The recent premiere of HBO’s Game of Thrones drew a record-setting 10.1 million viewers. Coupled with digital viewers, the show averaged 25.1 million viewers last year. It was by far the most watched show on television, nearly double the viewers of the second-place show.

Why is Game of Thrones so astoundingly popular? What does its popularity say about us?

I must begin with a disclaimer: I have never seen Game of Thrones, for reasons I’ll explain in today’s article. But Internet reviews are so abundant that it’s not hard to identify reasons for the show’s enormous popularity. Each of them says something frightening about our culture today.

One: The plots are unpredictably complex. As Forbes notes, “Central characters are killed, psychopaths claim power, weddings become bloodbaths, and bad guys develop consciences as time passes.” The show is built on the premise that there is no logic to life, that we live in a chaotic world with no central purpose or direction.

Two: The show embraces amorality. “Good” characters make horrific mistakes, while “bad” characters act redemptively. One psychologist lauds the “progressive tolerance” the show legitimizes. In a postmodern culture that views all truth as personal and subjective, the characters legitimize our rejection of right and wrong.

Three: All sexuality is endorsed. Rape, lesbianism, sex between siblings, prostitution, and other acts so despicable I won’t mention them here—all are regular fare. As millions of people watch such perversion, they are desensitized and far more likely to embrace the “sexual liberation” the show articulates.

Four: Violence is normalized. Heads are crushed, people are stabbed through the eye, victims are burned alive, mass murder is depicted graphically. Why is this a problem? Exposure to media violence is clearly linked to violent acts as watching violence changes brain patterns and alters behavior.

What would God say to Christians tempted to watch such ungodliness?

One: Guard your heart. Scripture teaches us to “keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23). We are commanded to “think on” whatever is “pure” (Philippians 4:8). Our thoughts determine our actions, which determine our lives (Proverbs 23:7 KJV).

Two: Guard your witness. Our skeptical culture looks for reasons to reject our faith. If we are ungodly, how can we call others to be godly? “A truthful witness saves lives” (Proverbs 14:25).

Three: Guard your relationship with God. Would you want your parents to watch you as you watch the nudity and violence depicted on Game of Thrones? Your heavenly Father sees all that you see. His Spirit lives in you and is subjected to whatever your experience. “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 4:30).

Jesus taught us, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8). Thus, we can see Game of Thrones, or we can see God, but we cannot see both.

NOTE: In response to the continuing controversy over neo-Nazis and white supremacists, I have written an article for our website titled Hitler’s Lies: Responding to Nazism Today. The article explores Hitler’s ideology, the continuing popularity of Nazism, and three biblical responses. I invite you to read it here.

Denison Forum

“I escaped the Nazis once. You will not defeat me now.” Marianne Rubin held a sign with these words as she joined protests against racial violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. The eighty-nine-year-old New York resident survived the Holocaust. Now she’s standing up to Nazis again. Her interview is making global headlines this morning.

The tragedy began when one hundred white nationalists marched on the University of Virginia campus Friday night. They carried torches, chanted Nazi slogans like “Sieg Heil,” and greeted each other with the Nazi salute.

The next day, when counter-protesters responded to their hatred, a Nazi sympathizer rammed his car into them, killing one and injuring nineteen others. Two state troopers monitoring the white supremacist rally were killed when their helicopter crashed.

Is this tragedy an isolated incident?

The third largest political party in Greece is led by a man who describes Hitler as a “great personality.” A Scandinavian group called the Nordic Resistance Movement praises Hitler in publications. Neo-Nazi activities in Europe have doubled in recent years.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Holocaust survivor stands up to Nazis in America →

Janet and I returned Saturday from vacationing in Northern Europe. Our trip took us around the Baltic Sea to some of the most picturesque places we’ve ever encountered.

We visited a church founded in 1130 and toured several others that were built prior to the Reformation. Their architecture was stunning, with towering spires and brilliant artwork that pointed us toward heaven. The commitment necessary to produce these worship structures was truly sacrificial and glorifying to our Lord.

