If you live in Las Vegas, you might not expect a visit from Santa this year. You’re likely not surprised that “Sin City” has been ranked the “most sinful city” in America again this year.

But you might be surprised that Houston came in second, Atlanta ranked number five, and Dallas came in at number eight. In addition to making the top ten in America’s most sinful cities, here’s what else the three cities have in common: I have lived in each of them.

Does this mean I’m the common denominator?

In a very real sense, the answer is yes.

But you’re not off the hook.

“What is wrong with the world?”

Scan this morning’s headlines and you’ll find abundant evidence that sin is not confined to my city or yours:

• “Putin says Russia will take all of Ukraine’s Donbas region militarily or otherwise”
• “Israel identifies body of returned hostage, remains of Israeli officer still in Gaza”
• “Doctor sentenced to 30 months over Matthew Perry’s death from ketamine”
• “Fatal shooting rocks luxury MGM casino as police hunt for gunman”

And yet, since human nature doesn’t change, our sin problem is as recurrent as the sunrise and as prevalent as air. To claim we are the exception to sin is to sin.

To illustrate, I have seen this anecdote repeated often over the years:

In answer to a newspaper’s question, “What is Wrong With the World?” G. K. Chesterton wrote in with a simple answer: “Dear Sirs, I am.”

However, this is not what the great British philosopher and journalist actually wrote. In a 1905 letter to the editor, Chesterton observed:

Political or economic reform will not make us good and happy, but until this odd period nobody ever expected that they would. Now, I know there is a feeling that Government can do anything. But if Government could do anything, nothing would exist except Government. Men have found the need of other forces.

Religion, for instance, existed in order to do what law cannot do—to track crime to its primary sin, and the man to his back bedroom. The Church endeavored to institute a machinery of pardon; the State has only a machinery of punishment. The State can only free society from the criminal; the Church sought to free the criminal from the crime.

Abolish religion if you like. Throw everything on secular government if you like. But do not be surprised if a machinery that was never meant to do anything but secure external decency and order fails to secure internal honesty and peace. . . .

In one sense, and that the eternal sense, the thing is plain. The answer to the question “What is Wrong?’ is, or should be, “I am wrong.” Until a man can give that answer, his idealism is only a hobby.

“The thing that makes a difference in people”

We are several days into the annual season called Advent, from the Latin adventus, meaning “arrival” or “coming.” While most of the attention is on Jesus’ first coming at Christmas, early forms of the observance focused not only on our Savior’s birth but also on his return, an event usually termed the “Second Coming of Christ.”

But this is chronologically incorrect.

Without question, Jesus came into our world at the event we call Christmas. I can point you to numerous first-century Roman and Jewish historians who documented the fact of our Lord’s earthly existence. And without question, he will come into our world again at the end of history: “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him” (Revelation 1:7; cf. Matthew 24:42–44; Acts 1:11; Hebrews 9:28; 2 Peter 3:10).

But in between the two, Jesus “comes” into our world every time he comes into a human heart. Every time someone asks him to forgive their sins and become their Savior and Lord, he takes up residence in their life by his indwelling Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16). In this very real sense, we become the “body of Christ” as he continues his earthly ministry in and through us (1 Corinthians 12:27).

And this “second coming” changes everything.

The pastor and author Paul Powell noted: “The thing that makes a difference in people is not the centuries nor even our cultures. It is Christ. He alone is able to break through all the pressures and patterns and make us new people.” He then quoted 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” and added:

When people commit their lives to Christ, they are changed. When enough people are changed, our world will be changed.

“There is only one relationship that matters”

To this end, let’s close with a paragraph from last Sunday’s reading in Oswald Chambers’s My Utmost for His Highest. It is my favorite entry in his classic devotional; I seem to quote it in a Daily Article every year:

There is only one relationship that matters, and that is your personal relationship to a personal redeemer and Lord. Let everything else go, but maintain that at all costs, and God will fulfill his purpose through your life. One individual life may be of priceless value to God’s purpose, and yours may be that life.

Will God “fulfill his purpose through your life” today?

Quote for the day:

“The same Jesus who turned water into wine can transform your home, your life, your family, and your future. He is still in the miracle-working business, and his business is the business of transformation.” —Adrian Rogers

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The Oxford 2025 Word of the Year is rage bait, defined as “online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive.” Could this be what we are seeing with regard to growing war crimes claims against Secretary of War Pete Hegseth? Or did Mr. Hegseth commit a genuine violation of the US code regarding military actions?

Were the survivors legitimate targets?

