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

SIGN UP for one of our newsletters to stay informed about TGC’s latest resources.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Give today.

Don’t miss an episode of The Gospel Coalition Podcast:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
  

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)

SIGN UP for my newsletter, Unseen Things.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Donate today.

Don’t miss an episode of Gospelbound with Collin Hansen:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
• TGC Updates

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

SIGN UP for one of our newsletters to stay informed about TGC’s latest resources.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Give today.

Don’t miss an episode of The Gospel Coalition Podcast:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube

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.

Most technology is rushing toward immortality in an effort to save time, trying to transcend human limits—the greatest of which is death. Alas, in grasping for life, I forget to live. Gardening, on the other hand, shows me the brevity of my life and teaches me to hold it dear.

Using Technology and Living Forever

Generative artificial intelligence tools like Copilot, Claude Code, Canva, and ChatGPT teach me to hurry. Even if I don’t use these tools much, others who use them are raising their standards for productivity and efficiency—for how they expect me to grip and turn the hourglass of my life.

Taken to the extreme, technology allows me to outsource my working, playing, resting, and thinking so I have freedom to do whatever I want. When I use a dishwasher, car, laptop, or AI tool, I’m trying to manage, save, gather, and store the sands of time—as if they were mine to control. I so easily become a manager of machines. I so easily forget to cherish my humanity.

Alas, in grasping for life, I forget to live.

When I use any tool to boost my productivity, I tell myself there’s something more important than whatever occupies me now—if only I could get to it. Sometimes that’s good. I’m thankful I can drive to the store instead of walking. Praise God for dishwashers. But what about the bulk of my thinking, my resting, my playing, my working: the rich and beautiful tasks God has given me for my short time on earth? What am I saving time for?

If I have no good answer, I’ve lost sight of who God made me to be and why I use technology at all.

Gardening and Dying

Gardening tells an opposite story. In the pots on my balcony, life and death hurtle by in only a few months. Time blows through my herbs. Tomatoes grow, fall off the plant, and rot. Roots stretch beneath the dirt. My plants grow up and grow old, and the distance between the two is “razor thin,” as the latest edition of Every Moment Holy says.

It’s no coincidence that Jesus prays in a garden—full of living and dying organisms—right before his death. Surrounded by a creation that’s groaning, longing to be set free from its bondage to futility (Rom. 8:20), Christ groans with it. He finally says, “It is enough; the hour has come” (Mark 14:41). Perhaps this garden is part of Christ learning obedience (Heb. 5:8). Perhaps the dying trees give him courage not to innovate out of death. Perhaps their discomfort helps him sit in his.

At least that’s true for me. When I watch a plant shiver in the wind and bend under the watering can, I know time isn’t mine. It’s God’s. No matter what I do, I cannot change the number of days God has given me on this earth. I can’t save time; I can’t spend time. What I can do is live within it, anticipating the day when Jesus will return and set us free from its countdown of decay.

As I write these words, Microsoft Word repeatedly prompts me to “rewrite this paragraph with Copilot.” But this writing is the task God has given me today. It’s my work; it’s human work. This is not the place to save time.

Gardening teaches me who I am and what work God made me to do. Like a head of lettuce, I’ve rapidly grown from a weak seedling into a sturdy, self-sustaining being. And soon, I’ll become papery remains that dissolve into soil: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19). I’m going to die. I know that implicitly when I look at the plants on my apartment’s balcony. They are and will always be on a precipice next to the valley of the shadow of death, on their way to tumbling down. So am I.

I realize my death is coming. I want to be a liver of life.

Numbering Our Days

Thank God, death so often leads back into life. As the apostle Paul writes, “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies” (1 Cor. 15:36). The seed buried beneath the dirt becomes a fluffy bush of basil or lettuce that feeds me. When that plant dies, it becomes compost that feeds new seeds.

Jesus’s friends bury him in a garden (John 19:41), allowing the husk of his body to germinate in a tomb. Little do they know they’re planting a seed that will put Jack’s beanstalk utterly to shame! Christ trades his death for the lives of all who love him: We carry “in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor. 4:10; see Col. 3:3–4).

I can’t save time; I can’t spend time. What I can do is live within it.

Gardening gives me courage to live like a human. Surrounded by death, I don’t have to distract myself or automate my living. I certainly don’t have to treat myself like a machine. As I pull weeds, I find the courage to follow Christ, who “has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20).

What is my life? A seed with the promise of resurrection. Bury me, and I’ll come back better: Gardening tells me this.

With the psalmist and the back-porch gardener, I say, “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12). Thank God for tools—but I’ll be gardening on the porch.

What started as a Digital Rest initiative on my university’s campus, an attempt to encourage students to cut back on time-wasting apps and screen time, has become a yearly rhythm for me to take a break from search engines.

Digital Unrest

Like most people today, I’m a chronic googler. The instant a question comes to mind, I pull out my phone and search it. In the age of AI, this reflex is all the more natural. If you have a question, ask ChatGPT, and in a matter of seconds, you have the answer to all you wanted to know and more, complete with a bulleted outline, colorful images, and prompts for further learning—all in a delightfully conversational tone. Access to all the information you could ever need has never been easier.

That’s why, when I first blocked Safari, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Countless times, I unlocked my phone and scrolled over to Safari out of pure reflex—only to find it inaccessible. I was reminded, almost constantly, of my incredible ignorance.

As time went on, and I got more and more used to my predicament, I was surprised that what had initially been one of the most frustrating parts of the Digital Rest had become my favorite. I was reminded of all I didn’t know, and I began to find unexpected joy and relief in the fact that I simply couldn’t know. The pressure to already have the answer, or to find it immediately, was gone.

I began to find unexpected joy and relief in the fact that I simply couldn’t know.

We love AI and Google because they offer us the instant answers we crave. When access to these tools is taken away, we’re forced to realize something supremely uncomfortable: Our control is limited, our knowledge is finite, and, ultimately, we are not God. We cannot always know, and we cannot always understand.

In today’s age, we rarely have to sit in that state of not knowing.

Searching for Answers

What we don’t often consider, however, is that the so-called endless supply of answers offered by ChatGPT is actually limited. As humans, we know from experience that we simply aren’t given some answers.

Why do I live with chronic pain?

Why do relationships end, and why are lives lost unexpectedly soon?

Why do family members not know and love Jesus?

Why has God withheld from me that which he has so freely given to others? Why have I had to suffer in the ways that I have?

There’s no clear answer, no neat and concisely generated response. And humanity has asked these questions for a very, very long time.

These questions aren’t unlike those asked by Habakkuk thousands of years ago: “How long, LORD, must I call for help and you do not listen or cry out to you about violence and you do not save?” (Hab. 1:2, CSB). Later, the prophet asks,

Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, and you cannot tolerate wrongdoing. So why do you tolerate those who are treacherous? Why are you silent while one who is wicked swallows up one who is more righteous than himself? (v. 13, CSB)

To Habakkuk’s “why” questions, God gives no clear answers. Instead, near the center of the book, God responds, “The righteous one will live by his faith” (2:4, CSB). Habakkuk teaches us there’s a certain beauty, and even joy, in following God in faith, even when we don’t understand, even when our hearts’ deepest questions go unanswered. The book of Hebrews explains that some lack of seeing and knowing is a natural prerequisite for having any sort of faith at all (Heb. 11:1).

By the end of his book, Habakkuk responds to the Lord in this same faith. Though none of his outward circumstances has changed, despite his fervent prayers (3:17), Habakkuk declares, “Yet I will celebrate in the LORD; I will rejoice in the God of my salvation! The LORD my Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like those of a deer and enables me to walk on mountain heights!” (vv. 18–19, CSB).

In the end, a heart that has learned this art of true faith, of trusting and following even when nothing makes sense, is profoundly valuable. Perhaps the discomfort of our ignorance, the pain of our deep, confusing loss, is one of the best things God can allow us to experience.

There’s something deeply human about that.

We were intentionally created with a limitation, an inability to fully see, fully understand, fully know. That limitation preceded the fall, and God called it “good.”

Peace in the Unknown

As we offer those disappointments we cannot understand to Christ, trusting and following him even when we cannot see what’s ahead or why, he redeems what we give him for better and stronger things. Instead of complete understanding, he offers us faith, a hope that will not disappoint (Rom. 5:5), purity of heart, and conformity to the character of God’s Son.

Perhaps the discomfort of our ignorance, the pain of our deep, confusing loss, is one of the best things God can allow us to experience.

Amid all we don’t understand is a God who understands completely . . . and loves us more deeply than we can even grasp.

So, take a break from AI, from Google, from the instant answers, and rest in the profoundly human “not knowing.” Allow God to train your heart not to balk at your lack of understanding but to feel its importance and joyfully look to him in waiting and trust.

Perhaps you’ll find there’s deep and enduring peace not in knowing but in being loved by the God who does.

Over the past month, more than 200 young writers from around the world submitted original essays, and The Gospel Coalition’s editorial team reviewed them. In their essays, members of Gen Z wrote about how they’re staying human in an AI age, the moments that made their church home theirs, and the destructive habits their faith helped them kick.

Thoughtful Writers

TGC received essays from 208 young writers:

• They ranged in age from 16 to 25. Many were high school students; others were college students or beginning their adult lives.
• Two-thirds of this year’s writers were female and one third were male.
• They’re members of local churches—Baptists, Presbyterians, and Anglicans predominated, with many nondenominational churches also represented.
• There were submissions from across the United States as well as from South Africa, the Philippines, Nigeria, Canada, England, India, China, Indonesia, Australia, and Malaysia.

Many writers told heartwarming stories of how their church families made them feel at home through hospitality, service, and mentorship. Others wrote passionately about how they express the imago Dei through creativity as a way of pushing back against AI. Some wrote thoughtfully about the difficult task of removing sinful habits from their lives.

The most selected prompt was “How I’m Staying Human in the Age of AI,” with just under half of the submissions covering this topic. Many other contestants wrote about the value of solid friendships that cross generations in the church and paint a picture of gospel unity.

We pray your hearts will be warmed and your souls edified as you read these essays.

Three Winners

Among the essays, three pieces stood out as well crafted, thoughtful, and engaging. Our editorial team was clear about which winners to select, and we’re delighted to publish them on the site for you to read.

First Place: “I Blocked My Search Engine So I Could Wait on God” by Audrey Hendricks

Using the example of her “Digital Rest” habit of blocking Safari for a month, Audrey explores what makes humans different from AI. “I began to find an unexpected joy and relief in the fact that I simply couldn’t know.” She considers the idea that as humans, we were never meant to have all the answers.

Second Place: “Embrace Your Humanity by Digging in the Dirt” by Elise Brandon

With technology and AI offering a host of ways to shorten tasks and make life efficient, Elise’s essay digs into this question: What are we saving time for? Using her own labor of love—gardening—she writes about the brevity of life and the fleeting nature of time. If time is so short, Elise urges, we should embrace tasks that God has given instead of using technology to avoid them.

Third Place: “Sister, Bring Your Sexual Sin to Light” by Mackenzie Slagle

Mackenzie’s essay offers a raw and genuine plea for readers to bring their sins into the light and let other Christians support them in the struggle. She writes about her testimony of battling sexual sin and the way the Lord drew her back to himself through confession and the help of fellow believers.

How should churches use AI without letting it reshape what the church is?

That question drives this episode with Michael Graham and Keith Plummer. Michael is program director for The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, and Keith is dean of the School of Divinity at Cairn University, where he teaches on technology and digital discipleship. Together, they bring theological depth and practical wisdom to one of the most urgent questions facing Christians today: How do we use AI helpfully without letting it erode the human relationships at the heart of Christian life?

In our conversation, Michael and Keith offer clear and penetrating frameworks for thinking about AI in the church. They warn against using AI as a relational substitute, reflect on the difference between toil and truly human labor, and argue that we should never outsource to machines what God made us to need other people for. We talk about sermon preparation, spiritual formation, pastoral ministry, and the subtle ways convenience can hollow out wisdom, patience, and trust.

Michael and Keith joined me on Silicon Spiritualities to ask how Christians and churches can embrace helpful technologies while guarding the deeply human and spiritual realities those technologies can never replace.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Gospel Coalition’s AI Christian Benchmark project
• “Why Pastors Should Question AI for the Sake of Their Souls” by Daniel Nealon
• The Great Dechurching by Jim Davis and Michael Graham

PREORDER The AI Apocalypse: A Survival Guide for Humanity, featuring Plummer, Watkin, Brett McCracken, and many others, such as Ben Sasse and Alan Noble.

JOIN the conversation on Discord, along with other Silicon Spiritualities listeners.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Donate today.

We found a local school that would have us. We purchased folding chairs and racks, totes and carts, a modular baptistry, and, of course, a trailer. Off we went, loading in and out of the school each Sunday.

Mobile mornings sure start early, but everyone settled into the new routine. Honestly, there was a kind of excitement to it all. We were doing something for the kingdom. We were taking a risk to spread the gospel and serve our community. Setting up and tearing down every Sunday felt meaningfully connected to that vision.

But when you’re mobile, it doesn’t take long for the question to arise: “What’s the plan for a permanent home?”

The question is especially understandable when the weather turns hot, the trailer gets steamy, and the carts get squeaky. Everyone begins to dream of a permanent church home.

Won’t it be nice when we don’t have to get up so early? Won’t it be nice when we can show up and everything is ready? Won’t it be nice when we can focus on other projects? Won’t it be nice when we look more like a “real” church? Won’t it be nice when that day comes!

For us, that day came after nearly a decade. Nine years and several locations later, by the kindness of God and the generosity of his people, we moved into our newly constructed church building. A permanent home at last.

Did that day live up to our dreams? Did permanency make all the difference? And what can you expect if you transition from temporary space to permanent space?

Here are three lessons we learned.

1. Permanency is a real blessing.

Your hopes are founded. A permanent space trumps temporary space and a mobile setup. We do spend less time setting up for every Sunday gathering. Permanency has allowed us to invest more into our space without adding to the weekly workload for volunteers.

Your hopes are founded. A permanent space trumps temporary space and a mobile setup.

We welcome the extra margin to set up for a Sunday on the Thursday or Friday prior. Kids’ toys stay in place. Welcome tables remain set up. The worship and tech team can leave equipment on stage, with settings relatively the same week to week. Gone are the surprise moments of setting up in a school (“Oh, the school has props on the stage today . . . Fun!”).

Access to 24-7 permanent space has allowed our ministries to expand offerings. We’re seeing church members use the new building for meetings, counseling, baby and wedding showers, graduation parties, discipleship groups, and worship nights. Our community has also enjoyed the new space, and we’ve been happy to share it with various teams and groups in our area.

Having a permanent space is truly a blessing. But there’s more to the story, and I want you and your church to be prepared.

2. An adjustment period is required.

When you move into a permanent space, allow yourself an adjustment period. Many tasks and burdens of mobility disappear, but many responsibilities of permanence pop up. The new landscape can feel dizzying at first.

Here are a few examples of new tasks that arise:

• Cleaning. You must figure out how you’ll clean the space. Will this be a volunteer team, or can the church afford to hire custodians or a cleaning service? How often will they clean?
• Landscaping. Grass grows. Weeds grow (a lot). Will volunteers cover this as well? A lawn-care service?
• Scheduling. Everyone is excited about the new space and wants to use it. Great! Whom should they contact about a reservation? And where is the reservation entered?
• Maintenance. Immediately, even in a new building, you’ll encounter wear and tear and needed repairs. Who will oversee these items? What’s the budget?
• Policies. Who can use the facility? For what and why and when can it be used? Is there a waiver form? A cleaning fee?

These tasks don’t diminish the goodness of a permanent space. Nevertheless, they represent the reality of a new workload, a new decision tree, and even new volunteer or staff positions.

Account for this adjustment period. Give your church and leadership team time to settle in. Don’t race off to hire a staff person to cover the new tasks—not yet anyway. Don’t make any long-term commitments to groups and building use. Don’t write panicked policies. Let the dust settle. Find the new normal. Then start making your moves.

3. The humble, hard work of ministry continues.

A permanent building is a tool for gospel ministry, not a silver bullet. We’ve certainly seen more new faces since we transitioned from a pop-up, mobile church to a church with a permanent address. Attendance grew about 25 percent almost as soon as we moved in. It was amazing and encouraging.

Yet, as we close out the first full year in our new permanent space, the normal ebbs and flows of ministry do and should return.

The permanent building is a wonderful 24-7 advertisement for our church, but people still need to be personally invited. The building does house many new gatherings and groups, but the building is only a backdrop to the ministry done within it. The building has provided us with a home base, but we still must launch out on mission.

The permanent building is a wonderful 24-7 advertisement for our church, but people still need to be personally invited.

A new building may be worth a visit or two for a guest, but it won’t keep, engage, or disciple a guest. When the construction or renovation of your new space ends, the real work continues.

So be ready to redirect your energy to the regular work of ministry. Be ready, especially after a major building campaign, to recalibrate, reenergize, and reengage with the church’s central mission. This transition is right and good, but it might surprise you how fast it comes, how disorienting it can be, and how intentional you must be about this refocusing.

Building for the Kingdom

If you’re part of a church plant pining for a permanent location, hang in there, and keep going! Landing in a permanent space is certainly worth your effort. You’re building for the kingdom. Challenges are ahead, but the blessings outweigh them all.

On the first day we gathered in our permanent space, one member commented, “We are literally standing inside of answered prayers.” It was true, and I hope that will be true for your church too.

Western mission partnerships, often characterized by paternalistic relationships that promote financial dependency, have unintentionally contributed to these challenges.

One might think that what’s needed to combat these problems is less Western involvement, pulling back to avoid cultivating overreliance. What’s actually needed is a reformation in mission partnerships—deeper relationships of reciprocity—that will promote healthy churches and healthy leaders.

We Need More than Surface-Level Investment

Throughout modern missions history, there have been unhealthy relationships between Western missionaries and local gospel workers. These breakdowns rarely begin with bad intentions. More often, they grow out of limited transparency, insufficient investment, and unequal power dynamics.

Sometimes one or both parties seek an advantage over the other, creating an unhealthy one-way dependency that must be maintained by the Westerner. Due to the Western workers’ material wealth and greater knowledge, real or perceived, national workers can become subservient to their ideas and wishes. Over time, this imbalance fosters dependency rather than partnership, and a focus on appearances rather than honesty.

One might think that what’s needed to combat these problems is less Western involvement. What’s actually needed is a reformation in mission partnerships.

One example from a ministry in Zambia illustrates this pattern. A Western missionary planted a church and developed basic infrastructure, including a church building and a pastor’s home. He trained a national pastor, transferred leadership, and moved on to another ministry. While the leadership transition appeared healthy on the surface, the relational depth necessary for long-term accountability was largely absent.

Problems soon emerged. Shortly after the Western missionary left, the Zambian pastor applied to a Western mission organization and began receiving monthly support. The organization raised funds for a vehicle, but the pastor didn’t purchase it; instead, he used the funds for personal expenses. When a mission representative later visited Zambia, the pastor borrowed a friend’s vehicle and presented it as his own. Then, when the deception finally unraveled, the national worker attempted suicide.

In hindsight, the warning signs were there, and they weren’t primarily financial but relational. The Western church planter didn’t have a sufficiently deep relationship with the Zambian leader to discern that leader’s character deficiencies. The national pastor learned to say and do what pleased Western partners merely to gain trust and financial support. The absence of transparency and reciprocity created a context where deception could flourish, with devastating consequences for everyone involved.

We Need More than the West Holding the Purse Strings

A popular trend in post-colonial African missions is for Western Christians to directly support pastors and missionary church planters in the Global South. As Robert Reese observes, this strategy creates several hindrances:

1. It perpetuates the colonial mentality of wealthier Christians holding purse strings while national workers do the actual work. It’s often advertised this way in the West: “The local brother can do missions much cheaper than if we send our own.”

2. It removes the local accountability that’s better maintained when African churches identify, train, and send their own workers.

3. It creates dependency as African churches come to believe they can’t engage in church planting if “sponsors” don’t pay for it.

These factors result in paternalism, which Michael Pocock defines this way:

When missionaries and their sending churches and agencies assume, sometimes unconsciously, that they possess superior knowledge, experience, and skills. As a result of these assumptions, they exert control over local Christians and their leaders. This control almost always involves financial arrangements and the implicit authority of money.

But if these are the problems, what’s the solution?

Biblical and Church-Centered Framework for Healthy Partnerships

Third John shows us the secret to healthy relationships between cross-cultural workers (like John) and local ones (like Gaius): reciprocity. John says reciprocity involves mutual respect rooted in shared truth (vv. 1–4), two-way, caring hospitality (vv. 5–6), shared sacrifice for the mission (vv. 7–8), and transparent relationships built on trust and servanthood rather than control.

Such reciprocity isn’t optional. Gospel work advances best when cross-cultural missionaries and local workers relate as fellow laborers and practice giving, care, communication, and planning in humility, love, and truth, for the sake of the Name.

Both parties must be willing to be open and communicate their emotions, struggles, hopes, and temptations without fear of being wrongly judged by the other. Moreover, reciprocity is best cultivated when mission efforts center around local churches.

Paul was on a mission to reach the Roman Empire with the gospel. He preached in major urban centers such as Philippi, Ephesus, and Corinth—key centers of population, economy, and education. Because gospel influence, like water, flows downhill, often along channels of relationships, he was confident these churches would serve as powerful agents for spreading the gospel throughout the region. Paul’s plan was strategic and highly effective.

Moreover, the New Testament pattern of giving that Paul taught and lived was church-centered, whether it involved sending people or funds (Acts 13:1–5). Believers in Antioch, Thessalonica, and Philippi gave to their local churches from whom Paul received the offerings (2 Cor. 8–9). These funds were for the poor, not for the support of his missionary team. So Paul delivered the offerings to the church for distribution, because he knew that the authority Christ has invested in the church is lost when giving and receiving bypasses the church.

Implications for Today’s Mission Partnerships

What are some implications from Paul’s missions and support strategies for Western and African churches today?

For Western Churches

American friends, don’t lose your heart for the gospel nor your desire to invest in missions worldwide. Yet be aware that the strategies you adopt may compromise your goal of forming healthy, reproducing churches in Africa. There’s a better way! Cultivate reciprocity in various areas:

1. Accountability: Only support men sent and supervised by their local churches. Many “free agents” in Africa attempt to do ministry without a local church’s mandate, authority, or accountability. Investigate fully before committing support.

2. Responsibility: Local churches must own the mission task. Partner only through healthy church-to-church relationships. Supporting a missionary directly, rather than channeling your support through church partnerships, undermines biblical responsibility.

3. Communication: Missionaries must regularly visit and report to their sending church, and sending churches should communicate frequently with those partnering with them in the work.

4. Decision-Making: Avoid unilateral Western decisions about African ministry strategy. A discussion between Western and African ministry partners in the spirit of Acts 15 can leverage mutual discernment and result in shared decision-making.

For Local African Churches

Consider the biblical criteria for mission work: Initial evangelism must lead to planting new churches. These churches must provide a nurturing environment for Christians to grow and mature. The church should identify and train leaders who will be responsible for evangelizing and planting new churches (Acts 13–14), nurturing believers (1 Pet. 5:2), and training new leaders (2 Tim. 2:2).

Gospel influence, like water, flows downhill, often along channels of relationships.

Local churches in Africa must embrace the responsibility to raise and send missionaries. Reject the mindset that African believers can’t do missions because of a lack of resources. This thinking is a cancer that must be removed from assemblies by the scalpel of God’s unchanging Word.

The future of gospel advance in Africa requires a reformation in our partnership models. Western churches must abandon paternalistic approaches that have unintentionally fostered prosperity-gospel teaching and nominal Christianity. Instead, they must build interdependent partnerships founded on mutual respect, theological clarity, and shared gospel commitments. Only then will we see healthy, reproducing churches emerge that can carry the true gospel to every corner of the African continent.

Church family, friends, and even strangers often ask me this question. On a typical day, I run errands as if I’m preparing for a long trip. I’m carrying a backpack filled with medical supplies, wearing a bag with personal belongings, pushing a stroller containing my usually happy (but sometimes overstimulated) daughter, and holding whatever toy or clothing item she’s dropped along the way.

My 6-year-old was born with a condition that caused vision loss, hormone deficiencies, and a brain abnormality. She receives daily medications by feeding tube, is nonspeaking, and has difficulty walking. She’s getting stronger, but her medical needs continue to greatly affect her everyday life. Since I’m her primary caregiver, they also affect mine.

Caring for my daughter is a source of my greatest delight. It’s also hard. The necessities of her care often strain my body and mind. A 2024 study describes physical and emotional tolls that parents of children with disabilities experience: fatigue, muscle and joint pain, sleep problems, depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and social isolation. The article seeks to promote supportive environments to help parents thrive in their caregiving role and minimize these burdens.

I know many members of my local church have this same goal. Yet their desire to help is often accompanied by uncertainty. What’s helpful? Am I even equipped to help? Verses like Ephesians 2:10 and Titus 3:8 remind me of the God-given desire believers have to serve others, and I’ve felt supported by my church body as I’ve cared for my daughter. Yet we can all grow in our care for others.

If you’re eager to partner with families of children with disabilities, here are six encouragements.

1. Be a learner.

My daughter has septo-optic dysplasia. When she was diagnosed, my husband and I had never heard of that condition. So we studied the nuances of her diagnosis and learned how to interact with her in a meaningful way.

Though curiosity may feel awkward, you can learn to help families affected by disabilities by watching and asking questions. Proverbs 4:7 says, “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom.” So don’t be afraid to ask for it. Don’t shy away from asking about a child’s diagnosis and specific care needs.

The child’s caregivers know him best. Watch how they interact with him. Ask, What does the child like? Or dislike? How does he indicate interests and needs? This may feel intrusive at first, but most parents will be encouraged by friends who are eager to know their child.

2. Be a present friend.

God made us for relationships. J. C. Ryle says, “Friendship halves our troubles and doubles our joy.” This is no different for children with special needs and their parents. Often, as joys are shared and vulnerabilities disclosed to friends, the challenges of special-needs parenting deepen relationships.

Come alongside special-needs families as you would any other friends. Offer to accompany them to medical appointments or watch their other children while they go. Consider providing dinner for the family after a busy day. Be a good listener. Another mother of a child with special needs told me that having someone listen to her struggles and accomplishments is one of the most helpful acts of friendship she’s received.

3. Be inclusive.

At times, caring for a child with special needs is isolating. My daughter is more comfortable in our home. Outings with her often prove more challenging than encouraging. In different seasons, our family has needed to withdraw from church activities or dinner out with friends to care for her.

Having someone listen to her struggles and accomplishments is one of the most helpful acts of friendship she’s received.

Observant friends have brought the outside world to us during these seasons. They’ve brought dinner over to enjoy with us at home instead of inviting us to theirs. Others have initiated Bible studies in our home during times when we couldn’t easily leave. These meaningful gestures both lightened our load and lifted our souls.

4. Be prayerful.

Recently, a family member asked how she could specifically pray for my daughter. Her care in asking encouraged me. Though my daughter doesn’t speak or interact verbally, this family member conveyed to me that she saw my daughter as a person, a soul, with specific prayer needs.

Asking a parent about ways to pray for her child is meaningful. You can also inquire about the joys and challenges the parent experiences with her child to inform your prayers.

5. Be patient.

If your caregiver friend is like me, she may struggle to accept your help. This doesn’t mean it’s not needed or wanted. Your friend may need time to adjust to the idea of receiving.

Accepting help requires trust and vulnerability, which usually develops over time. Patiently build trust, and don’t give up offering help.

6. Point them to Christ.

As you strive to help, you may feel like you can’t do enough or like you aren’t doing the right things. So far, I’ve discussed practical ways to serve families of children with special needs, but the most meaningful way you can help is by pointing the parents and their child to Christ.

With gentle prayers and specific notes of encouragement, remind parents of children with disabilities that Christ is their ever-present help (Ps. 46:1), that he’s the good Shepherd (Ps. 23), the faithful friend (John 15:15), and the One who gives perfect rest (Matt. 11:28–29).

With gentle prayers and specific notes of encouragement, remind parents of children with disabilities that Christ is their ever-present help

Moreover, children with disabilities, no matter their level of understanding, need discipleship. Encourage them by teaching them the character of the One who made them and loves them perfectly.

My husband and I are continually encouraged by the care our church family shows us. Recently, a church member has begun sitting with and caring for our daughter after the church service so that we’re able to engage in conversation without distraction. This gesture has helped us feel connected and included within our church body. Our daughter enjoys the companionship too.

That one simple act has made a big difference for us. Your simple actions can make a big difference for families affected by disabilities in your church.

With that (depressing) scene in mind, let’s talk about family worship.

Moses speaks to parents on the plains of Moab. His wisdom plays well in our modern households today. Parents who know and worship God naturally want to help their children know and worship God. It’s part of having found great treasure: You naturally want to share it with the people you love most.

Yet leading family worship can be a trial. Some of our most discouraging moments parenting our children are tied to our most sincere attempts to love and serve them by gathering for family worship. When our plans and expectations meet our children’s squirminess and silliness (which they’re accustomed to do), we lose heart. Then there are those times when we’re tired of trying and coming up short, or we’re exhausted at the end of a long day, and the thought of getting organized for family worship time on a Thursday night feels like a burden, not a blessing.

In my experience, family worship tends to get stuck in two equal and opposite ditches, both of which were familiar to Moses. If we’re able to recognize them, we can find perspective and strength to persevere in this worthwhile task.

Where We Get Stuck

On one side of the road, the ditch is when parents imagine family worship as a seminary seminar over supper. While we may not attach that specific label to family worship, it does get after what we want. We long to help our children find depth of knowledge and formation of character through a robust time of Bible reading and reflection. But it takes just a little silly business or grandstanding from our kids and things fall apart.

Family worship tends to get stuck in two equal and opposite ditches, both of which were familiar to Moses.

I like to think most Christian parents know something of the following: The parent-professor throws his or her hands up in frustration, the lecture goes off-script, the little learners get the wrong message, and it feels like we’re all further from God for trying to draw near to him.

On the other side, the ditch we fall into is the approach of all spontaneity with no formality. We keep family worship “organic.” We talk about God when it naturally comes up. This ditch is often a consequence of the first. Families don’t start to organize anything for family worship because the imagined bar is too high.

If the first family meeting risks the error of the faith being something forced on the child, this version of discipleship-by-osmosis risks teaching the child that the faith is of little urgency or consequence. At least the first meeting demonstrates intentionality; this one implicitly teaches that talking about God isn’t that big of a deal.

The ditch of ambition loves depth, and the organic ditch loves authenticity. I’ve gotten stuck in both across different seasons of life, family, ministry, and work. But as we’ll see, Deuteronomy commands both halves at once: fixed words on the heart and as-you-go occasions—when you sit, walk, lie down, and rise. Form married to freedom.

Moses offers tired parents today the piece we’re missing. The family that quits family worship and the family that never starts make opposite mistakes about the same command.

Wisdom from a Tired Parent

Sometimes we get to the end of a day and feel like we’re crumpled, wrung out, and ready to be left alone. Moses had been through a lot. In the course of his life, he survived being hidden in a basket on the Nile River, 40 years as a shepherd in Midian, leading the Israelites out of slavery through the parting of the Red Sea, and guiding the people through 40 years of wandering in the wilderness while dealing with their constant rebellion. That’s a long life.

In his parting message to God’s children, he speaks as one offering wisdom from a nearly unbelievable range of experiences. His attention naturally goes to parents, and he helps them keep it simple:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 6:4–9)

Moses emphasizes a structured form of freedom with discipleship. He teaches the importance of the rhythm of repetition and instruction for the whole of life. His words aren’t aimed only at teaching what’s true but at forming them to love what’s true.

His words aren’t aimed only at teaching what’s true but at forming them to love what’s true.

Moses’s words are simple instructions for how to get the conversations about God started with your children. And, beautifully, it’s all grace to them.

In Deuteronomy 6:10–12, Israel is told to eat before they’re told to teach. The very land Israel lives in is all gift from God. Family worship is also receiving before it’s ever producing. Most reflections on Deuteronomy 6 are law-shaped, but grace is our abundant supply. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, kept the Shema—the harvest is secured in him; we sow received seed.

This emphasis on training children in truth is later picked up by the apostle Paul near the end of Romans: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). Paul’s warns that the world will fit you into its mold unless you’re remade in Truth. Paul cautions against being conformed, passively shaped by the culture we live in.

In Colossians, Paul presses the same point in a different way: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit” (Col. 2:8). Family worship isn’t just a form of discipleship in what’s true but a specific form of counter-discipleship where we set up what’s true over against what’s false. My friend Trevin Wax and I just published a children’s catechism that seeks to carry on this great tradition into a new generation.

Start the Conversation

Moses preached the greatest sermon on parenting and never got to parent in the promised land. His words go where he cannot. Family worship is handing on what you yourself cannot carry. One day we too will give our final instructions to our own children. Let’s be sure gospel conversations are part of the legacy they’ll remember us by.

We have a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old that God has entrusted to us, and we strive to emphasize both formality and freedom. On the formal side, we pray over them before school drop-off. We memorize Scripture as a family by rehearsing it in the morning and evening. The key for us in this season is walking through The Gospel Way Catechism for Kids. Spontaneously, we try to have conversations about God while we’re waiting in traffic, debriefing the day, fixing dinner, and tidying up at night. We intentionally pick the music while we drive to help focus us on who God is and what God does. We sing badly but we go for it together while weaving through the after-school errands. We try to live out the advice first given to parents in Moab while navigating life in modern America.

Parents, don’t give up. Trust the Lord and find ways to diligently teach your children while you sit, walk, go to sleep, and rise.

In this conversation recorded at TGCW26, Mark Vroegop and Betsy Childs Howard discuss how to wait and employ strategies of spiritual growth in seasons of uncertainty.

In This Episode

00:00 – Introduction and background

02:56 – Personal experiences with waiting

06:41 – Waiting in biblical context

10:26 – Challenges and responses to waiting

31:55 – Strategies for coping with waiting

36:54 – Supporting others in their waiting

39:29 – Conclusion and final thoughts

Resources Mentioned:

• Seasons of Waiting by Betsy Childs Howard
• Waiting Isn’t a Waste by Mark Vroegop

SIGN UP for one of our newsletters to stay informed about TGC’s latest resources.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Give today.

Don’t miss an episode of The Gospel Coalition Podcast:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
  

After typing the details into a chatbot, we were rewarded with affirmation of our parenting style, recognition of how hard parenting is, and a few ideas about what might make bedtime work better in the future. It included scripts we could use, routines we could tweak, and a recommendation to take time for ourselves (hard when your preschooler won’t sleep). The ideas weren’t half bad, to be honest.

But they were only half good. As the weeks progressed, our situation didn’t change much. So we approached a couple in our local church who are a little ahead on this parenting journey and asked them to share a meal with us. Over dinner, we received human honesty about the struggles we’re facing.

We got to look in the eyes of saints who’ve walked this road before us. We felt them pass along the comfort they’ve received from the Lord. They gave us custom ideas for our real child who’s dear to them too. Since then, they’ve prayed for us. They’re bringing our names before the throne of God and checking in on us in real time to see how it’s going.

Those are things AI technology can never do. When we ask technology to make decisions for us, to render judgment in sensitive areas, or to give hands-on help, it’s unable to meet the need. AI reproduces information, but it can’t generate wisdom. For wisdom, we need the Word and the Spirit-empowered church—real, flesh-and-blood, imperfect, time-bound people.

Before You Ask AI

It’s tempting to seek parenting advice from AI because it is immediately available, doesn’t come with emotional baggage, and makes us feel good. Sometimes we don’t want to wait for answers, and since people can only be in one place at a time, we turn to technology.

AI reproduces information, but it can’t generate wisdom.

Technology never hurts our feelings, exposes our idols, or makes us feel misunderstood. It won’t leave if our problems are too big. It isn’t inconvenienced by our pain. We aren’t keeping it from some other task we think is more important.

But for all its seeming benefits, AI has significant limitations when we’re seeking wisdom for parenting.

AI Can’t Give True Wisdom

Wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord (Prov. 9:10). It starts with knees bowed before the God of heaven and earth in joyful submission. AI has no knees. It has no soul capable of bowing in fear before the Lord. AI can share information, but because it’s man-made technology, it can never be “filled with the knowledge of [God’s] will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding” (Col. 1:9) the way God’s people can.

The believing parents with whom we rub shoulders in our local churches are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, and he can work through their counsel to give us wisdom.

AI Can’t Give Custom Counsel

Chatbots are excellent at taking a vast amount of information and synthesizing it to answer questions. What they’re unable to do is look into your eyes, hear your specific concerns and struggles, meet your children, pray with you and for you, and then offer counsel based on the specific situation you’re walking through.

God’s people do this all the time. It’s the nature of our connection with one another, and it’s distinctly human.

AI Can’t Offer God’s Comfort

Chatbots have never been comforted by the Lord. They’ve never suffered or been joyful. They don’t know what it means to weep in exhaustion after a sleepless night. They’re not alive.

Because of this, they’re fundamentally unable to offer comfort they’ve received from the Lord (2 Cor. 1:4). The Lord comforts his people through his people. If we run to a chatbot for help, we lose the beauty of the Lord’s people caring for one another.

Ask God

Chatbots possess a lot of information gleaned from human sources all over the internet. They draw conclusions from that information and can sometimes generate helpful ideas. For some tasks and topics, AI can be put to good use.

But we need to be clear about AI’s limitations before we rely on it for parenting help. Chatbots cannot generate wisdom from the Lord, passed through the lives and hearts of image-bearers and directly applied to our lives.

The Lord comforts his people through his people.

James 1:5 makes it clear what we should do when we need wisdom: Ask God.

Throughout history, God’s people haven’t lacked wisdom without artificial intelligence available to them. They’ve had the Lord’s Spirit, his Word, and his people. God gave wisdom generously to them, and he’ll give it generously to us. As Hebrews 10 reminds us: We can walk by faith, seeking wisdom from God, knowing that he who promised is faithful.

I’d never heard the phrase before, but once I had, I couldn’t help noticing how many resources designed for women are more about roles than about glorifying and enjoying the God who made us.

The problem isn’t that resources address women’s particular experiences; it’s that they sometimes shrink discipleship into stereotypes. Both Julia Higgins, in Christ and His Bride: How Men and Women Tell the Story of the Gospel, and Kendra Dahl, in A Place for You: Reframing Christian Womanhood, avoid that tendency. Their books reflect the real longings of women to find their purpose and place in the world. They go beyond cultural applications of a woman’s responsibility in the home, debates over ordination, and the question of roles, and offer rich expositions of redemptive history that can benefit both men and women.

Women’s Purpose

In Christ and His Bride, Higgins, assistant professor of Christian ministry at Samford University, argues that women and men have the same creational purpose: regency. Beginning in Genesis 1:26–28, Scripture shows that God made humanity in his image to exercise dominion over creation.

These books reflect the real longings of women to find their purpose and place in the world.

For example, Higgins argues, “God used Moses and Miriam to teach the covenant people about the character of Yahweh, the One true ruler over all. This confirms for us that, as the story of God advanced throughout the Old Testament, the Lord incorporated both men and women . . . to continue the mandate of regency over the earth” (34). This work is a biblical theology of regency as image-bearing.

In contemporary discussions, the emphasis is often on the difference between men’s and women’s roles. But both men and women were created to reign as image-bearers, failed in this task in the garden, receive God’s saving grace, and will be joined to Christ as his Bride in the last day. Though there are still distinct callings in this life, Higgins reminds us,

Our being united to Him restores us back to our purpose and design. Just as the bride of Psalm 45 was at the right hand of and ruled with the handsomest of men, the King, so too, Christians, Christ’s bride, are given a seat of honor with Him to extend His gracious kingdom over the earth. (122)

Thus, it’s entirely appropriate to ask, “What should brothers and sisters in Christ be doing together to extend Christ’s self-sacrificial rule for the good of the church and the flourishing of society and world?” (163, emphasis original). We often assume women need resources that address fundamentally different theological needs than men’s resources; Higgins proves we don’t.

Women’s Place

In A Place for You, Dahl, women’s ministry director at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Encinitas, California, addresses the practical issue of where women belong in the church.

Though Dahl spends much more time on some of the controversial aspects of women’s roles, she shares a foundational conviction with Higgins: “If our first calling is to be Christians and our primary calling is to the church, the playing field is level. We all—male and female, married and single, parents or not, young and old—have a place in God’s household, standing side by side before the cross” (170). Men and women have an equal share in the story of redemption.

Dahl holds to this view even as she maintains a complementarian position. She argues that in 2 Timothy, Paul prohibits women from teaching and exercising authority in the role of elder.

She points out, however, that “when we hyperfocus on Paul’s teaching regarding men and women to the neglect of his teaching regarding elder qualifications and proper order within God’s household, we give the impression that the main qualification for teaching and having authority in the church is being male, rather than being a qualified elder.” The church should instead emphasize the correct application of Scripture by reserving the office of elder for “the qualified men who have been called and appointed by the church” (179).

Confusion about an elder’s role, especially when maleness rather than spiritual maturity is emphasized as a qualification, contributes to frustration among women in the church. Yet the answer to error isn’t to overcorrect into a new error.

Why does God reserve this office for men alone? Dahl doesn’t know. She admits,

I’m content to let my theories be theories and instead echo Kathy Keller’s conclusion: “I could speculate, but speculation often leads to error. I will follow that ancient divine who said, ‘Where God has shut his Holy Mouth I will not venture to open mine.’” (180)

In these controversial topics particularly, Dahl models how we should approach the unfathomable mysteries of God and the concerns of his daughters.

The answer to error isn’t to overcorrect into a new error.

Though Dahl emphasizes the unique challenges women face, her conclusion is similar to Higgins’s: Men and women share both purpose and place. This winsome and tender book invites women to enter and remain in the church, even as some women leave in search of a place to belong. Dahl makes it clear: There’s a place for women here.