However, the churches of the region, like many I have visited across Europe, are mostly tourist destinations today. Tiny congregations meet in them on Sundays. Only 3 to 5 percent of the Scandinavian population attends worship each week.

The pioneers whose sacrifice erected such majestic cathedrals would be shocked to find them so vacant on Sundays. What explains this tragic spiritual decline?

To summarize a complicated story, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe witnessed the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on human reason and depreciation of divine revelation. Science gained ascendancy over the “mythology” of religion. The Bible was viewed as a diary of religious experience rather than objective truth. Christianity was seen as just one way to God.

Does this seem familiar?

Continue reading Denison Forum – Good news from my travels to ‘secular’ Scandinavia →

The war against ISIS and the principles for which they stand has been going on for longer than most of us care to remember. It seems like news of their latest attacks is a near-weekly occurrence, and, even as their physical footprint in the Middle East continues to fade, their influence expands across the globe. One primary reason is their ability to recruit through videos and social media.

In the past, the American government has tried to fight fire with fire, making forty-two videos to dissuade people from joining the terrorists. Unfortunately, those videos have a combined fifty-five thousand views—a relatively paltry number by social media standards—and seem to have accomplished little. A new strategy, however, could be shifting the tides.

According to Wesley Bruer at CNN, Priyank Mathur is “a former counterterrorism intelligence analyst for the Department of Homeland Security who moonlighted as a comedy writer for the satirical news website ‘The Onion’.” Mathur has found a way to combine his two interests in the fight against the terrorists. He recently reached out to East India Comedy (EIC), a group of stand-up comedians and sketch writers from Mumbai, to develop a video called “I Want to Quit ISIS.”

The roughly five-and-a-half-minute sketch depicts ISIS as a normal-looking office where a young man attempts to leave the terrorist organization, only to be bogged down in bureaucracy and debates over the tenets of Islam with his manager. The video is quite funny but also does an excellent job of subtly pointing out the hypocrisy behind the terrorist rhetoric. It’s since been viewed more than a million times in Southeast Asia—some of the most fertile ground for ISIS recruitment—and hundreds of thousands of times by people in other parts of the world as well.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Laughing at ISIS: a new battleplan →

Does the day’s news ever make you question, even if just for a moment, God’s authority in the world? I’m guilty of at least asking the question now and then, and I doubt I’m the only one. To some extent, I think it’s only natural given the increasingly unstable nature of the world today.

President Trump, commander in chief of the world’s second largest nuclear arsenal, warned that further threats from North Korea “will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” North Korea responded by threatening to attack the American base in Guam. In France, six soldiers were injured in a possible terrorist attack after a dark BMW crashed into their patrol. And the impending release of a new report on climate change already has proponents from both sides on the defensive as they prepare for another round of the same old fight.

Amidst all the uncertainty and strife we face each day, believing that God remains in control and still has plans for this world and all those in it has seldom been more important or more difficult.

Jeremiah 29:11 is one of the most commonly cited verses when people are going through times such as these, and for good reason. God’s promise that he has a plan for you and that those plans are to “prosper you and not to harm you . . . to give you a hope and a future” can provide just the kind of reassurance and encouragement needed when life seems bleak. Unfortunately, that verse is also one of the most commonly misunderstood passages in Scripture.

Continue reading Denison Forum – When God’s plan is hard to trust →

Last week, we discussed President Trump’s assurance that North Korea would be “handled” and the mixed reaction that statement received. In the days since, with the key support of North Korean allies China and Russia, the UN passed new sanctions effectively reducing the country’s economic output by a third. It was a bold move but seems to have had little impact on Kim Jong-un and his government. The Washington Post broke a story on Tuesday that could explain why.

United States intelligence officials recently determined that, in addition to their developing weapons program, North Korea has successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead that could fit inside many of its long-range missiles. The Japanese Ministry of Defense recently reached the same conclusion.

As the Post describes, that development was expected to take the regime years to attain. While North Korea still lacks the missiles necessary to deliver such a warhead to the mainland United States, much of the world is now theoretically within range, including many of America’s allies.

