The Lunar New Year has begun. Celebrated by Asian cultures around the world, the holiday marks the first new moon of the year and continues for around fifteen days until the first full moon of the year. As National Geographic reports, the holiday focuses on themes of reunion and hope and is “a time for family reunions, plenty of food, and some very loud celebrations.”

It was therefore especially horrific that a gunman killed ten people and wounded ten others at a California ballroom dance club Saturday night following a Lunar New Year celebration. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna identified the shooter as seventy-two-year-old Huu Can Tran and said he took his own life last night in a van after law enforcement surrounded the vehicle in a parking lot.

Authorities are still searching for a motive at this writing.

“Man is the noblest of all animals”

Aristotle noted, “At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.”

Tragedies like this should convince us all that we need God, for at least four reasons:

1. Clearly, human laws are not enough to restrain human evil—we need a transforming power beyond ourselves.
2. When we lose someone we love, we seek help and hope we cannot produce or give.
3. The fact that human lives can be taken by other humans demonstrates our finitude and mortality.
4. The suddenness of such a tragedy illustrates the fact that tomorrow is promised to no one and that eternity is one day closer than ever.

These facts combine, we would think, to lead secular people to reconsider their secularity. And they often do, at least when the tragedy is fresh. Churches were crowded after 9/11. People, no matter their religiosity, often cry out to God in moments of distress. As the saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes.

But over time, the pain and shock fade and we return to the “real” world in which religion is outdated and irrelevant.

Why is this?

Building a house of sand

Oswald Chambers observed, “Troubles nearly always make us look to God; his blessings are apt to make us look elsewhere.” It is a fact that the more prosperous a society becomes, the more irreligious it becomes.

The peril of prosperity conspires with the lure of self-reliance. If we think we achieved what we have, we will think we can continue to achieve what we need.

From Socrates’ dictum to “know thyself” to the present, Western society has been built on the individual. Our foundational premise is that we can discover truth and improve the world if we will only try hard enough for long enough.

God or the gods can certainly help, or so the Greeks and Romans thought. Thus they built altars to their various deities and engaged in transactional religion whereby they gave the god what it wanted so the god would give them what they wanted. We do the same when we go to church on Sunday so God will bless us on Monday.

However, secular Americans now “know” that all gods are myths. As Richard Dawkins notes in The God Delusion, “We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”

So, when tragedy strikes, after we move past our initial religious reaction, we soon begin seeking human solutions. President Bill Clinton captured our cultural ethos when he declared in his 1993 inaugural address, “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.” When a shooting tragedy strikes, we turn to debates about gun laws. When natural disasters strike, we debate climate change.

Then the next wave hits and our house of sand is washed away. But before long, we start building it again.

“What’s wrong with the world today?”

As you and I know, the only One who can transform a sinful human heart is Jesus: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Why, then, don’t more people learn from tragedy to turn to him?

The problem with Christianity is Christians.

The Times of London is said to have posed this question in the early 1900s to several prominent authors: “What’s wrong with the world today?” The well-known author G. K. Chesterton reportedly responded with a one sentence-essay:

Dear Sir,
I am.
Yours, G. K. Chesterton.

I could say the same. I cannot persuade secular people that Jesus can change their lives until he first changes me. Just as we will not believe an obese diet “expert” or a dentist with bad teeth, why would non-Christians want Christ if Christians are no different than anyone else?

Here’s the good news: when the living Lord Jesus transforms us, others will see the difference. If we are loving toward those who do not love us; if we are calm in the storm, courageous in the crisis, moral in an immoral age, others will see our light in the dark (Matthew 5:16). And they will be drawn to the One who is “the light of men” (John 1:4).

This is why, as Oswald Chambers noted, “The one thing for which we are all being disciplined is to know that God is real.” He is not just the subject of the sermon you heard yesterday or the article you are reading now, but he is alive, powerful, and transforming.

No one can truly experience the God of the universe in faith, prayer, Scripture, and worship and stay the same.

Has Jesus changed your life yet today?

Denison Forum

The United States hit its debt ceiling on Thursday. The Treasury Department responded by taking measures intended to buy more time before the country risks defaulting on its debt. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen predicted that the measures would be sufficient for roughly five months, though she also cautioned that there is “considerable uncertainty” regarding that time frame.

But this is hardly the first time Congress has come to such an impasse, and few believe the government will actually fail to raise the debt ceiling when the time comes. So why all the furor over the present debate?

Given that the markets have largely shrugged off the development, it seems like those who follow the financials most closely see the Republican refusal as political grandstanding rather than seeking genuine reform. In fact, the primary reason the debt ceiling is even an issue is that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy promised to attach spending cuts to any conversation about raising the debt ceiling in order to garner the necessary support to win his position.

Productive negotiations seem unlikely, however, with the White House publicly saying that they will not negotiate over raising the debt ceiling. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated Thursday that it is Congress’ “constitutional duty” to come to a resolution that prevents the government from going into default. Democrats in Congress appear to agree.

While that stance also seems more political than practical, it speaks to an impasse that could have dire consequences were it to continue indefinitely.

So what is the debt ceiling? And why is this annual tradition of fighting over it before ultimately agreeing that it needs to be raised such a big deal?

What is the debt ceiling?

The debt ceiling is, essentially, the legal limit for how much borrowing the American government can do in order to finance the legislation it has already passed.

The last part of that definition is important for understanding the current debate. Any spending cuts negotiated into the eventual settlement will not apply to the current debt. Rather, the debt ceiling is about making sure the government has enough money to cover the legislation currently on the books.

The debt ceiling became a law in 1917 in order to allow Congress to more easily sell bonds to fund its involvement in the first World War. It has been raised seventy-eight times since 1960—forty-nine times under Republican presidents and twenty-nine under Democrats—and twenty times since 2001 alone.

In all that time, only once has America defaulted on its debt, and that was due to an administrative error rather than the failure of Congress. Still, even though the mistake was quickly rectified and pertained only to a small collection of Treasury securities, it raised US borrowing costs by the modern equivalent of $40 billion.

The threat of a similar escalation in how much it costs to borrow money is another key factor in this debate.

Why does America keep raising the debt ceiling?

Currently, our government is able to raise the debt ceiling whenever they want because “American Treasury securities have been viewed as one of the safest, most stable investments in the modern world.” And while $31 trillion in debt is a staggering number, the US still has a better debt-to-GDP ratio than countries like Britain, Germany, Australia, and Greece.

However, should America fail to make the interest payments on our debt, those privileges would quickly go away.

That reality is why neither party has, historically, been willing to risk not raising the debt ceiling. If Republicans were required to let the country default on our debt in order to garner concessions and reduce spending, the higher interest rates would, in all likelihood, wipe out any gains made by spending less or raising taxes.

And though the present debate may seem like a partisan topic, any hesitancy to raise the limits is a relatively recent development.

Many of the same Republicans working against raising the debt ceiling now, for example, showed little hesitancy in doing so during three of the four years that Donald Trump was in office. In 2006, then-senator Barack Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling because of what he termed President Bush’s “reckless fiscal policies.”

Ultimately, it is more politically expedient for both parties to pass legislation that we can’t afford and then fight over the means of paying for it at a later date than it is to fail to pass the legislation in the first place. As such, this is likely to continue to be an issue regardless of which party is in power.

And while there is relatively little we can do to curb such patterns nationally, we can and should learn from their mistakes in order to avoid repeating them in our own lives. And those lessons apply to far more than just money.

We can’t borrow time

While fiscal responsibility is important, an issue that receives far less attention in Christian circles pertains to being responsible with our time.

This side of heaven, there will always be more work we can do to serve the Lord than we have time to do it. As such, it can be tempting to say yes to more things than we should. However, eventually that debt will come due and we cannot borrow time to account for it. That’s why it is so important to allow God to be the one who determines when we say yes and when we decline.

Others may not always understand. They may see their work as the most important way a person could advance the kingdom and, for them, they may be right. But another person’s need does not define your calling. Only God gets to do that.

So the next time you’re presented with the opportunity to give your time to a particular ministry or opportunity, take a moment to pray and ask for the Lord’s guidance before responding.

After all, it’s far better to say no initially than to default on your obligations when the time comes to pay that cost.

Denison Forum

The National March for Life is tomorrow in Washington, DC., followed in two days by Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. Both are timed to correspond with January 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision tragically discovered a right to abortion in the US Constitution.

Since that time, more than sixty-three million (PDF) babies have been lost to abortion.

Last June, the Court finally overturned Roe in the case of Thomas Dobbs, et. al. v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. States such as Texas enacted their own bans on abortion as a result.

Now we are learning the practical consequences of these legal decisions, at least in my home state: new data released by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission shows that three abortion procedures were performed in our state in August 2022, compared with 2,596 in June. This is a drop of more than 99 percent. The report also indicates that all three procedures were “medically necessary” abortions.

Between April and August of last year, the number of abortions nationwide declined by 6 percent. If this trend persists, there could be at least sixty thousand fewer abortions this year as a result of Dobbs.

As we can see, five decades of hard work by pro-life legal advocates and their allies is now saving thousands of lives.

Using the secular to serve the spiritual

In yesterday’s Daily Article I noted that “Christians must not depend on the government to do our work for us.” Whatever the courts and legal systems decide about biblical morality, we are still called to declare and defend biblical truth (1 Peter 3:15). The more people reject the truth, the more they need it.

Today, let’s consider the other side of this theme: Christians can—and should—use the government and other secular means to advance the cause of Christ.

Thousands of lives are being saved as a result of Dobbs that likely would not have been saved apart from this legal outcome. Advocates for religious freedom in the US Senate have prevented the draconian so-called “Equality Act” from becoming law, thwarting (so far) what has been called “the most invasive threat to religious liberty ever proposed in America.”