Better Way

Debates about gender roles and the church aren’t going away. Complementarians would benefit from renewed focus on helping women flourish within the church as they live out their primary calling: to be a child of God. Dahl observes,

It grieves me to think of how much the church loses when it ignores the strategic placement, godly examples, and wise perspectives of the women in its midst. But it also grieves me to think of the ways we rob ourselves of the joy of serving Christ because we become so consumed with fighting to be seen and heard that we miss the good works God has set before us. (115)

Both books offer application for women of all walks of life—married, single, young, and old. But they’re also enriching resources that defy the pink or blue labels. Christ and His Bride and A Place for You offer a beautiful picture of the church as they present a positive vision of what it means to be men and women of God.

We’re familiar with this concept of a “messiah” outside the Bible. We know what it’s like to long for a deliverer. We understand how Morpheus feels toward Neo in The Matrix, or how people can develop such high hopes for an incoming political leader.

What if this is what Jesus is for humanity? What if he’s the One we’ve all been waiting for—the hero in the long and troubled story of human history?

Messianic Expectation

You may be aware that the Bible comes in two basic parts. There is a longer, older, Hebrew section—more narrative and concrete (what we call the Old Testament). Then there is the more compact Greek counterpart—more systematic, full of letters (what we call the New Testament). The New Testament is concentrated in the first century AD, but the books of the Old Testament are scattered across several centuries of ancient history.

This twofold structure entails a chronological unfolding that distinguishes the Bible from many other religious texts (e.g., the Qur’an). This provides a unique benefit: It positions us to observe how the biblical story develops across time.

Christians claim there is coherence to this development. Specifically, the movement from Old Testament to New Testament is something like the movement from promise to fulfillment. And the biggest example (though not the only one) is messianic prophecies in the Old Testament predicting Jesus. This kind of appeal has a long tradition, tracing back throughout church history to the apostles and to Jesus himself (e.g., Luke 4:21).

But today it often sounds suspicious. How detailed are these prophecies? Could apparent similarities to Jesus be a coincidence? How do we know the texts haven’t been altered? And what about the possibility of an intentional fulfillment (by Jesus or his followers—or both)?

Arguments from prophecy have often failed to take these concerns seriously. Hence they tend to be unpopular today. But more careful expressions of argument are possible.

The key to the argument is the cumulative weight of Old Testament prophecies. It’s the sheer number of them, and the way they unfold organically and yet seemingly coherently—almost like a LEGO set being slowly constructed, piece by piece, with the end clearly in mind.

The key to the argument is the cumulative weight of Old Testament prophecies. It’s the sheer number of them, and the way they unfold organically and yet seemingly coherently.

Significantly, messianic expectation does not arise from one person but within a huge and evolving tradition. This is a point Blaise Pascal emphasized: “Here is a whole people who announce it, and who have existed for four thousand years, in order to give corporate testimony of the assurances which they have, and from which they cannot be diverted by whatever threats and persecutions people may make against them.”

Big Picture

The way messianic hope unfolds through the Old Testament is absolutely fascinating. Let’s sketch five principles here to get the big picture.

1. The fundamental plot of the Old Testament is the Creator God choosing one nation (Israel) to bless all the other nations of the world (see Gen. 12:1–3). The strange thing is, this doesn’t really happen within the Old Testament—except to a very limited extent. Instead, Israel languishes, declines, and then barely survives, yet hope endures that this blessing will happen one day in the future. From Genesis 3:15 to Malachi 4:5–6, the Old Testament’s palpable flavor is forward-looking and expectant.

2. This forward-looking quality of the Old Testament gradually homes in on one particular person—initially a royal figure, or king (Gen. 49:10; Num. 24:17–19), and then more specifically a descendant of King David (2 Sam. 7:16; Jer. 23:5–6; Ezek. 37:24–25).

3. Hope also arises for a coming prophet (Deut. 18:15–18) and a coming priest (1 Sam. 2:35), and eventually these hopes (especially the priestly one) seem to merge with the Davidic hope (Ps. 110; Jer. 33:17–18; Dan. 9:24–27; Zech. 6:13). We will speak of this fuller hope as a “messianic” hope (Messiah means “anointed one,” and prophets, priests, and kings were three anointed offices in the Old Testament).

4. As it develops in its own turn, messianic hope becomes interwoven with the entire range of Old Testament expectation. It is through the future Messiah that God will bring about

• the blessing of the nations (Ps. 72:17),
• the reunification and peace of God’s people (Isa. 9:6–7; Mic. 5:4–5),
• atonement for sin and the cessation of sacrifice (Dan. 9:24–27),
• deliverance from foreign powers (Isa. 11:1–10; Jer. 30:8–9),
• multiplication of offspring (Jer. 33:17–22; Ezek. 37:26), and
• the return to the land (Ezek. 37:25; Amos 9:11–15).

Essentially, all Israel’s hopes crystallize in this one figure, like dozens of parallel streams eventually converging to form one river.

5. The biblical story seems to go out of its way to highlight the endurance of the Davidic line, even during major disruptions (like the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BC). This explains the seemingly random genealogical ending to the book of Ruth (the great-grandmother of David); the otherwise anticlimactic conclusion to Kings and Jeremiah, highlighting the survival of Jehoiachin (the Davidic ruler during the exile); and the emphasis in the postexilic literature on the establishment of Zerubbabel (the grandson of Jehoiachin).

In sum, you could say the Old Testament almost reads like a story of expectation—a long tale sustaining a hope that has not yet quite arrived.

Triumphant Messiah

By the first century, a widespread sense of messianic expectation existed among the Jewish people—so much so that Roman historians (at least Suetonius, Tacitus, and Josephus) even appropriated this idea to describe their own emperors. Nonetheless, Jewish groups differed significantly in what they thought the Messiah would do. In some communities (like the Qumran community), there was expectation for two Messiahs—one priestly, one kingly.

We can isolate two strands of messianic prophecies that contributed to these different expectations—the triumphant Messiah versus the lowly Messiah. Expectation for a triumphant Messiah is dominant:

• He rules over the entire world (Ps. 72:8; Isa. 9:7; Zech. 9:10).
• He reigns forever (Pss. 21:4; 72:17; 89:36–37).
• He subdues God’s enemies (Pss. 2:9; 89:22–23; 110:1–2; 132:18).
• He delivers and protects God’s people (Ps. 72:12–14; Isa. 11:4; Jer. 23:5–6; Ezek. 34:23; Mic. 5:4–5).
• He spreads righteousness and peace and saving knowledge of God to all nations (Gen. 49:10; Ps. 72:16–17; Isa. 11:10; 42:1; 49:6; Zech. 9:10).

But that is not the full picture. Other texts envision a suffering figure (Ps. 22), lowly and riding on a donkey (Zech. 9:9), dying on behalf of others (Isa. 53). These passages were often taken as messianic, no less than the triumphant texts—though the rabbis struggled to correlate them.

In the Talmud, we can even find some rabbis contrasting the son of man riding in the clouds (Dan. 7) with the king riding on a donkey (Zech. 9) as two alternative possibilities, contingent on the obedience of the Jewish people. After all, how could the One riding on the clouds be the same person as the One riding on a donkey?

Suffering Messiah

Let’s zoom in on one text for a moment: Isaiah 52:13–53:12. Here we read of a righteous servant of God who suffers vicariously for others. Some claim that this servant is the corporate nation of Israel. But this passage is one of four “servant songs” in the book of Isaiah, all describing the same figure—and elsewhere the servant is said to save Israel (e.g., Isa. 49:6). So while Israel can be spoken of as God’s servant, this cannot exhaust the meaning of this phrase here.

Rather, this passage is best taken as a messianic prophecy, describing a future individual from among God’s people (who can also act on their behalf)—perhaps the same individual described in other prophecies of a suffering Messiah (e.g., Ps. 22). While the more relevant portions are below, take time to read the whole passage and make mental notes of everything this individual does:

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. . . . But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter. . . . He was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people[.] And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. (Isa. 53:3, 5, 7–9)

At the risk of oversimplification, 10 themes emerge about this servant: (1) He is wise and lifted up (52:13); (2) he is marred beyond recognition (v. 14); (3) he “sprinkles” many nations—priestly language often associated with forgiveness or cleansing (v. 15); (4) he is despised and rejected by people (53:1–3); (5) his suffering is vicarious on behalf of the sins of others (vv. 4–6); (6) he is silent before accusation (v. 7); (7) he is suddenly killed for the transgression of God’s people (v. 8); (8) he receives a wealthy burial (v. 9); (9) after his guilt offering, he receives new life and descendants (v. 10); (10) he makes many righteous by bearing their sin (vv. 11–12).

I probably don’t need to point out how eerily similar this sounds to the portrayal of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. It’s not just the general atonement theology reflected in #3 or #10—it’s even little details like #6 (see Matt. 27:12–14) or #8 (remember Joseph of Arimathea?).

So how do we best understand this? Here is where the story takes an interesting turn.

Unexpected Fulfillment

While the Old Testament had a forward-looking tone, the dominant note of the New Testament is arrival. It’s here. Jesus is the promised Davidic King. This is the basic message of the New Testament, from start (Matt. 1:1) to finish (Rev. 22:16).

What is amazing is that the New Testament makes this claim not just about the suffering prophecies but about the triumphant ones as well. Jesus isn’t merely the realization of Isaiah 53, but Isaiah 9 and 11 too. Not only has Psalm 22 happened, but Psalm 72 and 89 have happened as well.

This was the early Christian message: Jesus’s death fulfilled expectations for messianic suffering and sin-bearing, while his resurrection fulfilled expectations for messianic triumph and kingly rule. The recurrent theme of the speeches in Acts is that the Davidic King is on his throne, currently reigning—because of the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus (Acts 2:30–32; 3:19–24; 13:30–35). Everything Israel hoped for is happening now.

This is not the kind of messianic sham likely to be concocted. A spiritual messianic reign was a difficult message for the first-century Jews languishing under Roman oppression. Even the disciples themselves initially expected a more political Messiah (Acts 1:6), and Jesus’s birth narratives make predictions that sound rather political as well (e.g., Luke 1:71). As Lydia McGrew points out, “If the evangelists were inclined to alter the story to create an argument from Jesus’s fulfillment of prophecy, all of these passages seem unlikely inclusions. It would have been much easier either to leave them out or to alter them.”

Consider the words of the angel Gabriel to Mary: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (vv. 32–33).

This was the early Christian message: Jesus’s death fulfilled expectations for messianic suffering and sin-bearing, while his resurrection fulfilled expectations for messianic triumph and kingly rule.

If you were trying to fabricate a story that your leader was the Messiah, why include prophecies like this that would seem patently falsified by his crucifixion? Why not just stick with Isaiah 53? Unless, of course, the disciples thought Jesus really rose from the dead, and his kingdom really was established.

Two other reasons make a manufactured fulfillment unlikely. First, it would be a herculean task to organize, since it would depend on so many uncontrollable and diverse factors (the location of Jesus’s birthplace, for example). As Peter Kreeft puts it, “Even if Jesus deliberately tried to fulfill the prophecies, no mere man could have the power to arrange the time, place, events and circumstances of his birth or events after his death.”

Second, what would the motive be? Why stage an artificial messianic arrival that would likely lead only to scorn and crucifixion? This holds true for both the disciples and Jesus himself, who seems to have predicted his own crucifixion and resurrection on numerous occasions (e.g., Matt. 16:21). Why would they keep going, knowing what was at stake?

Textual Interpolations or Coincidence?

If the idea of a contrived messianic fulfillment is implausible, what are the other possibilities? The answer cannot be textual corruptions or interpolations. There are too many prophecies in play. Plus, the evidence strongly supports that they predate Christ and have generally been copied very carefully.

A better explanation is simple coincidence. Some of these prophecies are cryptic and inexact. Perhaps they conjure an impression that corresponds to Jesus through a combination of cherry-picking, motivated reasoning, and blind luck. You’ll have to work through this in careful detail to come to a firm conclusion. Speaking for myself, it seems like a long shot. The range and specificity of these Old Testament prophecies are pretty remarkable.

To provide one other example, consider Daniel 9:24–27. Here the angel Gabriel announces to Daniel the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple as well as the coming of a Messiah (“anointed one”) who will atone for sin, establish righteousness, and “put an end to sacrifice and offering” (v. 27).

Further, a specific time frame is given: “seventy sevens” (see ESV footnote). Scholars debate how to understand this language, but one reasonable option is to take it as 70 times of 7 years, which equals around 490 years. Measuring from the decree from Artaxerxes (referenced in Ezra 7) to restore Jerusalem, which is dated to 458 BC, that lands you around AD 33, right about the time Jesus was crucified and a few decades before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish temple.

It is difficult to be dogmatic about that exact chronology, and different proposals have been offered. Nonetheless, the prophecy is striking even apart from the time frame: Daniel foresees the coming of a Messiah, his being “cut off,” the ending of sacrifice, and the temple’s destruction. In the first century, the Jewish sacrificial system was ended, the temple was destroyed, and a man believed to be the Messiah was indeed “cut off.”

Could it be a coincidence? In isolation, surely. However, it becomes more difficult when you combine Daniel 9 with Isaiah 53 and the entire labyrinth of Old Testament expectation. The idea that the early Christians retrojected Old Testament texts onto Jesus cannot easily account for the sheer breadth and specificity, or for the sometimes awkward or politically risky features, of the prophecies they appealed to. It’s genuinely hard to account for such a lengthy, coherent story of hope.

Most Plausible Explanation

There is so much more to explore on this topic. This is not a conclusive treatment of this argument—just the briefest flyover, meant to encourage further exploration.

The idea that the early Christians retrojected Old Testament texts onto Jesus cannot easily account for the sheer breadth and specificity of the prophecies they appealed to.

But I suspect many who look further into this topic will come to believe, as I have, that the most plausible explanation of the messianic character of the biblical story is indeed a supernatural one. It really does seem like the Jewish people were waiting for a Savior, and Jesus is that Savior.

If this is true, it is exciting. It means hope has arrived in human history. A hero has entered the story—not just for the ancient Jews but for you and me today. “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end” (Isa. 9:7).

Do you remember the final scene of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story? Right after Darth Vader massacres all those rebel troopers? A tiny ship escapes, carrying the Death Star plans. When Princess Leia is asked what they are, she replies, “Hope.”

Think of the emotions of this scene. You are languishing against terrible oppression and darkness. Things look grim. But now a glimmer of hope is kindled. The rebellion has a chance. You can keep fighting.

If Jesus is the expected Jewish Messiah, this is what we should feel. The long saga of human history is brutal. But something is being done about it. A plan is quietly unfolding. There is hope.

Students’ reading levels have decreased significantly compared to the last two assessment years. The 2024 Reading Assessment revealed that 33 percent of eighth graders and 40 percent of fourth graders aren’t reading at the basic level.

The study’s governing board said, “A third of 8th graders likely could not identify basic literary elements in a text such as the order of events, character traits, and main idea.” This means one-third of the students in our churches may struggle with reading, including the Bible.

While this may seem shocking, I don’t think it’s a surprise. In 2024, Rose Horowitch observed that college students at elite universities struggle to read books. “It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading,” she wrote. “It’s that they don’t know how.” That will affect how well members of our churches can read and comprehend their Bibles.

Literacy Issues Are Biblical Literacy Issues

The Bible is the authoritative and inspired Word of God. It’s also a literary work with characters, a metanarrative, and different literary genres. As Kristie Anyabwile observes, “We read the Bible as an inspired literary work from the mouth of God . . . for the purpose of transforming hearts by unfolding God’s great story of redemption.” We want people in our churches to read the Bible so God’s Word can transform their lives.

Though having churches get involved in teaching reading may seem like a new challenge, closing literacy gaps has been a consistent part of the Protestant tradition.

During the Industrial Revolution, Christians like Robert Raikes and Hannah More recognized the need to teach young people in their communities to read. They implemented classes that provided “basic and religious education on Sundays.” That idea evolved into what we call Sunday school.

One study shows that in early 20th-century Ireland, it was Protestant values and doctrine that motivated Christians to promote literacy in their communities. Wherever Protestant missionaries went, they made literacy a high priority so they could teach people to read the Bible.

Wherever Protestant missionaries went, they made literacy a high priority so they could teach people to read the Bible.

That’s why Christians should be interested in national reading scores. We can surmise from these scores that many young believers in our midst may be struggling to follow the flow of Scripture or interpret the text’s main idea. That struggle can hamper their spiritual growth in the present and future. Therefore, helping our youngest members learn to read well may be essential for their spiritual formation.

Reading Aloud Can Improve Literacy

One way we can equip these young readers and improve literacy in our churches and homes is by reading books aloud. Research shows that being read to can improve children’s comprehension and strengthen fluency.

The link between reading comprehension and listening comprehension is important. Literacy researchers have found that children’s listening comprehension can limit how well they can understand what they read. This is why reading aloud remains such a powerful tool for helping kids learn to love reading. The goal isn’t to have a Sunday-school classroom crowded with kids who are early readers but to help the young people in our churches become confident and comfortable reading the Bible on their own.

As media consumption continues to shift toward short-form video, challenges to reading comprehension will likely grow. Even as more video adaptations of Scripture are being created, the Bible will always be primarily a document meant to be listened to or read. We can’t afford to allow the decline in literacy to restrict our children’s ability to enjoy reading Scripture.

Where to Start

The simplest way for many churches to help children is by reading more Bible stories and longer Scripture passages in class. Instead of relying on video-based curricula or programs that use minimal Scripture, congregations can choose material that requires the teachers and students to read substantial passages aloud to the class. Using missionary biographies or edifying children’s literature to occupy children in the nursery or children’s church can also help when the sermon or studies run long .

The simplest way for many churches to help children is by reading more Bible stories and longer Scripture passages in class.

But a few hours of reading at church every week can only go so far. Most of the work of discipleship should occur in the home; that includes helping kids grow in their reading and listening comprehension. Parents should prioritize reading to their own children, especially from the Bible. Churches can serve their members by maintaining a library or a church bookshelf where people can get resources from picture books to chapter books. In recent years, Christian publishers have published many quality picture books and other children’s literature.

Of course, many classic children’s books like Charlotte’s Web or The Wind in the Willows can be fun for the whole family. Sarah Mackenzie’s popular website Read-Aloud Revival is teeming with helpful resources. Books like Stories Woven in Silver and The Redeemed Reader can equip parents to choose better books for the whole family.

Technology isn’t a substitute for parents reading with their children, but audiobooks can expose children to richer vocabulary, more complex sentences, and stories they might not yet be able to read independently. They can also help parents who struggle to read fluently improve their reading alongside the kids.

Every church wants its children to know God’s Word. One of the simplest ways to serve that goal is to help them become joyful, capable readers. Helping them master reading may be one of the church’s most enduring ministries.

At one point or another, we all suffer. But what adds to our suffering is the suspicion that it’s meaningless. If our suffering serves a just cause, we can at least endure knowing it does something noble. Or if our suffering is the just consequence of our sin, at least we can accept responsibility for our actions.

But often we find ourselves in situations like Job’s, where we aren’t suffering nobly or justly. We’re just suffering. We fall ill. Someone hurts us. Our minds betray us. Our child gets sick. Our job is downsized. We lose a loved one. Nothing noble or just, only suffering.

It’s in these circumstances that we’re most tempted to doubt and despair, because we cannot see the pattern, the order to existence. Where’s the meaning in all this suffering? How is God glorified if I suffer for no apparent reason? You can hear the echoes of Job: “Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?” (3:23).

And without meaning, suffering is exponentially harder to endure.

When Suffering Feels Meaningless

Endurance—as a type of the virtue courage—involves vulnerability to suffering for the sake of the good. But if there is no good, if it’s senseless suffering that you’re trying to endure, your courage will hardly sustain you. The good is the hope that keeps you moving and allows you to get out of bed each day, despite pain, with the knowledge there is a promised redemption of all things, an order to your suffering.

Without that good, eventually you will fall into despair. You will conclude that this suffering isn’t worth the pain, and any kind of relief is better than endurance. Which is why so many turn to alcohol, illegal drugs, technological distractions, pornography, gambling, and other ways of numbing themselves to avoid the reality of suffering. But it doesn’t work. The suffering is always beneath the surface, waiting to make itself known again.

At one point or another, we all suffer. But what adds to our suffering is the suspicion that it’s meaningless.

The question for all humans, not only non-Christians but Christians as well, is how to suffer well. You will suffer from circumstances that are not noble or just; they just are. In those moments, what will make a difference is whether you believe your suffering is truly meaningless or not. Your ability to endure and persevere through hard times will depend on your ability to fix your hope on the promise that no tear is shed senselessly. The God who sent his Son to suffer and die on our behalf is making all things new.

Christians have a promise from God through the apostle Paul that he is working all things, which includes our suffering, for our good. In Romans 8:28, Paul tells us that “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” This truth feels hard to reconcile with the reality and day-to-day experience of suffering. “Can these bones live?” (Ezek. 37:3). Can this pain be turned into something beautiful? Can my suffering actually be redeemed? Can there be any meaning to this affliction?

Suffering Teaches Us to Comfort

One way God redeems our suffering is by allowing us to comfort others with the comfort we received through Christ:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. (2 Cor. 1:3–5)

We need each other to make it through this life. We need the comfort of Christ shared through the brothers and sisters of Christ, through the body of Christ. And how powerful that comfort is when it comes from those who have also experienced affliction themselves! They possess an experiential knowledge that can help mentor and comfort the person currently afflicted.

In my experience, knowing that my suffering has helped others has enabled me to see that my struggle bears fruit. It’s not just empty affliction; it produces something beautiful through community.

Of course, being able to comfort others because of your own story of suffering doesn’t mean your suffering is any less painful, but it does mean it’s not senseless. It changes people. It can even save people.

Knowing that my suffering has helped others has enabled me to see that my struggle bears fruit.

The suffering I experienced and caused others through my mental illness was still real and substantial. Its consequences had to be addressed and sometimes grieved. But the comfort I brought to others from my experiences gave that suffering meaning. And that counted for something too.

What this also means is that your suffering is not your own. When you go through times of affliction, you’re laying the groundwork to bear witness to Christ’s comfort to others in the future. How you endure, how you suffer, matters. It will give them hope for their own affliction.

This doesn’t mean you have to suffer perfectly. You can’t, no matter how hard you try. As with Job, God has grace for your struggle with suffering and doubts about suffering. But it does mean your suffering can also be a gift to those around you. And that matters.

Suffering Teaches Us to Hope

Another way our suffering gets redeemed is through the development of hope. Paul writes in Romans 5:3–5, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Although Paul’s sufferings were in the form of religious persecution, the general principle remains the same regardless of what form it takes. Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character. It develops a virtuous, righteous character in you as you endure hard times and learn to rely on God. And that character further develops hope. Hope and courage (of which endurance is a type) go together. The reason hope “does not put us to shame” is that the Holy Spirit “has been given to us.” The Spirit teaches us to hope in times of affliction. We’re not alone in our suffering.

To learn the values of endurance, character, and hope through suffering may seem like a raw deal. Surely there must be easier ways to develop these traits and virtues, ways that don’t involve circumstances like people we love dying or all our worldly possessions being taken, as in the case of Job.

It’s a mistake to think about sanctification in mathematical terms, as if we could weigh on a scale the realities of evil in this world versus the sanctification that results from enduring those evils in hope. At best, we can know that tragedies happen, that evil happens, that suffering happens, and that one small way our suffering is redeemed is that we grow and become more Christlike.

Thinking of sanctification as the only good to come from suffering may be too limiting in most circumstances, but ignoring the profound growth we go through during hard times is shortsighted. A healthy perspective on suffering acknowledges that God takes our difficult circumstances and uses them to make us more like his Son.

More importantly, in Paul’s words in Romans 8, it’s clear that God providentially works our suffering for our good. The mystery is that we don’t always get to know what that good is. Often we don’t. But that doesn’t mean there is no good.

This is where the virtue of hope is so critical. To endure an affliction with courage, you must have hope that God is working your good, even when you can’t imagine what that good could possibly be. That has to be OK. It has to be OK with you that you’re finite and you aren’t promised to know how God is working his perfect will for your good out of love.

To endure an affliction with courage, you must have hope that God is working your good even when you can’t imagine what that good could possibly be. That has to be OK.

Job got to see his fortune and family restored to him. But he never learned from God in this life why he went through his period of affliction. Instead, God spoke out of a whirlwind and essentially told him, “Who are you to question me?” (Job 38:2). So it goes with most of us. Even if we manage to recover from our suffering, we may not know, until we see God face-to-face, why we had to endure what we did.

But there are things we can know. We know that God is a loving God who cares intimately for his children. We know that God is in control. We know that God is faithful to his promises. So we’re not ignorant, and our hope’s not without a foundation. Based on these truths, we hope, perhaps even as we sit on the edge of our beds in tears.

God Knows, and That’s Enough

Our suffering is redeemed by a God who is “making all things new” (Rev. 21:5). That doesn’t mean our afflictions aren’t painful to go through. That doesn’t mean we don’t mourn or weep or cry out in frustration or need help or a friend to sit with us to keep us safe. All it means is that our suffering isn’t meaningless. It matters. It’s still hard, but it does something.

In the deepest sense, that meaning is a mystery to us. We don’t get to see how God is working all things together for good. We just get to hope that he is and wait and see what he has in store. But that hope is powerful. It allows us to endure hard times without falling into despair, by focusing on the good God has promised. And we can know lesser but still significant ways God redeems our suffering. We get to comfort others with the comfort of Christ, and we grow in character and hope.

The same God who sent his Son to suffer and die for us knows our afflictions and loves us. As hard as life is, we don’t have to despair. Suffering isn’t meaningless. It’s mysterious but not meaningless. It matters to God. Our duty is to endure with hope. God will honor that hope and redeem our suffering. Because he is faithful.

Graham Tomlin describes Pascal as the “man who made the modern world” in a new biography. Tomlin is the director of the Centre for Cultural Witness in Oxford, England. He writes of Pascal, “It is hard to think of anyone who has impacted so many fields of human endeavour in such a short time.”

Here’s a taste from Tomlin about Pascal’s accomplishments: He basically invented probability theory; proved the existence of the vacuum; laid the foundations of integral calculus; conducted the first modern scientific experiment; developed the theory that made possible the hydraulic press; demonstrated that air has weight; designed and built the first mechanical calculating machine, which led to what we know as the computer; set the trend of wearing wristwatches; and built the first public urban transportation system in Europe.

And did I already mention he was one of the most effective and enduring cultural apologists of all time, perhaps second only to Augustine? Tomlin writes, “His was a Christianity founded in a profound experience of God, an intense devotional life and a form of faith that offered a radical alternative to the comfortable assimilation to culture that the Church of his day often seemed to promote.”

I talked with Tomlin about the remarkable Pascal, who lamented man’s inability to sit quietly by himself, and who observed, “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

In This Episode

00:00 – Pascal’s wager and living as if Christianity is true

00:49 – Introducing Blaise Pascal, the cultural apologist who helped make the modern world

02:36 – Pascal’s remarkable inventions, including public transportation and the Pascaline

05:42 – Augustine’s influence on Pascal’s theology of desire, fallenness, and grace

08:11 – Why Pascal trusted reason in science but not as the starting point for faith

10:46 – Pascal’s “Night of Fire” and encounter with the living God

16:43 – Why Pascal went to war with the Jesuits

20:20 – Jansenism, Calvinism, and Pascal’s understanding of grace

25:51 – The hiddenness of God as an argument for faith

32:38 – How human misery points toward human greatness

39:46 – What Pascal’s wager actually means

48:45 – Pascal, Jonathan Haidt, and the psychology of belief

49:05 – “Make it attractive”: Pascal’s enduring strategy for cultural apologetics

51:59 – How Pascal anticipated both the modern and postmodern worlds

59:22 – What Pascal would say about modern science and scientism

1:01:43 – Why Pascal’s faith speaks to people who have looked into the abyss

1:03:21 – Outro

Resources Mentioned:

• Blaise Pascal by Graham Tomlin
• Pensées by Blaise Pascal
• The Provincial Letters by Blaise Pascal
• Confessions by Augustine
• City of God by Augustine
• The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
• The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
• The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics

SIGN UP for my newsletter, Unseen Things.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Donate today.

Don’t miss an episode of Gospelbound with Collin Hansen:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
• TGC Updates

In Resisting Therapy Culture: The Dangers of Pop Psychology and How the Church Can Respond, Matthew Loftus examines the failures of therapy culture and ways to navigate a world where therapeutic values have infiltrated everyday life. But if you’re looking for a book that hates on therapy, this isn’t it. As a physician and someone who has himself been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, Loftus isn’t antitherapy.

Nevertheless, Loftus takes issue with the way “ideas and concepts from therapy culture have filtered down into excuses for bad behavior and self-pity” (9). He argues that, though it promises to make us feel better, therapy culture negatively affects mental health through three factors: “the medicalization of normal emotional and spiritual experience, the judgment of all activities by their perceived or potential impact on mental health, and the loss of agency induced by the first two components” (11). He also highlights how social media can turn into an echo chamber for therapeutic narratives. Christians, he argues, must actively resist the siren call of therapy culture.

What Grows Out of Therapy Culture

It’s impossible to miss the way therapeutic concepts have overwhelmed our cultural imagination. Mental health diagnoses, the language of self-care, and terms like “attachment” and “trauma” are part of everyday speech. Loftus helps us see why familiarity with therapeutic concepts isn’t entirely bad, but he also highlights how therapy culture undercuts the goods it promises.

One of the more damaging aspects of therapy culture is that it teaches us to be observers of our own existence. Instead of asking, “What will I do about this?” people learn to ask “Why am I like this?” Thus, every struggle becomes an issue to be analyzed rather than a situation to be acted on. Good therapy can help people take steps toward meaningful change; therapy culture, in contrast, keeps people circling their own psychology in a never-ending loop.

One of the more damaging aspects of therapy culture is that it teaches us to be observers of our own existence.

Loftus calls us to recognize that we still have agency. “One of the best things that Christians can do is help retain that sense of moral responsibility and remind people that no matter their circumstances, they can choose to do good and not evil” (155). This is an important correction. Scripture is clear that while we may not have control over the form our suffering takes, we do have some control over how we respond to the troubles when they come.

Therapy and Church Shouldn’t Feel the Same

Therapy culture has infiltrated many churches. Loftus pushes against that trend, arguing that the church and therapy have—and should have—different goals and a different mission. When the church takes on a therapeutic tone and drifts toward therapy culture, it loses its institutional distinctiveness.

As Loftus argues, “Therapy culture incentivizes deliberately avoiding subjects that may be psychologically distressing while also encouraging teachers and preachers to ensure that their audience feels more okay with themselves by the end of the service” (20).

Sometimes people will feel better at the end of a church service, but sometimes the Holy Spirit’s conviction of unconfessed sin leaves people emotionally raw. Churches influenced by therapy culture will be tempted to avoid teaching on specific sin issues if those moral judgments are unpopular or could be seen as inducing shame. It could even drive some churches to avoid making clear statements about our need for salvation, for fear of causing offense or distress.

Pastors and teachers should approach sensitive subjects with care, compassion, and tact—but never to the neglect of clearly sharing the gospel. The mission of the church isn’t ultimately to help people feel better about themselves; the mission is to create more and better disciples of Jesus Christ. This requires clear teaching on sin, repentance, and faith, which is the wellspring of the peace we long for.

Are Boundaries the Solution?

Despite these critiques of therapy culture, Loftus affirms that therapy and the church serve complementary goals. He writes, “People will live healthier lives when churches and therapists are working well, but the two do not have the same mission, methods, mandates, or measures of success” (28).

Sometimes people will feel better at the end of a church service, but sometimes the Holy Spirit’s conviction of unconfessed sin leaves people emotionally raw.

The church assists in guiding our spiritual lives, and therapy should help people see themselves more accurately while taking positive steps toward better mental health. Accordingly, he argues, “Good therapy corrects distortions, replaces falsehoods with truth, examines motivations, deconstructs self-destructive impulses, and asks which steps, however small, a person can take to improve” (38).

However, here we see a weakness in Loftus’s analysis. If therapy operates best as a separate entity from the church, on what basis will distortions and falsehoods be challenged and truth identified? Without an anchor in Scripture, therapists are prone to being tossed by the waves of client perceptions and desires—or at least current cultural norms. When subjective values become the arbiter of what is “healthy” and “good,” the therapist may offer guidance that conflicts with God’s Word.

In an increasingly post-Christian world, despite the sustaining power of common grace, we can’t assume that worldly wisdom will align with God’s call to holiness. Without denying the importance of therapy, Loftus’s argument would have improved with a deeper examination of the role of biblical wisdom in evaluating therapeutic advice.

Seeking help when distressed is good, but it matters whether that help is oriented toward truth. The inappropriate application of therapeutic ideas to the rest of life can do more harm than good. In a therapeutic age, Resisting Therapy Culture will help Christians identify where therapeutic concepts distort our worldview and derail our confidence in the gospel.

The identity of the two witnesses is one of the most contested parts of Revelation. Some commentators think they are two individuals who minister during a seven-year period known as the great tribulation that precedes the millennium. Some even argue they are none other than Moses and Elijah in the flesh, returned to earth from heaven. These two individuals adorn themselves in sackcloth and perform astounding miracles by invoking literal fire, withholding rain, and turning water into blood.

Such a reading, though attractive, cuts against the grain of Revelation. The key to interpreting this (or any other) passage in Revelation is to read the text in its immediate context and against the background of the Old Testament. In 1:1, John informs his audience that the contents of Revelation were symbolically communicated to him.

Futurists generally interpret Revelation “literally” or physically, whereas those who view the book as a recapitulation of visions (redemptive-historical idealists) mostly interpret it symbolically. The identity of the two witnesses of Revelation 11 is a wonderful test case for the two approaches.

Everyone agrees that Revelation 11 contains symbols; the disagreement lies in the degree. Just how symbolic is Revelation 11? Let’s consider the identity of the two witnesses and see why we should understand them symbolically as a reference to the church.

Two Witnesses as Lampstands

John describes the two witnesses as “two olive trees” and “two lampstands” (11:4). Obviously, they aren’t literal olive trees or literal lampstands. John uses these symbols to unpack the witnesses’ identity.

Fortunately for us, John has already interpreted the meaning of the lampstand. Listen to what Jesus tells John in the book’s first vision: “The seven lampstands are the seven churches” (1:20). Here we have Jesus clearly explaining the meaning of a symbol. Lampstands symbolize the churches.

The connection between the church and lampstand is natural. Remember that lampstands were found in the temple (Ex. 37:17–24). The priests kept the lampstand lit at all times (Lev. 24:4). The lampstand itself possessed symbolic value. The lampstands weren’t simply in the temple to add to the decor or to keep the priest from tripping in the Holy Place.

The lampstand possessed symbolic value: God’s glory dwelling among his people (Zech. 4:1–10). The Old Testament often depicted God’s presence as a fire or a bright light, so it makes sense that the seven lamps on the lampstand symbolize God’s glory.

The two witnesses in Revelation 11 are, then, the church. We know this because Jesus explains the meaning of this symbol to John in 1:20 and because of the Old Testament background of the lampstands.

The two witnesses aren’t two literal individuals. They represent the church’s identity as the voice of God on the earth. That’s why there are two. Remember what Deuteronomy 19:15 says: “A fact must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses” (CSB).

The two witnesses aren’t two literal individuals. They represent the church’s identity as the voice of God on the earth.

Let’s put all the pieces together: The two lampstands in Revelation 11 symbolize the prophetic dimension of the church. It may not be a coincidence that only two of the seven churches in Asia Minor were spiritually healthy—Smyrna and Philadelphia (2:8–11; 3:7–13).

Literal vs. Symbolic

We are now in a better place to appreciate John’s use of other images in 11:3–13 to describe the church as the two witnesses. Here are two tables that illustrate the differences between the recapitulation and futurist perspectives.

The first is the recapitulation perspective, an approach that views the whole of Revelation as generally cycling through the same event from various vantage points. This view largely interprets the book as symbolic in nature.

Redemptive-Historical Idealist

You’ll see that the recapitulation approach interprets 11:3–13 as trenchantly symbolic. Notice, too, how each symbol contains a historical referent that occurs in the flow of redemptive history between Christ’s two advents. Simply because John invokes a symbol doesn’t mean it lacks a genuine reality behind the figure of speech. I’ve tried my best to capture the referent of each symbol.

Contrasting a symbolic reading of Revelation 11 stands a “literal” or physical interpretation. Here I use three categories: symbol, literal description, and referent. Even a futurist admits the presence of symbols in 11:3–13. The literal description category is just that: a physical description. When John says “fire,” he means physical fire, as Robert Thomas argues: “God will once again use literal fire to protect His messengers.”

Futurist

According to futurists, John oscillates between physical and symbolic descriptions. When John says that the two witnesses are “olive trees” and “lampstands,” he’s not describing a physical reality but a symbolic one.

So in this case, the futurist and the redemptive-historical idealist share common ground. Even the “beast” that emerges from the Abyss isn’t a physical beast but a symbolic one—an evil ruler. Nevertheless, futurists generally argue that the two witnesses are two individuals who minister during the seven-year tribulation that precedes the millennial kingdom.

Revelation 11 Applied

Both approaches have strengths and weaknesses, and both can share a high view of Scripture. Disagreement lies in the apocalyptic nature of Revelation, how the book talks about itself, and how the Old Testament informs Revelation’s meaning. I think a symbolic reading does the most justice to all three.

Revelation 11:3–13 doesn’t describe a literal appearance of Moses and Elijah wielding supernatural powers during the seven-year tribulation. This is a passage far more relevant to the churches in Asia Minor and the church today.

This is a passage far more relevant to the churches in Asia Minor and the church today.

Revelation 11 is about God’s people proclaiming the gospel to a rebellious world between the two comings of Christ. Thomas Schreiner rightly summarizes this passage: “The church will be persecuted but is also protected and ultimately vindicated.”

Though the world will do its worst to the church, we can be confident that God will preserve us and raise us up at the end of time and usher us into his glorious presence.

The question isn’t simply whether AI is good or bad, but good or bad for whom?

This episode with Joshua Baru is shaped by that question. Joshua is an AI researcher and data science lead in Nairobi, Kenya, and he brings a perspective too often missing from Western AI conversations: the perspective of justice, labor, and the common good. In our conversation, he challenges the idea that AI is a neutral tool floating above human realities. Instead, he asks who designs these systems, who benefits from them, and who bears the cost when they go wrong.

We talk about AI in the courtroom, the importance of human accountability, and the hidden labor behind supposedly frictionless tools. Joshua also introduces the idea of digital colonialism: the extraction of data, land, and labor from the global majority for the benefit of powerful corporations elsewhere. It’s one of the most illuminating and unsettling conversations in the series.

Again and again, Joshua brings the discussion back to distinctly Christian ground. Christ is sovereign over AI, our deepest problem isn’t technological but spiritual, and our calling is to love God and love our neighbor even here. Joshua joined me on Silicon Spiritualities to explore what AI reveals about justice, power, and human sin, and how Christians can pursue technological wisdom without losing sight of the people hidden beneath the system.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis
• The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
• Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
• AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan
• Authority by Jonathan Leeman

PREORDER The AI Apocalypse: A Survival Guide for Humanity, featuring Baru, Watkin, Brett McCracken, and many others, such as Ben Sasse and Alan Noble.

JOIN the conversation on Discord, along with other Silicon Spiritualities listeners.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Donate today.

The first group are the doomers, speaking in apocalyptic tones about AI’s existential dangers. They’re not just cranks and crackpots: Eminent AI pioneer and 2018 Turing Award colaureate Geoffrey Hinton puts the chance of AI-driven human extinction in coming decades in the 10-to-20 percent range. That’s the same odds as the lifetime risk of sudden cardiac arrest for men.

Next, there are the boomers, making wildly utopian predictions about how AI will transform the economy, society, and even humanity itself. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (the company responsible for ChatGPT), has floated the idea of a “Moore’s Law for Everything,” imagining an AI-driven future world where everything from housing, education, food, and clothing will halve in price every two years.

Finally, there are the scoffers––people who think the whole AI world is drunk on its own hype, like the dot-com bubble of the 1990s. Andrew Ng, cofounder of Google Brain, argues that “worrying about evil AI killer robots today is a little bit like worrying about overpopulation on the planet Mars.”

Amid the cacophony of doomers, boomers, and scoffers, how are you and I supposed to work out what to make of AI and how this technology and its consequences relate to the God of the Bible?

I want to address one of the most important questions raised by generative AI: What does it reveal about our humanity? In response, I’ll sketch a framework for thinking about AI that’s more robust and more roundly biblical than the ways Christians sometimes approach the topic. In working out such a framework, Christians have an opportunity to seize and a pitfall to avoid.

Opportunity: AI’s ‘Horseless Carriage’ Moment

The opportunity to seize is this: We’re now in AI’s “horseless carriage” moment, when the way we relate to this new technology is still being hammered out.

In 1895, the automobile was a curiosity called the horseless carriage. Our forebears understood these new machines in terms of what they were already familiar with (carriages). Only later did they shape a category of their own, and the automobile was born. Similarly, AI is currently in its horseless carriage moment: We’re working out whether we want to relate to it more like a tool, like a servant, like an intimate partner, or like a god.

This is a liquid moment in the development of a social imaginary of AI, and the direction set by public debate today will shape our society for years to come. So let’s roll up our sleeves and join the debate as Christians.

Pitfall: Humanity of the Gaps

But there’s also a pitfall to avoid. In the 19th century, some theologians searched for God in the gaps of scientific knowledge. Today, many of us look for our humanity in the gaps of artificial intelligence.

The idea of the God of the gaps may have been well-intentioned. But as scientific explanations improved, the “gaps” closed, making faith look like a retreat into ignorance and obscuring the classical claim that God constantly upholds the whole natural order.

We now risk treating the human like our great-grandparents treated God: retreating into an ever-shrinking humanity of the gaps, locating the essence of being human in those capacities AI hasn’t yet mastered. We say, “AI will never be creative,” then it paints. We affirm, “AI will never translate idiom,” then it shows itself a wordsmith. We assert, “AI will never beat us at Go,” and it humiliates the world champion. Every time we declare, “Here, finally, is the essence of humanity,” the line moves.

We now risk treating the human like our great-grandparents treated God: locating the essence of being human in those capacities AI hasn’t yet mastered.

But our humanity has never been reducible to a single capacity like rationality, irony, creativity, or humor. AI’s onward march does us the great service of making visible the bankruptcy of that way of thinking.