Despite the looming threat, some experts argue that an even larger mistake than underestimating North Korea’s nuclear capabilities would be to overestimate them, thereby unnecessarily increasing the stakes in the region. Others argue, however, that the fear of overestimating the danger posed by the regime have led us to, in the words of Jeffrey Lewis, insist “on impossible levels of proof” instead of reacting appropriately to what we do know.

Continue reading Denison Forum – North Korea has a deployable nuke →

Marcus Hutchins was a relatively unknown British cybersecurity researcher until he helped stop the “WannaCry” ransomware attack that plagued countless companies, hospitals, and governments around the world earlier this year. The “WannaCry” software locked a computer until the user paid the perpetrators a ransom of roughly three hundred dollars.

Hutchins discovered that the virus could be stopped by controlling a specific website and then purchased the site for a little over ten dollars. While he initially hoped to simply track the spread of the virus, purchasing the site triggered a kill-switch that put an end to the global attack.

Hutchins tried his best to remain anonymous, going instead by his Twitter handle, but it only took a matter of days for journalists to discover his identity. Now he’s back in the news, but for a much more sobering reason.

It turns out the man who saved the world’s computers had allegedly crafted and sold some malware of his own a few years prior.

The program was intended to steal banking information and was made available for several thousand dollars. It’s unclear how many used the program, or the extent of the damage, but Hutchins has since been arrested outside the Las Vegas airport and indicted on six counts of computer fraud.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Hacker hero arrested →

“Unfortunately, confidence is an elusive goal for many people. And that’s because we fundamentally misunderstand the way it works.” So describes Quartz’s Melody Wilding in a fascinating article about why so many struggle with their sense of self-esteem and how the key to confidence often lies in failure as much as success.

Wilding writes of how many parents in the 1980s and 1990s worked to instill self-confidence in their children through participation awards and constant praise—earned or otherwise. The reality is that because parents helped their kids avoid failure rather than learn from it and work to become better, many of those children now struggle to build confidence on their own. As a result, we live in a culture where many either wrestle with self-doubt or overcompensate through baseless pride.

That latter temptation is especially troubling because the line between pride and confidence is often hard to discern.

As Christians, we are well aware of the dangers pride poses. So how do we live with confidence in who the Lord made us to be without crossing that line? The key is understanding where confidence ends and pride begins.

Pride and confidence cannot both exist in the same person. Pride is an overestimation of yourself; confidence is the result of a right understanding of your abilities and limitations. Consequently, prideful people are in constant need of justification to maintain the facade that they are something greater than their reality.

However, confidence does not require that sort of justification because it is already a correct view of one’s abilities and character. As a result, the confident person can be humble when the prideful person cannot because his or her limitations are not threats to be dealt with but limitations to be explored and improved upon. When we can view those aspects of our lives that need improvement as an opportunity rather than a danger, it’s a good sign we’re on the right path.

Continue reading Denison Forum – The line between pride and confidence →

The NCAA is fond of saying that most of its nearly four hundred thousand athletes “will go pro in something other than sports.” Given that a recent study found the slogan was true for more than 99 percent of student-athletes, it’s a helpful perspective for those young adults to keep in mind.

Apparently, though, it only applies once your playing career is at an end. Try to start going pro in something else while on scholarship and you’ve crossed an unforgivable line.

Donald De La Haye recently learned that lesson the hard way. As the backup kicker for a relatively unheralded program, it’s long been clear that De La Haye’s post-college career was unlikely to include football. To his credit, he made the most of his time on campus by becoming something of a YouTube star.

His channel had just over sixty thousand subscribers in June of this year—not enough to register far outside of Florida, but enough to warrant a relatively small paycheck from the video service. Unfortunately for De La Haye, the NCAA deemed his success a violation of their rules since part of the draw was that he played scholarship football at a Division 1 program.

Consequently, they told the backup kicker that if he wanted to continue doing both, he’d have to demonetize and remove any reference to his status as a student-athlete in both future videos and those he’s already made. Essentially, he can’t use his own name or status as a student-athlete to make money while under scholarship (even though the NCAA makes billions each year by doing just that). De La Haye chose YouTube and has since been kicked off the UCF football team for doing so.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Kicker loses scholarship because of YouTube →

Arizona until Donald Trump came to office. Since then, he has become a face for the conservative opposition to the kind of politics that have defined the president’s term to date. His recently published book, Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle, continues to cause a stir among those on both sides of the aisle.