We see a similar theme unfolding across Scripture:

• Joseph becomes prime minister of Egypt and saves his family and thus the Jewish nation through whom one day the Messiah would come.
• King David establishes the Jewish capital in Jerusalem and gives the world the Psalms.
• King Solomon builds the first temple and gives us the wisdom of Proverbs.
• Daniel is promoted to become one of “three high officials” in Babylon (Daniel 6:2); his witness following God’s intervention in the lions’ den (v. 22) leads the king to proclaim to the nation that “the God of Daniel . . . is the living God” (v. 26).
• Esther uses her position as queen to prevent the genocide of the Jewish people in Persia.
• Nehemiah uses his position as the king’s “cupbearer” (a strategic position with access to the king; Nehemiah 1:11) to advocate for rebuilding Jerusalem.
• “Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s household manager” serves as a powerful political figure in Galilee and one of Jesus’ financial supporters (Luke 8:3).
• Zacchaeus, the “chief tax collector” in Jericho, repents of his sin and becomes a public example of Jesus’ mission “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:1–10).

We could add a host of biblical figures who used their wealth and influence to advance God’s kingdom.

Are you a “paid Christian”?

Why are believers in positions of secular influence able to make an impact for the cause of Christ that professional ministers like me are not?

One reason is that the legal separation of church and state has been misinterpreted by our culture as the separation of faith and state. As a result, professional ministers are viewed as irrelevant to secular concerns. But when Christians in the marketplace live for Jesus, the relevance of their faith to the issues of the marketplace becomes clear.

A second factor is the horrific clergy abuse scandal that continues to undermine the credibility of professional ministers. So-called “lay” Christians are not painted with the same brush and have moral authority their pastors sometimes lack.

A third issue is that professional ministers are seen as “paid Christians.” When we advocate for biblical morality, we are only doing our job, or so skeptics say. But when Christians with secular influence stand for biblical truth, especially at a personal cost, they show an unbelieving world that their faith is real and biblical truth is transformative.

“My ministry is ________________”

So, if you are not an ordained member of the clergy, know that you are nonetheless ordained by God to a ministry that is just as vital as mine. You are part of the body of Christ, a “hand” or “foot” doing what no one else can do (1 Corinthians 12:12–27). Whether you are a legal professional advocating for life or a person engaged in other dimensions of secular influence, your work can make an eternal difference.

I encourage you to focus today on your specific calling. If you cannot complete the sentence, “My ministry is _______________,” pray and reflect until you can. Then live every day in alignment with your missional purpose, remembering that “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives” (Annie Dillard).

Wherever God has placed us, whatever our kingdom assignment, our life purpose is to know Christ and make him known.

Will you fulfill this calling more fully today than yesterday?

Denison Forum

In 2021, LGBTQ students filed a class-action lawsuit that would force religious schools to choose between abandoning their biblical beliefs or losing students who would be denied federal financial assistance.

The so-called Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP) claims to represent LGBTQ students at “more than two hundred taxpayer-funded religious schools that actively discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.” In their view, a school that upholds biblical sexuality illegally discriminates against those who disagree.

Since the schools in question receive federal funds, REAP claims that such funding should stop. As I noted in The Coming Tsunami, the schools in question received $4.2 billion in federal student aid in 2018.

Now, in excellent news for religious freedom in America, a federal judge in Oregon has dismissed REAP’s lawsuit.

David Cortman with the Alliance Defending Freedom, the group that represented the Christian schools, applauded the ruling: “A federal district court today rightly rejected an unfounded assault on the religious freedom of faith-based educational institutions. Title IX, which applies to schools receiving federal financial assistance, explicitly protects the freedom of religious schools to live out their deeply and sincerely held convictions.”

Professor dismissed after Muslim student’s objection

In other religious liberty news, the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal by an evangelical Christian former mail carrier in Pennsylvania.

Gerald Groff accused the US Postal Service (USPS) of religious bias after he was reprimanded for refusing to deliver packages on Sundays. He claimed that the USPS violated federal anti-discrimination law by refusing to exempt him from working on Sundays, when he observes the Sabbath.

The case relates to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Under the law, employers must reasonably accommodate a worker’s religious observance or practice unless doing so would cause the business “undue hardship,” which is what the USPS claimed in response to Groff’s lawsuit.

Let’s consider one more news item on our theme: Hamline University in Minnesota recently dismissed a professor for including depictions of the Prophet Muhammad in a world art course.

The course syllabus warned students that they would view images of religious figures, including the Prophet Muhammad, and included an offer to work with students uncomfortable with viewing those images. The teacher also warned the class immediately before showing the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad.

Nonetheless, a Muslim student complained to the university that the image violated her faith. The professor’s contract was not renewed following the fall semester. Now the university is under fire from those critical of its decision.

Protecting the “right to be wrong”

These cases illustrate the fact that freedom of religion includes freedom from religion.

I am deeply grateful for the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of religion and freedom of speech. But I also recognize that our culture is becoming ever more secularized. As a result, religious beliefs and speech that contradict social norms will become increasingly the minority view and will become increasingly objectionable to the post-Christian majority. And the right of a growing irreligious demographic to be free from such beliefs and speech will gain in popularity.

This is the view of LGBTQ students who claim to be the victims of discrimination at Christian schools. It is the position of the USPS in claiming to protect its workers from the imposition of a single employee’s religious beliefs on his fellow workers. And it is the stance of those who are protesting Hamline University’s decision to dismiss a professor over the religious objections of a single student.

When Christian morality was the majority view, the First Amendment protected our “right to be right.” Now that the opposite is true, the First Amendment is viewed as protecting our “right to be wrong.” But as our society increasingly views us as discriminatory and even dangerous, we can expect our “right to be wrong” to come under increasing attack.

My resolution for this year

Today’s conversation highlights this biblical fact: Christians must not depend on the government to do our work for us.

Whether the courts defend our religious freedoms or not, you and I are instructed to “always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15 NKJV). When the Apostles were called before the Supreme Court of their day and forbidden legally from preaching the gospel, they responded: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19–20).

Christians in Cuba face some of the most intense persecution of any nation in the world. However, I have experienced personally the amazing vitality of their churches and the sacrificial depth of their faith. I often say that visiting Cuban churches is like “walking around in the Book of Acts.”

Of the top ten countries where Christians face the most persecution, nine are Muslim. And yet a spiritual awakening in the Muslim world is bringing more Muslims to Jesus than ever before.

It is vital that Christians in America do what we can to protect and promote our constitutional freedoms. But it is also vital that Christians utilize these freedoms while we have them to lead those we influence to the One who promised, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).

My resolution for this new year is simple: to know Christ and make him known.

Will you join me?

Denison Forum

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is being celebrated across America today, and for good reason.

Here’s a brief synopsis of Dr. King’s life and legacy: he was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of a Baptist minister. He received a doctoral degree in theology and in 1955 helped organize the first major protest of the African American civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott.

The effort he led resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education and outlawed racial segregation in public facilities. Later that year, he became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. Today we remember his life, celebrate his legacy, and commit ourselves to continuing the march for racial equality in America.

As a coincidence of calendar, today is also National Religious Freedom Day. This observance commemorates the day the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was signed on January 16, 1786. Thomas Jefferson’s landmark statute later became the basis for Congressman Fisher Ames’ establishment clause in the First Amendment of the US Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

As a result, each year, by presidential proclamation, January 16^th is declared Religious Freedom Day.

Today’s intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and National Religious Freedom Day illustrates a fact that relates directly to our lives and our national future.

“Man is not the measure of all things”

Dr. King understood that the foundational need in America with regard to racial equality is not legal but moral.

He noted: “Christianity affirms that at the heart of reality is a Heart, a loving Father who works through history for the salvation of his children. Man cannot save himself, for man is not the measure of all things and humanity is not God. Bound by the chains of his own sin and finiteness, man needs a Savior.”

However, Dr. King affirmed the necessity of legal change as we seek moral change: “Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.” This is why the Civil Rights Act and other legislative progress have been so important.

Nonetheless, his movement focused foundationally on changing the hearts and minds of America: “In winning our freedom, we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process.” He believed that when we understood the urgency of racial equality for all Americans, we would unite in this cause for the sake of our nation and our posterity.

Was Dr. King wrong?

Just as our nation urgently needed (and needs) a civil rights movement to advance equality for all Americans, so too do we need a spiritual movement to advance morality for all Americans.

Our society has been deluded into believing that Dr. King is wrong: our cultural consensus insists that “man is the measure of all things and humanity is God.” As a result, we have rejected the sanctity of life from conception to death, redefined and undermined marriage and the family, and ignored constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and religion for those who disagree.

This is why the intersection of National Religious Freedom Day with Martin Luther King Jr. Day is so illuminating for our cultural moment. Without religious freedom, Dr. King could not have spoken to America so prophetically and redemptively. His historic “I Have a Dream” address was protected speech despite the animosity of many against his cause.

Imagine an evangelical Christian uttering similar words in front of the Lincoln Memorial today in defense of biblical morality. Would such a message gain a hearing in our secular media except in rebuke and rejection? What would be the “cancel culture” response?

Praying through open windows

Consequently, this day calls Christians to prophetic courage. We are to be as bold in declaring and defending biblical morality as Dr. King was in declaring and defending biblical equality.

We need more John the Baptists speaking truth to the King Herods of our day, whatever the cost to ourselves (Matthew 14:4). We need more Daniels praying through open windows whatever the threat to our future (Daniel 6:10).

We must do so in the humility that recognizes we need the same grace that we are offering to our nation. As Pope St. Clement I wrote to the Corinthians, “We are not justified by our wisdom, intelligence, piety, or by any action of ours, however holy, but by faith, the one means by which God has justified men from the beginning. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.”

And we can stand in bold confidence that embraces this moment as ours. We are cultural missionaries to where we are and to when we are. God has called us to the challenges and opportunities of this day. We can therefore claim this truth as ours: “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

“A worldview in a single word”

The Jacksonville Jaguars achieved a “stirring, miraculous comeback victory” Saturday night, overcoming a 27–0 deficit to win their playoff game. Afterward, sports journalist Jay Busbee reported that Jaguars head coach Doug Pederson introduced to the team in training camp a philosophy endorsed by motivational speaker and former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink, a worldview in a single word: “Good.”

