Imagine a day when your grocery cart will scan and weigh items, alert you to sales, suggest items based on what you’ve already chosen, and help locate products in the store. It will then scan your credit card to check out.

Here’s an even-easier fantasy: You could download a free app, scan a QR code at the store’s entrance, grab items off the shelves, then exit through the turnstiles. By the time you’re halfway to your car, you’ll receive a receipt in the app.

Sounds like science fiction? It’s actually just science. The Wall Street Journal tells us that AI-powered shopping is already here and coming to stores nationwide this year.

Will a robot drive your next taxi?

Here’s another fiction-to-fact story: According to Bloomberg Businessweek, robot-driven taxis will soon make travel in a driverless cab much cheaper than owning our own car. Ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft are making personal car ownership less attractive as well.

FedEx is testing autonomous delivery robots that will bring products from Pizza Hut, Walmart, Walgreens, and other companies to your door. AutoZone, Lowe’s, and Target have also signed on to the program.

Continue reading Denison Forum – AI-powered grocery stores and Chip and Joanna Gaines: How to use the temporal for the eternal →

“We’re more popular than Jesus now.”

These words of John Lennon, published on this day in 1966, have become a famous—or infamous—part of cultural history.

Here’s the larger context: Lennon told an interviewer for the London Evening Standard that “Christianity will go.” He added: “It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

His words sparked a furor in the United States. Radio stations invited listeners to bring their Beatles records to pickup points where they would be burned.

Lennon later apologized at a press conference in Chicago: “I’m not anti-God, anti-Christ or anti-religion. I was not saying we are greater or better. I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky.”

However, Lennon began his most famous song, “Imagine,” with the lyrics, “Imagine there’s no heaven / It’s easy if you try / No hell below us / Above us only sky.” Later he asked us to imagine that there’s “no religion, too.”

Why parents are selling their children

In a world like ours, it’s easy to wonder if God is real or relevant.

Search and rescue efforts are intensifying this morning after a series of tornadoes ripped through Alabama yesterday, killing at least twenty-three people in one county. At least a dozen tornadoes touched down in Alabama and Georgia Sunday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.

Two people were killed and seven more injured when the son of a New Orleans police officer drove his vehicle into a busy New Orleans thoroughfare Saturday night. Police are awaiting the results of a blood alcohol test.

More than 110 million people across the US are bracing for snowstorms. New York City and Boston are expected to get six to eight inches of snow.

And CNN reports that twenty thousand children in Ghana have been sold by their parents into slavery. They work on Lake Volta in the fishing industry. Authorities say extreme poverty forces parents to sell a child to traffickers to provide money for their other children to eat.

A “rapid and shocking” decline in church attendance

Five centuries before Christ, Greek philosopher Anaximander is said to have constructed the first map. It pictures the world in thirds—Europe, Asia, and what he called “Libya” (Africa). In the very center of the map stands Miletus, the city in western Turkey where he lived.

Why did Anaximander position himself in the center of the world? His decision was less reflective of ego than of experience. Look around yourself. Everywhere you turn, you’re in the middle of the world you can see.

This fact is both geographical and psychological. We measure the world by what we experience of the world. John Lennon later explained his belief that Christianity “will vanish and shrink”: “From what I’ve read, or observed, Christianity just seems to be shrinking, to be losing contact.”

The United Kingdom of 1966 was indeed experiencing a significant decline in church attendance and cultural relevance. And church attendance has fallen further in the decades since. According to a recent survey, more than half the British population now say they have no religion.

However, it’s always too soon to give up on God.

More people worship Jesus in China than in America

Our secular culture separates God from the “real world.” Our materialistic society measures truth by what we can measure. Taken together, the cultural trends of our day could lead Americans to believe Lennon was right.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Christianity in Africa across the last century has grown from less than 10 percent of the population to nearly five hundred million today. Our faith has grown at twice the rate of the population growth in Asia.

More people worship Jesus in China today than in America. A dear friend who serves in the Middle East tells me that more Muslims have come to Christ in the last fifteen years than in the previous fifteen centuries.

“Power belongs to God”

Just because we cannot see God at work does not mean that he is not at work.

Pharaoh trusted the magicians and idols of his cultural religion more than the unseen God of Moses until the one true Lord destroyed his nation. Darius insisted that the nation pray to him until Daniel’s prayer to the unseen God spared Daniel in the lions’ den. Saul of Tarsus persecuted Christians until he met their risen Lord on the road to Damascus.

David testified: “Power belongs to God” (Psalm 62:11). The psalmist added: “Great is our Lord and mighty in power” (Psalm 147:5 NIV). Jesus assured us that “all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27).

The greatest gift we can give

Do you believe that God can do all he has ever done? That he is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8)? If you’re lacking faith in his omnipotence, would you pray for the faith you need (Mark 9:24)?

Now, would you ask your Father to make your faith relevant to your culture? Would you pray for him to lead you, empower you, and use you to make a difference in someone’s life for the glory of God?

John Lennon was murdered on December 8, 1980. I’ve seen the spot where he was shot in the archway of the New York City residence where his widow still lives. One instant after his death, he no longer wondered if the God of Scripture is real (Hebrews 9:27).

Introducing people to Jesus before they meet him in eternity is the greatest gift we can give them.

Denison Forum

Words saved the world.

William Stephenson was a World War I hero, businessman, inventor, and spymaster. Ian Fleming called him the “real thing” behind his James Bond character.

A Man Called Intrepid tells Stephenson’s incredible story (“Intrepid” was his code name). The book reads more like a novel than the historical narrative it is. Here we learn that early in World War II, Stephenson created a secret network that eventually involved thirty thousand intelligence experts. They worked behind enemy lines in Europe to provide intelligence to President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill.

