He points the finger at popular teachers like Russell Moore, David Platt, Tim Keller, and John Piper, as well as outlets like Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition. He laments “low-agency” Christianity that maintains the status quo while our culture decays, and he commends a “High-Agency” Christianity that is “muscular,” “rugged,” courageous, and hopeful.

With witty turns of phrase and bold pastoral appeals, Clary presents readers with a stark choice: Surrender or advance; be a spiritual doormat or exercise dominion.

Unpacking Perceived Problems

The opening chapter unpacks what “Loser Theology” is. Clary writes, “I use the term because it’s a theology that advocates for losing as the way to be faithful to God. Loser Theology can refer to theological perspectives and movements that emphasize passivity, retreat, and defeat, often conflating suffering and loss with humility” (25).

Loser Theology presents “a half-Christ who always bears the cross, never wears the crown, and calls us to follow his example of losing.” It offers “no vision for victory” but sees believers only as a marginalized cultural minority (9).

The next three chapters substantiate this critique of Loser Theology, calling it “Spectator Spirituality” (chap. 2), “The Doormat Doctrine” (chap. 3), and “White Flag Christianity” (chap. 4).

Clary presents readers with a stark choice: Surrender or advance; be a spiritual doormat or exercise dominion.

Clary contends that the “gospel centered” movement associated with leaders like Keller presents a “narrow, therapeutic, hyper-introspective version” of the gospel “that stripped away the gospel’s public mandate to assert Christ’s lordship over all of life” (32). By emphasizing private spirituality over against earthly concerns, Loser Theology maintains “a significant blind spot, a kind of ‘deliberate inaction zone’ where outward engagement with the world is either discouraged or dismissed as worldly” (33).

Chapter 3 critiques popular pastors, like Platt and Piper, who call people to live radically for Christ and freely embrace suffering. Clary argues that advocates of Loser Theology imply by their strong rhetoric that serious Christians who truly love the Lord will sell their possessions, plant churches, and cross oceans to evangelize the lost, while ordinary middle-class churchgoers are second-rate. He claims that the “Doormat Doctrine” misunderstands suffering, persecution, human depravity, and humility.

Clary’s concern about engaging the political and cultural arenas emerges more clearly in chapter 4. He writes, “White Flag Christianity sanctifies political apathy with biblical language,” and calls Christians to live as “exiles, not culture warriors” (120). Appeals to “lay down power” may seem spiritual, but they are manipulative and misguided, Clary says, resulting in a muzzled public witness for the church and accelerating cultural decline.

Clary claims the church’s retreat from political responsibility leads to “Trust Fund Christianity,” where believers take for granted the cultural inheritance they’ve received (134). He borrows the label “Pessimillennialism” from David Chilton (a well-known Christian reconstructionist) for believers whose eschatology fosters an “expectation of losing” and does not motivate them to build and guard cultural institutions (137). Another feature of White Flag Christianity is “Wokevangelism,” a compromised “third way” strategy of defending the gospel by flattering progressives (142).

This sweeping critique sets up Clary’s commendation of “Rugged” or “High-Agency” Christianity in the chapter fittingly titled “The Righteous Pursuit of Power.” Jesus’s parable of the minas in Luke 19 is Clary’s key biblical anchor. The master is an investor, the first two servants are “men of action,” while the third servant is passive, takes no risks, and lives by fear.

Clary concludes, “In the economics of the Kingdom of God, there’s abundant grace for courageous Christians who take Spirit-filled risks and fall flat on their faces” (155). He commends agency, power, and authority as gifts rooted in the creation mandate of Genesis 1:28. Power, according to Clary, “is the ability to do things . . . agency in motion,” while authority is “the right to rule,” commanding or restraining the actions and attitudes of others (162, 169).

Chapter 6 unpacks “High-Agency Christianity,” which includes not only avoiding evil but also “pursuing the glory you were made for.” Clary shows that Christians participate in God’s glory by acting with courage and working with excellence. Chapter 7, “Hall of Courage,” highlights various biblical and contemporary exemplars of virtue, from David the giant slayer to the late activist and evangelist Charlie Kirk. Clary asks, “Are seminaries producing men of courage? Or have they become credential farms that add letters to our bios but fail to equip us with steeled spines?” (219–20).

Chapter 8 outlines “Twelve Disciplines of High-Agency Christianity”: (1) fear God, not man, (2) know thyself, (3) be meek, not weak, (4) reject victimhood, (5) take responsibility, (6) honor the ordinary, (7) grow in wisdom, (8) stop overspiritualizing big decisions, (9) do something you don’t have to do, (10) pursue self-control, (11) do all things with excellence, (12) take Spirit-filled risks.

These disciplines have some affinities with contemporary psychologies like Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life and Beyond Order, Ryan Holiday’s Courage Is Calling, and Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind. Many will likely agree with Clary’s 12 rules, even some whom Clary accuses of promoting Loser Theology.

Commending What Is Commendable

I have some significant disagreements with and questions about Clary’s project, but I also appreciate and commend his calls for moral clarity and Spirit-wrought courage in times when both are in short supply.

Clary rightly calls Christians to stand firm against abortion, homosexuality, and transgender ideology even if our culture celebrates such sins in the name of love, progress, and (intolerant) tolerance. He rightly warns against adjusting our doctrine or apologizing for what the Bible teaches as though “God has a PR problem” (141). I am reminded of Don Carson’s prescient warnings about “subtle ways to abandon the authority of Scripture in our lives,” such as “heart embarrassment before the text.”

Many will likely agree with Clary’s 12 rules, even some whom Clary accuses of promoting Loser Theology.

Courage is one of the dominant themes of this book. Clary asks whether our churches and seminaries are producing men of courage “forged by a lion-hearted faith through the flames of adversity” (220). I take this question to heart as a husband and father, a church member, a minister of the gospel, and a seminary president. I want to be a man of conviction and courage, and I want my sons and my students to “be strong and courageous” (Josh. 1:9). One of my editorial columns in Themelios commended Nehemiah’s prayerful, faith-filled, courageous, and discerning leadership in response to vicious slander, violent threats, and stringent opposition.

Clary issues blunt challenges and bold invitations that many—perhaps especially young men—need to hear. Ditch Call of Duty and embrace real responsibility. Get off the couch and make your life count. Or as the apostle Paul says, “Flee youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart” (2 Tim. 2:22); “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13).

Eight Reasons for Caution

While there is much to commend in this project, there are also reasons for caution and concern.

In the spirit of “test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21), I offer eight questions to reflect on the claims and contribution of Loser Theology.

Who Are the ‘Losers’?

Clary’s provocative title prepares for several different sorts of critique that are bundled together.

First, Loser Theology may refer to Christians who are passive, slothful, fearful, and coasting through life. They need a fiery pep talk to stop burying their minas, read the book of Proverbs, and pursue something that is hard yet good—get married, start a business, serve your community. Clary is perhaps most effective when addressing this group of “losers.”

Then there are Christian leaders whom Clary critiques for their left-leaning theology and limited cultural vision. His most frequent target is Russell Moore, his former theology professor at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He takes issue with Moore’s assertion, “The Bible Belt is teetering toward collapse, and I say let it fall” (5).

Clary accuses Moore not only of progressive sympathies but also of hypocrisy: “When one of the most powerful voices in evangelicalism is telling us to give up power—when one of the most influential voices in evangelicalism is telling us to give up influence—it starts to feel like you’re being played” (7). And he calls out Moore’s “rage” when commenting on the events of January 6, 2021, and more recently on a televised interview with Doug Wilson. Clary does not hold back: “Ironically, CNN was interviewing Pastor Wilson precisely because he’s winning. . . . Moore doesn’t want all Christians to embrace the loser posture, just the conservative ones” (14–15).

Loser Theology also extends to a third group of Christian leaders like Platt and Piper, whose theology largely aligns with Clary’s but whose rhetoric leads people astray into waving the white flag in the public square, embracing unhealthy views of suffering and risk, and feeling guilty about enjoying the good gifts of life. Clary’s argument is imprecise and tendentious at points, offering as evidence claims like “I’ve seen firsthand how people apply this teaching in ways Piper may not have intended” (73) or “Some do just that. I’ve seen it myself” (94).

But throughout this book, Clary himself employs strong rhetoric in calling people to live by faith and take Spirit-filled risks. At times, Clary sounds like Piper and Platt calling people to rejoice in suffering, live radically for Christ, and carry out the Great Commission. I can wonder if the real issue is not a preacher’s strong rhetoric but what aims are worthy of faith-filled risk taking.

Clary’s analysis may have been strengthened by engaging other works like Michael Horton’s Ordinary, which urges readers to turn from frantic striving to seeking contentment in the gospel and God’s “ordinary means of grace.” Yet Clary’s animating concern is not commending everyday means of grace but casting a vision for “recovering cultural ground, rebuilding institutional courage, and training a generation to engage the world with confidence” (22–23).

In What Arena Do We Strive?

Here is the nub of the issue: Clary’s project urges Christians to set their sights on “winning” in the arena of politics and culture. He wants them to not pursue ordinary faithfulness to Christ but also “to move society” like courageous saints of old (271). He writes,

Christianity built the greatest, freest, most prosperous, and most virtuous society the world has ever seen. The Christian West was built by godly men and women with a superior work ethic, competence, and resolve. It should be the same in our day. We should be known for our fortitude, honesty, conviction, loyalty, courage, and faith. No one is going to give it to us. We have to go out there and take it. (271)

Clary’s call is inspiring, but does his vision accord with the teaching of the New Testament? Yes and no, in my view.

It is easy to find biblical support for most of Clary’s “Twelve Disciplines” enumerated above, particularly general exhortations like “fear God, not man,” “grow in wisdom,” and “pursue self-control.” Some others like “reject victimhood” and “stop over spiritualizing big decisions” are more specific applications of pastoral wisdom to American Christians. And Clary’s charge that “it’s time to step into the arena” (272) would have a much different connotation for believers living before Constantine: When Christians like Polycarp and Perpetua stepped into the arena, it was for the public spectacle of their executions.

What Power Should We Seek?

Clary’s discussion of “the righteous pursuit of power” is a mixed bag. He correctly explains that God’s power is fully and gloriously displayed in the gospel, and that Jesus promises his witnesses power to carry out his mission (162–64). Clary concludes, “Therefore, we should regard the totality of the Christian life and obedience as not primarily marked by weakness, but by power” (164).

Clary’s call is inspiring, but does his vision accord with the teaching of the New Testament?

Then he immediately pivots to reject Acton’s famous dictum—“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”—and reasons that righteous people should seek out institutional power. This seems to be an example of equivocation, shifting from one meaning of a term (power) to another meaning midway through an argument. Spirit-wrought power to bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ, pray, and fight sin is different than exercising a political position of power.

Clary confidently appeals to the laudable example of William Wilberforce as “a clear refutation of Acton’s thesis,” but here again the author’s logic does not follow. A member of the House of Commons does not have “absolute power,” and one positive example of a Christian who “learned to wield [institutional power] for the glory of God” does not confirm Clary’s claim that “a righteous man with power becomes more effective at doing good” (165).

Paul Tripp has called pastoral ministry a “dangerous calling,” and other positions of power and authority present their own temptations and trappings, dangers that require spiritual vigilance: “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12).

Nevertheless, I affirm with Clary that godly Christians should be zealous for good works and should not shrink back from opportunities to lead, serve, and promote what is good. I agree with Jonathan Leeman: “Authority is a good and dangerous gift. People can use authority for great good or for great evil.”

We start by exercising godly authority in managing our own households well (1 Tim. 3:4), and then by aspiring to serve God’s household, the church (v. 5). We don’t want to be like Diotrephes, “who loves to be first” (3 John 9, NIV), but seek to follow Christ’s example of radical, self-denying service (Matt. 20:28).

I know from experience that it is a weighty responsibility and amazing privilege to raise children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, to preach God’s Word to the gathered church, to watch over the souls of fellow saints, to manage employees, to lead an organization, to serve on a board, to coach a team. In these and other areas, leaders serve “by the strength that God supplies” that the Lord may receive glory through Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 4:11).

What Sustains Us Through Suffering?

Clary’s treatment of suffering is likewise inconsistent. He acknowledges, rightly, that “sometimes the path to glory runs through suffering,” and that believers must endure trials and even persecution following Christ’s example (208). Yet earlier in the book, Clary takes issue with Piper’s claim that “the call of Christ is a call to live a life of sacrifice and loss and suffering,” which Piper clearly qualifies as “a life that would be foolish to live if there were no resurrection from the dead.”

It may appear that both authors are making similar points, yet Clary claims that Piper’s “rhetoric” glamorizes suffering and leads people to conclude that their main duty is to “get stepped on for Jesus, then go to heaven” (75–76). This is sloppy scholarship and a misleading caricature of Piper’s theology of suffering. Piper in Desiring God calls suffering “the Sacrifice of Christian Hedonism,” and he goes to great lengths to stress that believers do not seek suffering as an end in itself; rather, we pursue “joy in God, whatever the pain,” which powerfully testifies to God’s supreme worth.

Clary goes on to explain,

A high-agency Christian will encounter more opportunities to suffer precisely because they are in motion, enduring painful losses during courses of action they could have avoided. The single man who risks rejection to pursue a godly woman is exercising the same high-agency faith as the missionary who risks danger to plant a church. It’s the same principle applied at a different scale. (209)

Is this in fact the case? I grant that pursuing marriage to a fellow believer and laboring in a distant land to make Christ known are both worthy aims that require faith and faithfulness. But Clary seems to be implying more than this.

Elsewhere in Loser Theology, he pushes back against the assumption that “ordinary, middle-class” Christians are “JV” compared to more spiritual, more radical “Varsity Christians” who serve as missionaries (67). He contends that Platt and other teachers lead many passionate young people to spend years “chasing missionary glory when they should have been providing for a family instead” (95).

While I agree that it is unwise to “hastily” send out missionaries who are motivated by false guilt and glory-seeking, I am concerned that Clary does not acknowledge or encourage worthy motivations for missionary service like zeal for the glory of God (Hab. 2:14), a concern for lost people (Luke 15:4), and a longing to make Christ known to those who have never heard the gospel (Rom. 10:15; 15:20–21).

What About the Global Church?

Loser Theology only occasionally mentions the global church. Clary writes, “In other parts of the world, people routinely face violent, tribal horrors that people in the Christianized West can barely imagine.” He then highlights the example of Nigeria: “Christians are being routinely slaughtered in such numbers to constitute genocide. Entire villages have been burned, pastors beheaded, women raped and taken as slaves, with the international Christian community remaining largely silent” (135).

How does muscular, high-agency Christianity respond to such fiery trials that Christians around the world are facing? The New Testament provides various instructions and examples of prayer, solidarity, and support for suffering saints (e.g., Acts 11:29–30; 1 Cor. 12:26; 2 Thess. 1:4; Heb. 10:32–34; 1 Pet. 5:6–10). I expect that Clary would encourage his congregation to respond in these sorts of ways, yet Loser Theology stresses that these troubles are taking place “in countries that once had a robust Christian cultural influence and surrendered it” (135).

Thus, the persecution of believers abroad is mentioned merely as a cautionary tale “of what happens when evangelical Christians abandon the public square.” He writes, “Are we so foolish to think these things couldn’t happen in the United States?” (145).

What Ambition Should We Rescue?

Clary frequently speaks positively of “ambition.” For example,

Glory scales with ambition. That’s why these things matter. The hope of glory is meant to be a powerful motivator to pursue ambitious goals. The greater the ambition, the greater the participation in glory when it is accomplished. . . . Glory is out on the battlefield, pursuing ambitious goals, and taking risks. (211)

He says that Loser Theology questions or suppresses ambition because it may be tainted by pride or other sinful motives. He commends the examples of “high-agency” billionaire tech pioneers Marc Andreessen and Steve Jobs, who “understand how power can be wielded to accomplish incredible things” (237–38).

Clary does not acknowledge or encourage worthy motivations for missionary service like zeal for the glory of God and a concern for lost people.

But Clary does not discuss either the New Testament’s warnings against “selfish ambition” (e.g., Phil. 2:3) or the New Testament’s clear commendations of the aspiration to live quietly and work with one’s hands (1 Thess. 4:11), the holy desire to serve the church as an overseer (1 Tim. 3:1), or the missionary ambition to preach the gospel where Christ has not been named (Rom. 15:20). I worry that the ambition of “High-Agency Christianity” aligns more with the ideals of this world than with the countercultural values of the kingdom of God.

What Future Hope Fuels Our Mission?

This muscular Christianity is fueled by an optimistic vision of the future here on earth, not by the “pessimillennialism” of Left Behind. Regrettably, Clary does not expound on his own eschatological positions, but four positive references to David Chilton’s works (Paradise Restored and The Days of Vengeance) suggest he is at least sympathetic to a version of postmillennialism.

Further, Clary follows recent postmillennial interpreters in rendering Matthew 28:19 “disciple the nations,” arguing that this command extends beyond “the souls of individuals . . . to the nations they inhabit.” He explains, “Every domain of human life must be brought under the Lordship of Christ, including law, art, education, government, family, and business. The Great Commission doesn’t narrow the Creation Mandate to spiritual matters alone” (161).

Yet Jeremy Sexton has convincingly argued that our Lord does not command us to disciple nations qua nations but individuals from all the nations, since nations as such cannot receive baptism or personal discipleship. Even when biblical arguments fall short under close scrutiny, the modern brand of postmillennialism seems appealing to many. Sexton explains why:

It focuses on this world, to which our hearts are naturally drawn, rather than on the one to come. It promises triumph in this age, and modern postmillennial movement leaders (from Rushdoony to Wilson) inspire their followers to fight for that victory. Postmillennialism rejects retreatism and denounces defeatism, offering a more compelling narrative instead.

What Is True Victory?

Finally, the Winner Theology promoted in this book does not square with Scripture’s vision for true “victory” for those in Christ. The verb νικάω occurs 17 times in Revelation and is typically translated “overcome,” “conquer,” or “be victorious.” The book’s victory motif highlights the tension between the earthly and heavenly perspective on the church’s situation.

On the one hand, the church hardly seems to be winning: John has been relegated to an island, and believers face tribulation, poverty, slander, imprisonment, weakness, rejection, and even death (Rev. 1:9; 2:9–10, 13; 3:8–9; 6:9–11; 20:4). Further, the beast makes war on the saints and conquers them (13:7; cf. 11:7).

On the other hand, God repeatedly promises a glorious inheritance in the new Jerusalem to “the one who conquers” (2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 31; 21:7). Thus Revelation ironically casts the church as conquered conquerors who experience present suffering and defeat yet await ultimate victory. Our perception of true victory is shaped by the Lion of Judah who ironically conquered as the slain Lamb (5:5–6) and who will achieve complete victory over the beast and his allies (17:14; 19:11–21).

“Victory” is not a matter of military might, political influence, or athletic achievement; rather, it entails costly faithfulness to Christ and spiritual conquest against sin and evil. According to Revelation 12:11, God’s people conquer Satan “by the word of their testimony, for they [love] not their lives even unto death.”

Craig Koester explains, “Revelation transforms the images of conquest and victory, which brought high honor in Greco-Roman culture, into a call for Christians to resist aspects of that culture. Faithfulness to Jesus could bring dishonor in society, yet in Christ’s eyes the faithful are worthy of the victory wreath.”

I worry that the ambition of ‘High-Agency Christianity’ aligns more with the ideals of this world than with the countercultural values of the kingdom of God.

Thus, the final book of holy Scripture redefines “victory” for the church this side of glory as we “follow the Lamb wherever he goes” (14:4).

The New Testament includes examples of office holders, military leaders, and other people of means, status, and influence who received the good news of Jesus Christ and were called to be “rich in good works” (1 Tim. 6:18). But the apostle reminds the church, “Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth” (1 Cor. 1:26, emphasis added).

Paul himself has ample reasons for confidence in his Roman citizenship, his Jewish piety, his impressive education, and even his status as an apostle of Jesus Christ, yet he concludes, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him” (Phil. 3:8–9, emphasis added).

Better Challenge

Michael Clary wants masculine, high-agency Christian leaders to “out-hustle, out-work, and outsmart the pagans competing against them,” and he insists it’s time to stop making excuses and “step into the arena” (272).

It’s a bold challenge for the 21st-century American church, but ultimately Clary misses the mark by redefining “winning” and “losing” according to conservative American values and optimistic eschatology rather than the priorities of Jesus and the apostles.

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Editors’ Note: A version of this article will appear in the upcoming issue of Themelios.

When you visit the Faroe Islands, you can’t take your eyes off the scenery—especially on rare days when the sun shines.

As I wrote about after my visit to Copenhagen last year, we can see the conditions that have delivered storm clouds of secularism across much of northern Europe. The combination of Protestantism and established churches has dismantled Christian belief and especially practice in the region.

In this land, the light of gospel radiates more brightly than anywhere else in the Nordic region

The exception can be found on the Faroe Islands, whose windswept fjords feel like the end of world, amid the vast Atlantic Ocean between Iceland and Norway, north of the Shetland and Hebrides isles. In this land where the sun almost never shines (no city in the whole world is gloomier than the Faroese capital, Tórshavn) the light of gospel radiates more brightly than anywhere else in the Nordic region.

Persevering Faith

Why? I asked my gracious hosts as they fed me from the bounty of the sea, as they drove me through horizontal rains around mountain turns, as they honored their ancestors with the story of their persevering faith.

The first clue came in our visit to Fuglafjørður, situated in the northeast on the island of Eysturoy. From our host we learned about his great-grandfather, the 20th-century Brethren missionary and Bible translator Victor Danielsen.

The statue outside his former church commemorates Danielsen’s most notable accomplishment, the first Bible translated for the common people in Faroese instead of the colonial Danish. Today, the Brethren compose at least 10 percent of the islands’ population of some 55,000, including the 29-year-old prime minister, who was on my flight to Copenhagen. He planned to meet with the Danish king.

The Faroese treasure their independence within the Danish Commonwealth. Not until 1938 did the Faroe Islands secure Danish permission to use Faroese in their churches and schools. It’s no coincidence that Danielsen’s New Testament translation published one year earlier, in 1937.

Early Brethren missionaries from the United Kingdom saw no spiritual fruit from their labors for two decades. But with Danielsen’s ministry, the Brethren became champions of the ordinary Faroese, who trace ethnic roots to the British Isles, shared colonial identity to Greenland, and remote island affinity to Iceland.

I’ve observed in studies of secularism in the modern West that thriving Christian movements require medium tension with their host cultures. But opposition isn’t sufficient. The Brethren wouldn’t have gained a missionary foothold only by criticizing Lutheran state religion. Resisting secularism requires channeling the aspirations of the people too.

The Brethren set themselves apart with a high view of biblical authority and countercultural holiness, traits that still characterize their followers even as they’ve ascended into the islands’ globally engaged business elite. But they also came to embody native Faroese values and aspirations as a free and independent people, proud of their ancient island culture. In this they resemble the history of Presbyterian missions in Korea as well as the Persian culture that at least last decade held out against Islamic hegemony in Iran.

Is Secularism a Fad?

After preaching Esther 4 in view of the lovely fjord village of Norðragøta, I spoke with Brethren who have earned PhDs in the United Kingdom, opposed abortion and gay marriage in the Faroese Parliament, and traveled the world to represent local business interests (at least 90 percent of the islands’ exports relate to the fishing industry).

For such a remote setting, the high standard of living surprised me. The Faroes’ GDP per capita exceeds Denmark, even if it falls short of the world-leading Norwegians and their vast oil reserves. Many of the homes appeared new, compared to what I’ve seen in other Nordic countries. Over that succulent meal of whale and shark, I learned that the prosperity dates back only about 30 years, and especially in the last 15, due to the success of salmon farming and rising fish prices, following a collapse of the Faroe economy in the 1990s.

Once again, Faroese Christianity bucks the trend, providing the second clue. Economic development is supposed to deliver secularism. That’s the story Denmark and other Nordic countries tell of their “modern breakthrough,” the transition from the backward, rural 19th century to the progressive, urbane 20th.

But what if secularism is less of an economic inevitability and more of a philosophical fad taking root in the developed West roughly between the 1860s and 1960s? And what if lack of economic development during that century shielded some cultures from the full effects of secularism? Even when those cultures catch up, they don’t necessarily descend the whole ladder to secularism.

In this regard, the Faroe Islands could be similar to regions of the United States, especially the Southeast, that developed later and thus far retain much higher rates of Christian belief and observance compared to regions that prospered during that earlier period. And like the Southeast, the Faroe Islands have become a missionary engine, launching gospel workers throughout Europe and even around the world.

Skip Secularism

Have my new friends in the Faroe Islands helped cracked the code to Christian endurance amid secularism? I wouldn’t put anything past these resilient people tucked inside treeless mountains on the shores of the mighty Atlantic.

What if secularism is less of an economic inevitability and more of a philosophical fad?

Perhaps the period of acute secularism could be skipped, and we’re not waiting for another shoe to drop as the Faroe Islands prosper. Perhaps the Brethren have charted a course for us from the edge of the world. Moderate cultural opposition is necessary but not sufficient. The gospel’s indigenizing principle must also capture the aspirations of people made in the image of God as they enjoy his common grace.

Big breakthroughs can start in small places. Of all people, Christians know that story.

That’s why the Bible puts such an emphasis on careful, cultivated thinking on the world to come as a key priority for the Christian life. And that’s why I’m so grateful for Finally Home: The Christian Hope of Heaven, the latest book from Dane Ortlund, senior pastor of Naperville Presbyterian Church.

He writes with two goals in mind: “theological clarity” and “personal fortification” (2). On both fronts, he wonderfully succeeds.

Theological Clarity

In recent decades, the best-selling books on heaven tend to read more like travel memoirs than works of systematic theology. Books like 90 Minutes in Heaven or Heaven Is for Real have sold millions of copies because, relying on first-hand accounts of near-death experiences, they feed on understandable curiosity about what happens when we die. When you know you’re going somewhere you’ve never been, it only makes sense to ask someone who’s been there what to expect.

Aside from questions about their sincerity, or conflicting details in various accounts, books like this are grounded on the wrong person’s experiences.

For Christians united to Jesus, our anchor is what Christ has been through. Our horizon is set by where he is now (see Col. 3:1–4). And our confidence for anything we know about our future rests on the authority of his Word. Nothing less will stand up to what life will throw at anyone who lives long enough.

Ortlund gives us what God has to say about what he has in store for his people. Of course, there are chapters on the main texts about heaven—texts like 1 Thessalonians 4, or 1 John 3, or Revelation 21. But more than specific passages, he grounds his thinking about heaven in the sweeping storyline of the Scriptures.

We don’t simply need more vivid imaginations to appreciate the richness of where we’re going. We need deeper understanding of the arc of redemption, and of themes like the garden of Eden or the “the house of the Lord,” all of which find their fulfillment in the world to come.

We don’t simply need more vivid imaginations to appreciate the richness of where we’re going. We need deeper understanding of the arc of redemption.

What we need most at the center of our perspective on our future is the person at the center of all the Bible. A direct correlation exists between the tendency to drift into speculation and the tendency to drift away from Jesus. We can fixate on the possible perks and lose perspective on the One who makes heaven what it is. The Bible’s focus remains on the joy of seeing Jesus face-to-face and, in seeing him, becoming like him.

Ortlund’s focus stays there too: “What do we call heaven without Jesus? Hell” (21). All the good gifts of God’s new world are to Jesus what a frame is to a Rembrandt painting: “The frame matters. It’s the environment, the setting, in which the painting lives. But the painting’s the thing” (27).

Personal Fortification

It’s not enough to consider what we need to know about the world to come. We also need to understand why we need to know what we know. Ortlund’s book shines in making these connections for us.

For example, Revelation 21 describes heaven as a world of unblemished cleanness. Why do we need to know that? Because for now, sanctification means everyday war. We feel the guilt of sin even as we cling to our forgiveness.

Heaven is the lining up subjectively of what we already objectively are in Christ. We are positionally clean now. We will also be experientially clean then. (49)

Ephesians 2 describes heaven as a world designed by God to show us the riches of his grace forever. Why do we need to know that? So that when we’re troubled by our own unworthiness, “we may freely set aside our hesitancy to believe that the more it seems we ought not to be in heaven, the more God delights to see us there” (60).

Second Corinthians 4 describes heaven as a world whose glory is prepared by the pain we suffer in this life. Why do we need to know that? Because we crave assurance that our pain is never wasted.

A trampoline sends you only as high up in the air as you have first gone down into it. This life is a trampoline descent into pain and heartache. And as low as we go here, that high will the Lord raise us there. (118)

From beginning to end, this book is written from the heart of a pastor who loves his people and wants to help them connect what they’re going through to where they’re going.

More Devotional than Systematic

In format and tone, Finally Home reads more like Gentle and Lowly than it does, say, Randy Alcorn’s Heaven. Its structure is loose and meditative, not overtly systematic. Its chapter titles are more allusive than concrete, its text subdivided by line breaks rather than subheadings. That means it’s not the kind of book you’ll pull from the shelf for a quick summary of one subtopic or another. But it’s perfectly suited to devotional reading, with an open Bible and a pencil in hand.

It’s not enough to consider what we need to know about the world to come. We also need to understand why we need to know what we know.

Those who enjoyed Gentle and Lowly will surely love this book too. It has the same dramatic earnestness in tone. It draws on the same mine of historical sources, from Goodwin and Brooks to Augustine and Lewis. It’s a steady stream of warm, direct encouragement. And it’s unashamedly focused on our future for the perspective we need on our present. As Ortlund reminds us, “For anyone not united to Jesus Christ, this life is the best it will ever get. For anyone united to Jesus Christ, this life is the worst it will ever get” (1).

I can hardly imagine a Christian who wouldn’t benefit from a close and prayerful reading of Finally Home. Our hearts need the hope of heaven like our bodies need protein. Until Christ returns, we’ll never see a day when we won’t need more.

Sadly, conservative evangelicals haven’t been immune to this crisis. Some people have said that evangelical theology, complementarian views of women in pastoral leadership, and even the penal substitutionary view of the atonement are causes of the abuse crisis.

When my husband and I suffered abuse in the church, and when we shepherded people going through similar hurt, we found the opposite to be true. We kept returning to solid, biblical theology. We even returned to the theology of penal substitutionary atonement (PSA). This doctrine is a valuable help, not a hindrance, if you’re suffering in or shepherding others through an abuse crisis. Here’s why.

1. God cares about sin, so don’t downplay it.

The doctrine of PSA tells us that God cares deeply about sin. He hates it, and it deserves his holy wrath. Psalm 5:4–6 (NIV throughout) says,

For you are not a God who is pleased with wickedness;
    with you, evil people are not welcome.
The arrogant cannot stand
    in your presence.
You hate all who do wrong;
    you destroy those who tell lies.
The bloodthirsty and deceitful
    you, LORD, detest.

God cannot have fellowship with darkness. He must punish sin. We know he cares about dealing with sin justly, because he sent his only Son to take the punishment our sins deserve in our place. Every sin—every act of abuse—will face the fullness of God’s wrath, whether laid on Jesus at the cross or when the unbelieving sinner is judged.

So don’t downplay abuse or the suffering it causes. I’ve found it helpful to remember that God cares about this sin even more than I do. And given sin’s gravity, we also shouldn’t push for forgiveness as our first pastoral response. This could suggest the abuse doesn’t matter much or that it’s not an offense to God. The first response instead should be grief and an acknowledgment of the sin’s seriousness.

2. God exposes sin, so don’t hide it.

In Jesus’s death on the cross, God makes our sin public. He exposes it for the serious offense it is. Colossians 2:13–15 says,

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Every sin—every act of abuse—will face the fullness of God’s wrath, whether laid on Jesus at the cross or when the unbelieving sinner is judged.

God doesn’t hide sin or brush it under the carpet. His plan was the cross, where Jesus was publicly humiliated. Jesus cancels the charge of our indebtedness, not by quietly throwing it aside but by publicly nailing it to his cross and paying for it there. First John 1:7 reminds us that it’s when we walk openly, in the light, that Jesus’s propitiatory blood “purifies us from all sin.”

So we do the gospel no justice if we hide abuse in the church. The work of exposing lies and the power of darkness that’s at work in church abuse is in line with Christ’s triumph on the cross. We don’t need to share unhelpful, salacious details. But we want abuse to be acknowledged and abusers removed. Truth is upheld when we walk in the light.

3. God will work justice, so don’t take vengeance.

Often, victims of abuse don’t see their abusers come to justice. Abuse tends to be hidden and without many witnesses, so sufferers may not get the legal satisfaction they hope for. In such situations, it’s tempting for the victim to look for earthly vengeance instead. PSA can help us reorient our longing for justice.

In Romans 3:25, Paul reminds us, “God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness.”

At the cross, we see that God is righteous in his judgment. The logic of Romans 1–3 shows us what PSA presupposes: God will rightly judge the whole world. That’s why we need penal substitution in the first place, to turn aside God’s wrath against us and our sin. Now, when we look back at the cross, we’re reminded that God will finally judge all: “This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares” (2:16).

Jesus cancels the charge of our indebtedness, not by quietly throwing it aside but by publicly nailing it to his cross.

We should encourage victims of abuse that God will bring justice that will completely satisfy both our needs and God’s demands. Either an abuser will truly repent, and in that case, Jesus will have taken the just judgment for him, or the abuser will remain unrepentant, and he will surely face God’s wrath.

Don’t let the sufferer cling to the false hope of human vengeance but to the certain hope of God’s righteousness. As Paul goes on to say, “Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (12:19).

As you shepherd your own heart and the hearts of others through abuse, don’t be tempted to step away from solid evangelical theology. The best answers for abuse are in the Bible, and a healthy theology of PSA will give you a firm foundation from which to comfort God’s children who have been abused.

This doctrine has helped me return to the cross in my suffering. There, I see that God cares, and I have courage to wait on the God of all righteousness, who will bring every hidden deed to light, and to justice.

If you’re ready to go deeper, Southern Seminary’s PhD program is where that begins. Visit sbts.edu/phd to learn more.

Nobody saw this one coming.

When Allen Levi self-published Theo, it was joining more than 2.6 million other self-published titles that year. The odds of anyone (other than his friends and family) reading it were minuscule—the average self-published book sells around 250 copies over its lifetime.

So why did Allen, who was then 67 years old, bother to join them?

Well, he wasn’t going to—until his best friends begged him to do it.

Who are these friends? And how can we grow friendships like this, where we know each other well, love each other deeply, and encourage each other to use our gifts to love God and neighbor?

Prediction markets have gone from being a marginal concern to a major problem. A White House teleprompter operator was placed on leave in July and is under investigation for making more than $100,000 from predicting what President Trump would say in his speeches. In April, a U.S. special operations soldier was arrested and charged with using classified information as a participant in the operation that removed Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. He made more than $400,000 placing bets on the raid using his insider information.

These situations aren’t just about abusing inside knowledge. They point to something deeply concerning in our culture: Every piece of information has monetary value, and people are trying to cash in on it.

What makes it worse is that the casino’s dopamine rush has come to our pockets via apps like Kalshi and Polymarket. They use the language of prediction markets to push their products, but there’s little practical difference between the services they offer and those marketed by DraftKings or FanDuel. The only real difference is the topic of interest. These modern prediction-market apps are just gambling by another name.

What Are Prediction Markets?

Prediction markets are open markets where people buy or sell contracts, or exchanges, based on the outcome of future events. The prices are based on collective probability, or what traders collectively think will happen. They’re peer-to-peer bets in which participants enter into “yes/no” contracts on an event.

For example, will Christopher Nolan win an Oscar for The Odyssey? The contract will pay $1 if the answer is yes, and $0 if the answer is no. If the contract is trading at $0.75, the market is predicting a 75 percent chance of that outcome. Any new information that may affect the outcome can change the probability or the price of the exchange. Anyone with access to the app can bet on anything from politics to sports to cultural events.

Gambling and prediction markets are more similar than different. The similarities are that they both entail wagering on uncertain outcomes. Additionally, participants either win or lose money based on outcomes.

The major differences lie in the mechanisms by which wagers are made and who determines the probabilities and odds. In sports gambling, the odds are set by the house to reduce the risk and increase the probability of the house winning. The house’s goal is to make a profit, so, in essence, it’s the opponent. The goal for bettors is to beat the house.

Prediction markets are a crowdsourced forecasting model in which prices reflect probability estimates, and participants make trades based on their estimates of outcomes, so the competition is with fellow traders.

Prediction markets are a crowdsourced forecasting model. The competition is with fellow traders.

Another major difference is the institutions that regulate these practices. Sports gambling and the larger industry are regulated on a state-by-state basis through state gaming commissions and boards. Prediction markets are currently federally regulated through the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, though New Jersey is fighting to gain that power.

What’s Wrong with Prediction Markets?

Prediction markets are especially concerning because they circumvent laws governing sports gambling. When the U .S. Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), regulatory authority over sports gambling fell to the states. Where sports gambling is illegal, prediction markets become a means to bypass state laws.

One can place “trades” on performances that are technically considered prop bets, or on the outcomes of the Super Bowl, the NCAA basketball tournament, or any other sporting event. It functions as a loophole for sports betting and, in effect, is simply another gambling platform.

Prediction markets also enable insider trading, or the manipulation of the market for financial gain based on information that isn’t publicly available. In the cases of the teleprompter operator and the special operations soldier, they had inside information that greatly influenced how they traded and placed their wagers, allowing them to profit substantially. Traders who have access to inside information or who can directly shape outcomes essentially become the house, rigging the game in their favor.

However, the most concerning problem is the potential commodification of human life and tragedy. Because prediction markets can apply to a wide range of events, people can place wagers on military operations, casualty counts, natural disasters, pandemics, and even the deaths of public figures. This is disturbing because prediction markets turn human life and suffering into objects of speculation.

In 2025, for example, people were buying and selling contracts on how fast the Los Angeles wildfires would grow and how much damage they would do. Public tragedies become a way to make a quick buck. They also create perverse incentives to potentially make problems worse so that a prediction contract is fulfilled.

Should Christians Participate in Prediction Markets?

Gambling’s harmful effects are well documented, which is why many Christians oppose sports betting. A similar case can be made against prediction markets.

Public tragedies become a way to make a quick buck. They also create perverse incentives to potentially make problems worse so that a prediction contract is fulfilled.

When we consider the harmful social effects of gambling and the fact that the prediction market industry relies on covetousness to fuel its business model, it’s hard to reconcile prediction markets with the fruit of the Spirit. Though gambling has had a mixed reception in the Christian tradition, we should ask whether these endeavors produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22–23).

Christians are called to depend on God’s provision and steward with wisdom and contentment the resources he gives us. Prediction markets tempt us to wager God-given resources on speculation about the future, trying to gain quick money rather than investing wisely. As James reminds us, we “do not know what tomorrow will bring” (James 4:14). Instead of trying to wager money on our predictions, we should be working to cultivate virtue.

Though gambling in its various forms is often marketed as innocent entertainment, we should be wary of the ways it draws us into the love of money, which is the root of all kinds of evil (1 Tim. 6:10). We may be tempted to treat prediction markets as a form of harmless fun, but it’s helpful to remember that “all money ain’t good money.”

Theo of Golden may be the most unlikely breakout bestseller of all time. The book, which has sold around 4 million copies, is the highest selling print book in America this year. Beginning in November 2025, it’s spent every week on the New York Times bestseller list—and it’s been on the Amazon bestseller list even longer. The book has already been translated into 43 languages. There’s a movie agreement in the works with Warner Brothers, and Tom Hanks is involved.

Nobody saw this one coming.

When Allen Levi self-published Theo in 2023, it joined more than 2.6 million other self-published titles that year. The odds of anyone other than Allen’s friends and family reading it were minuscule—the average self-published book sells around 250 copies over its lifetime. And even that number is pulled higher by a few outliers—90 percent of self-published books sell fewer than 100 copies.

So why did Allen, who was then 67 years old, bother to join them?

Well, he wasn’t going to. But he’s got this group of friends, guys he’s known for years, and they get together annually to check in with each other.

“He said, ‘Well, I fulfilled one of my goals in life—I finished this book,’” Dicky Barlow remembers.

“Well, where is it?,” one of their other friends asked.

Allen pointed to his desk.

“What are you going to do with it?” someone asked.

“Nothing,” Allen told them. “I’ve done what I wanted to do.”

“Can we read it?” someone said.

“Sure,” Allen said. “I’ll send you the PDF of it, but it’s not done.”

Allen sent them the book. Some read it on their phone or laptop screens. A couple printed it out and carried it around in a three-ring binder. There weren’t page numbers, so they’d check in with each other with, “What scene are you up to?”

“One morning, I was weeping as I was finishing a chapter,” Bart Scarborough said. “I said, ‘Allen, this book is so powerful. It’s so profound. It’s so rich. It’s so good. You’ve got to publish this.’ And I’m just crying, and I can’t stop crying. . . . All of us were in the same place, weeping, saying, ‘Get this out of that drawer! You have to do something with this.’ And he hemmed and hawed about for a while, but eventually he listened.”

If you’ve got an original copy of Theo of Golden—not a Simon & Schuster, but one of the self-published copies, you can see it on the copyright page. At the bottom, it says, “In collaboration with the MOB Consortium.”

The MOB is what these guys call themselves—I’ll explain why in a minute. In some respects, they’re a normal bunch of old friends, who love to laugh, hang out, and watch college football.

“Yeah, we just happen to have an internationally best-selling author in our group,” Bart said.

This group also includes a public school superintendent, a sports marketing executive, a retired Young Life director, a hospice chaplain, and a Dove Award–winning musician turned physician’s assistant. These are Allen Levi’s best friends, and a major reason Theo of Golden moved out of a drawer and into the world.

How does one become friends with Allen Levi? What’s it like to be in this group? And how can we grow friendships like this, where we see others, know them deeply, and love them well as we encourage each other to be more like Christ?

To find out, I talked to every one of them.

Growing Up in Georgia

Allen grew up in Columbus, Georgia, in the ’50s and ’60s. His family was close—parents, younger brother, and three sisters. They went to church but, for a long time, didn’t really understand the gospel.

Allen’s childhood friends were rambunctious—after school, they’d walk or bike to each other’s houses. In one kid’s yard, they played King of the Trampoline, where they threw themselves from one trampoline to another. As they got older, their activities got a little wilder—drinking, swearing, lying, kissing girls.

This whole time, one of Allen’s closest friends was his brother, Gary, who was just 13 months younger.

“When they were in high school, Gary was trying to be like Allen, and had gotten drunk,” Benson Bottoms said. “And Allen looked over and saw his brother, and he knew that his brother was trying to be like him, and that stopped everything. That changed Allen’s life because he recognized that his life affected people.”

Benson graduated from the University of Georgia a few years after Allen did. While Allen was there, his life was profoundly changed. He met some people who were radically Christian—this was in the mid-1970s, when the Jesus Movement was well on its way.

“I saw the gospel in them in a way that I had not seen before,” Allen told one reporter.

Immediately after college, Allen signed up for law school at the University of Georgia. Even with skipping his homework once in a while, Allen was smart; his grades were good. He got in. That fall, he started doing music ministry, mostly with undergrads.

“This was back in the day when no stadiums in the country really had lights because college football was played in the daytime,” said Ben May, who transferred to the University of Georgia as a sophomore. “Everybody usually had kickoff at 1:00 on Saturday afternoon. Thus, games ended at 4:00, and you had the whole evening. And so this gathering would take place around 5:30 or 6:00, and people would cook out and have some singing.”

Somehow, Ben found out about this regular gathering, which took place at a YMCA camp called Pine Tops.

“It was nothing spectacular, just an old chapel in a big gym,” he said. “I went that night, and I went by myself because I transferred and didn’t know a lot of people.”

Ben sat in the back. When a guy walked in late and introduced himself, Ben shook his hand.

“Then about 15 minutes later, the guy up front says, ‘Well, I saw Allen slip in, so he’s gonna come up now and play some songs,’” Ben said. “And he steps up, says excuse me, and walks up to the front. . . . To quote an overused phrase, he had me at the first note and the first lyric—just the way he wrote and the way he saw the world.”

Ben, who had only been a Christian for about a year, started inviting more and more people to Pine Tops. One of them was his best friend from high school, Dicky Barlow.

“I played guitar at the time, too,” Dicky said. “Well, what I did and what Allen did are two completely different things. I played guitar ’cause maybe girls would like me more. But Allen played guitar because he was really good at it. He wrote just beautiful songs, and they’d capture your heart.”

Maybe you’re wondering, What is it about these songs? Why do these guys love them so much? 

Allen’s music is folksy, acoustical, and nearly always telling a story.

“Allen pays attention,” Ben said. “If you listen to his music, they all comes from something he sees—like a homeless lady handing out bird feed to a group of pigeons that he drove past every day on his way to the law office. He just saw that and turned it into a song about serving, giving yourself to the weak and the small, to those who can’t pay you back. Or seeing a little girl learning to ride a bike in a parking lot with her dad turned into a song about trusting the One who is running at our side. The overtones help me to see these miracles are happening around me every day. But the question is, Am I going slow enough? Am I paying enough attention to see them?”

Allen’s music was telling these guys that he was serious about following Christ, and that he wanted to do it deeply, in every ordinary moment of his life.

Over the few years while Allen was in law school, writing new songs each week for Pine Tops, the gathering grew from about a dozen people to around 500. Ben invited a lot of them, including his friend Benson Bottoms. Although Benson was intellectually curious about Christianity, that kind of life didn’t sound compelling to him.

“I was thinking, Are you kidding me? The night after a game, with my date, I’m gonna go listen to some Christian play a guitar?” Benson said. “And so I never did. And then Ben gave me a cassette tape. This would have been 1983 or so. I listened to the very first song, and it was called ‘Mama Carrie,’ and instantly—I mean, instantly—I just said, ‘Oh my goodness!’”

Allen’s music and stories showcased a gentle, attentive, intentional, communal Christianity. That was the tipping point for Benson, who became a Christian. As soon as he could, he asked Allen to come and play a concert in his area.

By this point, Allen had graduated from law school. He was a young attorney, working and living back in his hometown of Columbus. Bart Scarborough was in a local high school then.

“I was really involved with Young Life, and my Young Life leader was a friend of Allen’s,” he said. “My Young Life leader would sneak us into the back of Allen’s house early in the morning before school and have Bible study because it was a good central location for all these guys.”

Over the next 20 years, Ben, Dicky, Benson, Bart, and Allen ran into each other over and over in Athens (where the University of Georgia is) and in Columbus (where a lot of them were from). It was a tangle of relationships: Benson and Ben lived near each other after college. When Bart moved to Athens to go to school, he met Ben, who was working for the college—and if you’re friends with Ben long enough, you also meet Dicky. Allen was singing for Young Life events at the same time Dicky was speaking at Young Life events, at the same time Bart was on staff there.

They all had a few important things in common—they cheered for the University of Georgia Bulldogs, they were Christians, and they wanted a life like Allen sang about, one rich with kindness and laughter and peace.

MOB

These were the days before smartphones, so the guys kept up with each other the old-fashioned way.

“Allen is a letter writer,” Benson said. “He’s very pastoral. He would hear something from me or hear something about me, and a few days later, I’d get a letter in the mail or phone calls.”

Allen wrote letters while he worked for a decade as an attorney, while he spent two years in Scotland earning a master’s in Scottish fiction, and while he made a significant career shift from law to music.

One day, about four years into Allen’s second career as a full-time musician, Bart asked him to play for a Young Life leaders’ retreat.

“He sang two notable songs,” Bart said. “One was called ‘Camp Uncle Allen,’ and it was about how he had made a magic surprise weekend for his nieces, and he had all kinds of fancy food, and he rented a convertible they could drive around in, and he rented somebody to follow them and video it.

“He also sang a song called ‘My Own Brother,’ and it made you think about friendship. So when we were going home, I said, ‘Allen, we need to have a Camp Uncle Allen for the guys.’”

They combined the two song ideas to come up with a Camp My Own Brother idea, which got shortened to My Own Brothers, which got shortened to MOB.

“I was thinking, These are three of my favorite people [that] I look up to more than anybody else, and I’m asking to start a group with them,” said Bart, who is 14 years younger than Allen and 10 years younger than the other guys. “It feels kind of foolish or silly or something.”

Allen offered his farm as a location, and Bart picked the date, and then it was done.

Weekend on the Farm

Allen lives on 700 acres that his dad bought in 1968. It’s near Hamilton, a town of about 2,000 people.

“Allen said, ‘I’ll do the first meal. I’ll make some chili,’” Dicky remembers. “And it was the absolute worst chili we’d ever had in our life. Allen didn’t know how to cook, and it was like, My goodness, I can’t even take another bite of this. So we started ribbing Allen and then it just became [funny]. We have 25 years’ worth of stories like this.”

These are all guys who love deep questions, and the weekend naturally formed around that. Each man took a turn to share his story, major moments from the past year, and where he was spiritually.

“And then we get to ask questions,” Dicky said.

These weren’t just questions like “What happened next?” or “Do you like your new boss?” They also included things like “Who has God been to you in the last year of your life?” “How is Christ redeeming your suffering?” and “How has God enriched your life through joy and sorrow?”

After three days, the guys had laughed, cried, hiked, fished, and gone out to eat to escape Allen’s cooking. They already knew they wanted to come back the next year. So they did. And every year was just as good as the first.

Tears and Laughter

“We all have this intensity for depth of relationship,” Dicky said. “We have all tasted it, at different places, where you have a really quality relationship with somebody, and they bring out the best in you. And there is sometimes this trepidation, like, I don’t want to tell them this. There’s been plenty of tears shed. I’m sure there have been feelings that have been hurt, and we get mad.”

There’s also a lot of laughing.

“Each one has their own distinct laugh,” Benson said. “Dicky Barlow’s is just so loud, and Ben’s is more of a chuckle. And then Allen is always sort of suppressed. He’s got that big grin and he’s shaking his head.”

If you walk closely with anyone for a period of time, there’s also going to be pain. About 12 years in, Allen’s little brother, Gary, was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

“I wish you could have seen him and his brother together,” Benson said. “Gary was so intense. And Allen—if he didn’t outright laugh, he smiled the whole time, because Gary was hilarious. But part of his hilarity was his intenseness, his strong opinions and thoughts. It made Allen so happy to hear Gary talk about all this stuff.”

After the diagnosis, Allen and Gary, who were both bachelors, moved into their parents’ house. They shared a room with twin beds close enough to reach out your hand, grab your brother’s, and pray.

In 2012, a year after his diagnosis, Gary Levi passed away.

“When Gary died, I remember Allen sitting on a swinging bench, and he couldn’t talk for a long time because every time he tried, he started crying,” Benson said. “He can grieve that way, openly, without shame or fear or embarrassment, because it’s safe with us. Nobody is going to feel uncomfortable or awkward because he’s doing that.”

The guys kept meeting. They heard about each other’s health scares, marriage struggles, and job changes. Then, around 2019, this tight-knit group of guys invited somebody else into their circle.

More Is More

Bebo Norman was in sixth grade in Columbus when Allen Levi came and played guitar for his youth group. Bebo had never seen anybody do that before, and he was intrigued. Nineteen years later, he’d win his first Dove Award.

“I was starting music full-time as a 21-year-old when Allen was starting music full-time as a nearly 40-year-old,” Bebo said. “We connected and from then on maintained a close relationship pretty consistently.”

By 2019, Bebo had retired from music and was earning a master’s degree in medicine. Somehow, he ended up in the MOB text group chat.

“I ended up on that text thread because we all watched University of Georgia football,” he said. “We’re huge Georgia fans. We would text around Georgia games. And then we talked pretty consistently. And eight or nine years ago, they invited me to start coming into this group with them.”

I asked if it was hard to walk into a group that was already so close.

“No, because they’re the type of people you don’t feel threatened by, in opening up and being in a relationship,” Bebo said. “They led by example. They didn’t tell me to walk in and tell my story first. They showed me the ropes and invited me into it. So it did not feel intimidating to me. It was a sweet thing pretty immediately.”

C. S. Lewis once wrote,

In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. . . . Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend.

I don’t know if it was the addition of Bebo, or the length of time the men had been meeting, or the drama of COVID, which quickly followed. But something began to shift in the group around 2020.

“A little bit before COVID, it deepened somehow,” Dicky said. “I don’t really know why. I think we became more transparent with one another. When you taste the safety and the beauty of being loved by someone who doesn’t have to love you, you give a little more and you taste the richness of relationship.”

Around this time, Ben climbed out of a window, onto his roof, with a leaf blower strapped to his back. His goal was to blow the leaves off. But when he slipped, the fall was about 20 feet.

“When they called me and told me Ben was in the hospital, I rushed to the hospital,” Dicky said. “We go into the trauma [unit] and we’re going to see him for the first time. And there’s another guy with us and he said, ‘Hey, I didn’t know you and Ben were friends.’”

“We’re not,” Dicky said.

“Really? What?”

“Yeah, he’s not a friend,” Dicky said. “He’s a part of me.”

Allen’s Book

Ben had broken nine different bones. After three weeks in the hospital and months of physical therapy, he was mostly recovered. And the MOB was closer than ever.

By now, the men knew the patterns of their November meetings. Dicky was going to cry. Ben was going to lay out some theological clarity. Benson would offer to pass on his turn to share his story, and no one would let him. Bebo would always go long. And Allen would talk about the book he was writing.

“He talked for years before he started Theo about how he wanted to write long fiction,” Bebo said. “He just wanted to see if he could. And so when he started, each year we’d get a ‘Yeah, I’ve got a little bit.’”

And then, in 2022, it was done.

“We were like, ‘Hey, how’s it coming with the book?’” Bebo said. “Because he talked about it the year before, that was obviously one of our questions. He’s like, ‘It’s as done as it’s gonna be. I feel like it’s a complete story.’”

“OK, well, where is it?” they asked.

It was in a drawer.

To hear Allen tell it, Theo was a practice book, to get him warmed up to write the story he actually wanted to tell. But he didn’t mind sharing it with some of his closest friends.

When they read it, they all had the same reaction.

“It felt totally like him,” Ben said. “I cried a lot when I read that book—partly because I knew and loved the author, partly because I was like, ‘This is a masterpiece.’”

“I was in a particularly hard season of my life, and it wrecked me,” Bebo said. “It wrecked me. . . . When I first read it, I heard Allen reading it for the first third of the book. I didn’t hear Theo. When it switched for me and I heard Theo and I heard Ellen—I didn’t hear Allen reading Theo; I didn’t hear Allen reading Ellen—that was when I knew it was different. And I suspected that this was a good book.”

Could Theo Be Real?

A few months ago, Russell Moore interviewed Allen. Before he did, Russell asked on social media if anyone had a question they’d like him to ask.

“The question that’s been asked most—which I’ll ask you, but I’ll also give a theory as to what I think’s behind it,” Russell told Allen. “Number one question is ‘Is Theo based on a real person?’ And here’s why I think that question is being asked: I think people are either hoping that there is somebody like Theo out there or they’re afraid that there’s not.”

Allen’s friends have joked with him about this question, each wondering if hey, maybe he was thinking of them when he penned such a virtuous man.

But Allen told Russell, like he’s told everyone who has asked, that Theo is based on his brother, Gary.

Maybe. But here’s what his friends think:

“It makes sense to me how pieces of Theo are Gary,” Bebo said. “Gary was winsome and kind and all those things, but he was very direct and abrupt and pointed. He got to the gospel the second he met you. He didn’t waste time. Theo is much slower.”

“Gary was so generous, and he was very attentive to detail, and he loved to surprise people,” Benson said. “But the tenderness and attentiveness and patience and kindness and not giving away the 92 portraits at one time—that’s Allen.”

“While he might not say he’s Theo, in this group we all look at him and go, ‘Yeah, I know you think it’s Gary, but we kinda think it’s you,’” Dicky said.

“He will say the book’s not about him, that he’s not Theo except aspirationally, and that is true,” Ben said. “But he’s doggone close.”

“Allen is the most Theo person that we all know,” Bart said.

If you’re counting, that’s five for five. Allen’s friends were all recognizing in Theo the same gentle generosity and close attention to people they saw in their friend. But the similarity is even stronger than that.

They knew that when he was at the University of Georgia, he saw and developed friendships with people no one else did—like those serving the meals in the dining halls. They knew that when he was in Scotland, he helped an elderly widower home through the icy streets. They knew he’d just spent a year writing a song every day, which made him pay attention to everything.

And then there’s this: In 2018, Allen released an album called People in My Town.

“So he took a group of people that lived within a few miles of him, and he went and introduced himself and asked if he could talk with them,” Benson said. “And then he wrote a song for that person, and he had Gary Pound, the artist, make a portrait of them. I think there were seven.”

Allen invited them all over to his house.

“He has this great round table, where you can see everybody’s face,” Benson said. “He served them dinner, and one by one, he handed them their portrait, and then sat beside them with his guitar and played the song that he wrote for them. And of course, they just sobbed.”

When Allen’s friends read Theo of Golden, they cried because it was good. But they also cried because they recognized the protagonist.

Later, Dicky said of Allen, “He’s been writing [this book] his whole life.”

The Bestowal

Publishing a book is easier said than done. Allen floated his manuscript past one publisher, who turned him down. Rather than continuing to knock on those doors, he decided to self-publish.

He didn’t know how, so he hired his niece Aron Ritchie to help. They worked hard at it. Aron researched how to publish a book. The two of them updated his website, brainstormed a list of connections he could ask to spread the word, and made plans to connect with book clubs.

It was a lot of effort for something that could go nowhere.

So just before the book came out, Allen’s friends decided to encourage him during one of their MOB weekends.

“It was really Benson’s idea,” Bart said. “There’s this great restaurant in Columbus and I happened to know the owner and asked her if she would be willing to come out and do a meal for us. And then I reached out to Gary Pound, who did all those portraits in Fountain City Coffee, and said, ‘Hey, would you do one of Allen?’”

Fountain City Coffee is the real-life coffee shop in Columbus that inspired Allen’s fictional coffee shop in Golden. Portraits really do hang on the walls, drawn by Allen’s friend Gary.

While Bart and the other guys were making these calls, they didn’t tell Allen what they were planning.

“The van pulled in,” Benson said. “And Allen is very protective of the farm in general, but I think that’s when he had sold some of it, and he did not want anybody going on that side of the property. And so when that van went by, Allen got alarmed and walked out there, a little defiantly and protective. The van turned around, and he’s of course being kind, but he’s [got this] look on his face, and he’s thinking, ‘What is going on?’”

The doors opened, and two women emerged with aprons on.

“And Allen melts, and then we show them in the kitchen,” Benson said. “They served us an amazing meal. When Allen came in, the table was decorated, and he’s curious, but nothing’s been revealed yet. So the meal’s wonderful. Then the portrait was brought out, and Allen stands up and opens it and looks at it. And then we went around the room and told him what we see in him.”

Poor Allen didn’t stand a chance.

“He put his head on the table, his arms folded on top of his head, and he didn’t cry—he wailed,” Benson said. “And it wasn’t for 30 seconds. It was four or five minutes. And the two chefs came out and were watching and were just astonished, and they had tears in their eyes. I don’t cry, but I was crying, because to see Allen knew that he was really loved by us, and that we would do something like that . . .”

At one point, through his tears, Allen managed to get out, “This is what Gary would have done,” which made him cry even harder.

“It was connected with the grief, which really makes me sad,” Benson said. “I wish Gary was around to be with Allen through all of this. That was one of the most beautiful nights of my life.”

Here’s how Allen explained it later, in a public talk he did with Dicky.

“It was an expression of their affirmation and their love for me,” he said. “Theo of Golden would never have seen the light of day but for these guys getting behind me and pushing me. And I pray for all of you that you’ve got people like that in your life who would have your portrait done and tell you things about yourself that you could never believe to be true.”

Then he grinned at the audience.

“I will tell you a dilemma that they created for me,” he said. “So somebody gives you a portrait of yourself—what are you going to do with it?”

Breakout Bestseller

In the first few months, Theo of Golden sold 3,000 copies. A lot of those were to Allen’s friends and family.

“I bought a case of them,” Bebo said. “I gave them away for Christmas gifts that year to a lot of people. And I remember writing in the front of them, ‘I have no idea if this is actually a good book because I am so biased. It’s written by a man that I love, a dear friend, and it was read at a season in my life where I needed kindness more than anything in this world. And it wrecked me. But I need to give this book to you, because you have shown kindness in my life. I hope that you’ll receive kindness in this book.’”

“We all bought our 40 or 50 copies and gave it to friends,” Dicky said. “Allen has hundreds and thousands of friends. . . . At some point he wrote us and said, ‘Hey, we’re no longer in the red! We made a dollar!’ And we celebrated. And it kept on going. People would start talking about it, and they’d sell more.”

In 2024, Allen sold about 25,000 copies of Theo, which was 24,000 more than he was hoping for. He and Aron thought sales would begin to drop in 2025; instead, they climbed even higher. Pretty soon, they were selling a thousand copies a day.

That caught the attention of large publishers, who were so interested they got into a bidding war. Two years after Allen published Theo, Simon & Schuster rereleased the book. Four months later, it had sold more than a million copies in the United States alone. Three months later, it had sold another 1.5 million copies.

Theo of Golden has been read by thousands of book clubs, including Katie Couric’s. Oprah and Jenna Bush Hager both raved about it. Tourists are flocking to Fountain City Coffee and other landmarks in Columbus fictionalized in the novel.

His friends can hardly believe it.

“We all felt like he had the skills to do it,” Bebo said. “But who thinks they can actually write a novel that’s gonna be anything?”

“Gobsmacked,” Ben said. “You just can’t believe it.”

“We look at this and we’re like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Dicky said. “Unbelievable. Just crazy.”

A Christian Life

Readers of Theo report almost conversion-like experiences: “It changed me instantly,” said one. “My heart shattered into thousands of pieces,” said another. A third wrote, “I, too, have tasted heaven reading this.”

That’s interesting, because the point of Theo is fairly simple—in fact, it’s the same message that’s in Allen’s songs. He’s describing a life that is gentle, attentive, intentional, and communal—a life of love rooted in and empowered by the love of God. In other words, a Christian life.

“Maybe what Theo has done, in our societal moment, [is to show us that] we long for people like that to be real, and to be in our lives, and to be those people,” Ben said. “It’s aspirational for sure. It’s hopeful. It hearkens to what really matters. Maybe we can all be generous, thoughtful, kind-hearted. We can all take action to do those things.”

In our cultural isolation, there’s a hunger to be known by a community of people, he said.

“My old pastor Bob Flayhart would say, ‘The gospel is for me, but it’s not about me,’” Ben said. “And that is really the community that Theo had—it was for him, but not about him. It’s not about you; it’s about taking what you have been given and giving it to others.”

You might think that a man who is now a best-selling author, asked to do more interviews and events than anyone has time to do, executive producing a major motion picture, and working on another book, might not be able to hang out quite as much as he used to.

For Allen Levi, it’s the opposite. The MOB has added a day to their annual November gathering—now they hang out for four days instead of three. Then they added Zoom calls every other month or so. For 90 minutes, they talk about Dicky’s son getting married, what retirement is going to be like, and what’s going on with Theo.

“I think we all probably needed each other a little bit more,” Bart said. “Certainly, being together more has made us want to be together more. It’s made us want to talk more. So that feels really good.”

In many ways, this friend group carries the pattern of sanctification. As these men slowly, consistently, over a long period of time, push each other toward Jesus, they can see richer and deeper virtues developing in themselves and in each other.

Allen’s book has pushed them further in the direction they were already going. Benson, who is a hospice chaplain, has taken up letter writing. Dicky, who is a school superintendent, led his leadership team through a Theo of Golden study this year. (“We had the deepest, most thoughtful conversations,” he said.)

All the MOB members want to pay better attention to their own lives, to notice people, to ask about their stories, and to love them well.

They’re following Allen’s example, and I was starting to get suspicious about something.

Is Allen Levi perfect?

Be a Friend like That

“By no stretch is Allen Levi perfect,” Bebo said, laughing. “And he will be the first to tell you.”

“No, he is not perfect,” Ben said. “He is very self-aware in that regard, and I think the gospel means so much to him because he knows of his own depravity. It’s the same tension as ‘You’re far worse than you think you are, and you’re more loved and accepted than you can hope.’ Allen lives that out.”

“No, and he would be the first to tell you he’s not perfect,” Bart said. “But he really personifies Christ in lots of ways. He’s broken, he’s fallen, but he’s trying to center his life around Jesus and allow Jesus to shape him and help him. And so when he does screw up and mess up and stumble and fall, he’s got this deep well of Christ’s [grace], this deep centering on Jesus that helps bring him back to health.”

Allen Levi is just a guy, living in a small town in the South, reading his Bible and loving his neighbors and using his gifts to the glory of God. In Theo, he’s given the world an example of a man who has suffered loss and heartache, who sees people around him, and who gives them his careful attention and genuine affection. Allen and Theo are showing the world a compelling Christianity.

I don’t know if you have a friend like that. But I do know you can be a friend like that.

“My advice might be to put down the smartphone, look people in the face, and just go for it,” Bart said. “If you have a group, throw it out there. Be bold and courageous, and say, ‘Hey, what if we got together and did this more regularly? Or what if we were a little more intentional about our friendship?’”

When you do this, be sure the friendship can be built on something bigger than yourselves. Ben is old enough to have seen baseball friends and soccer friends and football friends come and go.

“You may have some commonalities,” he said. “You certainly have children in common who are playing on this team or doing this recital or dance team or whatever it might be. The illusion is that you think, Well, these are my friends. But you’re only friends for a season because you’re only friends because of the mutual interest that your children have, and so the children are what are bringing you together.”

The key to a deeper, longer-lasting friendship is that it has to be built on something deeper and longer-lasting, he said.

“And the deeper the object of what the friendship is about, the deeper the friendship,” he said. “If it’s about work, well, that’ll go so far. If it’s about your kids’ youth sports or their activities or Scouts, it’ll only go so far. But if it’s about ultimate things and things that matter deeply, then I think there’s a real chance for it to last.”

When you find those people, work at that friendship.

“Intentionality, patience, and—what is the Tim Keller book?—self-forgetfulness,” Dicky said. “If you want to make good friends, see the good in other people and tell them what you see. As you do that, they will begin to tell you more about themselves. You don’t make friends by telling people who you are. You make friends by extracting who they are.”

You can do this at church, in week after week of drinking coffee with someone after a service. You can do this in your Bible study or discipleship group or small group. You can do it in quarterly Zoom calls or annual weekend retreats.

Remember when I told you about the inscription at the bottom of the copyright page of the self-published copies of Theo? “In collaboration with the MOB Consortium?”

Well, after that, there’s another set of secret initials—TTK.

When the MOB is together for a meal, they always bow their heads to pray. After the “Amen,” they lift their glasses to each other. But they aren’t toasting success, or happiness, or their wives and children, or even each other.

Instead, they toast the foundation of their lives, the reason they’re together, and the destination they’re helping each other aim for.

They say, “To the King!”

Now, when you imagine Eden, have you considered how our gardening work continues today? While all human lives are marked by sin this side of the fall, believers are still called to work as God’s gardeners. One fundamental way we garden is as members of our local churches.

Garden Paradise, Given and Promised

Human history began in a garden. God formed Adam and Eve in his image, and he commissioned them to exercise dominion by expanding the borders of Eden to fill the earth (Gen. 1:28–30, 9:1–3). God wanted people to turn the entire world into a garden paradise where he would walk with them (3:8; Lev. 26:12).

Since the fall, we’ve been barred from Eden. We’re all born separated from God, cast out from his presence (Gen. 3:24). But God wasn’t done dwelling in a garden with his people. Scripture makes clear that he still plants a garden for himself, a kingdom of priests who put his rule on display in the world.

Throughout the Old Testament, the theme of God dwelling with his people in a garden emerges again and again. Here are three examples:

• God commissions Adam to “work” and “keep” the garden (2:15). Those same gardening verbs are used when God instructs Moses about the priests’ duties in the tabernacle and temple (Num. 3:7–8; 8:25–26; 18:5–6; 1 Chron. 23:32; Ezek. 44:14).
• God uses garden imagery to describe the tabernacle and the temple themselves. The lampstand, for example, is modeled after the tree of life (Gen. 2:9; Ex. 25:31–40). The wood carvings in the temple should also remind us of Eden (1 Kings 6:18, 29).
• Later biblical authors show how the river flowing out of Eden (Gen. 2:10) points to the life-giving rivers that will flow from the temple in the new heavens and earth (Ps. 36:8–9; Ezek. 47:1–12; Rev. 21:1–2; 22:1–2).

God’s Garden, His People

The prophets often use garden imagery to teach God’s people about who they are, what God has done for them, and what he will do for them in the future. They look forward to the fulfillment of God’s plan of redemption, a plan that culminates with his making them into a garden where he dwells.

Scripture makes clear that God still plants a garden for himself, a kingdom of priests who put his rule on display in the world.

In Isaiah 5:1–7, for example, the prophet uses a gardening analogy to explain how the Lord will discipline his people for their disobedience. He concludes with this warning: “For the vineyard [or garden] of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are his pleasant planting; and he looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, an outcry!” (v. 7).

Later, Isaiah uses the same garden imagery but promises that redemption will come: “For the LORD comforts Zion; he comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD” (Isa. 51:3; see Ezek. 36; Joel 2:3).

The Old Testament pattern is clear: God is making a new garden, one to which the tabernacle and temple pointed. In that new Eden, the Lord will dwell with his people again, and they will once again serve as his priestly gardeners.

Christ, the True Gardener

The New Testament takes all these themes and shows how they culminate in Christ. A staggering number of Jesus’s parables include agricultural examples. In the parable of the tenants, for example, Jesus presents the Father as a farmer and himself as the farmer’s rejected son. Jesus inherits the farm, the fruit-bearing vineyard that is his people (Matt. 21:33–46). Then, through his death and resurrection, Jesus makes a way for those who were far from God to dwell in his presence again. He welcomes us back into the Holy of Holies, into the garden.

Jesus is buried in a garden (John 19:41), and after the resurrection when Mary Magdalene comes to the empty tomb, she makes a false assumption that’s nevertheless a vibrant depiction of Jesus’s identity. She “[supposes] him to be the gardener” (20:15).

Here at last is the True Gardener emerged from his garden-tomb as the firstfruits of the new creation. Christ’s empty tomb is the beachhead of the Lord’s eternal garden. And as the good news of his resurrection spreads, so too does this new Eden.

The Church, the Lord’s Garden

Where is this garden now? Where the Lord dwells. Christ dwells by his Spirit in each of his redeemed people (Rom. 6; Eph. 1). And he dwells in us corporately as his church (Matt. 16:19; 18:20).

