Harvard’s “Study of Adult Development” followed two groups of men over eighty years to “identify the psychosocial predictors of healthy aging.” Beginning before World War II, they interacted with over seven hundred men as they scrutinized blood samples, performed brain scans, and collated surveys.

According to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, the director of the research project, “The clearest message that we get from this eighty-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”

However, as Dr. Waldinger clarifies, “It’s the quality of your close relationships that matters. Not the quantity.”

Here’s what the Harvard study overlooked: there is one relationship that is most crucial to our flourishing. According to a report published last month in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, “Anxiety or a lack of certainty about one’s relationship with the divine represents a threat to psychological well-being.”

Oswald Chambers turns out to be right: “There is only one relationship that matters, and that is your personal relationship to a personal Redeemer and Lord. Let everything else go, but maintain that at all costs, and God will fulfill his purpose through your life.”

Why is this?

“People will go a bit nuts”

The biblical answer to our question is clear: God made us in his image (Genesis 1:26) for personal relationship with himself (cf. Revelation 3:20). As the Westminster Shorter Catechism states, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”

St. Augustine spoke for all of us when he said to God, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you” (Confessions 1.1).

But what could I say to the person who discounts both the Bible and those who believe in its truth? An option would be to ask how we are doing in a culture that refuses to “rest” in God. How “restless” are our hearts as a result?

Andrew Sullivan summarizes the core thesis of a new book called Stolen Focus by Johann Hari: “Create a throw-away consumeristic civilization, break families into ever smaller units, add a tech revolution, online addiction, economic precariousness, breakneck social change, endless work, and the collapse of religion and meaning, and yes, people will go a bit nuts. They’ll become depressed; they’ll seek out escapes through opiates or meth; they’ll disappear down rabbit holes of online fanaticism; they’ll seek meaning through work or fame; they’ll tear each other down with glee; they’ll lose the skills for family, friendship, constancy, discipline, and love.”

“They all strive towards this goal”

Blaise Pascal (1623–62) was a genius. He wrote an essay on geometry at the age of seventeen that aroused the envy of Rene Descartes. Two years later, he developed the first digital calculator. He also invented the syringe, created the hydraulic press, and laid the foundation for the modern theory of probabilities.

Pascal’s understanding of human experience was as brilliant as his scientific expertise. For instance, in the Pensees, he observed: “All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they may employ, they all strive towards this goal. The reason why some go to war and some do not is the same desire in both, but interpreted in two different ways. The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves.”

He asked, “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace?” Then he responded to his question: “This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself.”

Pascal concluded: “God alone is man’s true good, and since man abandoned him, it is a strange fact that nothing in nature has been found to take his place: stars, sky, earth, elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, plague, war, famine, vice, adultery, incest. Since losing his true good, man is capable of seeing it in anything, even his own destruction, although it is so contrary at once to God, to reason and to nature” (Pensees 425).

“Embrace something with your heart”

God’s timeless word and today’s headlines agree: Humans cannot flourish apart from an intimate, personal relationship with our Creator. This fact explains much of the suffering in our secularized culture. But it also applies to you and me just as much as to any lost person we know.

If you have trusted Christ as your Lord, the fact that you have received eternal life through him does not guarantee that you are experiencing that life today. In fact, the opposite can be the case: we think that because our eternity is secure, our temporal lives need little spiritual attention.

The Harvard study is true for you: the quality of your relationship with Jesus is the single greatest determiner of your happiness and flourishing. Neglecting this relationship is indeed a “threat to psychological well-being.” But fostering it is the pathway to the abundant life Jesus died to give you (John 10:10).

Br. Curtis Almquist of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Boston observed, “To believe is not ultimately to wrap your brain around some existential concept. To believe is to embrace something with your heart as if your life depended upon it. The English word believe comes from the same etymological root as the word belove, which is to hold dear, to love deeply.”

Do you believe in Jesus today?

NOTE: As we embark on a new year, I see on the horizon some seismic cultural shifts headed our direction. This is why I wrote my latest book, The Coming Tsunami, which releases on January 25. On this day, I’m also hosting a special virtual book launch Q&A, which I’d love for you to attend. So please pre-order your copy of The Coming Tsunami to gain exclusive access. I look forward to seeing you on January 25.

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“For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election. He tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob reached the Capitol.” This is how President Biden explained the January 6 riots in a speech marking their one-year anniversary yesterday.

Many agree, identifying what they call a “coup plot” comprising a “deliberate effort to overthrow our democracy.” Others disagree, stating that there was not a “concerted, planned attempt to overthrow the government, let [alone] a terrorist insurrection.”

