A reflection on divine providence and sustaining hope

March Madness is upon us. The NCAA Men’s Division I basketball tournament begins Tuesday night. The women’s tournament begins Wednesday evening.

If, like me, you don’t know much about college basketball, your odds of predicting each game of the men’s or women’s bracket correctly are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (approximately 9.2 quintillion). If you are familiar with the game, your odds improve to 1 in 120,200,000,000.

This is just one example of the extreme finitude with which humans live regarding the future. Others are more humorous than injurious:

• “Cinema is little more than a passing fad” (Charlie Chaplin, 1916).
• “The Beatles have no future in show business” (executives at Decca Records, 1962).
• “I think there is a worldwide market for maybe five computers” (Thomas Watson, IBM president, 1943).
• “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share” (Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, 2007).
• “Everything that can be invented, has been invented” (Charles H. Duell, US Patent Office Commissioner, 1899).

Others, however, are catastrophic:

• A dead power line unintentionally brought back to life may have caused the deadly Eaton fire in Los Angeles. If this is true and could have been foreseen, horrific tragedy could have been avoided.
• At least thirty-nine people were killed by tornadoes, wildfires, and dust storms that wrought havoc across multiple US states. If the storms’ precise location and timing could have been foreseen, perhaps these lives could have been spared.
• A massive fire tore through an overcrowded nightclub in North Macedonia last Sunday, killing 59 people and injuring 155 others. If the fire could have been anticipated and prevented, the tragedy could have been avoided.

This article, thus far, may seem to be a moot point. We cannot see the future, as so-called “expert” predictions so often demonstrate. So why contemplate an omniscience that cannot be ours?

Because Christians claim to worship and serve a God who does know the future. If that’s true, why doesn’t he make it clearer to us?

One of the most ironic chapters in Scripture

If you knew what would cause a deadly wildfire, wouldn’t you warn someone who could prevent it? If you had perfect meteorological foreknowledge, wouldn’t you alert people in the path of storms? If you knew a tragedy would strike a crowded building, wouldn’t you tell those inside?

Christians often wrestle with the fact that an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God permits so much suffering in this world he created. Leaving his omnipotence aside (which is a large issue, given that he not only could foresee the tragedies we’ve described but had the power to prevent them himself), let’s just focus on his omniscience.

Why doesn’t God tell us today what we need to know to prevent disasters tomorrow?

Now let’s make the problem even worse: He sometimes does.

I find 2 Kings 6 one of the most ironic chapters in the Bible. Here the king of Syria is at war with Israel. However, every time he decides when and where to camp, the Lord warns the prophet Elisha, who sends word to the king of Israel (vv. 8–10). The Syrian king is distressed and sends servants to arrest Elisha, which is foolish since he should assume that the prophet will have foreknowledge of this strategy as well.

But rather than avoid the Syrian army, the prophet prays for God to use his angelic army to strike them with blindness (v. 18). Elisha then feeds them and sends them home, “and the Syrians did not come again on raids into the land of Israel” (v. 23).

If God knew when the Syrians would attack his people and warned them beforehand, why doesn’t he do the same when tragedy threatens us today?

Three plausible facts

A skeptic’s answer would be that this conversation demonstrates the absurdity of the question. God doesn’t do such miracles because (a) he does not exist; (b) he exists but does not do miracles; or (c) he could do miracles but, like Zeus and his cohort atop Mt. Olympus, he is too capricious to be trusted.

None of these options are required by the facts on the ground, however, assuming that plausible answers to our question can be given. And they can.

One: God can give only what we will receive.

If we do not believe he exists, we obviously will not pray for his guidance or follow what wisdom he attempts to provide. Our atheism then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, like the person who doesn’t believe doctors exist, does not consult them with his disease, and dies as a result.

Two: God can lead only those who will follow.

He chooses to honor the free will he has given us. As a result, he can reveal the future only to those willing to receive such revelation and guide only those who will follow his guidance. I believe that many of the tragedies we wish we had foreseen could have been avoided if more of us had sought God’s leadership more often.

