I have never been a big fan of fighting what has come to be called the “culture wars” in America. I find moral politics and legislative haggling to be tiresome and messy. But even more, these cultural conflicts can become for the church a terrible distraction and barrier to keeping Jesus Christ and His gospel our central concern. Recently, however, with the rapid rise of power politics and the overt legal threats brought against the free exercise of religion, I have been rethinking the role of political and legislative power.
The tension here is that many Christians see the use of political and legal power as a misunderstanding, misuse, and distortion of divine power and priorities. To some extent, that is certainly true. But in another very real sense, when enforced policies and political power moves become matters of causing harm, then at what point is the Christian obligated to use means of power—political power included—to protect the innocent and promote the common good?
There’s no doubt that at some important level, Christians have a responsibility to protect human life. Proverbs 24:11 says, “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.” And as Genesis 1:26 makes clear, as gendered divine image bearers, we are also responsible to lovingly steward and rule over God’s creation in ways that honor Him.
In my mind, many of the recent moves to demand greater access to and funding for abortion alongside the full affirmation of the LGBT+ agenda as well as the active promotion of medical interventions to “transition” youth who are struggling with gender dysphoria are good examples of areas where real and lasting harm is being done to the people directly involved in these decisions and lifestyles.
You can call it a “culture war,” or something else, but when real and active harm is being done to people, then beyond active avenues of persuasion, all legal and political means should be used to protect those who would otherwise be harmed, even if that might mean protecting some people from themselves. This is where libertarian freedom fails to recognize that in a world suffering the consequences of the fall, unbridled liberty is an open invitation to the harm of self and others.
In short, we are all sinners, and sometimes we need to be protected not only from others, but also from ourselves. And whether or not we admit it, there is a cultural and spiritual battle being waged. This battle is not merely a set of abstract arguments for a vision of what constitutes the common good. It is a concrete battle being waged in real time and real space. Right now, specific people are being harmed and becoming casualties in the process.
Christians who claim to love God and His justice should not turn a blind, indifferent, or fearful eye away from these real-life tragedies currently unfolding before us. We must wisely and appropriately use whatever power God has graciously given us to humbly, lovingly, and courageously fight for those who need to be protected from the devilish and destructive deceptions and deeds of our time. As G. K. Chesterton reminds us, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
The term, “woke,” was originally intended to help people better understand the ways in which racism negatively contributes to social systems and human relationships. The “woke” person had awakened from their moral slumber and was willing to admit wrong-doing and identify the ways in which their “white privilege” (meaning majority-culture status in the western context) had hindered the flourishing of minorities in positions of poverty, oppression, and weakness.
More recently, the term “woke” has taken on a decisively disdainful and pejorative connotation, referring to those who have been taken in by a “progressive” view of the world that sees almost everything through the lens of critical race theory, interpreting society through postmodern Marxist and racial categories.
A lot could be said about the original meaning of this term as well as the ways it has been changed into one of ridicule and derision. But regardless of whether you want to disparage or defend the term, something I have observed with those who consider themselves to be “woke” in the positive sense is that they tend to demand a level of sensitivity in public and interpersonal communication that borders on the absurd.
In short, for many, a passionate commitment to the principles of woke culture tends to destroy open communication. Every conversation, if not perfectly crafted, becomes a minefield of potential triggers for producing pain, anger, and even outrage. The problem is, very few conversations are perfectly crafted, and spontaneous conversations in particular are virtually never carefully constructed.
In the end, what was intended to create safe communication and better human relationships has created significant barriers to them instead. Genuine intimacy requires communication, and communication often results in misunderstanding and hurt feelings. But without communication and without a willingness to take the risk of being offended or offending someone else, friendships—at least in any meaningful form—become virtually impossible. Given enough time and enough talk, someone is bound to offend and be offended. Rather than joyous and sometime spirited exchange, communication becomes an endless string of trivial politically correct statements, polite critiques, and mutual virtue signaling.
Making “non-offense” the goal of relationships is essentially pushing communication to a level of nothing more than cliché, insignificance, and banality. If you don’t want to offend or be offended in friendships in particular and conversations in general, my advice is simple: stop talking and stop listening to others. It’s your safest bet. But it’s also the surest path to isolating dehumanization and closing yourself off from the people and things you were created for and need the most. You will be unable to love or be loved by anyone, God included, who, in His infinite holiness, has the potential to be the ultimate interpersonal offender.
