famous because their followers want to be like them.

This phenomenon has become so pronounced in recent years that psychologists have coined the name “Celebrity Worship Syndrome” (CWS). They warn that “CWS is an obsessive addictive disorder in which a person becomes involved with the details of a celebrity’s personal life.”

Celebrity obsession is especially alluring for people going through difficult times or young people who are still establishing their identities. One psychologist said, “In our society, celebrities act like a drug. They’re around us everywhere. They’re an easy fix.”

This addiction can lead to compulsive buying and other behaviors by which people try to emulate the celebrities they “worship.” Others use social media platforms to seek celebrity for its own sake rather than learning and using skills that contribute to society.

“You cannot see something that is above you”

This quest for celebrity speaks to something even deeper: there is hunger in each of us for significance that transcends the moment. We want to live beyond ourselves. We want to believe when our lives are over that they mattered, that we made a difference, that what we did was worth doing.

This is one way we deal with the reality of death: if we believe others will remember us, we will “live on” in a sense. But even more, this quest for enduring significance is a God-shaped hunger for living eternally in the temporal. It is a “signal of transcendence” pointing from this life to the next.

Here’s the problem: the quest for celebrity can leave us either frustrated that we are not who we wish to be or proud that we are.

A psychologist notes: “If you look at the Halls of Fame and biographies around the world, there are perhaps only thirty thousand entries and of those, perhaps ten thousand are dead. So this leaves about twenty thousand slots” for fame seekers. How many US presidents can you name? CEOs? Movie stars? Great athletes? Out of a world population of 7.8 billion, how many would you call “great” today?

If you do achieve celebrity that outlives you, beware of the pride that so often accompanies such fame. C. S. Lewis observed, “As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

“Jesus came to give us his own life”

The most transcendent celebrity who ever lived was a man who lived in the most humble of ways. If you and I will follow Jesus’ example by focusing on the eternal in the temporal and seeking intimacy with our living Lord, we will experience and reflect his life to a culture in desperate need for what he alone can give.

He testified: “Whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do” (John 14:12). This is because the same Holy Spirit who empowered Jesus now empowers us. He manifests the same “fruit” in our lives that he demonstrated in our Savior’s life (Galatians 5:22–23). And every day, by focusing on Jesus, we experience eternal significance that our world cannot begin to bestow or take.

As usual, Henri Nouwen makes my point better than I can: “Our lives are destined to become like the life of Jesus. The whole purpose of Jesus’ ministry is to bring us to the house of his Father. Not only did Jesus come to free us from the bonds of sin and death; he also came to lead us into the intimacy of his divine life.

“It is difficult for us to imagine what this means. We tend to emphasize the distance between Jesus and ourselves. We see Jesus as the all-knowing and all-powerful Son of God who is unreachable for us sinful, broken human beings. But in thinking this way, we forget that Jesus came to give us his own life. He came to lift us up into loving community with the Father.

“Only when we recognize the radical purpose of Jesus’ ministry will we be able to understand the meaning of the spiritual life. Everything that belongs to Jesus is given for us to receive. All that Jesus does we may also do.”

Are you seeking “the intimacy of his divine life” today?

Denison Forum

Jesus Revolution, a movie about a spiritual awakening in California in the early 1970s, is nearing $46 million in box office ticket sales as of this morning. In so doing, it has matched or surpassed The Fabelmans, The Banshees of Inisherin, Tár, Women Talking, and Triangle of Sadness, combined. (For more on Jesus Revolution, see our review, as well as our interview with director Jon Erwin in The Denison Forum Podcast.)

Why is the movie striking such a chord with so many millions of people?

Rev. Greg Laurie, a California pastor and central figure in the movie, writes: “We were created to worship. And when you get down to it, every person on Earth does worship. We don’t all worship the God of heaven, but we all worship someone or something. It may be a sports figure, an entertainer, or someone else. It may be a possession. But everyone bows at some kind of altar.”

The pastor continues: “Even atheists worship. Skeptics worship. Republicans and Democrats worship. Independents worship. Everyone, everywhere, worships. It’s the fundamental drive of life and one of the unique distinctions of humanity.”

This is because, as Rev. Laurie notes, “God has placed eternity in the human heart (see Ecclesiastes 3:11).”

Every person you know is looking for God in some way. Every person, whatever their public or private stance on faith and religion, is made by God for God. This is a fact beyond their control. It is a reality St. Augustine famously voiced sixteen centuries ago: “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you” (Confessions 1.1.1).

As a result, no matter how dark the days seem to be, you and I should have an “abundance mentality” that expects the King of the universe to use us in making a transforming difference in our lost world. As we will see today, it is always too soon to give up on God.

“No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars”

Evidence that biblical morality is best for us continues to grow. For example, the Wall Street Journal headlines, “For Long-Term Health and Happiness, Marriage Still Matters.” By contrast, studies have clearly linked premarital sex to divorce.

While our secularized culture conflates success with happiness, another Wall Street Journal article reports the opposite: “We’re all sprinting on what psychologists call a hedonic treadmill. That is, we might get a hit of joy when we achieve something, but we eventually return to our baseline level of happiness (or unhappiness). Whatever heights we reach, we’re still, well, us.”

This is because we are fallen people living in a fallen world.

The annual “Stress in America Survey” reports that stress is “rising rapidly” as a result of escalating inflation, concerns about possible Russian cyberattacks or nuclear threats, fears that a World War III could break out, and worries about money and the economy. Unsurprisingly, 90 percent of US adults say the United States is experiencing a mental health crisis.

The depressing news cycle exacerbates our angst. Bad news generates more interest than good news, contributing to a “negativity bias” that conditions us to pessimism about the world around us. As the axiom goes, “A pessimist is never disappointed.”

However, as Helen Keller noted, “No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.” Winston Churchill added, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

Who was the first named disciple of Jesus?

If I asked you to name the first named disciple of Jesus, whom would you nominate? Peter, the preacher of Pentecost? John, the “beloved disciple”? James, or Matthew, or Thomas? The answer is Andrew (John 1:40; John is the other disciple in the narrative, but he does not name himself).

As soon as he began following Jesus, what did Andrew do? “He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus” (vv. 41–42), thereby becoming the first evangelist in Christian history. Andrew later brought some Greek inquirers to Jesus (John 12:20–22), thereby becoming the first cross-cultural missionary in Christian history. He went on to plant churches across modern-day Ukraine, Romania, and Russia, making him the patron saint of all three nations and the 140 million Christians who are his spiritual descendants.

Andrew was ultimately crucified for his Lord. However, according to reliable early tradition, he testified that he was not worthy to die in the same manner as did his Lord, so he was crucified on an X-shaped cross that is known today as “St. Andrew’s Cross.”

But there was a time when Andrew was not so heroic. When five thousand families were following Jesus, he asked his disciples, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” (John 6:5). Andrew responded: “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?” (John 6:9). Jesus then turned that small boy’s tiny lunch into a feast for the multitude.

“What are they for so many?”

Andrew’s question is our question. We read of rising animosity against our Father and our faith, then we look at our capacities and ask, “What are they for so many?” We look at the spiritual, financial, and material needs of our day, then turn to our resources and ask the same question.

In response, consider the counsel of Pope St. Leo the Great (died AD 461): “Do not be put off by a lack of resources. A generous spirit is itself of great wealth, and there can be no shortage of material for generosity where it is Christ who feeds and Christ who is fed. His hand is present in all this activity: his hand, which multiplies the bread by breaking it and increases it by giving it away.”

Will you put your “lunch” in his hands today?

Denison Forum

Former President Donald Trump said Saturday that he expects to be indicted today by the Manhattan District Attorney for alleged hush money payments. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has not commented on Mr. Trump’s claim, and a spokesperson for the former president later stated that there “has been no notification, other than illegal leaks from the Justice Dept. and the DA’s office” to news outlets.

However, as the New York Times notes, “If Trump is indicted, this week will be unlike any other in American politics.”

What happens next?

A possible indictment was reportedly on hold yesterday until a final witness testified before a Manhattan grand jury. Experts say the jury, which meets during afternoon sessions on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, could deliberate again tomorrow and could vote to indict Mr. Trump at that time.

The investigation centers around cash paid to pornographic film star Stormy Daniels in 2016 prior to Mr. Trump’s election win. Daniels claims that she had an affair with Mr. Trump; the former president denies her claim. Mr. Bragg is expected to accuse Mr. Trump of concealing a $130,000 hush-money payment that Michael D. Cohen, his personal lawyer at the time, made to Daniels on the eve of the 2016 presidential election. Prosecutors would need to prove that Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen and falsified business records when he did so, possibly to hide an election law violation.

According to the New York Times, “It would not be a simple case. Prosecutors are expected to use a legal theory that has not been assessed in New York courts, raising the possibility that a judge could throw out or limit the charges. The episode has been examined by both the Federal Election Commission and federal prosecutors in New York; neither took action against Mr. Trump.”