These operatives were able to feed false information to German authorities, convincing them that D-Day would be launched at Calais rather than Normandy. This kept Hitler from committing forces that could have defeated the Allied invasion.

When the Germans began launching rockets into London, these intelligence spies fed the Nazis false data on where their rockets actually fell, saving thousands of lives. They helped the Allies free Niels Bohr from Nazi captivity, which kept the Germans from developing atomic weapons and helped America create the bombs that ended World War II.

These secret heroes did not fire weapons or drive tanks. They risked (and many gave) their lives to communicate words that helped defeat Hitler and save the world.

When Switzerland invaded Liechtenstein

A Florida congressman made news with a tweet directed at Michael Cohen, which the congressman later took down and for which he apologized. The Florida bar has now opened an investigation into whether the congressman, a licensed attorney in the state, violated professional conduct rules with his tweet.

Even wordless events require words to record and interpret them.

You may not know that on this day in 2007, Switzerland invaded Liechtenstein. A detachment of 170 Swiss infantrymen got lost on a training mission and accidentally crossed their neighbor’s border.

Liechtenstein is seventeen times smaller than Rhode Island. Its thirty-seven thousand residents were not aware that they had been invaded. Since they have no army, they chose not to retaliate.

We know of this ironic event only because it was reported in words.

We send 6,000 tweets a second

We are the most verbal society in history.

One study concluded that women speak 16,215 words per day, while men speak 15,669 words per day. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Six thousand tweets are sent every second, which corresponds to five hundred million tweets a day. Every sixty seconds, 510,000 comments are posted on Facebook.

Add the 1.7 billion websites on the internet and the information exchanged on social media sites such as WhatsApp (one billion users a month), WeChat (697 million users a month), Tumblr (555 million users a month), and Instagram (400 million users a month), and it becomes clear that we are exchanging more words than ever before in human history.

This can be good news for the gospel, but bad news for our souls.

Good news for the good news

Mart Green is the Chief Strategy Officer for the Green Family Businesses, board chair of Hobby Lobby, and founder of Mardel Christian Supply. At a recent conference in Washington, DC, I heard him describe the IllumiNations project he is leading. Its goal is to translate God’s word into all six-thousand-plus languages in the world. Digital technology is making this dream a reality.

Walt Wilson is a retired Marine, brilliant businessman, longtime personal friend of mine, and founder of Global Media Outreach. This online evangelism and discipleship ministry has documented more than two hundred million decisions for Christ since it began in 2004.

Digital technology is enabling us to “make disciples of all nations” more effectively than ever before in Christian history (Matthew 28:19).

The secret of the Reformation

Amid the cacophony of words in our culture, it can be hard to hear God’s voice. But human words cannot change human hearts. Only God’s words have the power to convict of sin, save souls, and transform eternities.

Explaining the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther testified: “I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing.”

The declaration “Thus says the Lord” appears more than four hundred times in the Bible. Each time, a human listened for God’s word before speaking or writing his truth to the world.

Now it’s our turn.

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

To speak God’s word, we must first listen for God’s word. When last in our frenzied, social-media-driven culture did you accept your Father’s invitation to “be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10)? When last did you listen for the “low whisper” of God’s Spirit (1 Kings 19:12)?

Our Father speaks through his word as we study Scripture (Hebrews 4:12). He speaks through his worship as we pray and focus on him (cf. Acts 13:2). He speaks through his world as we look for the Creator in his creation (Psalm 19:1–4).

As Francis Schaeffer noted, “He is there and he is not silent.”

In fact, your Lord wants to speak to you today. When will you make time to listen?

Note: In today’s chaotic culture, we are increasingly faced with faith-related questions that can be challenging and impossible to answer. In this week’s video from our YouTube series, “Biblical Insight to Tough Questions,” we tackle the question: Why do we believe the Bible is actually the word of God? Thanks for turning to Denison Forum to discern news differently and build a movement of culture-changing Christians.

Denison Forum

The Vietnam summit has ended.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un insisted all US sanctions be lifted on his country, offering to dismantle his Yongbyon nuclear complex in return. President Trump said Washington wanted a deal that includes other parts of the North’s nuclear program. “I just felt it wasn’t good enough,” Mr. Trump said. “We had to have more.”

The two sides ended their meeting amicably but without producing an agreement. Whether the summit is a setback or a step toward peace is open to interpretation.

While Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim were meeting in Vietnam, Michael Cohen was testifying before Congress. The president’s former personal attorney spent more than six hours yesterday answering questions from the House Oversight Committee. Whether his statements damaged the president or not is open to interpretation.

Historical events are objective, but the way they are reported and remembered is subjective.

30 million pages headed for the moon

Israel launched its first spacecraft last week. “Beresheet” (Hebrew for Genesis) will be the smallest craft to land on the moon, but it is carrying something of great significance: the so-called Lunar Library.

This is a disc containing twenty-five thousand books, a full copy of Wikipedia, and information on understanding earthly languages—in total, a thirty-million-page tome. The “library” is intended to preserve humanity’s knowledge and history long after we’re gone.

Did your story make the Lunar Library? On the day of your salvation, you joined a faith family that will be alive in Paradise ten thousand millennia after the moon and everything on it perishes.

Here’s my point: what makes history seldom makes headlines.

News that didn’t make headlines

Continue reading Denison Forum – Vietnam summit ends early: What makes history seldom makes headlines →

The second summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un begins later today. The two are scheduled to meet Wednesday night in a one-on-one session (with translators) before moving to a private “social dinner” and more meetings tomorrow.