James Hohmann of The Washington Post called it “the most courageous conservative rebuttal of Trumpism yet,” while others, like Mark Levin and Brent Bozell, have called him a “liberal” and an “impostor,” respectively. I haven’t had the chance to read Sen. Flake’s book yet and will reserve judgment on it until I get the chance to do so. I’d encourage you to do the same rather than make definitive judgments based on excerpts and secondhand statements.

Rather, my purpose today is to look at the environment in which a sitting senator of the same party as the president felt he needed to publish a book denouncing the commander in chief. Such a move is largely unparalleled, especially considering that Flake’s Senate seat is up for grabs in next year’s elections, and President Trump has already reportedly offered support to conservative candidates thinking about running against the senator. It speaks volumes about Flake’s assessment of the political climate that he felt the risk of losing his seat was worth the potential reward of bringing about what he deems to be necessary changes.

Chief among those changes appears to be the belief that the Republican party has prioritized politics over convictions, embracing the partisan belief that the other party’s “failure would be our success and the fortunes of the citizenry would presumably be sorted out in the meantime.” He traces that belief back to the Republican response to Obama’s first term. Lest we make the mistake of thinking it’s solely a Republican problem, however, the now-minority Democrats have often embraced a very similar tactic since Trump came to office.

Continue reading Denison Forum – What Jeff Flake says about our nation →

Following North Korea’s successful launch of its longest-range missile to date, tensions are once again running high over the volatile nation’s plans to join the list of global nuclear powers. In a recent meeting, President Trump stated, “We will handle North Korea. We are gonna be able to handle them. It will be handled. We handle everything.” This assurance has left many ill at ease regarding the president’s plans for the region.

Sen. Lindsey Graham clarified that the president assured him part of that plan could ultimately include military intervention: “There is a military option to destroy North Korea’s [missile] program and North Korea itself.” Graham then stated his belief that such actions are “inevitable if North Korea continues.”

Kim Jong Un and the North Korean government seem undeterred by the president’s position and the recent increase in sanctions against the country. North Korea’s most recent demonstration was coupled with increased submarine activity, including a test of their ability to launch a missile from a submersed submarine. Taken together, the tests represent two-thirds of the so-called “Strategic Triad,” a military theory arguing that a nation must possess land-, air-, and sea-based nuclear capabilities to prevent an outside attack.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Can North Korea be “handled”? →

Major League Baseball’s trade deadline passed yesterday afternoon, and the outlook for this year’s playoffs remains relatively unchanged. That doesn’t mean it was boring, as the Rangers and Dodgers pulled off a swap for ace pitcher Yu Darvish at the deadline, but the trades are usually defined by the rich getting richer at the cost of future prospects. Teams positioned to win now sacrifice a bit of their future for a better chance at experiencing success in the present.

The Houston Astros, on the other hand, made the opposite decision. They currently have the best record in the American League, but their rotation grows weaker by the day, and many doubt how well it will hold up in the playoffs. Still, they kept their best prospects to safeguard the future, even though it could come at a high price in the present.

Such calculations are not unique to baseball, however. Life requires that each of us weigh these sorts of decisions every day. The difficulty of doing so without knowing their consequences is a large part of what can make our time on this side of heaven so stressful. All we can really do is try to balance what we know of the present with what we expect might happen in the future. Fortunately, we serve a God for whom tomorrow is just as real as today.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Would you trade your present for your future? →

Janet and I are on vacation, so I’ve asked our oldest son Ryan to write the Daily Article in my absence. Ryan has been writing for our website for several years. He has earned BA and Master of Divinity degrees and is completing a PhD in church history. I believe you will profit from his insights as he engages cultural issues with biblical truth.