“When things are going bad, don’t get all bummed out,” Willink has said. “Don’t get frustrated. No, just look at the issue and say: ‘Good.’” After Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence threw four interceptions in the first half of Saturday’s game, a lineman came up to him and said “Good.” Lawrence threw four touchdowns in the second half as his team made history.

Let’s look at the challenges of this day and say “Good.” Then let’s trust and serve our good God.

All of God there is, is in this moment.

Denison Forum

Prince Harry’s autobiography Spare is now the UK’s fastest-selling nonfiction book. I started reading it yesterday and am already glad I’m not part of the royal family.

Closer to home, flights resumed yesterday after a Federal Aviation Administration system failure left pilots, airlines, and airports without crucial safety information for hours. My first thought when the FAA paused flights was to hope their action wasn’t related to terrorism. My second was to be grateful I wasn’t flying that day.

In other news, Goldman Sachs began layoffs yesterday; just over three thousand employees will eventually be let go. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station will be forced to extend their stay for several months after their Russian MS-22 Soyuz spacecraft sprung a leak. The Center for Strategic & International Studies has wargamed a Chinese invasion of Taiwan (Taiwan, aided by the US, wins but at a devastating cost). And a bestselling novel about a fictitious same-sex love affair between the son of the US president and the Prince of Wales will be made into a movie this year.

As with the royal family and air travel, I’m glad I’m not employed by Goldman Sachs, work on the ISS, or live in Taiwan. Nor do I have to read the same-sex romance novel or see the movie.

On the other hand, the World Bank’s warning that the global economy is “perilously close” to a recession does affect me for obvious reasons. And Bloomberg’s report that antisemitism is “seeping into the workplace” deeply grieves me even though I am not Jewish. My love for the Jewish people, bolstered by more than thirty trips to the Holy Land, calls me to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” every day (Psalm 122:6) and to urge you to do the same.

Advice from Ronald Reagan’s daughter

Patti Davis is the daughter of President Ronald Reagan and the author of an autobiography many years ago in which, in her words, she “flung open the gates of our troubled family life.” She now writes in the New York Times that she deeply regrets exposing her family’s private challenges to the public and has learned that “not everything needs to be shared.” She would “respectfully” suggest this lesson to Prince Harry today.

Here’s one reason her advice is worth taking: how we treat others is inevitably how the world will treat us.

Jesus advised us in the so-called Golden Rule, “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:12). He also taught us to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39, quoting Leviticus 19:18).

Over the years, when I have followed his instruction, I have discovered this pattern: when I love my neighbor as myself, I love myself more. This enables me to love my neighbor more, which enables me to love myself more. And on the pattern goes.

My experience is not unique: a new study at Ohio State University shows that people suffering from forms of depression or anxiety may help heal themselves by doing good deeds for others. Evolutionary psychologists would no doubt call this finding an example of the “survival of the fittest”: the more compassionate we are with others, the more we experience their compassion and the more likely we are to survive and flourish.

But what if this pattern is not a coincidental product of chaotic chance but one dimension of our Creator’s design for us and our world?

“Believe the God we believe in”

If this is true, I am wrong to read Spare as though the royal family is not part of the human family and thus my family. I am wrong to care less about flight delays on the days I am not flying or to treat news of layoffs, strandings in space, war scenarios, and sexual immorality as though they do not affect me.

Instead, I need to make agape love, God’s unconditional love for others, my goal. However, since this is a “fruit” of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), I need to submit my thoughts and feelings to the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) so he can manifest such love for others in and through my life.

The more our culture rejects biblical morality, the more you and I will need to pray for such compassion. As my wife brilliantly notes in her latest blog, “If Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world, we shouldn’t condemn the world, either.” Instead, we should “believe the God we believe in” (quoting R. C. Sproul) and thus share his truth with his grace.

It would be human nature simply to write our fallen society off, turning those who reject biblical truth over to the consequences of their sinful choices. But this would contradict the example of the One who came “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). It would ignore the example of the Apostle who wrote of his “great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart” for his unbelieving Jewish brethren (Romans 9:2).

And it would impoverish us personally. The more we love our neighbor, the more we love ourselves and the more we can love our neighbor as ourselves.

“The only way for us to stay well”

Henri Nouwen makes my point better than I can: “I think that we have hardly thought through the immense implications of the mystery of the incarnation. Where is God? God is where we are weak, vulnerable, small, and dependent. God is where the poor are, the hungry, the handicapped, the mentally ill, the elderly, the powerless.”

As a result, he asks: “How can we come to know God when our focus is elsewhere, on success, influence, and power?” Rather, he writes, “The only way for us to stay well in the midst of the many ‘worlds’ is to stay close to the small, vulnerable child that lives in our hearts and in every other human being. Often we do not know that the Christ child is within us. When we discover him we can truly rejoice.”

Jesus would agree. After describing followers who care for those who are hungry, thirsty, unwanted, naked, and imprisoned, he assured us that “the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me’” (Matthew 25:40).

And to yourself as well.

Denison Forum

According to a new report (PDF) by the nonprofit child advocacy group Common Sense Media, 73 percent of US teenagers seventeen years of age or younger have viewed online pornography. Fifty-four percent of those age thirteen or younger have seen online porn. On average, they first consumed pornography when they were twelve years old. Nearly one-third of all teens reported that they had been exposed to porn during the school day.

A majority who have viewed pornography also indicated that they had been exposed to aggressive and/or violent forms of pornography; 52 percent saw depictions of rape, choking, or someone in pain.

I have warned frequently about the “plague of pornography (PDF)” sweeping our nation and the damage it is doing to those who view it. Singer Billie Eilish is one example: she says porn “destroyed my brain” after she began watching graphic online movies while she was still in elementary school. She added that she still suffers from night terrors and sleep paralysis as a result of some of the porn she watched.

Brad Salzman, founder of the New York Sexual Addiction Center, responded to her story: “Parents aren’t paying attention and [porn exposure] can affect [their children] for the rest of their lives. It totally colors their perception of what normal sexuality is supposed to look like and it changes the way they think that they’re supposed to interact.

“They can begin seeing other people as sex objects as opposed to human beings.”

Therein lies my point today.

A factor I had not considered

It is a tragic fact that our secularized postmodern culture has desacralized life from conception to death. It was once conventional wisdom that children in their mother’s womb were gifts from God to be cherished; now they are seen as inconvenient impositions to be disposed of as easily as possible. The elderly and infirm were once valued equally with the rest of humanity; now they are being euthanized more widely and efficiently than ever.

Sexuality was once seen as part of God’s design for his image-bearers (Genesis 1:27); now LGBTQ advocates are doing all they can to normalize their ideology among children. From the federal government down, teachers, administrators, and school nurses are being urged to adopt LGBTQ curriculum and endorse transgender identity.

Seen in this light, the ever-spreading plague of pornography is unsurprising. When a culture abandons biblical morality and objective ethics, tolerance becomes the de facto rule of the day. As D. A. Carson has perceptively shown in his masterful book, The Intolerance of Tolerance, “tolerance” used to mean that we allowed people the right to be wrong. Now it means that there is no such thing as wrong, pornography included.

But there’s another dimension to the story, one I had not considered until I began writing this Daily Article.

Of all our moral failings, pornography especially dehumanizes humans. It turns people into pictures, humans into bodies to be used. And the more pervasive and powerful this becomes, the more easily those affected by pornography transfer this desacralizing of humans to all other aspects of human experience, from birth to death.

In a culture where people are a means to our ends, we should not be surprised when lying, property theft, and violent crime are on the rise. Nor should we be surprised when an “epidemic of loneliness” spreads across our land. Pornography is teaching millions of Americans, beginning as children, that people are commodities, nothing more.

The courage of Michael Gerson

The good news is that the good news of the gospel gives meaning to life that can be found nowhere else.

Michael Gerson is an example.

I was privileged to know Mr. Gerson, former Chief Speechwriter for President George W. Bush and well-known Washington Post columnist who died last November at the age of fifty-eight. He was the featured speaker at a Dallas Baptist University event in which I participated five years ago; we spent much of the evening together.

I found him a person of great humor, winsome charm, and personal warmth. At no point did he tell me that his physical health had been torturous for many years. According to his good friend Peter Wehner, Gerson struggled with depression since his twenties and suffered a heart attack in 2004 at the age of forty. He developed kidney cancer in 2013 and suffered from debilitating leg pain that probably resulted from surgical nerve damage. The kidney cancer spread to his lungs; he developed Parkinson’s disease and metastatic adrenal cancer, then metastatic bone cancer in multiple locations.

You would never have known the pain he suffered. As Wehner explains, Gerson was grateful “for the life he was able to lead and for the people who loved him and were able to travel his journey with him. He was in pain, but he was in peace.”

What was the source of such courage? Wehner explains: “Mike’s views reflected what he called a ‘Christian anthropology’—a belief in the inherent rights and dignity of every human life. It led him to solidarity with the weak and the suffering, the dispossessed, those living in the shadows of life. His faith was capacious and generous; it created in him a deep commitment to justice and the common good.”

Michael Gerson knew that his life, no matter its sufferings and challenges, possessed eternal and inestimable value. The same is true of every person on our planet. Including you.

“The core truth of our existence”

Henri Nouwen was right: “Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the ‘Beloved.’ Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”

Do you know that you are the Beloved of God?

Does this fact constitute the “core truth” of your existence today?

If not, why not?

Denison Forum

 “The eyes of the Lᴏʀᴅ range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 16:9 NIV).

The Georgia Bulldogs repeated as national champions last night with their 65–7 win over the TCU Horned Frogs. Only eight schools have won repeat national championships since the start of the modern era in 1936. The current playoff format only dates to 2015, but college football has named national champions going back to 1869 (when Princeton and Rutgers were the only two teams and split their series, so they were named co-champions retroactively).

The championship game is currently played each year in the month of January, which is named for Janus, a Roman god who is typically depicted with two faces—one looking into the past, the other into the future. The other eleven months were also named by the Romans, giving a stability to the calendar that far outlasted their empire.