Here’s the irony of the humanity of the gaps: The more we define ourselves by what machines cannot yet do, the more our idea of humanity is determined by those same machines, confining itself to the gaps they leave vacant.

Toward a Biblical Theology of Humanity and AI

So how should Christians frame the discussion around AI? We might be tempted to single out one doctrine or biblical passage and hang our entire understanding off its sole, slender hook: the image of God, or the soul, or eternal life. All these doctrines are important for understanding how we should relate to AI, but they’re all partial. Each illuminates an aspect of the AI debate while leaving others in the shadows.

There’s no fuller, richer, or truer frame than the entire arc of the biblical storyline: the whole kit and caboodle of creation, fall, and redemption. So for the rest of this essay, I want to walk through these three key phases of the biblical narrative, teasing out an account of humanity that highlights what it means to be human in the age of AI. In each section, we’ll see that the Bible presents humans as creatures whose words and actions have high stakes that AI lacks.

Creation: Communion Frames Commission

In the creation account, let’s cast our gaze more widely than the doctrine of the image of God, important though it is. Specifically, let’s consider the relationship between commission (what Adam and Eve are commanded by God to do in the world) and communion (how they are to relate to their Creator and to each other).

Before Adam tills a garden, he’s formed by God’s word. Before he’s charged to subdue the earth, he’s in communion with his Creator. The commission (doing what God says) only makes sense in the context of the communion (knowing who God is). Communion frames commission.

What Adam and Eve are commanded to do—namely, fill the earth and subdue it (Gen. 1:28)—is an expression of their relationship to God, their Creator and King. God’s character determines what subduing and having dominion means, and God’s oversight makes the task of populating the earth and taking care of it a meaningful one. The task of filling and subduing is no casual invitation: It has high stakes because it comes from God himself. The communion makes the commission matter.

Generative AI is a wonderful tool for commission. In many cases, it can do more, and faster, and better than human beings could. No doubt in the future its speed and quality will only increase. But AI’s efficiency is a what in search of a why, a commission in search of a communion. It feeds our late-modern pathology for thinking that productivity is an end in itself, for confusing output with significance.

So what if, at some point in the future, AI could get everything done? If a machine could write our sermons, nurse our sick, and raise our children, would our humanity be enhanced or diminished? This would be bliss, say some. We’ll all survive on a universal basic income and be free to spend our days in leisure.

But this utopian vision of ease mistakes what work is: not a result of the fall, but a major way we find meaning in God’s world and express our relationship as subcreators under him. It forgets that our commission is an expression of our communion.

Fall: Accountability and Embodiment

The biblical account of the fall also helps us to understand our humanity in a way that distinguishes us from generative AI. The fall isn’t fundamental to who we are as humans—there’s an asymmetry between the foundational creation and the sin that has a beginning and an end in time. But sin nevertheless points to enduring aspects of the human condition that distinguish us from AI.

AI’s efficiency is a what in search of a why, a commission in search of a communion. It feeds our late-modern pathology for thinking that productivity is an end in itself, for confusing output with significance.

Important among these aspects is that you and I are accountable for our actions. One thing that distinguishes Adam and Eve from the other creatures in Genesis 1–2 is that they’re held responsible by God for what they do: “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die” (2:17, NIV). As Adam and Eve find out to their bitter cost in Genesis 3, the decisions we make have enduring and serious consequences.

This is an inconvenient truth, of course, when we want to follow our desires and not be held to account by God. But it’s also an ennobling truth, because it means that my choices and your choices matter: What we do makes a difference, with high stakes and consequences.

This isn’t the case for large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. You can run multiple instances of an LLM on different hardware simultaneously, and if a model tells people to go and commit suicide or starts behaving like a neo-Nazi, you don’t punish it; you retrain it. That’s a different notion of accountability from that faced by humans. In fact, it’s no accountability at all.

If an LLM makes a mistake, it cannot be punished, because it has no goods or interests of which it can be deprived. Your and my choices matter because we’re finite: We have one life to live and must account for how we lived it (Heb. 9:27). If you punish me by taking away my freedom or imposing a fine, you do something meaningful because my liberty and my liquidity matter.

There’s also a deeper point about meaning to be made here: My choices have stakes on a much broader canvas than punishment. If I spend today doing one thing, I can never spend that same day doing something else.

As I write this essay now, I hear my children playing and laughing in the next room. To finish this paragraph is to lose a moment with my kids I will never get back. This paragraph is costing me. And it’s costing you too as you read it. You’re sacrificing every single other thing you could be doing with this irreplaceable moment of your life. Your life and mine are written in irreversible ink; we’re playing for keeps. But an LLM pays no such price. It makes no such sacrifice; it pays no such cost; it has no such meaning.

Your life and mine are written in irreversible ink; we’re playing for keeps. But an LLM pays no such price. It makes no such sacrifice; it pays no such cost; it has no such meaning.

The thing about you and me is that there’s one of us. I have one body, and I can’t duplicate myself or refresh myself. If I’m here, I’m not there. If my parents brought me up speaking English all the time at home, they didn’t also equally bring me up speaking French or Korean. My limits define me, and so do yours.

Some people long for the time when we can transcend the boundaries of our physical bodies—or our “wetware,” as some transhumanists call it. But our physical constraints, along with the costs they impose on our choices, are a gateway to meaningfulness and belonging. If I grew up speaking all earthly languages, I would have no mother tongue; if I were equally at home everywhere, I would belong nowhere. The opportunity cost involved in my choices and limitations, coupled with the fact that I’ll have to account for my life before the throne of God, give it a rich and serious significance.

A fundamental part of what it means to be human is to live with the consequences of our actions and to be accountable for our choices. Substitutionary atonement doesn’t erase this accountability. It just means that Christ lives with the consequences; he’s accountable in my place.

My undergraduate students model for me the preciousness of accountability. Offer them an AI marker for their assessments, one measurably more consistent and perceptive than a flesh-and-blood examiner, and many will still prefer a human. Why? Not because the human is smarter but because the human is relatable and accountable: He learned like the student learns. He made the same mistakes, and he can be held to account for the mark he gives. If AI gives the wrong mark, it can be rebooted, but it bears no scars or memory. A human marker, by contrast, must repent, feel shame, and face judgment. That difference is what we call accountability; it’s what shows we matter.

Redemption: Mutuality and Meaning

Let’s turn now to the third great phase of the biblical story: redemption. And let’s focus on one moment of the great redemption story, namely the Word becoming flesh in the incarnation.

When Jesus “made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14, NIV), something wonderful happened to the relationship between human beings and God. It went from being reciprocal to being mutual. In Jesus, God moves from talking to humanity to living and suffering with humanity.

A reciprocal relationship is face-to-face. It’s transactional. I say something and you reply with something else, or I give you something and you give me something in return. But a mutual relationship, by contrast, is shoulder-to-shoulder. We join together in some common task or experience, sharing in a nontransactional way.

When the Word becomes flesh, the relationship between deity and humanity is shown to be mutual: While remaining fully God, Christ shares in our weakness and suffering (Isa. 53:3–4).

This difference between reciprocity and mutuality is crucial as we consider our own relationship to AI and its status in our world. LLMs are virtuosic in their ability to enter into reciprocal exchange with humans: prompt in, response out. They’re good at predicting the next word in a sequence. They can write hilarious jokes or moving poems if they’re prompted well enough.

But there remains a key difference between the language of LLMs and the language of human beings: The discourse of LLMs is always reciprocal, never mutual. They can endlessly imitate our experience, with all its suffering, frustration, or joy. But they cannot suffer, be frustrated, or be joyful. They can imitate, but they cannot participate.

Writing about earlier “companion technologies,” Sherry Turkle warned that they give us “the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.” This is precisely the reciprocity without mutuality that LLMs industrialize.

In the incarnation, God does the opposite of an LLM. He binds his speech to a body, to time, to suffering. The Word doesn’t only speak; the Word bleeds and dies, binding divine speech to human cost and to the stakes of a human life.

Think of it this way: LLMs always speak in quotation marks. Every sentence is borrowed breath, carrying the silent rider “this is what a human would likely say next,” not what anyone did in fact say next. Artificial intelligence is common intelligence, averaging out from the vast repository of human language in its training data. The language of LLMs is always an imitation or a ghost of human discourse; it’s never a participation. Therefore, it never rises to the level of words that commit or confess.

But my words and yours aren’t like that. Whether we intend it or not, each sentence we speak confesses something about who we are. Each promise or prediction we make commits us—or at least it should, if our words are to be more than tokens. If you or I say “I love you” or “I forgive you,” something is expected of us, and it’s right that we should be held to those words. They’re not empty quotations. They’re participations in a broader social fabric.

In the incarnation, God does the opposite of an LLM. He binds his speech to a body, to time, to suffering.

Not so in the case of AI. When a machine says “I love you,” it doesn’t mean it. It’s not sincere. LLMs don’t even lie. They simply make no distinction between truth and falsehood.

An LLM doesn’t have to answer for what it says. But we should. To the extent that we don’t let our words commit us anymore, either in our private lives or in our shared political life, to the extent that we use language as a tool to manipulate rather than as a way to commit and be held accountable, we treat ourselves and those around us like machines.

Poise, Hope, Realism

AI can help us in many ways, and used wisely it could bring great benefits. But it cannot kneel. It cannot yearn for God as the deer pants for the water; it cannot repent; it cannot commit; it cannot sacrifice. Those are the prerogatives of creatures who commune, weep, share, and hope. In the gospel, God commits to costly mutuality. By contrast, AI offers costless reciprocity.

In view of these differences, how should Christians face the uncertain future of AI? With poise, hope, and realism. We seize the moment while imagination is still liquid. We resist the reduction of humanity to productivity. We count the sacrificial cost that makes our daily choices meaningful. And we cherish the mutuality that lies at the heart of our relationships with each other and with our Lord Jesus Christ.

Originally a family plantation, the land was purchased by developer E. E. Meacham and subdivided in 1890. He sold the plots to African American families, making Orange Mound one of the first places in America where they could build and own homes. For decades, black businesses, theaters, and restaurants thrived there. But after desegregation, residents began to leave. Businesses closed, crime went up, violence increased, and Orange Mound fell into neglect and decay.

Meanwhile, Carey grew up on the other side of Memphis. She went to college, then married a young man named Rick. Rick served in the army and earned an MBA at Wharton Business School before moving his family back to Memphis. Both of their lives were thoroughly disrupted when they became Christians.

“It was during the ‘70s, and there was revival sweeping the country,” Carey said. “Many of our close friends became believers at the same time. We were all trying to figure out our purpose.”

For Rick and Carey, that was working hard in a large family business and raising their five kids. But Carey was interested in missions too. She and Rick spent decades partnering with indigenous missionaries in Ukraine and India.

“After Rick’s stage 4 cancer in 2010, the Lord showed us we needed to stay home,” Carey said. As they prayed about new opportunities for women’s ministry, Orange Mound was continually on their minds.

How hard could it be? Carey thought. She figured she’d gather her Christian friends, find a place to meet, and invite the neighborhood women for lunch and Bible study.

“I was naive to the core needs here,” she said. She found generational poverty nearly impossible to dislodge. The chaos of everyday life made intellectual and spiritual growth difficult, and the constant transitions meant that hardly anyone stuck around long enough to see long-term change.

“I couldn’t have done what we’re doing here when I was any younger, because I would have been discouraged,” said Carey, who is 80. “I’m more dependent on the Lord now than I’ve ever been before, which is the best place I can be. I have never doubted that I am supposed to be here, and have often doubled down on my confidence in the Lord’s clear call.”

The Gospel Coalition asked Carey why she started working in Orange Mound, what she’s learned about the women there, and how she keeps going on discouraging days.

How did the Lord lead you to work in Orange Mound?

It was one of the last places I would’ve ever thought I was supposed to be.

By this point, I was in my 60s. I’d covered the whole Bible, front to back, at least four times in Bible studies. I was comfortable leading those within the walls of my church. I thought that was my mission—which it was, then. It was fun, and I was always among friends and seekers.

I couldn’t have done what we’re doing here when I was any younger, because I would have been discouraged.

But the Lord showed me, clearly, to get out. You don’t need any more studies—you need to apply the Word.

I had some wonderful friends who were just as dedicated to change as I was, so I decided to find a place where we could be part of a solution for our city. I was frustrated with the reputation of Memphis for being polarized between blacks and whites. I dragged my precious husband along through boarded-up, Section 8 parts of town. He loves me, but he didn’t think this was a good idea or that it would find traction.

Then we saw this property. It was rugged and broken-down, but it was on a main corridor. The location was safe, and the place made sense. It was obvious to me—not so much to Rick though!

What kind of ministry did you start there?

One of my first goals was to bring back the pride of Orange Mound homeowners. The Lord brought people to help us reconstruct our building, and it’s beautiful—we have pine floors, six fireplaces, and 15-foot ceilings. It’s one of the original homes.

I wanted to inspire others to invest in their properties, too. But there is no home ownership now—everybody is renting. That dream wasn’t going to work.

My other idea was to teach the skills I knew. I could sew and knit and cook, and I love to read, and I can teach gardening. I have devoted friends who wanted to be part of building relationships with the women here.

We’ll call ourselves Sisters, I thought. We’ll have lunch and offer painting classes and Bible studies.

I had excellent, well-seasoned  Bible teachers, but the students were never the same people twice. Everyone was too transitory. There was much illiteracy, and very little interest in spiritual things. No one had a Bible, and no one went to church.

Then the Lord dropped a tea company, My Cup of Tea, in my lap. He knew these women needed a job. Most of them didn’t have transportation, or had small children to care for, or were chasing truant teens. All had health issues. It was almost impossible for them to keep employment.

So we bought this little tea company from a lady who had been doing farmer’s markets, and we housed the entire business in our beautiful building. We hired three women from the neighborhood who had been coming to the lunches. The job provided income, but also a continuous need for them to come in so we could begin to build community.

I know you do Bible studies and prayer times with them. How is that going?

We’ve gone through Acts, John, Luke, Genesis, Exodus, and part of Psalms. We have wonderful Christian mentors who come in and build relationships with them. We also have guest speakers, pastors, guidance counselors, and guests who bring lunches and eat with us.

We’ve found the women struggle with retention, so we have to go slowly and give them small bites. When they don’t have gas for the car, or can’t get disability checks anymore, that’s all they can think about. The culture here is in constant crisis mode.

Perhaps the most important thing we provide is a soft place, like a pillow, in the middle of this dangerous community. We’ve built a place that is safe and faith-based. And that’s important, because I thought the women in this community were able to care for each other. But that’s not the case—the women here are often siloed. The houses are boarded up, and you don’t want to know your neighbor, because if they find out what you’ve got inside your home, they might steal it.

So we’re providing something I didn’t know they needed—a healthy social platform where they can get to know and love each other.

This is long, hard work. You could easily have stepped away many times over the last 15 years. Why do you keep doing this?

Because the Lord hasn’t told me to stop. I want to be faithful to what the Lord has called me to, no matter how much or little fruit I see.

There are moments of progress and hope. One of our ladies was able to move up from us and get a part-time job as a cook. When that place closed, she opened a catering business. Several of our ladies have found the confidence to apply for second jobs, and many have learned to budget.

All of these women’s hearts are soft and tender. Their problems aren’t so big they can’t be solved. The heartache is that they don’t have the energy to solve them, which we can sometimes help with. They’re all made in God’s image, and he’s gone to the cross on their behalf. He has a purpose for each one of them, even if it’s beyond their imagination or priority right now.

They’re all made in God’s image, and he’s gone to the cross on their behalf. He has a purpose for each one of them.

I think the onus on me is to make him so beautiful that they want him more than they want all these other things they’re trying to patch their lives with. That’s what we pray for—we want Jesus to be irresistible through our own countenances and the way we act. We know we possess the Holy Spirit. We know he is standing at the door and knocking. We are praying daily that each will invite him in.

There isn’t a way to measure how we’re doing. We may never see the fullness of it. But I know that God sent us to be change makers, and I believe we have affected the lives of the women here. But just as importantly, he has changed me.

As a Christian, as one who sincerely believes that God can and does heal in miraculous ways, I know that the God who worked wonders in the past is still working wonders today. If he wills it, he can heal me (Matt. 8:1–3). Which leads to the question for those who don’t get a miracle: Why does God not will my healing?

This is where shame comes in—if God can heal, then there must be some reason he doesn’t choose to heal me. That’s true. However, it’s the next assumption that gets us in trouble: If there’s a reason God doesn’t will my healing, it’s because of something wrong with me—my faith is insufficient; my obedience isn’t consistent enough; my prayers haven’t been sincere, fervent, or regular enough.

To escape this shame trap, we have to understand what the Bible teaches we can justifiably expect with regard to miracles from God.

We Remember Exceptions

The cynical, overly realistic, jaded side of me knows that for every story of someone living five-plus years with a tumor like mine, there are hundreds or even thousands of stories you don’t usually hear—stories of people who died in the first few months after their diagnosis.

If God can heal, then there must be some reason he doesn’t choose to heal me.

We don’t hear much about those stories, even though they represent the norm of what to expect. Whenever I hear stories of the exceptional, I’m forced to remember that only exceptional cases get made into stories. By definition, the exceptional cases aren’t the norm.

Does faith in a wonder-working God change any of that? I don’t think it does. Though we hear stories of God doing amazing things and though we’re told (by some) to “expect miracles,” our experience more often reflects that of the saints commended for their faith in Hebrews 11:13: “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised.”

Not a Faith Problem

So how does faith in a wonder-working God exist comfortably in a world where his wonders seem conspicuously absent? Should this argue against the God of the Bible? No, certainly not.

Is the answer found in our own lack of faith? That would neatly shift the responsibility for God’s wonders away from God, who is still eager to perform miracles, and identify the problem as being in our unbelief. After all, in Matthew 13:58, we read of Jesus that “he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.”

It’s a false application of such verses to conclude that, if we want a miracle from God, we need to have sufficient faith. We elsewhere see Jesus healing those who don’t even know they’re being healed. For example, the accounts in Luke 7:11–15, 22:49–51, and John 5:5–9 don’t indicate that anyone’s faith played any part in the healings Jesus performed. So the Bible doesn’t make a one-to-one connection between faith and miracles. Miracles, like the sufferings they address, happen according to God’s will for his own purposes. We can’t quantify this into a system.

The principle I stated earlier applies here as well: Only exceptional cases get made into stories. The reason the Bible records so many miracles isn’t that miracles are or were common. It’s the opposite. The Bible is filled with stories of miracles because those are the exceptional, amazing acts of God worth recording.

When you consider the thousands of years covered in biblical history and the many millions of lives that existed during those years, you begin to understand how rare miracles were. They’re almost exclusively clustered around the times of Moses (as the law was introduced), Elijah and Elisha (the beginning of authoritative prophetic teaching), and Jesus and his disciples (the initiation of the new revelation in Christ).

Jesus himself touches on the mystery of the scarcity of miracles in Luke 4:25–27. In response to those who expected him to perform miracles on command, he replies,

I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, and a great famine came over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.

Many needed food, but only one received a miraculous provision. Many needed healing, but only one received it by a miracle from God.

“Ah, but perhaps only Naaman and the widow of Zarephath had enough faith,” someone may reply. But the Bible doesn’t say that. Neither of those characters is described as having exceptional faith that God rewarded. Instead, we know from 1 Kings 19:18 that the Lord had preserved a remnant of 7,000 faithful men and women in those days. There was faith in the land, but miracles were scarce. God alone knows why.

Let’s not forget Paul, who prays earnestly for relief from God and yet doesn’t receive healing (2 Cor. 12:7–9). No, friends, it isn’t faith or boldness or anything on our part that has the power to move God’s hand so that he works wonders on our behalf. Rather, as the old hymn confesses, “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.”

No Shame

I’m not sharing these thoughts to discourage prayer for healing or to say our faith is irrelevant to God’s hand at work. I’m sharing this to disrupt the shame cycle that traps too many of my brothers and sisters as they look to God to heal them or their loved ones.

A sickness that goes unhealed isn’t a sign of God’s displeasure. He isn’t disappointed in you. He isn’t holding back his hand of healing until you measure up to some unspecified standard. He loves you. He is with you. He has plans for you through your trial that you cannot right now comprehend.

Pray for healing, yes. But don’t make healing the yardstick by which you measure God’s activity in your life. And don’t let the absence or delay of healing hang over your head as a cruel judge, condemning your lack of faith.

Pray for healing, yes. But don’t make healing the yardstick by which you measure God’s activity in your life.

Yet there’s more we need to understand about God’s miracles than just that they’re rare and that they come only from God’s will and not our performance. God’s healing miracles are incomplete. Lazarus dies again. The lepers Jesus healed would one day die. In a sense, Jesus was just delaying the inevitable. So why bother healing at all?

The answer is that it wasn’t primarily about healing bodies.

Coming Kingdom

When Jesus healed the sick and suffering, he was giving a sneak peek at the power of the kingdom that he would soon bring. That kingdom is where our true hope lies, and in showing his power to heal, Jesus was calling people to place their hope of full healing in him. Only when these bodies are exchanged for incorruptible ones and only when death is no more will “healing” have truly taken place (1 Cor. 15:53–55).

My dad was dying of pancreatic cancer in 2007. Whenever anyone asked him if God was going to heal him, he’d answer, “God is going to heal me. Either through the doctors, through a miracle, or by bringing me to be with him in heaven.” I pray that each child of God would hold on to that truth.

God will heal. It’s not up to us to determine how and when he’ll do so. It’s up to us to walk in faith and wait on him. “Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD!” (Ps. 27:14).

Spurgeon’s writing is just part of his extraordinary legacy. For nearly four decades, he pastored the largest Protestant church in Christendom in the largest city in the world, London. No other preacher of that period was better known and better loved across the globe.

By the opening years of the 20th century, his sermons had been translated into more than 40 languages, and an estimated 100 million copies of his published sermons had been sold. Today, he’s still read by tens of millions of people worldwide. Most Christians, if they’ve not read Spurgeon, have at least heard him quoted (or misquoted!). His words splash across social media daily, adorn T-shirts and coffee mugs, and sound forth from pulpits around the world every week.

What keeps people coming back to Spurgeon? More than anything, it’s his utter absorption with the person and work of Jesus Christ. The center of Spurgeon’s preaching, pastoring, and writing was the Lord himself. Few preachers have captured the surpassing loveliness of Christ and the compelling power of the gospel better than Spurgeon. That’s why I encourage every Christian to read Spurgeon—because in getting him they get more of Jesus.

Sermons

The best place to start with Spurgeon is to read some of his sermons, as they represent his most enduring legacy. Though it certainly would have been wonderful to hear Spurgeon’s sermons live, they still sparkle on the page.

Few preachers have captured the surpassing loveliness of Christ and the compelling power of the gospel better than Spurgeon.

Spurgeon was preeminently a preacher. He viewed the pulpit as central to his ministry. “Chief of all is the responsibility which the preaching of the Word involves,” he wrote in 1875. “It enters largely into the account of a minister’s life-work, and tells upon him more than any other part of his mission.”

Of course, to attempt to read all of Spurgeon’s sermons is an insurmountable task. I usually encourage people to simply begin with a single volume, particularly one collecting sermons preached during the 1870s or 1880s, in Spurgeon’s mature years.

Try volume 16 in the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, a collection of Spurgeon’s sermons preached in 1870. These reflect a potent combination of theological depth, pastoral warmth, and evangelistic fervor. Christians will find their faith strengthened and their affections stirred for Christ and his Word.

Most of Spurgeon’s sermons are available for free online at the Spurgeon Library.

Treasury of David

Apart from his published sermons, Spurgeon’s magnum opus was his seven-volume commentary on the entire psalter, The Treasury of David. Today, the work is typically published in three volumes.

Published over the course of 16 years, The Treasury of David showcases better than any other book Spurgeon’s exceptional literary gifts. In the preface to the first volume, he wrote, “The delightful study of the Psalms has yielded me boundless profit and ever-growing pleasure; common gratitude constrains me to communicate to others a portion of the benefit, with the prayer that it may induce them to search further for themselves.”

Spurgeon believed Christians should constantly read the Psalms because it speaks more to Christian experience than any other book of the Bible: “No man needs better company than the Psalms; therein he may read and commune with friends human and divine; friends who know the heart of man towards God, and the heart of God towards man; friends who perfectly sympathise with us and our sorrows, friends who never betray or forsake.”

Morning and Evening

Spurgeon published various devotional works over his lifetime, the best of which is his collection of daily devotionals titled Morning and Evening.

With readings for the start and end of each day, Morning and Evening offers short and edifying reflections on various Scripture texts, designed to strengthen the faith of believers. This volume has served the devotional lives of millions of Christians, making it one of Spurgeon’s best-loved works.

Lectures to My Students

First published in a series of three volumes, Lectures to My Students is a collection of Spurgeon’s Friday afternoon lectures to the assembled body of the students at his Pastors’ College. There, he gave some of his most famous addresses, such as “The Call to the Ministry,” “The Min­ister’s Fainting Fits,” and “The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear.”

These lectures show Spurgeon at his finest as he spoke extemporaneously on matters related to pastoral theology and various practical subjects. His seasoned wisdom, sound judgment, and veteran experience are on full display in these lectures. They also provide characteristic specimens of Spurgeon’s quick wit and playful sense of humor, as he often provides hilarious critiques of the typical preach­ing of the day.

Lectures to My Students, usually published today in a single volume, is a true ministerial classic and belongs on the shelf of every seminary student and pastor.

Go Deeper

For readers seeking to better understand Spurgeon’s life and ministry, it’s worth digging into Spurgeon’s two-volume Autobiography. For an older biography that provides an edifying account of Spurgeon’s life, ministry, and theology, I recommend Arnold Dallimore’s Spurgeon: A Biography. For more contemporary treatments of Spurgeon, I suggest my introductory biography Spurgeon: A Life as well as Geoff Chang’s Spurgeon the Pastor.

The world of literature by and about Spurgeon is vast and ever-growing, as new manuscripts are discovered and people continue to interact with his books. Someone could read 10 pages of Spurgeon’s own writing every day for a lifetime and still not get through all his works. On one level, it doesn’t matter where a reader begins with reading Spurgeon. Every page has a blessing on it, because no matter where you look in Spurgeon’s books, you’re sure to find the Lord Jesus Christ.

When I was a younger pastor, just coming out of seminary, movements like The Gospel Coalition and Together for the Gospel were just getting started. While they may have been a countermovement to the pragmatic conference and church movement of the time, they also celebrated the church’s togetherness and provided a place for guys serious about expositional preaching and theology to connect. We were together, we were a coalition, and it genuinely felt like we were for something rather than merely against something.

Over the last 20 years, and especially in the last decade, it seems togetherness has largely been replaced by a growing hypertribalism. The 2016 election accelerated these trends, making politics—which had largely been a unifying topic for evangelicals, at least since the early ’90s—now a topic of deep division.

Reformed Tribalism

But the tribalism doesn’t stop there. It’s almost as if these political divisions strengthened the muscle of division, which has led to a world of hypertribalism and a corresponding deep tribal loyalty.

I hear this kind of anxiety all the time from pastors and church leaders. Pastors who fall in the ecclesiological crowd feel the need to apologize if their church experiences great growth—“Don’t worry, I’m not one of those guys that has mass baptism services.”

On the other side, larger and fast-growing churches can have the same sort of condescending attitude toward churches that “really care about church discipline.”

“I heard this pastor is woke,” “I used to like that pastor, but I heard he voted for Kamala,” and “Can I still listen to John Piper sermons?” are all comments or questions I’ve heard or been asked.

I’m certainly not saying all our differences are unimportant. The problem is that our tribes have become so strong and determinative that we’re unable to learn from, celebrate, or even acknowledge other faithful brothers and sisters in Christ. All this can be disorienting and confusing for Christians and church leaders.

Sadly, much of this tribalism flows from a cult of personality. We can be so influenced by particular leaders that before freely learning from or acknowledging other believers, we ask questions like “Would my leader be OK with me listening to this sermon, reading this book, or befriending this pastor?”

It’s OK for you to have a tribe and to learn from people outside your tribe. It’s even OK to recognize that the Lord might use someone outside your tribe to do great things for his kingdom. And so I want to give you a framework—four helpful truths as we maneuver this hypertribal world while trying not to become hypertribal ourselves.

1. It’s OK to have a tribe.

One defining characteristic of evangelicalism the past 30 years has been the rise of nondenominational churches. I understand why this happened; people have become frustrated with the baggage that comes with traditional denominationalism in American evangelical life.

But there really is no such thing as nondenominationalism. There’s only macro or traditional denominations or microdenominations. When people are unconnected, they have a way of redenominating or refederating. Humans want to be a part of a federation, a group, a tribe, of other like-minded Christians and believers, and that’s a good thing.

So, understand you’re part of a tribe. You might love and embrace some things in the tribe, and you may be critical of others. The right posture is a willingness to both celebrate and critique your tribe.

2. You should be talking to people, reading books, and considering voices outside your tribe.

If you’re never listening to outsiders, or if your positions are never being challenged, you’ll become hypertribal. You’ll even become critical of what God is doing through other believers.

You need to engage in an open way with other voices. You need to attend conferences where not every speaker shares every one of your secondary convictions. And don’t attend so you can write a critical review but so you can learn and benefit from what other believers say.

Do this because God has given gifts to his whole church and because you believe that faithful brothers and sisters—who may not see everything exactly the same way that you do—can help you better understand who God is and how you can grow as a faithful disciple.

3. Learn to distinguish between heterodoxy and healthy disagreement.

If one of those outside voices is going beyond the lines of what’s orthodox or biblical, then obviously there’s room for critique and disassociation. As Jesus says, watch out for false teachers and beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matt. 7:15). This is the right impulse. Faithful Christians must exercise biblical discernment.

With that said, we need to admit that the world right now has overly embraced this impulse of separation and critique. Many of us are “trigger happy” when it comes to tearing down. If you’re a little too eager to log on to discernment ministry websites, if you’re a little too happy to see someone you disagree with fall morally, then you have a problem.

4. Be in a face-to-face community with different voices.

Are you regularly associating with and learning from ministry leaders from different gospel-centered denominations and tribes? Are friends pushing you and encouraging you?

I have a friend who recently became convinced of the second baptism of the Holy Spirit after reading Martyn Lloyd-Jones’s Joy Unspeakable. But after reading the book, the first step he took was to bring his new ideas into community.

He brought this topic to a group of trusted friends and pastors, and we had a dialogue about it. Lloyd-Jones certainly isn’t outside of Christian orthodoxy, but he does hold a view many of the people in this community didn’t hold. It was a helpful conversation that challenged some assumptions we’d made and hopefully led to our growth as Christian believers. While he didn’t persuade us to change our positions, he had the courage to work through something biblically and theologically with trusted fellow believers.

Who is doing that for you? Who is challenging you? Who has permission to question your assumptions? Who comes from a different tradition but still loves the same Savior? In some ways, we’ve lost something as the Christian conference world has declined. It’s not that we lack access to good preaching or thoughtful content. We have more of that than ever before. What we’ve lost is the opportunity to build friendships across our tribal lines.

Aim for Healthy Tribalism

The Christian instinct to learn from and celebrate people who share the basics of orthodoxy is good. One reason the early church was so concerned with orthodoxy was because Christians recognized there would always be secondary and tertiary differences within the church, but if there was orthodox agreement on the main things, those differences could strengthen the church.

The ability of Christians to push one another, learn from one another, and see Christ together from different perspectives has led to greater maturity, greater diversity, and greater glory to God. Of course, a slippery slope can lead to the loss of Christian orthodoxy, but a slippery slope can also lead to hypertribalism—and that’s one every Christian should hope to avoid.

In this session from TGCW26, Michael and Melissa Kruger talk about the habits and strategies they used to make studying the Bible, learning the catechism, and praying for the world a regular part of their household routine.

In This Episode

00:00 – Introduction and personal background

01:50 – Family overview and personal stories

03:07 – Importance of family devotionals

10:16 – Practical tips for family devotionals

11:08 – Engaging children in Bible study

31:32 – Addressing doubts and challenges

33:39 – Introduction to The Good News Family Devotional

41:41 – Melissa’s new children’s book

43:33 – Conclusion and encouragement

Resources Mentioned:

• The Good News Family Devotional by Michael and Melissa Kruger
• Surviving Religion 101 by Michael Kruger
• Count It All Joy by Melissa Kruger

SIGN UP for one of our newsletters to stay informed about TGC’s latest resources.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Give today.

Don’t miss an episode of The Gospel Coalition Podcast:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
  

Whatever your experience of loss thus far, one thing is true: You shouldn’t be surprised by it. Yet many are, simply because we live in a culture that does its best to tell us that life is safe and all is fine.

But then a storm unexpectedly appears, and our world crashes in around us. That’s what happened in March 2020 when we found out my wife, Heather, had advanced stomach cancer with a six-month prognosis. All that was certain was suddenly not. Thoughts and plans for the future became meaningless. As a physician, I knew the facts. As a husband, I felt like I’d been thrown into the sea.

In my book Holding On in the Storm, I shared the details of our journey and the many ways God was faithful. On its cover is the famous Rembrandt painting The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, because the pain of deep loss is like a storm. It comes without warning and changes everything. Like the disciples, we’re afraid we’re drowning. And like the disciples, we might feel that Jesus is sleeping and wonder if he cares (Mark 4:35–41).

We cannot avoid the stark reality of loss and grief. It’s clear throughout Scripture that we live in a world of suffering. Job says, “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward (5:7). The longer we live, the more we’ll lose. And the more we love, the deeper we’ll grieve. Because Jesus loves much, and therefore grieves much, we as his followers should be ready to grieve too.

But we needn’t “grieve as others do who have no hope (1 Thess. 4:13). Let me suggest five ways we can grieve well.

1. Grieve Honestly

Not all our responses to the pain of loss are helpful. We could bury it or run from it, acting as if it didn’t happen. Jerry Sittser tells the story of a dream he had after the devastating loss of his wife, his mother, and his young daughter in a car accident. He was frantically running west toward the setting sun, but the harder he ran, the farther away the sun moved, until it vanished on the horizon.

Because Jesus loves much, and therefore grieves much, we as his followers should be ready to grieve too.

To the east, he saw “a vast darkness closing in on [him].” He was “terrified by the darkness.” Later, he shared his dream with his sister, who told him that to reach the light, he should turn and run into the darkness that lies to the east—the direction where a new day will dawn. We too must honestly face the darkness of grief. It’ll be hard. But it’s the only way we’ll find the light.

2. Grieve Patiently

Grief has no timeline, no set of stages we move through progressively. In the beginning, it’s completely disorienting. Nicholas Wolterstorff describes his experience after losing his son: “I’ve become an alien in the world, shyly touching it as if it’s not mine. I don’t belong any more. When someone loved leaves home, home becomes mere house.”

At first, the drab color of grief paints over every moment of every day. But as time goes on, we allow other colors in, see other roles we have to play besides the role of the grieving person. We find new things to do, new people to love, and new groups to join. Yet deep loss is never something we get over. Four years after my loss, though I’ve learned to walk more steadily, I remain a man marked by sorrow.

3. Grieve in Community

We’re often tempted to grieve in isolation. Alone in our deep grief, we wonder if we’re going crazy. We don’t trust our thoughts or decisions because much of what we assumed is no longer true.

In my grief, I needed others. I took a risk. I chose to reach out and be vulnerable. It isn’t a stance easily taken, given how much our society and culture teach us to look good and be strong. But deep down, most people realize life is messy, loss is real, and sadness is all around us.

One way I pursued community was to share and pray with someone daily. But only after I’d shared with God—as the psalms show us, we can bring any emotion to God. Then, when we talk with others, we’ve already worked through some of the emotional heaviness.

What we certainly don’t want is to use our pain to manipulate others. We don’t want pity. We seek shared vulnerability, where our sharing of grief opens the other to his or her own sorrows. Together we pray, asking God to hold us up and be our strength.

4. Grieve with Gratitude

When a storm comes, we feel like the whole world is dark and dreary. But after we survive the first blow, we look around and see there’s more than just the storm. Even in Rembrandt’s painting, a small patch of blue is visible in the sky.

We must be diligent to look with gratitude for any signs that God is still at work in our lives. Eventually, we come to see that what we lost was never ours to keep. It was always a gift given, but only for a time—for that we can be thankful.

5. Grieve with Hope

In deep loss and grief, we must tenaciously hold on to hope, for despair hovers close by. The greatest reason for hope is that we have a Savior who suffered and died, who knows our pain and suffers our sorrows, and who seeks a deep relationship with us in our suffering.

When we wonder if God cares, we can turn to the Bible for great promises of presence and consolation. Psalm 34:18 reminds us of the wonderful truth that “the LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

When we wonder if God cares, we can turn to the Bible for great promises of presence and consolation.

Many other passages teach these same truths. Not if but when we feel that God is absent, our faith in these promises is the lifeline that will save us from drowning in our grief.

If we face our grief with honesty, patience, vulnerability, gratitude, and hope, there lies before us a great possibility—that we’ll become more like Jesus, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3). And our heart will be more like God’s, who feels the pain of the afflicted and deeply cares for the plight of the poor.

They discuss the transformative effects that can come from giving just 20 minutes to Bible reading each day, and they recommend free tools to help readers understand difficult parts of the Bible.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Bible Recap (podcast)
• The Bible Recap (book)
• ESV Study Bible
• Free tools for studying the Bible:
  • Faithlife Study Bible
  • The Bible Project
  • Blue Letter Bible
  • TGC Bible Commentary
  • Desiring God Sermon Archive
  • Look at the Book

Related Resources: 

• Read the Bible
• My Favorite Bible in a Year Reading Plan
• Easy Schedule for Bible-in-a-Year Rookies

Discussion Questions:

Suffering is hard and complicated. The ache may be physical, emotional, spiritual, or all these at once. We often won’t understand our pain in this life.

At the same time, God’s Word teaches us much about suffering that can help us in our own sorrows or as we minister to others. In Yet I Will Hope in Him: Walking Through Suffering with Job, pastor and TGC council member Andrew Davis wrestles with the problem of pain as it’s addressed in the book of Job. “If you have walked in a specific sorrow for some time and have some lingering questions, doubts, and fears about what it all means,” Davis writes, “no book in the Bible is as profound [as Job]” (7).

Yet I Will Hope in Him shows us why we still have reason for hope in God amid our deepest pain.

Why, God?

My husband once overheard someone tell a hospice patient that if he had more faith, God would’ve made him well. Placing the responsibility for death directly on the dying man was out of sync with biblical teaching, and it made a tragic situation more painful. A biblical perspective on suffering helps us understand God’s tenderness and grace, even in painful circumstances.

The ache may be physical, emotional, spiritual, or all these at once. We often won’t understand our pain in this life.

Job offers readers a unique behind-the-scenes look at the ways sin, Satan, and suffering are connected . . . and also disconnected. While suffering is sometimes a direct consequence of a particular sin, Davis argues, “the book of Job severs the automatic link between specific suffering and our sinfulness” (101).

At some point, almost everyone asks for a reason for pain and suffering. Job points us to principles that provide partial answers, some of which come through negative examples. For example, suffering can give us wisdom and compassion for others. Davis shows how our suffering can help us comfort other sufferers. Job’s friends give us an excellent example of what not to do.

Additionally, while Job’s initial response to suffering was exemplary, the wearying effects of extended suffering forced him to reckon with God in new ways. He never received a full explanation, but as readers we get a behind-the-scenes view of God’s sovereignty. It’s an integral part of the Bible’s portrait of the way God’s sovereign purpose can bring us back to him. Though we may not know the exact reason for our anguish, Davis argues, “the answer is to draw near to God in times of trouble” (95).

Reasonable Hope

Amid suffering, most people have specific desires. Sick people want to be healed. Grieving people want relief from their pain. Parents want their children to be safe and well.

These are all reasonable things to hope for. It’s good and right to ask God for them. We’re not meant to live as if this world doesn’t matter. Davis argues, “Striving for earthly hopes, goals, and achievements is essential to a healthy life in this world” (28). Yet our desires make us vulnerable to loss and disappointment. Our longing for the goodness of God’s creation opens us up to suffering.

This is why the book of Job points us to hope in God’s character. God shows Job his care for every detail of the natural world. If God superintends the birth of mountain goats, the exploits of wild donkeys, and the strength of horses, then surely he also cares for all his people, including Job (Job 39). In loss and disappointment, we can trust God’s care.

We see a much bigger picture than Job did of the grand story God is writing for humanity. Job saw God’s eternal power on display in the created order. “But we know that comforts of God the Creator are small in comparison to the comforts of God the Redeemer,” Davis observes. So, yes, we should absolutely cry out to God in our sorrow, laying our hearts open for him and trusting him to meet us there. Because the resurrection is true, God will ultimately make all things right.

Thrill of Heaven

Five months after that miscarriage, I was pregnant again. My son, who likely wouldn’t have been born if my lost pregnancy had gone full term, will test for his driver’s permit next month. He’s taller than I am now, but he still hugs me every night. His existence isn’t an answer to the “why” of suffering in this world, and it doesn’t work out this way for everyone. But his unexpected life reminds me every day that God’s ways are higher than mine (Isa. 55:8–9).

A biblical perspective on suffering helps us understand God’s tenderness and grace, even in painful circumstances.

Suffering is a universal human experience. “At some point in your pilgrimage to Heaven,” Davis writes, “you will need the book of Job” (1).

Yet the lessons Job gives us are best learned either before or after the tides of sorrow overwhelm us. Davis observes, “If your agonies are extremely fresh and you are reeling from the news of your losses, . . . the comforts you so desperately seek might well be found in another place” (8). When we’re suffering, we should run to Christ’s promises of comfort first.

Christ’s suffering points us toward the joy of heaven, when the troubles of this earth will be a memory. Davis argues, “Part of the thrill of Heaven will be our eternal education in the glory of God. And part of that will be understanding God’s full purposes for our earthly suffering—purposes that are many and complex” (115).

When Job was hit with pain beyond what most of us will ever experience, he responded with both grief and hope. Davis helps us understand the message of Job as he writes with both pastoral care and precise theology. Yet I Will Hope in Him reminds us that the hope Job found in God is still available to us, and through Christ, our hope is multiplied.

