“The eyes of the Lᴏʀᴅ range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 16:9 NIV).

The Georgia Bulldogs repeated as national champions last night with their 65–7 win over the TCU Horned Frogs. Only eight schools have won repeat national championships since the start of the modern era in 1936. The current playoff format only dates to 2015, but college football has named national champions going back to 1869 (when Princeton and Rutgers were the only two teams and split their series, so they were named co-champions retroactively).

The championship game is currently played each year in the month of January, which is named for Janus, a Roman god who is typically depicted with two faces—one looking into the past, the other into the future. The other eleven months were also named by the Romans, giving a stability to the calendar that far outlasted their empire.

We name months for the same reasons we want our teams to win national championships: we name what we seek to control (time, in this case) and we feel like winners when our teams win. These sentiments reveal a truth that is foundational to our lives, our democracy, and our future.

“The worst form of government”

The House of Representatives reconvened last night to pass a set of House rules as Speaker Kevin McCarthy cleared his first major test. However, the contentious nature of the process portends much conflict ahead; lawmakers nearly came to blows during the final votes that eventually elected him to the office.

In other news, Gallup reports that majorities of Americans predict negative conditions in 2023 across twelve of thirteen economic, political, societal, and international arenas. (The one positive: a majority think Russian power will decline this year.)

But our democracy is not the only one making headlines for challenging reasons.

Israel’s new government has been in the news with regard to its relations with the Palestinians. However, I was in Israel when Itamar Ben Gvir visited the Temple Mount last week and can tell you that it was largely a nonevent in Jerusalem. The issue my Israeli friends are all focused on has to do with proposals to give the Knesset (their parliament) power over Israel’s judicial High Court (corresponding to our Supreme Court).

Post-election riots in Brazil over the weekend continue to make headlines; British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is warning that the UK’s problems will not “go away” this year. All that to say, Winston Churchill was prescient when he observed: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

The “twin pillars of our democracy”

Our problems with democracy go back to its very foundations.

Jennifer Szalai reviewed Costica Bradatan’s In Praise of Failure: Four Lessons in Humility for the New York Times. At one point she reports: “Bradatan recounts how ancient Athenians were so committed to democratic rules that public officials were chosen by random lots. Their reasoning was straightforward enough: Elections, which we consider a mainstay of democracy, would have allowed such variables as wealth and charisma to come into play.”

However, Bradatan noted, “a fetish for institutions didn’t protect Athenian democracy from mob rule.” For example, “There were supposedly 501 Athenians on the jury that condemned Socrates to death. According to the political logic of the day, it would have been impossible to corrupt them all; the majority decided he should die, and so their decision was institutionally flawless.”

In other words, democracy (“the power of the people”) requires that the people be worthy of the power entrusted to them. But the “will to power,” the perennial temptation to “be like God” (Genesis 3:5), is ever with us. And it undermines our democracy at every turn.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently identified the “twin pillars of our democracy” as “truth and trust.” He explained: “Without being able to agree on what is true, we don’t know which way to go. And without being able to trust one another, we can’t head there together. And everything big and hard needs to be done together.”

Here’s what Friedman’s analysis leaves out: we cannot trust one another if we have no objective basis for such trust. And such an objective basis by definition requires objective truth. As a result, we must have truth in order to have trust.

However, our “post-truth” culture, by rejecting the former, undermines the latter.

“Religion and morality are indispensable supports”

It is unsurprising, therefore, that our trust in government today is a third of what it was in 1958 (before postmodern relativism became conventional wisdom). Or that 90 percent of Americans expect 2023 to be a “year of political conflict.”

To chart our future in such chaotic times, it is helpful to look to our past.

Last Saturday marked the 233^rd anniversary of America’s first-ever State of the Union address. In it, George Washington noted the need for the American people “to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last.”

His remarks were amplified eight years later in his Farewell Address when he stated, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” Our first president added: “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

In short, democracy requires “national morality,” which requires “religious principle.” This is not just a fact of history but a biblical truth: “The eyes of the Lᴏʀᴅ range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 16:9 NIV).

Can God strengthen our democracy today?

Can he start with you?

Denison Forum

“When you put real love out into the world it comes back to you 3x’s as much. The Love has been overwhelming, but I’m thankful for every single person that prayed for me and reached out. We brung the world back together behind this. If you know me you know this only gone make me stronger. On a long road keep praying for me!”

