The path to courage that changes the culture

Child psychologist Allan Josephson received one of the American Psychiatric Association’s highest awards while serving as chair of the University of Louisville’s Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychology. In 2017, he said at a Heritage Foundation panel, “Transgender ideology . . . is neglectful of the need for developing coping skills and problem-solving skills in children.”

For his comments, he was forced to resign as division chair. According to a lawsuit he filed, the university reduced his salary, retirement benefits, and academic travel funds before eventually choosing not to renew his contract, effectively terminating his position. He sued the university, alleging that they violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

Dr. Josephson will receive a $1.6 million settlement from the university this week.

China bans foreign mission activity

I was in Hong Kong some years ago. On my first morning, I exited my hotel, turned left into the coming stream of pedestrians, and was nearly run over by the mass of humanity rushing the other way. I quickly learned to find my “lane” of intended direction and strayed from it at my peril.

Going the right way when the crowd is going the other way is always dangerous.

For those who truly follow Jesus, it has ever been thus.

The Chinese Communist Party is banning foreign missionary activity, effective May 1. Foreigners will be prohibited from “preaching, sharing their faith, or establishing religious organizations without official government approval.” Non-Chinese citizens will be forbidden from recruiting Chinese citizens as religious followers. In addition, foreign clergy can preach only if officially invited by state-sanctioned religious institutions, and all preaching content must receive prior government approval.

On a speaking trip to Beijing some years ago, I met underground church pastors who risk their families and their futures daily to share God’s word. I have prayed for them often and can only hope I would have their courage in their circumstances.

Paul warned his fellow believers that “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22); “tribulations” translates the Greek word for a massive weight used to crush grain into flour. Jesus used the same word when he predicted, “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33a).

However, our Lord then added: “But take heart; I have overcome the world” (v. 33b). “Take heart” could be translated, “have courage.” The Greek tense translated “I have overcome” states an accomplished fact with ongoing relevance. We could render his phrase, “I have overcome the world and am still overcoming it today.”

What happens “when people renounce lies”

Faithful Christians in communist countries face prison and worse. In the post-Christian West, the threat is less obvious but no less real.

Like the church in northwest England spray-painted with lewd images, obscene phrases, and the statement, “God is a lie,” Christ-followers face an ongoing mass of humanity rushing headlong into secularism. Its destructive consequences are all around us, from the epidemic of pornography to plummeting life satisfaction to the threat of loneliness to discouragement exacerbated by the daily news.

Ironically, the attack on the British church came on Good Friday.

If we wish to experience Jesus’ overcoming victory in a culture blinded by “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4; cf. 1 Corinthians 2:14), our first step is to follow Dr. Josephson’s example.

On February 12, 1974, the dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn was arrested by the Soviets. That same day, he had released the text of his now-famed address, “Live Not By Lies.” In it, he identified “the simplest, most accessible key to our liberation: a personal nonparticipation in lies!” (his italics). He added, “Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!” (his italics).

He explained:

This is the way to break out of the imaginary encirclement of our inertness, the easiest way for us and the most devastating for the lies. For when people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist. Like parasites, they can only survive when attached to a person.

“The secret of the worker’s life”

To find the courage to refuse the lies of our culture, we need to love our Father more than we love our world. In The Imitation of Christ, Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) observed, “If God were our one and only desire, we would not be so easily upset when our opinions do not find outside acceptance.”

How, then, do we make God our “one and only desire”?

We begin by remembering how much he loves us (1 John 4:19). Pope Francis, whose body is now lying in state in St. Peter’s Basilica ahead of Saturday’s funeral mass, urged us in his last book, “Allow me to share the most fundamental truth with you: God loves you. . . . You are, in all situations, infinitely loved.”

Then we respond with the counselor’s adage: Act into feeling. If you loved God more than you do, what would you do?

The more time we spend with our Lord, the more his Spirit inculcates in us a desire for time with him. The more we worship him, the more we find ourselves wanting to worship him. The more we experience his presence in prayer and solitude, the more we yearn for his presence through prayer and solitude.

Oswald Chambers noted,

“The secret of the worker’s life is that he keeps in tune with God all the time.”

And the Holy Spirit infuses us with the courage of Christ in refusing the lies of our culture and testifying to the truth of the gospel.

Prior to Pentecost, Peter denied even knowing Jesus three times (Matthew 26:69–75). But after he joined believers who were “devoting themselves to prayer” (Acts 1:14) and was “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:4), he courageously told the same men who condemned Jesus, “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).

With this result: “When they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus” (v. 13).

Will people recognize that you have “been with Jesus” today?

Quote for the day:

“It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.” —A. A. Hodge

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Why “Americans haven’t found a satisfying alternative to religion”

“Credentialed experts, especially those in the fields of epidemiology and public health . . . tied themselves to badly flawed theories, closed their minds to new evidence, and [threw] the mantle of ‘science’ over value judgments for which they had no special competence.” This is how a recent Wall Street Journal article describes the official response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The article reviews two new books on the subject. An Abundance of Caution by journalist David Zweig reports that evidence in March 2020 showed the virus did not pose a serious threat to children, but American public health professionals “remained largely impervious to this fact,” leading to widespread school closures and disastrous consequences.

