Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Paris on Sunday in protest over the rising cost of living, a shortage of key supplies, and fears that their circumstances will only get worse as winter looms just over the horizon.

Those who spent their weekend marching through the streets of the French capital are hardly alone in their fear and anger.

The stress and angst that boiled over in the protests has been building for quite some time and was preceded by strikes at oil refineries that further exacerbated the problems. Almost a third of the country’s gas pumps are either fully or partly dry, and additional strikes are expected in the days to come.

Similar protest movements have begun in Germany, Italy, Belgium, and a host of other European countries as well. But while the inflation and shortages at the heart of these protests have a multitude of causes, the focus for many is the war in Ukraine.

When Russia began its invasion back in February of this year, most of the Western world was united in its opposition to Putin and his attacks. Officially, that stance has not changed. Both NATO and the European Union maintain their support for Ukraine and the measures that have been taken to fight back against Russia.

But as the cost of those measures—particularly the economic sanctions and energy shortages—have mounted, large swaths of the general public throughout Europe have started having second thoughts.

And there is perhaps no country paying closer attention to this development than China.

What if China invades Taiwan?

While one could argue that Russia stands to gain the most from any discontent among the European nations that oppose their invasion of Ukraine, circumstances have likely progressed too far for NATO or the EU to change course now. Those nations that stand against Putin’s government will continue to do so until the situation in Ukraine is resolved.

As such, the more pertinent question is whether those European nations can afford to take a similar approach should China invade Taiwan.

From the moment Russia started sending troops across their western border, many have seen similarities between Taiwan and Ukraine. As the latter denied Russia the quick victory that many inside the Kremlin forecasted, it gave hope to those in Taiwan that they too would be able to ward off any incursions by their much larger foe. And it would appear that China shared that apprehension, at least initially.

CIA Director William Burns told a House Intelligence Committee in March that Beijing had been “surprised and unsettled” by both Ukraine’s resistance and the Western response.

However, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s tone and comments were anything but apprehensive and unsettled on the subject of Taiwan during his opening remarks at this week’s Party Congress. Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist with the Australia National University’s Taiwan Studies Program, noted that Xi’s approach to the subject shifted from previous speeches and conveyed a “newfound urgency on making progress on the Taiwan issue.”

In fact, the delegates in attendance rendered their loudest applause of the night whenever Xi spoke on his hope for a “peaceful reunification” coupled with the resolve to “reserve the option of taking all measures necessary” to see that reunification come to pass.

In short, it would appear that any fears he had back in March have been assuaged in the months since. And while there are several plausible explanations for how that shift may have occurred, the most likely is the belief that the united Western support that has proved so crucial to the defense of Ukraine will not be extended to Taiwan.

The cost of commitment

We will discuss the implications of that reality for the United States in particular in tomorrow’s Daily Article. But before we do, there’s an important lesson from the European response that we need to consider.

Towards the end of Christ’s ministry, he cautioned his followers against underestimating the level of commitment required to be his disciple. To drive the point home, he compared that commitment to the way a builder counts the cost before beginning to construct a tower and to a king who measures the strength of his army against the enemy’s forces before engaging in battle (Luke 14:25–33).

This teaching was important because Jesus understood that maintaining one’s commitment is much more difficult when it begins to cost us more than we would prefer to pay.

Christ commanded total commitment from his disciples—above their commitment to family, friends, and most of all themselves—because he knew they could not comprehend what it would cost to follow him. As such, weighing that cost was less about what they would have to pay than about what they were willing to pay.

Understanding that distinction is just as important for us today as it was for his disciples nearly two thousand years ago.

How much are you truly willing to sacrifice?

Many of the protests in Europe are the result of countries hoping that the war in Ukraine would cost less than they’re currently having to pay. As such, their citizens are less likely to sanction a similar wager if China invades Taiwan, and Beijing appears to have reached a similar conclusion.

As the cost of following Christ in our culture continues to rise, let’s learn from their example.

For a long time, Christians in America have had the luxury of knowing that the true cost of what we could expect to pay for following Jesus was unlikely to exceed what we were willing to pay. But as circumstances change and that cost becomes less certain, many have already begun to waver in their commitment to the Lord. And while it’s unlikely that the price to follow Jesus will rise to the point of death, only God knows where it will ultimately fall.

So take some time today to ask the Holy Spirit to help you examine by which measure you’re counting the cost of discipleship.

