As the war between Russia and Ukraine officially turns a year old today, a popular question among many is whether we are witnessing the start of World War III. After all, it has already become “the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II” and shows few signs of slowing down any time soon.

In his address to the nation earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that his government would place a greater emphasis on nuclear testing and development in response to western involvement in the war. To that end, Putin claimed that the country was preparing to deploy its Sarmat silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles sometime this year.

Nicknamed “Satan 2,” each of these missiles reportedly has the capacity to launch at least ten nuclear warheads at different targets. It’s believed that Russia tested the missile earlier this month and that the test failed, though their defense ministry has not commented on the veracity of the report.

However, Putin is not the only one who seems invested in continuing the conflict.

On Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that “we will stand with Ukraine in its fight—for as long as it takes,” promising an additional $10 billion in economic support to the embattled nation over the coming months.

In that same address, she warned countries like China against helping Russia bear the burden of western sanctions. Several Chinese companies have already been hit with sanctions of their own for offering such aid, though most agree that they have yet to send lethal aid in the form of weapons or munitions.

Such help might not be too far away, though, if the present course of events continues.

Is China helping Russia?

While China marked the one-year anniversary of the war by calling for a cease-fire and proposing a twelve-point plan for peace, they did so amidst joint military exercises with Russia and South Africa.

As part of those exercises, the Russians sent a frigate equipped with hypersonic missiles—bombs that travel too fast to be shot down by most air defense systems—and there have been mixed reports on whether they plan to test them during the operations. However, they do not have to launch the missiles to remind the world—and the West in particular—that they could do so.

Given that the warship in question docked with the letters “Z” and “V” painted on its blackened smokestack—both of which are symbols associated with the war in Ukraine—there seems little doubt that the show of force was intended more for nations not taking part in the exercises than for those that are.

Given what’s currently going on in Iran, however, Putin may find that his target audience has more pressing concerns to worry about at the moment.

“We’ve waited very long”

Earlier this week, Bloomberg News reported that international atomic monitors in Iran detected uranium enriched to 84 percent purity. Considering that uranium is classified as weapons grade at 90 percent and previous reports—including those from the Iranian government—claimed that their centrifuges were designed to stop at a figure closer to 60 percent, this development could indicate a dramatic shift in their capacities as well as their intent.

A report last month indicated that Iran already has enough “highly enriched uranium to build ‘several’ nuclear weapons if it chooses.” Nonproliferation experts have also warned that even 60 percent enrichment “has no civilian use for Tehran,” casting further doubt on the country’s stated purpose for the uranium.

In response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly preparing to attack Iran’s nuclear installations in the near future.

But it is rare that Israel would telegraph such a strike. It’s widely believed that they have carried out similar attacks in the past, but they have never admitted it publicly. As such, many assume the leaked information is Netanyahu’s attempt to convince his country’s Western allies to intercede before any such attack would prove necessary.

The desire to have others step in, however, should not be mistaken for an unwillingness to act if Israel’s allies do not. Regardless of whether Iran is really on the verge of becoming a nuclear power, Israel seems done waiting for that eventuality to occur.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu cautioned that “The only thing that has ever stopped rogue nations from developing nuclear weapons is a credible military threat or a credible military action. . . . The longer you wait, the harder that becomes. We’ve waited very long.”

Is World War III starting?

So, going back to our initial question, will World War III start in Ukraine?

It’s impossible to be sure but the odds seem against it.

In many ways, China benefits more by prolonging the war than they do by expediting its end. And Iran seems content to continue selling drones and other munitions for the Russians to use in their attacks.

However, that doesn’t mean that what’s currently going on in Ukraine can’t play a part in bringing about a more global conflict.

The truth is people are wary of what’s unfolding around the world for good reason. Alliances are beginning to take shape in ways that could easily escalate a regional conflict into a world war in any number of arenas. After all, few thought the assassination of an out-of-favor prince could have led to the first World War, but that didn’t stop roughly 20 million people from dying over the course of four years of brutal combat.

And if it happens again, America may not like where it’s standing when the fighting starts.

Our spiritual battle

Ultimately, there’s little you or I can do to prevent the kinds of global conflicts that appear to be on the horizon. But there is an important lesson we can learn from them that makes a profound difference in our ability to navigate the trials and temptations that threaten to draw us away from God.

So much of the world’s attention is currently focused on the war between Russia and Ukraine that other—potentially more dangerous—threats are allowed to persist relatively unchecked. We make the same mistake in our own lives when we become so fixated on where we expect Satan to hit us that we blind ourselves to the other areas where we are vulnerable.

Our Enemy tends not to care where he attacks so long as the attack proves effective. As such, it is often the parts of our lives to which we give little thought that prove to be the most fertile ground for temptation to take root.

So take a few minutes right now to ask the Lord to show you any areas of your life where Satan may be at work in the shadows. Ask him to show you where you are most vulnerable and keep an open mind about where those areas might be.

All of us have them. The only question is whether they’ll be used by God to strengthen our walk with him or by the Enemy to drive us further away.

Which will you choose today?

Denison Forum

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that Moscow would step back from its last remaining major nuclear-arms-control treaty with the US. He also vowed to continue his military campaign in Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden responded: “Our support for Ukraine will not waver, NATO will not be divided, and we will not tire. President Putin’s craven lust for land and power will fail.”

As the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine comes this Friday, many are asking if this is a new Cold War or even the beginning of World War III. After a year, what do we now know about the conflict? What can we predict for the future?

One of the most insightful responses to these questions I have found was written for Foreign Affairs by Sir Lawrence Freedman (DPhil, Oxford University), the Emeritus Professor of War Studies at Kings’ College London. Dr. Freedman notes that Russia and Ukraine have been pursuing two very different war strategies and shows how this fact explains much about the conflict.

In reading his article, I was struck by the degree to which it is also relevant to our cultural challenges in America and to the urgency and promise of spiritual awakening.

“Classic warfare” vs. “total warfare”

According to Dr. Freedman, Ukraine has employed the “classic warfare” approach, while Russia has adopted the “total warfare” strategy. In the former, “victory [is] decided by which army occupied the battlefield, the number of enemy soldiers killed or captured, and the amount of equipment destroyed.” In this approach, “battles determined the outcome of wars.”

The latter views the opposing nation as an appropriate battlefield, not just its army. The rationale for targeting population centers is that armies draw on civilian infrastructure to fight. In addition, munitions factories depend on a civilian workforce. Citizens suffering under incessant bombardment might be turned against the war to the point where they demand their nation’s capitulation. To many strategists, bombing cities is a far simpler route to victory than winning battles.

In the decades after the Cold War, Russia has continued to follow the “total warfare” strategy. For example, they deliberately attacked rebel hospitals in Syria and applied brute force to civilian areas and cities in the Chechen Wars.

Ukraine, by contrast, has understandably avoided civilian areas and infrastructure in the present conflict since the war has been waged on Ukrainian soil.

One might think that, given Russia’s enormous size and resource advantage (it is about twenty-eight times larger than Ukraine), its “total warfare” strategy would overwhelm Ukraine and force it to capitulate. However, the opposite has been the case. Once Ukraine survived Russia’s initial onslaught, Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian civilians have made Ukraine all the more determined to liberate its areas and cede none to Russia. The humanitarian consequences of Russia’s brutality have also strengthened Western support for Ukraine.

In addition, Russia’s total-war aims have reinforced Ukraine’s belief that there is no obvious “compromise peace” available. Nor have Russia’s total-war tactics impeded Ukraine’s military operations.

“A car is made to run on petrol”

As evangelical Christians view our secularized society, it seems that our cultural opponents are following a “total warfare” strategy. Every dimension of our lives is now dominated by relativistic ethics and postmodern subjectivism. Popular media constantly reinforces LGBTQ ideology and unbiblical morality. It is easy to feel like Ukraine standing up to Russia’s overwhelming size and force.

But the opposite is actually the case.

We have been discussing recently the outbreaks of revival on college campuses now reaching historic proportions. They are occurring among a population group for whom unbiblical morality is assumed to be especially popular and pervasive.

But we should not be surprised.

The psalmist spoke for us all when he testified, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God” (Psalm 42:1). “Pants” translates a Hebrew word meaning to yearn passionately and deeply. The author added, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” (v. 2). “Appear before God” translates the Hebrew which literally means “see the face of God.”

We were made by our Maker for a personal, intimate relationship with him. No amount of cultural secularizing can fill the God-shaped emptiness that resides in our souls.

In one of my favorite statements in Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis observed: “God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on himself. He himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there.”

“God’s sudden, calming presence”

You and I can capitulate to the culture’s “total warfare” aggression against our faith. Or, like the Ukrainians, we can double down on our resolve to stand fast with courage. For believers, this means that we live in the power of the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18), manifest the character of Christ (cf. Galatians 5:22–23), and trust that our King will win the victory for all of eternity (cf. Revelation 19:16).

In his inspirational book In the Eye of the Storm: Jesus Knows How You Feel, Max Lucado writes: “The supreme force in salvation is God’s grace. Not our works, nor our talents, not our feelings, nor our strength. Faith is not born at the negotiating table where we barter our gifts in exchange for God’s goodness. Faith is not an award given to the most learned. It’s not a prize given to the most disciplined.”

The fact is, “We are great sinners, and we need a great Savior. Salvation is God’s sudden, calming presence during the stormy seas of our lives. Death is disarmed, failures are forgiven, and life has real purpose. And God is not only within sight, he is within reach.”

Why do you need such grace today?

Denison Forum

President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv today ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Pictures emerged this morning of the president walking alongside Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as they inspected a memorial wall dedicated to those killed fighting Russian troops since 2014.

Mr. Biden’s visit to Ukraine comes on Presidents’ Day and highlights the power of his office to make global headlines.

Today’s federal holiday was established in 1885 in recognition of President George Washington (whose birthday is on February 22) and was later expanded to include Abraham Lincoln (whose birthday is on February 12) and eventually all presidents. However, presidential historian Alexis Coe claims in the New York Times that our first president “would hate Presidents’ Day.” I will summarize her argument into three assertions.

The first is ironic: while we celebrate our presidents today, no president was actually born on February 20. The second is more practical: several states don’t recognize this day at all and many do so only sparingly, with Southern states typically omitting Lincoln from their observances. A third assertion is especially relevant, however: “The president, senators and representatives . . . serve at the American electorate’s pleasure, and not the other way around.”

In other words, the more we depend on a single person to lead and protect our nation, the more we slide from democracy into demagoguery. As we will see, this is a principle of special relevance to evangelical Christians today.