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It’s long been said that money can’t buy happiness, but a recent study put that cliché to the test and found that it’s not always true. As The Washington Post’s Jenna Gallegos writes, those who use their money to buy more free time through outsourcing tasks like cleaning the house and mowing the yard, or by taking the tollway to and from work, were less stressed and generally happier than those who spent their money on material goods. And while that may seem like something only the well-off can afford, the study’s results were consistent across most income levels.

Unfortunately, few of us live like that. Only two percent of people reported that, if given forty dollars to spend, buying more free time would be among their initial purchases. As the study’s lead author, Ashley Whillans, put it, “People are notoriously bad at making decisions that will make them happier.” The primary reason is that it’s far more difficult to measure the value of our time than it is movie tickets, a new dress, or a few more hours at the office.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Turns out money can buy happiness →

For a few hours, Jeff Bezos was officially the wealthiest person in the world. With a net worth exceeding $90 billion, he passed Bill Gates when shares of Amazon stock surged Thursday morning. The company’s stock then settled down slightly, moving Bezos into second place today.

Amazon was named “the world’s most innovative company of 2017.” The company started as an online book retailer but now delivers everything from groceries to personal care products to cloud computing. Amazon has outgrown Walmart to become the largest retailer in the United States.

But there’s a dark side to the story. Bezos was named World’s Worst Boss by the International Trade Union Confederation in May 2014. A New York Times article profiles Amazon’s work culture, in which emails arrive past midnight followed by text messages asking why they were not answered.

The company boasts that its standards are “unreasonably high.” Some workers suffering from personal crises claim they were evaluated unfairly or forced out rather than given time to recover. One former employer said, “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”

My point today is not to criticize Jeff Bezos and Amazon but to explore the cultural narrative they illustrate. We now live in a world dominated by multinational corporations. According to one analyst, “By many measures, corporations are more central players in global affairs than nations.” Foreign Policy lists twenty-five companies, Amazon among them, which it says “are more powerful than many countries.” It calls them “corporate nations.”

Continue reading Denison Forum – What the ‘world’s richest person’ says about us →

The most inspiring article I’ve read recently comes from an unlikely source.

Johnathon Carrington graduated from Georgetown University with a double major in management and finance. While he was valedictorian of his high school class, that school was in an impoverished, drug-infested community. But Johnathon chose to view his challenges as opportunities: “Given where I come from, giving up wasn’t an option. I wasn’t going to stop.”

“Cognitive reframing” is a way of seeing and experiencing events, ideas, concepts and emotions to find more positive alternatives. We can view our challenges as insurmountable, or we can find a positive way to interpret and conquer them.

A recent article in The New York Times illustrates this concept in relation to stress.

Research indicates that having a lot of stress in your life is not linked to premature death. However, having a lot of stress and believing it is taking a toll on your health increases your risk of premature death by an astounding 43 percent.

Continue reading Denison Forum – ‘Giving up wasn’t an option’ →

“Coke” is the world’s second most recognized word after “okay.” Coca-Cola is one of the most quintessential American brands. When I pastored in Atlanta, our family often visited the World of Coca-Cola, a museum with fascinating displays of historical American culture.

But what we see in the US is apparently not what the rest of the world sees.

A dear friend traveling in Italy alerted me to a deplorable ad playing on television there. It depicts a handsome young man cleaning a backyard pool. An enraptured teenage girl stares at the “pool boy” through a window.

Then the camera pans to her brother, also staring lustfully at the man. Brother and sister race to bring him a bottle of Coca-Cola. But when they arrive, they discover to their consternation that their mother has already given him a bottle of Coke. She stares longingly at the “pool boy,” then shrugs her shoulders at her children.

Coca-Cola clearly thinks its shameless ad will sell its product in Italy, home of the conservative Roman Catholic Church. If immorality sells there, it sells anywhere.

Continue reading Denison Forum – A Coca-Cola ad that foreshadows the future →

An unidentified flying object made headlines recently when it appeared over southwest England. A “flying saucer” was spotted last week over Mexico. Is your first inclination to believe that these were probably visits from outer space?

Your answer may depend on whether you went to church last Sunday, but not in the way our culture expects.