Sixty-eight percent of Republicans say the January 6 attack has gotten too much attention; only 23 percent of Democrats agree. While 87 percent of Democrats say the attack was extremely or very violent, only 39 percent of Republicans agree.

Descriptions and assignments of culpability matter as we seek to understand past tragedies lest we repeat them in the future. But I have seen no political explanations that focus on the real heart of the issue.

The Book of Common Prayer includes this intercession:

To my humble supplication,
Lord, give ear and acceptation.
Save thy servant, that hath none
help nor hope but Thee alone.

Why is this prayer so vital to transforming hope in the new year?

Father gunned down while carrying daughter’s birthday cake

The percentage of Americans who say they are more fearful about the coming year has risen from 36 percent in 2021 to 54 percent in 2022. A quick check of the news shows us why.

• A one-month-old baby was orphaned after his parents, both sheriff’s deputies, died by suicide within days of each other.
• A father in Texas was gunned down at Chuck E. Cheese as he carried his daughter’s birthday cake.
• Eight children and two mothers are among the dead at a Philadelphia house fire Wednesday.
• COVID-19 cases are topping one million daily in the US.
• An “adored” Catholic priest was killed in a car crash Monday, one day after his fifty-third birthday.

In the face of our obvious fragility and mortality, we might expect even secular Americans to admit our need for help and hope beyond ourselves. We obviously cannot prevent death or enable our own survival beyond it. But our scientific and medical advances have improved life expectancy and inoculated us from the reality of death to a degree unsurpassed in human history.

Nor can we remedy the sin problem at the heart of all our relational and political divisions. But, once again, we have found an alternative approach.

Vladimir Putin asked two questions with regard to political violence: “Who? Whom?” What matters is who performs the action and upon whom it is performed, he claimed. When we are the who, we see our actions against the whom as justified, from January 6 rioters in Washington to street violence after George Floyd’s murder.

However, as theologian Terence Sweeney notes, “The whom you attack is a who in reality. Just as you are a self, so too are they a self.”

Three empowering daily steps

In an 1816 letter to Thomas Jefferson, John Adams wrote: “Power always thinks it has a great soul, and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God service, when it is violating all his laws.”

The solution to our mortal frailty and to our political animosity is the same: admitting to God that we “hath none help nor hope but Thee alone.” I encourage you to join me in these practical and empowering steps each day across this year:

One: Invite the Holy Spirit to empower and control your life.

Ephesians 5:18 commands us to “be filled with the Spirit.” As my latest video explains, this is a daily act of confession and surrender that positions us to experience God’s best.

When we do, we can trust our Lord with the day before us. Charles Spurgeon asked: “If God cares for you, why need you care too? Can you trust him for your soul and not for your body?” He added: “He has never refused to bear your burdens; he has never fainted under their weight. Come, then, soul! Have done with fretful care and leave all thy concerns in the hand of a gracious God.”

Two: Walk in the power and peace of the Spirit.

Max Lucado was right: “The Holy Spirit is central to the life of the Christian. Everything from Acts to Revelation is a result of the work of the Holy Spirit. . . . After Jesus ascended into heaven, the Holy Spirit became the primary agent of the Trinity on earth. He will complete what was begun by the Father and the Son. ‘Keep in step with the Spirit’ (Galatians 5:25). He directs and leads: you must obey and follow.”

In my latest personal blog, I explain how we can experience the Spirit’s peace amid our hurried lives, his purpose amid our challenges, his calm amid our distractions. Claim God’s promise: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).

Three: Pray for courage and then serve with courage.

When facing growing animosity, the early Christians ask God to “grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness” (Acts 4:29). As a result, “When they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness” (v. 31).

In My Daily Pursuit, A. W. Tozer wrote: “Because God has been reduced in the minds of people, they do not have that boundless confidence in his character that used to be prominent among Christians. Confidence is necessary to respect. You cannot respect a man in whom you have no confidence. Extend that respect upward to God and if you cannot respect God, you cannot worship him. You cannot have confidence in him, because where there is no respect there can be no worship. Worship rises and falls in the church depending upon whether the idea of God is low or high; so we must begin with God where everything begins.

“God needs no rescuing, but we do, and we must rescue our concepts from their fallen and frightfully inadequate condition so that boundless confidence in him can reign once again.”

How much “boundless confidence” do you have in God today?

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The US Capitol is the focus of global attention today. Police riot shields have been placed near doorways. Metal detectors stand outside the House of Representatives chamber. Capitol police officers are out in force in larger numbers and with heavier equipment than before. Fencing is in place in some locations.