We can look for the negative as the summit unfolds. NPR reports, “While talks may hold off the immediate threat of a military conflict, they also give North Korea time to continue to develop its arsenal.”

Or we could look for the positive. One example: the two leaders are meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam. I remember when news coverage from Vietnam showed bloody images of American soldiers fighting and dying in its jungles. We could not have imagined then that the US and Vietnam would be diplomatic and economic partners today.

“God can help you, he really can.”

I told the story yesterday of Craig Coley’s thirty-nine years in prison for crimes he did not commit. Rather than focus on the negative, Coley told New York Times reporters that he often talks to people about the power of perseverance: “People that are down and out or having a hard time, my message to them is don’t give up, tell the truth about everything because the truth will always come back and support you.”

He adds: “Lies never do. And God can help you, he really can.”

We can focus on the horrendous crimes Vatican Cardinal George Pell has been found guilty of committing. But we can also be grateful for the courage of clergy abuse victims who have told their story, intensifying the spotlight on such sins today.

We should be horrified by reports of sex trafficking that have surfaced in the wake of Robert Kraft’s arrest. But we can also support International Justice Mission and other organizations working to end sex trafficking and other forms of slavery.

We should be appalled by YouTube videos that offer children instructions on how to commit suicide. But we can be grateful for Christian Parenting and other ministries that help parents raise godly children.

In short, we can decide that the world is only getting worse. But, as the Wall Street Journal reports, in significant ways it is getting much better.

“She is not dead but sleeping”

Unfortunately, many in our secular culture consider faith to be neither a cause for the good nor a solution for the bad. Young Americans are especially less inclined to identify as religious or attend regular services. Studies consistently show that religion is declining in Western Europe and North America while growing everywhere else.

As our culture becomes increasingly secularized, more and more people agree with Karl Marx that religion is “the opium of the people” which must be abolished so that “the illusory happiness of the people” can be exchanged for “their real happiness” (his italics).

According to Marx, “Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man so long as he does not revolve around himself.” Of course, he learned how wrong he was the moment he died and faced the God whose existence he denied (Hebrews 9:27).

Marx was the prisoner of presuppositions that blinded him to realities he could not then see. He was not the first or the last.

In Exodus 5, Moses and Aaron said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go’” (v. 1).

But the Egyptian ruler responded, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord” (v. 2). In Pharaoh’s view, what he had not experienced could not exist.

When Jesus told those mourning the death of Jairus’ daughter, “She is not dead but sleeping” (Luke 8:52), “they laughed at him, knowing that she was dead” (v. 53). Because they had not seen Jesus raise the dead, they assumed that he could not raise the dead.

Two ways to demonstrate the relevance of our faith

Before we can expect the pharaohs of our day to believe that our God is real and relevant, they must see that he is real and relevant for us. Consider two principles.

One: Do not judge your future by your past.

Exodus 6:23 tells us that Aaron, the future high priest, was married to the daughter of Amminadab. Ruth 4:18–19 tells us that Amminadab was descended from Perez. Genesis 38:29 tells us that Perez was the child of Tamar, who pretended to be a prostitute and became pregnant by her father-in-law.

Nothing that has happened in your past need determine what happens in your future. Only Jesus can forgive the past, empower the present, and redeem the future. When you seek and follow God’s “good and pleasing and perfect” will (Romans 12:2 NLT), others will be inspired to do the same.

Two: Give Monday to God.

Jesus becomes irrelevant to our lives when we separate him from our lives. A Sunday faith must be a Monday reality.

Oswald Chambers: “Abandon to God is of more value than personal holiness.” Here’s why: “When we are abandoned to God, He works through us all the time.” When he is King of every part of our lives, others will see that he is King of all of life.

According to C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, God desires for us “the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water.”

David echoed this joyous fact more simply: “This I know, that God is for me!” (Psalm 56:9).

Do you know that God is for you today?

Denison Forum

Craig Richard Coley was twenty-three years old when he moved to Simi Valley, California. A Vietnam veteran and the son of a retired Los Angeles police officer, he was newly married with no criminal record.

Coley managed several restaurants over the years. After a divorce, he dated for a time Rhonda Wicht, a twenty-four-year-old waitress who shared an apartment with her four-year-old son, Donald.

On November 11, 1978, Wicht and her son were killed in their beds. Coley, who had broken up with her, was arrested and charged with their murders. After two trials, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Both of his parents died while he was imprisoned.

Talking to an innocent man

Meanwhile, Michael Bender had started a career as a police officer. In 1989, he looked into the Coley case and was shocked by what he found. Coley’s alibi seemed strong; there were viable suspects who were never pursued; and hair and fingerprint evidence was not analyzed properly and then went missing.

Two years later, Bender met Coley in prison and knew he was talking to an innocent man. “In dealing with a lot of bad guys over the years, there are mannerisms and body language you come to know. He didn’t have that,” Bender explained.

In 1991, his superiors ordered him to stop pursuing Coley’s case or face termination, so he quit his job and became a theft investigator. In 2003, he moved his family to Carlsbad, California, where he continued to pursue the case in his spare time.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Christian receives $21 million after 39 years in prison →

In a surprise, Green Book won last night’s Academy Award for Best Picture. Rami Malek and Olivia Colman won for Best Actor and Best Actress in a Leading Role; Mahershala Ali and Regina King won for Best Actor and Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

For everyone who won an Oscar, last night’s ceremony was a pinnacle moment that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

For the rest of us, however, the transience of awards like last night’s Oscars is noteworthy. Who won last year for Best Actor? Best Actress? Best Picture? Who won the year before that?