We name months for the same reasons we want our teams to win national championships: we name what we seek to control (time, in this case) and we feel like winners when our teams win. These sentiments reveal a truth that is foundational to our lives, our democracy, and our future.

“The worst form of government”

The House of Representatives reconvened last night to pass a set of House rules as Speaker Kevin McCarthy cleared his first major test. However, the contentious nature of the process portends much conflict ahead; lawmakers nearly came to blows during the final votes that eventually elected him to the office.

In other news, Gallup reports that majorities of Americans predict negative conditions in 2023 across twelve of thirteen economic, political, societal, and international arenas. (The one positive: a majority think Russian power will decline this year.)

But our democracy is not the only one making headlines for challenging reasons.

Israel’s new government has been in the news with regard to its relations with the Palestinians. However, I was in Israel when Itamar Ben Gvir visited the Temple Mount last week and can tell you that it was largely a nonevent in Jerusalem. The issue my Israeli friends are all focused on has to do with proposals to give the Knesset (their parliament) power over Israel’s judicial High Court (corresponding to our Supreme Court).

Post-election riots in Brazil over the weekend continue to make headlines; British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is warning that the UK’s problems will not “go away” this year. All that to say, Winston Churchill was prescient when he observed: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

The “twin pillars of our democracy”

Our problems with democracy go back to its very foundations.

Jennifer Szalai reviewed Costica Bradatan’s In Praise of Failure: Four Lessons in Humility for the New York Times. At one point she reports: “Bradatan recounts how ancient Athenians were so committed to democratic rules that public officials were chosen by random lots. Their reasoning was straightforward enough: Elections, which we consider a mainstay of democracy, would have allowed such variables as wealth and charisma to come into play.”

However, Bradatan noted, “a fetish for institutions didn’t protect Athenian democracy from mob rule.” For example, “There were supposedly 501 Athenians on the jury that condemned Socrates to death. According to the political logic of the day, it would have been impossible to corrupt them all; the majority decided he should die, and so their decision was institutionally flawless.”

In other words, democracy (“the power of the people”) requires that the people be worthy of the power entrusted to them. But the “will to power,” the perennial temptation to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5), is ever with us. And it undermines our democracy at every turn.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently identified the “twin pillars of our democracy” as “truth and trust.” He explained: “Without being able to agree on what is true, we don’t know which way to go. And without being able to trust one another, we can’t head there together. And everything big and hard needs to be done together.”

Here’s what Friedman’s analysis leaves out: we cannot trust one another if we have no objective basis for such trust. And such an objective basis by definition requires objective truth. As a result, we must have truth in order to have trust.

However, our “post-truth” culture, by rejecting the former, undermines the latter.

“Religion and morality are indispensable supports”

It is unsurprising, therefore, that our trust in government today is a third of what it was in 1958 (before postmodern relativism became conventional wisdom). Or that 90 percent of Americans expect 2023 to be a “year of political conflict.”

To chart our future in such chaotic times, it is helpful to look to our past.

Last Saturday marked the 233^rd anniversary of America’s first-ever State of the Union address. In it, George Washington noted the need for the American people “to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last.”

His remarks were amplified eight years later in his Farewell Address when he stated, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” Our first president added: “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

In short, democracy requires “national morality,” which requires “religious principle.” This is not just a fact of history but a biblical truth: “The eyes of the Lᴏʀᴅ range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 16:9 NIV).

Can God strengthen our democracy today?

Can he start with you?

Denison Forum

“When you put real love out into the world it comes back to you 3x’s as much. The Love has been overwhelming, but I’m thankful for every single person that prayed for me and reached out. We brung the world back together behind this. If you know me you know this only gone make me stronger. On a long road keep praying for me!”

This was how Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin thanked the world on Instagram for praying for him after he nearly died last Monday night during a game with the Cincinnati Bengals. His progress bolstered his team as they wore a special “3” patch on their uniforms yesterday. In “a play that seemed plucked from a movie,” they returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown in front of a packed house and went on to defeat the New England Patriots. Hamlin’s jersey was the most purchased among all athletes across all sports.

In my opinion, Dallas Cowboys chaplain Jonathan Evans, the associate pastor of NextGen Ministry at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, sounded the most enduring note from Hamlin’s near-death crisis. Quarterback Dak Prescott quoted Evans’ message to the team last week: “Your age, you’re not old or young off of your birth date but off your death date.”

An “irrational atavistic impulse”?

Barton Swaim began his Wall Street Journal editorial on Damar Hamlin by referencing “the question of when prayer on public grounds is and isn’t permissible.” He noted that “Americans, especially American liberals, have been obsessed with the question for more than sixty years.”

However, he added, “The idea that prayer is improper at big-time sporting events was forgotten on Monday night.”

After Hamlin collapsed on the field, Swaim writes, “Suddenly prayer was back on the list of things anybody could talk about or do on camera.” Signs and social media posts called for the nation to “pray for Damar.” ESPN commentators actually prayed for him on air. In the days following, NFL players across the league prayed for him and for each other.

Is this unequivocally good news? Swaim sounds a cautionary note: “I’m not entirely comfortable with so many ecumenical pleas for the favor of an undefined deity. Are all these thousands of social-media posters urging their followers to #PrayForDamar actually praying and, if they are, praying to the one true God? I’m not so sure.”

Grieving over calls to prayer

What are critics of religion thinking about this national response? According to Swaim, “They will consider the whole pray-for-Damar episode a mass expression of some irrational atavistic impulse. . . . Let the fans ‘pray’ if that’s what gives them comfort, but it changes nothing.”

In one sense, I agree with them.

I grieved in Israel last week as I heard the Adhan broadcast from minarets calling Muslims to pray to Allah rather than to Christ. I know that Jesus alone is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) and that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

The power of faith resides not in its act but in its object. We can take the wrong road in faith that it is the right road, but we will still be lost. We can take the wrong medicine in faith that it is the right medicine, but our faith will not make it so.

At the same time, our instinctive response to pray when confronting a crisis we cannot solve with human resources reveals something important about us.

The nation does not pray when a football player sprains an ankle or suffers a concussion since our doctors can treat such injuries. We do not flood sanctuaries for prayer meetings when an airplane crashes. But when terrorists flew airplanes into buildings on 9/11, we packed church buildings for prayer. After we began learning the identity of our enemy and gained confidence in our ability to prevent further attacks, crowds in churches returned to normal.

A “relentless parade of atmospheric rivers”

One of Satan’s most subtle ploys is to focus us on what we can do rather than on what we cannot do.

We do not fear death since medical science can often postpone it, but medical science cannot prevent it. Our technological capacities exceed anything known to human history, as the advent of the iPhone on this day in 2007 demonstrated, but we cannot stop the “relentless parade of atmospheric rivers” pounding California. According to a new survey, 3.3 million US adults were displaced by natural disasters last year. None of us can prevent the disasters sure to come this year.

Here’s my point: every one of us, every moment of every day, is Damar Hamlin.

Jonathan Evans is right: “You’re not old or young off of your birth date but off your death date.”  Each of us is one heartbeat from eternity. Each of us needs help and hope beyond ourselves. We were made to depend on our Maker, not just on Sunday or in a recognized crisis, but every moment of every day.

“When you don’t see the whole staircase”

So begin your day with your Lord as Jesus did (cf. Mark 1:35). (Our ministry’s morning devotional, First15, is designed to help you experience God each day.)

End your day with your Lord. (To this end, I highly recommend my wife’s new resource, Wisdom Matters, a devotional word of biblical encouragement you can read or hear at the end of each day.)

Turn every challenge to God in prayer (for help, see my latest blog, “How to live victoriously in Christ”).

And have faith that the one true God hears you and will always do what is best in response. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was right: “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

What staircase will you begin to climb today?

Denison Forum

I’ll admit, my initial reaction when I realized that I would need to write about the second anniversary of the Capitol riots was somewhere between “not this again” and “I just don’t care.”

That’s not to say that the breach of the Capitol lacked significance or was in any way an appropriate or moral response to the 2020 election. As Dr. Denison wrote in the days following those events, “what we saw [on January 6] was abhorrent and sinful.” However, it was also not, as President Biden described it, “The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

The truth is that most Americans think what happened that day was wrong, but far fewer think it is worth continuing to dwell on or investigate going forward. So, if that’s the case, why am I writing about it today?

In short, it’s because it provides a good opportunity to think about a larger cultural question that continues to impact all of us, regardless of our political affiliation: Why is it that we so often feel the urge to push views to the extreme?

And, as we’ll see in a bit, the answer to that question has a profound impact on the way we should see evangelism as well.

Why people are pushed to extremism

With the Capitol riots, we see this trend in those who, like President Biden, exaggerate the historical significance of the attacks. However, we also see it from those who view the breach of the Capitol as a patriotic defense of liberty.

Both are minority positions that seem unreasonable to those who do not hold them. However, for those who do, they quickly become the only viable lens through which the events can be viewed.

But why are people drawn to such extreme views in the first place?

One reason is that extreme events push people to choose a side rather than remain in the middle, a fact that can exert a powerful pull to those who care a great deal about a particular issue. But while such an approach may help to garner support to some extent, it can also push those who reject such extremism—on either side of a subject—to extreme apathy.

As David French discussed in a recent article, if you do not hold what could be considered an extreme position on a subject, then engaging with those who do is often not worth the time. As French describes, “you instantly experience a cost-benefit analysis. Do I want to end my relationship with a beloved aunt or uncle over an issue I can’t impact? Or do I choose discretion, decide to maintain the relationship, and move on?”

After all, it can be just as difficult—if not more so—to have a rational conversation about an event when those involved assign it different levels of significance than when they hold fundamentally opposed views.

For example, the person who sees the January 6 riot as the greatest assault on democracy since the 1800s likely has more common ground for discussion with the person who sees it as a righteous protest against a stolen election than either does with someone who thinks it’s really not worth fussing about two years after the fact. The reason is that the first two participants are more likely to feel invested in the conversation while the apathetic person will probably look for a way out shortly after the dialogue begins.

