How pastor Yoichi Fujiyabu works to help people choose life in Christ

Shirahama, Japan, is known for its beautiful beaches, hot springs, and amazing views. However, for many, it’s become a popular destination for a far more tragic reason. Standing some two hundred feet above the ocean, Shirahama’s Sandanbeki Cliff—also known as “Suicide Cliff”—has become one of the nation’s most frequented locations for those looking to end their life.

Yet, as Kazusa Okaya describes in an excellent article on Yoichi Fujiyabu, the pastor of Shirahama Baptist Christ Church, God’s people have taken up the challenge to change that reality.

Fujiyabu’s ministry—the Shirahama Rescue Network (SRN)—is a nonprofit organization operating out of his church that provides an alternative to those who cannot see a future beyond the cliffs. Over the last three decades, he has stopped more than 1,100 people from killing themselves, but SRN doesn’t stop at preventing death.

Through a variety of SRN’s local businesses, a dormitory for those who need a place to stay, and partnerships with the local government, they work to help people rebuild their lives while introducing them to Jesus along the way.

That last part is particularly important and, in a country where less than 1 percent of the population is Christian, is perhaps the most unique aspect of their ministry. It also makes the hope and purpose found only in Christ the perfect antidote to the shame and meaninglessness that drives so many to the cliffs.

A tragic reality

While there are a number of reasons why suicide has become such an epidemic in Japan—long work hours, increased isolation, pressure in school and at the office, to name a few—shame is perhaps the most powerful motivator. As Okaya notes, “Japanese culture implies that people should avoid becoming a meiwaku, or a burden to others. . . . Such stigma can drive some people to want to vanish from society altogether.”

And Suicide Cliff is not the only location desperate people choose.

The Aokigahara forest—also known as the Sea of Trees—at the base of Mount Fuji carries a similar ignominy as the Sandanbeki Cliffs. Located roughly two hours from Tokyo, the government has been forced to place a sign at the entrance reminding visitors that “life is a precious gift” and encouraging them not to “suffer alone.”

Like the cliffs, people travel to the forest with the belief that they will be able to die without being noticed. However, others argue that they want to “share the same place with others and belong to the same group.” It turns out that even people who want to die alone don’t want to feel alone, and there’s something terribly tragic about that reality.

Never give up on God

When I was in college, I was fortunate enough to go on a mission trip to Japan one Spring Break. We were only there for a week, and I won’t pretend that my experiences over that short period of time nearly twenty years ago are normative for the country today. However, reading about Fujiyabu’s ministry and the heartbreaking reason it exists brought back many of those memories.

I remember when our train was delayed because someone killed themselves by jumping in front of it. That happens at least once a day in Tokyo, and even more often during the most stressful parts of the year.

I also remember standing on a crowded street corner asking people if they’d like to practice their English as a group of men attempted to convince young women walking down the street to work for their pornography company. While shame is perhaps the most common cause of suicide in Japan, sexual exploitation and abuse are high up the list as well, often contributing to that inescapable feeling of disgrace.

Yet, I also remember watching a guy in our group convince one of those men on the street corner to meet him at a nearby coffee shop, where he was able to share the gospel with him.

I don’t know if he ever trusted his life to Christ or left that line of work, but it has served as a remarkable reminder for nearly two decades that we can never give up on God’s ability to meet people where they are and call them to something more.

And, strangely enough, he often chooses to use us to play a key role in that transformation.

The gift of community

In “What does the Bible say about suicide?” Dr. Jim Denison notes that helping people find a sense of community is one of the best ways to fight back against the negative experiences that drive so many to kill themselves. As we discussed earlier, most people who want to die alone don’t want to feel alone, and every one of us can play a role in helping others understand that they are not alone.

As the author of Hebrews describes, one of our chief callings as Christians is to “stir one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24–25).

However, implicit within that command is the idea that this kind of community won’t always come naturally to us. If it did, then the Holy Spirit wouldn’t have had to inspire the author to include the admonition in the pages of Scripture. We’d just do it.

Now, there are circumstances where simply reaching out to people or offering them a sense of community will not be enough to stop them from taking their own lives. As Fujiyabu describes, “You cannot make that ultimate decision for them.”

Sometimes, the best thing we can do is encourage people who are hurting to seek help from those who are far better equipped to handle it. In America, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is a potentially helpful place to start. But, even beyond that, ministries like Stay Here offer free training to help you spot the warning signs and know how to respond.

The privilege of partnering with God

None of that is possible, though, unless you decide that you’re willing to help. That doesn’t have to mean taking emergency calls at all hours of the night like Fujiyabu and his team, but it may mean taking a friend’s call when they reach out. It doesn’t have to mean finding a bed for them to stay the night like the SRN, but it may mean offering your couch or a meal to go along with an open ear.

In short, we can never force someone to choose life, but we can work to render that a much easier choice to make. And even if the people the Lord has brought into your life have never considered suicide—praise God if that is the case—helping to foster this sense of community is still an essential part of Christ’s calling for each of us.

So, where do you need that community today? And is there someone God has placed on your heart while you read this article whom you need to reach out to today? If so, don’t wait.

As difficult as people can be, it’s a privilege to partner with the Lord in acting as his hands and feet to a world in desperate need of his help.

Who is he calling you to help today?

Quote of the day:

“God specializes in giving people a fresh start.” —Rick Warren

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• Embracing the wonder after Forrest Frank’s miraculous healing
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Denison Forum

As Dr. Jim Denison described in yesterday’s Daily Article, Congress has until the end of today to fund the government, or at least parts of it will shut down starting tomorrow. If it feels like we’ve been here before, well, you’re not wrong. Congress found itself in essentially the same situation six months ago when it kicked the can down the road to today.

That crisis was averted after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer gathered just enough support from his party to help pass the Republican-led continuing resolution (CR), which was supposed to buy leaders from both parties enough time to pass a new budget. That didn’t happen, and if the rhetoric coming out of yesterday’s meeting with President Trump is any indication, Democrats are unlikely to yield again.

But while party divisions continue to dominate the narrative as both sides attempt to shift the blame across the aisle, the simple fact is that neither party has been willing to do what’s necessary to actually pass a budget.

In fact, Congress has only passed all the required appropriations measures to fund the government for a given year four times since 1977, with the most recent instance occurring nearly thirty years ago. And even back in 1996, it took a six-bill omnibus package—a bill that funds multiple areas of the government at once—to get them over the finish line in time.

That’s not how this is supposed to work.

A flawed approach to governance

When Congress adopted the current format in 1974, the idea was to split government funding into multiple bills, under the theory that it would be easier to find common ground when focusing on one area rather than on the budget as a whole. As such, under the current arrangement, the House and Senate are charged with passing twelve spending bills a year—one for each pair of the House and Senate appropriations committees.

Instead, Congress has come to rely on either grouping them through omnibus bills or passing CRs to extend the current funding levels while they continue to negotiate an actual budget. Given that 147 of the 149 appropriations bills signed into law since 2012 were passed through an omnibus bill, this flawed approach to governance has unfortunately become the new normal.

However, the latest saga feels different in a way that could have massive implications for the future of our government.

Why Trump doesn’t seem to fear a shutdown

The last time Congress faced the prospect of a shutdown, neither side appeared overly eager to see large parts of the government shuttered. However, in the six months since, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act provided alternative sources of funding for large parts of the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security—two areas of government that Republicans are typically most concerned about.

In addition, the Office of Management and Budget sent a memo throughout its agency instructing division leaders to “use this opportunity to consider Reduction in Force (RIF) notices for all employees in programs, projects, or activities (PPAs)” that meet three criteria:

1. They are without discretionary funding once the shutdown begins
2. They are not funded by alternative measures like the One Big Beautiful Bill
3. They are not “consistent with the President’s priorities.”

Given that the Trump administration is primarily responsible for determining which workers in the executive branch are essential, the prevailing belief is that Trump could use the shutdown as a means of reducing employment and penalizing parts of the government that his administration deems either superfluous or standing in the way of its agenda.

The prospect of turning that power over to Trump was enough to motivate Schumer and other democrats to vote with Republicans six months ago, and we should know by the end of the day if the same will be true this time. However, it seems unlikely, and the government they’re left with once the shutdown ends could look quite a bit different as a result.

A sin we all commit

One of the primary flaws in our current political system is the degree to which Americans on both sides are tempted to overlook abuses of power when they’re used to advance their preferred agenda. Assigning blame for the current budget situation to Republicans or Democrats is pointless because, on a basic level, both parties govern the same. It may look different based on which priorities they’re pushing, but the path they take to get there has become so well-worn over the last few decades that it’s difficult to see either side straying from it anytime soon.

However, the wrong choice doesn’t become less wrong just because someone else made it first.

Every parent of more than one child has had the delightful experience of breaking up a fight in which one kid used the “she started it” or “he hit me first” excuse to explain away their own bad behavior. That same rationale is no less immature or sinful when utilized by our nation’s leaders than when it comes from the mouth of a child.

But, if we’re being honest with ourselves, we probably don’t have to think all that far back to remember a time when we made the same mistake.

Scripture is clear that another person’s bad choices will never justify our own (2 Corinthians 5:10), and a fundamental part of genuine repentance is owning up to your sin. “I’m sorry, but…” is not the sign of a truly penitent heart, and it’s an insult to God to think he won’t know the difference.

So, are there any areas in your life where you’re tempted to try to blame others for your own mistakes? Are there any sins for which you’ve yet to fully seek God’s forgiveness?

While it can be tempting—and justified—to complain about the state of our politics today, know that Christ cares far more about the state of your heart and the degree to which it is aligned with his own.

Let’s start there.

Quote of the day:

“No constitution for self-government can save a people from voluntarily ending their own reign. ‘A republic, if you can keep it’ wasn’t just a foreboding turn of phrase—it was a statement of historical literacy.” —Sarah Isgur

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Denison Forum

Sunday morning, a gunman rammed his vehicle into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan. He then opened fire on congregants and set the building on fire.

At least four people have died and eight others were injured, one of them in critical condition. Authorities were still combing through debris last night to find additional bodies; up to seven people are possibly still unaccounted for at this writing.

The shooter, armed with what appeared to be an assault rifle, exchanged gunfire with officers at the scene and was killed. The FBI, ATF, and federal officials are investigating.

The suspect who staged the attack has been confirmed to be a former Marine. He served from 2004 to 2008, including deployments to Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He earned several awards during his four years of service, including the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, the Iraq Campaign Medal, and the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has ordered US and Michigan flags at the State Capitol and public buildings across the state to be flown at half-mast in honor of the victims.

The “Gunfighter’s Code” of the Old West

This tragedy illustrates the fact that seemingly anyone in any setting can be a victim of deadly violence, and seemingly anyone from any background can be a perpetrator.

In some ways, our technologically advanced society is mirroring a world previous generations would have recognized.

In The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild, bestselling author Bryan Burrough describes what he calls the “Gunfighter’s Code” of the Old West, which was “all about defending one’s honor, emphasizing pride, courage, and the necessity never to back down from a fight and to avenge every insult, no matter how small.”

But violence was not confined to the Old West, according to Burrough:

In 1842, Abraham Lincoln, then a legislator in Illinois, reluctantly accepted a challenge from an opponent and, upon learning he was a skilled marksman, chose to fight with broadswords; bloodshed was avoided only when seconds talked the men out of it. It’s said the fifth president, James Monroe, once sought to duel the second, the prickly John Adams, until talked out of it by the fourth, James Madison.

And yet, generations beset with the threat of violence were also generations that repeatedly experienced transformational spiritual awakenings.

As I often note, the darker the room, the more powerful the light.

“The ‘Charlie Kirk effect’ is real”

An article by author Chip Kendall in Premiere Christianity is headlined, “The ‘Charlie Kirk effect’ is real. Thousands are coming to faith in Jesus.” He writes:

In the weeks since the shooting, something remarkable has been unfolding: thousands upon thousands of young people are not only exploring Christianity but actually turning up in churches, praying, and professing faith in Jesus Christ. For those of us who sometimes wonder if the gospel still works in a post-Christian, skeptical culture—here is our answer.

According to Kendall, the same is happening in the UK. For example, The Telegraph had an article claiming, “Charlie Kirk’s evangelical uprising is taking root in Britain.”

