“There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” —Acts 4:12

Coach Joseph Kennedy will be reinstated as a high school football coach after he was fired seven years ago for leading prayers on the field after games. This after the US Supreme Court sided with him last June. Critics alleged that he was forcing his faith on his students, which violates the cardinal virtues of our postmodern culture: tolerance and inclusion.

Such inclusion is on display now in the UK after Rishi Sunak became the first British prime minister of color and, as a Hindu, the first non-Christian. Britain now has a Christian king, a Hindu prime minister, a Muslim mayor of London, and a leader of the opposition who married into a Jewish family.

In other news, the Associated Press reports that a record number of LGBTQ candidates are running for office and notes that “some breakthrough victories are likely.” Meanwhile, the Presbyterian Church USA will add a “nonbinary/genderqueer” category to official church statistics. If you disagree, many will say that you are homophobic and as dangerous to society as if you were a member of the KKK.

One more related story: Pew Research Center and the General Social Survey agree that the percentage of religiously unaffiliated Americans is higher than ever before. Only 63 percent of Americans consider themselves to be Christians, declining from 90 percent in 1972; 29 percent are religiously unaffiliated, up from 5 percent in 1972.

Does the growing number of people with no faith grieve you? If not, why not?

Imposing my polio vaccine on you

We have focused this week on the privilege and necessity of being bold and public with our faith. Let’s close by exploring the necessity of sharing our faith with our skeptical culture.

Almost half of Christian Millennials (47 percent) believe that it is wrong to share one’s personal beliefs with someone of a different faith in hopes that they will one day share the same faith. This fact should not surprise us: postmodern relativism has indoctrinated generations of Americans with the claim that all truth claims are relative and subjective. If all truth is personal, what right (or responsibility) do I have to “impose” my personal beliefs on you?

Consider an analogy.

Polio is making a comeback in the US due to declining vaccination rates. After Dr. Jonas Salk discovered a vaccine against poliomyelitis in 1953, all children were inoculated against the disease, myself included. This is unfortunately no longer the case.

Now imagine that science found a cure for polio that does not require a vaccine. Why, then, would I impose on you the vaccine I received as a child? Alternately, imagine that there are scores of different vaccines available, each of them as effective as any other. Again, why would I impose my vaccine on you? If I tried to do so, how would you respond?

“No one comes to the Father except through me”

In a similar fashion, many Christians today discount or even dismiss the need for sharing their faith with unbelievers.

Some are universalists, believing that because God loves all of us, all of us will go to heaven. Others are “Christian universalists,” believing that Jesus died for everyone, so everyone will go to heaven whether they believe in him or not. You don’t need to know about Jonas Salk to benefit from his vaccine; you don’t need to have a personal faith in Jesus to benefit from his sacrifice, or so some say.

However, God’s word regarding the necessity of personal faith in Christ is clear. Jesus famously said of himself, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Peter said of his Lord, “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 book of Revelation reports, “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life [through faith in Christ], he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15). And Jesus’ statement is definitive: “Whoever believes in [Christ] is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:18).

Three practical responses

Of course, postmodern skeptics will say that these biblical claims are “our” truth and that they are under no obligation to make them “their” truth. Let’s consider three practical responses.

One: Pray for God to do what you cannot.

You and I cannot convict a single sinner of a single sin or save a single soul. This is the work of the Holy Spirit (John 16:8). Pray by name for the lost people you know, asking the Lord to draw them to himself.

Two: Look for ways to join God in answering your prayer.

God’s Spirit is at work today in lives he intends you to influence tomorrow. Ask his Spirit to prompt you when he wants you to meet a need in Jesus’ name (cf. 1 Peter 4:10). Ask him to give you the words you are to say when you are to say them (Luke 12:12). Then trust that he is using your ministry whether you can see immediate results or not.

Three: Begin today.

C. S. Lewis, in his 1939 sermon “Learning in War-Time,” encouraged Oxford University students during the Second World War: “Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment ‘as to the Lord.’ It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.”

Fulfilling our “one purpose” in life

Oswald Chambers states: “The great essential of the missionary is that he remains true to the call of God and realizes that his one purpose is to disciple men and women to Jesus” (my emphasis). But he also reminds us that we must experience for ourselves what we would share with others: “The one great challenge is—Do I know my risen Lord? Do I know the power of his indwelling Spirit?”