We’ve already had the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Critics’ Choice Awards, and the Grammys. Do you remember who won what? We could ask the same question about past winners of the Super Bowl, the World Series, the Stanley Cup, and so on.

There’s a reason our culture pays so much attention to short-lived successes.

“Wealthy, successful and miserable”

Richard Rorty was one of America’s most influential thinkers. The longtime Princeton and Stanford professor was a leading voice for the relativism that has captured our culture. He claimed: “There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.” He added that “truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.”

If we reject the supernatural, the only prism by which to see the world is the natural. And the natural cannot see beyond itself. Like rose-colored glasses that turn everything rose-colored, we assume that all we see is all that exists.

Continue reading Denison Forum – What the Oscars teach us about significance →

A new study has compared America’s fifty states using forty-three indicators of immorality. The data set ranges from violent crimes to excessive drinking to gambling disorders.

Unsurprisingly, Nevada ranks first, primarily because of “greed” and “lust.” Florida comes in second because of “jealousy,” “lust,” and “vanity.” The rest of the top (or bottom) ten in order: California, Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, and Arizona. The least sinful states in order are Vermont, Maine, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Idaho.

Sin may be measured collectively, but it is committed personally. And it never stays secret.

A Minnesota man was eating a hot dog at a hockey game last month. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and tossed the remains in the trash. Authorities then used DNA on the napkin to tie him to an unsolved murder from 1993.

In similar news, DNA from a genealogical database has led authorities to arrest a Colorado man for the murder of an eleven-year-old girl in 1973. Last fall, DNA evidence led to an arrest in a 1997 murder.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in the Jussie Smollett case say they have the $3,500 check used by the actor to pay two brothers to stage his assault last month. Smollett was arrested yesterday for allegedly filing a false report about the January 29 incident. After paying a $10,000 bond, he was released and is due back in court on March 14.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson alleged yesterday that the brothers’ motive for helping Smollett was money. “There was never a thought in their mind that we would be able to track them down,” he added.

Scripture warns us: “Be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23).

Why temptation is so tempting today

There’s something about temptation that causes us to think this warning doesn’t really apply to us. We will get away with it. No one will know, no one will be hurt, no consequences will follow. Or so we think.

Here’s why the temptation to yield to temptation is especially tempting in our culture.

Our post-Christian, relativistic society has jettisoned the concept of absolute truth and morality. In such a worldview, “sin” is a subjective idea rather than an objective reality.

What the Bible calls a “baby” (as when Elizabeth’s “baby leaped in her womb,” Luke 1:41), Planned Parenthood calls a “product of conception.” What the Bible calls “men committing shameless acts with men” (Romans 1:27), our culture calls “marriage equality.”

As a result, sins are no longer objectively sinful. It’s easier for Satan to tempt us to sin if we don’t believe in sin.

“There is no such thing as the devil”

It’s also easier for Satan to tempt us to sin if we don’t believe in him. A Barna survey found that nearly 60 percent of American Christians believe the devil “is not a living being but is a symbol of evil.”

An article in Psychology Today was blunt: “There is no such thing as the devil, just as there is no such thing as fairies, imps, or goblins. The two largest religions in the world–Christianity and Islam–teach that there is a devil. And they are wrong. There is no evidence for such a thing. Not a shred. It is simply something that germinated from the unscientific, irrational minds of early humans.”

Of course, that’s just what the devil wants us to think.

(For more, please watch Does Satan exist?, the most recent YouTube video from our new series, “Biblical Insight to Tough Questions.”)

The two categories of sin

The first step in defeating temptation is to admit that sin exists and the tempter is real. The second is to understand his strategy.

In essence, there are two categories of sin.

The first includes those temptations you and I can defeat in our ability. For instance, I happen not to be susceptible to illegal drugs. (I’m not boasting–there are other temptations to which I am far less immune). You can name sins that are easy for you not to commit.

The second category includes those temptations you and I cannot defeat in our ability. When we face these attacks, we need to turn immediately to God for help, knowing that “he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey” (Mark 1:27).

Here’s the problem: Satan seeks to mask these temptations so that we think they belong to the first category. That way, we’ll try to resist them in our strength rather than turning to God for his help. Satan wants to draw us into spiritual quicksand a foot at a time until we are trapped.

The solution is for us to take all temptation immediately to God, asking for his strength to refuse. Here’s how: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

Submit and you can resist. Resist and you will win. Every time.

If you think you’re getting away with sin

Let’s close with two additional life principles.

One: Satan is playing the long game.

When we defeat him with God’s help, he will bring this temptation against us again later. He wants us to think we didn’t win the victory since we’re facing the same temptation.

After Jesus defeated him in the wilderness, the devil “departed from him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). He does the same with us. Every time we face temptation, even the same temptation, we must “submit” and “resist.”

Two: The time to repent is now.

If you think you’re getting away with sin, you’re not. The enemy might be waiting until you climb further up the ladder so that your fall will hurt even more people as you plummet down.

“Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19) is a present-tense imperative, an ongoing command for each of us.

Is it relevant for you today?

Denison Forum

Michael Gerson was President George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter and senior policy advisor and is now a nationally syndicated columnist with the Washington Post. It was my privilege to meet him and to work together at a recent Dallas Baptist University event.

He has been named one of the “25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America” and is one of the most popular and respected conservative voices in American culture.

He also suffers from clinical depression.

Gerson preached last Sunday at Washington National Cathedral. His sermon was adapted into a Washington Post article titled “I was hospitalized for depression. Faith helped me remember how to live.” It is one of the most moving and illuminating articles I have ever read.

