By now everyone has had the opportunity to see the irony of the American Left, champions of compassion, responding to the assassination of Christian martyr Charlie Kirk with ridicule and condemnation. We’re also seeing the bizarre claims of the American Right – in whose CV are abortion clinic bombings and anti-LGBT violence – that only the Left is like this. Let’s not miss the meta-conversation about human nature here. This says something profound about the species.
Two recent developments are shaping the human psyche. First, the advent of social media (Instagram in 2010 being the watershed), and second, the pandemic of 2020. Ten years apart, but in the span of world history, adjacent. Social media allowed us to zoom in on each other’s minutae – what we had for breakfast, how we look in the bathroom mirror, what we brag about, and what inflames us. “Comments” sections are a Pandora’s Box of pettiness.
A comedian recently observed: social media has allowed us to see how dumb everyone is. We all had our suspicions, but now we have proof.
A moment later, the pandemic allowed us to see everyone at their worst and most destructive. We all saw, writ large, the power of deception and lies, slander and hate, cancel culture and power mongering. And blame, blame, blame.
I’m not hearing much talk about it, but at the heart of all of this is a longing for character. No political party can claim better standing here. We are, all of us, a greedy, dishonest, murderous, self-righteous lot. We destroy over a disagreement and feign offense over slight infractions. We don’t mourn with those who mourn; we shame them for it.
Character and its target, virtue, are notoriously hard to define, but by it, I mean that self-reflective, self-disciplined attempt to align one’s values with the divine order and hold to them consistently. The divine order is the nature of creation and God’s intention for human nature. We see it most clearly in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. That’s the target; a virtuous life is a life that seeks to imitate Jesus. Character is the self-disciplined attempt to constantly refine one’s self in humility to achieve that target. For a secular person, character is an attempt to align one’s self consistently and repeatedly with an ephemeral goodness (though I don’t see how that can be concretely grounded in anything).
What the ideological extremes in American culture lack is character. Neither one has it because neither one deems it necessary. This is where the mighty middle is so vital. People with character tend to be humble enough to allow others space to be. Character is only forged over long time and through repeated effort. It is the thousand strokes of a chisel before a statue starts to take shape. It is the long work of a soldier, when no enemy is in sight, to throw up a fortress that will stand when the enemy bears down upon them, according to Seneca (Letter 18).
For those who desire to seek character, I can share a few maxims I’ve found as a starting point. You can do your own research to find out where they come from.
“Love your neighbor.
Love your enemy.
If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn the other cheek to them as well.
Don’t repay evil with evil; answer it with good.
Judge other people the way you want to be judged.
Do not let unwholesome talk come out of your mouths.
Be kind, compassionate, and forgiving of one another.
Put the needs of others above your own.
Only three things are going to last – faith, hope, and love. The greatest one is love.”
Without a renewed pursuit of character, I’m afraid we stay where we are. Stuck.
There’s something a bit off about the way the media headlines are reporting on the assassination of Charlie Kirk. They are calling him a “conservative activist” (CNN), a “right-wing activist” (BBC), an “influential figure on the right” (WSJ), a “conservative influencer” (NYT), and a “fearless patriot” (Fox).
It feels to me like they are all dancing around the thing that preceded and grounded all of Kirk’s beliefs.
He was a Christian.
He was a Jesus-follower, a believer, a man of faith. This is not determined or affected by the positions he took on various social and political issues. It was determined by the position he took on the nature of Jesus of Nazareth. Charlie unambiguously called Jesus Lord and Savior.
He was a Christian.
Pretending his faith was irrelevant to his moral viewpoints is like pretending the sun is irrelevant to daylight. Given that it appears that the murderer’s motive was objection to Kirk’s moral views, this was not merely a political act; it was the religious persecution of a Christian who outspokenly preached the message of the gospel. As such, when he was killed for his beliefs, he became a martyr. He is a martyr who died on American soil in a public and grisly way.
So I don’t want us also dancing around two consequences, the way we’re dancing around who he was.
A Consequence For Christians
First, the martyrdom of a Christian on American soil is de facto an attack on all Christians. We are one body. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it (1st Cor. 12:26). We can no longer charge Christians with paranoia when they talk about being persecuted for their faith in America.
Christians around the world suffer persecution to an extent that most Americans do not imagine. Estimates from the UK Parliament suggest that 1 in every 7 Christians in the world endures some kind of persecution, defining persecution as hostility directed at the target because of their identification with Jesus Christ. The Pew Research Center reports that Christians experience harassment in nearly 75% of countries worldwide. In some countries, they are murdered for their faith or face discrimination that is legally protected.