The other book, In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us, by two Princeton political scientists, adds that “elite institutions failed us” by giving in to panic. According to the Journal, they report a “willful suppression of reasonable debate, including the unfortunate tendency to paint critics of lockdowns and mask mandates as racists, quacks, and conspiracy theorists.”

When our water heater stopped working

It’s often necessary for us to trust people whose expertise surpasses our own in the hope they will do what we cannot.

When the water heater in our house stopped working over the weekend, I tried to fix it myself but soon gave up and called the plumber. The days when we could repair our cars and homes are long gone for most of us. We need experts who know what we do not know.

But what is true of mechanical technology is not true of biblical Christianity. Tragically, many people do not know this.

This New York Times article caught my eye: “Americans Haven’t Found a Satisfying Alternative to Religion.” The journalist Lauren Jackson attributes the escalation of secularism in recent years largely to Richard Dawkins and other champions of “new atheism,” so-called “experts” who assured us that Christianity is outdated, irrelevant, and even dangerous to society.

According to Jackson, “an immense social transformation” followed. And the results?

She reports that “people are unhappier than they’ve ever been and the country is in an epidemic of loneliness.” She adds that “those without religious affiliation in particular rank lower on key metrics of well-being. They feel less connected to others, less spiritually at peace, and they experience less awe and gratitude regularly.”

What explains this?

Religion provides the “three B’s”

Jackson cites sociologists who say religion provides the “three B’s”: belief, belonging, and behaviors. Its beliefs supply answers to the hard questions of life; it gives people a place to belong; and it tells us how to behave. All three speak to deep needs in human experience.

As a result, Jackson notes Pew findings that actively religious people tend to say they are happier than irreligious people. We are healthier and significantly less likely to be depressed or to die by suicide, alcoholism, cancer, cardiovascular illness, or other causes.

A long-term Harvard study found that women who attended religious services once a week were 33 percent less likely to die prematurely than women who never attended. An author of the study explained: “They had higher levels of social support, better health behaviors, and greater optimism about the future.”

In addition, religiously affiliated Americans are more likely than irreligious people to feel gratitude (by 23 percentage points), spiritual peace (by 27 points), and “a deep sense of connection with humanity” (by 15 points). Since positive relationships have been proven to be the single most important predictor of well-being, these differences are especially significant.

Jackson’s reporting is obviously good news, showing that the “experts” who rejected religion as irrelevant and dangerous were wrong on the merits. But there is an even more important fact her article omits.

When “your faith is in vain”

Paul testified, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). However, “in fact Christ has been raised from the dead” (v. 20). As a result, God “gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 57) and we are “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

The living Lord Jesus now prays for us (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25), forgives every sin we confess to him (Romans 8:1; 1 John 1:9), heals us (cf. Acts 3:6), meets us in our most difficult places (cf. Revelation 1:9–20), and gives us eternal life in this world and the next (John 3:16; 14:3).

The benefits of religion cited in the Times article—belief, belonging, behaviors, gratitude, peace, and a “deep sense of connection with humanity”—are most fully experienced as the consequences of a daily, intimate relationship with him.

The good news is that all of this is as available to you and me on this Tuesday after Easter as it was on the first Easter twenty centuries ago.

“We are people of the spring”

The Vatican announced today that the coffin carrying the body of Pope Francis will be carried to St. Peter’s Basilica tomorrow. His funeral Mass will take place Saturday at 10 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square. (For more on the pope’s passing, see my Daily Article and website article from yesterday.)

But Francis would want us to look forward, not backward, demonstrating our faith in the God who wants only our best. In his latest book, published just two months before his death, the pontiff describes the hope at the heart of the Christian faith:

We believe that resting on the horizon of life is a sun that shines forever. We believe that our most beautiful days are yet to come. We are people of the spring, as opposed to autumn. . . .

A Christian knows that the kingdom of God, the dominion of Love, grows like a vast field of wheat, and that it may well have weeds in its midst. There are always problems: people gossip, there are wars, there is illness . . . But even so, the wheat ripens, and in the end, evil will be eliminated.

We know that the future does not belong to us. We know that Jesus Christ is life’s greatest grace. We know that God’s warm embrace not only awaits us at life’s end but also accompanies us on our journey every day.

The more we embrace the God who embraces us, the more we step past a religion about God into a vital relationship with the living Lord Jesus, and the more others are drawn to “life’s greatest grace.”

Do you believe that your “most beautiful days are yet to come”?

Quote for the day:

“We are all unique, free and alive, called on to live out a love story with God.” —Pope Francis

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Jeffrey LaFray, a student at Florida State University, told Good Morning America that he and his fellow students used chewing gum to stay safe during last week’s mass shooting on his campus. When gunshots were being fired nearby, his teacher wanted to cover the windows of their classroom with paper so the shooter couldn’t see inside, but they didn’t have tape to use. So the students started chewing gum and then used it to stick the paper to the windows.