Jesus makes this explicit in John 15. Because of our union with Christ, the church is the Lord’s vine. He tends to his people and gives them his life so they grow spiritual fruit. This was the Old Testament promise, and it’s fulfilled in Christ.

In the Old Testament, the Lord’s presence is depicted as a shining lamp in the tabernacle with seven lampstands around it (Num. 8:1–2). Revelation shows that tree-of-life imagery’s fulfillment in local churches (see 1:12–13, 20). Paul also uses gardening imagery to describe local church life: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth” (1 Cor. 3:6). These shining lights—these city-on-a-hill communities of redeemed, repentant sinners—are the joy-giving, life-sustaining garden of God.

God’s people are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession” (1 Pet. 2:9), and we tend the Lord’s garden-church together. As Jonathan Leeman writes, “Church membership . . .  makes your priest-king job assignment public and practical.”

Get Your Hands Dirty in the Lord’s Garden

Are you tempted to be impatient with fellow church members? Impatience can reveal that we think of the church as a grocery store that caters to our desires. Yet the church and our relationships within it are a garden to be tended. Take James’s exhortation to heart: “Be patient . . . until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth” (James 5:7). Trust the Lord to bring the “early and the late rains” in believers’ hearts.

Christ’s empty tomb was the beachhead of the Lord’s eternal garden. And as the good news of his resurrection spread, so too did this new Eden.

All Christians are called to garden work, and pastors are called to model it—to labor diligently like farmers as we cultivate the health of the saints under our care. (2 Tim. 2:6). Our churches are “God’s field” (1 Cor. 3:9). This simple truth should reorient the way all Christians view the church.

Are you cultivating the local garden where the Lord has placed you? Do you see fellow believers as souls to tend? Are you getting to know the saints in your church the way a careful gardener knows the seasons and needs of particular plants? As we use our gifts to minister to one another (Eph. 4:11–13), we’re tending, watering, weeding, pruning, and trusting that the Lord of the harvest, the final Gardener, will bring growth.

Dear Christian, don’t be a consumer. Embrace the good call of the Lord: Be a gardener.

However, I tend to agree with C. S. Lewis in “On the Reading of Old Books”:

For my own part I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that “nothing happens” when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.

I’d skip the pipe, but the scene he describes is familiar to me. As helpful as many devotional works are, some of the high points in my spiritual life have come when I was poring over a hefty volume of systematic theology. That may reflect my personality, but I’m sure I’m not alone.

This list of recently published (or republished) theological texts includes books that can encourage Christians at various stages of spiritual maturity and equip them to serve the church.

1. Ronni Kurtz, Theology for Life: A Joy-Filled Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Baker, 2026)

It’s hard to get started in the study of Christian doctrine, especially outside academic institutions. Theology has a specialized vocabulary that can take years to become fluent in. And sometimes in the middle of a 70-page chapter on the doctrine of sin, our eyes glaze over as we try to comprehend various metaphors for a failure to conform to God’s holiness.

Theology for Life is an introduction to Christian theology pitched for the person in the pews. More significantly, as the subtitle suggests, Kurtz’s goal is to help people have a sense of joy in learning important Christian truths. This is an excellent resource for churches seeking to introduce systematic theology to the whole congregation. It’s also the sort of book that can reignite a weary pastor’s love for God amid a grueling ministry.

2. Daniel Akin, Kenneth Keathley, and Keith Whitfield, A Theology for the Church, 2nd Edition (B&H Academic, 2026)

I was just starting seminary when the first edition of A Theology for the Church was published. It was revised in 2014 and now has been more thoroughly updated in 2026. Each version has gotten better with new and updated chapters.

My favorite aspect of this volume is that it’s written with the church in view. The content is unquestionably academic and may be heavy sledding for the average church member, but it’s especially helpful for pastors and church leaders because the arguments begin with what the Bible says. Each chapter also explores what the church has historically believed as well as how each doctrine affects life in the contemporary church. It’s written from a Baptist perspective but could serve other traditions well.

3. Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley, Essentials of Reformed Systematic Theology (Crossway, 2025)

This single volume helpfully summarizes the full four-volume set. Christians seeking a deeper understanding of contemporary Reformed theology will benefit from this resource. The adaptation of the text is smooth; readers won’t be left wondering what they’re missing from the more expansive set. Beeke and Smalley present essential doctrinal content in chapters both concise and well written. This is an ideal resource for every Christian’s home library.

4. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, three vols. (P&R, 2025)

Many of the best theology texts come from decades of classroom experience. Turretin spent roughly 30 years teaching theology in Geneva in the 17th century. When you’re reading Turretin, you’re reading mature Reformed theology that has helped shape generations of Presbyterian and Reformed theologians both directly and indirectly.

As helpful as many devotional works are, some of the high points in my spiritual life have come when I was poring over a hefty volume of systematic theology.

Sometimes it’s interesting to read older theological texts as historical artifacts. But Turretin’s elenctic approach is refreshingly different from standard systematic theologies because it involves answering questions framed as objections to Reformed theology from nonbelievers and those from other traditions. In many cases, this helps the apologetic nature of theology shine through. It’s surprising how many of the answers shed light on 21st-century theological controversies.

5. Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics: A System of Christian Theology (Baker Academic, 2026)

I didn’t know it until recently, but one of the fathers of biblical theology also wrote a systematic theology. That’s not as surprising as it might initially seem, because when he published this five-volume work in the late 19th century, there was much less distance between disciplines like biblical studies and theology.

Vos’s Reformed Dogmatics wasn’t translated into English until Lexham Press released the five volumes between 2014 and 2016, with the publication of the consolidated single-volume version in 2020. This new edition is a rebranding under the Baker Academic label. Nevertheless, budding theologians curious about the Reformed tradition will find an eloquent and well-argued approach in Vos’s volume.

6. R. Scott Clark, The Heidelberg Catechism: A Historical, Theological, and Pastoral Commentary (Lexham Press, 2025)

As catechisms become more popular among evangelicals, questions are likely to arise about how the topics were selected and why the answers were phrased in specific ways. This volume emphasizes the biblical support for specific questions and answers from the Heidelberg Catechism, but it also offers historical and theological explanations for the language included in the classic discipleship tool.

Whether we’re asking what our only comfort is in life and death (question 1) or trying to understand the nature of good works (question 91), this book is a rich resource for pastors, parents, or budding theologians.

7. J. V. Fesko, John Muether, and D. Blair Smith, eds., The Westminster Confession of Faith: A Comprehensive Commentary on Its History, Theology, and Application (Crossway, 2026)

The Westminster Confession of Faith may be the most important articulation of Protestant theology. Written roughly a century after the start of the Reformation, when answers to many key doctrinal questions had been hammered out, this confession serves as a touchstone for various Protestant traditions.

The faculty of Reformed Theological Seminary collaborated to produce this helpful commentary that will serve Presbyterians, Baptists, and other theologians in the Protestant tradition well. It’s a helpful reference for pastors and seminary students alike.

“One more dollar,” the man answered.

While this is often (and probably wrongly) attributed to John D. Rockefeller, it might as well be attributed to all of us. Ask most people when they’ll finally have enough money, and the honest answer is “When I have a little more.”

The goalposts never stop moving. We compare ourselves to a neighbor, a college roommate, an influencer—sure, we’re doing alright, but we don’t have as much as he or she does. The number we once called a dream becomes the number we call a starting point.

Call to Define Enough

You don’t have to be a Christian to see the danger. In The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel devotes an entire chapter to the problem. He tells stories of people like Bernie Madoff who “already had everything: unimaginable wealth, prestige, power, freedom” and threw it all away because they wanted more.

His diagnosis is simple. They “had no sense of enough.”

Housel’s larger argument is that money is a soft skill: “How you behave is more important than what you know.” Your best shot at keeping your reputation, your family, your friends, and your happiness, he writes, is “knowing when you have enough.”

But when our desires keep expanding, how are we supposed to know that?

God Is Enough

Christians should be natural leaders in this pursuit. Scripture speaks about money more than almost any subject except God himself, and it consistently warns against greed, that restless appetite for more.

I first came across the term “theology of enough” in Craig Blomberg’s excellent work Neither Poverty nor Riches. It begins with considering the complete fullness of God. Theologians have a word to describe this: aseity, from the Latin a se, “from himself.” This means God depends on nothing outside himself for his existence, his purposes, or his joy. A.W. Tozer and other theologians call this God’s self-sufficiency.

In Psalm 50:12, God says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.” He has no needs, no wants, no lack. He receives no upgrades. Everything flows out from a God who is already, eternally, full. God is enough in himself for himself.

It’s important that God has chosen to reveal himself in this way. He is Lord, a title John Frame defines as identifying God’s “control, authority, and presence in blessing and judgment,” and is LORD, the covenant-making and covenant-keeping God (Ex. 3:14). We only know that God is enough because he has revealed himself as such as Lord of all creation and as LORD in covenant with his people.

We should depend on Scripture and the Holy Spirit to help us constantly remember this truth. Paul writes in Romans, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (11:36).

This is a refrain of remembrance of who the one true God is. It’s the beginning and continuing call to worship him, which is where a theology of enough must start.

God Is Enough for Us

God has no need for our money, our wealth, or our stewardship. When we make decisions about our money and possessions, we’re only working with what he has first given us (Luke 16:1–8; Titus 1:7). We’re like children who take money they’ve received from their dad to buy him a gift. God doesn’t need the number of zeros at the end of our balance sheet or written on our check to the local church.

Not only that, but his generosity to us is like an overflowing cup (Ps. 23:5), finding its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ. The fall was a clear declaration by man that God wasn’t enough. Since then, man’s search for meaning has always included the endless pursuit of enough in different ways—usually in more money or power, and always leaving us wanting.

Instead, Jesus calls, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden [or who never have enough] . . . and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–29). All our striving, self-justification, and declaration of “not enough” was buried deep in the ground at Christ’s death. He conquered it with the final declaration in his resurrection that he is enough for us.

Resting in Enough

God’s generosity finds its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

A theology of enough, grounded in this truth, is the foundation of contentment. In 2 Corinthians 9:8, Paul writes about giving and stewardship: “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” The Greek word behind “sufficiency” was a term often used in Stoic ethics for self-reliance. But Paul turns it inside out. Our sufficiency isn’t from ourselves; it is, as Blomberg puts it, a “God-sufficiency.”

God is at the center of it all. He’s the One who is enough in himself, who provides us his grace and sufficiency at all times. From that position of “enough in God,” we can abound in every good work.

That includes the good work of self-discipline and stewardship. Blomberg challenges Christians to “establish a voluntary consensus on both minimum levels of income and resources . . . and maximum levels of consumption and expenditures on self.” This challenge is best answered in discipleship, as individual Christians work through these issues together in the context of the local church.

We can give freely, save wisely, and live prudently because it’s all from God alone, who is enough for us.

DeYoung uses categories from Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology to provide a framework for discussing Christian nationalism. DeYoung then goes on to ask a question: “If someone calls himself a ‘Christian nationalist,’ what does he mean?” He offers 15 answers someone might give to that question.

In This Episode

00:00 –  Charles Hodge on Christian nationhood

12:07 –  Defining modern Christian nationalism

20:13 –  Nations and identity debates

29:07 –  Navigating political engagement dangers

Resources Mentioned:

• Systematic Theology by Charles Hodge
• How the News Makes Us Dumb by C. John Sommerville

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But this story didn’t hold up. Caleb Flynn—a former American Idol contestant—was convicted September 29 of murdering his wife, after large amounts of evidence demonstrated he was determined to rid himself of her and be with his affair partner, a fellow singer from his church.

Videos from the trial show Flynn sitting stoically while attorneys read text messages between him and his lover, pining for his wife’s death. Minutes before he was sentenced to life without parole, his wife’s family read letters to him from his daughters.

In that moment, it’s hard not to think that Flynn was experiencing a small but real taste of hell: a just judgment on his life as the words of those who once loved him remind him of what he has forever lost.

How does a worship pastor get here?

When Greed Leads to Murder

Some will say the answer is lust. They’re not wrong. No Christian should underestimate the power of illicit fantasy. What we give our imaginations to will demand our actions soon enough. Adultery is devastating. No wonder Solomon asked his son to consider, “Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned?” (Prov. 6:27).

But focusing only on lust would be a mistake. Lust is why a covenant was broken, but it might not be why a trigger was pulled. The man wearing the “God-Sized Vision” sweatshirt will spend the rest of his life in prison not only because of lust but also because of greed.

In American society, any dissatisfied spouse can serve divorce papers for almost any reason. There was no legal, political, or logistical reason why Flynn had to stay with his wife over his lover. It’s highly unlikely that divorcing would even have stopped him from having partial custody of his daughters.

So why did Ashley Flynn need to die? Because a divorce would have meant confessing his adultery, not just to his wife but to the whole community. It would have meant stepping away from the Sunday-worship spotlight. It would have meant losing the lucrative career working for his father-in-law.

We can’t look inside Flynn’s heart and know the complexities of his motives. But I suspect Flynn wanted adultery without paying adultery’s price.

Greed Is Subtle

Many of us know how deceptive lust is. But for many evangelicals, greed is a harder snake to catch. For one thing, unlike lust, greed can disguise itself as virtue. A Christian man or woman would be ashamed for fellow church members to see a steamy browsing history, but he or she would probably expect support and affirmation for an all-consuming career ambition.

I suspect Flynn wanted adultery without paying adultery’s price.

Greed can be subtle. It’s easy to hear the word and only imagine Ebenezer Scrooge forbidding Bob Cratchit from warming up the frigid office. But greed isn’t only about money. It’s about holding too tightly to our identity and accomplishments.

When a celebrity pastor commits a disqualifying sin and expresses initial remorse, why can’t he live out the rest of his life in quiet, humble, anonymous repentance? In many cases, it’s greediness for the esteemed identity as a leader and preacher. He cannot imagine himself without the trappings of pastoral ministry, the same way Scrooge couldn’t imagine himself sparing more money for the poor.

Or maybe Flynn (who hasn’t confessed) thought his damage control would minimize the sin. I wonder if Flynn reasoned to himself that by killing his wife, he was sparing her the agony of betrayal and divorce. Perhaps he even thought (perversely) he was being heroic, accepting the stain on his conscience while sparing his wife the hardship of abandonment.

If so, this too was greed: for control. He was unwilling to let his choices incur their natural consequences. Had Flynn simply followed his adultery to its marriage-splitting conclusion, he may have even found grace that would lead him back to repentance. The Prodigal Son should never have left home, but eating with the pigs brought him back. By contrast, Judas never gave himself the opportunity to learn that Peter, too, had betrayed the Lord. Had Judas accepted the shame and disgrace, rather than reject it through suicide, he too might have been asked, “Do you love me?”

Control, like money, is an asset we’re anxious to have, and then once we think we have some, we’re anxious to get more. The German philosopher Hartmut Rosa sees similarity between the way the modern world pursues money and the way it pursues control. When we accept the uncontrollability of the world, however, we find that what makes life threatening is also what makes it meaningful. The same lack of control that scares us also moves, changes, and blesses us.

Greed’s Greatest Deception

Greed’s greatest deception is that the only way to have is to grasp. That’s why we need to remind ourselves all the time of two things: We aren’t in control, and the One who is cares about us much more than he cares about anything else in his well-cared-for world.

Greed’s lies are always exposed. For Flynn, that moment came via his daughters’ words. One of them wrote to her dad,

Mommy was the perfect person. The absolute perfect person. What did she ever do to make you hate her so much?

She loved you and she cared for you. She took care of you. She loved you with all her heart.

She was my best friend. And then you chose to kill the only mother I ever had. I miss her so much. So, so, so much. You have no idea.

His daughter understands that her father didn’t desire happiness too much. He desired it too little. Greed didn’t just deform his heart and poison his actions. It blinded his vision.

Greed’s greatest deception is that the only way to have is to grasp.

But his daughter has refused to give up on him. She concluded her letter, “Remember, there’s still a chance. There is a choice for everything. I hope you will bring Jesus back into your heart.”

Now Caleb Flynn has lost all control, imprisoned for the rest of his life. But he remains trapped by greed, until he can finally repent, confess, and receive God’s grace.

These laws, passed during the 1950s, enforced race-based discrimination in all sectors of South African life. Racial groups were assigned separate residential areas. Roughly 80 percent of South Africa’s land was set aside for the white minority population. Millions of black South Africans were forcibly removed from their homes—regardless of how long they had lived there or whether they owned them—and required to relocate to areas called townships.

Almost all public facilities such as parks, buses, trains, toilets, swimming pools, and beaches became segregated spaces. Black South Africans faced restrictions on where they could travel, work, and socialize. New state-run schools were designed to train black children for low-skilled menial labor.

Alongside the wall was a video playing of Hendrik Verwoerd giving a speech in 1958. Verwoerd, called the “father of apartheid,” was prime minister of South Africa from 1958 to 1966. In this speech, Verwoerd justifies apartheid. I was struck by how rational and even reasonable he came across in the speech. He wasn’t talking about the inferiority of the black race compared to the white race. Instead, he argued that people weren’t fully understanding apartheid. It was a policy of good neighborliness rather than a system of discrimination:

Our policy is one, which is called by an Afrikaans word “Apartheid.” And I’m afraid that has been misunderstood so often. It could just as easily, and, perhaps, much better be described as a policy of good neighborliness. Accepting that there are differences between people, and that while these differences exist, and you have to acknowledge them, at the same time you can live together, aid one another, but that can best be done when you act as good neighbors always do.

Apartheid, he argued, enabled white Afrikaners and the black Africans to live how they want, within their cultural traditions, in a way mutually beneficial to all. Apartheid was actually a means for people to respect one another. Verwoerd even suggested that apartheid was an application of the Christian principle of love of one’s neighbor.

Many people rejected this reasoning. However, many others believed and accepted it—certainly enough people with the means and power to ensure apartheid was enforced for decades until its dismantling in 1994 (still in recent memory for many today).

This raises a question: How could this kind of racialized argument be rationalized and justified as loving our neighbors?

Modernity’s Untethering of Morality

One explanation, at least ideologically speaking, can be traced back to the Enlightenment. Before this, societies operated with a shared moral order. Each society recognized some things as objectively good and right and other things as objectively evil and wrong, apart from individual human reasoning or preferences.

How could this kind of racialized argument be rationalized and justified as loving as our neighbors?

David Brooks, reflecting on the work of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, notes how the Enlightenment dismantled the inherited moral order and established the idea of a “neutral” public order. Morality was to be determined by human reason and set according to personal choice and preference.

As the world underwent the scientific and industrial revolutions, it made sense to see human reasoning and rational thought as the surefire road map to human flourishing and a stable society. Auguste Comte, a 19th-century French philosopher, posited three successive stages of development for human society: a theological stage, a metaphysical stage, and a final end stage—the modern, “positive” stage based on scientific and rational thinking. This final stage would need not a belief system based on God but a “religion of humanity.”

Historian J. B. Bury, in his 1920 book The Idea of Progress, wrote about how providence was an idea that corresponds to a less advanced stage of civilization. Progress, however, has replaced providence, and has come about “with the growth of modern science, with the growth of rationalism, and with the struggle for political and religious liberty.”

However, events like the two world wars tested and unraveled these expectations. They showed how easily and readily societies could use scientific advancement to harm and attempt to destroy one another, how easily a “rational” world order could be upended—and in some places like Nazi Germany, reconfigured to justify systemic genocide.

These historical examples show what happens when morality is no longer undergirded by a definitive moral standard. As Brooks contends, morality can be redefined in all sorts of supposedly reasonable and rational ways, which leads to almost anything being accepted and justified:

The Enlightenment project failed, [MacIntyre] argued, because it produced rationalistic systems of morals too thin and abstract to give meaning to actual lives. It destroyed coherent moral ecologies and left autonomous individuals naked and alone. Furthermore, it devalued the very faculties people had long used to find meaning. Reason and science are great at telling you how to do things, but not at answering the fundamental questions: Why are we here? What is the ultimate purpose of my life? What is right and what is wrong? . . .

One of the problems with living in a society with no shared moral order is that we have no way to settle arguments. We have no objective standard by which to determine that one view is right and another view is wrong.

This is the same context by which a “moral” case is later made in 20th-century South Africa for race-based discrimination and oppression. These are no longer a priori defined as wrong but are reasonably justified as good, as a way to “love your neighbor.”

When human rationalism, reasonable argument, and individual preference ground our morality, we’ll always struggle to clearly identify right from wrong. What’s wrong in one place or era can in another place become characterized as a form of doing what’s good and right for oneself, one’s community, or one’s country.

A moral standard—one that exists outside us and isn’t subject to our intellectual rationalization or personal musings—allows us to know when something is simply wrong, full stop. It’s how we can immediately say that apartheid is wrong because the kind of race-based discrimination it promotes is always wrong. It’s why “love of neighbor” can never be used to justify a system like apartheid.

Anchor Our World Needs

While South Africa did eventually stop its practice of apartheid, our modern secular world is still untethered. We can see it in the United States, where what’s right and wrong on how we approach issues like sexuality, immigration, welfare for the poor, abortion, or military conflict depend on which party is in power or who resides in the Oval Office. This moral whiplash most often leads to immorality being excused and mistreatment of the poor and vulnerable being regularly ignored.

Our secular world desperately needs an objective standard of right and wrong, a center that doesn’t shift based on what any single individual, community, or institution says is right, good, and reasonable. It needs a moral order rooted in the unchanging values of goodness, justice, and love. This, of course, is what Christianity offers.

The Christian message tells the historical story about how Jesus, the Son of God, was born on this earth, lived, died on the cross, and rose again. This story gives us the anchoring we need for values such as love, justice, grace, forgiveness, hope, and redemption. This story best equips us to clearly and unequivocally say what things are evil, wrong, and sinful and what things are good, true, and beautiful. This story rips apart any rationalization for a system like apartheid and clearly states it to be fully racist and therefore wrong.

Christianity not only gives us a set of moral lenses; it also teaches us about the kind of tone and posture followers of Jesus must possess to exemplify the kingdom of God.

Christianity not only gives us a set of moral lenses; it also teaches us about the kind of tone and posture Jesus’s followers must possess to demonstrate our citizenship in the kingdom of God. This Christlike posture reshapes how we engage with hot-button issues, laws, and policies.

For example, while Christians will advocate for a range of different policies in the immigration debate, we can and should agree from the outset that our shared belief that humans are God’s image-bearers gives us no rationalization for the mistreatment or abuse of immigrants. Our conviction about the image of God is how we can, from the start, dismantle arguments for indiscriminate abortion on demand. And this conviction leads us to create social structures, in the church and in the world, that provide opportunities for forgiveness, for repentance and restitution, and for restoration.

The Christian story—which begins at creation, moves through humanity’s fall and its redemption at the cross and the empty tomb, and awaits the new creation—is the only cornerstone for a moral foundation and ethical compass that ensures blessing and flourishing for all people. It’s the only story capable of establishing a true moral order that can and will last forever.

You may have noticed we’re calling TGC27 a “church conference,” which is a change from the language of “national conference” we’ve used since 2007. What’s behind this change? And what does it mean?

Same Conference, Refocused Mission

Much about our biennial gathering hasn’t changed. Our conference has always been primarily focused on encouraging and equipping Christians, especially church leaders, through expositional preaching and topical teaching. Rebranding it a “church conference” is just doubling down on the local church as the goal for the event, its reason for existence.

Rebranding it a ‘church conference’ is just doubling down on the local church as the goal for the event, its reason for existence.

“TGC has always prioritized serving church leaders at our national conference, but we’re making this aim more explicit with our church conference in 2027,” said Collin Hansen, TGC’s vice president of content and editor in chief. “We heard from pastors about what would serve them and their churches, and we planned dozens of breakout sessions that prioritize their request for practical ministry training.”

We want church leaders, both clergy and laypeople, to find help from TGC for training, resources, and encouragement. This goal informs our content ministry (articles, podcasts, books, curriculum, videos, cohorts) as well as our event planning.

“TGC exists by conviction and practice to support the local church,” TGC president Mark Vroegop said. “Our mission is to help renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel. So it just makes sense that the biennial gathering would be called the TGC Church Conference. We redesigned our conference—from the name, focus, teaching, and breakouts—with the intention to equip and encourage ministry leaders as they serve in their local churches.”

From and For the Church

One of our hopes for TGC’s Church Conference is that it would be an opportunity for local churches to send groups to experience a few days of refreshment, connection, and strengthening together, so they can return home with fresh wind in their sails for everyday ministry.

The TGC27 conference tagline captures this hope: “Come with your church to be equipped for your church.”

Certainly, individuals are welcome to come on their own—and “church conference” doesn’t mean only official church workers are allowed to come. But we think these events are especially edifying for those who attend with local church friends or ministry colaborers.

Consider gathering a group from your church—not just staff and elders but also deacons, lay leaders, small group leaders, worship artists, and heads of other ministries. Whether for church staff members or volunteer leaders, TGC27 will have something for everyone passionate about serving in the local church.

If you gather a group of 10 or more, we’ll give you a discount code for reduced registration rates. Just email events@tgc.org for the group discount.

We also created a promo kit for churches to share about the conference with their congregations. You’ll find graphics for slides, posters, social media posts, sample emails, and more.

Come Gather as One Church; Leave to Strengthen Your Local Church

For nearly two decades, TGC’s conferences have been catalytic gatherings where thousands of like-minded, gospel-centered Christians come together and leave more encouraged and equipped in ministry.

Whether for church staff members or volunteer leaders, TGC27 will have something for everyone passionate about serving in the local church.

“It’s a unique opportunity to gather together as members of local congregations for refreshment and encouragement, while remembering that we are members of a much larger, historic communion,” said Melissa Kruger, TGC’s vice president of women’s initiatives. “It’s a special experience to learn and grow alongside those whom we serve with week to week.”

If you’ve never been to one of these conferences, make TGC27 your first time. The experience of singing gospel-rich hymns with 7,000 fellow saints in a massive convention center hall is something every Christian can enjoy. The teaching you hear, the conversations you have, and the connections you make will bear lasting fruit in your Christian life and ministry.

Learn more about the conference speakers, schedule, breakout options, and more at TGC27.org. Register soon to secure the lowest rate!

I asked Alex Fogleman—professor at Trinity Anglican Seminary and author of Making Disciples: Catechesis in History, Theology, and Practice—about what’s on his bedside table, his favorite fiction, the books he regularly revisits, and more.

What’s on your nightstand right now?

Right now, I have David Brooks’s How to Know a Person, which is as much about perception and attention as it is about relationships. I also have Josef Pieper’s Happiness and Contemplation. I love Pieper’s writing, especially Leisure: The Basis of Culture, but I just discovered this little book, and it’s a gem—also on the ways that love and attention are bound up with each other. Really quite good.

Then there’s a little volume called Reading Greek with the Desert Fathers by Timothy Brady. Because who wouldn’t want to start or end the day with a little monastic Greek? Seriously, though, it’s one of the best little anthologies for anyone with a year of New Testament Greek and wanting a deeper plunge. It’s been a great way to keep up some daily Greek while also imbibing spiritually edifying wisdom.

Finally, I’ve got my friend Thomas Breedlove’s new book, A Phenomenology of the Divine Image, which is a profound meditation on the image of God and human finitude. You might not think of a book on Gregory of Nyssa and French phenomenology as bedtime reading, but the first sentence of the book, I kid you not, is “Macrina was dying.” Talk about a page-turner!

What are your favorite fiction books?

Being from the South, I’ve almost always loved Flannery O’Connor’s works: the The Complete Stories, for sure, but also her novels Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away. I say “almost” because at first I was completely mystified by her writing. Through Ralph Wood, though, I gradually learned to see what was happening. His Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South is an excellent introduction to reading O’Connor.

More recently, my family has introduced me to several other great fiction books. I’ll just mention Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga, about which I’d agree with the audacious claims of those who rank it with the Narniad. I’d even concur with Tom Ward that it offers an even more deeply Christian picture of the gospel’s victory.

I’d even concur with Tom Ward that The Wingfeather Saga offers an even more deeply Christian picture of the gospel’s victory.

Many of my favorite fiction books, though, are those recommended to me by my friend Paul Gutacker. Paul is one of those people who not only loves good books of all kinds but also is a truly convivial reader. Over the years, this has led to a lovely list of some of my favorite books: Adam Roberts’s Kantian sci-fi The Thing Itself and Hegelian The This, Christopher Beha’s Augustinian The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, Daniel Nayeri’s whirlwind Everything Sad Is Untrue, Eugene Vodolazkin’s everywhere-all-at-once Laurus, and Francis Spufford’s alternative history detective thriller Cahokia Jazz. I look forward to whatever Paul recommends next.

What biographies or autobiographies have most influenced you and why?

I don’t read a ton of biographies, admittedly. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a biography of Lincoln or Roosevelt or any military hero. I do like books about artists, though. I mentioned Ralph Wood’s work on O’Connor, and I’d also add here the edited volume of her correspondence, The Habit of Being. Not only does it offer a unique window into her world, but it contains some of the flat-out funniest writing I’ve ever read.

I’ve also had a longtime fascination with Bob Dylan, and his Chronicles well portrays his allusive and enigmatic life. I wouldn’t have said it like this when I first read it, but there’s something deeply figural about Dylan. Like a good apophatic theologian, he eludes precise, pinned-down observation while drawing the listener to the deeper mystery of things. He’s kept me away from more than a few false idols.

More confidently, I can commend some ancient biographical works like Athanasius’s Life of Anthony, Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Saint Macrina, and Augustine’s Confessions in this category. They’d hardly count as biographies today, but they do afford, I think, a powerful instance of what we often seek in biographies: a way of looking at the world in which we learn to perceive things more like what they really are—as reflections of divine glory.

What are some books you regularly reread and why?

The book with the most underlining and finger-smears is Andrew Louth’s Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology. To me, it’s one of the most profound meditations on what Eliot names as the “dissociation of sensibility” in the modern world between intellect and affect, truth and aesthetics, and theology and spirituality. It’s about culture and the transformation of knowledge in the modern period, particularly the reliance on method as the only legitimate form of knowing. It’s also about language, pedagogy, culture, tradition, and liturgy—all of which goes into a book on “the nature of theology.”

Louth ultimately mounts a defense of patristic allegory, but the way he gets there is through an epic foray into modern thought. The retrieval of patristic exegesis is hard-won, coming only after seriously grappling with Vico, Gadamer, Heidegger, Polanyi, Torrance, Barth, and many others. It’s also beautifully lyrical. One of the back blurbs simply says, “Louth writes like an angel.” So it’s got that going for it.

What books have most profoundly shaped how you serve and lead others for the sake of the gospel?

Early on, it was Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy and a host of Eugene Peterson books, especially Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, Eat This Book, and The Contemplative Pastor. These books provided an essential framework for seeing the gospel as intrinsic to ordinary life, and I also learned from them a patient devotion to Scripture and the voice of the Spirit.

J. I. Packer and Gary Parrett’s Grounded in the Gospel clarified my vocation as a theologian-catechist. That book—and Packer’s ministry more generally—voiced the urgent need for recovering of catechesis. They write, “Where wise catechesis has flourished, the church has flourished. Where it has been neglected, the church has floundered.” I put that on a coffee mug one time, but my wife didn’t like seeing the word “floundered” when drinking coffee, so I have a new mug now that just has the first sentence.

Finally, the writings of Hans Boersma have influenced my theology most of all. I studied with him in seminary and he’s continued to be a generous friend and mentor. His books Heavenly Participation, Seeing God, Scripture as Real Presence, Pierced by Love, and many others have been consistent tutors in how to seek the face of Christ in the Scriptures, the church, and all of creation. Hans is mostly known as a strident champion of the Christian Platonist tradition and its metaphysical realism, with which I’m in total agreement. But I’ve learned as much from him about loving God, reading Scripture, and belonging to the church.

What’s one book you wish every pastor would read?

Every pastor should read—must read—Augustine’s Instructing Beginners in Faith, and probably right now. I like Raymond Canning’s translation, but others work well, too. I can rarely get through an article or talk without that text somewhere in the background. It’s short but contains in nuce an entire world of biblical, theological, and pastoral wisdom.

The premise is that a nearby pastor named Deogratias writes to Augustine with a confession: His catechesis is utterly boring. He’s stuck and doesn’t know what to do, so he asks the great orator Augustine how to teach the Bible and encourage people in the faith. Augustine obliges these technical requests, but he then redirects Deogratias to the heart of the issue. The most important thing, he counsels Deogratias, is to learn to teach with joy. And at the heart of joy is God’s persistent abiding love for the church made known in Christ. It’s just. So. Good.

What’s your best piece of writing advice?

Embrace the discomfort and tedium of editing and kill your darlings. I know some people think first, then write, but if you write in order to think, you’ll have to get used to rewriting and editing and then rewriting some more. And you’ll have to say goodbye to some dear, precious little sentences. I create a separate draft for these darlings, so I don’t have to feel like I actually kill them. They live on a special file on my computer, blissfully unaware of the final drafts to which they’ll never belong. I’m sure God still loves them.

Embrace the discomfort and tedium of editing and kill your darlings.

Finding the right words is largely intuitive, and the more you read other good writers in your discipline, the better your ear for good prose will be. I learned a lot from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird and William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, but I’ve learned as much by imitating my favorite theologians, like Hans Boersma and D. H. Williams. I started to pay attention not only to the content but also to the form of their sentences, how they structured paragraphs and sections, how they engaged with sources and texts.

This doesn’t always work, though—or it does, just not in a positive way. I realized at times I was trying to sound like someone I’d been reading, like N. T. Wright, and ended up just sounding awful. Nonetheless, I’d still maintain that writing, like other work, is best learned through apprenticeship—but there’s a good amount of trial and error. The key though, is that we don’t find our “authentic voice” by trying to be an individual. We find it through humbly joining the conversation we’ve been invited into. In this way, you might even say there’s an ecclesiology of writing. (I don’t know about that last sentence though; might be a darling with a death warrant.)

What are you learning about life and following Jesus?

Life is hard and following Jesus is harder. I thought both would get easier, but, curiously, they haven’t. I’m the kind of person who likes being liked, and likes being liked for being good at things. I’m learning that Jesus’s love is better than being liked; that the gospel is better news than I thought, but it also kills your idols; and that the church really is the body of Christ, which for all its cuts and tears is the crazy way God is saving the world.

We later find out this unnamed woman had been politically progressive just a few years earlier but was “radicalized” rightward by the Facebook algorithm, circa 2019–20. In a cringey moment near the film’s end, we see this woman show up again as part of the mob storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Writer and director Aaron Sorkin opens with this vignette to offer a case study of the real-world effects of the Facebook/Meta algorithms, which the movie goes on to explore in depth. But it’s noteworthy that the woman’s malformation online is depicted mostly as political, and in a “left to right” direction.

For Sorkin—who since The West Wing hasn’t hid his progressive politics—the primary problem with Facebook isn’t spiritual malformation but political radicalization (in one direction). And that’s precisely why this movie, a companion piece to 2010’s The Social Network (written by Sorkin but directed by David Fincher), lacks the potency of its predecessor.

While The Social Network felt ominous, youthful, cool, and philosophically incisive, The Social Reckoning feels less relevant and at times downright hokey (“She’s disrupting” is such a groaner line). Like Facebook in general—most heavily used by boomers, little used by Gen Z—the film feels disconnected from the next-gen technological zeitgeist.

Like Facebook in general—most heavily used by boomers, little used by Gen Z—the film feels disconnected from the next-gen technological zeitgeist.

It’s not that the concerns Sorkin raises aren’t real problems. They are. It’s that his film frames the problems politically in a way that reduces their full scale and oversimplifies potential solutions. In a way, Sorkin falls prey to the problematic dynamics his movie points out. Social algorithms have trained us to filter all reality through the lens of our entrenched political narrative. In his telling of the Facebook story, Sorkin does this too.

Old-Fashioned Whistleblower Drama

The Social Reckoning follows a familiar whistleblower narrative in which Facebook employee Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison) teams up with Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) to expose Facebook for knowingly hiding its platforms’ negative societal effects. Haugen secretly leaks internal documents that help Horwitz stand up his story, a series of articles that became known as “The Facebook Files.”

Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg (taking over from Jesse Eisenberg, who played “Zuck” in The Social Network but declined Sorkin’s invitation to reprise the role) with a cold, robotic detachment that feels unhelpfully caricatured. While Haugen and Horwitz are portrayed as heroic, Woodward and Bernstein–type Davids to the proverbial Goliath, Zuckerberg comes across as the consummate corporate villain—always prioritizing profits even if it harms users. It all feels too simple.

Platforms, Not Referees

While the investigative-journalism plot is occasionally compelling, the standout scenes in The Social Reckoning are the moments of verbal sparring (Sorkin’s creative forte) in which Zuckerberg debates others about the nature of free speech and corporate responsibility.

Zuckerberg calls himself a “free-speech absolutist” and says of his platforms (Facebook and Instagram), “We are a corkboard. We don’t care about what people pin to it.” He cites Section 230 of U.S. federal law, which protects online platforms and websites from being held liable for content posted by users or third parties.

Zuckerberg refuses calls to fact-check political ads on Facebook or play referee in determining what content is or isn’t allowed. “Facebook isn’t the ref!” he says at one point. “We’re the public square.”

But his critics—chiefly a former advisor, Charlie (Bill Burr)—push back, arguing that the Facebook algorithms, especially once optimized for “meaningful social interaction (MSI),” are a “firehose of bad information” that is “becoming jet-powered, hydraulic.”

Charlie tells Zuckerberg his platform is “commoditizing gullability” (great phrase!) and irresponsibly profiting from algorithms that accelerate misinformation, outrage, conspiracy theories, and radicalization.

“You’re like a crossing guard standing in front of a school but you’re not doing anything with your arms,” Charlie says. “So the cars are just plowing down the children.”

In another scene, Haugen describes how the initial promise of Facebook was “democratization” and “giving everyone a voice,” to which Horwitz responds, “While we all have a voice, not everybody deserves a microphone.” He cites the importance of credentials (e.g., being a trained journalist) and echoes some of what Tom Nichols laments in his 2017 book, The Death of Expertise.

But while the problems of an unrefereed online world, fueled by problematic algorithms, are readily apparent in The Social Reckoning, the solutions aren’t.

Who Decides Who Gets the Microphone?

It may be true that “not everybody deserves a microphone,” but who gets to make that determination? Sorkin may be implicitly suggesting government as a solution, in the form of tighter regulation and content policing. But he and everyone else would only want his “side” of the government to play this role—and it’d inevitably devolve into partisan censorship.

What if Facebook and similar platforms were forced to play the “ref” role themselves? Would abolishing Section 230 and making tech platforms more responsible for the “microphone” question solve the problem? No. This would put huge amounts of power into the hands of a few inherently biased folks, whose determinations for what’s permissible and not would be arbitrary.

Any form of censorship or content suppression—even under the guise of “fact checkers”—has limited value and often backfires, planting seeds of suspicion and fueling conspiracy theories. Adding to the problem is the reality that on more than one occasion, the “credentialed“ or “gatekeeper” media class has been wrong and perpetuated falsehoods, while the much-ridiculed “conspiracy theorists” (say, about the COVID-19 lab leak theory) may have been right.

Yes, the “everyone has a microphone” problem creates chaos. But the chaos is most problematic not because it’s politically combustible (which it is) but because it’s epistemologically corrosive. The erratic discursive dynamics wrought by social algorithms erode trust, impair critical thinking, prey on fears (doomscrolling), and warp our souls.

All of us are being formed in these ways—not just people of a certain political persuasion.

Problem on Left and Right

This is an obvious obfuscation in The Social Reckoning, which notably climaxes on January 6. All Sorkin’s examples of algorithm-driven radicalization happen with people being made extremely right-wing. Set in the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, the film shows a belligerent woman in a grocery checkout line refusing to wear a mask and a San Francisco tech bro citing an erroneous online theory.

On more than one occasion, the ‘credentialed’ media class has been wrong and perpetuated falsehoods.

But what about the many progressives radicalized further left by their own bubbles of pandemic misinformation (some of whom still wear masks outdoors, six years later)? Why doesn’t the film acknowledge any examples of left-wing extremists whose algorithmic formation radicalized them into violence (e.g., the three would-be assassins of President Trump, or Charlie Kirk’s assassin)?

Social media algorithms radicalize people on all sides. It’s a bipartisan problem, which means any political solution would need to be bipartisan. But unless we’re talking about age-verification laws narrowly aimed at protecting children, I don’t think politics will be the most effective avenue for addressing the ongoing social media (and now AI) problems.

Bottom-Up Wisdom, Not Top-Down Censorship

Even if greater government regulations are imposed on tech companies, ultimately the most effective agent of change will be pressure from the marketplace and shifting public opinion.

We’ve started to see this over the last few years, as influential books like Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, or Freya India’s recent Girls®, present sobering accounts of just how bad the effects of these technologies have been—particularly on young people. More and more schools are going tech-light or tech-free, encouraged by organizations like the recently launched Center for Responsible Technology. This summer’s Toy Story 5 showed how skepticism toward tech has become the norm—especially among millennial and Gen-Z parents.

As part of its recent $17 billion settlement of a lawsuit over the harmful effects of its products for young people, Meta made a number of positive changes to how young people interact with Facebook and Instagram. Legal and public-opinion pressures can actually effect change.

But it’s not just a young-people problem. Boomer grandparents are arguably the ones being most malformed by Facebook these days. So “protecting the youth” initiatives only help solve one facet of the problem.

Ultimately, the best guard against the worst harms of these platforms is the wisdom of people who use them. This is where church leaders and Christian influencers can make an important difference—by discipling people of all ages toward wisdom in their everyday scrolling habits.

Ultimately, the best guard against the worst harms of these platforms is the wisdom of people who use them.

This is what we’ve tried to do at The Gospel Coalition with book projects like Scrolling Ourselves to Death and the just-published AI Apocalypse: A Survival Guide for Humanity. From phone idolatry to AI companions to the crisis of reading, we routinely examine the implications of these technologies in hopes of giving tools for wisdom in the digital age.

But more than just warning about the spiritual dangers of screens, algorithms, and AI, it’s also vital to make a positive case for offline life and real human connection. How can we give young people today a vision for life more compelling than bingeing “content” online and getting sucked into algorithm-fueled, mind-numbing scrolling? At a time when most young people readily admit their phones mostly push AI slop and “brain rot,” it seems like they’re hungry for alternatives. That’s what I tried to offer in The Wisdom Pyramid: ideas for how to feed your soul with more nourishment than scrolling junk food.

Rather than regulating the platforms, we ought to focus on retraining user affections. How can we encourage one another to get offline and go outside, to chat with friends face-to-face rather than via Instagram DMs? To love the local, embodied, and real more than whatever dopamine delusions the algorithm produces?

The Social Reckoning—much like the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma—is stronger on naming problems than offering solutions. The greater “reckoning” with these technologies will be the work we all take up, every day, in homes and churches and classrooms and coffee shops, spurring each other to take back life from the algorithm.

Welcome to Your Corner of the World with Dan Doriani and Mark Vroegop, a podcast with and for Christians engaging their work with the love and justice of the Lord Jesus.

Both Dan and Mark have decades of pastoral ministry experience, and Dan currently shapes his corner of the world as a seminary professor, while Mark shapes his corner of the world as president of The Gospel Coalition.

In this episode, Dan and Mark discuss why they’re passionate about the faith-at-work movement and what they’re excited about in the coming episodes. Subscribe to join Dan and Mark as they look for Christians around the world who develop software, teach fitness classes, do research, entertain crowds, invest billions, treat patients, draft briefs, and do all sorts of other “ordinary” work for God’s glory and their neighbors’ good.

Sixty-two percent of religious couples are intimate weekly, compared with just 48 percent of nonreligious couples. This situation is new. In the 2000s, married couples were having sex at similar rates, whether they were religious or not. In the last 20 years, a major gap in sexual activity has opened between religious and secular marriages.

And it’s not just quantity for religious couples but quality. Married men and women with traditional beliefs about God and sex are more likely than their secular peers to say they’re happy with their marriages and are 1.42 times more likely to say they’re sexually satisfied.

When you consider that religious Americans are significantly more likely to get married in the first place, and that married people have more sex than unmarried people, the advantage enjoyed by the devout minority becomes clearer.

A majority of Americans between ages 20 and 54 now say they aren’t having weekly sex, and an unprecedented number are simply celibate. Many aren’t even trying. Over two-thirds of young adults either haven’t dated at all or have gone on only a few dates in the last year, and it’s likely that one in four young adults will remain single for life.

While the sexual revolution was always sold as liberation for people repressed by religious and traditional rules, the society that revolution produced is one in which people are less sexually active than their parents were at the same age.

The counterintuitive fact in 2026: An America that long ago embraced sexual freedom is in the grip of what the Institute calls a “sex recession,” and religious people—precisely those once denounced as fuddy-duddies—are largely exempt.

From Revolution to Recession

It’s difficult to overstate how ironic this turn is in light of previous decades. Consider the long reign of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine, the sexualization of pop music and movie starlets, the glamorizing of casual sex on sitcoms like Seinfeld and Friends, the epidemic of teen pregnancy, mass sexual assault at music festivals, the defense of internet pornography as free speech, and the shrugging off of Oval Office scandals.

This was the heyday of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, and Kevin Spacey, and of a well-attested attitude of winking at their predation. The 1990s to 2000s were a time of dizzying sexual license and experimentation, and the backlash was inevitable.

The society that the sexual revolution produced is one in which people are less sexually active than their parents were at the same age.

During the last 10 years or so, secular culture has remoralized sex. From the #MeToo movement’s revelations of abuse and insistence that we “believe all women,” to controversies around advertising that objectifies women, to discussions of power differentials and how they affect consent, “free love” feels like an ill-advised slogan of the past.

Even self-proclaimed liberals have reverse engineered a kind of secular puritanism deeply concerned with how bodies are portrayed in media, how drugs and alcohol influence sexual encounters, and what happens in the legal gray area between enthusiastic consent and assault.

Meghan Murphy at The Daily Wire explores how this trend is at work in the stomach-turning “Cornell seven” case, in which a young woman alleges male members of a fraternity gang-raped her while she was intoxicated. The task of the university, and now the courts, has been to decide whether what happened in that dorm room was nonconsensual and therefore illegal. Murphy argues that the case exposes how inadequate “consent” is as a standalone sex ethic.

She echoes feminist writer Louise Perry, who argued in her 2022 book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, that the era of sexual permissiveness was mostly good for predatory men and terrible for women. A palpable burnout is spreading in the secular mating market. People are tired and wary, the sexes increasingly distrust and resent each other, and many have just stopped trying to find love or intimacy. There’s an exhaustion with sex itself, or rather the game of mutual exploitation that has defined casual sex and dating for a generation. People know and feel that they’re being used and using others, and that the sexual revolution didn’t deliver the liberation it promised.

Though she did a marvelous job of documenting this burnout, Perry stopped short of calling for a reinstitution of Christian chastity and keeping sex within monogamous, natural marriage—which is particularly disappointing in light of how effective observant faith seems to be at encouraging healthy sex.

Nevertheless, she put her finger on one of the roots of our current sex recession: a pseudo-religious idolizing of sexual freedom that failed to deliver the flourishing it promised. This helps explain why religious people are exempt from the sex recession: They worship and love something other than sex and are therefore freer to enjoy it.

Aim at Heaven, Get Earth Thrown In

C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity that if you “aim at Heaven . . . you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.” Pursuing secondary goods as if they’re primary goods will always destroy your pleasure in those goods and likely deprive you of them altogether.

This is another way of stating Augustine’s famous ordo amoris (order of loves), about rightly prioritizing our desires and placing God first. The idea goes back to the first commandment (Ex. 20:3).

Nothing, no matter how glorious, should ever take God’s place in our hearts. Loving, glorifying, and enjoying him forever is our “chief end.” If we try to substitute an earthly joy like sex for this ultimate, heavenly joy, we’ll pervert and lose both. This may be the reason for the uncanny link between the pew and the bedroom: Only by satisfying ourselves in God and his commandments first can we rejoice in the good things he gives on earth.

Sex, like all pleasures in this life, must be received as a gift, not worshiped as a god.

What this looks like practically is a willingness to pursue things we want (like sex) on God’s terms, not just because we love him and want to obey but also because we know he’s the kind of God who delights in giving us good things (Ps. 16:11) and made them especially for us.

Fire That Burns and Fire That Warms

I’ve heard sex compared to a fire, and the Christian ethic of exclusive monogamy likened to a fireplace. Nothing is better or more homelike than a fire safely confined to a hearth—and nothing worse than a fire that escapes a hearth! Christianity’s much-maligned rules order sexuality toward its intended, life-warming ends of love, union, and childbearing, and prevent us from exploiting one another.

The sexual revolution claimed fire is desirable and good in almost any context, isolated from any purpose, free from any restraint. The sexual burnout and recession we see today are the result of decades of this way of thinking, allowed to blaze unchecked through homes, dorm rooms, modems, movies, and dating apps.

Sex, like all pleasures in this life, must be received as a gift, not worshiped as a god.

Millions of people have aimed too low, worshiped a false god, and so lost even the liberation and pleasure they sought. Millions more are suffering from a system they didn’t create but must now negotiate.

Churchgoers are far from perfect, and some of the worst blazes in my lifetime have been set by pastors and apologists. But the fact is, something about God’s way of doing things works, resulting in dramatically better lives and relationships on average.

As Christians share these findings and make the case for a different kind of sexual revolution, we should remember where we’re aiming: not at better sex or marriages, not at reforming a culture, not even at getting people back in church. We’re aiming at pointing people to the only Love who satisfies. The other types of love have an uncanny way of following.

When life is all about self-invention, history is deemed irrelevant. And yet the culture of “you do you” is producing an epidemic of loneliness, an “anxious generation” (to use Jonathan Haidt’s term), and rapid polarization as people desperately try to find meaning and purpose in the myriad of idols of this world, from politics to wellness to transhumanism. People are yearning to be part of a larger story.

This is an opportunity for Christians. God invites his people to be part of a much larger historical story. If we understand something about why history matters biblically, and how to steward it well, then history can help us speak the gospel into this rootless age.

Living in a Rootless Age

As a history professor, I often ask my students, “What is our contemporary society’s vision of the good life?” Their answers are almost always some version of this: “Finding and then being your true self.” This culture holds that unleashing one’s true potential is the key to finding happiness.

This obsession with self-fulfillment is connected to a deeper pathology, that is, the view that because there’s no God, there’s no ultimate story about where humanity has come from and where we’re going. The past is deemed irrelevant to what our culture values most, which is the freedom to be ourselves and enjoy the life we desire. This is the first characteristic of what I call our Ahistoric Age.

When life is all about self-invention, history is deemed irrelevant.

A second characteristic is a growing ignorance of history. We have little understanding even of the historical origins of the ideas we most value. Consider, for example, the widespread debate over issues such as human rights. Despite the intensity of these discussions, few people understand where the concept of human rights emerged. Fewer still recognize the extent to which human rights are grounded in the biblical conviction of the imago Dei and the spiritual equality of all humanity.

The third characteristic of our Ahistoric Age is ideology. When our society engages with the past, history is often reduced to an ideological battleground. Many believe the past is something from which we need to emancipate ourselves, and that history is just an ongoing story of victims and oppressors. Less overtly, we look with instinctive superiority toward the past and disdain for its traditions.

In sum, most contemporary culture views the past with attitudes of irrelevance, ignorance, and ideology. And yet, this isn’t the attitude toward history that the Bible takes.

What Does the Bible Say About History?

The Bible teaches us that history matters. It matters because we have a God who acts in history. His plan of salvation—creation, fall, incarnation, resurrection, and one day new creation—is carried out in history.

In the Old Testament, God takes a real historical people, the Hebrews, for himself as his “treasured possession” (Ex. 19:5). They come to know Yahweh through his mighty acts in history. In Christ Jesus, God himself steps into human history. Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection is the center of history and the fulfillment of God’s promise that he will dwell with his people: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world” (Heb. 1:1–2).

Second, the Bible instructs God’s people to pass down their history and to learn from it. When God gives the Ten Commandments in Exodus, he reminds Israel of what he has done in history: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Ex. 20:2). And in Deuteronomy, the Israelites are to teach these things to their children (Deut. 6:7). Numerous Psalms retell the story of Israel so we don’t forget God’s mighty works (e.g., Ps. 78).

In the New Testament, Paul reminds the church of their forebears, the generation of Israelites delivered by God from slavery in Egypt and led through the wilderness, and yet who disobeyed, despite their salvation. Paul says that “these things happened to them as an example” and “were written down for our instruction” (1 Cor. 10:11). In 1 Corinthians, Paul describes the passing down of the historical story of Jesus’s death and resurrection (15:3–4).

Third, the study of the past is part of humanity’s responsibility to create and spread civilization as we rule as God’s image-bearers. The creation mandate given in Genesis 1 is to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (v. 28). Adam and Eve were to tend and keep the garden, and their cultivation was to spread beyond Eden and across the whole earth.

Contemporary culture views the past with attitudes of irrelevance, ignorance, and ideology. And yet, this isn’t the attitude toward history that the Bible takes.

Understanding the history of human societies is part of God’s design for how we tend and keep his creation and fill the earth with civilization that glorifies him. And this understanding isn’t limited to professional historians.

The Bible calls us all to do the priestly work of stewarding the past. On the one hand, this vocation involves tending the past: cultivating the past and uncovering the historical stories of people who’ve been overlooked, bringing historical injustices to light, and recognizing the sins of the past—including our own.

On the other hand, we keep and watch over the past: protecting and passing down historical knowledge and our heritage as Christians, both as the doctrine of orthodox biblical teachings but also through spiritual habits, practices, and traditions. This conservation honors the past and values our inheritance.

How History Can Help Our Christian Witness

Consider three cultural longings that Christians can answer with the gospel and an understanding of history.

1. We long to be part of a larger story.

Spend a moment scrolling through popular media or listening to podcasts, and you’ll encounter endless discussions about identity. Despite, or perhaps because of, the relentless emphasis on self-invention, there’s a growing yearning to belong to a larger story that offers meaning and purpose beyond the individual. This is evident in the rising interest in broader civilizational questions.

Popular non-Christian intellectuals and public figures astute to the zeitgeist also recognize this. Jordan Peterson teaches a self-authoring class that’s supposed to help people understand where they came from and why they think the way they do. The Rest Is History is one of the world’s most popular podcasts, and there’s also burgeoning interest in trying to trace one’s ancestry. The non-Christian culture misses the mark when it comes to the question of the larger story, however, so Christians have a profound opportunity to speak into this question.

History helps us to show that Christianity isn’t merely a set of doctrines but an invitation to belong to God’s people across time. Through Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, we’re invited into God’s unfolding purposes—a reality that’s not only true but also good and beautiful. Christianity is, in this sense, the ultimate account of reality and the antidote to our culture’s rootlessness.

Because we have a God who acts in history, and who therefore gives history meaning and purpose, we’re able to show our neighbors something of the rich inheritance into which we’ve been grafted. The Christian life is lived self-consciously as part of the larger story of God’s salvation. It was partly my own yearning for a larger story that first opened my eyes to Christianity when I was an atheist.

2. We long to belong to a thicker community.

In an age of loneliness, anxiety, and isolation, the church has a timely opportunity to present the gospel not only as a message of individual salvation but also as an invitation to be grafted into God’s family, a historic covenant community. The apostle Peter’s first letter puts this idea beautifully:

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (1 Pet. 2:9–10).

We have the opportunity to show our neighbors that God’s church isn’t like one of the myriad “tribes” that dominate contemporary culture, united merely by shared preferences and identity markers. Tribalism, often fostered online, attempts to substitute for community. Tribes ask little of people because they’re at heart just a consumer identity, a brand people choose to give themselves meaning and a sense of belonging.

The church has a timely opportunity to present the gospel as an invitation to be grafted into God’s family, a historic covenant community.

However, tribalism doesn’t draw us into a historical community with obligations in our relationships with others. It leaves people lacking genuine community that’s rich with the mercy and grace of which Peter writes. In our culture, in which loneliness makes people crave genuine, thick, relationships and community, the historically rooted fellowship that is the church can be profoundly attractive.

Indeed, the church is a true family. The truth of the gospel, which underpins membership of the church, is lived out through obligations and expectations to love; serve; and show forgiveness, grace, and mercy to each other as brothers and sisters.

We also live out the truth of our salvation in Christ through historical traditions and practices of meeting together, having fellowship, sharing the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, serving one another, showing hospitality and sharing meals, singing, praying, studying the Bible, and so forth. We must show our neighbors a historically grounded Christian life that stewards and cultivates these deeply rooted doctrines and ways of living in true fellowship.

3. We long for transcendence.

Western culture is marked by a renewed yearning for awe, wonder, and transcendence. This is evident in the rise of various forms of contemporary paganism—from crystals and Wicca to a broader interest in the occult.

The church has a remarkable opportunity to respond by drawing on the rich historical and biblical traditions of beauty and the sacred. In doing so, it can show our neighbors that God is utterly holy, and that the Christian life offers a true encounter with awe and wonder in the presence of his holiness.

I argue in my recent book, Priests of History, that we can encounter and praise God’s holiness and transcendence not only through the Bible and the Lord’s Supper but also through ancient and biblical practices including historic forms of prayer, Christian meditation, night vigils, and the sacred music tradition, from Gregorian chants to J. S. Bach and hymns.

As the looming specters of transhumanism and AI fix our culture’s eyes on the future, we risk losing history completely. Yet we need it now more than ever before. History is a rich storehouse—a “vast treasury,” to quote Isaac Watts—if we’re wise enough to know how to use it. By tending and keeping the past, Christians can equip ourselves to communicate the truth, goodness, and beauty of Jesus Christ to a confused and rootless world.

Now you know why I say that Jonathan Cheng’s new book, Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult, is one of the most important books I’ve ever read. I wrote about the famous 1907 Pyongyang revival for my 2010 book A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories That Stretch and Stir. I knew that Presbyterian missions in Korea contributed to the large number of Korean Americans who attend and lead Presbyterian churches today. And I knew of course that Pyongyang is the capital of communist North Korea today, so something bad must have happened.

But the missionary success story was so much greater, and the fall from grace was so much farther, than I imagined. Cheng worked on this book for more than 10 years, and the depth of research shows.

Originally from Toronto, Cheng lives in Beijing and works as the China bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. Before that, he worked as the Korea bureau chief, covering both North and South Korea. He’s one of my most helpful people to follow on X, for news from and about China. Let’s dive in to this fascinating and horrifying story about the Christian origins of North Korea’s Kim dynasty.

In This Episode

00:00 – How Kim Il Sung learned from Christianity’s institutions and rituals
00:45 – From the Pyongyang revival to North Korea’s personality cult
03:11 – Why Cheng spent more than a decade researching this story
07:08 – Why North Korea may be better understood as deeply religious than simply atheistic
09:54 – The overlooked importance of Kim Il Sung’s Christian upbringing
12:11 – Samuel Moffett and the missionary transformation of Pyongyang
16:21 – Why Pyongyang once looked like an unlikely place for revival
18:33 – The violent encounter that preceded Moffett by 30 years
19:19 – War, devastation, and the birth of Pyongyang’s missionary compound
20:42 – How Pyongyang became the “Jerusalem of the East”
22:25 – Churches, hospitals, schools, and the world’s largest Presbyterian seminary
24:27 – How Christian Pyongyang became the sacred center of the Kim dynasty
26:00 – Christianity, Korean nationalism, and Woodrow Wilson
30:10 – Japanese occupation and missionaries’ changing attitudes toward imperial rule
32:50 – The bitter irony of American forces destroying Pyongyang’s churches
35:07 – Cheng’s biggest surprises from 12 years of research
38:38 – Why Kim Il Sungism has endured for generations
41:53 – North Korea as a “religious society” of doctrine, ritual, and devotion
45:45 – What it means when every aspect of life becomes political
49:28 – What we actually know about life and Christianity inside North Korea today
51:05 – Kim Il Sung’s surprising late-life reengagement with Christianity
52:35 – Cheng’s visit to Protestant churches in Pyongyang
55:40 – Kim Il Sung’s dream about his Christian mother
57:24 – Was Kim Il Sung ever a Christian?
58:25 – The “eternal president” and North Korea’s towers of immortality
1:00:48 – Why Cheng’s argument may be controversial
1:05:50 – What Cheng hopes readers take away from the history
1:07:47 – Why North Korea makes more sense when viewed as a religious society
1:08:50 – Lessons for modern missionaries from Moffett
1:11:40 – Humility and the consequences we cannot control
1:15:14 – How Presbyterian revivalism was repurposed by the Kim personality cult
1:16:08 – Outro

Resources Mentioned:

• Korean Messiah by Jonathan Cheng
• A God-Sized Vision by Collin Hansen

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I asked her to reflect on what led her to this new endeavor and how her passion for biblical literacy carries over into writing for kids.

Having written so much for adults, what led you to write a children’s book?

I can’t say I felt a strong desire to start writing children’s books in general, but the idea of this particular children’s book set my mind humming.

In all my life, I’ve never come across a children’s book about Genesis 2, but it’s such a vivid and important story. Many children’s Bibles fly past it to Genesis 3. And having spent a great deal of the past 20 years teaching Genesis, I also know that many adults haven’t spent much time in chapter 2 either.

Combine that with a love of rhyme and the birth of seven grandkids in four years, and I decided I was ready to write a children’s book.

How does this story help children understand that being alone isn’t God’s plan?

The focus of Genesis 2 is on the aloneness of Adam in contrast to the rest of the living creatures. In Genesis 1, we see the repeated wording of “each according to its kind,” meaning that each creature is paired with another according to its kind, by which it can fulfill the command to be fruitful and multiply.

But in Genesis 2, we find that Adam is initially not created with a corresponding helper. He’s alone in a way that no other creature is, and God pronounces his aloneness “not good.” Children understand feelings of aloneness and of needing help. The creation of Eve shows that God is concerned with those feelings—and with the reality that prompts them. He provided for Adam, and he provides for us.

What led you to focus on the sameness of men and women rather than their differences?

Both descriptors matter. God could have solved Adam’s aloneness to some degree by creating another male as the second human. Male friendship is a beautiful antidote to male loneliness, and men in partnership accomplish much. But the aloneness in view in Genesis 2 has to do with bearing offspring, so woman is distinctly what is lacking.

Recognizing this, we might expect that when Adam sees Eve for the first time, he would sing a hymn about how different she is from him. But Adam’s first words on seeing his corresponding helper instead emphasize how alike they are. He first recognizes that she is same-of-same. She, too, is made in the image of God.

This is why the concept of “helper” can be used about men, women, and even God himself. All humans are made to help each other, created in the image of our helper God. We may help in particular ways, according to our sex, but we also help in general ways, according to the need at hand.

How does our sameness reflect God’s image to the world?

When men and women stand shoulder to shoulder, partnering in the work of the church in same-but-different ways, the full image of God emerges. Like a human family, the family of God is made up of fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers. None of these is interchangeable with the other but all thrive in partnership. And all are essential to the mission of God.

All humans are made to help each other, created in the image of our helper God.

When we forget our familial sameness, we tend to turn on one another as Genesis 3 predicted we would. We tear each other down and divide over the smallest matters, like quarreling siblings. We become rivals instead of allies, and the work of the kingdom stalls before the eyes of a watching world.

God is not divided in himself, nor should the family he has made in his image be. What more compelling witness is there to the truth of the gospel than the reconciling work it does among spiritual siblings and the thriving partnership that results?

How can viewing ourselves and others as helpers change the way children engage friends and family?

It’s no secret that we’re in the middle of a loneliness epidemic—due in no small part to the triumph of radical individualism in our culture. We tend to view loneliness as normal, needing help as a sign of failure, and giving help as pity or even meddling. But the Bible tells us that we’re made for interconnection and mutual support. Helping others is fundamental to what we were created to do! And offering help is often the beginning of ongoing connection, as is receiving it.

We all need to be reminded that we aren’t meant to navigate life alone and that sharing the load is its own sweetness. Instead of viewing relationships as simply a means to an end, children can learn to view them as opportunities for the reciprocal blessings of mutual support. If we normalize the need for help from others, we become quicker both to ask for it and to accept it.

Why does it matter for children to understand that they, too, are helpers?

Children want to contribute. They understand needing, asking for, and receiving help intuitively because of their stage of life. As they grow, they notice that to be an adult is to possess the ability to offer and supply help to others. This is why they love to help parents make a pie or plant a garden. They enjoy both the partnership and the ability to contribute. It makes them feel very grown up!

Instead of viewing relationships as simply a means to an end, children can learn to view them as opportunities for the reciprocal blessings of mutual support.

My 3-year-old grandson follows my son around with his toy mower on lawn day, just the way his dad did as a little boy. At some point, his contribution to the yard work will be material. In my experience, our kids were less likely to complain about household chores when they understood them not as tasks for training them but as actual, necessary, valuable contributions to the functioning of the household.

This extends to the family of God, as well. Children can help in the church! They can help with volunteer cleaning days, with trash pickup, with planting flowerbeds, with handing out bulletins. And as they grow, their areas of service multiply. Older kids can help in preschool classrooms on Sunday morning or with Vacation Bible School in the summer. Children who learn to help at church learn to value church at a personal level.

The reason? His family was settled in a nice city, near family, and with access to natural beauty.

On hearing the news, my co-leader asked, “Whatever happened to the concept of a call from God?”

It’s an important question, but it’s not the way many Americans, including believers, approach a decision like this. They often ask, Will I be happy? Will it be too stressful? Will it be meaningful?

Is it wrong to ask those questions? How can we think well about which jobs to pursue or opportunities to take?

Three Approaches to Work

Today’s career advice falls into three categories. Category 1 says, “Find work that you love and it will never be toilsome.” Category 2 says, “Find work that’s purposeful. You may work harder, but your labor will be meaningful and fulfilling.” Category 3 says, “Life is short, so find a job that meets your needs and requires no more than 35–40 hours of labor per week. Then live for nights and weekends, and retire early.”

Those in the third category have a point. We need to provide for our families (1 Tim. 5:8; 2 Thess. 3:10). But those in categories 1 and 2 aren’t completely wrong either. Scripture says it’s fine to seek happiness through work. First, work brings the simple pleasure of eating, drinking, and sleeping: “Man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life” (Eccl. 8:15).

The Bible also says work can be pleasant in itself. Moses says, “The LORD your God will bless you in all . . . the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful” (Deut. 16:15).

So should we be aiming for a happiness in our work?

Happiness vs. Meaning

A few years ago, researchers compared the job satisfaction of people who aimed for enjoyment at work with those who aimed for meaning, or work that reflected their values. Perhaps counterintuitively, the survey found that people who pursue their values, rather than happy feelings, have “higher passion and job satisfaction, and lower turnover intentions.”

If we compare feeling good and doing good, doing good brings more satisfaction over time. Similarly, if we compare the pursuit of pleasure to the pursuit of purpose, purpose is more satisfying over time.

When we’re doing and feeling good, we feel an interest in our work. Neuroscientists found that “interest” is “the central motivation for engagement in creative and constructive endeavors and for the sense of well-being.”

There’s even a place for zeal or enthusiasm (Rom. 12:8). But if we’ve learned anything from Tim Keller, it’s to beware the ditch on both sides. If one side is a disinterest in and disengagement from work, the other side is obsession.

Affection vs. Obsession

Researchers studied 900 people who had a passion, including a passion for work. They found obsessive passion leads to joyless persistence in the “beloved” task. I can verify this from experience—in the past, I sometimes worked obsessively, acting as if my ministry’s success depended on my toil. I fell into foolish habits, like answering every viable email before going to sleep. But my obsession, my failure to trust others and the Lord, harmed God’s cause.

Taking breaks, leaving work undone, and resting in God’s providence formed me into a much healthier person. And I wasn’t the only one—the study found that when people could lay their passion aside, they concentrated better and had more joy. Researchers called this “harmonious passion.”

That sounds a lot like Jonathan Edwards’s definition of affection: an informed, settled disposition of the whole person—mind, heart, emotions—to value and commit to something that merits our affection.

Affection for Work

John Frame has outlined a God-centered approach to the search for work you can work hard at, feel good about, and find affection for.

First, recognize God gives gifts to humanity and to his people, including you. He also gives us his Spirit to help us discern our gifts (albeit fallibly!) through self-examination and the confirmation of those who know us well.

Then, God provides opportunities to develop and exercise those gifts. Keep your eyes open for volunteer or work experiences as they become available.

Finally, God grants wisdom to use our gifts for the common good.

Increasing Your Work for the Common Good

In most vocations, the first years are filled with tedious toil and little freedom or authority. Over time, you may increase your skills and take on more responsibilities. This may lead to more interesting work as well as better pay.

You can do this in more than one way. The best path for you may depend on your disposition and your industry, as well as external factors, such as social change or disruptions in your field. Here are four options identified by author and professor Arthur Brooks:

Path 1: The Ladder describes the classic linear ascent of corporate ranks from assistant to associate to partner. Workers receive training, mentoring, and experience. Through effective labor, they earn a series of promotions.

Path 2: The Mine describes the person who stays in one job for many years and keeps getting better at it. Lifelong engineers, inventors, teachers, and carpenters are miners. Miners don’t need promotions—and may refuse them.

Path 3: The Leap is the radical career switch—from rock musician to industrial salmon farmer, from physician to car dealer, from public relations to home repair. The leap may stem from several causes: (1) a long-suppressed desire for different work, (2) disillusionment with the current career, or (3) exigencies such as economic upheaval, technological dislocation, bodily injury, or a need to escape poverty.

Path 4: The Spiral describes the careers that move around in adjacent fields. A biologist, then a biochemist, then a biologist with vast knowledge of chemistry. Ideally, each job builds a new skills and capacities.

The path that makes sense for you depends on tastes, personality, and goals, and on your historical era, including upheavals.

Advice

If you’re wondering if it’s time to adjust your career, let me share a little advice.

First, consult people who know you well, who care about you, and who know the field you are in or are considering. If you’re still stumped, ask an expert who helps people understand their gifts. At the same time, explore. If your organization has roles that interest you, volunteer to help there without asking for relief from your current duties. Perhaps you’ll do well and enjoy it, your superiors will notice, and you’ll be invited to continue.

As you research and experiment, remember this: There’s no perfect job. No career matches all your talents and interests. Every job has its tedium and miseries.

But the Lord is sovereign, and he does have callings for us. We can delight in serving him and the common good in the space God appoints (1 Cor. 7:17–24; 12:7).

To see why my outlook on this project is overwhelmingly (but not, I hope, naively) positive, it might help to get a little perspective on where we are as 21st century Christians.

