President Trump announced plans yesterday afternoon for a new fleet of warships, to be known as the “Golden Fleet.” In an address from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, he said the new battleships would be “one hundred times more powerful than any battleship ever built.” Renderings behind the president displayed the new “Trump class,” including a ship named the USS Defiant.

In other news, the US military says it struck a vessel allegedly carrying drugs in the eastern Pacific last night, killing one person. The US Coast Guard is in “active pursuit” of a third oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, part of an accelerating effort to block ships from moving the country’s crude oil. From a knife attack in Taiwan and a mass shooting in South Africa to possible new Iran strikes and US and Chinese satellites “dogfighting” in orbit, today’s news is filled with conflict, as always.

Prior to the First World War, the writer Hamilton Wright Mabie said of Christmas, “Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love!” Over the century that followed, however, not everyone has been in on the “conspiracy.” Since his pronouncement, we have seen two world wars, conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, the Cold War, the Gulf War, the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, and ongoing conflicts in Syria and Ukraine.

Peace is often defined as the absence of conflict. However, there’s a pathway to peace that transcends our conflicts and transforms our days. It is indeed a “conspiracy of love” that begins at Christmas but is not complete until it includes every human heart. Including yours.

 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace”

When Jesus was born, the angels announced, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:14). Seven centuries earlier, the prophet had promised: “Unto us a child is born, to us a son is given . . . and his name shall be called . . . Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). Isaiah added, “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end” (v. 7).

If Jesus is indeed the “Prince of Peace,” why didn’t his coming at Christmas bring the absence of conflict for which we yearn today?

You might say that his birth occurred two millennia ago and thus holds no relevance to the conflicts of our day, but Jesus assured us that he is “with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). As we have noted in recent days, he now lives in us by his Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16) and thus is as present in our world as when he inhabited his physical body.

Even more, by inhabiting Christians, he has multiplied his presence around the world through the billions of people who follow him. In this sense, he told us that we will do “greater works” than he did (John 14:12) by virtue of our globe-spanning presence as his “body” (1 Corinthians 12:27).

“Appointed for the fall and rising of many”

And yet, following Jesus does not guarantee the absence of conflict. The opposite is actually often true.

Simeon warned Mary shortly after Jesus’ birth, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:34–35). I cannot imagine that this brought an absence of conflict to her heart that day. Or on the day she saw the prophecy fulfilled as she stood helplessly while her beloved firstborn was nailed to a cross (John 19:25–27).

Jesus warned us, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18). His word therefore advises, “Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you” (1 John 3:13) and adds, “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). As imprisoned believers in Iran and China can attest today, “all” means all.

And conflicts such as “divisions” and “quarreling” in the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 1:10–11) have plagued the church across its history as well.

So I’ll ask again, how did Mary’s Son bring peace at his birth and today?

“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord”

The Old Testament word translated “peace” is shalom, which means to be right with God, others, and ourselves. The New Testament word is eirene, which similarly means harmony and order.

Here’s the catch: to be in true and lasting harmony with ourselves and others, we must be in harmony with God. Peace is a “fruit” of his Spirit (Galatians 5:22), a gift he alone can give.

This is what Jesus was born at Christmas to bring: a path by which our sins can be forgiven and where we can be restored to intimacy with our Father. If we reject this pathway, the conflicts that result are not his fault but ours. We can blame the Prince of Peace for all the wars that have come after he came, but this is like blaming our disease on the doctor whose prescription we ignored.

The key is to respond to the Christ of Christmas as did his mother: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). When we do—and only then—his transforming peace will be ours.

“God Emmanuel is with you”

Br. Curtis Almquist of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Boston suggests (his emphases):

As we anticipate Christmas this year, if you are asking, maybe desperately, whether God is with you, I suggest you rephrase the question. The question is not whether God is with you, but how God is with you. Because God Emmanuel is with you, and with the rest of us, whether we here, or those near, or those far away, all around the world. Whether the landscape of your soul is brightly illuminated just now, or whether you are temporarily blinded by more light than you can bear, or whether the darkness simply seems to loom large, God is with you. . . .

In Advent, are we waiting on God? Or is God waiting on us? The answer is “yes.”

How are both true for you today?

Quote for the day:

“God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.” —C. S. Lewis

Our latest website resources:

• What does Christmas say about God?
• Australia attack, Rob Reiner, Christmas movies, Candace Owens & football updates
• Do miracles still happen? A podcast interview with Lee Strobel
• A review of Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Miracles”
• What does Christmas have to do with bioethics?

Denison Forum

There are times when sinners seem to get away with their sins. For example, the Wall Street Journal tells us about the scourge of airline passengers claiming disabilities so they can board in wheelchairs and skip the lines. If no wheelchairs are available when they arrive, they are miraculously “healed” and disembark under their own power.

Skeptical observers call this the work of “Jetway Jesus.”