In America, Christians have enjoyed the status of a majority – influencing laws, education, and culture. Anxiety about persecution among well-to-do, comfortable Christians has largely seemed laughable. Harassment has typically been little more than social bristling.
But now that is not the case. A scale tipped. This is not mockery from the stage or condescension from the university lectern, which Christians have endured for decades. This is murder for faith.
Christians should be aware that we stand on new ground. We are not relieved of Jesus’ command to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, to repay evil with good and bless rather than curse. We are to double down on these things. We also can’t be naive about where we are. More clearly than ever, this is not the Promised Land. This is Babylon. Practice the faith so as to keep it alive in a foreign land.
A Consequence for America
Secondly, there are spiritual consequences for the making of martyrs. It is the cry of the saints that brought down God’s wrath on Pharaoh in the book of Exodus, on Haman in the book of Esther, on Saul when he went after David, on David when he murdered Uriah, on the ruling class when they oppressed the poor, and on Rome when they began martyring Christians.
“The martyrs’ blood is the seed of the church,” said the 2nd century church leader, Tertullian. He knew; he had witnessed the martyrdoms in Carthage. He’s not being poetic when he says this. He’s talking about a spiritual reality that when blood is shed, it calls out from the ground to God, and God gets angry. And God responds.
Secularism in America has taken an evil turn. It is no longer merely the intellectual skepticism of well-mannered agnostics. It has a wing that is seething with hatred and callous towards goodness and towards life.
So let’s be clear. Faith matters when you choose how to conduct your daily life. Faith matters to what you do behind closed doors. Faith matters when you choose who to vote for and when you choose who to date. Faith matters when you decide what to do with your money. It matters to how you form your moral commitments and to what you tell your friends. People of faith can live with deep peace, but we cannot relax. Faith needs to matter in everything we do in Babylon.
Faith must shape our identity, our families, our calling, and our citizenship. Let the people of faith stand up and be counted, unashamed and unafraid, doing everything in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
We live in a culture addicted to blame. It happened this summer when floods in central Texas killed over two dozen children. Questions began before the waters receded about whether the owners of the camp were negligent. Once upon a time, such natural disasters were written off as “acts of God,” presuming no human liability (though still strangely blaming the Big Guy). We now seem bent on finding fault.
Recently, I’ve watched blame be cast like a net over whatever group an individual might represent – a political party, the mentally ill, a gender, a race, an ideology, or a religion. We used to call this prejudice and bigotry. An intelligent person could distinguish an individual from a group. Pointing to the worst case was understood to be a straw man that was avoiding dealing with the best case, or even the average case. For some reason, a cross-section of Americans now defend broad-brush demonizing.
The History of Blame
It didn’t used to be like this. About a lifetime ago, there was a dramatic shift in the way legal cases placed culpability. Through the 1800s, if you were hurt by a product or service, it was generally your problem. The policy of caveat emptor reigned – buyer beware. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, a suspicious eye turned towards companies and their wealthy magnates. A decisive case was the 1916 MacPherson vs. Buick Motor Company, where the New York Court of Appeals allowed a man who had been injured by a defective wheel to hold the company liable. Thereafter, contracts were no longer required to prove culpability.
A court ruling in the 1960s then declared that companies could be held liable for defective products even if they hadn’t been negligent.
By the late 20th century, lawsuits abounded – asbestos, medical malpractice, tobacco, and even spilt hot coffee. Blame snowballed. Blame was a multi-billion dollar industry.
Modern neo-liberal, post-civil-rights-era activists and thinkers, particularly in elite universities, have advanced blame to the ideological realm. The recognition of ancestral land ownership, the tracing of longstanding structural inequities to a modern beneficiary, the attribution of explanation for crime to structures rather than individuals, the attribution of health issues to a food industry rather than choice – all of these are modern manifestations of a blame culture stretched to ambiguous ideological grounds. They bring out the wounded and the disingenuous capitalizers alike.
The Spirituality of Blame
Jesus said, “What you loose on earth, you loose in heaven.” When we loose a culture of blame on the earth, we invite a spirit of blame to take spiritual power over our society. I believe we are there.
In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, blame is an odd thing. The person who shot him was clearly responsible. Given a cogent, functioning mind, that person’s ideology must have been the motive. The culture that created his ideology seems to be the garden that grew it. There must have been gardeners.