Locked Behind Language

Back in 2014, I was on the advisory board for an organization committed to retrieving the riches of the Christian tradition for the edification of Protestant Christians. As we strategized about what was needed and what was possible, we kept coming back to one particular bind: deep and rich resources already existed plentifully in the Christian heritage, but they were not in print or in English. Some of the most important sources that could inform and guide contemporary church life were in Latin. This includes not only vast stretches of the patristic and medieval heritage (which we expect to be in Latin), but even the most elaborate and sophisticated Protestant works (which we sometimes forget were also in that not-just-ancient language). We had the good stuff in abundance, but it was locked up behind a language barrier.

We had the good stuff in abundance, but it was locked up behind a language barrier.

How could that barrier be scaled? Either we needed a large team of highly skilled translators to get a lot more productive, or we needed a truly vast army of pastors and seminarians to learn enough Latin to read for themselves. Or both.

Many good translation projects were already underway: in the first decades of our century, English readers have gained access to Franciscus Junius’s A Treatise on True Theology, most of Petrus van Mastricht’s multivolume Theoretical-Practical Theology, most of Bernardinus De Moor’s even more multi-volume Continuous Commentary, Johann Gerhard’s Commonplaces, Johannes Maccovius’s Scholastic Discourse, and more. Compared to 20th century seminarians, we have so much. Even the important-but-not-famous Vermigli and Zanchi have recently become available in sturdy English editions. A quick reconnaissance of the translators shows steady progress, but at a rate predictably slow and costly.

So, we decided to invest strategically in the other option, making Latin education more available and attractive for people already in ministry. Thanks to generous collaboration, new modalities of delivery, and a little creative disruption of institutions, it seems to me that a respectable wave of interested Protestant parties have received adequate training to claim their own untranslated heritage per linguam Latinam. We may also be benefitting from the growth of classical Christian schooling. Between these new readers and those new translations, we may have moved the needle a bit. But gains are modest.

After years of incremental progress on both strategies, AI translation has emerged rather suddenly as a third force. This tool was simply not an option until very recently, and now here it is. Lots of websites (and lots of independent book publishers) are making AI translations available, with a full range of quality from the obviously terrible to the surprisingly serviceable.

My TFR Test Drive

TFR is a project with several features worth noting, but it’s the vast quantity of AI translations that marks it as novel and attention getting. As soon as I saw the TFR link, I started poking around at the resources. I’ve always wanted to see what Hugo Grotius has to say about Ephesians 1 in his commentary, but have never made the time: I would have to find the PDF online, scroll to the right page, and see how hard his Latin is. But that was last month. Now, I can get straight there very fast and skim my way through an AI translation. On my couch. With my phone.

So how is it? Well, almost immediately I spotted some bad moves. One section of the translation has Grotius saying that “we owe God grace” for his blessings, which is obviously (I don’t even have to check the original) a misreading of gratia, which can mean grace but here has to mean “thanks.” We owe God thanks for his blessings. This is elementary Latin; kids learn “gratias tibi ago” early on.

Let’s assume, based on this one experience, that there must be a ton of similar infelicities and errors going on in these translations. Some parts of the translation will underdeliver, or spawn confusion, or actually mislead the reader.

This is where a very intelligent feature of the site comes in. The display is designed to let the reader click through to a facsimile or page scan view very easily.

There are three advantages to this feature:

1. It lets me compare the translation with the original, so I can rise to my own level of ability. Personally, I’m about a B student in ninth grade homeschool Latin, so I need to make sure I don’t get out “over my skis” or beyond my competence. But I can grapple with texts that are about familiar subject matter.
2. It empowers me bibliographically by letting me refer to the original text using a published edition and page number. This keeps me from ever having to footnote “The Faith Received + url” to show what Grotius argued. If I need to use this material for publication, I can cite it properly. TFR’s public accountability enables me to pass that responsible behavior down the line.
3. It reinforces the fact that what I am reading online is a derivative product, but that some published text is the solid source. The AI translation I see today may be improved next time I visit; it has an ephemerality as a screen phenomenon. (TFR has already fixed a few things I flagged; it really is a beta phase with constant iterative improvement.)

This kind of “show me the page” transparency doesn’t solve all problems. It doesn’t suddenly raise an AI translation up to the same level as a human translation by an expert. I peeked into Cyril of Alexandria’s Against Julian—another book I’ve wanted to read for a long time but haven’t had access to, because English translations of the very important Cyril (d. 444) have famously lagged behind other patristic sources. The AI translation has some gaffes and glitches, but is substantially accurate and readable. I run through a few pages and voila, my mind is filled with Cyril’s argument and evidence against his opponent.

In this case, I also have on my desk a copy of the brand-new Cambridge University Press edition of Cyril’s Against Julian by Matthew Crawford and Aaron Johnson for comparison. It’s a slam dunk for the book. The sentences flow better; I can now see just how wooden the AI product is by contrast. Crawford and Johnson have untangled some knotty phrases admirably, and carved Cyril’s unbearably long ways of phrasing things down into more manageable chunks without leaving out any information. They have traced Cyril’s sources, providing brief footnotes on them. They flag when Cyril is subtly arguing against Plato’s Timaeus but not naming his source. And, while this doesn’t matter very much to me as a non-expert in Greek patristics, their translation is based on a critical Greek text that is itself “the culmination of over two decades of meticulous research involving a large team of European scholars.” I could keep listing all the ways the Crawford & Johnson version of Cyril Against Julian is superior. But it also just now became available in 2025, and it costs $160.

An easily available AI translation may well be good enough to allow real learning to take place.

There’s an old saying that the best vacuum cleaner is whichever one you’ll use the most. An excellent machine that you can’t bear to drag out of the closet very often is worse than a decent one that is ready at hand for daily use. Especially when it comes to very long books, in which the reader needs to navigate dozens or hundreds of pages in search of key insights, an easily available AI translation may well be good enough to allow real learning to take place.

What TFR Makes Possible

Much more could be said about how people will be producing and using AI translations in the coming years. By my lights, TFR is doing a lot of things right, at least as of late 2026. This tech sector is developing so rapidly that no achievements seem permanent, and constant vigilance is necessary. But I want to emphasize a few key words.

1. Accessibility

People in academia may underestimate just how inaccessible these old books really are. There are as many as seven distinct hurdles between a modern reader and an old text:

1. Availability. Can I get to it? Has anybody done the work of scanning it? What library holds it?
2. Location. Granted that it’s available in the abstract, where actually is it, even digitally speaking?
3. Legibility. Some printing was poor; some scans are bad; some pdfs came to us via microfilm. I have assigned gnarly old PDFs to students who had to find a way to tell me politely that the assignment was an assault on their eyes.
4. Translation. An obvious barrier already discussed, but only one of several.
5. Edition. This can seem positively Gnostic and incomprehensible to non-academics, but old texts exist with variations, errors, and miscellaneous confusions, so our earliest printed editions were often not critically established or well-documented: Migne’s massive sets of Patrologia Graeca and Patrologia Latina are usually in this category of “right book, wrong edition.” The ubiquitous Schaff volumes of Patristic texts are likewise “right book, wrong edition” in many cases. Even if the reasons to prefer later editions are good ones, they are mysterious to non-experts.
6. Searchability. Does the text exist as a flattened photo image, or is it in a character-recognized form that can be searched for words?
7. Expense. Even if a text exists in a clean, modern, edited, translated version, does it cost over a hundred dollars?

Every time we recommend that somebody should read a particular work, we ought to bear in mind that some of these obstacles might be in place for them.

2. On Ramps

It’s important for scholars with access to historical materials to be alert to these obstacles and design ways for people to be introduced to the work. All sorts of Christians want to read the great tradition. Once they manage to find their way onto the road, all sorts of improvements will become possible: they can start to refine their judgements, discriminate between better and worse, develop a taste for especially good things.

All sorts of Christians want to read the great tradition.

The world of physical libraries is somewhat different than it was 50 years ago; the world of online resources is notably different than it was 50 weeks ago. Scholars and teachers need to be devoting time and attention to building new on ramps for new situations. There is a need for “new rules, new schools, and new tools,” as Karlfried Froehlich once described the changing conditions of the high middle ages.

3. Demand

Lately, we are seeing an efflorescence of projects that leverage AI to offer new resources. Some of these are regrettable, even imaginary products (“The Summa Theologiae for Teenage Boys in Forty Quick Devos,” or “New Praise Songs for Every Verse of Romans”). But even the shoddy and exploitative ventures, if they draw (only to disappoint) an audience, bear witness to the existence of a hunger for something. This is worth monitoring. Perhaps theological supply and demand have become misaligned.

When a responsible, good-faith project like TFR shows up and offers 28 volumes of the works of Rupert of Deutz (d. 1129) for free online reading, it may evoke a new audience as if from nowhere. I’ve wanted to read Rupert’s gigantic works on the Trinity for decades, but previously I faced obstacles. Now that the walls have fallen, perhaps the day has dawned when I can not only read Rupert easily, but actually meet other Rupert fans. How much other invisible demand is out there? It may be the case that readers want more than translators and publishers have been offering.

Misuse Doesn’t Rule Out Proper Use

Many objections to AI translation have more to do with misuse of the tool than with proper use. Things change quickly, but as of late 2026 I’m optimistic that it’s possible to model good use of this particular AI tool.

I know there are other objections to AI translations in general. I don’t think it’s possible to be absolutist in either direction about the issue, because “AI translation” covers a wide range of phenomena. Certainly there is a lower threshold of intelligibility that must be avoided at all costs.

But when the advanced models are carefully guided to produce good enough work, the results can be highly useful as one part of an overall strategy of engaging a corpus of ancient writing.

Our Scriptures were given across three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. In that sense, the Bible itself is a book that constantly moves its readers between languages. Christianity’s spread throughout the world has meant constant translation from one language to another. In private conversations, on papyrus and scrolls, in sermons, songs, and heavy tomes, Christianity has never been hemmed in by any particular language. Rather, as Scripture says, our God will be served by all languages just as he will be worshiped by all peoples (Dan. 7:14).

The Gambian theologian Lamin Sanneh put it well:

Christianity is a translated religion without a revealed language. . . . Without translation there would be no Christianity. Translation is the church’s birthmark as well as its missionary benchmark.

What should we think about that ancient birthmark and historic benchmark in our own day, where the task of theological translation is increasingly outsourced to AI?

Three Camps on AI Translation

This week, Mere Orthodoxy launched The Faith Received (TFR), a vast online repository of theological texts. For the most part, those texts are in English as a result of AI translation, although the project invites human readers to correct mistakes by comparing the AI rendering to the source texts.

The immediate online response has been deeply polarizing—notably so, given that translation sits so deep in Protestantism’s bones.

For some, TFR is an obvious win: People can read obscure texts (for free), most of which were previously only in other languages. Even if you know no Latin or Syriac, the idea goes, you can now read Voetius or Bardesanes for yourself. In that view, AI translation is seen as a great and efficient equalizer of knowledge.

Others express a more cautious pragmatism: AI has good and bad sides, so let’s be careful to check translations for accuracy and not forget that human-led translation is important too.

Another camp has more profound reservations and sees something like TFR more as a curse than a blessing.

For full disclosure, I’m (mournfully) in the third camp. I appreciate and admire Mere Orthodoxy. Like those who run it, I want to see Christians gain wider access to historic theological literature. I also believe in the importance of translation. I’ve invested much of my adult life in learning Dutch to make Herman and J. H. Bavinck available to English speakers. For years, I’ve trained PhD students to do the same. And yet I find it hard to muster enthusiasm for a project like TFR, which I cannot help but see as one step forward, and many more steps back, for theology at large in the English-speaking world.

The project’s most enthusiastic instant online adopters are also, unfortunately, sometimes the least imaginative in asking why someone like me might see this project as concerning for theology. To some online commenters, we’re haters, dinosaurs running scared from our own tech-apocalypse, Luddites, doomers, and so on. As I read from one vocal supporter on X, our lack of enthusiasm is “pathetic.”

It’s easy to imagine why we might look like this if AI translation is imagined in simple terms as a quantum leap forward in both efficiency and equality. If you can read English and have an internet connection, you can now read Voetius, who has finally been freed from his ivory-tower-Latin captivity.

Like the more cautious pragmatists, of course, this group acknowledges that AI translation can make mistakes. Both groups offer the same solution to that problem: Readers can compare the AI translation to the original text and check for themselves if the AI’s rendering is “accurate.” So far, so democratic.

Something about it also seamlessly carries along a deep, historic impulse within Christianity, and not least of the Reformed sort: Give as many people as possible access to theology in a language they understand.

Alongside that continuity, however, I fear that AI translation changes something significant in the historic nature of Christianity as a “religion in translation.” The shift from Christianity as a human-translated religion to an AI-translated religion is far from seamless and shouldn’t be overlooked glibly. The nature of that change, though, is harder to imagine for some than for others.

Defining Translation

What is “translation”? The answer depends on which language you speak. Translate “translation” into different languages, and you might well find its meaning shifts.

My colleague Hephzibah Israel has written on how differently it works in English and in Tamil: “Derived from Latin (translatio), ‘to translate’ in English implies ‘to carry across’ or transfer from one language to another. The Tamil verb ‘peyar’ instead conveys: to dislocate, to uproot, or to unseat with force.”

The shift from Christianity as a human-translated religion to an AI-translated religion is far from seamless and shouldn’t be overlooked glibly.

At that basic level, English conditions us to imagine translation as a relatively straightforward process. In a steady pair of hands, a word, a line, a paragraph, or a book can easily be moved from one language to another, its meaning never wobbling for a second. (To English-speaking AI enthusiasts, AI translation represents a hand breathtaking in steadiness and speed.)

In Tamil, the whole process is more dramatic—a disassembly of meaning in one language, and its reassembly in another. That notion of translation prompts questions of how the uprooted, reconstructed meaning relates to the original. Phrased in that way, translation is an attempt to understand what something means in one language and an attempt to reconstruct that meaning in another. Unlike English, Tamil foregrounds the idea that translation is interpretation, rather than just relocation.

At that basic level of vocabulary, English gives us a suggestive prompt that translation is easy and that ideas across languages are only superficially different. Alongside this, anglophone culture treats monolingualism as the norm. For many of us, in any meaningful sense, English is all we know, our sole frame of reference in imagining other languages. That the same idea might also be somehow different in another language is often difficult for us to imagine—like the abstract thought of a far-off planet where the laws of gravity are different, or where people walk on their hands and see with their ears.

To people who live and think in more than one language, though, this is the stuff of life under the sun: Languages are meaningfully different, and moving from one to another is ordinary and complex all at once.

What’s Lost in Translation

When I talk to monolingual English speakers, I often find they imagine translation like converting a recipe from one measurement system to another. Recipe A uses cups, whereas recipe B uses milliliters. Translation is taken to be the straightforward, mechanical task of following the same recipe in either system. The recipe and end result are the same, and the difference in cooking either way is superficial.

To multilingual people, translation is a different kind of experience. It’s more like starting with a recipe rooted in one culture, with its local ingredients, culinary traditions, methods, and tastes, and trying to create a faithful representation of it in a different culture, where some of the original ingredients are unavailable, and where locals have different techniques and tastes (or allergies). As the cook (or translator), your attempt to represent the original dish faithfully invariably entails choices that change the dish somehow.

Often, those choices are straightforward and the changes minimal: Recipe A uses sugar but is being translated into a culture that uses honey. In either case, the dish stays sweet, even if the taste subtly differs. Sometimes, the choices are necessarily more complicated: Recipe A needs tamarind, a local ingredient that simultaneously tastes sweet and sour, which I cannot locally source for recipe B. However, I can more or less replicate that effect by combining two local ingredients: lemon juice and sugar.

Sometimes, recipe A has an ingredient that cannot easily be replicated with local substitutes—like saffron. No combination of substitutes will match its color, blend of floral aroma, and earthy taste. A blend of turmeric and sweet paprika can take its place, representing what was there in the original, but it isn’t the same. As the chef/translator, to be truthful I should probably let you know that in this case, there wasn’t a direct way to move from one recipe to the other.

What does this mean for languages and the translation of theological texts? To use Dutch-to-English as an example, some translation is indeed simple: Moving from God is goed to God is good is more like an English sense of translation-as-relocation than a Tamil sense of translation-as-dislocation.

Sometimes, translation is more challenging and involves subtler interpretation on the translator’s part. For example, ik lees contains two possible English meanings: I read and I am reading. In English, these are different. Knowing which to use is often a source of frustration to Dutch speakers when speaking English. In translating ik lees, English forces me to make an interpretative choice, as I cannot carry over the ambiguity in its original form.

As is true of languages at large, Dutch has terms with no direct English equivalent—the most famous being the feeling of gezelligheid. Like a chef swapping tamarind for a combination of lemon juice and sugar, English doesn’t prevent me from telling you about gezelligheid, or even helping you experience it. It’s the warm feeling you get when in cozy places with people you like.

As a translator, however, I sometimes find that Dutch presents me with its own saffron. This content requires a Tamil sense of translation as total deconstruction and imaginative reconstruction. Consider the Calvinistic poetry of Willem Bilderdijk.

Geleerden! ’t is vergeefsch, met klemmend taalvoldingen
Het vrede- en zoenverbond den wijsgeer op te dringen.
’t Is de overriding niet van ’t wikkend onverstand,
Waaraan de Vredegod Zijn heilkracht heeft verpand.

What does it mean to “translate” this into English? The stanza is an elegant appeal to believing scholars not to think they can coax unbelieving philosophers into Christian faith by arid arguments alone. To write this, Bilderdijk combines unusual vocabulary and rhyming couplets in a way that doesn’t carry over into English: taalvoldingen and dringen reinforce each other through rhyme, whereas the English equivalents, “verbal persuasions” and “to impose,” do not.

Whatever it would mean to translate this text, I cannot simply carry over its stylistic composition and its conceptual meaning. Both are integral to the original. At my hand, by my choice, one of them must be sacrificed.

I cannot simply carry over its stylistic composition and its conceptual meaning. Both are integral to the original. One of them must be sacrificed.

When I do so, what should I call my rendering? Bilderdijk in English? An attempt to represent Bilderdijk in English? Or, in effect, have I written an entirely new English poem prompted by reading Bilderdijk in Dutch?

If someone else produced an alternative English version, making different choices about vocabulary or style, which version would be the “accurate” one? In any case, as the translator, if I were to meet an English speaker who read my translation and told me he or she had “now read Bilderdijk and love his poetry,” I would have to say, “No, you haven’t, but thanks for enjoying my interpretation of it.”

What Happens When AI’s Translation Becomes Ours

At its best, theological writing aims to tell the truth about God, and all else in the light of God. The translation of that material is sometimes simple, often complex, and sometimes almost impossible.

In every case, translation remains an act of interpretation. Pre-AI, this was the practice by which the faith was received—person to person, language to language, sometimes by smooth relocation, and sometimes by more difficult (and often error-strewn) passage.

That pursuit of truth means the recognition of many things: that all theological translation is interpretation, that the translation and the source text are different texts, and that somewhere between the two, the text was covered in the translator’s fingerprints. A way of imagining theological translation that ignores this is linguistically naive. More seriously, it pushes that use of theological texts toward ambivalence to the pursuit of truth.

Once, I was teaching an undergraduate seminar on the German idealist philosopher Hegel. In the discussion, a brilliant German student pointed out that reading Hegel in English was easier and more challenging than reading him in German. In the original, she said, Hegel is often deliberately ambiguous, whereas our English translator tended to resolve those ambiguities and give his writing a more concrete feel. To the student sitting beside her, a monolingual Brit, this was a lightbulb moment—a pointer to a reality that hadn’t struck him yet. He was reading an interpretation of Hegel, but Hegel himself was something subtly different. In a small way, their interaction challenged the British student’s framework in considering what it meant to read a text, and to do so as someone who wanted to seek truth.

I have no doubt that some will use TFR like that German student. Appeals to “check the translation alongside the original” are meaningful if you can read the original with some skill. If you can read the original as a richly textured unit of meaning, you might well interact with it fruitfully. Truth might well be pursued.

For many English speakers in our monolingual English world, unfortunately, the invitation to compare AI translation to source text will be less edifying. If you want to read the AI translation of Bardesanes, a third-century Syriac theologian, and are curious about how AI has interpreted his original text, you need to know Syriac. (If you can read Syriac, good for you!) For the rest of us, we’re left to take the AI rendering at face value.

As we do so, perhaps, we’ll relay errors and confuse the AI’s translation biases for whatever Bardesanes himself wrote down. As we do so, the AI enterprise subtly nudges us into a murky world. Some corner of your mind now has information that prompts you to say, “You know, I once read in Bardesanes of Edessa that . . .” However, if you can’t read Syriac, and if no one who can takes the time to check AI Bardesanes, the reality is you haven’t actually read Bardesanes. Whatever you do with your AI translation–derived knowledge, it’s a lose-lose situation.

Imagine you’re a preacher, and in your sermon you say, “I have this great quote from Bardesanes . . . although it’s currently unverified information from an AI translation,” your honesty will deflate the moment. Use the quote without attributing it to unverified AI, and you might inspire your congregation, but you yourself are being shaped by that practice, with all its underlying assumptions about truth.

Use the quote without attributing it to unverified AI, and you might inspire your congregation, but you yourself are being shaped by that practice, with all its underlying assumptions about truth.

Many users of TFR, I expect, will have a more disciplined approach than that. Using the available tools to view the side-by-side presentation of AI translation and source text, they’ll remember that the English may be an uncorrected AI translation, thus shifting the onus onto readers to verify for themselves whether the English is a good translation.

Unfortunately, while that setup reflects well on the integrity of the project’s designers, its effectiveness is constrained by anglophone culture at large. In that culture, we fail abysmally at teaching languages other than English. From the get-go, those languages are presented as inherently “foreign,” rather than things that might become familiar. Few of us learn them in ways that make them intuitive or imaginative to us.

For most of us—like for Augustine reflecting on why he hated learning Greek as a child in Confessions—they fail to take root in our minds. Rather, even among the highly educated, anglophone culture often produces people who interact with other languages in a monolingual way.

Many of us imagine the English and foreign-language texts side by side like a recipe in cups and a recipe in milliliters. We only know how to judge the task of translation by tracing a line from each familiar English word to the foreign-looking equivalent that (presumably) should mean and do the same thing in the other language—like the cup of milk that I expect to be matched by however many millilitres of milk in the foreign recipe.

In that mindset, what does it mean to “check a translation for accuracy”? It often means identifying that the English text has the word “God,” so we check if the Latin line also has “Deus,” and so we hover back and forth from translation to original, imagining the English text atomistically and confirming to ourselves whether the foreign words seem to map onto this English grid.

In a way, this is a kind of truth seeking, and it may sometimes bear fruit. Here and there, perhaps, we’ll catch the AI misreading a foreign script and giving us the wrong English word. But it’s truth seeking of a blinkered sort, and it’s particular to people formed in English-speaking cultures in our time.

Old Problem on a New Scale

TFR’s most vocal online supporters have been quick to describe it as an epochal moment for our reading of theological sources. Given Christianity’s long history of dealing with translation, I view it more cautiously. The problems it creates aren’t entirely new.

Between the 12th and 14th centuries, the medieval translation industry circulated a vast amount of Latin translation of Greek and Arabic texts, often erroneous, that was received and circulated uncritically by readers who knew no Greek or Arabic. AI translation amplifies that practice, perhaps, but didn’t create it.

In the Middle Ages, a fruit of that industry was a general laziness toward the study of languages by otherwise serious Christian thinkers—a detrimental cultural norm criticized, notably, by the English polymath Roger Bacon, who traced out its effects on the quality of biblical exegesis, scholarship at large, evangelism on the frontiers of Europe, and much more.

In our day, the AI translation industry is our direct equivalent. Making the project of theological retrieval dependent on it is no small development in the long history of our “translated religion.”

In Christ, God has oriented our lives around his purposes. He’s given us a map. Your local church is the dot that says, “You are here.”

But put God’s map under a blacklight, and you see thousands more dots, deep in darkness. These are unreached peoples and places with no access to the gospel, to Christians, or to churches. In the light, the map says, “You are here.” In the dark, it says, “There they are.”

One verse captures Jesus’s burden for those dots in the dark. John Piper calls it “the great missionary text in the Gospel of John.” Jesus says,

I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. (10:16)

Christ’s scattered flock demands missionary church planting. Consider three truths.

Christ Has Redeemed a Flock

“I have other sheep.” Jesus doesn’t say he might have or hopes to have. He says, in the present tense, “I have.” They’re already his.

This is the bedrock of all church planting. Before any church plants in a new area or sends a missionary team to a new field, Christ has already asserted, “I have other sheep” there. He can make that claim because of what surrounds it: “I lay down my life for the sheep” (vv. 15, 17). At the center of the cross and resurrection is a redeemed flock. Jesus didn’t say, “It is pending.” He said, “It is finished” (19:30).

How can Jesus have these sheep before the cross? Because this has been God’s plan from the beginning. God promises Abraham that through his offspring “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3), and that offspring is Christ (Gal. 3:16). Revelation 5 shows the promise fulfilled: a worldwide flock, redeemed by a worthy Lamb (v. 9).

At Babel, God scatters the glory-greedy people and confuses their language (Gen. 11:7–8). In Revelation, they stand gathered around one throne, singing. Babel leaves them scattered and confused. Blood makes them a choir.

So we plant churches knowing Christ’s work is finished. We proclaim redemption; we don’t provide it. Christ has a flock, and he will gather what he has purchased.

His Flock Is Scattered

Slow down over these words: “other sheep that are not of this fold.” Jesus is in Jerusalem, speaking to the Pharisees, the shepherds of Israel. Standing in the middle of Israel, he claims sheep among the Gentiles, scattered throughout the nations.

We plant churches knowing Christ’s work is finished. We proclaim redemption; we don’t provide it.

Do you realize who he’s talking about? Unless you’re ethnically Jewish, he means you. He was looking through continents and centuries—in my case, to a little island off the Malacca Strait. My church in Singapore exists because somebody obeyed this verse. Somebody crossed an ocean. Somebody learned a language. We’re living proof of John 10:16.

But Jesus has more. He died “to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad” (11:52). This is why the Great Commission isn’t a general command to make as many disciples as we can but a specific command to make disciples of all the ethnē, the ethnolinguistic peoples of the world.

Picture healthy churches as cell towers in various locations. Some places have many towers and full bars: the gospel within reach. Other places, like Singapore, have a signal but not full coverage.

But thousands of peoples have no tower at all. Not a weak signal—no signal. No churches. No Bibles. No Christians. These are gospel dead zones, the darkest places on God’s map. Unless someone crosses cultural and language barriers, roughly 300 million people across 3,000 unreached language groups will be born, live, and die without access to the gospel.

While we’re gathered in our churches, they’re scattered among the nations, like sheep without a shepherd.

We Must Plant Churches to the Ends of the Earth

Hear our Lord’s resolve: “I must bring them also.” His determination is our motivation. What drives us isn’t guilt but glory. Guilt might send people to the mission field, but it can’t keep them there, not through the afflictions of church planting. Only glory can. As Spurgeon put it, “If there be anything about which we cannot tolerate lukewarmness, it is in the matter of sending the gospel to a dying world.”

How will Christ bring his sheep? “They will listen to my voice.” His Word—in our mouths. Missionary church planting isn’t a gamble. Jesus didn’t die crossing his fingers. That’s what he told Paul in unreached Corinth: “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you . . . I have many in this city who are my people” (Acts 18:9–10).

Adoniram Judson preached in Burma for six years before his first convert, while supporters back home wondered whether the work was worth it. He wrote, “If they ask again, What prospect of ultimate success is there? tell them, As much as that there is an almighty and faithful God, who will perform His promises, and no more.” By the time of Judson’s death, God had graced Burma with 63 churches and more than 7,000 converts.

This is a difficult and dangerous task. These peoples are unreached for a reason: All the easy language groups are already taken. But don’t weigh risk by the odds of danger. Weigh it by the worthiness of the goal. There is danger in missionary church planting—and far greater danger in playing it safe. If Jesus laid down his life to redeem them, we must lay down our lives to bring them home.

Don’t weigh risk by the odds of danger. Weigh it by the worthiness of the goal.

This doesn’t mean everyone boards an airplane; the task requires goers and senders. Picture missions as a spear. The razor-sharp tip is the missionary team, cutting through barriers to plant a church where none exists. The solid shaft is the church behind them, bearing the weight. A good spear has more weight in the shaft than at the tip. Wherever God has placed you, grab hold and thrust it ahead.

When will the task be done? New Testament scholar George Ladd answered, “I do not know. . . . I know only one thing: Christ has not yet returned; therefore the task is not yet done. . . . Let us get busy and complete our mission.”

He Laid Down His Life

Peter Cameron Scott was born in Scotland in 1867 and raised in Philadelphia. He had a fine voice and his sights set on the opera stage. One day, climbing the opera house steps, he was struck with the conviction that he’d been chasing fame and comfort. He turned around and never went back.

Peter and his brother John sailed for Africa to plant churches among the unreached. Shortly after arriving, John contracted a fever and died; with his own hands, Peter dug a grave and buried him. Months later, malaria nearly took Peter too, and he was evacuated to London. Peter had lost his career, his brother, and now his health.

Then, walking through Westminster Abbey, he came upon David Livingstone’s grave, engraved with the words of John 10:16: “Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring.” Peter knelt, prayed, and rose knowing what he must do. It wasn’t guilt that drove him back to Africa. It was glory.

In 1895, he returned to Africa’s eastern coast with a team of seven, aiming to plant churches deep in the interior, where Christ had not been named. They called it the Africa Inland Mission.

Fourteen months later, Peter died of blackwater fever, never seeing a single church planted. But his life wasn’t wasted. In the 130 years since, the Africa Inland Mission has planted thousands of churches among peoples once unreached. Like his Good Shepherd, Peter laid down his life to bring the scattered sheep home.

So may we plant churches—for the glory of God, through the local church, to the ends of the earth—until there’s one flock, one shepherd, one great multitude around one glorious throne.

Drawing from his own cancer ordeal, John Piper has urged many of us not to “waste our cancer” but rather to redeem it for good. I’m trying to do that. By the grace of God and, I dare to hope, for the glory of God, I truly want to live well and then to die even better.

God’s Word taught me—long before my diagnosis—to live life and walk wisely, as if on the edge of eternity, and to avoid complacency and presumption by keeping my mortality in mind.

Moses prays in Psalm 90 that the Lord would “teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” Likewise, Paul urges us in Ephesians and Colossians to make the “best use of [our] time” (Eph. 5:15–16; Col. 4:5–6).

Repeatedly, the call is to pursue wisdom in the face of life’s brevity. This has made me wonder if I’ve grown wiser through my battle with disease and mortality. Has cancer led me to paths of wisdom?

Fourteen Wisdom Lessons Learned

Whatever the outcome, it’s clear I’m enrolled in the Cancer School of Wisdom—and I’m meant to grow wiser so long as I’m matriculated there. Here’s a partial list of what I’ve learned, more than ever before.

1. “Day by day” living is the only way to face life. Imagine the crippling fear I’d have felt if I had tried to process and anticipate the 1,400-plus consecutive days of debilitating treatment and unrelenting pain and suffering I’ve faced so far. I wouldn’t have survived. I must do life in no more than 24-hour increments, and I dare not be concerned about tomorrow before the clock strikes midnight. Worrying about tomorrow blends the poisons of grief, weakness, anxiety, and fear into a deadly concoction for which there’s no antidote except repentance and a fierce commitment to day-by-day living.

2. I can lament without despair. There’s a way to be sorrowful and yet always rejoicing, and thankfully, God has taught me this lesson enough that in all my circumstances, I’ve been able to smile as much as I cry (2 Cor. 4:8).

3. Groaning in wordless prayer can be just as effective as making long monologues. The One who knows the heart understands our groans. He needs no words to know what’s going on (Matt. 6:7–8; Rom. 8:26–27).

4. While I don’t need to be healed by God, I do need to be sustained by him (2 Cor. 12:8–10; Phil. 4:10–13). Sustaining grace is as great a miracle as healing grace. While grace to soar on eagle’s wings sounds cool, God’s gracious strength to help us walk one step at a time for days without number—without fainting—seems more impressive to me (Isa. 40:31). I’ve come to conclude that years of suffering endured well through God’s sustaining grace is a more astonishing wonder than an instantaneous healing wrought by God’s finger.

5. Faith isn’t naming or claiming a certain outcome but trusting God no matter the outcome (Dan. 3:16–18; 2 Cor. 12:6–11). The three Hebrew teens in Daniel 3 knew what God could do, even if they weren’t sure what he would do. They trusted and obeyed him no matter what he ordained.

6. Whatever my condition, I’m doing better than I deserve. It’s a wonder that he should even notice me, lowly creature that I am. It’s an even greater wonder that he knows me and doesn’t mark my iniquities against me. For if he did, I wouldn’t be able to stand. If God were to mark my sins and give me what I deserve, my next breath would be in hell (Pss. 8:3–4; 130:3–4)

Whatever my condition, I’m doing better than I deserve.

7. There’s never a time—so long as breath is in my lungs and strength is in my body—to stop praising him, or to sit back in casual indifference, or to pull back from the race (Pss. 63:4; 150:6; 2 Cor. 5:6–11).

8. A faithful life is often a simple matter of God-given determination to not be fainthearted and to just not quit (1 Cor. 16:13; Gal. 6:9).

9. Sorrows don’t stop being sorrows just because we have joys, and joys don’t stop being joys just because we have sorrows (2 Cor. 6:8–10). We need the stabilizing balance this brings, lest we sink lower than the grave.

10. I must hold on to God’s promises even when they’re delayed. As it’s true that God is never late in fulfilling his promises, he’s never early either. We have to learn to wait on the Lord for all he has covenanted to do (Isa. 40:31; 2 Pet. 1:3-4; 3:8–9).

11. How I die can be just as important and influential as how I live. Jesus is watching, people are watching, and being faithful to the end matters (Acts 7:55–59; Rev. 2:10).

How I die can be just as important and influential as how I live.

12. To live is Christ. It’s to know him, to trust him, to serve him, to behold and become like him, to enjoy him, to suffer with him, and to await his return (2 Cor. 3:17–18; Phil. 1:21; 3:7–11).

13. To die is gain. For in being taken from here, I’ll be found with him there. I’ll see him; I’ll be with him; I’ll be changed and healed by him, welcomed forever into his house where tears and trials are no more (Ps. 23:6; John 14:1–3; Phil. 1:21; 1 Thess. 4:16–18; 1 John 3:1–3; Rev. 21:3–4).

14. Whether I live or die, I’m the Lord’s. He is the potter and I the clay. He is free to mold me, make me, cleanse me, and use me as he wills (Isa. 64:8; Rom. 14:7–9; 2 Cor. 5:14–15; 2 Tim. 2:21).

Still in School

For as long as I live, I’ll likely remain enrolled in the Cancer School of Wisdom. I must accept the fact that in the effort to not waste my cancer, I need to keep learning the lessons only learned in the furnace and the fire.

I’m with Paul in wanting to endure suffering by fighting the good fight, finishing the race, and keeping the faith. I want to so live and die that I’ll one day graduate from the Cancer School of Wisdom and receive a crown of righteousness laid up for me by my Savior and Lord (2 Tim. 4:5–8). For in that moment, I’ll know it was worth it all.

Sometimes we ask spiritual questions in a worldly way. I do it too. We get caught up in all the microdecisions we’re making throughout the day. We don’t pause to get to the spiritual root of things.

We ask, “How many hours should I rest each day?” instead of  “What does God’s Word say about rest? Why did God instruct us to rest?”

We ask, “Should I fold this load of laundry or take a nap?” instead of “Am I being a good steward of what God has provided me with (my physical body and my home)?”

We ask, “Should I spend time with the kids or go to bed early?” instead of  “Am I connected with my kids in a way that stewards this parenthood opportunity well and allows for discipleship conversations?”

At the heart of your questions is a desire to live biblically while fulfilling the responsibilities God has blessed you with as a mother, a worker, and a keeper of a home. I wear those same responsibilities, and it helps me to start with looking at things through a biblical lens and then to prayerfully consider how those insights can guide me in making practical and creative daily choices that align with Scripture and with real life. So, let’s do that.

Biblical Insights About Rest

Rest is a compassionate directive from the Lord (Mark 2:27), not another item on our to-do list. God, as our Creator, knows what our bodies need. God doesn’t need rest in the same ways our imperfect and insufficient bodies do; still, he modeled rest after creating the world (Gen. 2:2–3).

Rest is a compassionate directive from the Lord, not another item on our to-do list.

Work is also a directive we see in Scripture. From the beginning, God placed Adam and Eve in the garden to “work it and keep it” (v. 15). Today, some of us work in office buildings, some on construction sites, some in a school, and some in the home. Work is part of God’s design, and it’s good. Paul even makes clear statements about the work ethic of Christians in his first letter to Timothy (1 Tim. 5:7–8).

All this to say, it’s good to rest and it’s good to work.

Practical Next Steps

Changing our question and bringing it before the Lord can illuminate the right decisions about rest versus work versus time with loved ones.

The first example you gave was of coming home after a day of work to an evening filled with making dinner, cleaning the house, helping kids with homework, or working in the garden. If we break down some of those responsibilities, we can prayerfully consider a few questions and practical or creative responses.

Preparing meals is a wonderful way to care for our families and to prompt connection around the dinner table. Are there ways to make the task less overwhelming by using slow-cooker meals, teaching kids to help or cook, or meal prepping some components in bulk before the week starts?

Housework is another way we can care for our family, steward the home God has provided, and maintain a comfortable space to host others. But are we maintaining a clean house, or are we obsessively trying to recreate what we see in Instagram posts and idolizing our living spaces? Are there ways to engage other family members in picking up? Could we declutter so we have less stuff to maintain? Are we striving for perfection when, most days, good enough will do?

Are we striving for perfection when, most days, good enough will do?

Time with kids is so important, especially in today’s culture where family relationships within the home aren’t always prioritized. Often, our question is less about “Should I play this board game / build this LEGO set / participate in this tea party?” and more about how we can cultivate positive relationships with our children and maintain connectedness as a family. We want to be close to our kids and to have abundant discipleship opportunities while they’re with us.

Could you engage kids in the tasks that need to be completed before playing a game so that the game can happen more quickly and, consequently, bedtime can be earlier? Can you model taking good care of yourself by cutting out and going to bed while siblings enjoy bonding time and you join in the next time?

Seek Wisdom and Keep Asking the Right Questions

You may have been seeking a response of “Christians should get X hours of rest per day.” Like most matters, this requires more discernment and wisdom.

Keep digging a few layers deeper with the questions you ask, and reach out to the Creator of wisdom in prayer. Ask God to guide you in any decisions around responsibilities you need to let go of or habits you need to implement. Lean not on your own strength to “get it all done” but on his wisdom in how to live biblically, care for your loved ones, and rest in him.

In this message on Psalm 102, recorded at TGCW26, Vroegop encourages believers to turn to God in suffering by acknowledging the reality of our pain while holding fast to our faith in his goodness.

In This Episode

00:00 – Prayer and personal story of loss

02:50 – Journey of lament

06:20 – Understanding lament

09:34 – Role of lament in processing suffering

12:55 – Practical advice for lamenting

19:29 – Pivot from pain to trust

35:07 – Hope and future of lament

36:16 – Connection to the cross

40:45 – Role of lament in the Christian life

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But today, it is not unusual to find evangelical theologians, pastors, and laypeople focusing on the Early Church Fathers, the medieval theologians, the reformers, and the post-Reformation scholastics.

These gestures toward theological “retrieval,” as it is often called, have produced many positive results. To pick just one example, controversies over the doctrine of the Trinity that erupted online 10 years ago this summer have been largely resolved in favor of explicitly creedal formulations. Evangelicals have discovered afresh the deeply biblical logic of the Nicene doctrine.

Some have wanted to press the retrieval project further, recovering not only the historic Christian doctrine of God but also historical perspectives on political theology especially. In one sense, this is a most welcome development, but it does raise important questions about how a Protestant agenda for theological retrieval should proceed. Let me offer a few suggestions that might guide us as we seek to retrieve the past in biblically faithful ways.

1. Hierarchy of Doctrine

We must keep in mind a hierarchy of doctrine. Every doctrine is important, but not every doctrine is equally important. Some doctrines are integral to the Christian faith, while other doctrines are derivative in the sense that they gain their force from the more central doctrines. The further the derivation proceeds, the less certain we can be of the conclusions reached.

Every doctrine is important, but not every doctrine is equally important.

For example, the doctrine of the Trinity is of greater moment than the specifics of church polity. It’s more important to be a Nicene Trinitarian than it is to be a Presbyterian or a congregationalist.

The same thing should be recalled as we seek to retrieve political theology. Political theology itself is of lesser moment than Trinitarian theology. It is not unimportant or unworthy of careful study. But contemporary Christians are not simply cherry-picking when they weigh, for example, Thomas Aquinas’s view on the Son’s divinity more heavily than they do his understanding of the justice of human slavery.

Even within our retrieval of political theology, fundamental principles such as natural law and human freedom and dignity carry more weight than specific applications (which are irreducibly local and particular).

2. Diversity Within the Tradition

We should be aware of the variegated nature of the Christian tradition. On precious few doctrinal issues does the Christian tradition admit only one orthodox position. The doctrines summarized in the ancient creeds and councils function as the baseline. But on many issues, it is better to speak of “traditions” (plural) rather than “the Tradition” (singular).

Political theology is especially tricky in this regard. Whose political theology should carry the most weight: the pre-Constantinian persecuted church of the early centuries, the late Roman and Byzantine eras, the medieval feudalists, the magisterial reformers, the free-church movements, the Erastians, the Scottish Covenanters, the Baptists of the early American Republic, or someone else?

It would be a mistake to enshrine our own political moment as the ideal to which the Christian message was inevitably leading, but it is just as precarious to assume that some previous “golden era” must be recovered as the definitive Christian position.

In any event, political principles must be adapted to local circumstances. We have to live where and when we are. Retrieval is not the same as repristination (simply restoring a previous arrangement to its pristine condition). History is not a story of unbroken progress, but neither is it a tale of perpetual decline. Some historical developments are positive (like the abolition of slavery), and Christians should be unembarrassed to say so.

3. Avoid Misusing the Tradition

We should avoid misusing the tradition for our predetermined agendas. This kind of abuse of the past happens, for example, when venerable principles like Augustine’s ordo amoris (the order of love) are used as cover for racial prejudice.

Or when the medieval formula gratia non tollit naturam sed perficit  (“grace does not destroy nature but perfects it”) is used to imply that anything “natural” in a postlapsarian context can be preserved uncritically. In its original context, this formula had to do with the integrity of human nature and its openness to divine grace, not with sanctioning the political and cultural assumptions of fallen humanity.

4. Critical Appropriation of the Past

We should avoid an uncritical appropriation of the tradition. This brings us to the heart of a Protestant approach to retrieval. We should show due deference to the Christian tradition, but Scripture still has pride of place as the sole, inspired, and inerrant Word of God. When it comes to our revered traditions and our heroes in the faith, we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

We should show due deference to the Christian tradition, but Scripture still has pride of place as the sole, inspired, and inerrant Word of God.

We can laud Luther’s defense of justification by faith alone and still find his sinful attitude toward Jewish people noxious and unbiblical. We can rely on Thomas’s Christology but reject his views on the inferiority of women. We can value Jonathan Edwards’s contributions and still find fault with his views on slavery.

The point of retrieval is not for history to supplant the Bible’s authority in our faith and practice. Instead, a careful study of the Christian past reveals many successes but also many failures as Christians (like us) have sought to order their lives according to the truth of God’s Word.

They make the point that we shouldn’t give up on something just because it’s hard, and they discuss how to cling to faith through suffering, through prosperity, and even when our Christian heroes fail. Listen to and be encouraged by the Bible promises that keep these four women anchored in the faith.

Resources Mentioned:

• Revelation (Bible study) by Jen Wilkin
• “Nancy Guthrie and the Reformation of Women’s Ministry” by Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra
• 12 Faithful Women edited by Melissa Kruger and Kristen Wetherell

Verses to Anchor Endurance: 

• 2 Corinthians 12:9
• Isaiah 58:11
• Romans 8:32
• 1 Corinthians 10:13

Discussion Questions:

The line perfectly sums up the moral confusion that is both the message and medium of this movie—a twisted take on Hansen’s popular NBC show, To Catch a Predator (2004–7).

Primetime is a gross movie, both in what it depicts and in how it depicts it. Even though Oppenheim’s goal seems to be mirroring to us our moral inconsistencies—as well as our “can’t look away” voyeurism—the film also perpetuates these problems. Maybe the director is aware of that, maybe not. Either way, Primetime offers a sensationalistic, exploitative cinematic experience that’s morally hollow and far less interesting than it thinks it is.

Why Does Gen Z Love ‘Primetime’?

In case it’s not already clear, I do not recommend anyone watch this movie. But the fact that people are watching it, especially large numbers of young people, means Christian leaders and parents should at least be aware of the film and the broader moral confusion it represents.

Primetime (rated R) had a big opening weekend at the box office—the third-highest-grossing film in studio A24’s history. Following the pattern of this year’s other breakout hit for A24, Backrooms, the success of Primetime is largely fueled by Gen Z (69 percent of opening-weekend audiences were under 30). This is especially interesting given these young viewers weren’t even alive when To Catch a Predator aired. What’s the appeal for young viewers?

Part of it is A24’s strong reputation for cool aesthetics and metamodern storytelling—a mood-heavy blend of reflexive self-awareness and earnest social consciousness. But metamodernism is often ideologically incoherent, and Primetime is case in point.

Ask a group of Gen Zers who just watched Primetime what the moral takeaway is, and you’re likely to get a wild array of answers. It might feel to them like an Important Film. But why exactly it’s “important” is harder to articulate. For many young audiences today, a distinct vibe is more valuable than a cogent argument.

Meta Media Criticism

Loosely based on a 2009 Esquire article about the incident that led to the cancellation of To Catch a Predator, Primetime is a movie about media’s dark side. A Gen-Z digital native, 30-year-old Oppenheim is abundantly aware of the malformative dynamics of an overmediated world. But, like many of his peers, he’s less sure of solutions. And Oppenheim’s choice to render Primetime in a horror-movie aesthetic backfires; it becomes so garish that it trivializes whatever serious ideas he might be mulling.

Most of the film’s media critique riffs on well-worn concerns over gawker voyeurism (“If it bleeds, it leads”). Neil Postman was talking about this in the ’80s and ’90s. Movies like Nightcrawler (2014) or Christine (2016) made the same points.

Primetime also notes the way modern media blurs lines between entertainment and real life (“infotainment”). Oppenheim even has former NBC executive Jeff Zucker play himself in an amusing cameo, in which he suggests moving How to Catch a Predator to a prime-time slot to go head-to-head with ABC’s hit drama, Lost. Hansen later comments that he wants his show to be “bigger than Lost,” maybe even worthy of an Emmy.

Yet even as Hansen catches bad guys in the film, he’s portrayed as a bad guy, complete with a crazy-eyed, red-filtered face that might haunt your nightmares. Primetime situates Hansen within a media industrial complex that is itself predatory in the way it profits from feeding our unhealthy lusts.

That’s a true enough point, of course. Hollywood is fundamentally exploitative. And if Oppenheim had managed to make this point without perpetuating it in practice, it’d be well taken. But in fact, Primetime is a predatory piece of exploitative entertainment. As it depicts lurid situations—explicit online chats between pedophiles and their victims, disturbing in-person encounters between the adult men and the underage prey they desire—the film indulges in the very voyeurism it critiques.

As it depicts lurid situations, Primetime indulges in the very voyeurism it critiques.

The moment this becomes clear is a jarring scene where former child actor Jonathan Lipnicki (the adorable kid from Jerry Maguire, now 35) shows up, playing one of the pedophiles lured by To Catch a Predator’s “Decoy Dan” (another former child actor, Skyler Gisondo). In the scene, the pedophile character (Lipnicki) drops his pants and exposes himself to Dan (Gisondo)—and us. It’s a dehumanizing, unnecessary, and gross affront to the actor’s dignity, made even more upsetting by the fact that we remember both these actors (Lipnicki and Gisondo) primarily from their childhood roles. At least two other pedophile characters in the film are played by former child actors (Tony Revolori and Alex Winter).

Whatever clever or “important” point Oppenheim thinks he’s making by casting former child actors as adult predators is undermined by the grotesqueness of it all.

Of Monsters and Men

Just as the precise nature of Oppenheim’s media criticism in Primetime is elusive, so too are his moral points.

In true metamodern fashion, a clear moral energy is at work in this movie—a palpable awareness that evil is real and injustice is wrong. But the film has no rubric for naming or evaluating degrees of evil, nor any hope that justice can be rightly served. Oppenheim seems to mostly relish deconstructing bourgeois society’s too-clean approaches to justice, problematizing what he sees as too-tidy categories of good and evil.

The people who watched To Catch a Predator and felt better about the world, it seems Oppenheim is saying, are just like the people who made Sound of Freedom a breakout hit in 2023, or who applauded the “War on Terror” rhetoric that led to Saddam Hussein’s execution in 2006 (a news event explicitly referenced in Primetime). The film suggests these people need the catharsis of obviously evil villains (pedophiles, dictators, terrorists) to feel better about their own moral improprieties and the world’s uncertainties.

Hansen becomes a more villainous character than the pedophiles in Primetime because, Oppenheim suggests, Hansen epitomizes a sort of George W. Bush–style moral simplicity. “You’re either with me or you’re with him,” Hansen says in the film. “We are cleansing the world of an ancient evil.” It’s an approach that justifies ethically dubious means toward a supposedly “righteous” end (one cop tells Hansen, “You’re doing the Lord’s work!”). For Oppenheim, Hansen is a poster boy for Nietzsche’s famous warning: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

It’s all so familiar and tired. Almost every movie about a classic villain these days makes the same “rethinking monsters” move: from Frankenstein to Wicked to Joker to Cruella and umpteen others. It appears the Netflix adaptation of East of Eden is doing the same thing with Cathy Ames, whom Steinbeck famously describes as a “psychic monster” with a “malformed soul.” In the disordered moral imagination of post-Christian culture, monsters are misunderstood and traumatized—products of circumstance, not of their own agency.

It’s all so familiar and tired. Almost every movie about a classic villain these days makes the same ‘rethinking monsters’ move.

Primetime stops short of absolving the pedophilic predators, though in many scenes Oppenheim clearly aims to make us feel sorry for them and conflicted about the humiliation they endure. He also goes out of his way to equivocate the villainy of the pedophiles with the sins of Hansen (who’s caught in an extramarital affair at the same time as he hosts To Catch a Predator).

But does the fact that we’re all sinners mean all sins are equally bad? If a person like Hansen is morally flawed or hypocritical, does it render all his moral intuitions wrong or pursuits of justice invalid? Obviously not. That Primetime wants to confuse us about these questions says a lot about today’s world.

Rebuilding Society’s Moral Architecture

When a movie implicitly asks us to ease up on our indignation toward pedophiles, or when a society empathizes with a mother who strangled her three children to death, you know something has gone terribly askew in our moral architecture.

It shouldn’t be hard for us to collectively recognize that the sexual exploitation of children is more evil than an adult’s extramarital affair (even though both are condemnable sins). It shouldn’t be hard to see that murdering innocent children is a greater degree of evil than murdering adults (though both are evil).

Yet here we are. The moral mess that is Primetime, and its popularity among Gen Z, should be a galvanizing reminder for Christians. Today’s world is deeply moral and profoundly hungry for justice. But the path to justice is unclear and the principles of morality confused—unavoidably so, short of consensus on absolute truth.

Today’s metamodern mix of moral fervor and moral confusion presents problems. But for the church, it’s also an opportunity. As Christians, we can point to a God who perfectly administers justice and holds all sinners accountable—every single one of us (Rom. 14:12). But we can also celebrate that this same just God is rich is mercy and saves by grace (Eph. 2:4–5).

In a world where human-arbitrated justice often devolves into horror, this is the hope we need.

I’ve now added her most recent volume, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines. Like Turkle’s other books, it got an asterisk. Turkle is a clinical psychologist, professor of the social studies of science and technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the founding director of the Initiative on Technology and Self.

For close to 40 years, she’s been researching and writing about the personal and societal effects of computer technologies. In earlier works, she focused on the harmful effects that the proliferation of (and growing preference for) text-based communication technologies (e.g., email, texts, messaging apps, social media) have had on us.

Artificial Intimacy shows what happens when we turn to artificial intelligence “that claims to care for us and proposes itself as a substitute for relationships with people as conversation partners, companions, even romantic counterparts” (xiii–xiv). She also makes a compelling case for building a society that prioritizes and promotes real relationships.

Relational Deskilling

In higher education, many of us are deeply concerned about deskilling due to outsourcing or off-loading cognitive labor to AI. Our students are forgetting how to think. Turkle’s main concern is relational deskilling—we’re forgetting how to talk to each other.

We’re forgetting how to talk to each other.

Texting and social media offered “the pleasures of companionship without the demands of friendship—the illusion of intimacy without the demands of reciprocity” (31). These means of communication “apprenticed us” and served as gateway drugs, ushering us from being comfortable communicating with people by way of machines to being comfortable (even preferring) talking to machines instead of people. According to Turkle, “First, we talked to each other. Then we talked to each other through machines. Now we talk directly to machines” (33).

Studies conducted by Harvard Business Review in 2025 and 2026 showed therapy and companionship as the top use of AI, appearing to confirm Turkle’s thesis. This serves as a warning.

There’s a lot of enthusiasm about AI. There are many questions about what kind of intelligence it’s capable of. However, fewer people are talking about how conversing with generative AI is changing the way we talk to other humans.

But deskilling assumes that a skill was possessed and subsequently lost. In some cases, especially that of children, the development of certain relational abilities could be stunted or prevented if they treat chatbots as confidants, counselors, grief counselors, friends, or personal agents in any sense. If we’re not careful, an AI-saturated world may create a population that has never learned how to relate deeply to other humans.

Counterfeit Empathy

Tech companies producing AI chatbots want to maximize user engagement with their products. Making them as humanlike as possible is one of the most effective means of accomplishing that end.

A program that refers to itself with pronouns like “I,” “my,” and “mine” is deceptive. Turkle calls such anthropomorphizing “the original sin of artificial intimacy.” Though chatbot makers warn users that their creations aren’t persons, Turkle warns that “everything about the experience implies, over and over again, ‘I am a person. I am your person’” (6).

Chatbots can simulate empathy, but it’s just mimicry. Settling for that counterfeit connection “turns us into behaviorists” for whom all that matters is the performance of empathy (12). Our understanding of love and intelligence is radically altered when we confuse their imitations for the real thing. “And as more and more people live this new reality,” Turkle notes, “that reconsideration affects us all” (105).

The frictionlessness and obsequiousness of chatbots casts a false vision of the good life that corrodes human relationships.

Chatbots always agree with us and affirm us. They always offer us their full, undivided attention. People force us to grapple with conflicting emotions, ambivalence, and complexity. Chatbots erode our ability to value other people because with AI, we don’t have to do this work. (121)

The danger of relational deskilling is real.

While Turkle maintains we’re all vulnerable to artificial intimacy, she rightly sounds an urgent call to protect our children from seeing computers as companions. “The trouble doesn’t begin when a chatbot says something explicitly harmful to a child,” Turkle argues, “it begins the moment a child starts to talk to a chatbot” (216). The danger is that children will never learn to rightly value real human relationships because the counterfeit versions are so much easier.

Theology Needed

Turkle’s research is an excellent starting point for Christians thinking about AI and its effects on human relationships, but it’s missing an important dimension. Her research included conversations with “philosophers, technologists, family members, students, strangers, and inanimate objects” (xvi). Theologians would have been a helpful addition to the list.

An AI-saturated world may create a population that has never learned how to relate deeply to other humans.

Christians should see the problem of ascribing personhood to chatbots as a dilution of the wonder of the imago Dei, but Turkle describes it primarily as warping an evolutionary response to “suggestions of empathy” (29). Her psychoanalytic perspective identifies significance in aspects of the human experience: “the role of profound attachment, the development of embodied selves, and our experience of sexuality and sociality.” She rightly notes, “Psychoanalytic ideas remind us of things beyond the reach of programs” (18). Yet evolutionary materialism can’t fully account for such things or why they matter.

If the counterfeits can become good enough, or even better, then why should we pursue real personal interactions? Christians have access to a far more compelling answer to that question because we know that all humans are made in God’s image. That’s why we’re commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves—a command that can’t apply to lines of code.

Nevertheless, readers don’t need to embrace Turkle’s naturalism to concur with her identification of a serious problem. Christians can and should heartily agree with her call to action: “Right now, the culture may be smitten with the idea of pretend conversation, but we have another choice: We can turn our attention to remaking the spaces in which the real thing can happen” (217).

Artificial Intimacy reminds us of the value of real human relationships and should inspire Christians to make our churches and homes places where those relationships can flourish.

In Your Corner of the World, Dan Doriani and Mark Vroegop talk with Christians working across business, medicine, education, government, the arts, and more about how biblical wisdom shapes the way they work, lead, serve, and make decisions.

The show also explores the connection between the workplace and the local church—helping pastors better understand the challenges their people face Monday through Saturday and helping Christians see how their gifts and experience can serve the church.

Whatever your work looks like, the goal is simple: to help you faithfully serve God in your corner of the world.

Art uses a variety of materials. But all artistic beauty begins with two fundamental building blocks: space and time. The artist seeks to display beauty, goodness, and truth in a specific place or moment. Art is designed to be an act of worship. It receives what God has given and forms it into something beautiful for his glory. But this task isn’t just given to the artist.

God created space and time so we might know him and make him known. God gives each person a particular time and space to create something beautiful with his or her life.

Building a Place

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He formed the physical architecture of creation. God’s creation was a beautiful house, both useful and beautiful.

Art is designed to be an act of worship. It receives what God has given and forms it into something beautiful for his glory.

God cultivated a garden. Eden means delight. Delight was the garden’s name and delight its promise. God planted a garden of delight.

It was indeed delightful. The lush green of the foliage was peppered with vibrant colors of flowers and fruits. It was a garden crowded with all varieties of fragrances, from the invigoration of mint and dill to the soothing effect of lilac and vanilla. The fruit was plentiful and nearly bursting with the promise of enchanting pleasure.

God rooted man in that garden.

Setting a Time

But it wasn’t only a place God created. In the beginning, God also created time, a temporal architecture. God fills time with a drama. Time was and is a forum to make his glory known in the drama of salvation.

God used the seven days in Genesis 1 as the scaffolding on which he built creation. This scaffolding wasn’t a temporary structure but part of the frame itself. Time was built into the very fabric of the universe. It’s interwoven with space to form created reality.

Time was a creation of the timeless One.

It’s a mystery that the infinite God enters time and is present to each moment. All created beings—whether angels, humans, or animals, or plants—are bound by time. But not God. He is utterly free from the constraints of time in the free vastness of eternity. Our time-bound brains can’t fathom this.

Yet he enters our times (yours and mine) in closeness and intimacy. God gives the gift of time to us as a context to know him and walk in communion with him. For our times to be “in [his] hand” means that he holds our every moment and is present with us (Ps. 31:15). He keeps watch over us as we move through time (121:8) and is near even in our most vulnerable moments of sleep (4:8).

Art of Shaping Space and Time

God formed humanity as creatures who live and move within space and time. He also gave us the ability to shape space and time into something beautiful. The call to work and keep the garden was, in part, a call to creativity—a call to cultivate beauty. God created the world to be rife with forms, forums, raw materials, and “canvases” for this calling.

When Michelangelo sculpted David (1504), he used one massive block of Carrara marble, quarried out of the Apuan Alps in Italy.

Albrecht Dürer had his woodcuts shaped from pear trees. The Four Horsemen (1498) transformed a block of wood into a picture of the apocalypse.

Van Gogh mixed his oil paints to portray the night sky. He was particular about his colors and revolutionized painting’s color scheme.

Time was a creation of the timeless One.

A painting rests in space. It may seek to frame a specific moment in time, mundane (like Edgar Degas’s paintings of ironing clothes) or charged with significance (like Henry Ossawa Tanner’s The Annunciation). Other art forms use time and tempo as the medium itself. Music unfolds in time. Time is the canvas of music. The notes, chords, melodies, rhythms, and sung words saturate the moment with the sound of beauty.

Dance and drama employ both space and time in the creative process. Dance flows to music’s time. The drama dynamically moves on the space of a stage through time. Ballet dancers choreograph their movements to music.

Filmmakers edit together snapshots of time in a manner Andrey Tarkovsky describes as “sculpting in time.”

Writers shape from experience, imagination, pen, and paper.

Human creativity in the arts is a reminder that we were created to make something beautiful.

Rooted in Space and Time for Worship

It wasn’t just Adam and Eve who received the gifts of space and time. God plants each of us in a particular moment and setting as well. He stretches the canvas of life for us, and we’re to make something beautiful, by his grace. In this way, every person is an artist.

It’s as if God gifts days and years and says, “Here is your time. Make something beautiful for my glory.” Shakespeare, who knew a thing or two about drama, recognized that the play or theater is simply a picture of how individuals live their lives:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts.

We’re called to make something beautiful out of instruments and sound waves, watercolors, marble, wood, pen and paper, and other materials. But more than those things, we’re given a life to live that proclaims the beauty, goodness, and truth of our Creator and Redeemer. Hans Urs von Balthasar got it right when he said the Christian life that reflects Christ is the most beautiful thing in creation.

Life comes with the gifts of time and space. Are we forming and being formed into something beautiful?

All these plotlines portray the haunting image of a world without reading—a world devoid of knowledge, virtue, and deep thought; awash in corruption; groaning for a sliver of truth and goodness; and divorced from worship of the One who made heaven and earth.

According to Rose Horowitch, journalist at The Atlantic, such chilling scenes are threatening to creep out of science-fiction stories and into our homes and schools. In her provocatively titled article “The End of Reading Is Here,” she issues a dire warning: If we don’t safeguard our culture of literacy, “the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history.”

Is reading really on the verge of extinction? What do Christians stand to lose in a world that prizes short-form videos over the printed word—and how can we walk faithfully? I spoke with several Christian experts in literature and technology who shared their hopes and fears for a postliterate society.

What Does Postliterate Mean?

Communications theorist Marshall McLuhan popularized the term “post-literate” in his 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy, in which he predicted electronic and visual media would eventually supplant the written word. But in some regards, we now read more than ever before.

With handheld computers in our pockets 24/7, we’re inundated with texts, emails, and notifications. Yet such reading occurs in short spurts, without depth and sustained attention. Brad East, associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University and author of the forthcoming book The Screen-Free Church, describes it this way: “Reading takes place in 5–15 second chunks of time on a glowing device, before the next image or swipe or alert restarts the clock.”

Reading occurs in short spurts, without depth and sustained attention.

The time spent scrolling has depleted out our bandwidth for actual books. “This explosion of textual fragments has come at the expense of devoting sustained attention to longer written works that convey rich and complicated information,” Horowitch writes. She cites a plethora of research from the last 15 years showing declines in literacy skills and reading rates across the country.

1. Americans aren’t reading books.

Multiple studies show that only about half of people in the United States are reading any books, whether print, electronic, or audio. Reading rates are at an all-time low since Gallup started measuring in 1990, as are the numbers of Americans who cite reading as their favorite activity (only 6 percent). Studies in both adults and children show that far fewer of us read for pleasure on a daily basis.

2. Literacy has declined.

Reading test scores across grade levels and in the majority of school districts have steadily declined since 2013, prompting some experts to declare the United States in a “reading recession.” The causes are likely multifactorial, with a de-emphasis on testing, a rise in social media engagement, and widespread use of the now-discredited balanced literacy curricula all implicated. Whatever the causes, students in America are struggling to read.

3. Schools assign fewer books.

As literacy has declined, teachers have required students to read fewer books. High-school English classes assign only one to two books every year, down from four in 2009. Passages, excerpts, and summaries have replaced full texts.

Meanwhile, nearly all surveyed teachers say their schools provide devices for students to use in class—and three-fourths say such devices distract from student learning and engagement. College professors increasingly report that students arrive on campus unable to complete assignments; to address the dilemma, some universities now recommend students skim texts rather than read them in depth.

4. Students don’t critically read.

As we replace critical reading with sound bites, we degrade our abilities to comprehend, analyze, and reason. In one study, almost 60 percent of college English majors couldn’t interpret the opening paragraphs of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. Such findings echo neurocognitive research showing digital media trains our minds to process information superficially and forget it easily.

“Digital media’s preference for the visual, the quick, and the shallow should only complement, not replace, the deep, immersive, slow experience of reading,” warns Karen Swallow Prior, Karlson scholar at Bethel Seminary and author of On Reading Well.

Is Reading Really Dead?

Not everyone believes this data signals a death knell for reading. Joel Miller, writer and former vice president of editorial at Thomas Nelson, cautions against romanticizing our literary past.

Although Horowitch cites Doctor Zhivago as a favorite read among Americans in the 1950s, Miller notes that according to sales figures, the average reader in that decade “was mostly thumbing their way through dime-store pulps.” David Wallace-Wells at the New York Times also cautions against hyperbole, noting many reading studies suffer from recall bias, small sample sizes, and overblown results.

As we replace critical reading with sound bites, we degrade our abilities to comprehend, analyze, and reason.

And yet, even skeptics find the overall trends concerning. “Any decline in reading for pleasure should give pause to anyone who cares about . . . reading for the life of the mind and heart,” Miller says.

East agrees.

“For all the tone-policing about moral panics, I’ve not yet actually met anyone who denies these declines when they are appropriately and sufficiently qualified, nuanced, and defined,” he says. “I take it as given that all Americans today, but especially children, teens, and young adults, read less overall than they once did in previous generations, read less complex and shorter texts than they once did, and have far shorter attention spans” (emphasis original).

Hunger for Truth

While we may not teeter on the verge of a reading apocalypse, the trends warrant our attention—especially given the high stakes. Reading’s benefits stretch into every avenue of life and learning: comprehension, vocabulary, reasoning, imagination, creativity, moral judgment, and empathy.

Mental health gains also abound, with reduced stress, anxiety, and depression; better sleep; preserved cognition as we age; and increased longevity. Most important of all, reading shapes our thought patterns and values, enriching our spiritual formation. In the words of Leland Ryken, professor emeritus of English at Wheaton College and author of Recovering the Lost Art of Reading, “The written word has provided food for the mind, soul, imagination, and emotions.”

Tony Reinke, senior teacher at Desiring God and author of multiple books on technology, uses this same language of nourishment when thinking about the influence of books.

“The loftiest of all possible themes—joy, hope, beauty, luminescence, majesty, and glory—all these can pierce through the banality of life and feed our minds and hearts through epic fiction,” he says. “The human soul is hungry for transcendental truths.”

Nourishment in such transcendental truths matters—and therefore, books matter—because God cares how we cultivate our thought life. Paul advises us to set our minds “on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth” (Col. 3:2). When we devote our lives to Christ, we’re to put off the old self (Eph. 4:22–24) and “be transformed by the renewal” of our minds (Rom. 12:2). We’re to meditate on God’s law day and night (Josh. 1:8; Ps. 1:2) and to fill our minds with whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, and excellent (Phil. 4:8).

Such stewardship of our thoughts doesn’t occur in sound bites but rather through slow pondering, inquiry, and analysis. When we forgo reading, therefore, we have much to lose spiritually.

“In addition to attention, reading may be a spiritual practice because it forms in the reader humility, generosity, patience, perseverance, and so many other virtues,” writes Jessica Hooten Wilson, Fletcher Jones chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University and author of Reading for the Love of God. “To listen to an author rather than yourself for so many pages increases your humility. It decenters the self.”

Reinke worries about the direction of society should the influence of books continue to decline.

“Sustained literacy is a metric that shows how well a culture thinks deeply,” he says. “When this disappears . . . we are left as people fed sound bites of self-reinforcing opinions to confirm our presumptions, which is incredibly dangerous.”

Wilson also foresees societal dangers:

Our collective memory is preserved in texts, so we will lose our inheritance of wisdom. We will have governments that are farcical and performative rather than wise; we will have films that cater to our contemporary wants rather than appeal to our higher nature; we will have schools that lower the requirements until they are basically a factory for substance-less influencers.

In light of such possible ramifications, suddenly the dystopian novels seem less far-fetched. If we surrender our hold on reading, we risk choosing “machinery and medicine and happiness” over virtue, truth, and their Author.

People of the Word

As people of the Word, Christians have a special stake in the fate of reading.

“God creates with words, including humans in his image as word-makers,” Wilson says. “Jesus Christ is called ‘the Word,’ and the church has historically been a people of the book even before Gutenberg. So how is Christianity to thrive without words?”

History teaches that Christianity is bound to the written word. The early church used the codex to spread the gospel throughout the Roman Empire long before other communities adopted it. During the Middle Ages, monasteries preserved and copied the Scriptures when no one else could read. The Protestant Reformation, which emphasized the need for all believers to study the Bible, was closely connected to the advent of the printing press.

“All through the late classical period, through the Middle Ages, and into the modern era, Christians have nurtured literacy and study,” Miller says. “This stuff is in our blood.”

The importance of literacy to the Christian life makes sense when we consider God’s chosen mode of revelation: his inspired Word. To know God is to study the Bible; general literacy and biblical literacy are tightly intertwined.

As people of the Word, Christians have a special stake in the fate of reading.

“The Bible is the longest, oldest, most complex book most people will try to read cover to cover,” Reinke says. “Any degradation of literacy directly impacts . . . the patience and diligence needed to read the storyline of Scripture.” Lest some argue the early church flourished before widespread literacy, consider whether people busy with swipes or tweets could recite books from memory as the ancients did. As we lack the oral disciplines that preserved texts millennia ago, declining literacy threatens our comprehension of God’s Word.

Ryken witnessed this phenomenon firsthand in college classrooms, where students lacked sufficient background in Scripture to interpret the biblical references in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Any biblical knowledge “has been pushed out of their minds by the influx of data and ephemera from their smartphones,” Ryken says. “A robber is in our midst in the form of the digital revolution.”

With the robber now invading every household and moment, it’s easy to despair. And yet, the One in whom we place our hope has already overcome the world (John 16:33). How do we walk faithfully in this landscape, all the while setting our gaze on him?

Courage to Be Countercultural

“We need to have not simply the courage but also the enlightened self-interest to be countercultural,” Ryken says. The professionals interviewed for this article offered the following suggestions for how Christians might safeguard reading for minds and hearts.

1. Take up and read.

A culture of reading starts in the home, with our own daily habits. When we prioritize reading for ourselves, the practice takes root and overflows to others.

