Kate Middleton has been in the center of a media firestorm since abdominal surgery on January 16 removed her from the public eye, leading to rampant speculation regarding the severity of her condition. A photo of her with her children posted on Sunday was intended to calm the waters, but media outlets discovered that it had been edited and removed it from their sites, which only fanned the flames. She admitted yesterday that she edited the photo personally and apologized for the confusion.

If you’re like most of us, this is a “tempest in a teapot.” You likely follow news about the Princess of Wales and her family with some degree of interest. But knowing about the royal family and knowing them personally are two very different things.

Satan does everything he can to confine our relationship with Jesus to the former. Choosing the latter is the single most important decision in all of time and eternity. It changes our lives and, through us, our world.

We are not radical enough

The transformation of America must begin with the transformation of America’s Christians. We must prove that biblical morality is relevant today by demonstrating its relevance in our personal lives. We then become our best argument for persuading others to join us. And we are empowered to share biblical truth with bold, courageous compassion as we display the “fruit of the Spirit” to the world (Galatians 5:22–23).

Consequently, you and I need to seek nothing less than a daily, intimate personal experience with the risen Christ.

Substituting a religion about Jesus for a transforming relationship with him is a deception of Satan himself. When we fall for this trap:

• We don’t seek to know Christ more fully (Jeremiah 29:13).
• Rather, we seek to be our own God (Genesis 3:5), in control of our own lives.
• We are inoculated spiritually with just enough of a relationship with God to keep us from experiencing the real thing.
• Our witness is enervated since the world sees no difference between our lives and theirs.

In this way, religion is dangerous, but not for the reasons post-Christian progressives think. It’s not that we are too radical, but that we are not radical enough:

• We should oppose abortion, despite the accusation that we are part of a “war on women,” but we must also love women considering abortion and the children we encourage them to bring into the world.
• We should oppose same-sex marriage, despite the claim that we are “homophobic,” but we must also model biblical marriage by rejecting pornography and adultery while loving all people as Christ loves us.
• We should oppose euthanasia, despite the claim that we oppose “death with dignity,” but we must also care for the infirm and honor the elderly.
• We should bemoan the divisiveness of our politicized culture, but we must also “love [our] neighbor as ourselves” (Matthew 22:39) whatever their political positions.

Why I love to talk about my grandkids

Here’s why today’s conversation is so crucial for our broken culture: when you and I experience the risen Christ in a daily, intimate, transforming way, we must tell the world. Just as Jesus “had” to pass through Samaria (John 4:4), not because this was a geographical necessity but because he was compelled by his love for Samaritans, so the Samaritan woman he led to himself had to tell her fellow villagers about him (vv. 28–30, 39–42).

She was not alone:

• The demoniac healed by Jesus had to tell his fellow residents in the Decapolis “how much Jesus had done for him” (Mark 5:20).
• The disciples on the road to Emmaus, when they had a transforming encounter with the risen Christ, had to tell the apostles “what had happened on the road” (Luke 24:35).
• Early Christians, when they were “filled with the Spirit,” had to share the gospel with the Pentecost crowds (Acts 2:4–41).
• When Peter was “filled with the Spirit,” he had to testify for Christ before the Sanhedrin at the risk of his life (Acts 4:8–12).
• When Paul met the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he had to proclaim Christ in the synagogues there (Acts 9:20).
• When John met the risen Christ on the prison island of Patmos, he had to give the Revelation to the world.

We often see evangelism as a duty and even a chore. But in fact, when we truly experience the risen Christ, we must share him. We cannot help it—we want everyone we know to know the One whose love has changed our lives.

Jesus promised the same: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’” (John 7:38). Like the waters of an artesian well forced by underground pressure to pour up from the ground, so our love for Jesus will flow into our words and actions as we naturally fulfill his commission to “be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8).

Because I love my family, I love talking about them. And, like a typical grandparent, I am always ready to convince you that my grandchildren are perfect (with pictures as evidence). Because I love them, I want you to love them.

So, here’s the question:

Do you want to share Jesus with someone today?

If not, why not?

Tuesday news to know:

• Biden attends urgent meeting with Caribbean leaders as Haiti’s violent crisis grows
• US responds to Russia–China plan to put nuclear reactor on moon
• How the AI that drives ChatGPT will move into the physical world
• Indonesian flight veered off course after both pilots allegedly fell asleep in the cockpit
• On this day in 1933: FDR broadcasts first “fireside chat” during the Great Depression

Quote for the day:

“Jesus did not say that the whole world should go to church, but he did say that the whole church should go to the world.” —Greg Laurie

Denison Forum

Oppenheimer won last night’s Academy Awards for best picture, best director (Christopher Nolan), best actor (Cillian Murphy), and best supporting actor (Robert Downey Jr.), as well as for film editing, score, and cinematography. As you know, the movie tells the story of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s quest to build the world’s first nuclear weapons.