If Mr. Trump is indicted, Reuters reports: “Any trial of the former US president would still be more than a year away . . . . and could coincide with the final months of the 2024 presidential campaign as Trump seeks a return to the White House.” As a result, he could have to stand trial during the campaign or even after Election Day, “though putting a president-elect or president on trial for state charges would enter uncharted legal waters.” Reuters adds: “If elected, he would not hold the power to pardon himself of state charges.”

All of this would be unprecedented: no US president, sitting or former, has ever been charged with a crime.

What does this mean for our nation?

What does Mr. Trump’s possible indictment say about our political culture?

The New York Times reports, “In the short term, an indictment seems likely to help Trump politically. It will draw attention to him, and he often performs best when he has a foil.” Columnist Maggie Haberman said, “I do think an indictment, if it happens, will galvanize his supporters. He will describe the case as trivial, a point some Democrats have argued, and he will insist it’s all part of a broader Democratic Party conspiracy against him to help President Biden in his re-election effort.”

Liam Donovan, a veteran Republican strategist, took the view that an indictment may help Mr. Trump in the primary but hurt him in a campaign against President Biden: “Legal escalation would be a significant blow in a general election where he needs to broaden his support, but any event that polarizes the primary in terms of pro- or anti-Trump sentiment only serves to harden his core support.”

Here’s what seems less likely: that an indictment will change many minds about Mr. Trump. His supporters will see such an action as a politically motivated witch hunt that further proves the need for his election to “make America great again.” His detractors will see an indictment as further proof that he is unfit for office. Those who are ambivalent about him are likely not surprised by this news, however they view it.

I say all of that to make this point: our political culture is divided to a depth that raises questions about our national future. A former president of the United States and current leader for his party’s presidential nomination is either the victim of a partisan witch hunt or the perpetrator of felony crimes; one would think either scenario would move the political needle. As it is, it would seem that both parties are believing and doing precisely what the other party condemns them for doing. As I noted yesterday, the depth of these divisions is unprecedented in living memory.

A friend from the past

Let’s apply today’s conversation to an issue even more urgent than the US presidency: the status of people’s eternal souls. Like partisans in today’s political environment, many non-Christians have clear opinions about Christians and reasons they believe warrant their rejection of our faith.

To be sure, their beliefs regarding Jesus and his church are often wrong, but they don’t know that. In their minds, they are justified in their unbelief. To persuade them to question their entrenched opinions is challenging, indeed.

This is why following the lead of God’s Spirit is indispensable in advancing God’s kingdom. Jesus knows the thoughts of those he wants us to influence (cf. Matthew 9:4) and is preparing them and us today for our ministry to them tomorrow. If we will begin today by surrendering it to his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) and then speak as he speaks to us, he will use us to change minds and souls for eternity. Today’s conversation points to a second fact: It is always too soon to give up on God. He is working in ways you cannot see to effect transformation you may never get to witness. As I often say, you cannot measure the eternal significance of present faithfulness.

I’ll close with a personal example: I received a text yesterday from a colleague who is at a pastoral conference and met someone who said he knew me from my college days. This person greatly understated his impact on my life: when my father died in December 1979, this man drove across Houston the next day to spend the day with me. I don’t remember that he said anything, but his presence was the presence of Christ to my grieving soul. Forty-four years later, I remember his compassion as if it were yesterday.

I’ll say it again: You cannot measure the eternal significance of present faithfulness.

With whom is God calling you to be faithful today?

Denison Forum

Should America get a divorce from itself? Twenty percent of Americans think so, believing Republican- and Democratic-leaning states should split into separate countries.

Twenty percent sounds like a small number. However, as Axios notes, it represents sixty-six million people, roughly equivalent to everyone in Texas, Wyoming, West Virginia, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Idaho, Arkansas, Kentucky, South Dakota, Alabama, Georgia, and Nebraska—combined. It is also larger than the populations of most countries in the world.

This finding is unsurprising as partisan animosity continues to rise: 72 percent of Republicans now say Democrats are dishonest and immoral; 64 percent of Democrats say Republicans are dishonest, while 63 percent say they are immoral. In 1994, fewer than a quarter of people in both parties rated the other party very unfavorably; now 62 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of Democrats have a “very unfavorable” view of the other party.

Of course, splitting America into “red” and “blue” states presumes that the various states are themselves “red” and “blue,” but this is often not so simple. For example, everyone considers California to be “blue” and Texas to be “red,” but Donald Trump received 6,006,429 votes in California and 5,890,347 in Texas. Joe Biden received 5,259,126 votes in Texas, or 46.5 percent of the total.

If either state were to “secede” into a “red” or “blue” coalition, a significant part of the state would want to secede from the state.

The idea that Americans don’t need America, that we can “go it alone,” is central to the American frontier spirit. But such individualism has been called “our most toxic myth,” one that isolates us from each other and from the communal dependence we were created to need and to supply (cf. Genesis 2:18; 1 Corinthians 12:27).

This myth is indeed toxic.

Filling a “void of purpose”

The United Nations has designated today as the International Day of Happiness and is encouraging us to be mindful, grateful, and kind to each other. But it’s hard to be any of the three when 74 percent of us believe the US is “off on the wrong track.”

Forty-four percent of teenagers report “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness,” while adult “deaths of despair” (from suicide, alcohol, and drugs) continue to escalate. Depression and anxiety are now the most prevalent psychological and emotional problems faced in the workplace. “Microstresses”—small, difficult moments through the day—are less obvious but still dangerous to our mental health. Unsurprisingly, psychologists report that our overall stress level is “rising rapidly.”

Venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy announced recently that he is running for president. As the leader of a nonpartisan ministry, I am not endorsing his candidacy in any way. However, I found his description of America’s greatest challenge interesting: “America today is so hungry for meaning and identity at a moment in our history when the things that used to fill that void of purpose—be it faith, patriotism, hard work, family, you name it—those things have disappeared.”

When we do turn to faith, it is not biblical faith we seek but faith in tolerance. Theologian H. Richard Niebuhr described the “gospel” of our culture: “A God without wrath brought human beings without sin into a kingdom without judgment through ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

How’s that working for us?

“You do not have, because you do not ask”

What we need is the gospel of God’s grace: a God who is love (1 John 4:8) forgives sinners who seek his pardon (Ephesians 2:8–9) and makes them part of his family (John 1:12) through the ministrations of Christ on the cross (Romans 5:8).

Here’s the problem: grace, like all other gifts, must be received to be experienced. And Satan has deceived our “go it alone” culture into believing that we need neither Christ nor his church. Our materialistic success has blinded our eyes to our impoverished souls. Our insistence on tolerance has deluded us into tolerating a cultural ethos that is destroying us from within.

Satan has done something similar to evangelical Christians: we know we have trusted Christ to save us from hell for heaven, but we are tempted to trust ourselves for everything else. What we need is to admit that we need God’s grace in every moment in every way. What we need is to be “poor in spirit,” recognizing how desperately we need God’s Spirit to empower, lead, and redeem our lives (Matthew 5:3; Ephesians 5:18).

“You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2) applies to every dimension of our lives where we are not experiencing the “abundant” life Jesus came to give us (John 10:10).

“Let us make daily use of our riches”

The good news is that God’s transforming grace is available to you right now if you will admit that you need what he alone can do: “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

Charles Spurgeon was right: “Grace, whether its work be to pardon, to cleanse, to preserve, to strengthen, to enlighten, to quicken, or to restore, is ever to be had from [Jesus] freely and without price; nor is there one form of the work of grace which he has not bestowed upon his people. As the blood of the body, though flowing from the heart, belongs equally to every member, so the influences of grace are the inheritance of every saint united to the Lamb; and herein there is a sweet communion between Christ and his Church, inasmuch as they both receive the same grace.”

As a result, Spurgeon encouraged us: “Let us make daily use of our riches, and ever repair to him as to our own Lord in covenant, taking from him the supply of all we need with as much boldness as men take money from their own purse.”

How boldly will you “draw near to the throne of grace” today?

Denison Forum

“My heart says that the way I feel most myself is to go by the name ‘Fred.’ That’s because I’m nonbinary and Fred is the name that fits me best. And I also use ‘they’ and ‘them,’ because calling me a she or a he doesn’t feel right to me.” This is how a nonbinary character “comes out” on a recent episode of Ridley Jones, a Netflix cartoon for two to four-year-olds.

This is just one way popular culture is normalizing LGBTQ ideology for children. As another example, Marvel is announcing its Pride Month Star Wars comic book covers for this June. And the first annual Children’s and Family Emmy Awards honored a “Muppet Babies” episode in which the character Gonzo tries on dresses and uses they/them pronouns to identify as nonbinary. Netflix’s Heartstopper won the most awards; the drama centers on a romantic relationship between two teen boys in England.