If you have time, I encourage you to stop and read it before continuing with this Daily Article. If you do not, I hope you’ll read it as soon as you can.

“Despair can grow inside you like a tumor.”

Gerson describes his disease: “The brain experiences a chemical imbalance and wraps a narrative around it. So the lack of serotonin, in the mind’s alchemy, becomes something like, ‘Everybody hates me.’ Over time, despair can grow inside you like a tumor.”

There are times when the body is incapable of healing without medical intervention. God calls medical professionals just as he calls pastors and missionaries. Faith is a key part of the solution, but depression and other clinical conditions require clinical responses as well.

That’s why Gerson offers this crucial advice: “I’d urge anyone with undiagnosed depression to seek out professional help. There is no way to will yourself out of this disease, any more than to will yourself out of tuberculosis.”

However, as he adds, “Those who hold to the wild hope of a living God” find help and grace in him.

I found myself wondering, are there resources the God of Scripture offers that no other source can?

Help for the past

Much of the despair of life comes from guilt over the past.

We know that we need forgiveness from those we have hurt. However, we don’t even know all the people we have hurt.

Nor can we ask forgiveness from everyone we know we have hurt. Some are deceased. Others might be injured further by our attempt to make amends (as Step Nine of the Alcoholics Anonymous “Twelve Steps” program notes).

But God is different.

David prayed after his affair with Bathsheba, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Psalm 51:4). He did not mean that his adultery with Bathsheba and the death of her husband were not sins against them. He meant that his sin was ultimately against the holy God who made him and who rules the universe.

The good news is that this God can and will forgive every sin we confess (1 John 1:9). He then separates our sin from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12), buries it in the depths of the deepest sea (Micah 7:19), and will “remember [our] sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12).

No one else can make this promise.

Help for the present

Much of our discouragement comes from struggles in the present. We carry burdens too heavy to bear and face obstacles too high to climb.

But Jesus knows what you are feeling today. He was rejected by his hometown and mocked by his own family. He experienced overwhelming stress in the Garden of Gethsemane, horrific pain and torture after he was betrayed by his friends, and abandonment beyond anything we can understand (Matthew 27:46).

Now he is praying for us with empathy and passion (Romans 8:34) and assures us, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

No one else can make this promise.

Help for the future

Much of our despair comes from fears about the future. But God testifies, “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come” (Isaiah 46:10 NIV).

Our timeless Lord sees tomorrow better than we can see today and promises to lead us “in paths of righteousness” (Psalm 23:3).

No one else can make this promise.

“My name is Lazarus”

Let me repeat Michael Gerson’s statement: Depression is a medical condition requiring professional treatment. But for those suffering from depression–and for the rest of us on this fallen planet–there is help and hope in Jesus that we can find nowhere else.

In testifying to the transforming power of his conversion to Christ, Gerson quotes G. K. Chesterton’s poem, “The Convert”:

The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.

Gerson then cites “God’s promise”: “That even when strength fails, there is perseverance. And even when perseverance fails, there is hope. And even when hope fails, there is love. And love never fails.

“So how do we know this? How can anyone be so confident?

“Because we are Lazarus, and we live.”

Denison Forum

While walking on the Gulf Shore near Corpus Christi, Jim and Candy Duke found an unusual bottle. It contained a note explaining that the bottle had been released in 1962 by scientists studying the role of water currents on the movement of shrimp.

Here’s the good news: if the person finding the bottle completed and mailed the enclosed postcard, they would receive “a fifty cent reward.”

The current lab director offered to pay the Dukes as promised, though it would cost the agency fifty-five cents for a stamp and three dollars to print the check.

What was the most powerful computer in 1962?

I’ve been thinking about some of the changes to our culture since 1962.

Technological advances are an obvious example. In 1962, the most powerful computer in the world was the Ferranti Atlas. It filled a room, took six months to assemble, and was difficult to keep running for ten minutes at a time.

Technology has revolutionized our lives, but its advances are a double-edged sword: they have put mobile computing in our pockets but also fueled the plague of pornography and provided a platform for terrorist recruiting.

In 1962, the Civil Rights Act was still two years away. Governmental legislation soon advanced the biblical mandate to reject racism (cf. Galatians 3:28), but other legislation has overturned centuries of biblical morality regarding marriage, gender, and the sanctity of life.

The Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1962 celebrated groundbreaking discoveries “concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material.” This work was foundational to genetic advances that are revolutionizing medicine today. However, these advances could also enable eugenic alterations that would redefine and threaten the future of our species.

In 1962, President Kennedy announced the goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, was a landmark event in science, history, sociology, and philosophy. Global travel was making the world smaller for cultural exchange and educational advancement.

However, the academic rejection of absolute truth and objective morality was also gaining momentum. The “sexual revolution” was one manifestation of such relativism. As Mary Eberstadt has documented, this “massive experiment in chaos and confusion” has radically and negatively impacted our culture.

What problem is the root of our problems?

Many of the technological, legislative, medical, and academic achievements of the last fifty-seven years have clearly improved our lives. But have they improved our souls?

Are humans more moral as a species today? Would you say that the overall moral trajectory of our culture is positive or negative?

What is the problem at the root of our problems?

The answer is a reality our culture considers so outdated and Puritanical that we seldom discuss it. But ignoring something makes it no less real and can make its consequences even worse.

The Bible diagnoses our root issue: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The problem of sin cannot be solved by technology, legislation, medicine, or scholarship. We can regulate it through laws and meliorate some of its effects through education, medicine, and technology.

But we cannot change the underlying human condition: “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a). The consequences of our sin nature are spiritual, emotional, relational, and–eventually–eternal death.

