Sojourning in community
Lately, I have received more than the usual number of questions about politics. The Italian election, looming American mid-terms, and the British PM contest have fueled a great deal of concern. While God calls us to be engaged in the lands where we sojourn, Christians are richly blessed with redeemed community that provides more than anything world systems can supply. World Opinions writer Thaddeus Williams recently posed this fantastic question:

What would it look like if extremist political groups saw their membership rolls crash because there were just so many vibrant Christ-centered communities offering substantial answers to the human predicament and seeking justice with the fruit of the Spirit rather than endless outrage?

NY Pastor Edwin Ramirez adds:

Examine your hearts. What effect is reading oppression into all of life having on your soul? Is it giving you a sense of moral superiority, or making you dependent on the righteousness of Christ? I know how a noble desire for justice can replace love in our hearts with resentment. By God’s grace, I have been set free. You too can exchange the suspicion and rage of wokeness for the love and joy of the gospel of Christ.

God bless,
Wayne

Herculaneum
On my way to a recent meeting in Rome, I was blessed to spend a day in Herculaneum – the wealthy city destroyed, buried, and preserved under Mt. Vesuvius’ AD 79 eruption. It is one of the finest-preserved ruins I have experienced, in my opinion far surpassing nearby Pompeii.

While in Herculaneum, I watched an archeologist digging through a volcanic pile of rock inside a 1^st century villa. Her painstaking efforts will yield items that likely appear as junk to most modern people. Yet every bit of that “junk” – the buried detritus of a bygone day – will uncover great information about the past. The comb I watched her extract spoke to routines of life. The stunning gold jewelry in the small museum nearby tells of celebratory moments, while the bones still visible in the boat dock below the villa testify to a cataclysm that changed the world. Extracting, sifting, and examining each piece, the digger is doing an important work for us all because the better we understand the past, the more prepared we are to learn from and build upon it.

Cataclysms, special celebrations, and customary routines
This principle is true in a personal sense as well. Each year in our earthly lives is comprised of steady, even tedious routines; exciting moments of celebration; and a sprinkling of cataclysms. It is important to occasionally dig through the layers of silt and rock that cover our memory. With the Lord’s guidance, we can sift and examine each piece, using that knowledge to bless the days to come.

To assist, I have included a brief guide below.

1. Vesuvius moments

What recent cataclysms have most rocked your personal world?
In a few words, what positives have you learned from these? What scar tissue might be causing problems?

2. Routines

What aspects of your daily routine do you enjoy most?
What about your regular weekly schedule brings the most joy?
What about your monthly rhythm do you delight in most?
What aspects of your work drain the most energy from you?
What good things do you see those “thorns & thistles” achieving in your character?

3. Special celebrations

What big events bring you energy, even when they are exhausting?
What big event are you most likely to dread?
What success do you think has gone underappreciated this year?
Has any failing been over-emphasized?

God bless,
Wayne

I was in a meeting where a brother in Jesus was lamenting all the pain on this hard rock called earth. With good reason, he was upset and fearful over evil occurring all around. Aching with him, I listened. But when he began to express ill will toward all the nasty people working against goodness, I reminded him of Jeremiah’s word in chapter 29.

Yes, Babylon is wicked, and our rescue from this fallen world is coming. Yet, while we are here, we should labor and pray for prosperity on our neighbors. Like Judah before us, we should desire that even our persecutors thrive – not because this is our home, but because it is theirs.

After leaving that conversation, I headed home. As I rounded the corner of our neighborhood, I spied 10 kids playing football. They were out in 101-degree heat; boys and girls; sporting black, brown, yellow, and white skin; ranging between 7-10 years old; laughing and playing some really bad touch football.

I stopped for a second and watched. A couple of kids recognized my car and waved between plays, and I waved back. As I turned onto my street, I prayed with ever more fervor for this city where we are aliens. Those kids are worth the effort.

God bless,
Wayne

Hard things show God’s grace
Doing the hard things God calls us to do reveals His amazing grace. Genesis 22 shares a significant example. YHWH, who granted Abraham his promised son Isaac [whose name means “laughter”], asks Abraham to do a very hard thing. God calls on Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. This test occurred on Mt. Moriah, the rock hill that today lies under the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Doesn’t that seem hard and harsh? Indeed! But Abraham didn’t kill his Laughter and Isaac didn’t need to surrender himself, because God intervened and declared His wonderful grace – that He had Himself provided a sacrifice instead.