Christian school barred from future competition

The Mid Vermont Christian School girls basketball team refused last month to compete against a transgender student due to concerns that playing a biological male would endanger the team’s female players. Now the school has been barred from competing in any Vermont Principals’ Association-sponsored competitions across all sports.

Meanwhile, members of the Randolph Union High School girls volleyball team in Vermont were banned from using the girls’ locker room after objecting to a transgender student changing there. One student responded, “I feel like for stating my opinion—that I don’t want a biological male changing with me—that I should not have harassment charges or bullying charges. They should all be dropped.”

And several members of Congress wrote a letter this week urging the US ambassador-at-large for religious freedom to turn his attention to the worsening treatment of Christians in the United Kingdom.

Some British Christians have been arrested for praying silently outside abortion clinics; one was cited for displaying an “Unborn Lives Matter” bumper sticker on his car. A chaplain was reported as a terrorist and blacklisted by his diocese for telling students at a Church of England school that they are free to accept or reject LGBT activists’ claims. Another official was formally rebuked by the church’s highest-ranking clerics and reported to the police for opposing the sexualization of children on social media.

The fourfold strategy for cultural transformation

For years I have been describing the fourfold strategy for cultural transformation: normalize beliefs, legalize actions, stigmatize opposition, then criminalize opponents. However, there are two problems with my analysis.

One is that it might suggest that these “stages” can be completed one before the next. In fact, cultural change requires all four in a constant state of cultural application.

The less “normal” the behavior in question (such as the killing of unborn babies), the more it must continually be “normalized.” As society begins to accept this “new normal,” its behaviors can then progressively be legalized (from same-sex marriage to polygamy, for example). Such “progress” will inevitably spark disagreement, which is why opposition must be stigmatized (such as branding biblical marriage advocates as “homophobes”). To defeat such critics, their opposition must ultimately be criminalized (as we are seeing in the UK today).

The other problem with my analysis is that it might suggest that these “stages” are primarily transacted on political and legal grounds. In fact, we are seeing them much more widely practiced by popular culture and voluntary organizations.

Netflix, for example, can seek to normalize LGBTQ ideology among preschoolers more easily (and perhaps effectively) than advocates could accomplish through school curricula overseen by elected school boards. And local school officials can enforce LGBTQ ideology more easily (and perhaps effectively) than federal mandates might accomplish.

When Oral Roberts made the Sweet Sixteen in last year’s men’s basketball tournament, there were calls for the NCAA to exclude the school due to its alleged homophobic policies. Since the NCAA is a private organization, it can do what it wants in this regard. I predict we will see similar pressure brought to bear against evangelical schools by academic societies and other private organizations.

“I would not be a citizen where Jesus was an alien”

David prayed, “I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers” (Psalm 39:12). Charles Spurgeon commented: “I walk through this sinful world as a pilgrim in a foreign country. Thou art a stranger in Thine own world. Man forgets Thee, dishonors Thee, sets up new laws and alien customs, and knows thee not” (his emphasis).

Spurgeon was right: When Jesus came into the world, “The world was made through him, yet the world did not know him” (John 1:10). This was true even of his own people: “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (v. 11).

When you are living in a foreign land, you have a binary choice: you can adopt the language, customs, and culture where you live, or you can remain as you are. The pressure to do the former is intense: everyone wants to be liked, to fit in, to be valued by others. For example, being branded an intolerant “homophobe” who engages in a “war on women” is something few of us want. It is far easier to go along to get along.

But if we would follow Jesus, we must refuse and resist the continuing normalization of unbiblical immorality. To do this, let’s pray daily for the ability to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1). Let’s seek to join “the mature . . . who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:14).

Then let’s pray for the Holy Spirit to lead and empower us (Ephesians 5:18) as we “fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13). Let’s remember that “God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (v. 14). And let’s remember that we are indeed sojourners in this foreign land and that “our citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20).

Spurgeon prayed, “Lord, I would not be a citizen where Jesus was an alien.”

Would you make his commitment your prayer today?

Denison Forum

March Madness begins in earnest today, and if you have not yet added your bracket to the more than 80 million that are filled out each year, there may still be time to join the fun. If you don’t like to gamble, no need to worry. Though it’s estimated that more than half the adult population will place a wager over the internet—to the tune of roughly $10 billion in total bets—many people just play for fun and for office bragging rights.

That said, don’t be surprised if the office seems a bit more sparsely populated today. More than a third of Americans “are willing to call in sick or skip work to watch March Madness.” I suppose that’s still better than watching from the office, though, which the average worker will spend six hours doing over the course of the Tournament.

But while it’s estimated that the lost production will cost businesses around $163 billion this year, there is some benefit to be derived as well.

Of employees, 78 percent “say celebrating March Madness at work boosts morale,” and 39 percent report that “they became closer with a coworker after participating in an office pool.”

And if you still need a bit of guidance before officially joining the fun, there are a dizzying number of resources out there for your perusal—this list of facts from ESPN and this one from The Athletic are good places to start. Just be prepared for your picks to go wrong no matter how much work you put into them.

The odds of a perfect bracket

The odds of filling out a perfect bracket are 1 in 9.2 quintillion—that would be seventeen zeroes, lest you think I just invented a number. You’re twice as likely to win back-to-back lotteries as you are to fill out a perfect bracket.

Those long odds are why Warren Buffett felt comfortable offering $1 billion in 2014 for anyone at his company or its subsidiaries who could accomplish the feat.

He’s made the chance to win life-changing money a bit more attainable in the years since, though. While $1 billion is now off the table, a perfect first round will result in $1 million while any of his employees who can extend the streak through the second round will get $1 million each year for life.

However, considering that the longest anyone has stayed perfect is forty-nine games—it would take forty-eight to clear the second round—Buffett’s money is probably safe.

But if perfection is out of the question and many of those who participate in the Madness don’t even follow college basketball—as the vast number of (often winning) selections that are made based on school colors and mascots attest—how did the tournament become such a large cultural phenomenon?

Why do millions love March Madness?

One reason relates to the sense of chaos that infuses the games with an air of unpredictability.

Upsets are common and, unless they happen to your school, we get to embrace the seeming randomness of each game’s outcomes without being personally invested in the results. We can root for the underdogs without any sense of disappointment when they lose. There aren’t many other areas of our lives where we can emotionally invest in something without any real risk if it doesn’t go our way.

However, the second reason is, perhaps, more relevant to our larger calling as Christians.

March Madness—and, more specifically, the brackets, competitions, and good-natured fun that frequently accompany it—creates a sense of community for those who take part. It gives people a common interest to unite around and experience together. Even people who don’t care all that much about the sport can be included alongside those who live and breathe basketball.

There are not many parts of our culture where that’s the case, and the way people gravitate toward that sense of community shows just how much it’s needed.

If done right, the church should be able to help meet that need as well.

Shooting for community

In yesterday’s Daily Article, I made the point that asking if the church still matters is asking the wrong question. The basic idea was that it doesn’t matter if the church is relevant if it ceases to be the church in the process.

I still believe that is the case, but a point I could have made more clearly is that when our communities are built on the foundation of meeting spiritual needs, we become better at meeting other needs as well.

As the individuals in our communities of faith worship God and proclaim God’s truth, a funny thing happens along the way: we become more like Jesus. We start to love as he loved. We forgive as he forgave. And we serve as he served.

When that happens, we don’t have to bother with proving our worth or our relevance because it will be apparent to anyone who walks through our doors (even if those who remain outside continue to be perplexed).

As March Madness shows, people are starved for that kind of community. And if the church can be the church, we can help them find it in the body of Christ.

Creating that sense of community cannot be our focus and, paradoxically, the harder we try the more it will slip through our fingers. But when our eyes remain fixed on Christ and worshiping him, it will often happen naturally.

Throughout his ministry, the lost were drawn to Jesus because he exuded the presence of God in every facet of his life, and the same was true for his disciples (Acts 2:42–47).

Will it be true for us?

Denison Forum

It’s become conventional wisdom that the key to happiness is less screen time . . . or at least that’s how it often seems. Turns out, that’s not entirely accurate.

As Rhiannon Williams describes, “Screen time has a bad reputation, and there are plenty of negative headlines blaming the amount of time we spend on devices for everything from reduced attention span to depression and anxiety. But there’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that reducing your screen time won’t in itself make you happier, and that general device usage isn’t a reliable predictor of any of those things.”

To be sure, there are elements of social media, phone addictions, and the inability to step away from work that can make our lives worse, but some variation of “Do I need less of those things in my life?” is the wrong question.

Unless you first understand what it is about the time you spend on a screen that’s making your life worse, you are likely to end up solving for the wrong problem.

And screen time is hardly the only area of our lives where we face that same issue.

What is the church?

In an article for Christianity Today, Kirsten Sanders argues that Christians in America are making a similar mistake when it comes to our understanding of the role the church should play in our culture. As she writes, “One question I encounter regularly these days is why the local church matters. This, I think, is the wrong question.”