But the eagerness to blame Democrats, liberals, or what have you for a violent culture will only go so far. Who murdered Democratic Representative Melissa Hortman? What motivated the shooter in the Buffalo shopping mart? Who has been responsible for abortion clinic bombings and LGBTQ-directed violence in America? The extreme right blames the extreme left and vice versa. The common thread is extremism.
A Way Out
Today, I’m inclined to turn the spirit of this age back on itself. The blame goes to a seething culture of blame. Polarization is a product of the extremes pulling us away from the middle, pulling us away from dialogue and communication. In this landscape, the enemy is clearly “over there” with the guilty and can be attacked from a distance. We need not find common ground – we retreat and leave scorched earth behind us.
One of the things I like best about Jesus of Nazareth is that he was always on the bad guys’ side. When the religious right formed a rock-throwing hoard, Jesus went and stood by the woman caught in adultery. When the nationalists gathered to evaluate Jesus’ loyalty, he went and had lunch with the traitorous tax collector, Zacchaeus. When zealots sought to kill Roman sympathizers and Romans sought to kill rebels, Jesus put Matthew the Roman-employed tax collector and Simon the Zealot in his inner circle of twelve. When he could have been a member of the Sanhedrin, Jesus was counted among sinners. When Creation staged a rebellion against its Creator, Jesus incarnated among the Creation.
Jesus of Nazareth didn’t seek to destroy us when we became his enemies. He sought to win us back. When we crucified him, he did not flood the earth and wash us away. He began, one by one, to win us over to his side. He also didn’t tell us to destroy our enemies. He showed us how to convert them. When I realize what he did for me when I hated him, I can do little more than bow and submit to his Way. It is the way of acknowledging my own guilt rather than finding a group to scapegoat. And rather than throwing rocks, I seek to stand alongside the sinful and broken the way he stood alongside me, with the hope we will forsake sin.
America has submitted itself to a spirit of blame, and we are spiraling in it. Peace will not be found by finally driving out one end of the political spectrum. It will be found by exorcising the spirit of the age and choosing grace instead.
Where are you right now? Sitting quietly in a church? Residing peacefully in the San Gabriel Valley or thereabouts. Where you are is a matter of perspective. The earth rotates on its axis, spinning a circumference of 25,000 miles every 24 hours. Meaning that you’re travelling over 1000 miles per hour. We’re going that way (east). You guys are headed right for me. Additionally, the earth is orbiting the sun, so even if you sit right there until tomorrow, you’ll be somewhere else. And if you follow these thoughts out, you’ll come to discover that time isn’t going at the same speed for every place in the universe. I learned all this from Einstein, who, as far as I can tell, makes more sense to artists than engineers. All that to say, you’re not where you think you are.
Now figure this in. Psychology is a science that is still in its infancy. We’re still exploring all of what psychology has to reveal. But one of the big milestones in our self-understanding as the human animal came when Freud and his ilk showed us that our deepest motivations can be shaped by things our parents did, repressed memories, biochemistry, drives and desires that we don’t have complete control over. Where you are right now, in the more subjective sense, is in part determined by things you’re not even aware of.
Plus, things happen in your life before you know they’re going on. You don’t find out someone has lied to you the minute it happens, only later. Someone may have lied to you already, and that lie may be damaging you right now, and you don’t know it. We don’t find out we’re sick the minute the cells mutate, only later. You could be sick right now.
Spiritually, Jesus would say that we are in motion as well. He says that many, many people are headed through a wide door that leads to destruction, and only a few are headed through a door that leads to life. We right now are most likely growing closer to or further away from God, even as we sit quietly and still.
Where are you? Do you even know?
Here I am, we say confidently. I am educated or employed or married or befriended. But the truth is that we don’t always know where we are.
I remember visiting a man in the hospital when I was a chaplain, many years ago. He was weeping. He told me he had lost his Corvette, and then his house, and then his wife, and of course his insurance, and now his health. Everything was spiraling. And there was a time in his life when we was saying, “Here I am. I’ve done it exactly the way I wanted. Made the money, got the girl, built my empire.” But where he was going was not in his control.
Here I am, we say, but we don’t know where we are. Confidence is always a game.
Some people say faith begins when you decide you believe in Jesus. Some people say it begins when before you even know God is there, because he chooses you before you choose him. I think true faith begins when we admit to God that we don’t know where we are.