Most of us probably don’t have to think back very far to remember such a conversation.

Whether it was about politics, sports, family events, or any number of other issues, we all get trapped in discussions we’d prefer to avoid from time to time. And remembering what that feels like is important when it comes to sharing our faith.

Knowing when to speak

If you have a personal relationship with Christ and your life has been transformed by his grace, chances are that you see the gospel as profoundly more important than those with whom we are called to share it.

There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, we should be the ones most fired up about telling other people about Jesus. That purpose is central to what it means to be a Christian (Matthew 28:18–20).

However, that reality also means that we are likely to be seen as the extremists by those who accord faith and religion a less essential place in their lives. As such, we shouldn’t be surprised when it feels like non-Christians just don’t care as much as we think they should.

If someone has shown that they have little interest in the gospel and seem to check out every time you bring it up, continuing to press them about it is unlikely to prove productive. That doesn’t mean we should give up on them, but people can get to the place where continuing to hit them over the head with God’s word—figuratively speaking—can do more harm than good to their long-term prospects of accepting Jesus.

When people reach that point, it’s all right to give them space when it comes to the subject of spirituality. We should absolutely continue to live out the gospel around them and make sure they know that we are available to talk should they ever want to do so, but it’s all right to leave it up to them.

Ultimately, God knows their heart and their mind better than we can. He understands when the gospel will be welcome and when it will be ignored. And while his word promises that it will never return void, that is only when it is sent out according to his will (Isaiah 55:11).

That’s why it’s so important that we rely on the Holy Spirit to guide our interactions with others and to respond in obedience when he prompts us to share our faith with them. He has a way of redeeming hardships and using the events in a person’s life to help them assign faith a higher level of importance, even if that shift is fleeting.

Will you be ready the next time God gives you that opportunity?

Denison Forum

Ukraine has claimed responsibility for a missile attack on a temporary military barracks in the Russian-occupied region of Donetsk that killed scores of Russian soldiers. The Russian defense ministry blamed the use of mobile phones by its soldiers, stating that this allowed Ukraine to track the soldiers’ location.

Pro-war Russians are increasingly blaming Moscow for its demonstrated military failings in the conflict. The pressure on Vladimir Putin to win the war by any means is steadily increasing. For example, Ukraine is warning that Russia is likely to respond to its latest setback by stepping up the use of Iranian-made exploding drones. Some experts are concerned that if Russia continues to lose, Putin may launch a nuclear strike on Kyiv to affect regime change by killing the Ukrainian government.

Against this escalating backdrop, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping met recently to strengthen their partnership. China has repeatedly refused to condemn Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, consistently blaming the conflict on NATO and the United States instead. Putin said of their relationship, “We share the same views on the causes, course, and logic of the ongoing transformation of the global geopolitical landscape.” Xi said that the two countries should “strengthen strategic coordination” to oppose “bullying” by other nations.

This growing partnership is of obvious concern to the US and the West. However, it should especially alarm all Americans for two less than obvious reasons.

“The equivalent of tactical nuclear weapons”

Niall Ferguson has been called “the most brilliant British historian of his generation.” A Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a senior faculty fellow at Harvard, he is the author of an illuminating and frightening new essay published by Bloomberg. In it, he warns that “Cold War II could become World War III in 2023.”

And he explains why the US is in a precarious position to fight such a war.

Ferguson notes that war is “about the mobilization of real resources” needed by combatants to sustain the conflict while providing for their populations and powering their industries. In World War I, these resources were “coal, iron, and the manufacturing capacity to mass-produce artillery and shells, as well as steamships.” In World War II, they were “oil, steel, aluminum, and the manufacturing capacity to mass-produce artillery, ships, submarines, planes, and tanks.” After World War II, “it was all of the above, plus the scientific and technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons.”

Today, he notes, “the vital inputs are the capacity to mass-produce high-performance semiconductors, satellites, and the algorithmic warfare systems that depend on them.” Such systems are “the equivalent of tactical nuclear weapons” in their devastating capacities.

We depend on 61,000 ships

Ferguson explains that this is a major problem for the US, for two reasons.

One: Russia clearly lacks the algorithmic warfare systems that the US and our allies have been supplying to Ukraine, which means that Vladimir Putin may eventually be driven to use actual nuclear weapons to avoid losing the war he started. Such a scenario could lead to nuclear escalation that could threaten the US and the world.

Two: Ferguson notes that China “is dominant in the processing of minerals that are vital to the modern economy, including copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium. In particular, China controls over 70 percent of rare earth production both in terms of extraction and processing. These are seventeen minerals used to make components in devices such as smartphones, electric vehicles, solar panels, and semiconductors.”

In addition, “the US long ago ceased to be a manufacturing economy,” now importing much of what we need from the rest of the world. Most of these internationally traded goods are imported in six million containers transported in approximately sixty-one thousand ships. And China’s Shanghai Westwell Lab Information Technology Co. “is rapidly becoming the leading vendor of the most advanced port-operating systems.”

As a result, a conventional war with China could severely cripple our ability to produce the technological devices our military needs and import the goods our people require.

Dr. King’s definition of “true peace”

Ferguson’s article is further illustration of the fact that peace has been elusive for humans since Cain murdered Abel at the dawn of history. This is because we pursue peace as an object, a goal, when it is actually a consequence of prior priorities.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.”

King David knew much about war and peace. He noted, “Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven” (Psalm 85:11 NKJV). With this result: “Righteousness shall go before [the Lord], and peace shall be a pathway for his feet” (v. 13, BCP).

Here we see that peace comes from righteousness (the Hebrew word means to do what is right and honest), which comes from knowing and doing the truth. And, as Jesus made clear, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32).

“No God, no peace”

Imagine a world in which everyone lived by the truth of God’s word. Imagine the personal and corporate righteousness that would result.

Now imagine the consequences for a world in which each person and nation loved their neighbor as themselves (Matthew 22:39) and treated others only as they wished to be treated (Matthew 7:12), to cite just two biblical truths. How would this change the war in Ukraine? China’s threats against Taiwan? Crime in your city? Conflict in your home?

Peace does indeed come from righteousness, which comes from knowing and obeying the truth.

Where do you most need peace with God, others, and yourself?

The old truism is still true: No God, no peace. Know God, know peace.

How will you choose the latter today?

Denison Forum

 “The last five hundred years have witnessed a breathtaking series of revolutions. The earth has been united into a single ecological and historical sphere. The economy has grown exponentially, and humankind today enjoys the kind of wealth that used to be the stuff of fairy tales. Science and the Industrial Revolution have given humankind superhuman powers and practically limitless energy. The social order has been completely transformed, as have politics, daily life and human psychology.”

So writes Yuval Noah Harari in his bestseller, Sapiens. To illustrate his point, the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the world’s largest technology conference, begins tomorrow in Las Vegas.

Among the many innovations on display, we will see a smart refrigerator with a touchscreen display where you can control home devices, watch videos, and make shopping lists for Amazon delivery. Mops that wash themselves, window-cleaning robots, and robots that climb stairs are expected. As are electric cars with multiple touch screens and built-in video gaming.

Temple Mount visit called an “unprecedented provocation”

From new technology to the latest in a very old conflict: Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on Tuesday.

Ben Gvir has long challenged the status quo by which Muslims are allowed to visit the site and pray with few restrictions while Jews can visit only during limited time slots and are not allowed to pray there. As a result, the Jerusalem Post reports that the Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Ministry condemned the visit as an “unprecedented provocation.”

Jordan likewise denounced Ben Gvir “in the severest terms [for] the storming of the Al Aqsa Mosque and violation of its sanctity.” Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia all criticized the visit as well. Even newly reelected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned in the past that “Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount, though it sounds like a reasonable thing, I know it would have ignited the Middle East.”

And so, in the view of skeptics, we have another example of the danger posed to our advanced secular society by antiquated religion. But is the world really this simple?

“Human life has absolutely no meaning”

Let’s return to Harari’s analysis of our cultural moment. After describing the remarkable innovations that have changed our lives, he asks: “But are we happier? Did the wealth humankind accumulated over the last five centuries translate into a new-found contentment?”

His short answer is no.

He explains why: “Happiness is not the surplus of pleasant over unpleasant moments. Rather, happiness consists in seeing one’s life in its entirety as meaningful and worthwhile. . . . A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is.”

Here’s the problem, in his atheistic and secularist view: “As far as we can tell, from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan . . . Hence, any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just a delusion” (his emphasis).

What is the color of a C scale?

Harari, brilliant as he is, makes a basic logical error known as a “category mistake.” We make this mistake when we ask how much the number three weighs or the color of a C scale. Harari does the same when he assumes that a “purely scientific viewpoint” is the only viewpoint from which to assess the meaning of our lives.

Of course we cannot determine the meaning of life through scientific means. How would a chemist measure the strength of his marriage in a lab? How would a physicist evaluate her friendships through mathematical formulas?

Secularists make a similar mistake known as an “association fallacy” when they point to the acts of a single person or religion as typifying all religion. Having led more than thirty study tours to Israel, I can testify that Itamar Ben Gvir categorically does not represent all Israelis, nor are his views regarding the Temple Mount the consensus among Jews. Nor are Jewish beliefs on any subject necessarily typical of the beliefs of Christians, Muslims, and so on.

The most logical way to discover the design of an object is to consult its designer. Similarly, the best way to find the purpose of your life is to consult the One who created you.

“The greatest discovery you will ever make”

Let’s not make a category mistake with our souls this year. No matter how advanced our technology becomes, Harari is right: we will never find lasting happiness through temporal comfort and convenience. And let’s avoid an association fallacy that confuses formal religion with a personal relationship with our Maker.

Jesus taught us: “Abide in me, and I in you. . . . Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:4–5). So let’s “abide” in Christ by beginning each day with him in prayer, Bible study, and worship, then walk through the day with him in prayer and obedience. And let’s measure success by whether or not we are bearing “much fruit” for Christ.