She goes on to describe how the pandemic taught us that “God can be encountered in living rooms, in nature, and even on a TV. . . . The entire Christian tradition insists that God is not hindered by anything. . . . God indeed dwells with his people, gathered in homes across the world.”

At the same time, however, Sanders argues that “the church is not God’s guiding, consoling presence in one’s heart or the very real consolation and correction that can come when a group of Christians meets to pray. Nor is it what we name the occasional gathering of Christians to sing and study in homes or around tables worldwide.”

So what is the church?

That, it would seem, is the correct question. Unfortunately, it’s also one that has proven increasingly difficult to answer for many believers today.

Needs “only the church can meet”

Throughout her article, Sanders goes into greater detail on the myriad ways in which Christians have attempted incorrectly to define what it means to be the church, and her account is worth reading in its entirety.

For our purposes today, however, the most crucial element of her argument is that the church’s greatest mistake is often losing sight of what makes it unique in its attempts to make itself relevant.

Efforts to care for the poor and the needy, provide a place of community, and help people live more moral lives are all important pieces of what it means to follow Christ, but they cannot serve as the foundation of what it means to be the church.

The reason is that those services, as vital as they are, can be found in other places. They’re not what makes the church distinct from the world around us.

As Sanders, notes, people’s physical and emotional needs are important, but “spiritual needs are the ones that only the church can meet.” Consequently, that needs to be our focus and the principle that guides our other efforts to serve people in the name of God.

Sanders concludes, “We must refuse to justify the church’s existence by stating what good we offer, what our contribution is, or whether we can promise that our people will resist temptation or refuse improper use of power or never harm each other. The church matters because only there is the truth about the world spoken—because only there is the Lord proclaimed as King.”

When the world doesn’t understand the church

In short, what makes the church the church is our common cause of worshiping Jesus as the only path to salvation and the Lord of our lives.

However, as Paul writes, we should not be surprised when that identity is considered “folly to those who are perishing” (1 Corinthians 1:18). As he goes on to say, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (vs 23–24).

But will we be content if the world around us doesn’t quite understand that purpose? Can we resist the pull of defining our worth by the culture’s standards rather than God’s?

Those can be difficult questions to answer, but they reside at the heart of what it means to be the church today. Fortunately, the same was true for the first generations of Christians as well.

We are purposefully peculiar

One of the primary ways that the early church proved its value and worth was by being a blessing to the people they met. However, blessing others was never their focus. Rather, it was a natural byproduct of a life dedicated to serving God and growing in their relationship with him.

In the same way, there is an important place for Christian service and charity in the church’s purpose. But, as Sanders describes, if meeting physical and emotional needs ever becomes a higher priority than meeting spiritual needs, “the church becomes understandable to the world but loses its mission. It is no longer peculiar, even if it is now coherent to a culture that is anything but Christian. We need that friction, that impossible question of how church works, that puzzlement over what the church does, because what it does is often inconceivable to those outside it.”

As we think about what it means to be the church, we’re going to have to accept that there will be some who just never get it. Whether it’s mischaracterizations in movies and entertainment or even just a sideways glance from our neighbors and coworkers, we’re going to have to learn to live with being misunderstood.

And that’s all right. After all, people didn’t get Jesus either.

The crowds followed him because he fed them and performed miracles, but few understood him because his priorities were different from theirs. He never gave up on them, but he also never strayed from his purpose to accommodate them.

If we want to embody his church in our culture, we must do the same and remember that our purpose—what makes us unique—can only be found in worshiping God as part of the body of Christ and making him known.

Is that your purpose today?

Denison Forum

On Monday, spurred by the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, President Biden addressed the nation in the wake of the ongoing banking crises to reassure Americans that we “can have confidence that the banking system is safe. Your deposits will be there when you need them.”

Unfortunately, the stock market disagreed.

Trading on more than a dozen small to mid-sized banks was forced to halt after prices continued to free fall. However, the crisis seems fueled less by the fears of an impending bank run depleting available cash—emergency measures taken by the government over the weekend appear to have largely staved off that fear—than by concerns that what happened at Silicon Valley Bank last Thursday is a sign that the Fed’s attempts to control inflation through interest rate hikes “may be cracking the banking system.”

A closer look at what went wrong last week shows that such fears are not entirely unfounded.

SVB was not a normal bank

To understand the scope of the crisis that began last Thursday, it’s important to note that Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was not a normal bank.

SVB got its start in the 1980s by investing in Silicon Valley startups and then providing a place for those startups to keep their investors’ money. As such, they’ve always leaned more heavily into the high-risk, high-reward technology sector than your average bank.

Whereas most financial institutions have a pretty diverse set of customers, SVB was primarily used by venture capitalists and small businesses. As much as 97 percent of its deposits went beyond the $250,000 limit insured by the FDIC and the average customer balance as of late last year was $4.2 million. Consequently, when customers attempted to withdraw roughly $42 billion last Thursday over fears that their money wasn’t safe in the bank, SVB ended the day in the red by more than $950 million.

Word quickly spread after screenshots of error messages from those who tried to access their funds went viral and the government stepped in last Friday to shut them down.

But while the Silicon Valley Bank collapse happened quickly, the signs had been there for some time.

What caused the Silicon Valley Bank collapse?

SVB’s largest problems stemmed less from the influx of people trying to get their cash than the ways that the bank had used that cash in recent years.

No bank carries enough currency to match the total amount deposited by its customers. Rather, they keep a percentage and reinvest the rest in loans, bonds, government securities, and other assets. That reinvestment is why they are able to pay interest on savings accounts and take on other forms of risk to help their clients.

The people running Silicon Valley Bank, however, leaned far more heavily into those risks than most.

As Vivek Ramaswamy notes, SVB invested roughly 57 percent of its total assets—its peer average is 24 percent—and of its $120 billion investment portfolio, only $26 billion was held in assets that were easy to move. The rest was tied up in bonds and securities that can be difficult to sell without taking a loss, especially in the current economic climate.

You see, well before SVB invested much of its pandemic-related growth in US treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities, the Fed warned about inflation and the likelihood that they would raise interest rates in a way that could heavily jeopardize the value of those assets. SVB ignored those warnings and invested anyway.

As such, when they were forced to sell $21 billion in bonds over recent weeks at a nearly $2 billion loss, it set off red flags that culminated in the chaos of last Thursday.

However, given that SVB President Greg Becker sold roughly $3.6 million in company stock two weeks ago while urging investors to “stay calm,” it seems clear that present events were hardly a surprise.

Will the SVB collapse affect your finances?

So what happens now?

Unlike when the “too-big-to-fail” banks went under in 2007 and 2008, those in charge of SVB have already lost their jobs and the bank’s remaining assets are being sold off to help cover the cost of ensuring that the bank’s clients will have access to their money. Sunday night, HSBC bought the UK subsidiary of SVB for one pound—roughly $1.20—and a similar model could be pursued for the rest of SVB as well.

However, the larger threat to the banking system still looms.

As George Godber, a fund manager at Polar Capital, remarked, “The imminent crisis may have been averted but it’s alerted people to the fact that there’s a group of companies out there with business models who will struggle in a high-interest rate environment.” In short, people are worried that what happened to SVB could happen to their bank as well, even if the same risk factors don’t exist. And that fear—even though unfounded in most cases—has proven strong enough to potentially damage an entire industry.

Choosing faith over fear

One of the most difficult of Christ’s commands comes in the Sermon on the Mount when he instructs his disciples to “not be anxious about your life” (Matthew 6:25). In the Greek, that sense of anxiety carries the idea of being “divided into parts” or “drawn in opposite directions.”

The idea here is not that we never experience the emotion of fear—God never commands us how to feel. Rather, the sin against which we are warned is feeding our anxiety by dwelling on it instead of giving it back to God and trusting that he not only knows our needs but has a plan to meet them as well.

Fears over the present economic climate and whether your bank will be the next to go under are understandable. And they are hardly the only thing we have to be anxious about these days.

But it’s the times when fear seems like the most natural response that choosing faith can make the greatest impact on our lives and on our culture.

Which will you choose today?

Denison Forum

As predicted, Everything Everywhere All At Once won last night’s Academy Award for Best Picture. The Best Picture nominees’ total box office gross was $4 billion, the highest in thirteen years. The show was three hours and forty minutes in length; by contrast, the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929 lasted fifteen minutes.

Here’s something all the Oscars have in common: the winners thank people who helped them win. Axios analyzed more than eighteen hundred Oscar acceptance speeches and found that 97 percent thanked someone. As they should: making a movie is among the most collective of all experiences.

Take Top Gun: Maverick as an example. By my count, there were ninety-seven members of the cast, forty-eight members of the makeup department, seventy-four members of the sound department, and several hundred visual effects contributors, just for a start. When I scrolled through the full credits on my laptop, they filled the screen thirty-nine times.

It turns out, “everything everywhere all at once” is more than a movie title—it describes the interconnectedness of life today.