To really understand the story, we must grasp what a shocking idea Isaac’s salvation was in that culture. In that world, the people around Abraham practiced child sacrifices regularly. The gods of the Canaanites demanded child blood, but YHWH uses this test to reveal His gracious concept that no children are to be sacrificed. God later codifies this in Moses’ Law. The Lord alone provides the sacrifice.

This story is very significant for us. We find life is hard and think that God is asking too much of us. I’ve felt that way and you either have or will. But we need to remember Abraham and Isaac. Genesis 22 teaches us that God’s sacrifice alone saves us. All the tests we face are merely signposts directing us to rely upon His sacrifice.

Abraham didn’t sacrifice his Son, but God did! God sacrificed His Son so that we could be eternally saved. Why is life hard? So that we’ll learn that we don’t stand strong through our own strength! It’s all by God’s grace. Hardship reveals His amazing grace.

God bless,
Wayne

“Celebrate bad things, c’mon!”
Imagine a place & time when you are required to celebrate “murder month” or “gossip week,” or the “year of theft.” The lyrics of Kool and the Gang’s 1981 hit are rewritten, and all people are expected to sing along to “Celebrate bad things, c’mon!” Of course, that sounds absolutely absurd! Yet as the progression detailed below illustrates, such moral entropy is far from rare. [This is a bit lengthy, but I have been repeatedly asked for my understanding of how humans come to celebrate evil.]

Sin’s slippery slope
Step 1 – A cultural sin movement posits that something God calls wrong has been misrepresented or misunderstood. The idea of behavioral choice is buried under a mound of rationalization as terms are radically redefined.
Response: About 75% of a wide spectrum in the society tries to disagree. Yet if the sin movement successfully changes word definitions, the movement advances.
Example: Thieves are not to blame for their crimes. They only steal because they weren’t read to enough as children. Thieves are redefined as “needy pre-owners” who have been treated unjustly.
End result: Wrong cannot be seen as objectively wrong & the wrongdoer is not responsible.

Step 2 – The culture then builds great momentum exonerating wrongdoers and demanding they have free and equal treatment. Real or imagined past mistreatment plays a big role here, justifying the cultural reversal as a kind of tit-for-tat.
Response: About 50% of the society tries to disagree, but they have already lost the battle for words and thus the sin movement continues.
Example: Thieves are granted carte blanche to steal and store owners who complain are cast as the real oppressors, denying pre-owners their due.
End result: Wrong is declared right & the wrongdoer justified.

Step 3 – Before long, the sinners demand to be celebrated. All the weight of the culture jumps on board, persecuting any bigots who won’t join in applauding the greatness of what formerly was agreed to be evil.
Response: God’s people, usually comprising 10-25% of the population in a western culture, are often the only remaining voice of protest. They tend to split: ½ go along with calling wrong “right.” ½ stand undaunted, voicing their objections in ways that range from reasonable and winsome to harsh and vitriolic.
Example: Theft is proudly fêted. Anyone who refuses to applaud thievery is marginalized or condemned.
End result: Wrong is to be celebrated & the wrongdoer worshipped. Dissenters are silenced to preserve civic unity.

A regularly occurring mess
But of course, you are responding, in your Vincent Cassell voice [He played the French thief in Oceans 12.], “Ah, I get your point. And that thievery example actually occurred in San Francisco, culminating in the 2021 burglary epidemic. But that only happens very rarely, and only in places like Northern California.”

Au contraire, mon ami…

Christians in the Roman Empire faced that exact situation when they refused to commit idolatry and pray to the emperor. The very Romans who persecuted the Christians knew that their forbears in Rome would have agreed with the Christians! For centuries, Romans had hated the idea of a king and steadfastly refused to worship any living human. But under the new, enlightened Empire, events rapidly moved through all three stages down the slippery slope. By the end of the 1^st c. A.D., worship of the throne was viewed as a requirement for civic unity.

Christians in Spain were required by the Inquisition to renounce the Bible as authoritative and swear allegiance to the Pope. Those Inquisitors themselves knew that their Christian forebears would have disagreed with their message & method. But by the 12^th c. A.D., allegiance to the papal throne was considered a requisite for civic unity.

Our missionary friends in Russia have recently shared distressing stories of persecution. In many of the reports, the Russian Orthodox church partners with the Kremlin and the state-controlled media to “out” Christians who had privately declared that invasion of Ukraine does not meet the biblical criteria for just war. Once exposed, these brethren face loss of jobs and occasionally jail time.

Christians in America can also experience the difficulties that come at the bottom of the slippery slope of sin. So, what is to be done?

How should we live?
Isaiah faced just such a cultural cesspool, and chapters 5-9 of his prophecies serve as an excellent guide.