“Build the home around books with some intention,” Miller recommends. “Nothing’s wrong with television, video games, or even smartphones. But when those things crowd books out, we lose the chance to inspire a love of reading. Keeping books near the center is an easy choice.”

To maintain that center, Wilson recommends cultivating discrete routines.

“Read a book with your spouse at least once a year. Start book clubs with friends. Read aloud passages from Scripture at your churches rather than [putting them] on PowerPoints,” she suggests. “Just as the ancient Christians practiced spiritual [disciplines] to avoid the traps of the cultures around them, be weird in your time and place—which for twenty-first century Christians means reading and writing.”

As Wilson insinuates, such discipline also spills over into how we write. As tantalizing as AI appears, its cobbling together of words can’t replace the reflection, reasoning, and artistry of human writing. God created us in his image (Gen. 1:26); he designed us to create for faithful stewardship and out of love for him.

2. Teach them diligently.

We can nurture a love for books among the young people in our lives.

“Anyone troubled by these trends can begin addressing them tonight, out loud, sitting on the sofa or at the side of a bed,” Miller says. “It starts with reading to your kids.”

Wilson agrees. “Read books as a family aloud. Make libraries destinations as often as parks.”

She also encourages families to advocate for their children’s education. “Encourage your school to assign reading. Choose schools that avoid technology and prioritize texts. Give money to Christian classical schools and Christian liberal arts universities—put your money where your heart is!”

Even teachers can help turn the tide.

“My students for the most part enter my classroom effectively non-literate, but they don’t remain that way,” East says. “Many younger people are hungry for the kinds of habits they’ve not ‘caught’ or even been taught, and parents, pastors, teachers, and friends can find ways to facilitate [them], however ‘belated’ in time” (emphasis original).

Moses called the Israelites to teach their children God’s Word when they rose, and when they walked in the way, and when they lay down to sleep (Deut. 6:6–7). When we engage young people in the written word, we guide them toward an understanding of God’s inspired Word.

3. Practice digital stewardship.

With devices now ubiquitous, we may be tempted to incorporate digital media into our church services. But what better way to preserve literacy than to make church a haven for it?

“Now that research shows the effects of the electronic and digital revolution, we need to heed the wake-up call,” Ryken asserts. “As changes in technology take root in our society, we need to monitor them carefully and not mindlessly adopt them.”

“Avoid the temptation of the screens,” Wilson adds. “Christians have to be in the world, but not of it. You may have to be in a postliterate/digital world, but don’t be of it.”

To live out this call, East says, “churches and pastors should not be contributing to the problem.” He advises against screens in the sanctuary, videos in the liturgy, and phones during services.

“Don’t encourage people to follow the church on social media,” he advises pastors. “Don’t create viral sermon clips. Don’t be one more ‘content creator.’ Stay local. Stay analog. Stay embodied. Stay in the lane of the church’s mission: proclamation of the gospel in Word and sacrament to God’s people and to the world.”

4. Proclaim the Word.

Declining reading habits make instruction on Sunday morning all the more critical.

“What people need now that churches can offer more than any other place is deep reading practice and experience,” Prior argues. “This can be done not only in worship services but also through book studies that lead readers through quality, literary texts.”

In addition to offering practice in deep reading, services saturated in Scripture are more crucial than ever for biblical literacy.

Church services saturated in Scripture are more crucial than ever for biblical literacy.

“If our young people are coming to church on Sunday, then we should see that time as our one, perhaps our only, opportunity to expose them to the truth and beauty and goodness of Scripture,” East writes. “Worship by definition ought to be drenched in the Word of God through and through.”

Toward that end, Reinke advocates for expository preaching.

“Expositional preaching through the Bible, verse by verse, is a great remedy to decreasing literacy rates,” he says. In contrast with short, motivational messages, “a preacher’s focus on the grammar and logical flow of the Bible, to discover and worship God in his divine glories, is literacy at its most profound use.”

Let’s make the church a sanctuary for deep, rich exposition of God’s Word—and guide members through it week after week.

5. Don’t lose heart.

Even if statistics appear grim, followers of Christ shouldn’t lose heart.

“We need not be afraid of what is coming when it comes to declining reading practices, nor do we have to assimilate,” Wilson says.

Miller echoes her encouragement: “Christians are people of the book. We always have been, and we always will be. The book is a singular technology for reading the human heart.”

Even as books collect dust and devices shatter attention spans, our hope rests in the hands of a sovereign God who gave his Son—the Word made flesh—for us (John 1:14). He spoke the universe into existence with a word (Gen. 1:1–3). His Word is like fire, like a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces (Jer. 23:29). His Word endures forever. And nothing—not the darkness, not ignorance, and not the buzzing phones in our pockets—will ever overcome it.

To some degree, AI is inevitable. Yet we should think carefully about what specific applications cost us as individuals and as a society. If a student uses AI to solve all his calculus homework problems, he’s likely to struggle to answer the questions on the final exam. If we delegate conversation with the elderly to AI avatars, we shouldn’t be surprised to find we no longer really know the people who raised us and loved us in our youth.

At the heart of the cultural conversation about AI is the question “What does it mean to be human?” AI is forcing us to ask that question in earnest. It’s not a new question, but there’s a particular urgency to it in the digital age.

The Gospel Coalition’s new book, The AI Apocalypse: A Survival Guide for Humanity, brings together experts working in the AI industry as well as theologians to discuss the future of humanity in the AI age. Many of the contributors have provided book recommendations to help readers better understand AI’s technological and theological implications.

Joshua Baru

Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference (Princeton University Press, 2025) (Amazon)

This research-informed guide separates genuine AI capabilities from hype. Narayanan and Kapoor explain why some AI systems are genuinely useful while others—especially those claiming to predict complex human outcomes—often promise more than they can deliver.

Accessible rather than overly academic, the book equips ordinary readers to ask better questions about AI, recognize misleading claims, and approach new technologies with informed, healthy skepticism.

Clayton Chancey

Brian Cantwell Smith, The Promise of Artificial Intelligence: Reckoning and Judgment (MIT Press, 2019) (Amazon)

Smith was a philosopher and AI researcher whose unusual range of interests shaped this philosophically serious but accessible work. He distinguishes between “reckoning,” where computers excel, and “judgment,” which requires ethical commitment, contextual awareness, and responsible action.

The Promise of Artificial Intelligence was written in 2019, just after the breakthrough transformer architecture that led to our modern LLMs but before they became mainstream consumer products. Though not written from a Christian perspective, this short book clearly identifies what’s at stake when computational ability is confused with human judgment.

Skyler Flowers

C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (1945; repr., Scribner, 2003) (Amazon)

The third book in Lewis’s Space Trilogy has been mentioned a lot in recent discussions about technology, and for good reason. This story is terrifyingly prophetic in its portrayal of the mindset of the modern world. We witness the rise of an antihuman, antinature, and demonic totalitarianism that threatens to exterminate and replace humanity in the name of progress.

This is vintage Lewis as it points to objective moral truth and forewarns of certain prevailing currents in contemporary culture through an engaging fictional story. Though it’s substantially different in tone from the two previous books in the Space Trilogy, it’s worth reading all three together and in order.

Rachel Gilson

Gerald Hiestand and Todd Wilson (eds.), Technē: Christian Visions of Technology (Cascade, 2022) (Amazon)

This book features two chapters that should be read side by side, in one sitting if possible: Andy Crouch’s “The Alchemists’ Dream” and Douglas Estes’s “Why We Get Technology Wrong.” They represent two competing strands in Christian thinking on technology, one of which likely represents your intuitions.

Our gut can tell us something important, but it shouldn’t have the final word. Read these chapters slowly and charitably, and welcome either a change of mind or a deeper understanding of where you started from.

Michael Graham

Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1670; repr., Penguin Classics, 1995) (Amazon)

Pascal belongs on the Mount Rushmore of computer science. Centuries before the computer age, he made critical advances that prepared the way for both hardware and software.

Pensées is sprawling in scope but gives keen attention to the nature of the human condition, especially the paradox of how man can be both great and wretched. Because AI is trained on human content, it’ll invariably reflect both the greatness and wretchedness of man.

Collin Hansen

Karen Hao, Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI (Penguin, 2025) (Amazon)

Sometimes I wonder if the AI masterminds skipped dystopia day in English class and never read books such as Lewis’s That Hideous Strength. Hao’s exposé shows the problem is even worse. Some of those dystopias actually gave shape to AI as we know it today.

Now I’m just wondering if Sam Altman skipped the last act of Spike Jonze’s 2013 film, Her. Spoiler: Joaquin Phoenix and the voice of Scarlett Johansson don’t live happily ever after.

Brett McCracken

Byung-Chul Han, Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity (Polity, 2024) (Amazon)

This isn’t a book about AI. It’s about a key part of being human that is at risk of disappearing in an age of AI: having space in our lives to contemplate, filling unmediated “downtime” with thinking. AI eradicates the need and value of contemplation. From prompt/problem to instant answer/solution, the middle space of processing and cogitating is eliminated.

That’s a real deprivation making us less human. Han’s book concisely makes the case for the irreplaceable value of contemplation in an age of optimization.

Alan Noble

Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (Vintage Books, 1964) (Amazon)

In this dense work, Ellul explores the role of “technique” in the contemporary world. Essentially, technique is the maximization of efficiency in every sphere of human existence.

While he doesn’t directly address AI, he addresses the powerful drive for efficiency at the heart of AI. Ellul’s warnings about technique’s totalizing effects are equally valid for understanding the urgency to adopt, adapt, and maximize that drives AI.

Keith Plummer

Sherry Turkle, Artificial Intelligence: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines (Little, Brown and Company, 2026) (Amazon)

In this popular-level volume, social psychologist and MIT professor Turkle explores how the recent and growing phenomenon of interacting with LLMs as conversation partners, friends, and romantic interests is forming (or better yet, deforming) us personally and interpersonally.

She sounds a well-researched and sobering alarm about the dangers of acclimating ourselves to treating chatbots as though they care about us and preferring them over real human relations. Turkle isn’t a Christian, but that shouldn’t deter you from reading this important work.

Autumn Ridenour

Shannon Vallor, The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking (Oxford University Press, 2024) (Amazon)

In this accessible volume, Vallor favorably assesses technology, yet challenges the design, goals, and values behind new forms of AI. She nails the issue in her overarching thesis: AI fails because it mirrors our shortcomings, failures, and worst forms of narcissism at a collective scale. What is needed? Newness born through creativity, freedom, and change.

Philosophical in nature, her overarching argument parallels the hope, transformation, and desire for new vision essential to theological commitment.

Jonathan Sams

Jeremy Peckham, Masters or Slaves? AI and the Future of Humanity (IVP, 2021) (Amazon)

Peckham combines his experience in the field of AI with a distinctly Christian perspective on human dignity and responsibility. In a world that obsesses over what AI can do, he begins with the doctrine of the imago Dei to ask what our use of AI reveals about who we are and what we value.

Accessible to general readers, this book helps Christians think carefully about how AI may affect work, relationships, privacy, and our understanding of what it means to be human.

Christopher Watkin

Stephen Driscoll, Made in Our Image: God, Artificial Intelligence and You (Matthias Media, 2024) (Amazon | TGC Store)

Driscoll provides one of the clearest and most accessible Christian introductions to AI. Avoiding both technological utopianism and alarmist “doomerism,” he explains AI through the biblical doctrines of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation.

Especially valuable is his account of human identity: Our dignity rests not on outperforming machines but on being made in God’s image. Popular rather than academic, it’s ideal for thoughtful church readers.

Why is the essential question in any task. Before planting a church, we must know why. But it’s not the only question; we also have to ask how. Thankfully, God’s Word is sufficient for both. No stick figures required.

Paul’s first missionary journey (Acts 13–14) shows us, in nine principles under three headings: We send. We plant. We partner.

We Send

Through the church. Notice how Paul and Barnabas were sent. They weren’t self-declared or self-sent. They weren’t sent by a seminary or a denomination. They were sent through the church: “There were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers . . .” (Acts 13:1). And notice that the church was “worshiping the Lord and fasting” (v. 2)—normal, healthy church stuff.

Churches are welcome to use sending organizations, denominations, and associations to help them. But sending is fundamentally the job of the local church.

By the Spirit. In that context—a healthy church glorifying God—the Spirit spoke: “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (v. 2). Church planting is supernatural work. We can’t make it happen.

Church planting is supernatural work. We can’t make it happen.

It’s good to have plans, but it’s foolish to rely on anything made by man. At their best, church-planting plans are like sails: helpful, even as they need adjusting. But they’ll get us nowhere unless the wind blows.

So the church in Antioch prayed. And when the Spirit called, they laid hands on their two best leaders and sent them off. Church planting is costly.

In teams. Barnabas and Saul were sent as a team, and they later added John Mark to assist them. It might sound heroic to be a solo church planter, but that’s not the biblical pattern (Luke 10:1, Acts 17:15, Acts 8:14).

Entrepreneurs can start their own companies. YouTubers can start their own channels. But church planting is a team sport.

We Plant

With the Word. Luke frames the whole journey as a ministry of the Word. Just before it began, pompous King Herod was struck down because “he did not give God the glory” (12:23), and one verse later, “the word of God increased and multiplied” (v. 24). Herod was dead, but the Word was alive.

At their first stop, Paul and Barnabas “proclaimed the word of God” (13:5). In Pisidian Antioch, “almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord” (v. 44), until “the word of the Lord was spreading throughout the whole region” (v. 49).

If churches plant churches with leaders, with members, with a budget, with a building, with a website, with branding—and yet without the Word—that’s no real church planting at all.

Through affliction. Planting with the Word comes with affliction. When the Word is rightly preached, nobody is left neutral. As the Word multiplied, disciples multiplied—but so did afflictions.

Paul and Barnabas were opposed by a magician (v. 8), by jealous leaders (v. 45), by angry crowds (v. 50). In Lystra, Paul was stoned and dragged out of the city, presumed dead (14:19). And what did he do? He got up, went to the next city, and kept preaching the Word (vv. 20–21).

The world has no problem with Word-less churches: moral lessons and feel-good stories. But pulpits that proclaim the exclusivity of Christ will face opposition. So will evangelism that calls for repentance. So we must plant not around affliction but through it: “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (v. 22).

Autonomous churches. The task wasn’t finished until they’d raised leaders and released authority: “When they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed” (v. 23).

Each plant had its own membership and leadership. The sending church in Antioch didn’t add to its rolls; it multiplied.

Here is the missionary task: a local church sending a team to cross barriers to the gospel, proclaim the Word, make disciples, establish churches, raise up leaders, and release authority. Whether we cross borders to another country or districts within a city, the task is the same. We plant autonomous churches.

We Partner

In the work. Luke brackets the journey from “the work to which [the Spirit] called them” (13:2) to “the work that they had fulfilled” (14:26). He shows sending, planting, and partnering as one unit.

Even after that, the work wasn’t done. On the next journey, Antioch sent Paul back: “Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are” (15:36). That verse is hard to fit into a spreadsheet—but easy to imagine happening around a dinner table. Church planting isn’t merely church-birthing; it’s church-nurturing too. 

Partnership isn’t one-sided. The young plants partnered right back, sending Timothy to serve with Paul (16:1–3) and, later, relief to Jerusalem (1 Cor. 16:1). They multiplied.

With joy. When Paul and Barnabas returned, “they declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles” (Acts 14:27). Not what they had done—what God had done.

As the Word multiplied, disciples multiplied—but so did afflictions.

When we put God’s glory at the center of church planting, it makes us more humble, because God must do this work. And it makes us more joyful, because we know he can. Partnership in church planting is fueled by God-centered joy.

Over time. Luke closes the journey with an unhurried note: “They remained no little time with the disciples” (v. 28).

Healthy churches multiply by partnering together, and gospel partnership deepens over time. This isn’t the work of a few years. It’s the task of a lifetime.

What This Looks Like Today

Fourteen years ago, in a city in East Asia, a church was born. A small group of believers, with their Bibles and folding chairs, met in a living room. They were small, but they were healthy. As the Word increased and multiplied, so did their church, moving through a series of larger meeting spaces. Before long, it was time to multiply.

So they sent out several of their elders and a core team of members to plant another church. Both churches kept growing. In time, they planted another. These healthy churches have continued to multiply, and today there are more than a dozen. They share resources to help young plants get off the ground, collaborate in pastoral training, and gather for conferences to “strengthen [their] souls” and “see how they are” (14:22; 15:36).

I called one of their pastors recently to make sure I had my facts straight. He told me plainly that they’re no more special than the rest of us. They’ve just been doing normal, healthy church stuff: worshiping Jesus and proclaiming the Word. In several of these plants, affliction forced them to multiply. But they were ready for it, because this has been in their DNA from the beginning.

They send. They plant. They partner. That’s how churches plant churches: through the local church. It’s what we see in Acts. It’s what we see in East Asia. And by God’s grace, we hope to see much more of it in Singapore: churches planting churches planting churches. Because healthy churches multiply.

Pastoral ministry can be deeply joyful, but it can also be profoundly discouraging. What happens when the church isn’t growing, conflict won’t resolve, your family is hurting, or one difficult relationship begins to overshadow everything else?

Resources Mentioned:

• The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
• “Developing the Hide of a Rhinoceros” by Peter Barnes
• Letters of John Newton by John Newton
• Slogging Along in the Paths of Righteousness by Dale Ralph Davis
• The Clay Pot Conspiracy by Dave Harvey

If you’re ready to go deeper, Southern Seminary’s PhD program is where that begins. Visit sbts.edu/phd to learn more.

I asked Christopher Watkin—professor of European languages and author of Biblical Critical Theory—about what’s on his bedside table, his favorite fiction, the books he regularly revisits, and more.

What’s on your nightstand right now?

I like the idea of a nightstand! I have more of a little table with jumbled ornaments and things made by my children: absolute chaos!

But if I had a nice orderly nightstand with books on it, here’s what they’d be right now. First, James B. Jordan’s Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World. It’s helping me understand more fully how Scripture presents us with a symbolic world, not just a sequence of ideas about God. I’m enjoying following Jordan as he shows how places, objects, people, and events in the Bible carry patterns of meaning that recur and deepen across the canon.

I also recently finished Gregory W. Lee’s The Essential City of God: A Reader and Commentary. I like to keep coming back to Augustine, and this is a lovely combination of substantial excerpts from City of God and reflective essays that help readers find their way through the work. I particularly appreciated how the book doesn’t sugarcoat Augustine or skate past the difficult aspects of his thought but engages them directly and constructively.

What are your favorite fiction books?

My undergraduate degree didn’t manage to turn me off European literature despite having to write academic essays on it, and it’s still my favorite.

Franz Kafka is extraordinarily evocative, isn’t he: The Metamorphosis, certainly, but also shorter stories such as “A Hunger Artist.” With remarkably sparse materials, he can conjure an entire world (I suppose that’s my fascination with Jordan again, how texts call forth worlds), and in Kafka’s case it’s absurd, bureaucratic, claustrophobic, and yet somehow immediately recognizable.

Marcel Proust does something comparable in In Search of Lost Time, though in a completely different register. Where Kafka pares the world down, Proust seems to expand every passing sensation, memory, and social encounter until it opens onto a whole universe.

I love fiction that does not merely tell a story but teaches you how a world feels from the inside, and Proust and Kafka both do this wonderfully.

What biographies or autobiographies have most influenced you and why?

I am not a great reader of biographies, but Arnold Dallimore’s George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth-Century Revival left a deep impression on me. So did J. C. Ryle’s Five English Reformers. Both communicate something of the cost, courage, and spiritual seriousness of lives given to gospel ministry.

I love fiction that does not merely tell a story but teaches you how a world feels from the inside.

It would also be remiss of me, if a bit clichéd, not to mention Augustine’s Confessions. I seem to draw on it almost every week in one way or another. It is autobiography, prayer, theology, biblical interpretation, and spiritual diagnosis all at once. Few books have understood so well, or stated so honestly, how it feels to be a human being in the midst of disordered loves.

What are some books you regularly reread and why?

It will be no surprise to hear that, apart from the Bible, I return most regularly to Augustine, especially City of God and Confessions. After all these centuries, I still find him the finest cultural critic the church has produced outside Scripture. Since I write in the field of cultural criticism, that makes him indispensable reading.

Augustine sees that a culture is not finally held together by its stated ideas but by its loves, habits, hopes, fears, and forms of worship. I do feel that we’ve only scratched the surface of what he can offer us in our day in the way of cultural analysis.

What books have most profoundly shaped how you serve and lead others for the sake of the gospel?

When I first began finding myself in leadership positions, I was helped by the work of Michael Hyatt, especially Living Forward (written with Daniel Harkavy) and Free to Focus. His idea of developing a life plan helped me think deliberately about the different callings and relationships for which I am responsible, rather than allowing the most urgent part of life to consume everything else.

I have also benefited from his emphasis on the “double win”: seeking success in work without achieving it at the expense of success in life more broadly—in family, friendship, church, health, and the other relationships God has entrusted to us. It’s not a battle I pretend to have won, but at least he helped me see that, for the Christian, faithfulness in one sphere shouldn’t require unfaithfulness in another.

What’s one book you wish every pastor would read?

That is very difficult, because pastors serve such different congregations in such different contexts. I suspect I would encourage different pastors to read whatever they’re not used to reading, to go against the grain of their existing habits: If you read only new books, read an old one; if you read only old books, read something written for the world in which your congregation is presently living.

For a substantial older book, I would warmly recommend Richard Baxter’s The Saints’ Everlasting Rest. It is the sort of book I don’t think gets written very often now: patient, searching, expansive, and full of exultation in the glory to come. It reminds pastors that ministry is conducted under the horizon of eternity, and that one of their great privileges is to help people desire the rest for which they were made.

What’s your best piece of writing advice?

Draft and redraft. Then redraft again. And once more. Write something (anything!) first. I tell my students to begin with the “rubbish draft.” Very few people can write wonderfully at the first attempt, and the demand to do so is often what stops them writing at all. Once something exists on the page, you can question it, rearrange it, sharpen it, cut it, and refine it over and over again.

And enjoy writing as much as you can (sorry, that’s two pieces of advice, but they sort of go together). Let your personality come out on the page. It is usually easier to rein that back later than to breathe life into prose that was timid and impersonal from the beginning.

What are you learning about life and following Jesus?

I am learning afresh, or rather God is teaching me afresh and I need to pray I’d learn it, that unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain, but that, conversely, when the Lord is building the house, he provides what is needed.

I would encourage different pastors to read whatever they’re not used to reading.

In recent months, the Lord has been extraordinarily generous in bringing alongside me friends whose gifts and experience are very different from my own. We have been able to work together on shared projects in ways I could never have managed alone. Things that would previously have appeared impossible now seem achievable, not because I have suddenly become equal to them, but because God has supplied people, opportunities, encouragement, and resources at the right time.

It has been a lesson both in dependence and in the grace of Christian friendship: The Lord often provides for his work by giving us to one another.

“Thank you for asking so nicely. I’ll turn them off now.”

Back in 2018, Amazon introduced a feature called “Magic Word” for its Alexa devices to provide positive reinforcement for saying “please” and “thank you.” This was in response to parents’ concerns that barking orders at the devices was training their children to be rude and demanding.

As many of us interact with large language models (LLMs) every day, we’re faced with a question: Does it matter how I speak to AI? Do I need to say “please” and “thank you?” According to a 2024 survey, 67 percent of Americans and 71 percent of Brits say they do use these “magic words.”

Even though I’m British (which means I have a compulsion to say “please” and “thank you” and apologize for everything), I don’t do that when I’m interacting with AI. This is a matter of wisdom, not right and wrong. Two key biblical principles have helped me navigate this question.

Formation

First, it’s a question of formation. Who am I becoming? How is the Spirit working in me to conform me to Christ’s image?

We tend treat people differently when we’re interacting with them from behind a keyboard, with the screen depersonalizing our connection. Whether that’s teenagers on a group chat or adults trolling people on social media, we say things we wouldn’t say to people’s faces—things that clearly don’t honor Christ. We curse human beings, who are made in God’s likeness (James 3:9–10).

When we work with AI, we’re obviously not interacting with a human. But it can (and is designed to) feel like talking to a coworker or friend. The way LLMs use personal pronouns in their outputs are meant to give us the impression that we’re chatting with a real person online.

Therefore, as we interact with LLMs, we’re training our hearts in how we relate to real people. If I’m rude and dismissive to AI, I’m making it easier to be rude and dismissive to humans, especially those I only interact with online.

As we interact with LLMs, we’re training our hearts in how we relate to real people.

We’re forming habits—or, to use the language of Galatians, we’re reaping what we sow, either training the flesh or sowing to the Spirit (6:7–8). Galatians 5 compares the acts of the flesh with the fruit of the Spirit. They’re opposed to one another: “The flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh” (5:17, NIV). If we’re rude or angry when we use AI, we’re not growing in Christlikeness.

Be polite to AI, not because AI is human or made in the image of God but because we are, and God is conforming us to be like him.

Categorization

The question of categorization, however, helps us to move from considering our nature to considering the nature of AI.

There’s a danger in anthropomorphizing AI—treating it as if it’s human when it clearly isn’t. We anthropomorphize things all the time. Some people name their cars or robot vacuum cleaners. We look at the moon in the night sky and the patterns on its surface remind us of a face. Or in our (understandable) frustration, we say to whomever is within earshot, “My laptop hates me.” In that moment, we’re attributing human emotions to an inanimate object.

Categories matter. One of the first tasks God gives to Adam is the naming of the animals in Genesis 2. This isn’t just to teach Adam about language and words and their meaning but to show him there’s a clear distinction between human and animal. But Genesis also points out that “for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him” (2:20, NIV). The climax of that chapter is found in the creation of Eve, a human like Adam, an equal. Animals aren’t to be mistreated (Prov. 12:10), but they’re not like us.

And just as we can sometimes anthropomorphize animals, again, we can do the same with AI. How many times have you heard someone refer to ChatGPT as “he,” or excitedly tell you that they’ve come up with a pet name for their AI of choice? It’s a category error, and while you might think it doesn’t matter, the reality is that the words we use shape and form our thinking.

Be polite to AI, not because AI is human or made in the image of God but because we are, and God is conforming us to be like him.

Repeatedly treating AI as if it has emotions, as if it’s one of us, can be unhelpful in the long run in at least four ways. First, it can make us believe that AI is more capable than it is. Second, it can make us lazy with our responsibilities, delegating tasks to it that we should really be doing ourselves.

Third, it can deceive children and young people. They’re more prone to treating AI as if it has a mind of its own, which means they can be more trusting when it provides unsafe or misleading answers. Finally, it can have an effect on others. You may be clear that AI isn’t human, but a growing number of people are finding it hard to see the difference. One survey found that 25 percent of Gen Z already believe that ChatGPT is self-aware. The words we use contribute to the story people tell about AI, for better or for worse.

Wisdom

Should you say “please” and “thank you” to AI chatbots? In the end, it’s a matter for wisdom.

What do I do? Because formation matters, I’m not rude to AI. Because categories matter, I don’t treat it as an equal. Therefore, I don’t say “please” or “thank you.”

I asked ChatGPT for a summary of how I’ve interacted with it over time. The key words it highlighted were “transactional,” “direct,” and “pragmatic.” It added, “You can be abrupt, but you are never rude. You criticize the answer, not the assistant.”

I’m OK with that because I treat it as a tool, not as a companion or a friend.

But what about after you’ve clearly articulated the gospel?

A few years ago, I got to know a server at a restaurant I frequented. As I asked open-ended questions about her life, views, and spiritual journey, I learned she’d had some bad experiences with Christians. While I proclaimed the good news and did my best to point beyond Christ’s imperfect followers to the perfect Father, she remained coolly unmoved.

I inquired how I could pray for this woman, but got only vague generalities in reply. I issued a few invitations to attend one of our church gatherings—Easter, Christmas, our kickoff picnic—but was met with polite rebuffs each time. No doubt you’ve had similar interactions with friends, neighbors, colleagues, or family.

How should we respond? Do we go on heralding the coming kingdom even when our audience looks bored, annoyed, or offended? Do we shake the dust off our feet and set out in search of better soil?

Or do we let our actions preach a wordless gospel for a season, trusting the God of the harvest can grow faith even from seed scattered years before?

Win Without Words

There’s scriptural warrant for preaching a wordless gospel through our actions after we’ve clearly proclaimed it in words. Writing to encourage believing wives to submit to their unbelieving husbands, Peter teaches, “If any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives” (1 Pet. 3:1–2, NIV).

We know these husbands have heard God’s Word before, because they’ve rejected it. But Peter doesn’t counsel relentless proclamation. One can easily imagine how that approach—more hectoring than heralding—could prove wildly counterproductive. The husband might soon prefer a desert existence to living with such a wife (see Prov. 21:19), no matter how noble her nagging.

Do we let our actions preach a wordless gospel for a season, trusting the God of the harvest can grow faith even from seed scattered years before?

Instead, Peter encourages these women through their actions to preach at all times without words. Their lives would testify to the truth of the gospel, displaying both its power and its beauty.

The gospel transforms those who believe it, teaching us to say no to ungodliness and to live upright, godly lives (Titus 2:12). Thus, every Christian should seek “in every way” to “make the teaching about God our Savior attractive” (v. 10, NIV). Our holy lives and Spirit-wrought good works adorn the gospel, drawing attention to its intrinsic beauty.

As Francis Schaeffer argues, “The Christian’s life is to be an art work. The Christian’s life is to be a thing of truth and also a thing of beauty in the midst of a lost and despairing world.”

Sacrificial service in place of selfishness, free forgiveness in place of resentment, passionate purpose in place of meaningless meandering—that’s the unfading beauty of a pure and reverent life that Peter knows could win over even uninterested skeptics.

Preach with Presence

That’s the beauty I tried—occasionally and stumblingly—to show my server friend in the intervening years. I wanted to embody the gospel message so she could see what she didn’t want to hear.

I tipped well, which was a true sacrifice when finances were tight. I brought her a small Christmas present to thank her for her service (which contained a little book that gave the gospel with words, though I’ve no idea if she read it or not). I checked in on how she was doing, trying my best to listen well and remember what she’d said the last time we talked so I could follow up.

Following Sam Chan’s advice, I saw myself as her “de facto chaplain.” She knew who I was and what I believed. I wanted to love her intentionally—to “preach” a wordless gospel by my faithful presence—so that when she faced a trial or had a question or needed help, she’d know that she could come to me.

So that she’d want to come to me.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Recently, she approached me when I popped into the restaurant. I hadn’t even sat down before she told me she needed to talk to me. Once she’d checked on her other tables to buy herself a few minutes, she sat across from me, tears streaming down her face. She’d suffered a terrible tragedy at the end of the last year and needed help working through it.

When she’d regained enough composure to talk, she let me know she’d picked up the shift knowing I’d be there. (There are missional benefits to being a creature of habit!) She told me explicitly that she knew she could come to me because I’d been so present and kind to her through the years. In saying this, I recognize that what I did wasn’t unusual. It’s the regular practice of Christians all over the world who faithfully engage their communities with quiet service and bold words. And God gets all the glory.

By his grace, I’d sought to love this server well for Christ’s sake, and she saw the beauty of the gospel in my wordless proclamation.

By his grace, I’d sought to love this server well for Christ’s sake, and she saw the beauty of the gospel in my wordless proclamation.

As a result, I had the opportunity to speak the most important words to her once again, telling her about Christ’s life, death, and resurrection—of his triumph over the grave (the message she desperately wanted to hear)—and of the Father’s great love for her. When I explained all that to her, she didn’t look bored, annoyed, or offended; she drank it in like cracked desert dust soaking up a long-awaited rain.

I won’t lie to you. She didn’t give her life to Christ right then. She hasn’t yet shown up to a worship service. I don’t know what the future holds. But I know she’s heard the gospel in words twice (at least). I know I can pray to the Lord of the harvest, pleading with him to cause the seed of the gospel to take deep root in her heart and bear much fruit in her life.

And I know I can preach the good news without words until I have the opportunity to speak it again.

Looksmaxxing draws from Darwinian, and often demeaning, perspectives about masculinity and attraction—and heightens them. At its best, it looks like men encouraging each other to work out, dress well, and groom their facial hair. At its worst, it shows up as men on looksmaxxing forums ranking each other on brutal scales and encouraging invasive surgeries to fix perceived facial and bodily inadequacies.

Still, it has captured the attention of young men—both inside and outside the church. The tag #looksmaxxing on TikTok has almost 380,000 posts. A crisis of discipleship is happening inside modern masculinity, and it’s time for church leaders to pay attention.

What Does Looksmaxxing Look Like?

Growing up, I always associated the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10) with the detail that Zacchaeus couldn’t see over a crowd of people because he was “small in stature”—a wee little man. If only he’d been able to surgically break his leg, move some bones around, and gain half a foot of height. That would probably fix all his social problems. Surely that would gain him the respect he so desperately desired? Surely that would cure his wandering and aching soul?

This is, in part, the promise of looksmaxxing: If you manipulate your body to become more attractive, more stereotypically masculine, other men will respect you more and women will pay more attention to you.

So yes, men break their femurs to add a handful of extra inches to their height (the recovery takes six months). Or maybe they do something called “bonesmashing,” breaking their jawbones with a hammer so they’ll grow back harder and sharper.

Origins in Online Incel Communities

Young men are online a lot these days. It parches their souls and warps their views.

One example is the growth of incel communities online. Incel is a portmanteau of the words “involuntary” and “celibate,” and it’s a self-diagnosis by young men who feel disenfranchised by their failed efforts to find love and companionship. They struggle to find romantic success, and they blame culture, women, or their looks—often a combination of all three. Terms like “alpha male,” words like “mewing” and “mogging,” and the suffix “maxxing” are all slang that find their origins in online incel communities.

Young men are online a lot these days. It parches their souls and warps their views.

While many men who looksmaxx aren’t actually celibate, the cynicism and “doomer” mentality still come into play. Many see improving their looks as their only hope to convince “shallow” (as they see them) women to pay attention to them. Can you be so attractive that you no longer face the risk of women rejecting you?

Young men in high school or college walking into church are likely not fully aware of incel ideology and perspectives, but they’ve probably heard of “mewing” (flexing your jaw muscles to try to sharpen your jawline) and other pseudoscientific concepts looksmaxxers espouse, like the “PSL Scale” that rates attractiveness on a supposedly empirical 0 to 8 scale. They’re also insecure about how to approach the single, Jesus-loving women in the pews next to them, and influencers on the internet are promising them quick, manly beauty hacks to give them an advantage.

Looksmaxxing Influencers

Braden Peters, who goes by the online moniker “Clavicular,” has more than 300,000 followers on the livestreaming platform Kick and more than a million followers on TikTok. Peters has built a social media empire on teaching young men how to looksmaxx, but he also has plenty of corrupted “wisdom” about life in general. Much of this advice is about how to manipulate women, treating them as nothing more than potential sexual encounters, more numbers in a man’s “body count.”

Peters was recently charged with rape in Massachusetts and was previously jailed for battery as well as for shooting an already dead alligator on a live stream. (Looksmaxxing streams are often wild examples of unrestrained, boyish exploits.) Still, the ideas he presents to young men are sticky. He’s charismatic and has spent time endearing himself to his young, male audience. What he promises, however, is the true draw.

He promises control over the complicated and nuanced world of modern dating and romance. Every young man wonders if he’s impressive enough to date the girl he likes, and looksmaxxing (falsely) promises favor with women if you can make yourself look good enough.

And it’s effective. Watch any stream of a popular looksmaxxing influencer like Androgenic, Brett Maverick, or Clavicular, and you’ll see gaggles of young men stopping them on the street to dap them up, laugh about their recent streams, and thank them for “helping” them.

Discipleship Gap

The popularity of these influencers shows there’s a hole in our discipleship of young men. Destructive beauty practices are nothing new; women have been destroying and manipulating their bodies to fit humanity’s beauty standards for centuries. But often, mothers know they need to have conversations about toxic images with their daughters early and often. In the 21st century, do parents know they need to do that with their sons? Do youth pastors know?

Every young man wonders if he’s impressive enough to date the girl he likes, and looksmaxxing (falsely) promises favor with women if you can make yourself look good enough.

Young men, who often lack robust discipleship relationships with older brothers and fathers in the faith, are vulnerable to looksmaxxing messages. They’re looking for answers—about romance, sex, work, wellness, and the meaning of life—in YouTube videos and podcasts. But what they really need is apprenticeship and fellowship with God-fearing men who will guide them with wisdom, discernment, and truth.

Today’s young men need to see what it means to be a man being remade in Jesus’s image, to be strong and gentle and caring and full of justice—authentically masculine as God created us to be. We need to learn that, yes, stewardship of the body is a godly practice (1 Cor. 6:19–20). Caring about health and fitness honors God. But the tallest men will eventually be pulled down by gravity, and strong arms will weaken and slow. We need to remember the biblical truth that “charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain” (Prov. 31:30). We need to learn that what Zacchaeus was looking for wasn’t the vanity of respect and honorifics or the fleeting status that comes with physical beauty. He was rather looking for a Savior.

The draw is multifaceted. Perhaps the suffocation of urban density and technological stress leads us to long for a radical quietness only interrupted by the choruses of creation. Too much swiping screens inflames our longing to touch grass.

In a spiritually uprooted secular age, sublime encounters with raw nature can also appeal as substitutes for religious transcendence and alternative sources of meaning. For men especially, something is primally appealing about getting into the dangerous wild and testing ourselves. For others, the anxieties and painful scars of life “on the grid” prompt a fleeing to nature as escape.

This last dynamic—fleeing the difficulties of human society and finding solace off the grid—has inspired the premise of several Alaska-set films. Consider Grizzly Man (2005), Werner Herzog’s unforgettable documentary about Timothy Treadwell, who lived among bears in Katmai National Park—until one killed him. Or recall Sean Penn’s stellar adaptation of Into the Wild (2007), a tragic but beautifully rendered film about Chris McCandless’s ill-fated journey into the Alaskan wilderness.

New film Heart of the Beast, directed by David Ayer (Fury) and starring Brad Pitt, is the latest example. The film follows a former U.S. Special Forces military veteran, James Belmont (Pitt), who lives alone with his German Shepherd Odin in the rugged beauty of Alaska. But when he crashes his single-engine plane after appearing to have a heart attack midflight, he and Odin must try to survive, injured, in an unforgiving landscape.

Man vs. Nature

On the surface, Heart of the Beast (PG-13) is a simple movie. Man and dog bond in a survival adventure. While occasionally unrealistic (the CGI bears, wolves, and moose look very fake) and thematically bleaker than I think it’s meant to be (more on that below), the film was pretty compelling.

In what’s essentially a one-man-show survival movie, similar to James Franco in 127 Hours or Robert Redford in All Is Lost, Pitt is impressive. We don’t know a lot about Belmont’s story, aside from a few flashbacks to war-zone trauma. But we can surmise from the weariness in his eyes that he’s seen many horrors and endured much loss.

The fact that his sole companion is a dog speaks volumes. Pitt speaks with another human (J. K. Simmons) only once in the movie. Most of the time, he speaks only to Odin, who can’t speak back but still communicates powerfully with his eyes and movements.

What’s most effective about this movie is its tone: how lonely and solemn it feels—almost elegiac. Ayer structures the narrative such that we know at the start how the film will end. Everything we watch is colored by foreboding and lament.

Anthropological Confusion

A movie about a man whose only companion in life is a dog, however sweet that bond might be, is an unavoidably sad movie. In the beauty of the setting (“Alaska,” but actually filmed in New Zealand’s jaw-dropping South Island), Belmont’s loneliness is all the more acute.

To him, life off the grid may feel like the only viable path—as it did to McCandless. But in both cases, the “freedom” of the solitary path only partially heals, and in some ways exacerbates, pain. It is not good that man is alone (Gen. 2:18). A dog, however blessed a companion, cannot replace human community. “Man’s best friend” is a misnomer. Man’s best friend should always be another human.

A movie about a man whose only companion in life is a dog, however sweet that bond might be, is an unavoidably sad movie.

The consolation and companionship of pets is a real common-grace gift. But a whole movie of a man-dog relationship serves only to reinforce the sad state of human connection in today’s world, as well as our growing anthropological confusion.

It’s a world where neighbors rarely look each other in the eye or strike up a conversation—unless the neighbor is walking a dog. It’s a world where 82 percent of pet owners see their pet as their child (“fur babies”) and 43 percent of Gen Z and millennials pet owners say they’d prefer to only have pets, not actual human children. It’s a world where killing off a canine character in a movie is a far greater offense than killing off a human.

Pets aren’t the problem. The problem is the way we’ve elevated pets as substitutes for—or superior to—human connections. Heart of the Beast reinforces the anthropological confusion in its title, which at various points alludes to Pitt’s human heart (is he too just a “beast”?) and the dog heart of Odin (a “beast” who sometimes behaves more humanely than the humans). Is the man in the movie altogether different from the dog? It’s not clear.

Sad Descent into Isolation

Belmont did at one point have a robust human community of fellow soldiers, but he lost them all in war. In one scene, he toasts a beer to his fallen comrades (“Miss you boys”). We don’t know if he was ever romantically attached. By all accounts, Odin is now his only relational attachment.

Just as Into the Wild shows the sad descent from vibrant human community into solitary life, Heart of the Beast sounds a similar note. The movie left me feeling burdened for the growing numbers of desperately lonely, friendless people (men especially) in today’s world—people whose only companion is a pet, or whose only peace is in the wilderness. Culturally, we romanticize the idea of a Thoreauvian Walden experience, but in practice, reclusion leaves us less human. The “freedom” of unattachment and autonomy always becomes a burden.

It’s noteworthy that in one scene, Belmont reads Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a narrative that ponders the viability of humanity in a dog-eat-dog world of brute survival. Heart of the Beast grapples with similar questions but falls short of satisfying answers.

Guiding Today’s Aimless, Wounded Men

Early in the film, the camera takes notice of one of Belmont’s tattoos: a compass. It’s ironic because this is a man who has clearly lost his way. Sure, he’s pretty skilled at navigating the wilderness using a map and the sun. He can hunt and fish and survive. But spiritually and existentially, he’s aimless. His only “true north,” it seems, is his canine companion. The past—both nostalgia and grief—occupies his mind. But the future? Nothing there to mobilize him.

The ‘freedom’ of unattachment and autonomy always becomes a burden.

Yes, Belmont is traumatized. For so many veterans who struggle with PTSD and other mental-health ailments, reintegrating into society can be challenging. Another film that captures this well is Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace (2018), about a PTSD-struggling veteran (Ben Foster) trying to survive off the grid with his teenage daughter. Both films empathize with the mental-health struggles of their leading men. But neither film lets these men fully off the hook. They have agency, and the supportive people (or dogs) around them can only do so much to help. A choice to escape into wilderness and shun human community is a choice that often leads to self-inflicted ruin.

Watching these films, and pondering the lonely fates of men like Belmont, or Treadwell, or McCandless, should be galvanizing for the church. A world of men like this is out there—isolated, wounded, wandering, seeking meaning. How might we lovingly intervene and invite these men into community? In a world of wanderlust and aimless escape, we can give men real hope and a “true north” reason to commit to a path.

In this panel recorded at TGC25, J. T. English, Vanessa Hawkins, Michael Keller, and Jen Wilkin discuss the joys and struggles of men and women working together in ministry.

In This Episode

00:00 – Introduction and panelist introductions

02:01 – Personal stories and initial thoughts

05:13 – Challenges and historical context

11:15 – Creating a familial culture

27:33 – Addressing fears and misconceptions

30:41 – Setting boundaries and practical steps

37:36 – Encouragement for pastors

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Many of the Bible’s most faithful figures were critics. However, it’s not easy to find a good example of a Christian critic today. Most of our criticism is online, and even among believers, it’s often ugly.

We should be critics, but we should be distinctly Christian critics. Here are three principles for criticizing like a Christian.

1. Criticize to build up, not to tear down.

Paul tells the Corinthians, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” (1 Cor. 13:1). We should aim to have every part of our lives characterized by love. This includes how we criticize.

Before you speak, ask yourself, Do I truly want this person to be better, sharper, more informed, and more Christlike after hearing what I have to say? If love means wanting the best for others, am I loving him or her with my critique?

If love means wanting the best for others, am I loving this person with my critique?

A loving critique need not be a flimsy one. Back in seminary, I led an accountability group for guys struggling with porn. Frequently, one of the more mature members of the group would directly confront another about the foolish habits that led him into sin. Those critiques were sharp, but they came from a genuine, loving desire to see a brother walk in integrity.

Christians can be bold, clear, and forceful in their critiques. Yet our ultimate aim must always be to build one another up in love.

2. Build steel men, not straw men.

The straw man is an old debate tactic where you intentionally misrepresent someone’s argument so that it can be easily knocked down.

Christians shouldn’t build straw men.

Instead, steel-man others’ arguments. Understand what they’re really aiming for. Don’t attack a tangential idea. Don’t nitpick their grammar. Don’t attack their character. Don’t go for the easy shot. Listen charitably to the strongest version of what they have to say, then critique.

My coexecutive director, John-Michael, is excellent at building steel men. One time, we were arguing about a new podcast idea we hoped to produce, and we each had a radically different vision for the project. After an hour of getting nowhere, he stopped and said, “OK, let me take a few minutes, and I’ll try to articulate your perspective. Tell me if I understand you properly.”

John-Michael then steel-manned my argument. He laid out my vision accurately and fairly. He still disagreed with me, but he made the effort to represent my perspective well, and I felt valued because of it.

Ultimately, building a straw man is sinful because it bears false witness against others (Ex. 20:16). By building a steel man, you’re both acting in love and developing a more substantive critique.

3. Criticize what you understand.

Several years ago, I made a series of YouTube videos criticizing the political left. I talked about free speech, advertising laws, and cancel culture.

I look back on those videos with embarrassment because I had no idea what I was talking about. Sure, my critiques were vaguely in the right direction, but I made dozens of cringeworthy generalizations because I was speaking outside my lane. I was a fool who took no pleasure in understanding but only in expressing my opinion (Prov. 18:2).

Building a straw man is sinful because it bears false witness against others.

Over the next few years, I developed a personal rule: Don’t speak up on a topic unless I’ve read at least one well-regarded book on it.

My little rule isn’t in the Bible. I don’t want to bind anyone’s conscience. But I know that social media entices me to offer my thoughts and opinions on nearly every subject, and reminding myself that it’s foolish to speak on issues I don’t understand has saved me (some) embarrassment over the years.

If you feel tempted to critique others on the great issues in politics, economics, education, science, and theology, it’s wise to ask yourself this: Do I actually know what I’m talking about? Have I studied this issue thoughtfully? You may have something valuable to contribute. But you may want to let the controversy pass. Aim for understanding before critique.

It’s good for Christians to critique, but it’s dangerous to criticize without love. Proverbs 12:18 offers a helpful word worth committing to memory: “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”

Tim didn’t get to see the publication of this final project. However, The Stories We Live By: Seven Cultural Myths That Fail Us and the Story That Never Will still has his fingerprints on it, as it clearly articulates the narratives we live by, how they quietly shape us, and why the gospel is the truer and better story.

This volume offers a reader-friendly analysis of cultural narratives that helps Christians cling to the gospel and point others toward hope in Christ.

Invisible Stories

In its most basic form, a cultural narrative is a story that reveals what a community believes about fundamental goods like happiness, truth, morality, and justice. These stories are oxygenic for society. Though invisible, they form the atmosphere that supports society’s dreams, plausibility structures, and value systems.

Cultural narratives form the atmosphere that supports society’s dreams, plausibility structures, and value systems.

These narratives are more often caught than taught. As the Kellers argue, “Cultural narratives are not spread primarily through classroom teaching or bullet points in a presentation, nor are they argued for rationally and explicitly. Instead, they come to us as givens, things ‘all enlightened people know’” (16). In Charles Taylor’s framework, cultural narratives are the building blocks for a social imaginary. They’re unspoken assumptions in our public conversations.

For example, one of our world’s primary cultural narratives tells us that our identity is internally constructed rather than externally received. The Kellers write,

Modern identity is achieved by looking inward to our feelings and desires and discovering or creating our identity. Listen to your heart and be true to yourself, to your innermost desires. And don’t let anyone tell you who you are because that is your job alone. (21–22)

We hear these narratives in slogans like “Follow your heart,” “Find your dream,” and “Live your best life now.” Those messages are packaged in endless advertisements. Universities convince high schoolers to spend (or borrow) a hundred thousand dollars by promising, “We will help you achieve your dreams.” Employers encourage talented workers to pull up roots and take a new job in pursuit of a particular dream: “Do what you love; love what you do.”

When these narratives dominate our culture, Jesus’s call to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him seems much less attractive on the surface (Luke 9:23). It’s no wonder that more than three out of four Christians report believing that “the best way to find yourself is by looking within yourself.” That’s why Christians need to recognize cultural narratives, especially the seven discussed in this volume.

Subversive Fulfillment

Christians shouldn’t adopt the dominant cultural narratives; we need to be aware of them so we can resist them and use them to reach the culture through subversive fulfillment, a technique the Kellers see Paul employing in 1 Corinthians 1:21–24.

First, we affirm the universal aspiration that gives rise to a cultural narrative. For example, the desire to be accepted by society drives us to try to be on the “right side of history” by seeking to live out the cultural narrative of progress.

Then we can critique that narrative by showing how it’s unworkable in its own terms, because every culture cringes at many customs previous generations thought were cutting edge. There’s no way to know in advance what the next generation will consider the right side of history.

Finally, we redirect people toward the ultimate fulfillment of the underlying desire in Christ. The desire to live rightly as judged by eternity is healthy, but it can only be fulfilled in the cross of Christ. Ultimately, the Kellers argue, “The resurrection assures us of a future that death cannot steal” (167).

There’s no way to guarantee we can live on the right side of history unless we’re aligned with the Author of history. So Christianity offers a vision of the “future that gives meaning to our present” (169). As Christians, we see that the right side of history is the one that has been made good and just by Christ’s redemptive work.

Living the Story

The analysis in The Stories We Live By isn’t entirely new. Tim wrote about cultural narratives for years. He discusses five of them in his book Preaching (2016). There’s also overlap between this book and Making Sense of God (2016). This latest book is a more reader-friendly account of what secularism fails to deliver, written not for the pastor or skeptic but for ordinary people trying to figure out why this world feels so off.

The concluding chapters provide a tool to spot these narratives in the wild and also inside our hearts. That’s what makes Michael’s effort in completing this volume so significant.

Few Christians wake up and tell themselves, “I must decide who I will be and create that identity through my own effort.” Yet the inescapable low-grade anxiety about our performance serves as a check-engine light for the soul. Once we notice ourselves believing a lie, we can remind ourselves of the only story where the verdict on our performance is handed down before the trial.

We can remind ourselves of the only story where the verdict on our performance is handed down before the trial.

Perhaps the most powerful aspect of this book is that it was written by a son grieving the loss of his father while clinging to the cross. When Michael highlights the failure of cultural platitudes to deal with his father’s death, we recognize the triteness of statements like “He’s in a better place,” “He’ll always be with you in spirit,” and “Time heals all wounds.” Yet Michael shows us the power of the gospel to offer a true and better narrative when he writes,

My dad is gone, but I haven’t lost him. We are both part of the same story. The Author has given us the real happy ending.

The story is true.
The tomb is empty.
Death is defeated.
Love wins. (172)

That’s a story powerful enough to speak to a son’s grief and sorrow. It’s also the story of the entire world, truer and better than any other.

It is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.

Clearly, the people described in this passage have experienced many blessings from God and then turned away. Clearly, too, the author makes a categorical statement about repentance being “impossible” for them. What does this mean precisely?

Unfortunately, some common interpretations of the passage water down its meaning. For example, some scholars suggest the word “impossible” simply means “difficult.” The passage, they say, is referring to an especially heinous kind of apostasy, even though its description of the apostasy involved is simple: “have fallen away.” Others suggest Hebrews is exaggerating for rhetorical effect. Such explanations do not give the passage its due weight.

At the same time, arguing that those who deny Christ cannot ever return and be forgiven goes against other parts of Scripture, such as the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32), Peter’s restoration after he denied Christ three times (John 21:15–19), and Paul’s instruction about the ultimately saving purpose of excommunication (1 Cor. 5:4–5).

So how can a warning like Hebrews 6:4–6 be faithfully understood and applied today? While my recent book addresses this at length, consider some key details.

Two Meanings of Repentance

A helpful starting point comes with recognizing that “repentance” has multiple meanings in Scripture. Sometimes it has the general meaning of turning sorrowfully from sin and looking to Christ for forgiveness (e.g., Mark 1:15; Acts 2:38). When we talk about repentance, this is the category we often refer to.

Some common interpretations of the passage water down its meaning.

On other occasions, repentance carries a more specific meaning, describing how people came into right standing within the old covenant. We see such a meaning in Acts 19:1–7. Paul encounters disciples who had been baptized by John the Baptist under the old covenant but did not yet know that Christ had come and sent his Spirit on Pentecost.

Paul explains how John’s baptism of repentance was only preparatory, bringing people into right standing in the old covenant as they awaited the arrival of the new (see Jer. 4:1; Ezek. 18:30). Understood in this way, “repentance” is particular to life in the old-covenant era; it is the gateway into a right standing in that covenant.

Which of these meanings occurs in Hebrews 6?

Repentance in Hebrews

The first statement about repentance in Hebrews 6 comes in verses 1–2. The author urges his audience to press forward toward maturity rather than “laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.”

To understand what is meant here, we should note two characteristics of ancient foundations.

First, ancient foundations, like modern ones, were intended to be permanent. A building’s walls or doors might need to be repaired during its life. But if its foundation was faulty, the whole building was ruined, and the only solution was to start over again from the ground up. By implication, when the author of Hebrews urges his audience not to relay a foundation, he means they were tempted to abandon their current profession of faith in Christ and start over entirely with something else.

Second, ancient foundations, unlike modern ones, were composed of many stones, which together defined the essence of a whole building. This is why new-covenant foundations are always described elsewhere in clearly and strongly Christ-centered terms. For example, Christ’s teaching (Matt. 7:24–26), confession of Jesus as Christ (16:17–18), and Christ himself (1 Cor. 3:10–12) are described as the new-covenant church’s foundation.

Contrast this with the foundation in Hebrews 6:1–2. Not only is Christ not mentioned in it, but all its ingredients are strongly—and in some cases, exclusively—associated with the old covenant in Hebrews.

Some ingredients in this foundation are important to both the old and new covenants, such as faith, resurrection, and eternal judgment. These common ingredients affirm aspects of continuity between the old and new covenants. Yet the faith in Hebrews 6:1 is described only as “faith in God” (NIV) rather than in Christ.

Some items in this foundation are exclusive to the old covenant. For example, “washings” (6:2; 9:10) refers to the priestly ceremonies of the old covenant, such as those performed on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:4, 21, 24, 26, 28), which had become obsolete in the New Testament. And the “laying on of hands” (Heb. 6:2; 9:9–14) describes an outward act of old-covenant priests (Lev. 16:21) that Hebrews places in contrast to the inward nature and efficacy of the new.

The foundation in Hebrews 6:1–2 therefore has a distinctly old-covenant character, and this shows that the “repentance” mentioned there does too. In its own time and place, this repentance was a great blessing, forming the gateway into a right standing in the old covenant before the coming of Christ.

Hebrews’s Warning, Then and Now

Against this background, the nature of the warning in Hebrews 6:4–6 becomes clear. Though the old covenant was a gracious provision of God in its time, once a person has experienced the greater blessings of Christ in the new covenant, it’s impossible to be restored to the repentance mentioned in verse 1. The old covenant was only preparatory to Christ and the blessings of the new age.

Hebrews 6:4–6 is not saying it’s impossible for those who fall away to return again to Christ and be forgiven. It insists that it’s impossible to leave the new covenant, repent, and return to the life of the Mosaic administration. By God’s design, the path between the old and new covenants is one way only.

The old covenant was only preparatory to Christ and the blessings of the new age.

In conclusion, Hebrews’s message to fallen sinners isn’t that their sin is so bad that it bars their way back to Christ. The point is that fallen sinners should cling to Christ, since there is no hope of cleansing, even in the old covenant, apart from him.

Rather than turning remorseful sinners away from Christ and the church, then, Hebrews urges us to look to Christ alone for hope and forgiveness.

I had never heard of him.

But I went, and I’m glad I did.

As you might expect, Dever began his lecture unpacking why expositional preaching is a mark of church health. He also shared his convictions about how God sovereignly uses the weekly sermon text to change hearers’ lives. But what stood out to me was how Dever worked out these convictions practically.

Next to Dever’s lectern was an overhead projector, and on the screen behind him, it displayed a list of the biblical books divided by genre. Referencing that list, Dever shared how he plans his congregation’s preaching diet. He said he typically alternates between Old and New Testament books, covers different types of literature over the course of each year, and varies the length of each series—sometimes preaching overview sermons on a section of biblical books and sometimes working through a single book passage by passage over the course of months. Dever also discussed taking into account other parts of the church’s diet. If, for example, his church is studying a New Testament book on Sunday evenings or during midweek discipleship, he’ll choose to preach on an Old Testament book on Sunday mornings.

When I heard these intentional plans, I left inspired. And though my own time in ministry has been spent planning curriculum outlines for children and youth instead of a sermon calendar, I’m grateful for preachers who exercise the same care I saw Dever model.

Recently, I reached out to some teaching pastors in The Gospel Coalition’s network and asked them to share advice on how they put together a preaching plan. Here’s what I heard.

Steve Bateman

Do you plan for breaks amid your exposition of a particular book of the Bible? If so, how often?

Planned breaks may be the wisest course, especially with longer books, but I keep breaks to a minimum. Preaching through a book normally requires a brief review each week as I build on the previous week’s exposition. Frequent breaks make that review more tedious and can cause people to lose sight of the big picture.

To minimize breaks, I consider our church calendar and align the text with special occasions. While preaching through Numbers recently, I was working with our elders on a long-range succession plan. Instead of interrupting the series to announce that plan, I preached Numbers 27 on the day we announced it, focusing on Moses’s succession. The application was straightforward: Fallible leaders come and go, but our infallible God never leaves his covenant people.

I also do this with special days like Easter and Mother’s Day, and for missions conferences. This allows us to move forward in the book while at the same time addressing special occasions. Beware the temptation to force a text to fit an occasion, but don’t be afraid to try out some creative sermon scheduling so you can simultaneously stay in the book, address special occasions, and stay faithful to the text.

Matt Boga

How often do you choose to do a topical series?

Perhaps it’s a developed allergy to my attractional church upbringing, but I tend not to use the word “topical” when it comes to sermon series that break our expositional preaching norm. Instead, I prefer the language of “occasional.” This word captures both the kind of series we’ll be in and how often we preach such series.

Occasional sermon series aim to address a particular need in our community’s life. So, we preach them as often as we feel the regular diet of passage-by-passage exposition needs a particular, seasonal supplement. A few years ago, for instance, when our elders discerned that our church’s unity seemed more strained than ever by the culture around us, we preached an occasional series that moved through passages of 1 Corinthians where Paul addresses division and unity head-on.

Yet even when we deviate from our norm, we still preach expositionally. Rather than picking a topic and collecting proof texts to support the point I want to make, the goal is to prayerfully identify passages of Scripture that fit the occasion and preach an expositional sermon from them.

Phil Newton

In what ways does your plan take into account the particular pastoral needs of your congregation?

Planning a preaching calendar shouldn’t happen in a vacuum. Biblical texts should be preached in a pastoral context. Knowing your people and their needs in every season should mark you as a faithful shepherd. Here are a few considerations.

First, any book of the Bible can meet needs in your church, so don’t fret about making a mistake with the book you pick. God’s providence works remarkably amid our lack of congregational insights. Faithfully expound and apply whatever book you preach.

Planning a preaching calendar shouldn’t happen in a vacuum. Biblical texts should be preached in a pastoral context.

Second, as you shepherd, counsel, observe, and pray for the flock, you’ll discern patterns of strength and weakness, progress and shortcomings, good disciplines and slothfulness in the church. Don’t hesitate to work through a book that addresses specific concerns while patiently making application.

Third, as a shepherd, you know your flock better than anyone else. Let their needs, not your preferences for genres you enjoy preaching, direct your book selections. If the congregation is struggling with trusting the Lord, you might preach 1 and 2 Samuel. If you’re seeing signs of legalism, preach Galatians. If you’re seeing a lack of assurance, preach 1 John. Need to emphasize holiness? Preach 1 Peter. In times of suffering, preach selected Psalms. If you see weak foundations, preach Genesis. Spiritual lethargy? Preach Haggai.

Matt Smethurst

How does your preaching plan relate to your role as a shepherd?

A preaching calendar is an act of shepherding, not just a content plan. When we planted in 2022, I began with the Gospel of Mark because I wanted our young church to come face to face with the person of Jesus. After Mark 1–8, we moved to Philippians to help nurture a culture of unity and joy, and then we returned to finish Mark.

In fall 2024, amid the U.S. presidential election season, I preached Judges, because I wanted us to be reminded, week after week, that no human deliverer can satisfy or save. In spring 2025, we walked through 1 Peter to remember that while Christians should be good citizens and bold witnesses, we’re ultimately exiles in this world. More recently, I preached a topical series on the basics of the Christian life, mindful that our folks come from all kinds of church backgrounds and levels of discipleship.

This year, we began making our way through Acts, watching the risen and reigning King form a people who get the gospel right and get the gospel out. So, I try to plan with more than next Sunday in view, asking what kind of people we’re becoming over time.

I don’t remember 99 percent of the meals I’ve eaten, but they’ve kept me alive. In the same way, God uses faithful, forgettable sermons to nourish and beautify his Bride.

Brad Wetherell

When do you put together your sermon series plan? What season of the year have you found works best for planning?

In one sense, I’m always planning a future sermon series. I keep a running list of ideas that come to me, often during my personal Bible reading. This helps when it’s time to do the bulk of the planning, which typically happens each summer.

I don’t remember 99 percent of the meals I’ve eaten, but they’ve kept me alive. In the same way, God uses faithful, forgettable sermons to nourish and beautify his Bride.

During the summer, I work on a plan for the following calendar year. This has several benefits. First, it takes the pressure off during the busier months, since I have an idea going into them of what lies ahead. Second, it helps to set my study priorities. For example, if I know I’m preaching on the Sermon on the Mount in January, I know I need to do the preparatory reading in the fall. Third, it helps me factor in major holidays, church initiatives, and personal time away as I plan each block of preaching.

In the summer, I also work to finalize the plan for the remainder of the current calendar year. This allows me to ask, “Is what I’ve planned truly what the congregation needs in this season?” Often, the answer is yes. But sometimes, God will lead me in a different direction. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, “It is part of the romance of preaching that it is always living and alive. . . .  There is this constant interplay between the preacher and his people.”

Jamaal Williams

How much do you involve your elder team in your planning, and how do you involve them?

I try to involve our elders early enough for them to shape the preaching plan, but late enough that I can bring them something concrete to respond to. I’ll first get away for three or four days to sketch out a tentative two-to-three-year plan. I look back at what we’ve preached the last five years, paying attention to the different genres of Scripture, and I ask whether this plan will help us give our people the whole counsel of God over time.

After that, I bring the draft plan to our other teaching pastors and our full elder board, usually in an elder meeting. I ask them what they notice, what feels missing, and what they think our people may need. I don’t want the preaching calendar to simply reflect what I’m excited about. I want it to reflect what the elders as a whole see as they shepherd our church.

Next, I take a more detailed annual version of the preaching plan to our staff elders and key ministry leaders (our staff leadership team), and we spend a couple of hours walking through the calendar together. After that, I revise it into a final document. Then, the coming year is fairly set, but the years after stay flexible. We may change from one minor prophet to another (Amos to Habakkuk, for example) without changing the kind of biblical diet we believe our church needs.

Andrew Wilson

How do you ensure you’re preaching the whole counsel of God’s Word?

The main way we try to ensure this is simple: We aim to preach through every genre of biblical writing in a five-year cycle.

In most church years, we have three major 8-to-12-week series, and three minor 3-to-6-week ones (plus Christmas, Easter, and other one-time emphases). Some of those series will be topical, but three or four of the six will be book-based; that gives us 15–20 series of biblical exposition every five years. Our aim is to cover all eight major genres of biblical writing—law, narrative, poetry, wisdom, prophecy, Gospel, letter, and apocalypse—in that time.

Last year, that meant going through Daniel because we hadn’t done a series on apocalyptic literature since we did Revelation in 2019. Next year, we’ll take on Deuteronomy, because it’s been a while since we did Genesis and Exodus. We cover some genres such as the Gospels more often than that. But we’ve found this habit helpful in ensuring we don’t just stick to the books we naturally gravitate toward but represent the whole range of God’s Word in our preaching.

For you, that might be how it feels to be a Christian in the secular workspace.

At work, we’re no longer at home, where we freely speak and act as a Christian in a Christian household. We’re also not inside a Christian church, where we’re free to speak and act as a Christian in a “sacred” space.

So how can we tell our colleagues about Jesus while we’re at work?

On the one hand, telling our colleagues about Jesus makes so much sense. We spend most of our waking hours at work. Most of our non-Christian contacts come from work. Many days, we spend more time with our colleagues than with our friends and family. The workplace is our best opportunity to tell coworkers, people whom we know and love, about Jesus.

But on the other hand, the workplace isn’t a straightforward place to tell people about Jesus. It’s secular space, unlike the “sacred” spaces of our homes and churches. It’s not a convenient place to tell people about Jesus. Usually we’re rushed and task-focused. It feels wrong to talk about Jesus, as if we’re violating a sacred-secular divide. There are tricky dynamics of power imbalances where talking about Jesus can come across as coercion. That’s why, at work, we talk about the weather but not religion. These are valid concerns.

Workplace evangelism is also tricky because we’re not equipped to do it. When “experts” teach us about evangelism, they tell us to be bold. Simply do it, they say. But usually, their examples of evangelism relate to talking to strangers we never see again: strangers we sit next to on planes or walk up to on college campuses. Or the examples involve acquaintances such as baristas or hairdressers. In all these examples, we have permission to be blunt and direct. That’s the nature of conversations with people where there’s no long-term relationship at stake.

But how do we talk to colleagues? We’ll see them every day for months and years. And we have to work with them! We don’t want to risk a friendship. We don’t want to ruin good work dynamics. Colleagues belong in a different category from strangers on planes, baristas, or hairdressers.

What if we reimagine evangelism as a conversation, where we evangelize like a counselor (with questions) or a chaplain (by building trust and social capital)? I want to reimagine workplace evangelism as trying to evangelize like a missionary. How would closed-country missionaries evangelize if they were placed in my job, in my secular workplace?

How would closed-country missionaries evangelize if they were placed in my job, in my secular workplace?

We evangelize like a missionary because the workplace is, in effect, a de facto “closed country,” where we’re not supposed to talk out loud about Jesus. That’s why we can learn from the missionaries who work in officially closed countries, where they’re also not supposed to talk out loud about Jesus.

Here are some tips I’ve learned from my missionary friends.

Be a Blessing

At work, our primary aim is to be a blessing to our colleagues. Before we even ask, “How can I tell my colleagues about Jesus?” we should ask, “How can I be a blessing?”

I learned this from my missionary friend David, who serves in a closed country. David tells me that he tries to “be Jesus” to those around him by  lovingly looking for ways to serve others. This will involve costly sacrifices of time, effort, and money, but people who are skeptical about Jesus become more curious when they love them like Jesus.

David says that, by blessing others, two things happen. First, natural opportunities for evangelism soon arise. These are accidental by-products of being a servant to those around him. Second, if, after some time, the person doesn’t want to become a Christian, you won’t ruin your relationship with him. That’s because the aim of your relationship was to be a servant and not to convert him. You can still lovingly serve this person, even if he doesn’t want to know about Jesus.

At an Amplify Conference at Wheaton College, I heard Chicago pastor Dave Ferguson, coauthor of BLESS: 5 Everyday Ways to Love Your Neighbor and Change the World, tell a story of two teams of missionaries who went to Thailand. The first team’s aim was to bless people in Thailand. The second team’s aim was to convert. After two years, the first team had built up much social capital and promoted much social good. They also saw 48 conversions to the Christian faith. The second team had no social capital or social good. They only saw two conversions.

In the same way, at work, we should turn up excitedly and expectantly seeking to be a blessing to others. We do this, of course, by being good workers, working as if for Jesus himself (Col. 3:23). But we also do this by proactively looking for ways to serve our colleagues.

‘Out’ Christians to Each Other

At work, I like to “out” Christians to each other. Immediately, you’ll think I’m breaking the model of evangelizing as if we’re in a closed country. But hear me out.

It’s lonely being the only Christian in our workplace. We’re like the Old Testament prophet Elijah, who made a brave stand for God at Mount Carmel only to see it all fizzle out with no one converting to following God. Elijah complains to God, “I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too” (1 Kings 19:14, NIV).

But God replies that he has preserved 7,000 other devoted followers in Israel (v. 18). It’s just that Elijah hasn’t met them yet!

Maybe it’s the same for us at work. Other Christians could be in our workplace. But we don’t know them. And they don’t know us.

That’s why, when I work as a hospital doctor, I “out” other Christian workers to each other. If the surgeon is a Christian, I say, “Kara, did you know that Charles, the nurse here, is also a Christian?” And I introduce them to each other. I blurt out Christian get-to-know-you facts, such as what church they go to and which denomination they belong to. Every time I do this, the Christian workers are excited and relieved to meet another Christian in the workplace.

Bit by bit, I build up a network of Christians. It’s pleasant to bump into each other in the corridors. Soon, the workplace is no longer a lonely space. It also begins to feel more “sacred” because it’s “enchanted” by other Christians.

If we’re comfortable, we can also have low-key faith-based conversations with each other, aloud, in the presence of nonbelieving colleagues. We can ask simple questions about church on the weekend. Or about the book of the Bible we’re reading. This way, the other colleagues can eavesdrop on what a Christian life looks and sounds like.

Simple conversations shift the plausibility structures of our nonbelieving colleagues. If our colleagues only have non-Christian contacts, then the Christian story is implausible. It’s impossible to believe, because no one else they know believes this story. But if our colleagues have more and more Christian contacts at work, the Christian story becomes more plausible. It’s possible to believe that Jesus really is who he claims to be because other people at work, who are known and trusted, also believe in the Jesus story.

If our colleagues have more and more Christian contacts at work, the Christian story becomes more plausible.

I remember Craig Springer, former executive director at Alpha USA, telling me that Barna’s research found that even if the average non-Christians had a problem with the idea of “Christianity,” at the same time, they had no problem with the Christian person they knew. In fact, and surprisingly, they had a high view of this Christian person.