Fed moves to stop banking crisis

This theme is illustrated by a second story dominating the morning news: the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which could have precipitated a “catastrophic banking crisis.” US regulators took control of the bank yesterday and announced emergency measures to enable all depositors to have access to all of their money today.

Customers withdrew $42 billion from their accounts with the bank last Thursday, the largest bank run in history, precipitating the bank’s collapse. SVB held the funds of hundreds of US tech companies, but more than 85 percent of its deposits were uninsured.

This crisis impacts far more than California’s Silicon Valley: state regulators also closed New York-based Signature Bank yesterday and assured all depositors that they will be made whole. Due to the interrelated nature of banking and technology today, financial institutions around the world are being affected.

One other global story dominated weekend headlines: the world reached the third anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic last Saturday. As the Associated Press reports, “the virus is still spreading and the death toll is nearing seven million worldwide.” As a result, “The virus appears here to stay, along with the threat of a more dangerous version sweeping the planet.”

Virus researcher Thomas Friedrich of the University of Wisconsin-Madison warned, “New variants emerging anywhere threaten us everywhere. Maybe that will help people to understand how connected we are.”

“People ask about a legacy. There’s no legacy.”

Actor William Shatner is preparing to release his documentary You Can Call Me Bill and explained in a recent interview, “I’ve turned down a lot of offers to do documentaries before. But I don’t have long to live.” The ninety-one-year-old Star Trek captain added, “This documentary is a way of reaching out after I die.”

Here’s why Shatner felt the need to make the film: “People ask about a legacy. There’s no legacy. Statues are torn down. Graveyards are ransacked. Headstones are knocked over. No one remembers anyone. Who remembers Danny Kaye or Cary Grant? They were great stars. But they’re gone and no one cares. But what does live on are good deeds. If you do a good deed, it reverberates to the end of time.”

I pray that William Shatner experiences the eternal life Jesus offers us not because of our “good deeds” but because of God’s love (Ephesians 2:8–9). But he’s right: in this fallen world, “No one remembers anyone.”

Can you name the Academy Award winners for Best Actor and Best Actress just two years ago?

What determines our true legacy

The good news is that our Father never forgets even one of his children: “The Lᴏʀᴅ has remembered us; he will bless us” (Psalm 115:12). We are all connected in that we are all loved by our Maker (John 3:16).

However, we are connected as well by the fact that our eternal life depends on our relationship with Jesus Christ. Everyone knows John 3:16, but fewer know John 3:18: “Whoever believes in [Christ] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

Do you believe our culture’s relativistic insistence on tolerance, or do you believe Jesus?

Do you believe that every person you know who does not know Christ is “condemned already” and will spend eternity in hell unless they turn to him as their Savior and Lord (Revelation 20:15)? Believing that they need to believe is not enough: Are you praying for lost people by name? Are you seeking ways to share the good news of God’s love with them?

Here’s the bottom line: Our true legacy is determined not by what people think of us, but by what they think of Jesus.

When we reach people with God’s love, they impact others who impact others. Every dimension of society is affected as a result of our faithfulness to share the gospel, from crime to poverty to racism to substance abuse to loneliness and despair. The best way to change the world is to introduce everyone we know to the One who loves the world.

Then, one day, “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:14).

If the “end” comes today, will your Father find you faithful?

Denison Forum

You are undoubtedly familiar with Pride Month, described as “a month, typically in June, dedicated to celebration and commemoration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) pride.” Now school officials in Austin, Texas, are preparing for “Pride Week” to be held later this month. “Pronoun buttons,” rainbow flags, LGBTQ stickers, and other items will be distributed to students and staff. The event is timed to coincide with National LGBTQ Health Awareness Week.

I was unaware of either “week,” so I wondered what other LGBTQ “Pride” events are held these days. It turns out the International LGBTQ+ Travel Association (IGLTA) website lists more than one hundred and fifty different such events.

Why so many? IGLTA explains: “The LGBTQ+ rights movement has made tremendous strides over the past few decades and much of the progress in visibility is thanks in part to gay pride parades and marches that have taken place in cities around the world.”

Why can we expect more “Pride” events?

“Pride” events began with the Stonewall Riots in 1969. Since that time, there has been a concerted, focused effort for more than fifty years to normalize LGBTQ behavior.

But this strategy exposes its inherent weakness: Something that must continually be normalized is, by definition, not normal. Otherwise, it would not need to be continually normalized.

For example, no one seeks to normalize sexual relations within heterosexual marriage. This is because such relations are already normal and express God’s design for humans to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) as “a man shall . . . hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).

By contrast, same-sex sexual relations are not God’s design: “Men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” (Romans 1:27).

Likewise, elective abortion is continually being normalized in our culture because it is not normal for a mother—or for society—to end the life of an unborn child. The illogic of abortion is clear: We instinctively know that killing an innocent person is wrong and that an unborn baby is innocent. It is therefore wrong to kill an unborn baby.

How much does religion benefit the US economy?

However, as we noted earlier this week, those who do not like a message are prone to attack the messenger. In this case, when Christians defend biblical marriage and the sanctity of life, our religion is attacked as homophobic and part of a “war on women.”

Consequently, it is important for us to show our secular critics the value of religion to secular society. Here are some examples:

• Research shows that “religious attendance once or more per week leads to an extra seven years of life expectancy.” Religious involvement is also linked to a stronger immune system, lower blood pressure, less depression, and less alcohol and drug use.
• Religious participation by kids results in less juvenile delinquency, less drug use, less smoking, better school attendance, and a higher probability of graduating from high school.
• Adults who regularly attend religious services commit fewer crimes and give more money to charity.
• Studies indicate that “higher rates of religious beliefs stimulate [economic] growth because they help to sustain aspects of individual behavior that enhance productivity.”

According to sociology professor Rodney Stark, all of this benefits the American economy in the amount of $2.6 trillion per year, which is about one-sixth of our nation’s total economic output.

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

Of course, the greatest benefit the Christian religion offers society is not a religion about God but a relationship with him. I believe if more secular people understood this fact, they would view Christianity very differently.

They see our faith as just another religion with duties, rituals, and obligations. In a sense, they are like those who came to Jesus’ tomb to finish burying his corpse and met angels who asked them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen” (Luke 24:5–6).

We “seek the living among the dead” whenever we treat Jesus as anyone or anything other than our living Lord. When he is an idea, a theology, a model, a movement, or a religion, he is as dead as if he were Muhammad or Buddha. When we seek and encounter Jesus as a living person, we personally experience the fact that he is alive because he is alive in us.

Have you met the risen Christ for yourself? You can today if you will ask Jesus to forgive your sins and become your Savior and Lord. (For more, see my website article, “Why Jesus?”)

If you have, have you met him again today? His word promises, “The Lᴏʀᴅ is near to all who call on him” (Psalm 145:18). As a result, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). Jesus assures us, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20).

Tony Evans was right: “God will meet you where you are in order to take you where he wants you to go.”

Will you accept his invitation today?

Denison Forum

The ninety-fifth Academy Awards are this Sunday. If you remember nothing from last year’s Oscars, you undoubtedly know that actor Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock on stage after the latter made disparaging remarks about the former’s wife.

Later that evening, Smith apologized to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and to the other nominees, though not to Rock. The next day he utilized social media to issue an apology to Rock and to the Academy. Four months later, Smith posted a YouTube video in which he addressed the incident and said, “I will say to you, Chris, I apologize to you. My behavior was unacceptable and I’m here whenever you’re ready to talk.”

Apart from brief references to the incident, Rock did not respond publicly for nearly a year. Last Wednesday, he addressed the topic briefly during a standup show in Boston. Then, last Saturday night, he performed a live comedy special on Netflix in which he spoke at length about last year’s Oscars.

According to the New York Times, Rock claimed that Smith’s slap was “an act of displacement, shifting his anger from his wife cheating on him and broadcasting it onto Rock.” The reviewer adds: “The comic says his joke was never really the issue. ‘She hurt him way more than he hurt me,’ Rock said, using his considerable powers of description to describe the humiliation of Smith in a manner that seemed designed to do it again.”

“Anger is possibly the most fun”

It is conventional wisdom in our secularized culture that biblical morality is not just outdated and irrelevant but dangerous to modern society. Today’s discussion proves that the opposite is the case: it is secular morality that is dangerous to society.

For example, refusing the biblical call to forgiveness makes conflict ever more painful, more protracted, and more pervasive. If someone “slaps you on the right cheek” and you “turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5:39), you break the cycle of vengeance and escalation. If you strike back, however, you feed the fire of animosity and retribution.

You may think your reaction harms the other person more than yourself, but you’re wrong.

In Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, Frederick Buechner writes: “Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back—in many ways it is a feast fit for a king.

The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”

Imagine a society in which everyone chose to “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). What would happen to crime and war? To human trafficking, racism, and poverty? To lying and deceit?

Which ethic is dangerous to society: Scripture or secularism?