Jimmy Carter has entered hospice care

On one level, we all know that our presidents are mortal.

As a recent example, the Carter Center announced on Saturday that former President Jimmy Carter, at ninety-eight years old the longest-lived American president, has entered hospice care at home in Plains, Georgia. The news followed reports that a small lesion was removed from President Biden’s chest during his latest physical exam, though he otherwise was pronounced “healthy” and “vigorous.”

On another level, however, it is human nature to seek and then trust those who can do things for us we cannot do for ourselves. This starts as children who depend on our parents and older siblings. As we grow older, we come to appreciate soldiers who defend us abroad and police who defend us at home. We become grateful for doctors whose medical expertise exceeds our own and supports our health. We learn to trust counselors who can advise us in areas of finance and relationships and mentors whose wisdom can guide our path.

This tendency to trust our leaders is especially central to evangelical Christianity. Unlike those whose faith story began with the collective sacraments and catechisms of the church, many of us came to Christ through the influence of a pastor, youth minister, or Bible teacher. Unlike churches whose worship centers on the collective liturgies of church tradition, ours focuses on the “preaching of the word” and thus the preacher who delivers that word to us.

Many of our churches place the pulpit or lectern at the center of the platform and thus the preacher at the center of the service. In many evangelical churches, the pastor announces our faith to the congregation, baptizes us, marries us, and buries us.

This is all well and good unless we forget the example set by our first president.

“The greatest man in the world”

After leading America to victory in our Revolutionary War, George Washington voluntarily chose to resign his military commission. When King George III of England was told of Washington’s intent to step down from power, he said, “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.” Over the years, Washington refused numerous attempts to make him more a monarch who would rule the people than a president who would serve them.

His popularity could have made him president for life, but he feared that if he died in office, Americans would view the presidency as a lifetime appointment. Accordingly, he chose to step down following his second term.

His example is especially relevant for evangelicals at this cultural moment.

In Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church, Katelyn Beaty defines “celebrity” as “social power without proximity.” She means that in large churches and ministries, leaders wield enormous influence but without the restraints and accountability of smaller churches in which pastors are known much more personally by those they serve.

Beaty wisely warns: “To have immense social power and little proximity is a spiritually dangerous place for any of us to be.” Many of the clergy scandals she discusses in her book have their origin in this fact.

“Attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric”

Two conclusions follow.

One: We must daily surrender our lives and influence to the Holy Spirit so he can manifest his servant love for our Lord and our neighbor in and through us (Galatians 5:22; Matthew 22:37–39).

Jesus set the example when he washed the feet of his followers and commanded us to do the same (John 13:14). I heard a preacher say: “When you stand before the Lord, he will not examine your title but your towel.”

Two: We must pray for our leaders to live and lead by biblical truth and morality (1 Timothy 2:1–2). The more they deviate from God’s word, the more they need the intercession of God’s people.

In his 1796 Farewell Address, George Washington made this clear and prophetic pronouncement: “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?”

Who, indeed?

Denison Forum

It is estimated that roughly 50,000 more babies will be born each year as a result of the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last July.

For those who oppose abortion, every one of those lives is a cause for celebration. For those who think differently, that’s 50,000 women who will be forced to carry, and often raise, a baby that they didn’t want.

But while there are many stories of women who are grateful once the child arrives, most who feel inclined to get an abortion do so because their lives were difficult before adding a baby to the mix. Fortunately, an increasing number of people are taking steps to help make sure that being pro-life means more than just being pro-birth.

And, as Adam Macinnis profiles for Christianity Today, Christians are often at the forefront of such efforts.

Learning to cope with being uncomfortable

Embrace Grace is one such example of a Christian group that “supports single parents and women facing unplanned pregnancies.” Betty Hodge started a chapter at her church in 2019 because, as someone who had also faced an unplanned pregnancy and pressure to abort a baby, she can empathize with women who find themselves in a similar position.

She credits the support of her family for helping her to choose life for her child and now works to provide similar support for the women to whom she ministers.

As Macinnis notes, Mississippi—where Hodge lives and works—has “the highest rate of preterm births—over 30 percent more than the national average,” as well as “the highest infant mortality rate in the US, with nearly 9 of every 1,000 babies dying. And for the infants who live to be toddlers, 28 percent will live in poverty.”

There are understandable reasons that Mississippi often finds itself in the crosshairs of pro-choice advocates looking to justify their position by highlighting the additional dangers faced by women denied the chance to abort their babies. However, those increased risks also mean increased opportunities for those willing to step in and help.

Another ministry in the area attempting to meet those needs is Her PLAN. Anja Baker is the coordinator for the Mississippi chapter, and her team partners with 140 churches and organizations that are ready to offer support and help to mothers in need, with more partners still being added. As she describes, “We’re going to take a state like Mississippi . . . and we’re going to make it the champion of hope and life, hospitality and generosity.”

As Hodge cautions, however, such work can get uncomfortable at times: “You have to be ready for the f-bomb to come out of a mouth. You’ve got to be ready for someone to come in here in a short, short skirt.”

But learning to cope with being uncomfortable can be an essential first step to serving the parents as well as their children. And to be sure, helping both is crucial.

“Kids are unwell”

As Kate Woodsome writes for The Washington Post, “Kids are unwell. Worse than ever recorded, according to two new reports tracing depression and suicidal thoughts and behaviors in teens. . . . But if we want to make any lasting difference, it is us, the adults, who need an intervention.”

Woodsome goes on to describe how “American kids are unwell because American society is unwell. The systems and social media making teenagers sad, angry and afraid today were shaped in part by adults who grew up sad, angry and afraid themselves.”

Working to break that generational cycle of pain is an essential part of being pro-life as well.

The CDC reports that “preventing adverse experiences in childhood could reduce the number of adults with depression by as much as 44 percent.” As such, we see that one of the best ways to serve a child is to serve his or her parents. By working to help parents create an environment in which their children can feel safe and provided for, we can interrupt that cycle of pain and help kids avoid the trauma that so often defined their parents’ lives.

So how can the church help?

We can start by valuing people the same way God does.

The difference between a burden and a treasure

At a recent conference, pastor Chris Legg made the point that the only difference between a burden and a treasure is the value assigned to the object in question.

A fifty-pound piece of iron, for example, would be considered a burden to anyone who had to carry it. But what if it were fifty pounds of gold instead? To what extent would you gladly burden yourself to carry as many blocks as possible?

As Legg points out, the weight didn’t change, and the block would be difficult to carry in either case. However, your perspective changed because your assessment of the object’s worth changed.

How we choose to relate to the people God brings into our lives is similar in many ways.

Even in the best of times, other people can be difficult to work with, take us out of our comfort zone, and generally hinder the way we might prefer to live. But if we can come to see them as God does—as a treasure worth every bit of the exhaustion and exasperation they might require of us—then ministering to them as the Lord intends can become a source of joy rather than sacrifice and purpose rather than pain.

And if we can help parents to see their children, both in the womb and after they’re born, in the same light, then perhaps we can help to break the cycle of trauma and distress that is so often passed down from one generation to the next.

Treating every person God has created as a treasure of inestimable worth is what it should mean to be pro-life.

Are you?

Denison Forum

The Satanic Temple is launching an online abortion clinic that prescribes medication for patients who want to take part in its “religious abortion ritual.” The group named the initiative “The Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic” in reference to the Supreme Court justice who wrote the majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.

In related news, the Grammy Awards recently recognized “Unholy” as the best pop duo of the year; the performance of the song during the show included demonic costumes and depraved sexual themes. Prior to the show, singer Sam Smith tweeted a photo of himself in rehearsal wearing devil horns with the words “This is going to be SPECIAL” and a devil emoji. CBS responded: “You can say that again. We are ready to worship!” They later deleted the tweet.

While these stories are obviously tragic and disturbing, they are no longer surprising, a cultural fact which is itself tragic and disturbing.

Now consider a thought experiment: imagine that a group of pro-life supporters launched an initiative opposing abortion named for Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s mother. Or that the Grammy Awards included a performance they knew would offend Muslims (or any other religious group except Christians).

What would be the response in secular culture?

“The biggest threat to American democracy”

George F. Will has been a conservative columnist for the Washington Post for the last half-century. In a fascinating recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, he laments the fact that “consciousness itself has become a political project.”

Here is his explanation: “You can blame Marx, or his precursor Hegel. Once you decide that human nature is a fiction, that human beings are merely the sum of impressions made on them by their surrounding culture, then politics acquires an enormous jurisdiction. Consciousness becomes a political project, and the point of politics becomes the control of culture in order to control the imposition of proper consciousnesses.”

In Will’s view, progressives think that “consciousness is to be transmitted by the government. And they’re working on it, starting with kindergarten. The academic culture, from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to kindergarten in Flagstaff, Arizona, is the same now, coast to coast, as far as I can tell.”

This works because our secular society has jettisoned belief in objective truth and morality, viewing people as made not in God’s image but in the image of pragmatic consensus. As a result, politics are so crucial these days because political power can be used to inculcate a particular worldview across society. When political parties advance that consensus through cultural institutions, they ensure that they remain in power.

All that is necessary is for the worldview being advanced to appeal to our intrinsic desires and needs. An agenda that empowers us to define ourselves and our “truth” as we wish appeals to the “will to power” at the heart of fallen humanity (Genesis 3:5). A corollary agenda that defines morality as anything that doesn’t harm someone else appeals to the “works of the flesh” such as “sexual immorality, impurity, [and] sensuality” (Galatians 5:19).

At the end of his Wall Street Journal interview, George Will states, “People always ask, ‘What’s the biggest threat to American democracy?’ The biggest threat to American democracy is American democracy. It is the fact that we have incontinent appetites and no restraint on them” (his emphasis).

The great impediment to revival

We have been focusing this week on the revival still ongoing at Asbury University in Kentucky. I am praying for God to protect and bless those experiencing this remarkable movement of his Spirit and to make them a catalyst for the spiritual awakening our nation needs so desperately.

Here’s the great impediment to God answering such prayers: we must admit that we need what only his Spirit can do. If God’s people do not recognize how much we need the transforming power of God in our lives and our culture, we will not truly seek such a movement or pay a personal price to join it.

The 2 Chronicles 7:14 text so often connected to revival begins, “If my people who are called by my name . . . .” However, its call to humility and dependence on God is preceded by verse 13’s description of a day when drought, devastation, and disease have ravaged the land. In that condition, the people would clearly know that they needed to turn to God in desperation.

Here’s my point: American society is now in the same condition spiritually that the Israel described by 2 Chronicles 7:13 was in physically. The unbiblical immorality that began gaining cultural traction with the sexual revolution of the 1960s has become normalized and legalized. Those who stand for biblical morality are now stigmatized and such opposition is increasingly criminalized.

