In a democratic republic, politics and politicians will always play an outsized role in our culture. For example, this morning’s announcement that former US Vice President Dick Cheney has died at the age of eighty-four is making headlines even though his term in office ended sixteen years ago.

Today’s political races are dominating the news as well, from the mayoral contest in New York City to gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey to a redistricting vote in California. By my calculations, these elections will directly affect 80.3 million people, which is obviously a very significant number of people, but less than a quarter of our national population.

The larger story is what they mean for our own larger story.

• According to a new poll, 49 percent of Americans say our best times are behind us, while only 41 percent think they lie ahead. According to Politico, this underscores “a pervasive sense of unease about both individuals’ own futures and the national direction.”
• Only 39 percent of Americans believe the Republican Party governs in an “honest and ethical way”; only 42 percent say the same about the Democratic Party.
• Most Americans expect political violence to keep growing in the US.

We are not surprised by reports that Iranians are taught to hate America. But it is distressing that so many Americans are taught the same. In cultural commentator Andrew Sullivan’s latest blog, the Oxford and Harvard PhD graduate summarizes a new report on American higher education:

On race in American history, for example, only one viewpoint is actually taught: that the US is a white supremacist state that murders and imprisons black people as its core goal, that its real founding was 1619, its Constitution is a form of white tyranny, and racial “progress” is a lie designed to obscure this permanent reality.

Sullivan grieves for recent generations who have been indoctrinated in Critical Theory and its resultant anti-Americanism. Clearly, we live in a divided and divisive time in great need of a positive path toward a unified future.

The good news is that this path is as available and transforming as it has ever been.

“They are generally the same people”

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in Tel Aviv thirty years ago today. I flew home from Israel that morning and heard the news upon landing in the US. In the years since, I have been many times to Rabin Square, the site that commemorates his tragic death. He was murdered not by an Islamic terrorist but by a Jewish extremist opposed to Mr. Rabin’s peace initiatives with Palestinians.

His death illustrates G. K. Chesterton’s maxim: “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.”

We are clearly to love both. Jesus insisted: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). His words can be translated literally from the Greek, “Continually and unconditionally love those who hate you and ask God for their best even as they are persecuting you.”

Our Lord went even further when he taught us, “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). To translate again, “To the exact same degree that I have loved you, you also are to continually love one another.”

Our Savior’s love was unconditional (Romans 8:35–39), sacrificial (1 John 3:16), and empathetic (John 11:35). Now we are commanded to love others, including those who hate us, in the same way.

Imagine the difference in America if every American Christian obeyed his command.

When I love my neighbor well

Of course, as we noted in discussing our love for God yesterday, such love for others is impossible in human agency. I cannot love my neighbor, much less my enemy, as Jesus loves me. I am a sinner, but God “is” love (1 John 4:8).

However, Jesus never intended me to do so. He wants to continue his earthly ministry through me as his “body” (1 Corinthians 12:27), which includes his ministry of love. He wants to forgive those who sin, comfort those who grieve, and heal those who hurt through me.

My part is to stay submitted to his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) and then measure success by what Jesus does through me (John 15:5). When my words and deeds express his love for those I serve, I love my neighbor well. When they do not, I do not.

This works in every dimension of life. If you’re a teacher, Jesus loves your students and wants to love them through you. If you’re a doctor, lawyer, pastor, or business person, he wants to love your patients, clients, congregation, and customers through you. If you’re a parent, he wants to love your children through you. If you’ve been hurt by someone, he wants to love even your enemy through you.

And he wants such love to transform not only our divisive and discouraged culture but our hearts as well.

Forgiving a concentration camp guard

In her classic autobiography The Hiding Place, Holocaust survivor Corrie ten Boom told this remarkable story:

It was at a church service in Munich, Germany, that I saw him, the former SS man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbrück. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. Suddenly it was all there—the roomful of mocking guards, the heaps of clothing, [her sister] Betsie’s pain-blanched face.

He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,” he said. “To think that, as you say, he has washed my sins away!”

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. “Lord Jesus,” I prayed, “forgive me and help me to forgive him.”

I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. Again, I breathed a silent prayer, “Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness.”

As I took his hand, the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand, a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on his. When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives, along with the command, the love itself.

Why do you need her discovery today?

Quote for the day:

“If God should have no more mercy on us than we have charity to one another, what would become of us?” —Thomas Fuller (1608–61)

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When President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met yesterday morning in South Korea, it marked the first time the two had sat down together in six years. While their advisors and negotiators had spent countless hours laying the groundwork for what took place, and improving markets revealed high hopes that the meeting would be productive, there were also reasons for concern.

Earlier this month, China announced plans to limit access to rare-earth minerals. Given that they control roughly 92 percent of the global output, it’s difficult to overstate the degree of control they have over one of the world’s most important resources.