Genesis 22: 1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”
3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”
15 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”
Abraham was a man surrounded by pagan religions and false gods. Widely worshipped in the ancient Mediterranean world was a god known as Molech, the god of fire, often pictured as a bull. Molech was an angry god, and it was believed that he had to be appeased with sacrifices to stop him from sending droughts on the crops or storms on the seas. Huge shrines were built to Molech, statues, with a fire at their base. In the chest were built seven doors, ovens into which were placed offerings: a goat, a bull, a bag of grain, a dove, a sheep, a ram, and a human child. Molech demanded everything. They believed that in giving up their own they would be forgiven for whatever they had done. They would stand around the burning statue and chant, “We are not men, we are oxen!” In 1921, a cemetery was uncovered in Carthage Greece, which had an inscription that read MLK, Molech, and in the cemetery were found the remains of animals and children by the thousands. Abraham would have seen these worship services.
But Abraham had a different God. His God called him to a new home and promised him that he would one day have as many children as there are stars in the sky. The Hebrew Bible is clear, “Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.” (Lev. 18:21) For the rest of the Bible Molech is referred to as the detestable god.
Abraham followed God’s call. And everywhere he went, he profited. He stopped one place and someone gave him flocks. He stopped somewhere else and someone gave him land. Abraham was getting rich. And he must have thought, “Here I am. I’ve got it all together. God is on my side, I’ve got it made, maybe it’s time for a Corvette.”
And Abraham had a son, a son that he loved, Isaac. Isaac was the miracle child. He would have been so proud. In the community you can imagine that they stopped calling him Abraham and started calling him “Isaac’s dad,” which he would have loved.
Then one day Abraham was living in the hill country, in the lands that would one day be called Israel and belong to one of his descendants. And God called and said, “Give me your son.” And you can imagine the agony of a father betrayed by a god who had seemed so good. And everything in him must have reeled. This God who had given him everything would now take it away. “Go to Mt. Moriah and sacrifice your son to me.”
And Abraham gave up everything. He gave up his will to decide for God. He surrendered everything to the god who had seemed to be so good, believing that God must somehow know what he was doing, despite the horrible call.
My favorite artistic rendering of this story comes from Salvador Dali, in a painting entitled “Abraham, Abraham!” Because Abraham is not the center of the picture. Abraham is small, distant, and decentered. The back of the angels overwhelms the center of the page. The story is not about Abraham. The story is about God. God who steps into the middle of Abraham’s life, knocks him out of the center, disorients him. Dali understood the story.
This God, we find, is a good God. A God who passionately loves Abraham. He will even show Abraham that he will never take from him what he has promised.
Abraham says in verse 1, “Here I am.”
And God says, “No you’re not! Get out of the center of your life! Never rely only on yourself. You cannot make it in this world without me. You would have nothing without me! But see who I am! I am the god who loves you! I am not Molech and I will not take your children!”
But only when Abraham has experienced the sacrifice of his own will, has experienced this God for who he is, can he say rightfully, in verse 11 “Here I am.”
After that, Abraham was not known as the father of Isaac. He was known as the father of faith.
God has to disorient us to set us straight.
Only when we give up our wills for his do we know where we really stand in the universe.
As my kids would lie in their crib, they learned that they could cry out, and mom and dad would come running, and faces would appear above and around the crib, looking down at them. And from where they lay, they must have felt like the center of the universe.
As they got older, they found friends. But if you read Piaget’s descriptions of children’s conversations, you will learn that when children talk, they don’t primarily talk to share communication, they primarily talk just to be heard. Because they believe themselves to be the center of the universe.
There are adults who have never stepped out of that worldview. “Here I am,” we can say confidently, “I’ve made myself who I am.”
Faith begins at that moment when we surrender the center of the universe to God. We can’t go there, our families can’t go there, our work can’t go there. If you want to live life right, you have to put God in the center.
You know, there’s a funny thing about that hill country in which Abraham lived. No one knows exactly where it was, but it is believed to have been somewhere outside of modern day Jerusalem. There’s another hill there, called “The place of the skull,” because there appears to be a skull in the side of the hill. It would not at all surprise me if, in the poetry of God, it was the same hill.
Because there another son was called to be sacrificed, bound and surrendered. But this time, God himself would take the place of humanity’s sacrifices. God himself would put himself in the place of people who could not be forgiven without sacrifice for all that they had done wrong. In that moment, humanity would decenter God. Humanity would refuse to let God walk among them or lead them. Humanity would reject God and instead have him tortured and killed. And God, hidden quietly in human form, would go willingingly. It is at this moment that God would say, “I am the God of love! I will not require sacrifice from you! I will spare your children and take their place in the fire. If only you will believe in me.”