This movement is using the levers of cultural and political influence to advance its aims and ensure its continued power.

“Led forward by grace”

Let’s end on a positive note: God knows everything I have discussed today and is still on his throne. He is working to redeem the brokenness of our secularized society by using it to draw people to his amazing grace and love. And, as the Asbury revival shows, he is using all who will be used in his agenda of restoration and renewal.

An unknown writer in the fourth century noted that “those who carry Christ within them, shining within them and renewing them—these people are guided by the Spirit in various ways and led forward by grace working invisibly in the inner peace of their hearts.”

As we know Christ and make him known, the Christ within us will renew us and lead us “forward by grace.” However others respond to such grace, we will know we have been faithful to the God who is faithful to us.

And, as Mother Teresa observed, “When facing God, results are not important. Faithfulness is what is important.”

Will you do what is “important” today?

Denison Forum

Here’s news for the day after Valentine’s Day: crows mate for life. So do geese, whooping cranes, beavers, bald eagles, seahorses, coyotes, and termites. (Did you know that termites mate? Do you care?)

Some evolutionists aren’t surprised. According to author Christopher Kukk, biologists from Charles Darwin to E. O. Wilson believe that “cooperation has been more important than competition in humanity’s evolutionary success.” Kukk adds, “Compassion is the reason for both the human race’s survival and its ability to continue to thrive as a species.”

You don’t have to be an evolutionist to agree that God made us for compassionate community. This exhortation is just one biblical example: “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24–25).

Note the phrase “not neglecting to meet together.” What happens when we disobey?

How our “starving souls” will be “eternally filled”

According to Harvard University, regularly attending religious services is associated with lower risks of “deaths of despair” related to suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol poisoning. A new study agrees, noting that the increase in “deaths of despair” in the early 1990s was preceded by a decline in religious participation.

Writing for Christianity Today, Hillsdale College professor Adam Carrington offers three reasons why.

First, without the community of the church, we lack full communion with God.

Christ reveals his presence when we gather in his name (Matthew 18:20). We experience him more fully when his word is preached, he is glorified in worship, and he is experienced through the ordinances or sacraments of the church.

Second, Carrington notes, without the church, we lack full knowledge of God.

From the early Christians who “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42), to the Bereans who “examined the Scriptures every day” together (Acts 17:11 NIV), to churches who teach God’s word to each other today, we grow in our faith when we grow together.

Third, without the church, we lose authentic, restored human community.

When Christ restores us to himself in salvation, he restores us to each other as members of his body. We are now to serve those in need together as we serve our Lord (Matthew 25:40).

Carrington concludes: “In the end, a healthy church community encourages those in despair with the hope of final glory. Then our starving souls will be finally and eternally filled at the wedding supper of the Lamb depicted in Revelation. All tears will be wiped away, and death will be no more—and despair itself will be cast into hell.”

Why people are coming to Asbury

The ongoing revival at Asbury University we discussed yesterday is a case in point.

Every Great Awakening in American history began in Christian community. In fact, the familiar 2 Chronicles 7:14 text so often associated with revival begins, “If my people who are called by my name . . . .” Only then does it call us to humble ourselves, pray, seek God’s face, and turn from our wicked ways so that he might “hear from heaven” and “forgive their sin and heal their land.”

Jesus’ first followers experienced the miracle of Pentecost when “they were all together in one place” (Acts 2:1). Those who would experience a similar move of the Spirit must be united in community as well.

There is a reason people have been coming to Asbury from far and wide to join together in their auditorium for collective worship and prayer. Rather than calling his people into solitary spirituality, the Lord is calling them closer to himself and thus to each other.

If you and I would join and advance such a transforming movement of God’s Spirit, we must do so in community as well.

Taking a coal from the fire

Here’s the problem: Satan loves to isolate God’s people because he knows the power of unity in God’s Spirit. Western culture from ancient Greece to today has joined the conspiracy, claiming with Protagoras (490–420 BC) that “man is the measure of all things.” Note the singular, “man,” rather than the plural, “men.”

Capitalism depends on consumption and thus conditions us to be consumers. Social media measures success by popularity and makes people a means to the end of our “likes” and “follows.” Relativism defines truth as personal and makes us the arbiter of our own identity and reality.

Take a live coal from the fire and it goes out. Put a dead coal in the fire and it comes to life.

Have our spiritual enemy and our secularized culture been isolating your soul? Being identified with a denomination or even a local church is not enough. The question is: Are you engaged in intentional community within the body of Christ?

We are commanded to “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2).

Whose burdens are you bearing today?

Who is bearing yours?

Denison Forum

“The Holy Spirit was tangible in the room. Chains were broken, confession happened, and God was praised as holy, holy, holy.” This is how one student described the Asbury revival, which began last Wednesday at Asbury University in central Kentucky.

This evangelical school of 1,639 students has been known through the years for a number of great revivals beginning in February 1905. A revival that began in February 1970, for example, lasted for 144 hours of unbroken worship services. Some two thousand witness teams went out from the school to churches and 130 college campuses around the nation.

A student confession during the close of chapel in March 1992 turned into 127 consecutive hours of prayer and praise. A student chapel in February 2006 led to four days of continuous worship, prayer, and praise.

The 2023 Asbury revival

Now the Holy Spirit seems to be moving in an extraordinary way again at Asbury.

During a call to confession on February 8, at least one hundred people fell to their knees and bowed at the altar. Since then, the campus has experienced an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that was still continuing yesterday.

People have been giving testimonies, reading Scripture, worshiping God, and praying. Students, professors, and local church leaders have been participating. Students from multiple colleges have been drawn to the Asbury campus as well.

Unlike previous campus revivals, people are watching the current movement of the Spirit through the lens of social media. This has drawn a broader audience to witness what is now happening in Kentucky.

Tim Keller on revival in America

In his thoughtful Atlantic article, “American Christianity is Due for a Revival,” Tim Keller cites the classic book Habits of the Heart by sociologist Robert Bellah. According to Keller, the book “showed that the social history of the United States made it the most individualistic culture in the world. American culture elevates the interests of the individual over those of family, community, and nation.”

Here’s the good news, according to Keller: “For two centuries, Americans’ religious devotion counterbalanced this individualism with denunciations of self-centeredness and calls to love your neighbor. The Church demanded charity and compassion for the needy, it encouraged young people to confine sexual expression to marriage, and it encouraged spouses to stick to their vows.”

However, “Bellah wrote that American individualism, now largely freed from the counterbalance of religion, is headed toward social fragmentation, economic inequality, family breakdown, and many other dysfunctions.”

Bellah’s book was published in 1985. Have the last four decades proven him right?

According to Keller, “The modern self is exceptionally fragile. While having the freedom to define and validate oneself is superficially liberating, it is also exhausting: You and you alone must create and sustain your identity. This has contributed to unprecedented levels of depression and anxiety and never-satisfied longings for affirmation.”

Asbury revival student: “He is radically transforming lives”

America needs revival not just because our culture is broken but because Americans need to know how much God loves them. In fact, it is because Americans do not know how much God loves them that our culture is broken.

By contrast, the common experience being shared from the Asbury revival now taking place is a deep sense of God’s loving presence as he draws people to himself. For example, Elena Overman, a sophomore from Dallas, said, “Throughout the past three days, the Lord has revealed himself and his unfailing love and faithfulness to everyone who has stepped through the doors of Hughes Auditorium. He is radically transforming lives. The Holy Spirit is at work in this place and all around the world through our prayers, and he’s not stopping anytime soon. All glory to God.”

On this Valentine’s Day, named for the patron saint of engaged couples and happy marriages, let’s celebrate both the fact and the reason that we are loved unconditionally by the God of the universe.

The fact of his love is clear: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). There is literally nothing you can do to make God love you any more or any less than he already does.

This is because of the reason for his love. In his essay “Membership,” C. S. Lewis offers this observation: “The infinite value of each human soul is not a Christian doctrine. God did not die for man because of some value he perceived in him. The value of each human soul considered simply in itself, out of relation to God, is zero. As St. Paul writes, to have died for valuable men would have been not divine but merely heroic; but God died for sinners.

“He loved us not because we were lovable, but because he is love.”

“Let it begin in me!”

Lewis is right: God loves you because “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Stated bluntly, he cannot not love you.

If you will respond to his love by loving him with “all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30), you will also “love your neighbor as yourself” (v. 31). Your neighbor will learn that God is love by experiencing God’s love in yours.

And you will be a catalyst for the revival our culture needs so desperately.

Please join me in praying for God to bless, protect, and use the Asbury revival to spark revival across our land. And let’s pray, in the words of the old hymn, “Let it begin in me!”

Denison Forum

The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the Philadelphia Eagles in yesterday’s Super Bowl, overcoming three “curses” to do so.

First, their quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, won the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award again this season. Since 1999, nine MVPs made it to the Super Bowl; none won it. Second, Canadian rapper Drake bet $700,000 on the Chiefs, but nearly all his large sports bets in recent years have failed. Third, Chiefs fans have been placing team apparel on the Rocky Balboa statue in Philadelphia. When fans did this in the 2015 and 2018 playoffs, their teams lost to the Eagles.

In more serious news, Chiefs fan John Gladwell donated a kidney to Eagles fan Billy Welsh more than two years ago. The pair met more than twenty years ago when they both served in the Marines. They sat together yesterday at the game, but Welsh was worried about a Chiefs victory since he has a “Chiefs kidney”: “I don’t know how my body will react if the Chiefs win.” There is no news so far on his medical response.

The rest of us might be concerned about the outcome for a different reason: over the previous fifty-six Super Bowls, stocks do better when the NFC team wins. Also, the Chiefs won by a last-minute field goal, but the best years for markets have come when the game is decided by a large margin.

Why is football so popular?

If you didn’t watch yesterday’s game (at least for the ads), you were a cultural outlier: the NFL estimates that 208 million-plus viewers saw last year’s Super Bowl, approximately two-thirds of our population. While the Super Bowl is unique, football games in general were eighty-two of the top one hundred highest-rated shows on television last year.

Why is football America’s most popular sport?

Consider a psychologist’s contrast between the sport and baseball, formerly our “national pastime.” Writing for Psychology Today, Thomas Hendricks notes that “baseball is largely an individual sport” in which batters face the pitcher alone and defensive players occupy isolated positions on the field. Football, by contrast, “is more thoroughly collective” since “every teammate is involved in the design and execution of every play.”