All of this is in preparation for the first anniversary of the January 6 assault on the Capitol.

A year ago I wrote a Daily Article special edition as the crisis was unfolding titled “Chaos in Washington.” Millions of us watched on television as lawmakers were evacuated from the House and Senate chambers. Fox News‘ Chad Pergram stated, “This is the most significant breach of an American government institution since the British burned the Capitol after the Battle of Bladensburg on August 24, 1814.” Former President George W. Bush called the attack “a sickening and heartbreaking sight.”

The next day, I asked our readers to join me in praying for our leaders and people to seek reconciliation and peace, for Christians to respond with truth and grace, and for more Christians to be engaged in our democracy. You and I need to continue offering such intercession as much today as we did a year ago.

And we urgently need to renew our commitment to the most transformational yet countercultural way we can answer our prayers for our nation.

If I were Satan

The ultimate answer to every problem humans face is found in a saving relationship with Jesus Christ. He alone can forgive our sins, empower us to truly forgive others, and make us the “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) we must become to experience abundant life in this fallen world (John 10:10).

Satan knows this as well as we do.

As a result, if I were Satan, I would try to convince all Americans to be atheists. The twentieth century saw firsthand the consequences of the denial of God, with one hundred million deaths due to atheistic communism around the world. Erwin Lutzer was right: “It is said that after God died in the nineteenth century, man died in the twentieth. For when God is dead, man becomes an untamed beast.”

If I could not convince Americans to be atheists, I would try to convince them to be agnostics. This is because the practical consequence is usually the same. I have never met an agnostic—someone who is not sure God is real—who acted as if he is.

Satan is having moderate success on both fronts: according to Pew Research Center, the share of Americans who identify as atheists has risen from 2 percent in 2009 to 4 percent in 2019. The share who call themselves agnostic has increased from 3 percent a decade ago to 5 percent today.

What should be done about the remaining 91 percent who persist in some form of faith in God?

A masterful satanic strategy

If I could not convince Americans to abandon faith entirely, I would have a third strategy ready: to have faith in faith. To be “spiritual but not religious.” To believe that so long as we have faith in a “higher power,” a spiritual feeling of some sort, that is all the “religion” we need.

Our enemy is having great success here. As I reported yesterday, 63 percent of American adults believe “having faith matters more than which faith you have.” This is a quintessential postmodern approach: we can be tolerant of all faiths while requiring none. We think we can derive the benefits of believing in God or the gods without choosing any particular religion and its demands on us.

Imagine, however, applying this logic to any other dimension of our lives. So long as you have faith in medicine, it doesn’t matter which medication you take. So long as you have faith in roads, it doesn’t matter which one you travel. So long as you have faith in people, it doesn’t matter which one you marry. Where in life does “faith in faith” work?

This is a masterful strategy by Satan. It causes us to be “inoculated” by faith in a way that keeps us from getting the real thing. We get to live by moonlight in the dark without being exposed to the light of the sun.

There is only one road to heaven, but there are many roads to hell. This is one of the most popular today.

When Christianity works

Lest we shake our heads at the “faith in faith” mentality that is so popular and deceptive, let’s consider its insidious attraction for Christians as well. If Satan cannot get us to boycott worship services, Bible studies, prayer, and other spiritual activities, he’ll tempt us to make them an end instead of a means—to think we’ve checked the “God box” by going to church on Sunday and spending a few minutes in religious activities during the week.

If we are not entering his transforming presence in worship, hearing his voice in his word, and connecting intimately with him in prayer, we are placing our faith in faith. We are substituting religion for relationship. And we are missing the empowering, daily encounter with the living Christ that is our only path to being “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

In addition, if we fall prey to the “faith in faith” delusion, we will sidestep the biblical call to evangelism (Acts 1:8) that our culture brands as “intolerant” since other people have their own “faith” as well. As I noted in my latest personal blog, this is an enticing way to appear tolerant in a post-Christian culture. But it victimizes those who need the salvation we have experienced and consigns them to an eternity separated from God.

If we want an end to the political animosity and divisiveness of our day, faith in political leaders and parties is not enough. If we want to prevent another January 6 riot, faith in law enforcement is not enough. If we want true hope in the midst of a pandemic, true peace in the midst of rising geopolitical threats, true joy in the midst of economic pain, faith in faith is not enough.

In her latest blog, my wife wrote these important words: “Christianity works when Christians allow God to work through their lives.” I would add that America works best when Christians do the same.

We can have faith in faith, or we can have faith in Jesus, but we cannot have both.

Which would he say you have chosen today?

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