How “morality works best”

However, it’s not enough to believe that Christian morals are superior to other moral systems or even to practice such morality as an end unto itself.

Michael Kruger, president of the Reformed Theological Seminary campus at Charlotte, explains: “To believe in Christian morals, without actually believing in Christianity, can only be sustained temporarily.” This is because “morality works best when it flows from a transformed human heart, not when it is merely forced by external laws.”

Dr. Kruger adds: “That is not to suggest external laws don’t matter. We should still make good laws and enforce such laws. But the healthiest cultures are the ones where morality flows naturally and internally.”

For example, the Pharisees ascribed to one of the most rigorous systems of morality known to the ancient world, yet Jesus told one of their leaders, “You must be born again” (John 3:7). It is only when we make Christ our Lord that we “become children of God” (John 1:12). It is only then that we become God’s “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) and “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Colossians 3:10).

The goal is not to try harder to be better. As Dr. Kruger noted, such self-reliant morality “can only be sustained temporarily.” It is to submit every day to God’s Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) so that the “fruit of the Spirit” flow through our lives, transfusing us with “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23).

If every follower of Christ manifested the character of Christ like this, how could our culture stay the same?

“The love we most long for”

Henri Nouwen was right: “Jesus is the revelation of God’s unending, unconditional love for us human beings. Everything that Jesus has done, said, and undergone is meant to show us that the love we most long for is given to us by God, not because we deserved it, but because God is a God of love.”

As a result, according to Pope St. Leo the Great (AD 400–461), “Christ has taken on himself the whole weakness of our lowly human nature. If then we are steadfast in our faith in him and in our love for him, we win the victory that he has won.”

Will you win his victory today?

Denison Forum

Tennessee has become the first state to explicitly ban drag shows in public places. Gov. Bill Lee signed the provision into law prohibiting “adult cabaret performances” that include “male or female impersonators” in areas where minors could watch. Similar laws have been introduced in at least fourteen other states.

However, Gov. Lee was criticized after a photo surfaced on Reddit that seems to be the governor wearing a dress from a 1977 Franklin High Yearbook.

A spokesman from the high school said the photo “appeared to be Lee” but noted there was no name under it. A spokesman for the governor responded: “The bill specifically protects children from obscene, sexualized entertainment, and any attempt to conflate this serious issue with lighthearted school traditions is dishonest and disrespectful to Tennessee families.”

In similar news, Texas state Rep. Nate Schatzline, a Republican, recently authored a bill that would restrict drag performances in the state. Then, according to NBC News, a video surfaced that appears to show him “skipping, running, and dancing in a park while donning a black sequined dress and a red eye mask.”

Schatzline, a first-term state representative and former pastor, responded: “Y’all really going crazy over me wearing a dress as a joke back in school for a theater project? Yah, that’s not a sexually explicit drag show…lol y’all will twist ANYTHING.”

If our faith does not change our lives

When we don’t like the message, our first instinct is to attack the messenger. This is called the “ad hominem” (“against the man”) fallacy: instead of addressing a person’s argument or position, we irrelevantly attack the person making the argument.

This reaction is so pervasive because it is so effective. At the very least, it distracts from the issue at hand. More often, it undermines the moral authority of the person making a moral argument and encourages their critics to justify rejecting their position.

Since this reaction is, in fact, illogical, I am tempted to dismiss those who employ it to reject biblical morality (such as the news in today’s Daily Article regarding gender and clothing; cf. Deuteronomy 22:5). But there’s more to the story.

A valid way to measure a truth claim is to ask if it does what it claims to do. In the case of Christianity, the Bible is clear: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

As a result, if our faith does not change our lives, others have the right to question whether our faith will change their lives. “Do as I say, not as I do” was not welcome advice from our parents, much less from those who profess moral standards they claim to be superior to our own.

Why Satan divorces Sunday from Monday

Yesterday, we discussed our secularized culture’s euphemistic strategies for normalizing and advancing immorality. Abortion is “lifesaving” care (though only for a very tiny percentage of women whose pregnancies actually threaten their lives), sex change surgeries are “gender-affirming care,” and so on.

In addition, when we stand for biblical truth in contrast to the prevailing social norms, we can expect “ad hominem” arguments against us by the legion.

As a result, the more unpopular our argument, the more important our personal character.

The more we seek to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), the more we need to love the One whose truth we speak. The more intimate our relationship with Jesus, the more our words will align with our works and our lives will draw others to him (Matthew 5:16).

This is one reason our spiritual enemy tries so hard to divorce Sunday from Monday and the spiritual from the secular. If we try to practice what we preach without the transforming power of the Spirit, we will soon stop preaching and we will eventually stop practicing.

“We have a new Moses, God himself”

My purpose today is not to discourage you but to encourage you. Actually, it is to discourage you if you are trying to serve your Lord without surrendering each day to his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). Your life will inevitably contradict your message and God’s kingdom will suffer.

But it is to encourage you if you are depending intentionally on Jesus to manifest himself in and through you (cf. John 15:5). In that case, he promises, you will be able to stand boldly before your critics because your Lord will “give you a mouth and wisdom, which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict” (Luke 21:15).

To this end, let’s close with St. John Chrysostom’s (AD 347–407) reflection contrasting the miracles experienced by the Jews during their exodus with the miracles experienced by followers of Jesus: “The Israelites passed through the sea; you have passed from death to life. They were delivered from the Egyptians; you have been delivered from the powers of darkness. The Israelites were freed from slavery to a pagan people; you have been freed from the much greater slavery to sin.”

He continued: “The Lord was with them because of the favor he showed to Moses; now he is with us, but not simply because of your obedience. After Egypt they dwelt in desert places; after your departure you will dwell in heaven. Their great leader and commander was Moses; we have a new Moses, God himself, as our leader and commander.”

Who is your “leader and commander” today?

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Walgreens has confirmed that it will not carry abortion pills in twenty states. Critics are calling for boycotts against the pharmacy chain, and pro-abortion political leaders are voicing their outrage as well.

For example, Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker, the highest elected official in the state where Walgreens is headquartered, tweeted: “@Walgreens must rethink this policy. To all the other pharmacy providers, we’ll stand with you so you can provide this lifesaving care.”

Let’s be clear: not a single American state, no matter its abortion restrictions, has a law preventing medical treatment to save the life of a pregnant woman. How many abortions are necessary to save the life of the mother?

Consider the state of Florida as an example, since it records a reason for every abortion that occurs within its borders each year. In 2021, there were 79,817 abortions in the state. In 0.15 percent of the cases, the woman’s life was endangered by the pregnancy.

And, of course, except for the rare occasions when a baby survives the procedure, abortion is always fatal for the unborn child.

Perception can become reality

Why, then, is abortion so often called “lifesaving” care? Because “truth” has been weaponized in our culture as a means to predetermined social ends.

Sex change surgeries are now “gender-affirming care.” Euthanasia is “death with dignity.” To defend the unborn is to engage in a “war on women.” Those who support biblical marriage are “homophobic.” Those who believe women should not have to compete against biological men in sports are “transphobic.”

On the one hand, such euphemisms do not change the truth. Perception is not reality. An unborn human, no matter what abortion activists choose to call it, is still a human.

On the other hand, however, perception can become reality. When Americans support abortion in the guise of “lifesaving care,” millions of unborn children die as a result.

And when our secularized culture inundates us with messaging that reinterprets truth according to its chosen fictions, its fictions become true.

“Lower than they have ever been in American history”

Christians should not be surprised, since “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

The leader of these “spiritual forces of evil” is, of course, Satan himself, the “ruler of this world” (John 12:31). And he specializes in lies and deception: he “does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

Satan is very good at his job: “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). He has been especially busy in recent years, convincing millions of Americans that biblical truth and morality are outdated, irrelevant, and even dangerous.

Consequently, according to sociology professor Phil Zuckerman, religious belief, behavior, and belonging are “lower than they have ever been in American history.” He cites these key statistics:

• A 2022 Gallup survey reported that the percentage of people who believe in God has dropped from 98 percent in the 1950s to 81 percent today.
• Only about half of Americans believe in “God as described in the Bible.”
• Congregational membership is at an all-time low: a 2021 Gallup poll found that, for the first time ever, fewer than half of Americans were members of a church, synagogue, or mosque.
• About one in five adults say they have no religious affiliation, up from one in fifty in 1960.

Tuning one hundred pianos

What does this mean for you and me?

First, refuse to measure truth by popularity. The more Satan persuades our secular culture that the Bible is dangerous to society, the more dangerous society becomes to itself. The next time you find yourself on the wrong side of the crowd, remember that the crowd demanded the crucifixion of your Lord (John 19:15).

Second, stand for truth with compassionate courage. People who reject biblical truth are not enemies of the Lord but victims of the devil. The more sick people reject medical help, the more they need medical help.

Third, walk closer than ever with the One who is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). He promised us: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32, my emphases).