Then Kendall asks the question I want us to consider today:

Why are so many people coming to faith in the wake of tragedy? Partly, it’s because moments of crisis strip away our illusions of control. When someone so young and influential is gunned down, the fragility of life is laid bare. People are desperate for hope, for answers, for something solid in the chaos.

“When you pass through the waters”

I have often reflected on the fact that America has not seen a “great awakening” in more than 120 years.

Prior movements of the Spirit transformed the culture in dramatic ways. Each was preceded by desperation—immorality, decadence, crime, and threats of war. Each time, Americans turned to God for the help he alone could give. And God kept his promise: “You will seek and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).

I am praying today for those devastated by yet another horrific tragedy, asking God to give them his strength, help, and peace. And I am praying that the mounting hopelessness from so many tragedies in recent days would lead Americans to turn to the God of all hope.

The prophet asked in his grief, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). But he pointed to our only source of transforming hope in a fallen world: “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lᴏʀᴅ, whose trust is the Lᴏʀᴅ” (v. 7).

This is because our Lord hurts as we hurt, grieves as we grieve, and walks with us through all pain:

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lᴏʀᴅ your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior (Isaiah 43:2–3).

And one day, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

As Gilbert M. Beeken famously noted,

“Other men see only a hopeless end, but the Christian rejoices in an endless hope.”

Let us claim and share this hope today, to the glory of God.

Denison Forum

While President Trump’s speech garnered most of the attention at the UN General Assembly, a gathering on Tuesday with Arab and Muslim leaders could turn out to be the most consequential part of this week’s events. Trump even said as much, referring to the negotiation as “my most important meeting,” and a chance “to end something that should have probably never started.”

That something that shouldn’t have started is Israel’s war with Hamas, and the President’s assessment appears to have a better chance of being accurate now than at any point in the conflict’s nearly two years of violence and death.

While most ceasefire negotiations to this point have relied on both Israel and Hamas finding a middle ground that was considered mutually beneficial to both parties, Trump’s current proposal appears to essentially leave Hamas out of the equation. Instead, on Tuesday, he met with leaders from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan.

Notably absent from that list were Hamas, Iran, and Israel, though Trump is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday. Israel is, however, generally aware of what Trump proposed. And, as one Israeli official described, they understand that “There will be bitter pills we’ll have to swallow.”

Specific details of the President’s twenty-one-point plan are, as of this writing, largely unknown. Yet, as Axios reports, some of the general principles are:

• The release of all remaining hostages.
• A permanent ceasefire.
• Gradual Israeli withdrawal from all of the Gaza Strip.
• A post-war plan that includes a governing mechanism in Gaza without Hamas.
• A security force that would include Palestinians but also soldiers from Arab and Muslim countries.
• Funding from Arab and Muslim countries for the new administration in Gaza and for reconstruction of the enclave.
• Some involvement of the Palestinian Authority

In return for their support, Axios writes that Arab leaders will reportedly require that:

• Israel will not annex parts of the West Bank or Gaza.
• Israel will not occupy parts of Gaza.
• Israel will not build settlements in Gaza.
• Israel will stop undermining the status quo at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
• Humanitarian aid to Gaza will immediately increase.

(These lists are quoted directly from Axios’s article.)

Essentially, Muslim nations want Israel out of Gaza and appear more willing than at any point in the last two years to take on the necessary levels of responsibility to ensure Israel can do so safely. But while all of that sounds good, a number of questions remain that could determine the feasibility of Trump’s proposal. And chief among them is whether Gaza would remain part of Israel or become an independent Palestinian nation.

Will Israel accept a two-state solution?

Calls for Israel to accept a two-state solution have been around for decades, but both their frequency and intensity have increased in recent weeks. At the General Assembly, France, the UK, and several other Western powers joined the chorus.

President Trump has, to this point, staunchly opposed the idea, arguing that such a move would be a “reward for Hamas.” The majority of Israelis are similarly against the proposal. However, it’s difficult to see other Muslim nations—and particularly those in the Middle East—accepting so much risk and responsibility unless they were doing so on behalf of an independent Palestine.

Moreover, Trump was unyielding in his belief that Hamas cannot be rewarded for what happened on October 7, but it’s less clear if he would feel the same about a situation where Hamas was no longer in charge. And while accepting a two-state solution would indeed be a “bitter pill,” there are also sound arguments that it could advance the security and prosperity of Israel.

As Faisal J. Abbas describes:

A Palestinian state would give Israel a partner responsible for its own territory, its own governance, and its own security. This means that any terrorist activity originating from Palestinian soil becomes the responsibility of the new government, which will be held accountable under international law.

But while that sounds reasonable, it rests on the assumption that a fledgling Palestine would be capable of enforcing that level of accountability rather than falling back under the control of Hamas or another terrorist influence. And that’s where the nations with whom Trump met on Tuesday—many of whom were part of the first major foreign trip of his current term—would need to step in.

Why Israel needs help

The truth is that Israel will never be able to do what is necessary to restore peace in Gaza without incurring the anger and wrath—at least publicly—of the Muslim world. Muslims everywhere are bound by the concept of Ummah, which holds that all Muslims are part of a collective community. This principle is largely where they get the idea that an attack on Muslims in one area is an attack on Islam as a whole.

As such, when Israel’s attacks on Hamas lead to the death of civilians, the Islamic world is required to condemn them. Yet, if a Muslim nation were charged with putting an end to Hamas and freeing the remaining hostages, that would not violate the principle in the same way as when Israel or a Western nation attempts to do so.

However, Israel’s problem is that they’ve seen little in the Palestinian Authority—the group that runs the West Bank and would be the most likely candidates to lead in a post-war Gaza—to make them believe they would be up to the challenge. Outside help will be needed, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the other nations with whom Trump met appear willing to give it.

While there are a number of details that still need to be worked out, if Israel is willing to receive that help—and to do so on terms those nations would find acceptable—it’s possible that this war could end before the second anniversary of the attacks that started it back on October 7, 2023.

And there is an important lesson in that reality that we would all do well to remember today.

Choosing God’s will over your own

One of the most difficult aspects of living out our faith well is laying down our rights when doing so is required to advance God’s kingdom. Israel has every right to defend its borders and continue the war in Gaza until each hostage is returned and Hamas is no longer a threat. But the reality is that continuing to pursue that right will make it more difficult to achieve their desired ends.

In the same way, there are times when pursuing our right to defend our reputation, our honor, or to seek retribution for a wrong done to us will make it much more difficult to maintain our witness and fulfill the role God has called us to play in advancing his kingdom. Jesus spoke to this reality in the Sermon on the Mount when he called us to turn the other cheek, give up your cloak, and go the extra mile (Matthew 5:43–48).

At no point in that teaching does Jesus claim that we do not have the right to pursue retribution. He just calls us to give up that right in order to prioritize our witness instead.

I think he knew that would be hard for us, though, which is perhaps why he followed up that lesson by teaching on the need to love our enemies and the call to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:43–48).

You see, Jesus isn’t asking us to do anything more than what he’s already done for us. On the cross, he had every right to command angels to come and rescue him. He chose not to, though, because pursuing God’s purposes was more important.

I don’t know how the situation in Gaza will end or whether Israel will be willing to make the necessary concessions to receive help from its neighbors in bringing about that end. I have more hope that they will than I’ve had for quite some time, but, at least for now, it’s difficult to do more than hope.

However, I do know that there will be times when Christ calls us to concede our rights in order to prioritize his purpose, and making the right choice in those moments will be far easier to do if we’ve already decided that God’s will is more important than our own.

Will you make that choice today?

Quote of the day:

“The weakness of the Church lies not in the lack of Christian arguments but in the lack of Christian lives.” —William Barclay

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Denison Forum

“When you finally start moving up into the air, I recommend that you don’t hold onto anything. I definitely don’t recommend looking down. . . . Just keep calm, take a deep breath, slowly release it, and keep your face looking upward.” This is how one person advised her fellow Christians to experience the rapture when it came two days ago.

Except it didn’t.

Or if it did, you and I (and everyone else, so far as I can tell) were left behind. This despite the fact that so many expected the rapture to come on September 23 that the New York Times, Newsweek, and numerous other outlets covered the story.

The date appears to have originated with a person named Joshua Mhlakela in South Africa. He said in a YouTube video that he is not a pastor, though news reports widely described him as such. In his video, he reported that Jesus came to him in a dream in 2018 and told him, “On the 23^rd and the 24^th of September 2025, I will come to take my church.”

His prediction aligned with this year’s observance of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Evangelical TikTok users picked up Mhlakela’s assertion, some pointing to signs in Revelation 12 and various astrological alignments involving the constellations Virgo and Leo to claim that his prophecy was being fulfilled.

On social media, some said they had given away their belongings and quit their jobs. Others satirically celebrated the coming lower rents or asked believers to hand over their money or keys to their homes.

The latter response points to my point today.

“An hour you do not expect”

The “rapture” is a belief held by some that Jesus will take believers out of the world prior to a period of “great tribulation” on Earth. The word does not appear in the Bible, which is not definitive (the word Trinity is not in Scripture, either), but the idea is based on passages such as 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 and 1 Corinthians 15:51–52. Some interpret Jesus’ invitation to John, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this” (Revelation 4:1), to refer to this event.

This is a complex subject, one I have discussed in detail in books and articles over the years. (You can go here and here for examples.) My purpose today is not to explore eschatology (the doctrine of last things) but to focus on the cultural implications of the current story.

Jesus clearly said about his return, “Concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matthew 24:36). In fact, those who claim to be able to predict the date must be wrong by definition, for our Lord added, “the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (v. 44). “You do not expect” could be translated from the Greek, “all of you without exceptions are not expecting it when it occurs.”

Nonetheless, some across history have been undeterred in claiming to know more than Jesus said he knew about the timing of his return. Such predictions have been more frequent since 1948, the year Israel became a nation again, since many interpretive schemes consider this event to be pivotal to end times sequencing.

However, one predated it by more than a century: the “Great Disappointment” occurred when a Baptist preacher named William Miller predicted that Christ would return on October 22, 1844. Tens of thousands of his followers (known as Millerites) sold their possessions in preparation; when nothing happened, widespread disillusionment followed.

The better-known these failed predictions, the more ridicule they generated for the predictors—and the larger Christian community.

Billy Graham’s greatest fear

Such ridicule is unfortunately understandable. When so-called financial experts make stock market predictions that turn out to be inaccurate, we question their competence for their next prediction. When meteorologists get the weather wrong, we look askance at meteorology itself.

This tendency is especially unsurprising with regard to evangelical Christianity. Already widely considered outdated, irrelevant, and even dangerous, our truth claims are dismissed as esoteric and speculative, especially when they have to do with “unscientific” issues such as the end times.

All this to say, if there is any subject Christians should be especially careful to avoid in our post-Christian culture, it is end times speculation. Not only because Jesus promised we would be wrong, but because our wrong predictions will add fodder for those already predisposed to reject our Lord.

Billy Graham once described to the interviewer David Frost his greatest fear: “That I’ll do something or say something that will bring some disrepute to the gospel of Christ before I go.” He added, “I want the Lord to remove me before I say something or do something that would embarrass God.”

If we want to impact our culture for Christ, we must make Dr. Graham’s greatest fear ours as well.

Visiting Armageddon

Ironically, a way to live that draws people to Christ is to focus on the end times, but not in the way we’ve been discussing.

I was privileged to lead more than thirty study tours to Israel over the years. Each time, we made our way to the heights of Megiddo, an ancient fortress overlooking the vast valley below. In Hebrew, this area is known as Har Megiddo (the “mount of Megiddo”). Transliterated into English, it becomes “Armageddon.”

The site is mentioned just once in Scripture: at the end of history, the enemies of the Lord are described as assembling “at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon” (Revelation 16:16). Each time I led a tour here, we discussed this verse and the various end-times scenarios that center around it.

Then I told the group, “The only fact about the future about which I am absolutely certain is this: We are one day closer to eternity than ever before.”

Jesus could return today. Or you could step through death into his presence today (John 14:3). What it takes to be ready is also what it takes to live in ways that most glorify our Lord and attract others to him.

If you knew that day were tomorrow, what would you change today?

Quote for the day:

“Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.” —Theophrastus (372–287 BC)

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Denison Forum

I watched President Donald Trump’s hour-long speech at the United Nations yesterday. Since the UN was founded eighty years ago, every US president has addressed the General Assembly.

However, there is a scenario by which the event could have made history for cataclysmic reasons.