We have to be disoriented in order to be set straight.
Our sins decentered God. Your decision to surrender to Jesus puts him back.
Christians sometimes act like all we have to do is sign on the dotted line that we believe and then back to life as usual. “Here I am,” we say. “I’ve got life all figured out now, and I’m going to heaven, so off I go to spend my life making money and being comfortable.”
Don’t go on with life. Make him the center.
I talk to college students who go off to school and tell me they don’t go to church anymore because they can’t find one they like. And I tell them, “Then you chose the wrong school! Because the most important thing that happens to you in college is not that you get a degree so that you can get a job, the most important thing that happens to you is that your faith matures into adulthood!” We don’t know where we are until we surrender to God.
I talk to people with busy and important jobs who get a lot done and who don’t have time for church. And I ask them, What will it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your soul? Because we don’t even know where we are until we surrender to God.
I knew a man who sat in church and week after week with tears quietly rolling down his face. And when the Pastor finally asked what was wrong, he said, “All the wasted years.”
Step out of the center of your life! Because the God of love has walked among us. He has died for us. He will never take away our children the way the office god does in late night hours and weeks away. How could we not have the humility to surrender the center of our lives to the one who really belongs there.
This is Jesus. Believe. And don’t just believe. Surrender. Because only when you do can you know yourself well enough to say, “Here I am.”
Paul, imprisoned and facing martyrdom, looks back over his life to give us that which is most important. He writes, “In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge:” (2nd Timothy 4)
Paul is employing a courtroom vocabulary. He’s making it clear: in light of God’s ultimate judgment and the revealing of His eternal kingdom, we’re given a charge. It’s serious. It’s life-defining. But here’s the good news—we don’t have to figure it all out alone. God’s word provides the blueprint.
Paul’s charge to Timothy, and to us, is straightforward. Just like a vineyard owner who plants a vineyard according to his design, sends his son to check in on the laborers, and returns in the end to pay what is do, so we are tasked with tending to our lives. Here’s what he tells him to do:
2 Timothy 4:2-5: “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.”
Our instructions:
Tell people about Jesus.
Warn against what’s wrong.
Encourage what’s right.
Be patient, be clear, be wise.
Persevere through life’s challenges.
Paul is a mentor to Timothy, which sets up a model for effective discipleship. This isn’t just for pastors or ministry leaders. It’s for all of us—at work, at home, in our neighborhoods. Everyone needs a mentor, and everyone can be a mentor. Paul mentored Timothy; who’s your Timothy? And who’s your Paul?
Reflections from a Mirror
Mentorship isn’t always about grand wisdom. Sometimes it’s about holding up a mirror. I’ve had mentors reflect back things I needed to hear, like when a fellow pastor once told me I was “a little too blunt.” Tough feedback, but I needed it as a young pastor.
I’ve also had moments of being the mirror. I remember a young pastor feeling discouraged because his church wasn’t growing fast enough. When I asked, he shared that his church had doubled from 70 to 150 people in a year. I told him, “You have one of the fastest-growing churches in America.” Sometimes, we just need someone to show us the blessings we’re too close to see.
Three Prophecies for 2025
Now, drawing from Paul’s mentoring of Timothy, let’s practice the same activity of looking at what is most important and how we should prepare ourselves for the road ahead. Paul warned Timothy about a time when people would reject sound doctrine. That time feels closer than ever. Here’s what I see coming in the year ahead:
A New Ideological Divide There’s a growing split in American conservatism between secular conservatives and religious conservatives. They may talk about shared values, but their motivations differ. While one group may focus on familiarity or financial stability, the other roots their values in following Jesus. In 2025, many won’t put up with Jesus’ values—whether they identify as liberal or conservative.
The AI Revolution Artificial intelligence is accelerating—jobs, education, and even how we process information are going to transform. Education will shift away from memorization toward critical thinking. We will train children to be filters of information rather than receptacles of information. The skill set for the rising generation will be the ability to sort out the useful from the rubbish.
Truth vs. Lies As filters on information tighten, discerning truth will become a critical life skill. Conspiracy theories abound (seriously, Russians hacking hot tubs?). But the solution isn’t censorship; it’s teaching logic and critical thinking. We must raise a generation equipped to separate fact from fiction.