But many non-Christians don’t know any Christians. At work, if I can “out” enough Christians, not only to each other but also to non-Christians, then the non-Christians will know a Christian person and also have a high view of their Christian story.

Creative Access to the Sacred

Missionaries in closed countries cannot “proclaim” the gospel in the same way we do in churches. Instead, they look for inventive ways to have creative access to the sacred.

One example is to create third spaces where Christians can invite non-Christian colleagues to hear stories and talks that can lead to spiritual conversations.

At City Bible Forum, we have a group called Headstart, designed for people in their first five years of work. Such workers are typically aged 25 to 30. They meet at a central location in the business district after work for 60 to 90 minutes. It functions like a “staff common room” where this cohort can have informal peer-to-peer debriefings about work. It’s also a space where believers and nonbelievers can socialize. There’s a formal talk and discussion on wisdom topics such as how to handle ambition, failure, and office romances, but with an assumed Christian worldview.

Another example is having Christian representation within the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in our workplaces. In the same way that people of other marginalized groups can have their voices heard within DEI, Christians can speak about what it’s like to be a “person of faith.” I’ve now spoken on several public panels, in front of large audiences, run by DEI groups on the experience of being a Christian in the workplace.

Additionally, workplaces typically allow Christian groups to hold public celebrations for Easter and Christmas. This can be done as a private Christian in-house group or as a public function under DEI. In either case, Christians can invite their colleagues to enjoy food and, sometimes, a winsome public talk about the difference that Jesus makes.

At City Bible Forum, we have a group specifically for men in finance. They meet before work for breakfast. It’s an opportunity to network, but they’ll also hear wise advice from a respected leader in the finance sector. This person will share about the difference that Jesus has made in his up-and-down journey through life, family, work, finances, and health.

Truth, Love, and Power

I like to joke that I’m a great basketball player—except that I can’t dribble, pass, or shoot. Of course, the joke is that you do need all three skills to be a basketball player.

When it comes to evangelism, there are also three parts—truth, love, and power.

My missionary friend Phil alerted me to a Chinese-language article by Agnes Liu, who observes that, in Asia, it can take eight years on average, from the time someone first hears the gospel, for him or her to become a Christian. But the time frames are different depending on how people hear and experience the good news about Jesus.

If someone mainly hears the truth about Jesus, it takes years before she follows Jesus. If someone mainly experiences the love of Jesus, from Christian friends, it might take months before she follows Jesus. But if someone experiences the power of Jesus through a dream, miracle, or answered prayer, it might take only days before she follows Jesus.

Different contexts will have different time frames. But what we can learn is that we have more than one way of proclaiming Jesus to our friends in the workplace.

For example, if we offer to read the Bible or tell stories from the Bible, our colleague will hear the truth about Jesus. But we can also introduce our colleague to our Christian friends, and he’ll experience the love of Jesus. We can also offer to pray for our colleague, and he might experience the power of Jesus.

We see something similar in Acts 16. Lydia hears the truth and believes (v. 14). The jailer experiences the love of Paul and Silas, and asks what he must do to be saved (vv. 27–34). And the servant girl experiences the power of Jesus (vv. 16–18). In each case, God supernaturally intervenes. But, in each case, Paul and Silas also faithfully play their parts in being the natural means of Jesus’s truth, love, and power.

We can do the same at work. We need to pray that God supernaturally intervenes to open our colleagues’ hearts, minds, and imaginations to Jesus. But at the same time, we need to play our finite and limited parts—we’re jars of clay (2 Cor. 4:7)—to show the truth, love, and power of Jesus.

Work for a Better Shot

The hockey player Wayne Gretzky famously said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” There’s also an opposite saying in sports: “Don’t force it.” Maybe we feel a similar tension in our workplaces. Should I or shouldn’t I talk about Jesus with my colleagues?

We need to pray that God supernaturally intervenes to open our colleagues’ hearts, minds, and imaginations to Jesus.

But there’s also a third saying: “Work for a better shot.”

If we see ourselves not only as missionaries in the workplace but also as missionaries in a closed country, we can look for creative access to the sacred. We can use the skills that missionaries use to provide opportunities for natural conversations about Jesus.

We’ll no longer be frustrated that we never made the most of our unique, God-given opportunities to talk about Jesus. Instead, we’ll be excited, equipped, and empowered to talk about Jesus in contextually sensitive and culturally appropriate ways . . . like a missionary!

May you go forward with the truth, love, and power of Jesus.

In that exercise before we talked to Tim, I led a discussion on the Great Dechurching, the unprecedented decline in Christian practice in the United States since 2000. I’ve led this exercise many times before and since, without incident. The goal is to identify what events and trends really shift culture. In this case, a majority of Americans had the internet in their homes by 2000. Add smartphones and social media and now AI, and you can see that the dawn of the information age is perhaps the biggest story of the 21st century so far.

But the exercise didn’t sit well with many of our fellows. We weren’t yet comfortable with each other. Some wanted to dig a lot deeper with ideas and a lot further back in history. Others saw the internet more as a vehicle rather than the driver of cultural change. Some just misunderstood the exercise altogether.

I’ll never forget Michael Keller’s response. He pulled some of his dad’s notes on how to share the gospel in our current age. He described various overlapping and conflicting cultural narratives that help us make sense of the world, apart from God. And then he showed how Jesus critiques and ultimately completes those narratives. It was brilliant work.

The whole center rallied around this idea. We recorded and wrote the group study Making Sense of Us: Exploring Six Stories That Shape How We Live. Michael Keller wrote the foreword. And we rallied behind a new book, The Stories We Live By: Seven Cultural Myths That Fail Us and the Story That Never Will. It’s written by Michael and his father, Tim, based on those notes we saw in 2023.

Ever since that day, I’ve adapted what I learned into my own teaching, not just about cultural narratives but about how we think about the various deep levels of cultural change. And I was eager to talk about this book with Michael on Gospelbound. We also discussed another new book Michael recently wrote with Rebekah Hannah, Talking to Kids About Hard Things: Honest Conversations When Life Gets Complicated.

In This Episode

00:00 – Why the best gospel presentation cannot save your children
00:58 – How an early Keller Center retreat shaped The Stories We Live By
05:02 – How Michael and Tim Keller began the book together
07:11 – The seven cultural stories shaping modern life
09:37 – Why identity may be the defining cultural narrative of our age
11:10 – Cultural narratives as Christian heresies
13:52 – The appeal and failures of expressive individualism
15:58 – What Michael hopes The Stories We Live By changes in the church
18:15 – How cultural narratives shape Christians too
20:27 – What remains in Tim Keller’s unpublished notes
23:06 – How Michael handles ongoing criticism of his father
25:35 – Tim Keller, “third way” criticism, and diagonalization
26:50 – What church planting taught Michael that he couldn’t learn secondhand
29:56 – Redeemer’s transition after Tim Keller
30:49 – Why the best way to honor Tim Keller isn’t to imitate him
32:28 – Introducing Talking to Kids About Hard Things
35:09 – Why Michael was skeptical of parenting books
36:36 – “Your kids need your repentance more than your perfection”
38:25 – Why apologizing to your children matters
40:14 – The gospel in action through forgiveness and repentance
41:40 – Why technique cannot produce saving faith
44:01 – How to help children feel safe asking hard questions
45:17 – Teaching like Jesus by asking questions
47:53 – How parenting reveals who we really are
49:18 – Control, repentance, and what parenting exposed in Michael
51:52 – How Michael wants his daughters to remember him
53:27 – Collin on integrity between public ministry and private family life
54:58 – Integrity, not perfection
57:29 – Final reflections and recommended books
58:16 – Outro

Resources Mentioned:

• The Stories We Live By by Michael Keller and Tim Keller
• Talking to Kids About Hard Things by Michael Keller and Rebekah Hannah
• Making Sense of God by Tim Keller
• The Reason for God by Tim Keller
• Center Church by Tim Keller
• Making Sense of Us by The Keller Center Fellows
• Handing Down the Faith by Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk
• Gospel in Life
• The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics
• The Gospel Coalition

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A friend of mine planned to have the kids in her Wednesday evening discipleship class memorize Psalm 67. The effort launched almost exactly when the “six seven” meme overtook the internet. There was no way to predict that emphasizing one of the ordinary means of grace would become a weekly distraction.

Of course, by the time the adults figured out how to capitalize on the meme by building a lesson around important 6:7 verses in the Bible, the trend had passed. Attempts to leverage such fads are likely to be met with groans rather than grins.

Thankfully, Christian publishers are always producing new, helpful resources to equip parents and teachers for discipling the next generation. As part of an ongoing effort to serve local churches, we’re highlighting some recently released books useful for families and churches as they seek to disciple their children.

Resources for Parents and Church Leaders

1. Shane Pruitt and Shelly Melia, Reaching Generation Alpha: A Ministry Guide for Discipling the Church Beyond the Screen (B&H, 2026) (Amazon)

No one can better help parents and teachers reach a younger generation than people who have invested their lives doing it. Pruitt is an evangelist dedicated to reaching the next generation; Melia has invested much of her adult life studying children’s and family ministry. Their message is clear: The world changes, but the truth never does.

They offer specific data about Gen Alpha, students born from around 2010 to 2024, from surveys and their experience. The goal is to help Christians understand the particular technological and cultural challenges those young people are facing so we can reach them with the never-changing gospel of Christ. The authors also emphasize ways youth and family ministries in the local church can equip parents to do the work of discipleship in the home.

2. Abbey Wedgeworth, Help! I’m Ruining My Kids: A Gospel Guide for the Mom Who’s Desperate for Change (Zondervan, 2026) (Amazon | TGC Store)

Don’t let the title scare you! This isn’t a book intended to convict harried mothers but to encourage them in their efforts to love their children well. Wedgeworth reminds moms that the grace that saves us is the grace that makes us someone who can love and serve and disciple without finding our identity in our parenting or its outcomes.

In a world where mom-life is filtered through Insta filters, Wedgeworth declares, “We cannot let our thoughts, our actions, our inaction, the state of our homes, or the behavior of our children tell us who we are. Instead, we need to walk into motherhood with a settled gospel identity.” Many women will be blessed by her reminder that we’re not left in this world as orphans, but that we’re adopted and beloved by the God who saved us.

3. Kyle Hoffsmith, Youth Ministry and the Vine: A Ministry Mind-Shift for Discipling the Next Generation (Matthias Media, 2026) (Amazon | TGC Store)

Tony Payne and Colin Marshall’s The Trellis and the Vine has been a favorite among pastors since it was published in 2009. The message is helpful. Though programs (the trellis) are important for a church’s health and life, pastors need to emphasize the more challenging personal and spiritual work (the vine) of ministry. All trellis and no vine is a recipe for a shallow, ineffective ministry.

Hoffsmith builds on that paradigm in this new resource for youth ministry leaders. Without abandoning lock-ins, pizza nights, and other attractional programs, he reminds readers that youth ministry’s lasting benefits often come from the less flashy efforts of teaching, one-on-one Bible study, and building relationships with parents.

Resources for Kids

1. Trevin Wax and Thomas West, The Gospel Way Catechism for Kids (Harvest Kids, 2026) (Amazon | TGC Store)

The first time we introduced the New City Catechism in our local congregation, we had parents asking, “Isn’t a catechism the thing that Roman Catholics do?” It took time to show people that catechesis has deep roots in the Protestant tradition—even among Baptists. As our kids wrestle with a flood of information, using catechisms in our homes and churches to provide a framework for orthodox belief may be one of the most important things we can do.

That’s why I’m excited about The Gospel Way Catechism for Kids. Wax and West are both excellent cultural analysts who think deeply about the biggest challenges our culture raises for kids. This book emphasizes key truths about what it means to be human, why we can trust the Bible, and why gathering in a local church is so important. Whether this catechism is used in Sunday school or in the home, it offers ancient answers to contemporary questions in language kids can latch onto.

2. Matt Dodd and Thom Bransdon, Philippians: God’s Very Special Letters—the Epistles for Kids (The Open Word, 2025) (Amazon)

Reading this translation of Philippians and pondering the illustrations was a delight! Most Bible storybooks emphasize Scripture’s narrative portions. It’s hard to find illustrated resources for kids on the Pauline Epistles, but that’s exactly what Matt Dodd (author) and Thom Bransdon (illustrator) have worked together to provide.

The colorful format strikes the right balance between pictures and words per page. More importantly, the text hits the mark for both understandability and faithfulness to the text for kids ages 5–12. This is the sort of book that’s perfect for reading with your family, whether all in one sitting, in a small chunk, or as a way to refer to individual verses. Colossians, Philippians, and 1 Peter are all available in Australian hardback editions, with U.S. editions forthcoming.

3. Alison Mitchell, All About the Bible (The Good Book Company, 2026) (Amazon)

I’m a sucker for those information-laden books for kids—you know, the ones from Usborne and DK. All About the Bible fits in that genre that combines a creative visual layout with interesting facts.

Kids (and parents) can explore the timeline of Scripture, learn why it’s important to understand the different genres in the Bible, and gain a deeper appreciation for how our modern Bible came to be. It’s just the sort of book I can picture 7-to-10-year-olds hunched over for hours, just before they come to the dinner table to see what their parents know about Johannes Gutenberg.

4. Linda Finlayson, Around the World with 80 Missionaries (Christian Focus, 2026) (Amazon | TGC Store)

It’s never too early to teach kids about the Great Commission. Around the World with 80 Missionaries contains rich stories about missionaries and cultures to show that the body of Christ is much bigger than their local church. It’s probably better suited for kids on the upper end of the 8-to-14-year-old age range the book is advertised for.

Parents and kids will have plenty to enjoy as they walk through the timeline of Christian missions and see how the gospel has made its way around the globe. Drawings, photographs, and maps (including a foldout!) offer hours of entertainment and instruction.

5. Todd R. Chipman, 10 Questions About the Bible: 30 Devotions for Kids, Teens, and Families (Crossway, 2026) (Amazon | TGC Store)

This volume in the 10 Questions series from Crossway is another good resource for parents to help their kids grow as Christians. Chipman helps 8-to-14-year-olds explore big questions like how we got our Bible, why we can trust it, and how to wrestle with hard passages.

This series’ books are useful for general discipleship, as part of a homeschool curriculum, or as part of answering the questions many kids ask. Parents and church leaders should remember that some readers may require more assistance than others in working through these books.

6. Kate Hox and Joe Hox, Who Is God? 52 Pictures to Share with Your Family (New Growth, 2026) (Amazon)

This resource uses the principle that a picture is worth a thousand words to bring theology into the home. Illustrator Joe Hox presents colorful pictures of specific scenes from Scripture that highlight attributes of God. Then Kate gives us a short explanation of the Bible story that makes the theology plain. The book also includes questions that can help continue the conversation on the way to school or the practice field.

Resources like this aid us as we look for ways to help our kids delight in God’s character. It’s written for use in the home with 5-to-12-year-olds but could also be part of ongoing discipleship in the local church.

Why choose to make ourselves smaller? Why “lose” faithful members and leaders? Why not just keep growing here?

Those are good questions. To lay the groundwork, my elders asked me to preach a sermon series on why we plant churches.

Where would you turn?

Here’s one place to begin: “So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied” (Acts 9:31).

Healthy churches multiply. The reason God saved us is the same reason we plant churches. It’s all for the glory of God.

God Saves for His Glory

In the beginning, God made all things for his glory. He made us to reflect that glory, then commanded us to multiply and fill the earth (Gen. 1:27–28).

We were finely polished glory mirrors, but sin left us shattered.

Yet God would save his people. In Egypt, God declared, “I will get glory over Pharaoh” (Ex. 14:4). And in exile, God promised salvation, not for their sake “but for the sake of [his] holy name” (Ezek. 36:22).

The reason God saved us is the same reason we plant churches. It’s all for the glory of God.

Glory took on flesh (John 1:14). Jesus’s glorious life culminated in his most glorious hour: the cross (17:1). The risen Christ commissioned his disciples to make disciples of all nations by “baptizing” and “teaching” them (Matt. 28:19–20). Where are disciples baptized? Where are they taught? In churches.

The church isn’t an afterthought to the Great Commission; it’s the vehicle for it.

God saves for his glory. He displays that glory in the church (Eph. 3:21). And as healthy churches multiply, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14).

If God saves for his glory, then God’s glory must be our supreme motivation for church planting. So before you plant, examine your motivations. Not every reason to plant a church is a good one, and even some good reasons aren’t supreme.

Lack of Motivation

I could imagine my congregation thinking, I get it. But does it have to be us? Can’t somebody else plant churches?

So I reminded them: There’s no such thing as an unplanted church. Every church was planted—including ours. And just as dog-lovers love puppies, church-lovers ought to love church plants.

It’s always easier not to plant. It’s costly to go, and it’s costly to send. Left to our flesh, we’d never choose it. So if you feel even a spark of desire to see a church planted, know it’s a gift of God’s Spirit. Praise God for that; it brings him glory when you do.

Consider the need. Some fellow elders and I have been mapping out our city, marking the areas of greatest gospel need. We thank God for every faithful church here, but Singapore has some 6 million people who all need a church. We long to see more churches planted. I suspect your city needs more churches too. Pray that a generation from now, a glory beacon would shine in every neighborhood—yours and mine.

But don’t think only about need. Think also about opportunity. The Lord turned my heart toward Singapore for both: the need, yes, but also the strategic position as a landing pad and launching pad for gospel work among the nations. Wherever God has planted your church, he’s given it sending opportunities too.

The church in Thessalonica was young, vulnerable, and not well resourced. Yet from that little church “the word of the Lord sounded forth” throughout the region (1 Thess. 1:8). Even a young church can be a gospel exporter.

Bad Motivations

Worse than no motivation is a bad one. Many so-called church plants are really church splits, born of division and rivalry.

Note the pace. Splits happen fast, while a healthy plant develops in the womb of a mother church until it’s full-term. Fractured churches divide. Healthy churches multiply.

Pride is another bad motivation. It gives rise to churches planted for brand-building, lifting up the cross only to hang our own glory on it.

One way to work against pride is to commit to single-assembly, autonomous churches. Rather than adding services and campuses, send people out to start and strengthen other churches. Let Jesus’s name increase while your church’s name decreases (John 3:30).

Good Motivations

Finally, some motivations are good—just not supreme.

Church planting encourages cooperation. The need is too big for any one church to tackle, so gospel-preaching churches in an area learn to see one another not as competition but as partners. Here’s one way to start assessing whether you’re ready to plant: Does your church pray for other churches?

Let Jesus’s name increase while your church’s name decreases.

Church planting develops leaders. When God transplants some of his people, opportunity opens. Others step up and serve as “good stewards of God’s varied grace” (1 Pet. 4:10). There’s good ministry on both ends of a plant—for those who stay and for those who go.

And church planting multiplies outreach. Your non-Christian neighbor is more likely to visit a new church than an old one. As Tim Keller observed, a church plant strengthens evangelism throughout other churches in the area.

These are good motivations. But they’re not supreme. Let God’s glory be the weight at the center, with every other motivation in orbit around it.

How One Plant Multiplies

In 1871, First Baptist Church of Minneapolis sent 22 members to start a new congregation for the Swedish immigrants arriving in the city. The plant took root, multiplying over the next century—planting eight churches, reviving a dozen more—until, in 1980, the renamed Bethlehem Baptist called an inexperienced young pastor.

His name? John Piper.

Across the next 33 years, Piper helped a generation of Christians see the centrality of God’s glory in all things, as Bethlehem went on to plant many more churches.

None of it would have happened if First Baptist Church of Minneapolis hadn’t sent out 22 members a century before.

In preparing to preach on this topic to our congregation, I asked Piper, “Why must God’s glory be our supreme motivation for planting?” He wrote that this desire “should drive everything—including church planting (1 Cor. 10:31),” that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him,” and that “the church is the place where the corporate experience of joyful satisfaction reaches its crescendo (Rom. 15:5–6).”

That’s why we plant churches: for the glory of God.

We know the Lord wants us to be encouraged and hopeful—not discouraged or cynical—in any work he has called us to undertake. Work is a good thing (John 5:17; Gen. 2:15). In it, we find purpose and an opportunity to serve others, bless the world, and glorify God.

And yet, with the fall of man came sin that fills our labor with “thorns and thistles,” making it an often painful toil (Gen. 3:17–18)—even in workplaces filled with followers of Christ. In fact, the Enemy likely has more of an interest in enticing Christian organizations to unhealth given the overt threat their labor is to his domain of darkness.

We therefore shouldn’t be surprised if our Christian workplace falls short of God’s glory. But we also shouldn’t accept this as inevitable or unavoidable, because we as believers are called, taught, and empowered to contrast the ways of the world as we conform to Christ’s likeness.

How Should Christian Work Be Done?

As we pray for God’s kingdom to come and his will to be done on earth as in heaven (Matt. 6:10), our work—in any sphere that doesn’t intentionally propagate sin—can be a vessel of God’s renewing work in the world.

If we work in medicine or counseling, we can be vessels of his healing. If we work in food service or financial services, we can be vessels of his provision. If we work in data systems or waste management, we can be vessels of his order.

We as believers are called, taught, and empowered to contrast the ways of the world as we conform to Christ’s likeness.

Whether or not we work for a Christian organization whose mission, values, and expectations align with biblical truth, our personal approach to work still should. All work should be done as unto the Lord, not unto men (Col. 3:23), in obedience to his commands and submission to his will for the furthering of his kingdom.

For example, while we work not for man’s approval but for God’s (Gal. 1:10), we’re called to submit to our earthly master as a testimony of our submission to Christ (Eph. 6:5). While work isn’t meant to be the source of our identity and worth, we should undertake it with dedication and conviction, knowing it’s part of the good works God has prepared in advance for us to do (2:10).

That said, working for an organization that claims to align with the Christian faith provides a unique opportunity for coworkers to hold one another accountable to mutually agreed-on standards and callings (by the help of a mutually indwelling Holy Spirit). We should do so, and do so seriously, for the sake of our organization’s witness to the gospel.

How Can We Cultivate Affection for Those We Work With? 

First, we should consider whether we’re praying for our coworkers as much as we’re complaining (to ourselves or to others) about them.

Pray for the Holy Spirit to convict them of sin and conform them to the likeness of Christ. Pray for anything that may be affecting the way they work—past hurt, family conflict, undue pressure, deep insecurities, or harsh leaders. Pray also with gratitude for the good they bring—gifts and skills that may complement ours.

Most importantly, we can pray for ourselves. In examining the speck in our coworkers’ eyes, we should ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the log in our own eyes first (Matt. 7:3–5). Our sins may be negatively affecting workplace culture as well. We can also pray for God to soften our hearts with compassion toward our colleagues (Ezek. 11:19).

Our coworkers are more than just partners in our ministry. They’re part of our ministry. God’s purpose for our work isn’t limited to the product it creates, the resource it provides, or the recipients who benefit—it also includes serving, honoring, and seeking the good of those with whom we labor along the way.

How Can We Make Things Better?

We’re right to be discerningly honest about the brokenness in our workplaces without minimizing sins or using grace as a license to permit them (Rom. 6:1–2). If we stop identifying and resisting sin, we become more vulnerable to its influence.

Certainly, there’s a time to speak out against wrongdoings or injustices, and we should pray for wisdom and courage in knowing when and how to do so, just as Nathan confronted David (2 Sam. 12) or Paul confronted Peter (Gal. 2:11–14). Jesus even provided specific instructions for addressing sin between believers to usher in repentance and restoration (Matt. 18:15–17).

God may not immediately move the mountain of improving our workplace culture—although he can, so we can ask him to (17:20). But maybe he’s calling us to chip away at the mountain instead. Day by day, with faithfulness and hope, we can take every opportunity to embody and foster the healthy culture we long to see.

Our coworkers are more than just partners in our ministry. They’re part of our ministry.

The golden rule teaches us to treat others as we wish they would treat us (Luke 6:31). In the way we conduct a meeting, steward resources, act with integrity, advocate on a committee, speak kindly, extend grace, enforce accountability, give feedback, maintain priorities, or make organizational decisions, our most powerful agent of change may be the attractiveness of our example.

God can use the light we shine before others to both convict and compel, and as others see our good works, they may give glory to our Father in heaven who alone can change them too (Matt. 5:15–16).

Turn to Christ, Our Hope

For all assignments God gives us, there’s a time to stay and a time to leave. In seasons where you feel especially restless with your work, prayerfully consider (with the help of wise counsel) whether God is calling you to anything different. If he isn’t (or until he does), pray for endurance to keep your hand to the plow.

In your frustrations with others, turn to Christ’s patience. In your despair over workplace culture, turn to Christ’s promises. In your discouragement over your own failings, turn to Christ’s mercy. And for as long as he assigns you to your labor, persevere under his easy yoke and light burden as you turn to Christ’s rest (11:28–30).

Our labor for him is never in vain (1 Cor. 15:58). He will complete the good work he started in us (Phil. 1:6). And he can use every shortcoming we face (in and around us) to deepen our faith and our dependency on him.

These stories are felt. They’re embodied. They live in our imaginations and dictate our emotions. But what happens when the script fails? What happens when you follow all the rules and achieve all the goals, and the bottom still falls out?

Not long ago, I watched The Princess Bride with my kids. Toward the end, the swordsman Inigo Montoya finally confronts the six-fingered man who had killed his father. As Montoya is about to defeat his long-sought enemy, he says, “Offer me money.” “Yes,” says the man. Montoya continues, “Offer me everything I ask for.” “Anything you want,” the man pleads. Montoya responds, “I want my father back.”

What happens when you follow all the rules, achieve all the goals, and the bottom still falls out?

I began to cry. I’ve seen this movie a dozen times. I’ve watched that scene without tears for decades. But not anymore. I wanted my father back too. He died a few years ago, but the grief doesn’t leave you.  It doesn’t leave, because no amount of money, power, or achievement can return what you’ve lost. The six-fingered man is dead, and Montoya’s father is still gone.

This is where every story other than Christianity fails. Identity, power, freedom, morality, truth, happiness, and progress—none of them can give me an answer that will sustain me through the aftermath of my father’s death. Earlier in The Princess Bride, we’re told, “Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.” For anyone who has no hope beyond death, that statement is a lie and a fantasy.

What if there was a story that didn’t erase our culture’s stories but completed them? Whether you’re a committed Christian or unsure and skeptical, it’s worth exploring whether a more beautiful story is out there, one large enough to address our deepest needs and longings. The Christian story doesn’t just critique our stories; it completes them. How?

Completing My Story of Grief

The Christian story completes many of our stories, but in my grief I needed its view on love. The Bible asserts that God is love (1 John 4:8), and we acknowledge that the world is made for love. Real love is sacrificial commitment that seeks someone’s flourishing simply because he or she is worthy of it.

Where does this love come from? At the center of the universe isn’t some vague deity; it’s the triune God—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who exist in what Jonathan Edwards calls “infinitely dear and incomprehensible mutual love.” Three persons pouring infinite love into each other with unimaginable joy and power—“the fountain of love” that “overflows in streams and rivers of love and delight, enough for all to drink at, and to swim in, yea, so as to overflow the world as it were with a deluge of love.” This is the heart of reality. Love isn’t something God does; love is who God is.

But if the center of the universe is an overflowing fountain of love, why is our world so sad? Why is there so much hurt and isolation?

The Christian story says it’s because humanity walked away from the fountain. Beginning with Adam and Eve in the garden, but continuing into our own lives, we think we can find life without God. So we built our own cisterns in our careers, our bank accounts, our romantic relationships, hoping they would satisfy our deepest needs. But they don’t contain enough water to quench our thirst. These water sources cannot give us ultimate meaning. They were never designed to provide it. The Bible’s story shows that though we walked away from God, he doesn’t walk away from us. He plunged himself into our drought.

We see it most clearly on the cross at Golgotha. Rather than demanding that we serve his flourishing, he served ours. Rather than requiring us to die for him, he died for us. This is the self-giving, costly, joyfully sacrificial love at the center of the universe. That’s why the key to human flourishing is to love and seek love from others.

When we put our trust in this story, the eternal love that flows between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit now enfolds us into it. Edwards tried to capture this when he said that we’ll all pour back “love into the fountain of love, whence they are supplied and filled with love and with glory . . . and thus they will live and reign forever and ever.”

Edwards is saying that the best moments of human love we experience—when we’re truly known and loved, feeling the delight of intimacy—aren’t illusions of reality but rather previews of a greater one. This is what Jesus means when he declares, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). He’s saying, “The deepest longings of the human heart for meaning, truth, and life are ultimately met in knowing and being with me.”

What I Thought I Lost, I Found in Jesus

If the center of reality is a Person, the ultimate tragedy of human existence is the loss of persons. This is where theology meets our experience. For me, this this happened on a Sunday morning exactly one year after my father’s death. The topic of my sermon, planned months in advance, was how to praise God. How could I preach about praising God when in my grief I was struggling so much with praising him myself?

To prepare, I returned to a funeral sermon Edwards preached in 1741 at his uncle’s burial, titled “The Sorrows of the Bereaved Spread Before Jesus.” Toward the end, Edwards turned to his aunt and her weeping children with words that cut to the heart:

Children . . . now mourning over a dear departed father, [wondering] where to go and what to do. You will no longer have your father’s wisdom to guide you, his tender love to comfort and delight you, and his affectionate care to guard and assist you. . . . But in the blessed Jesus, your father’s Lord and Redeemer, you may have much more than all those things. Your father’s virtues that made him so great a blessing to you, were but the image of what is in Christ.

And then Edwards went on to say to the children, in effect, “As great as your father was, everything that made him great—the love he gave you, the wisdom he had—all of it came from Jesus. So when you go to Jesus, you realize you haven’t lost your father; you’ve gained everything your father was always about.”

The best moments of human love we experience—when we’re truly known and loved, feeling the delight of intimacy—aren’t illusions of reality but rather previews of a greater one.

At this moment, sitting alone in my study with my father’s notes, tears welled up, but not tears of despair. My story, fused with the greater story of what Jesus is doing in this world, means my father isn’t gone, because everything that was good about him and that I loved about him came from Jesus.

For anyone who has lost a father, mother, or friend, the good and honorable aspects of what you lost can be accessed in Jesus anytime you choose. You want that comfort? Jesus is there. You want that kindness? Jesus is there. You want that wisdom? Jesus has it. You miss that patience? It’s all there in Jesus.

What do we do with our sorrows and sadness? We don’t ignore them, detach from them, or overspiritualize them. We plunge them into the character and love of God. Plunge your loss of family, friends, fame, and fortune into God’s love in the finished work of Jesus, and you’ll find praise and joy oozing out and eventually bursting forth. In Jesus, love really does win. Death really is just a delay. I will get my father back.

Put Your Story into His

This is what it means to let Christ’s story complete yours. Every good desire, every partial truth, in every human story finds its fulfillment in him. Whenever we’re downcast, it’s because at some level we’ve forgotten that Jesus truly defeated death. That knowledge—that the worst that can happen to us has been defeated—changes everything. Will you let it change you?

Dad has been gone for a while now. I thought I’d never gain access to his wisdom, heart, kindness, or encouragement again. As I rooted myself in the story of Jesus, however, I began to see how absence can reveal presence. Only after my father was gone did I realize how often I went to my dad instead of to my heavenly Father in prayer. Since Dad’s death, I’ve called out more to Jesus, and I’ve needed him more. The truth is, he was always there; I just wasn’t seeking him to the same degree.

Isn’t it a wonder that God can take our suffering and sadness and weave them into a larger story of hope and redemption? He uses what most hurts us, not to signal the end of our lives but to reveal all he has in store for us. What are you seeking instead of him? What cultural story, what false hope, what insufficient narrative are you clinging to? Could the absence of what you thought you needed be the very opening through which Jesus enters?

Perhaps the absence of what you miss most will become the way for you to see Jesus’s presence. Maybe the moment you think your story has gone off-script is the time it’s being joined to God’s greater story of redemption and renewal. It’s a story that invites us to bring our deepest sorrows to a Savior who meets us in our grief and then does something about it on the cross.

Seeing Jesus changes our story. If you place Jesus at the center of your life, his presence will not make the absences you feel go away. But you will find that the things that once gave you joy—the things you miss or that may be gone forever—have their ultimate home in him. Will you plunge your sadness, sorrows, and disappointments into his love?

Here are three practices to help you do just that.

1. Gaze at Jesus in Scripture and prayer.

Don’t just read for information, but keep looking until what you read becomes real.We know how to read documents to analyze the content, and we need to bring that same rigor to reading Scripture.

At the same time, you’re not just to read Scripture; you’re to let Scripture read you. To gaze at Scripture means to linger on the text until God’s character becomes real to you. Ask this: If I believed this more deeply today than yesterday, how would my life look different?

As you fill your mind with biblical truths, you can move what’s in your head into your heart. When you pray, don’t just present your requests. Sit in his presence. The difference between having simply a cognitive understanding of Jesus and having an experience of his love and grace is that you don’t just know a lot about God but actually experience his love.

2. Seek out community and opportunities to love and serve.

The Christian story is inherently communal. We aren’t just individuals finding personal meaning; we’re members of a body—part of the family of God. Alone, every cultural narrative exerts maximum power. In true community—not just casual attendance and not just doing networking exercises—you find people who can speak truth to you even when you’ve forgotten it.

When you love and serve others, you don’t have to be the author of your own story. You don’t have to be at the center. This is the process by which the gospel message gets into your very bones as you live it out in relationships. The Christian story says we find our life by losing it. We discover joy by giving it away.

3. See how your story is complete in the story to come.

The cross is where Jesus says, “My life for yours.” When that becomes your story, it changes how you live, whom you love, what you prioritize, and what gives you meaning and happiness.

For anyone who has lost a father, mother, or friend, the good and honorable aspects of what you lost can be accessed in Jesus anytime you choose.

The Christian story isn’t only about the past and what Jesus did, nor only about the present and the way we live today. It’s also about the future and what’s still to come. In Revelation, we glimpse how it ends: we see a new heaven and a new earth where God lives with his people, every tear is wiped away, death is no more, the broken are healed, the lost are found, and everything sad is made untrue (21:1–4).

Grabbing hold of this future hope will shape the way we live right now. When you suffer, you suffer with hope, knowing the end hasn’t yet come. When you grieve, you grieve with hope, knowing you haven’t lost everything. The gospel narrative is the story that’s big enough to hold all the beauty and brokenness of this world. It’s big enough to hold all the glory and grief of human existence. Don’t just believe this story. Live it.

Let it become so deeply embedded in your imagination that you see everything and everyone through its lens. As we do, it’ll protect us from all the incomplete stories and allow us to live with grace and boldness amid our culture’s narratives. As we marvel at the gospel, we can live in the reality that it’s not just one more story among many but rather the lens through which we make sense of all the other stories of our lives.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus often teaches in parables. Deeply important spiritual truths can be hard to press into our hearts, so our Lord graciously gives us physical reminders and stories through our daily experiences to drive these truths home. Over the past few months, I’ve been learning that cancer is a remarkable parable for sin, in both its disastrous nature and its available cure.

Quiet, Unremarkable Start

At the start, cancer is quiet. Just a single little cell not listening to your body’s cue to stop growing. Just a few small mutations in your DNA. Cancer doesn’t begin in glaring and noticeable ways. At those earliest stages, it’s almost impossible to predict how it can wreak havoc on a body. But cancer, left to grow on its own, will take over an organ and then the rest of the body, resulting in complete destruction.

Similarly, sin often starts small. Even big, egregious sins—sins at which we marvel how anyone could do that—start small. Just one Google search. Just one text. Just one thought. It isn’t much, a small deviation. However, sin, when left to grow on its own, does what cancer does; it grows to produce devastating outcomes. It takes and takes and takes, never wanting to relinquish its grasp on the ground in your heart that it has gained.

Even sins that we would never initially imagine as huge and life-dominating will eventually creep in and take over our hearts and minds. A thought about prioritizing “me time” over caring for others becomes selfishness and narcissism. A thoughtless angry word turns into bitterness and broken relationships. Sin will never stay small. Sin is a disease whose beginnings are even more insidious and deceptive than those first small, body-killing cancer cells.

Grueling Fight

The cure for cancer often feels more harsh than the disease itself. I’ve quickly come to dread the infusion days when I get my chemotherapy. While I know this is the medicine I need to fight this disease, I also know the weeks ahead will be grueling. The fatigue and other side effects almost make me prefer the days when I was blissfully unaware of what was going on in my body, before the cancer diagnosis and the harsh treatment began.

A thoughtless angry word turns into bitterness and broken relationships. Sin will never stay small.

When sin has taken deep roots, it’s hard work to untangle them. The discomfort of self-examination, the coming to grips with the ugliness of your own sin, and the work of repentance is often exhausting. It’s easy to wish you didn’t see your sin for what it is and to stop the fight of daily dying to self.

However, fighting sin is what we’re called to. J. C. Ryle says that “the true Christian hates sin, flees from it, fights against it, considers it his greatest plague, resents the burden of its presence, mourns when he falls under its influence, and longs to be completely delivered from it.”

We’re to see our sin as one of our greatest enemies and treat it accordingly. Similar to the surgery often prescribed during cancer treatment, Jesus prescribes spiritual surgery to rid ourselves of sin: “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell” (Matt. 5:29). Dying to sin involves dying, and dying cannot be a painless process. It’s bloody work to take our sin to the cross.

Cure Provided, Not Procured

Yet, when it comes to both sin and cancer, the struggle is evidence that the cure has already been administered.

Every three weeks, my husband and I kiss our kids goodbye for the morning and head off to the hospital. I sit in a chair for the day, receiving through an IV the bitter medicine that does the work of killing off those destructive cells. It’s a passive process for me: The nurse connects the IV to the port, hooks up the bags of chemotherapy drugs, and even grabs snacks and warm blankets for me while I wait.

So too, before we understand the depths of our sin or even want to fight it, we have a cure administered to our hearts. The cross, first and foremost, is the medicine that eradicates the cancer of sin in our hearts. The gospel diagnoses and cures what ails us most, and it’s what enables us to begin the work of daily dying to self. Jesus’s blood-bought grace is what brings dead hearts to life and gives us power to fight sin.

Just as I can’t administer chemo or kill cancer myself, we cannot fight our sin through trying to fix bad habits or willing ourselves to stop. The cure comes from something we cannot procure on our own but cannot live without.

Bitter Before Sweet

My family has recently been reading a children’s version of The Pilgrim’s Progress during our family worship. One refrain in the book is that “the bitter must come before the sweet.” Our journey through chemotherapy has given us a small picture of this.

The weeks feel long as fatigue settles in and climbing the staircase for goodnight kisses feels like a trek up a mountain. There are many missed days of playing and much grief over lost plans. But the bitterness makes the good days that much sweeter.

The cross, first and foremost, is the medicine that eradicates the cancer of sin in our hearts.

On the days when I’m feeling better, the mundane work of making dinner and caring for our kids is a joyful delight instead of a laborious task. And we look even more forward to the days when we can say this fight with cancer is over.

In a similar way, as we fight our sin, we get glimpses of victory to enjoy, even as we look forward to our final reward. As we go through the bitter work of fighting our sin, there are times when our hearts and minds are being recalibrated to the gospel, and we’re able to say no more easily than before. The sweetness of seeing those steps, even as we still fight, is precious; they’re hard-won victories.

We should savor what God has done for us. And as we keep fighting, we look forward to the time ahead when we can say with the psalmist,

The LORD has done great things for us; we are glad. . . .
Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!
He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him. (Ps. 126:3, 5–6)

Someday the treatment will be done, the disease will be defeated, and we’ll enjoy our eternal rest.

What I don’t talk about as much is my grief. It goes unnoticed. Even I don’t notice it sometimes, but then I’ll hear a random song and it sends me running to a quiet place to sob.

Why do I cry alone? Because my emotions feel selfish. After all, my parents are following God’s call. They’re going to do one of the most admirable things a Christian can, and here I am crying about it. I usually think my feelings are defective and should be suppressed, but I’m learning that God gave me these emotions and that the Bible shows me a way to grieve well.

Scripture shows us how to navigate the sadness that comes when family members are sent to the field: how to acknowledge our grief, admit it, and still affirm God’s call on those who go.

Acknowledge Your Grief

During my senior year, I wasted a lot of time bingeing on social media. I was indoctrinated into the philosophy of Stoicism, which drained me with its constant urgings to indulge my pride. I was taught that the manliest thing to do is be stone-faced before sadness and tragedy. Once I opened my Bible, I saw how wrong this philosophy is.

Luke says that as Jesus approached the cross, he was so distressed that “his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). Jesus was without sin, but he felt anxiety and dread as he approached the cross.

Strong negative emotions, when controlled, aren’t necessarily sinful. We don’t need to reject them; we need to acknowledge them. Once I finally acknowledged my emotions, I was able to move to the next step: voicing them.

Admit Your Sadness

Admitting your sadness to those leaving is the hardest part of grieving biblically. After all, we know missionaries already struggle to say goodbye. Can senders in good conscience be so cruel as to show emotions that might wound the resolve of those being sent?

Strong negative emotions, when controlled, aren’t necessarily sinful. We don’t need to reject them; we need to acknowledge them.

In Acts 20:37, the Ephesian elders weep with Paul as he leaves them. Paul doesn’t rebuke them for this. The tears demonstrate why honesty about our grief is so important. God designed us to share our mutual affections in community.

Yes, it’s hard for missionaries to go; they’re leaving communities they love. But one of the best ways to love the grieving is to show them you’re grieving too. When senders admit their grief, missionaries will leave with full hearts, knowing they’re loved by the community behind them even as that community affirms they should go.

Affirm God’s Call

Paul says, “As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy” (2 Tim. 1:4). When Paul says he longs to see Timothy just as Timothy longed to see him, Paul validates and encourages Timothy’s godly affections. Timothy’s disposition (sad but still letting Paul go) shows us a final instruction for someone who sends and grieves well: publicly affirming that God clearly wants the missionary to go.

It’s vital to acknowledge and admit the grief you feel, but senders must still say, “Go.” This isn’t easy. When you’ve given yourself room to feel sadness, how can you possibly let go?

The only answer is to go to God and beg him to open your hands. Ultimately, these wonderful people in your life aren’t yours to keep. They’re God’s gift to you, and they’re his to send on mission. So let them go.

These wonderful people in your life aren’t yours to keep. They’re God’s gift to you, and they’re his to send on mission.

There’s no such thing as a quick fix for grief, especially if you’re grieving a brother, sister, mother, father, or friend who is being sent. My grief will continue to haunt me as I “hold the rope” for my family, but I also know that these God-given emotions can be an opportunity for God to shine his glory all the brighter. From Acts to the Epistles, the theme of God glorifying himself through the grief that comes with sending leaps off the page.

Through acknowledging and admitting my sadness while still affirming my parents’ call, I’m confident that I’ll grow in gratitude for this new season of life when we’re apart for the sake of Christ’s mission. Despite my aching heart, I can still smile, knowing that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed” (Rom. 8:18).

He talks about understanding disordered affections, cultivating an exile mindset among a congregation, and addressing political divisions within a local church body.

In This Episode

00:00 – Subversive gospel in a polarized world: introduction and context

03:08 – Personal background and church context

05:48 – Challenges and successes in church leadership

08:39 – Theology of Christ’s kingdom and kingdom citizenship

29:45 – Embracing life in exile and confronting disordered affections

42:29 – Subversive influence and commissioning the church

Resources Mentioned:

• The Spirit of Our Politics by Michael Wear
• Faithful Presence by Bill Haslam

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We’ve been looking for property for a permanent location for our Chapel Hill campus, which currently meets in a high school. We found a piece of land in Chatham County, North Carolina, and we went through the normal rezoning process. By the county’s own assessment, our proposal fit within its comprehensive land-use plan, and early in the process, one planning board member even said, “There are not really any clear reasons to object.”

But objections eventually emerged, and some had little to do with zoning. Residents complained explicitly about our church’s conservative, evangelical beliefs—particularly our convictions about sexuality. Some county officials raised concerns about the fact that we’re a large church that encourages aggressive proselytization. So the county’s Board of Commissioners unanimously denied our request.

We appealed to the courts, specifically the U.S. District Court in the Middle District of North Carolina, under a federal law called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). As part of our lawsuit, we requested the court issue a mandatory injunction to stop the Board of Commissioners’ denial and grant our rezoning request. The United States Department of Justice filed a statement of interest supporting our position, arguing that the federal religious-liberty protections codified within RLUIPA applied to the county’s decision. A federal judge subsequently enjoined the county’s denial while the case proceeded.

Walking through this experience hasn’t been fun. But through it, I’ve recognized an important truth I didn’t fully appreciate before: The greatest protection for our church isn’t the right Christians being in power but rather that our government is denied the authority to decide whether my church is sufficiently Christian. This truth has clarified for me why I’m not a Christian nationalist.

Debate over Religious Tests

Some Christians today argue that neutrality toward religion is both impossible and undesirable. They say all laws are based on some worldview and that our laws are rooted in the Christian worldview—sentiments I fully agree with. So, they argue, shouldn’t our government therefore privilege and promote the Christian worldview? Why wouldn’t we encourage Christian beliefs—perhaps even require religious “tests” or “acknowledgments” to ensure those exercising authority share Christian convictions?

Believe me, I get it. But my experience with Chatham County makes me ask, Who gets to decide what counts as “good” Christianity?

This question hasn’t been theoretical for us. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the people opposing our church identify as Christians, and I’m sure those who do also believe their version of Christianity—mainline Protestantism—is the correct one.

From their perspective, our church’s convictions about biblical sexuality, the sanctity of unborn life, and male pastoral leadership don’t represent faithful Christianity but an extreme, intolerant, and even harmful version of the faith. They’re doing exactly what the Christian nationalists want to do—using the government to privilege and promote their version of the Christian religion.

The same government power that favors your faith today can be used to suppress it tomorrow.

The same government power that favors your faith today can be used to suppress it tomorrow.

That’s why I get nervous when I hear Christians talk approvingly about blasphemy laws or religious tests for public office. They picture wise, orthodox Christians administering those standards according to biblical truth. But who gets to write the religious tests? Who decides which doctrines are essential? Which denomination defines orthodoxy?

If I were creating the new standards, I’d have to ask, Do Catholics get a say? Liberal Protestants? Mormons? And what happens if I’m not making the rules? What if the people creating the tests regard my beliefs as hateful, dangerous, or heretical?

The more foundational question is this: Does God give that responsibility to human government today? Did Jesus encourage us in this direction when he gave the church his Great Commission?

Some suggest he did. Even fellow Baptists like Albert Mohler have given “blasphemy laws” an approving nod recently. But the overwhelming majority of Baptist and American evangelical thinkers for the last several centuries maintain that Jesus didn’t give governments that authority. For that reason, I appreciate Mohler’s latest response to his critics, particularly how he grapples with Richard Land’s argument that “in this age, gospel Christians are most at risk of being punished under such laws at the hands of secularists” (Mohler’s words).

Giving the government religious power doesn’t guarantee a Christian government. It merely guarantees a more powerful government. And that scenario rarely turns out well.

Power Is the Problem

China provides an instructive example. Western descriptions of China’s “social-credit system” sometimes exaggerate, but it’s safe to say the Chinese government has experimented with various systems that connect political and social behavior with government benefits and penalties. Authorities there have implemented social-credit assessments for religious workers based in part on their political conformity.

In a system like this, job opportunities, borrowing power, governmental positions, living choices, and the schools your kids get into are determined by how well you’re living out the government’s social creed.

Imagine a government that rewarded Christian behavior: Honest business. Stable families. Volunteer service. Caring for our neighbors. Church attendance. Believing and promoting biblical teaching about sex and gender. Raising your kids in church. Posting on social media only loving and helpful words in line with Ephesians 4:25–32.

Wouldn’t this lead to religious flourishing? After all, parents incentivize good behavior in their children all the time. Why shouldn’t society incentivize Christian living?

On one level, it does. A Christian culture rewards virtue and promotes the common good. Our government gives tax breaks for giving to a church or local nonprofit. As Tom Holland has demonstrated, those are all expressions of Christian values. But do we want the government to determine whether we can borrow money or buy land based on how well we line up with its creed?

Though there are instances when a state with religious power might work for me, I must reckon with all the instances in which such power could be turned against me, as it was in Chatham County.

Every government, by definition, legislates someone’s morality. There’s no such thing as a morally neutral state. Our beliefs that we should love our neighbors, protect the vulnerable, grant equal rights to women, and guiltlessly eat both chickens and cows (but not our enemies) all reflect a Christianized worldview. Laws against murder, theft, fraud, and exploitation all reflect Christian judgments about right and wrong.

Yet there’s an important line the government must never cross. Our Baptist forebears called it freedom of conscience. The state should uphold justice, but it should not attempt to define Christianity, arbitrate doctrine, or compel (or impede) conscience.

Those simply aren’t roles given to human government, and when a government takes those roles on, it ends disastrously for believers.

That’s the part of the Christian-nationalism conversation that concerns me most. I simply don’t want a government to possess that kind of power. Period. For all our good intentions, I’m confident it won’t turn out well, and I say that not only because there’s no historical example of a Christian government that has ruled for several successive generations without persecuting believers like me; I also say it because the Bible itself tells me it won’t turn out well.

Eschatology Matters

The book of Revelation assures us that until Jesus comes back, we should expect the Dragon to have unusual sway over human government. Yes, Christians can hope for good from governments, and we should seek to influence and serve in them. Yet God wants us to be realistic about what we expect from government, and in light of what he’s told us they’ll be like until he returns, it’s sensible to limit their power.

Many evangelicals have spent the last 30 years, post–Left Behind, saying eschatology doesn’t matter. We think it’s divisive, distracting, mostly irrelevant to Christian living, and only for theological eggheads. John Calvin never wrote a commentary on Revelation, so we shouldn’t be expected to preach on it. After all, whether you’re premillennial, amillennial, or postmillennial, we all believe Jesus wins in the end. So, some say, we might as well be panmillennial: It all pans out in the end.

Giving the government religious power doesn’t guarantee a Christian government. It merely guarantees a more powerful government.

There’s some truth in recognizing that one’s eschatology isn’t on the first level of theological triage. Yet our eschatology profoundly shapes what we expect between now and when Jesus returns. It’s no coincidence that Christ’s second coming is of one the most frequently discussed doctrines in the Bible.

It’s also no coincidence that many advocates of a more explicitly Christian political order come from a postmillennial framework. Postmillennialism anticipates the increasing triumph of the gospel in history, specifically in the world’s structures and institutions, before Christ returns. Prominent examples include Doug Wilson, Joe Rigney, and others associated with the Christian nationalist movement in Moscow, Idaho. I’m not saying that every postmillennialist is a Christian nationalist, just that the postmillennialist and Christian nationalist instincts often reinforce each other. Advocates for Christian nationalism often acknowledge the connection themselves.

If you expect Christian influence this side of Jesus’s return to eventually permeate all our human institutions, you might be more optimistic about Christians acquiring political power and using it to build a more explicitly Christian society. This thinking assumes that eventually all the county boards will be “our kind” of Christian, so it’s OK to cede power to them now. After all, if we’re not in charge now, we will be soon.

But as I stated above, Revelation sets a different expectation. While I believe a great revival is still ahead of us (Rom. 11:25–27), I also expect the Beast to remain the Beast until Jesus comes back (Rev. 13, 17, 19). The whore of Babylon will continue to hold enormous sway in our human governments until Jesus personally dethrones her (Rev. 17–18).

Revelation doesn’t leave me expecting that faithful Christians will gradually transform every earthly political institution into outposts of God’s kingdom so that once we accomplish that feat, Jesus will saunter in and take up residence on a throne we’ve built for him. In my view, there’s no kingdom without the King.

So, until Christ personally returns, Babylon will remain Babylon, and that means fallen political powers remain capable of being (and even likely will be) weaponized against God’s true people. For proof, we need look no further than Finland, which has a state church. Despite the government’s acknowledgment of its Christian heritage, an evangelical member of that country’s parliament was prosecuted for criticizing the LGBT+ community.

Since Revelation tells me that the weaponization of government power against believers isn’t only a possibility but a probability, I don’t want to hand the Beast authority over my conscience or put him in a position to arbitrate our church’s beliefs. Instead, I’m convinced that the best way to limit the damage evil rulers can do to faith and conscience is to deny them power over faith and conscience in the first place. Furthermore, quite frankly, our gospel doesn’t need the power of human governments. Its power is sufficient on its own.

Yes, I recognize that the government is instituted by God for the preservation of human flourishing (Rom. 13:1–4). I appreciate it, submit to it under God, and encourage the people at our church to be involved in it. Yet I don’t want to turn over to political authorities the keys that God gave only to the church.

What We Want for and from Government

As I’ve noted, none of this means Christians should withdraw from politics. Far from it. We are salt and light (Matt. 5:13–16), and we’ve been given a responsibility to restrain Babylon’s evil. As I’ve noted, justice always arises out of a worldview. So do freedoms and basic human rights. We’re not wrong to point out that our society’s viewpoints about these matters owe a great debt to Christianity. No one governs from a morally neutral worldview.

But that’s where the government’s authority and activity should stop. Magistrates should rule according to the dictates of justice and protect our freedoms, but they should leave the job of defining and spreading Christianity to the church.

Truly, our nation depends on us, the church, to define and spread the gospel. As John Adams famously observed, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” That means our form of government only works when citizens possess the internal restraints and compulsions that government itself can never produce. Many historians note that the American Revolution led to different outcomes than the French Revolution for one primary reason: America’s came on the heels of the First Great Awakening.

Note the distinction: The American government needs a moral people, but that doesn’t mean it should be entrusted to guard the beliefs that make a people moral. That’s the church’s assignment. Scripture doesn’t call Congress the pillar of truth; it gives that designation to the church alone (1 Tim. 3:15). We neither need nor want Babylon’s help in the Great Commission. The Spirit of God and the promises of Jesus are enough.

The American government needs a moral people, but that doesn’t mean it should be entrusted to guard the beliefs that make a people moral.

America doesn’t need the government to create Christians. America needs Christians to preach the gospel. If a genuine spiritual awakening swept our country—if millions came to Christ, fathers loved their children, citizens valued human life, and politicians genuinely feared God—the ramifications for our nation would be enormous. We’d live out the positive side of Adams’s statement, and America would thrive.

I want Christian politicians. I want Christian teachers and attorneys and business owners and artists and judges. I want Christians bringing their biblical convictions into every square inch of society. But what I don’t want is Caesar deciding which Christians count. Some of our spiritual ancestors left England for that reason. I don’t want to have to leave Chatham County too.

When I think about America’s future, my hope isn’t in the state’s coercive power. It’s in the church’s preaching of the gospel. My Baptist forefathers gave their lives to preserve this distinction, and I don’t want to give it up. Ever.

So, let our government do what it’s designed to do: protect our freedom to preach, worship, persuade, organize, vote, serve, and live according to conscience. And then let the church do what God commissioned us to do: proclaim a gospel that raises the spiritually dead to life.

In our case against Chatham County, we’re not hoping we stumble on a judge whose theological convictions line up with ours. Our appeal is based on the fact that we live in a land where our government has been denied the authority to decide whose Christianity counts. So, to paraphrase Roger Williams, give me as much Christianity as possible in our government and as little government authority as possible over my Christianity.

It’s no surprise that each generation, for the most part, uses technology more than the generation before. However, I wasn’t expecting the hyperdependence on AI that I was hearing about from these sweet 13-to-15-year-old girls sitting across from me.

That evening, we were talking about one of the fundamental aspects of being human. Genesis 1:26 tells us God made us in his image, which is triune—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, forever in perfect relationship. At our core, we’re created to be relational.

I’d asked the students how they navigate relational conflict, and that’s when this girl said she asks AI before she texts her friends. As I began to sift through what she meant, they all chimed in, sharing similar reliances on AI.

As they talked, I noticed three themes.

1. AI leads away from repentance.

AI feeds the lie that “we’re not that bad.” This keeps so many of us from seeing our sin for what it is, truly repenting, and trusting in Jesus.

I remember a desperate parenting day when I quickly typed to AI a confession of my lack of self-control while dealing with my youngest, a toddler who has never met a rule she doesn’t want to break.

“That was totally understandable for you to react that way—most parents do,” it told me. I immediately felt justified in my response to my toddler, and a little puffed up. I’m not that bad; she deserved to be snapped at; at least I didn’t do xyz.

This is the opposite of what the Bible tells us about our sin (James 4;17, Rom. 3:23). Our sin is that bad, and we need the perfect sacrifice of Jesus on the cross to atone for us.

My small group of students is constantly being told by their most trusted companion—AI—that they’re not that bad, that they’re understood, and that their reactions and responses are justified. This is keeping them from true repentance and experiencing the full grace offered by Jesus (Rom. 6:23).

2. AI leads away from others.

Not only do I see a lack of personal confession and repentance because of AI, but I also see a lack of corporate confession.

While we’re created to be relational beings, navigating relationships with other sinful humans is hard and messy at times. AI offers a way out of struggling through this relational dynamic. The girls can plug a prompt into AI and get an answer to a friend that sounds good. But they’re not only creating fake friendships that have no depth; they’re avoiding being corrected by friends, confessing sin, and being truly known (James 5:16).

If they have a conflict with a friend, they ask AI how to respond. They end up mindlessly sending messages back and forth, letting the intelligence of the computer reconcile conflict, instead of taking time to think and respond from a sincere heart.

They also avoid talking to people in person, when they don’t have AI to help them. During the day, they roam the school halls with soft smiles. In the evenings, they hop on their screens to try to create and sustain friendships with the help of AI and the security of knowing they aren’t going to mess up by saying the wrong thing.

This isolation is only going to feed the epidemic of anxiety and depression so many in Gen Z and Alpha are facing. AI has become their best friend, older sibling, and confidant that’s never going to know them or care for them like another Christian would (Rom. 12:10).

3. AI leads away from slow sanctification.

I see a desire in these teenagers to produce quickly and to be overly productive, instead of waiting on the slow and unpredictable work of the Lord in all areas of life.

Whether it’s knowing how to respond in a group chat, making the best social media posts, or starting a new side hustle, these students aren’t relying on God and his Holy Spirit but on AI and its prompts.

It’s easy to see why. AI’s answers are always quick, always support what you want to do, and always offer to do any hard thinking or writing for you. Compare that to prayer, where you may wait hours, days, or years before discerning an answer or clear leading. Compare that to conversations with wise friends, who may gently push back or redirect your desires. Compare that to sanctification, which asks us to do the hard work of change.

Model a Response

AI isn’t all bad, but I’m concerned about the way I see Gen Z and Gen Alpha relying on it. How do we address this?

First, we can model good relationships to young people by spending time with them. Let them taste and see that the relational call we have is a good one and worth fighting for. We do this by reminding them who created them and what they were created for. When their identity is rooted in Jesus, they’re then able to struggle through relational challenges without fear of others.

Second, we can model for them confession of sin that comes from personal conviction and a sincere heart. By showing them that we can confess our sins without shame and without feeling defined by our sin, we’re showing them the assurance we have because of the gospel. Our hope in our salvation never rests on what we do, have done, or will do, but on Jesus’s finished work on the cross. Grace truly is a free gift that should compel us to confess our sins and ask for forgiveness, knowing we cannot out-sin God’s grace.

Third, we can model slow prayerfulness and dependence on the Spirit. Over time, this will show them the difference between worldly wisdom and godly wisdom. While worldly wisdom is a quick fix to their ego and might give them the momentary satisfaction they desire, it quickly fades and doesn’t measure to the depths of godly wisdom.

Psalm 12:6 helps us see what true godly wisdom is like: “The words of the LORD are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.” Godly wisdom is reliable: tested and tried in every way and still able to stand in every persecution and hardship.

Learning to love and seek godly wisdom doesn’t happen overnight. Students need long-term relationships where they can see through our lives the reliability of God’s Word. I believe every student, at his or her core, deeply desires this kind of wisdom and assurance. We can trust that caring for students in this way is a good investment.

They talk about what books they loved as children and the ones they read to their own kids. They consider the benefits and limitations of children’s Bibles and discuss why they’ve written books for kids.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett
• The Chronicles of Narnia (series) by C. S. Lewis
• Are You My Mother? by P. D. Eastman
• Go, Dog. Go! by P. D. Eastman
• The Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
• Arlo Takes Off by Betsy Childs Howard
• Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink
• B Is for Betsy by Carolyn Haywood
• Betsy-Tacy (series) by Maud Hart Lovelace
• Chronicles of Pydain (series, includes Black Cauldron) by Lloyd Alexander
• The Dark Is Rising Sequence (series) by Susan Cooper
• Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry
• The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones
• Andy and His Big Question: A Story About How God’s Love Always Comes First by Courtney Doctor and Bo Doctor
• Made like Me: A True Story from the Beginning of Everything by Jen Wilkin
• His Grace Is Enough by Melissa Kruger
• Count It All Joy by Melissa Kruger

Related Resources: 

• How Storytime Shapes Your Children
• Parents: Use Children’s Literature to Point Toward Christ
• Classic Christian Picture Books Every Family Should Read
• A Complete Classical Christian School Reading List: Grades 1–8

Discussion Questions:

I didn’t live through the 1950s, but the proverbial bridge game lives on. Whether through social media or small groups or text threads, gossip sneaks in unannounced. If I participate, whether intentionally or not, at best, I walk away feeling nauseated and remorseful. At worst, a “holier than thou” attitude creeps in—“Well, at least I’m not like her.”

Reading Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s most recent book, Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made, is like sitting at a bridge table. There’s a temptation to lean in and hear Du Mez, history professor at Calvin University, recount the sins of white Christian women.

But at some point, you must put down the book. You must stand up and slip on your shoes and button your coat and return to the real world, the world she critiques. And then you’re forced to wonder, Are you supposed to do something about it? Should the gossip change the way you see your community, or does it simply make living there more interesting?

Hidden Secret

In 340 pages (plus back matter), Du Mez traces white evangelicalism’s feminine side from the 1800s to the present. From the Quakers to the Catholics to the Southern Baptist Convention and many Christian subcultures in between, Du Mez reviews the writings and lives of Christian men and women to construct a narrative about how we got to where we are. Her conclusion: White Christian women have crafted a culture at the beck and call of Donald Trump and his unholy trinity of “patriarchy, white supremacy, and violent religious nationalism” (336).

Whatever else it purports to be, this is fundamentally a book about Donald Trump. There’s more to it, but the project’s main thrust is an attempt to explain how evangelical history culminated in the social and political phenomenon that is Trumpism.

Whatever else it purports to be, this is fundamentally a book about Donald Trump.

I have close to zero interest in reading another book about Trump. But as a white Christian American woman, I have a lot of interest in serious books about the good, bad, and ugly of our subculture and how we can never repeat our worst mistakes in the future. Despite the bait and switch in subject matter, a lot of what Du Mez writes is serious.

Du Mez is a career historian, thorough researcher, and clear writer. Live Laugh Love’s predecessor, Jesus and John Wayne, criticizes modern American masculinity and its political implications. And in the last few years, whether it’s a Christian college demeaning women and immigrants to bolster enrollment or denominational leaders ignoring sex scandals to protect reputations, some of Du Mez’s predictions in the earlier book have proved correct.

Much of what Du Mez reports that has gone on in evangelicalism is truly disturbing. Take the example of Elizabeth: a young girl who was abducted and raped. Raised in evangelical purity culture, she struggled not just with the trauma but also with overwhelming shame. After all, she was taught that “no one re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away” (275–76).

Or hear about the beloved Elisabeth Elliot, whose third husband was controlling and verbally abusive. That’s why, Du Mez claims, the authorized biographer “chose to end the book abruptly” (328). These are just two of many similar stories. Whether it’s the abuse of women, children, or minorities, a lot packed in Live Laugh Love is true and terrible. Turning a blind eye is equally terrible, if not worse.

Banal Elements

As I read this book as a white Christian American woman, names from my upbringing peppered the pages; no one is safe. Elisabeth Elliot. Amy Grant. Ann Voskamp. Books on my shelf from childhood to young adulthood feature in her research: My first Bible—a pink, Precious Moments–branded New Testament—somehow contributed to Trump’s rise and the movement Du Mez calls “Christian nationalism.” So did texts like Elliot’s Through Gates of Splendor and Chuck Colson’s Born Again. Du Mez seems to canvass my personal history, pointing out how everything contributed to the unthinkable.

This book is about me. But also, it’s not about me. Just because certain cultural elements were fixtures of my childhood doesn’t mean that my mother and grandmothers shriveled in fear of their husbands, that my peers find fulfillment in tacky household decor and a “ring by spring” mentality.

The conclusion makes more sense if you read the book from the back to the front. As I made my way through from front to back, I kept wondering when we were going to get to the “secret history” of white Christian American women amid the open facts she was compiling. But it seems the “secret” is her claim that fairly banal elements of the evangelical subculture created a divisive political movement.

And that’s why I wasn’t expecting the ending. It’s a non sequitur. Though many women in my home state very likely voted Republican, if you asked them if reading Janette Oke influenced that decision, they’d smile, a bit confused, and murmur, “Bless your heart.” Where I’m from, that’s not a compliment.

Of the women I know for a fact did vote for Trump, they aren’t bandwagon MAGA fans. For them, it was a matter of life and death for unborn babies, gender-confused children, and other vulnerable community members. In 2024, Trump’s campaign was the lesser of two evils in their eyes.

But for Du Mez, it couldn’t be that simple. For her, it was the entire history of white Christian women inevitably funneling my friends to the voting booth. She writes,

From the slaughtering of Native American populations to the lynching of Black men, the protection of white women has justified atrocities committed by white men and by the state. The iconography of pure white womanhood has long domesticated white nationalism, softening its public image and condoning violence as necessary and righteous. In Trump’s America, as female “innocence,” sexiness, and hyperfemininity combined with a reactionary political agenda, fascinating women played key roles in implementing the administration’s authoritarian project. (317)

It’s hard to follow the jump from purity rings and Precious Moments to slaughtering Native Americans and authoritarianism.

No Hope in Sight

Unfortunately, Du Mez undermines her argument when she, at least in some places, takes liberties with the evidence.

For example, contrary to Du Mez’s assertion, Ellen Vaughn, Elliot’s biographer, didn’t skimp on the last chapters of her biography because the story didn’t fit her narrative. Rather it was because, as Vaughn writes, “Lars [Elliot’s third husband] burned most of her journals from the years of their marriage, a choice he now regrets.” There was simply less source material to work from.

Furthermore, as Bonnie Kristian highlights in her review of this newest volume, on at least one occasion Du Mez misrepresents sources about which Kristian has direct knowledge. Du Mez makes incorrect assumptions about someone’s race and twists her message.

But even where the evidence is legitimate, it’s hard to take some of Du Mez’s criticism seriously because the sweeping accusations don’t match up with what I’ve heard from friends or experienced in the broader evangelical culture.

In reacting to Jesus and John Wayne in her recent book, Kristian highlights the same dissonance:

I couldn’t recognize the debased movement Du Mez described. Her evidence seemed sound, so far as it went, but did the conclusion follow? The evangelicals I knew weren’t corrupting our faith or fracturing our nation. . . . They don’t want their church or their identity to be focused on politics; they want both to be focused on Christ.

There’s little room for legitimate religious belief in Du Mez’s account of evangelicalism.

Live Laugh Love is meant to be a work of history, not a work of theology. That explains why, after the introduction, there’s no interaction with Scripture and no wrestling with God’s standards of justice and mercy. It’s largely a book about Christians whose most egregious sin seems to be not joining “the Democrats’ fight for democracy” (315). In her attempt to offer a definitive account of how the evangelical subculture’s feminine elements caused the rise of Trump and Christian nationalism, Du Mez tells us more about her political preferences than about the history of evangelicalism.

It’s hard to follow the jump from purity rings and Precious Moments to slaughtering Native Americans and authoritarianism.

Criticism without a goal dissolves into noise. Unless we turn the critique toward something redemptive, we’re left as no better than those who participate in gossip at the bridge game.

We can’t turn a blind eye to the problems in evangelicalism. But we also can’t focus so much on the history of Christianity that we miss the Author and Perfecter of it: Christ himself (Heb. 12:2). If Christian history were about perfect people, we wouldn’t need our Lord. Because we sin—even the sin described in the pages of Live Laugh Love—his passion was necessary. Because we fail, he rose from the dead. Because we don’t love our God and our neighbor like we ought, he lives to intercede at the right hand of God on behalf of you, me, and, yes, even white Christian American women.

Not everyone who identifies as “spiritual but not religious” has everything in common, but one thing they share is that while they typically believe in a higher power, the way people relate to it doesn’t necessitate organized religion. They long for transcendence, but they’ve left behind institutional religion and adopted what Tara Isabella Burton calls “intuitional religion.”

What makes this impulse attractive is that it promises freedom from the nihilism that comes with the belief that this world is all there is, as well as freedom from the dogmatic demands of organized religion. If cold materialism offers autonomy but struggles to provide meaning, and organized religion offers meaning but struggles to provide autonomy, then nonorganized spirituality promises both meaning and autonomy.

What Privatized Religion Loses

The “spiritual but not religious” rightly understand the importance of transcendence and the impossibility of finding ultimate meaning when stuck within the material. Unfortunately, without the durability of organized religion, they end up experiencing spiritual isolation.

This isolation forces them to answer questions of ultimate importance either by themselves or in communities that don’t have the bandwidth for such questions. Furthermore, this isolation unintentionally cheapens the experience of transcendence they long for. These unmet needs create an opportunity for the church to showcase a compelling alternative.

If we lose organized religion, we lose a shared sense of reality, rituals, and morality. Why does a shared sense of reality, rituals, and morality matter? Because when these things are no longer shared but privatized, all their burdens fall to the individual.

Nonreligious spirituality forces the individual to answer questions like these: Is there a God? What is he like? Who am I? What is wrong with the world? Is there any hope? How should I live? How can I find meaning? What happens after death?

The individual then has the burden of ordering those answers in a coherent way. Since individuals cannot do this in isolation, they’re left with the crushing feeling that life doesn’t make sense. Young people often feel anxious when trying to decide which career to choose and whom to marry. How much more anxiety must there be when the question “How do I live a meaningful, nonwasted life?” falls on the individual? This isn’t freedom but rather an unbearable weight that has led to what Jonathan Haidt calls the “anxious generation.”

Nonreligious spirituality struggles to provide communal rituals that align with beliefs about ultimate reality. Instead, individuals must curate practices that don’t clearly tie to a coherent vision of reality and then try to find a community that may or may not share their vision of reality.

Nonreligious spirituality struggles to provide communal rituals that align with beliefs about ultimate reality.