Have you put limits on how much you’re willing to pay to follow Jesus?

Is your commitment based on what you want it to cost or on what Christ says it could cost?

It’s all right to hope for the former so long as you are prepared to pay the latter.

Are you?

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The twentieth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a weeklong event that opened yesterday in Beijing, China. Beijing is 6,980 miles from Dallas, Texas, where I live. Why should I care what happens there?

Why should you?

According to the US Department of State, the Chinese Communist Party seeks to set up “a new international order dominated by the CCP.” It therefore “threatens the world’s economy and public health by unsustainably exploiting natural resources and exporting its reckless disregard for the environment.”

Meanwhile, the CCP “silences dissent and restricts the rights and freedoms of Chinese citizens to include forced population control, arbitrary detention, censorship, forced labor, violations of religious freedom, and pervasive media and internet censorship,” all while it “manipulates international organizations, democratically elected governments, and companies to mask its human rights abuses at home and abroad.”

The FBI says confronting the economic espionage threats emanating from the CCP is its “top counterintelligence priority.” It warns that “the Chinese government is seeking to become the world’s greatest superpower through predatory lending and business practices, systematic theft of intellectual property, and brazen cyber intrusions.”

And our Christian brothers and sisters in China face some of the most oppressive and sophisticated surveillance and persecution in the world. It is illegal for those under eighteen years of age even to attend church. Christian leaders who are seen as threats to the government have been abducted.

Why we are the enemy

When I was growing up, the Soviet Union was the major threat to the West and to global stability. Now, despite Russia’s horrific crimes against Ukraine, China has risen to become our greatest threat. Why?

The foundational answer consists of two names: Karl Marx and Xi Jinping.

Xi is expected to be reelected this week to an unprecedented third term as China’s leader. He more than any other individual or factor has led China to threaten the West as it does.

The reason is simple: he is following the ideology of Karl Marx. Often called the Father of Communism, Marx emphasized the importance of class struggle in every historical society. He sought to foment working-class revolutions throughout the capitalist world that would lead, he claimed, to a classless society and a socialist utopia.

In Marx’s view, the individual is a means to the advancement of society, which in turn (he claimed) will benefit the individual. He wanted the state to govern every dimension of life as a means to this end and saw Western capitalism, with its emphasis on the value and rights of the individual, as the enemy of such “progress.”

So does Xi Jinping.

Chinese Marxism and American materialism

Kevin Rudd is president of the Asia Society in New York and a former prime minister and foreign minister of Australia. Writing for Foreign Affairs, he notes that Marxism has been China’s official ideology since 1949. However, he states, Xi Jinping “has developed a new form of Marxist nationalism that now shapes the presentation and substance of China’s politics, economy, and foreign policy.”

As a result, he has “reasserted the influence and control the CCP exerts over all domains of public policy and private life” and “stoked nationalism by pursuing an increasingly assertive foreign policy, turbocharged by a Marxist-inspired belief that history is irreversibly on China’s side and that a world anchored in Chinese power would produce a more just international order.”

In direct contrast to Xi Jinping’s ideology that makes the individual the servant of the state, the United States stands on the declaration that “all men are created equal” and a consequent belief in “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” as Abraham Lincoln stated so eloquently.

However, as Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren notes in yesterday’s New York Times, Americans are increasingly experiencing life as “machines” who exist as a means to materialistic ends.

Digital productivity monitoring has resulted in hyper-controlled work environments. Omnipresent technology means work is no longer confined to the office: nearly 40 percent of workers said they check email outside of regular hours every day. Remote work means we can work anywhere at any time. A majority of workers say it is more difficult to “unplug” from work than when the pandemic began.

A third ideology

As a result, whether we are discussing China’s oppressive Marxism or America’s oppressive materialism, we need to remember a third ideology: the biblical claim that each of us is created uniquely in the likeness of God (Genesis 1:26–27). As “image bearers” of the divine, we are people of intrinsic value and worth.

However, sin marred this image and separated us from our holy Creator, so he sent his Son to die on our cross, pay our debt, and purchase our salvation. When we trust Christ as our Savior and Lord, he makes us the children of God and gives us “abundant” life on earth and in eternity (John 1:12; 10:10).

This is the gospel, literally the “good news.” It is the only ideology that restores fallen humans to the transforming intimacy with our Maker for which we are intended. It is the only worldview that empowers us to love our Father and each other unconditionally (Matthew 22:37–39).

