American governance and the path to our best future

Anti-ICE protests were staged in cities across the US over the weekend. Bikers also participated in memorial rides for Alex Pretti, who was killed by federal agents in Minneapolis last month. Over two hundred such rides took place across forty-three states.

In other news, the US government partially shut down over the weekend as dozens of federal agencies saw their funding lapse at 12 a.m. Saturday. And President Trump named Kevin Warsh to become Federal Reserve chair, but the process for confirmation by the Senate may be in doubt.

Here’s what these stories have in common: they illustrate features in America’s governance, not bugs. This is a fact that matters far beyond its political implications.

Equality vs. checks and balances

Public demonstrations have long been part of the American story, as the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the recent “March for Life” in Washington, DC, illustrate.  Such events stand in marked contrast to the recent massacre of protesters in Iran and the 1989 murder of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square by the Chinese Communist Party.

Our partial government shutdown occurred because the Senate approved a funding package late Friday, but the House is not expected to vote on it until tomorrow at the earliest. Mr. Warsh’s confirmation by the Senate may be blocked by Sen. Thom Tillis, not because he is opposed to the president’s nominee, but because he wants an investigation into the current Fed Chair, Jerome Powell, to be “fully and transparently resolved” first.

In each case, we are seeing the juxtaposition of America’s founding declaration that “all men are created equal” with the constitutional provision of checks and balances against unaccountable power.

Citizens can seek to persuade our leaders and otherwise catalyze change through lawful protests and public gatherings. The various branches of government can also leverage their influence toward the common good. And even individuals serving in leadership can have an outsized role in our governance.

This system has helped an amazingly disparate and diverse nation achieve a level of solidarity and progress that few Europeans foresaw at its birth. But no nation’s future is guaranteed, including ours.

Our “most grievous cultural wound”

I have long appreciated the work of New York Times columnist David Brooks. I do not agree with all he writes, but I appreciate the reasoned way he seeks to advance his vision of American flourishing.

I was therefore surprised on Friday to read that he is leaving the Times after twenty-two years. In his final column, he diagnoses our cultural condition once more:

Four decades of hyperindividualism expanded individual choice but weakened the bonds between people. . . . As a result of technological progress and humanistic decay, life has become objectively better but subjectively worse. We have widened personal freedom but utterly failed to help people answer the question of what that freedom is for.

The most grievous cultural wound has been the loss of a shared moral order. . . . Without shared standards of right and wrong, it’s impossible to settle disputes; it’s impossible to maintain social cohesion and trust. Every healthy society rests on some shared conception of the sacred—sacred heroes, sacred texts, sacred ideals—and when that goes away, anxiety, atomization, and a slow descent toward barbarism are the natural results.

In other words, we want the benefits of consensual governance without the necessity of a consensual morality. But human laws cannot change human nature. At best, they can restrain some of us from harming others some of the time. They cannot produce the “shared moral order” that leads to the flourishing our Founders envisioned for us.

What can?

“Honest but reluctant taxpayers”

At this point, you probably expect me to recommend biblical morality as our essential cultural foundation. But here’s the problem: such morality requires our unconditional commitment. The Bible calls us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30, my emphases).

When did you last spend a day loving God with “all” your heart?

I am no different. I am just as tempted by partial obedience as you are. It is appealing to have my cake and eat it as well, to do what God requires to obtain his blessing but no more.

1. S. Lewis observed in his last sermon:

Our temptation is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers. We approve of an income tax in principle. We make our returns truthfully. But we dread a rise in the tax. We are very careful to pay no more than is necessary. And we hope—we very ardently hope—that after we have paid it there will still be enough left to live on.

But partial obedience can lead only to partial benefits. The more unconditionally we are committed to our marriage, our children, our work, or our friends, the more we experience the best such relationships can offer.

It is the same with God. Our Father cannot bless what harms his children, and anything outside his will is sin (James 4:17) that enslaves us (John 8:34) and “brings forth death” (James 1:15). As Lewis noted in his sermon, “When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, [God] claims all.”

How, then, can we give him “all”?