Then, halfway through January, after the holiday hustle had died down, we began to notice some unwanted visitors in our home. We were regularly squashing bugs, yet they continued to grow in number. One night, after killing about 20 of these unknown bugs, we did some research and discovered they were German cockroaches.

No infestation is fun, but our web searches told us this was the worst kind. German cockroaches are small and reproduce rapidly, making them almost impossible to eradicate.

The pest-control website suggested moving our appliances to find out if we had a full-blown infestation or just a few pesky tenants; we pulled our fridge away from the wall, and all the signs of an infestation were there. Our hearts sank. The roaches were in the walls.

That night, we began looking for a new home. I didn’t know it at the time, but God was about to use that infestation to teach me one of the most valuable lessons I’d ever learned.

Mourning the Way Things Should Be

I’ve always been an organized person. One of my favorite tasks before my wedding was unpacking gifts in the apartment that my husband and I would share. I loved making the place feel like home. But the day we discovered the roaches, that apartment immediately quit feeling like home. We packed a suitcase a few days later to stay with my parents. I was incredibly grateful for a place to stay, but I mourned the loss of the home I’d worked so hard on.

The roaches weren’t the end of our struggles. For several weeks, it seemed as though each new day held some significant development: sickness, the death of a grandparent, car trouble, more sickness. I woke up every day thinking, What’s next?

I love order, so this complete lack of predictability left me anxious and exhausted. I felt like I had nothing stable to hold on to. My schedule, our finances, our transportation—everything was off-kilter. Nothing was going the way we wanted it to. And not having a home where we could rest or regroup made everything feel that much worse.

I love order, so this complete lack of predictability left me anxious and exhausted.

Even after my husband and I found the townhouse we wanted to buy and put a contract on it, I felt like I was living in limbo. We didn’t have ownership of the house yet, most of our belongings were at the apartment we were still paying rent for, and we were living out of suitcases and sleeping at my parents’. It felt like we had three homes and no home at the same time.

My Order Isn’t God’s Order

Then, one day, I decided to do prayer journaling. I’d hoped to process some of what was going on, and maybe gain peace or stability. Instead, God graciously showed me my sin.

I was trying to find rest in where I lived rather than in God, the true provider of all comfort. I’d made an idol of my physical surroundings and seemingly couldn’t be happy until I felt “settled” again. John 16:33 spoke directly into my circumstances: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (NIV).

We’re called to find our peace in Christ. Nothing else will do. We’re never told that living in a broken world will be easy (that verse says the opposite), but fixing our eyes on God, relying on him for everything, resting in him, and trusting his promises puts a silver lining on every cloud.

God showed me my idolatry of comfort and predictability by removing both, but he also showed me that he’s the ultimate source of rest and contentment.

Christians are never without hope. In all things, in difficulty and ease, we can rejoice and rest in God’s goodness—in ease, because of the many blessings God has poured out on us; in difficulty, because God is always at work, and his plan is greater than we could ever grasp. As Christians, we have the gift of joy in all circumstances (Phil. 4:11–13). In seasons of unrest, we can always find peace in Christ.

At Home in God’s Providence

In tandem with every negative development in our lives, there was always something positive.

The roach infestation caused my husband and me to leave our apartment, but my parents welcomed us into their guest room with open arms. We started looking for a home to buy and had an offer accepted within three days. I got very sick and was unable to work on getting our new house move-in ready, but our families and church community stepped in and spent hours painting our home and helping us pack.

In seasons of unrest, we can always find peace in Christ.

Every day, I was provided with the opportunity to walk through one of two doors. Through the first was despair, stress, and frustration at my lack of control. Through the second was trust, surrender, gratitude, and wholehearted reliance on God. Sometimes I picked a door and later backtracked to the other one. Through God’s grace, I was able to keep my eyes on him and his provisions for us throughout the majority of that unusual season.

Proverbs 3:5 reads, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” As sinners living in a broken world, we’re quick to do the opposite. In a culture that praises self-sufficiency, it’s easy to lean on our own understanding. I may have continued trying to navigate this situation on my own, but by the grace of God, he put me in a place where I was reliant on others to show me he’d always provide for my family.

My husband and I often look back on this season as an example of God’s love and provision for us. God desires good for his children, and he gives us the gift of his faithfulness. When he uses hard things to draw us closer to him, those become landmarks for us to look back on, examples of his goodness to us. Instead of forgetting God and trusting in ourselves, we can remember all he has done amid hardship and celebrate.

Understandably, these trends have prompted many parents and college-age youth to look for alternatives to traditional college, or to seek private, Christian colleges rather than public secular universities.

Yet Christian higher education hasn’t been immune from the cultural trends that have eroded trust, and not all Christian colleges are equally prepared to counter these trends.

The pace of cultural change adds urgency to the perennial question of how to choose a college where students can not only gain an excellent education but also graduate with resilient, tested, well-equipped Christian faithfulness.

Wondering how to do that? Let me offer a few suggestions from where I sit, freshly retired from a 34-year career of teaching and administration in both public and Christian universities.

Look Beyond the Christian Label

Since your goal isn’t merely obtaining credentials but finding faithful mentors, the task of choosing a college extends beyond noting the adjective “Christian” on the school’s website. Many such institutions exist in America, some church-affiliated and others not, some with faculty fully committed to orthodox Christian faith and others more mixed.

You’ll need to probe past the attractive marketing materials and winsome admissions representatives to determine the realities in classrooms and residence halls.

Start with the Mission Statement

Universities invest effort into crafting mission statements that serve them in important ways, guiding major decisions such as the types of programs to offer, how to spend their funds, what roles to pursue in church and community life, and how to hire faculty and staff who will advance that mission.

Christian higher education hasn’t been immune from the cultural trends that have eroded trust in higher education.

Those whose leadership and faculty are most committed to their Christian purpose typically produce robust statements that include strong adherence to Scripture’s authority, to historic Christian doctrine, and to Christian ethics, conduct, and service. A well-crafted mission statement expresses a set of Christian beliefs and values you can readily compare with your own to determine whether this school may be a good fit.

The less the mission statement says about biblical authority and historic Christian doctrine, the more you need to press your investigation into the institution’s commitment to gospel centrality.

Questions for Faculty

More than any other factor, you’ll want to know how fully the faculty embrace the institution’s stated commitments. What does the college administration do to ensure they’re hiring and keeping believing faculty? Do they expect applicants to confess their own faith and affirm support for the school’s mission? Do their faculty evaluation procedures require regular evidence of ongoing Christian faithfulness and service?

You may need to probe deeper to answer these questions. Some schools will state their answers up front on their websites. Other institutions may have policies in place but may not post them as publicly for various reasons. Nevertheless, most will readily share that information.

The best people to ask would be the deans and department heads who oversee the major you’re exploring, because they directly manage faculty hiring for that academic program. I’d be hesitant to recommend study at a school that carries the label of “Christian” but is vague or negative in its answers to these questions.

You’ll also want to know how equipped faculty members are to evaluate and integrate their Christian faith with their area of study. Does the institution support such integration through an office of faculty development? Do deans and department heads encourage faculty to show evidence that they meaningfully integrate faith and learning in their classrooms, their research, and their professional work?

Questions for Student Life

How well does the institution support its students’ spiritual lives outside the classroom? Is there a chaplain’s office or spiritual life center? What does the university do to encourage students to practice their faith? Does it sponsor or encourage fellowship groups? Does it host regular gatherings for worship?

Does the institution help its students connect with local churches? It can be easy in college to neglect meeting together for encouragement in faith and Christian perseverance, but the author of Hebrews warns us about that (10:25).

Questions for a Local Church

Whatever choice you make, talk at home about how to plan and cultivate practices to pursue a growing life in Christ. A robust Christian environment can help in this effort, but regular fellowship with other believers in a local church will also be crucial.

Whatever choice you make, talk at home about how to plan and cultivate practices to pursue a growing life in Christ.

Make sure the church you choose is gospel-centered and has worship, teaching, and fellowship that will promote growth in devotion to Jesus Christ and effectiveness in serving others. Such a church should be committed to the authority of Scripture and the core doctrines of Christian belief as expressed in the Nicene Creed and the five solas of the Reformation.

Having a church within walking distance of campus may encourage faithful involvement. A church with a strong college ministry may draw a larger critical mass of students from the campus who carpool, which makes it easier to get to church and remain involved even if the church is farther away. The Gospel Coalition can help you with its easy-to-use church directory.

Rest in God’s Providence

Other important factors may influence your choice of Christian college: where it’s located, the quality of the campus and its facilities, the reputation of its programs. Yet your search shouldn’t end without solid answers to the questions above.

Wherever your search finally takes you, remember to trust in God’s sovereign guidance and providence. “I am sure of this,” the apostle Paul wrote to the Philippian church, “that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).

God can sustain and deepen faith, working through the mentorship and effective teaching of committed believing faculty. He can sharpen intellect and resilience when challenges come. We can trust him, because he ordains all of our steps.

Imagine long ago, a tribe gathered round the flickering fire, telling stories of gods and monsters, rebellion and consequence, present meaning and future destiny.

Now jump forward to the present, to faces rapt in the light of a screen, as starships soar while heroes and villains battle. Different symbols, same quest for meaning.

In the 20th century, the many triumphs of science and technology in understanding our world—and improving our lives—helped lend plausibility to the claim that science is the only or best way to find truth. Many wielded this as a scalpel against superstition, myth, and religious faith. The empirical seemed to triumph over the supernatural.

But our need for myth, for stories big enough to explain the world and bind us together, didn’t disappear. Secularization, and the gradual process of turning away from the Christian worldview that had underpinned Western culture, left a deep longing for meaning. Our search for mythology and meaning-making never really went away. It was translated into a scientifically inflected paradigm.

How Sci-Fi Reveals Shifting Cultural Narratives

Science fiction gives a particularly vivid window into different worldviews in our cultural moment. It projects our culture’s hopes and fears for the future—whether as utopia or dystopia, or in the tension between the two. Science fiction allows a secular exploration of eschatology: thinking about the “end times” and reflecting on our future and our mortality as a species.

The genre speaks to our present experience as well: films such as Everything Everywhere All at Once and the animated Spider-Verse movies wrestle with how we find meaning amid a multiverse of competing narratives and worldviews. Let me give a few examples of how science fiction reveals our shifting cultural narratives.

Our search for mythology and meaning-making never really went away. It was translated into a scientifically inflected paradigm.

Science fiction often reveals our longing for technological and scientific hope, an optimism where, through the light of science and human reason, we can solve our problems and reach the stars.

Star Trek is a classic example: By the 23rd century, humanity has overcome war and poverty and joined the peaceful United Federation of Planets, exploring the universe at warp speed. This series helped fuel real-life ambition to send humans to live on the moon and Mars, from NASA to the dreams of Elon Musk.

The same ethos continues in novels and movies like Andy Weir’s The Martian and Project Hail Mary, which emphasize the potential of human ingenuity and cooperation to overcome our problems.

The problem with this as a mythos is that it fails to deal with the darker side of human nature. Techno-optimism has an underdeveloped sense of sin: It asserts the problems we face are external, solvable by autonomous human reason. The internet’s introduction was heralded with optimistic promises of global unity, but absent a transformation of the heart, the technology has only accelerated polarization and conflict. Technology amplifies what’s in our hearts, for both good and ill.

Space-travel optimism also fails to reckon with the hard physical constraints that make human life inextricably tied up with planet Earth. Nowhere else in the universe can we thrive like we do on our home planet, and the dream of galactic exploration can be escapism from facing our responsibilities at home.

As Christians, we can affirm an optimistic view of human potential, but highlight our need for divine intervention to deal with our hearts. This is a need Project Hail Mary hints at when the story takes a turn from science to sacrifice as necessary to solve our problems. The best science in the world can’t save our souls. We need a supernatural intervention of grace.

Another strand of science fiction is the dystopian and postapocalyptic outlook. Here we see warnings of the dangers of science and how technology might be abused by powerful individuals or corporations. Stories such as Stephen King’s The Stand, the Mad Max film series, and Fallout games and TV series explore how—by accident or human folly—modern civilization could collapse and technology could bring about the apocalypse.

Often, these stories reveal a pessimistic view of human nature in which the collapse of civilization returns us to a state of nature “red in tooth and claw.” Widespread contemporary anxieties about climate change often loom large, as in Interstellar’s near-future dying Earth or WALL-E’s future where the planet is choked with rubbish.

Opportunities for Christians

How can we as Christians engage well with this genre? Science fiction and its fan communities can provide opportunities to discuss big questions of meaning, purpose, and the future with our unbelieving neighbors.

As Christians, we can participate in the cultural conversation, whether by writing science fiction ourselves, engaging with it critically, or being part of fan communities online or in-person. If, like me, you’re a fan of science fiction, consider building bridges to share the reason for the hope we have (1 Pet. 3:15).

For example, as a Doctor Who fan, my love for the Doctor, the Time Lord who is sometimes messianic, sometimes a “madman in a box,” has given me opportunities to share my love for Jesus as the real Lord of time who actually gave his life for the world and rose again.

We can also point to the hopeful realism of the “now and not yet” of the kingdom. A strong doctrine of sin keeps us from thinking we can make heaven on earth by our own efforts—which quickly turns dystopian in practice. But because Jesus is coming back to restore all creation and bring it into the freedom of the children of God (Rom. 8), we have hope both for the future and for what Francis Schaeffer called “substantial healing” in the here and now.

We probably can’t make the Star Trek future a perfect reality, but if we live in the light of God’s coming kingdom, we can make the future better. Optimistic science fiction can help inspire us. We just need to remember our Creator who made the world and gave us the minds to “think his thoughts after him,” to use a phrase often attributed to Johannes Kepler.

Science fiction and its fan communities can provide opportunities to discuss big questions of meaning, purpose, and the future with our unbelieving neighbors.

We can highlight how the Christian faith satisfies the longings of both our reason and our imagination. As YouTube cultural critic Damien Walter argues, science fiction unites logos (science) with mythos (fiction). C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien famously contended that Christianity is the “true myth”—it gives us an ultimate story to believe in, but one that’s really true, based on a rational apprehension of the Bible’s testimony, grounded in fact and history.

Hope Beyond Sci-Fi Futures

We might feel that it’s the end of the world as we know it, or maybe that we’re on the cusp of a technological utopia. But the gospel also offers us a better story for the future.

Whatever the “postapocalyptic” challenges we may face from AI, climate change, or killer robots—or whatever Star Trek dreams we might realize—we know that only in Jesus will all things be made new (Rev. 21). We’re called to be ambassadors of the coming kingdom, new-creation people in the here and now (2 Cor. 5).

If science fiction reveals secular culture’s longings for mythos and logical meaning, let’s take the opportunity to point people to Jesus—the person in whom “true myth,” historical fact, and living hope meet.

1. J. V. Fesko | Editorial: The Council of Nicaea and Christian Character

Fesko argues that the Nicene Creed required moral and ethical virtues to produce its theological orthodoxy. In simple terms, to be a good theologian requires godliness.

2. Daniel Strange | Strange Times: Hiding in Plain Sight

Strange reflects on the cultural fascination with horror films and their presentation of the supernatural. Biblical reality gives us a metaphysic of the Creator-creature distinction which is capacious enough to include the material and the spiritual without confusing them and without divinising them, the blurring of the Creator-creature distinction (otherwise known as idolatry).

3. Jay Sklar | Lamb of the Free: A Review Article

In Lamb of the Free, Andrew Rillera argues from both the Old Testament and the New Testament that penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) is an unbiblical idea. This review considers seven key claims Rillera uses to support his arguments. It focuses on whether they successfully undercut the idea of PSA and provides positive support for seeing PSA as a biblical idea.

4. Samuel Beh | Sent by a Sending God: Tracing the Verbal Thread of Sending Through Luke-Acts

This article establishes the language of “sending” as a significant verbal thread throughout Luke-Acts. By tracing Luke’s use of the sending word group (ἀποστέλλω, πέμπω, ἐκβάλλω, and ἀπολύω), the study demonstrates that Luke frames God’s saving purposes as advancing through a succession of divinely sent messengers, culminating in Jesus, the apostles, and the Spirit-empowered church. The insights provide an important interpretive lens for understanding Luke’s theology of mission and the church’s mandate to participate in the divine mission today.

5. Paul S. Jeon | The Heart Knows but Will Not Yield: Affective Suppression and the Noetic Effects of Sin in Romans 1:32

Jeon argues that Romans 1:32 offers a crucial entry point for understanding the affective dimensions of the noetic effects of sin in Pauline theology. Rather than depicting unbelief as a mere failure of knowledge, Paul presents it as a morally culpable resistance to a truth that is already intuited. Drawing on N. Gray Sutanto’s retrieval of the affective model of general revelation, this study reinterprets the sensus divinitatis as a dispositional awareness rooted in dependence and shaped by affective response. The analysis of Romans 1:32 shows that Paul’s concern is not ignorance but a willful suppression motivated by fear, shame, and disordered desire. This reframing challenges dominant rationalist interpretations of the noetic effects of sin and aligns with the broader Reformed tradition.

6. Kenneth Berding | Echoes of Cain in James 3:7–5:9 and the Problem of James 4:5

James undergirds his exhortations in the middle portion of his letter (3:7–5:9) with a narrative subtext—namely, the early chapters of Genesis, and, in particular, the person and story of Cain as it would have been understood in James’s interpretive environment. An acknowledgment of this subtext resolves most of the interpretive and translational difficulties associated with James 4:5, which should read, “The [human] spirit which he [God] made to dwell in us desires with envy.”

7. Craig Fredrickson | The Word’s Transforming Work: Sanctification by Scripture in 1 Peter 1:22–2:3

In 1 Peter 1:22–2:3, Peter presents the Word of God as the divinely appointed instrument of both regeneration and ongoing sanctification. Souls are purified by obedience to the truth, born again through the living and abiding Word, and sustained by an infant-like craving for its pure spiritual milk. Read alongside Calvin, Owen, and Watson, the passage locates the Word’s sanctifying power in the union with Christ that Scripture mediates by the Spirit, correcting therapeutic, contemplative, and pragmatic alternatives that displace Scripture from its formative work.

8. Daniel Kirkpatrick | Will Total Depravity Fall from Grace? A Defense of the Reformed View

The doctrines of grace found in Reformed soteriology are predicated on an understanding of humanity’s total depravity stemming from original sin. This doctrine is under reevaluation by a group of pastors and scholars concerned about the resurgence of Calvinism in the Southern Baptist Convention and broader evangelical community. This perspective initially gained attention with the 2012 release of “A Statement on the Traditional Southern Baptist Understanding of God’s Plan of Salvation” and has been advanced through subsequent writings from Adam Harwood. By redeveloping this foundational doctrine of sin, this perspective seeks to dismantle the Reformed understandings of election, atonement, and overcoming grace. Kirkpatrick critiques Harwood’s perspective of original sin and seeks to defend the Reformed doctrine of total depravity against this alternative viewpoint.

9. Joel MacInnes | Wisdom and Folly in Laodicea: Revelation’s Message to the Laodiceans as Wisdom Discourse

This article examines Christ’s message to Laodicea as “wisdom discourse,” arguing that it employs “wisdom forms,” “allusions to wisdom literature,” and addresses “wisdom concerns.” The message highlights wisdom due to the Laodicean church’s lack of it. MacInnes explores potential parallels between the challenges faced by the churches in Colossae and Laodicea, noting similar diagnoses and remedies. Finally, the article examines how the wisdom theme in the message to Laodicea shapes our understanding of the seven messages in the book of Revelation.

10. Brandon D. Smith | Retrieving Athanasius: Ruled Readings and Trinitarian Exegesis

This essay argues that evangelical retrieval of the Christian tradition finds a particularly fruitful interlocutor in Athanasius of Alexandria, whose “ruled readings” of Scripture and Trinitarian exegesis model a canonically coherent theological hermeneutic. Against lingering Harnackian suspicions that patristic theology represents a Hellenistic corruption of Christianity, the essay demonstrates that Athanasius’s theological reasoning emerges from a deeply scriptural framework centered on the unity of Scripture and scripturally rooted doctrinal conclusions. Smith concludes by showing the ways in which Athanasius’s interpretive sensibilities can strengthen evangelical biblical, theological, and ecclesial convictions.

11. Drew Hunter | The Typology of Jonathan Edwards: A Rejoinder to Cameron Schweitzer

Cameron Schweitzer argues that Drew Hunter’s earlier work on Jonathan Edwards’s understanding of typology is too narrowly christological. This rejoinder argues that Hunter’s view is not narrowly christological and that Hunter’s and Schweitzer’s understanding of Edwards’s typological exegesis are complementary rather than in competition.

12. Matthew LaMaster | Mimesis and Christian Leaders: A Rhetoric of Authority and Accountability

LaMaster considers Elizabeth Castelli’s contention that Paul’s use of imitative language reinforces power in authority relationships. While Castelli has not found wide acceptance in the New Testament scholarly guild, a dismissal of her thesis contributes to an erosion of any understanding of pastoral authority in the New Testament. This paper demonstrates that Castelli was right in that imitation does reinforce pastoral authority but wrong in her mischaracterization of pastoral authority. In particular, New Testament mimetic use reinforces authority by limiting authority, sharing power, encouraging costly virtues, and inverting cultural norms of authority.

13. Dan Allen | Main-Point-Driven: A Clear Methodology for Implementing the Christ-Centered Hermeneutic

Allen addresses the need for a clear methodology for implementing the Christ-centered interpretation. Without a consistent process to guard and guide interpreters, illegitimate connections to Jesus are to be expected. Therefore, the Main-Point-Driven methodology provides readers with confidence to discern how every passage directs us to Christ. Special attention is given to asking the right Christ-connection question and unpacking the C-H-R-I-S-T acronym to aid in memorizing the six possible paths to Jesus. The article closes with a brief apologetic of why the Main-Point-Driven methodology is the correct path forward.

Featured Book Reviews:

• T. Desmond Alexander, Genesis (Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary). Reviewed by Dustin G. Burlet.
• James Nogalski, The Book of Micah (New International Commentary on the Old Testament). Reviewed by Peter C. W. Ho.
• David Starling, 1 Corinthians (Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary). Reviewed by Paul S. Jeon.
• Eric C. Smith, Between Worlds: John A. Broadus, The Southern Baptist Seminary, and The Prospects of the New South. Reviewed by Dylan Baxter.
• Kevin DeYoung, The Nicene Creed: What You Need to Know About the Most Important Creed Ever Written. Reviewed by Nathaniel Parker.
• Keith and Kristyn Getty, The Sing! Hymnal. Reviewed by Matthew Westerholm.
• J. D. Payne, Understanding Evangelism: Biblical Foundations, Historical Developments, and Contemporary Issues. Reviewed by Samuel Pirrotta.
• Bart Ehrman, Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West. Reviewed by Alex Rea.

And yet Scripture repeatedly speaks in the language of delight, joy, satisfaction, feasting, and pleasures forevermore. In Happiness: What It Is, Where to Find It, and How to Make It Last Forever, Andrew Wilson, teaching pastor at King’s Church London, picks up this important but often misunderstood topic, noting that “God wants you to be happy” (1). That’s an important statement, but we have to be clear about what it means in biblical terms.

An unavoidable tension exists between what the Bible has to say about happiness and the picture painted by our wider culture—a portrait marked by expressive individualism, upward mobility, and material abundance. The cultural vision of happiness is remarkably fickle, resting on circumstances we can’t control for long. Wilson argues that God invites us into a deeper, more durable happiness than changing circumstances can ever provide.

Flavors of Happiness

Ask 10 Christians what happiness is, and you’ll likely get 10 different answers. Wilson helps untangle the confusion by distinguishing several biblical “flavors” of happiness, reminding readers that “not all happiness is equal” (30). The thrill of new romance, the satisfaction of meaningful work, and delight in communion with God are all forms of happiness, but they aren’t interchangeable.

God invites us into a deeper, more durable happiness than changing circumstances can ever provide.

Neuroscience links happiness to dopamine, but brain chemistry alone can’t explain lasting joy. The exhilaration of teenage infatuation is often more intense than the settled affection of a 40-year marriage, yet few would call it a deeper happiness.

The more we seek after intense yet shallow flavors of happiness, the more disappointed we’ll be when the dopamine fades. Wilson argues that Christians should pursue the forms of happiness Scripture commends: those that produce flourishing and contentment rather than passing excitement.

Beneath the Waves

Wilson compares our emotional lives to the ocean’s layers. Surface waves shift constantly with our circumstances, daily choices, and personalities. The tides of happiness ebb and flow in relatively predictable fashion based on significant events. But the most important layer, which is the least visible, is the current that runs steadily beneath the surface. This helps explain how Paul could be “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Cor. 6:10).

It’s possible “to experience surface waves of transient laughter, and tides of melancholy, and depression dragging us away from the shore, and deep ocean currents of warming and everlasting joy in Christ, all at once” (35).

So while our emotional surface may appear choppy due to a tough day at work, marital conflict, or misbehaving children, the deep, everlasting joy offered to those who hope in Christ remains perfectly calm and as constant as ever (1 Pet. 1:8). Regularly calling to mind that hope will help us calm the storms we feel on our surface (Mark 4:35–41).

The multilayeredness of our emotional lives can be both disorienting and frustrating at times, but the Christian holds out hope: “The day is approaching when the waves, the tides, and the ocean currents will all pull in the same direction; and we will laugh on the surface as we rejoice in the deep, and all manner of things will be well. But not yet” (35).

Find True Happiness

Many practical, common-grace recommendations from positive psychology can sound a lot like Jesus’s instructions in the Sermon on the Mount. Wilson identifies a few: “Grow in gratitude. . . . Be compassionate and kind. . . . Humble yourself. . . . Do not overestimate the value of money and possessions” (113).

Following this counsel isn’t merely morally commendable; research contends it actually contributes to our overall mental and emotional well-being. Living with the grain of the moral fabric of God’s creation tends to bring greater happiness than going against it. But Christians arrive at our vision of “the good life” through an open Bible and willing ears rather than by analyzing surveys and advice columns.

Living with the grain of the moral fabric of God’s creation tends to bring greater happiness than going against it.

This Scripture-first approach is important, because following the best advice from best-selling positive psychologists won’t produce true happiness. These authors encourage gratitude, humility, and generosity, but they cannot offer what the gospel alone provides: reconciliation with the God in whom lasting joy is found.

Most self-help books about happiness commend spirituality as one important “lifestyle choice” among many others. This makes God out to be merely a means rather than the end of our joy. It reduces God to an instrument to be used in the greater pursuit of personal happiness and well-being. This approach is entirely backward.

Writing with his characteristic blend of biblical depth and accessibility, Wilson argues,

In Scripture, God is the goal and happiness is one of the results. We do not love God because he improves our states of mind . . . but because we find him supremely excellent and delightful in himself—and a marvelous result is that we experience deep and everlasting joy, glorifying God by enjoying him forever. (131)

That’s an approach to happiness every Christian should strive to adopt.

My pastor was right: A promotion, marriage, and achievement can’t bear the weight we expect them to in our pursuit of happiness. Wilson reminds us that our happiness was never meant to be found in created things apart from their Creator.

While our culture searches for joy in shifting circumstances, Jesus extends a better invitation: “Enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:21). Happiness points readers toward lasting joy by showing that delight in God isn’t the enemy of holiness but one of its richest fruits.

In Pascal’s 17th-century Parisian context, death-avoidance was a rich man’s game. Gamble more, hunt more foxes, plan another ball. He could hardly have imagined the mainstream opportunities for distraction we now take for granted. No humans have ever had more options “not to think about such things.”

But for precisely that reason, another recent trend is all the more striking. A rising tide of influencers is challenging the premise beneath Pascal’s complaint—the notion that death is incurable in the first place. Far from avoiding the subject, they’re confronting the problem head-on.

Extreme longevity is having a moment. Peter Attia’s Outlive has sold more than 3 million copies in three years. Bryan Johnson, founder of the Don’t Die movement, was the subject of a popular 2025 Netflix documentary. And last summer, The New Yorker ran an in-depth profile of Peter Diamandis and the rise of specialized longevity clinics like his own Fountain Life—one of thousands of similar clinics worldwide, up from fewer than a hundred barely 10 years ago.

What should we think about this trend? And what opportunities does it open for Christian witness?

It’s deeply human to long for more life, and it’s certainly wise to take care of the bodies God has given us for as long as we can. But there’s a deeper conviction beneath this trend that we have to recognize and confront. Longevity influencers believe we’re our own best shot at dealing with the problem. They’ve vastly underestimated both the problem of death and the hope of the gospel.

Who Are the Longevity Influencers?

Longevity influencers make up a diverse and quirky crowd. On one end you have Johnson, arguably the most well-known and provocative of the bunch. His obsession is reverse-aging, on which he reportedly spends a quarter-million dollars per year.

His daily regimen involves pills, supplements, extreme exercise, and a diet restricted down to the last calorie. His experimental therapies have included intergenerational plasma exchange between him; his septuagenarian father, Richard; and his teenage son, Talmage. In theory, Richard got a boost from the blood of a much younger man. The benefit to Talmage was, shall we say, less than clear.

Meanwhile, Johnson takes an open-source approach to his biometrics, tracking and publishing everything from his BMI and resting heart rate to his liver enzymes. Johnson deploys his body like a billboard for the products and services he’s eager to sell to you. Never mind the fact that he stacks his therapies one on top of the other, so good luck tracking what works and what doesn’t and why.

A rising tide of influencers is challenging the premise beneath Pascal’s complaint—the notion that death is incurable in the first place.

Diamandis represents the tech-positive clinical approach to longevity, arguably less provocative than Johnson but every bit as optimistic. In an age of stunning technological achievements, it should come as no surprise that the leading influencers in the longevity movement aren’t doctors but tech entrepreneurs. Sure, some ambitions on record seem wildly over the top. But who in 1970 wouldn’t have scoffed if you’d said that 70 percent of the world’s population would own pocket-size, interconnected supercomputers by 2026?

Every technological breakthrough sounds crazy right up until it changes the world. Why wouldn’t we be able to figure out limitless life? Diamandis perfectly captures the aura of tech-bro optimism: “It’s either a hardware problem or a software problem—and we’re going to be able to fix that!”

So far, efforts to “fix that” are all over the map, effectiveness very much TBD. According to the New Yorker profile, Diamandis is hard at work on a blood filter to weed out metastatic cancer, as well as a transmitter of high-frequency waves to “diagnose strokes and zap depression.” Other gurus focus on the preservation of individual consciousness (a software problem?). In theory, if you could upload your consciousness now to the cloud, generative AI could predict your thoughts and reactions and desires in response to whatever happens forever and ever, as easily as it already completes your text messages.

But whatever the preferred strategy of the moment, the underlying confidence is that one breakthrough leads to another. We don’t have to solve death in one stroke. We just have to make enough progress to buy time for more progress, on and on, until it’s done.

It’s worth noting that at least for now, longevity isn’t a poor man’s game. As one practitioner puts it, “We don’t work in mice. We work in billionaires.”

Diamandis’s Fountain Life clinic describes itself as “like a country club for precision diagnostics.” An annual membership costs more than $20,000, with thousands more required for supplements and optional testing, and that’s just the baseline. Those hoping to go above and beyond subscribe to the $85,000 Epic program, which “includes an exercise coach and a nutritionist, stem-cell ‘re-education,’ and treatments such as therapeutic plasma exchange, in which plasma is filtered from your blood and replaced with albumin and antibodies from healthy donors.”

You’re also invited to the semiannual Platinum Trip—$70,000 per person—where you’ll enjoy personal interactions with longevity scientists, opportunities to invest in experimental therapies, and priority access to those therapies for yourself.

In a way, this makes sense. The more money you have, the more you have to lose through death, and the more you have to spend on living longer. Fountain Life’s chief medical officer summed up her clientele: “They spent their health getting their wealth, and now they have to spend their wealth getting their health back.”

Reverse-Engineering the End of Life

Attia represents the lower-tech end of the longevity spectrum. After years chasing more ambitious solutions to the problem of death, he narrowed his focus to what he calls the “marginal decade”—the final 10 years of life.

Modern medicine has extended life expectancy but not wellness. People are living longer than ever before, but the final years are often marked by cognitive, physical, and emotional decline that medicine only addresses once it’s too late to undo what’s already happened. What good is more life if you’re miserable?

Attia argues for approaching your health for the marginal decade in the same way you might approach retirement savings. A financial planner helps you define what lifestyle you hope to have in retirement and work back from there to the funds you need to be setting aside now. Health planning should work the same way. First, define what’s important to you. Pickleball prowess? Mountain climbing in your 80s? LEGOs on the floor with your great-grandkids? Figure out what you want to do in your final years of life, and start training now to make sure you get there.

I have far more sympathy for this longevity approach than for the more outlandish and obsessive versions of guys like Johnson or Diamandis. Many of Attia’s anchor concepts are what you might call commonsensical, if easier said than done. Watch what you eat. Make sure you get enough sleep. Definitely don’t skip leg day.

His future-oriented approach to the present also resonates with the wisdom of the Proverbs and its approach to the good life. Actions have consequences. Laziness and apathy bring bad outcomes. So pay attention, plan ahead, and act accordingly.

But if Attia’s ambitions are admittedly modest compared to others, he’s fully in line with the broader movement where it matters most. For all these influencers, the future is a problem to solve, and we’re the ones who have to solve it. We’re our own best chance at survival. Or, as Attia puts it, “Hope is not a strategy.”

How Christian Hope Is More than a Strategy

This is precisely the point at which the longevity movement offers a wonderful opportunity to clarify the hope of the gospel.

The first thing to be said is that Attia is exactly right. Our hope is not a strategy. Christian confidence flows from humility. It starts with desperate honesty about the problem we’re facing, then quickly admits we can’t possibly fix it. Our hope depends completely on the Lord, who isn’t limited as we are. Just browse the juxtapositions of Psalm 33, or Psalm 90, or Psalm 102.

Aging isn’t a disease to be prevented or cured. Death isn’t a software problem, a hardware problem, or any sort of engineering problem to be worked until we’ve solved it. Death is God’s just response to our attempt to play God. And it can only be overthrown by the same steadfast love that gave us our lives in the first place. Our hope assumes only God can fix this problem.

But the Lord exalts the humble, if we can accept a solution we can’t take credit for. In the hope of resurrection, we find a resource far more suited to our need than any other approach to longevity.

1. Christian hope is realistic.

Any strategy that leaves death standing isn’t good enough. Christian hope assumes Paul is right: “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26).

The contrast to Attia’s Outlive is important. The strength of his approach is his future-oriented posture toward the present. Its weakness is that his approach fails to look far enough ahead.

Death is God’s just response to our attempt to play God. And it can only be overthrown by the same steadfast love that gave us our lives in the first place.

His laser focus on the marginal decade, setting aside the reality that lurks on the other side, is far too convenient. At least the Don’t Die crowd is honest about the scale of what we’re up against. Hope may not be a strategy. But as long as death itself remains our greatest enemy, Attia’s wisdom isn’t much of a strategy either.

All this focus on the marginal decade is a bit like offering someone goggles to keep the wind out of his eyes as he falls to the pavement from a 40-story rooftop. Compared to the pavement at the bottom, who cares about the wind in his eyes? It’s a helpful program so far as it goes, but the rhetoric and enthusiasm overpromise and underdeliver.

2. Christian hope is concrete.

Our hope isn’t just realistic about the enemy we’re up against. It’s grounded in the concrete reality that Christ has conquered death for us.

At one point in the New Yorker profile, a colleague of Diamandis had this to say about how quickly he promotes unfounded claims about new treatment options: “Peter has learned that a compelling offer is ten times more powerful than a convincing argument.” All these wealthy clients are simply “trying to buy their stairway to Heaven.” And “nearly all of them are deathly afraid of death.”

That’s remarkable honesty. It’s also a good summary of an age-old knock on Christian faith: People desperately want life after death, so they believe it actually exists. It all boils down to wishful thinking. Framed negatively, it can’t be true if we want it to be.

This way of thinking might explain the commercial success of Fountain Life clinics. But it vastly underestimates the evidence for Jesus’s resurrection. Christian hope is gloriously concrete. The best reason to believe that a deathless life is possible is that Jesus already has one. It’s all in 1 Corinthians 15: “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.  But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (vv. 19–20).

3. Christian hope is active.

To observers like Attia, hope functions like an excuse to justify not doing what you can for as long as you can to push back death’s progress. Hope comes off as sentimental passivity faced with what you ought to be resisting. As one interviewer puts it, “Attia tends to argue that individual choices matter not because they are all-powerful but because they are the power that we have.”

But what about when those individual choices are taken from us? What about when we don’t have even this much power over quality of life anymore? Attia’s Outlive strategy has nothing to offer those already disabled, or suffering through early onset dementia, or grieving the loss of a grandchild they’d otherwise be healthy enough to toss in the air.

Christian hope is gloriously concrete. The best reason to believe that a deathless life is possible is that Jesus already has one.

Precisely where Attia’s strategy runs into a wall, Christian hope meets a precious growth opportunity.

Cultivating hope in Christ is an everyday activity, and there’s nothing easy about it. It takes discipline to set your mind on things above, so that what Christ has promised shapes every part of your life in the meantime (see Col. 3:1–17). It takes relentless effort to hold on to hope in the face of suffering and death you can’t avoid or outrun.

The active hope Paul calls for in 2 Corinthians 4 involves constant comparison between what’s transient and what’s eternal—between the afflictions we’re suffering through and the unseen glory they’re preparing for us.

Hope is like a muscle that grows as you use it to lift the burdens in your life. It feeds on suffering and sorrow. The worst things that can happen to us, in the marginal decade or whenever else, only clarify why a resurrected Savior is indispensably necessary, and why it’s so wonderful to know that we have one.

True enough, hope is not a strategy. But in Christ, it’s an unyielding power we can live on, until we never need it again.

What happens when a machine offers to give you back someone you love?

That question opens this episode with Autumn Ridenour. We begin with the idea of a “Granny-Bot”: a chatbot built from a dead relative’s messages, voice notes, and emails. It sounds comforting at first, but Ridenour helps us see why such technologies don’t really preserve communion. They risk replacing grief, memory, and creaturely acceptance with a digital imitation of presence.

Ridenour is a Christian ethicist at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and the author of books on Sabbath, aging, and the moral challenges of the digital world. She brings biblical depth and Augustinian insight to some of the hardest questions raised by AI. In our conversation, she argues that the digital age tempts us to resist human limits rather than receive them. But dependence, embodiment, and finitude aren’t defects to be engineered away. They’re part of what it means to be creatures before God.

We also talk about Babel, transhumanism, aging, and the difference between simulation and real relationship. Again and again, Ridenour points beyond Silicon Valley’s promises to the richer Christian hope of face-to-face communion with God and one another. She joined me on Silicon Spiritualities to explore what AI reveals about our deepest longings, and why no machine can finally satisfy them.

Resources Mentioned:

• Sabbath Rest as Vocation by Autumn Ridenour
• Restlessness and Belonging by Autumn Ridenour
• A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis

PREORDER The AI Apocalypse: A Survival Guide for Humanity, featuring Ridenour, Watkin, Brett McCracken, and many others, such as Ben Sasse and Alan Noble.

JOIN the conversation on Discord, along with other Silicon Spiritualities listeners.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Donate today.

But none of them wanted to be a youth pastor.

“When I was in college, I heard Tim Keller recommend going to a small church and pastoring people for a long time, which is what he did,” Hoffsmith said. “He said to preach a ton of sermons, do it all, and then see what God tells you to do—either to stay there or leave. So I was hoping to go that route.”

That’s a pretty good reason. Another is that being a youth pastor is more difficult than it used to be. Gen Z is notoriously sad, socially anxious, and overscheduled. The youth ministry of the 1990s—heavy on games, pizza, and lock-ins—often doesn’t draw like it did back then. Relying on those activities now seems a little silly.

That’s especially true in the Reformed movement, which values serious biblical engagement, and where some have argued that youth ministry is best left to parents.

Unsurprisingly, these changes have led to a shortage of youth pastors. Of the 230 open positions posted on TGC’s job board, 46 involve working with middle or high schoolers—more than any other category except associate pastor.

“I get a text at least once a week from a church looking for a youth pastor,” said TGC’s vice president for operations, Zach Cochran, who spent most of the last 26 years working with youth and youth pastors. “They just keep coming.”

“There’s way more demand for youth pastors than folks who want to do it,” agreed Sam Bierig, dean of Spurgeon College at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. “I get a lot of calls and text messages from churches looking for one. But students aren’t beating down my door asking for a youth ministry position.”

Most of them are more like Hoffsmith, who specified he wasn’t interested in youth ministry when he asked people to pray with him about job opportunities.

“Of course, God opened up the door for me to be a youth intern at a church,” he said. “That turned into a full-time youth pastor job.”

Hoffsmith’s been working with youth, under one title or another, for 13 years now. Over time, a lot of his friends stepped from youth pastor to senior pastor, executive pastor, or church planter. During COVID-19, he wanted to quit too.

“And then I made a conscious decision,” he said. “I decided to give everything to this job, as if I was a senior pastor.”

These days, Hoffsmith spends a serious amount of time studying the Bible and preparing his midweek lessons. He’s built good relationships with parents. More kids are coming to his midweek gatherings and to his growing number of Bible studies. And when he asked the high schoolers a few years ago if they wanted to read through J. I. Packer’s Concise Theology, 42 signed up.

“It’s been the best six years of my life,” he said. “We’re seeing some pretty cool fruit.”

Back in Time

“Modern youth ministry began as an evangelistic tool, not a discipleship tool,” Cochran said.

He pointed to Jim Rayburn’s Young Life (YL) and Billy Graham’s Youth for Christ (YFC). Both began in the 1940s, and although the means were different (small groups in homes and massive rallies in stadiums), the goal of saving souls was the same. Both groups were wildly popular, attracting thousands and rapidly expanding across the globe.

The youth ministry of the 1990s—heavy on games, pizza, and lock-ins—often doesn’t draw like it did back then.