The Secret Service announced before the president’s address that the agency had disrupted a sprawling telecommunications network in the New York tri-state area. Investigators say this network could have disrupted telecom systems and threatened the UN meetings this week.

The servers were so powerful that they could have disabled cell phone towers and blocked emergency communications like EMS and police dispatch. If an attack had been staged on the president and the UN gathering, a network outage could have prevented security forces from responding.

There was a time when we would perhaps not have thought to connect the president’s UN speech and the Secret Service’s discovery. But after Charlie Kirk’s murder and two assassination attempts on the president, the second of which resulted in a conviction yesterday, this is not that time.

The good news is that the bad news of our day is fertile ground for the best news of all.

A perceptive explanation of our times

Cultural commentator Geoff Shullenberger notes that there was a time when the lone assassin dominated political violence. For example, the years between 1963 and the early 1980s witnessed the murders of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the attempted assassinations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.

Then came a shift toward mass shootings. Shullenberger theorizes that this aligned with “the shifting landscape of power” from sovereign individuals to groups and movements, focusing on schools and other public venues. In addition, the fragmentation of media could have motivated shooters to commit even more spectacular crimes so as to gain the attention they craved.

However, political assassins are now back, recently attacking leaders from both political parties, but mass shootings have not lessened. Within an hour of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, for example, a shooter in Colorado injured two classmates before taking his own life.

As Shullenberger notes, the fact that both kinds of killings are now making headlines is a “particularly grim indication” of our times.

Three open doors for the gospel

However, three factors contributing to these “grim” times are each an open door to the good news of God’s grace. The gospel offers:

One: Hope that counters despair.

According to New York Times journalist Jia Lynn Yang, “The most dangerous element in our society may well be hopelessness.” Her research shows the many ways individual hopelessness spurs violent actions. However, “the God of hope” is able to “fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope” (Romans 15:13). When we know that the all-powerful God of the universe is our Father and loves each of us as if there were only one of us, we find hope even in the hardest places and days.

Two: Community that bridges ideology.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank reports that relationships across ideological divides are proven to counter isolation and the political polarization it produces. Early Christians could have told us so. Gathered across fifteen different languages and cultures (Acts 2:8–11), they found unity in Christ and met the needs of others so sacrificially that “the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (v. 47).

Three: Courage that redeems persecution.

Theologian Bradley G. Green writes in First Things that the critical theorist Herbert Marcuse convinced generations of “progressives” that they must repress the speech and acts of those with whom they disagree. As Dr. Green notes, such “repressive tolerance” forms the backdrop for the silencing and canceling of conservative thought on university campuses and violence against conservative leaders. But as I noted yesterday, Jesus empowers his followers to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). By “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), we become the change we wish to see.

Misquoting St. Francis

A fourth factor is foundational to the other three and especially opens the door to the gospel.

The Lord described Israel to Ezekiel this way: “Son of man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house, who have eyes to see, but see not, who have ears to hear, but hear not, for they are a rebellious house” (Ezekiel 12:2). When we rebel against God’s word and will, we lose the ability to discern God’s word and will, which heightens our need for God’s word and will.

If we break our compass, we can no longer find our way and need the compass even more. If we throw away our flashlight, we sit in the darkness and can no longer find it.

This is why our lost culture so desperately needs Christians to boldly declare the essential truths of the gospel. To be blunt: Gone is the day when most non-Christians will attend church services, and gone is the day in many denominations when, if they did, they would actually hear the gospel presented.

I have often heard St. Francis of Assisi quoted: “Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” However, Francis never said these words. And he was famous for preaching the gospel in words; according to his first biographer, he sometimes preached “in up to five villages a day.”

What saved people owe lost people

Every lost person needs the salvation only Jesus can provide. As the apostles said of our Savior, “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).

However, a lost person cannot be saved without understanding that they are lost, but if they repent of their sins and confess them to Jesus, he will forgive them and give them eternal life as the child of God. These facts cannot be intuited from nature or “spiritual” activities. They must be understood, accepted, and acted upon.

Our lives are critical to our message, of course. We cannot expect people to believe that Jesus will change them if he does not obviously change us. But our lives are not enough. Pastor and missions leader David Platt is right:

“Every saved person this side of heaven owes the gospel to every lost person this side of hell.”

How will you discharge your debt with the lost people you know today?

Quote for the day:

“Jesus did not come into the world to make bad men good. He came into the world to make dead men live.” —Leonard Ravenhill

Our latest website resources:

• How to discern God’s will, manifesting vs. biblical faith, the reality of hell, and God’s unconditional love
• Is YoungHoon Kim the “world’s smartest man” and a Christian? An encouragement to walk in the truth regardless of the cost
• Why the alleged assassin killed Charlie Kirk: Trusting God to use great evil for greater good
• Did God spare Donald Trump but not Charlie Kirk?
• Cultural shockwave of Charlie Kirk’s death, America divided, free speech debate, viral revival, Robert Redford & Larry Ellison

Denison Forum

Jimmy Kimmel Live! will return to the air tonight. The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC, said in a statement, “Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive.”

The statement added, “We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.” (For more on the story, see Dr. Ryan Denison’s Daily Article, “Jimmy Kimmel suspended for comments on Charlie Kirk’s killer.”)

The controversy over Kimmel’s suspension illustrates the partisan fault lines dividing our country: According to a new poll, Democrats are far more likely to watch late-night talk shows than Republicans or Independents. This explains why late-night talk show hosts are negative toward President Trump and Republicans while sympathetic toward Democratic Party leaders—they are “playing to their audience.” However, confining themselves to only one part of the electorate also defines their audience, further reinforcing their bias and that of those who watch them.

By contrast, Johnny Carson, widely known as the “King of Late Night,” explained many years ago that he was “not there” to deal with political issues. “Once you start that, you start to get that self-important feeling” and try to sway people, he said, adding, “I don’t think you should as an entertainer.” Jay Leno made the same point recently.

However, both were reflecting times that were not nearly so bitterly and deeply divided. As Chris Matthews illustrates in his fascinating book, Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked, Republican President Ronald Reagan and Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill disagreed on many issues but found ways to work together. Matthews writes: “Reagan was fond of Tip and completely believed that Tip wanted to help the little people. He just disagreed about how to do it.”

That was then, this is now. The divisiveness of our society has risen to a level that fundamentally threatens the future of our democratic experiment.

And the solution lies in the very message that many people blame for the problem.

The challenge of “affective polarization”

Cultural commentator Fareed Zakaria remembers a time when political debates involved two issues: economics (how much to tax and spend) and the Soviet threat (how best to counter it). On both issues, compromise was possible.

However, many of today’s issues are moral in nature and thus far more deeply held. While there once were pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans, for example, Zakaria writes that the parties have now “sorted themselves into ideologically consistent groups,” so “the divides get weaponized” and “each party sees the other as not just misguided but evil.”

New York Times columnist Ezra Klein explains how this happened: over the past fifty years, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. These “merged identities” have come to define who we are, not just what we believe. We therefore self-select into disparate cultures with little or no overlap or interchange.

The result is “affective polarization,” which is how scholars describe a society such as ours in which the two sides simply do not like members of the other party. How do we make a democratic republic work in the midst of such bitterness?

Three biblical facts

Many religious skeptics consider religion to be at the root of our divisions. They’re right that our most divisive issues are religious at their core, from abortion to same-sex marriage to euthanasia. They’re also right in noting that religious platforms are often used to advance political agendas and politicians today.

However, our faith embraces not just a worldview that critics consider divisive, but the way its followers can embrace such critics. Consider three biblical facts.

First, the Bible views all people, whatever their beliefs, as “image bearers” of the Divine (Genesis 1:27).

God loves us despite ourselves: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Now our Savior commands us to love as we are loved (John 13:34–35). As a result, Christians are compelled to seek common ground with our opponents, to wish their best even at the cost of our own, to forgive as our Father has forgiven us and to pay forward the grace we have received by faith.

Second, the God who commands us to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43) also empowers us to do what he commands.

His Spirit indwelling his people manifests the “fruit” of “love” in and through all who submit to him (Galatians 5:22; Ephesians 5:18). Erika Kirk’s decision to forgive her husband’s assassin is just one example of such love at work. No other religion or worldview empowers its followers from within to be the change they wish to see. But Jesus does.

Third, our commitment to love those who do not love us points the essential way forward for our society.

Cultural commentator Paul Kingsnorth describes our cultural moment: “Cut loose in the postmodern present, with no center, no truth, and no direction, we have not become independent-minded, responsible, democratic citizens in a human republic. We have become slaves to the power of money, and worshippers of the self.” We therefore have no hope for a better future in ourselves. But we have abundant hope in the transforming grace of Christ (cf. 1 Peter 1:3; Romans 5:5).

We are back where we began

In a sense, Americans are where America started. As the famed historian Joseph Ellis explains, colonial Americans were united in their opposition to Great Britain but were otherwise thirteen very disparate and divided colonies. Consequently, George Washington observed that their hope for a collective future lay not in themselves. Rather, he declared,

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

As historians Peter A. Lillback and Jerry Newcombe compellingly demonstrate, the “religion and morality” our first president embraced and endorsed was the Christian faith.

In a consensual democracy, citizens rule each other. But we cannot rule others if we cannot rule ourselves. And as James Madison warned, “Whenever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.”

There is only one Power in the universe capable of remaking fallen people, of giving sinners a “new heart” and a “new spirit” (Ezekiel 36:26) as children of God who manifest his character to the world (John 1:12; Romans 8:29). Submitting to this Power and demonstrating this transforming love is the greatest, most essential gift we can give our divided nation.

Do you agree?

Quote for the day:

“The salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epics and tragedies in the world” —C. S. Lewis

Our latest website resources:

• Why the alleged assassin killed Charlie Kirk: Trusting God to use great evil for greater good
• Check your fears
• Did God spare Donald Trump but not Charlie Kirk?
• Cultural shockwave of Charlie Kirk’s death, America divided, free speech debate, viral revival, Robert Redford & Larry Ellison
• How to fight against the Age of Outrage

Denison Forum

In all my life, I have never seen so many people afraid of so many things.

War, poverty, disease, crime, shortages, violence, and suffering are in news reports on any channel, through the internet, and even intruding upon “social” accounts.

I don’t discount fears. They are real, and they have a way of adding up.

Is it any wonder that Jesus continued to say “fear not” in his time with the disciples?

Do you fear man or God?

We just fear so many things and so often. But, in Luke 12, Jesus goes to the core of fear and divides it into two disparate categories: those who fear man and those who fear God.

He starts with a warning about the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is when we create a public impression to hide our real motives. It’s as though we wear a mask and play-act at who we really are because we are afraid of people. Being a fake is no laughing matter to God, and, as a pastor, I find it especially poignant that Jesus is exposing religious leaders as fakes.

Notice that Jesus doesn’t give this warning to the multitude who are crowding on top of one another to get to him but to the twelve because they needed it. Jesus knew even they could fall to hypocrisy, and Jesus loved them enough to say the hard truth to them. They need to beware, to watch out, because that small bit of spiritual leaven is dangerous.

And what a picture of hypocrisy Jesus gave when he called it leaven. You and I know the implications: something that can start small and grow, something that works its way through the entirety of where it is placed, and something that is hard, if not impossible, to remove.

Doesn’t that describe fear well too?

Hypocrisy is born of the fear of man and he said it was the leaven of the Pharisees as it had filled their lives.

What if Jesus called you a hypocrite?

Think about all the things you might be afraid of and ask yourself this: “How afraid would I be if Jesus called me a hypocrite”?

Your answer determines which column you fit in.

The Fear of Man column isn’t really afraid of his opinion.

But if you line up under the Fear of God column, these are chilling words.

It also shows just how far away from God religious people can be. Didn’t they know they were pretending to be someone they were not?

And they had to be shocked at how Jesus was able to see through their pretense, but there is no indication that they ever considered listening to him and making a change. They fit into the description of verse 4: they feared man, not God.

Can that be true today?

Are there religious people, even those serving in ministry, who fear men more than God?

If Jesus warned the disciples, it seems that answer is yes.

When my focus changed

The church I serve started as a plant. During those early days when money was tight and the future uncertain, a few people banded together to try to force a change in the direction of our mission.

Eventually, they left. As you know, they seldom leave silently.