Scripture warns us, “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:10). So ask yourself: Will this attitude, statement, or action glorify God? Will this decision bring honor to his name? Will he be pleased with this day when it is done?

Billy Graham observed, “This is the greatest discovery you will ever make: You were created to know God and to be his friend forever.”

Will you be God’s friend today?

Denison Forum

Damar Hamlin (PDF) is a twenty-four-year-old safety for the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League. Nine minutes into last night’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals, he tackled a Bengals receiver who appeared to collide with him in the head and chest area.

Hamlin quickly stood up, took two steps, collapsed backward, and his body went limp.

Medical personnel administered CPR and cared for him for ten minutes while visibly upset players from both teams watched. Some shed tears while others circled together to pray.

The Bills said later that Hamlin had suffered cardiac arrest on the field; his heartbeat was restored and he was taken to a Cincinnati hospital. According to the team, “He is currently sedated and listed in critical condition.”

The NFL postponed the game; rescheduling discussions have not yet occurred.

A picture that brought tears to my eyes

The reaction in prayer was immediate and profound.

A photo of players and coaches from both teams praying on their knees brought tears to my eyes. Christians from around the league were quick to respond as well.

Robert Griffin III tweeted the image of the praying players and wrote, “Please don’t share the video of the Damar Hamlin play. Share this because we are all praying for him and his family.” Star quarterback Josh Allen tweeted: “Please pray for our brother.”

Patrick Mahomes tweeted, “Praying hard.. please be okay man.” Tim Tebow added, “Please join me in prayer for Damar Hamlin.”

If you don’t believe in Zeus

I’m sure their calls for prayer will be criticized by skeptics, as they usually are when “thoughts and prayers” are offered during a crisis. Critics want us to do something concrete and practical about the issues we face, believing that words spoken to God (if he exists) are insufficient and often used as a substitute for action.

Such criticism is understandable from their point of view. If you don’t believe in Zeus, you will discount prayers to him in a crisis when practical responses are needed. If those who pray to him don’t then take action, you’ll dismiss their prayers as a pious evasion of personal responsibility.

But if you believe in the God to whom Christians prayed last night, you know that asking for his help is the most practical thing we can do. Why would you not want an omnipotent God to intervene in a health emergency? Why would you not ask him to heal Damar Hamlin as Jesus healed so many others in Scripture?

And you know that praying to God in a crisis, rather than distracting us from taking action, empowers us to respond in ways we could not otherwise. This is why John Bunyan observed, “You can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.”

Our real problem with prayer

Our real problem with praying in a crisis is not that we do it but that we don’t do more of it. The Bible says, “You do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2). Jesus assured us, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find, knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).

Criticism of prayer unmasks the self-sufficiency at the heart of our secularized culture. But crisis unmasks the irrationality of such self-sufficiency. We think we don’t need God anymore, that our scientific and medical advances have made faith in him obsolete and irrelevant. Then we face an emergency our human resources cannot solve and we are faced with our need for Someone beyond ourselves.

For example, this morning’s news tells us about another earthquake and massive flooding in California, a death in a house fire, fatalities and injuries from car crashes, and snowmobile accidents that killed a professional driver and severely injured a Hollywood actor.

Each story demonstrates again our finitude and frailty in a broken and fallen world.

Three practical steps

The right response to Damar Hamlin’s life-threatening injury and to the other crises in our world is to do what sports analyst and former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho tweeted: “Join me in praying for: Damar Hamlin’s full recovery. Peace for his family and loved ones. Wisdom for doctors and physicians in contact with Damar right now.”

Then he added, “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective (James 5:16b).”

First, be sure you are a “righteous person” by renewing your commitment to Christ as your Lord and submitting to the sanctifying power of his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). For practical ways to experience the power of God in prayer, please read my latest blog, “The key to success is to ‘sit in one chair.’”

Second, pray specifically for Damar Hamlin and any other crises in the news and in your life. Ask God to work in power and grace.

Third, look for ways to help answer your prayers by meeting needs in God’s name. For example, a toy drive sponsored by Damar Hamlin with a goal of $2,500 had raised more than $3,170,000 as of this writing. Find a way to help a hurting person with the compassion of Christ.

One way God redeems our crises is by using them to turn us to himself. Pope Benedict XVI modeled such faith from his deathbed when he spoke his last words: “Lord, I love you.”

How will you express your love for your Lord today?

Denison Forum

Lebanon, Pennsylvania, dropped a giant package of bologna to mark the new year. Tallapoosa, Georgia, dropped a possum. Boise, Idaho, unsurprisingly dropped a giant potato. And, as everyone knows, New York City staged its iconic “ball drop” once again as around a million people packed the Times Square area and millions more watched on television.

When you think about it, watching a giant ball descend to bring in the new year is a rather strange custom. Who thought of this? Why do we still do it?

From “hangxiety” to “God’s merciful dealings”

Before the twentieth century, timekeeping was much less precise. Sailors and ship captains needed to know the exact time so they could chart their navigational courses.

So Robert Wauchope, a captain in the British Navy, created the time ball in 1829. Raised balls visible to ships along the British coastline were manually dropped at the same time each day, allowing ships to set their chronometers to the accurate time.

The devices fell out of fashion by the 1880s due to the availability of self-winding clocks. But the New York Times, looking for a way to celebrate the New Year in 1907 after fireworks had been banned, decided a lighted midnight ball drop was a good way to honor the occasion.

Now comes the ironic part. So many drunken revelers woke up yesterday with hangovers that a term has been coined for them: “hangxiety.” By contrast, Capt. Wauchope, the inventor of the event they were celebrating, titled his autobiography A Short Narrative of God’s Merciful Dealings.

“Hangxiety” or “God’s merciful dealings”—how can we make the latter our story this year? How can we find a larger purpose that will give the new year empowering and joyful significance?

“Permacrisis” chosen as “word of the year”

Collins Dictionary has chosen its word of the year: “permacrisis.” The dictionary defines the word as “an extended period of instability and insecurity” and says it chose the word as it “sums up quite succinctly how truly awful 2022 has been for so many people.”

Now we are beginning the new year with news of the deaths of Barbara Walters and Pope Benedict XVI. From the horrors of war to massive storms and floods to holiday loneliness and financial struggles, we are reminded daily that we are broken people living in a broken world.

However, your Creator has a paradoxically hopeful perspective for your life.

I was reading Hebrews 2 recently and came across a statement I had never considered. Speaking of Jesus’ crucifixion, the author noted that “through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (vv. 14–15, my emphasis).

Consider the thought for a moment: the “fear of death” subjects us to “lifelong slavery.” Why is this?

“The quest never ends till life itself does”

When we fear what will happen to us when we die, we try to make the most of life while we can. We therefore invest this world with more meaning than it possesses: “Behold, joy and gladness, killing oxen and slaughtering sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine. ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (Isaiah 22:13).

However, as commentator Ray Stedman noted, this fear of death “creates the frantic restlessness found in so many. That unsatisfied restlessness, that yearning for what cannot seem to be found, is at least partly what the writer [of Hebrews] means by slavery.

“Like a slave bound to a cruel master, human beings find themselves forced to keep searching for what they never attain. They try everything, but nothing satisfies. There is pleasure and fun—but seldom peace and contentment. Soon everything palls and the search must begin again. It is a lifelong bondage, for the quest never ends till life itself does” (his emphases).

But when we remember that the worst that can happen to us leads to the best that can happen to us, we are set free from the fear of death and its enslavement to this fallen world. When we remember that our Lord owns “the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:18), we are free to serve him fully and joyfully—whatever he asks, whatever it takes, wherever he leads.

“Right in those, he led me well”

Spurgeon’s observation is worthy of reflection: “Let us rest assured that we have already experienced more ills than death at its worst can cause us.”

Pope Benedict XVI would have agreed. In his final spiritual testament, released by the Vatican on Saturday evening, he urged the faithful to “stay steady in the faith” and voiced his confidence that, even in our secularized world, “the rationality of faith has and will emerge again.”

And he wrote: “Retrospectively, I see and understand that even the dark and tiresome traits of this journey were for my salvation and, right in those, he led me well.”

As 2023 begins, if you will “stay steady in the faith,” unconditionally committed to your King and Lord, when the year ends (if the Lord tarries) you will be able to look back and say, “He led me well.” And “God’s merciful dealings” will be the theme of your life.

This is the promise, and the invitation, of God.

Denison Forum

Pelé, called the “global face of soccer” by the New York Times, has died after a battle with cancer. After canceling more than 2,300 of its flights yesterday, Southwest Airlines plans to return to normal operations today “with minimal disruptions.” As Ukrainians face freezing winter temperatures, Russia has launched what appears to be one of its largest strikes to date on their energy infrastructure.

Police in Buffalo, New York, arrested ten people for looting amid the deadly winter storm that buried much of western New York. And 85 percent of rural land in California is now at a “high” or “very high” risk for wildfires, according to a new analysis.

Why did I begin today’s Daily Article with these stories? I never watched Pelé play soccer. I have no current plans to fly on Southwest Airlines. Nor do I live in Ukraine, western New York, or rural California. But you and I were made by God as empathetic, communal beings: “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). The happiness or pain of some is experienced as happiness or pain by the rest of us.

The same is true of experiences long past. Millions will sing “Auld Lang Syne” tomorrow evening with its question, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?”

And we seek happiness not just in the present and from the past but for the future. We will wish each other a “Happy New Year,” all the while wishing we could do more than wish for such happiness.

It turns out, we can. But only if we look in the right place.

Our souls need “seven rests”

According to an American Psychological Association survey, more than a quarter of Americans say they are so stressed most days that they cannot function. And more than one in five Americans report feeling serious anxiety or depression.

How should we respond?

Counselors tell us that some of our anxieties are avoidable and are due to hunger, sleep deprivation, being over-caffeinated, and medical issues. We can take practical steps such as addressing burnout and enhancing our well-being through a workout. We can free ourselves from “task paralysis” by breaking tasks down into small, tangible steps and rewarding ourselves when we complete them, and we can identify our wellness nonnegotiables such as coffee in the morning.