Here’s the solution: “But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23b).

How can temporal work bear eternal fruit?

If healing bodies could save souls, the apostles with their miraculous healing ministries would have gone into health care (cf. Acts 3:1-10; 5:15-16; 20:9-10). If technology could save souls, Jesus would have used his divine omniscience to revolutionize carpentry and other industries (cf. Mark 6:3).

If scholarship could save souls, Saul of Tarsus would have continued with his remarkable academic career (Acts 22:3). If laws could save souls, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus would have sought political leadership through their roles in the Sanhedrin (Mark 15:43; John 3:1).

Let me be clear: God calls his people into medicine, technology, academics, and legislative service today. These are vital and valuable roles in our society. But they cannot save souls. Nor can the sentences I’m typing right now or the words I spoke in church last Sunday.

Only the Holy Spirit can convict of sin and save sinners (John 16:8). Only God has the miraculous power to make us a “new creation” so that “the old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

As a result, the most valuable way to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39) is to share Jesus with them. The greatest gift you can give is the good news of God’s saving grace and transforming love. You’re not forcing your beliefs on others–you are offering them the only antidote to the deadly poison of sin, the only chemotherapy that cures spiritual cancer, the only path that leads to eternal life.

If you and I see our vocations as opportunities to model and share Jesus’ transforming love, our temporal work will bear eternal fruit. But only then.

When will the moon be destroyed?

The largest “supermoon” of the year was visible last night. At 221,734 miles from earth, it is closer to us right now than it will be at any other time this year.

However, our relationship with our closest celestial companion is not permanent. According to one scientist, the earth and moon will be destroyed in about five billion years when the Sun swells enough to incinerate them both.

When (or if) that happens, eternity will only have begun.

Denison Forum

Gary Montez Martin went into his local Circle K convenience store to buy a few cigars last Friday. He did this almost every day. Store clerks said he seemed fine. Hours later, he learned he had been fired from his job and allegedly shot five co-workers to death.

We’re now learning more about his victims.

One was Josh Pinkard, who sent his wife this text: “I love you, I’ve been shot at work.” He did not survive, leaving his wife and three children. Vicente Juarez was a father of three and grandfather of eight. Russell Beyer had a daughter and a son and would have turned forty-eight this Thursday. Clayton Parks left his wife and a young son.

And Trevor Wehner was a student at Northern Illinois University who began as an intern that day. He was scheduled to graduate in May.

The company is determining if anything can be done in the future “to ensure this horrible incident is never repeated.”

“Pessimism is a mark of superior intellect”

Since the Parkland shooting on February 14, 2018, there have been nearly 350 mass shootings in the US–nearly one a day.

Whether the issue is crime and violence, disasters, or disease, when we look at the future through the prism of the present, it’s easy to abandon hope.

Socrates taught us that the key to knowledge is to “know thyself.” From then to now, Western civilization has focused on the individual. Our existentialist worldview limits our experience to ourselves. Jean-Paul Sartre claimed that “man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

As a result, we cannot believe in a future we cannot see in the present. That’s why Nietzsche could say, “Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.” Economist John Kenneth Galbraith: “We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.”

Cyrano de Bergerac claimed that “a pessimist is a man who tells the truth prematurely.” Actually, the opposite is true: a pessimist is a man who decides the truth prematurely. As Robert Schuller noted, “Pessimism drops the curtain on tomorrow.”

“The famine was severe in the land”

I’ve been studying the biblical story of Joseph lately. In Genesis 43, we learn that “the famine was severe in the land” (v. 1). This was the seven-year famine Joseph predicted years earlier. To prepare for it, Pharaoh elevated him to second-in-charge of the nation.

Those suffering from the famine had no way to know that God was using this disaster for a larger redemptive purpose. They could not know that the famine would lead Joseph’s family to join him in Egypt, where they would be saved. They could not know that Joseph’s family would establish the nation from which the Messiah of the world would one day come.

All the world knew was that “the famine was severe in the land.”

To whom will the world “belong tomorrow”?

Much of what God is doing to redeem tragedy is not apparent at the time. Think of the forty years Moses spent in the desert before he led his people out of Egyptian slavery. Remember the forty years they spent in the wilderness until a new generation was ready to enter their Promised Land.

Think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as they were condemned to the fiery furnace. Or Daniel as he was thrown into the lions’ den. Or Peter in prison the night before he was to be executed by Herod. Or Paul in a Philippian jail. Or John exiled on Patmos.

None of them could know when and how their suffering would be redeemed by God’s providential omnipotence. When we’re in the darkness of night, we cannot see the brightness of day.

If “the world will belong tomorrow to those who brought it the greatest hope” (Teilhard de Chardin), how can we offer our culture a realistic path to hope for the future? How can we find such hope for our souls?

One: Expect God to do what is best.

Frederick Buechner once met an Episcopal laywoman who had a ministry of faith healing. Here was the essence of her message: “You had to expect. You had to believe. . . . It was faith that unbound the hands of Jesus so that through your prayers his power could flow and miracles could happen, healing could happen, because where faith was, healing always was too, she said, and there was no power on earth that could prevent it.

“Inside us all, she said, there was a voice of doubt and disbelief which sought to drown out our prayers even as we were praying them, but we were to pray down that voice for all we were worth because it was simply the product in us of old hurts, griefs, failures, of all that the world had done to try to destroy our faith.”

Is that voice speaking to you this morning?

Two: Trust that the present will be used for a redemptive future.

Oswald Chambers: “At times God puts us through the discipline of darkness to teach us to heed Him. Song birds are taught to sing in the dark, and we are put into the shadow of God’s hand until we learn to hear Him.”