I was experiencing my first real fear of man as a pastor and it must have shown. One of our early leaders pulled me aside and told me he was praying I wasn’t “snakebit.” He had grown up in the country, where a snake bite could alter your behavior and make you live with fear of the next snake. He reminded me that I was here to serve God and he loved me and believed in me.

In those few words, I realized my focus had changed and I never saw it coming.

I was looking at and fearing man so much I had not even given a glance toward the God who called me. I have come to believe that it’s a constant struggle for most pastors. So let me encourage you that if you feel that way, you are not the first, and you don’t have to live with that fear.

Even the great prophet Jeremiah was afraid and needed straight talk about fearing man and he got it! “Get up and dress and go out and tell them whatever I tell you to say. Don’t be afraid of them, or else I will make a fool of you in front of them” (Jeremiah 1:17 TLB).

Then, just like the heavenly Father that God is, he seems to pull Jeremiah close in verse 19 and says,  “‘They will try, but they will fail. For I am with you,’ says the Lord. ‘I will deliver you.’”

It’s like Oswald  Chambers said, “The remarkable thing about God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.”

I do not want to fear everything else. I want to fear God.

The benefits of fearing God

As ministers, we have already made the big decision to follow Jesus in a life of ministry, but sometimes we need to be reminded of some of the benefits of fearing God:

• I have a singular focus on God.
• I don’t have to fear man.
• I accept the blessing of personal conviction rather than run from it. God is drawing me to be close to him.
• I am in a relationship with the only One who knows me completely and still loves me.
• I don’t labor alone but with him.
• I don’t know what is next, but God does.
• I am part of something eternally significant.
• I can pray with confidence.
• I am on the winning side. We’ve read the Bible, and we know how this ends.

I’ll end with the testimony of David: “I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed” (Psalm 34:4–5).

Denison Forum

Jimmy Kimmel, host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC, was suspended indefinitely in the wake of falsely characterizing Charlie Kirk’s killer as a member of “The MAGA Gang.” Kimmel made the comments around two minutes into his monologue on Monday’s show as part of a larger condemnation of President Trump and his response to Kirk’s death.

To be honest, after listening to what he said, the line was neither funny nor factual, but I probably wouldn’t have given it a second thought except for the firestorm that followed.

You see, Kimmel had the poor judgment to make that statement at a time when both the Trump administration and conservatives across the country were already on edge over the manner in which many—though far from most—of those on the left responded to the shooting. As such, when Kimmel declared that Tyler Robinson—the suspect charged with Kirk’s murder—was a member of the MAGA movement, he became an easy target for the right’s anger.

The latest reports are that Kimmel planned to address the controversy on Wednesday’s show but was not going to apologize. Instead, he was intent on “defending what he said [as] being grossly mischaracterized by a certain group of people.” Given that 66 of ABC’s roughly 200 affiliate stations were not planning to air the episode, Disney decided to take the decision out of their hands.

What does the First Amendment protect?

Many of those who condemned Kimmel’s suspension have characterized it as an assault on his freedom of speech. However, this assessment demonstrates an important misunderstanding of what the Constitution actually protects.

The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The Supreme Court later expanded that protection to include all levels of government, from the federal to the state and local as well.

But while every aspect of the First Amendment is important, the key part for our present discussion is that it specifies that the government cannot punish the exercise of free speech. It says nothing, however, about employers choosing to do so.

We’ll discuss this aspect of the controversy and the ways it’s of particular relevance to Christians in a bit, but understanding that ABC and its affiliates had every right to take Kimmel off the air for what he said is essential context to this story. And if they were the only ones to influence that decision, the story would end there. However, that was not the case.

Why was Kimmel canceled? 

On Wednesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said of Kimmel’s comments, “Frankly, when you see stuff like this—I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way . . . I think that it’s really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast and Disney and say, ‘Listen, we are going to pre-empt, we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out.’”

A few hours later, two of ABC’s largest affiliates did just that.

Nexstar, which owns roughly 10 percent of ABC’s stations across the country, called Kimmel’s statements “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse.” They went on to add that they “do not believe they reflect the spectrum of opinions, views, or values of the local communities in which we are located.”

Sinclair, the largest ABC affiliate group in the country, echoed those thoughts and also stated that it would no longer air Kimmel’s show. Instead, they’ve decided to televise reruns with the exception of this weekend, when they will use that timeslot to run a special program in remembrance of Charlie Kirk.

While it’s possible that both affiliates came to that decision on their own, the timing in relation to Carr’s comments is difficult to overlook. Moreover, Nexstar is currently in the process of merging with Tegna—another broadcast company—in a move that is expected to generate roughly $300 million per year in cost savings, but needs Carr’s approval at the FCC for the deal to go through.

As the Free Press described, “This is what’s known as jawboning—when state actors use threats to inappropriately compel private action.” They went on to warn, “For the MAGA crowd who might like what they’re seeing from Carr: Remember that Democrats will wield this power again. And when they do, they will play by the new rules that Carr and the Trump administration just established.”

The degree to which these rules are truly new in the wake of the controversies in 2020 and 2021 is debatable. But, regardless of where you stand politically, the government openly wielding this kind of influence should concern all of us.

What’s at stake?

As Christians, we should assume that there will be times when our beliefs come into conflict with the popular norms of the culture around us. After all, Jesus promised that it would be that way, and we have nearly two thousand years’ worth of examples that prove he was right (John 15:18–25).

Now, that doesn’t mean that we will always face opposition when we stand up for biblical truth, but we shouldn’t be surprised when some would prefer that we fall in line rather than stand apart on the foundation of God’s word. When that happens, I would much rather live in a place where the government was content to leave me alone, even if it means they have to do the same for people who stand on beliefs with which I strongly disagree.

Even then, though, it’s important to remember that the First Amendment only shields us from government intervention. Your job, your coworkers, or the myriad strangers and keyboard warriors online will always be free to disagree and to seek opportunities to punish you for those beliefs. And when that happens, we’ll have to choose whether we want to keep God’s blessings or pursue what the world has to offer.

Scripture is clear about what that choice should be, but the Lord has left it up to us to decide. However, it’s crucial that we go into that decision with a clear view of what’s at stake.

Choose what’s helpful

As Christians, we are no more entitled to God’s blessings than Jimmy Kimmel is to a late-night talk show. So, when our words and actions do not reflect well on our witness, we shouldn’t be surprised when those sins come with real consequences. While they won’t get us fired in the sense of losing our salvation, they can relegate us to the sidelines of God’s kingdom work.

So, which will you choose the next time you’re faced with the decision of pursuing God’s blessings or the world’s? It’s easy to give the right answer now, but if you haven’t fully wrestled with what that decision may cost you, then it will be far more difficult to make the right choice when it counts.

With that reality in mind, let’s finish for today by taking some time to ask the Holy Spirit to help us understand the degree to which we are willing to choose Christ when that decision proves costly. Are there any areas of your life where you’ve sacrificed God’s blessings in favor of the world’s? And when you think, type, or post about people who think differently than you do, how well do your words align with your faith?

Ultimately, you have every right to post what you want on social media. But, as the apostle Paul warned, “‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up” (1 Corinthians 10:23).

Let’s choose what’s helpful to God’s kingdom today.

Quote of the day:

“Fighting who we think is wrong is often confused with doing what’s right. Those two things are not always the same.”—Justin Giboney

Our latest website resources:

• Did God spare Donald Trump but not Charlie Kirk?
• Cultural shockwave of Charlie Kirk’s death, America divided, free speech debate, viral revival, Robert Redford & Larry Ellison | CB Ep. 37
• How to fight against the Age of Outrage
• How can understanding the mind-body-spirit connection improve mental health struggles?
• “Dancing with the Stars” and the Christian journey

Denison Forum

On religious apps, tens of millions of people are confessing to spiritual chatbots their secrets: their petty vanities and deepest worries, gluttonous urges and darkest impulses. Trained on religious texts, the bots are like on-call priests, imams, or rabbis, offering comfort and direction at any time. On some platforms, they even purport to channel God.

Jackson notes that a Christian app called Bible Chat has more than thirty million downloads. Hallow, a Catholic app, beat Netflix, Instagram, and TikTok for the number one spot in the app store at one point last year. Some see these apps as ways into faith, but others warn that they “tell us what we want to hear” rather than providing the accountability only a person and community can foster.

Explaining our quest for spiritual connection

At the very least, the popularity of spiritual chatbots reveals the underlying and undying popularity of spirituality itself. In a sense, this should be unsurprising even in our highly secularized culture.

The secularization thesis, popular in academic circles, claims that as societies progress, religion loses its authority in social life and governance. America has certainly seen such a religious decline in recent decades, due in large part to clergy abuse crises, religious engagement in partisan politics, and divisive cultural issues.

But religion and spirituality are not the same thing. The Bible teaches that we are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27) and that “God is spirit” (John 4:24). It therefore stands to reason that humans are “spirit” as well and that our quest for spiritual connection beyond ourselves is both intrinsic and vital to our flourishing.

The key, of course, is to connect with the best source of such flourishing.

What Robert Redford and Charlie Kirk had in common

Robert Redford died yesterday at the age of eighty-nine. As the New York Times notes, the famed actor and director used his platform to advance independent filmmaking and environmental causes. His movies were an end to larger purposes in his life.

At the other end of the political spectrum, Charlie Kirk had a larger purpose than most understood as well. A revealing profile by Atlantic journalist Isaac Stanley-Becker reports that the conservative influencer saw politics as a necessary means to the cultural transformation he sought to catalyze.

He founded Turning Point USA to engage young people in conservative politics, but he also started TPUSA Faith to advance ideas about the Christian foundations of the US. In recent months, he launched Turning Point Academy to form Christian schools “where all areas of study are rooted in God’s truth.” He told Stanley-Becker that he intended to be in the “education space” for the rest of his life.

Kirk’s foundational belief was that our freedoms come not from man or manmade law but from God. And he was convinced that “once people start to drink from the stream of liberty, they will want to know its source.”

Watching Erika Kirk speak to the nation

St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) was born on this day in Germany. In 1141, she began experiencing a series of visions she described as a “flow of light” that “kindled her whole heart, not burning but warming.” Over time, she became convinced that she was called by God to share these visions with the world.

She wrote three volumes on theology and two on natural medicine, composed music that is still performed today, and preached many sermons denouncing clerical corruption and calling for reform. Her humility, intellect, and holiness attracted many to her.

I especially appreciate this prayer by St. Hildegard:

Holy Spirit, the life that gives life: You are the cause of all movement. You are the breath of all creatures. You are the salve that purifies our souls. You are the ointment that heals our wounds. You are the fire that warms our hearts. You are the light that guides our feet. Let all the world praise you.

When we make it our purpose to know Christ in the power of his Spirit, we are then empowered by the Spirit to make Christ known. And this purpose gives purpose to everything we do. The places we live, work, and go to school become our mission fields; our vocations become platforms for ministry; our gifts, abilities, education, experiences, and even our challenges become tools for the Spirit’s use.

When we ask of every moment, “How can I know Christ in this moment and then make him known?”, every moment becomes infused with meaning. Times of suffering become opportunities to know Christ more deeply as we trust him more deeply and experience his deeper answers to our prayers and needs. And they become opportunities for making him known more powerfully as others see the relevance and power of our faith.

Anyone who watched Erika Kirk speak to the nation two days after her husband was assassinated saw both facts on display. Her faith was tangibly real, and her courage glorified her Lord. If I had not been a Christian before seeing her message, I would have wanted what she has.

“Go for the purposes of God”

May I ask you what purpose gives meaning to your life today?

In his New York Times bestseller The Purpose-Driven Life, Rick Warren asserts, “The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without purpose.” The key to knowing your purpose is knowing the God who made you, since, as Rick notes, “You were born by his purpose and for his purpose.”

Conversely, as Rick reminds us, “You cannot fulfill God’s purposes in your life while focusing on your own plans.” The good news is that when we make God’s purpose our purpose, he will direct our plans to this end (cf. Proverbs 3:5–6). The evangelist Reinhard Bonnke was right:

“Go for the purposes of God, and the means to fulfill them will follow.”

So, will you “go for the purposes of God” today? Will you seek to know Christ and make him known, or will you settle for a lesser purpose for your life?

All of eternity is in your choice.

Quote for the day:

“You were made by God and for God, and until you understand that, life will never make sense.” —Rick Warren

Our latest website resources:

• “Dancing with the Stars” and the Christian journey: The art of transformation
• How should Christians respond to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and rising violence in our culture?
• A quick word on the death of Charlie Kirk, Pentagon’s rebrand, US hope in decline, viral sports fails, US Open, NFL & Emmys weekend
• Encouraging stories of faith in sports
• Can Bonton Farms show us a better way to restore hope to struggling communities?