Then there are times when “private” sin becomes public overnight. For example, the New York Times is profiling the woman who was “shamed” at a Coldplay concert last July when she was caught on camera in the arms of her boss. When news broke that both were married to other people, the story caused an international furor. Both resigned from their positions; she has received death threats.

There are mistakes and failures in my past that I am glad were not broadcast to the world; I’m sure you can say the same. Here’s the practical question: What shortcomings in your life would you most like to improve today?

Do you struggle with what the Puritans called “besetting sins,” perennial temptations and failures? Are there things you wish you could do or stop doing if you only had the strength? Defeats you wish you could repair? Victories you wish you could claim?

The answer to all of the above is found in Christmas.

What was your favorite Christmas gift?

What was your favorite Christmas gift as a child? For me, it was the Mattel Stallion Bicycle (like this one) I received in elementary school.

Someone at my school had one and parked it where I passed by it each day. I thought it was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. My parents, however, gave me no assurance that I would receive one. I was a “challenging” child (to put it mildly), constantly bringing home conduct slips generated by boredom at school and my belief that I should be able to amuse myself however I wished.

I did nothing to deserve that Stallion bike and had no reason to expect it, which made (and makes) the Christmas morning I found it beside our Christmas tree near-miraculous to my mind.

Of course, of all the gifts we did not deserve, the one for which Christmas exists stands above them all.

Jesus was not “born” when he was born at Christmas: before time began, he was “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Revelation 13:8 NIV). It is therefore unsurprising that three chapters in Matthew, three in Mark, three in Luke, and six in John focus on the last twenty-four hours of his earthly life.

The reason is simple: he was born to die for us.

A second- or third-century work called The Letter to Diognetus notes that in response to our sins,

[Our Father] gave his own Son as the price of our redemption, the holy one to redeem the wicked, the sinless one to redeem sinners, the just one to redeem the unjust, the incorruptible one to redeem the corruptible, the immortal one to redeem mortals. For what else could have covered our sins but his sinlessness?

Across this Christmas week, I invite you to remember each day the greatest gift you have ever received.

The truest measure of our sincerity

How should we respond?

We often hear the question, What can you give the person who has everything? In Jesus’ case, it is literally true (Colossians 1:15–17). Ministers typically respond by encouraging us to give Jesus ourselves. This is good theology: our omnipotent Lord has chosen to honor the free will with which he made us in his image, so he stands at the door of our heart and knocks to gain admittance through our free choice (cf. Revelation 3:20).

The harder it is to open this door of obedience to him, the deeper the love we demonstrate when we do.

When God’s will obviously benefits us, we can respond as an employee who chooses to do what their employer asks in the transactional expectation of reward as a result. The price that obedience costs us is the degree to which we demonstrate the sincerity of our love for him.

I don’t know about you, but this is not entirely good news for me.

I’m as obedient as I want to be

I once heard the president of a once-Christian university say, “At our school, you can be as religious as you choose to be.” I’ll confess that the same often applies to me: I am as obedient to Jesus as I want to be. If my next step into serving him were easy or obviously beneficial to me, I would have already taken it. What remains in my journey to surrender and sanctification seems to cost more than it pays.

Perhaps you know what I mean. Perhaps you are also being called to do something you’re not doing or stop doing something you are doing. In fact, I would imagine that every Christian on the path to holiness faces such a step today.

As Oswald Chambers noted in today’s My Utmost for His Highest reading, “Every man is made to reach out beyond his grasp.”

Here’s the good news: the Christ who lives within us will empower us to fulfill the purpose of Christ for us.

In recent days, we have focused on the incarnational miracle that “Christ in you” is our “hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). The One who came to live in our world at Christmas now lives in believers by his Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16). Paul’s testimony is therefore true of every Christian: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

Now the living Lord Jesus stands ready to help us step into the holistic obedience that is our best response to his holistic sacrifice for us.

If we ask, we will receive (Matthew 7:7).

“Majesty in the midst of mundane”

If you doubt that Jesus can work such a transforming miracle in your life today, think back to the transforming miracle by which he was born into our fallen world. Max Lucado describes the first Christmas:

Majesty in the midst of mundane. Holiness in the filth of sheep manure and sweat. Divinity entering the world on the floor of a stable, through the womb of a teenager and in the presence of a carpenter. God came near. And as Luke 1:33 says, “His kingdom will never end.”

In what new way will you make him your king today?

Quote for the day:

“People don’t resist change—they resist being changed.” —Peter Senge

Our latest website resources:

• What does Christmas say about God?
• Australia attack, Rob Reiner, Christmas movies, Candace Owens & football updates
• Do miracles still happen? A podcast interview with Lee Strobel
• A review of Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Miracles”
• What does Christmas have to do with bioethics?

Denison Forum

Last Saturday afternoon, a gunman entered the School of Engineering at Brown University and killed two students, wounding nine others. Two days later, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology named Nuno Gomes Loureiro was shot multiple times outside his home in Brookline, Massachusetts, and later died from his injuries.

Late last night, police announced that the suspect in both shootings had been found dead in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire.