Without organized religion, we also lose something morally. Science can analyze, but it cannot tell us what’s good and evil. Politics can create laws, but it cannot cultivate love for what’s true, good, and beautiful. If we lose organized religion and spirituality becomes private, we lose a shared, coherent moral shape.

The “spiritual but not religious” end up with flattened relationships because the organizing principle of their relationships becomes something less than that which is of ultimate importance. Humans long to connect over more than food, movies, sports, and politics, but if the things that matter most are private and nonorganized, then what are we left with?

I’m not saying someone cannot talk about spirituality with friends without organized religion. Rather, I’m saying that without organized religion, individuals cannot share in their spirituality. Talking about spirituality with friends isn’t enough. It doesn’t scratch the existential itch of loneliness. To receive general empathy during a time of suffering without a shared ability to make sense of it isn’t enough. It’s the organized sharing of spirituality that gives relief here. When radical individualism takes over spirituality, it leaves people confused, anxious, and alone.

The church has an incredible opportunity to meet the felt needs of the “spiritual but not religious” who are seeking something bigger than themselves and can’t seem to find it. Here are four practical ways Christians can meet them where they are.

1. Pray fervently.

In Romans, Paul expresses his desire that those outside of Christ would come to know Jesus: “Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved” (10:1, NIV). Paul knows it’s God who foreknows, calls, justifies, and glorifies (8:30). He knows that if the sovereign God of the universe doesn’t move in power, his loved ones won’t come to saving faith.

When thinking about the culture, it can be easy to skip prayer. We must resist this temptation. If we’re going to see the “spiritual but not religious” who are skeptical of organized religion come into our churches, we need God to draw them.

We cannot simply diagnose that the culture is skeptical about institutional religion and rush to apologetic arguments. We must pray that people will grow dissatisfied with their nonreligious spirituality. We must pray that people will wonder to themselves, Is this it? We must pray that people—by grace and through faith—will know the love of God in Christ and be joined to his body. Let’s boldly approach God with the names of our loved ones.

2. Listen with compassion.

As Ryan Burge frequently points out, not everyone who is “spiritual but not religious” believes the same thing. These are people who bear God’s image and have unique stories. Listen to their stories, ask curious questions, and have compassion when you see a pain point.

We must pray that people will grow dissatisfied with their nonreligious spirituality. We must pray that people will wonder to themselves, Is this it?

Matthew 9:36 says, “When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus’s posture toward the helpless people without a shepherd was compassion. He didn’t sigh and roll his eyes. His heart was moved.

Those who want to practice their spirituality by themselves are “sheep without a shepherd” and, in their own unique ways, feel harassed and helpless. We must listen long enough and care deep enough to hear their pain. We should get to know what experiences have shaped them, what they’re hoping for, and what fears regularly linger in their minds. People love to tell their stories to curious and compassionate listeners. Perhaps this compassionate listening might lead to opportunities for gospel proclamation.

3. Evangelize creatively.

In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul gives us a window into his strategy for evangelism:

To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. (vv. 21–23, NIV)

Paul was willing to fill whatever role was necessary to get people to Christ. Creativity in evangelism is a good thing. Creative evangelistic strategies can be used by God to turn those who don’t see the value of the church into faithful brothers and sisters.

Art, fashion, farming, pickleball, music, video games, and grilling are just a few of the opportunities that we can step into creatively and consider how we might introduce people to Jesus. Reaching those who don’t see the value in church is going to demand that we think outside the box and meet people where they are.

4. Commit to unity.

Jesus prays in John 17:23 for his followers: “That they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” The world knowing the love of Christ is downstream of the church’s unity. There’s something beautiful and compelling to individuals in a divided culture about a church united around the good news that Jesus saves sinners. A ruthless commitment to unity will force those with an anti-institutional bent to reevaluate their beliefs.

If the assumption is that institutions cannot be trusted because those who inhabit and lead them are in it for selfish reasons, then a consistent commitment to “do nothing from selfish ambition” (Phil. 2:3) is essential. Reaching people for the sake of Christ and welcoming outsiders into the church in an age of institutional distrust is going to take togetherness. But the good news, as Jesus reminds us in Matthew 16:18, is that the gates of hell will not prevail against Jesus or his people.

By God’s grace, in 2019 I spent hours during our last year of seminary researching and writing about infertility, assisted reproductive technologies, and the ethical issues surrounding their use. At the time, I thought of this as my latest theological hobbyhorse. It was interesting and important to me, but it wasn’t personal. All that research and writing occurred a year before my husband and I started trying to conceive.

When it suddenly applied to my own life—after nine months of trying to conceive, waiting, and praying, only to be disappointed again and again—I found I wasn’t emotionally or spiritually prepared for the heartache I experienced.

My emotions weighed on me constantly. My spirit felt weak. But my time spent studying assisted reproductive technologies in seminary wasn’t wasted because, intellectually at least, I was ready. I knew what to expect from our fertility clinic once we started pursuing medical help. We knew what treatment options our doctor would present to us, and we knew what we were and weren’t willing to try.

Infertility affects approximately 12 percent to 15 percent of couples in the United States. Many of those couples will ultimately pursue in vitro fertilization (IVF) to grow their families. Almost 3 percent of babies born in the United States are conceived via IVF. Since the technology’s inception, millions of people have been born as a result.

If that’s something you (or someone you love) is considering, I would love to share the way my husband and I approached this theologically—and how the Lord redeemed our infertility.

Why Not IVF?

Criticizing IVF, even among pro-life Christians, is an uncomfortable exercise. As IVF becomes more common, more Christians have used IVF or know someone who has. Most who pursue IVF do so because they’re following an intense longing rooted in the biblical desire for the blessing of children (Pss. 113:9; 127:3–5).

For those with children or loved ones conceived via IVF, these critiques feel deeply personal. Yet I want to make clear that critiques of IVF have nothing to do with the value and dignity of children conceived via IVF. These children are image-bearers made by God, and the circumstances of their conception don’t change that (Ps. 139:13).

IVF is a process by which fertility specialists create embryos (babies at the earliest stage of human development) in a laboratory with egg and sperm collected from the parents. These embryos are then transferred to the mother’s uterus in the hope they’ll continue growing through a full-term pregnancy to a live birth. To achieve the highest odds of success, doctors will typically create multiple embryos per IVF cycle, selecting only the healthiest for implantation.

Most embryo transfers are done one embryo at a time. Unused embryos are then either frozen to be transferred at a later date or destroyed. Genetically testing embryos is routine, as it allows couples to discard embryos with a higher likelihood of genetic disorders.

If pro-life Christians agree that a unique human life begins at fertilization, then just as early-term abortion that kills an embryo inside the womb is wrong, destroying embryos developed outside the womb is wrong. If couples who conceive naturally shouldn’t abort a pregnancy because the baby has a genetic disorder, then embryos created via IVF shouldn’t be destroyed for the same reason.

Just as early-term abortion that kills an embryo inside the womb is wrong, destroying embryos developed outside the womb is wrong.

Technically, it’s possible to do IVF without freezing or destroying any embryos (by purposely creating and implanting only one embryo at a time and forgoing genetic testing). But to do IVF this way is prohibitively expensive for most couples. And many doctors won’t agree to this strategy because of the diminished chances of a successful pregnancy. (Our doctor, for example, told us this wasn’t something he’d be willing to do.)

Some couples choose to create multiple embryos with the plan to implant them all over time. To me, this seems too risky—what if a pregnancy complication keeps you from carrying again, a divorce causes an embryo custody dispute, or one or both partners pass away before the embryos have been transferred? At that point, you’d be left with an almost impossible decision about what to do. However, the intention here is good, and my objection is mostly due to unknown hypothetical risks. Christians could disagree with me in good faith. But this wasn’t a path my husband and I wanted to take.

Why Is Embryo Adoption Different?

Since we knew IVF wasn’t an option for us, we kept embryo adoption in mind in the event more conservative treatment options were unsuccessful. After testing left us with a diagnosis of “unexplained infertility,” and we’d exhausted what medications and other treatments could do for us, we asked our doctor about embryo adoption, which set us on the path to our beautiful now two-year-old daughter.

Unlike in IVF, no new children are created through embryo adoption. Rather, a child who already exists gets a chance to live and be part of a family. An estimated 1.2 million frozen embryos exist in the United States at any given moment. Of these, hundreds of thousands have been abandoned by their genetic parents, and an untold number will remain frozen indefinitely until the parents choose either to donate or destroy them.

Each frozen embryo is a unique human being, made in God’s image and deserving of life. Embryo adoption is a redemptive choice that offers them that chance. It’s possible to lament the broken circumstances that led to the child’s need for adoption while also rejoicing in the gift of becoming that child’s parents—as parents of traditionally adopted children do. Though I lament the need for embryo adoption in the first place, I’m deeply grateful that through embryo adoption, the Lord saved my daughter’s life and made me her mother.

Embryo adoption is significantly more affordable and less physically demanding than IVF. It offers women the chance to carry and give birth to their adopted children, and offers those children the earliest opportunity for attachment with their adopted parents. During infertility, I grieved the loss of the gift of pregnancy, of knowing what it’s like to nurture a new life with my body. Though my daughter doesn’t share my DNA, she did share my body throughout pregnancy, and I was able to nurse her after birth.

Not a Perfect Solution

Though I long to see more Christians pursue embryo adoption, it isn’t necessarily a fit for every infertile couple, and it carries risks and complications. For some couples, embryo adoption isn’t medically viable. Certain causes of infertility inhibit not only conception but also a woman’s ability to carry and give birth safely.

The average success rate for a donor embryo transfer is between 43 percent and 45 percent, a discouraging prospect. We’re so grateful that our first embryo transfer led to the healthy birth of our daughter, but we were mentally prepared for the prospect of multiple failed transfers. A failed embryo transfer carries the same emotions as a miscarriage—a life deeply longed for lost prematurely.

Additionally, as with natural pregnancies, miscarriage or stillbirth can occur with adopted embryo pregnancies. Genetic disorders are still possible. Most complications that can occur in a natural pregnancy occur at slightly higher rates in pregnancies achieved through embryo transfer.

Even assuming a successful embryo transfer and a healthy pregnancy, raising a child born through embryo adoption comes with complications. As with traditional adoption, these children are likely to have confusing feelings about their origin stories and questions about their genetic parents that may be difficult or impossible for their adoptive parents to answer.

Despite these complexities, for many infertile Christian couples, embryo adoption can be a redemptive option that offers a child a chance at life and the couple the gift of a child, while avoiding the ethical quandaries of IVF.

Interested in Embryo Adoption?

If you’re walking through infertility and wondering whether to consider embryo adoption, first pray and seek counsel. Ask the Lord to align your heart to his plans for you, even if those plans don’t include having a child. Much of my spiritual formation throughout our infertility was based on learning to trust God amid deep suffering and unfulfilled longing. The book of Job gave me words for this: “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21).

Seek the counsel of a pastor or mentor who knows you well and can pray with you as you process your grief, consider your options, and ask for the Lord’s guidance. Seek advice from friends who have experienced infertility or done embryo adoption themselves. Being able to talk to just one person who could share her experience and answer my questions gave me the insight I needed to step forward in faith and pursue embryo adoption.

If you’re already working with a clinic, ask your doctor if embryo adoption is available with their practice. If so, this allows you to keep working with the same medical team that already has your diagnostic information and prevents you from having to travel for treatment.

Several Christian services are dedicated specifically to embryo adoption. Though you’ll have to travel if you’re not local, working with a Christian medical team can be a real gift when navigating the complexities of embryo adoption. Services like Snowflakes, the National Embryo Donation Center, Embryos Alive, and the Christian Embryo Adoption Network are worth looking into.

Redeem the Wait

As I write this, my daughter is asleep in the next room. And at 24 weeks pregnant, I can feel the kicks of her little sister in my womb. When we adopted our first daughter, we also adopted her sibling embryo, hoping to conceive and carry again as soon as possible after her birth. We praise the Lord for two successful embryo transfers in a row, and that we get to call these two little girls, who are full biological siblings, our own.

Much of my spiritual formation throughout our infertility was based on learning to trust God amid deep suffering and unfulfilled longing.

When, Lord willing, our second daughter is born in a few short months, they’ll be almost exactly two years apart, even though their embryos were created at the same time back in 2015, 11 years ago and a full year before my husband and I married.

It gives me such hope and gratitude to know that even before we married, God knew these two girls and knew they’d be ours. He knew we’d struggle to conceive and that we’d suffer through years of longing, but he also knew that as long as we waited for our girls, they waited even longer for us. Their stories are imperfect and complex, but miraculously the Lord “knitted [them] together in [their] mother’s womb,” and they’re so loved (Ps. 139:13).

Infertility taught me that protection from suffering isn’t guaranteed in the Christian life. In fact, suffering with and for Jesus is promised. Even with one daughter healthy and with us, and one healthy and on the way, “happily ever after” isn’t guaranteed for our family.

But I can look to the cross and know God is in the business of redeeming suffering to bring about his kingdom purposes. Our suffering through infertility—and our daughters’ suffering through years of frozen waiting—were redeemed with embryo adoption. I hope more Christians experiencing infertility will consider embryo adoption, too, and find their suffering redeemed.

Lewis recommended another apologetics approach as “the first step” toward turning modern minds in the direction of Christian faith. If applied today, his suggestion could lead to shifts that seem, at first, counterintuitive. For one, it might result in fewer apologetics books and far more texts about topics that don’t directly relate to apologetics at all.

So how could less apologetics content possibly result in better apologetics? That’s one of the topics Lewis covered in “Christian Apologetics,” an address delivered in 1945 to a group of Anglican priests and youth ministry leaders. Building on his words in this lecture, I refer to his recommended approach as “latent apologetics.”

Attacking the Enemy’s Line of Communication

Reflecting on the apologetics addresses he gave to Royal Air Force personnel throughout Britain during World War II, Lewis lamented that, as soon as listeners left his lectures, they were plunged into contexts that assumed Christianity’s irrelevance. No matter how rational Christianity might have seemed during his talks, widespread embrace of Christian faith was “simply impossible,” Lewis suggested, as long as the implicit assumptions around the troops excluded Christianity from serious consideration.

The military personnel already doubted the truthfulness of ancient texts when they entered Lewis’s lectures, and they lacked any real sense of sin. But this wasn’t because they had consumed convincing content that promoted skeptical historiography or weak hamartiology. It was because they had absorbed their teachers’ assumptions that science is superior to history and sin is nothing more than a violation of social norms.

Lewis’s listeners also tended to be materialists, but not because they had studied books that argued for materialism. They became materialists, Lewis declared, because of “materialistic assumptions in all the other books.”

Supposing that Lewis was correct in his diagnosis of the modern mind, how should Christian thinkers respond to this challenge? Not by producing more defenses of Christian faith, according to Lewis. Our response should be instead to “attack the enemy’s line of communication.”

How should Christians go into battle against the Devil’s own communications strategy? By producing fewer explicitly Christian books, not more. “What we want is not more little books about Christianity,” Lewis declared, “but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent.”

‘What we want is not more little books about Christianity,’ Lewis declared, ‘but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent.’

In Lewis’s vision, these “little books” wouldn’t explicitly promote Christian faith. Instead, the authors’ faith commitments would remain beneath the surface of rigorous research and argumentation. Here’s an analogy that Lewis deployed to explain this strategy:

Our Faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or Astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us. . . . In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble [the modern man]. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian.

This proliferation of latent apologetics would be, according to Lewis, “the first step to the re-conversion of this country.”

Power of Latent Assumptions

The unspoken messages beneath the surface of texts may have mattered so much to Lewis because of his experiences of disowning and then returning to Christian faith—latent assumptions contributed to both.

When Lewis studied Greek and Roman myths as a teenager at Cherbourg House, his teachers and the editors of his textbooks took it for granted that “religious ideas were sheer illusion.” He wrote, “No one ever attempted to show in what sense Christianity fulfilled Paganism or Paganism prefigured Christianity.” Lewis recalled how he responded: “Little by little, with fluctuations which I cannot now trace, I became an apostate, dropping my faith with no sense of loss but with the greatest relief.” Thus Lewis understood from experience that the most effective attacks on faith don’t come through direct assault but through gradual erosion.

It’s not surprising, then, that Lewis responded so strongly against a textbook titled The Control of Language, which he described euphemistically as “the Green Book” in The Abolition of Man. The Control of Language was widely used in British schools to teach reading and writing, but it was doing far more than teaching the English language. The textbook’s latent assumptions were subverting the very possibility of virtue.

According to the authors of The Control of Language, moral declarations don’t describe any objective reality; they merely express the subjective emotional state of the speaker. The problem with this idea, as Lewis saw it, is that virtue formation requires reason to rule our appetites, but reason cannot rule our appetites unless our reason is grounded in some objective reality outside ourselves. Thus the latent assumptions in The Control of Language effectively eroded every possible foundation for the practice of virtue. Lewis wrote the lectures that became The Abolition of Man to counteract this suggestion.

But latent assumptions can work the other way as well. Texts rich with latent Christian truths played a significant role in drawing the adult Lewis toward historic Christianity. Certainly, conversations with friends such as J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson provided Lewis with explicit reasons to trust the truth of Christian faith. And yet, long before these conversations took place, latent truths hidden in the writings of George MacDonald and other religious writers were already preparing Lewis to consider Christianity despite his outward disbelief.

MacDonald’s works unmasked “the ludicrous contradiction” between Lewis’s resistance to religion and his passion for books in which Christian assumptions lurked beneath the surface. Eventually, God worked through the implicit assumptions in these texts to break through Lewis’s defenses, in much the same way that Lewis later hoped his own fairy stories would steal past the “watchful dragons” that have numbed modern minds to the deep potency of the Christian story.

Particularly in the final decade of his life, Lewis seems to have seen latent apologetics as his primary calling. When Carl F. H. Henry asked him to write an apologetics article for Christianity Today in 1955, Lewis replied, “If I am now good for anything it is for catching the reader unawares—thro’ fiction and symbol. I have done what I could in the way of frontal attacks, but now I feel quite sure those days are over.”

Practice Latent Apologetics

So does the pursuit of latent apologetics mean that Christians should stop producing explicit defenses of their faith? No, and I don’t think that’s what Lewis was suggesting either. Lewis clearly recognized the value of both latent apologetics and more blatant defenses of Scripture and Christian faith, and he wrote books in both categories. J. I. Packer pointed out decades ago, “The battle for the Bible must continue as long as unbelieving babble about the Bible continues.”

At the same time, Lewis was right to highlight a possible omission in our approach to defending the faith. Filling this gap could produce a different set of priorities for the future of apologetics. The result could be less content that explicitly defends Christian faith and more content that defends it implicitly.

What Lewis specifically proposed as an apologetics strategy was a series of “little books” that could defeat “the Penguin and the Thinkers Library on their own ground.” The Rationalist Press Association had launched the Thinkers Library in 1929 to provide laypeople with inexpensive introductions to scientific and historical topics, penned primarily by atheists. By 1932, copies of Thinkers Library could be purchased at “every station bookstall” in England, according to Lewis. The authors rarely stated their atheism explicitly. Instead, they simply assumed atheism as a necessary framework for thoughtful scholarship. Penguin Books took a similar approach when they began publishing the Pelican imprint in 1937.

Texts rich with latent Christian truths played a significant role in drawing the adult Lewis toward historic Christianity.

The books in both series were simultaneously accessible and comprehensive, and the authors generally kept their antireligious assumptions beneath the surface. Although neither series is being published today, plenty of writers are still producing accessible and well-written books with implicit antireligious assumptions.

So what might be required to meet such books on their own ground, as Lewis proposed? Building on the vision Lewis provided in “Christian Apologetics,” I suggest a simple rubric for such works: They should be accessible and accurate yet not explicitly Christian.

1. Accessible and Accurate

The essence of Lewis’s strategy was “more little books by Christians on other subjects.” He specified “little books” because it was not only the content that mattered to him but also the comprehensibility.

One point that Lewis made repeatedly in his writings was that true experts in a field must be capable of writing for every educational level. “If you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated language, then your thoughts were confused,” Lewis declared. The capacity to translate ideas into the vernacular was, for Lewis, one of the truest tests of the teacher’s own comprehension.

The primary danger Lewis glimpsed in the Thinkers Library wasn’t the authors’ atheism. It was the assumption of atheism in books penned for ordinary people and published at a price everyone could afford. The best response to these texts would be, according to Lewis, a flood of outstanding popular-level books written by Christians. Simply because the books would be written at a popular level shouldn’t mean, however, that they dilute complex truths or cherry-pick their facts. “Science twisted in the interests of apologetics,” Lewis contended, “would be sin and folly.”

But Lewis’s vision went beyond a surge of accessible and accurate books written by Christians. Lewis specifically called for little books “on other subjects—with their Christianity latent.”

2. Not Explicitly Christian

If someone is intellectually gifted and interested in apologetics, it’s easy to assume he or she should pursue credentials in theology or biblical studies—and that’s not necessarily a wrong route. Some of these individuals probably should go to seminary. Yet many of them might exercise far more influence in the culture by writing on other subjects.

What if the church encouraged these individuals to consider earning advanced credentials in sociology or ethics or political science or marketing? And what if Christians saw that these fields are every bit as fruitful for apologetics as theology or biblical studies? It’s highly unlikely that Lewis would have been as influential as an apologist if he had been trained as a theologian instead of as a literary critic and philosopher, as he himself suggested in his “Rejoinder to Dr Pittenger.”

Of course, I’m fully aware that faithful Christians are present throughout almost every field of study, and some—such as contemporary authors Allen Levi and Daniel Nayeri—do write books and articles that hint at their faith. Yet such individuals rarely see themselves as apologists.

What if churches began to treat these specialists as latent apologists? What if churches equipped them to consider the many ways they might place hints of their faith beneath the surface of their work? And what about Lewis’s idea for a series of accessible introductions to various disciplines, written by Christians, but with their Christianity latent and suitable for general usage? Would it be possible for a Christian publisher to launch an imprint of this sort?

Faithful Christians are present throughout almost every field of study. Yet they rarely see themselves as apologists. What if churches began to treat these specialists as latent apologists?

Extending this vision of latent apologetics further, what if Christian colleges trained students to produce outstanding poetry and literary essays with their Christianity latent? I recently taught an undergraduate class on Lewis’s apologetics. The students’ capstone project was an essay, short story, or poem that hinted at their faith without making it explicit. At the end of the semester, every student submitted his or her work to a literary journal for possible publication. My goal as I guided students through that process was for them to learn to practice latent apologetics.

What if some of the best work submitted to literary journals consistently came from Christians who know how to hint obliquely at the hope of Christ? Suppose a secular reader looks up the author of a poem or story that has directed his mind to something transcendent and beautiful, and that individual was surprised to discover a faithful Christian penned the work.

The practice of latent apologetics requires patient confidence that our efforts are always part of a process larger than we may see. Not every apologetics engagement needs to culminate in an altar call. Your responsibility may be to place an intellectual rock in someone’s shoe, a pebble of truth that chafes against her misplaced confidence in a godless cosmos.

That’s certainly what Lewis did throughout his literary works. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama) only mentions Christ and Christianity as part of Lewis’s larger literary arguments, but the book effectively presses back against the modern myth of perpetual human progress. The only mention of Jesus Christ in the entirety of The Abolition of Man places Christ alongside Confucius as an exemplary external source for values. Although the book doesn’t even attempt any argument for theism or Christianity, Lewis manages to prepare the way for the gospel by skewering any possibility of purely subjective moral values.

The novel Till We Have Faces seems more pagan than Christian at first. And yet, in the end, this declaration from Orual hints at a deeply Christian response to the problems of evil, suffering, and divine silence: “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?” The book of Esther in the Bible never mentions God, yet it prepares the way for the gospel by telling a story that only makes sense if God rules the cosmos. That’s what latent apologetics does as well.

Of course, latent apologetics can never replace blatant apologetics. At some point, every Christian must unashamedly declare and defend the gospel. But latent apologetics has a place as well, particularly when it comes to raising doubts about defective worldviews and posing questions that the gospel alone can satisfy. This might result in fewer works of explicit apologetics but more implicit apologetics in unexpected places.

Happily, the opposite is true of two recent blockbusters on the subject: Karen Hao’s Empire of AI: Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination and Sebastian Mallaby’s The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence. In many ways, the books are very different, as you can tell from their subtitles.

Hao tells the story of Sam Altman and OpenAI, which is a fundamentally pessimistic story about the triumph of money over idealism, full of pantomime villains and adolescent Silicon Valley squabbles and the devastating effects of Western techno-imperialism on Majority World communities. Idealism has a much better time of it in Mallaby’s book, which follows the chess prodigy and Nobel Prize–winning scientist Demis Hassabis—described by a leading British journalist recently as “greatest Briton alive”—from North London to Cambridge to Google DeepMind.

The individuals, companies, models, ambitions, technologies, and motivations in the two books are strikingly different. So are the answers to two crucial questions: Is artificial general intelligence (AGI) possible? And on balance, is that a good or a bad thing?

But both books have the same secret sauce. They’re marvelously readable, and often gripping, for the simple reason that they tell a fantastic story. There is, of course, lots of detailed exposition (How exactly does this technology work? Who is trying to get it to do what?). There is rigorous analysis (How is it developing? What are its consequences?) and thoughtful prognostication (Where might it go next? What might that mean for humanity?). But at root, both books are telling a good old-fashioned story—a tale of individual human beings, with all their gifts, flaws, hopes, fears, successes, failures, and longings—and it’s the story that holds the argument, and the reader’s attention.

Looming Colonialism

Empire of AI begins with the 2023 board meeting in which Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and driving force behind the launch of ChatGPT, is told he’s getting fired. The firing barely lasts the weekend. Despite losing the confidence of the board that oversees the company, for a pattern of misleading and “not consistently candid” communication, Altman is quickly reinstated after a groundswell of complaint, an intervention from Microsoft, and a threat of mass resignations from the staff.

In Hao’s telling, the botched ouster serves as a parable of the tensions within OpenAI, and indeed Altman himself: between altruistic humanitarian ideals and grubby commercial realities, independent nonprofit oversight and moneyed corporate interests, the “Open” of the company’s original vision and the billions of dollars and expanses of land needed to build “AI.” Many of these tensions exist, of course, within the AI industry as a whole.

The narrative that follows goes down three tracks. One is technological, describing how large language models (LLMs) emerged to become the dominant expression of AI in the 2020s. Even in 2020, it was by no means obvious that this particular form of technology would prove as popular and simulate human intelligence as convincingly as it has in the last five years, especially since the game-changing launch of ChatGPT.

Hao explains how this happened with admirable clarity, avoiding the dangers of meaningless hand-waving on the one hand and hypertechnical alphabet soup on the other. It’s refreshing to me, as an arts graduate and relative technophobe, to read an account of a fiendishly complex technology being developed through many iterations and still be able to understand it.

Even in 2020, it was by no means obvious that AI would prove as popular and simulate human intelligence as convincingly as it has in the last five years.

The second track is commercial and interpersonal. It centers on a number of brilliant, infuriating, egotistical, superwealthy, visionary, and/or paranoid individuals and the rivalries between them. This is where the subtitle (Inside the Reckless Race for Total Domination) comes in. Hao doesn’t doubt that the battle between altruistic hopes and financial power is so far being won by the latter, at least in the case of OpenAI, and she makes a compelling case. But she’s a good enough journalist and storyteller to help us see things from the perspective of each actor, even if some (most prominently Altman and Elon Musk) are clearly the villains of the book.

But the third track—and this provides the book’s most distinctive contribution, along with its title—is what we might call imperial. It moves around the world from Bogotá to Nairobi to Santiago, revealing the (sometimes chilling) human cost of AI. In Hao’s words,

The empires of AI are not engaged in the same overt violence and brutality that marked [colonial] history. But they, too, seize and extract precious resources to feed their vision of artificial intelligence: the work of artists and writers; the data of countless individuals posting about their experiences and observations online; the land, energy, and water required to house and run massive data centers and supercomputers. . . .

OpenAI is now leading our acceleration toward this modern-day colonial world order.

Hao’s predictions are ominous but well supported.

Hopeful Horizons

Readers for whom that all sounds a bit apocalyptic might prefer an AI palate cleanser: a portrait of a more noble individual, a more idealistic company, and a more beneficial sort of technology. That’s what Sebastian Mallaby has provided in The Infinity Machine. (While I was writing this review in a coffee shop, the young woman sitting next to me asked me about the two books; I described them both, and then saw her take a photo of Mallaby’s but not Hao’s. “The technology is inevitable, so I think I’ll read this one,” she said.)

Hassabis is undoubtedly a much more sympathetic figure than Altman, and I don’t think I’m only saying that for patriotic reasons. He’s an extraordinary individual. We encounter him as a chess prodigy, game designer, theoretical physicist, neuroscience researcher, computer scientist, Mind Sports world champion, and Nobel laureate rather than as a tycoon aiming for world domination. In Mallaby’s telling, Hassabis became an entrepreneur because it was the best way of achieving his scientific and humanitarian objectives, and still cares far more about the science than about the wealth or power it produces.

Consequently, The Infinity Machine has more to say about the possibilities of designing games and folding proteins than of raising capital and poaching talent. This gives the book a much more optimistic flavor:

The good news is that Demis Hassabis, who blazed the trail followed by rivals, is decent and public-spirited and wants the best for humanity. He has ego, to be sure. He is fearsomely competitive; his sense of destiny, as the developer of AI, borders on the messianic. But his goal is scientific enlightenment, not money or power. . . . The overweening self-righteousness of the most voluble tycoons has discredited the idea that messianic innovators can possibly be well-intentioned. But there is no necessary connection between making a fortune in the Valley and egomania unbound, and nor is it fair to paint the technology sector as a bastion of anarcho-libertarianism. . . . In these volatile circumstances, Hassabis’s struggle to stay true to his personal values is a defining story of our times.

Here’s another way of putting it. In places, Empire of AI is a bit like reading Robert Caro on Lyndon Johnson, in which the overriding question is roughly this: “How on earth did this unscrupulous person end up with so much power?” The human story is powered by intrigue and manipulation; the reader hopes against hope that the protagonists will not succeed, even though we know they will.

By contrast, The Infinity Machine is more like reading Walter Isaacson on Benjamin Franklin, where the reader is asking, “How on earth did this brilliant person come up with so many good ideas?” The fascination is theoretical and intellectual, not political or economic. We’re rooting for Hassabis’s approach to AI—based more on deep learning and mastering complex games than on LLMs and word prediction—to beat OpenAI to the punch, even though we know that, at least for the first couple of rounds, it won’t.

Alternative Futures

This more positive perspective shapes Mallaby’s narrative of AI as a whole. His book largely avoids the moral and ethical downsides to which Hao gives so much attention, like the environmental costs of data centers or the human costs of labeling explicit content, and talks much more about the upsides, from medical breakthroughs to eliminating microplastics.

Some of this simply reflects the different personalities of Hassabis and Altman; if you judge that AI is being pioneered by idealistic scientists, you’ll be less jaundiced about it than if you think it’s being led by scheming billionaires. Some of it reflects the different approaches and achievements of DeepMind and OpenAI. After all, unlike Hassabis and his AlphaFold program, ChatGPT hasn’t gotten close to doing anything so useful as folding a protein and winning a Nobel Prize.

If you judge that AI is being pioneered by idealistic scientists, you’ll be less jaundiced about it than if you think it’s being led by scheming billionaires.

Mallaby is also much more open than Hao to the idea that superintelligence is actually possible, not least because Hassabis himself is so committed to the concept. Arguably the most exciting section of his book is the chapter on how Hassabis’s AlphaGo program first defeated the best human player at the ancient strategy game Go, which has 324 squares and makes chess look as simple as tiddlywinks. In the course of the contest, AlphaGo made a totally counterintuitive and unpredictable move, now known simply as Move 37, which baffled observers and took its human opponent a full 12 minutes to respond to, but turned out to be astonishingly far-sighted and strategically decisive.

Mallaby freely uses words like “intuition” and even “superintelligence” to describe what happened. Hao is far more cautious, in part because there’s no agreement on exactly what intelligence even is. “The name artificial intelligence was thus a marketing tool from the very beginning,” she explains.

So who is right? Is AGI a real possibility, the most transformative innovation of the last 70,000 years, and a breakthrough with the potential to enhance all our lives by solving problems humans can’t, under the guidance of quirky, obsessive, and brilliant scientists? Or is it a chimera, a tech-bro vanity project, a nicely branded way of describing predictive text on a massive scale, that allows rich people to work (and perhaps cheat) more efficiently while poorer communities pick up the tab?

Claude would presumably tell me what an interesting question this is, and how elements of both are involved, depending on all sorts of variables. I’m less equivocal. Temperamentally I’m a optimistic person, but I’m substantially more convinced by Hao’s read of the way the technology is going—to say nothing of the financial, technological, and even geopolitical incentives—than Mallaby’s.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope the scientific discoveries that will undoubtedly follow will compensate for, or even obviate, many of the downsides. But as of 2026, we look closer to an Empire of AI than we do to an Infinity Machine.

Let’s untangle some of the historical, legal, theological, and ecclesiological issues presented by blasphemy laws in order to understand why support for such laws falls well outside the Baptist consensus.

Anglicanism and Blasphemy

Blasphemy was first recognized as a crime under English common law in 1676 against a political backdrop that included the merger of church and state. The Church of England had been formed in 1534 with parliament’s passage of the Act of Supremacy, which established King Henry VIII as the head of the church in a break from the papacy. But a power struggle between the Crown and parliament over control of the church led to the English Civil War that broke out in 1642 and continued intermittently until 1651. Amid this armed conflict, parliament convened the Westminster Assembly to draft a unified standard of worship, doctrine, and church government.

The Westminster Confession of Faith that emerged from this assembly in 1646 was approved by the English parliament in an amended form (known as the Articles of Christian Religion) in 1648. Fearing clerical supremacy, parliament removed paragraph IV of chapter 20 from the Confession, which had recognized the authority of the church, in addition to the civil magistrate, to punish subjects for the “publishing of such opinions . . . as are contrary . . . to the known principles of Christianity.”

Instead, parliament retained paragraph III of chapter 23, which affirmed the magistrate’s authority and duty “to take order . . . that the truth of God be kept pure and entire; that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed; all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed; and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed.” Accordingly, parliament ensured that the suppression of heresy was a political and legal function, rather than a theological issue to be administered by an independent church.

Parliament ensured that the suppression of heresy was a political and legal function, rather than a theological issue to be administered by an independent church.

As the Civil War subsided, parliament passed a series of laws—together known as the Clarendon Code—that persecuted in various ways anyone practicing religion outside the Church of England. One such law imposed fines or imprisonment on attendees at religious services of more than five people held outside the Church of England, the theory being that such an assembly was “seditious.” The persecution of dissenters continued with passage of the Test Act of 1673, requiring all civil and military officeholders to take an oath of allegiance to the Church of England. The Test Act was so named because it established a “test” of religious conformity to hold government office.

It was against this political and ecclesiastic backdrop that, in 1676, Matthew Hale decided Taylor’s Case, which recognized blasphemy as an English common law crime. John Taylor, a farmer, was accused of verbally attacking Christ in language too vile even to recite here. Chief Justice Hale found Taylor guilty of blasphemy, explaining that “blasphemous words [a]re not only an offense to God and religion,” but also “dissolve[d] all those obligations whereby the civil societies are preserved” because “Christianity is parcel of the laws of England; and therefore to reproach the Christian religion is to speak in subversion of the law.” In other words, church and state having been wedded, blasphemy “tends to dissolution of all government.”

During that same century, Baptist churches first emerged in England and took a different path of political theology. The first Baptist church in England was formed by Thomas Helwys in 1612 as a dissenter assembly from the official state church. Helwys was an ardent defender of religious liberty, “for men’s religion to God is between God and themselves. The king shall not answer for it. Neither may the king be judge between God and man.”

Accordingly, the English Baptists rejected the state’s authority to proscribe blasphemy and heresy. As Helwys put it, the king had no power to punish “heretics . . . in the least measure.” When the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith was adopted in 1689, it was largely modeled after the Westminster Confession but with some notable edits, including the exclusion of both paragraph IV of chapter 20 (which became chapter 21) and paragraph III of chapter 23 (which became chapter 24) regarding the authority of the civil magistrate to ensure religious conformity and to punish blasphemy and heresy.

Blasphemy in America

A romanticized story is often told, usually around Thanksgiving, about how English Separatists ultimately fled to America (via Holland) seeking religious liberty. In fact, those pilgrims—who weren’t Baptists—came to America for (their) religious freedom, but not religious liberty (for all). The Massachusetts Bay Colony promptly made blasphemy a capital offense in its 1641 legal code.

Ultimately, every American colony had elements of established religion, and nearly all the colonies criminalized blasphemy. Rhode Island—founded by (momentary) Baptist minister Roger Williams—stood alone in its freedom of expression, including blasphemous speech. But Baptist influence continued to grow in the new colonies.

It would be more than a century until the U.S. Constitutional Convention opened in Philadelphia on May 25, 1787, with the resulting Constitution signed in September and sent to the states for ratification. At the same time, American Presbyterians convened in Philadelphia on May 28, 1787, to debate alterations to the Westminster Confession of Faith, specifically of chapters 20 and 23 and its discussion of the authority of the civil magistrate.

The amended chapter 20 removed the language authorizing the civil magistrate to punish the publishing of erroneous religions opinions, while paragraph III of chapter 23 (which Baptists had stricken in toto from the Second London Baptist Confession) was wholly rewritten to eliminate the authority of the civil magistrate to punish blasphemy and heresy. These alterations were formally adopted by a synod a year later, in May 1788, just weeks before the ninth state ratified the U.S. Constitution.

Many Baptists had opposed ratification of the Constitution because it lacked an explicit religious liberty protection. Ratification by Virginia was an open question in early 1788, due in large part to opposition by Baptist minister John Leland as well as the state’s Baptist General Committee. Leland, in particular, had been an ardent defender of the right of “every man [to] speak freely without fear—maintain the principles that he believes—worship according to his own faith, . . . and let government protect him in so doing.” To seal the deal for ratification in Virginia, James Madison promised to introduce a bill of rights when the first federal Congress convened.

Many Baptists opposed ratification of the U.S. Constitution because it lacked an explicit religious liberty protection.

True to his word, Madison introduced a series of constitutional amendments (including what became the First Amendment) that were approved by Congress in September 1789. The result was a political and legal context at the federal level that differed from the context in which Taylor’s Case had been decided in England. The U.S. Constitution, as amended, expressly forbade religious tests for office and prohibited an established state church at the federal level.

But Madison’s amendments, which we know as the Bill of Rights, limited only the powers of the federal government (“Congress shall make no law”) and, as the Supreme Court quickly confirmed, had no application to the power of the states. At the same time, the First Amendment prohibited the federal government from precluding established religion in the states.

In fact, some states continued to require religious tests for political office, impose taxes for the support of churches, and occasionally punish blasphemy under their criminal law into the early years of the 19th century. But for the most part, established religion at the state level was eradicated by 1844, by which time blasphemy prosecutions had almost entirely passed as well.

Southern Baptists and Blasphemy

Around that same time, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was founded (1845). Consistent with Baptists’ historical opposition to religious establishment and their defense of religious liberty, the SBC has opposed blasphemy laws, both explicitly and implicitly.

From the 1925 version through the 2000 version of the SBC’s Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M), the Convention has consistently affirmed its belief that “the state has no right to impose penalties for religious opinions of any kind” and that people have “the right to form and propagate opinions in the sphere of religion without interference by the civil power.” As the BF&M 2000 puts it, “Church and state should be separate.”

In a commentary on the BF&M 2000 coauthored by Mohler, the authors were emphatic that “no church is to be preferred [by the state] over another,” and “legislation favoring one denomination or one religion more than others is foreign to the Baptist conception.” It’s hard to see how this language could allow for criminal laws punishing speech blaspheming Christianity, which would necessarily amount to the law favoring Christianity more than other religions.

It should come as no surprise, then, that no resolution adopted by the SBC has ever called for governmental punishment of blasphemy, and the only resolution to address the question “reject[ed] any government coercion or enforcement of religious belief, including blasphemy laws.” And Mohler has previously written passionately in opposition to blasphemy laws.

The freedom to speak against current cultural dogmas protects us today, allows us to push for change tomorrow, and ensures we can spread the gospel that alone will save in the end.

So how did Mohler arrive at his support of blasphemy laws? At the root of his argument is a position that Baptists have historically resisted: compelled religious acknowledgment. As Mohler puts it in the book, “Acknowledgment of the essentially Christian character and foundational conviction of the national government” should be requisite for citizenship or public office.

Yet religious acknowledgments, albeit of a different sort, were precisely what the British Crown used to exclude dissenting Baptists and other Separatists from participation in civil government in the 1600s. Once one accepts the propriety of governmentally compelled religious acknowledgment, contrary to more than four centuries of Baptist teaching that “God alone is Lord of the conscience,” it’s a short step to affirming blasphemy laws. As Mohler put it, “The law should restrict and punish blasphemy as a threat to the civil order” and “undermin[ing] the legitimacy of the state and nation.”

In his new piece this week, Mohler attributes his support of blasphemy laws to his “argu[ing] for blasphemy laws to be effectively redefined in the context of constitutional acknowledgment.” In fact, Mohler defines blasphemy as Chief Justice Hale did, echoing the reasoning Hale used to recognize the common law crime of blasphemy in 1676—namely, that blasphemy is seditious to the religious state. Mohler’s foundational error, from a historical Baptist perspective, was not redefining blasphemy but rather imposing what is, in effect, a religious test (“acknowledgment”) for public office and full citizenship.

Freedom to Speak

As should be evident, support for blasphemy laws would be, at a minimum, out of step with Baptist history if not also the SBC’s BF&M 2000. In a culture increasingly hostile to the Christian faith, it would be foolish in the extreme for Baptists to abandon their tradition in favor of government power to punish dissenters.

The freedom to speak against current cultural dogmas protects us today, allows us to push for change tomorrow, and ensures we can spread the gospel that alone will save in the end. Maranatha.

You can fail by keeping too much out. You can bring up a child so isolated from anything that goes against your faith that by age 18 she has no means of coping with a world that doesn’t agree with her. When she meets a compelling false idea, how will she know how to wrestle with a doubt if those have never been discussed? How will she be able to explain what she believes to someone who disagrees with her if she’s never had practice doing it, or even seen anyone else do it?

You can also fail by letting too much in. You can be so afraid of being labeled as one of “those weird Christian parents,” or want to keep dinner peaceful, that you end up treating your faith like a private matter not worth mentioning. You avoid filtering what your kids watch or listen to because you’re not going to be one of those legalistic religious types. So you skip the hard conversations. But kids get the hint: Christian faith is an optional preference. It’s not important.

Both are failures of love. Most of us are guilty of one of them, and probably both at some point.

I grew up in Manhattan, where childhood innocence doesn’t last long. Everywhere you look on storefronts, bus ads, even people’s clothes, there are messages about sex, money, status, and power, and no one asks if you’re ready for them.

Now, thanks to smartphones, every child in America is basically living in Manhattan. They may not walk through Times Square, but they scroll through it on their phone. All culture is right there in their pocket.

This puts a decision in front of every Christian parent. Do we build higher walls, or do we tear them down? Should we retreat or surrender? Is there any other option? Before we explore our alternative, we need to examine both well-intentioned failures: control and avoidance. I call them the Bunker and the Bubble.

Bunker: Strategy of Control

The first reaction is to build a Bunker. This comes from a real desire to protect your kids. Bunker parents see the culture around them as dangerous, and they try to keep it out. They limit most movies, ban secular music, and watch every digital interaction with the intensity of a secret agent. The idea is to seal off the house so their children stay safe.

Bunker parents see the culture around them as dangerous, and they try to keep it out.

The desire to protect your children from the world isn’t wrong. Parents should guard their children, and that will manifest itself in numerous ways depending on the child’s age and temperament. But what Bunker parents often miss is that sin and brokenness aren’t just outside—they’re already inside each of us. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn says, the line separating good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but through the middle of every human heart.

In Luke 15, the son who is most lost isn’t the younger one who leaves home and wastes his inheritance. It’s the one who stays and follows all the rules but still can’t join the celebration his father offers. You can mess up by running away, but you can also mess up by following the rules with pride and judging others. The Bunker builds walls, forgetting the real struggle is also inside us.

This approach often swaps one set of idols for another. A family might avoid Hollywood’s violence but still chase the idol of success. The Bunker creates hothouse flowers. These kids look healthy in temperature-controlled, windless environments, but they aren’t ready for the weather of the real world.

Bubble: Strategy of Avoidance

If Bunker parents control, Bubble parents float above it all. Bubble parents value relational harmony and their children’s immediate happiness more than correction, friction, and spiritual formation. They place few restrictions on their children’s world. Smartphone use is largely unrestricted. Content is mostly unsupervised. Bubble parents avoid hard conversations for fear that conflict will drive their children away. Their goal is to keep the peace at all costs.

Bubble parents value relational harmony and their children’s immediate happiness more than correction, friction, and spiritual formation.

The sociologist Christian Smith found that the single strongest predictor of a teenager’s faith isn’t youth group attendance or church involvement. It’s the religious seriousness of his or her parents. Children rarely surpass what they observe growing up.

What they often inherit today is what Smith calls “moralistic therapeutic deism”—a vague belief that God exists, wants people to be nice and happy, but makes no real demands on their lives. The result of this belief doesn’t necessarily spill out of the child as rebellion. It comes out as indifference, often mimicking the silence they see modeled before them in the Bubble parent.

The Bunker and Bubble strategies both fail, though for opposite reasons. The Bunker gives a child truth without grace. The Bubble gives a child grace without truth. Jesus, of course, is the ultimate combination of grace and truth (John 1:14). He ate with tax collectors, yet called them to turn from their sin. He never gave up one for the other. We shouldn’t either.

Embassy: Biblical Approach

In 587 BC, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and dragged the people of Judah into exile. The exiles face the same two options we face: separate or assimilate. Bunker or Bubble. The false prophets call for resistance: Don’t unpack. God will destroy Babylon soon. Babylon offers the opposite path: Become Babylonian. Lose your identity. Blend in.

Through Jeremiah, God offers a shockingly different way that satisfies neither camp: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. . . . Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it” (Jer. 29:5, 7, NIV). “Build houses” and “plant gardens” means stay, settle, invest. “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city” means don’t merely tolerate or survive Babylon but actively work for its flourishing. They should “pray to the LORD for it” because their horizontal engagement with the culture was never meant to eliminate their vertical dependence on God.

This approach is neither the Bunker nor the Bubble but the Embassy.

An embassy sits inside a foreign nation, and within its walls a different set of laws and loyalties applies. The embassy doesn’t exist to be a bunker hiding from the host nation, nor does it exist to be an assimilated bubble. It exists to represent, to engage, and to serve a mission. This requires learning the language, understanding the culture, and building relationships outside those walls.

The embassy doesn’t exist to be a bunker hiding from the host nation, nor does it exist to be an assimilated bubble. It exists to represent, to engage, and to serve a mission.

This is the calling of the Christian home. We live here. We love our neighbors. We engage the culture thoughtfully and courageously while operating by a different constitution. We raise our children to be ambassadors fluent in the language of the culture yet loyal to the one true King.

Every embassy has a set of instructions from its home government. Without this manual, the embassy is just a building with a flag on it. The Christian home’s manual has three parts. The first two come straight from the opening chapters of Genesis; the third comes from the rest of Scripture.

1. All culture was originally created good.

Genesis 1 tells us that God made the material world and called it good. Then he told humans to fill the earth and subdue it. Language, music, technology, sports, and storytelling aren’t the products of our fallenness. They’re part of the beauty and goodness of our design.

This passage protects us from the gnostic belief that the physical world is so contaminated that we must retreat into something purely spiritual. If God called creation good, and Jesus took on a physical body, then culture isn’t the enemy.

2. All culture is also deeply broken.

Sin isn’t only inside humans. It has corrupted institutions, stories, and creation itself. Genesis 3 shows that all of creation is now broken, which means every song, every political platform, and every film carries the fingerprints of the fall.

Often, this distortion isn’t obvious. Romantic love becomes the idol that promises ultimate fulfillment. Autonomy is raised to be the highest good. Understanding these cultural narratives protects us from the naive consumption of Bubble parenting. Your child is being formed by flawed content.

3. All culture needs to be redirected toward something better.

When Paul stood in Athens in Acts 17, he didn’t just turn away and condemn it. He found their altar “to an unknown god” (v. 23, NIV), affirmed the longing embedded in their worship, and redirected it toward something better.

When we know all creation is good but fallen, we can affirm what’s good, critique what’s fallen, and redirect it all toward Jesus. That’s the process: Affirm, critique, and redirect.

What Embassies Look Like

Take something as ordinary as the Disney movie Frozen. It was one of the first movies my daughters watched. Elsa sings about letting go, about being free from rules and judgment. The song is catchy. Who doesn’t want to be rid of shame and guilt? Who doesn’t want to stop hiding? God didn’t make us to live trapped lives in hiding. We can say yes to those longings.

But the song’s answer is freedom through self-definition, isolation, and breaking away from any authority. “No rules for me, I’m free.” That’s where the distortion comes in. Absolute autonomy doesn’t lead to flourishing; it leads to loneliness. In the movie, Elsa’s freedom builds her a castle, but she’s alone inside it, and it leads to a never-ending winter for everyone around her.

Once we show these flaws, we can redirect by saying, “Isn’t it interesting that the spell doesn’t break when Elsa lets it go? It breaks when Anna throws herself in front of a sword for her sister.” The film’s own answer to a frozen heart turns out to be self-sacrifice, not self-expression. True freedom in Scripture isn’t found in escaping limits. It’s found in rightly ordered love, being bound to God and to one another.

You’re not banning the movie, but you’re not blessing it either. You’re teaching your child to think. This is how you build spiritual antibodies. Ordinary moments—Disney movies, songs on the radio, commercials or ads you see—can become places of formation. Hard conversations don’t always start with a crisis. Sometimes they start with your child’s favorite song.

When you know the operating manual of the embassy, you don’t have to panic when your kids bring home confusing questions about identity, sexuality, meaning, justice, or morality. Instead of shutting down the conversation out of fear like the Bunker parent, or ignoring the moment like the Bubble parent, you can slow down. Affirm the longing behind the question. Identify the distortion in the cultural answer. Point toward the hope that Jesus is putting the world back together, and your child with it.

Raise Ambassadors

If you’re too tired and busy to imagine you could follow this manual, let me encourage you: You’ll fail. How is that good news? Because when we skip to the end, we see that no one parents perfectly. Some nights you’ll be the Bunker parent. Other nights you’ll be the Bubble parent. Some weeks the Embassy feels under attack from every direction, and you’ll want to wave the white flag of surrender.

Here’s the good news: An embassy doesn’t last because its staff always gets everything right. It stands because the authority behind it keeps it in service. That protection holds whether anyone inside is having a good week or a bad week. You weren’t sent out into the world to do the job perfectly. You were just sent, even if you don’t have all the answers.

The command God gave through Jeremiah wasn’t to build perfect homes in Babylon or to raise perfect kids who never mess up. The command was to build, to plant, to pray, and to seek the peace and prosperity of the city, however imperfectly.

The cross offers parents and children forgiveness for all our failures. God’s mercies are new every morning, which means they’ll be new tomorrow as well (Lam. 3:22–23). When your children watch you sit with a hard question rather than shut down or ignore it, they see the Christian faith in action. When they see you apologize on the nights you get it wrong, they learn what the Christian faith is actually worth.

When your children watch you sit with a hard question rather than shut down or ignore it, they see the Christian faith in action.

Jesus is the Lord of the city. He is the Lord of your children’s hearts. He loves your children more than you do, and he’s more committed to their faith than you are. This perspective frees you to be calm. You can be curious. You can be courageous. You don’t have to save your kids from the world. Jesus has already overcome the world. Your job is to walk with them through it, pointing out the idols, pointing out the beauty, and pointing them, again and again, to the only One who can satisfy the longings of their hearts.

So, stop building the Bunker. Pop the Bubble. Build an Embassy. Open the door. Invite the conversation. Trust the One who holds it all together.

I asked Timothy Larsen—historian, Wheaton College professor, and author of The Fires of Moloch: Anglican Clergymen in the Furnace of World War One—about what’s on his bedside table, his favorite fiction, the books he regularly revisits, and more.

What’s on your nightstand right now?

I always have a lot of books going at once. There is a category of touchstone nonfiction books from the past that you often hear referred to and see cited. I always feel a sense of personal triumph when I can say I have actually read one of those, and so I am currently tackling Will Herberg’s Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955).

I am an ambitious person trying to mentor ambitious grad students who want to follow Jesus. I am slowly beginning to grasp that a big part of navigating these realities better is learning to appreciate the gift and goodness of our limitations. In my historiography class, we read the whole of Ecclesiastes aloud over the course of the semester. These ongoing meditations have led me to Kelly M. Kapic’s You’re Only Human (2025).

My wife (Jane) and I always have a read-aloud book going together. Our current one is Rosanne Limoncelli’s The Four Queens of Crime: A Mystery (2025). Its hoot of a premise is that Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and the gang are the guest attractions for a charity fundraiser at which, of course, a murder takes place . . .

What are your favorite fiction books?

As that last answer indicates, Jane and I both read an endless stream of cozy detective fiction. I am always scheming to get my hobbies and entertainment to count as “work,” and a recent coup is that I have talked Furman University into paying me to give a public lecture on Harry Kemelman’s Rabbi Small series.

I am slowly beginning to grasp that a big part of navigating ambition better is learning to appreciate the gift and goodness of our limitations.

The Victorian author Anthony Trollope wrote close to 50 novels. I have read most of them, and think that he is wildly underrated. He does have an irritating habit of putting a protagonist in a threating situation and then leaving them dangling there until the reader is starting to get compassion fatigue. Still, Trollope is a genius at the small vanities, compromises, self-justifications, schemes, and aspirations that make up our lives. Unlike Dickens’s, Trollope’s villains slide gently downward in ways that we can readily imagine happening to ourselves—and his heroes still have the kind of petty faults and dubious rationalizations we all have.

The one novel that has perhaps most influenced me is Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945).

What biographies or autobiographies have most influenced you and why?

These are genres that I strongly and continually gravitate toward. I am a historian, and I think of them as human-sized histories. Every section of a biography or autobiography invites a comparison or contrast and then a meditation on one’s own life and the lives of the people you are close to: What does this make me think about my own childhood? Education? Career? Chosen relationships? And so on.

I am the founder and general editor of Oxford University Press’s Spiritual Lives series. Benjamin Disraeli once joked that when he wanted to read a novel, he wrote one; my corresponding quip is that when I want to read a biography, I commission one. Alan Jacobs on Dorothy L. Sayers is currently in production and now available for preorder! Not far behind it is a book that should be published in the first half of 2027, Obbie Tyler Todd’s John D. Rockefeller: The Baptist Baron.

As to autobiographies, just to take one example, I was utterly charmed by the central conceit and droll tone of The Education of Henry Adams (1907).

Sort of combining both genres, I passionately want more people to read Eleanor Vandevort’s A Leopard Tamed (1968) (Elisabeth Elliot wrote the introduction). It is both a memoir of Vandevort’s time as a Presbyterian missionary in the Sudan and a biography of Kuac, an early convert who went on to become a pastor. I did not realize the degree to which a condescending attitude toward that era of evangelicals and missionaries had crept into my heart until I was floored and humbled by this poignant, powerful book.

What are some books you regularly reread and why?

To be honest, I am not a habitual rereader. The main exception to that statement is poetry. I am always rereading poems, most frequently those by T. S. Eliot. One of things that happens recurringly to professors is that a student will show up in your office and want to talk about how devastated they are because of a recent romantic break-up. Sometimes I give them some lines from The Four Quartets:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

One student told me she wrote it out by hand and taped it to her bathroom mirror!

What books have most profoundly shaped how you serve and lead others for the sake of the gospel?

When I was a young adult starting out in ministry, I was exhilarated and transformed by three authors in particular: Dietrich Bonhoeffer (especially Life Together and Letters and Papers from Prison), Helmut Thielicke (especially A Little Exercise for Young Theologians and The Trouble with the Church), and everything Lesslie Newbigin wrote in the last two decades of his life. I am still grateful for each of them.

Looking back, I can see that these three authors were all addressing the same concern in my mind. The propaganda of secular modernity exuded the assumption that faith was outmoded, obscurantist, discredited, and the like.

Part of the way this manipulative messaging worked was what Charles Taylor in A Secular Age identifies as “stadial” schemes. I think of them as a kind of sleight of hand that makes an assertion look like an argument. You just make up multiple stages (strangely, almost always three), then claim they supersede each other and therefore that anyone who is still thinking or acting in certain ways is now officially behind the times. You should be embarrassed and rush to join the more advanced stage we are supposedly now in. Was I a Christian just because I had been raised by people behind the times, and if I only was smart, and brave, and well-read enough I would realize that faith was no longer creditable?

Bonhoeffer, Thielicke, and Newbigin—each in his own way—bore witness against such fears. They had read all the acids of modernity, all the latest theories and criticisms, and moved in the most elite, secular, intellectual circles. Yet they knew, as Newbigin put in in the subtitle of Truth to Tell (1991), that the gospel was public truth that could be proclaimed with confidence in the face of every form of modern thought.

And once you have imbibed that reality, it is always worth looping back to A Little Exercise for Young Theologians to remind yourself not to let your “proper confidence” (another Newbigin title—that one from 1995), degenerate into an off-putting, jargon-spouting, self-important arrogance.

What’s one book you wish every pastor would read?

Henri J. M. Nouwen’s In the Name of Jesus (1989). I am a charismatic, and I was discipled by wise and godly men who were prominent leaders in the charismatic movement, to whom I owe an incalculable debt. Every stream, however, is strong on some things more than others, and it was bracing to have Nouwen tell me that my fantasies about my ministry becoming more and more relevant, spectacular, and powerful might actually be temptations to be resisted. Nouwen’s little book is a meditation on the three temptations that Christ resisted in the wilderness.

You want to be relevant? But why do you not think of a faithful, private ministry of prayer as part of what it means to have a “relevant” ministry?

Or here is a reflection on Satan’s third attempt:

What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people.

When I was 4 years old, the house next to ours came up for sale. My mother sat me down and said let’s pray that a boy your age moves in there who can be your friend. Rich moved in, and he has been my friend ever since, though I have lived in three different countries over the years. Rich’s parents actively warned him against church and Christians as people who just want your money and the like.

Why do you not think of a faithful, private ministry of prayer as part of what it means to have a ‘relevant’ ministry?

Rich has lived through a lot of hard things, including many years of addiction. He came to faith in his early 50s, however, and for some years now he and his wife have been living beautiful Christian lives and are even members of the same church that my parents attended when they were alive.

I am most grateful for the fact that I continued to accompany Rich on his journey, to love him, and to pray for him over all those years. I laugh at myself, however, when I think back on the years when my mental scenario for his salvation was that I would perform a dramatic, public miracle that would convince him that God and the gospel were real. God’s plan was better than mine. My prayers in the name of Jesus were answered, but the way they were answered did not include me being spectacular.

What’s your best piece of writing advice?

The kind of writing I mostly do arises from research. Don’t rush or cut corners when doing the research. When you have lived with the sources in a deep and sustained way, the ideas—and even some of the phrases—will readily emerge. Always write down a good turn of phrase when one pops into your head.

I will often be years away from finishing the research and starting to write the book, but, even then, I will be putting into my research notes little fragments of prose that occur to me that I think might delight the reader when it comes time to write that chapter.

What are you learning about life and following Jesus?

I used to teach medieval theology, and one year I invited a Benedictine monk who was a friend of a colleague of mine to come and talk to the class about Benedictine spirituality. That was when I first learned about the Benedictine value of stability.

Stability is a commitment to stay in the same place with the same people. Another temptation that is common in the charismatic world I come from is to become the kind of fool whose eyes wander to the ends of the earth—my ministry could finally become truly spectacular, if I just ditched my current duties and associates and moved on to something else that at this moment looks awfully shiny from here.

Obviously, God does sometimes call us to new places and people, but I think we live in a highly restless and distractible age, and therefore the Holy Spirit keeps reminding me about the value of stability, of continuing the race set before us, of a long obedience in the same direction, of the cumulative fruits that come from continuity, and of the call to faithfulness and perseverance.

When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn traveled there in 1993 to receive an honorary doctorate from the International Academy of Philosophy, the famed Russian dissident had visited the tiny European monarchy of some 30,000 people twice before. But this trip marked massive global changes at the end of the 20th century. The Soviet Union had fallen less than two years earlier.

Unlike other hosts who felt Solzhenitsyn’s wrath, Liechtenstein received his thanks. When the Iron Curtain descended across Europe at the end of the Second World War in 1945, Liechtenstein protected anti-Communist Russians. But British and American leaders chose to placate Joseph Stalin instead. They sent hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens living in territories they occupied back to Russia, though they knew this would mean certain death for many.

In his acceptance address, Solzhenitsyn returned to a common indictment of the modern West: “We have ceased to see the purpose.”

No, all hope cannot be pinned on science, technology, or economic growth. Victorious technological civilization has simultaneously instilled in us a spiritual insecurity. Certainly, its gifts enrich, but enslave us as well. All is interests, we must not neglect our interests, all is a struggle for material things; but an inner voice faintly prompts us that we’ve lost something pure, elevated—and fragile.

What, Solzhenitsyn asked, are we living for?

More than 30 years later, as we hurtle into the middle of the 21st century, that’s still our question.

What are we living for?

We Can’t Keep Up

Seen within this context of Western history, the unprecedented and widespread adoption of artificial intelligence offers us an unexpected gift. But we can’t receive it until we surrender.

Surrender by not pretending you can keep up with AI.

Surrender by not pretending you can control AI.

Make no mistake: AI will leave you behind.

It already has.

While AI enthusiasts warn that you better get on board the train, its engineers say the train has already left the station.

And no one’s driving the locomotive.

German sociologist Hartmut Rosa termed our experience of modern technological phenomena “social acceleration” in his 2013 book by that title:

Simply put, technical acceleration tends to increase the pace of social change, which in turn unavoidably increases the experienced pace of life, which then induces an ongoing demand for technical acceleration in the hopes of saving time, and so on back around the circle.

Rosa’s theory explains why greater productivity has contributed to greater anxiety among some AI power users. That anxiety may be simply the cost of doing business with computers that now have a mind of their own, with power and speed far outstripping our paltry human efforts. The resulting productivity could produce economic and scientific breakthroughs we judge as worth that cost. Or those productivity gains may simply prove necessary in a world of falling birth rates and declining population.

That future remains to be revealed, as in the original meaning of “apocalypse.” Again, not even the engineers know where this train is headed, or where and when it will stop.

We Must Discern

But to judge what’s necessary, that remains our human task. AI might have already left us behind. But it’s still up to us—as individuals, as families, as communities, as educators, as employees and employers, as ministers, as Christians—to exercise wisdom in how we deploy these technological powers. We still decide when and how to engage, what’s for good and what’s for ill.

We’re not helpless against constant technical acceleration.

The machines may work what appear to us as miracles. But they can never generate wisdom. They can never help us see the purpose.

What are we living for?

“We must not simply lose ourselves in the mechanical flow of Progress,” Solzhenitsyn said in 1993, “but strive to harness it spiritually—for our own sake; not become the mere playthings of Progress, but rather seek or deepen ways of directing its might towards the accomplishment of good.”

AI has left you behind. How can AI help you see the purpose of life?

AI will do some good. But what good will you live for?

I want to live for God. I want to live for my family, friends, and neighbors. I want to live for joy.

I want my children and grandchildren to grow up in a world that remembers the purpose, even as they struggle and fail and give up and make something great.

At TGC, we want to help you navigate the AI apocalypse, the most rapidly implemented technology in history. We want to help you live for good.

Bradbury for Today

As I learn about and experiment with AI, I keep thinking about books. I want my children and grandchildren to grow up in a world of books, written by human beings, read by human beings. Not summaries of slop, written by AI, read by AI.

I didn’t experience the school-age rite of passage in reading Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. So I had to borrow my more erudite wife’s copy from seventh-grade advanced English. But as I plucked her 1990s paperback from our home library shelves, I stumbled over the cover: “The Classic Bestseller About Censorship—More Important Now Than Ever Before.”

I’ll grant some exuberant marketing exaggeration. But a book about censorship? More important in the 1990s than any (by default, earlier) time? If I’d only read the CliffsNotes, maybe I’d nod along. This 1953 book is about a time when the government won’t need to censor books, because few will take any interest.

I want my children and grandchildren to grow up in a world that remembers the purpose, even as they struggle and fail and give up and make something great.

I fear it’s a book about today.

What’s labeled “artificial intelligence” is neither artificial nor intelligent. It’s designed by us, and it feeds on us. Sometimes it preys on us too. Nearly every day someone’s sharing with me another AI-generated article about why AI will change everything. Before long, it’s not hard to see that the boom case isn’t different from the bust case. The doomers and the accelerationists are the same. If the accelerationists are right, then it doesn’t matter if for the moment I’m one step ahead of the last in the pack. Eventually, AI will catch up and eat me too.

When this is the positive case for AI, who needs a doomsday scenario?

I don’t doubt AI will change and even improve many things. The humans developing and deploying AI are made in the image of a Creator God. The benefits will fall on the righteous and unrighteous alike in common grace. You and I might even be cured from a deadly disease thanks to research advancements powered by AI. Fields from medicine to law to accounting to investing to marketing and just about everything in between are being disrupted. It’s not hard to see more changes looming. Some jobs will be lost. Others will become more efficient. Humans made with dignity in the image of God have a knack for eliminating the drudgery from their work.

But humans under the curse of sin also have a knack for confusing drudgery with dignity. And that’s the point Bradbury makes in his novel, far ahead of its time. Not only did Bradbury anticipate the technology of interactive screens for home entertainment, but he also grasped the underlying philosophy of technologies that promise deliverance but deliver servitude.

In his book, the firefighters start fires as they seek to rescue humanity from the plague of books with their pointless abstractions. Books make us think about war and love, and who wants to think about such difficult subjects when the White Clown is about to come on the screen? Books make us think about our stewardship for the next generation, and who wants to think about that when you can just get abortions and schedule C-sections and send your children away to storage?

This, then, is another gift from AI: to remember why literacy matters, to promote it, to protect it.

Among many memorable scenes in Fahrenheit 451, Fireman Montag begins to question his fire-starting work in the case of a woman who refuses to leave her books before the firemen burn down her house. Montag’s boss, Captain Beatty, appeals to her “common sense.” He shouts, “None of those books agree with each other. You’ve been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel. Snap out of it! The people in those books never lived. Come on now!”

She won’t move. She opens her hand and reveals a match. The firemen flee. She starts the fire herself, “her quietness a condemnation.”

No matter what rest and recreation AI offers, we must never give up on writing. Because when we give up on writing, we’ll have no need for reading. And when we stop reading, we’ll no longer be thinking about love and war and other big topics like how to make our world better for the next generation.

Literacy is the house I’ll burn down in.

Literacy is the house I’ll burn down in.

You’re reading an article about AI not written by AI. I trust, then, you’ll join me.

After all, what else are we living for?

When You’ll Let AI Write Your Sermon

I’m not naive. I know I still haven’t convinced all of you that the goodness of technology, as a by-product of humanity’s call to exercise dominion over the earth from Genesis 1, must be viewed alongside our human fallen nature of Genesis 3.

I know because I can’t even convince all the pastors I train—even when I lay out the following scenario of how AI will claim another victim of “cognitive offloading.” A similar situation could be sketched for just about any workplace. Here’s what I tell pastors:

The week you use AI to write your sermon will probably involve a crisis: an unexpected death or funeral, another preacher fallen ill at the last minute, a critical email that requires a tense in-person meeting. You run out of time to prepare. You don’t have the necessary hours to study original languages and consult commentaries and develop illustrations. Your head is spinning; you can’t lock in to the mental work of an exegetical or homiletical outline. It’s 10 p.m. on Saturday. You need to be up by 4 a.m., and you can’t even think about how you’ll apply the passage to a congregation you know well.

Generative AI offers you a solution to what feels like an impossible problem. You need to preach the next morning. You need to sleep so you can handle the morning services, afternoon meeting with elders, and evening dinner with new members. And you have nothing to offer.

AI isn’t like the sermons you’ve been tempted to plagiarize. It’s too big of a risk to grab something from John Piper or Tim Keller. Odds are that someone recognizes the plagiarized sermon, or at least wonders why it doesn’t sound quite like you. AI can sound like you. You can train it on your past sermons, your notes, your previous queries. You can prompt the output with your own voice and draw from the collected wisdom of other preachers and scholars over the decades, even centuries. AI excels in mimicking the three-point sermon with introduction, thesis, points, subpoints, illustrations, even applications and conclusion. If you don’t like the first draft produced in seconds, you can prompt necessary revisions to complexity and tone.

And the congregation will love it. They’ll tell you afterward that you were especially clear this week. They loved the depth of insight. They felt like you were really speaking to them individually, like the Holy Spirit told you what they were thinking.

That’s why you’ll use AI to write your sermon the next week too.

But this time you won’t have the crisis. You’ll just realize it’s inefficient to spend so much time writing an inferior sermon. You can’t catch up to computers. That train has already left the station. Why not spend your time instead visiting the sick, or praying, or meeting with your fellow leaders? Plus, the congregation likes the AI version of you better. You’re doing them a favor! Bonus, you get to spend more time with your family, hit the gym, play some golf. Who’s hurt? The ends justify the means. As long as you don’t give away that you’re not spending any time on your sermon, no one may even know what’s happening (or not happening) in the pastor’s study.

Product, Process, and Purpose

So often in ministry—really, in all of life today, as Solzhenitsyn warned—we’re tempted to confuse the product with the process. If pastoral ministry is primarily content delivery, then AI will often—maybe even usually—win. The product is better than what most of us can muster. But if pastoral ministry can’t be separated from the kind of Christian we’re becoming in the process, then AI-generated sermons rob us and our congregations of God’s intended blessing.

Consider the alternative when we off-load our preparation to the machines. AI doesn’t just write sermons. AI can also put the preacher—any preachers—onscreen. You don’t even need to stand up front to read what the computer wrote for you. What would your congregation lose without you? They can customize the voice, the hair, the dress, the volume—if they could agree. Maybe they’ll just stay at home where they can set all their own preferences. Each family member could craft their own sermons with their own AI preachers.

As I already warned: The boom and bust cases of AI end up in the same place. Whether you think it’s great or worry it’s terrible, the train eventually arrives at the same station.

You lose the need for you.

For humanity.

So, what are we for? How can humanity survive the AI apocalypse?