Denison Forum

To paraphrase Shakespeare, there are times when you need to “fight fire with fire.”

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, refusing to respond would only have encouraged more attacks on American soldiers. Russia’s recent drone incursions into NATO countries Poland and now Romania are raising fears of war; Poland’s prime minister said his country is “the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two.” Ignoring such aggression is likely to encourage further aggression.

However, there are other times when “fighting fire with fire” only accelerates the conflagration. For evangelical Christians in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, this is one of those times.

“If I had to use a single word to capture him”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La) told “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday, “I think this could be a turning point for our country.” He urged leaders to “turn down the rhetoric” amid a divisive political climate, saying lawmakers should stop treating policy disputes as an “existential threat to democracy or the Republic.”

“Calling people Nazis and fascists is not helpful,” Johnson said. “There are some deranged people in society, and when they see leaders using that kind of language so often now increasingly, it spurs them on to action. We have to recognize that reality and address it appropriately.” He added that he’s “heartened to know” that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle “are stepping up and saying that and addressing it.”

Charlie Kirk would agree. A commentator who knew him personally for many years wrote on the day he was killed: “If I had to use a single word to capture him, it would be gracious. We could disagree about anything—and we did—but he would, without fail, engage civilly and explain his point of view” (his emphasis). Others have described him in the same way.

I would like to respond by simply encouraging our nation to follow Charlie Kirk’s example. But our divisive culture has gotten where we are for a reason, and it’s not from a lack of examples to the contrary.

“How the West lost its soul”

Paul Kingsnorth is an Oxford graduate, novelist, poet, and cultural commentator who has been called “England’s greatest living writer.” In a recent Free Press article, he explains “how the West lost its soul.” In essence:

We’ve abandoned the founding religious story that sustained us for 1,500 years. The result is the greatest age of abundance we’ve ever known—and a complete lack of meaning.

His brilliant essay is an excerpt from his upcoming book (which I’ve already ordered). I urge you to read the article in its entirety, but for our purposes I’ll focus on this assertion:

The modern experiment has been the act of dethroning both literal human sovereigns and the representatives of the sacred order, and replacing them with purely human, and purely abstract, notions.

He shows that the secularism of our culture, while rejecting the unifying moral compass of Christendom, has nothing with which to replace it. Thus we are left with a “post-truth” society in which “our politics have become religion,” as scholar Ryan Burge notes. Political parties have replaced denominations; stump speeches have the feel of a tent revival; donating to candidates is like tithing.

But unlike biblical religion, political religion is a zero-sum battle in which the other side is dangerous and our side must do whatever it takes to win. The future of the nation is at stake, we tell ourselves.

And we’re right, but for the wrong reasons.

“The better angels of our nature”

If Americans decide that those with whom we disagree are our enemies, our decision becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we treat people like enemies, we make them enemies. When they treat us in the same way, a vicious cycle of vengeance and retribution infects our politics and rhetoric and leads to violence and more violence.

We’ve been here before.

In the immortal conclusion to his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln pleaded with a nation on the brink of civil war:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break the bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

But the “better angels of our nature” did not arrive, and the nation descended into the most devastating war in our history.

This is because “our nature” is the cause of our division, not its solution. From Eden to today, our will to power has driven us to be our own gods at the expense of any who would usurp our throne.

This is why the gospel is still our only hope. The transforming power of God’s Spirit alone can cleanse our prideful hearts, replace our quest for power with a passion for service, and turn us into carriers of forgiveness and grace.

“Speaking the truth in love” is our only way forward (Ephesians 4:15). But to do either, much less both, we must be empowered by the One who is the truth and who is love.

A hard question

Jesus wants our love for others to be as unconditional as his love for us. He prayed for his Father’s forgiveness for those who crucified him (Luke 23:34); Stephen prayed for his executioners to be forgiven as well (Acts 7:60).

Here’s a hard question: Can you pray for God to forgive the alleged murderer of Charlie Kirk and save his soul?

I’m not suggesting that the shooter should not face legal consequences for his crime (cf. Romans 13:4). But I am asking if you can ask your Father to make him a child of God and “new creation” in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). This is as hard for me as I assume it is for you. But Jesus’ command to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” has no loopholes or exceptions (Matthew 5:44).

So, I am asking God to:

• Lead his people to submit our hearts to his Spirit and manifest his love as a result.
• Help us pray for the alleged killer and all others who foment and ferment hatred and animosity in our culture.
• Empower us to break the cycle of vengeance with the radical gift of forgiveness.
• Make us catalysts for a movement of grace that leads the West to find its “soul” again.

Will you join me today?

Quote for the day:

“To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you” —C. S. Lewis

Our latest website resources:

• “Dancing with the Stars” and the Christian journey: The art of transformation
• How should Christians respond to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and rising violence in our culture?
• A quick word on the death of Charlie Kirk, Pentagon’s rebrand, US hope in decline, viral sports fails, US Open, NFL & Emmys weekend
• Encouraging stories of faith in sports
• Can Bonton Farms show us a better way to restore hope to struggling communities?

Denison Forum

Turning Point USA has announced that a memorial service for Charlie Kirk has been scheduled for Sunday, September 21, in Glendale, Arizona. As an indication of their founder’s cultural significance, the service will take place at State Farm Stadium, the home of the NFL’s Cardinals, which can seat 73,000 people.

If last week’s assassination of the thirty-one-year-old conservative activist had been an isolated event, it would be tragic but of little relevance to the rest of us, like an earthquake in California or a wildfire in Texas. More than twenty-two thousand Americans are murdered each year, roughly sixty-three a day. Unless one of them is a family member or friend, that statistic evokes little visceral reaction from us.

But this is not that. The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy that affects every American and especially every American evangelical in ways that may not be obvious but are deeply significant.

“Cheers from the balcony”

An eyewitness to Kirk’s murder at Utah Valley University last Wednesday said, “When he was shot, there were cheers from the balcony” behind him. “It was horrific to be a part of,” she added. “There was just no human empathy.” At a vigil Wednesday night, a person said, “I would have killed him myself.” The assassin, he claimed, “did us a favor.”

In the hours after Kirk’s death, young people flooded the internet with rhetoric justifying his killing. Numerous others have been fired or placed on leave for their hateful responses to the murder.

Presumably, none of them knew Charlie Kirk personally. So far as we know, the alleged shooter did not, either.

Why, then, do they feel justified in causing and celebrating his death?

According to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, the accused gunman had recently become “more political.” The governor referenced a family conversation in which the alleged shooter said Charlie Kirk was “full of hate” and “spreading hate.” According to authorities, inscriptions on unfired gun casings recovered by investigators contained overt references to political and cultural issues.

So, from what we know, this man disagreed with Charlie Kirk’s ideas, so he killed him. Those who are celebrating Kirk’s death are doing so for the same reason.

Here are three reasons this is so dangerous for our nation and especially for evangelicals.

One: The “veto of violence”

Democratic senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut responded to Kirk’s murder: “The beating heart of a free society is the ability for citizens to engage in political life with no fear of violence.” New York Times columnist Ezra Klein agreed: “The foundation of a free society is the ability to participate in it without fear of violence. Political violence is always an attack against us all.”

His colleague David French added, “The assassin didn’t just take aim at a precious human being, created in the image of God, he took aim at the American experiment itself.” The Free Press editors noted: “Charlie Kirk was murdered while practicing the very act that gave birth to this nation—and the only thing that will ensure its survival.”

A commentator in the British press wrote that “Kirk was killed, doing what he lived for: demonstrating the crucial importance of free speech in a democracy.” Andrew Sullivan agreed that Kirk “did the hard work of democracy: talking to those who disagreed with him.”

If our nation loses its First Amendment right to free speech via the “veto of violence,” our democratic process is imperiled. As Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel warned, political violence has politicians as “its primary target,” with the result that “soon, none will be safe.” Cultural commentators are facing rising threats as well.

Presidential biographer Jon Meacham noted: “If this is open season on everybody who expresses an opinion, then the American covenant is broken.”

Two: “Words are violence”

This threat is amplified by the claim that “words are violence.” As Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff write in the Atlantic, this “dangerous” idea has been “percolating on college campuses these days.” The argument is that if words can cause stress, and prolonged stress can cause physical harm, certain types of speech can be a form of violence.

This psychological claim has been extrapolated into the belief that it is fair to respond violently to words with which we disagree. In a new survey, a record one in three college students now consider violence to be justifiable against a speaker uttering “hate.”

It’s therefore unsurprising that so many are lauding the violence against Charlie Kirk as an appropriate response to his “violent” message. Taken to its logical conclusion, this thinking robs our democracy of free speech protections and imperils the political process itself.

Three: “Oppress the oppressors”

A third cultural factor behind Charlie Kirk’s murder is the Critical Theory (CT) claim that all relationships are based on power struggles between “oppressors” and the “oppressed.” According to CT, the appropriate response by the oppressed is therefore to “oppress the oppressors.”

For example, if a speaker such as Charlie Kirk defends biblical morality with regard to homosexuality and abortion, they are “oppressing” homosexuals and women. And if words are violence, violence becomes an appropriate response to words.

You can see why this belief is threatening to all Americans but especially to evangelicals.

Unashamed and unafraid

How should we respond?

As my wife often says, lost people act like lost people. So did we before we met Jesus. We need to remember that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4). The more they reject our words and our faith, the more they need them.

In an increasingly secularized culture, such compassion will increasingly require courage. But this is nothing new for us. Paul was warned by the Holy Spirit that “imprisonment and afflictions” awaited him in Rome (Acts 20:23), but he went anyway to “testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (v. 24).

He told the Romans, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). Even when imprisoned in Rome and awaiting execution, he testified that “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7).

Unashamed and unafraid are commitments God’s people especially need in these days.

Will you pray for the courage to be both today?

Quote for the day:

“Let nothing frighten you. Who has God, lacks nothing. God alone is enough.” —St. Teresa of Avila

Our latest website resources:

• How should Christians respond to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and rising violence in our culture?
• A quick word on the death of Charlie Kirk, Pentagon’s rebrand, US hope in decline, viral sports fails, US Open, NFL & Emmys weekend
• Encouraging stories of faith in sports
• Can Bonton Farms show us a better way to restore hope to struggling communities?
• Having suicidal thoughts? Call or text 988

Denison Forum

The murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk continues to dominate headlines this morning.

The shooter who killed the thirty-one-year-old author and podcast host is still evading capture at this writing. A new video showing the suspect fleeing the scene was released last night by the FBI and Utah officials. Police also released new images of a “person of interest” wearing a black T-shirt with a US flag on it and Converse shoes as officials asked for the public’s help in finding the suspect.

President Trump said yesterday that he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously, the highest civilian honor in the US. Vice President J. D. Vance flew Kirk’s casket on Air Force Two from Utah to Arizona, where he lived with his family.

We know what Charlie Kirk’s death means for his family: his wife is now a widow, his three-year-old daughter has lost her father, and his one-year-old son will not remember him.

But what does it mean for the rest of us?

“The dark fruit of passionate conflict”

We do not yet know with certainty the motive behind this tragedy. However, investigators have found ammunition engraved with expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology inside the rifle that authorities believe was used in the shooting. Three unspent rounds were also found in the magazine, all with wording on them.

Commentators are responding on the assumption that the assassin was motivated by political animus and opposition to Kirk’s beliefs:

• Political philosopher R. R. Reno writes in First Things, “In our history, assassinations are symptoms. They are the dark fruit of passionate conflict over the future of our nation.”
• In The Atlantic, George Packer calls Kirk’s death “a disaster for the country” and warns, “In an atmosphere of national paranoia and hatred, each act of political violence makes the next one more likely.”
• CNN headlines, “Kirk assassination is a national tragedy in a polarized America.”
• Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute agrees, writing in the Free Press that Kirk’s death is “the most stunning evidence yet that America is becoming two nations.”

Continetti observes that we are “divided not only by politics but by culture, lifestyle, psychology, and epistemology. Weak institutions, corrupted data, rampant distrust, political enmity, and an apparent inability to control criminality and the dangerously mentally ill tear us apart like a centrifugal force.”