At the center of the controversy is a Washington Post story about a September 2 attack staged by US forces on a boat believed by officials to be ferrying drugs. The article reports that Mr. Hegseth gave a spoken directive: “The order was to kill everybody,” according to a person with direct knowledge of the operation. A US missile then struck the vessel, igniting it in a blaze from bow to stern. When the smoke cleared, a live drone feed showed two survivors clinging to the smoldering wreck.

According to the Post article citing “two people familiar with the matter,” the Special Operations commander overseeing the attack ordered a second strike to comply with Mr. Hegseth’s instructions. The two survivors were then blown apart in the water.

Lawmakers from both parties are now raising the term war crime in response. They point to “18 US Code § 2441 – War crimes,” which states that such a crime occurs when someone “intentionally kills . . . one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause.”

Some experts argue that those who survived the first strike would fall under this description. If so, Mr. Hegseth could be held legally culpable.

However, the commander overseeing the operation, Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, stated that the survivors were legitimate targets because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo. He reportedly ordered the second strike to fulfill Mr. Hegseth’s directive that everyone be killed.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting yesterday, Mr. Hegseth told reporters that he had authorized the operation but that he left the room ahead of the second attack for another meeting. However, he added that the admiral had “the complete authority” to order the strike and “eliminate the threat.”

There is much more to this unfolding story, but media reports are overlooking an aspect that transcends the political, legal, and military issues making headlines these days.

My greatest personal regret

I was born in Hermann Hospital in Houston, Texas, to an electronics salesman and his wife. I grew up primarily in an apartment complex in southwest Houston. We had enough but not more than enough. Our family was not only not famous—we didn’t know anyone who was.

Because of my father’s horrific experiences in World War II, we never went to church or even discussed spiritual things in our home. My father had his first heart attack when I was two years old and lived nineteen years on what the doctors called “borrowed time” before a second heart attack took his life when I was in college.

While my parents were wonderful to my brother and me, if I could have chosen the circumstances of my early life, I might have wanted them to be famous and wealthy. I might have chosen to be born into privilege and prosperity, with a father and mother who were deeply involved in God’s work and raised me to know and love our Lord.

I might have wanted my father to be healthy and live to old age. The greatest personal regret of my life is that my father never met my sons or their families.

If you could, I would imagine you might have made changes to your family and early life as well.

How insignificant was Jesus’ hometown?

It therefore bears remembering that Jesus was the only baby in human history to choose his parents, the place of his birth, and the persons who would attend his birth.

He could have been born in a Jerusalem palace to parents of cultural prestige and still come as the Jewish Messiah. He could have grown up in the Holy City and displayed his divine capacities to a national audience.

Instead, he chose a mother and adoptive father so impoverished that their offering at his birth was the one specified for the poor (Luke 2:24). He chose to be born in a cave where animals were kept and where his infant body would be laid in a stone feed trough. For his attendants, he chose field hands so ritually unclean that they could not enter a synagogue or the Temple. He grew up in a town so insignificant that it is not mentioned even once in the Old Testament and was a joke in its day (John 1:46).

He called followers who were not Pharisees and Sadducees but fishermen and tax collectors. He touched leprous limbs and dead bodies, befriended Samaritan sinners and Gentile demoniacs, and welcomed all who welcomed him.

“Christ’s wounds are your healings”

Accordingly, if the Christ of Christmas was commenting on the missile strike with which I led today, I suspect that he would focus less on legalities and military strategy and more on the immortal souls of those who perished.

Jesus would not minimize the crimes they are alleged to have committed or the urgency of protecting our nation from the influx of deadly drugs. His word makes clear the priority of lawful order and self-defense (cf. Romans 13:1).

But he would remind us that we are each sinners in our own way, that we have each done things worthy of the reprobation of society and the judgment of God (cf. Romans 3:23; 5:12; Jeremiah 17:9). And he would remind us that he chose before the foundation of the world to die for those on that boat and for the rest of us as well (Revelation 13:8 NIV).

Matthew Henry invited us:

“Come, and see the victories of the cross. Christ’s wounds are your healings, his agonies your repose, his conflicts your conquests, his groans your songs, his pains your ease, his shame your glory, his death your life, his sufferings your salvation.”

How will his invitation change your Christmas?

Quote for the day:

“There is no death of sin without the death of Christ.” —John Owen (1616–83)

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• Why are so many young people struggling to find hope—and how can we help?