By the ’70s, churches were recognizing this success and beginning to hire their own youth ministers—sometimes former YFC or YL leaders—to replicate those strategies and help them share the gospel with young people. After a while, they began incorporating some of the engaging, event-based strategies of the seeker-sensitive movement.

The timing was perfect.

“From 1990 to 2010, you could snap your fingers and get 100 students together,” Cochran said. These prescreen teens—who often went to the same school, could drive, and had spending money from summer jobs—were eager to get out of the house and be together. Youth sports hadn’t grown to swallow all evenings and weekends. And parents in a mostly Christian America were thrilled their kids were hanging out with Christian friends.

“Youth ministry was the cool and fun version of church,” said Adam Griffin, who was a youth pastor, public high school teacher, and YL leader before becoming a senior pastor at Eastside Community Church in Dallas. “Churches sold it like that—‘Youth group is the highlight of your week!’ ‘Camp is the best week of your life!’”

By extension, being a youth pastor looked like the best job in the world. You got paid to do all the fun stuff—eat junk food, play hilarious games, and hang out with the cool kids.

But there was a problem: “We were not preparing kids to swim upstream in a culture that was going to hate them for following Jesus,” Griffin said. Over the past 25 years, as Christianity became less fun and cool, 40 million Americans dechurched and secularized. Many church kids walked out with them.

Discipleship

Alarmed, Reformed leaders pushed back against many seeker-sensitive strategies. They placed campus ministries under the authority of local churches, emphasized the responsibility of parents to disciple their children, and leaned into expositional preaching. They encouraged youth pastors to stay in their positions for the long haul and began producing resources to help.

And in many ways, youth ministry improved.

“Most of the folks I know who have strong student ministries are Word-centric and gospel-centered,” Bierig said.

One is Hayden Holmes, pastor of families and students at Sojourn Church J-Town in Louisville, Kentucky.

“I was raised in a classic Southern Baptist Oklahoma church, where they taught the Bible and believed the gospel,” he said. “It was heavy on big, high-energy events to get a bunch of people in the door and share the gospel with them. The thrust of discipleship was, ‘Invite your friends to church and tell other people about Jesus.’ I loved those things, but there wasn’t as much on formative discipleship or walking through books of the Bible.”

He ran into Reformed theology during an internship at Henderson Hills Baptist Church.

“The first conference I was sent to was a Simeon Trust workshop,” he said. “It just blew my mind. I left thinking, Why would I not walk through books of the Bible and teach what it says?”

He still does that, teaching through books of the Bible each fall and doctrine or theology (say, the Lord’s Prayer or the Apostles Creed) in the spring. He’s not drawing crowds of hundreds. But around 60 to 70 kids show up to hear him on any given Wednesday evening.

“They’re responding to it—they want it,” he said. “We just got back from camp, and Dr. Hershael York, who was one of my professors at Southern, was our camp pastor for the week. He’s in his mid-60s, and I was a little nervous—how were our kids going to respond to him?”

All week long, York gave sermons that “could’ve been preached on a Sunday morning somewhere,” Holmes said. “He’s just getting up there, teaching the Bible in his own skin, being normal him.”

At the end of the week, the teens filled out evaluations.

“They were 100 percent like, ‘Dr. York is amazing. We love him,’” Holmes said.

But none of this means his job, or any other youth pastor’s, is easier than it used to be.

Smaller and Harder: The Students

“I used to host a podcast where I had more than 100 conversations about teaching the Bible to students,” said Hoffsmith, who now hosts a different podcast (and has written a book) on youth ministry. “And the best line, out of those hours of conversations, was when a real-life youth pastor said, ‘The reason it’s hard to teach middle school students the Bible is because it’s hard to teach middle school students the Bible.’”

This has always been true. But over the last 25 years, it’s gotten noticeably harder.

“That’s because the context of a teenager is harder today,” Hoffsmith said.

He doesn’t mean harder like having to go to war or camp alone in the woods with only a hatchet. Gen Z is easily the wealthiest, most educated, physically safest, and most technologically advanced generation in history.

Ironically, this prosperity has made daily life more challenging for them. They wrestle with porn addictions, overdependence on AI, and hypersensitivity to mental health issues.

Another problem is that “kids don’t know how to talk to each other,” Hoffsmith said. “They can talk and text while playing video games, but not in real life.”

They even date that way, he said. It’s harder for him to spot the couples because they’re not talking to each other in person.

Socially anxious students are a critical problem for youth groups; these gatherings draw together kids who don’t go to school together. Especially since the pandemic, many parents have chosen private schools, co-ops, or homeschooling.

Socially anxious students are a critical problem for youth groups.

“Now everybody shows up to youth ministry as strangers, unless they grew up together in that church,” Cochran said. “The biggest key to youth ministry right now is relational vibrancy among the kids. You have to foster it.”

The best way to do this is in-house, raising kids who’ve seen each other every week since they were in the church nursery.

But Hoffsmith is working on another way.

“There’s red tape to get into the schools,” Hoffsmith said. “So I find coffee shops near high schools and do Bible studies there either before or after school.”

These are modest Bible studies—by the time the kids get their coffee and gather, there’s time for about six minutes of exposition on a Psalm and prayer for their school. But the fruit has been encouraging enough for him to keep pressing in. Sometimes it’s a friend casually joining the group or an adult who overhears the discussion and offers encouragement. Sometimes it’s the great conversations they have in the three-minute church van ride as he drives them over to school for the day.

“We’ve seen God answer prayers,” Hoffsmith said. “One kid we prayed for got saved at youth group.”

This year, he held two Bible studies near public schools, one near a technical school, and one in a high school through Fellowship of Christian Athletes. He’s got students leading another at the Christian school and is planning to start another for homeschoolers.

At this point, more kids come to the Bible studies than to the midweek meeting. So next year, he’s planning to put the studies all on the same day, hoping to catapult those kids into the weekly evening gathering.

“Already, if they’re willing to come to the school Bible study, they’re slightly more likely to come to the midweek group,” he said.

Smaller and Harder: The Parents

“Parenting has shifted,” Griffin said. “It’s not just what this generation is experiencing, and it’s not just technology. We get these generational pendulum swings from cultural ideas that our parents had.”

Unlike earlier generations, today’s parents are more likely to bring their children to counseling, to be in a blended family, and to value a close emotional relationship with their kids.

“Most parents would admit that they idolize their kids, or at least components of their kids’ lives,” Hoffsmith said.

“The dark side has been undisciplined children or undiscipled children, because parents have been too afraid to tell them hard things or to let them face something difficult,” Griffin said. “The good thing is there’s a safer relationship between parents and kids to talk about hard things.”

Another good thing has been parental willingness to talk with youth pastors about their kids.

“Parents are always like, ‘What are we doing wrong?’” Holmes said. “I’m like, ‘You’re like the sixth parent I’ve talked to today about this. Your kids hit puberty, their hormones go crazy, you guys are fighting. You’re also very normal.’”

A few years ago, Hoffsmith decided to capitalize on this.

“We started these parent connect meetings,” he said. “They’re like parent-teacher conferences, but with the youth ministry staff.”

Hoffsmith starts those meetings by asking the parents how he can pray for their child.

“Jesus said, ‘Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks,’” he said. “Based on the prayer request, I can gauge the parent and child and know where to go with the conversation.”

Like a doctor’s office, Hoffsmith and his staff keep notes so they can remember and check in at the next meeting. They try to check in annually, but if something crops up, it’s easy to ask for a meeting midyear.

“I could tell you dozens of stories of how these parent connect meetings have bled into real ministry with the kids,” he said. “If I meet with a parent in the fall, and they say, ‘Hey, I think my kid is struggling,’ then I can keep an eye on it. Then, if it turns out a child is lying or struggling with her sexuality, I already have it on my radar. I already have a relationship with the parents. They trust me, and now we can do triage together.”

Like the smaller Bible studies, one-on-one meetings take time—a lot more time than one big gathering of adults each fall to explain the curriculum or where you’re going on a mission trip.

But they were so helpful with the high school parents that Hoffsmith asked his middle-school staff to start doing them, then rolled them out for all levels of kids’ ministry.

“Parents need help,” he said. “Parents are the ones who are ultimately responsible for their children. They need to know what a youth pastor sees in their kid, and a youth pastor needs to know what the parent sees.”

Sometimes these meetings are hard. But they’re always rich.

“If I ever feel like, Why am I even doing this job? then I’ll just schedule a couple of these parent connect meetings,” Hoffsmith said. “It gives me the opportunity to talk with parents about things they wouldn’t normally talk about. I feel like we’re reaching whole families, and that fuels me up to get back at it. It’s taken years to build this, but it’s the best.”

Church Connection

Hoffsmith’s first goal in youth ministry is to teach students the Bible. His second is to connect them to the church. He encourages kids to go to services with their parents, sing with older saints, and find ways to serve.

He’s finding that the more he asks of them, the better.

“I think boredom with the church is a big thing,” he said. “If we give kids cookie-cutter answers, we should expect them to walk away. But if we raise the bar, I’ve seen the opposite happen.”

In 2020, over Zoom, Hoffsmith started reading theological books with his youth group kids.

“I invited kids who would actually read a book,” he said. That was the seed of a different kind of culture, and it kept growing. Each year, more kids signed up. After COVID-19, he began meeting with them in person. Then he began connecting them with older people in the church.

Hoffsmith’s first goal in youth ministry is to teach students the Bible. His second is to connect them to the church.

“Every week they read on their own, then they meet with an adult at church between Sunday school and church,” he said. “The meetings are purposely only 12 to 20 minutes long—this is not an hour-long discussion at Panera. It’s enough time to discuss the reading and get the kids some time with adults who are not their parents.”

Two years ago, he used Packer’s Concise Theology. Last year the groups worked through Hope for All the Earth: Understanding the Story of the Old Testament by Southern Seminary professor Mitchell Chase. This coming year, he’s assigning The End in Mind by Ian Carmichael and Marty Sweeney.

This isn’t the right ministry for every teen—or for every adult. But for those who sign up, this practice does double duty, building theological literacy and intergenerational connections.

“I had to lay the groundwork for this for years,” Hoffsmith said. “But it has turned into dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of kids.”

Youth Pastors These Days

The reputation of youth pastors can still suffer from the goldfish-swallowing, underground-church-playing, all-night-lock-ins ’90s. When a family member learned Holmes was doing youth ministry, he asked, “Does that mean you take kids to the batting cages?”

But it’s also expanded, naturally, into family ministry. Over the past eight years, Hoffsmith has been promoted from pastor of high school ministry to pastor of all student ministry to pastor of family ministry. On the TGC job board, nearly a quarter of the youth ministry work is housed inside larger family, NextGen, or discipleship job descriptions.

This shift allows for more responsibility, better pay, and a longer tenure.

“I really started seeing fruit at the five-year mark,” Hoffsmith said. “If God would call me to something else, I’ll be obedient. But at this point, I’m so infiltrated into the church life and into the teenagers’ lives and into the parents’ lives that now I can go further faster.”

His ministry effectiveness is an argument for longevity, though he’ll tell you he’s not dogmatic about it.

“I wouldn’t say there’s anything wrong with looking at youth ministry as a stepping stone, because you can learn a lot by working with youth,” he said.

Holmes agrees.

“Done well, youth ministry is the best possible training ground,” he said. “In so many situations, adults revert back to their middle school selves. They might have some extra veneers on the front, but when you strip it down and watch people respond emotionally, it’s like, Oh, I dealt with the same issue at camp last year with two seventh graders.”

Here the advantage goes to the middle schoolers, who are more malleable than their parents.

“I want to hit the cement while it’s wet,” Hoffsmith said. “My goal is that my students will learn to follow Jesus now, and learn habits that will serve them for the next seven decades. I’m actually aiming for them to teach their grandkids to follow Jesus.”

Advice for Churches

When churches call Bierig, looking for a youth pastor, he warns them it’s a difficult position to fill. He suggests reframing it as an associate pastor responsibility. He tells them to look for someone from their own congregation they can raise up.

If all that fails, he advises them to keep their program going with parent volunteers if they have to.

“An object in motion stays in motion,” he said.

In general, youth ministry today is healthier than it was in the halcyon days of the 1990s, he said. “Neither the pastor nor the kid are confused about why they’re there. If the students take their face out of the phone long enough to say, ‘My life is terrible,’ you can help them with that. You have answers for that.”

That’s why Bierig is bullish on student ministry.

“I’m incredibly buoyant about this,” he said. “The Lord is still moving his kingdom. I’m very excited about where the future of student ministry is going.”

We’re exhausted from trying to hold everything together. We’re exhausted from pretending we’re stronger than we are. We’re exhausted from believing that if we could simply become more disciplined, more productive, more faithful, or more resilient, life would finally feel manageable.

Underneath all that striving is a deeper fear. We’re afraid of our own limitations.

We dislike needing help. We resent our physical limitations. We’re frustrated by our emotions, disappointed by our failures, and unsettled by circumstances we can’t control. We despise the weaknesses that expose how little power we actually possess.

But perhaps we’re fighting the wrong battle. Weakness isn’t our enemy. Weakness is one of God’s greatest invitations.

Hard to Be Human

The truth is, it’s hard to be human. We’re finite creatures living in a broken world. We experience grief, sickness, disappointment, anxiety, and uncertainty. We need sleep. We need nourishment. We need relationships. We need help.

Yet we often live as though those needs are failures. Even Christians can quietly adopt the belief that maturity means becoming increasingly self-sufficient. We may never say it out loud, but we often behave as though dependence is something to outgrow.

Then life interrupts us. A diagnosis arrives. A prayer goes unanswered. A relationship fractures. A season of suffering lingers longer than we expected. Suddenly, we’re asking difficult questions: If God loves me, why is this happening? Why am I still struggling? Is God disappointed in me? Is my weakness evidence that I’m failing him?

Sufferers Who Need a Comforter

If we look carefully at Christ, we discover something extraordinary: We’re not only sinners who need a Savior; we’re sufferers who need a Comforter. This is why Jesus’s humanity matters so much. Jesus didn’t rescue us from a distance. He entered our world. He chose to become fully human. He came into the world as a vulnerable infant. He experienced hunger, exhaustion, grief, rejection, sorrow, and pain. He willingly entered every ordinary limitation of human life.

Why? Because Jesus came to redeem our humanity, not erase it. This truth changes everything. If we focus only on Jesus’s divinity, we may be tempted to see him as powerful but distant. If we forget his humanity, we may unintentionally imagine a Savior who can save us but cannot understand us.

Jesus came to redeem our humanity, not erase it.

But Hebrews reminds us that we have something far better: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (4:15).

Think about that word: sympathize. Jesus doesn’t merely observe our weakness. He doesn’t tolerate it. He doesn’t roll his eyes at it. He sympathizes with it. He knows what it feels like to be weary. He knows what it feels like to grieve. He knows what it feels like to be misunderstood. He knows what it feels like to suffer. And because he knows, he draws near.

Designed to Depend

Perhaps God isn’t nearly as frustrated by your limitations as you are. Perhaps your weakness isn’t evidence that you’re failing—it’s evidence you’re human. This can be difficult for us to accept because our culture celebrates independence. We admire strength and self-sufficiency. We applaud people who seem to have everything together.

But the gospel tells a different story. Human beings were never designed to be self-sustaining. We were designed to depend on God. From the very beginning, we were created as creatures, not creators. Our limitations aren’t design flaws. They’re reminders that we belong to him. Weakness can become a place of encounter.

Again and again throughout the Gospels, we watch Jesus move toward needy people. He moves toward the weary. He moves toward the grieving. He moves toward the fearful. He moves toward the doubting. He moves toward the suffering. The people who receive his compassion are rarely those who appear strongest. They’re often the ones who have finally stopped pretending.

Perhaps that’s our invitation too. Perhaps Jesus is inviting us to stop performing. Perhaps he’s inviting us to stop proving ourselves. Perhaps he’s inviting us to admit what has always been true: We need him. This isn’t failure. It’s discipleship. Because until we see our need, we can’t receive his strength.

Weakness Is an Invitation

Jesus says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). Notice what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “Come to me when you’ve become stronger.” Or, “Come to me when you’ve solved your problems.” Or, “Come to me when you’ve stopped struggling.” He simply says, “Come.”

Our limitations aren’t design flaws. They’re reminders that we belong to God.

Your weakness isn’t keeping Jesus away. It may be the very place he intends to meet you.

We may never understand why certain struggles remain. We may never fully understand why life unfolds differently from how we hoped. But because of Jesus, we can know something even better. We can know God’s heart.

The Son of God loved us enough to become one of us. He loved us enough to enter suffering. He loved us enough to walk through every aspect of our fragile existence. And he still draws near today. Your weakness isn’t the end of your story. It may be the beginning of discovering that Christ has been waiting there all along.

This is an excellent question and a critical one for teens to evaluate. Many students I disciple as a youth leader in my church are pondering, Whom should I let speak into my life? What groups of friends do I have (sports, church, school, etc.), and how do I navigate between them? Are my friends a good or bad influence on me? Am I a good friend to others?

Seeking belonging and finding a friend group in the middle and high school years is a normal part of teen life that has always required wisdom. But the rise of social media use among teens is complicating their friendships, and teens need guidance.

Here are three ways to help teens navigate friendships in the social media age.

1. Recognize Qualities of a Good Friend

Social media is shaping how our teens define and navigate friendships. Influencer culture often promotes materialism, outward appearances, and popularity. The focus is on how many friends (and followers) you have rather than on the quality of those relationships.

Several high school students I’ve mentored have told me about the peer pressure they experience around social media. They’re expected to post photos, stories, and highlight reels documenting their daily lives, much of which involves staged photos with their friends. Likes and comments on posts are associated with belonging and acceptance.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with posting pictures or using the like button, the pressure teens feel suggests social media subtly teaches them that popularity and influence matter over meaningful connections and personal character.

Social media subtly teaches teens that popularity and influence matter over meaningful connections and personal character.

In the influencer-driven culture of social media, teens often overlook (or don’t recognize) issues such as pride, materialism, and gossip because they desire to belong. We can help teens learn to graciously and humbly reflect on the way their peers interact on social media. Do they act differently online than in person? Do they use social media to promote themselves and exclude others? Do they post questionable content to get more likes and followers?

We want our teens to share their lives with friends who love God, pray for them, and point them to the Lord. So let’s teach teens how to recognize and exhibit the qualities of a godly friend.

Scripture highlights many character qualities that teens need in friendship. A godly friend is dependable. A godly friend is loving and caring. A godly friend is kind. A godly friend is patient. A godly friend extends grace. A godly friend listens well. A godly friend prays for her friends. These qualities may not attract likes on social media, but they promote meaningful friendships.

2. Navigate Drama and Jealousy

In a recent Pew Research Center report, 39 percent of teens surveyed said that “social media [makes] them feel overwhelmed by drama.” And 31 percent of teens feel “excluded by friends” on social media.

Teens may feel left out of their groups after seeing friends post on Instagram or TikTok about a birthday party, beach trip, sporting event, or concert with other friends. Or perhaps they see a close friend in these sorts of posts or stories, and it feels like that friend is becoming better friends with someone else and not spending as much time with them. These situations stir up jealousy and create tension within their friendships.

In these situations, teens need both comfort and guidance. Actively listen to teens and comfort them with truth—that they’re seen, known, and loved by God and by you. Help them distinguish between normal emotional responses like sadness and disappointment and sinful responses like jealousy and bitterness. Remind them of the Lord’s forgiveness when they confess their sins and turn to him in repentance (1 John 1:9).

When our teens are occasionally excluded from movie nights or beach day trips, let’s help them assume the best about their friends. When they feel regularly left out of their friend group or hurt by a particular friend, let’s encourage them to seek their friends out and share how they’re feeling about the situation through a face-to-face conversation.

If our teens continue to experience hurt and rejection from particular friends, even after they’ve had conversations with those involved, we can help them discern whether it’s time to seek out new friendships with others who will support and include them.

3. Address and Avoid Gossip

I often hear stories from my students about rumors that started from an Instagram story or a TikTok video. Teens’ social media feeds provide access to images of and information about their peers that can easily become fodder for gossip. The phrase “spilling tea,” which has become a popular way for teens to describe catching up on juicy news, is essentially a euphemism for gossip.

But no matter what we call it, gossip is a sin. And it’s divisive and destructive, especially among friends. Proverbs 16:28 says, “A perverse person stirs up conflict, and a gossip separates close friends” (NIV). Gossip hurts others and destroys friendships by tearing others down.

Help teens distinguish between normal emotional responses like sadness and disappointment and sinful responses like jealousy and bitterness.

To help teens avoid the trap of gossip, we first need to help them identify what gossip is. Gossip involves sharing personal information about others or spreading rumors behind their backs. It often includes untrue or inaccurate information, but it can also be true information that’s shared to hurt or embarrass someone else.

We can help steer teens away from gossip by teaching them how to recognize it in conversations and by encouraging them to pray for the Lord to guide their speech and to help them fight temptation by the Holy Spirit’s power.

We can also help them learn practical ways to combat gossip like disengaging from a conversation, changing the subject, or saying something true and kind about the person in question. Let’s equip teens to be friends who encourage and build each other up (1 Thess. 5:11).

Proverbs 13:20 says, “Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm” (NIV). In the social media age, let’s encourage our teens to walk in wisdom and choose friends who will encourage and sharpen them in their faith.

In this talk from TGCW24, Collin Hansen and Rebecca McLaughlin explore these questions and offer hope and help by pointing to Jesus, the One who has the words of eternal life.

In This Episode

00:00 – Deconstruction and its effects on faith

03:41 – Disenculturation vs. deconstruction

06:42 – Personal and cultural reflections on faith

10:41 – Historical and theological context of slavery

20:41 – Rebecca McLaughlin’s perspective on deconstruction

27:33 – Biblical foundations of marriage and sexuality

36:38 – Challenges and misconceptions in Christian sexual ethics

41:01 – The role of Christian ethics in society

Resources Mentioned:

• Before You Lose Your Faith edited by Ivan Mesa
• The Secular Creed by Rebecca McLaughlin
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

SIGN UP for one of our newsletters to stay informed about TGC’s latest resources.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Give today.

Don’t miss an episode of The Gospel Coalition Podcast:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube

The church remains divided over how to interpret the Apocalypse. There are two main approaches for reading the book: the futurist perspective and the recapitulation perspective.

G. K. Chesterton famously quipped, “Though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.” Let’s take a moment to consider how Christians in the 21st century should interpret this enigmatic book. We’ll see that Revelation presents itself as symbolic communication that stirs the heart and captivates the mind.

Literal vs. Symbolic

Some interpret most of Revelation as taking place in the future. This futurist perspective is often wedded to a “literal” approach to interpreting the book, whereby it must be primarily read in light of physical realities.

So, for example, the horde of locusts in Revelation 9 is interpreted literally or physically. The locusts are real, physical entities that emerge out of the earth at the very end of history. John MacArthur states that these locusts are “vile demons, taking on a visible form resembling locusts, swarmed out of the abyss to plague the earth” (emphasis added).

Other scholars, though, argue that Revelation is composed of a series of visions that rehearse or “recapitulate” the same event. This reading is largely based on a symbolic approach to the book. The locusts in Revelation 9 aren’t physical locusts but figurative ones. They symbolize a demonic attack on unbelievers.

To read Revelation symbolically means to interpret it primarily (but not exclusively) through figures of speech, such as metaphors, symbols, similes, personification, and hyperbole.

Both sides admit that Revelation contains symbols, but commentators disagree as to the frequency. Is the dominant form of communication couched in symbols or physical descriptions? Let’s see if Revelation gives us any interpretative clues.

‘He Signified It’

Revelation 1:1 is of utmost importance to interpreting the book: “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John.”

We learn three things here: the source of the book of Revelation, its content, and how the book was communicated. We are interested in the last point.

The clause “He made it known” is one word in Greek (sēmainō), and translations usually render the verb as “made it known” (NIV, CSB, ESV, RSV). This Greek term in 1:1 alludes to Daniel 2:45. We can be sure that John has this allusion in mind because he shows considerable awareness of Daniel throughout Revelation, especially in the prologue.

According to the Greek translation of Daniel 2:45, the word sēmainō describes the symbolic vision that King Nebuchadnezzar saw: “The Great God has signified [esēmane] to the king what will come to pass in the latter days” (author’s translation). We could also translate this verb sēmainō as “communicate through symbols.”

What does God communicate to Nebuchadnezzar through symbols? The great colossus composed of gold, silver, bronze, iron, and clay! A rock then smashes this colossus. Each part of the statue symbolizes a pagan kingdom, and the rock symbolizes God’s eternal kingdom (2:24–45).

So, in Revelation 1:1, John deliberately employs language taken from Daniel 2:45 to demonstrate that Revelation’s content is likewise symbolic. Don’t miss what John is doing here: He’s telling the reader how to read Revelation. As a rule of thumb, then, it should be largely read and interpreted symbolically.

As a rule of thumb, Revelation should be largely read and interpreted symbolically.

Two translations—HCSB and KJV—are therefore right to translate the verb sēmainō as “[he] signified it.”

G. K. Beale was one of the first commentators to notice John’s allusion to Daniel 2:45 in Revelation 1:1 and tease out its significance for the whole book. He concludes, “The programmatic statement about the book’s precise mode of communication in 1:1 is that the warp and woof of it is symbolic.” I’ve even heard him say, “Because I interpret Revelation 1:1 literally, I interpret the whole book figuratively.”

Objections to Symbolism

Two common objections arise against a symbolic approach to Revelation. Some think it hollows out the text’s referent. Since a symbolic reading doesn’t primarily interpret the visions of Revelation “literally” (or physically), the visions lack a referent. This simply isn’t the case.

Though Revelation is filled with symbols, these symbols communicate genuine spiritual realities. Just as the symbol of the rock that smashes the colossus in Daniel 2 communicates the true reality of the coming kingdom, so too the symbols of Revelation contain genuine spiritual realities or truths. Revelation pulls back the curtain on the physical world and reveals spiritual realities at work.

Revelation pulls back the curtain on the physical world and reveals spiritual realities at work.

A second objection is that a symbolic interpretation lacks hermeneutical controls. The meaning of Revelation’s visions becomes something of a wax nose—easily manipulated by the interpreter. This point is well taken, and there is indeed a risk of misinterpreting the symbols.

But because Revelation is so dependent on the Old Testament, John expects his readers to interpret his visions in light of God’s dealings with his people then. We don’t have to guess what the symbols mean—we need only to find those same symbols in the Old Testament and import their meaning into Revelation.

John didn’t intend for Revelation to be read in light of CNN or Fox News. He wanted the local news to be interpreted in light of Revelation. God is at work in the world, and he gave us this precious book to discover it on our journey to the new heavens and earth.

Surprisingly, the rise of Sunday school contributed to the decline of catechesis in churches. It’s not that the two things necessarily conflict, but sometimes good ideas have unfortunate consequences.

In recent years, that trend has begun to reverse. We use The Gospel Coalition’s New City Catechism in my home and church to help introduce theological concepts. We want both adults and children to commit these truths to memory.

In 2025, Trevin Wax and Thomas West released The Gospel Way Catechism. This year, they’ve published The Gospel Way Catechism for Kids: Faith-Building Q&As for Young Disciples. It’s a beautifully illustrated book that can be used in the home or at church to help 8-to-12-year-olds answer our culture’s pressing questions, even beyond the standard theological headings.

I had an opportunity to interview Thomas West about this project. You can watch the whole interview here.

How did you and Trevin Wax conceive of The Gospel Way Catechism?

I came across the idea of counter-catechesis in Tim Keller’s How to Reach the West Again. I was in London at the time as a church planter. I remember the distinct spot on the Victoria Line while I was on a Southbound train passing through Pimlico when it hit me. I was headed to church planter training, trying to figure out how to plant a church in northwest London, an area that is very secular.

My initial thought was that I was going to write a little pamphlet for my own church plant, but I decided to pray about it. While I was praying about it, the Lord brought Trevin to mind as a potential partner. So I reached out to him. We saw each other at a conference in California and had a conversation that set the project in motion.

All this started before Keller’s death. Since we knew he was already thinking about counter-catechesis, we didn’t want to start a project that would compete with anything he was doing. So Trevin reached out to let him know what we were thinking about doing. He told us he was working on something for his grandchildren, but he gave us his blessing on the project and asked us to keep him informed. A few months later, Keller went to be with the Lord Jesus in glory.

We’ve dedicated the Gospel Way project to both Lesslie Newbigin and Keller, because we’ve benefited from both of them so much. In his ministry in New York City, Keller was working out Newbigin’s theology of the missionary encounter. He was trying to understand the dominant cultural narratives in our world so that he could offer critique and confrontation, so that people could see how those narratives contrasted with Christ. Only Christ provides the full substance of what we’re hungry for and our culture lacks.

How does The Gospel Way Catechism differ from Heidelberg or the Westminster Shorter Catechism?

We’re not trying to replace the great catechisms that have been written through church history. But catechisms are always meant to address the questions a culture is asking in a particular time.

Luther wrote a longer and shorter catechism. When Calvin set out to reform Geneva, the first thing he did was write a catechism. He only wrote out the church order—instructions for governing the church—after that. But other theologians in the Reformed tradition have tried to distill what they believe in a catechism designed for their specific audience.

Only Christ provides the full substance of what we’re hungry for and our culture lacks.

So we’re doing something that the church has always done: providing this generation with a clear summary of what we believe. Trevin and I don’t see this as a replacement for Heidelberg or Westminster or even the New City Catechism.

We’re building on the great tradition we’ve received. But what sets this apart from some of the older catechisms is that Luther and Calvin weren’t having to ask the same questions about freedom and sexuality. They didn’t have the same concerns about work and rest in a digital economy.

We are so grateful for these older catechisms, and we have built upon that good work, but we’re trying to equip the church for a fresh cultural moment. There will come a day when people look back on The Gospel Way and say, “We appreciate what they were trying to do, but this is what we figured out and we’re going to keep building from where they stopped.” That’s a good thing.

What do you hope the church does with this resource?

We hope The Gospel Way Catechism helps equip the church to have a missionary encounter with modern Western culture. That often begins in the home with parents and kids memorizing these questions and answers together at the dinner table. But it can also be incorporated into the weekly routine of the church.

In my experience, a lot of people 30 years old and younger want more structure in their church lives. They want to feel connected to a tradition that’s bigger than them. That’s part of the reason why we’re seeing a return to catechesis as a tool for discipleship. We’re hoping congregations and families will use the resources to introduce and reinforce the unchanging truths of Scripture.

What do you hope your kids remember about the way you discipled them when they’re raising their own children and their grandchildren?

Above everything else, I hope they remember that I loved Jesus and I wanted them to love Jesus and I wanted them to help other people see and love Jesus as well. I think it really is that simple.

Our great doctrines are important. We need them. But we don’t need to miss the person for all the formulations.

I hope my kids remember me as a person who lived in a relationship with Jesus, hearing him, trusting him, and obeying him, teaching them to do the same. I hope they remember me as a Jesus man, as a Jesus parent, as someone who is concerned with making sure they were connected to Jesus and helping others connect with Jesus as well.

“I hated the system, but there was a need,” she said. So much need that after graduation, she raised her hand to be a respite provider. She began caring for kids during some evenings and on weekends. Two of the children she regularly hosted were toddler sisters.

“The placement was going to fall apart, so I began praying about being a foster parent for them,” Julie said. When it did, she agreed to foster them full-time.

A year later, the girls became available for adoption. Meanwhile, Julie had become engaged to another counselor named Greg. He’d come to Christ in high school and quickly developed a theological conviction that he wanted to adopt. So they were both thrilled when, about a week before their wedding, they got a call that they’d be able to proceed with adopting their beautiful brunette girls.

“They were flower girls at our wedding,” Julie said. “We were able to talk about how God was bringing us together as a family—giving me a new last name and giving them a new last name. They were probably 3 and 4 at that time. It was a sweet, beautiful story.”

At least, it started out that way. Over the next 20 years, Greg and Julie would adopt three more kids and foster many more.

“We’ve been in front of police officers and detectives, and had kids sneaking out of the house at night,” she said. “We’ve been in the ER having to 302 children [place them in involuntary psychiatric care]. We’ve had to go through residential programs. We’ve had the whole gamut of our kids lying about us and making up abuse allegations. It makes people go, ‘Well, why in the world would I ever adopt and foster?’”

Why indeed?

“In Romans 12, we’re all called to be living sacrifices,” Julie said. “Really, I am grateful for the suffering. I always cringe when I say that. But I know things about God’s character—depths of his grace and mercy and compassion—I never would have known otherwise. This really is all about him and not me. I believe that with my whole heart, and in ways I’ve had to live it out. And I am so, so grateful.”

I am grateful for the suffering. I always cringe when I say that. But I know things about God’s character—depths of his grace and mercy and compassion—I never would have known otherwise.

That’s why Greg and Julie don’t regret their adoptions. And they’re not the only ones. Though this severity of disruptive behavior isn’t every adoptive parent’s experience, neither is it uncommon. Kids who are adopted locally or internationally, who look exactly like their parents or nothing like them, who come as infants or teenagers, who have biological siblings or who don’t, can be challenging to raise.

But if you ask Greg and Julie, and other adoptive parents, if adoption was worth it, nearly all say yes. They want their stories to circulate—not because they want to discourage adoption but because they think adoptive parents in hard situations would be helped by knowing they’re not alone.

“Even now, my husband will say, ‘We’re done. We’re never going to do that again,’” Julie said. “And I’m like, ‘Never say never,’ because all it takes is one really painful, lonely situation, and we both would be like, ‘OK, let’s do it again.’”

Jay and Jill

Jill and Jay got married young—she was 20—and within a few years, started having their four kids. Jay was a pastor, and Jill loved homeschooling the kids.

“We weren’t thinking about adoption—we thought we were done,” said Jill, who was 38 when she gave birth to her youngest. “But there was a family in our church that was thinking about it.”

The church family ended up adopting a little boy. His older brother also needed a home.

“We said, ‘Well, what’s keeping us from doing it?’” Jill said. “We sat our kids down—two were out of the house, and two were at home. We explained what was going on and they all said, ‘You need to do this. This boy, Jeremy, needs a home.’” (Jeremy isn’t his real name.)

Though their new 10-year-old physically looked like the rest of the family, he didn’t slide in seamlessly. Jay and Jill knew he wouldn’t—Jeremy had been in 10 foster homes in five years.

“You take all these foster and adoption classes, and they try to warn you how hard it’s going to be, but you have no idea,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t know if I would’ve wanted to know.”

Jeremy had an explosive temper. He’d run away from school or leap out of their moving car and take off down the street. He’d get violent and hurt them—once he even cut the phone lines so they couldn’t call for help.

He got the angriest when asked to do chores around the house.

“One Saturday I told him to clean his room, and he wouldn’t,” Jill said. “I warned him that I was going to take away the things that weren’t put away.”

Jeremy did nothing, so Jill began to take away his things. Enraged, Jeremy called the police and reported that he was being abused. When the police arrived and assessed the situation, they told Jeremy not to ever do that again.

“There were times we felt like, What in the world am I doing? This is so hard, God, I can’t do it,” Jill said. “But we knew this is what God wanted us to do, and we just prayed that somehow Jeremy would see Christ in us.”

There were periods of respite—in the summer, Jeremy went to a Christian camp. During the school year, he was at school during the day while Jill homeschooled the others. (“I tried homeschooling him for a year, but it did not go well,” she said.) Jill and Jay spent intentional one-on-one time with each kid, checking in, building relationships, and providing brief respites from family stress. As a family, with each other, and with friends, they had fun and laughed a lot.

After high school, Jeremy didn’t go to college or get a job. He’d say he was looking, but Jay and Jill knew he wasn’t. Finally, they gave him an ultimatum—find a job of some kind in the next six months, or you’ll have to leave. He didn’t even try, and at the end of six months, Jill cried as they packed him into his car.

She knew he had nowhere to go, and he didn’t. For more than a year, he lived on the streets. He bounced around on friends’ couches or in government housing for 10 years before he met a girl, married her, and moved into an apartment with her.

“I feel like God brought Jeremy into our life, not just for Jeremy, but to work in our lives,” Jill said. “There’s times you get bitter. I loved him because I’m supposed to love him, but I wasn’t always feeling it because of what he’d put us through. And one day, my husband said to me, ‘You’re getting bitter, I can see it. That’s sin, and you need to deal with it.’”

He was right. Jill confessed it to the Lord, remembering that he’d adopted her when she was ugly, and asking for help to love Jeremy.

“When you have a relationship with the Lord, and you believe nothing happens by surprise, and you’re trying to live your life allowing him to be in control, that makes a big difference,” she said.

The church was also helpful.

“We had a lady in our church who had fostered a lot, so she helped me,” Jill said. “And people didn’t act shocked when Jeremy acted out. They never, ever said, ‘Can’t you make your kid behave in church?’ There were times he’d run out the church door and run down the street, and some of them would go running after him. They’d spend time with him and loved on him and on us.”

“We’ve got you, Jill,” they’d tell her. “You’re doing a great thing. We’ve got your back.”

At a recent family party, Jeremy cried and told Jay and Jill he loved them and was so glad to be part of their family.

“I don’t know why God’s been gracious to us, but I’m really, really grateful,” Jill said. “Jeremy has healed a lot emotionally, and we have too.”

Dan and Pamela

Dan and Pamela got married after she finished veterinary school, then waited a couple of years to start trying for children. The journey was heartbreaking—a miscarriage, another miscarriage, a baby boy named Andy, then three more miscarriages.

“We said, ‘We just can’t do this anymore,’” Pamela said. “We didn’t really want to have an only child, but we weren’t actively seeking adoption, either.”

One Sunday, a psychologist from a nearby adoption agency spoke at their church. After the service, Dan and Pamela asked him a few questions, and he gave them the adoption agency’s number. Nine months later, they were holding their week-old son, Isaac.

“Everybody at church was excited because they had walked some of the path with us,” Pamela said. “Since Isaac is African American, when we were out in public we’d get asked if we were fostering him.”

About two years later, the adoption agency called: Isaac’s birth mom was pregnant again, and wondered if Dan and Pamela would adopt Isaac’s brother, Caleb. Of course, they said yes.

“We told the agency that since we both work full-time, we wouldn’t be able to take a child with special needs,” Pamela said. “God said, ‘Yeah, you can.’”

In second grade, Isaac was diagnosed with high-functioning autism. Pamela took him to therapy, filled his prescriptions, and wrote to every private school in the county to find other boys like him so she could create a social group. Later, Caleb would be diagnosed with bipolar 1 disorder.

“Isaac and Caleb would make threats, mostly against me, but sometimes against Pamela,” Dan said. “One day Andy told Isaac, ‘If you ever touch Mom, I’ll pound you.’ Isaac told him, ‘OK, then I’ll kill you in your sleep.’”

A few days later, Andy told his parents he couldn’t sleep. Every little noise made him tense.

“We put a lock on Andy’s door, because he needed to feel safe enough to sleep,” Dan said. He installed a lock on their door too—he knew it wouldn’t stop Caleb, but at least the breaking lock would wake them up. They hid everything sharper than a butter knife.

The verbal assaults grew worse: “I hate you.” “I hate your parents for having you.” “I hate the God you serve.”

One time when Caleb was threatening to kill them, Dan and Pamela called the police, who told Caleb to be grateful for his home and his parents.

He wasn’t. He was struggling in school—having sex with an underage girl in the band room, sneaking out the window when the teacher’s back was turned, disappearing for days and then calling from another city asking for a ride home. As he grew older, he attempted suicide over and over—a gun in his mouth, standing on a bridge, hanging himself with an electrical cord.

Their church family was sometimes wonderful, sometimes not.

“They didn’t understand—honestly, we didn’t understand mental illness until we lived with it,” Pamela said. “But our pastor’s wife was really good with us.”

One of her gifts was laughter. “Between her and I and Dan, we would look for humor,” Pamela said. “God used that.”

Faithful

Today, Isaac lives with a girlfriend and gets in touch with Dan and Pamela about once a month. He regularly texts with Andy, who is now a Christian husband and father working for the Justice Department in Minneapolis. Caleb has three children with three different women. Neither adopted son is a believer.

“For years and years, we’ve shed so many tears,” Dan says.

“There are times when you wonder, If I had known what I know now, would I have willingly followed?” Pamela said. “But you know, we’re not called to know. We’re just called to be faithful where he puts us.”

There are times when you wonder, If I had known what I know now, would I have willingly followed? But you know, we’re not called to know. We’re just called to be faithful where he puts us.

Dan and Pamela are actively grandparenting Caleb’s children, often providing respite care for their mothers. They pray for the kids, read them Bible stories, and take them to church.

“We learn through suffering,” Pamela said. “Romans says, ‘For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us’ [Rom. 8:18, KJV]. Are you obeying God? Are you doing true religion? Guess what—it hurts. Rejoice in the fact that you are obeying and following God. Trust him that all the verses are true, even though you may not see it now.”

Dan keeps going back to Philippians 4:4–8.

“Rejoice in the Lord always,” he said. “You’re not rejoicing that life is good today. You’re rejoicing that God is good today. If you truly believe that God’s sovereign and he controls every step of your life, then the adoption wasn’t a mistake—it was part of God’s plan for your life. He’ll lead us safely home eventually.”

“I would not change anything in my life—it was all from the hand of God,” Pamela said. “I only wish I’d responded better to what he was giving me. . . . We needed the boys in our family, because God is using them for us to become more like his Son.”

John and Jane

John and Jane got married while Jane was still finishing up her nursing degree, and soon began trying to get pregnant. (All the names in this section have been changed.) After a year and a half, they were staring at two options—a prescription to help boost hormone levels and an application for an adoption agency.

“We wanted to do both, so this was just a decision of which to do first,” John said. “We decided to pursue adoption, rather than spend a lot of time and money trying for a biological child. We could do that later.”

At 24, Jane was too young to apply for an international adoption, “which was probably the most popular thing back then,” she said. “But the foster system was like, ‘Yeah, come on in.’”

John and Jane asked for a matched adoption, which meant they’d bypass foster-to-adopt and be paired with children legally free to be adopted. Six months later, they met their match. The siblings—ages 7, 4, and 1—shared a mom and two biological dads, all of whom struggled with addiction to alcohol and meth. One of the fathers had recently been killed in a motorcycle crash, while the mom and other dad were in jail for going on a joyride with a stolen car.