How we became the “United” States

Violence is endemic to our fallen human nature, “a kind of dark matter inside the human race,” according to public intellectual Ryan Holiday. He describes this “dark matter”:

It is a kind of dark oppositional energy that goes from issue to issue, era to era. It’s rooted in self-interest, self-preservation, in fear, in not wanting to be inconvenienced, not wanting to change, not wanting to have to get involved. It manifests itself a thousand ways, but once you recognize it, you spot it everywhere.

Political violence is especially prevalent in a day when America’s external enemies are not strong enough to unite us and we therefore focus our “dark oppositional energy” on other Americans.

Partisan divides have existed in our nation from its founding. As historian Joseph J. Ellis notes in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, the arguments colonists made against being ruled by a distant power in England applied equally to a distant national government on these shores. The most likely outcome of the War for Independence was that the thirteen colonies would become independent nations linked together in a Europe-like confederation.

It was the threat of future conquest by European powers, the necessity of paying the national debt, and the drive to settle the western frontier that forged these disparate colonies into a “United” States of America. In the generations since, our unity has been strongest when we were fighting world wars, economic depressions, and terrorist threats.

In our day, however, partisan politics have taken the place of foreign enemies. More than three-fourths of voters now believe that Americans who strongly support the other side are a “clear and present danger” to our nation.

When you are facing an enemy, you feel motivated to do whatever is needed to defeat them. The resurgence in political violence of recent years illustrates this tragic narrative. Reuters has documented more than three hundred cases of politically motivated acts of violence across the ideological spectrum in the last four years.

“As you wish that others would do to you”

Here we find one of the most urgent reasons Americans need Jesus. He alone can transform terrorists like Saul of Tarsus into missionaries like Paul the apostle. He alone can turn racial prejudice such as what Peter harbored against Gentiles into passionate compassion for all peoples (cf. Acts 10). He alone can heal our broken hearts and divided nation.

Because Christ now lives in his followers (1 Corinthians 12:27), you and I can animate a movement that replaces partisan animosity with transforming grace. But this can happen only by the power of God’s Spirit, since the first “fruit” when he operates freely in us is “love” (Galatians 5:22), the passionate desire to seek the best for others at our own expense.

This means that Christians can be the catalysts for healing our culture needs most.

What are our next steps? Consider three interconnected facts:

1. We can measure the degree to which we love our Lord by the degree to which we love our neighbor (Matthew 22:37–39; John 13:34).
2. We can measure the degree to which we love our neighbor by the degree to which we love our enemies, since the two are so often the same (Matthew 5:44).
3. We can measure the degree to which we love our enemies by the degree to which we “do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27), seeking their best at any cost to ourselves (vv. 28–30).

In short,

“As you wish that others would do to you, so do to them” (v. 31).

Imagine the transformation if everyone lived by this simple mantra. Now imagine the difference when you do.

What do you “wish that others would do to you” today?

Quote for the day:

“Willpower does not change men. Time does not change men. Christ does.” —Henry Drummond

Our latest website resources:

• How should Christians respond to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and rising violence in our culture?
• A quick word on the death of Charlie Kirk, Pentagon’s rebrand, US hope in decline, viral sports fails, US Open, NFL & Emmys weekend
• Encouraging stories of faith in sports
• Can Bonton Farms show us a better way to restore hope to struggling communities?
• Having suicidal thoughts? Call or text 988

Denison Forum

A 9/11 reflection

NOTE: The manhunt for the killer of conservative activist Charlie Kirk is continuing this morning. For my reflections on his death yesterday, see my Daily Article Special Edition, “Charlie Kirk fatally shot at speaking event in Utah.” Please join me in praying for his wife and young children and for our nation in this dark hour.

I hate this anniversary each year. I wake up knowing that I will see the horrific images in the news all over again. The brilliant blue morning sky against which the Twin Towers stood as the airplanes flew into them. The assault on the Pentagon, our national paragon of military might. The plane crash in Pennsylvania and the ensuing stories of passenger courage that thwarted their hijackers.

I remember where I was on that tragic morning. So do you. So will we always.

On this day twenty-four years ago, 2,976 Americans were killed and thousands more were injured in the deadliest terrorist attacks in our nation’s history.

But here’s another fact to remember: 7,085 Americans have died and more than fifty-three thousand have been wounded because of this day.

“A new and different war”

President George W. Bush stated a month after 9/11, “The world has come together to fight a new and different war . . . A war against all those who seek to export terror, and a war against those governments that support or shelter them.” Over the next twenty years, nearly three million Americans served in what has come to be known as the Global War on Terror, including those I numbered earlier who died or were injured in battle.

The victims of 9/11 woke up that Tuesday morning with no idea that it would be their last morning. None of them volunteered for what happened to them. Part of our shock and grief is that their cruel deaths were so unexpected and senseless.

By contrast, those who died in the War on Terror that ensued did volunteer for what happened to them. They chose to serve their fellow Americans in the full knowledge that their choice could cost them the “last full measure of devotion,” in Abraham Lincoln’s immortal words.

The families they left are paying the price of their courage still today. As a husband and the father of two sons, I cannot begin to imagine the suffering of those who lost wives and husbands, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. Every day that goes by is another day with an emptiness that will go unfilled. Every birthday of the loved one they lost, every holiday, every significant marker passes with a seat at the table still vacant.

They, no less than the brave soldiers they mourn, are our nation’s heroes today.

“Make this a nation worth dying for”

It falls to us to respond in two ways.

First, we must never forget what happened on this day and because of this day. 9/11 can never become a day like 9/10. Those who fought and died in the conflicts that followed that terrible morning, and those who suffer their pain still today, must never be forgotten or ignored. Partisan views of the war and the administrations that waged it must not obscure the sacrifice of those who served in it.

In The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For, acclaimed historian David McCullough writes:

“Gone but not forgotten” is the old expression for departed heroes. But if not forgotten, they are not gone.

Second, we must strive to be a nation worthy of such sacrifice.

A significant military anniversary never passes without calling to mind for me a conversation I had some years ago with a veteran scarred by wounds received in battle. When I thanked him for his sacrificial service, he looked into my eyes and said, “Just make this a nation worth dying for.”

McCullough notes:

There’s a line in one of the letters written by John Adams where he’s telling his wife, Abigail, at home, “We can’t guarantee success [in this war] but we can do something better. We can deserve it.”

What JFK said we “cannot afford to be”

What can we do to “deserve” the sacrifice of so many who served our nation, protected our freedoms, and died that we might live?

In one sense, there is nothing we can do to deserve such gifts. Those who died in the War on Terror and in all the wars that preceded it obviously did not do so because of anything you and I can do today. Their deaths preceded our reflections this morning by years and even centuries. Their choice to serve was an act of grace, and grace can never be deserved, only received.

But in another sense, there is much we can do to be a nation worthy of such sacrifice. In biblical terms, we can seek to be a people God is able to bless (cf. Psalm 33:12). To this end, we can humble ourselves, pray, seek God’s face, and turn from our “wicked ways,” knowing that he will then hear us, forgive us, and “heal our land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

We can intercede for our leaders and nation (1 Timothy 2:1–2), praying and working each day to be the salt and light our decaying and darkened culture needs so desperately (Matthew 5:13–16). And we can seek to be the change we wish to see.

David McCullough was the keynote speaker for an event my wife and I attended in Dallas on the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The historian shared with us some of the slain president’s most significant statements, among them his assertion:

“This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”

If you agree, consider Mr. Kennedy’s most famous words, spoken in his inaugural address more than forty years before 9/11 but just as relevant on that tragic day and today: “Ask not what your country will do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

What can you “do for your country” today?

Quote for the day: 

“To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.” —George Washington

Our latest website resources:

• A quick word on the death of Charlie Kirk, Pentagon’s rebrand, US hope in decline, viral sports fails, US Open, NFL & Emmys weekend
• Encouraging stories of faith in sports
• Can Bonton Farms show us a better way to restore hope to struggling communities?
• Having suicidal thoughts? Call or text 988
• John Stonestreet on “Truth Rising” and courage in today’s culture

Denison Forum

The corruption of Hamas and Amy Coney Barrett on the power of the law

An Israeli air strike on Doha, Qatar, killed five members of Hamas and a member of Qatar’s Internal Security Force yesterday. The strike took place shortly after Hamas claimed responsibility for a shooting that killed six people at a bus stop in Jerusalem on Monday.

Hamas leaders were gathered in Qatar to discuss a US proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza. However, the New York Times also reports that the attack “targeted a residential headquarters where a number of senior Hamas politicians lived.”

Here’s a question worth considering: Why were Hamas leaders living in a residence more than a thousand miles from the Gaza Strip they presumably serve?

And here’s what many people don’t know: Many of Hamas’s leaders living abroad are billionaires. According to the Telegraph, those living in Qatar do so in “five-star luxury.” This while, according to the United Nations, 65 percent of the Palestinians in Gaza live below the poverty line.

This disparity exists because Hamas is a dictatorship. After it came to power in Gaza in 2007, there have been no more elections.

Its terrorist leaders could therefore stage a horrific invasion of Israel on Oct. 7 with no accountability to the people of Gaza. They can profit personally while impoverishing the population. They can hide themselves and their soldiers and weapons behind civilian shields because they view the people as a means to their ends.

In fact, they want Israeli soldiers to harm Gazan civilians in order to turn public opinion against Israel and advance Hamas.

“A government of laws, not of men”

By contrast, as John Adams noted, the United States is “a government of laws, not of men.”

Americans elect the president by national vote, the Senate by statewide vote, and the House of Representatives by district vote. These leaders then enact laws intended to serve the common good. If we disagree, we can elect leaders who will revise or rescind such laws, as has been done often in our history.

But what about holding our leaders accountable to the laws of the land? James Madison noted: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

To enable such control, the Founders devised another layer of accountability, creating an unelected Supreme Court whose sole job is to interpret the Constitution and other laws as written and hold leaders and their actions accountable to them.

Amy Coney Barrett’s new book

These reflections have been on my mind in light of yesterday’s publication of Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution by Supreme Court associate justice Amy Coney Barrett. Her book is both readable and deeply fascinating, with behind-the-scenes descriptions of the actual work of the Court as well as her explanation of its function.

She states that the Court’s story cannot be separated from the US Constitution, “which is both its birth certificate and life’s work.” Accordingly, she writes:

We judges don’t dispense justice solely as we see it; instead, we’re constrained by law adopted through the democratic process. We exercise authority that the people have given us and resolve disputes according to the ground rules that the people have prescribed. . . .

In our system, a judge must abide by the rules set by the American people, both in the Constitution and legislation. . . . The guiding principle in every case is what the law requires, not what aligns with the judge’s own concept of justice.

Justice Barrett cites the death penalty as a personal example. A number of years ago, she co-authored an academic article “expressing a moral objection to capital punishment.” Then, soon after her appointment, the Court considered a death sentence imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers. She joined the Court’s holding that Tsarnaev’s death sentence was valid. As she notes,

That was not the only course open to me. Given my view of capital punishment, I could have looked for ways to slant the law in favor of defendants facing the death penalty. There were, after all, plausible arguments going Tsarnaev’s way—the court of appeals agreed with him, as did three of my colleagues in dissent. Had I voted in favor of Tsarnaev, no one would have known that I did it because I objected to the death penalty rather than because I concluded that Tsarnaev had the better of the argument.

But that would have been a dereliction of duty. . . . My office doesn’t entitle me to align the legal system with my moral or policy views. Swearing to apply the law faithfully means deciding each case based on my best judgment about what the law is, not what it should be.

As she explains, judges are “referees, not kings, because they decide whether people have played by the rules rather than what the rules should be.”

“The hallmark of a life of holiness”

As Justice Barrett’s book and the corruption of Hamas officials both illustrate, a government of laws rather than of men is enormously preferrable to the reverse. However, such laws are of course created and enforced by people. And people, including the Founders, are obviously fallen and flawed. (Consider that the large majority of those who signed the Declaration of Independence, with its assertion that “all men are created equal,” were slaveowners at the time.)

This is why fallen people need wisdom beyond our own. It is why we need the laws of God and the power of God by which to obey them. The good news is that, as I noted yesterday, the same Holy Spirit who inspired the word of God now guides us to interpret it and empowers us to obey it.

The key is wanting such guidance and power. It is wanting to live by a higher standard than anything humans can produce. It is seeking the holiness only a holy God can manifest in us, measuring ourselves by the “fruit” of his Spirit in our lives (Galatians 5:22–23) and paying any price to settle for nothing less.