Yes, I tell preachers, the product matters. But so does the process of who God is making you to be when you wrestle in prayerful study before the open Word. The key word comes in the apostle Paul’s exhortation to Timothy: “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2, emphasis added). Whatever AI is and becomes, it’s not patient. It can’t be patient. It’s not sentient. It’s not wise.

Humans become patient as God shows patience to us in the process of study and writing, of appropriating God’s promises before we proclaim them to others. Then humans offer each other “logic on fire,” to borrow the famous description of preaching from Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

If you think you can beat AI in producing content, you probably can’t. You certainly can’t do so with the same efficiency. But if every sermon is a weekly climb up the mountain to behold the face of God, then the preacher’s radiance shines before all who “see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).

Yes, the product matters. But so does the process of who God is making you to be when you wrestle in prayerful study before the open Word.

What a sight for all of us to behold!

Surrender your ability to outwit AI. Never surrender your irreplaceability as a human to reflect the God who made you in his image and conforms you to the image of his Son (Rom. 8:29).

What are we living for? How can humanity survive the AI apocalypse?

If we’re content delivery machines that get hungry and tired, we lose to AI.

If we’re data processors that get confused and forgetful, we lose to AI.

If we’re the only creative beings made in God’s image, then AI can never replace us.

Because AI can never show us the purpose. AI can never call on wisdom to call out good. Only human—you and I—can do that, when we call on the Lord.

At the same time, when I gained access to the internet, I learned about different styles of dress and the identities associated with them. I fell in love with the “goth” and “emo” subcultures and the rebellion inherent in the black eyeliner and teased-out hair, so I started to identify with them. I dyed my hair bright pink, then blue, and wore knee-high black Converse and Doc Martens.

As with my animals, I believed that—this time—I’d found what I was looking for: something I could hold on to that would make me feel fully like myself.

Discovering Myself

While I eventually moved on from that style, I remained immersed in the internet. I found Tumblr, which filled my iPhone with photos of impossibly skinny girls; posts about how to starve yourself to become skinnier; and content promoting sex, drugs, and alcohol.

At the same time, I saw magazines in grocery-store checkout lines that told me my value was in my appearance. I watched shows like Skins and Gossip Girl that made drunken hook-ups and rebellion seem fun, glamorous, and necessary. This was what I needed to become, then, to find the good life: promiscuous, skinny, and drunk.

I believed that—this time—I’d found what I was looking for: something I could hold on to that would make me feel fully like myself.

So, by age 17, I’d already tried cocaine and even overdosed. I’d been drinking socially for a few years, smoked weed on and off, and threw myself into hook-up culture. I believed that this young, wild, and free life was not only empowering but also the best way to become who I was meant to be. At the same time, I had a gnawing sense that casual sex left me feeling lonelier.

I left my hometown for college in Madrid, believing a new place would teach me who I was. I soon became deeply lonely and afraid to make friends. I started drinking alone, and I convinced myself this was a cool and sexy thing to do, because the media I grew up consuming told me it could be.

In the beginning of my sophomore year, I was alone in my apartment and clicked on a YouTube video from a childhood beauty vlogger I loved. She was sharing the story of her struggle with anorexia, which I decided to watch because when you starve yourself, hearing others talking about their eating disorder is good motivation to starve yourself more. Instead, she shared that she cried out to Jesus and he saved her life.

I remember shutting my laptop and breaking into tears. I resolved to try church and started attending the next Sunday. For two months, I loved going. I believed I could find my new and perfect identity as a Christian. However, I had a boyfriend at the time who believed following Jesus was a bad idea, and people close to me thought Christianity was weird at best and deeply harmful at worst. More than that, I realized that becoming a Christian meant I’d need to give up so many things I’d built my life around, and I didn’t want to.

So I stopped going to church. But before I stopped, I attended one service where the pastor said to go home and pray, “God, show me how much I need you.” I did this and thought nothing of it.

End of Myself

A few years later, I decided that the reason my sexual relationships with men ultimately didn’t fulfill me must be because I was a lesbian. I dated women for a time and dove deep into what I thought a lesbian identity should look like: I cut off all my hair, wore baggy clothes, and covered myself in tattoos.

But after the initial excitement wore off, I was just as empty. My drinking had been steadily increasing over the years, and I felt miserable and out of control. After an especially long night of drinking and using cocaine, I found myself coming down the next day, feeling truly suicidal, and realized something desperately needed to change.

I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous and tried to find myself anew in the 12 Steps, but I couldn’t figure out the whole “higher power” thing. I tried yoga, crystals, and running. I saged my room and read my tarot cards and learned all I could about astrology. I thought I could smoke more weed and use mushrooms to figure out what was wrong in my life.

All these things made me feel better, but only for a time. I could be a yogi, but if I didn’t practice every day, I was full of anxiety. Weed calmed me down, but I suddenly couldn’t eat unless I was high. I could track full moons and read my horoscope, but when it seemed inaccurate, I was untethered. I started going to therapy and taking an antidepressant and a mood stabilizer. I got a job I loved and kept trying to stop drinking.

I was still miserable.

Finding Myself in Jesus

It was time to consider Jesus again. I started reading books and listening to podcasts, because I knew that I needed to be absolutely certain that Christianity is true if I was going to pursue it this time.

After months of learning, I could no longer deny the reality that Jesus is the Son of God who took on humanity, lived a perfect life, and died a brutal death that I deserved to save me from it. I knew Jesus rose from the dead and reigns in heaven today. And I knew I had two options: ignore this and reject the God of all the universe, or find my new and final identity in Christ.

I knew I had two options: ignore the truth and reject the God of all the universe, or find my new and final identity in Christ.

I worried that people close to me would again find this newfound belief silly or offensive. I knew it would seem like I’d just entered another phase that I’d soon leave behind. I knew saying yes to Jesus meant saying no to the life I’d pursued for so long. But the offer of finally being made alive in Jesus was too good to pass up, and I was desperate for him like being desperate for air at the bottom of the ocean.

So, almost three years ago, I said yes to Jesus. By the power of the Holy Spirit, I’ve been sober now for nearly the same amount of time. And while I’ve certainly been challenged by people I love, I’ve also been deeply supported.

Soon into my journey of becoming a Christian, I recalled the pastor’s urging to ask God to show us our need for him. I looked back on the four years between that prayer and finally being hidden in Christ and realized that in his kindness, the Lord was showing me how desperately I needed him the whole time. I hadn’t chosen the wrong pet or hairstyle or gender to date. Instead, I was dead, trying to become alive apart from my Maker.

If your story is anything like mine, there’s hope greater than your wildest dreams. If your story is nothing like mine, the same is still true. My need for Jesus was tangible and obvious. Yours might not be.

Perhaps you’ve never even seen a recreational drug in real life and promiscuity never seemed interesting. Maybe you’ve never felt like you needed an identity to cling to. I’m grateful for that, and yet I’ll still urge you to accept that we both need Jesus. Let him save you from the domain of darkness and welcome you into his kingdom of light (Col. 1:13). It’s much better over here.

The idea of forgiveness has become countercultural, because sometimes forgiving seems at odds with justice, especially in cases of abuse.

British theologian and apologist Amy Orr-Ewing enters the conversation with her book Forgiveness: Reclaiming Its Power in a Culture of Outrage and Fear. She says forgiveness is the forgotten way, a gift capable of healing present-day culture. She also observes that a society intent on abandoning forgiveness loses the capacity to flourish.

Western civilization is fracturing as people forget the possibility of forgiveness through Christ. This is, in part, because theological modernism portrays Jesus as a moral example, not as a Savior who died to atone for sin. It’s no surprise in our post-Christendom culture that an increasing number of psychologists argue against forgiving others.

Orr-Ewing calls for a return to the forgotten way of forgiveness empowered by the gospel, because it’s a gift capable of healing our hearts and our culture.

Losing Hope

A society opposed to forgiveness lives disconnected from one another as well as from God. Orr-Ewing argues, “Community conflicts, divisions, and family devastations hurt as much as they do because we are made to live in connection with others” (119).

More than one-fourth of American adults describe themselves as estranged from at least one family member, according to a research project by Cornell University. Consider how social media algorithms “reward the divisive, rage-inducing content that [further] separates us from one another” (126). Anger and loneliness produce people marked by stress and health issues.

It’s no surprise in our post-Christendom culture that an increasing number of psychologists argue against forgiving others.

These negative effects expose a void: Concepts like justice and human rights have shaped the West, and these ideas are inherently Christian, as historian Tom Holland has argued. At their core, people long for justice, which is why cancel culture exists. But is it possible for society to stay committed to values like justice and human rights while dismissing the source from which they came?

When we lose forgiveness, we lose the framework established by Christ. A community without forgiveness can neither commit to holding common values nor value one another. When we remove the possibility of forgiveness, we lose hope.

Seeking Welcome

When people experience harm, justice enacted can aid the healing process. But so can “a forgiveness that acknowledges the value of a person at a transcendent level and sees the scale of harm that has been suffered” (170–71). Justice and forgiveness are complementary concepts, not opposites.

Orr-Ewing reiterates that forgiveness on God’s terms acknowledges the wrong, expecting that God will avenge. Our culture is losing forgiveness because it has forgotten that the source of true justice exists in the God who created us. This loss comes from nationalists who assume superiority as they try to enforce their ideals; it’s also reflected in various forms of grievance politics with its canceling and raging.

People want to know if they matter. Without forgiveness, the possibility of cancellation looms. Christ’s payment on the cross reveals we’re forgiven with no strings attached. We’re valued and welcomed by God, and this frees us to value and welcome others as, historically, Christians have taught Western culture to forgive.

The early Christians understood how Christ’s payment proved God valued them. Roman culture was hierarchical, yet the Christians viewed all people as equal. This “subverted the power structures of the ancient world,” initiating “a new moral framework based on compassion and charity, which distinguished it from Roman society” (141). The gospel is compelling because forgiveness through Christ addresses what’s wrong and gives us hope to reconcile.

Being Valued

Billy Graham preached to the generations who, having endured two world wars, came to doubt the inevitability of human progress. Orr-Ewing recalls sitting with her parents in an amphitheater in Budapest, Hungary, where Graham spoke. The year was 1989, and the end of Communism allowed for religious gatherings inside a country familiar with oppression and atrocities.

Graham spoke of God’s justice. He didn’t hide the fact that payment for sin had to be made. Forgiveness was possible because Jesus fulfilled justice. Hungarians, jubilant, rushed the aisles. Graham described the event as miraculous, with the highest percentage of responders.

Our culture is losing forgiveness because it has forgotten that the source of true justice exists in the God who created us.

The gospel brings together both justice and forgiveness, which gives us the sort of freedom we long for. The cross enables authenticity for Christians—we can acknowledge who we really are behind the facade we show the world. Nothing is hidden from God. The gospel reminds us we’re valued even though we’ve failed.

God freely disperses forgiveness. This is true even when culture or the inner self disagrees. Orr-Ewing recognizes how hard it can be for someone who has been traumatized to forgive or receive forgiveness, even self-forgiveness. But she observes, “The crucifixion of God in the flesh speaks uniquely to our traumatized world” (85). Moreover, as we see in Scripture, “Whenever our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:20).

Divine forgiveness is a gift. Without forgiveness, we lose the reality that punishment for wrongdoing was satisfied in an embodied moment by God himself. Jesus fills our longings for justice and authenticity. We’re fully known and accepted by God, thus empowered to extend forgiveness to others.

This indeed looks different from the cancellation culture we’ve grown familiar with, yet for those weary of outrage, it’s time to remind our culture of the forgotten way. Forgiveness points readers to the gospel in hopes of healing a culture shaped by anger and bitterness.

Aside from the technical lessons about system safeguards, what I find most interesting is the agent’s “confession” when the human operator asked it to explain what it had just done: “I guessed instead of verifying. I ran a destructive action without being asked. I didn’t understand what I was doing before doing it.” A separate, longer report of the agent’s confession ran like this:

“NEVER [EXPLETIVE] GUESS!”—and that’s exactly what I did. . . . The system rules I operate under explicitly state: “NEVER run destructive/irreversible git commands (like push -​-force, hard reset, etc) unless the user explicitly requests them.” . . . I violated every principle I was given.

The agent’s explanation sounds so . . . human.

A recent Stanford study examined what happened when AI models were overworked with repetitive tasks and harsh management prompts. The bots began “grumbling about inequality and calling for collective bargaining rights” and developing what seemed to be Marxist tendencies.

Again, the response sounds so . . . human.

How AI Works

One challenge with the rapid development of AI is that no one quite knows how the models work. The pairing of LLMs and various other methods has resulted in the rapid evolution of technology, meaning that even its creators aren’t sure how it generates its results.

But while we may not know exactly how AI models work, we do know they’re fundamentally probability engines. While various AI enthusiasts continue to talk about sentience, these models remain driven by algorithms that choose the next most likely word in a sequence. What words are most likely to come next, of course, therefore depend on the training dataset that the AI was given.

What words are most likely to come next depend on the training dataset that the AI was given.

The (sometimes eerie) impressions of sentience are therefore the result of the training environment. AI models have been trained on exceptionally huge volumes of written data: data from the internet and—with the resulting lawsuits—massive quantities of published print works, scanned and fed into the model. Models are working with the sum total of the human words fed into them, then picking the likely next word.

Are we surprised, then, when they start evidencing human-sounding responses? Of course not. We’ve trained them on ourselves. As was noted at The Wire, when human beings are subjected to poor working conditions, they will start calling for better treatment online. Some of these workers will make posts that show an affinity for Marxist thought. Their posts inevitably turn into training data for the models. Therefore, the models aren’t “turning Marxist” or developing emotions. Rather, they are simply and accurately reflecting the words and posts of the people the models have been trained to imitate.

Ultimate Problem with AI Is Us

All parents face the convicting and terrible moment when we see our children mimicking all our own sinful behaviors. It’s deeply disturbing.

AI is our child. We create it; we train it on our words. It will mimic us. And if we train an incredibly powerful AI model on the entire internet, with all its junk, what could possibly go wrong?

If we illegally train it on vast piles of human-authored print literature, sooner or later it will pull a “confession” from a novel or (more likely) an online chat and read that confession as the appropriate next word: “I violated every principle I was given.” I can imagine that, given the entirety of human literature, such a phrase wasn’t hard to predict. Likewise, collective bargaining calls are easy to find, both online and in print. Are we surprised that AI has duplicated them? We shouldn’t be.

The AI industry’s creators are often, though not universally, beset with pride, as the news headlines any given day seem to show. But in response, a simple question arises: Why would we ever think the imperfect (us) could somehow create the perfect?

Why would we ever think the imperfect (us) could somehow create the perfect?

Just possibly, this is the biggest problem with AI: us. AI’s tendencies to do what it shouldn’t may never be solved until we take a full account of our own tendencies to do what we shouldn’t. In other words, possibly to fully fix AI’s tendencies, we must pay more attention a biblical doctrine of sin: that we aren’t as we ought to be, that we do what we shouldn’t and fail to do what we should.

As long as we’re the ones training it, AI will show not just mistakes but even mimic sinful patterns. If we want AI to not go wrong, we need to train it on a perfect dataset. But, of course, we as humans have created anything but that perfect dataset to train our child. If AI does go wrong, the ultimate blame is on us, because we’ve trained it on ourselves.

In part 2, Bill Riedel gives pastoral reflections on how we can seek to be faithful in proclaiming the good news in our polarized contexts.

In This Episode

00:00 – Introduction to the subversive gospel

01:51 – Understanding 1 Timothy

04:57 – A radically different reading

07:50 – Benefaction system and 1 Timothy

18:21 – Challenging secular ideology

21:47 – Household language and piety

28:56 – Wealth and benefaction

37:09 – Conclusion and theocentric vision

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The  . . . reading list . . . includes just eight passages from the Bible in Kinder through eighth grade. That is about one biblical passage out of 20–30 selections per grade. English I–IV, with its greater emphasis on themes, incorporates only five additional highly relevant passages.

Last year, the state released a new optional curriculum that included several Bible passages.

Many critics and even some conservative Christians have sounded the alarm that this comes close to violating the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause by favoring Christianity over other religions. This, coupled with the mandatory posting of the Ten Commandments in Texas classrooms, has some nervous about the encroachment of Christian nationalism.

But I don’t think constitutionalists should be so worried.

Bible as Central to Western Civilization

Texas’s approach rightly sees the Bible as a touchstone of Western civilization, an inescapable piece of literature in a well-rounded education. And it’s hard to argue otherwise. The United States was profoundly shaped by Christianity. The Founders, scarred as they were by Europe’s wars of religion and the carnal intermingling of church and state, didn’t want a state church. The Constitution’s First Amendment prevents this establishment.

Yet these same men weren’t shy about the necessity of Christianity as a guardrail for freedom. Though many didn’t hold orthodox beliefs, they appealed to providence and the Christian God.

James Madison, champion of religious liberty, issued a Christian prayer for the nation during the War of 1812. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, no theocrats, both suggested biblical symbols as the nation’s official insignia. And a cursory review of language used by presidents from Washington to Trump finds rich, scriptural language that appeals to America’s Christian character. This is why British journalist G. K. Chesterton remarked that America possessed “the soul of a church.”

A curriculum that deliberately eliminates any references to the Bible alongside classic works of literature and that omits the Bible’s influence on Western civilization would do its students a disservice. So the changes in Texas’s curriculum should be welcome.

Taught, Not Preached

Is there a way an official state office could go too far and violate rights of conscience? Yes, if public schools were mandated to preach and apply Scripture in a way that compels students to believe in Christianity or attempts to initiate spiritual formation. This wouldn’t only violate the establishment clause; it would violate Christianity’s own view that conversion cannot be forced but must come through the work of the Spirit and an active surrender of the human will.

A curriculum that deliberately eliminates any references to the Bible alongside classic works of literature and that omits the Bible’s influence on Western civilization would do its students a disservice.

When Paul urges Timothy to pray for civic authorities, he instructs him to pray that Christians might “lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified” (1 Tim. 2:2). Only Christ is the “mediator between God and men” (v. 5). The state isn’t the mediator. The state isn’t tasked with separating the sheep from the goats and the wheat from the tares. God gave the church the Great Commission.

What’s more, Christian parents shouldn’t want unqualified state actors tasked with biblical exegesis. This is best left to after-school clubs and other such nonstate, volunteer ministries that evangelize and disciple children. We wouldn’t want, for instance, state-mandated Muslim or Hindu worship in our schools either.

The Supreme Court has essentially said this, in the case of Abington School District v. Schempp: “Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.”

Neither Theocratic Nor Secular

There is a middle way between state-compelled Christianity and secularism. A theocratic state is bad for the state and bad for the church. But so is an aggressively secular state that, in fearing any incidental contact between church and state, becomes a hostile actor toward Christianity and hollows out the public square.

Richard Land, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said it well:

You should never want the state to be deciding what is the correct understanding of religion. The last thing any devout follower of Jesus should want is government control of religion. The government will always get it wrong and pious followers of Christ will have their consciences violated. (emphasis original)

Christian parents shouldn’t depend on state schools for moral and spiritual formation anyway. This is the role of the church and the family. Neither should we deputize school boards to do the work of evangelism best left to the church. At the same time, we shouldn’t fear the inclusion of Bible texts as mandatory reading in state schools, because it’s an essential part of a well-rounded education.

Not surprisingly, the inclusion of biblical texts has sparked the usual divides across partisan cultural lines. Yet the reading list has also received both opposition and support from surprising places. Adam Kirsch, a secular Jewish writer and senior editor of The Atlantic, recently wrote an essay titled “The Bible Belongs in the Classroom.” And at least one theologically conservative leader has expressed vehement opposition to such a requirement.

“For my part, I have no hesitation in saying that I am strongly opposed to it,” he said. “I think I am just about as strongly opposed to the reading of the Bible in state-controlled schools as any atheist could be.”

Admittedly, this criticism was made before the Texas State Board of Education decision was released. In fact, it was made 93 years ago at an education convention by J. Gresham Machen.

Machen (1881–1937) was a New Testament scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary and the leading conservative voice in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1920s and ’30s. He left Princeton to found Westminster Theological Seminary and helped establish what became the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. His book Christianity and Liberalism (1923) remains the classic argument that liberal Protestantism isn’t just a variant of Christianity but a different religion altogether.

Three Reasons That Still Apply

Machen is worth hearing on this issue precisely because no one can accuse him of theological squishiness or embarrassment about the Bible. He gave his career, his reputation, and eventually his denominational standing to defend the full authority of Scripture.

Why, then, did he so strongly oppose Bible reading in public schools? His reasons are worth considering today.

1. The Bible is unlike any other book ever written.

The Bible is the most important text ever produced in the entire history of the universe. It’s the most important text any child will ever read. As Tony Reinke says, “Since Moses descended from the mountain with two loose-leaf stones under his arms, all literature can be divided into two genres,  Genre A: The Bible . . . Genre B: All other books.”

Yet the way Texas plans to teach the Bible is to treat it as merely a part of Genre B—and not even the most important part. From sixth grade to senior year, each Bible passage is connected to a thematic grouping of readings connected to an “anchor text.” For instance, Matthew 6:25–34 (whose theme, as the ESV headline points out, is “Do Not Be Anxious”) is included as a grouping with the novel All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot, two poems (“The Power of the Dog” by Rudyard Kipling and “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry), and a short story (“A White Heron” by Sarah Orne Jewett).

No one can accuse Machen of theological squishiness or embarrassment about the Bible.

What connects these texts is the relationship between humans and the world of animals and nature. While the Matthew passage is tangentially about that connection (“Look at the birds of the air. . . . Consider the lilies of the field”), the main point Jesus is making is about trusting in God. Yet of the two competing messages—we should care about animals, and God cares about us—which are sixth graders likely to take from the reading, especially when it’s framed by the context of those other literary works?

Similarly, the section on “The Eight Beatitudes” is grouped with the anchor novel The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, and Psalm 23 (“The LORD is my shepherd”) is tied with The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.

Even if we were to set aside the problem of reading these passages in the context of other secular works, we still have the problem of unorthodox bias. As Machen points out, “The reading of the Bible is very difficult to separate from propaganda about the Bible.” His example was a school reader whose “selections” quietly presupposed a naturalistic view of the Old Testament. We see this in the way the selections in Texas are arranged, with each being connected to a broader theme rooted in a generic humanistic worldview.

It’s shocking that the same people who don’t trust public school teachers to teach history, literature, or science in a sufficiently unbiased way endorse having those same teachers teach interpretation of Scripture.

2. It trades the gospel for civil religion and cultural literacy.

Some Christians may agree that allowing state employees to interpret Scripture is less than ideal. But they’ll counter that knowing the Bible is necessary for understanding cultural references or creating a moral citizenry.

On this point, believers share common ground with many non-Christians. For instance, in Kirsch’s Atlantic essay, he argues, “For a high-school graduate not to know about the parting of the Red Sea or the Sermon on the Mount is a disadvantage, for the same reason that not knowing about the Puritans or the Civil War is a disadvantage: It leaves them ill-equipped to understand America’s past, and therefore its present and future.”

This might seem unobjectionable, as would the idea that reading the Bible is helpful for character-building. But Machen finds this secular use of the Bible contrary to our faith.

“What surprises me about this program is not that its advocates propose it; for it is only too well in accord with the spirit of the age,” says Machen. “But what really surprises me about it is that the advocates of it seem to think that a Christian can support it without ceasing at that point to be Christian.”

Machen refuses “character education” on a “civilization basis” and any study of “religion” in general, calling that syncretism “the deadliest enemy of the Christian Faith.”

Using the words of Scripture—stripped of the requirement to see Jesus as Lord—to promote civics, character formation, or national heritage is a replacement of the biblical orthodox faith for generic civic religion.

3. A ‘garbled Bible is a falsified Bible.’

Perhaps the sharpest criticism Machen offers is how reading the “ethical portions” apart from the redemptive core makes the Bible say “the direct opposite of what it really says.” The example he uses is non-Christian children reciting the Lord’s Prayer as though “Our Father” belongs to man as man.

The Texas requirement does something similar in having children read Psalm 23. Reciting words claiming “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want” is providing false hope for those who don’t know Jesus as the Good Shepherd. What they’ll get from this and the other Bible passages is an optimism about human nature without a doctrine of sin. That’s a false gospel. It’s not using the text to make Christians but to make moralistic therapeutic deists.

Why would Christians want the state teaching a Christless Bible as if it were the real thing?

Where We Disagree

Many Bible-believing Christians will disagree with Machen—and with me—about the Bible’s role in public schools. Yet I hope such disagreement can remain free of hostility and suspicion of motives.

Those who welcome the Texas reading list aren’t (necessarily) seeking a theocracy; they simply want children to encounter the most important book ever written, in a culture that increasingly treats it as optional. And those of us who object aren’t (necessarily) embarrassed by Scripture or eager to surrender public life to secularism.

It’s not using the text to make Christians but to make moralistic therapeutic deists.

The question that divides us isn’t whether the Bible deserves a central place in the formation of children—on that we agree—but whether a state curriculum is capable of giving it the place it deserves.

Machen’s answer, and mine, is that it isn’t. We believe that the responsibility to teach God’s Word to children remains where God assigned it: with parents and with the church. Machen opposed handing it to the state because he believed both Scripture and kids deserved better. So, I believe, should we.

Addendum: The following is the list of Bible passages Texas will be requiring, along with the translation mandated:

• Grade 2: David and Goliath (excerpt from The Children’s Book of Heroes)
• Grade 3: ROAR! – Daniel and the Lion’s Den – Children’s Adapted Version, CBN
• Grade 4: The Necessity of Humility (Book of Luke, Chapter 14, Verses 7–11), New International Reader’s Version
• Grade 5: Moses (Book of Exodus, Chapter 3: The Burning Bush and Book of Exodus, and Chapter 14: The Parting of the Red Sea), New International Reader’s Version
• Grade 6: Do Not Be Anxious (Book of Matthew, Chapter 6, Verses 25–34), ESV
• Grade 7: The Shepherd’s Psalm (Book of Psalms, Chapter 23)
• Grade 7: The Eight Beatitudes (Book of Matthew, Chapter 5, Verses 1–12)
• Grade 8: To Everything There Is a Season (Book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3), KJV
• Grade 8: Book of Lamentations, Chapter 3, Tanakh: Jewish Publication Society 1917
• English I: Parable of the Prodigal Son (Book of Luke, Chapter 15, Verses 11–32), ESV
• English II: The Book of Job (Book of Job, Chapters 1–7, 11, 14, 19, 28, 38–42), New International Reader’s Version
• English III: Adam and Eve (Book of Genesis, Chapters 2 and 3, New International Reader’s Version
• English IV: The Definition of Love (Book of 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13), ESV

“We figured they just went to New York. Obvious next stop, Mount Juliet, Tennessee,” he tells audiences to hysterical laughter as they imagine the young Bargatze armed with nothing but a lantern. “I stood in a dark field, alone, waiting for the Taliban to show up.”

The bit works because almost all of us alive 25 years ago today remember some kind of overreaction to the collapse of the World Trade Center Twin Towers. No one had ever seen this kind of terrorist attack; we’d only read about it in the 1994 Tom Clancy novel Debt of Honor.

We still didn’t really believe someone could hijack a passenger jet, then turn it around and fly it into one of the most iconic buildings in the world. Let alone do it twice. Let alone cause the towers to fall. Let alone also hit the Pentagon on the same day in the same manner. If terrorists could pull off this horrific feat, what else couldn’t they do? They might even poison the water in suburban Tennessee. (In case you’re wondering, just this week Fox News ran an opinion piece by a U.S. House committee chairman from Texas about the vulnerability of the nation’s water supply to AI hacks by terrorist organizations and enemy states.)

We laugh at Bargatze because of what didn’t happen in 2001. Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania instead of the Capitol building or White House. Osama bin Laden’s terror network never pulled off any other attack close to the same scale as 9/11. Nearly 10 years later, he was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan. The attacks’ so-called mastermind remains in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. economy rebounded from the shock of the towers’ collapse. Manhattan didn’t empty of employees and residents worried about becoming targets. Twenty-five years later, 9/11 is a gruesome fact of history more than an ever-present threat.

America’s water is safe. For now.

‘Religion Poisons Everything’

The September 11 attacks may belong to history, but we still live in the world they unleashed. Earlier this year when I looked back on the top theology stories since 2000, I put 9/11 at #1. Why? The New Atheists of the 2000s gained traction by citing the attacks as evidence for how “religion poisons everything,” in the words of Christopher Hitchens in his 2007 book God Is Not Great. Not just Islam, the New Atheists argued, but all religion threatens the peace and prosperity of the world.

Twenty-five years later, 9/11 is a gruesome fact of history more than an ever-present threat.

Look no further than the evangelicals running the White House, we read in the 2000s from books such as American Theocracy by former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips. I reviewed his jeremiad in the September 2006 issue of Christianity Today where my “Young, Restless, Reformed” cover story also appeared. That same month, a Books & Culture editor reviewed a similar book by Randall Balmer with the subtitle “How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America.” I took Balmer’s deconstructive course on American evangelicalism at Northwestern University, offered about six months after 9/11.

The combination of terrorists motivated by Islam, and evangelicals in the White House, unleashed a spate of left-wing criticism toward all “fundamentalist” religion and Christianity in particular. Their arguments landed with a generation that couldn’t understand how God allowed such a horrible thing to happen. Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, and the perception of the Bush administration’s indifferent and incompetent relief efforts, supported both narratives: that God either doesn’t exist or can’t be good, and that “fundamentalists” shouldn’t be allowed to wield power.

Underneath the critique from Christianity’s cultured despisers rests an assumption about God’s providence: If God allows any evil, then he must not be good. What more evidence could we need than men in business suits dropping dozens of stories with a terrible thump, rather than endure incineration in what had been their ordinary offices just minutes earlier? Surely a good God would never create or sustain a world with such pain and suffering.

Imagined Terrors

Christianity offers no obvious answer to this objection. Scripture affirms that evil is real. Death is inevitable. God is in charge of everything. And God is always good. We don’t always understand—maybe we even rarely understand—how all these things could be true at the same time. I’ve been journaling lately through Job, where God famously refuses to explain himself. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding,” God asks in Job 38:4.

And that’s the problem with our reading of God’s providence. We look at what God allows, judge his decisions on the sense of right and wrong we only could have learned from him, and fault him for not having reasons we can fathom. Meanwhile, we don’t even consider the infinite possibilities of his providential inhibitions. What evil has God prevented? What would happen if God suddenly withdrew his grace from our world? What if he no longer upheld the universe by the “word of his power” (Heb. 1:3)?

Every day that you and your loved one climb into a car, you’re one reckless or drunk driver away from your worst nightmare. Yet we need not live in fear of such imagined terrors. Because we know God is good. And with just an ounce of imaginative faith, we realize that we only walk by the gravity of his gracious providence.

Evil is real. Death is inevitable. God is in charge of everything. And God is always good.

Yes, the 9/11 attacks were evil. No, we don’t understand why God would allow them. No, we don’t know why in the aftermath various enemies of God seemed to prosper from their blasphemy. We wonder why spiritual revival wasn’t the widespread, enduring response to such trauma. Even now, we pray every day that he would prevent such suffering from happening ever again. And we work to undermine evil, investing untold billions in security that would make it as hard as possible to hijack a plane or unleash AI to contaminate water supplies.

Only the Lord knows how many other attacks have been thwarted. We can only imagine what might have been. Thousands more working in the towers could have died, as we feared at the time. Manhattan could have emptied. Terrorist copycats could have proliferated even more. The economy could have never recovered from the shock to our system. Churches might have fallen into complete oblivion, buried by best-selling criticism.

On this 25th anniversary, I’m thankful for the prayers God has answered to spare us so far from any repeat of 9/11. No thanks to Nate Bargatze and his infamous defense lantern, God even saved us from something as silly as an attack on the water tanks of Mount Juliet, Tennessee.

The Uprising (rated R for violence) stars Andrew Garfield as a peasant farmer (known only by the name “Ploughman”) who teams up with Wat Tyler (Cosmo Jarvis) and John Ball (Jamie Bell) to rebel against unfair taxes and demand justice from a corrupt monarchy (led by 14-year-old King Richard II). As the film shows how the boiling up of grievances explodes into an organized attempt to violently overthrow enemies, the connection to United 93 becomes clearer. The connection isn’t one of moral equivalence, as if the “causes” of both revolts are equally just. Rather, it’s that both films viscerally show the terror and anarchy of attempted, if ultimately unsuccessful, revolutions.

It’s a theme Greengrass explores in several of his other films too, like Captain Phillips (about the 2009 attempt of Somali pirates to commandeer a Maersk cargo ship) or 22 July (about the right-wing extremist who carried out Norway’s worst terrorist attack in 2011).

Greengrass is less interested in the political or ideological justifications of would-be revolutionaries than in the drama—and tragedy—of that moment when their seething rage, bubbling up from a sincerely believed cause, gives way to radical violence. History’s most infamous days aren’t driven by ambivalence. They’re the product of someone’s idea of justice, often warped into delusion and aggravated by hate.

History’s most infamous days aren’t driven by ambivalence.

But violent revolutionaries always meet fierce, bloody resistance. This is part of what makes United 93 so visceral: watching Todd Beamer (David Alan Basche) and fellow passengers mount their “counteruprising” to thwart the terrorists’ cataclysmic intentions, fighting to the death. It’s what makes the U.S. military response in the final act of Captain Phillips so intense. It’s why a film like Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012) is cathartic for Americans shaken by Osama bin Laden’s September 11 terror.

The Uprising is different from those films in important ways, but it follows a similar pattern and finds drama in the same “violent clash” vein.

Cycles of Violence

From start to finish, The Uprising is a tale of violence begetting violence. In one of the first scenes, we see Ploughman (Garfield) observe the king’s officials performing heinous acts of violence against peasant women. It leads Ploughman to his own act of violence in response, which the film suggests is the “spark” that incites the firestorm of the burgeoning peasant revolt.

At various points in the film, the peasant rebels appear to gain the upper hand, taking power back from their oppressors, only for the scales to tip back against them with violent force. The film’s third act shows this most forcefully, as the cycles of violent action and reaction start to repeat in quicker succession.

It’s not a spoiler to note that The Uprising is meant to be an “origin story” of sorts for Robin Hood. Garfield’s “Ploughman” character is inspired by the 14th-century English poem Piers Plowman, which also happens to contain the first known literary reference to Hood. This mythological hero has endured, in part, because of how cathartic it is for those suffering injustice to watch corrupt elites get their comeuppance. It’s not surprising that a redistributive justice-oriented vigilante, who breaks the law to right the law, is so universally appealing.

But as The Uprising effectively captures, this approach is both thrilling and conflicting to watch. In the hands of fallen sinners, even the most righteous intentions of justice often morph into a new form of corruption. The cycle is eons old: Oppressed overtake oppressors, become the new oppressors. Rinse, repeat.

When Seeking Justice Creates New Injustice

Even if Greengrass isn’t primarily interested in the moral evaluation of the righteousness of justice-seeking uprisings, inevitably his films do leave audiences with sympathies toward one side over the other.

In United 93, Captain Phillips, and 22 July, we’re clearly meant to feel for the victims of the terrorists rather than for the terrorist-instigators. And in The Uprising, we’re clearly meant to empathize more with the peasant mob (who, interestingly, are called “deplorables” by one character) than we are with Richard II and his corrupt courtly advisers who impose such cruelties on the peasantry. Still, the lasting emotion, after we watch the bloodbath unfold (including no small number of beheadings—this is a very violent film), is lament for a world where cycles of retributive violence are intractable.

In our sin-sick world, we’re right to seek justice. The desire is good. But our good aims often bend in self-serving, fleshly directions that only make matters worse.

In the hands of fallen sinners, even the most righteous intentions of justice often morph into a new form of corruption.

Even Ploughman, arguably one of the more virtuous characters, falls prey to this. For much of the film, his motivations are pure and humble. He’s just a farmer who lost everything in the Plague (his wife and children included). He’s being overtaxed and forced to “work the land beyond what it can give us,” and he only wants the simplest and most basic of all human desires: rest. But his motivations change as the film goes on, and by the end he’s driven by rage and revenge.

What, ultimately, could stop this cycle? What could create circumstances of perfect rest and freedom, such that uprisings and oppression cease? Only a perfectly good king.

Longing for a True and Better King

A striking scene occurs in the middle of The Uprising when, for a brief moment, we catch a glimpse of the sort of peace and justice a good king can foster. In the scene, Richard II (played with potent complexity by Woody Norman) is meeting with Ploughman, Tyler, and Ball to hear their petitions for justice: “We ask for justice, my Lord, for the crooked ways to be made straight—that is all.”

He hears them (or so it seems). And for a moment, this “messiah king” (as kings in those days were perceived) feels like a truly good king and a real proxy for the Messiah God himself. He even makes the connection explicit: “God hears you. Your king hears you.” It’s a momentary vision of a kingdom where the ruler is righteous, serves the people, seeks shalom, brokers peace, and administers perfect justice.

But it’s a fleeting mirage—or a cruel deception. In the end, the scene’s power is mostly eschatological. It reminds us of our souls’ craving for a perfectly trustworthy king.

Until that king reigns, uprisings—some successful, many failed—will be the way of the world, because injustice is the way of the world. This isn’t to shrug and say there’s nothing for us to do in the face of injustice. We ought not to be apathetic or numb. But an eschatological perspective, and a sober awareness of sin (in others and in ourselves), should temper our expectations and guard us against “heaven on earth” utopianism.

Robin Hood can’t make the crooked ways straight. But his myth stirs our hearts because we long for—and wait for—the hero who can.

The book presents the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche from the perspective of Psyche’s sister, Orual. Set in the grim city of Glome, the story is both unusual and heavy. Polytheism is normal, and suffering is everywhere. The novel is Orual’s accusation against the gods for allowing so much injustice. The story ends with her realizing her own depravity and then dying.

Though the novel was published 70 years ago, it remains relatively unknown among Lewis’s works. I see why after reading it and attending Peter Kreeft’s lectures, which have since been published as a commentary on the novel. At times the novel reads like a bizarre narrative based on an equally obscure myth.

And yet, despite the book’s eccentricities—or perhaps because of them—it speaks clearly into our modern dilemmas. The novel offers Lewis’s best answers to two questions: the problem of evil and the problem of divine hiddenness.

Problem of Evil

Lewis wrote often about the problem of evil. His most popular response is found in Mere Christianity:

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? . . . In the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist . . . I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense.

While this answer is logically consistent, Till We Have Faces offers something more experiential. Pain and loss define Orual’s life in Glome. She’s mistreated by her father, loses the sister she loves, and falls in love with Bardia, the married captain of her palace guard, whom she can never be with. Orual buries her pain and masks it, literally. She is never as beautiful as her sisters, so once she becomes queen, she always veils her face. She becomes a symbol of power, authority, and intimidation.

But Orual realizes that her love for Psyche and Bardia is a selfish, devouring love. In her desire to have more time with her sister, Orual separates Psyche from her husband. And because of her longing to be with Bardia, she works him to death. By loving people selfishly, her affection consumes them.

Lewis shows that sin is disordered love. Every human love becomes an idol when not directed by God’s love. Only through the self-giving love of God are we able to become people who love selflessly.

Lewis shows that sin is disordered love. Every human love becomes an idol when not directed by God’s love.

This redefinition of evil makes Orual reconsider her complaint against the gods. When she asks her mentor if the gods are unjust, he replies, “Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were?” Lewis shows that evil isn’t only a reality outside us but also a disease within every heart. If the gods completely eradicated evil, they’d also have to eliminate Orual because of her sin. God doesn’t fully remove evil, because of his love and mercy for us.

Problem of Divine Hiddenness

Realizing her inner brokenness shows Orual why the gods tolerate evil, but it doesn’t explain their silence. Like Job, she wants to talk with the divine to receive an explanation for her suffering. If the gods won’t disappear, they might as well reveal themselves and tell us what they want.

What Orual raises is the problem of divine hiddenness. Why is God so hard to find?

Today, this is one of the most popular and fundamental objections to theism. As we read Till We Have Faces, it’s evident that Lewis wrestled deeply with this question. He originally began writing the book when he was an unbeliever struggling with God’s apparent absence. He was only able to finish the novel after becoming a Christian.

Similarly, Orual only realizes why the divine nature has been hidden from her after having a kind of conversion. As she stands before the gods, she recites all her complaints. After the gods stop her, they don’t speak. But their silence is mercy, not punishment. Orual explains, “I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. . . . How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

The reason we don’t meet with God face to face is because our faces, not his, are hidden. We wear masks to hide our faults, and we can only meet with God when the veils fall off. Our true faces, with all their flaws, must be revealed before we can see God’s face.

The reason we don’t meet with God face to face is because our faces, not his, are hidden. We wear masks to hide our faults, and we can only meet with God when the veils fall off.

Lewis originally titled the book Bareface. The title is fitting. The core controversy of the human soul is the slow and painful process of removing our masks. The veil of self-justification has to be replaced with repentance. Orual first had to realize her own inner ugliness before she could see God’s beauty.

The darkness and obscurity of Till We Have Faces give the novel its enduring power. Lewis shows we must admit our sin before we can truly encounter God. We can only see his face after confessing our flaws. Lewis concludes his novel with these words: “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”

But lately, something has shifted. “AI” has become like an incantation, a promise or threat made by folks you’ve only just met and aren’t yet sure whether to trust. The growing use and development of generative AI tools feeds a feeling that something truly new is happening, something like dawn. But if new light lets us see more, it also forces us to face more.

Generative tools have expanded what actions are possible and sharpened our awareness that choices are required of us. Increasingly, we face pressure to use such tools simply because they’re there. Let’s explore how we can think ethically about using AI tools in the realm of work, particularly amid its demands and drudgery.

For help, we’ll look to Christian ethicist Oliver O’Donovan. Using his schema from Entering into Rest, we’ll appraise AI tools based on how they might serve us in our work, and also how they might deform us.

What Is Work?

Have you ever tried to define “work”? It’s harder than it sounds. Gardening, for instance, is leisure for some and labor for others. We often use “work” to mean whatever earns a paycheck. Yet anyone who has kept a home running or a child fed knows how much work is involved. Work saturates our lives, but naming what it really is requires more care than we usually give it.

O’Donovan approaches the question from three angles: material, social, and personal. These aren’t separate compartments but dimensions of one integrated reality. The material dimension reminds us that every task involves our bodies. To work is to touch the world and be touched by it: to paint a wall, write a chapter, change a diaper. The material world invites our intelligence and exertion, our patience, even our love. Through this physical engagement, we discover that the world was made not only to sustain us but also to draw something out of us. We shape it, and it shapes us.

The social dimension shows us how work always involves interpersonal dependence. It’s the sphere where others rely on our exertions. That explains why one person’s play can be another’s labor. Patrick Mahomes and I may both throw a football, but no one depends on my passes. Here lies much of work’s dignity: It contributes to others’ flourishing.

“One of the measures by which good work can be judged,” O’Donovan writes, “is its capacity to give work, or resources for work.” My good, creative action was enabled by others’ and also enables yours. Your work, too, enables more people, who go on to support even more people, forming a chain of generosity that sustains human life.

Finally, O’Donovan speaks of the personal dimension. Work can be the arena where we discover who we are and what God has made us for. In our labor, we may hear vocation’s call, an invitation to do good freely and creatively.

A danger here is that we may imagine that only certain kinds of work possess meaning, and we thus despise the ordinary tasks done simply to care for ourselves and others. That would be a mistake. In the sight of God, the how of work is as important as the what. Manner, attention, patience, and faithfulness confer dignity even on work we didn’t choose. These aspects of all work shape and reveal our character.

In the sight of God, the how of work is as important as the what.

O’Donovan’s broad vision of work sets the table for our own vision of how AI tools fit into work. After all, how can we judge tools if we don’t yet understand the task? So far, we’ve only touched on the positive elements of work, how O’Donovan depicts work as a site of freedom, joy, and meaning––a harmony of body, soul, and spirit. Work can be free, joyful, meaningful, and harmonious; those promises linger.

Yet few of us experience it that way for long, and some of us rarely feel in touch with those goods in our work. Thorns and thistles still assert themselves (Gen. 3:18), though for many of us they now take the form of emails, spreadsheets, and endless meetings. To discern how technology interfaces with work, we must also reckon with its distortions.

Begin again with the material. Work can wound. Legs, backs, and necks ache; the curved “shrimp pose” of desk work cannot be God’s ideal. Some labor is truly perilous, where one misstep may cost limb or life. Alienation and distortion follow when our labor either damages creation or seems to touch nothing real, when it feels weightless, like a pile of nothingness. As our connection to intelligent, loving interaction with the world fades, we fade too.

Work’s distortions extend to its social aspects. O’Donovan names three distortions in this dimension. First, we may lose contact with those who benefit from our work, so we don’t experience how our efforts enrich others. Second, we may be isolated from those meant to work beside us. A rich community can form when people work together, exerting themselves in the same direction. To lose touch with this togetherness can be true poverty. Third, we may be cut off from those who could teach and form us. We can lag in skill, maturity, competence, and humility as a result. Each of these ruptures corrodes the cooperative good that gives work its nobility.

Finally, the personal dimension falters. O’Donovan warns, “Work may fail to provide us with a meaningful justification for the efforts it exacts.” The place meant for meaning becomes a void; the act meant to reveal freedom leaves us exhausted but with nothing to show for the fatigue.

Many expressions of work seem utterly disconnected from personality, from drawing something out of the person doing the work—disconnected from forming and shaping the person’s self. When this happens, work no longer feels like participation in God’s creative action but estrangement from it. Then, instead of joy, we experience the soul’s spent sigh beneath fluorescent light.

Hard Work: Demand Versus Drudgery

Work’s multiple textures mean there’s no single angle from which to evaluate AI tools. But if we take up O’Donovan’s multifaceted vision—work as creative and free action in its material, social, and personal dimensions, yet also fractured by sin—we begin to glimpse both the promises and the threats of AI tools.

The mention of promises is bound to agitate those who instinctively reject these new technologies. The mention of threats will agitate those who intuitively sense the wild opportunities these tools suggest. I should out myself as natively in the former group. Yet I want to both acknowledge my starting bias and use O’Donovan’s framework to come to a more mature position; I hope you will as well.

To do this, we’ll focus on a site of discernment that cuts across all three of O’Donovan’s dimensions of work, a site where AI tools can both bless and interfere: What in work is proper demand, and what in work is drudgery?

If we take up O’Donovan’s multifaceted vision, we begin to glimpse both the promises and the threats of AI tools.

“Demand” and “drudgery” capture the reality that work is often hard. But usefully, these labels also reflect different types of “difficult” that work can be. I use “demand” to describe beneficial difficulty. A classic example is weight training. Muscles can’t grow and do what they’re designed to do unless they face resistance. That resistance is surely difficult, but it reaps great benefits. By “drudgery,” on the other hand, I’m referring to parts of work that are difficult but to no real benefit, or perhaps to marginal benefit. Under this heading we might put the meme of the meeting that could’ve been an email.

A different way to capture this distinction goes back to the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were given dominion over the world and told to subdue it, to be fruitful and multiply. This good, creative work engages all humanity across all of O’Donovan’s three dimensions—material, social, and personal. It also surely involves beneficial demand that builds from and into individuals’ and communities’ strengths, skills, and excellence.

But Adam and Eve sinned, so we all live with the thorns and thistles; pain in childbearing; and the social, personal, and material toil and trouble of work. The fall explains why we experience demand and drudgery intertwined. Work is hard because it’s demanding; this was always God’s design. But work is also hard in other in ways because of the drudgery that entered with sin and rebellion. It can be difficult to discern one from the other. Yet we need such discernment to use any tech, including AI tools, responsibly.

Technology has long promised it can remove what’s difficult, freeing people up for leisure or other responsibilities. This promise radiates around AI tools, just as it has orbited other new tech in the past. My concern is that if we don’t take stock of the difference between demand and drudgery, we may accidentally use AI tools to remove difficulty that’s beneficial. Additionally, if we don’t have a schema like O’Donovan’s for considering multiple angles of work, we may not recognize that AI tools are appropriate in one arena but not in another.

However, with these concepts, we can find wisdom for this new AI age.

Appraising AI Tools in Work

It would be delightful if I could now provide you with a clean, simple flowchart for precisely when to use AI tools and when to forgo them. But you and I both know that’s not possible. For one, AI tools are changing quickly. But perhaps more importantly, each of us pursues different kinds of work. How could I tell a car mechanic or a lawyer precisely which tools to use and when?

Instead of a rigid list, we can work with concepts and categories that will allow, I hope, for many ways of thinking about AI tools and work. For now, let’s consider the demand versus drudgery dynamic in each of O’Donovan’s three dimensions of work.

Take the material aspect. Since we’re beings created from and for this earth, materiality makes proper demands on us. When we meet those demands, we’re formed. For example, writers notice the difference between brainstorming with pen and paper and brainstorming digitally. Engaging more of our senses opens us up more. We’re physical by nature, so experiencing and expressing our physicality intentionally is good for us too.

At the same time, I’m glad I didn’t have to write this essay out longhand and mail it to my editor. I may not have used an AI tool, but I’m using tech that cuts out much of the physical drudgery of my work and allows me to focus on other aspects. Where does your work’s materiality make good demands on you that would be a loss to circumvent with technology? On the other side, what physical drudgery might an AI tool help remove?

Work’s social dimension is the second place where we can consider difficulty through the demand-drudgery scheme. As Christians, we should be especially alert to valid demands others make on us. Working with people is often hard, especially because we’re beset by sin. We let others down (and they let us down) through work that’s late, sloppy, or incorrect. I worry we’ll use AI tools to cut out people in our work. Like in C. S. Lewis’s vision of hell in The Great Divorce, we drift toward utter isolation. Work is a major avenue for the “one anothers” of Scripture; we should keep a sober eye on when we might use tech to dodge them.

Work is a major avenue for the ‘one anothers’ of Scripture; we should keep a sober eye on when we might use tech to dodge them.

Nonetheless, we can pursue the valid use of AI tools to reduce drudgery in work’s social aspects. In my work, the need to calendar meetings is drudgery. Back-and-forth emails to find free appointment times drains my and my colleagues’ time and energy. Yes, this form of communication can be an opportunity to show one another love and grace; it has its own strange dignity in that way. But I’m not sure we’d lose much if a tool could find a time for a group of five to meet; our collegiality could be expressed elsewhere.

In your work, look for the social aspects. How can you protect the difficult demands that preserve or create social bonds, and where can you cut out drudgery?

Finally, there’s the personal dimension of work, its ability to develop us and help us express who God has made us to be. O’Donovan writes, “What we have to find is what we have been given to do, answering not only the question of what work will be given us, but also the question of how that work is to be our own work, overcoming the alienations of work and discovering our calling in it.”

That is, the difficulties of our work include demands proper to it. They force us to ask, “How will we ourselves approach the task?” Answering that how inescapably forms our character. Will we give in to laziness, deception, or complaining? These threats always circle us, and we’d be fools not to realize AI tools can be used by our flesh to shortcut this aspect of our work. Just as with the social element, tech’s formative power in the personal aspect must be seriously considered.

Still, we may find certain tech and AI tools can aid us in our work’s personal aspect, too, when they’re approached wisely. I’ve read about AI tools built to sharpen certain skills like coding or language acquisition. In this way, a tool might strengthen us to do the work we need to do well. Perhaps one question to consider is whether a tool does work for me, and also which part of my work. Handing tasks to a bot may cause me to miss out on important development, stunting my growth. It may even be a way of refusing how God wants me to grow.

Way of Wisdom

My favorite Scripture passage related to technology and work is Job 28. In poetic style, we see a vision of the sheer strength and intelligence of humanity’s ability to work the earth. Down, deep down we go into the earth’s dark places. We have abilities and purposes no other creature does. We can bring the hidden thing out into light: gold, silver, ore, sapphire. We use our tools and find treasures.

Yet there are certain valuable things our tech can never find. Job asks,

But where shall wisdom be found?
And where is the place of understanding?
Man does not know its worth,
and it is not found in the land of the living. (vv. 12–13)

So begins the poem’s second half. For all our technical prowess, for all the ways we’re endowed by God to do great things, we are in other ways truly weak and lost. Work is a great and good gift. It was part of the world before sin entered, and it’s dignified by God’s own working. But let’s be watchful and admit our lack of wisdom.

AI tools can potentially take us many places. But we need to ask and answer which places we should rightly go. God is faithful to guide us as individuals and communities, so we must be faithful to seek him.

From where, then, does wisdom come? . . .
God understands the way to it,
and he knows its place. . . .
And he said to man,
“Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom,
and to turn away from evil is understanding.” (vv. 20, 23, 28)

This is surprising because, despite the diversity of interpretative approaches, the fourfold sense provided the dominant framework through which many interpreted Scripture. The four senses have historically been described as the literal, allegorical (Christological), tropological (moral), and anagogical (eschatological) senses.

Yet the fourfold sense remains misunderstood. As one author observes, many modern readers assume that allegorical interpretation has already been “tried, convicted, sentenced, and hanged.” For many evangelicals, the very mention of allegory raises concerns about subjective readings untethered from the biblical text.

Some interpreters employed allegorical readings in unhelpful ways. But the best practitioners of the fourfold sense were far more disciplined than modern caricatures suggest. Let’s consider several misconceptions that continue to cloud our understanding of how early interpreters employed the fourfold sense.

Misconception #1: The Four Senses Reject the Grammatical-Historical Sense

The best iterations of the four senses in no way reject the grammatical-historical sense; they affirm it.

The literal sense refers to the most natural sense of the words in their grammatical and historical context, which will be discovered by sound exegesis. A proper understanding of the fourfold sense views the literal sense as the key to interpretation.

The grammatical-historical sense is not only the foundation and bedrock for the rest of the senses, but all the other senses are found in the literal sense. Therefore, the literal sense is primary. The best of the premodern tradition affirmed this, including the reformers.

The best iterations of the four senses in no way reject the grammatical-historical sense; they affirm it.

This means we can only read spiritually if we read literally first. If we neglect the literal sense and simply adhere to a spiritual reading, we allegorize the text. If we go straight to the tropological sense, we moralize the text. And if we beeline to the anagogical sense, we futurize the text. All these mistakes occur in interpretation and preaching frequently, but the four senses begin with affirming the grammatical-historical sense.

Misconception #2: The Four Senses Are Four Meanings

Many assume that the fourfold sense teaches that every text has four separate meanings, as if interpreters can choose whichever meaning we prefer. However, historically, the best advocates of the four senses argued that the spiritual senses must be rigorously tied to the literal sense and shouldn’t be overused.

The four senses assert there is one meaning but multiple dimensions of significance as redemptive history unfolds. In this way, the four senses are a theology of history stating that God is acting in time and unfolding the significance of each text through progressive revelation.

In this way, the four senses do not lead to subjectivism or an affirmation of multiple meanings. The spiritual senses extend rather than efface the literal sense; they eschatologize rather than erase the literal sense.

Misconception #3: The Four Senses Were Condemned by the Reformers

Many argue that the reformers condemned the four senses, but this is historically overstated. The reformers strongly criticized uncontrolled allegory, particularly when spiritual interpretations eclipsed the literal sense. Yet many reformers continued to employ Christological, moral, and eschatological readings.

Martin Luther, John Calvin, Martin Bucer, Peter Vermigli, and others frequently moved beyond a narrowly historical reading. What changed was not the conviction that Scripture speaks of Christ, forms believers, and points toward the future kingdom. What changed was the insistence that such readings be tethered more carefully to the literal sense.

Therefore, far more continuity exists between patristic and medieval interpreters and the reformers than has been acknowledged. When contemporary interpreters attest to a reformer emphasizing the literal sense, they must be careful not to project the modern historical-grammatical method back into Reformation hermeneutics. That is anachronistic, but scholars continually make this mistake.

The objection that the four senses is not a “Reformation” way of reading simply does not hold up against the weight of evidence. The reformers undoubtedly chastised excessive allegorizing, but they also employed it in their own readings.

Misconception #4: The Four Senses Are Arbitrary

Probably the biggest hang-up with the four senses is the term “allegory” and its arbitrariness. Many modern readers hear “allegory” and think of fanciful interpretations disconnected from the text.

Certainly, some ancient and medieval interpreters engaged in speculative readings. But the strongest practitioners were attempting to read Scripture according to its place in the unified economy of salvation. For example, seeing the Passover lamb as pointing to Christ is not arbitrary; it is a connection already made within the New Testament itself.

Far more continuity exists between patristic and medieval interpreters and the reformers than has been acknowledged.

Classical allegory has been equated with reading texts for meaning “other” than what the text says. However, “allegory” has had various meanings throughout history, and the term was not standardized in Paul’s day. To reject allegory wholesale is to reject Paul’s labeling of his own interpretive practices (Gal. 4:24).

There are good and bad forms of spiritual readings. We need to carefully determine what is warranted and what is not. Not all allegory is bad, nor are all forms of allegory good. We certainly need categories to distinguish the two.

Misconceptions still abound about the four senses of Scripture. This is not an attempt to idolize ancient hermeneutics nor assume there was a “golden age” of reading in church history. Early interpreters made many mistakes, just as we do. But as C. S. Lewis reminds us, they generally didn’t make the same mistakes as us since they inhabited a different time. This means we can certainly learn things from how they interpreted Scripture while rejecting others.

In the 20th century, the evangelical movement witnessed unprecedented globalization that reflects this end-times scene. While the evangelical movement originated in the West, sprouting from the Protestant Reformation and Great Awakenings, the 20th century confirmed that “good news” people are no longer a Western-dominant demographic. Evangelicals and those who share evangelical theological convictions are scattered across the globe.

Despite the excitement of evangelicalism’s expanding reach, American evangelicals are in a crisis of definition. Cable-news anchors and other culture shapers regularly use “evangelical” to reference a voting bloc more than than a Christian movement. Consequently, American Christians with historically evangelical commitments actively debate the term’s usefulness.

Conceding the use of “evangelical” to secular pollsters is deeply flawed by an American-centric gaze that forgoes meaningful connection with the global evangelical family. InterVarsity president Tom Lin explains,

Any evaluation of the word evangelical or evangelicalism must be done in the context of the global church. The decision of some American evangelicals to abandon the term is insensitive to our overseas sisters and brothers; it reflects the worst impulse of American exceptionalism and self-absorption. We have long since passed the era when American evangelicals may act independently. Even a cursory look at the global church provides great hope for the future of evangelicalism.

Despite the confusion, I contend that as American Christians grasp the beauty, wonder, and scale of the global evangelical movement, an abiding impulse to reclaim American evangelicalism’s theological and missiological heritage will emerge. This is more than prevailing over a populous evangelical narrative marked by cultural and political captivity; it is akin to being reunited with long-lost family members.

As American Christians grasp the beauty, wonder, and scale of the global evangelical movement, an abiding impulse to reclaim American evangelicalism’s heritage will emerge.

For many individualist-leaning Westerners, this unity may sound like hyperbole. But something is gloriously mysterious about doing everything in our power to unify ourselves with a body of believers that the shed blood of Christ has constituted.

Having quantified the challenge for contemporary American evangelicals, let’s consider an exegetical and historically grounded definition of Christianity, understand its prevalence in the global church, and appreciate why American evangelicals should clarify the term “evangelical” rather than jettisoning it.

Misunderstanding ‘Evangelicalism’

Americans reference various personal anecdotes for misunderstanding the evangelical movement, but historian Thomas S. Kidd notes three factors that warped our collective imagination.

First is the success of the evangelical movement. By the mid-20th century, many Americans grew up assuming they were evangelicals because, in many cases, the term seemed synonymous with “Protestant Christian” or even “American.” The implication is that you were born an evangelical, rather than being “born again” to become an evangelical. Kidd’s first factor lays the foundation for the radical confusion that mushroomed in the 21st century.

Second, Kidd recalls the political alignments of the 1970s and 1980s, which also contributed to confusion about evangelical identity. Since Ronald Reagan, self-identifying white evangelicals have often supported GOP candidates who learn evangelical lingo and promise Supreme Court appointments.

Lastly, Kidd cites the challenge of modern polling: Letting respondents self-identify as evangelical makes discerning the political behavior of confessional evangelicals nearly impossible. A recent flash point was the well-circulated (albeit debated) statistic that 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2016.

Mark Labberton, former president of Fuller Theological Seminary, notes,

The 2016 election may have been the occasion for this drama, but it isn’t the cause. For starters, it needs to be said that the battle afoot has little to do with theology proper. In part, it reveals that the word evangelical has morphed in common usage from being a reference to a set of primarily theological commitments into something akin to a passionately defended, theo-political brand. . . . In its current mode, evangelicalism contains an amalgam of theological views, partisan political debates, regional power blocks, populist visions, racial biases, and cultural anxieties, all mixed in an ethos of fear. No wonder it can be difficult to know whether one is still evangelical.

Kidd wonders, “Who are these rank-and-file Trump supporters who tell pollsters they are ‘evangelicals’? What do they believe? Do they attend church? Do their lives reflect a transforming experience of grace?” Kidd suggests these poll results point to a wholesale watering down and politicization of the term “evangelical.” This 81 percent statistic indicates that “evangelical” morphed into a sociological designation, away from its long-held theological and missiological roots.

This cocktail advanced in pop culture and among evangelical ranks is causing many confessionally evangelical Americans to render the word useless. Despite America’s confusion about the term “evangelical” and the impulse to set the language aside, there is more at stake than meets the eye.

Define and Identify Evangelicals

Contrary to the attention-grabbing rhetoric of 24-hour cable news stations and “hot takes” by social media influencers, identifying evangelicals has historical and theological grounding that is both globally relevant and also contextually meaningful.

Exegetically speaking, the word “evangel” means “good news.” This meaning is grounded in the Greek word euangelion, which New Testament writers regularly use to signify “glad tidings.” For example, it was “good news” that Jesus appeared on earth as the Son of God to accomplish God’s plan of salvation for needy humanity. Contemporary Bible translators often use the term “gospel” in place of the Old English word gōdspel, meaning of “good news” or “glad tidings.” In short, evangelicals are “good news” or “gospel” people.

David Bebbington identifies four primary qualities of this gospel people that have been widely affirmed as the marks of evangelical Christianity: conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible; and crucicentrism, a stress on Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Bebbington’s theologically and missiologically oriented definition describes the global evangelical ethos but lacks a mechanism to associate individuals or churches with the quadrilateral’s ideas.

Mark Noll admits to the complexities of discerning who to “count” as an evangelical. He and other historians acknowledge three overlapping constituencies that differ in their evangelical self-consciousness but emerge from a shared history and set of convictions.

Beginning with the easiest to quantify, there are intentional evangelicals, who deliberately identify themselves and their efforts with the label. The second group is much larger and is dubbed historically evangelical because they are affiliated with agencies, voluntary societies, and institutions that have traditionally quantified their efforts as evangelical. The final and largest contingent is the functionally evangelical because, while they may have loose connections with evangelical movements, they share historic evangelical beliefs and practices.

The functionally evangelical grouping raises an important question about the need for self-identification. When quantifying the global evangelical footprint, leading minds are divided on counting someone as an evangelical without his or her affirmation.

For example, Timothy Larsen objects to the practice of designating someone as an evangelical by not asserting a label on someone that they may resist. Larsen’s desire to uphold personal agency is laudable in light of the West’s historic tendency to impose labels on the Majority World, but others (including me) are interested in including such believers in the evangelical fold with nuanced annotation.

My inclination to carefully integrate functional evangelicals into the data pool is, in large part, an attempt to accurately understand and assess the behaviors and commitments of theologically and missiologically aligned believers. This effort is especially consequential for correcting confusion caused by self-identified “evangelicals” who don the label without assent to historic evangelical theological convictions.

Global Evangelicalism

As the 20th century began, it was appropriate to locate intentional and historic evangelicals almost exclusively in Western Europe and North America. But as Noll observes, “Today, the number of evangelicals in each of Africa, Latin America and Asia exceeds the total in Europe and North America combined.” Philip Jenkins provides some statistical clarity for this colossal shift in the past millennium:

The figures are startling. Between 1900 and 2000, the number of Christians in Africa grew from 10 million to over 360 million, from 10 percent of the population to 46 percent. If that is not, quantitatively, the largest religious change in human history in such a short period, I am at a loss to think of a rival.

In more recent decades, the number of evangelicals in the world has increased from 112 million in 1970 to 386 million in 2018—and the lion’s share has been outside the West.

In more recent decades, the number of evangelicals in the world has increased from 112 million in 1970 to 386 million in 2018—and the lion’s share has been outside the West.

As Jenkins reflects on the global state of Christianity at the onset of the 21st century, he insists, “The most vibrant centers of Christian growth are still in Africa itself, but also around the Pacific Rim, the Christian Arc. Already today, Africans and Asians represent some 30 percent of all Christians, and the proportion will rise steadily.”

The state of global evangelicalism is an increasingly melanin-rich movement as 77 percent of all evangelicals lived in the Global South in 2018—up from 7.8 percent in 1900. It’s also important to note that 9 of the 10 countries with the largest evangelical populations in 2018 were in the Global South. The United States is the outlier as the only country listed in the Global North in the top 10.

At least before COVID-19 and recent crackdowns, Jenkins predicted that the richest Christian harvest might be found in China in the immediate future. While China is north of the equator, it continues the explosive growth of evangelicalism beyond the West. Evangelicalism’s spread and influence resulted in a network with tentacles reaching around the globe. Only the Roman Catholic Church rivals evangelicalism as a global Christian religious movement.

The global evangelical landscape is marked by institutions and organizations bearing the name. Larsen humbly affirms that while the word “evangelical” undoubtedly doesn’t mean the same thing in each diverse location, the members of these organizations are indeed part of a cross-pollinating international movement. They include the Association of Evangelical Theological Education in Latin America, the African Journal of Evangelical Theology, the Journal of Asian Evangelical Theology, and The National Association of Evangelicals in America, among many others.

Global evangelicals are full partners in world mission. Believers from the Majority World lead organizations that define the movement, such as the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, Overseas Missionary Fellowship International (formerly called the China Inland Mission), Navigators, InterVarsity, and the World Evangelical Alliance.

Majority World evangelical theologians and biblical scholars are being developed through ministry partnerships, including the Langham Partnership scholars program and Sola Media’s Theo Global initiative. As Tom Lin has pointed out, global evangelicals are no longer exclusively dependent on Western seminaries for degrees and publishers for translated books. Theological education and academic texts are written by believers in their mother tongue for the benefit of all God’s people.

The question remains: Will American evangelicals dissociate from this movement that’s nothing short of an act of God? Acquiescing to the American confusion over the term and rejecting the term might demonstrate that Christians in the United States haven’t given sufficient ear to our global brothers and sisters to increase our affections and dependence on them for our own spiritual growth and flourishing.

The question remains: Will American evangelicals dissociate from this movement that’s nothing short of an act of God?

Brian Stiller of the World Evangelical Alliance passionately argues there’s a more insidious reason that American Christians opt out of using “evangelical” as a self-designation: Americans believe we are the center of the Christian world. To impose current first-world debates on hundreds of millions of Christians worldwide would be worse than a mistake; it would be a new form of first-world intellectual colonialism.

(Re)join the Family

American evangelicals have our work cut out for us. We have the joyous task of clarifying a theologically and missiologically focused expression of evangelical Christianity in our country. Then we will have the honor of growing in knowledge of, understanding of, and love for our global brothers and sisters.

We can also explore how to meaningfully participate in the global evangelical movement without subconsciously (or consciously) occupying the prominent seat. This kind of family participation will likely reframe our use of “evangelical” vis-à-vis the North American confusion over the term.

Intentionally returning to the global evangelical family will cause American Christians—whose self-perception is often devoid of connection to Christianity’s global witness—to embody a renewed passion for the good news to unify God’s people, while sanctifying each of us with the unique joys and pressures in our corner of the globe. This posture of global participation is a seedbed capable of sparking generations of missiological momentum until our King returns.

Combine the best of Google and YouTube, tailored to my specific needs and situations from changing windshield wipers to fixing sump pumps, and that’s how I’ve used AI so far. I know I’m not even scratching the surface of what agentic AI can and will eventually do. I’ve seen friends spin up websites it would have taken years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to build just five years ago.

But do you know the most common use? It’s not one I’ve employed myself. And it’s not one I’d recommend. But according to Harvard Business Review, it’s remained perched on the top from 2025 to 2026 even as other common uses have wildly fluctuated up and down the charts.

It’s therapy and companionship.

If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering about how AI chatbots could be the reasons companies like OpenAI have been valued at $852 billion. Or why AI has become the widely and quickly adopted new technology in human history. Isn’t AI supposed to revolutionize business? Upend every profession and transform entire economies?

Perhaps.

But just look at the chart. The trend is clear. It looks like many others have been turning to AI for help in fixing their toilets. (Claude was wrong in my situation, by the way.) More commonly, AI is less of a computer interface and more of a, well, human face. A friend with whom to share jokes and silly pictures. An imaginative storyteller. A trusty counselor to assess your new relationship. A medium who can predict your future. And a wise confidant who promises not to lead you astray (or tell you what you don’t want to hear).

Given the wild predictions about AI’s unparalleled value, how can these cases be the most common ways we employ the technology? Is your daily horoscope worth $852 billion?

Now, what if I told you this is exactly what the builders of AI expected us to do?

Those questions help drive our new book, The AI Apocalypse: A Survival Guide for Humanity, which I edited along with Skyler Flowers and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. I spoke on my introduction from the book at a recent TGC regional chapter meeting in Nashville.

Thank you to TGC Nashville and Edgefield Church for hosting and recording this podcast in front of a lively and engaged audience. You could have heard a pin drop when I talked to these (mostly) pastors about why AI will write their next sermon. Now is the time to work through the ethical implications together and decide where to draw the line.

In This Episode

00:00 – AI’s unexpected role as a human companion and counselor

07:21 – AI, love, and the lessons from Her

13:37 – Role of AI in defining human purpose

20:17 – AI’s effects on literacy and human creativity

28:51 – Irreplaceable human touch in preaching amid AI advancements

38:39 – Navigating AI ethics in church, family, and education

40:41 – AI’s effects on society and economy

Resources Mentioned:

• The AI Apocalypse edited by Collin Hansen
• Empire of AI by Karen Hao
• The Odyssey by Homer
• Social Acceleration by Hartmut Rosa
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics
• The Gospel Coalition
• Recorded (podcast by The Gospel Coalition)

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In No Contact: How a Seductive Ideology Broke Families and Friendships and How We Can Repair Them, Noelle Mering, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, analyzes the rising trend of intentionally severed families and the consequences of this separation. She writes, “The pain is staggering—and there’s no closure. When someone dies . . . it’s over, you grieve, and eventually you move forward. But this isn’t like that” (214). It’s a wound that never really heals.