Micah Tomasella provided an excellent summary of why rare-earth minerals are so important in a recent episode of Culture Brief, but the short version is that they are essential for most of the modern technology we’ve come to rely on.

While those resources can be mined in numerous locations around the world, processing them into something usable is so expensive and toxic that few countries outside of China can do it well. The US is trying to develop its own production facilities, but it will still be years—if not decades—before we can match China’s capacities.

The US enjoys a similar advantage when it comes to the advanced microchips that many of those metals end up becoming. However, Trump’s rhetoric leading up to yesterday’s negotiations left many concerned that he would cede that advantage in exchange for short-term gains.

Fortunately, those fears appear to have been unwarranted—at least for the moment.

Details continue to emerge about the finer points of the deal, but the principal components include China’s agreement to buy “massive amounts” of soybeans and pause its implementation of most rare-earth restrictions. In return, the US reduced its tariff rate on the country by 10 percent, while both nations will pause further tariff escalations for one year. Most importantly, while microchips were discussed, the most advanced remain off the table.

The back-and-forth between Trump, Xi, and their respective advisors demonstrates the difficulty and importance of knowing where to draw the line between what’s negotiable and what needs to remain off-limits. And that principle is relevant to far more than global politics.

Can Christians celebrate Halloween?

Few cultural events tend to divide Christians like the holiday celebrated today. For many, Halloween is an innocent opportunity to watch kids dress up as their favorite characters and meet neighbors you may only see in passing at other times of the year. However, far too often, there’s a darker side to the festivities as well.

As I described in What does the Bible say about Halloween?, the pagan origins of the holiday have led many to conclude that it should be off-limits for Christians today. While they’re not wrong about where Halloween comes from, the full truth of how we got to the modern version of the holiday is a bit more complicated, and illustrates the importance of knowing where to draw boundaries.

The oldest version of Halloween is typically considered to be the Celtic festival of Samhain—pronounced “SAH–win”—that began more than two thousand years ago.

It originated as a pagan celebration marking the end of the harvest season and the start of winter. The ancient Celts believed that it was also a time when the dead could walk among the living. They would light bonfires and wear costumes to either blend in or ward off the ghosts, depending on which accounts you read.

The celebration took on a Christian flair in the eighth century after Pope Gregory III moved the celebration of All Saints’ Day—a time to celebrate the memory and legacy of the saints—to November 1. When the holy day reached the Celtic lands shortly thereafter, it served the important purpose of helping guide the people there to a greater understanding of Jesus.

By this point, St. Patrick, Columba, and others had already led large swaths of Celtic culture to embrace Christianity, often doing so by Christianizing elements of pagan worship to make the transition to the faith simpler. As such, it was largely par for the course to incorporate aspects of Samhain into All Saints’ Day as well. Thus, October 31 became known as All Hallows Eve, which was eventually shortened to Halloween.

While it can be easy to misuse that kind of contextualization as a license to incorporate unchristian ideas into our Christian walk, seeking opportunities to apply culturally significant concepts or moments to help people meet Jesus is a very biblical practice. The difficulty has often come in knowing when we’ve gone too far.

Why people stray into heresy

Across this week, The Daily Article has examined the various ways in which Satan typically attempts to thwart God’s people and the advancement of God’s kingdom. Throughout Christian history, one of his favorite tactics has been twisting the genuinely good motivations of believers to lead them further away from the truth.

Very few heretics wake up one morning and decide they want to lead people away from the Lord. Rather, the vast majority of heresies that have assaulted the church came from the desire to make the faith more understandable or more acceptable. There’s nothing wrong with either motivation—unless it comes at the expense of helping people understand what is biblical.

When Paul charged Timothy to preach the word of God, he warned that “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Timothy 4:3–4).

Even though that word of caution is nearly two thousand years old, it’s as relevant today as it’s ever been. The best solution remains to ensure that, regardless of the subject, the Bible functions as the lens through which we evaluate every aspect of our lives.

So, as we finish for today, take some time to pray and ask the Lord to help you identify any beliefs or areas of your life where you’ve strayed from Scripture. Pay particular attention to those subjects where you feel like you’re on the right side of history, the culture wars, or any of the other divisive forces in our society today.

Whether it’s concerning holidays like Halloween or issues like sexuality, the treatment of the poor and immigrants, or a host of other cultural hot topics, only the Bible is capable of helping us know where to draw the boundaries around how far we can go in our efforts to help people understand and accept God’s truth without it ceasing to be the truth.

Are there any boundaries you need to redraw today?

Quote of the day:

“Nothing less than the whole Bible can make a whole Christian.” —A. W. Tozer

Our latest website resources:

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• When I’m attacked for being a Christian, how should I respond?

Denison Forum