Hendricks then observes, “More thoroughly social, contemporary people accept that group cohesion is the foundation of individual success. Football heroes are covered up in helmets and pads. Individuals become soldiers, elements in a great collective striving.”

When our team wins, “we” win

As a cultural apologist, I would add that the parallels between watching American football and participating in American religion are noteworthy.

On a typical Sunday, 100 million Americans (30 percent) watch an NFL game, roughly the same percentage as attend worship (28 percent). Most who participate in either activity engage in a transactional experience.

I have noticed that when a football team wins, their fans will say “we” won; when a team loses, their fans often say “they” (not “we”) lost. Very few fans have the players first in mind or even know an NFL player personally. The players and coaches are a means to the end of our entertainment and vicarious victory (we hope). If they lose, we are angry with them; if they win, we are excited for ourselves.

Many American Christians engaged in worship in a similar way yesterday. We inherited the cultural religion of our Greco-Roman ancestors who placed sacrifices on altars so gods would bless their crops or otherwise give them what they wanted. Worship was a means to their end, as it often is to ours.

Reflect on the last time you needed God’s help. If he did not do what you wanted, were you angry with him? If he did, were you excited for yourself?

“God doesn’t want to be used”

Imagine a marriage where one partner seeks a relationship with the other primarily for what their spouse can do for them. Is this how the “Bride” of Christ (Revelation 19:7) is treating our Groom today?

By contrast, we are told to “offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe” (Hebrews 12:28). Does this describe your last worship experience?

Dr. Derwin Gray is a former NFL player, a pastor, and the author of God, Do You Hear Me? He observes, “When we deduce prayer to be a mantra or a spiritual ATM or superstition, we’re really not praying. We’re actually using God and God doesn’t want to be used. God wants to be worshiped. Because when we worship, we become who we were created to be.”

Who were we “created to be”?

In The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren writes: “God’s ultimate goal for your life on earth is not comfort, but character development. He wants you to grow up spiritually.” Thus he “gives us our time on earth to build and strengthen our character for heaven.”

Warren adds: “Jesus did not die on the cross just so we could live comfortable, well-adjusted lives. His purpose is far deeper: he wants to make us like himself before he takes us to heaven.”

“Our greatest privilege”

As the winners of Super Bowl LVII, the Kansas City Chiefs are being granted “football immortality” by our culture this morning, but this is a myth. Do you remember who won the title even ten years ago?

By contrast, the more you seek to know Christ for no reason except to know Christ, the more you will become like Christ and the more you will make him known. According to Rick Warren, being like Christ is “our greatest privilege, our immediate responsibility, and our ultimate destiny.”

Do you agree?

Denison Forum

In their own words, “He Gets Us has an agenda.”

“How did the story of a man who taught and practiced unconditional love, peace, and kindness; who spent his life defending the poor and the marginalized; a man who even forgave his killers while they executed him unjustly—whose life inspired a radical movement that is still impacting the world thousands of years later—how did this man’s story become associated with hatred and oppression for so many people? And how might we all rediscover the promise of the love his story represents?”

Such questions motivate those behind the ministry called He Gets Us and, if you haven’t seen their ads or billboards yet, the Super Bowl this Sunday night will offer the perfect chance to change that.

What is He Gets Us?

But what is the He Gets Us campaign? And why are they spending roughly $20 million for ninety seconds of airtime this weekend—with plans to invest about a billion dollars over the next three years in similar efforts? Surely, some argue, there are better ways to use that much money.

It’s a question people like Hobby Lobby co-founder David Green and the other—largely anonymous—donors behind the He Gets Us ministry have asked themselves on multiple occasions. Yet, as Lora Harding, an associate professor of marketing at Belmont University, noted, outside of major events like the Super Bowl, “There just aren’t ways to reach an attentive, engaged audience that size anymore.”

Their short videos are certainly attention-grabbing and engaging.

However, they’ve also been somewhat controversial

With taglines like “Jesus was a refugee” and “Jesus felt alone, too,” He Gets Us leans heavily into the human side of Jesus’ story. In so doing, they invite us to engage with the Christ who stood beyond any of the stereotypes and preconceived notions with which people—Christians and non-Christians alike—have often attempted to define him for the better part of two thousand years.

But, as Religion News Service‘s Bob Smietana described, while they hope to help everyone encounter that Jesus, their target audience appears to be “spiritually open skeptics, which are people who might be OK with religion but aren’t really excited about Christians.” And that description fits an increasingly large percentage of the population.

He gets us because he became one of us

Phil Boone, the Director of Generosity for the He Gets Us campaign, recently mentioned on the Denison Forum Podcast that research shows as many as 150 million people—58 percent of the American population—are either skeptics or cultural Christians.

Boone was quick to point out, though, that “skeptic” is not a negative term. Rather, it refers to people who are “just not sure about all this, but they want to know more. They want help in raising their children. They want help in having a healthier emotional condition. They want help in providing for their family.” And the cultural Christians “have a lot of those same desires.”

These are practical issues, and they require a practical response.

That’s why He Gets Us doesn’t start with topics like human depravity or deep, theological truths. They start with the story of Christ and, in so doing, help people meet a God who gets us because he became one of us.

They understand the other stuff is important too, which is why anyone who engages with He Gets Us is eventually pointed toward resources that can help them go deeper and, if they choose, connected with one of 6,500 partner churches that have signed up across the country to help people find a local community of faith.

But they don’t start there, and that’s all right.

As Boone pointed out, it’s often “people’s expectations to have the whole thing presented and wrapped up in a nice package. And that’s the problem.”

Instead, He Gets Us is more focused on introducing people to Jesus and then partnering with the body of Christ to help them dive deeper into that relationship.

It’s a strategy that has already borne fruit for more than 115,000 people over the last nine months, with countless more sure to come given that roughly two-thirds of American adults are likely to tune in this Sunday.

Are you a skeptic?

While He Gets Us may target religious skeptics, it is often the skeptics who are already part of God’s kingdom that can be the greatest impediment to its advance.

What was your first reaction upon hearing about the strategy and financial decisions of the He Gets Us campaign? Did part of you share the concerns of those who question whether that money could be better spent in other ways? Did you want to push back against the idea of starting a presentation of the gospel without any mention of sin, hell, or repentance?

If you answered yes, that’s all right. I’ll admit, part of me was a bit skeptical when I first encountered the videos and began researching the campaign.

But in the time since, I feel like God has used their ministry to remind me that I’m not immune to trying to put him in a box either.

Videos that might not appeal to me could be exactly what the Holy Spirit will use to lead others into a saving relationship with Jesus. And theological questions that I consider essential to a right understanding of the Lord can easily be irrelevant to those who do not already have a relationship with him.

So the next time you pass by a billboard or see an ad aimed at helping people identify with the God who loves us so much that he left heaven to become one of us, make sure your first response is to pray rather than judge.

Pray that the Holy Spirit will work through those images and videos to break down barriers and call people to take a fresh look at Jesus. Pray that the Lord will guide the believers who are engaging with the lost that reach out as a result of what they’ve seen. And pray that God will help you and your church know in what ways you might be called to join them.

Helping the lost know Christ requires strategies as diverse as the humanity he’s endeavoring to save.

Are you doing your part today?

Denison Forum

According to American intelligence officials, China’s spy balloon program is part of a global surveillance effort to collect information on the military capabilities of countries around the world.

Surveillance balloons, like China’s spy balloons, have advantages over satellites: they can fly closer to the earth and drift with wind patterns that are not as predictable to militaries and intelligence agencies. They can also hover over areas and their cameras can produce clearer images than those on orbital satellites. We now know that Beijing has used such airships to probe American airspace in the past—one other time under President Biden and three under former President Trump. China’s spy balloons have been spotted over five continents in total.

Did China’s spy balloons break international law?

Unlike satellites which travel in space, balloons are like other aircraft in that they are subject to international aviation law. According to such law, a nation’s airspace is sovereign territory that cannot be entered without express permission. As a result, surveillance balloons are clear violations of national sovereignty when they enter another country’s airspace.

In other news, Dutch prosecutors said yesterday that it was likely that Russian President Vladimir Putin signed off on a decision to supply missile systems to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The long-range anti-aircraft missiles were then used to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July of that year, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

This attack was an obvious violation (PDF) of international law, one for which individuals and states are both responsible.

“If everybody got their time from somebody else”

These stories illustrate this fact: laws do not have the intrinsic power to change character. For example, America has more laws than ever, but murder rates are 30 percent higher than they were in 2019; other kinds of crime, including thefts and robberies, increased last year as well.

Laws can prevent illegal activity so long as they can be proactively enforced, but they do not by themselves alter human nature. Individuals and nations will still do what they consider to be in their best interest. Most will adhere to laws that prevent or alter their intentions only when they must.

Do you obey speed limits because you have an intrinsic desire to do whatever the authorities advise or because you don’t want to get a ticket for speeding?

Of course, the alternative to laws we feel to be arbitrary and invasive is to have no laws at all.

In my sermon last Sunday, I quoted Dr. Paul Powell: “Man needs some authority in his life. Without duly recognized authority, chaos would soon result in every realm of life.” He cited the Bureau of Standards in Washington, DC, without which we would have no objective measure of weights and measurements. Without these standards, he noted, “inches and pounds would soon shrink or expand according to the wishes of the person doing the measuring. It would not be long until daily business could not be transacted.”

He then pointed to the Naval Observatory, also in Washington, DC, which gives us the correct astronomical time every day at 12 o’clock. What if we did not have such a standard? Dr. Powell answered: “If everyone got their time from somebody else, pretty soon we would have no idea as to what the time really was.”

Is this where our culture is morally?

Four transforming facts

David prayed, “O Lᴏʀᴅ, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!” (Psalm 39:4). From his prayer we can discern the following facts:

1. We do not know how fleeting our lives really are or how dependent we truly are on our Maker.
2. Only God can reveal this to us in a way that transforms us, which is why David’s words are a prayer rather than an observation.
3. If we will not ask God to show us our need for his help, we will waste our time and our lives.
4. If we will make David’s prayer ours, we will use our time and lives well in response.

For example, as a result of his prayer, David could say to God, “I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers” (v. 12). This is a powerful metaphor for life on this transitory planet. We are all guests here. Accordingly, we must not invest our souls where they will not live permanently.

I often note that self-sufficiency is spiritual suicide. The contrary is true as well: Spirit-sufficiency is spiritual victory.

“Never interpret your numbness as his absence”

When Abraham offered Isaac (Genesis 22), God intervened and Isaac became a progenitor of the Jewish nation. The theologian Origen (c. 185–c. 253) noted: “Abraham offered to God his mortal son who did not die; God gave up his immortal Son who died for all of us.”