We are encouraged to face our crises with people we can trust who are navigating the same issues. And psychologists advise us to seek “seven rests”: physical, mental, sensory, emotional, social, creative, and spiritual.

The last “means connecting on a deeper level with something greater than ourselves,” which “can mean adding prayer, meditation, or purpose to our lives” through “a church, a volunteer program, community outreach, or even nature retreats.”

Life as a chest of drawers

In my survey of news sources regarding happiness, I was struck by their secularity. Even the paragraph on spirituality in the article on “seven rests” points us to “something greater than ourselves” with no suggestion that this “something” could be a Someone.

In Jesus the Great Philosopher: Rediscovering the Wisdom Needed for the Good Life, Jonathan T. Pennington notes that “our modern lives are often built like a chest of drawers, with distinct compartments for each area. Even as we keep our socks, underwear, exercise clothes, and jeans in different drawers . . . so too our lives have distinct compartments—health, relationships, money, education, leisure, religion.”

He adds: “Christian people have a specific drawer for Jesus. For some it is a low-placed half drawer that is only opened once a week or maybe twice a month on Sundays. For others—especially pastors and missionaries—the Jesus drawer is big and probably at the top of the cabinet with well-oiled rollers. Most Christians’ ‘Jesus drawers’ are somewhere in between.”

Pennington cites theologian Peter Leithart, who observed that many Christians are dualists, mistakenly living our lives like a layered cake with supernatural truths on the top layer of an otherwise natural cake. In this worldview, according to Leithart, the “church adds a spiritual dimension to my life but leaves my natural world more or less intact.”

While we have a “Jesus drawer” others do not, it is only one drawer among many.

How to “experience meaningful happiness”

Our culture has been compartmentalizing us into body, soul, and spirit since the ancient Greeks. Why is this bad for us?

According to Pennington, “Humans are organic beings who thrive only when the many parts of our lives are connected together. . . . We cannot treat our lives as if the various parts are unrelated and expect to experience meaningful happiness and the flourishing life that Jesus talks about.”

So, if we want happiness for ourselves and others in the coming year, we will need to travel the ancient pathway: “Delight yourself in the Lᴏʀᴅ, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). How do we do this? The psalmist explains: “Commit your way to the Lᴏʀᴅ; trust in him, and he will act” (v. 5).

Your “way” in the Hebrew refers to your “journey” today. When you “commit” or surrender it to God, you can “trust in him” to “act” in ways that “give you the desires of your heart.” C. S. Lewis was therefore right to claim, “God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

James Clear advised us: “You just need to have the courage to eliminate everything that doesn’t directly feed what you really want.”

What do you “really want” in the coming year?

Denison Forum

New York Representative-elect George Santos recently made his first televised appearance since the New York Times revealed that he lied about several elements of his résumé. It did not go as well as he’d hoped.

As a brief overview of the controversy surrounding Santos, he defeated Democrat Robert Zimmerman in November’s election, running on a campaign built largely around his story of rising from poverty to prominence. Yet, as he admitted to the New York Post, several elements of that story were false.

Among the most problematic lies relate to his Jewish heritage—he clarified that he is “Jew-ish” rather than Jewish because his grandmother was Jewish before converting to Catholicism. This despite claiming to be a “proud American Jew” in campaign materials sent to Jewish constituents. The Republican Jewish Coalition has since stated that he “misrepresented his heritage” and “will not be welcome at any future RJC events.”

In addition, he claimed that he graduated from Baruch College when he never even attended and holds no college degree. He also said that he worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup when he was never employed by either.

He has since referred to these errors as “embellishing my résumé” and apologized.

The nature and sincerity of that apology were at the forefront of questions he faced from former representative Tulsi Gabbard, who filled in for Fox’s Tucker Carlson in the interview.

“What does the word integrity mean to you?”

In her first question, Gabbard asked Santos, “What does the word integrity mean to you?”

After being pressed further for a definition rather than a rote response, he replied that “it means to carry yourself in an honorable way. And I made a mistake, and I think humans are flawed and we all make mistakes.”

He’s right, but it’s what we do after our mistakes that matters most, and when asked by Gabbard why people should trust him moving forward, Santos’ response left much to be desired: “Tulsi, I can say the same about the Democrats and the party. Look at Joe Biden. Joe Biden’s been lying to the American people for forty years and he’s the president of the United States. Democrats resoundingly support him.”

As Gabbard then pointed out, “This is not about the Democratic party, though. This is about your relationship with the people who’ve entrusted you to go and fight for them.”

The interview included other notable points as well, but I’d like for our focus to remain on this part for today.

The government we deserve

George Bernard Shaw once remarked that “democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.”

Prior to bringing Santos on, Gabbard made the point that he is hardly the first politician to lie about their résumé or heritage. She pointed to Richard Blumenthal’s false claims of military service in Vietnam and Elizabeth Warren’s remarks about her Native American ancestors as examples.

Her point in doing so, however, was not to excuse Blumenthal, Warren, or Santos. Rather, it was to explain why “no one should be surprised that the American people don’t trust these politicians” and have “no faith that those in Washington are actually working for the people when they’re so clearly working for themselves.”

I suspect many agree with her—myself included, if I’m being honest.

Unfortunately, our anger and disappointment at their moral failures often stop with them when the real problem hits much closer to home.

Holding ourselves to a higher standard

If our response to our own mistakes is to minimize the gravity of the sin and point out the hypocrisy of others, then we’re not really very penitent. After all, “I’m sorry, but . . . ” is not a real apology, and that’s just as true for you and me as it is for elected members of Congress.

Santos is right that politicians frequently lie in service to their ambitions. That he could say so knowing that there are large swaths of the populace who are willing to tolerate such behavior if it means getting another vote on their side of the aisle is why our government is the way that it is.

But if we want the government to change, then we need to change.

Politicians never have been and never will be the moral compass for the nation, and our situation will not improve until the people voting for them—that would be all of us—hold ourselves to a higher standard.

Fortunately, God longs to help us do just that.

There may be times when we have reasonable explanations for the sins we commit and could point to countless others who have made the same mistakes. But they are not our standard. God is (Matthew 5:48).

If we are truly meant to be the light of the world and a city on a hill that guides the lost around us back to the Lord, then we need to genuinely repent of our sins rather than try to justify or minimize them.

So the next time you sin, ask the Lord to help you practice real repentance and own your mistake.

Who knows? Maybe you’ll inspire someone else to do the same.

Denison Forum

In a televised special tonight, Amy Grant will become the first contemporary Christian music star to be recognized at the Kennedy Center Honors. This distinction is well deserved: her total career album sales have exceeded thirty million with over one billion global streams. She has received six Grammy Awards and twenty-six Dove Awards, including four Artist of the Year Awards.

I have followed her career since it began and have been grateful for the way she brought contemporary Christian music to the attention of the larger culture. However, she is also in the news today for a less positive reason: she told the Washington Post that she and her husband, Vince Gill, are planning to host her niece’s same-sex wedding at their farm, which will be her family’s “first bride and bride” nuptials.

She explained, “Honestly, from a faith perspective, I do always say, ‘Jesus, you just narrowed it down to two things: love God and love each other.’ I mean, hey—that’s pretty simple.”

In other news, thousands of flights have been canceled this week as a major storm has stranded travelers around the country. A doctor who has practiced for three decades in China says he has never seen anything like the crisis confronting the nation as the COVID-19 pandemic is overwhelming their hospitals.

And the United Nations is warning that nuclear war is “back within the realm of possibility.” Russian state television announced that the Pentagon, Camp David, Jim Creek Naval Radio Station in Washington, Fort Ritchie in Maryland, and McClellan Air Force Base in California would be their first targets.

“The interrelated structure of reality”

These disparate stories illustrate a common theme, one I will explain by illustration.

According to Amy Grant, we are to “love each other,” a biblical command that, in her view, includes same-sex marriage. Her position is more or less relevant to you depending on whether, like her, you care for someone engaged in same-sex sexual relationships.

The story about mass flight cancelations interests you more or less personally depending on whether one of these flights was yours. The escalating crisis in China matters more or less to you depending on whether you live in China and/or care personally for someone who does. The UN warning about nuclear war becomes even more threatening if you live near one of the Russians’ first targets.

But Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was right: “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” He called this “the interrelated structure of reality.” John Donne famously observed, “No man is an island entire of itself . . . Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

I wonder, would Amy Grant extend her defense of her niece’s same-sex wedding to include polygamy? Popular support for this practice has increased fourfold in the last decade and a half. What about “genetic sexual attraction,” otherwise known as incest? A Virginia university professor was placed on administrative leave just last year for insisting that it isn’t necessarily immoral for adults to be sexually attracted to children.

If “love is love,” as we so often hear these days, where do we draw the line? How many innocent people will this unbiblical ethic continue to harm? And what will happen to the religious freedom of those who uphold biblical sexuality?

How many families’ holidays were disrupted when family members were unable to travel to be with them? China’s escalating pandemic crisis will result in economic damage for the world because China is a major producer of goods. It will also mean that there will be fewer medical supplies available because China is their major producer but now needs the supply.

And of course, a nuclear attack on any city in America is an unthinkable crisis for all Americans.

How to “easily judge the character of a man”

We noted yesterday the urgency and privilege of sacrificial compassion as our primary medium of witnessing to a post-Christian, skeptical culture. This opportunity is only enhanced by an existentialist society that measures all news through the prism of the personal. In a day when people care primarily about what affects them directly, you and I will stand out when we extend God’s grace to those who cannot repay us or otherwise affect us.

Malcolm S. Forbes observed, “You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.” By this standard, Jesus Christ had the highest character of any person in all of human history.

We could “do nothing for him,” but he chose to do everything for us. C. S. Lewis explained his incarnation: “The Eternal Being, who knows everything and who created the whole universe, became not only a man but (before that) a baby, and before that a fetus inside a woman’s body. If you want to get the hang of it, think how you would like to become a slug or a crab.”