Three: One aspect of God’s omniscience is that, by definition, it cannot be understood by our finitude.

St. Anselm described God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” If my mind could understand this Supreme Being, either I would be God or he would not be. I should, therefore, not expect to comprehend his providential ways even in the suffering of our broken world. As he told the prophet:

My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lᴏʀᴅ. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8–9).

Consequently, even when we believe in God and seek his guidance, there will be times when he does not answer us as we wish. On such days, however, we can claim the fact that one day we will understand what we do not today (1 Corinthians 13:12). And we can trust our Father to redeem all he allows for his ultimate glory and our ultimate good.

A simple prayer for each day

I harbor serious doubts about whether God would reveal the “perfect NCAA bracket” to us even if we believe in his omniscience and pray for his guidance. But I do believe that he would lead us into an uncertain future more often if we sought his leading more often and were willing to follow it faithfully for his glory and the common good.

As James noted, “You do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2). Alternately, “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (v. 3).

Some years ago, I learned a simple prayer that I seek to pray every day:

“You lead, I follow.”

Will you offer it to our Father with me today?

Denison Forum

How long can our democracy sustain itself like this?

Many people think Americans have gotten ruder since the COVID-19 pandemic. This morning, Chuck Schumer may agree with them.

Enough Senate Democrats voted for a Republican spending bill last Friday to avoid a government shutdown. Led by their minority leader, Charles Schumer (D, NY), they chose the GOP’s spending regime rather than be blamed for a shutdown they feared would further empower President Trump.

Many Democrats, however, consider Schumer’s decision to be so heinous that they are questioning whether he should step down as their leader. According to the Hill, the minority leader is now the center of a “civil war” within his party. A senior Democratic aide said of the frustration toward Schumer, “I’ve never seen anything like it in the time I’ve been in the Senate toward any leader on our side.” The furor comes at a time when, according to a CNN poll released yesterday, their party’s favorability rating among Americans stands at a record low.

If you’re a Democrat, you are likely troubled by this news and what it may mean for the future of your party. If you’re a Republican, you are likely pleased by this news for the same reason. However, this story is symptomatic of a much deeper issue with implications for the future of our democracy.

Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill

Partisan divisions are inevitable in any disparate society that attempts to govern itself through participatory democracy. Nearly every true democracy on the planet (apart from small countries such as Micronesia, Tuvalu, and Palau) consists of political parties, many with many of them. (Thirty-nine parties participated in Israel’s last election, for example.)

But the depth of partisan rancor we are experiencing today is not simply a function of democracy. For example, President Ronald Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill were political opposites, but they were also good friends. In his book Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked, Chris Matthews describes a scene that typifies their relationship.

After President Reagan was shot and nearly killed in 1981, O’Neill was one of the first people the president let visit him in his hospital room. O’Neill grasped both of the president’s hands and said, “God bless you, Mr. President.” The president, still groggy, thanked him for coming.

The speaker, holding one of Mr. Reagan’s hands, got on his knees and said he would like to offer a prayer for the president, choosing the Twenty-Third Psalm. Then O’Neill kissed Reagan on the forehead.

That was then, this is now.

Today, 63 percent of Democrats see Republicans as immoral, while 72 percent of Republicans view Democrats in the same way. Nearly half of Americans consider members of the opposing political party to be “downright evil.”

President Ronald Reagan instructed his staff, “Remember, we have no enemies, only opponents.” “Enemies” must be defeated at all costs. To seek a middle ground or consensus is to compromise with evil. One side must win, which means the other side must lose.

How long can a consensual democracy sustain itself like this?

“They worshiped him, but some doubted”

During Jesus’ earthly ministry, “not even his brothers believed in him” (John 7:5). In fact, at one point “they were saying, ‘He is out of his mind’” (Mark 3:21).

However, one of his brothers later became the leader of the church in Jerusalem (Acts 15:13–21) and author of the biblical book of James. Another became the author of the New Testament book of Jude.

When Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, “all the disciples left him and fled” (Matthew 26:56); Peter then infamously denied his Lord three times (vv. 69–75). When the apostles later met the risen Lord, “they worshiped him, but some doubted” (Matthew 28:17, my emphasis).

However, Peter became the prophetic preacher of Pentecost and bold witness before the very authorities who executed his Lord (Acts 5:29). And the other apostles led in advancing the nascent Christian movement so effectively that it “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).

When we love those who do not love us

Our postmodern, secularized society is convinced that all truth claims are personal and subjective. As a result, when we differ in our opinions, reasoning toward a solution and consensus is pointless. Rather, we congregate in political “tribes” with those who already agree with us and see the other side as wrong and even evil.

But Christians know that Christ can change any heart and transform any life. What he did with his apostles, he has done with us. So we see the other “side” as people for whom Jesus died. And we know that no one is beyond the reach of his grace.

As a result, even when we disagree deeply on the most divisive issues of our day, we will refuse to slander (1 Peter 2:1). We will “honor the emperor” (v. 17) and pray for our leaders (1 Timothy 2:1–2). And we will model the humility and compassion that are essential in any participatory governance.

We should not be surprised when lost people act like lost people. But when Christians engage in the same political slander and vitriol, our Lord is shamed and our witness damaged. By contrast, when we love those who do not love us, our broken culture is surprised and drawn closer to the Source of our grace. The more people reject our message, the more urgently they need it.

Establishing two hundred churches in Ireland

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, the annual holiday commemorating the death of the patron saint of Ireland in AD 461. He was enslaved at age sixteen, came to faith in Christ, and escaped to return home at age twenty-two.

But God called him to go back to his Irish captors as a missionary. When his career was over, he had established some two hundred churches in Ireland and led more than one hundred thousand people to Christ.

Despite more than a dozen attempts on his life, Patrick saw the Irish not as his enemies but as people in need of God’s grace. Accordingly, he wrote in his Confessions, “The Irish, who had never had the knowledge of God and worshiped only idols and unclean things, have lately become the people of the Lord, and are called sons of God.”

St. Patrick closed his memoirs by explaining the secret to his history-changing ministry:

“Do you judge, and let it be most firmly believed, that it was the gift of God.”

With whom will you share this “gift” today?

NOTE: For more on today’s topic, please see my recent website article, “Democrats clear way for funding bill, end threat of shutdown.”

Quote for the day:

“Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.” —St. Patrick

Our latest website resources:

• Who are the Tate brothers and why should Christians care?
• Why are Christians being killed in Syria?
• Why teens are growing up more anxious and depressed: A review of “The Anxious Generation” by Jonathan Haidt
• Why antisemitism is such a problem on so many campuses: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”
• What I learned as a parent that helped me as a minister (Or was it the other way around?)

Denison Forum

Clergy abuse scandals and a prophetic moment I have not forgotten

Rev. Robert Morris founded Gateway Church in April 2000 at the Hilton Hotel in Grapevine, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. Ten years later, the church opened its current sixty-four-acre facility. In November 2018, it was ranked the fourth largest megachurch in the US with about twenty-eight thousand weekly attendees.

While I do not know Robert Morris personally, I have known many who have benefited greatly from Gateway’s ministries over the years. It was deeply grievous to learn of horrific abuse allegations against Morris last June, prompting his resignation.

This week, news broke that Morris has now been indicted on child sex abuse charges in Oklahoma. The former pastor is charged with five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child. The Oklahoma attorney general told the Dallas Morning News yesterday that Morris will “more likely than not” turn himself in and be arraigned by Monday.

Earlier in the week, the Dallas Morning News published an extensive article interviewing ex-Gateway employees who say the church had “a culture of silence and trauma.” They said that before Morris’ exit, the church had a “narcissistic” culture where criticism was silenced and staffers were left with lasting trauma.

Top Headlines. Non-Partisan. Biblical Perspective.

According to the elder board chair, the church is now reckoning with a “failure of culture.”