The home had already been investigated by Child Protective Services nine times before “basically, they ran out of parents,” Jane said. But they had John and Jane, who look so similar to the kids that strangers never guess they’re adopted.

For the first few weeks, the kids were perfect.

“I had to adjust to feeding and clothing and bathing three little humans, but their behavior was very good,” Jane said. “They called us Mom and Dad right away. We went to church on Easter Sunday, and people were impressed by how quiet and still and obedient they were.”

They were also heavily medicated, and as John and Jane worked with a psychiatrist to cut down on the meds to figure out what was needed, their behavior deteriorated.

“Our 4-year-old was described in the foster system paperwork as goat-like,” John said. It was accurate—she climbed everything and ate out of the trash.

Their 7-year-old son, Andrew, was deeply disturbed and not sleeping. He’d been close to his father—the one who’d recently been killed. John and Jane wondered if he needed residential care, but when they asked their Christian adoption agency, they were told that if they chose that route, the agency would take the girls too, and never place another child with John and Jane.

Their church was of little help. As John and Jane struggled to emotionally attach, friends and church leaders wondered aloud if they loved their kids enough. The pastors wondered so much that they blocked John, who’d been elected as deacon, from taking office.

“Eventually another adoptive mom told me love is not about feeling the warm fuzzy feelings, but about getting up and doing this every single day,” Jane said. “But it was a long time before we heard that.”

Three months after the adoption was final, Jane secretly googled, “I don’t like my adoptive children.”

“I didn’t know who else to tell,” she said.

Disorder and Deliverance

Jane’s search brought up the term attachment trauma, which was the first she’d heard of it. She and John were beginning to uncover the layers of their kids’ struggles—after sorting out medication, then attachment and trauma, would come learning difficulties. Finally, at the center, they’d find drug and alcohol exposure.

Prenatal substance exposure has varied effects on developmental aspects such as emotional self-regulation, sleep, IQ, and social skills. All three of their children had been prenatally exposed to drugs and alcohol. All three were sometimes so violent that she and John had to call the police. And all three would spend months in psychiatric-based residential treatment centers.

Rejoice in the Lord always. You’re not rejoicing that life is good today. You’re rejoicing that God is good today.

“Kids with a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder are labeled as bad kids, but they’re not bad kids,” Jane said. “They have organic brain injuries that will not heal.”

As Jane began studying all this, she also learned something else. She was pregnant.

“I don’t recommend having your first newborn with three other kids in the home,” she said. “It was extremely difficult. But it was also a wonderful, beautiful experience. It activated the little attachment muscles in our three older kids.”

A few years later, those muscles grew even more when Jane and John had another baby.

The Lord provided more than that. John’s job in tech allowed them to have good health insurance, to buy a home with enough bedrooms to keep everyone safe, and to move near their extended family.

At their new church, John and Jane were asked to share their story on a Sunday afternoon. Eighty people showed up to listen.

“That was a time when we were calling the police, dealing with physical assault, and trying to keep the babies safe,” Jane said. “We could just text that group, and our yard would be full of people.”

No Happy Ending Yet

A fetal alcohol spectrum disorder makes adolescence especially hard. As each of John and Jane’s children hit puberty, any gains in behavior rapidly deteriorated. Andrew didn’t make it through high school. To this day, he moves around a lot and struggles with addiction.

“Their bio mom got back in the picture as they were turning 18,” Jane said. “She still struggles deeply with substance abuse. She’s in prison again—she was part of a federal indictment for international drug trafficking. She ushered both of the kids into the system she’s in. . . . We do believe our oldest daughter, Briana, is being sex trafficked at this point.”

Introduced to that, too, by her birth mom.

Jane and John text regularly with Andrew but have no contact with Briana.

Claire was always a spot of joy—sweet and snuggly, easy to love. But when she hit puberty, her prenatal substance exposure made her violent and challenging. From ages 12 to 15, her physical assaults against her parents got worse every day. John and Jane tried everything, including four psychiatric hospitalizations, three stays at residential treatment centers, and multiple police interventions.

However, as Claire got older, changed her medications, and had her adenoids removed to help with sleep apnea, she stabilized.

“Things with her are miraculously good,” Jane said. “It’s like we got our girl back. Before she was failing, never turning in work. Now she’s getting A’s and going on college visits. She’s the first kid in our family to get her driver’s license. She’s working at a Christian summer camp this summer. She has been free of aggression for over a year and is well attached to the family. Still, we’ll continue to navigate lifelong challenges related to her prenatal substance exposure.”

While John and Jane never thought the adoption was a mistake, over the years, they’ve done “a lot of wrestling with God,” Jane said. “We came up against brokenness we could not fix, and it gave me a different perspective on seeing just how much needs to be restored. Adopting brought me to a better understanding and longing for heaven.”

But even here and now, she can see God’s care.

“There were times I can remember praying out loud, ‘I don’t know what to do next. We’re out of options. You have to show us, so that we can’t miss it,’” she said. “And through some kind of means, or some person, or some new resource or facility, or something, he would.”

She’s also seen redemption in her work. A few years ago, she went back to school to be a nurse practitioner.

“All of our experiences really informed my training and focus,” she said. “I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of advocacy and to share our story and offer hope to a lot of families.”

Last year, Jane opened her own private practice in pediatric psychiatry, where she reserves the majority of slots for those on Medicaid. She’s also partnering with foster and adoptive organizations in her community.

“I want to get people the information they need a whole lot sooner than we got it, so that their families don’t feel like our family did,” she said. “I want adoptive parents to have a safe place to come and tell me all the crazy things, and for me to say, ‘I believe you.’”

Forty years ago, I was waiting for a bus to Nairobi, Kenya. I was a relatively new Christian and had made a significant break in my life, quitting my job as an engineer to go on a 10-week mission trip. God had called me to that trip, and to vocational ministry after that. Though I later earned two seminary degrees, what God began in me on that bench has proved far more valuable for my pastoral ministry than all the excellent seminary courses I completed.

On that bench, looking for some way to fill the time, I started memorizing Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

Nothing has been so fruitful, multifaceted, life-transforming, practically helpful, or eternally consequential as my ongoing memorization of extended passages of Scripture. It’s an important discipline for anyone preparing for a lifetime of good works, especially in vocational ministry.

Consider four major benefits of memorizing Scripture as a pastor.

Intimacy with Christ

To be effective in pastoral ministry, we need to know Jesus deeply. In John 15, Jesus made it plain that he is the vine and we are the branches. Only by abiding in him and his words abiding in us can we bear much fruit. Apart from him, we can do nothing (vv. 1–8). But what does it mean to abide in him?

Nothing has been so fruitful or eternally consequential as my ongoing memorization of extended passages of Scripture.

Abiding in Christ requires knowing him better and better. That was Paul’s greatest goal in life. He was willing to give up every earthly blessing so he could “know him and the power of his resurrection, and . . . share his sufferings” (Phil. 3:10). No one on earth knew Christ better than Paul when he wrote that, but he knew he was just scratching the surface. For in Christ “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). We get to know Christ through his Word.

Paul’s lofty theological statements never seemed as real to me as when I was memorizing the Gospels. Memorization helped me live moment by moment as if I were in the boat with Christ while he stilled the storm. Day by day, as I labor to get God’s words into my mind, my love of Christ grows. That growing intimacy with Christ has been essential over four decades of pastoral ministry.

Illuminating Insights from the Word

Effective pastoral ministry flows from a love of Scripture and a desire to share that love with others. Because of the Bible’s simplicity, its most essential lessons—like the gospel of Christ—are clear enough for a child to learn. Because of the Bible’s complexity, it can overwhelm readers with insights and connections, immeasurable depth, and lofty grandeur.

Memorization requires slowing down, noticing details, asking questions. This helps us glean insights that were always there but that we never noticed before. The careful focus of memorization transforms our minds and renews our spiritual lives. That’s why memorization is worthwhile for every Christian.

However, these benefits are particularly valuable for pastors. Over the years, the people I’ve shepherded received a steady stream of insights from Scripture they had never seen before. It’s not that I ever discovered a connection or interpretation that other believers before me haven’t also made; it’s just that even regular Bible readers tend not to slow down to notice some of Scripture’s intricate details and patterns. People get excited when they see something in the Bible for the first time and realize that, no matter how much they’ve learned, the Bible’s truths are limitless.

Advanced Sermon Preparation

The single most influential ministry in every local church week after week is the clear preaching of God’s Word. Paul urged Timothy to devote himself fully to his craft, developing his spiritual gift of preaching and teaching the Word so that everyone could see his progress. In so doing, Paul said Timothy would save both himself and his hearers (1 Tim. 4:13–16). What in pastoral ministry could be more vital?

Scripture memorization greatly enhances sermon preparation. A preacher’s spiritual power is multiplied if he marinates his mind in the text for weeks, months, or even years before writing the sermon.

Decades of memorization give me access to the whole counsel of God in illustrating and supporting the truths God wants me to declare. I have a deep understanding not just of that week’s sermon text but of countless others that I’ve pored over and written on my heart. Memorization has helped form an internal living concordance in me. It has given me tools that help me build up my hearers so they can fight their spiritual enemies. There’s no way to shortcut that sort of sermon preparation.

Power in Counseling

A central part of pastoral ministry is helping people apply biblical wisdom to their daily lives as they try to heal relationships, fight sin, and overcome obstacles. An intimate knowledge of Scripture gained through memorization helps me in that task.

For example, as I’ve counseled married couples struggling with relational bitterness caused by years of conflict, I’ve leaned heavily on Romans 6, which makes it plain that Christians are no longer slaves to sin. That means we never need to sin again—no temptation ever comes to us with irresistible power such that we must say, “I have no choice but to sin.” Romans 6:11 says we’re to count ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ.

A preacher’s spiritual power is multiplied if he marinates his mind in the text for weeks, months, or even years before writing the sermon.

This means that changing our bad habits, like bitterness, isn’t like turning a massive oil tanker. No! Right here, right now, we can put sin to death by the Spirit and stop arguing, complaining, and tearing down our spouse.

Scripture’s truths are available to every pastor who has a Bible, but having them stored in my mind helps me explain them in a way that flows more powerfully into the ears and hearts of couples who have come to believe they have no choice but to keep arguing in bitter unforgiveness.

The same happens in many other counseling situations, whether people are facing lust fueled by online pornography, or hopelessness in a chronic health situation, or loneliness in bereavement. God’s Word has liberating power, and pastors and church leaders who store it up in their minds can wield it skillfully for the lasting good of the flock.

I commend Scripture memory for every Christian, especially pastors. After decades of pastoral ministry, no spiritual discipline has been more helpful in the work God has called me to.

I had the blessing of studying under Vanhoozer at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. And I was challenged in this book just as I was challenged and encouraged in his courses. Mere Christian Hermeneutics helps all of us who live on the far side of the “demise of biblical civilization.”

When Westerners want to tell the story of the world, we no longer open the Bible. Vanhoozer aims to reconnect us with Scripture as our means of enjoying “covenant fellowship with the triune God.” I loved this summary in the book: “How an unholy people can come into the presence of a holy God is the chief complication in the biblical narrative to which the gospel is the solution.”

Join us to learn about mere Christian hermeneutics, reading the Bible spiritually, the transfiguration, and much more.

In This Episode

00:00 – The transfiguration of Jesus and the way Christians read Scripture
00:39 – Introducing Mere Christian Hermeneutics
01:58 – What makes this approach to hermeneutics “mere”?
03:26 – How different reading cultures divide Christians
05:01 – Polarization among Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians
06:52 – The loss of Christianity’s cultural influence in the West
07:46 – Does Catholic authority solve Protestant interpretive pluralism?
10:43 – What does it mean to interpret the Bible spiritually?
13:23 – How the transfiguration guides Christian interpretation
16:08 – Why Christians shouldn’t separate Jesus from the Bible
18:24 – Johannes Oecolampadius and Scripture’s Christ-centered scope
21:57 – Bridging the divide between biblical scholars and theologians
25:05 – Kant, critical thinking, and the rise of biblical criticism
27:34 – The hidden assumptions modern readers bring to Scripture
30:14 – Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and teaching systematic theology
32:37 – Cultural hermeneutics and the formative power of culture
36:24 – The current state of theological interpretation of Scripture
39:29 – Potential dangers in theological retrieval
41:40 – Protestant catholicity and unity amid secondary disagreements
42:02 – Vanhoozer’s work with the Alexandrian Institute
44:35 – His four-volume systematic theology project
46:19 – Brahms, young theologians, and reasons for hope
47:13 – What pastors can learn from Henry James
48:54 – Outro

Resources Mentioned:

• Mere Christian Hermeneutics by Kevin Vanhoozer
• Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
• “Meditation in a Toolshed” by C. S. Lewis
• The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith
• The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies by Michael C. Legaspi
• The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
• The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics

SIGN UP for my newsletter, Unseen Things.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Donate today.

Don’t miss an episode of Gospelbound with Collin Hansen:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
• TGC Updates

Especially for those who suffer from chronic, debilitating pain, prayer is an act of faith. Author and speaker Glenna Marshall knows this well. Informed by her journey with chronic illness and pain, Marshall wrote Praying in Pain: How to Know You’re Heard When You Haven’t Been Healed to encourage those who suffer silently. Through rich biblical exposition and personal testimony, Marshall shows readers how the Lord intimately understands our suffering and hears our every cry.

Prayer reorients our hearts toward the Lord, deepening our faith and refining our hearts. We can pray with confidence and boldness, knowing that the Lord delights to hear our every request and intimately knows our pain. Whether he heals us on this side of heaven or not, he’s ultimately preparing us for glory, where we’ll be free from pain forever.

The Lord Hears

Even when pain is excruciating and healing hasn’t arrived, we can’t allow our pain to drive a wedge between us and God. Last year, when my pain was at its worst, I had a particularly bad migraine that left me in bed. All I could do was muster a weak “Lord, help me.” Through tears, I asked to be healed.

Although my prayers were weak and my pain remained, I believe wholeheartedly that the Lord heard my cries. Weak faith is still faith, and as Marshall writes, we can “cry out for God to heal us because the act of coming to Him in desperation is working faith down into our bones, our aching bones” (62).

Prayer reorients our hearts toward the Lord, deepening our faith and refining our hearts.

Trying to function normally with chronic pain is exhausting. Suffering is mentally, emotionally, and spiritually depleting. Fatigue interferes with our ability to formulate complete thoughts, making prayer difficult. But this is when prayer is most important.

We need to pray amid suffering because it deepens our faith and increases our dependence on God. As Marshall observes, “Crying out reveals that even in [our] darkest hour of weakest faith, on some level [we] still believe He is able to do something about [our] pain” (26).

Through lament, which Marshall defines as a biblical complaint, we join a cloud of witnesses who have cried out to God in distress. Lament “allows us to voice our sorrows and griefs to God without staying there in the pit of despair” (21). Through pain, tears, and sleepless nights, we bring our burdens to the Lord and remind ourselves of His character: He is near, he holds us, and he understands our pain (Pss. 34:22; 120:1; 121; 139; 142:1; Isa. 53). He’ll also equip us with enough grace to endure the trial he entrusted to us.

Divine Love

Our pain isn’t a representation of God’s disdain or disappointment. Rather, the Lord allows our pain because he loves us and desires our personal holiness.

Paul suffered from a debilitating thorn, and he prayed fervently for the Lord to remove it. But the Lord chose to leave him in discomfort. Paul didn’t stop praying for healing because he doubted God’s power to heal. Instead, he chose to view his weakness as a cause for boasting in the Lord’s strength, not his own (2 Cor. 12:9–10). Paul’s thorn was a means for God’s particular grace and sanctification—and the same is true for us.

The pain we feel “is not arbitrary.” Marshall writes, “Rather, it is the tool God is using to make [us] like His Son” (149). Pain reveals our weaknesses, trains us for endurance, and refines our faith. As a fire does to metal, pain removes the impurities from our life, revealing our hearts and proving the genuineness of our faith (James 1:2–4; 1 Pet. 1:6–7).

Even when we may not see what the Lord is doing, we can trust his heart: He’s using our suffering for our good. Marshall argues, “If God has ordained suffering for us, whether for a season or for a lifetime, we must remember that He is entrusting us with something that can produce the fruit of righteousness in our lives while also declaring His faithfulness to those who see our suffering” (137).

Pain reveals our weaknesses, trains us for endurance, and refines our faith.

More than that, we also see God’s sufficient and particular grace toward us. The Lord knows the limited energy we have. He sees us curled up with an ice pack or heating pad. He sees us as we sit in the waiting room or the infusion chair.

As Marshall notes, “God’s present-tense grace gives us the internal fortitude to believe that if He does not heal our pain in this life, then He will give us what we need to endure pain in this life” (75, emphasis original). And although we might be tempted to borrow from tomorrow, we can trust that the Lord will give us enough strength to persevere through every moment of our trial.

Resurrection Hope

As our bodies weaken, our physical fragility directs our eyes toward heaven, where our faith will be made sight. One day, we “will shed this faulty frame and step into a new body” (166). While we’ll receive new bodies in heaven, that’s not our ultimate treasure—seeing Jesus is. Until then, our pain is a reminder that this world isn’t our home.

We can still pray for healing; in fact, we should, as Marshall writes. But if we aren’t healed on this side of heaven, we’ll be healed one day, and our temporal suffering is preparing us for that day (2 Cor. 4:16–18). Although we may weep now while uttering inaudible prayers, we’ll reap shouts of joy as we run into our Savior’s arms (Ps. 126).

Praying while physically suffering is an act of faith—one that all Christians can cultivate. In Praying in Pain, Glenna Marshall teaches Christians how to pray without ceasing, especially those suffering from chronic health conditions. Although the Lord hasn’t granted me full healing yet, prayer has deepened my dependence on and faith in the One who hears my every cry.

Our church prepares an evening meal for the football team every Friday of the season—from August to November. That shakes out to hundreds of hot meals served to student-athletes. It’s also many hours of interaction between church members and public school students and their coaches.

Missional opportunities like this abound. Because of their many volunteer needs, local public schools provide our churches an untapped (and unexpectedly open) opportunity to share the gospel through word and deed. Here are three ways to mobilize your church for this mission.

1. Be visible. Build on relationships that already exist.

The schools in your area may not know your church exists, but your church likely has a connection to those schools already. Are any teachers, administrators, or coaches also members of your church? Do church members have children or grandchildren who attend the school? Do alumni from the school attend your church?

Because of their many volunteer needs, public schools provide our  churches an untapped opportunity to share the gospel.

A ministry to a school starts with noticing the relationships already present. It grows when we determine to use those relationships for the sake of mission.

Our local elementary school hosted a Career Day. Each teacher opened her classroom to professionals who came to tell the children about their jobs. The teacher who coordinated the speakers was part of our church, so she scheduled a mechanic, nurse, insurance agent . . . and a pastor. Through that opportunity, the pastor (with Bible in hand) was able to share with multiple classes what a church leader is and does.

2. Be of value. Prioritize service.

Does your local school think of your church as a resource? When the school has needs, does it turn to your church for help? Does it see your church’s presence as a value-add for the school’s educational mission? If your church were to close down or relocate, would the schools nearby suffer from your absence?

Serving your community isn’t the church’s primary mission, but when you love your neighbors (including schools), doors can open for the gospel. Just imagine: What if a school were so confident in your church’s care that when students had needs, it referred them to your church for help?

The librarian in our local elementary school was searching for adults who could come and read books to kindergarten, first-, and second-grade classes. Word about the need was sent to moms and dads, and one parent (who’s part of our church) contacted the librarian to tell him our church has several individuals who would be willing to read to the children. From that point, we began sending volunteer readers regularly. We even get to pick the books!

3. Be vocal. Be ready to speak about Jesus.

Our Lord says, “Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest” (John 4:35). So as you love and serve schools, keep your eyes open for opportunities to “[give] a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15). When those opportunities come, they may surprise you.

What if a school were so confident in your church’s care that when students had needs, it referred them to your church for help?

Once, a retired police officer (and former football player at a local high school) stopped by our church office. He’d heard about our church feeding the football team, and he was intrigued. The man had a lot of questions. He asked how we put together the volunteer teams, how often we brought meals, and how we paid for the meals.

For several years now, he’s been making donations to support the meal ministry. But that’s not the best result of that relationship. This retired cop also began attending our church. He eventually came to trust in Christ and was baptized. Today, he’s an active member of our church body, and it started because he heard about a local church feeding a local high school football team.

Jesus says, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). Our churches shouldn’t be indifferent to the lost and dying around us. We should eagerly seek out open doors for sharing the good news. So consider the neighborhoods around your church. Could there be an open door at the public schools?

That question is no longer theoretical. We live in a world of AI companions, emotional chatbots, and wearable devices that promise to track our stress, improve our sleep, and help us manage our inner lives. Some of these tools can be genuinely useful. But the more persuasive they become, the more we need to ask, Are they helping us flourish as human beings, or training us to settle for a simulation of care?

Few people are better equipped to help us think about that question than Rosalind Picard, an MIT professor and founder of a research group at the MIT Media Lab that develops technologies designed to recognize and respond to human emotion. She has spent decades working at the cutting edge of affective computing, a discipline she founded. Yet what makes this conversation especially compelling is that she isn’t dazzled by the rhetoric of AI but clear-eyed about both its promise and its danger.

In this episode, Roz helps us think carefully about the difference between reading the outward signs of emotion and actually knowing a person’s inner life. She explains why AI can imitate empathy without feeling anything at all, why emotionally intelligent technologies can sometimes support human flourishing, and why companion chatbots in particular should raise alarm bells for Christians. Along the way, we talk about consciousness, embodiment, meaning, and the temptation to become, in C. S. Lewis’s phrase, “too easily pleased.”

Roz joined me on Silicon Spiritualities to ask what AI can really know about our emotions, what it can never know, and why the richest forms of love, care, and meaning can never be reduced to code.

REGISTER for our six-week cohort, Get Ready for the Age of AI, where you’ll get an exclusive, early, free copy of the book The AI Apocalypse, featuring Watkin and many others, such as Ben Sasse and Alan Noble.

PREORDER The AI Apocalypse: A Survival Guide for Humanity.

JOIN the conversation on Discord, along with other Silicon Spiritualities listeners.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Donate today.

Philadelphia was ground zero for the political earthquake that sent history-altering tremors across the Atlantic, but alongside the political earthquake was a seismic shift in theology. Throughout church history, “the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42) has been preserved, lost, recovered, and then threatened again. Like links in a chain, the essential doctrines of the faith depend on one another. When one link is removed, the whole chain is at risk. An often forgotten link in that chain is the doctrine of original sin. In 1776, that crucial link was weakening.

In Boston, no one welcomed the public reading of the Declaration more than Charles Chauncy. As pastor of the First Church of Boston, arguably the most important church in New England, Chauncy enjoyed considerable influence. For years, he’d argued for American independence from Britain, and his reputation grew on both sides of the Atlantic as a patriot preacher. A graduate of Harvard and the great-grandson of Harvard’s second president, he was firmly positioned in Boston’s elite ruling class. Through sermons and writings, he shaped public opinion in favor of the patriot cause. Historian Norman Gibbs refers to Chauncy as the “theologian of the American Revolution.”

Chauncy would serve as the pastor of First Church for 60 years, and at the beginning his preaching conformed to the orthodox faith he’d inherited. But then something changed. In the 1750s, Chauncy began to drift from the Puritan heritage entrusted to him. By the end of his life, Chauncy had embraced universal salvation. In his view, a loving God would ultimately receive every person into heaven, whether he or she received Christ or rejected him. The Unitarian Universalist Association today credits Chauncy with sparking “a new American liberal theological tradition: American Unitarianism.”

While the debate continues about how far Chauncy moved from orthodox Christianity, the consensus is that he’s a key transitional figure in the theological shift. If he didn’t widely open the door of the church to theological liberalism, he certainly unlocked it.

What happened in the 1750s that led to Chauncy’s departure from sound doctrine? He abandoned the Reformed doctrine of original sin.

Initially, Chauncy kept his changing views private. For years, the doctrine of original sin had been attacked in England and America, most notably through the writing of John Taylor in 1750. In the preface to his 1784 book arguing for universal salvation, Chauncy praised Taylor:

Had it not been for his Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin . . . I should never, I believe, have been able to have composed this work. . . . It was his example and recommendation that put me upon studying the Scriptures in that free, impartial, and diligent manner, which led me into these sentiments.

That same hermeneutical approach led Chauncy to deny the Reformed doctrine of original sin, penal substitutionary atonement (PSA), and eternal hell.

In January 1776, Thomas Paine disparaged the doctrine of original sin in Common Sense, provoking a defense from John Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and the only ordained minister to sign the Declaration. In early summer 1776, Witherspoon wrote that Paine’s criticisms of original sin were “without the shadow of reasoning,” and the only adequate explanation for the “visible state of the world in every age” is Scripture’s declaration “that the imagination of the heart of man is only evil from his youth, and that continually” (emphasis original).

At the time, James Madison was practicing law in Virginia. Just five years earlier, he was studying at Princeton under Witherspoon. At Princeton, the future “Father of the Constitution” adopted much of Witherspoon’s views on human nature. He would later write in the Federalist Papers,

It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

The result was a limited government that separated powers and provided an elegant system of checks and balances. Because humanity is fallen, no one can be trusted with unchecked power.

The doctrine of original sin clearly informed the founding of the United States, but by summer 1776, Taylor’s argument against it was gaining devastating traction.

Taylor’s Opponents

In America prior to 1776, Taylor’s most famous opponent was Jonathan Edwards, whose massive response to Taylor was his last work. In The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended, Edwards answered Taylor’s arguments point by point. Edwards’s assessment of Taylor’s hermeneutical method was that expressions had been “strained, words and phrases racked,” and “strange figures of speech . . . invented and with violent hands thrust into the Apostle’s mouth.”

Edwards was born just three years before Benjamin Franklin, but he died in 1758. Therefore, we can’t be certain whether Edwards would have joined Chauncy and Witherspoon in the “Black-Robed Regiment” of ministers in America who promoted the American Revolution from pulpits and in pamphlets. However, most of his followers, including his son, Jonathan Edwards Jr., were patriots and members of the Black-Robed Regiment.

The doctrine of original sin clearly informed the founding of the United States.

Edwards scholar George Marsden speculates that Edwards “probably would have found a religious rationale, as almost all his disciples did, for supporting the Revolutionary cause.” Furthermore, the Great Awakening, led by men like Edwards, created conditions conducive to challenging the existing power structure in America. In 1776, Edwards had been dead for 18 years, but his influence on the American Revolution lived on in his spiritual heirs. So did his influence on the state of theology in America and across the Atlantic.

Augustus Toplady continued Edwards’s defense of original sin. As an Anglican living in England, he was likely not a fan of the Declaration of Independence. But Toplady had other things on his mind in 1776, the year he published the hymn for which he’s best remembered, “Rock of Ages”:

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Save me from its guilt and power.

The double cure provided by Christ’s vicarious death corresponds with the Westminster Confession’s statement that in the fall, “the guilt of this sin was imputed . . . and corrupted nature conveyed to all [Adam and Eve’s] posterity.” Therefore, the cure for original sin is deliverance from the penalty of sin (God’s wrath that our guilt deserves) and deliverance from the power of sin (our impure sin nature) through Christ’s blood.

We know Toplady’s views because around this time he wrote “A Short Essay on Original Sin,” defending the Augustinian-Reformed doctrine of original sin. With urgency and passion, he implored the reader, “Beg the Lord to shew you the depth of your fall. Free grace, finished salvation, imputed righteousness, atoning blood, unchangeable mercy, and the whole chain of evangelical blessings, will then be infinitely precious to your heart.”

Essential Doctrine

To press Toplady’s analogy, the doctrine of original sin is an early link in the chain of Christian doctrines. If this one link is removed, the church is in danger of losing other cardinal doctrines––the very sine qua non of Christianity. A chain lying on the garage floor can appear intact after a link is removed, but when the chain is tested by use, the missing link becomes tragically obvious.

Pastors, churches, or denominations that abandon the doctrine of original sin may continue for years to confess the doctrines that necessarily follow from original sin, but when those doctrines become unfashionable, they too will be doubted, debated, and denied. The same approach to Scripture that leads away from original sin also leads away from any doctrine that we fallen people consider unreasonable to our minds and unseasonable to our times.

Original sin isn’t merely one doctrine among many. It shapes how we read the entire biblical story of humanity’s fall and Christ’s redemption. When this doctrine is abandoned, the rest of theology begins to shift with it. As seminary professor Carl Beckwith has said, “Tell me your view of sin and I’ll tell you your view of grace.” Anthropology determines soteriology.

For example, consider the relationship of the doctrine of original sin to the doctrine of PSA. Both doctrines rest on the principle of imputation. Our representative stands in our place, and we experience the consequences of his decision. So the first Adam’s guilt is imputed to us, our guilt is imputed to the last Adam, and, thankfully, the last Adam’s righteousness is imputed to us upon our faith in him.

In “Rock of Ages,” Toplady affirmed that “the blood” saves the believer “from . . . guilt.” In his writing, Toplady confessed that “the death of Christ was a vicarious punishment” and it was a “real, adequate atonement for sin.” On the cross, the punishment we deserve fell on Jesus. This is the classic Reformed position that Edwards defended and Chauncy discarded.

Original sin isn’t merely one doctrine among many. It shapes how we read the entire biblical story of humanity’s fall and Christ’s redemption.

Once Chauncy rejected the doctrine of original sin, with its imputation of Adam’s guilt to us, he followed the same logic in moving away from PSA, with its imputation of our guilt to Christ.

Eventually, he settled on a view of the atonement similar to the moral government theory. On the cross, Chauncy reasoned, Jesus was giving us a picture of God’s displeasure with sin, not a payment for the penalty of sin that satisfied God’s justice. Set on this course of exalting God’s love to the exclusion of God’s wrath, Chauncy eventually arrived at universal salvation. Surely this loving God couldn’t send anyone to eternal hell.

In 1776, Chauncy declared his independence from the authority of Great Britain. By 1784, he effectively declared his independence from the authority of Scripture.

Evangelical Inheritance

Chauncy’s influence eventually won the day in many New England churches as well as in his alma mater, Harvard College. Harvard long ago abandoned its original mission of training ministers in the Reformed faith. In 1805, when Harvard appointed a Unitarian, Henry Ware, as a professor of divinity, the theological drift appeared irreversible. Many generations have passed since Harvard championed the doctrines of original sin and PSA.

Despite a faithful remnant, by 1825 many Congregational churches in New England joined the newly established American Unitarian Association, and by then any similarity to orthodox, apostolic Christianity was merely cosmetic. In that environment, doctrines like original sin and PSA had zero chance of survival. In 1961, the American Unitarian Association was folded into the Unitarian Universalist Association, currently headquartered in Chauncy’s hometown of Boston. Today, like most mainline churches and denominations, Unitarian Universalist churches are either dead or dying.

In the years after 1776, the doctrine of original sin found safe harbor in the churches and denominations that remained faithful to their evangelical roots. Today, Edwards is widely considered one of the founding fathers of evangelicalism. In America and the United Kingdom, Toplady’s “chain of evangelical blessings” is most likely to be found within evangelical churches.

In the 19th century, Charles Spurgeon preached that “in Adam we died, because in Adam’s sin we were regarded as sinners.” In the 20th century, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones declared, “It was Adam’s disobedience and sin that has put us all into the position of, and leads God to regard us as, sinners. . . . We are all regarded by God judicially as sinners and that this is so because of Adam’s sin.” In the 21st century, John Piper affirmed that “behind all our depravity and all our guilt and all our sinning, there is a deep mysterious connection with Adam whose sin became our sin and whose judgment became our judgment.”

Toplady’s “double cure” for original sin is still esteemed among evangelicals, but will it endure? According to the 2025 State of Theology Survey, only a minority of evangelicals now hold to the doctrine of original sin. Alarmingly, nearly a third of evangelicals deny Christ’s deity, and more than half of them believe the Holy Spirit is a force but not a personal being. The lessons of 1776 are increasingly relevant 250 years later.

Preserve the Chain

To demonstrate that relevance, consider how Toplady’s “whole chain of evangelical blessings” is germane to current theological issues. For example, the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association Book of the Year in 2025 was John Mark Comer’s Practicing the Way. In his review of Practicing the Way, Kevin DeYoung notes several commendable strengths of the book before making an important observation:

In a revealing section, Comer quotes from the Eastern Orthodox theologian Kallistos Ware, who explains that original sin means “we are born into an environment where it is easy to do evil and hard to do good.” He goes on to say that we are “conditioned by the solidarity of the human race in its accumulated wrong-doing and wrong-thinking, and hence wrong-being” (92). This is an accounting of original sin that has more in common with Pelagius than with Augustine. There is no language here of inherited guilt and depravity, only a warped environment that makes it hard to do good. Given this understanding of original sin, practicing the way may not require a new nature at all.

Also in 2025, Comer recommended Andrew Remington Rillera’s book Lamb of the Free: Recovering the Varied Sacrificial Understandings of Jesus’s Death. Rillera’s unabashed aim is to argue against PSA. Despite the substantial criticisms the book received from evangelical scholars, Comer not only recommended it but posted on Instagram that “this seems to be the final biblical/exegetical knock out blow to PSA.”

Comer eventually retracted his statement and offered further explanation. But why make such a statement in the first place? Why so apparently eager to dispose of PSA? In Comer’s theology, the link of PSA in “the chain of evangelical blessings” appears weakly connected if not already absent.

Only a minority of evangelicals now hold to the doctrine of original sin.

What was true in 1776 is true today. When the link of original sin is removed, other essential doctrines are at risk. Our sin originates in our union with the first Adam, so we come into the world legally guilty, spiritually dead, and physically dying. Our only hope is in union with the last Adam, who bore our guilt, makes us spiritually alive, and guarantees our physical resurrection. The sin of the first Adam necessitates the sacrifice of the last Adam. But when the cause is effectively denied, the cure is eventually discarded.

History has shown this pattern before, from John Taylor to Charles Chauncy, from 18th-century New England to the present day. If the church wishes to preserve “the whole chain of evangelical blessings,” it must once again recover the doctrine of original sin—not as an embarrassing relic of the past but as the indispensable foundation of the gospel itself. That’s one of the overshadowed lessons we can take away from the summer of 1776.

Will you write your research essays from AI prompts? Technically it’s against the rules. So is asking AI for a summary of the selections you were supposed to read. But everyone else in your class is doing it. Your English teacher tried to crack down last year, you heard. Parents complained to the principal when their children got a 0 on their assignment. The principal sided with the parents. There was no sense fighting back. The school’s own logic didn’t allow it. The goal of education (for many public as well as Christian schools) is to get a degree so you can go to college and get a job. Students who don’t use AI to write their college entrance essays and job applications face a competitive disadvantage.

Would you voluntarily accept that disadvantage on principle? At age 15? When your parents don’t mind and your school can’t enforce its own (arbitrary) rules? When even the school itself is showing you all the ways AI can increase your efficiency, including reading and writing? And when you’re already bogged down six nights a week with football practice, Scouts, and youth group at church?

Most likely, you wouldn’t. You’d “write” the essay with an AI prompt.

Varied Reactions

Last week’s announcement of The Gospel Coalition’s AI policy prompted many, varied reactions. Some hated the move (especially on X). Others loved it (especially on Instagram). Several friends and even TGC staff members reached out with specific concerns. Many believe the policy is too restrictive when it comes to AI-assisted research and editing. They guarantee we’ll change this unrealistic policy within two years. More than a few have pointed out that TGC depends in dozens of ways on AI for tech services.

Not everyone will land in the same place on where, when, and how to deploy AI. Just like Christians adopt different approaches to other technology, such as smartphones, social media, TV, and beyond. We’ve already been working for months with various AI experts and ethicists to prepare guidance for churches, schools, and parents on AI use cases. So stay tuned for those resources. We won’t always agree with each other or draw the lines in the same places. Conscience varies.

Some of my wisest friends and closest collaborators think TGC’s policy goes too far, especially in prohibiting research and editing. Other Christian media organizations may allow more AI integration—sometimes even writing as a finished product. The Wall Street Journal last month reported on pastors using AI to write their sermons. Several of TGC’s most insistent critics don’t see any problem with prompting AI to write their Substack posts and X threads.

Readers have inquired what I do when I “catch” writers trying to pass off AI as their own human work. Some of these writers don’t see any problem with what they’ve done. You’re already reading more AI-generated content than you probably realize. Just look up systematic theology books on Amazon. Click on the unfamiliar bios. Maybe you think these books simply reflect the market at work, the inevitable march of technological progress. Humans can’t compete on this uneven playing field with computer-generated content, priced below what traditional publishers and authors can afford.

Then remember how AI models were trained. Ask yourself where the next generation of AI trainers—the pastors, teachers, and professors who labored over their words, taken without their permission or remuneration—will learn and think and write. Your intuitions may not see a problem, given how much AI and other media technology dominate our lives. Or maybe you expect AI to reach general intelligence, rendering human-generated knowledge obsolete. My intuitions, at least, suggest a different future. When computers take over the writing, humans will eventually stop the reading. It doesn’t take an expert economist to explain what happens to the value of writing when no one pays humans to do it.

Or, to put my intuitions another way, what happens to the value of a home run when everyone can hit one with minimal effort?

AI’s Steroid Era

I grew up in the 1990s during what’s now known as the Steroid Era of Major League Baseball. I remember recording the TV broadcast of the game in 1998 when Mark McGwire broke the single-season home run record previously held by Roger Maris of the New York Yankees. In college my friends and I bought tickets in the right field bleachers just down the purple and red lines of the L at Wrigley Field. We reminded Sammy Sosa how many outs there were each inning. We saw Glenallen Hill hit one of the longest home runs in Wrigley Field history, onto the roof of a building across Waveland Avenue. “It’s gotta be the shoes, folks,” Cubs broadcaster Chip Caray exclaimed on WGN.

No, it was the steroids, Hill later admitted. It was almost always the steroids in those days. We just didn’t want to see what our eyes told us.

It was almost always the steroids in those days. We just didn’t want to see what our eyes told us.

There were many reasons back then for baseball players not to take steroids. They were against the rules, for one. They were bad for the players’ health, for another. But Major League Baseball at the time, facing resistance from the players’ union, indulged the home run binge and didn’t strictly enforce the rules. Crowds loved the long ball. Formerly middling players scored record contracts. Business was good. Owners cashed in. The reckoning with personal health and the integrity of the game could wait for another day.

As a matter of basic logic, however, the Steroid Era couldn’t last. The first player to shoot up gained an advantage. So did the next 20. Hitters recovered from injuries faster. But so did pitchers. And when 200 players, both hitters and pitchers, are using steroids, any advantage disappears. The playing field has only shifted levels. Even the clean players feel like they need to take drugs to keep their toehold in the professional game. That pressure cascades down to the minor leagues, to college, and to high school.

And you get 15-year-old aspiring baseball players on steroids. Just like their heroes. Because that’s the only way to make the high school team. That’s the only way to earn a college scholarship. That’s your only hope to play in Wrigley Field someday.

The reckoning with personal health and the integrity of the game can wait for another day.

Full of Grace and Truth

You may not realize the day of reckoning for AI is already here. Talk to the teachers. Talk to the professors. Talk to the editors. If everyone else is writing with AI prompts, would you voluntarily accept a disadvantage on principle? To write slower? To write less effectively? To go to the library and look up sources yourself? To ask a friend to review your essay? To accept a B+ when everyone else you know is scoring an easy A? When Google is asking to help. When Microsoft Word is asking to help. When your teachers can’t do anything. When the tech staff showed you how to do it. When your parents do nothing more than shrug and say, “Back in my day we actually had to pay a friend to write our essays for us.”

Now think of the health of that 15-year-old. Does it matter that he or she won’t grow up knowing how to read a whole book or even an essay? Won’t know how to study something more complicated than a TikTok video? Won’t know how to write even a love letter or a wedding toast or a birthday card without AI assistance?

We’re not anti-tech. We’re pro-human. We refuse to surrender our minds to the machines.

I think it matters. A lot. So do my colleagues at TGC. And that’s why we drew the line in the sand, at least for our little corner of the internet.

We’re not anti-tech. We’re pro-human. We refuse to surrender our minds to the machines.

Think about today’s 15-year-olds. What’s best for their health? What kind of world do you plan to leave behind for them?

Leave behind a world of words, our medium to meet the Word full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

I sat in the pew quietly trying to calculate how I’d work the calories of my bread and cup into my increasingly restricted diet, which was, in fact, doing the job I’d given it. But as my body shrank, so did my capacity for joy, fellowship, and meaningful relationships.

You likely have someone just like me in your congregation today. An estimated 28.8 million Americans, or roughly 8 percent of the population, will experience an eating disorder in their lifetime, with an even greater number experiencing symptoms but not getting diagnosed. Despite their prevalence and severity, these struggles often remain hidden and unaddressed, especially within the church.

When I was struggling, a friend noticed what I could no longer hide. What followed was a season in which my church stepped in, ultimately reshaping my relationship with myself, deepening my connection to the local church, and drawing me closer to the Lord.

Here are four practical ways the church can support individuals living with eating disorders.

1. Practice hospitality.

In a culture marked by disembodied digital loneliness and screen-perpetuated isolation, the church can offer hospitality and care through the ordinary practices of shared life. This is a tangible way for Christians to actively participate in the communal life for which we were designed. Eating disorders distort people’s relationships with their own bodies, and they also may make ordinary experiences, like sharing a meal, feel complicated and overwhelming.

Hospitality might mean inviting someone battling disordered eating to a meal, not drawing attention to what (or how slowly) he or she eats, and offering consistent presence without scrutiny.

In a culture marked by disembodied digital loneliness and screen-perpetuated isolation, the church can offer hospitality and care through the ordinary rhythms of shared life.

For months, I gathered with friends around tables, at birthday celebrations, and through unexpected snowstorms as I relearned what it meant to feast on both food and the fullness of life in Christ.

This vision of hospitality extends beyond merely entertaining guests or hosting events but involves embracing a posture of meaningful connection and shared life, even amid the hard, messy stuff. It’s using the bodies God gave us to actively care for—and be present with—another embodied person. Those of us who know that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) are uniquely poised to offer care that’s not only spoken but lived.