Chambers also notes that “God does not give us overcoming life; He gives us life as we overcome” (his italics). He adds: “If we will do the overcoming, we shall find we are inspired of God because He gives life immediately.”

What do you need to overcome today?

Three: Offer someone hope for the future in the present.

Henri Nouwen: “The fragmentation of humanity and its agony grow from the false supposition that all human beings have to fight for their right to be appreciated and loved.” This “false supposition” seems to make the news daily.

If you and I offer someone the appreciation and love of God’s inclusive grace, how much hope will we infuse into their soul? And ours?

Denison Forum

News broke yesterday afternoon that President Trump will sign a border security compromise package that averts another government shutdown. However, this package does not include all the funds Mr. Trump has requested for continued construction of a barrier along our southern border.

ABC News reports that the president plans to announce today his intention to spend about $8 billion on the border wall with a mix of spending from congressional allocations, executive action, and an emergency declaration.

As a nonpartisan ministry, my purpose is not to offer a personal opinion on the political issues involved here. Nor is it to focus on the border wall itself, a subject I addressed recently.

Rather, my goal today is to consider the divisive response to these developments.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders: “The president is once again delivering on his promise to build the wall, protect the border, and secure our great country.”

Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer responded: “Declaring a national emergency would be a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency and a desperate attempt to distract from the fact that President Trump broke his core promise to have Mexico pay for his wall.”

Being Baptist and working for IBM

There are clearly significant debates dividing Americans today. Many of us are fundamentally opposed on foundational issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia.

Continue reading Denison Forum – President to announce $8 billion for border wall →

If you’re planning to get married today in Las Vegas, you can apply for your marriage license here, then pick it up at the baggage claim area at the airport. Alternately, if you or your travel partner is named “Valentine,” you can get free air travel to Iceland today.

A “Smooches from Pooches” kissing boooth is waiting for you at Asheville Regional Airport in North Carolina. Master violinist Patrick Contreras will serenade you at Fresno Yosemite International Airport in California. If you forgot to get a Valentine’s Day card for your loved one, you might head to Chicago Midway Airport, where they’re distributing free cards today.

“Love others like God loves them.”

As Janet Denison noted in her blog, the history and legends surrounding Valentine’s Day remind us that today is “a perfect holiday to allow God to use you as a witness to his perfect love. Love God with everything in you. Love others like God loves them. Let people know you are a Christian this Valentine’s Day by sharing God’s perfect love with them.”

God’s word repeatedly calls us to love as we are loved:

• “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34; cf. John 15:12).
• “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8).
• “Love one another with brotherly affection” (Romans 12:10).
• “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly” (1 Peter 4:8).

Continue reading Denison Forum – How to get a marriage license at baggage claim →

The good news: A newborn baby was pulled from a storm drain in South Africa on Monday. Emergency responders heard a baby crying from deep inside the concrete structure. After working four hours to dig up the area and chisel into the drain, they were able to rescue the baby.

The bad news: according to the Associated Press, paramedics say “it is unclear why the baby was ‘dumped’ and . . . police are investigating.”

The good news: Smithsonian Magazine reports that “Southern California will soon see another booming superbloom.” If rains continue, the desert landscape will come alive with blossoming wild poppies, verbena, lilies, primroses, prickly pear, and dozens of other species of ephemeral native spring wildflowers. Rare species that only bloom every few years or decades may appear.

The bad news: the “superbloom” will result from recent, massive wildfires that created the heat and smoke necessary for the flowers to germinate.

The good news: tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, a wonderful day of celebration with those we love.

The bad news: tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, a difficult day of grief for those who have lost someone they love.

A day I’ll never forget

This week, we’ve been discussing the painful issue of innocent suffering. From clergy abuse scandals to natural disasters and diseases, such suffering makes the news every day. Judging by the response of our readers, this is an issue that resonates deeply with us all.

On Monday, we prayed for victims of clergy sexual abuse. Yesterday, we focused on ways God can redeem our suffering as we trust him in hard places.

Today, I’d like us to consider one of the most significant yet overlooked ways our Lord helps those who hurt.

When my father died ten days before Christmas during my senior year of college, a friend from school drove across town the next day and spent the day with me. He didn’t offer advice or theological wisdom. He was just there. I’ll never forget his presence.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Why was a newborn baby in a storm drain? →

Stories about innocent suffering make the news daily.

Five watercolor paintings attributed to Adolf Hitler failed to sell at auction last weekend, reminding us that the Nazi dictator was a failed artist before inciting the deaths of six million Jews and twelve million other victims in World War II.

Nearly one hundred children have died in Africa from the second-deadliest outbreak of Ebola in history. More than eight hundred people have reported symptoms.

And the appalling report about clergy sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention continues to make news today.

Tragically, no organization is immune to such abuse. The Roman Catholic Church continues to respond to reports of clergy abuse over the last several years. Sexual abuse scandals have rocked the Presbyterian Church USA, the Boy Scouts, gymnastics, swimming, hockey, college football, and political leaders as well.

A study found that nearly five hundred schoolteachers were arrested in 2015 on sexual abuse charges. Shockingly, about 10 percent of children in eighth through eleventh grades were found to have been subjected to some form of sexual abuse by an adult at school (most often a teacher or coach).

Where is God when such tragedies occur?

“Why have you forgotten me?”

Job 9 poignantly describes the pain innocent victims feel when God seems to fail them.

Job pictures the omnipotence of the One “who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea . . . who does great things beyond searching out, and marvelous things beyond number” (vv. 8, 10).