1. Know the lies cannot last forever. The shallowness and absurdity of demanding that “down” be termed “up,” makes longevity impossible. Later in that same Isaiah passage, God declares:

Therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes straw
and as dry grass shrivels in the flame,
so their roots will become like something rotten
and their blossoms will blow away like dust,
for they have rejected
the instruction of the Lord of Armies,
and they have despised
the word of the Holy One of Israel. [Isaiah 5:24 CSB]

2. Keep sharing God’s grace. Having established the horrible sinful context in chapter 5, God then arranges for the very next chapter to describe Him sending someone to faithfully share about how the Lord atones for sin. The ugliness of a culture’s sin does not provoke withdrawal. It is the exact opposite!

Then I heard the voice of the Lord asking:
Who will I send?
Who will go for us?
I said:
Here I am. Send me. [Isaiah 6:8 CSB] 

3. Don’t measure success by immediate numerical results. The end of chapter 6 seems rather depressing, as God tells Isaiah that the people won’t respond well. Rather than accept God’s healing, they cling to their mislabeled sin. However, God promises that a seed will remain, a stump that will shoot forth with permanent, positive change in an age to come.
4. Don’t look for human answers or fall prey to human fears. Doing so will ironically take you onto a parallel slippery slope that disgorges into the same swamp into which your culture has fallen.

For this is what the Lord said to me with great power, to keep me from going the way of this people:
Do not call everything a conspiracy
that these people say is a conspiracy.
Do not fear what they fear;
do not be terrified.
You are to regard only the Lord of Armies as holy.
Only he should be feared;
only he should be held in awe. [Isaiah 8:11-13] 

5. Focus on Jesus. Remember that the answer to sin is Jesus, God the Son, who died and rose again to pay for sin and provide eternal life to those who receive Him. In the micro scope of each individual, Jesus is the solution. In the macro sphere of kingdoms and eons, Jesus is the answer.

The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
a light has dawned
on those living in the land of darkness.
For a child will be born for us,
a son will be given to us,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
He will be named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. [Isaiah 9:2, 6 CSB]

God bless,
Wayne

Imago Dei
Amy Sherman and I diverge on a few points of theology, but I nonetheless appreciate her work. In her new book released this month, Amy notes how important Genesis 1:27 is for all of humanity:

The doctrine of the imago Dei, which teaches that God created humankind in his own image, implies that every person, regardless of race, gender, ability, ethnicity, or social status, has inherent value. This revolutionary idea is the font of Western civilization’s notion of inalienable human rights. Cornell University historian Brian Tierney roots this concept, of all human beings having equal dignity and worth, in Christian and biblical teaching. – Amy Sherman, Agents of Flourishing

Self-made?
However, that beautiful doctrine is usually rejected. Since the world became shot-through with sin, humans have enjoyed pretending that we are self-created. The lie has taken various forms through the centuries, but the core idea is that personhood is defined, determined, and developed solely by each individual human. Our age is proudly defined by this mold. [The only exceptions in our era concern pre-born humans, who are often not given the opportunity to declare their own personhood, and invalid adults whose age or mental capacity makes them unable to prove that they deserve to continue existing.]

In fact, each individual is so triumphantly convinced of self-definition that people become livid at the merest hint of reality. I recently told a precious human that she was made in God’s image. She was so offended that she spat her own definition of selfhood back at me, adding, possibly inadvertently, this statement of clarity:

I determine my own pronouns! I determine my own identity! I am my own god! – a young adult woman

I was blessed with the opportunity to explain to her the scriptural and logical implications of being created in God’s image. Wonderfully, she calmed down and admitted that she often longs for more, even confessing that she has shifted her self-identification many times in her search for significance. She agreed that the imago Dei explains a great deal about humanity that self-determination cannot. She even committed to read the gospel of John and consider the love shown for her by Jesus, God the Son.

There go I
Her struggle against the laughable lie of self-determination is real, and it is not limited to non-Christians. Joshua 9 shows that the folly of self-directed living is just as harmful to members of God’s redeemed community:

Then the men of Israel…did not seek the Lord’s decision. – Joshua 9:14 CSB

This led to a huge mess. A century ago, Dr. Ironside summarized how damaging this was, and how prone we are to the same mistake:

Verse 14 (represents) a fatal mistake. It is always wrong to act on our own judgment instead of seeking to know the mind of God as revealed in His Word…As we so often are inclined to do, they trusted their own judgment and were misled completely. – H. A. Ironside, Joshua

God bless,
Wayne