Will you trust such a loving God with your life today?

In Revelation 3, Jesus tells his people, “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” (v. 20). Commenting on this transforming promise, Max Lucado writes: “The world rams at your door; Jesus taps at your door. The voices scream for your allegiance; Jesus softly and tenderly requests it.

“Which voice do you hear? There is never a time that Jesus is not speaking. There’s never a room so dark that the ever-present, ever-pursuing, relentlessly tender Father is not there, tapping gently on the doors of our hearts—waiting to be invited in.

“Few hear his voice. Fewer still open the door. But never interpret your numbness as his absence. He says, ‘Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age’ (Matthew 28:20). ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’ (Hebrews 13:5). Never” (his italics).

Will you open your life to his lordship today?

Denison Forum

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fell asleep during President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped up a copy of President Trump’s 2020 speech after he finished his address. And networks cut away from President Clinton’s 1997 address to air the OJ Simpson verdict.

I saw no such noteworthy events last night during (or after) President Biden’s speech, in which he highlighted progress during his years in office and sought to sell Americans on his economic plans for the future.

However, if the past is prologue, the president should not expect to see significant results from his speech. According to Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones, “Historical data suggests these speeches rarely affect a president’s public standing in a meaningful way, despite the amount of attention they receive.”

And yet the Washington Post reports that the president had “the largest audience any US politician will have all year, absent some catastrophe that would require him to give a very different kind of prime-time address.”

Why do so many of us watch? The answer is actually relevant far beyond last night’s speech.

“You gave your word to his boss”

In Clear and Present Danger, a 1994 movie adapted from a Tom Clancy novel, Harrison Ford plays CIA analyst Jack Ryan. In one scene, he relates troubling news he has discovered regarding governmental corruption to National Security Advisor Jim Greer, played by James Earl Jones. Ryan says, “I’m afraid if I dig any deeper no one’s going to like what I find.”

Greer responds, “You took an oath, if you recall, when you first came to work for me. And I don’t mean to the National Security Advisor of the United States. I mean to his boss, and I don’t mean the president. You gave your word to his boss: you gave your word to the people of the United States.”

Jim Greer was right. Unlike 70 percent of the world living under dictatorships, in the United States, our president and other elected leaders work for the people who elected them. That’s why the president tried last night to impress us with his work and why we watched his speech to decide whether or not we agree.

The annual State of the Union address illustrates the “golden rule” in our fallen world: “Whoever has the gold makes the rules.” In the case of democracy (“the power of the people”), the people have the “gold” of cultural authority and thus make the cultural “rules.” And as Jesus said, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required” (Luke 12:48 NRSV).

Self-governance requires the ability to govern the self. Therein lies our system of government’s greatest opportunity and its greatest challenge.

“Truth has stumbled in the public squares”

In a recent survey, 81 percent of Americans said humankind is inherently good. As a result, our postmodern culture believes we should tolerate another person’s moral choices so long as they do not harm others. However, as Scripture notes, “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7). This is why Jesus said we must be “born again” (John 3:3).

In Isaiah 59 the prophet states, “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God” (v. 2). He then identifies specific consequences of this “separation.” Do any of these describe our culture?

• “Your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity” (v. 3a). Does this bring abortion to mind?
• “Your lips have spoken lies” (v. 3b). Does this relate to our “post-truth” culture and our redefinitions of marriage and gender identity?
• “No one enters suit justly; no one goes to law honestly” (v. 4). Does this describe our escalating governmental and corporate corruption?
• “Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood” (v. 7). Does this relate to racial injustice today?

Consequently, “We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight” (v. 10).  This is because “truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter” (v. 14).

The prophet then states our only hope: “A Redeemer will come to Zion” (v. 20).

“Leave the rest to God”

Numerous retrospectives on President Ronald Reagan were published Monday on the 112^th anniversary of his birthday. One article, written by a columnist who worked for the former president, identified “the secret of who he was” in his life motto: “Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, leave the rest to God.”

Of course, to do the first four well, we need the help of the One to whom we “leave the rest.” As we noted yesterday, we must know Christ before we can truly make him known. This is why a daily encounter with the living Lord Jesus is so vital for our souls and for our society.

John Eldredge writes: “Henri Nouwen once asked Mother Teresa for spiritual direction. Spend one hour each day in adoration of your Lord, she said, and never do anything you know is wrong.” To do the second, we need the power of the first.

If “one hour each day” seems unrealistic, how much time will you spend in “adoration of your Lord” today?

Denison Forum

In the midst of all the bad news in today’s news, I thought you might like to hear about something a little different this morning. As you’re making plans for next week’s Valentine’s Day, here’s an option you may not have considered: you can donate $10 to the San Antonio Zoo. For that amount, they will name a cockroach after anyone you designate and feed it to an animal.

Their annual “Cry Me a Cockroach” is intended for “exes who just won’t bug off,” as CNN reports. The annual event received more than eight thousand donations last year from all fifty states and over thirty different countries.

This expression of animosity is relatively innocuous (unless someone names a cockroach for you, I suppose). Here’s a more dramatic example of the enmity pervading our culture: According to Pew, 77 percent of Americans say our country’s partisan divide is deeper now than it was before the pandemic, as compared with a median of 47 percent in thirteen other nations surveyed. Even worse, support for the use of political violence is rising in our society.

Gallup recently conducted a “confidence in institutions” survey. Their polling included the church or organized religion, the military, the Supreme Court, public schools, the police, the criminal justice system, small business, big business, large tech companies, banks, the medical system, newspapers, television news, Congress, and the presidency.

What do these fifteen institutions have in common?

Public confidence in every one of them fell last year.

“I know my own and my own know me”

James described his first-century world in terms that seem eerily accurate today: “What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:1–2).

By contrast, the creative brilliance and power of the One who made us is on display everywhere we turn, if only we have eyes to see. For example, a recent galactic photo shoot captured more than three billion stars and galaxies. Astoundingly, this is only .15 percent of the two trillion galaxies in the universe.

Your Lord made all of that and holds it in the palm of his hand (Isaiah 40:12).

From the transcendent to the immanent: according to National Geographic, your circulatory system is more than sixty thousand miles long (this is more than twice the equatorial circumference of our planet). Your heart beats one hundred thousand times a day, forty million times a year, up to three billion times in your lifetime.

Jesus made all of that when he made you: “By him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” (Colossians 1:16). What’s more, his omniscience and omnipotence are available to all who seek his wisdom and strength.

This is because, unlike every other figure of history, the living Lord Jesus can be known personally by any who make him their Savior and Lord.

Buddhists do not claim that they can know the Buddha; Muslims do not claim to know Muhammad. But Jesus assured us, “I know my own and my own know me” (John 10:14). We can “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). Paul’s life purpose was to “know him” (Philippians 3:10).

“All the thrills of religion”

Here’s the problem: we all too often settle for knowing about Jesus when we can know Jesus. Consider an analogy.

I was taught algebra in the eighth grade, but I remember almost nothing of what I learned. So I turned today to a Wikipedia article on the subject. Here I discovered that the word algebra comes from the title of a book by the ninth-century Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. I learned that its roots can be traced to the ancient Babylonians and that at least twelve different areas of mathematics have “algebra” in their name.

The article taught me much about algebra, but it did not teach me how to do algebra. This is how many of our religious activities function: they teach us about Jesus, but do they lead us to experience Jesus?

If not, why not?

To be confessional, I know one answer: it is easier to tell you about Jesus than to know him and then make known what I know. When I seek to know him personally, I experience his presence in ways that can be more than uncomfortable. I see the stains of my sins in the light of his holiness. I hear him calling me to accountability and submission to his authority.

However, if I spend my time teaching people about Jesus, I can avoid all of this while maintaining the appearance of religiosity. I can teach a passage of Scripture without having to deal with the One who inspired it. I can engage in religious practices without risking the repentance that is likely to be required by relational intimacy with Christ.

To quote C. S. Lewis, “All the thrills of religion and none of the cost.” Except this: avoiding the cost of knowing Christ costs me everything that matters most to my soul.

“We are bound to be captured”

Br. Keith Nelson of the Society of St. John the Evangelist writes: “In the sea of this life, we are bound to be captured sooner or later. The waters are full of other nets, bristling with hooks. If we don’t give our consent to be caught by Christ, something else will encircle our freedom and determine our choices. We need our attention to be captured by the one who longs for our transformation and wholeness.”

To shift the analogy, Jesus testified: “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). With regard to your present significance and eternal rewards, “much fruit” or “nothing” are your two options.

Which do you choose today?

Denison Forum

Three stories making headlines this morning offer a case study into human nature.

First, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked southeastern Turkey and northern Syria this morning, toppling hundreds of buildings and killing more than 1,300 people. The death toll is expected to rise as rescue workers comb through mounds of wreckage for people still trapped under rubble.

Second, Navy divers are searching for debris from the Chinese spy balloon a US fighter jet shot down Saturday off the coast of South Carolina. According to the New York Times, the shooting down of the balloon “introduced a new phase in the increasingly tempestuous relationship between the United States and China.”

Third, the New York Times is reporting that “an even deadlier pandemic could soon be here.” The article explains that bird flu, known formally as avian influenza, “has long hovered on the horizon of scientists’ fears.” This pathogen, especially the H5N1 strain, has not often infected humans. However, when it has, 56 percent of those known to have contracted it have died. This contrasts with a mortality rate of 1 to 2 percent for COVID-19 prior to vaccines.

Here’s why bird flu is now so frightening: a mutant H5N1 strain has been infecting minks at a fur farm in Spain and is most likely spreading among them, which is unprecedented for mammals. “This is incredibly concerning,” says Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College London. “This is a clear mechanism for an H5 pandemic to start.”

This is because the mink’s upper respiratory tract is especially well suited to act as a conduit to humans. If different strains of flu infect the same person at the same time, they can swap gene segments to give rise to new, more transmissible ones.

As a result, according to the Times, “If a mink farmworker with the flu also gets infected by H5N1, that may be all it takes to ignite a pandemic.”

The “fight or flight” response

If you’re like me, you’ll want to know more today about the earthquake in Turkey and Syria and the Chinese spy balloon story. However, you’d like to think about anything but another pandemic. This is not just because we’re still dealing with the worst public health crisis in a century. Nor is it simply that we are not (speaking for myself) scientists who can do anything practical to prevent such a crisis.