Finishing the Race
Fortunately, Paul sets out to show us how to do this. Invite Jesus into your decision making and let the Holy Spirit be a filter for discerning what is true. Paul is absolutely unintimidated by the future that he sees. Rather, he’s victorious. “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”
Picture Paul, in prison, near death, arms raised in a V, shouting, “Woo! I won!” That’s the joy of a life well-lived for Jesus.
Success in 2025
Here’s how to win the race this year:
Find a mentor who knows and loves Jesus.
Be a mentor who guides others in faith.
Stay the course: Tell people about Jesus, stand for truth, encourage others, and persevere for His name.
Run the race with patience, wisdom, and joy. And when you cross the finish line, you’ll get to make the declaration of faith that all saints have made when their race is run: “Woo! I won! I won! I won!”
Christmas is coming, and the story we retell each year reminds us of God’s great plans for our world. It’s the story of angels, shepherds, and wise men, all drawn to the manger by a love so great it touches every corner of creation.
Let’s take a closer look at the characters in this story and what their presence tells us about the child born that night. In Korean culture, there’s a tradition called doljabi, celebrated on a child’s first birthday. During this ceremony, objects are placed in front of the baby, and whichever one the baby chooses is seen as a hint of who they might become. A pencil could mean a scholar, a stethoscope a doctor, and so on. It’s a fun, symbolic way of imagining a child’s future.
At Jesus’ birth, there’s something like a divine doljabi happening—not with objects, but with people. God chooses shepherds, wise men, and angels to gather around the manger, and their presence offers signs of who Jesus is and what His life will mean.
The angels were the first to announce His birth. They are not just heavenly beings but royal messengers, sent directly from God’s throne room. Their presence signifies that this event is not just important for earth but is celebrated in heaven itself. They remind us that Jesus is not only the Messiah but also the King of Kings, sent from heaven to bring peace to earth.
Then there are the shepherds. In the eyes of the world, they were nobodies—simple, unpolished, and overlooked. Yet they were the first to receive the good news. This is no accident. God chose shepherds because their presence points to who Jesus will become. He is the Good Shepherd, the one who will care for His people with humility and love. Throughout Israel’s history, shepherds like David and Moses were chosen by God for great purposes, and Jesus continues that tradition, coming to lead His people with a shepherd’s heart.
Finally, later in the story, we see the wise men. These were learned men from faraway lands, outsiders in every way, yet they were drawn to worship Jesus. They symbolize that Jesus is the source of all wisdom and the one who calls people from every nation to come and know Him. Their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh reflect His kingship, His priestly role, and His eventual sacrifice.
Each group—angels, shepherds, and wise men—represents a piece of who Jesus is. He is the King of Heaven, the Shepherd of His people, and the Wisdom for the world. God’s choice of these witnesses reminds us that this story is for everyone. The highest heavens and the humblest fields all find their place in His plan.
This Christmas, remember that you are part of this story, too. God invites each of us, no matter where we stand, to approach the manger and discover what He has in store for us. Like the shepherds, we are called into His care. Like the wise men, we are invited to seek Him with all our hearts. And like the angels, we are given the joy of celebrating and sharing the good news.
May this season fill us with light, joy, and a deep sense of belonging in the story of Jesus.
I want to ask the question that is in the back of the minds of a lot of religious adherents right now, and perhaps even in the mind of a few skeptics. Are the terrible things that are happening in the world right now a direct activity of God?
Australia was just ravaged by fires, which destroyed over 32,000 square miles and over 1000 homes, and killed a couple dozen people and millions of animals. Immediately on its heels, locusts plague Africa and the Middle East – I mean like biblical quantities of locusts. Look it up. The story has been buried behind the coronavirus, which has now claimed 9,000 lives with a frightening mortality rate and brought the earth to a grinding halt.
To top it all off, there was an 5.7 earthquake in Salt Lake City, Utah on March 18th, which normally might not raise eyebrows, but this one knocked the trumpet out of the hand of the gold statue of Angel Moroni standing atop the spire of the pompous Mormon Temple in the heart of their homeland. Even without all the rest of today’s chaos, that one would certainly make the orthodox zealots call out to the heavens, “Nice one, Lord!”
So the question is a bit surprisingly a rational one – is God mad at us?
Surprising at least for those raised on a Western, naturalistic view of the world, a “scientific worldview” we call it, although by that we mean committed to presuppositions which empirical science cannot substantiate. That is – we assume there’s nothing supernatural, so science can only give natural explanations.