In The Pursuit of God, A. W. Tozer asked, “Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow.”

Will you tune your soul to your fallen society or to your loving Savior today?

Denison Forum

Haiti is the Western Hemisphere’s second-oldest republic. At least for now.

As Andy Olsen writes for Christianity Today, massive influxes of militant gangs now control most of the country’s capital of Port-au-Prince and parts of many other cities as well. Due to this Haitian gang violence, their economy has experienced nearly 50 percent inflation and the nation’s citizens are on the brink of famine.

The acting president, Ariel Henry, took over in 2021 after the country’s previous leader was assassinated but should have passed that mantle on to someone else long ago. Replacing him would require elections, though, and what remains of the nation’s law enforcement is too preoccupied with the gangs to ensure people can vote safely.

The problem does not appear likely to improve anytime soon.

The gangs at the heart of the violence have waiting lists because so many young people want to join while the government “had to open a dedicated office just to process the thousands of police officers applying to flee the country.”

As Guenson Charlot, the president of Emmaus University in Cap-Haïtien, describes, “I have never seen people in the street so fearful and suspicious of other people. That is damaging the very fabric of our resilience.”

So it’s worth looking into when Olsen poignantly asks, “How did the most evangelized realm in all the world become a nation in dismaying anarchy?”

To that end, he details the history of Haiti through the lens of two main eras, and his entire piece is worth taking the time to read, but I’ve summarized salient points below.

A short history of Haitian missions

Olsen dates the first wave of Haitian missions back to the 1840s.

At this time, Protestant missionaries had begun to take the gospel across the world but largely skipped Haiti. As he describes, “Most of the few missionary efforts gaining traction in the young nation were initiated by Black believers escaping antebellum America or inspired by the prospect of a Black-led republic.”

By this point, Haiti had been an independent republic for roughly four decades but was still struggling to find its footing in many respects. That’s where the missionaries often stepped in.

The Methodists in particular established a strong relationship with the government, hosting schools in their churches and partnering with the Haitian leaders to help the people in their communities.

At a time when, “600 miles north in America, the Civil War came and went and Jim Crow entered adolescence,” white missionaries and Haiti’s black government worked hand in hand to help their people.

As Olsen describes, “The Haitian state saw the missionaries as allies in nation building and entrusted precious resources to their oversight. The missionaries saw the gospel as a gift for both individuals and entire societies, and they entrusted the Haitian state with the future of their programs.”

Brutal atrocities

However, that all changed when the USS Washington sailed into the waters outside Port-au-Prince on July 28, 1915, and 330 Marines disembarked to begin a brutal occupation that would last nearly two decades.

The list of atrocities committed by the Marines is heartbreaking, and the negligence of the American government in enabling it to persist should be a much larger stain on our nation’s history. Ultimately, it was the work of missionaries like L. Ton Evans and S. E. Churchstone Lord that helped draw enough attention to the occupation that the government was forced to eventually withdraw its troops.

The damage had largely been done, however, and the groundwork was laid for the rise of one of the twentieth century’s most brutal dictators.

Papa Doc’s reign of terror—with evangelical complicity

Missionaries began arriving again in earnest following World War II. During this same period, François Duvalier—an American-educated Haitian better known as “Papa Doc”—was elected president. He quickly built a “fearsome paramilitary group to punish dissent” while siphoning “government funds and foreign aid to enrich himself and his supporters.” It is believed that at one point he was “skimming as much as $15 million a year from American aid money.”

In response, the US government cut off Haiti, choosing to funnel resources into the country through missionary organizations instead. And there were plenty to choose from.

One of the first changes Papa Doc made upon coming to power was to start expelling Catholic priests, choosing instead to reach out to American evangelicals for help. Arthur Bonhomme, a Haitian senator and nominal Methodist lay preacher, was the primary means by which he curried evangelical favor.

As Olsen describes, Papa Doc fostered these relationships at the same time his regime “assassinated or executed an estimated 30,000 or more victims around the country.” Duvalier would often supervise or observe torture sessions “through peepholes cut in walls at the Port-au-Prince police headquarters.”

Papa Doc made it clear to all incoming missionaries that their help was welcome and they would be given relatively free reign within the country “so long as they do not interfere in the internal politics of Haiti.” Most abided by those restraints and by the 1970s evangelicals were opening hundreds of schools, clinics, orphanages, and other facilities across the country.

Haitian gang violence today

Charles-Poisset Romain, a Haitian sociologist and theologian, writes that “Haiti during the ’70s was the most active mission field in the Western Hemisphere.” Given that an estimated 85,000 short-term missionaries traveled there each year, “most active” still seems to underestimate the gravity of the evangelical presence in the country.

When Papa Doc died and his son “Baby Doc” took over, the violence subsided to some extent, but the greed and embezzlement continued. By the time the Duvalier family’s reign finally came to an end in 1986, the economy was in shambles and corruption was rampant throughout the government and police.

The efforts of missionaries masked much of the damage, propping up the populace but creating a level of foreign dependency from which the nation still has not recovered—a fact that became abundantly clear when Covid put a stop to the constant stream of missionaries. And while those efforts have since resumed to some extent, the vacuum left by their pause has been filled by gangs and a general unrest that has left the country in a dire condition.

How to help Haiti

I bring this story up today for two reasons.

First, the people of Haiti and those risking their lives to help them need our prayers and support.

Only God gets to say what that support should look like for you, but we need to ask and then commit to obeying the Lord in whatever he calls us to do. And whether his command is to pray, serve in Haiti yourself, or anywhere in between, we must do so under the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit, which leads to the second reason.

As Olsen concludes, “Foreign evangelicals cannot end Haiti’s problems, but we can stop doing our own thing.” He goes on to call for greater care and cooperation between the Haitian people and those endeavoring to serve them in the name of Christ.

Remember, God’s call is not to recreate the American church but his church, and his church can look very different depending on where it resides.

Christians have done a remarkable job serving the people of Haiti for the better part of two centuries. Especially over the last seventy years, though, that service has too often been done for the people instead of with the people. And we should bear that distinction in mind wherever we seek to be the hands and feet of Christ to those around us.

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A Christian school in Vermont forfeited a girls basketball game last week and withdrew from the state championship tournament because the opposing team included a transgender player.

Mid Vermont Christian School (MVCS) Head of School Vicky Fogg explained: “We withdrew from the tournament because we believe playing against an opponent with a biological male jeopardizes the fairness of the game and the safety of our players. Allowing biological males to participate in women’s sports sets a bad precedent for the future of women’s sports in general.”

If you share my biblical beliefs regarding LGBTQ ideology, you may agree with the school’s decision. But what if the opposing team had a Black student-athlete on its roster?

According to our secularized culture, the situations are identical. Christians who defend biblical sexual morality are considered the modern-day equivalent of white supremacists defending slavery. Not only did MVCS deprive its players of a chance to continue in the tournament—they deprived the opposing team of a chance to compete and brought unfair attention to its transgender athlete. Or so critics could claim.

In such cultural conflicts, is there a way we can convince skeptics that we are truly “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15)?

Religious participation lowers deaths of despair

One response is to use secular means to persuade secular people of the relevance of our faith.

For example, a new study profiled in the Economist shows that American states with more participation in religious services have fewer deaths of despair (drug overdoses, alcohol-related illness, and suicides). The article cites another study by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showing that of 110,000 health workers, those who participated in religious services were less likely to die from such causes.

However, the article also notes that “private prayer was not linked to lower deaths of despair.” In the author’s view, this finding “suggests that the risk reduction stems not from belief, but rather from the interpersonal connections that organized religion provides.” Of course, Christians know that “private prayer” is efficacious only to the degree that we are praying to the one true God, an element the study does not explore.

In addition, the article notes that “secular groups like charities or labor unions also produce such ‘social capital,’” but it also reports the JAMA authors’ observation that “faith-based networks provide unusually potent protection.” Christians are not surprised: we know that our “networks” are made powerful by the One who promised, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matthew 18:20).

Here we find a fascinating case study in secular attempts to explain and perhaps minimize the efficacy of religious experience.

Consider another: after Ross Douthat argued recently in the New York Times that religious experiences such as the Asbury Revival transcend predictions or easy explanations, a Psychology Today article disagreed. Robert N. McCauley writes that “religions provide tools for rendering many extraordinary experiences culturally acceptable.” He points to “representations (e.g., gods) and routines (e.g., rituals)” which are useful for “framing such experiences.”

In other words, religions are popular because they help humans make sense of experiences that may or may not be religious in their origin. Or so the author claims.

One way forward

I report on these reports to make this point: people tend to believe what they want to believe.

If you are a secularist looking for ways to defend your secularism, you will find secular ways to explain and minimize the relevance of religion to society. If you are a Christian looking for ways to defend your faith, you will find biblical ways to explain and maximize the relevance of religion to society.

One way forward is therefore to help secular people want to believe what Christians believe. For that to happen, they must first want what we have.