Have you asked God’s Spirit to empower and use your life yet today?

Denison Forum

 “Your testimonies are my delight; they are my counselors.” —Psalm 119:24

An earthquake rattled the San Francisco Bay Area yesterday. The strongest quake the region has seen in eight years happened on the Calaveras Fault, one of eight major faults in the Bay Area and a branch of the San Andreas fault line. The event is thus a reminder that earthquakes do not create faults in the earth—they reveal them.

This fact applies to more than geology.

The nineteen-year-old gunman who killed two people and wounded several others at his former St. Louis high school left a handwritten note saying, “I don’t have any friends. I don’t have any family. I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’ve never had a social life. I’ve been an isolated loner my entire life.” According to St. Louis Police Commissioner Michael Sack, “This was the perfect storm for a mass shooter.”

In other news, 2022 has set a record for border crossings and migrant deaths. A man who drove an SUV into a Christmas parade in Wisconsin last November has been found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide. Authorities are investigating a woman’s claim in Iowa that her late father was a prolific serial killer who murdered dozens of people over several decades.

And the body of a little boy who was found stuffed inside a suitcase in Indiana has been identified. Local police have announced an arrest, with another suspect still at large.

“A republic, if you can keep it”

The moral challenges we face reveal the foundational fissures created by our postmodern, post-Christian rejection of biblical truth and morality. This crisis was predictable and was, in fact, predicted.

Adam Smith is considered to be the “father of capitalism.” In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, he advocated for a society in which “every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man or order of men” (my emphasis).

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he added: “Upon the tolerable observance of these duties [such as justice, truth, chastity, and fidelity] depends the very existence of human society, which would crumble into nothing if mankind were not generally impressed with a reverence for those important rules of conduct.” George Mason University economist Erik W. Matson comments: “It is liberty, in Smith’s view, that is at the heart of capitalism, and at the heart of liberty lies commitment to the good of humankind.”

In his magisterial work, Democracy in America, French historian Alexis de Tocqueville explained that this focus on personal morality is “how the Americans combat individualism by the principle of self-interest rightly understood.” He noted that this principle “suggests daily small acts of self-denial” and disciplines us “in habits of regularity, temperance, moderation, foresight, [and] self-command,” drawing us toward “virtue by the will.”

I often state that America’s founders believed consensual morality to be essential to self-governance. Our constitutional checks and balances can only go so far in preserving and advancing our democracy. Government “of the people, by the people, for the people” requires a people capable of self-governance. As Benjamin Franklin famously stated when asked what the Constitutional Convention of 1787 created, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

And so, once again we see that advancing biblical morality is vital to our secular culture.

“Your servant will meditate on your statutes”

Therapists remind us that we cannot change the minds of others merely through the explanation of facts. If people do not want to change, they are unlikely to change.

However, we can demonstrate the transforming personal relevance of biblical truth so fully and powerfully that others may want what we have. As we have noted this week, living boldly and courageously for our Lord is vital to our souls and to our culture.

As an example and a model, consider Psalm 119:23–24: “Even though princes sit plotting against me, your servant will meditate on your statutes. Your testimonies are my delight; they are my counselors.” “Princes” in this context refers to rulers or commanders of the Jewish people. They “sit plotting” against the psalmist—the phrase means that they have gathered together, perhaps behind closed doors, to plan harm against the writer.

Nonetheless, he calls himself God’s “servant”—the word refers to a bondservant or slave, one who must do what his master requests whether he wants to or not. As God’s servant he will “meditate on your statutes”—the Hebrew means that he will focus his attention fully on God’s decrees.

Despite the opposition he faces from his nation’s leaders, the writer makes this commitment happily: “Your testimonies are my delight” (v. 24a), truth in which he finds great joy and pleasure. Furthermore, he will do what these “testimonies” teach: “They are my counselors” (v. 24b).

“Make an effort to be noble”

Such fidelity to biblical truth is no guarantee that we will not be persecuted by those who reject such truth. Nevertheless, the psalmist refused to be deterred from meditating on God’s statutes and enacting them in his life each day.

Dead fish float with the current; live fish swim upstream. God sees every act of unpopular obedience and will reward it forever. Just as he honored “the sons of Zadok, who kept my charge, who did not go astray when the people of Israel went astray, as the Levites did” (Ezekiel 48:11), so he will reward our faithfulness to his word and will.