There’s a third factor also at work here: the “fight or flight” response that is part of our innate human nature. In response to acute stress, psychologists tell us, “the body’s sympathetic nervous system is activated by the sudden release of hormones,” resulting in “an increased heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate.” This response better enables us to fight the threat we face or flee from it. In the case of “an even deadlier pandemic,” since we cannot fight it, we instinctively turn our attention to something else.

The “fight or flight” response has enormous spiritual implications. Not every problem we face requires divine assistance, of course. But some do. When we face temptation, choosing between “fight” and “flight” is vital for our souls.

Take Job as an example.

“Does Job fear God for no reason?”

In one of the most remarkable compliments paid to anyone in Scripture, God asked Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” (Job 1:8).

Satan responded, “Does Job fear God for no reason?” (v. 9).

The Enemy proceeded to describe God’s many blessings in Job’s life and predicted that if Job faces severe suffering, “he will curse you to your face” (v. 11). Satan said this because it is usually true. Crisis does not produce character—it reveals it.

Job turned out to prove God right and Satan wrong: after losing his children and all his possessions, he “fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return. The Lᴏʀᴅ gave, and the Lᴏʀᴅ has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lᴏʀᴅ” (vv. 20–21).

The narrator adds, “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” (v. 22).

Don’t become Patient Zero

The devil cannot attack God, so he attacks God’s people. At issue is whether God’s character will be defamed by God’s servants.

My character reflected on my father just as my sons’ character reflects on me. Consequently, one of Satan’s most effective ways to turn people from considering the love of Christ is to focus them instead on the failings of Christians.

Here’s my point: when you and I face temptation, we should remember that far more is at stake than our own integrity. Our response honors or dishonors our Savior. It draws those we know closer to him or pushes them further away from him.

The solution is to choose “flight” over “fight.” Do not try to defeat your spiritual enemy in your strength since he is far better at tempting than we are at resisting. Instead, go immediately to Jesus. Name your temptation and ask him for the strength, wisdom, and resolve to refuse it. If you have fallen to temptation, come immediately to him in repentance, asking him to forgive you and restore you before your spiritual virus spreads.

If H5N1 becomes a global pandemic, the first person who contracts the virus and transmits it to others will be known as Patient Zero.

With the next temptation you face, you can choose flight or fight. You can turn to the power of the Lord, or you can become a spiritual Patient Zero.

The reputation of your Savior and the spiritual condition of those you influence are at stake.

Denison Forum

The old cliché that something went “the way of the dodo” could soon have a very different meaning.

As Antonio Regaldo writes for the MIT Technology Review, scientists at Colossal Biosciences in Austin, Texas, are currently working to resurrect the bird that has become synonymous with extinction. If your mind is trending toward Jurassic Park flashbacks as you read, you’re not too far off base.

Is the dodo bird coming back?

Colossal’s process works by genetically altering the Nicobar pigeon—the dodo’s closest living relative—to gradually turn it into its long-dead ancestor. This process is made possible by the research of Beth Shapiro and her team at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who recently recovered the extinct bird’s DNA from the five-hundred-year-old remains of a dodo at a museum in Denmark.

However, the dodo is not the only creature that Colossal is trying to bring back to life. By 2029, Ben Lamm, Colossal’s CEO, estimates that they will have successfully turned an elephant into a wooly mammoth, with the Tasmanian tiger also on their list of current projects.

Still, with any of the experiments it remains unclear just how many changes will be needed before one could actually say the extinct creature exists once more.

As Mike McGrew, an avian biologist at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, noted, “That is one of the big questions. At what point is your editing done? Is it hitting a hundred genes or one thousand genes?”

Whatever the answer may be, the possibilities of what such incremental changes could bring about have piqued the interest of an interesting assortment of people. Billionaires like Thomas Tull and Robert Nelson, as well as the CIA’s venture capital arm, have all decided to back Colossal’s efforts.

I bring this story up today, however, not because I’m overly excited about the possibility of seeing a dodo anytime soon—though a wooly mammoth may be a different story—but rather because the technique of relying on small changes rather than large leaps to accomplish something extraordinary offers some important parallels for Christians today.

“The best way to address social problems”

In a recent article for Persuasion, Greg Berman and Aubrey Fox approached this conversation from a more philosophical point of view.

The pair discussed the idea of incrementalism, claiming that it represents “the best way to address social problems in a climate where it is difficult to agree on basic facts, let alone expensive, large-scale government interventions.”

The foundation of their argument is that big plans often fail because they require “access to high-quality information, agreement about underlying values, and effective decision-making on the part of government planners” at a time when none of those conditions tend to exist in the real world. By focusing instead on small changes that build on one another, over time we can actually accomplish more than by trying to do everything at once.

They allow that “we still need dreamers and visionaries and rabble-rousers who want to pursue moon-shot goals like curing cancer and ending hunger. But our default setting should be to admit the obvious: our problems are big and our brains are small,” so our solutions to those big problems should start small as well.

What if small changes are the most lasting changes?

What would it look like if we took a similar approach to trying to change our culture for Christ?

Granted, it would be great if we could set forth a plan that would result in a sweeping spiritual awakening and see our culture turn back to God. But that’s not likely to happen, and we can’t afford to wait for such an opportunity to arrive.

By contrast, an incrementalist approach to sharing our faith and shaping society means each of us must take advantage of the opportunities the Lord brings our way to help people know him better. It means making sure that our lives match up with the message we’re sharing. And it means being satisfied with the knowledge that we’ve done our part even if it doesn’t always appear to make an immediate difference.

Such an approach may lack the appeal of big changes and historic impact, but history shows it’s actually more likely to make the kind of difference we’d really like to see.

None of the spiritual awakenings in modern times began with Christians making a five-step plan to change the world, and they certainly did not include any reliance on government intervention to save the day. Rather, they started with believers who felt a burden for their culture and that burden led them to pray. Those prayers resulted in Christians starting to take their faith more seriously, and only then did non-Christians begin to take notice.

The same pattern holds true today as well.

From ordinary to extraordinary

While history may highlight the big movements and leaders that made an outsized difference, the most important work was often done by those who remain anonymous to everyone but the Lord.

If we can learn to be content with that fact, not allowing our ambition to grow larger than our calling, then we can begin to make the incremental changes that could eventually result in the kind of spiritual awakening and cultural renewal that often seems out of reach today.

Christianity is never going to go the way of the dodo and God will always have his remnant. But you and I can begin to make a difference simply by taking advantage of the incremental opportunities the Lord provides to share both his love and his truth with those around us.

As Oswald Chambers once remarked, “All of God’s people are ordinary people who have been made extraordinary by the purpose he has given them.”

Christ made our purpose clear in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16–20).

How will you fulfill it today?

Denison Forum

NFL quarterback Tom Brady announced his retirement from the sport yesterday. (For an excellent analysis of his decision and its life lessons for us, see Dr. Ryan Denison’s article, “Tom Brady retires again: The cost of holding on to success for too long.”)

Brady’s decision is unusual on three levels.

First, it comes a year to the day after he retired last year only to change his mind and return for his twenty-third season. Not many people retire twice from the same job.

Second, most players retire because they can no longer play the game well enough to compete as they once did. Not so with Brady: Even though he was the oldest active player in the NFL this season, he threw for 4,694 yards, the third most in the league, while completing 66.8 percent of his passes.

Third, it would seem that Brady was no longer satisfied with the direction of his life and career. This makes him an outlier in our society.

According to Gallup, 85 percent of Americans are satisfied with their personal lives. This contrasts with only 17 percent who are satisfied with the direction of their country (the number has recently risen to 23 percent).

What explains this wide disparity between the way we view our country and the way we view our personal lives?

The “big thing” a society must get right

David Brooks responds to our question in The Atlantic: “My basic take is that life in America today is objectively better than it was before but subjectively worse. We have much higher standards of living and many conveniences, but when it comes to how we relate to one another—whether in the realm of politics, across social divides, or in the intimacies of family and community life—distrust is rife, bonds are fraying, and judgments are harsh.”

However, Brooks believes that, despite all the gloom about our nation at present, “a society can get a lot wrong as long as it gets the big thing right. And that big thing is this: If a society is good at unlocking creativity, at nurturing the abilities of its people, then its ills can be surmounted.”

Next he surveys the ways America has been “unlocking creativity” in her people, from raising productivity and living standards to investing in education, helping people live healthier, longer, and more energetic lives, and creating an excellent innovation infrastructure.

Brooks notes: “If there is one lesson from the events of the past year, it is that open societies such as ours have an ability to adapt in a way that closed societies simply do not. Russia has turned violent and malevolent. China has grown more authoritarian and inept. Meanwhile, free democratic societies have united around the Ukrainians as they battle to preserve the liberal world order.”

“Pushed from the public square”

Brooks’ claim that humans are satisfied with our lives if we have an opportunity to unlock our creativity is both reasoned and biblical. You and I were created in the image and likeness of our Creator (Genesis 1:27) and called to “work” and “keep” his creation (Genesis 2:15). While work became more difficult as a result of the fall (Genesis 3:17–19), partnering with our Creator by advancing his creation was always part of his plan for us.

The problem comes when we decouple this partnership. Satan tempts us every day to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5) by taking over God’s creation as if it were our own and doing with it what we wish, all the while refusing to acknowledge the One who owns all that exists.

As one example, the London School of Economics will remove Christian words from its calendar next year. Christmas break will be “winter break,” Lent term will be “winter term,” and Easter break will be “spring break.”

Simon Calvert, deputy director at The Christian Institute, responded: “We have been warning for years that Christians are being pushed from the public square, yet the problem is getting worse.” He added, “Christians and those with traditional views often find themselves silenced or bullied. It’s particularly ironic when this happens at institutions that were originally founded on Christian principles and with endowments from Christian benefactors.”

“When he appears we shall be like him”

How can you and I resist this Satanic and secular pressure to fulfill our creative desires apart from our Creator? One key is to recognize that we are still being created.

If you have trusted in Christ as your Lord, his Spirit dwells in you as God’s temple (1 Corinthians 3:16) so that “Christ is in you” (Romans 8:10). Now your Father wants Christ to be “formed in you” (Galatians 4:19, my emphasis) so that you are “conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29, my emphasis).

We are not complete until we are completely like Christ. This will not happen until Jesus comes for us: “When he appears we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). On that day, “just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Corinthians 15:49).

In the meantime, “We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). If you want to be more like Christ today than you were yesterday, spend time worshiping Christ today. Then ask the Holy Spirit to make you like Jesus. He will reveal sins to be confessed, steps to be taken, and service to be rendered. And he will empower you to do all he leads you to do.