Denison Forum

The legendary actor and comedian Dick Van Dyke turns one hundred on December 13. What explains his longevity? He recently told People magazine, “I’ve always thought that anger is one thing that eats up a person’s insides—and hate. And I never really was able to work up a feeling of hate. I think that is one of the chief things that kept me going.”

However, he knows that “the end of my life is so much closer.” What happens then? “When you expire, you expire,” he said. “I don’t have any fear of death for some reason. I can’t explain that but I don’t. I’ve had such a wonderfully full and exciting life that I can’t complain.”

He added, “What I left in the way of children’s entertainment and children’s music—that’s my legacy.” As long as children are singing the words or songs he made famous, he said, “the most important part of me will always be alive.”

“I don’t believe in Australia”

I have long been amazed by the assumption of so many people that their subjective beliefs about the afterlife will unquestionably correspond to what actually happens to them when they die. I remember a woman who confidently told me, “I don’t believe in hell,” as if hell must therefore not exist. This seems to me like saying “I don’t believe in Australia” and therefore assuming there is no such thing as Australia.

We don’t make such claims about any other reality that lies beyond our capacity.

Imagine assuming that a hotel will have a vacancy when we arrive and therefore choosing not to make a reservation. Or presuming that we will have a job for which we did not apply or a place on a team for which we did not attempt to qualify. Or believing that the road we choose will take us home upon no evidence except that we chose it.

And yet Dick Van Dyke can confidently assert, “When you expire, you expire,” and claim that “the most important part of me will always be alive” through the children’s music he made. He is convinced that his subjective opinion regarding his eternity must be true, even though he has no objective basis for it.

He is by no means alone in this.

According to a new Cultural Research Center survey, 25 percent of those who do not identify as Christians are certain they will “cease to exist in any form or place” when they die. Another 20 percent believe they will “join with the universe,” while 14 percent say they will “return to earth as another life form.”

Only 3 percent say they will “experience torment and punishment.” With regard to eternity, the others apparently believe that their unbelief is all they need to believe.

Proving I would be a good husband

At this point, we could have an apologetics discussion regarding the logical basis for the Christian faith. We could consider compelling rational arguments for God’s existence, overwhelming evidence for the veracity of Scripture, and remarkable historical confirmation for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

But when you die (assuming the Lord tarries that long), these arguments will no longer be operative for you. When you cease to live, you will obviously have no capacity by which to decide or affect what happens to you next. By definition, your life after death will be entirely dependent on a Power that transcends death.

To have personal confidence that Jesus will bring us into life beyond this life (John 14:3), we can do what we do with all relational realities: we examine the evidence, then we step beyond it into an experience that becomes self-validating.

If I had been required to prove to Janet that I would be a good husband before we married, we would never have been married. Instead, she considered what she knew about me, then she took a step beyond such knowledge into a marital relationship with me. (Some would say this “step” was a very large leap, and I would not dispute them.) Over our forty-five years of marriage, I hope that her decision has (at least on my good days) been self-affirming.

We do the same with Jesus: We examine the evidence for his life, death, resurrection, and divine character. Then we step beyond it into a saving relationship with him by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8–9). When we do, he promises that we are in his omnipotent hand forever (John 10:28), declaring that “everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:26).

And he offers us assurance that is based on biblical truth but becomes intuitively personal as well.

This is where Christmas comes in.

“If the presence of God is in the church”

As I noted yesterday, the fact that the omnipotent God of the universe could reduce himself to become a fetus and be born as a baby is among his most staggering miracles. Here’s my point: If he could live in his body, he can live in yours and mine by his indwelling Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16). We can become the “body of Christ” as Jesus continues his earthly ministry in and through our lives (1 Corinthians 12:27).

And our experience of the living Lord Jesus in this life assures us that we will experience him in the next.

On the days I walk closely with Jesus, I sense his presence, peace, and joy in such transcendent and transforming ways that the question of my eternity with him never seems to come up. I am already experiencing the eternal life that becomes ours in the moment we trust him as Savior and Lord (John 3:16). And I can say with Paul, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).

On the days I drift from intimacy with Jesus, in those hours and moments when I allow temptation, distraction, or deception to turn my heart from his, my relationship with him becomes more transactional and less transformational. I work for Jesus more than I walk with Jesus. And the joy of my eternal life begins to dim.

What Charles Finney said about the church is true of our hearts as well:

“If the presence of God is in the church, the church will draw the world in. If the presence of God is not in the church, the world will draw the church out.”

Which will be true for you today?

Quote for the day:

“The Christian life is to live all of your life in the presence of God.” —R. C. Sproul

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