But this omnipotent God seems impervious to Job’s cries for help: “If I summoned him and he answered me, I would not believe that he was listening to my voice. For he crushes me with a tempest and multiplies my wounds without cause” (vv. 16-17). In fact, according to Job, “When disaster brings sudden death, he mocks at the calamity of the innocent” (v. 23).

Continue reading Denison Forum – Victims of innocent suffering: Biblical help and hope →

Virginia continues to deal with scandals engulfing its top three leaders.

Gov. Ralph Northam is facing renewed calls to resign today over a racist photo in his 1984 medical school yearbook. Attorney General Mark Herring has admitted that he wore blackface at a college party in 1980.

And a college professor, Dr. Vanessa Tyson, is accusing Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexually assaulting her at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston. He denies the allegation.

Meanwhile, Gucci has apologized for marketing a sweater that appears to mimic blackface. It looks like a black turtleneck that is worn over the nose, with a red-lined cutout for the mouth. After a public outcry, Gucci removed the product.

In other news, President Trump spoke yesterday morning at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. The president stated, “We must build a culture that cherishes dignity and sanctity of innocent human life.” He added: “All children, born and unborn, are made in the holy image of God. Every life is sacred, and every soul is a precious gift from heaven.”

What do these stories have in common?

“An affront to human dignity”

Russell Moore is an ethicist and president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. In a very perceptive article on the Ralph Northam scandal, Dr. Moore notes that both racism and abortion “are rooted in the counter-Christ idolatry that sees human dignity and lives worth living defined by power.” He states that “abortion and racial injustice are alike an affront to human dignity, and to the image of God.”

Continue reading Denison Forum – What do racism, sexual abuse, and abortion have in common? →

Here’s the most objective story about Donald Trump I could find in today’s news: his childhood home in Queens, New York, is on the market. For $2.9 million, you can purchase the house where Mr. Trump lived until he was four years old. It comes with a life-size cardboard cutout of the president.

It’s hard to open a news feed without finding polarizing stories about the president. Watching reactions to his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, you would think that two separate nations inhabit the same country.

But we’ve been here before.

“A repulsive pedant”

George Washington was the only president ever elected unanimously by the Electoral College. Anyone who believes our politics are polarized beyond repair has not studied the election of 1800. (A Thomas Jefferson surrogate called John Adams a “repulsive pedant,” while an Adams surrogate warned that electing Jefferson would create a nation where “murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced.”)

The founders knew that complex issues would require complex solutions that can be achieved only through sometimes-contentious debate, compromise, and perseverance. That’s why they created a federal structure with three branches and a complicated system of checks and balances.

Reflecting the diversity of the new nation, political leaders soon formed the first two political parties. And a two-party system has basically dominated our political process ever since.

Whose nomination took 103 ballots?

There is no question that America’s two parties are intensely opposed to each other today. According to Pew Research Center, 45 percent of Republicans consider the Democratic Party “a threat to the nation’s well-being”; 41 percent of Democrats view the Republican Party the same way.

Continue reading Denison Forum – How much does Donald Trump’s childhood home cost? →

President Trump delivered the 2019 State of the Union address last night before a joint session of the 116th Congress. I watched the address, then surveyed coverage of it this morning. It is as if there were two different speeches delivered.

The Blaze headlines: “An astounding number of viewers approved of Trump’s State of the Union speech–here are the results.” A Fox columnist claims that “once again, America saw that Trump on the stump is very, very good.”

By contrast, the Washington Post is carrying a column titled “More Trump fantasyland as the world fries.” CNN has an article titled “Critics laugh off Trump’s mispronunciations once again.” Van Jones claimed that the speech was “psychotically incoherent.”

None of this should surprise us.

Who is neutral about the president?

The New Yorker interviewed a Georgetown University scholar this week who called President Trump “an amateur in the White House” and claimed that he “looks hideously weak.” By contrast, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders recently called Mr. Trump “the most productive President in modern history” and claimed, “It’s indisputable that our country has never been stronger than it is today under the leadership of President Trump.”

It seems difficult to find someone who is neutral about the president. The latest poll shows that 39.9 percent of Americans approve of the job he is doing, while 55.6 percent disapprove. Only 4.5 percent are undecided.

Our divisions over the president reflect a growing partisan divide in our country. Pew Research Center asked more than five thousand people about several specific political issues and found that, on average, there was a thirty-six-point gap between Republicans and Democrats. This is up twenty-one points since Pew began tracking these questions twenty-three years earlier.

Continue reading Denison Forum – The ‘State of the Union’ is divided: How should Christians respond? →

As everyone who doesn’t live on Mars must know, the New England Patriots defeated the Los Angeles Rams to win Super Bowl LIII yesterday.

The game set eighteen records: It was the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in history. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are now the oldest starting quarterback and head coach to win a Super Bowl. It featured the longest punt ever (though the ball rolled much of the way), the fewest touchdowns, and the fewest kickoff returns.

Critics are condemning the Rams and their quarterback today, but they did make it to the game’s biggest stage (albeit after a blown call against the Saints). However, the NFL gives out no trophies for second place.

Legendary driver Dale Earnhardt spoke for our culture: “Second place is just the first place loser.”

Do you remember who lost the Super Bowl last year? The Patriots. Two years ago? The Falcons. The year before? The Panthers. (I had to look it up.)

“A first-grader could have painted that”

In our culture, you’re a winner if you win and a loser if you lose. That’s because a secular culture, by definition, cannot consider spiritual truth. It can see only what it can see. A materialistic society measures success by materialistic means.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Why the Rams’ Super Bowl loss matters today →