“If the salt has lost its taste”

Ruth Graham recently profiled evangelical author Aaron Renn in the New York Times. Renn is especially known for his historical taxonomy that has become conventional wisdom for many:

• American Christians experienced a “positive world” between 1964 and 1994, during which being a Christian generally enhanced our social status and “Christian social norms” were the basic norms of the broader American culture.
• In the “neutral world,” which lasted roughly from 1994 to 2014, Christianity no longer held a privileged status, but was viewed as one of many valid options in a pluralistic public square.
• About a decade ago, the US became a “negative world” for Christians. Following Christ and holding traditional Christian moral views, particularly related to sex and gender, is now seen as “a threat to the public good and new public moral order.”

I have written widely on this shift as well in numerous articles and especially in my book, The Coming Tsunami: Why Christians Are Labeled Intolerant, Irrelevant, Oppressive, and Dangerous—and How We Can Turn the Tide. I would nuance Renn’s description by noting that “positive,” “neutral,” and “negative” cultural engagements depend not only on chronology but also on geography. Evangelicals on both coasts and in major cities are likely to experience the “negative” world more than those in smaller Midwest towns, for example.

However, I agree with Renn that biblical morality has become more problematic than ever before in American history and that, despite recent more positive trends, the church in America is facing unprecedented opposition.

According to Notre Dame scholar Christian Smith, author of Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America, sex abuse scandals are especially to blame:

The scandals violated most of the virtues believed to make religion good. They demonstrated that religion did not make people moral, did not help its own leaders cope with life’s challenges and temptations, did not promote social peace and harmony, and did not model virtuous behavior for others.

It is inconceivable to me that ministers whose moral failings have captured so many headlines over recent years intended this to happen. Surely they did not know when they took their first steps into sexual immorality that their sins would grievously wound so many people and deeply damage the larger witness of the church in contemporary society.

But this is just what Jesus warned us could happen: “If the salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet” (Matthew 5:13).

A prophetic moment I have never forgotten

Many years ago, I was teaching philosophy of religion at a major seminary when a megachurch pastor in the community was caught in numerous affairs. The news made headlines all weekend. The next Monday, I was attending seminary chapel when the speaker began his message by addressing the scandal.

I thought he was going to criticize the celebrity pastor for his appalling moral failures. But that’s not what he did.

After describing the story in some detail, he pointed his finger at us in the auditorium and declared, “And there but for the grace of God go you.” Then he pointed at himself and added, “And there but for the grace of God go I.”

It was a prophetic moment I have not forgotten. And one I’d like you to hear directed at your soul today: “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (James 1:14–15, my emphases). This process, unless halted through genuine repentance and sincere restoration, is inevitable.

A cancer left untreated will be worse tomorrow than it is today, until the day it kills the patient.

Why we need “abandonment to Jesus Christ”

Here we find yet another reason why you and I need the personal, transformational relationship with the living Lord Jesus that I have been emphasizing this week. He will “deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13), but we must seek such deliverance. His Spirit will give us victory over temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13), but we must first submit our lives and temptations to him.

Oswald Chambers observed:

“The reason some of us are such poor specimens of Christianity is because we have no Almighty Christ. We have Christian attributes and experiences, but there is no abandonment to Jesus Christ.”

Conversely, when we submit ourselves fully to the person of Jesus, “we walk in the light, as he is in the light” (1 John 1:7). But only then.

According to our Lord, you can be “salt [that] has lost its taste” and is “thrown out and trampled,” or you can “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:13, 16). You can be part of the solution, or you can be part of the problem.

I face the same choice today.

Let us choose wisely.

Quote for the day:

“May we not only be delivered from the outward act or word that grieves Thee, but may the very springs of our nature be purified!” —F. B. Meyer

Our latest website resources:

• What I learned as a parent that helped me as a minister (Or was it the other way around?)
• Stock market woes, Syrian murders, Tate brothers, NFL free agency & more trending stories this week
• Why antisemitism is such a problem on so many campuses: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”
• “Computers with limbs” are coming. Is this a good thing? A ceasefire in Ukraine, death by firing squad, and the providential creation of God
• What is the New Thought Movement?

Denison Forum