One reviewer explained its appeal, calling the film “very much a movie of the moment—a feel-bad hit for our feel-bad age, perfectly calibrated to capture the imagination of an audience perpetually scanning the horizon for the bloom of some new mushroom cloud.”

We don’t have to look far to find such “clouds” in the news:

• Today marks the fourth anniversary of the WHO’s declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic; the global death count from the virus now exceeds seven million.
• The largest wildfire in Texas history was apparently ignited by a power company’s facilities; the conflagration has left at least two people dead, killed thousands of animals, and scorched more than a million acres of land. (For a theological reflection on this ongoing tragedy, please see my new website paper, “The Texas wildfires: What we know, what we don’t know (yet), and what to do with what we know.”
• The proliferation of AI, cloud computing, crypto-mining, and electric vehicles is making unprecedented demands on America’s aging and increasingly inadequate power grid.
• An epidemic of anxiety, loneliness, and technology-induced isolation continues unabated.

But I think an even deeper force is at work in our culture, one to which the gospel can uniquely respond with the hope we long to embrace today.

“There are no national principles”

In an article published Saturday, New York Times contributing opinion writer Christopher Caldwell analyzes America’s shift from a consensual, objective moral worldview to a relativism that is unable to “distinguish facts from wishes.” Using our fracturing response to Russian aggression in Ukraine as an example, he writes:

Fighting a war based on values requires good values. At a bare minimum it requires an agreement on the values being spread, and the United States is further from such agreement than it has ever been in its history—further, even, than it was on the eve of the Civil War. At times it seems there are no national principles, only partisan ones, with each side convinced that the other is trying not just to run the government but also to capture the state.

There was a day when our “national principles” were clear and compelling. As set forth in our founding creed, the Declaration of Independence:

• Truth is “self-evident,” not subjective.
• All people are “created equal” by God, not the product of chaotic or evolutionary coincidence.
• We are “endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights” which the government does not bestow but protects.
• We each have the right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” a claim that contradicts the culture of death embraced by abortion and euthanasia advocates.

These declarations contributed directly to our national character, purpose, and astounding success on the world stage. However, as Ronald Reagan warned:

“We’ve gone astray from first principles. We’ve lost sight of the rule that individual freedom and ingenuity are the very core of everything we’ve accomplished. Government’s first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.”

The good news is that these “first principles” were not the invention of Founders long dead. To the contrary, they are as available to us today as they were to them.

“For correction or for his land or for love”

As I and many others have noted, our nation was birthed within the consensual morality of the Judeo-Christian worldview. Whether particular Founders were committed Christians or not, they lived in a culture where the biblical principles espoused in the Declaration were prevalent.

Now it falls to us to embrace these principles anew, to think biblically and act redemptively in all we do. When we make this lifestyle commitment, we join our omnipotent Lord as he continues to advance his kingdom today.

Scripture declares: “God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things that we cannot comprehend” (Job 37:5). He does his work in the world for three purposes: “Whether for correction or for his land or for love, he causes it to happen” (v. 13).

• “Correction” in the Hebrew refers to a measuring rod used to convict us of our sins and to guide us into our best lives.
• “His land” refers to the entirety of his creation.
• “Love” translates the Hebrew hesed, referring to God’s unconditional, faithful, passionate love for us (agape is the Greek New Testament equivalent).

By his word and the ongoing work of his Spirit in the world, God continues to correct us, provide for us, and demonstrate his love for us. However, he requires our holistic commitment to holiness and can give only what we will receive with humble dependence on his Spirit: “Justice and abundant righteousness he will not violate. . . . he does not regard any who are wise in their own conceit” (vv. 23–24).

“If you will, you can be healed”

St. Theophilus of Antioch (AD 120–190) wrote:

A person’s soul should be clean, like a mirror reflecting light. If there is rust on the mirror his face cannot be seen in it. In the same way, no one who has sin within him can see God.

But if you will, you can be healed. Hand yourself over to the doctor, and he will open the eyes of your mind and heart. Who is to be the doctor? It is God, who heals and gives life through his word and wisdom. . . .

If you understand this, and live in purity and holiness and justice, you may see God. But, before all, faith and the fear of God must take the first place in your heart, and then you will understand all this.

Will you “see God” today?

Monday news to know:

• Andrea Bocelli and son Matteo Bocelli perform stunning “In Memoriam” tribute at the 2024 Oscars
• Muslims spot Ramadan crescent moon in Saudi Arabia, meaning month of fasting starts Monday for many
• US military airlifts nonessential staff from embassy in Haiti, bolsters security amid ongoing gang violence
• Macron backs “end of life” bill, aims for Parliament debate in May
• On this day in 1985: Mikhail Gorbachev picked to succeed Konstantin Chernenko

Quote for the day:

“Holiness, not happiness, is the chief end of man” (Oswald Chambers).

Denison Forum