A binary choice

Every day, you and I face a binary choice with eternal consequences: we can seek to be like God’s Son, or we can seek to be our own God. As fallen human beings, if we are not intentionally seeking the former, we are by default choosing the latter.

Max Lucado noted, “Our highest pursuit is the pursuit of our Maker.”

How passionately will you pursue your Maker today?

Denison Forum

A Georgia police officer named Jacob Kersey made this post to his personal Facebook account earlier this month: “God designed marriage. Marriage refers to Christ and the church. That’s why there is no such thing as homosexual marriage.” The next day, his supervisor informed him that someone had complained about the post and instructed him to take it down.

When Kersey refused, the supervisor warned him that failure to delete the Facebook post could result in his termination. He was placed on paid administrative leave for a week, then told he could not share personal opinions on social media that someone might find offensive.

Next, Kersey received a letter explaining that “if any post on any of your social media platforms, or any other statement or action, renders you unable to perform, and to be seen as [unable] to perform, your job in a fair and equitable manner, you could be terminated.” By this logic, any statement made by any person on any subject that another person deems not to be “fair and equitable” is grounds for dismissal.

Realizing that he could continue his career with the department only if “I compromise my values, morals, and deeply held religious beliefs,” Kersey resigned his position.

“The core of who I am”

You and I cannot control what secular authorities do about our biblical beliefs. But we can control how we respond to what they do.

One option is to pay any price to serve Christ as our Lord. After he chose this approach, Jacob Kersey explained his response: “I am grateful for the opportunity that I was given to be a police officer. I do not take that honor and responsibility lightly. However, my integrity and Christian beliefs are at the core of who I am, and I will not abandon them.”

The other option is to succumb to cultural pressure to privatize our faith, treating Jesus less as our Lord and more as a means to our ends.

This temptation is more subtle and attractive than we may think.

“Honest but reluctant taxpayers”

C. S. Lewis likened Christians who engage in religious activities to “honest but reluctant taxpayers. We approve of an income tax in principle. We make our returns truthfully. But we dread a rise in the tax. We are very careful to pay no more than is necessary. And we hope—we very ardently hope—that after we have paid it there will still be enough left to live on.”

His analogy seems especially appropriate these days as tax preparation companies inundate the airwaves with ads seeking our business. However, I think an even better analogy for religious engagement in our culture is paying for insurance.

We buy a policy to obtain the benefits we wish to receive. We make our payments each month to keep these benefits available to us. We then draw on them as needed—medical bills, house expenses, etc.

But few people have a personal relationship with their insurance providers. I have no idea the names of those who insure our family, for example. We pay what is required (and hopefully no more) to receive the benefits we seek.

“Only pay for what you need”

I have written often over the years about this transactional religion so common to our culture. From the ancient Greeks and Romans to today, our society thinks we can give God (or the gods) what they want (going to church on Sunday, praying, reading the Bible, donating money, and so on) so that God (or the gods) will give us in turn what we want.

But I think there’s something even more foundational behind our impulse to treat God like an insurer whose benefits we procure by our religious “payments.”

You may have seen the insurance commercials on television these days with the pitch, “Only pay for what you need.” This is a tempting way to relate to God in that it limits his activity in our lives to what we want him to do in our lives. When we need forgiveness for our sins or direction for our decisions, he’s waiting on the other side of our prayers, or so we think. But if he wants to point out sins we don’t want to stop committing or lead us in directions we don’t want to go, that’s another matter.

Here’s the problem: God knows our needs far better than we do. Limiting his benevolence to our ignorance is unwise for us and grieves our Father.

“The deepest desires of your heart will be fulfilled”

To return to our insurance analogy, imagine that your insurers know the future better than you know the present. Consequently, they know about the storms that will damage your roof next spring, the leaking water heater that will flood your garage next fall, and the broken water pipes that will ruin your carpet the following winter. They therefore offer you insurance you don’t know you need.

Now, to extend the analogy further, suppose that they are willing to pay the premiums themselves. All you need to do is to ask for their best and trust their answers.

Would you make that decision?

If so, I invite you to make Henri Nouwen’s prayer your own:

I so much want to be in control.
I want to be the master of my own destiny.
Still I know that you are saying:
“Let me take you by the hand and lead you.
Accept my love
and trust that where I will bring you,
the deepest desires of your heart will be fulfilled.”
Lord, open my hands to receive your gift of love.

Amen?

Denison Forum

Let’s start with the good news: the White House announced yesterday that the US plans to end the coronavirus public health emergency on May 11. According to the New York Times, this is “a sign that federal officials believe the pandemic has moved into a new, less dire phase.”

Now to the bad news: A report released yesterday by the world’s largest humanitarian network states that the world remains “dangerously unprepared” for the next pandemic, which could be “just around the corner.” The World Health Organization is currently monitoring nine “priority diseases” that pose the greatest public health risk. One of them is labeled “Disease X,” acknowledging that “a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease.”

I found this news disconcerting but personally less relevant since there is nothing I can do about “Disease X” or any other pathogen. However, this headline also caught my eye: “Tens of Thousands of Americans May Have This Deadly Disease—and Not Even Know It.” I quickly read the story to discover the nature of this “deadly disease” and whether I might have it.

And I saw an online life expectancy calculator in today’s news and immediately took it myself.

Why I changed my sermon last Sunday

The brevity and uncertainty of life is on my mind and heart today because of something that happened two days ago at the Chapel where I speak on Sundays.

I was about to begin my message when our executive pastor told us that someone was in need of special prayer. It turned out, a couple in the service had received word that their thirty-six-year-old son had just died. He left three small children.

We gathered around the couple to pray for them and to grieve and weep with them. After they left to be with their family, I changed my message to a conversation about trusting God with our worst fears and grief.

We began by acknowledging the shock we all felt. Children are supposed to bury their parents—parents are not supposed to bury their children. This is every parent’s worst nightmare and greatest fear.

It’s something we think could never happen to us, until it does.

Filtering the world through two prisms

This is how many people approach the subject of death itself.

I was troubled about VEXAS, the “deadly disease” in the news, until I learned that I don’t have its symptoms. But I’m choosing to ignore the pandemic which could be “just around the corner” since there is nothing I can do personally to prevent it.

I think most of us respond to such threats in a similar fashion. We filter them through two prisms: Do they affect us personally? If so, is there anything we can do about them personally? If the answer to both questions is not yes, we find something else to think about.

This is because most Americans are pragmatists, measuring truth by what works for us. In fact, the philosophical school called “pragmatism” (from the Greek pragma, “action”) originated in the US and has been deeply influential on our culture.

Some pragmatic philosophers even believe that “a claim is true if and only if it is useful.” Since the story about the next pandemic is not useful to most of us, we feel free to ignore it if we wish.

You and I are not Jesus

The biblical worldview is far different.

In God’s eyes, every person is valuable as a bearer of his image (Genesis 1:27), someone for whom Christ chose to die (Romans 5:8). As a result, I should be concerned for those who have VEXAS whether I have the syndrome or not. And I should be troubled about the global consequences of the next pandemic whether I can prevent it or not.

The good news is that our Savior feels everything we feel, whether others empathize with us or not. In fact, he “loves each of us as if there were only one of us,” as St. Augustine said.

Now he wants to do the same through his church, the “body of Christ,” as we continue his earthly ministry today (1 Corinthians 12:27). However, you and I are not Jesus. We cannot feel as deeply as he feels for even one person, much less everyone in the news and in our lives.

But if we will ask, he will direct us to a hurting person we are to help in his name. He will give us his heart for this person until we “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15) and incarnate his grace in our compassion.

I believe he has such a person for each of us to love today. Will you ask him for yours?

The gospel on five fingers

Here’s the rest of the story: as we share Christ’s presence with hurting people, we experience Christ’s presence more deeply in our souls.

When people asked Mother Teresa why she loved the poor so much, she would point them to Jesus’ statement, “As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). But she did so in a very personal fashion: she took their hand and slowly wiggled one finger at a time as she said, “You-did-it-to-me.”

What will you do to Jesus today?

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Denison Forum

On a weekend with another mass shooting in California and grief and outrage over the video of Tyre Nichols’s horrific death, watching the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs win their playoff games yesterday was a welcome distraction for many.

Meanwhile, another story in the news is more culturally significant than it may seem.

A golden, eight-foot female sculpture wearing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s signature lace collar now stands over the state courthouse in New York City. According to the New York Times, the sculptor titled her work “NOW” because “it was needed ‘now,’ at a time when women’s reproductive rights were under siege after the US Supreme Court in June overturned the constitutional right to abortion.”

Art history professor Claire Bishop called the sculpture “a magical hybrid plant-animal” and hoped that “maybe she can help channel us back to reinstating Roe v. Wade.” Critics see the sculpture in a very different light, some calling it a “hideous abortion idol” and even “demonic.”

“You shall have no other gods before me”

Idolatry is by definition “the worship of someone or something other than God as though it were God.” This sin violates the first of the Ten Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3).

“Other gods” originally took the form of a “carved image” (v. 4). Today, our idols are seldom as visible as they were in Moses’ day. Nonetheless, we all have an “ultimate concern,” as philosophical theologian Paul Tillich observed.

If it is not the one true God, anything we serve in his place is our idol. From material success and financial prosperity to cultural popularity and a host of other “deities,” we are all tempted to worship something or someone who is not God.

Paradoxically, the more God meets our needs and blesses our lives, the more we tend to choose other gods to serve.

“We do not recognize the scale of his generosity”

St. John Fisher (1469–1535) was an English Catholic bishop, cardinal, and theologian who also served as Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In a biblical commentary, he observed:

“God freed the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt with many signs and wonders. Then he led them across the Red Sea dry-shod; in the desert he fed them with food from heaven in the form of manna and quails; when they were thirsty he gave them an inexhaustible spring of water bubbling from the rock. He gave them victory over enemies that attacked them; he made the Jordan flow backwards for them; he took the land he had promised them and divided it between them according to their tribes and clans.

“Although he had dealt with them so lovingly and generously, the ungrateful people abandoned the worship of God, as if they had utterly forgotten everything, and shackled themselves with the crime of idol-worship—not once but many times.”

Consequently, in words that describe our culture even more than his, Fisher noted that we are “supremely ungrateful: we have gone far beyond the boundaries of all previous ingratitude. We pay no attention to God’s love, we do not recognize the scale of his generosity, but we spurn the source and giver of all these good things and practically hold him in contempt.

“Not even the outstanding mercy he shows to sinners moves us to order our lives and actions according to his holy law.”

“Status threat and envy”

Why do we do this?

A basic fact of our fallen nature is that we all seek to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5), to be in charge of our lives so we can do as we wish. As a result, we resist authority of any kind that tries to tell us who we are or how we should live.