Br. Lucas Hall of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Boston notes:

We might not be able to see over the horizon, but the pitched battle between good and evil that happens within the very mundane, day-to-day aspects of our lives is one we can take up again and again. The call to continue that work is the hallmark of a life of holiness. It may cost us everything: our lives, our understanding, our sense of clarity; and that offering is holy enough.

Will you seek such a “life of holiness” today?

Quote for the day:

“When you open your Bible, God opens his mouth.” —Mark Batterson

Our latest website resources:

• Having suicidal thoughts? Call or text 988
• John Stonestreet on “Truth Rising” and courage in today’s culture
• Millionaire CEO goes viral for stealing a hat from a child
• Is mining the moon in our future?
• Cracker Barrel, US division, Taylor Swift–Travis Kelce engagement & college football returns!

Denison Forum

More than twenty people were killed in a Russian attack on a village in eastern Ukraine this morning. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on X: “A brutally savage Russian airstrike with an aerial bomb on the rural settlement of Yarova in the Donetsk region. Directly on people. Ordinary civilians. At the very moment when pensions were being disbursed.” His post showed horrific footage of bodies strewn across the ground.

When I saw the news, I admit that it felt like “more of the same.” This terrible war has been going on for more than three years. I have never been to Ukraine and don’t know that I know anyone directly affected by this tragic news.

And yet, far more people died in this morning’s airstrike than were killed in an attack on a bus depot in Jerusalem yesterday, a tragedy that I used to lead the Daily Article and have continued to grieve. My response comes from the fact that I have many friends in Israel, having led dozens of study tours there, and love the land and its people deeply.

Here’s my guess: many in our culture likely viewed the latter as I viewed the former, seeing another attack on Jews in Israel as irrelevant to their lives. Or even worse, they saw the victims of the Palestinian attackers as the villains and the attackers as the victims.

 “One of the fruits of the Oct. 7 attack”

One-sided media narratives against the Jewish state have been regularly debunked, but they persist, drowning out reporting that disagrees. As a result, 60 percent of young adults told a recent survey that they favor Hamas (which has been designated a terrorist organization by at least eight nations and the European Union) over Israel.

In addition, recent moves by various governments to recognize a Palestinian state have strengthened Hamas, whose leaders are calling them “one of the fruits of the Oct. 7 attack.”

The rise of antisemitism is tragically on display in America as well. According to the American Jewish Committee, attacks on Jews in our country “have reached shocking levels, affecting American Jewish behavior and sense of security like we haven’t witnessed before.” As just one example, a man speaking Hebrew was assaulted recently at the Santa Monica Pier, part of what officials are calling a “deplorable escalation of antisemitism across southern California.”

What explains this escalation?

The “Marvelization of reality”

Paul Miller is professor of the practice of international affairs at Georgetown University. A veteran of the war in Afghanistan, he served as a member of the National Security Council under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In a recent article for The Dispatch, he explains “the problem with framing the Israel-Hamas conflict as one between the powerful and the powerless.”

Dr. Miller perceptively describes the process through which the left came to view Israel as:

• A powerful overlord, with the Palestinians as the heroic resistance.
• A “settler-colonial” state, with the Palestinians as indigenous rebels.
• And “white,” with the Palestinians as their “nonwhite” victims.

As he shows, all three claims are spurious.

• Israel became powerful by defending itself from nations seeking its annihilation. This does not make it an “overlord” or evil by definition.
• It is not a settler-colonial state: it began resettling the land under the Ottoman and British empires and did not erase or replace the people already living in Palestine. In fact, the Arab population of historic Palestine grew from 1.4 million in 1948 to 7.4 million today.
• Israel isn’t white or European; an equal number of Israeli citizens are descendants of immigrants from Asia and Africa as from Europe; 20 percent of its population is Arab.

However, as Dr. Miller explains, none of this matters to Israel’s critics. In what he calls the “Marvelization of reality” whereby “we expect reality to conform to the story arcs of fiction,” there’s the protagonist (the Palestinians), the goal (statehood and liberation), and the villain (Israel).

In a complex world, we crave simplicity, with white hats for the good guys and black hats for the bad guys. And to much of America these days, Israel wears the black hat.

From active participants to passive consumers

This “Marvelization of reality” is relevant beyond Israel in ways that speak to our national future.

As author and educator Neil Postman warned in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, the television age turned us from active participants in society into passive consumers of entertaining sound bites. Digital technology exacerbates this trajectory, since we can now watch whatever we want for as long as it entertains us.

Since there is far too much content available for us to consume, we filter it by preconceived biases. And since we don’t produce the content we consume, we are at the mercy of those who do.

This is massively significant for our post-Christian society, which has no objective filter by which to discern truth from falsehood and, in fact, rejects the existence of objective truth itself. But it is just as significant for Christians in such a society.

We can be as secular as our secular friends. According to research by George Barna, about half of those who attend evangelical churches say there is no absolute moral truth and believe people can earn salvation through good works. Only four in ten believe humans are born into sin and need salvation in Christ. We can be swayed by entertainment that normalizes extramarital and same-sex sexual relations. We can evaluate political news through our partisan biases. We can measure success by cultural popularity rather than biblical obedience.

“He will guide you into all the truth”

I can claim that the answer is to view secular culture through the prism of the Bible, but skeptics will assert that this is just as biased as viewing the Bible through the prism of secular culture. After all, the Bible is a book like any other book, subjectively written by flawed people using words that must be subjectively interpreted by flawed people, or so they will say.

Here’s the difference: The Spirit who inspired these words can give us the discernment we need to understand and obey them.

Jesus promised that, in ways no secular person can understand, the Holy Spirit “will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). Accordingly, “his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie” (1 John 2:27).

Because he literally lives in you (1 Corinthians 3:16), the Spirit can speak to your mind and influence your spirit in ways no one else can. If you “keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25), “he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). As the book of Acts and a plethora of spiritual awakenings across history show, he can empower and direct God’s people to impact their broken culture in transformative ways.

But he can guide only those who will follow. Would the Spirit say you are “in step” with him right now?

If not, why not?

Quote for the day:

“When we have the Holy Spirit, we have all that is needed to be all that God desires us to be.” —A. W. Tozer

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At least six people were murdered and dozens were wounded when terrorists opened fire on civilians at a bus stop in Jerusalem this morning. The two attackers were killed at the scene; Hamas praised the shooting by “two Palestinian resistance fighters.”

This tragedy is especially personal for me on two levels. One is that I have led more than thirty study tours to Israel and love the country and its people. The other is that Ramot Junction, the site of the attack, is located at one of the main entry points to Jerusalem. I have traveled by it many times over the years and know that what happened there could have happened to me and to my fellow travelers.

In other news, Russia launched its largest attack on Ukraine over the weekend since the war began. At least four people were killed, including a two-month-old baby and the child’s mother. Dozens more were injured.

“I am the captain of my soul”

Queen Elizabeth II died on this day in 2022 at the age of ninety-six. Even though she was the longest-reigning monarch in British history, death found her as it will us all (unless Christ returns first).

Our very human fear of that moment is not just the threat of pain and suffering but also our innate dread of the unknown. We fear walking into a dark room or a dark forest, much less a dark future.

So we ignore the fact of human mortality when we can. I didn’t want to write about today’s tragic news from Jerusalem and Ukraine any more than you wanted to read about it. We euphemize death (people don’t die anymore, they merely “pass on”) and we seek to extend our lives through medical means.

When we fear death, we make this world our home and fight tooth and nail to stay here as long as we can. We measure success by temporal standards and drive ourselves to achieve it. And we go through life claiming, “I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”

Therein lies the issue I want to address today.

Liberalism failed because it succeeded

Patrick J. Deneen is a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame. In his masterful book Why Liberalism Failed, he describes “liberalism” (from the Latin liber, meaning “free”) as a view that “conceived humans as rights-bearing individuals who could fashion and pursue for themselves their own version of the good life.” Over the centuries of its ascent, this view has led many of its followers to jettison everything that constrains individual freedom, including religious dogma, societal mores, and legal strictures.

Whether the topic is abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, or a host of other cultural issues, Western culture has “evolved” to a place of existential freedom in the quest for a temporal utopia.

How is this working for us?

Professor Deneen notes that “some 70 percent of Americans believe that their country is moving in the wrong direction,” while “every institution of government shows declining levels of public trust by the citizenry.” After documenting a plethora of other social ills, he concludes, “Nearly every one of the promises that were made by the architects and creators of liberalism has been shattered.”

Then he draws this surprising lesson: “Liberalism has failed—not because it fell short, but because it was true to itself.” By removing barriers and constraints on human behavior built by religious teaching and legal structures, it has freed us to be our fallen selves. And when my “will to power” collides with yours, conflicts abound, terrorists attack, wars are launched, and the weak are oppressed by the strong.

Being freed from “lifelong slavery”

What is the solution?

The Bible teaches that Jesus died to “destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Hebrews 2:14–15). We are enslaved to our fear of death unless we are set free by a power greater than death. And no other person in human history demonstrated such power except Jesus Christ.

Muslims venerate the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina. I have been to the tomb of Baháu’lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í faith, and visited the graves of some of our culture’s greatest heroes, from George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to Winston Churchill and Sir Isaac Newton. None rose physically from the tomb. Even Lazarus and others whom Jesus raised from the dead eventually died again.

Only Jesus demonstrated the power to defeat the grave. Therefore, only he can give that power to us. When we receive the gift of eternal life that he offers all who trust in him, we are freed from “lifelong slavery” to death.

But there’s a downside to the upside.

Those of us who trust in Christ as our Lord know we will “never die” (John 3:16). But we can therefore feel free to pursue whatever we want in this life, secure in the knowledge that Jesus will forgive our sins when we confess them and that nothing we do in this world can keep us from the world to come. We can even believe that our religious activities will earn God’s favor and blessing on the non-religious areas of our lives.

All of this is but a spiritual expression of our fallen “will to power.” Such a compartmentalized way of life makes Jesus a means to our ends. By seeking what we want, we forfeit what he wants for us. This grieves our Father and impoverishes us since the will of an all-knowing, all-loving God is by definition better for us than ours.

“You lead, I follow”

The solution is the simple but transforming decision to “submit yourselves therefore to God” (James 4:7), to “humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God” (1 Peter 5:6) and to pray with Jesus, “Not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).

In the words of a dear friend whose business and cultural influence spans the globe, it is to pray all through the day, “You lead, I follow.”

Dwight Moody counseled,

“Let God have your life; he can do more with it than you can.”

Do you agree?

Quote for the day:

“Carry the cross patiently, and with perfect submission; and in the end it shall carry you.” —Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471)

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Truth Rising, a documentary developed through a partnership between Focus on the Family and the Colson Center, premieres today at noon EST, and I highly recommend making time to watch it. It’s free to stream and, as its creators describe, the film is “a call to action at a critical time in our culture.”

However, what I appreciated most about the film is that it provides both a realistic assessment of the state of Western civilization as well as reasons for optimism grounded in the fact that God is still at work using his people to offer redemption and hope to a world in desperate need of both.

The documentary begins with Os Guinness—a brilliant author, theologian, and social critic—examining the ways in which other civilizations have declined and fallen in the past to use as comparisons when evaluating the degree to which our current civilization is following in their footsteps. To that end, he outlines how we are at a “civilizational moment,” which he defines as the time when a culture loses touch with the inspiration that created it.

When that moment occurs, he shows how there are really only three options for what comes next:

• Renew the original inspiration
• Replace the original inspiration
• Decline

As made clear by both he and John Stonestreet, the president of the Colson Center and host for the second part of the discussion, the original inspiration for Western Civilization is the sense of Judeo-Christian morality that undergirds our most foundational beliefs.

But while Guinness and Stonestreet are equipped to outline that reality by themselves, I appreciate the way they incorporate the views of others in the conversation. Throughout the documentary, they speak with a host of experts who bring unique perspectives and experiences to the discussion that add both context and nuance. And though the contributions of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Konstantin Kisin, and others in the first half of the film are excellent, the personal stories of those interviewed by Stonestreet in the latter half often stood out the most.