The problem, Science, is that most of us, most of humanity, believes in God. Not only that, many gods, angels, demons, an afterlife, miracles, ghosts, and all the rest of it. Most – a majority – of all humanity present and past. Scientists even now speculate that some part of evolutionary history wired us to be religious, even if there were no God out there to be religious about. But whether there is a God is a subject of another post. Here I want to ask, for those who do believe in God, is God actually, you know, doing this?
Some religious people, those with especially guilty consciences, assume that when something bad happens to them, it’s because of something they did. Karma is essentially the same idea. But the disasters befalling the world are too broad for even the worst narcissist to assume they’re causing it all.
So is it because of us, all of us? And do we have the power to change world events through our behavior, through repentance?
It Has Happened Before
Clearly, readers of the Bible can see, this jibes with what the Bible says God has done in the past.
God says to King Solomon in 2nd Chronicles 7:
13 “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among my people,14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
Repeatedly God forewarns of doom for disobedience and reward for faithfulness. When Israel is taken into slavery in Babylon, they say it was because King Solomon wasn’t faithful. When Jesus’ disciples come across a man born blind, they ask Jesus, “Is it because he sinned or his parents sinned that he was born this way?” (John 9:2). In the book of Revelation, God even warns rejection of churches that are not faithful, because God disciplines the people he loves (Revelation 3:14-20).
Two Options
However, Jesus’ answer to his disciples about the man born blind is that his blindness is not a result of anyone’s sin. His blindness is an opportunity for God’s power to be shown through him. Likewise, in the book of Job, a man named Job loses everything – his family, his wealth, and his health. His friends gather around and tell him he must have sinned. God shows up at the end of the narrative and vindicates Job – in fact, he hadn’t done anything wrong.
So Answer #1: Bad things are not always tied to God’s punishment. There’s a biblical basis for saying this. Furthermore, those who believe in Jesus believe that he died on the cross for our sins, so we are now completely forgiven. There is no anger left for us, and God does not destroy his children as punishment. Jesus aims to shape us in to healthy, loving, faithful people; he did not come to condemn us (John 3:17).
But, Answer #2: The terrors of this world are in every way a tool in the hands of God to lead the world to repentance. However, rather than causing suffering willfully, I think the Bible suggests that they come about in another way. Romans 1 says that God’s worst punishment for us is to let us have our own way (Romans 1:21-24). He “hands us over to our lusts,” it says. Allowing us to live in a broken world without his intervention is its own punishment. We live in a horribly broken world, and as we reject God and push God away, we can hardly complain that he allowed bad things to happen. He’s literally done exactly what we asked for. The consequence, sadly, is a world that doesn’t look like heaven. The hard part for those who follow Jesus is that we are all in this together, and the brokenness of the world drags us all down.
Our Hope
There are three places in which to put our hope:
If you choose to invite Jesus into your life, he will immediately begin a remodel that will turn something broken into something beautiful. You can do that through a simple prayer – Jesus, I invite you in. Please take my life, forgive me, and lead me.
When we follow Jesus and are filled with the Holy Spirit, we get to witness miracles. Jesus empowers his followers in the world to do exactly the same kind of things that he did, and that brings people out of brokenness and into healthy life. Against the backdrop of a world of storm clouds, a light shines through in the lives of the faithful.
There will come a day when this present darkness will be chased away by light, and we will enter a world where there is no more mourning or crying or pain, and every tear will be wiped away (Revelation 21:4). Until then, we work to build the kingdom of God on earth; on that day we will rest.
Don’t be afraid. Jesus is still on the throne. When you believe in him and follow after him, he will save you. He’s not out to punish you and he doesn’t hold grudges. His business is forgiveness and redemption. Whatever origin story we believe in about the catastrophes of the world and the coronavirus, let them sharpen our minds and point us towards the one in whom we find true hope: Jesus Christ, our Lord.
A snow-capped couple used to sit next to me in a café, clucking away with each other and passing friends. The first time I noticed them, I was trying to read Athanasius’ “On the Incarnation,” but couldn’t pay attention. I was privately amused at the way they loved each other, giggling as they finished each other’s sentences and offering to get up one for another, because at their age, it was too much of a commitment for them both to stand up.
I was conscious of my eavesdropping, but not of the effect they were having on me. They became part of the aesthetic of the café – the warm, sun-filled widows, the robust, walnut-toned coffee, and the happy old couple as familiar as the furniture. They were always there.
Until one day I saw her alone. When I stopped to ask, I withered to hear of his passing. She was thereafter different than she had been before, as was the café.