Jesus’ compassion for tax collectors, Samaritans, and lepers earned him only the opprobrium of Jewish society. His crucifixion was the most horrific form of execution ever devised.

“What greater grace could God have made”

St. Augustine reminded us of the significance of such grace: “You would have suffered eternal death, had he not been born in time. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh, had he not taken on himself the likeness of sinful flesh. You would have suffered everlasting unhappiness, had it not been for this mercy. You would never have returned to life, had he not shared your death. You would have been lost if he had not hastened to your aid. You would have perished, had he not come.”

He then asked, “What greater grace could God have made to dawn on us than to make his only Son become the son of man, so that a son of man might in his turn become son of God?”

Will you share such grace with “those who can do nothing” for you today? And will you respond to your Father’s love with the worship of your heart?

Our joyful praises sing
To Christ, that set us free;
Like tribute to the Father bring,
And, Holy Ghost, to thee.

Denison Forum

An artificial intelligence (AI) tool called ChatGPT can respond to a question or topic with an essay that looks deceptively like it was written by a human. One college professor expects a “flood” rather than a “trickle” of plagiarism problems in the near future as a result. Such technology is being called “a turning point with artificial intelligence,” one that prompts the question, “How can we use these tools ethically and safely?”

Now consider this: half of the ten most-read stories in the New York Times this year dealt with shootings, abortion, or insults. Four others dealt with death, disasters, or aging. (“Wordle is a love story” was the lone exception.)

Given our fallen nature, how confident are you that we will master AI before it masters us? What about the other problems that plagued us last year and are likely to do so in the year to come?

Clearly, we need a Savior to save us from our sins. But, paradoxically, one of the sins from which we need to be saved is the sin of rejecting our need for a Savior.

Legend, liar, lunatic, or Lord?

Yesterday we noted that 52 percent of American adults believe that Jesus was a great teacher and nothing more. Such a supposition is not new. In 1942, C. S. Lewis responded to this assertion in what later became the most famous paragraph in his classic, Mere Christianity:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

From this paragraph derives what is known as the “trilemma”: Jesus must be either a liar, a lunatic, or Lord.

There’s a fourth option, however. We also noted yesterday that 53 percent of Americans believe the Bible “is not literally true.” If they are right, perhaps Jesus did not really claim to be Lord. Perhaps this idea is a legend that grew up over the centuries (a claim Dan Brown made famous in his bestseller, The Da Vinci Code).

If this is the case, we are not forced to choose among Lewis’s three options, since all of them arise from the supposedly faulty presumption that Jesus claimed divinity for himself.

“A hymn to Christ as to a god”

I have taught seminary classes and written extensively on this subject (see my Wrestling With God, for example). To summarize the remarkable extrabiblical evidence for Jesus:

• Thallus the Samaritan (AD 52) referred to the darkness of the crucifixion of Jesus.
• Mara bar Serapion (writing after AD 70) noted that Jesus’ followers considered him to be their king.
• Tacitus (AD 55–120) described early Christian belief as a “most mischievous superstition,” referring to faith in the supernatural or miraculous rather than simply following a human teacher.
• In AD 112, a Roman administrator named Pliny the Younger wrote that Christians “were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ as to a god.”
• And the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (AD 37/38–97) reported that early Christians called Jesus the “Christ,” the Messiah, and believed him to have been raised from the dead.

So, since Jesus’ claim to divinity was not a legend that grew up centuries afterward but a first-century assertion accepted by his followers, we are back to Lewis’s three options: liar, lunatic, or Lord.

However, a postmodern relativist will likely shrug his shoulders and say, “That’s just your truth. I have my own truth.” What do we do then?

“Lord, do not hold this sin against them”

2 Chronicles 24:20 reports that “the Spirit of God clothed Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest” (this was not the biblical prophet by the same name), and he called the people to repent of their idolatry and immorality. However, “they conspired against him, and by command of the king they stoned him with stones in the court of the house of the Lᴏʀᴅ” (v. 21). Here was his response: “And when he was dying, he said, ‘May the Lᴏʀᴅ see and avenge!’” (v. 22).

Fast-forward eight centuries to the Book of Acts, where we find a similar story. This time the person who was empowered by God’s Spirit was named Stephen (Acts 6:5). Like Zechariah, he exposed the idolatry and immorality of the people (Acts 7:2–53). And like Zechariah, he was stoned to death as a result (vv. 58–59). But unlike Zechariah, “he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’” (v. 60).

What explains the difference?

Stephen knew the example of Jesus’ vicarious atonement and his prayer from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). And while Zechariah was “clothed” by God’s Spirit, Stephen as a Christian was indwelt by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16).

As a result, he could manifest the “fruit of the Spirit,” the first of which is “love” (Galatians 5:22). His forgiving grace was witnessed by “a young man named Saul” (Acts 7:58), who soon came to encounter Stephen’s Lord and make him his personal Lord as well (Acts 9:1–18).

Here’s the point: the best way to show skeptics that Jesus is Lord is to show them that he is our Lord. And the best way to show them that he is our Lord is to love them as he loves us.

How will you imitate Stephen today?

Denison Forum

More than one million Americans and Canadians were without power over the weekend as a “bomb cyclone” wreaked havoc with snow, strong winds, and freezing temperatures that affected nearly 250 million people.

But I’m happy to report that Santa Claus was not one of them.

US military officials assured anxious children that the arctic blast that disrupted US airline traffic would not prevent Santa from making his annual Christmas Eve flight. A spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which tracks the yuletide flight, explained: “We have to deal with a polar vortex once in a while, but Santa lives year-round in one at the North Pole, so he’s used to this weather.”

My four grandchildren confirmed the military’s report by opening numerous presents from Santa yesterday morning.

Santa Claus has an official address

Of course, rationalistic skeptics might view both the military’s statement and my grandchildren’s testimony as somewhat fanciful. In their view, anything that defies human logic and experimental corroboration must be considered myth and tradition, nothing more.

This is especially the case if they can find rational explanations for the events in question.

For example, according to the United States Postal Service (USPS), Santa Claus’s official address is 123 Elf Road, North Pole, 8888. The USPS reports that letters sent to this address are received, personal information is redacted, the letters are published online, and generous people “adopt” them and ship gifts to the letter writers. This practice provides a naturalistic explanation for many gifts from “Santa.”

Another factor is the bedrock principle of scientific discovery that an experiment’s results must be capable of verification by others who perform the same experiment. Philosopher Antony Flew offered a similar approach called “falsification”: essentially, if a truth claim cannot be proven wrong, it cannot be proven right.

If I claim to have met with Santa Claus on his nocturnal visit Saturday evening, you will want evidence: Did anyone else see him with me? Did I take his photo or get other empirical evidence of our encounter? Can you speak with him? If the answer to these and any other investigatory questions is no but I still insist that my story is true, you will obviously dismiss my assertion.

And so it is that many view Santa’s “visit” on Christmas Eve with unbridled skepticism. Tragically, millions view the other event we celebrated this weekend in the same way.

Was Jesus a great teacher but nothing more?

According to a recent survey, 52 percent of American adults believe that Jesus was a great teacher but nothing more. In their view, it is as mythical and irrational to claim that the Christ of Christmas is the Son of God as it is to claim that Santa visited my home last Saturday evening.

I believe I understand their reasoning:

One: Since 53 percent of Americans believe that the Bible “is not literally true,” they do not allow clear biblical claims for the divinity of Christ (cf. John 1:1, Colossians 2:9, Hebrews 1:3, John 8:8) to change their minds.

Two: Since we live in a postmodern, relativistic culture where many people consider all truth claims to be personal and subjective, they are not persuaded by the extraordinary extrabiblical evidence for the deity of Christ. (For a survey of such evidence, see my “Is Jesus really God?”)

Three: If Jesus is only a “great teacher,” they are no more bound to do what he said than they are to obey the teachings of Buddha, Confucius, or any other “great teacher.”

Four: Thus they can choose which teachings of the “great teacher” they will obey and reject the others in order to live however they wish to live.

“The site of God’s surprising presence”

The illogical nature of this reasoning deserves a larger response than I have room left to offer today, so we’ll pick up the story tomorrow. For now, let’s close by focusing on the billions of people who do accept the biblical claim that the Baby of Bethlehem was and is the divine Son of God.

In her Sunday New York Times article, Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren explains what this truth claim means for them: “Because God took on a human body, all human bodies are holy and worthy of respect. Because God worked, sweating under our sun with difficulty and toil, all human labor can be hallowed. Because God had a human family and friends, our relationships too are eternal and sacred. If God became a human who spent most of his life in quotidian ways, then all our lives, in all of their granularity, are transformed into the site of God’s surprising presence.”

What does the incarnational miracle of Christmas say to the hurting and lonely? Warren continues: “God knows the depths of human pain not in theory but because he has felt it himself. From his earliest moments, Jesus would have been considered a nobody, a loser, another overlooked child born into poverty, an ethnic minority in a vast, oppressive, and seemingly all-powerful empire. We have tamed the Christmas story with overfamiliarity and sentimentality—little lambs and shepherds, tinsel and stockings—so we fail to notice the depth of pain, chaos, and danger into which Jesus was born.

“God identifies himself most with the hungry and the vulnerable, with those in chronic pain, with victims of violence, with the outcasts and the despised.” When Jesus was born, “it was not into a posh home in a cozy Christmas movie but instead into a place of hardship and sorrow.”

A time for choosing

You and I can dismiss the incarnational miracle of Christmas, or we can believe that “to us a child is born, to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9:7). We can trust that Son with our greatest fears and failures, worries and burdens. And we can invite those we influence to do the same.

Warren concludes: “The hope of Christmas is that God did not—and therefore will not—leave us alone.” But we can leave him alone and miss the miracle of Christmas in our daily lives.

The day after Christmas is a time for choosing what Christmas will be to us the rest of the year.

Choose wisely.

Denison Forum