Why Christians should be a “people of hope”

In the film’s second part, Stonestreet interviews a number of individuals who have been “canceled” or threatened for their beliefs. The accounts of Ayaan Hirsi Ali—who shares more of her story in this part—Jack Philips, Seth Dillon, and others demonstrate how God redeemed the trials they faced in ways that often expanded their ministry while providing opportunities that couldn’t have happened otherwise. They don’t minimize how hard those times were, but they do point to what God has done through them.

Remembering the Lord’s ability to take what man intends for evil and turn it into good is vital when so much of what we see around us tends to draw our focus toward the negative. God does not call us to a naïve ignorance of the problems we face, nor does he permit us to give up on being part of the solution (Matthew 5:13–16). Learning to do both is a key element of living out our identity as Christians.

As Stonestreet describes, “Christians must remember who they are—people of the resurrection, and therefore people of hope.” If our solution to the state of our culture is to hunker down and wait for the world to hit rock bottom, then we’re doing Christianity wrong.

Jesus entered a world with no moral compass outside the vague, philosophical ideas of right and wrong that people were free to disregard. And even in his more immediate context, where the Jewish people still professed—and, typically, lived in accordance with—a desire to please the Lord, their approach to doing so was rooted in the kind of legalism and performative religiosity that was slowly suffocating any chance at a personal, intimate relationship with the Father.

In response, Christ met the people where they were, showed them a better path forward, and then was willing to pay the price for not flinching from God’s truth when it contradicted the culture’s. Now he calls us to do the same.

Fortunately, we don’t have to look very far for the chance to make a difference.

“Secularism let them down”

In our conversation with John Stonestreet on today’s special edition of Faith & Clarity, he makes the point that when he first started teaching on worldview and culture, many of the warning signs like shifting gender norms and postmodernism were theoretical. There were indications, but not necessarily evidence, that this is where our society was headed. That’s no longer the case.

Many of those problems are now present, and they’re having a dramatic impact on the way our civilization functions. Moreover, an ever-increasing part of the population is coming to realize that the secular alternatives just aren’t working.

As John goes on to describe, the reasoning among those who left the church used to be that “the church has let them down. And now we have a whole bunch of young people going back to church, talking about how secularism let them down. So, what an opportunity right now for truth to rise.”

This is truly an exciting time to be a follower of Christ. Many of society’s solutions to humanity’s problems are beginning to crumble. This brings us to the question each of us must answer: Will we help them rebuild on the foundation of God’s truth, or will we sit back and watch as they try in vain to reconstruct those walls on a new set of lies?

When those who have wronged us suffer the consequences of their sins, it can be tempting to find pleasure in their pain. Many of the stories in Truth Rising demonstrate what it looks like to choose a better path, one that is more in line with Christ’s example.

When Jesus looked out on a people who were lost and desperate for something more than the lies and half-truths that defined their culture, he was filled with compassion (Matthew 9:36).

Will the same be true for us? Will it be true for you?

Quote of the day

“There’s something as deep as the human experience goes that we’re missing, so it’s not going to be a political solution, it’s not going to be an economic solution to this. We have to go back to what is true.” —John Stonestreet, Truth Rising

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“How did you find out over the weekend that you were dead?” This is how Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked President Trump his opinion on the online controversy alleging that the president was either dead or about to be.

The root cause was that Mr. Trump had nothing on his public schedule for three days last week. For a person who is so often in the public eye, his lack of visibility was visible evidence for some that something was happening behind the scenes.

He is the oldest person to be elected president and has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a common condition for people his age that often produces the swollen ankles many have noted during his public appearances. But, as the New York Times reports, recent days were different:

On TikTok, influencers with legions of followers surmised that the White House was publishing old photos, suggesting that the president was hidden from view. Reddit threads, one after another, were ablaze with commentary. On X, posts shared by anonymous critics disseminating dubious reports picked up thousands of interactions and shares.

For years, critics of President Biden have questioned his health. Now some are asking similar questions about President Trump. When he responded on Sunday, “NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE!” skeptics explained the post as part of the cover-up. Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and influential figure on the far-right, asserted on social media, “There is obviously something going on with Trump that the White House is covering up. This is literally Biden 2.”

Believing what we want to believe

For many years, I taught a seminary course titled “Christian Evidences.” We explored in-depth a variety of apologetic issues for which scientific, historical, archaeological, and manuscript evidence are relevant and helpful, including Jesus’ resurrection, the veracity of Scripture, and the plausibility of miracles.

But as I warned my students, evidence must be interpreted and may not be compelling. As an example, I cited the religious authorities’ response to Lazarus after Jesus raised him from the dead: “The chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus” (John 12:10).

Their reaction to Jesus’ resurrection was similar: rather than trusting him as Messiah and Lord, they fabricated an explanation to keep others from believing in him (Matthew 28:11–15).

All this to say, the postmodern relativism that considers all truth to be personal and subjective is not just a feature of recent times. It is also a symptom of our fallen condition and desire to be our own god (Genesis 3:5). We are all prone to beliefs we want to believe and susceptible to believing only what endorses these beliefs while rejecting what does not.

But when it comes to God, believing our doubts can cause us to doubt our beliefs—to the detriment of our souls.

Losing faith in the American dream

Today’s reflections are prompted by a recent Wall Street Journal report regarding the “American dream” that if you work hard, you will get ahead. Nearly 70 percent of those surveyed say this no longer holds true, or never did. Majorities believe the prior generation had an easier time buying a home, starting a business, or being a full-time parent. Majorities also lack confidence that the next generation will be able to purchase a home or save enough for retirement.

Here’s my point: If you believe the American dream is dead, you obviously won’t dream it. Then your fears become a self-fulfilling prophecy as your doubts become reality. This happens in other dimensions of life: If we don’t trust someone to be our friend, we don’t befriend them and thus never learn to trust them. If we don’t trust our doctor enough to take the medicine she prescribes, we never benefit from the medicine and thus have no reason to trust our doctor.

The same holds true for our relationship with our Lord.

As we have been discussing this week, it can be hard to have faith in God when he disappoints us or trust the church when the church hurts us. One response is blind faith that ignores realities and sees only what reinforces its suppositions. As a small boy said when asked to define faith: “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so.”

A better response is to examine the evidence as fully and fairly as possible, then take a step beyond it into a relationship that becomes self-validating. I know of no approach to faith in Christ that is more urgent or transforming than this.

When we feel God’s comfort most deeply

God will never ask us to do anything that contradicts his word. This is one reason he calls us to love him with all our “mind” (Matthew 22:37) and to “reason together” with him (Isaiah 1:18). The Bible commends the Berean Christians who “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11).

But no relationship can be proven before it is experienced. I cannot prove to you that my wife loves me, for example. I can tell you that she tells me she does, but she could be lying. I can point to all the amazing ways she is kind to me, but she could be deceiving me. You would have to experience my marriage to trust it.

The same is true with taking a job, becoming parents, or making any other relational decision: we examine the evidence, then step beyond it into a new reality that verifies itself.

This is especially the case with following Jesus, in part because following him comes at such a price in our fallen world. He warned us, “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20). In addition, “your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

As a result, we often experience Jesus most fully when such faith is hardest. We feel his comfort most deeply when our grief and suffering are deepest but we trust him despite and because of our pain.

“Let me find thy light in my darkness”

To this end, let’s close with a Puritan prayer a dear friend shared with me this week:

Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,
that the repenting soul is the victorious soul,
that to have nothing is to possess all,
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown,
that to give is to receive,
that the valley is the place of vision.
Lord, in the daytime, stars can be seen from deepest wells,
and the deeper the wells the brighter thy stars shine;
let me find thy light in my darkness,
thy life in my death,
thy joy in my sorrow,
thy grace in my sin,
thy riches in my poverty,
thy glory in my valley.

Amen.

Quote for the day:

“Fear can banish faith, but faith can banish fear.” —Billy Graham

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President Donald Trump told reporters yesterday that he is ready to order federal law enforcement intervention to combat crime in Chicago and Baltimore. “I have an obligation,” he said. “This isn’t a political thing.” He stated, “We’re going in,” but added, “I didn’t say when.”

Officials in both cities are opposed to such moves.

The president’s announcement followed police reports that at least fifty-eight people were shot in Chicago over the Labor Day weekend, eight fatally.

The violence in the city brought to mind a personal experience there many years ago. When I was in college, I led a ministry team that spent a week in Chicago working with inner-city churches. I was deeply impressed by the commitment of these leaders to making a transformational difference. They could easily have left their community for safer environs, but they felt called by God to be his light in their darkness.

Such efforts are continuing in Chicago today. Churches and ministries are supporting mothers who lose children to violence, offering events and strategies for pairing younger and older generations, providing after-school programs and safe party events on Friday nights to keep children out of harm’s way, and hosting feeding and mentoring programs.

I have personally witnessed similar ministries at work in other major cities around the world. Philip Yancey famously asserted that “God goes where he’s wanted.” The evidence of Scripture, Jesus’ earthly ministry, and church history also shows that “God goes where he’s needed.”

Trusting the church when the church hurts us

Yesterday, we reflected on the challenge of trusting God when he disappoints us. Today, let’s take up a related question: How do we trust the church when the church hurts us?

You probably have personal examples here, as do I. So did Jeremiah, who was beaten and imprisoned by Pashhur the priest (Jeremiah 20:1–2). So did Stephen, who was martyred by the high priest and other religious leaders (Acts 7). So did the apostles, who were arrested and beaten by the religious authorities (Acts 5:17–40). So did Paul, who was repeatedly persecuted by religious leaders. So did Jesus most of all, who was condemned in illegal trials staged by the high priest and then crucified under pressure from religious leaders.

What was true of Jewish religious authorities in early Christianity has been true of Christian authorities across the centuries since. From the millions who died in Crusades championed by the Church, to Southern clergy support for slavery and Jim Crow discrimination, to clergy abuse scandals of recent years, the church of Jesus Christ has often failed to be the body of Jesus Christ.

We can respond with the truism, “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven,” which is true. We can note that our faith is to be in a holy God, not fallen people. We know not to be surprised when the sins of sinners harm the innocent as well.

But Christianity claims that followers of Jesus will become like Jesus by following him. The New Testament teaches that Christians are a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) in whom the Spirit of God actually lives (1 Corinthians 3:16) and that the Father is working to mold us into the character of his Son (Romans 8:29). No other religion makes such transformative claims.

So, when the church fails us, it is understandable to feel that God has failed us as well.

Church attendance and health outcomes

However, if we are measuring the relevance and value of church attendance by its results in those who attend, there is good news here as well.

According to research, participation in a religious community correlates with better health outcomes and longer life, higher financial generosity, and more stable families. The more we participate, the greater the positive effects:

• Sixty-two percent of those who ranked high in church engagement also ranked high in human flourishing.
• Only 40 percent of those with average church engagement scores ranked high in human flourishing.
• And only 23 percent of those who ranked low in church engagement scored high in human flourishing.

These findings make sense. “Going to church” on occasion is not the same thing as encountering Jesus personally. And only Jesus, working by his Spirit, can change our lives and transform our character. Listening to sermons and Bible studies, singing hymns and choruses, and otherwise attending church activities is no more transformative apart from the Spirit than watching a football game is transformative apart from participation on the field.

But Satan does not want us to know this. If he cannot keep us from church attendance, he will tempt us to believe that attending church checks the “spirituality box” and constitutes all we need to do in our relationship with God. Then, when our lives are no different, we can erroneously but easily conclude that the church makes no difference in the world. And skeptics who see our unchanged lives can conclude the same as well.

“Pinholes through which I see the face of God”

In Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Ethics, the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” In other words, we should ask of everything we consider doing, “What if everyone did that?”

Missionaries sent around the globe, universities and hospitals begun and operated by churches and denominations, and ministries to human needs wherever needs are found—each shows the wisdom of God’s call not to “give up the habit of meeting together” (Hebrews 10:25). If everyone stopped going to church, all of this would stop as well.

On an individual level: What if everyone experienced the risen Lord Jesus personally every day and corporately every week? What if every Christian sought his voice when we study his word, listened for his Spirit when we pray, worshiped him as our “Audience of One” when we sing at church, and made him known through our words and works in our congregation and our community?

Such a lifestyle is not reserved for the few but is God’s intention for us all. This is what Watchman Nee called “the normal Christian life.”

Oswald Chambers observed,

“If I obey Jesus Christ in the seemingly random circumstances of life, they become pinholes through which I see the face of God.”

Will you “see the face of God” today?

Quote for the day:

“Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality.” —C. S. Lewis

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