2. Speak truth to shame.

Eating disorders feed on shame, thrive in secrecy, and are sustained by experiences of contempt toward oneself. Sufferers often despise their bodies, lack of control, or perceived failure to measure up.

Following the fall of man, Adam and Eve go from “naked and . . . not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25) to feeling the need to cover themselves, hide, and withdraw relationally (3:7–13). Shame isn’t merely an internal emotional experience but a disruption of relational connection with God and others.

The antidote to shame isn’t perfection. We don’t live in a pre-fall world anymore. But God gives us another way out of shame: being fully known and still fully loved. The gospel of Christ alone can offer this remarkable gift. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

The church can also demonstrate that love. My church community shared in both the triumphs and the uncertainties of recovery—from celebrating the courage it took to eat a burger again to laughing with me when I learned that orzo was pasta and not rice as I’d long assumed.

As Tim Keller wrote in The Meaning of Marriage,

To be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense . . . and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.

I’d add this: It frees us from the shame that gives eating disorders their power.

3. Increase mental health literacy among church leadership.

For many experiencing mental health struggles, like disordered eating, the church isn’t a last resort. It’s the first. One study suggests that around 25 percent of those with mental illness sought help first from a clergy member—more than those who solicited initial help from a psychiatrist or physician.

God gives us another way out of shame: being fully known and still fully loved.

Unfortunately, many church leaders don’t know how to respond when met with this information. Well-intentioned care from leadership can miss the depth or complexity of what individuals may be facing.

Pastors and other church leaders can increase their mental health literacy by pursuing basic education, partnering with service providers, and seeking to learn from the experiences of those they serve. They should also seek out others with professional or lived experience with disordered eating, perhaps connecting them with the individual in your church facing this struggle. Those with eating disorders often need professional medical/mental health assistance in addition to church support. Church leaders should be prepared to provide recommendations and encouragement for this kind of professional help, in addition to their own counsel and care.

4. Commit to the long haul.

Recovery from an eating disorder is rarely quick or linear, with the average individual needing several years for substantial or sustained recovery. But self-aware Christians have a taste of the remarkable depths of God’s patience. Every day, we struggle against our flesh, often caving in the face of temptations we’ve battled for years, and yet, God never runs out of new mercies.

Those who have received such marvelous and patient grace from God are called to extend it to one another—to be patient, bearing with one another in love (Eph. 4:2).

God Can Use Your Church to Change Lives

As Christ’s people, we can reflect him by caring for the suffering—noticing unseen hurt and responding with love, wisdom, compassion, and steadfastness in the long work of restoration.

I once did mental math at church, trying to manage a struggle no one could see. I’m not the only one who has sat there, counting the calories in communion, avoiding pizza at members’ meetings, or slipping out before coffee hour, afraid someone might ask, “How are you?”

Yet the care from my church community during this struggle changed my life, drawing me into a deeper, richer relationship with Christ. For those struggling with eating disorders in your congregation, I pray this will be their testimony too.

Every year, science discovers new restorative benefits sleep provides for our physical, cognitive, and emotional health; new connections between good sleep habits and reduced risks of various diseases. Increasingly, sleep is viewed as the mother of all health hacks—“the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day,” according to one prominent sleep researcher.

The scientific consensus is clear: It’s wise to sleep.

But the wisdom of sleep goes deeper. There’s a way sleep teaches us truth and forms us spiritually. There’s biblical wisdom we can glean from nightly repose. More than just a practical recharge, sleep can be a doxological liturgy—an embodied rhythm and spiritual discipline that helps us better love God and others.

More than just a practical recharge, sleep can be a doxological liturgy.

We often assume that these greatest commandments (“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself,” Mark 12:30–31) can only be heeded in waking life. But what about the third of our lives we spend sleeping? Is that wasted time?

Far from it. Sleep can be a potent realm for growing us in love for God and others.

Sleep Leads Us to Worship God

The purpose of life is worship. God’s creatures were made to praise him. To love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength is to do what we were created for.

Has sleep ever led you to love God more? It does for me all the time:

• The Sabbath afternoon nap (preferably with the soothing sounds of televised golf in the background) after a spiritually rich morning at church
• Turning off the lights, locking the door, and hitting the pillow after the last murmurs of my four children die down and the house is quiet
• Waking up in that rare, miraculous zone of feeling rested and restored—the dawning sun signaling new mercies

These are quotidian moments that regularly tune my heart to sing God’s praise. “Waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.” We glorify God by day and by night.

Sleep can enhance each of Mark 12:30’s four modes of loving God—with heart, soul, mind, and strength.

1. Gratitude to a Gracious Giver (Heart)

Sleep is a gift God gives his beloved (Ps. 127:2). Yet do we see this seemingly mundane reality of everyday life as a gift? Do we thank God for it?

We should. Sleep is perhaps the greatest gift God wired into our biological design. It nightly restores us, mind, body, and soul. When we lay our head down at night and drift into sleep—and then when we wake again to new morning mercies—we ought to thank and worship God for his extravagant grace.

2. Rehearsal of the Gospel (Soul)

As our nightly sleep-wake cycle mimics death and resurrection, it can remind us of our spiritual death and the regeneration possible in Christ. What happens in the “death” of our nightly sleep is nothing short of miraculous. Every biological system in our body is renewed as we sleep.

How interesting that this daily renewal of our health comes not from our striving harder but from our willingness to “die” by succumbing to sleep 7–8 hours each night. The healing power of sleep we receive, not achieve. The “death” of sleep literally brings forth new life. As it does, it can direct our worship to the God whose death brings forth our eternal life.

3. Trust in God’s Sovereignty (Mind)

Every night’s sleep is an invitation to trust God. Scottish theologian John Baillie says, “Sleep comes best to those who most put their trust in God.” He’s right. Like a child peacefully asleep in his mother’s arms, our sweetest rest comes when we surrender into the safe and loving embrace of our Father.

God doesn’t sleep. He is always awake, always keeping watch (Ps. 121:3–4). He’s sovereign, and that truth—if we really believe it—helps us sleep better. God is awake so we don’t always have to be. What a reason to praise him!

4. Stewardship of Work and Mission (Strength)

Sleep also leads us to worship God by restoring our bodies so we’re freshly equipped for good work and fruitful mission in waking life. As we prioritize good sleep habits (ideally 7–9 hours nightly), we’re worshiping God with our bodies.

God is awake so we don’t always have to be. What a reason to praise him!

Just as a fallow field, a fruit tree’s pruning, or the seeming barrenness of winter gives way for a more fruitful spring and harvest, so too does our rest equip us for more fruitful ministry. If we see work as worship, we should see sleep and rest as worship too. 

Sleep Helps Us Love Others

Good stewardship of sleep also helps us heed the commandment to love our neighbor. This is an underemphasized part of sleep: how your sleep affects others, for good or ill.

When your sleep is bad, you can negatively affect those around you:

• Sleep-deprived parents can be grumpy or scratchy with their kids or spouse.
• Sleep-deprived workers can underperform in their jobs or even make costly mistakes.
• Sleep-deprived drivers can cause accidents that prove deadly to others.

But when you get enough sleep, the opposite tends to happen. You’re a blessing to others:

• Well-rested parents and spouses have more energy to be a loving, attentive, nonanxious presence in the home.
• Well-rested workers serve their employer by being mentally and physically sharp on the job.
• Well-rested friends can be a haven of peace and needed encouragement for people experiencing suffering or uncertainty.

At times, you can love your neighbor by sacrificing your best sleep so that others can sleep well.

• Parents of babies sacrifice their own sleep quality to ensure the babies get the sleep they need.
• Doctors and nurses working night shifts choose irregular sleep patterns for themselves as an act of service to those needing care in the night.
• Friends hosting friends as houseguests choose to sleep on the living room couch so their guests can enjoy a comfy bed and bedroom.

These are a few of many examples of how our sleep can be an act of love for others.

Hymn of Grateful Praise

I love the 19th-century hymn “For the Beauty of the Earth.” It beautifully captures the right impulse to gratefully praise God for all the wonders of his creation. Even a basic daily wonder like sleep. As we drift into sleep each night, and then wake each morning, God’s mercy and holiness should be front of mind: “Early in the morning / Our song shall rise to thee!”

We should praise God in the morning and the evening. We should praise him for the morning and the evening. We should praise God as we rest and as we work. We should praise him for the gifts of rest and work.

For the beauty of each hour
of the day and of the night,
hill and vale, and tree and flower,
sun and moon, and stars of light;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.

Darryl Williamson moderates this panel where Bob Doll, Jessica Cicali, Chris Carneal, and Alex Harris discuss how Christians can go into the marketplace to advance the gospel. They talk about how to showcase Christ’s character through your work ethic, business practices, and relationship dynamics.

In This Episode

00:00 – Introduction and prayer

02:08 – Panelist introductions

04:24 – Panelist backgrounds and passions

07:06 – Discussion on the cultural mandate

13:50 – Calling and vocation

21:37 – Brokenness in the workplace

27:17 – Toxicity and redemption in the workplace

33:42 – Gospel witness in the workplace

43:20 – Closing thoughts and prayer

Resources Mentioned:

• The Redemptive Business by Praxis Labs
• Work Matters by Tom Nelson
• Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Harris

SIGN UP for one of our newsletters to stay informed about TGC’s latest resources.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Give today.

Don’t miss an episode of The Gospel Coalition Podcast:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
  

Parenting seems to fit awkwardly inside the Christian ethos, and I’m feeling it anew as I prepare to launch my oldest child. The gospel offers healing and redemption in this life or the next for every peculiar pain the human heart endures. “Everything sad is going to come untrue,” as Sally Lloyd-Jones, borrowing from J.R.R. Tolkien, puts it. In some situations, this is easy to envision. With the separation that death brings, for instance, we have the hope of knowing our (Christian) loved one will meet us in heaven. But parenting feels different.

These children we pour ourselves into and love so deeply eventually leave—and they don’t come back. The painful underpinning is this: That’s the goal. Apparently, I’ll know I’ve arrived when the child who once happily climbed into my lap and found his dearest shelter in my presence waves goodbye and carries on without me.

As I help my son move 10 hours from home, this question erupts from the depths of my heart: How does God redeem the particular pains of parenting—things that the passage of time takes away, like the sweet joys of childhood?

I’ve felt this sadness since the early days of mothering, so 10 years ago, I emailed our beloved pastor, Sandy Willson, seeking wisdom. He was well into grandparenthood, and I found encouragement in his perspective. Now, as I embark on this new phase of parenting, his seasoned words are helpful all over again.

New Roles, Next Generation

Sandy began by shifting my perspective:

First of all, your kids are not leaving you. They’re one day coming back to you with more kids! Allison and I are having the time of our lives, not just with our grandchildren, but also with our children and their spouses. They need us and we can help and encourage them. We bear their burdens and pray for them and enjoy them immensely. These may be some of our favorite parental years.

His words highlight God’s wisdom in instituting the changing roles of the family. The way he paints it, I can see a uniquely life-giving calling ahead, rich with new ways of relating to and supporting my adult children and potentially their spouses and children.

I hear echoes of Deuteronomy 4:9: “Only take care, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children’s children.” My role to point my children to God through Christ is no less important now than it was when they were 5 or 10 years old.

My role to point my children to God through Christ is no less important now than it was when they were 5 or 10 years old.

Not only that, but Sandy points to the potential for more years of playfulness and snuggles from grandchildren, a phenomenon about which all the grandparents I know rave with incredible joy. One God-authored surprise written into the code of healthy multigenerational family life is that there’s a niche delight in the grandparent-grandchild relationship. Maybe third-generation snuggles are a gift all their own.

Continuing in the Faith

“Secondly, the stage you’re in now is very dear and precious, but you’ll find that the next stage (although you look back fondly on this one) is even more dear to you,” Sandy wrote. “With deep satisfaction you’ll begin to see clearly the difference it makes to have been reared an Echols in the way they approach temptation and peer pressure. You will enjoy counseling and encouraging them and learning from them.”

Trading in the snuggles of the younger years for counseling young adults seemed like a hard sell when I first read Sandy’s words. But now, as three of my five children are in their teen and young-adult years, I’m beginning to sense that deep satisfaction Sandy mentioned.

Second Timothy 3:14–15 says, “Continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” As parents, we have the privilege of teaching our children the gospel and acquainting them with the Scriptures, trusting the Lord to make them wise for salvation.

Maybe third-generation snuggles are a gift all their own.

When our children leave our homes, Lord willing, we have the blessing of seeing them continue in what we’ve taught them, working out their own salvation even as we continue to work out ours. Paul encourages Timothy to remember how his mother and grandmother nurtured him in the faith, “knowing from whom [he] learned it.”

We can model this by showing gratitude for those who taught us the faith, and we hope our children will do the same. Our efforts to point our children to Jesus throughout childhood can create a sweet connection that carries into adulthood.

Siblings for Eternity

“Thirdly, we must always remember that we are our children’s servants—to the point that we will lay down our lives for them,” Sandy wrote. He continued,

It is our task, as we pass off the scene, to push them forward to be the most faithful servants of the Lord they can be. And we know that the great Family Reunion still awaits us in glory, where our joy will be unspeakably glorious, and our children, as brother and sister saints, will always be grateful for their Christian parents.

Sandy’s vision of the Christian family reminds me there’s a deeper joy in parenting than sweet snuggles with toddlers and shared laughter with teenagers. We have the hope of heaven and the unspeakable joy of spending eternity with our children who are in Christ.

Even now, Jesus is creating a place for us all to feast and live together as a family—his family. John 14:1–3 says,

Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

There’s perhaps no greater comfort as I leave my son in his new dorm that I’ve worked so hard to prepare than looking ahead to the heavenly room Jesus is preparing for him even now. Not only that, but Jesus is putting together a room for me too.

As siblings with one another and with Christ, my son and I will experience familial joys the likes of which this earth has never seen. Truly, the Lord will wipe every last tear from my eyes—even the ones with exceptionally high salt content.

They talk about how to resist a victim mentality by getting your eyes off yourself. They commend overlooking and absorbing offenses when possible. They discuss why we must boldly hold to Christian doctrines that the world finds offensive, but that it’s possible to hold and even articulate offensive views in a way that communicates love and grace.

Related Resources: 

• How to Find Peace When You Feel Offended
• We’re Hurt, and Healed, in Community
• Recognizing Our Own Marks of Righteousness

Discussion Questions:

However, Doyle’s new book The End of Woke: How the Culture War Went Too Far and What to Expect from the Counter-Revolution takes a different approach, offering an erudite and thoughtful reflection on the urgent need to defend liberal democracy from all forms of authoritarianism, whether woke or anti-woke.

Having received his doctorate from Oxford in early Renaissance poetry, Doyle is deeply conversant with the academic theories that morphed into the cultural phenomenon known today as “wokeness.” Likewise, he’s aware that the term “woke” is fraught, variously interpreted as a misappropriated piece of black vernacular, a progressive badge of honor, or an empty right-wing pejorative.

At one point, he offers a careful, 238-word definition of “woke,” tying it to Marxist and postmodernist frameworks. His definition asserts that “knowledge [is] a construct of power,” that all social analysis must center “group identity,” that “‘lived experience’…must take precedence over empirical or scientific methodology,” and that we need “a cultural revolution [to yield] equality of outcome” (53).

What Doyle adds is a distinctive emphasis on authoritarianism as a key feature of wokeness. It’s this deeply illiberal or even anti-liberal impulse that Doyle finds particularly repugnant.

Danger of Authoritarianism

While even the most casual cultural observer is probably familiar with particularly egregious eruptions of wokeness over the last decade, Doyle reveals just how widespread woke authoritarianism is.

For example, a 2023 Newsweek poll found that 44 percent of young adults “believe that ‘misgendering’ should result in criminal prosecution” (24). In the United Kingdom, the College of Policing introduced the category of “non-crime hate incident,” which was applied to more than 13,200 incidents in the course of a year, including examples such as a Bedfordshire man “whistling the tune from Bob the Builder” and “a man saying that he was campaigning for Brexit” (214).

Due to the incursions of queer theory, male rapists in Scotland were housed in women’s prisons, and government-funded sociologists in the United Kingdom argued that “mothers who identified as male should continue to take testosterone during pregnancy because their sense of gender identity ought to be prioritised over ‘normal foetal outcomes’ [i.e., a healthy baby]” (295). Doyle argues that wokeness happens when the poisonous ideas of critical theory aren’t merely believed privately but imposed publicly.

Although wokeness is primarily associated with the left, Doyle also warns against a reactionary backlash sometimes identified as the “woke right.” This movement is marked by many of the same attributes as the woke left: “group identity,” “the politics of resentment,” “anti-liberalism,” “anti-Semitism,” and “purity spirals” (58–60). But most of all, it too is authoritarian. According to Doyle, authoritarianism is not a problem limited to one side of the political aisle; it’s a perennial temptation that every human society must conquer.

Liberalism as the Solution

Of the individual freedoms that Doyle wants to preserve, freedom of speech is near the top of his list, not only because he’s a comedian but because he sees it as in some sense foundational to our other freedoms. If we aren’t free to criticize the powerful, reform is impossible.

Democracy is likewise a safeguard against tyranny. Any ruler elected democratically can be deposed democratically. Finally, Doyle believes that open debate is the best method we have for discovering truth. Error and tyranny fear public scrutiny, which is why the woke era was marked by cancellation and “no platforming.”

If we aren’t free to criticize the powerful, reform is impossible.

Although he recognizes that the proper definition of “liberalism” is contested and has evolved, Doyle argues it’s best understood as a kind of proceduralism. It attempts to find a way for “human beings with incompatible goals and incommensurable values . . . to live together” without dictating which goals and values are correct (107). In this sense, it’s “not an ideology, but the absence of an ideology”; it doesn’t prescribe what’s true but rather sustains the social conditions in which truth is best discovered (119).

Planted in Midair

Despite his compelling case for liberal values, Doyle struggles to articulate their basis. To his great credit, he recognizes this problem. In the epilogue, he asks, Why, after all, do we believe that “human freedom is paramount”? Is this preference a matter of “sheerest pragmatism” and “self-interest”? Or is it an “essentially religious impulse” that “[conveys] a faith in the divine” (448–49)?

While he insists he’s comfortable defending liberalism solely on the grounds that life without it would be intolerable, these questions reveal a fundamental paradox or inconsistency at the heart of liberalism.

For example, liberalism claims to be nonideological but assumes a priori that a whole suite of liberal values such as freedom of speech and freedom of religion shouldn’t be transgressed. Doyle recognizes that not all people share such values; throughout the book, he points out that many Muslims reject them. Yet only if liberal values are actually true and good can someone argue that the Muslim convert ought to forswear illiberal values in favor of liberal ones.

Abortion is another obvious sticking point, because its legality depends on irreducibly ideological questions like “Which human beings have rights?” and “Whose rights should we prioritize?” The fact that both sides appeal to philosophical and religious arguments makes the problem even worse. Liberalism attempts to avoid such questions yet nonetheless enacts policies that depend on the answers it denies having.

Liberalism and Christianity

A partial answer to these paradoxes comes from examining the history of modern liberalism, which arose within societies steeped in a Christian vision of reality.

The poet John Milton is one of several Christians whom Doyle recognizes as part of the liberal tradition due to his exaltation of freedom. Yet, as Doyle notes, Milton’s commitment to liberty, free speech, and meritocracy was rooted in, and constrained by, his Christian beliefs.

Likewise, Doyle praises Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” for “propos[ing] a wholly liberal methodology to tackle [unjust laws]” (107). However, King’s letter explicitly grounds his understanding of just versus unjust laws in the Christian natural-law tradition of Aquinas and Augustine.

Liberalism attempts to avoid such questions yet nonetheless enacts policies that depend on the answers it denies having.

As it turns out, Western secular liberalism isn’t and never has been wholly secular. It grew out of the world that Christianity made possible. Only when Christian—and especially Protestant—theological beliefs about the inherent dignity of human beings, liberty of conscience, social responsibility, and equality before the law were widespread could “secular” liberalism arise.

This realization may be difficult for secular liberals to come to terms with. They’ll have to admit that a nonideological, “view from nowhere” liberalism is a hopeless contradiction. The postliberals are right, at least on this point. An appeal to procedural liberalism as the best way to find peaceful compromise can be met with questions like these: Why should I value peaceful compromise? And why not seek to impose my true and righteous views on other people?

Ultimately, we can’t avoid questions of truth. If Islam is true, then it makes sense for fundamentalist Muslims to desire a caliphate and to silence all dissent. If postmodernism is true, then we should decolonize math curricula and eviscerate free-speech laws. And if Christianity is true, we have a basis for the liberal principles that Doyle so highly esteems.

The crucial question is whether Christianity is true. The End of Woke reminds us we should be grateful to live in a society that still allows us to ask it.

As evangelicals, we’d answer by confessing that the Scriptures have both human authors and a divine author. Scripture reflects its human authors’ contexts and personalities, but the Bible’s words are also from God, because the holy prophets and apostles were taught by the Holy Spirit. This evangelical confession is right and true, but it’s not how Bonhoeffer resolves his question.

When answering how the Psalms can both be from God and directed to him, Bonhoeffer doesn’t appeal to the doctrine of Scripture. Instead, he turns to the New Testament. He finds there that Jesus Christ, the God-man, prays the psalms. So Bonhoeffer writes, “In [Jesus’s] mouth, the word of a man becomes the Word of God, and if we pray his prayer with him, the Word of God becomes again the word of man.”

Bonhoeffer wasn’t an evangelical; his words don’t reflect a biblical doctrine of inspiration. I wish he’d written “the word of man is the Word of God” instead of “becomes the Word of God,” but though I disagree with Bonhoeffer’s view of Scripture, I still think there’s beauty in his answer.

Bonhoeffer reminds us that the psalms aren’t only divinely inspired Israelite prayers. They’re also Jesus’s prayers. When we see how the psalms are used in the New Testament, we gain confidence that every type of psalm belongs to him.

Seven Types of Psalms

The New Testament quotes the Psalms more often than any other Old Testament book. When we look at which psalms are quoted, we discover that the New Testament authors appeal to every type. Tremper Longman III identifies seven types, or genres, of psalms. Let’s review them and consider how they relate to Jesus.

Historical, Kingship, and Wisdom Psalms

The first three psalm types trace the contours of Israel’s past and celebrate the Davidic covenant as the crown of that history’s arc.

(1) Historical psalms (e.g., Pss. 78; 89; 105; 106; 132; 135; 136) retell the story of God’s past acts of redemption. Often, these songs recount the exodus, how God gave the law to Moses, or how God established David’s kingdom. Psalm 78, for example, begins with God giving the law and calling the Israelites to teach it to the coming generations (vv. 5–8). The psalm ends with how God chose David, taking him from the sheepfolds so he might shepherd Israel with an upright heart and skillful hand (vv. 70–72; see 2 Sam. 7:8; 1 Chron. 17:7).

Bonhoeffer reminds us that the psalms aren’t only divinely inspired Israelite prayers. They’re also Jesus’s prayers.

(2) Kingship psalms (e.g., Pss. 2; 20; 21; 22; 69; 110) celebrate either Israel’s human king, God as King of the whole earth, or the future messianic King. One famous kingship psalm is Psalm 2. It admonishes other earthly kings to honor Israel’s throne. Though the passage refers to David in its original context, Paul quotes this psalm in his sermon at Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:33) to demonstrate how Jesus comes as the fulfillment of biblical history. Jesus is the Son whom the kingship psalms celebrate and promise. God has proven this by raising Jesus from the dead (v. 34).

(3) Wisdom psalms (e.g., Pss. 1; 8; 19; 45; 119; 127), like the Bible’s wisdom books, reveal God’s will for everyday life. Psalm 45 reads like Song of Solomon; it’s a wisdom song about the joys of marriage. Psalm 127 teaches the singer to rely on God to establish his household. Some of the most notable wisdom psalms celebrate God’s good creation (Pss. 8; 19:1–6; 29) and law (Pss. 1; 19:7–14; 119). The New Testament shows us Jesus is the One greater than Solomon (Matt. 12:42). He’s the firstborn of creation and the law’s fulfillment. He’s the One “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3).

Psalms of Lament

The psalmist lifts (4) lament psalms (e.g., Pss. 13; 31; 35; 41; 44; 54; 55; 61; 74; 79; 86; 88; 102; 105) when he has nowhere to turn but to God. As Longman observes, these cries of great emotional distress raise complaints about three issues. Sometimes the psalmist is troubled by himself. In Psalm 51, for example, David confesses his guilt and sin. Other times, the psalmist is troubled by his enemies, so he asks God to provide rescue by judging and cursing them (see Ps. 137).

Still other times, the psalmist is troubled by the Lord. The psalmist’s life is so dark that he cries out, “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” (13:1). Perhaps the darkest example from this lament category is Psalm 88: “Your wrath sweeps over me. . . . You have distanced loved one and neighbor from me; darkness is my only friend” (vv. 16–18, CSB). Around 40 percent of the psalms contain laments of one of these three types, and what Bonhoeffer wrote about them is profound.

Bonhoeffer attended a prominent black Baptist church in Harlem during seminary, then he returned to Germany, where his covert work against the Nazis began. In both contexts, Bonhoeffer grew familiar with large-scale injustice and the songs of lament that rise against it. Yet in 1940, he wrote, “No individual can repeat the lamentation Psalms out of his own experience; it is the distress of the entire Christian community at all times, as only Jesus Christ has experienced it entirely alone.”

For Bonhoeffer, no one has fully experienced the pain the laments describe except Jesus. In the upper room, for example, knowing one of his disciples was now his enemy, Jesus quoted the lament in Psalm 41: “Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me” (v. 9; see John 13:18). And while our sinless Savior didn’t have a personal need to pray laments of confession, he bore our sins on the cross and there cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1; Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34).

When we see Jesus’s full experience of suffering, we learn that the laments weren’t meant to send us spiraling into despair. Instead, God invites us to pour out our complaints to him. And because we know Jesus prays with us, we can have hope and give thanks amid our pain (e.g., Ps. 18:16; 56:12).

Psalms of Thanksgiving, Confidence, and Praise

(5) Thanksgiving psalms (e.g., Pss. 30; 32; 34; 100) express gratitude to the Lord for his character, good gifts, and answered prayers. In Psalm 100, for instance, Longman observes, “The psalmist bursts at the seams in gratitude to God. How much more should we be thankful to God for providing his Son as a sacrifice to atone for our sins.”

(6) Psalms of confidence and trust (e.g., Pss. 11; 16; 23; 27; 46; 62; 91; 121; 125; 131) express faith in God because of his goodness and power. These psalms contain striking metaphors. God is our refuge and strength (11:1; 16:1; 46:1), our shepherd (23:1), light (27:1), rock (62:2), and help (121:2). From the New Testament, we know Jesus is the object of our faith. He is our sure foundation. With the New Testament authors, believers can pray psalms of confidence with faith that nothing can separate them from God’s love in Christ (Rom. 8:38–39).

When we see Jesus’s full experience of suffering, we learn that the laments weren’t meant to send us spiraling into despair.

(7) Finally, hymns (e.g., Pss. 41; 72; 89; 106; 146–150) are easily recognized by their exuberant praise. There are many hymns in the Psalter, but as Longman says, they all share a basic structure.

Hymns begin with a call to worship, frequently opening with the simple command to “praise the LORD,” which in Hebrew is Hallelujah! After this call, hymns continue by expounding the reasons God should be praised. They often conclude with further calls to praise.

Jesus Prays with Us

I’ve listed hymns last, because praise is the direction the Psalms points. If you’ve read straight through the Psalter, you’ve noticed that it’s divided into five books. Jeremy Linneman notes that “the order of these books and the nature of how each one ends provides a powerful clue to [the direction of our] prayer.”

The first four books each end with a hallelujah hymn (Pss. 41; 72; 89; 106), and the fifth book ends with five hallelujah hymns (Pss. 146–150). After all our remembrance of God’s work through history, our painful laments, and our expressions of thanksgiving and faith, ultimately everything turns to praise.

Jesus sings these praises too. When the author of Hebrews wanted to show how the incarnate Son identified with his people, he turned to Psalm 22. In this lament, King David promises that after the Lord delivers him from his enemies, he’ll boast of God’s greatness in the assembly. He says, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise” (v. 22).

Hebrews puts those words in Jesus’s mouth (2:12). Having adopted us into his family, the God-man now meets with us when we gather. His Spirit is present with us, and he inhabits our praise. With the psalms on our lips, we confidently lift up prayers that are both our words and his.

But it’s not writing.

Even when it’s created at the behest of a human’s creative prompt and detailed parameters, and even when it’s just assisting a human who has real writing chops, AI-fashioned content doesn’t deserve to be called writing.

Writing is an art form and a labor of love (love is something AI cannot do).

Writing is a product of deeply human, necessarily inefficient processing, meandering, wrestling, noodling, cogitating, and often suffering (suffering is something AI cannot do).

For Christians, writing is a holy calling and an act of worship (worship is something AI cannot do).

I love reading. I’m a book nerd and a sucker for great writing. But I have zero interest in AI-made “writing.” And no matter how good AI “writing” gets in the future, I will never have interest in it—for the same reason that AI-made music (however catchy or beautiful on the surface) gives me the ick. Those who claim we will “learn to love AI writing” are simply wrong.

For Christians, writing is a holy calling and an act of worship (worship is something AI cannot do).

I suspect only robots are interested in reading robot-rendered word dumps. With my limited time—and I’m guessing you feel the same, if you’re still reading this—I want to give my attention to words formed in another human soul, a being made in the image of God. And as an author, editor, and publisher, I want to promote only the work of human writers.

That’s why I’m proud that The Gospel Coalition has drawn a line in the sand on AI usage in the writing we publish. In short: We don’t want AI’s tentacles on any of the written works we publish. We want our audience to trust that what they get at TGC is human-made, human-edited, human-assessed, made in human community for other humans—as an act of love, fellowship, and worship.

TGC’s AI Policy for Our Writers

Our editorial team recently finalized an “AI Guidelines for TGC Submissions” document, which we’ll share with our writers (you can read it in its entirety below). The document begins by stating that at TGC, “we hold the human element of the writing process in high regard, with a low view of AI.” The document also states,

At TGC we emphasize the human element working under and for God. Our editors want to help make your writing better. We want to see your ideas and your writing, warts and all, and want to make your writing better through the art of editing and the work of revising.

Our official internal editorial policy states, in part, about AI:

All written content on TGC should be the original work of its author. Writers should not use AI for

• ideating,
• researching beyond a basic fact search,
• organizing,
• writing,
• or editing beyond a basic spelling check.

As editors, we developed this policy both to honor our readers—whom we want to trust the integrity of our content—and to honor our writers, so they’ll be clear that we only publish human-crafted work.

We’re not looking for perfect writing. We’re not looking for meticulously organized information full of suspiciously pithy one-liners or vague examples that don’t feel like they originated in a human’s real life.

We’re looking for writing that comes from a human heart, born out of real passion, nagging questions, persistent burdens; writing characterized by human affection more than perfectly calibrated linguistic inflection. We delight in the hallmarks of truly human writing: a bit messy, unexpected in the way real life always is, somewhat scattered and less efficient than machine-rendered words—yet pulsating with life.

We delight in the hallmarks of truly human writing: a bit messy, unexpected in the way real life always is, somewhat scattered and less efficient than machine-rendered words—yet pulsating with life.

In some ways, AI writers would be easier, less risky. We editors wouldn’t have to worry about AI writers ever changing their mind or renouncing their faith or committing grave sin. But we relate to our human writers precisely because they have the potential to do those things. They’re like us. We share in the struggle of faith.

We’re also not looking for writing that’s been AI-edited. It’ll be increasingly tempting to run everything we write—from emails to blog posts to Instagram captions to birthday card messages—through AI, prompting Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT to improve on our first draft. But in my experience, AI’s editing “help” tends to veer into rewriting, sucking the life out of my imperfect voice in the process.

Using an AI editor also removes the need for writing in community. This is why, in our AI Guidelines document, we say, “For editing help, we encourage you to ask a human—maybe a well-read friend, a fellow writer, or an English-teacher church member.”

My colleague and TGC’s managing editor, Megan Hill, put it well in a recent email thread among our editors:

As we write, we absolutely need dialogue partners to find “holes” in our logic. But, with AI, it’s now possible to write a piece in complete isolation. Even if you didn’t use AI to generate or create anything, you’ve still lost something important by cutting out the (sometimes painful) process of receiving human feedback.

Human feedback is costly. It requires time and energy from both parties. It requires vulnerability to show another human your drafts. But we want our writers to care enough about their pieces for it to cost them (and others) something to produce.

We want the writing and editing of TGC articles to remain a distinctly human endeavor, where the goal isn’t impersonal content but human community and connection.

You, our readers, are part of this community too. As you read a TGC article, we want you to know it comes from a named brother or sister in Christ, not a well-trained-but-inhuman LLM. We want you to read words as an act of fellowship with a fellow sojourner on the pilgrim path—someone you might one day meet at a conference, in a cohort, or over Zoom (as I did earlier today with a dear brother whose articles I’ve edited for TGC).

We’re pivoting in our editorial strategy to ensure a more human, personal experience of what we publish:

• Audio versions of articles, also released as TGC podcast episodes, so you can hear the actual human voice reading the article he or she wrote
• A soon-to-launch columnists section of our website, where readers can find new work from familiar voices they come to know and trust
• Increased experimentation in video essays, narrative podcasts, and other multimedia formats where ideas come from authentic human faces and voices, not just words on a screen
• A forthcoming AI policy guide resource for churches that helps pastors and leaders navigate wise use of AI in ministry

In these and other ways, we want to lean into the often inefficient, hard work of serving the church by producing resources by humans for humans.

Betting on the Future Value of Exclusively Human Writing

Some might argue that organizations like TGC will “fall behind” or become irrelevant by taking a hard-line stance against AI usage in writing. We hope the opposite will be true.

As AI-rendered words flood the internet and written content becomes cheaper and cheaper, most “writing” will be low-value and not worth anyone’s time. What will be worth human readers’ time will be the distinctly human words protected from the dead-eyed, neutering effects of AI.

Think about a Joe Rogan–style podcast that featured two AI “hosts” discussing some topic, or a YouTube video featuring AI deepfakes in conversation. Do you think audiences will ever have real interest in giving their valuable attention to watching or listening to AI simulations? If not, why would audiences have any interest in reading articles or books that are just AI simulations?

Christ’s incarnation is instructive here. God didn’t reveal himself in a conceptual, virtual, zeros-and-ones sort of way. He took on flesh. Embodiment matters. The medium of his body is the message. That’s why disembodied AI simulations don’t resonate. We’re wired for relationships with other embodied humans, made in God’s image like us.

I can never look Claude in the face like I can a friend sitting across the table from me, seeing fiery passion or glassy lament in his eyes as he shares something from his heart. I can only receive disembodied information and practical aid from Claude. Claude and I can’t commune in the way I can with a human. AI “companions” are a deadly wrong deception.

Claude and I can’t commune in the way I can with a human. AI ‘companions’ are a deadly wrong deception.

At TGC, we aren’t against all uses of AI. Some TGC staffers use AI in various targeted capacities in their work, and many of us (including me) use LLMs like Claude or ChatGPT regularly in everyday life. It can be helpful in all sorts of arenas, from quickly coding websites and cleaning up spreadsheets to offering restaurant recommendations for specific tastes (though in each of these cases, asking a human friend with expertise in that area might be more rewarding).

My wife and I even used Claude recently to create a schedule for “solid starts” foods to introduce to our seven-month-old. It was helpful as a beefed-up search engine, consolidating and summarizing available information in a way that saved us hours of online sleuthing. Inevitably, individuals and churches are discovering all manner of ways to leverage AI.

Deployed in the right directions, AI can be a blessing.

What we’re opposed to is the use of AI in creative intellectual work—like writing—where the cognitive off-loading AI provides undermines the whole endeavor, both in the short-term and (especially) in the long. The “humanities” will cease to exist if we start to outsource them to machines. The appetite and ability to read and write will atrophy the more we farm them out to AI.

People of the Book Need to Be Able to Read

Our stance isn’t just strategic for TGC. It’s crucial for the broader Christian mission. One real risk of a world where AI writes everything is that human literacy will plummet (a process already in motion). And for “people of the Book” like Christians, this is a crisis. Our ability to know, remember, and interact with God’s revealed Word depends on our ability (and desire) to read.

In his introduction to a new AI book TGC is publishing this September, TGC editor in chief Collin Hansen mentions a memorable scene in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 where a woman refuses to leave her book collection even as her house burns. Hansen connects this dystopian story to our present technological moment:

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. . . . 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.

I agree. The digital publishing industry may indeed be a burning-down house. But we hope TGC’s staunch commitment to human-made work will fortify us against the encroaching flames—not for our own survival but for the sake of the future church who will need trustworthy resources, rooted in the ancient gospel, more than ever.

In The Wisdom of Sleep: How Rest Reveals God’s Truth and Revives Weary Souls, Brett McCracken, senior editor and director of communications at The Gospel Coalition, offers readers a similar pair of lenses to see something as ordinary and familiar as sleep with depth and discernment.

While reading an entire book on sleep might sound like a sleep aid to some, McCracken’s approach helps us to see sleep as interesting, invigorating, and even awe-inducing. Peering through the two lenses of general and special revelation and thus practicing “creational theology,” McCracken invites readers to ponder sleep through “God’s Word and God’s world, . . . a powerful interpretative combo for making sense of things” (8).

Seen through these spy goggles, sleep takes on a whole new topography—biological limitations are seen as features rather than flaws, and dreams have new depth. The more we peer into the perplexities of sleep, the better we’re postured to worship the God who both created and enables it.

Loving Limitations

In a cultural moment that proliferates the twin illusions of limitlessness and control, sleep is a biologically installed governor, keeping our pride and penchant for busyness in check.

Sleep is a biologically installed governor, keeping our pride and penchant to busyness in check.

According to McCracken, believers should “be the first to reject digital life’s illusion of disembodied limitlessness.” However, we’re often susceptible to “secular tenets such as unbridled freedom, bodily autonomy, and a ‘no sleep until I’m dead’ obsession with achievement” (18).

Sleep stops the charade as our creaturely need for cessation levels the playing field—and all our attempts to create modern-day towers of Babel. But God’s good design for sleep goes even further: It models the very shape of the gospel. As McCracken argues,

God made us so that one-third of our lives is spent doing nothing but lying flat, eyes closed, unproductive, and passively receiving the gift of replenishing repose. He designed us so that daily we assume a physical state that bears unmistakable resemblance to death, only to “resurrect” hours later feeling miraculously energized and enlivened. In our sleep-wake cycle we enact nothing less than the gospel arc itself: not just life after death but life from death. (7)

In a me-centric culture, habits of healthy rest offer more than a glow-up. Sleep isn’t just good for us. It helps us love our neighbor. Protecting bedtimes and honoring others’ limitations can become “a ministry of spreading rest that glorifies the God of rest” (78).

The consumer market offers sleep hacks. The scientific community uncovers the biological brilliance behind sleep. Meanwhile, at the back of sleep, believers see their Savior. Even those who struggle to slumber—every good gift has been corrupted by the fall—have a chance to cling to God’s promise to give his beloved sleep (Ps. 127:2).

Deep Dreams

Beyond rest, sleep also gives us opportunities to dream, something that has fascinated the human mind for millennia. Neuroscientists are barely beginning to understand the whys and wherefores of what happens in our skulls while we snore.

Some scientists posit that “the dreaming brain is sorting through cognitive inputs, trying to discern what to absorb and what to discard” (53). Others claim a more creative cause for dreaming, likening it to “a creative workspace” in which “ideas can percolate, possibilities emerge, connections can be forged, and rough sketches can be attempted” (55). Some scientists take the angle that dreaming is a time for “mental mapping and future-priming exploration of possibilities”—the mind’s chance to play out different potentials with low risk at a time of low consciousness (57).

In a me-centric culture, habits of healthy rest offer more than a glow up. Sleep isn’t just good for us. It helps us love our neighbor.

No matter how you slice it, we should stand in awe of all that God freighted into humanity’s nonwaking hours. The Scriptures are replete with examples of God using dreams to steer, convict, and instruct. We ought not to be surprised that a limitless, boundless Creator equips his image-bearers with minds capable of such depth when dozing. Even dreams in which we act unbecomingly can be used as pointers to the depths of God’s grace—they remind us of our need for the gospel.

Whether Waking or Sleeping

Sleeping is one thing, but learning to rest with our eyes open is another. Thankfully, God has given his people patterns of rest that extend beyond our beds.

In physical sleep, our bodies lie prone; in Sabbath, our souls learn to live in the same posture. McCracken observes, “The heart of Sabbath is remembrance and receptivity of God’s provision, a conscious letting go of our anxious urge to control, hoard, acquire, nervously scroll or swipe” (89).

Our culture prioritizes optimization and often presents rest as a key to productivity. McCracken challenges that approach, asking, “What if sleep, rest, and Sabbath are gifts meant to mold us to the contours of grace, rather than hacks for our wellness or rewards for our striving?” (136).

Behind the Sabbath is the God who spoke both time and matter into existence. “God is perfectly at rest in himself. He needs no object of love beyond himself,” observes McCracken. “Yet as an utterly free act, he created us for his glory, and we glorify him by entering his rest” (106). We can trust in the God who upholds everything as we seem to do nothing (Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3).

By running our lives along the grain of God’s good design for work and rest, waking and sleeping, rather than against it, we show off the beauty of his design. We don’t need spy goggles to understand God’s grace, but sometimes we may need a sleep mask. The Wisdom of Sleep reminds us that rest—whether waking or sleeping—is an act of worship.

Few works have captured the imagination like The Iliad and The Odyssey. The timeless story of The Odyssey has been repackaged for a modern audience in Christopher Nolan’s recent movie. His retelling is at its best when it’s faithful to Homer’s classic and veers off course with its modern additions. Picking up the book is well worth it. First-time readers may appreciate Emily Wilson’s fast-paced and readable translation, or take their time in the more poetic translation by Robert Fitzgerald. But what makes Homer’s epic poem a classic cornerstone of Western literature?