But our world will not adopt our worldview unless we do. Secularists will not love our Father more than we do. Skeptics will not believe we love our neighbor unless we love them.

St. Augustine observed, “Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.”

How beautiful will your soul be today?

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 “This is one of the best days of my life. I feel like I might be dreaming or something. I thought my life was over. I will remember this day for a long time. You don’t know how much I appreciate this . . . you really don’t know.” This is how a one-hundred-year-old veteran thanked a stranger named Isaiah Garza for taking him to Disneyland.

A now-viral video posted to TikTok shows Garza approaching the elderly man (after coordinating with the man’s caregiver) to say, “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’ve had a really rough day. Do you want to go to Disneyland with me today?” The man was shocked but delighted. Garza told a reporter later, “First we went on the tea cups and it was his first ride in like fifty years and then It’s a Small World and sang it together like fifty times it was so cute.”

Garza captioned part of the video: “Became best friends for the day.”

“The nicest place on the internet”

Unsurprisingly, Harvard University reports that “loneliness appears to have increased substantially since the outbreak of the global pandemic.” More than half of all US adults are considered to be lonely; young adults are twice as likely to be lonely than seniors.

In response, a website calling itself “the nicest place on the internet” will give you a virtual hug. Social media offers unprecedented virtual community. But we need community that is more than virtual.

What God said of Adam is true of us all: “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). You and I were made in the image and likeness of the God (Genesis 1:27) of triune community (2 Corinthians 13:14) who created us to love him and to love each other (Matthew 22:37–39).

As we close our weeklong focus on our status as the children of God, let’s focus on this fact: if you are a child of God, you are part of the family of God. The community he offers you and offers the world through you is a gift no one else in the world can give. It is a gift we were created to need. It is a gift that makes the church uniquely relevant to our fractured culture.

It is a gift you are invited to embrace and to share for an especially urgent reason today.

“The source of order in man and society”

Gnosticism (from the Greek word for knowledge) was a second-century heresy that believed humans can save themselves from this evil material world through a special type of knowledge of the divine mysteries. However, this knowledge was reserved only for an elite group who claimed to understand what others did not.

Eric Voegelin was a German-American political philosopher. In The New Science of Politics: An Introduction, he used this ancient concept to describe the rising secularism of Western culture: “The more fervently all human energies are thrown into the great enterprise of salvation through world-immanent action, the farther the human beings who engage in this enterprise move away from the life of the spirit. And since the life of the spirit is the source of order in man and society, the very success of a Gnostic civilization is the cause of its decline.”

Let me recast his crucial insight in a current context: Like the ancient Gnostics, a group of cultural elites is convinced they can bring about the “salvation” of society through secular progressivism. However, “the life of the spirit” stands in the way of their secular utopia. As a result, they employ LGBTQ ideology, abortion activism, and other unbiblical causes to expose and condemn the “discrimination” inherent in Christian orthodoxy and thus free society for radical individual “authenticity.”

Here’s their problem: as Voegelin notes, the “life of the spirit is the source of order in man and society.” Consequently, the disintegration of our social unity, escalation of crime, and epidemic of sexual immorality we are witnessing today are inevitable results of their secularist agenda.

“The final word in reality”

Voegelin’s thesis explains why it can be difficult for evangelical Christians to reach cultural “Gnostics” and those they represent: they are foundationally convinced that they understand what we do not. They are certain either that the Bible is wrong on the cultural issues of our day or that we are wrongly interpreting it. Either way, they have no interest in rational dialogue or personal engagement with people they consider dangerous to society.

How, then, are we to reach them and those they influence with God’s word and grace?

Here is where today’s focus on community is so relevant. Every person who has ever lived was created for authentic, life-giving relationship with others. However, from Cain and Abel to yesterday’s shooting in Raleigh, North Carolina, that left five people dead, sin disrupts and corrupts these relationships. Secularism has no solution for sin; it can try to legislate against its symptoms, but it cannot reach their source.

As the Christian psychiatrist and author Curt Thompson notes: We have to change our lives if we want our lives to change.

You and I are called to “have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind” (1 Peter 3:8). Then, we are to extend this community to our critics: “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called” (v. 9). When we experience such grace with each other and offer it to the world, the “God-shaped emptiness” in every soul is drawn to the Source of our love.

On this day in 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize. In his acceptance speech, he proclaimed: “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”

Let’s speak that word into reality today, to the glory of God.

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