Oswald Chambers noted, “It takes a tremendous amount of discipline to live the noble life of a disciple of Jesus in actual things. It is always necessary to make an effort to be noble.”

How noble will you be today?

Denison Forum

The Christmas shopping season is already going strong. Christmas decorations are up in stores and on some houses as well. In that context, I have good news and bad news regarding Santa Claus.

The good news: we now have archaeological evidence that he is real. The bad news: this evidence comes in the form of a tomb that has just been discovered. In other words, he’s real but he’s dead.

The historic Santa Claus was Saint Nicholas of Myra, a bishop who lived from AD 270 to 343. The Santa Claus story was based on his reputed ministry of distributing gifts to the poor and the needy. Now archaeologists say they have discovered his tomb beneath St. Nicholas Church in Demre, a town in the Turkish province of Antalya.

The church is named for him, of course, but it had been thought that his bones were moved to Italy during the First Crusade in the eleventh century. However, during a routine survey this month, his tomb was found beneath the church’s floor mosaic. You can visit the church, though you will not see St. Nicholas’s actual sarcophagus since it has not yet been excavated.

Demre is 3,730 miles from the North Pole. Few of us can visit Santa up there, but every year pilgrims from around the world flock to his church in Turkey, where they pack the sanctuary for a December service. Father Amvrosios Chorozidis, who leads the liturgy, explains: “In the West, we seem to have everything, but in fact we have a lack of love in our hearts, so we need someone to visit us even once a year, to give us that love.”

“Starve to death or freeze to death”

Father Chorozidis could have been reading the morning news.

A health teacher killed in the south St. Louis school shooting “loved her students,” as her daughter told reporters. The number of school shootings in the US has already passed the record set in 2021, with more than two months left. In related news, after a series of school shootings, the state of Texas is sending public school students home with DNA kits designed to help parents identify their children “in case of an emergency.”

As Rishi Sunak takes over as prime minister, millions of elderly Brits are facing an escalating cost-of-living crisis with no apparent end in sight. “Starve to death or freeze to death” is the way one person described her dilemma. And a man who has been arrested three times for murder and was released on parole in 2020 is now accused of killing a fourth individual in California.

According to a recent poll, only 9 percent of Americans think our democracy is working “extremely” or “very well.” Americans’ trust in the media remains near a record low as well.

In such struggling times, you and I have a strangely paradoxical role to play in God’s providence.

Why God has blessed America

Years ago, a Cuban pastor friend shared with me his belief that God has blessed America so America’s Christians could bless the world. He cited our church’s ministry in his country as an example of Christian generosity to those in need. His logic makes sense: God would entrust resources to those who would use them as he intends.

However, there is another dimension to this calculus: I also believe that God has blessed America because America has blessed God’s people.

We enjoy constitutionally enshrined religious freedoms that are virtually unprecedented across history. Christians have been welcome and active in our governance on federal, state, and local levels since our nation’s founding. For most of America’s history, being a public Christian was a good thing in our culture.

Tragically, as I have written often in recent years, this is changing. Christians are increasingly being castigated as intolerant, oppressive, and even dangerous to society. Our religious freedoms are under unprecedented attack. Each day’s news brings another story of a Christian who loses their job or is otherwise “canceled” because of their faith.

Does this mean that our country may face God’s judgment if it persists in judging and oppressing his people?

“What you do makes a difference”

In Revelation 18 we read, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!” (v. 2). Most scholars consider this to be an allusion to Rome, “the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth” (Revelation 17:18). Among the reasons for his judgment we read this indictment: “In her was found the blood of prophets and of saints” (Revelation 18:24).

Jesus grieved over Jerusalem as “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it” (Matthew 23:37). As a result, he warned, “your house is left to you desolate” (v. 38). Luke similarly tells us that Jesus “wept” over the city, lamenting, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes” (Luke 19:41–42).

Consequently, the courageous public faith we have been discussing this week is vital not only for the people we influence but for the larger trajectory of our nation.

God’s mandate to his exiled people in Babylon speaks to our exiled position in our secularized culture: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lᴏʀᴅ on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:7). As we help people know and love our Lord, our influence benefits them in this life and the next. Their transformed lives benefit us as well. And together, we reverse our cultural trajectory before it is too late.

Dr. Jane Goodall observed: “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

Choose wisely today.

Denison Forum