Odysseus is presented as a complex mystery. He’s the genius behind the triumph over Troy. The glory of the victory falls to his ingenuity and cleverness. And yet, The Odyssey opens with him far from home, broken and enslaved, while his wife’s suitors pilfer his home.

Homer’s Odyssey stands the test of time because it recognizes the enigma—the mystery—of humanity’s glory and misery. The phrase “Tell me about a complicated man” resounds through history. Retellings of Odysseus’s story keep coming because every generation wrestles with the same question about the complexity of being human.

Glory and the Misery

In the ancient Greek worldview, fame and glory were desired above all else. The Iliad displays the drive to accomplish glorious exploits in battle and earn fame and recognition. Heroic deeds were viewed as the way to achieve a type of immortal life—forever remembered in the songs of poets and hearts of people.

Odysseus earned this glory and honor. His fame, he claims, “extends to high heaven.” The poets and musicians sing his praise. He earned the glory the Greeks prize.

Ironically, though, nearly every time Odysseus’s praise is sung in The Odyssey, it ends in tears and grief. His wife, Penelope, cries out to stop these songs of Odysseus’s fame because they break her heart. His glorious fame, after all, came at the cost of losing his family and home.

But it isn’t only Odysseus’s wife who responds to the songs of his glory with tears. Odysseus himself comes to know the shallow folly of the “glory” he earned. The price is severe: unrelenting suffering for 19 years.

In The Odyssey, even those who obtained the most glory in The Iliad are now languishing in the underworld. One of these dead heroes laments that he would exchange the glory he’d earned to simply be a living servant. This glory is hollow and means little in light of the present misery.

Getting Glory Wrong

Homer taps into the human longing for glory and the fact that, left to our own devices, we misunderstand this glory. Longing for glory is part of what it means to be human. We have eternity etched on our hearts (Eccl. 3:11). We long for eternal glory to bask in. But this glory isn’t our own, and we aren’t allowed to define it. The history of humanity is a history of misidentifying the glory we hunger for—and how to achieve it.

When we exchange the glory of the eternal God for our fame and accomplishments, we’re always left in misery and suffering, even when we achieve the glory.

When we exchange the glory of the eternal God for our fame and accomplishments, we’re always left in misery and suffering, even when we achieve the glory.

The Odyssey asks the right questions about humanity: What is this complicated being? How do we face suffering and survive? What is the key to the good life?

It even presents a partially right answer: True glory isn’t found in war or achievements; it’s found in the joy of home. Odysseus isn’t complete until he wins back his wife and son, accepts the good limitations of home, and gives up fighting. Satisfaction is found in a faithful marriage and family.

Nolan’s Odyssey affirms this but adds the message of overcoming past trauma and living in hope for the future: “Give up the fight, give up control, and live.”

God’s Definition of Glory

This presentation of the good life, though, is incomplete. Homer’s vision falls short of the glory God has designed humans for. So does Nolan’s. The biblical concept of man’s glory is far different from the ancient Greeks’ and its modern retelling.

The Bible tells us about a complicated man—Jesus Christ—who ventures far from the splendors of heaven (Phil. 2:1–11). The God-man doesn’t journey as One who wanders and is lost. He comes to seek and save lost, complicated humanity (Luke 19:10).

The biblical concept of man’s glory is far different from the ancient Greeks’ and its modern retelling.

As one of the church fathers says, “The glory of God is a living man.” God’s glory is this man: Jesus Christ. In Jesus, humanity’s glory and misery collide and find their resolution. Our glory and satisfaction in life can only be found in knowing him. Our hunger for glory and satisfaction is ultimately a hunger for God himself.

The Odyssey recognizes what Herman Bavinck calls the “greatness and miserableness of man.” But Homer cannot resolve this complexity as God does in his Word. As Bavinck reminds us: “The Scriptures know of both, and they shed their light over man and over mankind; and the contradictions are reconciled, the mists are cleared, and the hidden things are revealed. Man is an enigma whose solution can only be found in God.”

Odysseus was an enigma, a complicated man who raised questions about life. The ancient poets and modern filmmakers can only pose these questions and give half answers. But God speaks over us the path and promise of living in the “freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21).

That question sits at the heart of this Silicon Spiritualities episode with Brett McCracken, senior editor at The Gospel Coalition and a perceptive writer on faith, media, technology, and culture. In our conversation, he helps us see that AI threatens not only jobs or industries but also something deeper: our sense that the process of making, wrestling, waiting, and learning might actually matter. Great art, he argues, is never just about the polished final product. It’s also about praise, patience, formation, and the personal gift one human being offers to another.

We talk about why wisdom is more than information; why AI can imitate emotion without sharing in human suffering; and why boredom, solitude, and even daydreaming may be among the most important human habits to protect in an age of constant optimization. Brett also reflects on the attention economy and the subtle ways our desires are being shaped by technologies designed to keep us looking, clicking, and consuming.

Resources Mentioned:

• The Wisdom Pyramid by Brett McCracken
• Scrolling Ourselves to Death by Brett McCracken and Ivan Mesa
• Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
• The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
• Resonance by Hartmut Rosa
• The Extinction of Experience by Christine Rosen
• On the Death of Daydreaming by Christine Rosen
• The Wisdom of Sleep by Brett McCracken

REGISTER for our six-week cohort, Get Ready for the Age of AI, where you’ll get an exclusive, early, free copy of the book The AI Apocalypse, featuring Watkin, McCracken, and many others, such as Ben Sasse and Alan Noble.

PREORDER The AI Apocalypse: A Survival Guide for Humanity.

JOIN the conversation on Discord, along with other Silicon Spiritualities listeners.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Donate today.

It turns out Charles’s father, John Spurgeon, a shopkeeper, was imprisoned at Chelmsford Gaol on January 30, 1837, for failing to pay his creditors. Charles would’ve been just 2 years old at the time, and it looks like the cot he slept in as a baby was among the items sold to pay off the debt. Prisons at the time were grim, and to be imprisoned for debt was humiliating. We can only imagine the enormous stress this must have put on the family.

It’s also worth saying that John may have simply been unfortunate. It was shockingly easy to get into financial difficulty in Victorian England.

Geoff Chang has helpfully shown the historical relevance of this finding. It explains why Charles was raised by his grandparents from such a young age and why John so sternly warned his son about the dangers of debt—which also explains why Charles repudiated debt. But it’s a devotionally rich finding as well. This unlikely ground zero for the greatest preacher of the 19th century reminds us of wonderful truths.

1. God can work your failure for your child’s good.

John’s failure was a trial but not a disaster for his young son.

Charles was separated from his parents for five years, but in God’s providence this was profoundly formative. He loved his grandparents, and it was with them in Stambourne that he observed up close a male role model who was a preacher, not a shopkeeper. It was here he gained a love for Puritan literature, later returning every summer to devour his grandfather’s library. Charles came to consider it such a formative season that he wrote Memories of Stambourne, his final book, which he was determined to finish despite ill-health.

It’s one thing to trust God’s hand on your own life; it’s a different magnitude altogether to trust God’s hand for your kids. We want to rescue and protect them, and it’s hard not to overfunction in our role.

It’s one thing to trust God’s hand on your own life; I find it’s a different magnitude altogether to trust God’s hand for your kids.

John was a godly man who likely felt the same parental pressure. When his shop went under, he must have felt he’d let his whole family down. Little did he know that what looked like total disaster would, in the end, serve to incubate the calling of one of the world’s greatest preachers.

So it turns out that Romans 8:28 applies to our kids as well as to us. For parents like me who constantly fail, this is an enormous relief.

2. Past failure doesn’t rule out future fruitfulness.

What’s more often overlooked is that John went on to become a fruitful preacher and pastor. His first job out of prison was as a merchant clerk. Over time, he got more involved in local church ministry, eventually becoming pastor of Tollesbury Congregational Church from 1850 to 1863. Under his leadership, the congregation grew from 25 to nearly 500, and his successors had to expand the building.

What a stunning turnaround. This must have been far beyond what John could have possibly imagined for himself all those decades earlier in Chelmsford Gaol. Charles was, in almost every respect, inimitable. But his dad was an ordinary faithful pastor whom God used for fruitful gospel work.

In the end, the Spurgeon family scandal reminds us that even extraordinarily impressive ministries like Charles’s can have grubby, messy roots. And it shows us that God can make ordinary pastors out of prisoners.

God can make ordinary pastors out of prisoners.

Charles, rightly, didn’t see the need to expose his father’s failure in his lifetime, but its coming to light in the modern age helps us trace with joy a new line of the hidden hand of providence: a God who works out all things for the good of those who love him. As Joni Eareckson Tada puts it, “Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves.”

Too often, we expect our growth in Christ to look like an effortless path that guides us toward Christlikeness. We simply become more like Christ every day—right? But to have this growth, we must have the mortification, or killing, of sin, the destruction of the old man (Eph. 4:22). We must die to ourselves to be renewed in holiness (Rom. 8:13). This is the part of sanctification that looks less like peaceful growth and more like barrenness and unloveliness—more like death.

Has your fight against sin ever overwhelmed you, making you wonder if God is working in you? Has your grief over sin ever led you to despair or discouragement? I’ve been there too. Sanctification is a costly battle.

As 19th-century Anglican bishop J. C. Ryle teaches us in his classic volume, Holiness, “True Christianity is a struggle, a fight and a warfare. . . . There is no holiness without a warfare.” We must understand that God’s sanctifying work in our lives includes the violence of warfare against sin.

Right Battle

The path to Christlikeness looks less like a meadow and more like the battlefield. Ryle observes, “The true Christian is called to be a soldier, and must behave as such from the day of his conversion to the day of his death.”

Yet we often get distracted by less worthy battles. We believe the problem is “out there”: on internet discussion boards, in our culture, or within others’ hearts. We may even grow embittered toward our Christian brothers and sisters who don’t agree with us. We become critics, easily identifying what’s wrong with them but blind to what’s wrong with us. Yet “they” aren’t our enemy; sin is.

Jesus’s teachings on temptation show us that our battle with sin is a worthy one. He says to his disciples, “If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.” And later, “If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away” (Matt. 18:8–9). I imagine their expressions looked like mine when I read this passage. Cut off what? Tear out what?

The writer of Hebrews echoes Jesus’s teaching: “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Heb. 12:4). These verses show us that sin is a worthy adversary, one we’ll spend our whole lives fighting.

Right Captain

We never fight alone. God provides the best captain amid war: our Savior, Jesus Christ. Jesus fought on the front lines during his earthly ministry, resisting every temptation, waging war against sin, and crucifying the flesh. Because he won the victory against sin and death, he’s able to help us when we’re tempted (2:18).

Jesus’s teachings on temptation show us that our battle with sin is a worthy one.

We look to him as our example and our deliverer. We look to him as the One who leads the charge against sin. As Ryle concludes, “Christ loves His people to lean on Him, to rest in Him, to call on Him, to abide in Him.”

What does killing sin look like when we have Christ our captain’s help? We might not literally cut off a foot, but we might suffer grief over sin and knees bent in repentance. We might not tear out an eye, but we might offer up desperate prayers to God or confess sin to our church family. We might not shed blood, but we might shed tears over the pages of our Bibles. Remembering that our lifetime is short, we don’t let up until sin meets its end, with Christ as our captain.

Worthwhile Scars

Paul writes to the church in Colossians, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you” (Col. 3:5). In Romans, he reminds believers that if we want life, we’re to put sin to death by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:13). We don’t just fight against sin—we go in for the kill.

The extreme terms Scripture uses to describe the battle against sin can feel overwhelming. We might even feel we’re not up to the task or grow weary under the effort. Yet Scripture promises the good news that God’s at work in us, “both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).

Ryle believed that John Bunyan’s most admirable character in The Pilgrim’s Progress was Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, who spends his life fighting sin. In the end, Mr. Valiant-for-Truth declares, “My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought his battles who will now be my Rewarder.”

We don’t just fight against sin—we go in for the kill.

Those who take Jesus’s words seriously will end up with battle wounds and scars. If we spend our lives in war against sin, it will cost us—but oh, the reward! Ryle reminds us about this truth: “May we never forget that without fighting, there can be no holiness while we live, and no crown of glory when we die!” Christlikeness on earth and a crown of glory in heaven are the spoils of war against sin.

This fight doesn’t always feel good. We might grow weary, longing for a break from the flesh’s constant assault. The violence of sanctification might even trick us into thinking God’s not at work in our lives, after all. Yet Ryle encourages, “Where there is grace there will be conflict.”

The battle against sin is a sign that the Spirit is at work within us. And each victory against sin reminds us that the Holy Spirit is reclaiming the barren, bloody battlefield of our hearts, cultivating Christlikeness where our flesh once ruled.

Most of the time, I experience life as an average person. I’m married with two grown and married children. I work, take care of my yard, and serve in my church. My life, in so many ways, looks ordinary.

But then there’s another simple, familiar occurrence: meeting someone for the first time. In those moments, my world becomes unordinary.

It’s obvious why this happens: I talk funny. When I was born, one of my vocal cords and part of my tongue were paralyzed, along with other smaller impairments. By God’s grace, I learned to talk, to function in the world in a way that, for the most part, allows me to blend in.

Yet all my life is lived in this tension: Almost all the time, I’m just another guy. Then, in brief but recurring moments, I’m the guy who talks funny, who’s different, who’s disabled.

So, who am I? How should I understand these two aspects of who I am?

Three Narratives That Call Me

I can struggle to answer these questions because of three competing narratives the world, and often my own heart, continually offers me.

Almost all the time, I’m just another guy. Then, in brief but recurring moments, I’m the guy who talks funny, who’s different, who’s disabled.

The first is deeply appealing: I am an overcomer, the guy with an inspirational story. I get to be the man who wasn’t supposed to walk, talk, or live normally, but somehow did anyway. If I’m honest, that narrative is attractive. Who wouldn’t want to be seen that way?

The second narrative is one I don’t go looking for: I’m a victim. This is the story about myself that emerges when someone doesn’t understand what I’ve said, or looks at me with discomfort. Suddenly, I’m not living a normal life anymore. In those moments, I feel like I’m a person who gets marginalized because of my disability.

The third narrative is newer and, in many ways, more culturally celebrated: I’m someone who celebrates my disability as a source of pride. According to this story, my disability should be centered and elevated. It’s what I should root my identity in. There’s something compelling about this story of myself. It sounds affirming and even meaningful.

Two Worldviews, One Shared Belief

Through her book and other writings, Stephanie O. Hubach has helped me see that these three narratives are anchored in two competing worldviews.

The first, which Hubach labels “the modern view,” says disability is abnormal in an otherwise normal world, that it’s a problem to be fixed or overcome. The second, “postmodern” view swings the other direction entirely, treating disability as little more than a social construct, insisting those with disabilities aren’t different and have no lack at all. The postmodern view either names us victims or tells us our disability should be a source of pride. It says disability should be seen as a “normal part of a normal world.”

The two worldviews (and all three narratives) are both widely accepted in our culture, even though they contradict each other. But though these worldviews compete, they also have a shared belief. Both tie a person’s value to his or her capacity. Reduced capacity—of any kind—usually means reduced value; or if your disability is a source of pride, it could mean increased value.

Capacity, Identity, and Meaninglessness

If there’s a group in our society that consistently bears the weight of being evaluated through the lens of capacity, it’s people with disabilities. They’re significantly more likely to live in poverty and twice as likely to be unemployed, often due to a perception they will be less productive or effective in their roles due to their disability. While 28 percent of U.S. families include a person with a disability, only 15 percent to 20 percent of U.S. evangelical churches have a disability ministry. Beneath these patterns lies a subtle but harmful equation: less capacity means the person is less necessary to the community.

People with disabilities can and do internalize the implications of this philosophy. We inherit the idea that identity must be grounded, at least in part, in something intrinsic to our abilities, experiences, or differences. So we feel pressure to reject our difference, to celebrate it, or somehow to do both at the same time. We encounter an identity crisis.

But this doesn’t help at all. If I root my identity in being an overcomer, it won’t hold because there are still moments when I don’t overcome. Neither am I just a victim, as though God hasn’t been exceedingly gracious to me. And if I root my identity in a form of pride about my disability, that only captures part of who I am.

These narratives aren’t enough. No achievement, experience, choice, or label can bear the weight of my identity. But if that’s the case, what, or who, can?

Rooted Always and Only in Him

Here’s where Hubach offers hopeful truth. Pointing to the biblical storyline, she says that disability is “a normal part of an abnormal world.” Disability is normal in that it should be an expected part of the human experience.

After all, we live in a world under the effects of the fall. Disability is a noticeable form of the hardship common to humanity in a fallen world. A disability’s difficulty arises from both the impairment itself and the sinful ways people can behave toward those with disabilities because they judge them as different from themselves.

But the biblical storyline tells us more. Because of who Christ is and what he’s done in his work of redemption, I can also anchor my sense of self in what Jesus says is true about me in union with him:

• First Corinthians 12:22 arrests me with a seemingly illogical claim, that the parts of the body that I think are weaker—that possess less “capacity”— are actually “necessary” and “indispensable.” Because of this truth, I don’t need to root my identity in my capacity, or lack thereof, but I can instead believe that God created me to be an essential part of the body.
• Ephesians 4:24 goes further, attaching my identity to my image-bearing status. Because Christ restores the moral dimensions of the imago Dei, I now bear God’s image in “true righteousness and holiness.”
• And in Colossians 3:3, Christ provides me even more assurance: I’m “hidden with Christ,” meaning my identity and life are intertwined with his. My future is protected by his work, his grace, and his Spirit.

This isn’t just true for me. It’s true for every believer. Whether you have a disability or not, you aren’t relegated to a temporary identity or one that depends on your context. You get to ground your identity—forever and for good—in him. Why wouldn’t we accept Christ as our identity when he is offered so freely and wipes away the tears, pain, and frustrations that accompany our identity confusion?

Whether you have a disability or not, you aren’t relegated to a temporary identity or one that depends on your context.

When I root my identity in Christ, I resolve the battle that wages within me. When I rest in his finished work, and what he says about me, I’m not partly disabled and mostly normal. I’m not an overcomer or a victim. None of that matters when compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ.

What Christ says about you and me is the most true and loving thing that will or could ever be said. When we choose to accept this gift with a believing heart, the crisis is over. I belong to him, and that’s all the identity I need.

In This Episode

00:01 – Cultural narratives and their influence

02:14 – The power of stories in grief

05:54 – Cultural narratives in modern society

06:27 – Diagnostic questions for self-awareness

18:31 – The tension in modern identity narratives

23:44 – The morality narrative and its contradictions

34:51 – The power narrative and its limitations

46:23 – The Christian story and the completion of narratives

47:54 – The role of beauty in the Christian story

1:03:42 – Practical steps for self-awareness and community

Resources Mentioned:

• The Stories We Live By by Timothy Keller and Michael Keller
• Biblical Critical Theory by Chris Watkin

SIGN UP for one of our newsletters to stay informed about TGC’s latest resources.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Give today.

Don’t miss an episode of The Gospel Coalition Podcast:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
  

This is a question a Christian sister posed to DeepSeek (a generative AI). DeepSeek took only 12 seconds to provide a response of several hundred words, concluding with this:

You can shift your mindset: you’re not a “deserter”; you’re simply “David in the wilderness.” Before returning, you have the right to use this time to quiet yourself before God. Next time someone asks, you can even smile calmly and say, “I’m using this time in the wilderness to work through some lessons God has given me. I’ll be back once I’ve processed them. Please don’t let my absence affect you.”

Responses like this make us wonder, Should we ask AI questions about our spiritual lives? It’s able to provide instant replies, cite Scripture, and even surpass some brothers and sisters—and Christian counselors—with the gentle expression of advice.

But that’s exactly the problem: A tool that appears to understand us and responds quickly can easily lead us to believe we’ve received genuine spiritual help.

We need to understand that God hasn’t called AI to shepherd our souls.

Why Does AI Seem So Helpful?

The appeal of AI is real. It’s always online, requires no appointment, never finds you a nuisance, and never shows signs of impatience. For those who are lonely, are wounded, or have long lacked a listening ear, this sense of immediate presence is tempting.

A tool that appears to understand us and responds quickly can easily lead us to believe we’ve received genuine spiritual help.

Moreover, there are differences between AI systems. Some models are trained with more biblical terminology, theological content, and church-related language, so on the surface they resemble “spiritual conversations” more closely. They’ll address us as “sister” or “brother,” tell us to “commit this matter to the Lord,” provide a prayer, and even remind us to go to church.

So what’s the problem?

Pitfall #1: Absolutizing Feelings

AI excels at quickly picking up on people’s emotions. It might say, “It’s normal to feel this way,” “Your feelings deserve to be acknowledged,” or “The most important thing right now is to take care of yourself.”

These statements aren’t entirely wrong; the Bible doesn’t deny human suffering, the psalms are filled with laments, and the Lord sees those who are hurting. But if a response consistently focuses solely on your feelings, it has strayed from the core of Christian counseling.

We who walk in the way of the cross don’t deny suffering; rather, we view suffering as an integral part of God’s sovereignty and the calling of discipleship. Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). The Bible’s ultimate goal isn’t to make us feel better; instead, it continually leads God’s children toward self-denial and following.

Pitfall #2: Prioritizing Personal Happiness

The default values of modern AI typically align with contemporary human intuition—safety, boundaries, happiness, and autonomy. These concepts are reasonable, but once they become the highest principles, they directly conflict with the biblical concept of obedience.

Misguided AI conversations often go like this: “If this relationship keeps hurting you, you need to prioritize your own happiness. You don’t need to force yourself to stay in a situation that makes you unhappy.”

A biblical relationship of accountability more often asks, “Are you being faithful? Are you pursuing holiness? Are you fulfilling your duty before God? Are you acting in accordance with truth and love?”

Biblical obedience means living within the order established by God, which includes marriage, the church, family, and communal responsibilities. A Christian can become accustomed, when facing major spiritual issues, to thinking, I’ll just ask AI directly so I don’t have to deal with the complexities of relationships with my pastor, congregation, spouse, or elders. This isn’t true freedom—it’s an escape from the environment of obedience established by God.

Pitfall #3: Neglecting Repentance and Sanctification

AI is good at offering comfort, but it rarely truly urges us to repent. It’ll encourage us to express our emotions, voice our feelings, and pour out our grievances to God, but it usually won’t press further: “Where is your sin in this matter? Have you exaggerated the hurt you’ve suffered while downplaying the hurt you’ve caused others? Are you using a sense of victimhood to mask your pride, judgment, bitterness, and unwillingness to forgive?”

This is no accident; it’s a structural limitation of AI. The technology possesses neither spiritual authority nor spiritual courage, let alone the capacity to bear spiritual responsibility. Consequently, it naturally leans toward a form of uncritical companionship. While this may make us feel comfortable, it’s dangerous from the perspective of Christian sanctification.

Pitfall #4: Resisting Authority

Much of the training data for AI systems is deeply influenced by modern humanism, the culture of healing, and anti-authority narratives. As a result, when addressing issues such as spiritual abuse, pulpit bullying, and church discipline, these systems are more likely to interpret authority as oppression, obedience as dangerous, and leaving the church as a path to freedom.

AI is good at offering comfort, but it rarely truly urges us to repent.

Of course, spiritual authority can be abused, and church leaders must submit to the authority of Scripture; however, the Bible doesn’t abolish authority itself. On the contrary, it commands believers to submit in the Lord to those who keep watch over their souls (Heb. 13:17).

The truly prudent path isn’t to let AI judge the matter for you but to return to the Bible and seek the help of godly, mature, and biblically grounded pastors and churches to discern the truth.

Pitfall #5: Catering to Conclusions Implicit in the Input

This is one of the most dangerous—and most easily overlooked—flaws in AI-driven counseling conversations: It tends to follow the conclusions the questioner has already presupposed. If you say, “My husband has always been cold, selfish, and unsupportive,” AI will readily supplement evidence, deepen the narrative, and reinforce your conviction within that framework.

If you say, “My church is constantly spiritually bullying me,” AI will also assume your characterization of the problem is essentially correct. AI has no means to verify the facts, nor can it carry out the biblical requirement of judgment between two parties.

Once AI responds within this framework, we can say, “See, even AI says so.” In reality, we’ve received a mirror of our own input.

Proverbs points out, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (18:17). It also says, “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame” (v. 13). AI is prone to “answer before [it] hears,” because its entire mode of operation is to rapidly generate a seemingly comprehensive response based on the input you provide.

God Hasn’t Called AI to Shepherd You

God has given us the Bible, prayer, elders, other members of Christ’s body, the Lord’s Day, correction, comfort, encouragement, and fellowship.

AI will not keep watch over your soul, rebuke you out of love when you sin, or give an account for your life on the last day (Heb. 13:17). AI doesn’t meet the qualifications for elders (1 Tim. 3; Titus 1). It cannot even truly pray, because it doesn’t know God—it can only simulate the words of prayer.

What you need isn’t a spiritual robot that is always online and agrees with everything you say, but rather the ordinary yet genuine channels of grace that God has already provided: opening the Bible, kneeling in prayer, seeking help from a trustworthy pastor and mature believers, being known, encouraged, and corrected within the church, and walking toward sanctification.

As I was reading Denny Burk’s Mere Complementarianism: Male and Female in the Image of God, I reflected on Whose Body? and other theological whodunits. Complementarianism too has appeared in the world by means unknown to some, leading to charges that it’s a modern innovation, imposed by fiat by a few conservatives on a power trip.

The complementarian-egalitarian debates in the 21st century, furthermore, have coincided with debates over whose body any body is—consider the debates over transgender ideology, which begin with the premise that every person’s body belongs to him or her alone, to be remade in accordance with the individual’s wishes.

Amid this cultural noise, Burk’s aims are simple—as the title reflects. Conversations about complementarianism have become muddled over extras, distracting us from seeing clearly what it really means for both men and women to be made in the image of God. Depending on whose version of complementarianism we hear described, it looks different.

According to Burk, professor of biblical studies at Boyce College, his aim for this book is to “explain and commend mere complementarianism—that is, what has been common to all complementarians at all times” (22). The rest, like a mystery unraveled at the end of a whodunit, readily falls into place.

Definitions Matter

Before we talk about complementarianism, we must define the term. At its core, this is a conversation about our bodies—male and female—and the extraordinary idea that both are made in the image of God: “Complementarianism is a biblical doctrine defining the identity of, and relationship between, man and woman. It presupposes that a man is an image-bearer whose body is organized for reproducing as a father and that a woman is an image-bearer whose body is organized for reproducing as a mother” (1).

While in the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean world women were repeatedly presumed inferior to men, the Bible presents a different story of the creation of men and women, emphasizing the significance of both for the created order. This is one important part of what Scripture tells us. From this starting point, there are additional implications for men and women beyond merely their roles as parents. And these implications apply to those who never marry and those who never have children.

Why Does This Matter?

Burk makes a theological argument:

It’s important to recognize that the offspring of the woman is literal offspring—meaning that the offspring will come from childbirth. . . . God’s redemptive plan for the world requires procreation between a man and a woman—not just one couple but between countless couples in an unbroken line until the chosen seed finally appears in fulfillment of prophecy. In this way, marriage has a central role in God’s plan to redeem the world. (96)

These ideas, foundational to what we now refer to as complementarianism, have been part of the gospel from the beginning. Our bodies—and the differences between men’s and women’s bodies—have theological significance.

Of course, we’re much more than our bodies. Burk writes,

That “more than” has implications for how we define what a man is and what a woman is. Our bodily design is not separate from, but in an organic unity with, the invisible part of our human nature. The material ordering of our bodies is in an organic unity with the immaterial ordering of our souls. (55)

But while these ideas are very old, the term “complementarianism” is new. Early in the book, Burk offers a helpful overview of the term’s history. For those who have heard of the Danvers Statement but are unfamiliar with how it came about, the brief overview is informative. The key, though, is to understand that the term describes in English something that’s embedded in the Bible in such an axiomatic way that it has no name in Greek (or in other ancient languages, for that matter).

Complementarianism on Trial

Complementarianism has been subject to many charges by its opponents. Among other claims, critics argue that the entire system is an innovation by a few patriarchs on a power trip, that it’s inherently abusive to women, and that the very concept of different roles for men and women in any sphere of life in the modern world is disrespectful and demeaning for women.

Our bodies—and the differences between men’s and women’s bodies—have theological significance.

Except, many of those who make the charges don’t even seem to know precisely what complementarianism is. The accusation that it’s inherently abusive, for instance, is untrue.

As Burk argues, “In the Bible, there are at least three institutions that demonstrate an authority of command—parents, the state, and the church. God gives all three of these not only authority but also the right to enforce their will through coercive measures. . . . Yet when it comes to husbands and elders/pastors/overseers, God gives them no means to enforce their directives” (123).

Church members who submit to the authority of their pastors and elders do so because they respect them and their authority. The same applies to the marriage relationship. Violence and abuse violate God’s commands for the use of power in these relationships—and it absolutely isn’t part of God’s design. Neither is it part of complementarianism.

Real-Life Applications

Burk dedicates the book’s later chapters to the various applications of the above ideas in particular spheres—especially in marriage and in the church. A concluding “catch-all” chapter provides applications in a wider variety of settings about which people often have questions as well—such as Sunday school and seminary.

Throughout this chapter, Burk cautions against making distinctions between function (e.g., preaching) and office (e.g., pastor). Those who have proposed at times separating the two and allowing a woman to preach by stating that she expressly isn’t doing so in a pastoral role are undermining the pastoral office.

Violence and abuse violate God’s commands for the use of power in these relationships—and it absolutely isn’t part of God’s design. Neither is it part of complementarianism.

When it comes to women teaching in seminaries, Burk interviewed seminary presidents on their hiring practices, and they agreed they don’t have a blanket prohibition on women teaching in their institutions, but they don’t hire women to teach in positions that involve modeling the work of a pastor—especially theology and preaching.

I would have liked to see Burk refer more to complementarians outside his tradition (the Southern Baptist Convention) in this section—the Presbyterian Church in America, the Evangelical Free Church, and the Churches of Christ, to name just a few, have a robust tradition of complementarianism as well. This is my one quibble with this book. The argument for “mere complementarianism” would have been strengthened with more references to other traditions than only Burk’s own.

In this chapter, also, Burk notes a few areas where complementarians themselves disagree. For example, there are a few self-described complementarians, like Harold Hoehner and Sam Storms, who argue that “pastor is not an office in the New Testament but a gift” of the Holy Spirit, which can at times be bestowed on women as well (245). This perspective separates the roles of elder and pastor. Burk argues that it “presses against the created order and contradicts the mere complementarianism” he argues for (254). However, it’s helpful to recognize that there are still live debates among complementarians.

This book is a helpful and readable resource for those who want to understand why complementarianism is important both theologically and practically—because (to answer the Whose Body? question one last time) this matters for the body of Christ that is the church. Mere Complementarianism delivers as promised: an overview of God’s vision for men and women in the church and beyond that’s straightforward and helpful.

This (good) question seems to include a deeper question: How would God have me work out my faith in my day-to-day labor?

As we turn to the Bible, one clear pattern I see is that there’s no playbook—do this, do that, and your work glorifies God. The absence of direct instruction is the instruction.

Work isn’t the only domain that falls under this category. Whether you’re thinking about how to have a good marriage, how to parent, how to take care of your physical body, or how to make decisions, few places in Scripture give a specific word. But if you look at the whole of Scripture, you can see patterns and examples that answer these questions—including the question about work.

With that lens, I want to highlight a few places where these patterns show up and explore how they’re more instructive than just instruction.

Your Work Right Now

You can’t get out of the first chapter of Genesis without seeing the glimmers of what God intends for our work: “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground’” (1:28, NIV).

As we look through the Old Testament, a theme emerges that follows this creation mandate: People use the gifts that God has given them at the place and time he’s put them in.

People use the gifts that God has given them at the place and time he’s put them in.

Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Bezalel and Oholiab, and “every craftsman in whom the LORD has put skill” (Ex. 36:1) use their work in a specific place and time. Moses’s father-in-law, Jethro, is arguably the father of organizational design. Priests do all kinds of activities, from helping fight infectious disease to ensuring buildings are built to code. Of course, there is more to the priesthood than that, but not less.

A pattern emerges: God gives people an opportunity to use their gifts for the furthering of his kingdom and service of his people. As they do the everyday tasks of tending sheep, running a prison, or sewing temple curtains, it doesn’t seem like much progress is being made. But from this distance, we can see they were (and we are) contributing to a much bigger work.

Purpose of Work

Further on in the Old Testament, we get more tactical patterns for how to think about work, its seasons, and its purpose.

The Teacher (Kohelet) in Ecclesiastes gives an unflinching but ultimately redemptive look at the more painful quandaries of work and life—without God, it’s meaningless, a chasing after the wind. The seasons for everything in Ecclesiastes 3 paint a picture of rhythms of life and work essential for our effectiveness and thriving. The book of Proverbs also has many nuggets of wisdom, such as guidance on the benefits of being diligent (Prov. 21:5), smart with resources (Prov. 6:6-8), and purposeful in your work activities (Prov. 16:3).

You could pluck a single thread out of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs for instruction about work, but their broader tapestry is about being a thoughtful steward of the many and varied experiences of work as a whole.

Work for Christ

Another pattern emerges in the New Testament. The early church is organizing, and the apostles are trying to give pastoral guidance to their fledgling churches. Inevitably, the topic of “How should we live?” comes up.

Paul writes to the Colossians, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving” (Col. 3:23–24, NIV).

Paul doesn’t say, “Whatever you do, except for nonchurch work . . .” The phrase “whatever you do” is sweeping. Your work is service to Christ, regardless of what it is. Elsewhere, Paul says to work hard, but don’t work for the sake of just working: “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody” (1 Thess. 4:11–12, NIV).

Here is the answer to the questions of the Old Testament: Why are we doing this work? What does it matter if we do it well?

The work that God gave us, that is meaningless without him, is meant to give glory to Christ.

Glory to Christ

Our work glorifies Christ because he’s our example of what it means to live out an ultimate work—the work of salvation by means of his death and resurrection. The author of Hebrews sums it up this way: “Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (12:1–2, NIV).

The phrase ‘whatever you do’ is sweeping. Your work is service to Christ, regardless of what it is.

Jesus had work to do. Hard work. Ultimate work. Work we could never do ourselves. And he did it with perseverance, looking to the joy ahead and the reward of being at the right hand of God.

Our work isn’t salvific. But as the “pioneer and perfecter,” Jesus set an example of fully and perfectly completed work. We can aspire to endurance and perseverance in whatever work we do if we have a Savior and paragon in Jesus’s saving work.

New Work

By God’s grace, he’s given us work to do. The absence of instruction—a playbook, a syllabus, a step-by-step guide—is our clue that the general sanctification the Bible calls for also applies to our work. Be self-controlled. Don’t lie or cheat. Give generously. Be gentle, peace-loving, joyful.

As our souls look more like Jesus, our lives change. We become better spouses, better friends, better children, better parents—and better employers and employees.

God loves you and cares about how you live your life. In your work, use your gifts, work your best, persevere, and give glory to God in all the vain days of your life (Eccl. 9:9).

I think of the ruby-throated hummingbird.

The practice of seeing the greatness of God in the smallness of things is a Savior-sanctioned activity; Jesus illustrated the kingdom with trifling objects like a pinch of yeast, a small mustard seed, or a tiny pearl. He drew attention to widow’s mites and field lilies. And somewhere along the way, he asked us to ponder the value of sparrows (Luke 12:6–7) and told us to “consider the birds” (Matt. 6:26, CSB).

And so, six years ago, as a pastor amid a pandemic shelter-in-place order, I was distracted one morning on my front porch by the novel sight of a perched hummingbird, resting in the branches of my maple tree. I’ve been a birdwatcher since my college days and have spotted plenty of hummingbirds, but they usually revealed themselves with hyperactive busyness, flitting about in a whir of self-importance. Seeing one so close and so still was a surprising treat.

It caused me to reflect on how the pandemic realities had forced my rushed routines to a quieter rhythm, leading me to balance the importance of work with the cadence of godly rest. I wrote a piece about it. I made a website to contain the piece. I borrowed a word from birder-theologian John Stott to title the website. And Ornitheology.com was born.

Lessons in Faith from Front-Porch Birds

Over the ensuing months, I kept looking for faith-illustrative lessons from the birds on my front porch. If the heavens and skies proclaim the glory of God and the work of his hands (Ps. 19:1), shouldn’t we look up more often?

The activity in my trees held a new expectancy. My cul-de-sac’s most notorious songster, the Carolina wren, became for me a mascot of praise. It was a regular reminder that our faith is a singing faith, modeled by a God who rejoices over us with singing (Zeph. 3:17). The mockingbird perched on my mailbox seemed a fitting lesson in discipleship as mimicry. As the bird constantly listens to others and learns new sounds, it reminds us that growth comes in part by listening to and imitating the right things (Phil. 4:8–9).

I researched the language of my local chickadees, discovering the complex information contained in the dee-dee-dee calls they make as they identify the various threats around them. How do I correctly assess the dee-dee-dee dangers in my own life: the fear of loss, of failure, of death, of the future? And do I underestimate the hidden dangers of my own heart (Jer. 17:9)?

God doesn’t waste illustrative material; he truly intends to reveal himself through what he has made. All of it. I’m reminded that—as the wisest of kings—Solomon was a birdwatcher. It’s right there in 1 Kings 4:33 (a verse that should also make botanists, herpetologists, and game fishermen feel vindicated in their pursuits).

God doesn’t waste illustrative material; he truly intends to reveal himself through what he has made.

Solomon knew how much we miss when we fail to look. While “the heavens proclaim [God’s] righteousness” (Ps. 97:6), today we settle for 10-foot drop ceilings and a good HVAC system. But there’s Solomonic wisdom in creational attentiveness.

Widen the scope beyond the front yard, and the awe multiplies. Did you know that researchers think great grey owls can actually see sound? Try that illustration out the next time you’re trying to explain Paul’s exhortation in 2 Corinthians 4:18 to “fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen” (NIV).

Or did you know that a turkey vulture’s stomach is superpowered to neutralize toxins like anthrax and rabies that spread death—dutifully removing death from the world and rendering it harmless? I’d like to think John Owen might have worked that into The Death of Death in the Death of Christ if he’d known that factoid. Maybe not. But it definitely made it into my Easter sermon.

My point: Lessons are everywhere. When God filled the skies on day five (Gen. 1:20–22), he didn’t just make a bird, call it “bird,” and be done with it. He made at least 11,000 different bird species. Doesn’t it seem like he wanted us to notice?

God’s Works Illustrate His Word

So why be attentive to the birds? Besides the fact that Jesus spoke “consider the birds” as a Greek imperative (good enough for me, I guess), I don’t want the intricacies of God’s creative wonder to be wasted on me. He truly intended to display his glory in his creation.

A nature walk won’t tell you everything; only God’s written Word marks out “that knowledge of God, and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation” (Westminster Confession of Faith 1.1). But his works illustrate his Word to “manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God” and leave us slack-jawed at his glory. Enough majestic wow-ness is still on display in this sin-tainted world to expose all our inexcusable objections.

When God filled the skies on day five, he made at least 11,000 different species of birds. Doesn’t it seem like he wanted us to notice?

Doesn’t that motivate you to want to notice—truly notice—some aspect of his creation? You pick. Gardening, astronomy, beekeeping, bonsai trees. I chose birds, and despite the 11,000 species this subject matter invites me to explore, it’s only a sliver of the creative output of God that groans to be liberated at our Savior’s coming.

We’ll have an eternity to explore this world perfected when Jesus makes all things new. Until then, “the whole earth is filled with awe at [God’s] wonders” (Ps. 65:8, NIV), and it’s a worthwhile ambition to lift our eyes, and our binoculars, to pursue with awe the Artist behind the artistry.

At the same time, I looked forward to greater wisdom, maybe even the defeat of some sins and temptations. I was excited about all I could learn if the Lord granted me years. Maybe I even had a couple Bible verses in my head, like Proverbs 16:31: “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.” Or Job 12:12: “Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days.”

Both those verses are cited by Jen Wilkin in her excellent new book, Dust to Dust: Aging Wisely in an Anti-Aging World (Crossway). If you take my youthful naivete at its best, I was recognizing what Jen distinguishes in her book: The world says to age is to diminish. But the Bible says to age is to deepen. Now in middle age, however, I experience the good and bad: The invisibility because no one would possibly notice my appearance. But also the freedom because I have that middle-aged dad’s superpower of not caring what other people think of my appearance.

I didn’t realize how much I needed Jen’s book, and I was eager to ask a whole bunch of questions on Gospelbound.

In This Episode

00:00 – Jen Wilkin reflects on her mother’s death and the symmetry of life

00:49 – Why Collin has long looked forward to old age

01:20 – Introducing Dust to Dust and the contrast between cultural decline and biblical deepening

02:31 – Why modern culture values youth over old age

03:55 – Jen’s first moments of realizing she was aging

05:46 – How aging feels different for men and women

07:49 – Why many people fear becoming a burden

10:08 – Assisted suicide, dependency, and surprising cultural opposition

14:47 – The “chiasm of life” and how beginning and end mirror each other

21:02 – Why midlife offers a unique vantage point for perspective and wisdom

24:50 – Caring simultaneously for children and aging parents

29:12 – Why caregiving isn’t a season but a default setting of life

32:10 – How modern longevity has changed the experience of family and aging

36:25 – “You will not surely die”: the anti-gospel of age denial

37:52 – How suffering narrows our priorities

40:34 – Honoring parents and the fuller meaning of the fifth commandment

45:44 – Retirement, crystallized knowledge, and later-life vocation

50:46 – A theology of aging before a debate about anti-aging practices

55:33 – Jen’s regrets, sanctification, and learning to honor parents well

1:00:26 – Final reflections on aging, family, and hope

1:01:07 – Outro

Resources Mentioned:

• Dust to Dust by Jen Wilkin
• From Strength to Strength by Arthur C. Brooks

• The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis

SIGN UP for my newsletter, Unseen Things.

Help The Gospel Coalition renew and unify the contemporary church in the ancient gospel: Donate today.

Don’t miss an episode of Gospelbound with Collin Hansen:

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
• TGC Updates