This has never been more true than today. Our “post-truth” culture assures us we can define truth however we wish, do with our bodies (including those carrying unborn babies) whatever we wish, define gender and marriage as we wish, and end our lives whenever and however we wish.

In addition, psychologists report that when we receive help from those we perceive to be more competent than ourselves, “status threat and envy” arise and we are “likely to undermine help givers.” We “bite the hand that feeds us” because we resent our dependence on this “hand” and the control this dependence creates.

The passion of Christ’s love for you

The solution is both horizontal and vertical.

If you’re thinking only about your own best interests, ask yourself: Does it make sense to refuse the guidance of an omniscient Father who sees your future better than you can see your present? To refuse the help of an omnipotent Lord who can meet your every need by his grace?

Now let’s turn from our interests to our Savior. Reflect upon his decision in the Garden of Gethsemane to die to purchase your salvation. Consider the fact that, if you have trusted in him as your Savior and Lord, you will spend eternity in heaven rather than hell only because of his grace. Remember the last sin he forgave, the last prayer he answered.

Now take a moment to focus on Jesus himself. Envision him at the right hand of the Father as he intercedes this very moment for you (Romans 8:34). Feel the passion of his love for you.

To worship and serve anyone before Jesus is to choose idolatry and thus to “bite the hand that feeds you.” To love Jesus with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to serve him as your ultimate concern is to trust the hand that was crucified for you.

How will you respond to the outstretched hand of your Savior today?

Denison Forum

January 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It was designated as such by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005 to mark the date when the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated sixty years prior. The hope is that the day of remembrance can commemorate the victims of the Nazi regime, promote education about the Holocaust, and inspire people to work to prevent further genocide.

But while nations around the world will set aside time today to remember those who died, the proper form of that remembrance remains a matter of some debate. And as those in charge of Amsterdam’s Resistance Museum (Verzetsmuseum) have learned recently, some can be very vocal when they believe the memory of those who passed has not been honored correctly.

Humanizing the heroes and the villains

The Resistance Museum has existed in Amsterdam since 1985. For most of that history, the displays focused on highlighting the efforts made by the Dutch resistance movement to subvert the Germans across the five years they occupied the Netherlands. However, the museum’s new offering represents a slightly different approach.

The new exhibit highlights the role that one hundred individuals played in the Netherlands during World War II. But whereas such exhibits often traditionally focus on people who resisted the Nazi occupation, the museum has chosen to feature those who collaborated with the Germans as well.

Liesbeth van der Horst, the museum’s director, told reporters “We are offering new perspectives, a different emphasis. By showing the choice these people made [to collaborate] you highlight how courageous it was to choose to resist.”

But, as Nina Siegal writes, not everyone sees it that way. And, given that nearly 75 percent of Dutch Jews were deported and murdered by the Nazis during the war—by far the largest percentage in western Europe—it remains an emotional subject for many.

Jalda Rebling, whose family was part of the resistance, argued that by humanizing both the heroes and the villains of the story, “the whole wartime disappears into a grayish state.”

However, if that’s the case, van der Horst does not seem to mind.

More than “monsters and heroes”

“We don’t just have monsters and heroes,” the museum’s director notes. Rather, “people are people and you have many shades between good and bad.”

Van der Horst went on to add that “we show pictures of some Nazis, especially Dutch Nazis, because they are also part of our history. The bad sides of history also have to be included.”

To that end, the exhibit includes short vignettes on people like Hannie Schaft—a law student who “sabotaged German military operations and shot Nazis”—right next to that of Emil Rühl, who worked for months to catch her before ultimately handing her over to be killed by the Germans.

Wim Henneicke, who led a “Jew hunting” group, and Gerard Mooyman who, as a teenager, was “so impressed” by German propaganda that he joined up and served on their front lines, are other examples of people who would not have previously made the display but now feature prominently alongside resistance fighters.

Forcing people to grapple with that side of their history was an integral part of the exhibit’s purpose.

As van der Horst described, they wanted their audience to recognize that “in the face of a threatening dictatorial regime, it’s not easy to just act. Sometimes people judge too easily, in hindsight. They say, ‘More people should have been involved in the resistance,’ and ‘They didn’t do enough.’ Of course, it’s true, they didn’t do enough, but it was not that easy to do enough. . . . You cannot expect resistance from everybody.”

In general, most of us like to think that we would stand up to evil when given the opportunity. Yet, history shows repeatedly that the vast majority of people will not. There are shades of gray to every person, and one of my favorite parts about reading the Bible is that it does not shy away from that fact.

Present faithfulness does not guarantee future obedience

Whether it’s the villains or the heroes, it’s rare for a biblical character to be completely good or completely evil.

For example, with the exception of Jesus, Scripture does not include any infallible heroes, and I believe there are two primary reasons why that’s the case.

First, acknowledging that even the most important figures in biblical history were fallen people helps us to realize that there is no reason we cannot follow God as well.

Prominent figures like Gideon and Moses, for example, tested the Lord repeatedly before agreeing to serve him (Judges 6; Exodus 3). And the disciples failed Jesus on countless occasions before going on to become the leaders of his burgeoning church. It can be reassuring to remember that the Lord can use us just as readily as he used them if we are willing to follow his will.

Second, by humanizing its heroes, God’s word cautions us that present faithfulness does not guarantee future obedience. Every choice we make presents us with the opportunity to follow God’s will or our own, and the consequences of either choice can be profound.

David, for example, was a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14) through whom the Lord accomplished truly amazing feats. However, decades of faithfulness did not stop him from assaulting Bathsheba, arranging her husband’s murder, and then trying to cover it all up (2 Samuel 11). Nor did it keep him from becoming a negligent father (2 Samuel 13), an impotent leader (2 Samuel 15), or a vindictive old man (1 Kings 2).

If David could fail so absolutely after starting so strongly, you and I can as well.

At the same time, even the villains in the Bible are rarely without some redeeming quality.

The religious leaders during the time of Christ, for example, were mostly well-intentioned people who just wanted to help their fellow Jews follow the Lord. And Paul was much the same prior to his conversion. They were sincere in their belief that opposing Jesus was an act of service to God. That they were utterly wrong in that belief does not change that there was often some pious motivation behind it.

Ultimately, none of us are so good that we are beyond the need for God’s help or so bad that we are beyond his redemption. And though there is room to disagree with the Dutch Resistance Museum’s approach to teaching people about their people’s history, the exhibit does a good job of reminding us of that fact.

Every day brings the chance to be a hero or a villain in God’s story.

Choose wisely.

Denison Forum

This morning’s headlines include former Vice President Mike Pence’s discovery of classified documents in his Indiana home; House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s decision to block two Democrats from serving on the Intelligence Committee; the firing of several Ukrainian officials in an anti-corruption purge; the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Google; another mass shooting in California; and storms that inflicted extensive damage to communities near Houston.

Since none of these stories directly affects me in Dallas, Texas, I read the first four with interest and the last two with sorrow, but none of them with existential concern.

Will FCA clubs be barred?

By contrast, these stories feel very different to me:

• A UK army veteran was fined for praying silently near an abortion facility.
• A Christian charity worker in Malta could face jail time after stating publicly that his faith enabled him to turn from a homosexual lifestyle he no longer wanted.
• A group of pro-abortion and freedom-from-religion activists demonstrated at the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Sunday evening to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
• A Michigan state law is threatening a Christian medical nonprofit for operating according to its Christian beliefs.
• A federal appeals court will decide whether Fellowship of Christian Athletes groups should be barred from high school campuses in San Jose, California, since the club does not permit LGBTQ students to serve as club leaders.

Do these stories feel more personal to you as well?

One reason we responded as we did is that attacks on another person’s Christian faith could obviously become attacks on ours as well. A rising tide raises—or damages—all boats.

Another is that we are members of the global body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27). A hand or foot in pain is obviously felt by the entire body. It is—or should be—the same with the body of Christ.

But there’s a third dimension to these stories and the rising tide of anti-Christian animosity they illustrate, one that is foundational to the others and a factor that tempts Christians as much as it tempts our opponents.

“Don’t hide behind religion”

Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov chose not to wear a rainbow jersey during warmups for the team’s recent Pride Night. He cited his religious beliefs as the reason: “I respect everybody, and I respect everybody’s choices. My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion.” He also said that he is Russian Orthodox.

Interestingly, his jerseys sold out online in the days following.

Nonetheless, one sports pundit called on the National Hockey League to fine the Flyers $1 million over Provorov’s “insulting” comments. Another said the Russian-born player should go back to his homeland and join the war against Ukraine. A third called the player out for previously participating in the Flyers’ military appreciation event: “Ivan Provorov is more than happy to play pregame dress-up when it does align with his belief system.” A fourth warned him, “Don’t hide behind religion.”

Their reaction makes my point: our culture is convinced that religion is so private, personal, and subjective that it should have no bearing on our public lives or society. This conclusion has become conventional wisdom in Western society, whether in the UK, Malta, or the US.

“In Israel, Judaism is the prevailing culture”

By contrast, the Jerusalem Post notes that “in Israel, Judaism is more than a building or a property. In Israel, Judaism is more than prayer. In Israel, Judaism is even more than God. In Israel, Judaism is the pervading culture.”

Having led more than thirty trips to the Holy Land, I can attest that this is true. From Shabbat laws that restrict working (and even pushing elevator buttons) on the Sabbath to kosher dietary restrictions in restaurants across the nation, Judaism dominates every dimension of Israeli life.

I have traveled widely in Muslim and Asian countries and can tell you that the same is true there. From the five pillars of Islam to the Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism, religion is not separate from the “real world”—it forms and frames it.

In our culture, by contrast, religion is to be kept separate from public life. It is viewed as a personal hobby, nothing more. As such, it is to be given no more weight or warrant in public life than any other hobby.

I like watching car auctions on television and listening to classical music, but I obviously have no right to make you watch or listen to what I prefer or tell you that your personal tastes are wrong. In the same way, our culture thinks, a Christian should not pray in front of an abortion clinic, discuss in public the impact of his faith on his sexuality, or seek to live by his faith convictions as an attorney, physician, or high school athlete.

When we make faith a hobby

My purpose today is less to critique secular society for treating our faith like a hobby than it is to warn Christians that we must not follow suit.

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). If Jesus is not Lord of every dimension of our lives, he cannot bless, redeem, and use every dimension of our lives. A painter cannot paint a room she is not permitted to enter.

When we make faith a hobby, we lose all an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful Father can do for his children.

Will you bear “much fruit” today?

Denison Forum