The April 17 attack killed two men: Tiru Chabba, a forty-five-year-old father and executive for campus vendor Aramark, who is survived by his wife and two children; and Robert Morales, a beloved high school football coach who worked in the university’s dining services department. Six people, including students, were injured as well and sent to a local hospital.

After the mass shooting, there were many calls for prayer for the victims, their families, and first responders. Despite skeptics who ridicule such responses, the Bible clearly calls us to respond to crisis by seeking God’s help and hope (cf. Philippians 4:6–7; Jeremiah 29:12).

Reading about the tragedy over the weekend, I had this simple thought: Let’s also pray for help and hope before the crisis strikes.

One way I limit God

I must confess that while I have prayed often for victims of school attacks after they happen, I have not often prayed for God to protect our schools from such attacks.

When I was a pastor, I prayed for our members as they faced health challenges, grief over the death of loved ones, and other suffering endemic to life on this fallen planet. But I did not pray often enough for God to protect them from such challenges and suffering.

One of the manifold reasons to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, not just on Easter Sunday but every day, is the fact that our risen and living Lord is just as relevant to our needs today as when he walked our planet twenty centuries ago. As I noted last week, he is praying for us even as Scripture calls us to pray to him. He is still healing the sick (Acts 3:1–10; 9:32–35) and raising the dead (Acts 9:36–43). And he is still proactively holding the world together (Colossians 1:15–17).

However, if we limit his relevance to reacting to pain and problems, we miss much of what he wants to do in and through our lives. If we were to be more proactive, praying for him to protect us from such suffering and to advance his kingdom in our broken world, what would be the results?

“Seek the welfare of the city”

The Bible admonishes us, “Ye have not, because ye ask not” (James 4:2 KJV). Could it be that much of our suffering comes from not asking God to prevent it and to work proactively to make our world better?

I am not suggesting that such prayers are a magical panacea, of course. Human free will still permits us to sin against God, others, and ourselves. And God’s ways are far beyond our finite and fallen understanding (Isaiah 55:8–9).

But any good parent wants their children to flourish positively, not just recover from crisis and calamity when they strike. We want their best, not just their survival.

Scripture calls us to seek the same from our Lord, wherever we are and whatever our circumstances. Even Jewish exiles in Babylon were told to “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).

Paul assured us that we are “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). It is not health-and-wealth heresy to seek God’s best as proactively as possible. As we pray for God’s will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10), this means praying for far more than his help when we hurt.

And as we join him in answering our prayers by seeking the flourishing of our world, we partner with our Creator in redeeming his creation.

“You are more than your frustrations”

As I noted recently, “an abundance mentality that expects and focuses on the positive is demonstrably healthier for us than a scarcity mentality that does not.” This has been shown conclusively both in scientific and anecdotal ways.

Seeking and expecting the positive rather than the negative builds a positive focus that often becomes self-fulfilling. The bestselling author James Clear recently encouraged us:

Focus on the things you are for, not the things you are against.

Many people spend large chunks of their day thinking about what they hate. They are always telling you about something they dislike: this food, that subject, this political party, that coworker.

You are more than your frustrations. Build your identity around what you love.

When we proactively seek God’s best for ourselves and others, we can partner with our Father in answering our prayers. We become the change we wish to see, and the hands of Jesus continue his ministry in our broken world.

And just as the multitudes responded to his compassion in faith (cf. Matthew 4:23–25), so they will respond as our ministry draws them to its Source (Matthew 5:16).

Why I am not more proactive in my prayers

Why, then, am I not more proactive in responding through prayer to the world around and within me?

One reason is that I’m afraid God won’t do what I ask, and then I’ll have the problem and frustration of wondering and explaining why. If I pray for safety on school campuses and there’s another shooting, I’ll be disappointed. If my prayers are public, I’ll be embarrassed for myself and for my Lord.

Pessimists are never disappointed, as they say.

A second factor is that, despite my constant warnings over the years not to segregate religion from the “real world,” I sometimes succumb to cultural pressure to do so.

On my too-frequent bad days, my first impulse when things go wrong is to wonder why God allowed this and then to pray for him to correct his “mistake” and make things right. On my better days, I see obstacles as opportunities to pray and respond redemptively for his glory and our good.

On my best days, I pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17) in communion and conversation with Jesus about everything in my world, good and bad. I thank him for the good and pray for his providence and protection to advance his kingdom. Then, when the bad does arise, I respond in faith.

Now I am resolving to have more of my “best days,” and invite you to join me.

In his 2009 song, “Closer to Love,” Mat Kearney sings, “I guess we’re all one phone call from our knees.”

When you get your next “phone call,” I hope you’ll turn to your Father.

But how will you pray today before that call comes?

Denison Forum