“I have now concentrated all my prayers into one”

Jesus promised, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). “Love” translates agape, the unconditional commitment to place the other before ourselves. When we love Jesus like this, he said, “you will keep my commandments.” Not might, but will.

Here’s the good news: agape is a “fruit” of the Spirit, not of human effort (Galatians 5:22). When we submit ourselves to him daily (Ephesians 5:18), he produces this fruit in our lives daily. The Spirit thus enables us to love our Lord so fully that we naturally and inevitably keep his commandments.

As the pastor and author Erwin Lutzer noted, “When you surrender your will to God, you discover the resources to do what God requires.” And doing “what God requires” positions us to experience his best in and through our lives, advancing the “shared moral order” that Brooks identifies as foundational to our cultural future.

Charles Spurgeon testified,

“I have now concentrated all my prayers into one, and that one prayer is that I may die to self and live wholly to him.”

Let us make his “one prayer” ours today, to the glory of God.

Quote for the day:

“Few souls understand what God would accomplish in them if they were to abandon themselves unreservedly to him and if they were to allow his grace to mold them accordingly.” —St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556)

Our latest website resources:

• Alex Pretti’s death, immigration tensions & how Christians can respond with Dr. Ryan Denison
• The Focus: Reason for hope after the shooting of Alex Pretti
• A review of “The Body Teaches the Soul” by Justin Earley
• Finding hope after life’s detours
• The Challenger disaster and the providence of God

Denison Forum

“A massive Armada is heading to Iran. . . . Like with Venezuela, it is ready, willing, and able to rapidly fulfill its mission, with speed and violence, if necessary. . . . As I told Iran once before, MAKE A DEAL! They didn’t and there was ‘Operation Midnight Hammer,’ a major destruction of Iran. The next attack will be far worse! Don’t make that happen again.”

That was President Trump’s message to the leaders of Iran earlier this week, though it appears to have fallen on deaf ears. To this point, Iran and the US have passed messages through intermediaries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, but it does not appear that they have talked directly to one another.

Turkey has taken a leading role in those mediations, and Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, arrived earlier this morning for that purpose. So far, at least, neither side appears overly eager to budge, with Araghchi using part of his time in Turkey to decry the European Union’s decision to name Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization for their role in suppressing protests earlier this month. However, those looking for a diplomatic solution may have time, as President Trump does not seem to be in too much of a hurry to act, despite the threats he’s issued.

As of this writing, he has yet to decide on an approach, and that indecision stems largely from the reality that they don’t really have a clear picture of what they hope to accomplish. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has cautioned that regime change in Iran would be “far more complex” than what they carried out in Venezuela, and even there, they appear to be making things up as they go to some extent.

But if they’re hesitant to force a change in leadership, what are their goals? After all, the fleet they’ve positioned within striking distance of Iran was not exactly cheap or easy to relocate.

Four demands, in particular, stand out.

The terms for peace

President Trump’s first demand—and the one he highlighted in his Truth Social post referenced above—is that Iran not only put an end to its nuclear program, but also give up all of its stockpiles of enriched uranium. That may prove difficult, however, since the majority of that uranium is buried underneath the facilities that collapsed following the strikes last summer.

Second, Iran must “stop killing protestors.” He later added that “they are killing them by the thousands.”

While the Human Rights Activists News Agency, a US-based group monitoring Iran, has confirmed 6,126 deaths from the protests, that number does not include the more than 17,000 that are still under investigation or the bodies that were buried by loved ones secretly to avoid government desecration. And, given that the government continues to arrest its citizens for connections to the protest, both numbers could increase over the coming days. Ultimately, we’ll never know an exact number, but something in the tens of thousands appears most likely.

The third demand is perhaps even less likely to be achieved than the first. President Trump called for Iran to limit the range and number of its ballistic missiles to such an extent that Israel would be safe from further attack. Given that those missiles are largely considered to be the primary reason that Israel hasn’t already attempted a regime change in Iran, removing the threat is likely off the table for the Supreme Leader and his government.

