I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14).

My wife and I tested positive for COVID-19 a few days ago. While more than ninety-seven million Americans have contracted the virus since the pandemic began, this was our first time. We are both vaccinated and boosted and are under our doctors’ care, so we’re experiencing mild symptoms. This could be far worse—nearly twenty-eight thousand Americans are currently hospitalized with the disease, which is causing more than three hundred deaths a day.

Our experience with the pandemic has brought back terrible memories of the days before the vaccines when it seemed that anyone could infect anyone and anyone could die as a result. Things are much different now, but humanity’s overall mortality rate is unchanged. Every one of us will die of something someday unless the Lord returns first.

From Sunday’s multiple fatalities at the University of Virginia and the University of Idaho, to last Saturday’s deadly midair collision at a Dallas air show, to comedian Jay Leno’s burn injuries following a gasoline fire, each day’s news is filled with reminders that life is finite and fragile.

And as with most gifts, the more fragile life becomes, the more precious it seems.

Unless, that is, we’re discussing the most fragile lives of all.

Abortion vote an “unmitigated disaster”

Most commentators discussing the midterm elections have focused on control of Congress, with more than a dozen House seats still uncalled as of last night. I have been watching a different story line, one that reveals something deeply urgent about the state of our culture.

According to NPR, “in every state where voters were asked to weigh in directly on abortion rights, they supported measures that protect those rights and rejected initiatives that could threaten them.” Voters in several states approved measures to enshrine abortion rights in their states’ constitutions. And Kentucky voters rejected a measure explicitly stating that the state constitution contains no right to an abortion, a defeat Southern Seminary president Albert Mohler called an “unmitigated disaster.”

These outcomes further reinforce the cultural narrative we discussed yesterday: our postmodern, post-Christian society is increasingly antagonistic to biblical moral values. In a post-Roe world, abortion will be legislated on a state-by-state and community-by-community basis. If the majority of your community is for elective abortion, they will elect pro-abortion leaders who enact pro-abortion legislation.

Consequently, protecting the most fragile of our fellow humans becomes your job and mine.

Three responses

One response is logical: unborn humans are humans.

From the moment of conception, the fetus contains all forty-six human chromosomes and is able to develop only into a human being. Nothing new will be added except the growth and development of what exists from conception. At twelve weeks, the unborn baby is only about two inches long, but every organ of the human body is clearly in place.

As a result, a child prior to birth deserves the same legal protections it will receive the moment it is born. All that happens in that moment is that it changes locations from inside its mother’s womb to outside of it. Making the case that pre-born children are children is foundational to saving their lives from abortion.

A second response is practical: pregnant women deserve all the support they need.

Every reason women cite for choosing abortion is a need we can meet. From financial support (the #1 cause of abortion) to counseling and medical resources, churches and ministries can help mothers choose life.

A third response is spiritual: our culture is being deceived.

A caller on a radio program where I was being interviewed made the claim that she is personally opposed to abortion but doesn’t feel she has the right to make this decision for others. Tolerance is the cardinal ethos of a relativistic culture in which “we have no right to force our beliefs on others.” Abortion decisions are best left to the mothers who must make them, or so we’re told.

Of course, in every other dimension of life we enact laws to protect us from each other and even from ourselves. From illegal drugs to seat belt laws, we “force our beliefs” on one another. The greater the consequences, the more strict the law and the more severe the punishment.

But when innocent, defenseless pre-born humans are at risk, we decide we cannot “force our beliefs” on those who would take their lives. This deception comes from “the father of lies” (John 8:44) who blinds the minds of those he deceives (2 Corinthians 4:4) and “comes to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10).

“Fearfully and wonderfully made”

The fight for life is shifting into a new season in which every community is on the front lines. This means you and I are on the front lines as well.

We need to make the logical case for life wherever we can. We need to support ministries that support pregnant women considering abortion. And we need to pray daily for a spiritual awakening that would expose the darkness of deception to the light of truth.

Then every unborn child across our land will be able to say one day to God, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14).

Joni Eareckson Tada observed, “Though gradually, though no one remembers exactly how it happened, the unthinkable becomes tolerable. And then acceptable. And then legal. And then applaudable.”