For example, everyone wants to experience more “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” (Galatians 5:22–23). When we manifest such “fruit of the Spirit” out of an intimate daily relationship with the living Lord Jesus, others will inevitably be drawn to him through us.

By contrast, as Oswald Chambers notes, “The reason some of us are such poor specimens of Christianity is because we have no Almighty Christ. We have Christian attributes and experiences, but there is no abandonment to Jesus Christ.”

“You are not what people say about you”

So, let me ask you: How abandoned to Jesus Christ are you today? Asked differently: How fully would those who know you say the “fruit of the Spirit” are being displayed in your life?

The key is not to try harder to do better. It is to ask God’s Spirit to help you be more in love with God’s Son. It is recognizing how much you are loved by Jesus and then responding in kind: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

To that end, let’s close with this observation by Henri Nouwen:

“You are not what you do, although you do a lot. You are not what you have collected in terms of friendships and connections, although you might have many. You are not the popularity that you have received. You are not the success of your work. You are not what people say about you, whether they speak well or whether they speak poorly about you. All these things that keep you quite busy, quite occupied, and often quite preoccupied are not telling the truth about who you are.

“I am here to remind you in the name of God that you are the Beloved Daughters and Sons of God, and that God says to you, ‘I have called you from all eternity and you are engraved from all eternity in the palms of my hands. You are mine. You belong to me, and I love you with an everlasting love.’”

How will you respond to such “everlasting love” today?

Denison Forum

The US Energy Department (USED) has concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic origin was most likely a laboratory leak.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this conclusion “is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of US national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research.” However, people who have read the classified report add that the USED made its judgment with “low confidence” (which means that it is based on highly incomplete evidence).

While the USED now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory, four other agencies and a national intelligence panel still believe it was likely the result of a natural transmission. Two other agencies are undecided, and White House national security spokesman John Kirby said yesterday that there has not been a definitive conclusion and consensus in the US government on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here’s my question: Why don’t we know for sure? In eleven days, the COVID-19 pandemic will officially reach its third anniversary. Why is this debate still raging?

If the COVID-19 pandemic origin was in fact at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, as many now suspect, surely Chinese officials know that this is so. Yet they continue to assert that the pandemic did not originate at the lab; in recent months they have even claimed that the pandemic did not begin in China at all.

If this is true, why do the USED and FBI not believe them?

These questions point to cultural realities that go beyond the pandemic and relate directly to the intersection of our faith with our world today.

“The American experiment is ultimately in jeopardy”

In his latest New York Times article, David French reflects on a speech delivered by President Jimmy Carter on July 15, 1979. The president’s purpose was to respond to the political assassinations, economic challenges, and campus unrest of the day along with America’s defeat in Vietnam and the continuing stigma of Watergate. Due to his description of our nation’s ills, his address has come to be known as the “malaise” speech, though that word nowhere appears in it.

According to French, it was “the most important and memorable address of his life.”

Mr. Carter called on Americans to look in the mirror: “In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns.”

French describes the president’s “central insight”: “Even if the country’s political branches could deliver peace and prosperity, they could not deliver community and belonging. Our nation depends on pre-political commitments to each other, and in the absence of those pre-political commitments, the American experiment is ultimately in jeopardy.”

“Lives which have no confidence or purpose”

The Chinese political system is built on Marxist ideology that makes the individual the servant of the state. In this view, if the state prospers, individuals will ultimately prosper as a result. But Chinese leaders self-servingly assert that for the state to prosper, its autocratic government must remain in power and must control every dimension of the state.

As a result, lying about a COVID-19 lab leak in Wuhan, especially to the Western world it regards as the greatest threat to its global dominance, would be expected and predictable.

By contrast, the US was founded on the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal” and that our leaders serve to represent those who freely elect them. In our system, if government officials lied about a lab leak that created a global pandemic, this would be an immoral and likely criminal act worthy of legal and political response.

But before we congratulate ourselves on the moral superiority of our system over that of Communist China, let’s return to President Carter’s diagnosis of our cultural health forty-four years ago. In his speech, Mr. Carter noted: “Consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”

Our first president would have agreed. George Washington observed: “Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.” Self-governance depends on our ability to govern ourselves. And the existential materialism that has replaced consensual morality at the heart of our capitalistic culture cannot sustain our democracy, much less our souls.

“My unmoved mansion of rest”

This is why an intimate, daily experience with the living Lord Jesus is so vital, not just for our personal lives but for our collective flourishing. No other source can offer us the transforming grace that empowers us to forgive ourselves and each other for our failings and to serve each other out of love for our Lord and our neighbor.

Jesus taught us: “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The psalmist similarly called us to “abide in the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1) by making the Lord our “dwelling place” (v. 9).

Charles Spurgeon responded to the psalmist’s invitation: “If [God] loved me yesterday, he loves me today. My unmoved mansion of rest is my blessed Lord. Let prospects be blighted; let hopes be blasted; let joy be withered; let mildews destroy everything; I have lost nothing of what I have in God.”

He added: “I am a pilgrim in the world, but at home in my God.”

If you were to be more “at home” with your God today than yesterday, what would you need to change?

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The Tim Tebow Foundation sponsored its annual “Night to Shine” last Friday evening. The event was designed to give a prom experience centered on God’s love to people with special needs.

Daniel Ritchie, one of the presenters, was born without arms. At his birth, when he was not breathing, the doctor asked his father, “Do you want us to let him go?” He grew up to become a speaker and author who earned two college degrees and is married with two children. He eats, drives, and writes with his feet.

Ritchie notes: “These people with special needs are just that—incredibly special in both the eyes of God and in our eyes.”

Tim Tebow has a similar story: because his mother’s placenta was not attached at the time of his birth, doctors urged his mother to abort him. The doctor who delivered him described his survival as “the greatest miracle [he had] ever seen.”

Ritchie and Tebow survived our culture’s instrumentalist worldview: people have value to the degree that they function in and contribute to society. You are what you earn and possess, how you look, and how well you perform.

By contrast, as St. Augustine noted, God loves each of us as if there were only one of us. In recent days, he has been making this fact clear in surprising ways.

Asbury revival ending

The continuous revival services that began at Asbury University on February 8 have come to a close. A Fox News article reports that the revival brought over fifty thousand visitors to the services, including students from over two hundred schools.

When the daily services concluded, one student said, “We don’t want to stop this. Why would we want to stop something that is so good and so pure? What God wants us to do now is take this, take what we’ve experienced and take everything that God has filed with us and to move and to go out with it.”

This is apparently happening. According to the Fox News article, “The revival had already caused ripple effects, not just throughout the nation but throughout the world. Whispers of revivals have cropped up in local news stories across the globe. In some areas, the whispers have turned into song and prayer.”

One Asbury student is not surprised: “We all have a spigot to the water of life in us. We just have to learn to open it and pour it out wherever we go.”

“It’s something that no one ever expected”

The spontaneous nature of the Asbury Revival is especially noteworthy. One Asbury employee said, “We have been crying out for a revival here at Asbury for the past ten to twenty years. And to be part of the generation that brought it into being is just remarkable. It’s something that no one ever expected.”

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s weekend article amplifies this theme. He cites an 1822 letter in which Thomas Jefferson wrote, “I trust that there is not a young man now living in the US who will not die an Unitarian.” However, less than a year earlier, a young man named Charles Grandison Finney had a transformative encounter with Jesus.

As Douthat writes, “This experience set Finney on a path that would help bury Jefferson’s confident hypothesis—toward leadership in an age of revivalism, the Second Great Awakening, that forged the form of evangelical Christianity that would bestride nineteenth-century America.”

Douthat then applied his point to the current context: “Whatever the Asbury Revival’s long-term impact, the history of Finney and Jefferson is a reminder that religious history is shaped as much by sudden irruptions as long trajectories, as much by the mystical and personal as by the institutional and sociological.”

He concluded: “If you’re imagining a renewal for American Christianity, all the best laid plans—the pastoral strategies, theological debates, and long-term trendlines—may matter less than something happening in some obscure place or to some obscure individual, in whose visions an entirely unexpected future might be taking shape.”

“You really cannot stop something that you didn’t start”

The reason movements of God are unpredictable is that God is unpredictable. Here’s why: “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:28–29).

Daniel Ritchie, Tim Tebow, and the Asbury Revival are examples of his surprising, omnipotent grace. They make this point: If you can predict it, control it, and take credit for it, God probably didn’t do it.

When Asbury President Kevin Brown was asked about the “end” of the revival, he wisely replied, “You really cannot stop something that you didn’t start.”

What Jesus did with Galilean fishermen, tax collectors, and persecutors of his church, he wants to do today with your life. To the degree that you are holistically surrendered to his will (Romans 12:1–2), you will be able to testify, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). Can God use your life to forge an “entirely unexpected future” for our secularized culture?

Can Jesus send you anywhere to do anything?

If not, why not?

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