Iran’s unwillingness to consider this condition for peace is one of the reasons why these ballistic missile sites are thought to be high on the list of potential targets should the US engage with Iran directly. Israel would, reportedly, be willing to assist in such an attack and has encouraged President Trump to consider going this route if he chooses to engage.

Lastly, the fourth demand is perhaps the easiest for Iran to accomplish: sever all ties with proxy groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. While the regime would be loath to officially cut off all connections with these terrorist organizations, the truth is that sanctions have crippled their economy to the degree that most believe they don’t have much to offer right now anyway.

Yet, as with the others, agreeing to this demand would effectively mark the end of the regime’s influence and respect around the region, even if some of the same people technically remained in power. As such, while a deal between the United States and Iran remains possible, it’s difficult to see where they can find common ground.

So, where does that leave us?

They don’t have the cards

Hopefully cooler heads can prevail, further violence can be avoided, and—most importantly—the lives of the Iranian citizens who have already suffered so much can finally start to get a little better. However, that does not appear to be the direction in which events are heading.

While Araghchi may not have begun speaking directly with his American counterparts, he has been quite vocal about what Iran needs to see before negotiations could begin. Namely, he stated:

Our position is precisely that pursuing diplomacy through military threats cannot be effective. If they want negotiations to take place, they must set aside threats, excessive demands, and the raising of illogical issues. Negotiations have their own principles and must be conducted on equal footing and based on mutual respect (emphasis mine).

That last part about equal footing and mutual respect is essential to understanding why this situation still has a high possibility of escalating into further violence.

You see, the US and Iran are not equals, and Iran has never treated America as an equal. To ask for such treatment now, when their army is already overwhelmed, most of their people have lost all respect and fear of them, and a military force far greater than they can defend against is parked just off its southern coast, is simply foolish.

It makes sense that Iran’s leaders would be hesitant to show weakness, but pretending they are in a position of strength when they’re not is only going to make matters worse for them. Even if their legions of drones and ballistic missiles pose a greater threat than what American forces encountered in Venezuela, those factors likely represent a reason for caution rather than genuine concern.

To use one of President Trump’s favorite analogies, in the end, they just don’t have the cards, and the world knows they’re bluffing. Unfortunately, that’s not a mistake limited to Iran.

Made in whose image?

Throughout Scripture, we find examples of people who lacked the self-awareness to see their situation objectively. King Belshazzar, whose celebration was interrupted by a divine hand scrawling a message of doom as the Persian army was taking his city, seems like a fitting example (Daniel 5). However, he’s not alone.

Generations of Israelites thinking God wouldn’t care if they worshiped other gods, the religious leaders in the Gospels who were so focused on keeping the Law that they rejected its author, and Peter taking Jesus aside to scold him for talking about dying are all good examples of this mistake in action.

The truth is that when we forget who God is, it becomes far easier to forget who we are as well.

From the very beginning, we were meant to find the essence of our identity in the fact that we are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). When our lives are submitted to his will and we see ourselves through his eyes, we don’t have to be afraid of the areas where we’re weak or flawed, because those weaknesses do not define us.

However, when we live as if we are made in our own image instead, strength—or at least the appearance of strength—can easily become foundational to every other aspect of our lives. And when that strength is threatened, everything else becomes threatened as well. Owning our mistakes and understanding when we’re wrong are simply not outcomes we can tolerate very well.

That’s an exhausting way to live, yet it’s the path many people choose to follow.

So, as we finish for today, take a moment to ask the Lord to help you identify any areas where you lack this kind of self-awareness. Is there a part of your life that’s built on a foundation other than your identity in Christ?

If so, today is a great day to repent of that sin and find real, lasting peace in your relationship with the Lord.

Let’s start now.

Quote of the day:

“Self-awareness is indispensable to seeing the lines between what you want to be true and what is actually true.” — Jonah Goldberg

Our latest website resources:

• Alex Pretti’s death, immigration tensions & how Christians can respond with Dr. Ryan Denison | Ep. 54
• A review of “The Body Teaches the Soul” by Justin Earley
• The Challenger disaster and the providence of God
• The Focus: Reason for hope after the shooting of Alex Pretti
• Finding hope after life’s detours

Denison Forum