This was how Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin thanked the world on Instagram for praying for him after he nearly died last Monday night during a game with the Cincinnati Bengals. His progress bolstered his team as they wore a special “3” patch on their uniforms yesterday. In “a play that seemed plucked from a movie,” they returned the opening kickoff for a touchdown in front of a packed house and went on to defeat the New England Patriots. Hamlin’s jersey was the most purchased among all athletes across all sports.

In my opinion, Dallas Cowboys chaplain Jonathan Evans, the associate pastor of NextGen Ministry at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, sounded the most enduring note from Hamlin’s near-death crisis. Quarterback Dak Prescott quoted Evans’ message to the team last week: “Your age, you’re not old or young off of your birth date but off your death date.”

An “irrational atavistic impulse”?

Barton Swaim began his Wall Street Journal editorial on Damar Hamlin by referencing “the question of when prayer on public grounds is and isn’t permissible.” He noted that “Americans, especially American liberals, have been obsessed with the question for more than sixty years.”

However, he added, “The idea that prayer is improper at big-time sporting events was forgotten on Monday night.”

After Hamlin collapsed on the field, Swaim writes, “Suddenly prayer was back on the list of things anybody could talk about or do on camera.” Signs and social media posts called for the nation to “pray for Damar.” ESPN commentators actually prayed for him on air. In the days following, NFL players across the league prayed for him and for each other.

Is this unequivocally good news? Swaim sounds a cautionary note: “I’m not entirely comfortable with so many ecumenical pleas for the favor of an undefined deity. Are all these thousands of social-media posters urging their followers to #PrayForDamar actually praying and, if they are, praying to the one true God? I’m not so sure.”

Grieving over calls to prayer

What are critics of religion thinking about this national response? According to Swaim, “They will consider the whole pray-for-Damar episode a mass expression of some irrational atavistic impulse. . . . Let the fans ‘pray’ if that’s what gives them comfort, but it changes nothing.”

In one sense, I agree with them.

I grieved in Israel last week as I heard the Adhan broadcast from minarets calling Muslims to pray to Allah rather than to Christ. I know that Jesus alone is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) and that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

The power of faith resides not in its act but in its object. We can take the wrong road in faith that it is the right road, but we will still be lost. We can take the wrong medicine in faith that it is the right medicine, but our faith will not make it so.

At the same time, our instinctive response to pray when confronting a crisis we cannot solve with human resources reveals something important about us.

The nation does not pray when a football player sprains an ankle or suffers a concussion since our doctors can treat such injuries. We do not flood sanctuaries for prayer meetings when an airplane crashes. But when terrorists flew airplanes into buildings on 9/11, we packed church buildings for prayer. After we began learning the identity of our enemy and gained confidence in our ability to prevent further attacks, crowds in churches returned to normal.

A “relentless parade of atmospheric rivers”

One of Satan’s most subtle ploys is to focus us on what we can do rather than on what we cannot do.

We do not fear death since medical science can often postpone it, but medical science cannot prevent it. Our technological capacities exceed anything known to human history, as the advent of the iPhone on this day in 2007 demonstrated, but we cannot stop the “relentless parade of atmospheric rivers” pounding California. According to a new survey, 3.3 million US adults were displaced by natural disasters last year. None of us can prevent the disasters sure to come this year.

Here’s my point: every one of us, every moment of every day, is Damar Hamlin.

Jonathan Evans is right: “You’re not old or young off of your birth date but off your death date.”  Each of us is one heartbeat from eternity. Each of us needs help and hope beyond ourselves. We were made to depend on our Maker, not just on Sunday or in a recognized crisis, but every moment of every day.

“When you don’t see the whole staircase”

So begin your day with your Lord as Jesus did (cf. Mark 1:35). (Our ministry’s morning devotional, First15, is designed to help you experience God each day.)

End your day with your Lord. (To this end, I highly recommend my wife’s new resource, Wisdom Matters, a devotional word of biblical encouragement you can read or hear at the end of each day.)

Turn every challenge to God in prayer (for help, see my latest blog, “How to live victoriously in Christ”).

And have faith that the one true God hears you and will always do what is best in response. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was right: “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”

What staircase will you begin to climb today?

Denison Forum