They identified the suspect as Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a Portuguese national. According to Brown University President Christina Paxson, Valente was enrolled at the Ivy League school from the autumn of 2000 to the following spring, studying for a PhD in physics. He had “no current active affiliation” with the university, she said.

Officials said they also believe Valente killed Prof. Loureiro. Both he and the suspect had studied at the same university in Portugal in the late 1990s, police said.

Initial findings indicated that Valente died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police were unable to comment on how long he might have been inside the storage unit. No motive in the shootings has been revealed at this writing.

“His answer was faith in faith”

Frederick Buechner taught at Harvard Divinity School one semester, where he met a student who “said once that what he believed in was faith, and when I asked him faith in what, his answer was faith in faith.”

Buechner responded:

I don’t mean to disparage him—he was doing the best he could—but it struck me that having faith in faith was as barren as being in love with love or having money that you spend only on the accumulation of more money.

At the same time, I think I understand the student’s perspective.

Having “faith in faith” brings significant benefits to those who embrace it. They are able to connect in a way with transcendence beyond themselves. They are likely to engage in religious activities proven to enhance mental health, economic well-being, self-esteem, and empathy. They may be part of a community of like-minded individuals with whom they can share the challenges and joys of life.

And yet, when tragedies such as the shootings we’re discussing occur, they are untroubled by the painful questions such suffering inevitably poses for those who hold faith in Jesus.

A suffering child anywhere in the universe

Christians say their God is all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful—claims which pain and grief threaten every time they strike. If you knew these shootings would happen before they did and had the power to stop them, of course you would. Any moral person would do the same.

And yet the God of Christianity did not.

Atheism is a typical response to innocent suffering. As Sam Harris stated, a suffering child anywhere in the universe calls into question the existence of God.

But if you don’t want to go so far as to claim rather audaciously that God cannot exist, you can focus your faith on faith itself. You can believe in belief and practice religion to the degree that such practices meet your needs without needing to understand how the object of your faith could allow or cause the suffering and grief of our daily lives.

In fact, this is precisely what you might be doing right now.

An article I didn’t want to write

I intended to write a very different article this morning before news regarding the Brown shooting broke overnight. I didn’t want to have to think about this tragedy and did not want to talk about it with you so close to Christmas. I wanted to focus on something more uplifting and encouraging. And the compassion fatigue resulting from so much bad news in the news made it hard to want to focus yet again on the connection and collision of tragedy and biblical faith.

If you’re like me, you would rather not try to understand how to hold onto belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God in the face of innocent suffering. It’s not that you reject such faith. You would not go as far as Buechner’s student in claiming a mere “faith in faith.”

But you would like to leave the difficult questions regarding your faith to others and focus on the positives. You would rather I talk about the joys and traditions of Christmas, the inspirational and encouraging aspects of our shared religion. So would I.

However, this is only because I happen not to be facing such questions at the moment. The next time suffering and grief find me, I will once again echo the visceral cry of our Savior, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46, quoting Psalm 22:1).

“The suffering and the love are one”

So, today is not a day to ignore the hard question of innocent suffering. It is not a day to subconsciously embrace a “faith in faith” that leaves the heartbreaking perplexities of life to the side.

It is rather a day to admit that our finite minds cannot by definition understand the mind of an infinite Supreme Being (Isaiah 55:9). It is a day to be honest about our questions and struggles but then take them to the God who urges us to “argue together” with him (a literal translation of Isaiah 1:18).

It is a day to recognize that the greater our pain, the greater our need for a Great Physician. And it is a day to remember that faith in God, like all relationships, requires a commitment that transcends the evidence and becomes self-validating. In other words, the more we trust God when we do not understand him, the more we will eventually (and eternally) come to understand the God we trust (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Above all, it is a day to do the things faith in the God of Scripture calls us to do: Pray for the victims of these horrific shootings and all affected by them (cf. 1 Timothy 2:1). Trust tragedy when it strikes to the God who walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4). And believe that he redeems all he allows and look for ways to be the hands and feet of Jesus in serving the suffering with practical compassion (cf. Romans 8:28; 1 Corinthians 12:27).

Such responses do not explain the unexplainable. But they offer something far better: the personal help and transcendent hope of a Savior who was born into our suffering at Christmas and has never left us.

To close with another reflection from Frederick Buechner:

“When someone we love suffers, we suffer with that person, and we would not have it otherwise, because the suffering and the love are one, just as it is with God’s love for us.”

Why do you need this reminder today?

Quote for the day:

“Because of Christ, our suffering is not useless. It is part of the total plan of God, who has chosen to redeem the world through the pathway of suffering.” —R. C. Sproul

Our latest website resources:

• Australia attack, Rob Reiner, Christmas movies, Candace Owens & football updates
• Do miracles still happen? A podcast interview with Lee Strobel
• A review of Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Miracles”
• Are you SAD? How to fight against the winter blues
• The real story of Christmas: The baby who was “from the beginning”

Denison Forum