What will you do to reverse this tragic trajectory?

Millions of unborn lives are in the balance.

Denison Forum

Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lᴏʀᴅ of hosts (Zechariah 4:6).

Democrats will continue to control the US Senate after Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto was projected on Saturday to win reelection. Whatever the outcome of the December 6 runoff in Georgia, Democrats will have fifty votes in the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote when needed.

This news is far more consequential than it may seem.

The “filibuster” is a rule requiring sixty votes in the Senate to pass legislation. It was suspended on a simple majority vote by Democrats in 2012 to confirm then-President Barack Obama’s judicial nominees and again in 2017 by Republicans to confirm then-President Donald Trump’s first nominee to the Supreme Court.

President Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have each called for suspending it again to pass legislation codifying abortion regardless of states’ objections or legislation. There have been similar calls in support of the so-called Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ rights with no protections for religious freedom.

Two Democratic senators—Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ)—have refused to suspend the filibuster in the past. If Democrats win the Georgia runoff, they will be one vote from doing so even over the objections of both.

One vote away?

As the leader of a nonpartisan ministry, my purpose today is not to advocate for or against any political party or leader. Rather, it is to illustrate the problems inherent in advancing biblical morality through secular legislation.

For example, if you believe on biblical grounds that marriage should be between a man and a woman, you should be strongly opposed to the so-called Equality Act (EA) which has passed the US House of Representatives twice but does not have the sixty votes it needs in the Senate. But if the filibuster were suspended on this issue, the EA would pass and be signed by President Biden. And legislation considered to be the most invasive threat to religious liberty in American history would become law.

We may be one vote in the Senate from this scenario becoming a reality. Pro-life supporters could face a similar scenario with proposed legislation that would codify abortion access regardless of states’ laws or objections.

In both cases, Christians would be depending on one or two senators to prevent legislation that has broad public appeal. For example, 58 percent of Americans support a federal law establishing a right to an abortion before a fetus can survive outside the womb; 70 percent support same-sex marriage.

From Moral Majority to moral minority

My entire professional life, conservative Christians have engaged our culture on the premise that the majority of Americans agreed with us. For example, Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979 to advance conservative social values; the name was meant to signify that he and his supporters spoke for the majority of Americans on cultural and moral issues.

At the time, 70 percent of Americans believed (PDF) same-sex sexual relations were “always wrong”; in 1988, only 10 percent of Americans supported same-sex marriage. Electing lawmakers who would support traditional marriage was not only the right thing to do biblically—it reflected the broad consensus of Americans.

This consensus is now gone.

If lawmakers vote in ways that reflect popular consensus today, biblical morality will increasingly lose. You and I will hope for the “right to be wrong” on the basis of our First Amendment religious liberty protections, but these can be overturned on a case-by-case basis as with the so-called Equality Act.

Not to mention all the other ways a “moral minority” can face the opprobrium of the majority, from demands that the NCAA exclude evangelical schools, to threats against federal funding for schools deemed “discriminatory” against LGBTQ students, to calls for ending tax-exempt status for organizations that do not support same-sex marriage.

Could this be the start?

More than ever before in American history, America’s Christians will need to be both courageous and persuasive. We will need to stand for biblical morality whatever the personal cost, remembering that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). And we will need to persuade our fellow citizens that biblical morality is best for them and for society since we can no longer depend on legislation and legislators to do that job for us.

In other words, Christians in the twenty-first century are returning to the first century. We are returning to a day when we had little or no social standing. We owned no buildings, so we taught “in public and from house to house” (Acts 20:20), going to those who would not come to us. We had no official clergy, so each of us was responsible for “the work of the ministry” (Ephesians 4:11–12).

And by Acts 17:6 we had “turned the world upside down” and birthed the mightiest spiritual movement in human history.

Our secret was simple: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lᴏʀᴅ of hosts” (Zechariah 4:6). Paul testified, “My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:4–5).

Could it be that we have relied in recent decades on politics to do what only the Spirit can do? Could America’s widespread embrace of unbiblical morality and rejection of biblical Christianity force us to depend on the Spirit more than ever before?