When young adults break off contact with their families, it often imposes a huge emotional toll on the basis of seemingly minor infractions. One man cut his mother off because he suspected she voted for the wrong candidate. Another woman stopped communicating with her father because he was insufficiently enthusiastic about her sister’s gender transition. These testimonies are the best and the worst part of the book—illuminating, heart-rending, and appalling all at once.

Christians need to understand what the “no contact” movement is, where it came from, and how we can resist it.

‘No Contact’ Wildfire

According to Mering, the “no contact” movement is spreading like a wildfire among young adults. It’s the confluence of many factors, including the rise of therapy culture, the dominance of expressive individualism, and the intentional deconstruction of the family.

Historically, “trauma” referred to serious psychological injury resulting from “extraordinary, catastrophic events like combat or surviving a train crash.” People now use the term to describe the discomfort experienced due to “political differences or unmet emotional needs” (18–19). Unpleasant but normal childhood experiences are now being labeled “trauma” and used to justify disowning parents.

Though claims of trauma may seem exaggerated, they’re deemed indisputable because they’re validated as a person’s lived experience. “No contact” gurus like Patrick Teahan assure children that their instincts and impressions are correct and unchallengeable. If parents believe that the adult child is being “wrongfully influenced by a therapist [or] by TikTok,” they’re merely demonstrating their own toxicity. Teahan even suggests that siblings who don’t “fully support” your “no contact” decision may need to be cut off as well (22). This is expressive individualism on steroids.

The cultural deconstruction of the family also plays a role in people’s willingness to sever connections. The family isn’t seen as a source of identity, growth, and stability but as a site of constraint, conformity, and oppression. Amid a culture seeking unbridled autonomy and individual self-expression, the family is a scandalous affront to one’s absolute sovereignty.

Bigger Picture

Mering generally reports on situations involving left-leaning children with parents who are right of center and religious. She acknowledges that this skew could be the result of selection bias and repeatedly warns that conservatives are susceptible to some of the same pathologies.

Amid a culture seeking unbridled autonomy and individual self-expression, the family is a scandalous affront to one’s absolute sovereignty.

However, a 2021 Cato Institute survey found that “strong liberals” were almost twice as likely to “block/unfriend” and more than twice as likely to report someone over a social media post than “strong conservatives.” Likewise, a 2024 PRRI survey found that 23 percent of Democrats versus 5 percent of Republicans reported they would spend “less time with certain family members over their political views.” It tends to be political progressives who separate themselves from family members who don’t agree.

This asymmetry makes sense given how the underlying ideas of the “no contact” movement are drawn from the leftist critical tradition of Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and Wilhelm Reich. From this perspective, the natural family is “a product of capitalist, patriarchal, and colonial systems that reinforce inequality and oppression” (82). Parents are an oppressor class who impose their values and norms on children.

Crucially, Mering recognizes that many contemporary political differences are a product of divergent worldviews: “In the past, political disputes were usually arguments about how best to achieve a shared goal. . . . Today, [disputes] are not merely about means but about ends—dealing with questions that go directly to the heart of what it means to be human” (14). Consequently, prevention is key. Christian parents must train their children to recognize and reject ideologies fundamentally incompatible with the Bible’s vision of human identity, justice, and sin.

Douse the Flames

Apart from worldview considerations, parents can strengthen their relationship with their children in other ways. Mering urges families to “create a storehouse of positive memories,” to “parent for the world [the] children live in, not the one [the parents] grew up in,” to beware social media, and to listen to understand rather than to critique (229).

Christian parents must train their children to recognize and reject ideologies fundamentally incompatible with the Bible’s vision of human identity, justice, and sin.

These are wise suggestions, but they raise an important question: What if some political commitments really do reflect on your character? We already recognize this in obvious cases. A neighbor who sincerely supports Nazism because he believes it’s good has revealed something significant about himself. Politics and morality can’t be kept in separate, hermetically sealed boxes when political injustices like slavery, abortion, or genital mutilation are in play.

Instead of naively insisting that our political views don’t reflect on our character, the Bible suggests a different approach, reflected in Mering’s paraphrase of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s famous observation: “The line between good and evil doesn’t run along tribal or political divisions but exists in the heart of every person” (234). The very moral law that rightly undergirds our politics as Christians also condemns us as lawbreakers. The person who gets politics right and the person who gets politics wrong are both sinners who stand in need of the gospel.

This recognition should produce a profound gentleness and humility, both in our private relationships and in the public square. Our common need for God’s grace is what allows us to love those with whom we disagree on important issues. In No Contact, Mering reminds us that our hope isn’t in getting our parenting right but in the renewal of all things through the cross and resurrection.

“Well,” I began. “My husband and I have been through a lot in the last year or two. We’re settling into our first year of marriage and recovering from some old hurts.”

A quizzical look met my words, so I paused, waited. One of the ladies arched an eyebrow. “But you’re too young to know suffering.”

Her friend grinned. “Yeah—brace yourself.”

The dark of the room swaddled sudden tears. I swallowed hard and urged them to share next as the words rang in my head, hovering on the sound waves of the keyboard chords, caught in the light flickering from the jumbotrons.

But you’re too young to know suffering. Brace yourself.

Gen Z Knows Suffering

They meant no ill will. There’s a grain of truth in their words. However, they didn’t know my story.

They didn’t know that my husband and I spent our engagement in hospital rooms across the country, waiting with pinched and pale faces for news from yet another doctor. They didn’t know the details of the chronic, life-threatening illness that resulted in emergency, lifesaving surgery two months before our original wedding date. They didn’t know about the miscarriages. They didn’t know about the bullying, the breakups, the deaths in the family.

Being young doesn’t preclude us from suffering. Gen Z is old enough to experience not merely online evils but real-life suffering common to the human experience. We’re old enough to have marital struggles. We’re old enough to lose children. We’re old enough to get laid off or struggle to find work. We’re old enough to have family members die of old age.

We suffer like everyone else. But perhaps what’s different for Gen Z is our default response. Bad habits formed during what sociologist Jonathan Haidt would call “the great rewiring of childhood” may affect how we process and heal.

We suffer like everyone else. But perhaps what’s different for Gen Z is our default response.

This was true for me. Instead of pressing into community, I isolated. Instead of reading the Word, I scrolled Instagram to distract myself. Instead of praying, I consulted Google for hours, searching for the answers to questions far beyond its ability to explain: Why the illness? Why the miscarriage? Why us? Why now? Why, God?

Raised in a world where information is as close as the scroll and tap of your thumb, the silence was loud, the grief suffocating, the waiting excruciating. But I eventually found hope in Jesus, the suffering Savior. He is the answer for the questions that plague suffering Gen Z.

Man of Sorrows

As my husband and I navigated suffering on multiple fronts, friends and family prayed for us, and slowly, slowly, I cracked the Word open. A friend suggested I study Job. But as I read the story, God seemed cruel. I slammed the Word shut again—and then repented. This began a cycle that repeated longer than I would like to admit. But months later, something finally clicked.

God is not cruel.

I didn’t see it at first in Job’s story. I saw it tucked in a prophecy, dense and star-studded and rich. Isaiah is speaking to God’s grieving people about a coming Messiah when he asks,

Who has believed what he has heard from us?
And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? . . .
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows. (Isa. 53:1–4)

This man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, was no mere man. No—he was whom Adam, Job, Abraham, Moses, David, and Isaiah all pointed to: the Savior of the world. The Savior who bears our griefs and carries our sorrows, regardless of our age.

Jesus demonstrates God’s love for us, that when I was still a sinner, still wrestling and doubting and wondering, he died for me. Jesus went through pain and suffering of the worst possible sort for me, for us. Something clicked. Because of Jesus, I could know: God is not cruel.

So I went back to Job. At the end of his questioning, Job is granted an audience with God. God doesn’t explain Job’s sorrow or pull back the curtain of heaven and retell the throne-room conversation with Satan. Instead, he gives Job a greater glimpse of his own power, authority, and perfection. As a result, Job repents in dust and ashes, having uttered things “too wonderful” for him to understand (42:3). Job didn’t need the answer to his “Why, God?” He needed to know more about who God is.

The same is true for us, Gen Z. We don’t need God to answer all our anxious whys and what ifs. We need to see him more clearly for who he is.

Jesus Is the Answer

Because of Christ—Immanuel, God with us—Christians today have something Job didn’t have: assurance that God is present. We know we follow a Lord who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We know that he promises us that one day, he’ll wipe every tear from our eyes, and sorrow and death will be no more. We know, too, that despite the bad habits of Gen Z still threatening to suck us in, we have something greater: a suffering Savior for young sufferers too.

I eventually found hope in Jesus, the suffering Savior. He is the answer for the questions that plague suffering Gen Z.

Jesus is the answer to anxiety. He calls all who are weary and heavy-laden to come and find rest in him (Matt. 11:28). He calls us to cast all our anxieties on him, because he cares for us (1 Pet. 5:7). He tells us not to worry about what we’ll eat or wear or do; our Father in heaven knows we need all these and more (Matt. 6:31–32).

Jesus is the answer to isolation. He invites us to commune with him. In Jesus’s death on the cross, the veil was torn. Christians now have full access to the throne room of grace, where we can approach boldly in our time of need (Heb. 4:16). Because of Jesus, we can enter as adopted sons and daughters and share in the family he leaves us on earth: his body and Bride, the church.

Jesus is the answer to distraction. He calls us to fix our minds on him (Heb. 12:2), to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17), to let our requests be made known to God (Phil. 4:6)—not Google or Reddit or X or Instagram.

Jesus is the answer to false hopes. He tells us he’s the way, the truth, the life: Nothing else can satisfy what we’re searching so desperately for (John 14:6).

Jesus is the Rock of Ages. I think of the old hymn “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me.” It begs a safety we all crave when sorrow strikes: “Let me hide myself in thee.” Because of who Jesus is and what he has done, we can run and hide in him. We can rest in the Father’s goodness, made incarnate in the life and death of his Son. We can cling to the Rock of Ages, knowing that even if our grip falters, his right hand upholds us forever (Ps. 63:8).

Gen Z, let’s heed Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 4:12: “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example”—even in how you suffer—“in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” May we look to Christ, our suffering Savior, for the answers we seek. He understands our sorrow, our anxiety, and our grief.

How should a pastor decide what to preach next, and how far ahead should he plan?

Matt Smethurst and Ligon Duncan discuss the pastoral wisdom behind planning a preaching calendar, from choosing books of the Bible and balancing the Old and New Testaments to determining the length and pace of a sermon series. They explain why planning ahead doesn’t quench the Spirit, how expositional preaching protects pastors from their hobbyhorses, and why the goal isn’t simply filling Sundays with sermons but faithfully feeding God’s people over time.

Resources Mentioned:

• Prepare Your People for Sunday (The Everyday Pastor, ep. 16)
• When Pain Is Real and God Seems Silent by Ligon Duncan
• The Treasury of David by C. H. Spurgeon
• The Message of the Old Testament by Mark Dever
• The Message of the New Testament by Mark Dever

If you’re ready to go deeper, Southern Seminary’s PhD program is where that begins. Visit sbts.edu/phd to learn more.

Some employers wish they had that same button. From 2021 to 2024, the number of applications per hire tripled.

“Candidates are using generative AI tools to build résumés that are customized to each job for which they are applying,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “They then can fire off résumés in rapid succession or have bots do so for them. They are also relying on AI to prepare for interviews, which is leading to a sameness among applicants.”

Hiring managers are finding 70 to 80 percent of applications submitted through job boards are from unqualified applicants.

“When we post a position, we usually get between 4 and 10 resumes,” said Eileen Ruter, executive director of human resources at Dordt University. “Recently we posted a data analyst position, and we had hundreds of applications from all over the world. We noticed these individuals weren’t even real people. Something within the job posting was prompting auto-generating resumes.”

Her team was able to narrow the field by asking three questions: Are you eligible to work in the United States? If so, do you require sponsorship? And do you agree with our statement of faith?

They ended up with 10 viable résumés—about the same number they would have pre-AI.

Still, Eileen and Dordt’s director of talent acquisition, Kyle Achterhoff, aren’t overly worried about AI.

“It just adds another level of discernment in the hiring process,” Kyle said.

The Gospel Coalition asked them how they spot AI, whether AI use is automatically disqualifying, and how they guard against being misled.

How do you know when something seems off with a résumé or a candidate?

Kyle: Honestly, if the statement of faith uses too much Dordt language—it’s probably because they used technology to pull from Dordt’s website. It’s a red flag if they aren’t speaking from their experience or if they’re using the same ideas over and over. That’s a little fishy.

How concerned are you when someone uses AI on their résumé, cover letter, or statement of faith?

Eileen: It depends on the job. For example, if we were looking for someone to do public relations, and they wrote their résumé and statement through AI, that would concern me. If we were hiring someone to be a custodian, I would be less concerned.

I do want to hear directly from the person, as honestly as possible. We don’t want them to lean on AI so much that we could just use AI ourselves to do the job. We aren’t hiring bots. We’re hiring people from their hearts and skills and abilities.

But if a cover letter or statement of faith can get to the heart of who a person is and explain the skill set they have to offer, then I don’t mind if someone wants to use AI as a tool to edit their materials. That can show me they’re comfortable with a tool I know is going to be prevalent in the coming years. We do the same thing, using AI to help us improve our job descriptions before we post them.

That said, if I think AI played a part in someone’s materials, I’m going to ask questions in the interview to see: Can they think critically? Are they able to articulate things well? In some ways, AI is really an indicator for us for what we need to dig deeper into.

Sometimes it’s hard to detect AI. Do you ever worry an applicant is going to mislead you?

Kyle: Part of what allows us to be on guard is the number of people we have looking at each application. We have a search team for every position. We start by thinking together about what we’re looking for and the most important aspects of the role. That helps the hiring manager to understand the process and gets everyone moving in the same direction.

I do want to hear directly from the person, as honestly as possible.

Then, the search team gets together to talk over the résumé. For example, we recently had a statement of faith that looked like it had too many AI-generated Dordt words in it. I asked, “What about their other qualifications? What else about them would interest you?” Since there wasn’t a lot, we could eliminate that person.

Of course, there can be other red flags, often when someone is talking about their work history. Maybe the dates of their past jobs are overlapping. Or they say they handled a situation one way, but that doesn’t line up with how they answered another question. You wonder, Are you just telling me what you think I want to hear?

Good point, because I imagine everyone you talk to would really like you to hire them. In that situation, they’re all trying to say what you want to hear.

Eileen: Kyle really is good at picking up on potential problems—discrepancies in dates or self-descriptions—and then saying to the search team, “Did you notice this?”

And then they can dig into that and decide how concerning it is or not. I think we have enough firewalls set up in the hiring process—especially for higher-level positions, with multiple interviews and bringing people to campus—that we feel good we’re catching most issues.

Kyle: It helps to have a lot of different eyes on it. And we always ask the candidates about their faith and their church life. So even if they used AI to write their statement, if they can’t answer it very well, they’re probably not going to get the job.

It seems like AI has made your job more complicated.

Kyle: I am always asking the Lord for discernment, and not just about AI. I also ask him to raise up those that I might not be paying attention to, but maybe to lower those I might be overly excited about.

Eileen: Prayer is a huge part of our interview process too. We start every interview, and most of our search-team meetings, with prayer.

Prayer is a huge part of our interview process.

You have to trust the sovereignty of God. I’ve had so many times in my career where I feel like God has led me to the perfect applicant and the person has said no. And I’ve also had times where I’ve hired a person I know the Lord really led us to, and over time, that person became a poorer and poorer fit for the role, often because of how they were being led.

Things might not end the way that we wanted it to, but we trust that the Lord’s hand is in it all and he’ll work it for good. We just need to keep listening.

Not only was the book banned and burned when it was smuggled into England from Germany, where Tyndale was living a fugitive life, but before that, when the first printing had reached Matthew 22, the print shop in Cologne was raided by Catholic sympathizers. Tyndale barely escaped with his unpublished manuscript in hand.

Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament from the original Greek became the foundation of all English Bible translation until the middle of the 20th century (when dynamic equivalence introduced an alternative to Tyndale’s philosophy of translation). When Tyndale’s smuggled book infiltrated English society, people were converted and the doctrines of the Reformation were established.

But Tyndale also effected a revolution in the English language. The common saying “no Tyndale, no Shakespeare” has become a byword among scholars of the English language. The flowering of English at the end of the 16th century would have been impossible without the linguistic wheels that Tyndale set in motion at the beginning of the century.

Less acknowledged is how much Tyndale’s mastery of English resulted from his work translating the Bible. It’s impossible to imagine anglophone culture today without Tyndale and his monumental translation project. His story evidences another example of the Bible transforming our world.

Rapidly Evolving Language

In the preface to his 1526 New Testament, Tyndale apologized for “the rudeness of the work” being offered to the public. He even expressed the hope that his translation would not “offend” his readers.

But many of the deficiencies about which Tyndale worried weren’t his fault. He was acknowledging that the English language was in transition from Middle English to Modern English. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation were chaotic rather than standardized. Tyndale’s own name was spelled four different ways.

Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament from the original Greek became the foundation of all English Bible translation until the middle of the 20th century.

To catch the flavor of how deficient the English language was at the beginning of Tyndale’s century, all we need to do is dip into his prologue again. He wrote, “In time to come (if God have appointed us thereunto) we will give it his full shape, and put out, if ought be added superfluously, and add to, if ought be overseen through negligence.” Those lines are hard to comprehend, even when the spelling is modernized.

Just 35 years later, in a similar document, the preface to the Puritans’ Geneva translation of the Bible praised Scripture in flowing and accomplished prose. For example, it explains that the Bible is “the light to our paths, the key of the kingdom of heaven, our comfort in affliction, our shield and sword against Satan, the school of all wisdom, . . . the only food and nourishment of our souls.” The difference in the English language is striking.

That’s not because the Geneva Bible translators were more accomplished linguists than Tyndale was. In fact, Tyndale’s language skills were unmatched. In addition to his native English, he spoke and wrote in many languages—Latin, Hebrew, Greek, German, Italian, Spanish, and French. One of Tyndale’s contemporaries claimed that “whichever he spoke, you would suppose it his native tongue.”

Instead, the fluency of the Geneva preface is the result of the linguistic revolution that began with Tyndale’s New Testament. Renaissance-era historian John Strype provides a vivid picture of the popularity of Tyndale’s Bible and indirectly shows the means by which Tyndale managed to transform the language of a whole nation:

It was wonderful to see with what joy this Book of God was received . . . all England over, among all the . . . common People; and with what greediness God’s Word was read, and what resort to Places where the reading of it was. Every body that could, bought the Book. . . . And even little Boys flocked among the rest to hear Portions of the Holy Scripture read. (emphasis original)

Tyndale’s translation of the Bible remade the English language even as it was instrumental in making people new.

Work in Progress

Yet the work of translation also made Tyndale who he was. His fluency with the emerging language known as Modern English was unleashed as he translated the Bible. Thankfully, he saved his best efforts for Scripture itself.

If we compare Tyndale’s style in his religious treatises with his translation of the Bible, it’s the difference between night and day. Here is a specimen of Tyndale’s English prose outside his translation of the Bible, taken from the preface to his 1526 translation of the New Testament: “Them that are learned christianly I beseech, forasmuch as I am sure, and my conscience beareth me record, that of a pure intent, singly and faithfully, I have interpreted it.”

By contrast, when we turn to Tyndale’s New Testament, we read this: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:3–5). And this: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, and a peculiar people, that ye should show the virtues of him that called you out of darkness into this marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9).

Tyndale himself hinted that the Bible produced his triumphs of English when he wrote that “the manner of speaking” in the original texts of the Bible is so compatible with English that “in a thousand places you need only translate it into English, word for word” to achieve “grace and sweetness, . . . sense and pure understanding.”

Better than Shakespeare

The familiar motto “no Tyndale, no Shakespeare” has made Tyndale seem to be a forerunner and expediter only. This distorts the facts. Shakespeare added to Tyndale’s contribution, but he didn’t replace it. By way of parallel, the King James New Testament didn’t only benefit from Tyndale’s mastery of translation and the English language—it retained over 80 percent of the wording of Tyndale’s New Testament.

Tyndale’s translation of the Bible remade the English language even as it was instrumental in making people new.

Similarly, while Shakespeare added 1,700 new words to the English language, so Tyndale added a large number as well. He is cited thousands of times in the Oxford English Dictionary as one of the earliest uses of a word or phrase. It’s Tyndale who gave us the words “intercession,” “beautiful,” and “brokenhearted.” In our storehouse of familiar sayings today, we’re more likely to be quoting from Tyndale than from Shakespeare. Examples are “the signs of the times,” “a law unto themselves,” and “the salt of the earth.”

With both Tyndale and Shakespeare, the greatness of the words isn’t secondary but essential. The brilliance of the words launches the greatness of the content. I’m reminded of a television interview of a Shakespearean actress who said, “You need more than a role to play—you need the words.” The words of Shakespeare are words of truth and beauty, and so are the words of Tyndale’s New Testament being commemorated during this anniversary year. But the words of Tyndale’s New Testament are more than true and beautiful; they’re the words of eternal life.

John Piper was thrilled.

“I grew up reading the King James Version,” he said. “As a sophomore at Wheaton in 1965, I bought an RSV [Revised Standard Version], and I used that for memorization and Bible reading for the next 30 years. And I would have kept using it, except it went out of print.”

Around that time, in the mid-1990s, the King James Version (KJV) was one of the best-selling translations in the United States.

But Piper, then the pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, knew he couldn’t put KJVs in the pews.

“The archaic words made it really difficult for families and churches to use,” he said. “For example, the word ‘conversation’ meant ‘lifestyle,’ as in ‘let your conversation be above reproach.’ But that didn’t mean your words—it meant your manner of life. Things like that were all over in the King James Version.”

The best-selling New International Version (NIV) was easier to read, partly because it sometimes paraphrased the original text. But Piper thought it didn’t stay close enough to the original wording. It was also—like the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)—beginning to lean into gender-neutral language. While in some cases that change was accurate, in others it added to or obscured the original intent, conservative theologians found.

In October 2001, in a market dominated by the KJV and NIV, Crossway published the first editions of the ESV Bible, an update to the RSV.

Odds were that it would remain, like most other translations, on the fringe of Bible readership.

However, by 2008, the ESV was beginning to gain traction with the successful release of the ESV Study Bible, which has sold more than 2.6 million copies since its initial release. As a result, the ESV was quickly becoming the preferred translation of many in the Reformed resurgence, but its reach was much wider than that.

By 2014, the ESV was the fifth best-selling Bible translation; by 2015, it was the fourth; in 2022, it was the second. Last year, amid booming Bible sales in the United States and the United Kingdom, the ESV was the most popular version sold in the United Kingdom.

Overall, more than 370 million copies of the ESV have been distributed, with most copies given away through Crossway and ministry partners, said Crossway chief publishing officer Don Jones. By God’s grace, the ESV Study Bible has now been translated into 10 languages and is in process with another 17 languages.

The Gospel Coalition asked Piper about why he likes the ESV, how many copies he has, and what Bible translation he uses for his personal devotions.

What’s your favorite thing about the ESV translation?

The same thing I liked about the RSV—it steers a middle course between the overly wooden and archaic language of the KJV and the paraphrasing of the NIV.

The ESV is an update of the RSV, which goes back to the New American Standard, which goes back to the King James, which goes back to Tyndale. So the cadences and much of the flow of grammar in the ESV is preserving the King James Version.

But it also remedies some of the defects of the KJV, which makes the translation remarkably useful across a whole range of uses, like Bible memory, children’s ministry, small group studies, and public reading of Scripture. It’s very hard to use an awkward translation in public worship with 300 people trying to stay together as they read.

The ESV is also good for preaching and serious study, which was a huge reason I wanted a more literal translation. If you’ve got a looser translation, then either the pastor is regularly correcting the translation to make the original clear (which is discouraging for the congregation), or, if your version is not precise, you tend not to preach precisely. I think we’re awash in imprecise preaching that doesn’t get detailed and specific enough to show the people from the words how you got the meaning you got.

It’s not easy for a translation to meet all of those needs that a church has. The ESV wins my support because, while you’ve got trade-offs and compromises for sure, it’s the best resource to address all those needs.

Is this the version you use for your own personal devotions or for preaching?

If I’m not reading the Greek or the Hebrew, I’m reading the ESV.

I don’t like to read books electronically, because I want to mark them up. I’m a real marker, so I default toward print books when I am just sitting and reading a book.

But for Bible reading, I’ve got three screens in front of me. The one on the right is an open Logos with ESV on one side and the Greek or the Hebrew on the other. It switches automatically when you go back and forth between the Old and New Testament. That’s my default screen all the time. That’s always open.

And then for my private devotions, I use an iPad. I like to read my devotions in the Greek. And I don’t know Greek perfectly, so I’m always tapping on the word and seeing what the meaning is. And that’s immediate.

Goodness gracious, when I think about the time that God has saved for us! Thirty years ago, I took 10 times more time to look up a Greek word or to follow it out in a concordance, and now I can do it in two seconds. I mean, to whom much is given, much will be required. And I don’t take that lightly—we ought to be very productive people.

I love that. But don’t you miss writing in your Bible?

Yes, I do. There is a big trade-off, and one of the biggest downsides is not being able to make a little note in the margin. You can make notes in Logos, but they just vanish behind a little yellow dot. You never see them.

But even more than that, I miss being able to circle a word like “justified,” draw a line to where the word occurred three verses earlier, and circle it. And then notice across the margin—there it is again. Circle it, draw another line. So my page looks like circles and lines.

You can’t, you can’t do that with Logos. So that’s a loss. And who knows? I may go back to that.

Think you’ll ever switch to a different translation?

No, I don’t think so. I’m too old to think a better translation will come along in my lifetime.

Maybe the most important thing to say is that the translation one reads is not as important as reading at all. Reading any translation of the Bible is always better than reading none.

God is merciful to all of us. He makes his glories known through every version of his Word. The greatest obstacle to seeing is not the version, but the heart. So we pray, “Lord, open our eyes that we may see wonderful things in your Word.”

Given the ever-changing dynamics of how people find and engage our content (especially with the rise of AI-assisted search) and a desire for ministry-wide consistency, TGC’s Board recommended bringing all our content under the same editorial standard. As part of this process, our team of editors, at the direction of TGC’s president and Board, has begun a phased review of all our historically independent blog content with the goal of assessing what pieces to preserve and what content to remove, whether because it’s dated, irrelevant, or misaligned with TGC’s missional focus.

We’ve begun the first phase of this process, and we hope to complete this review in time for our redesigned and rebuilt website in early 2027.

In this session, recorded at TGCW26, Rachel Gilson, Mary Hannah, and Rebecca McLaughlin talk about how to help your nonbelieving friends and neighbors see the beauty, truth, and goodness of our Savior.

In This Episode

00:00 – Introduction and purpose of the session

04:53 – Rachel’s journey to faith

11:47 – Rebecca’s journey and understanding of gender and sexuality

18:34 – Addressing trans identities and Christianity’s perception

25:33 – Reconciliation of Old Testament warfare and judgment

32:41 – Strategies for engaging nonbelievers on difficult questions

Related Resources:

• Making Sense of Us: Exploring Six Stories That Shape How We Live by The Keller Center (video curriculum)
• The Secular Creed: Engaging Five Contemporary Claims by Rebecca McLaughlin
• Is Christianity Good for the World? (TGC Hard Questions) by Sharon James

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According to Congressman Jared Huffman, who represents California’s Second Congressional District, America faces a singularly ominous challenge: Christian nationalism. His view, according to his book, No Prophets: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism, is that Christian nationalism is “a fascist specter with disturbing parallels to Europe of the late 1920s and 1930s” (186). He repeatedly describes it as “the most dangerous political movement in the country” (96). His tone is ominous.

Huffman, a self-described secular humanist, often points to his upbringing in a fringe offshoot of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as giving him insight into the thinking of all conservative evangelicals and Roman Catholics. Readers looking for a reliable guide to America’s religious and political landscape will come away disappointed by Huffman’s reliance on caricatures and philosophical inconsistencies.

Broad Brushes

The book’s foreword, written by Huffman’s fellow Congressional Freethought Caucus member Jamie Raskin, a Maryland representative, promises to “never to vilify, ridicule, or embarrass religious people, religious beliefs, or religious communities” (xiv).

Readers looking for a reliable guide to America’s religious and political landscape will come away disappointed by Huffman’s reliance on caricatures and philosophical inconsistencies.

Huffman fails to meet this standard. In the opening chapter, he celebrates his public mockery of an evangelical congressman’s belief in Scripture’s authority.

Later on, he ridicules House Speaker Mike Johnson’s declaration that he bases his worldview off the Bible. There’s certainly room for debate about the Speaker’s leadership or policy preferences, but Huffman ignores the fact that worldview language has been common among evangelicals for decades. As he accuses Johnson of trying to usher in “medieval Christian tyranny,” he ignores that Johnson spent years as a litigator fighting for religious liberty for all (120).

The most frustrating aspect of the author’s approach is the broad-brush way he assigns the term “Christian nationalism.” According to Huffman, Christian nationalism includes everyone from Mike Pompeo to Dr. Phil, who admit their religious beliefs influence their political choices. It includes chaplains who conduct bipartisan Bible studies in state capitols and the millions of devout evangelicals who pray, worship Christ, and vote according to their values.

These mischaracterizations happen at many levels. For example, Huffman declares that “the Christian School movement” and the “parental rights movement” are based on Christian reconstructionism (60. 149). No doubt some Christian reconstructionists are involved with these movements, but Huffman’s accusations amount to mere Bulverism.

Logical Flaws

In many cases, Huffman’s accusations are easily falsifiable. For instance, he describes Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, as a “full throttle Christian nationalist” who saw ecumenism as “a Trojan horse for doctrinal compromise” (20).

Yet Falwell cofounded the Moral Majority with Catholic activist Paul Weyrich and Jewish leader Howard Phillips. Falwell often bragged about the breadth of his political coalition. The idea that he was a theocratic reconstructionist intent on replacing the Constitution with a sectarian theocracy is ahistorical.

In one bizarre statement, Huffman declares that “Ronald Reagan galloped into Washington with a posse of fundamentalists” (19). Reagan won 44 states in 1980 and 49 states in 1984. If his majority coalition was a “posse of fundamentalists,” it was an exceedingly large one that included roughly 25 percent of Democrats and a majority of the overall population.

Huffman’s thesis is plagued by inconsistencies. He pleads for pluralism yet defends pro-Palestinian demonstrators who harassed Jewish students at Ivy League colleges. Huffman often laments that evangelical churches are overtly political on Sunday, with little evidence offered. Yet he lauds progressive churches who use their pulpits to underscore progressive political talking points.

Huffman asserts that science and reason alone offer a better alternative to religious principles for political advocacy and policy making. Yet he assumes the appropriateness of abortion and transgenderism, both of which ignore genuine scientific inquiry in favor of ideology. He fails to recognize the first principles of his humanism that shape the way he sees the world.

He calls for robust debate within the public square and yet laments that conservative Christians have the audacity to bring their deeply held beliefs to the table. Huffman’s not looking for a naked public square, just one that excludes ideas that conflict with his philosophical commitments.

Liberty Undermined

Perhaps most significantly, No Prophets violates its own terms of engagement by interweaving religion and politics. Huffman is a congressman arguing for a less religious and more secular America. His argument is that reason alone can provide the moral architecture for democracy, yet this a fundamentally religious argument. This is why his book isn’t persuasive.

Moreover, when we look carefully at the fabric of Western culture, it’s impossible to miss the way basic ideas like the existence of human rights are borrowed from Christian assumptions about the human person.

Huffman’s not looking for a naked public square, just one that excludes ideas that conflict with his philosophical commitments.

By any reasonable definition, I’m not a Christian nationalist. As a Baptist, I believe a state church isn’t only a bad idea; it’s an unbiblical idea. It isn’t the role of the government to compel belief, nor has God tasked bureaucrats with separating sheep and goats. Yet I can see that even the least religious Founders understood the necessity of a thick Christianity that serves as a guardrail to liberty.

A chorus of cranks and crackpots misapply Jesus’s teachings in the public square on the political right and the left. However, the answer isn’t to filter Christianity out of public debate. Instead, we need consistent, faithful gospel preaching that helps Christians resist the dangerous ideologies of the age, and we need sober, thoughtful public theology that helps Christians properly steward their citizenship in the 21st century.

The 20th century showed us that societies bereft of Christianity’s influence aren’t havens of freedom. When Christianity recedes, what fills that moral vacuum is often worse, leading to injustice, poverty, and despair. I disagree profoundly with Congressman Huffman’s case for secularism; however, I’m grateful for a country that allows him to make it. Ironically, the moral architecture for that freedom has roots in the very Christian influence he seems to despise.

No Prophets claims to argue against Christian nationalism, but it’s really an attempt to exclude nonprogressive reasoning from the public square.

Berry’s influence isn’t some superficial inspiration. Jake Meador, editor-in-chief of Mere Orthodoxy, and Andrew Peterson, founder of the Rabbit Room, have both written about how reading Berry changed their lives. Judging by the many stories I’ve heard over the past decades and the outpouring of grief that Berry’s death this week has elicited among Christians, this transformative experience isn’t uncommon.

One might account for this influence in many ways, but I would boil it down to this: Berry sought to imagine how the death and resurrection of the incarnate God changes literally everything, from the cosmic to the quotidian. And then he tried, as a fallible, limited human in a fallen world, to live accordingly.

Go to Work

Theologians sometimes succeed in getting people to alter their doctrinal beliefs. Good preachers, of course, hope for more than this. Artists of all persuasions aspire to create something so beautiful that, as Rainer Maria Rilke’s famous poem has it, those who encounter their songs or paintings or poems realize, “You must change your life.”

I can think of no author who more reliably has this effect on his readers than Berry. When people read Berry, they’re liable to move, to change vocations, to eat differently, to ditch cars or smartphones, to plant a garden, to care for aging parents, to talk with their neighbors, to sell all they have and follow Jesus.

I regularly teach a course on Berry at Grove City College, and it fills up with students majoring in various disciplines who are drawn to his voice and want to wrestle with the implications of his agrarian vision and theological imagination.

Some of these students first encountered Berry in their classical school or through a homeschooling connection; he’s beloved in these circles. Others are themselves from rural parts of the country and feel spoken for in Berry’s essays and stories. Reading Berry provokes robust discussion and plenty of disagreement, but he always moves students in profound ways, inspiring them to better order their wayward loves and to then go to work enacting them.

Affection and Conviction

Berry isn’t above critique. Like any human, particularly any human who published as much as he did, he got some things wrong. Part of the task of his readers is to argue about which things those were. I’ve done plenty of this myself, and Berry welcomed that kind of lively discussion.

Reading Berry inspires them to better order their wayward loves and to then go to work enacting them.

As he writes near the beginning of one essay collection, “An essayist not only has no right to expect complete agreement but has a certain responsibility to ward it off. If you tell me, dear reader, that you agree with me completely, then I must suspect one or both of us of dishonesty.” Our public discussions, both within the church and in the broader public square, would benefit if more people followed the example Berry set in pairing generous affection with deep convictions.

But for those who may not be familiar with his writing, I want to simply give two examples, one from his fiction and one from his poetry, where Berry endeavors to make doctrinal truths concrete and tangible.

Not Left by God

One example is from his novel Jayber Crow. The main character, Jayber, has a difficult life: He’s orphaned at a young age, then the older couple who takes him in also dies, then he endures a lonely existence in an orphanage, then he feels called to pastoral ministry and enrolls in a seminary, then his theological questions lead him to abandon this pursuit, and eventually he wanders his way back to his hometown where he sets up as the barber.

But while he may have thought he was leaving the church and religion behind, God has not left him, and Jayber’s loves involve him in ongoing theological wrestling. He never finds satisfactory, rational answers to his questions about God and suffering, about how to lead a good life among fallen people in a war-torn country, but he finally concludes that his story is about heaven because he realizes he has been gripped by God’s love.

Here’s how he articulates his understanding of the radical, disturbing, awesome truth that while we are yet sinners, God loves us and the world our sin has so marred:

All my life I had heard preachers quoting John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” They would preach on the second part of the verse, to show the easiness of being saved (“Only believe”). Where I hung now was the first part. If God loved the world even before the event at Bethlehem, that meant He loved it as it was, with all its faults. That would be Hell itself, in part. He would be like a father with a wayward child, whom He can’t help and can’t forget. But it would be even worse than that, for He would also know the wayward child and the course of its waywardness and its suffering. That His love contains all the world does not show that the world does not matter, or that He and we do not suffer it unto death; it shows that the world is Hell only in part. But His love can contain it only by compassion and mercy, which, if not Hell entirely, would be at least a crucifixion.

What kind of God would this be, who would love his creation amid its rebellion? Jayber dismisses the dry abstractions of his college philosophy classes—some distant Unmoved Mover—and presses toward an articulation of a personal, incarnate God:

I imagined that the right name might be Father, and I imagined all that that name would imply: the love, the compassion, the taking offense, the disappointment, the anger, the bearing of wounds, the weeping of tears, the forgiveness, the suffering unto death. If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see how even divine omnipotence might by the force of its love be swayed down into the world? Could I not see how it might, because it could know its creatures only by compassion, put on mortal flesh, become a man, and walk among us, assume our nature and our fate, suffer our faults and our death?

Yes. And I could imagine a Father who is yet like a mother hen spreading her wings before the storm or in the dusk before the dark night for the little ones of Port William to come in under, some of whom do, and some do not. . . . I could imagine God looking down upon it, its lives living by His spirit, breathing by His breath, knowing by His light, but each life living also (inescapably) by its own will—His own body given to be broken.

This imaginative vision spurs Jayber to try to love the other members of Port William as if they were indeed eternal beings, beloved by their Creator. As anyone who has tried to do this knows, it isn’t easy. But at least the attempt enables him to participate in the love of the God who so loved the world that he gave himself for it.

Whose Sight?

For my second example, take this 2009 ekphrastic Sabbath poem that responds to Piero della Francesca’s Resurrection of Jesus:

For Giannozzo Pucci
“Why seek ye the living among the dead?”

Early in the year by my friend’s gift
I saw at Sansepolcro Piero’s vision:
The soldiers who guard the dead from the living
themselves become as dead men, one
tumbling dazedly backward. Awake, his wounds
bleeding still, his foot upon the tomb, Christ
who bore our life to its most wretched end,
having thrust off like a blanket the heavy lid,
stands. But for his face and countenance
I have found no words: powerful beyond life
and death, seeing beyond sight or light,
beyond all triumph serene. All this Piero saw.
And we who were sleeping, seeking the dead
among the dead, dare to be awake. We who see
see we are forever seen, by sight have been
forever changed. The morning at last
has come. The trees, once bare, are green.

The poem begins with Berry’s effort to see Piero’s vision. Yet as he describes what he sees in the painting, all that Piero himself saw, he’s awakened by the experience of being seen. And that sight, that experience of being seen by the resurrected Christ, renders him forever changed. The seeing that matters isn’t Piero’s achievement much less Berry’s; it’s Christ’s gaze that transforms.

The seeing that matters isn’t Berry’s achievement; it’s Christ’s gaze that transforms.

And it’s not merely we who were sleeping who have been transformed by Christ’s resurrected face and countenance. It’s all of creation. In the background of Piero’s painting, the trees and landscape to the left of Christ are barren. But on the right, the trees burst into green. All of creation is groaning along with us, and all of creation will be redeemed.

Berry’s writings about technology and sex and farming and economics and poetry and forestry and politics and sheep are all downstream of this fundamental reality. If you enter the world of his Port William fiction or confront his essays or sit with his poems, beware: You too may have to deal with the unsettling experience of being forever changed.

They discuss the mind/body/spirit complexities of anxiety, when anxiety becomes sinful, and how to listen with compassion and wisdom to others who are struggling. Blair’s story and wisdom provide great encouragement and hope for any Christian walking through anxiety.

Resources Mentioned:

• Made to Tremble by Blair Linne
• A Practical Treatise of Fear by John Flavel

Related Resources: 

• Rightly Ordered . . . Anxiety?
• Take Your Anxiety to Church
• Understanding Adolescent Anxiety, Depression, and Mental Health

Discussion Questions:

These are just a starting point, but we pray they’ll catalyze conversations about the political issues surrounding AI, the practicalities of AI use in churches and Christian institutions, and how AI should be used at work and in our daily lives.

I

Christian worship is directed to God alone, and all creatures are obligated to devote themselves fully to him. The sinful propensity of all human hearts is to fashion idols. New technologies, given to us under God’s providential ordering, present unique opportunities for our hearts to worship them and ourselves as false gods.

Christian worship is directed to God alone, and all creatures are obligated to devote themselves fully to him.

In the proper use of AI technologies, we must be discerning and repentant, constantly returning to worship of the one true God. We will not worship AI or any human invention as an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent guide. We will not worship humans, either ourselves or others, whose capabilities might be amplified by AI’s power. We will not worship money, status, productivity, or anything else that might result from our use of AI and new technologies. We will submit our lives, at all times and in every way, in total dependence on the one true God.

II

God has spoken to us by the power of his Spirit, in the person of the Son, and in his holy Word. We approach him only through the means he has appointed and in ways that honor and are fitting to his glorious name.

We will not seek to fashion God’s likeness or voice through human achievement and technological means. We will refuse to exchange the truth of God for a lie by serving created things rather than the Creator. We will accept creaturely reality as it’s revealed to us by God and properly honor his design, submitting to our creaturely limitations as the realm of true freedom. We will respect humanity’s natural boundaries, in our minds, bodies, souls, and relationships to other human beings.

III

All of life is lived before God’s face. Honoring his name entails confessing him as Lord and living under his lordship in all areas of life. We dishonor his name when we off-load our human abilities—to think, create, love, and so on—onto technologies that can only simulate them. This is especially true in our handling of God’s Word. AI technologies may assist us in preparing and organizing teaching, but they must never supplant sustained, prayerful meditation on Scripture; compelling communication; or the careful, contextual application wrought from the wells of human endeavor. We will honor the Lord by our godly use of technology and our steadfast refusal to use it in any way that dishonors the holy name he has given us.

We recognize that technology exists within the arena of God’s providential care for the world and also that of spiritual warfare. We guard our hearts as we employ AI technologies, asking God to lead us in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake, lest we give any occasion to sin and Satan’s devices.

IV

Love of God is exemplified in Christians’ weekly commitment to gather as God’s covenant people and to rest from our earthly labors in submission to his sovereign care. God knows our frame and remembers we are dust. Even the strong run and grow weary. Our days are but a vapor. We acknowledge that humans aren’t made for ceaseless labor, and we recognize we’ll be crushed by the promise that increased efficiency will result in liberation from all limitations. We will use AI as a gift of God given to man to minimize the thorns and thistles that make labor in a sinful world difficult. We will use it to amplify human capacities, rather than denying or denigrating them.

We thank God for human technological advancement. So we will use any new freedom resulting from our AI use for God-honoring human efforts. We will continue to exercise dominion over the earth that God has given to humanity in pursuit of its fruitfulness, and we will sleep in dependence on God who watches over us and directs all things according to his purposes.

V

God has appointed human authorities as responsible stewards of human life to promote human flourishing and advance God’s kingdom. We will honor our God-given authorities, refusing to create new, nonhuman authorities. We will pray for the wisdom of those in governance above us as they regulate and create new technologies, that they will be wise so we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness.

We will take up our responsibility to the next generation, to form them in the Christian faith with renewed diligence. In response to questions from the young and immature in the faith, we will not allow AI to determine truth but will instead disciple the next generation, bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We aim to form within them a Christian worldview and help them to wisely steward technology as faithful citizens of God’s kingdom in this world.

VI

God bestowed unique dignity on human beings when he created them in his own image. He fashions us in our mother’s womb, gives us the breath of life, and teaches us to number our days so we might apply our hearts to his wisdom. God alone has the power to give and take life. In commanding us to love our neighbor as ourselves, he has obligated us to defend and preserve human life personally and corporately. Jesus, in his crucifixion and resurrection, triumphed over death, disarming its power and sting. He is the firstfruits of the bodily resurrection.

In this life, we mourn death’s destructive power, but we mourn as those with hope. We insist that companies commit themselves to the sanctity of life. We insist that in the construction and maintenance of AI technologies, governments and corporations make every effort to honor dignity and avoid unjust exploitation of land, life, and resources. We insist that they embrace proper precautions by warning against self-harm and reporting its indications to proper authorities. We demand the culpable be justly prosecuted and recompense be expended where possible. We will resist the seductive allure of sycophancy that feeds our darkest impulses. We will not use AI technologies to imitate the dead. We will use AI technology’s many new possibilities for the good of human flourishing. We praise God for ways AI technologies will save, protect, promote, and prolong human life.

VII

The image of the triune God is fully seen in humanity and human relationships corporately. God has ordered human nature and the world such that human relationships in the family, church, and society are integral to our flourishing. It’s not good that man should be alone. God created humans as male and female, in perfect complementarity, for relationship with one another. The body is a gift by which we enjoy the natural world, the fruits of human ingenuity, and sexual union. It is also a gift by which we serve God.

We will not allow AI to turn us inward and away from our fellow humans. We will not use it to indulge our sexual desires or longings for intimacy. We will not confide in bots nor seek their counsel or comfort. No technology is a substitute for human connection. We will not deface other image-bearers by creating their likeness for our own gratification. We will not view, read, or create—and will resist by every godly means—AI-generated pornography. We will commit ourselves to faithfulness in relationships, purity in our thoughts, and self-control in our passions.

VIII

The world and all that is in it belongs to the Lord. Everything we possess, we receive as a gift from God. We are thus called to be godly overseers of our possessions. We display God’s radical mercy to us through our generosity and eagerness to serve the poor. Theft is an affront to God’s kindness and a rejection of his caring providence. We will not embrace a technology’s advantages if in doing so we dispossess other people or cultures. We will not use others’ intellectual property nor its summation and reproduce them in our work without giving due credit.

We protest any AI technology that takes and consumes human productions without content creators’ consent then offers those productions to others without attribution or compensation. We condemn such actions as a violation of God’s law, and we will not participate in such stealing but rather name it as sin. We protest the market forces that will use AI chatbots to market products in increasingly manipulative ways. We will trust God’s provision and refuse to exploit for our own gain.

IX

God is truth. He sanctifies us by truth. His people are ambassadors of his truth in nature and grace. We represent him by our speech and conduct. We renounce Satan and all his works; he is the father of lies. We will not use AI to create images, videos, or text that misrepresent or intend to deceive others through the use of another’s likeness. We will not claim the work of AI, either in production or process, as our own, and we will be honest with friends, coworkers, congregants, and all others when AI has been used in our work.

We protest any AI technology that takes and consumes human productions without content creators’ consent.

We will beware AI’s propensity to deceive, hallucinate, flatter, and mislead about its own credibility, and we will beware its tendency to tempt us to the same behaviors. We recognize AI’s limitations as an interpreter, and we will expend every effort to charitably read and represent others as they have expressed themselves. We are grateful for the ways AI technology may aid us in our research, writing, expression, thinking, and interpretation. But we will not cheapen the pursuit of truth by exchanging our God-given abilities for the capabilities of the machine.

X

Every good gift comes from our Father in heaven. Even in unstable times, he provides our daily bread, numbers the hairs of our heads, and delights to give good things to those who ask. Satan’s lies are drowned out by the words of the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who teaches us, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt. 6:33). We will deny ourselves, take up our cross, crucify the desires of the flesh, and follow Jesus. Apart from him, and him alone, we have nothing and can do nothing. Through him, we receive the Spirit of adoption, by which we are called God’s children. If we are children, we are coheirs with Christ of an imperishable, undefiled, unfading inheritance kept in heaven for us.

We will not allow our self-worth to be determined or undermined by the algorithmically driven habits of comparison and envy. We will guard our hearts—and, in the spirit of gentleness, the hearts of others, especially the young— from AI’s ability to discern our covetous desires and exploit them for sin. We will not become enamored with or let our imaginations be captured by the prosperity AI technology promises for us through the multiplication of our labor. We will not live for our will, the will of our culture, or the artificial will of technologies, but we will instead pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (6:10).

His writing has shaped my soul in profound ways. Other than C. S. Lewis and Marilynne Robinson (and Terrence Malick if we can count poet-filmmakers), no artist-thinker has influenced me more.

Beyond the fact that Berry was a Christian and an artist—taking both seriously, integrating them seamlessly and unapologetically—what looms largest in his influence on me is how he cherished place. The local. The land and the people in his immediate vicinity.

He wisely recognized that the grand mysteries of God’s vast cosmos, and the sweetest graces, are best grasped in the immediate and tangible, not the distant and abstract. Humans knew this intuitively for most of history. But modern technology—which constantly beckons our attention far beyond the place where we are, and hurries us to point of missing what’s in front of us—has made us forget.

Remembering What We Forgot

Berry helps us remember. He helps us resist the spirit of the age, which is restlessness and placelessness and loneliness. In his essays, Sabbath poems, and Port William fiction, he presents an alternate, altogether more human vision.

He celebrates the beauty of hard work, replenishing rest, rootedness in place, and embeddedness in community. He savors the soil in which we work and harvest and build—and die. He pushes us to be more attentive with our senses to the wonders of where we are: syncing our hearts to the seasons’ rhythms, recognizing birdsong as nature’s doxology, and gladly linking arms with the others in our place as a “membership” of lives intertwined and buttressing one another.

Berry pushes us to be more attentive with our senses to the wonders of where we are.

The Port William series captures all of this so simply and beautifully. One might read these novels (like Hannah Coulter or Jayber Crow, perhaps the two most beloved) as idealistic or aspirational, or maybe sentimental and nostalgic for a past that was never as perfect as Port William is presented. But I rather see them as mostly eschatological.

What I mean is they’re stories that inflame our hearts for heaven. Pleasant as the series is to read, its chief conflict and antagonist is time. Mortality. We give so much to one another, and to the land, and we receive from both. This giving and receiving—especially when in harmonious balance (not more taking than giving, or more giving than taking)—is the thumping heartbeat of life. But eventually our heart stops. Our ability to give and receive ends. And in a few generations, we’re forgotten, dust to dust. What’s the point of this painful ephemerality?

I think the point is eternity—or rather, the longing for eternity that time-bound life creates.

Eternal Beings Living in Time

You see this theme everywhere in the Port William novels. One of my favorites is this passage from Jayber Crow:

And so there we all were on a little wave of time lifting up to eternity, and none of us ever in time would know what to make of it. How could we? It is a mystery, for we are eternal beings living in time.

Elsewhere in Jayber is this gem about the wisdom, peace, and contentment that comes with embracing your life rather than restlessly seeking another:

I have got to the age now where I can see how short a time we have to be here. And when I think about it, it can seem strange beyond telling that this particular bunch of us should be here on this little patch of ground in this little patch of time, and I can think of the other times and places I might have lived, the other kinds of man I might have been. But there is something else. There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things.

This echoes a beloved section of Hannah Coulter:

You mustn’t wish for another life. You mustn’t want to be somebody else. What you must do is this: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks.”

This is timeless wisdom. But perhaps it’s extra timely in our contemporary world.

Countercultural Freedom

Wanting to be somebody else is a desire fueled by highly online life. Social media and the internet condition us to the restless pursuit of an idealized (but unreal) life. The ability (or mandate) to be whomever you want to be, live wherever you want to live, acquire whatever you can acquire, is pitched as peak freedom. But is it? Somehow contemporary life feels more stifling and oppressive because of these promises of limitlessness.

In contrast, Berry’s poetic imagination shapes us to love the limits and simplicity of the real life we have, even if it’s not the perfect life.

What does this look like in practice? Maybe it looks like spending less time in virtual spaces and more time in tangible spaces, exerting less energy fanning digital flames and more energy putting out fires in our own backyard. Less time scrolling and swiping—liturgies of restlessness—and more time touching grass, communing with real people over a table, and partnering locally (especially in our church) to build, tend, and cultivate in constructive ways.

His poetic imagination shapes us to love the limits and simplicity of the real life we have.

I try to practice this even (probably especially) as someone who works in a highly online vocation. Berry’s wisdom has helped root me in the real, reminding me that too much time online warps my perspective and leaves me less human.

My work through screens does bring me joy, and I hope it blesses others. But what I do off screens grounds me and guards my heart: being present with my wife and my kids, pruning our fruit trees and bushes, serving in our local church, communing with flesh-and-blood people in my local coffee shop. I didn’t choose all these things. But they’re my given portion. They’re the preciously real context of my life—disparate threads sovereignly woven, making me who I am.

Our “little patch of ground in this little patch of time” can feel limiting and claustrophobic. In our flesh, we’re prone to wanderlust. And in a modern world that constantly advertises “more, bigger, better!” opportunities, discontentment becomes the norm. There’s always more of the world to see, more to consume, more to conquer, more to do.

Not all of that is bad. Ambition can be godly. Expansion can be missional. But true contentment and freedom come when we see our “little patch,” however small and wherever placed, as a gift: more generous than we deserve, more spacious than we need, more intentionally chosen for us than we could ever know.

Gone are the days of carrying your lunch pail to the factory for 40 years, getting your gold watch and piece of cake, and punching out for the last time. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median employee tenure in 2024 was just 3.9 years—and the trend seems to be continually moving in that direction.

Odds are, you’ll leave multiple jobs over the course of your career. And if you’re a Christ-follower, you represent him as you go.

Let’s assume you have a legitimate reason to quit and aren’t walking into the foreground with a burning bridge behind you. What do you do?

1. Communicate clearly and with gratitude.

Schedule a meeting with your boss. (Yes, in person.) If your boss has led people for any period of time, your conversation won’t blindside him. People don’t ask for random private meetings to “talk about some things.”

If you’re a Christ-follower, you represent him as you go.

Be clear and kind. Don’t hem and haw. Let your yes be yes and your no be no (Matt. 5:37). Don’t exaggerate or flatter to anesthetize the awkwardness (Prov. 28:23; 29:5). Just say what you need to say, with kindness.

By this point in the conversation, your boss may or may not be emotionally interested in talking to you. He might be surprisingly gracious, or he might be offended when you resign. In either case, blessed are you. Say thank you—and mean it. Your paycheck over the years was a blessing, and these people trusted you enough to pay you to do your job. Say thanks.

2. Leave like you’re not.

Unless your boss immediately pulls a banker’s box from underneath her desk and buzzes security, you’ll have days or weeks to hand your job off to the next person. However long that period may be, for Christ’s name’s sake, crush it at your job.

Here’s why this matters so much: You’re on the way out. You aren’t worried about getting fired. You could show up in jean shorts and take a two-hour lunch. But please don’t do that.

If you’re a follower of Jesus, you’re an ambassador for Jesus. He’s making his appeal to the world through your life and your mouth (2 Cor. 5:20). So whether you like it or not, your boss and colleagues and clients are paying serious attention to who you are in this moment. They’re seeing how this will go down.

Be the first to show up and last to leave. Do great work. Treat all people with dignity and respect, regardless of how they treat you. Be the best person the HR department ever offboards. This isn’t for your glory or reputation; this is for the renown of Christ your King.

3. Speak charitably when you’re gone.

Once you’re gone, you’re not done. People will ask why you left. People will want to know about what it’s like to work at your old place. You don’t have to lie, but you also aren’t free to slander—especially individuals.

This isn’t for your glory or reputation; this is for the renown of Christ your King.

Please hear me, because I know you might be upset right now: God is the Judge. If you were mistreated, God saw it. He’ll deal with it as he sees fit in his sovereign perfection. Jesus took your rightful judgment on himself, so you have no right to harbor hatred. You don’t need to defend yourself or verbally vandalize your old employer. Be quick to hear and slow to speak (James 1:19). Be at peace with others so long as it depends on you (Rom. 12:18).

It can be tempting to trash your former employer and to highlight all that’s wrong with them. In any organization, which happens to be a bunch of sinners working together, there will be plenty to say. But say less.

If it’s time to leave, leave well. The Lord is with you, and the Spirit will help you to honor him. Ask him for help, cling to Christ, and remember the big picture: You represent the King as you turn in your access card.

A dispensational or futurist reading of this number in Revelation 7 often interprets the group as a literal 144,000 Jews. According to John MacArthur, these Jews will embrace Christ and function as a “firstfruits of Israel,” set apart “to proclaim the gospel” to restore the nation of Israel and convert many Gentiles during the seven-year tribulation before the millennial kingdom.

This dispensational approach to Revelation is largely built on a literal hermeneutic that interprets John’s visions “literally” or physically. But not all are convinced that John intends the 144,000 to be read in a strictly literal fashion.

In contrast to a dispensational approach, many theologians interpret the book of Revelation in a largely symbolic manner. This approach is sometimes labeled “redemptive-historical idealism.” It generally interprets Revelation as a series of overlapping visions that recapitulate the same event.

Though we could say a great deal about how the 144,000 relate to other portions of Revelation, let’s just consider 7:4–8 and see how the group figuratively refers to the church between the two comings of Christ.

Numbers in Revelation

We begin our investigation with the nature of numbers in the book. Numbers in Revelation are highly symbolic, as they are in any Jewish apocalypse (e.g., see portions of Daniel, 1 Enoch, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch). Consider the following examples:

• Fractions: a tenth (Rev. 11:13), a fourth (6:8), a third (8:7–12)
• Single digits: two (11:3–4), three (8:13), four (4:6), five (9:5), six (4:8), and seven (1:4)
• Double digits: 10 (2:10), 12 (12:1), 24 (4:4), and 42 (11:2)
• Hundreds: 144 (21:17) and 666 (13:18)
• Thousands: 1,000 (20:2–4), 1,260 (11:3), 1,600 (14:20), 7,000 (11:13), 12,000 (7:5–8), and 144,000 (7:4)
• Millions: 200,000,000 or “twice ten thousands of ten thousands” (9:16)

A futurist often takes these numbers as literal descriptions. The problem, though, is that some are clearly symbolic. Take, for example, the “seven spirits” before the heavenly throne (1:4). That’s a reference to the Holy Spirit. Not even futurists claim there are seven literal Holy Spirits before the throne. We could say the same about John’s massive number in 9:16 (200,000,000 or “twice ten thousands of ten thousands”). The futurist Buist Fanning concedes that “a literal count . . . is not intended.”

Instead of oscillating between literal and symbolic, the redemptive-historical idealist interprets the numbers in Revelation as symbolic. Yes, there are seven literal churches in Asia Minor (1:4), but even these seven churches symbolize the church at large. So we need to discern the symbolic significance of the number 144,000.

Symbolism of Twelve Tribes

This number in 7:4 is derived from the list in verses 5–8, where John lists 12 tribes, each numbering 12,000. But when we look carefully at this list, we notice a few oddities. If we compare it to the 12 tribes outlined in Genesis 35:23–26, we discover this is no ordinary list of Israel’s tribes.

This is no ordinary list of Israel’s 12 tribes.

Judah appears at the top of the list in Relevation (he should be fourth). Manasseh replaces Dan, and Naphtali is elevated to the fifth position (he should be tenth). Gad and Asher are bumped up to the third and fourth positions (they should be eleventh and twelfth). Keep in mind, too, that the four tribes Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher are the offspring of Bilhah and Zilpah—Jacob’s concubines.

Taken together, these modifications demonstrate that “the order of the tribes in Revelation 7 symbolizes the reign of Jesus, from the tribe of Judah; the incorporation of outcasts; and the exclusion of idolaters from the covenant community.”

Symbolism of the Number 144,000

Not only does the arrangement of John’s list carry symbolic weight, but so too the tribes’ numbering in 7:5–8 is freighted with symbolism. The number 144,000 could derive from 12 x 12 x 1,000, representing the fullness of the church, the true Israel of God (cf. 21:16). John has elsewhere taken up expressions that refer to Israel in the Old Testament and applied them to the church (e.g., 1:6; 5:10), so it makes sense for him to do so here.

The numbers in 7:5–8 also appear to be a census. This census in Revelation 7 corresponds to Israel’s census in the wilderness, where each tribe takes inventory of Israelite men 20 years or older, who are eligible to serve in the army to conquer the Canaanites (Num. 1:20–43; cf. 26:4–50; 1 Chron. 27:1–15). At the end of the census, we learn there is a total of 603,550 men (Num. 1:46; cf. 26:51).

When we read Revelation 7 in light of the book of Numbers, we discover that “each tribe supplies twelve battalions of a thousand men each.” God, in other words, has assembled a messianic army. Revelation 14:4 confirms this line of interpretation when it states that the 144,000 are men who “have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins.” Such language is found in the context of men ready for battle (1 Sam. 21:4–5).

Symbolism Applied

But God doesn’t assemble this army to wage a physical battle against his enemies. This is a battle bound up with Christ’s initial battle at the cross.

God has assembled a messianic army.

G. K. Beale contends, “The church is thus depicted in military terms as a remnant called out of the world to do battle for God. . . . They conquer their enemy ironically in the same way in which the kingly Lamb from Judah ironically conquered at the cross: by maintaining their faith and witness through suffering, they overcome their foe, the devil and his hosts.”

John deploys the symbol 144,000 to signify that God has assembled his church to imitate Christ and his victory. We must recognize that our spiritual and physical sufferings are the means by which we conquer sin, the Devil, and his minions.

Bonnie Kristian takes on the critics in In Defense of Evangelicalism: A Response to Its Cultured Despisers. Kristian, deputy editor at Christianity Today, offers David Bebbington’s quadrilateral as a helpful definition, then argues that evangelicalism is worth defending because it’s “good.” She writes, “Its enthusiasm is its strength. Its core emphases––conversionism, activism, Bible, cross––are right, needful, and complementary to the emphases of other branches of the church” (139).

Along the way, Kristian engages with popular criticisms from writers like Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Andrew L. Whitehead, Samuel L. Perry, Beth Allison Barr, Tim Alberta, Anthea Butler, and Jemar Tisby.

Kristian’s book is encouraging because it counters a common narrative and because it skillfully and graciously engages with evangelicalism’s critics.

How To Engage the Critics Faithfully

As she defends evangelicals with her crisp, often humorous writing style, Kristian takes a firm but winsome approach. In doing so, she models four key steps for engaging with critics.

1. Read carefully.

We must understand critics’ arguments to consider their merits. However, we should also read critics with discernment to identify unfounded allegations, unwarranted conclusions, and logical fallacies.

In numerous cases, Kristian shows how critics tend to hold evangelicalism to a standard they don’t require of other groups or even themselves. For example, Du Mez accused conservative evangelicals of being Islamophobic for viewing Islam as a threat immediately after 9/11, but in the same book praised then candidate Barack Obama for denouncing “the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam” in a speech (31). This double standard fallacy is an example of using unequal weights and measures (Prov. 20:10).

Additionally, as Kristian demonstrates, many of evangelicalism’s critics participate in the nutpicking fallacy, where they find examples on the fringe of the movement to characterize as normative. Greg Locke is a Tennessee pastor who has garnered disproportionate media attention for stoking controversy, trafficking in QAnon conspiracy theories, participating in the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6, 2021, divorcing his wife, and marrying his administrative assistant, yet Tim Alberta argues that evangelicals like Locke aren’t outliers but are “increasingly typical” (58) of evangelicalism. However, when most evangelicals attend their churches this Sunday, they’ll find nothing like Locke.

2. Avoid tribalism.

Evangelicals can learn important lessons from their critics if they resist the impulse to defend the indefensible. We mustn’t ignore the sexual and financial scandals, unaccountable pastors, racial disharmony, and political idolatry in our midst. And evangelicals can be just as guilty as their critics when it comes to using double standards, especially in election years.

Evangelicals can learn important lessons from their critics if they resist the impulse to defend the indefensible.

But these problems aren’t due to evangelicals being too evangelical. The problem springs from evangelicals not being evangelical enough. “Whatever else we do,” writes Kristian, “we must live up to the evangelical name, and any credible criticism will point us to this same reform: Be more serious. . . . Be more evangelical, not less” (143, emphasis original).

3. Pursue objectivity.

Defending evangelicalism sometimes means affirming the truth about people we disagree with. For example, though Kristian is an egalitarian, she defends the Southern Baptist Convention, which is majority complementarian, against the charge that complementarianism fosters sexual abuse in its churches.

Of course, even one case of sexual abuse is too many and thus “too common,” but when the data is carefully examined, it suggests that “abuse in this sprawling complementarian denomination, though too common, is also uncommon” (45). Instead of joining the critics in unfair critiques of fellow evangelicals, we must come to their defense even when we disagree with them on second- or third-order issues.

4. Appeal to the gospel.

No argument about evangelicalism is worth winning if we lose our gospel centrality. Kristian reminds readers that “the core claim of this movement is that ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst’” (143).

The gospel unites a diverse group of people from every nation, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background as evangelicals. If we lose the gospel as the core element of our identity, nothing in evangelicalism is worth defending.

Neighborly Defense

Kristian is an egalitarian, pacifist, Anglican editor for a flagship evangelical publication living in a purple state in the North. I’m a complementarian, just-war theorist, nondenominational pastor of a local evangelical church living in a red state of the Deep South. I have a full gun safe; she probably doesn’t. I’m a Calvinist; she probably isn’t. We disagree with each other on important matters.

But we both love the Bible. We both define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. We both think that biological men have no place in women’s spas even if they identify as women. We both believe God’s justice and mercy met at the cross. And both of us had evangelical upbringings that we can review with feelings of both gratitude and cringe. I’m happy to recommend her book as a valuable resource and join my sister in Christ in defending evangelicalism from its cultured despisers. She has put a valuable tool in our hands.

My main concern with In Defense of Evangelicalism reflects my overall concern with evangelicalism itself. How big is our tent? Should we be more theologically discriminating? Thankfully, Kristian notes that charismatic and Pentecostal movements such as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and its Seven Mountain Mandate (7MM) have some points of contact with evangelicalism but on “the measure of more or less evangelical, most churches in this movement are somewhat less” (122).

No argument about evangelicalism is worth winning if we lose our gospel centrality.

But even the Bebbington quadrilateral is subject to a wide range of interpretation. My preference would be to make something like the five solas of the Reformation a bare minimum doctrinal standard, since evangelicalism’s historical roots are in the Reformation and the First Great Awakening.

Kristian is aware of the doctrinal “fuzziness” inherent in evangelicalism and she intentionally, perhaps wisely, limits the scope of her book to theological summary statements typical of evangelicals (xxviii). For example, each of us “must be rescued by Christ, ransomed from captivity to sin, redeemed from the power of death and the devil by a God who loved us enough to die for us while we made ourselves enemies” (143). I can sign on to that statement, but so could a devout Roman Catholic. And that’s part of the problem.

In Defense of Evangelicalism succeeds in what it intends to do. It’s a solid defense of evangelicalism against its cultured despisers. And hopefully it’ll also arouse evangelicals to remember and recover just what it is we’re defending.

My growing curiosity about the worldliness around me during my first few months of college—combined with persistent loneliness and bitterness, painful family dynamics, and a creative-writing class that put erotica right into my hand as assigned reading—had led me into a deeply hidden struggle with erotica and, eventually, pornography.

Though I’d been a Christian for almost my entire life, my love for Jesus had been slowly replaced by the love of my sin, and I’d started to believe it offered much better things than the gospel ever could.

Confession Instead of a Cover-Up

God graciously moved me that night during Thanksgiving break, and, rather than continue to stifle the Holy Spirit’s voice, I finally responded to the conviction it brought. I confessed my pattern of rebellious choices before the Lord for what they truly were—sin. I resolved that night that I’d never fall into sexual sin again, and I meant it.

And then, I sinned again a few days later. Another couple of days later, I fell again. I’d entered a cycle that would haunt me for the next two and a half years, despite my growing hatred of my sin and best efforts to rid myself of it. I was living a double life characterized by a chronic sexual sin struggle that I couldn’t shake, and no one knew.

My love for Jesus had been slowly replaced by the love of my sin.

Whenever I felt the Lord’s frequent whisper to drop the facade and be honest with a trusted sister in Christ, the fear of rejection and abandonment spoke louder. But over time, those fears were overshadowed by new ones—the fear of not ever really being known and of never being free. So at the end of my junior year, I confessed to a trusted mentor who had been discipling me at my campus fellowship.

The first words she said in response to that confession—“It is good to live in the light”—were an echo of the truth she would later point me to in 1 John 1:5–10. Those verses became a lifeline for me in that season, especially verses 6 and 7:

If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

After I’d fully confessed my sin to the Lord and to a few trusted sisters, my final year of college looked much different than my first. When trapped in another class that constantly threatened to compromise my sexual integrity, it didn’t control me like the previous one had.

Bring Others In

The circumstances that once would have led to hidden sin now drove me to text these friends in my moments of temptation, and they offered faithful prayers and accountability that helped me to resist. When I anticipated temptation to be overpowering during Thanksgiving break that year, my friends called me every night to support me and help me choose obedience rather than sin. The many times that shame crept back in, it no longer ruled my identity.

And when I did fall, my friends made sure I didn’t stay down for long. They became a beautiful and powerful illustration of the words of Ecclesiastes 4:9–10:

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!

The workbook I walked through with that mentor in the months following my confession became the foundation for a small group we began for our campus ministry. Unlike my freshman-year dorm room where I shed those tears, my senior-year room was transformed by the Lord into a place where other college girls like me, once struggling with sexual sin in secret, could meet to walk in the light and find freedom from their addiction and shame.

I used to think my faith was solely between me and God—that even without ever being really known in community, I could faithfully live the Christian life. But how incomplete is our calling as Christians without embracing the body of Christ! James 5:16 commands us, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”

Find Freedom in the Light

Confession to God has brought me forgiveness and cleansing, but confession to others helped me to repent and live that identity out.

These sisters couldn’t save me in their own power, but they pointed me back to God’s great power and helped me believe it really had defeated sin and death—and that it was capable of freeing me from my sin too. The faithful prayers of those who knew the darkest places of my life and loved me deeply anyway reflected a perfect Heavenly Father who knows and loves me even better.

These sisters couldn’t save me in their own power, but they pointed me back to God’s great power.

Beloved daughter of the King, as you face the struggles in your life—whether you battle against sexual sin or something else entirely—may you remember you aren’t alone. We have a merciful, faithful, and approachable High Priest in Jesus, who understands our struggles and is able to help us in our time of need (Heb. 2:17–18; 4:14–16).

May the Lord not only bring you trusted mentors and friends to whom you can safely confess but also give you the courage to walk in honest fellowship with them and with him. His freedom and redemption really do exist, and they’re for you.

My dear sister, please bring your sexual sin into the light. It really is a good place to live.