That couple for me is a better metaphor for the Trinitarian God than most of the go-to illustrations. St. Patrick notably used the three leaf clover to explain the Trinity to the pagan Irish, but his metaphor was flawed, because if you pull a leaf off of it, you still have a deformed clover, but a clover nonetheless. A widow is something fundamentally different than a spouse. One does not merely lose a spouse, one loses spousehood. When we love and are beloved, to lose love changes our identity.
Imagine the Trinity not as a mechanical philosophical concept requiring technical definitions of “substance” and “nature,” but rather a being who is so infused with and exuding love that the Father, Son, and Spirit are giddy at finishing each other’s sentences, that within the nature of the one God is a love so overwhelming that it must be reciprocated. Trinity is love immune the frailties of human love. It’s love made perfect, love like the first time a baby laughs, love like a wedding, love like a hero dying to save someone else. Imagine a love so urgent it can’t resist exposing itself to the risk of betrayal and brutality. It will pay the cost if only to love one more. Imagine a kind of love that promises a day when inseparable lovers are reunited, because that’s how a good story is supposed to end.
A friend of mine who is a missionary in a Muslim country tells me that she sometimes tells Muslims that there is “love if,” “love because,” and “love despite” – you can love someone if they will do something for you, because they have done something for you, or despite anything that they do for you. She has been told more than once by the people to whom she ministers that “love despite” isn’t real.
Imagine love despite. That’s a better description of Trinity that most of our metaphors.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time decrying the decline of the Church in America, particularly so much as it is a consequence of a lazy Christianity that just assumed lost neighbors would find their way to church without any effort from the converted. But if you asked me if I was afraid if the Church in the world was going to pass away, I would have to admit I’m not afraid of that at all. My reason for that confidence is not a strident declaration about the gates of hell never prevailing. It’s far more amusing than that.
It’s because we live in a haunted house.
By house, I mean the planet Earth, and by haunted, I mean haunted. The free-wheeling secularist cannot suppress the cathartic tears at sunset and at the symphony. She can’t muster up a plausible grounding for all of the passionate ethical positions for which she tirades and votes and argues. She will never sufficiently suppress nor rewrite a history that is filled with church-going grandmothers who find her life a shame. And to be honest, one out of every ten people I talk to has actually seen a ghost. The world is haunted, or to use Charles Taylor’s more pleasant term, enchanted. The hard-nosed laboratory researcher who claims to have dissected away the enchantment doesn’t come off as a genius. He comes off as one in denial, like a captain who keeps insisting the leak isn’t that bad.
I’m happy to say there will always be a Church, because the world will always be haunted. The intrusiveness of its ghosts can be dodged by denial no more than a bee sting can be avoided by closing your eyes. They will keep poking us. My worries for the Church in America have far less to do with anything about metaphysical reality and far more to do with the fact that my son and my daughter will likely marry and raise kids in this generation, and they will be surrounded by blind captains sailing sinking ships.
…you’ve invited someone who doesn’t believe in Jesus to believe in Jesus. That’s what pastors are for. If you don’t do it in your daily life now, you’re not going to be better at it when some seminary or denomination says you’re ready to.
…you pray and worship when no one is listening.
…you can pray and worship without telling everyone you did.
…your knowledge of the Bible is as thorough as your questions about it. The questions shouldn’t come from what you don’t know; they should come from what you do know.
…you’ve given up the dream of getting rich. We print “In God We Trust” on the back of his leading competitor.
…you’ve given up the dream of being famous. There should be a pretty distinct difference between a sermon and a selfie.
…you’ve given up the dream of being attractive. If the dream comes true, you’re likely to embarrass the ministry. If it doesn’t come true, but you keep hoping, you’re going to look ridiculous.
…you’ve realized your wedding vows are more important than your ordination vows.
…you could competently do ministry without a formal theological education. And once you don’t need it – go get it.
…you’ve learned how and when to say “I could be wrong” and “I’m sorry.”
…you can name the places that you’re broken with no more shame than if you were describing what you like about a painting. Brokenness is something we need to accept about ourselves so that we can deal honestly with the problems it creates, rather than trying to hide it from everyone else until the problems become public.
…you have a stronger passion for releasing other people’s gifts than releasing your own.
…God’s call to ministry is louder than your desire to do ministry and other people’s affirmation of your ministry.
That said, I don’t know that I would have become a pastor 17 years ago if I was following my own list.
I want to ask the question that is in the back of the minds of a lot of religious adherents right now, and perhaps even in the mind of a few skeptics. Are the terrible things that are happening in the world right now a direct activity of God?
Hardwired 