If so, could this be the start of the spiritual awakening we and our nation need so desperately?

Denison Forum

The law of the Lᴏʀᴅ is perfect, reviving the soul (Psalm 19:7).

“I never collect welfare, I never collect Medicare, I never collect any money from the government. All what I do, I work hard, seven days a week. I raised my kids, graduated from the college and bought a house and I bought a business all because I work hard and become an honest man.” This is how Joe Chahayed described himself to reporters after selling the winning $2.04 billion Powerball ticket this week.

Mr. Chahayed emigrated from Syria in the 1980s with his wife, two children, and around $14,000 in his name. Now a grandfather of ten, he owns Joe’s Service Center in Altadena, an unincorporated community northeast of Los Angeles. For selling the winning ticket, he will receive a Powerball bonus of $1 million. Unsurprisingly, he plans to spend it on his five children and donate some to the community.

“Uncertainty is the friend of the status quo”

In Maxims for Thinking Analytically: The Wisdom of Legendary Harvard Professor Richard Zeckhauser, Dan Levy lists and discusses a number of insightful and practical axioms taught by the noted economist.

Among them is this observation: “Uncertainty is the friend of the status quo.” Levy explains: “When there is uncertainty about the value of the choices we are considering in a given decision, we tend to stick with our initial or previous choice.” He cites credit cards, bank accounts, gym memberships, and even toothpaste brands as examples.

Such “status quo bias” is often appropriate, as Levy notes: “As long as we consider the original brand we choose to be sufficiently good, and the cost of assessing whether to change not worth it, it is rational to stick with our initial choice.” However, he adds that “one can take advantage of status quo bias to help people make better choices by setting a default option that will be good for the person making the decision.”

In behavioral economics terms, this involves constructing “choice architecture” that “nudges” people toward good choices. Such defaults have been used to get people to automatically enroll in retirement plans or donate organs, for example.

Two transforming truths

As America has focused on this week’s midterm elections, we have focused in the Daily Article on the relationship between politics, culture, and religion. Yesterday we discussed the urgency of holiness for Christian leaders since “religion is the root of culture” and religious leaders play a formative role in the lives of religious followers.

Today, let’s close our series by considering the urgency of personal godliness for all Christians, whatever our leadership status. We’ll do so by applying the two narratives we’ve explored thus far:

1. In a postmodern society that measures truth by relevance, our personal character is fundamental to our cultural impact.
2. Establishing biblical authority as our “default option” will transform our personal character and our public influence.

Joe Chahayed is not the first or the last person to sell a winning Powerball ticket of significant size (though the one he sold was the largest so far). However, he made the news not just for what he did but for who he is: a hardworking, conscientious immigrant who has made a good life for himself and his family.

We are always going to be attracted to the beliefs of attractive people. (This is why celebrity endorsements remain such popular and powerful marketing tools.) However, as fallen people, you and I are more likely to live in ways that discourage rather than encourage others to trust in our holy God unless we have his help.

This is why it is so urgent that we decide every day at the start of the day to live biblically that day. When we say to God, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105, my emphasis), it will become so. When we decide that “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16), we will profit from it personally.

“Pilate was merciful till it became risky”

It should be noted that choosing against culture always comes at a cost. It is far easier to float with the current than to swim against it. Living biblically in an unbiblical culture especially requires courage, as the members of the Hebrews 11 “Hall of Faith” vividly remind us:

“Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy” (vv. 35–38).

In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis famously observed: “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point. . . . A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”

However, the further our culture turns from biblical morality, the more it needs biblical truth. The less it considers God’s word to be relevant, the more it needs to see the relevance of God’s word in our lives.

“The testimony of the Lᴏʀᴅ is sure”

Let’s close by applying our conversation personally: What is your next step into biblical obedience? It likely will require courage on your part—if it were easy, you would probably have already taken it.

But if you will decide now to make biblical living your “default option” for the day, you will say with David, “The law of the Lᴏʀᴅ is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lᴏʀᴅ is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lᴏʀᴅ are right, rejoicing the heart” (Psalm 19:7–8).

Will your soul be revived and your heart rejoice today?

Denison Forum