It’s conventional wisdom that faith makes us less scientific and more gullible. However, research indicates the opposite: the less religious people are, the more likely they are to endorse empirically unsupported ideas about UFOs. In addition, the Pew Research Center has discovered that those who attend religious services less than weekly are more than twice as likely to claim they have encountered a ghost.

Writing for The New York Times, psychology professor Clay Routledge cites these studies to argue that those who are less religious still search for transcendent meaning, though in non-religious ways. He is undoubtedly right. There is a “God-shaped emptiness” in us, as Pascal noted. If we will not fill that emptiness with God, we will fill it with something or someone else.

However, there’s more to the story.

What if those who are religious are therefore more biblically literate? What if one of the reasons they are less likely to believe in ghosts and UFOs is because they know what God says about these fictions? Could it be that being more biblical makes us more scientific, not less?

Continue reading Denison Forum – UFOs appear over England and Mexico →

“Divine comedy” is how AP News describes a typographical error in a Wendy’s sign. The fast-food restaurant in Palm Beach County, Florida, recently installed a sign reading, “All of Wendy’s sins off one word—FRESH.” The word was supposed to be “spins.”

While the restaurant could use a better proofreader, its sentiment is interesting. What word does your life “spin off”?

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. He has been hired by companies such as Google, Wells Fargo, and Warner Brothers to talk about managing people. In an interview published yesterday, he made a statement that is both simple and significant: “What we spend the majority of our waking lives doing should be something we find really valuable and rewarding.”

You would think it wouldn’t take a best-selling psychologist to point out this fact. But are you following his advice? What mission defines your life?

Here’s a better question: Whose mission defines your life?

Jordan Spieth won yesterday’s British Open in record fashion. I watched the tournament on television and was astounded by his performance over the last five holes. His temperament in facing adversity was absolutely remarkable. Spieth is not yet twenty-four years old, but his maturity is already legendary.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Why a typo in Wendy’s sign is ‘divine comedy’ →

This morning’s news is dominated by O. J. Simpson after a parole board unanimously voted yesterday to release the former NFL player from prison. The seventy-year-old Simpson could be free as early as October 1 after serving the minimum nine years of a thirty-three-year sentence.

Orenthal James Simpson was indisputably one of the greatest athletes in NFL history—a five-time Pro Bowler, five-time first-team All Pro, NFL Most Valuable Player, NFL 1970s All-Decade Team, and AP Athlete of the Year.

But his success on the field concealed a troubled life off it.

His father was a well-known drag queen in the San Francisco area who later announced he was gay and died of AIDS in 1986. His parents separated when he was five, and he was raised by his mother. He joined a street gang as a teenager and was incarcerated briefly.

After two years of community college, Simpson transferred to the University of Southern California, where his gifts as a running back made national headlines. He won the Heisman Trophy and was drafted number one by the NFL. His football career and endorsements made him a household name.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Learning from the tragedy of O. J. Simpson →

Stephen Colbert is the most popular talk show host on late-night television. He has discussed his Christian faith frequently over the years; I have written about the fact that he teaches Sunday school and attends mass regularly with his family.

Last Tuesday night, however, Colbert made an extremely obscene gesture as he was ridiculing the Republicans’ failure to pass health care reform. Last May he made headlines with another sexual obscenity as he lambasted President Trump.

How does his lewd behavior reflect on his faith?

A Christian in Israel is accused of stabbing his daughter to death because she was dating a Muslim. A report released Tuesday claims that at least 547 members of a prestigious Catholic boys’ choir in Germany were physically or sexually abused between 1945 and 1992.

Meanwhile, books condoning marital rape were found in an Islamic high school library in England. Three Muslims shot and killed two Israeli officers at the Temple Mount last Friday, triggering tensions that are continuing today.

When you read such stories about Muslims, how do they make you feel about Islam? When non-Christians read stories about the sins of Christians, that’s how they feel about our faith.

Now consider a story you might have missed: Betty Dukes died recently. You may not know her name, but the world’s largest retailer certainly does.

Continue reading Denison Forum – Stephen Colbert makes news for the wrong reason →