As C. S. Lewis so wisely reminds us in The Four Loves, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
When applied to our relationship with God, if He is genuinely righteous and loving (He is), He will frequently say offensive things to the hearts and minds of sinners. And as sinners, we need to be offended if we are to escape the ever-present and destructive dangers of our sin and pride. Avoiding offense in a sin-stained world such as ours is to invite greater, not lesser, damage along the way.
We were created to be in relationship, to communicate and to listen to others as they communicate with us. But in the midst of that need, we take the risk not only of being hurt and offended, but also of hurting and offending others. It requires the hard work of granting and receiving forgiveness, but if we are willing to risk going deeper, sometimes offending and sometimes being offended along the way, then—and only then—can we enjoy the precious privilege of loving and being loved by God and one another. And that’s always a risk worth taking.
In this context of communication, God is simultaneously the ultimate offender and the ultimate consoler, the one who comes alongside us in our shame and our pain and calls us into personally challenging but infinitely loving and healing fellowship with Him. As Hosea 6:1 reminds us: “Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us; he has injured us, but he will bind up our wounds.”
I recently turned sixty. A lot of water has passed beneath the bridge of my life with what feels like dizzying speed. How could I have lived six decades already? Where in the world has all the time gone?
As I reflect, I am struck first and foremost by a deep sense of gratitude. God has blessed me with so many precious people who have deeply impacted me: parents, family, friends, wife, children, and grandchildren. I have been given so much more than I deserved through the years: food, clothing, shelter, and health. There have been incredible and undeserved opportunities to serve God and help others to come to know and grow in their walks with Him all over the world.
Of course, there are many regrets. I openly acknowledge my many shortcomings, failures, character flaws, and sins. I wish I were more patient, more humble, more kind, more emotionally engaged and mature. I wish I were a better listener, asked more and better questions, had a greater sense of teachability and curiosity.
I somehow thought I would be significantly further along in my personal and spiritual maturity by now. And while I have known many precious moments with Him, I believed that walking closely with Jesus would be easier and sweeter by now than it actually is. My Christian life is still a daily struggle of wrestling with sin, character flaws, and bad habits.
Beyond this, there have been many deep heartaches and profound disappointments. Some family and friends have disheartened me by walking away from the faith. I’ve also caught myself asking: What has my life meant and accomplished? I had big dreams in my youth. Have I really followed Jesus whole-heartedly? Has my life truly mattered and made a difference, making a lasting impact that genuinely honors God?
Nevertheless, in the face of all this, God’s goodness and faithfulness has been undeniable and unwavering. I see without question the kindness, grace, and patience of a compassionate God who continues to love, forgive, and provide for me a life I never dreamed possible and the privilege to be used by Him in ways I never deserved or could have imagined.
This life has been, is, and always will be, a gift. And now that I am fast-approaching the increasingly evident tail-end of it, Joe Rigney’s words hold a special significance: “Those at the beginning and the end tell those of us in the middle: This was you: weak, frail, dependent, and needy. This is you: weak, frail, dependent, and needy. This will be you: weak, frail, dependent, and needy. You are a vapor, here today and gone tomorrow. And your life is not your own. It is a gift.”
Thank You, Lord, for creating, loving, and saving me. Thank You for continuing to transform and conform me to the image of Your beloved Son. Thank You for graciously giving me sixty years of life. And thank You for the astonishing hope of eternal life in Christ that enables me to look to the future with unspeakable joy versus devastating dread or deluded denial. You truly are a gracious, kind, and loving God!
As part of our yearly Christmas traditions, our family erected a Nativity display, complete with a wooden stable, plastic barn animals, shepherds, an angel, three wisemen, Mary and Joseph, and baby Jesus in a manger. One year, however, baby Jesus disappeared. Although we searched high and low, He seemed to have vanished into thin air. When Christmas was over, we reluctantly packed up the stable, animals, and other important figures in the Christmas story, but baby Jesus, who was supposed to be the central figure of the scene, was still missing.
Sad to say, our family’s experience of losing Jesus has become a fitting metaphor for many of our lives at Christmas. We pull out all the seasonal décor, attend holiday parties, anticipate family gatherings, and make lists for how many gifts and cards we will be giving and sending to others. On top of all this, we are besieged with invasive displays and advertisements urging us to buy more and more things that promise to give us the joy and contentment for which we hope and long.
Of course, these promises are never fulfilled. There always seems to be a bigger and better version of what we have purchased by the time the next Christmas season rolls around. As a result, we frankly find ourselves exhausted and relieved when the whole holiday season is finally over. And when it comes to Jesus, the real reason for the season, He often gets lost and forgotten in the midst of all the clutter, commotion, and clamor.
While we are busy hanging lights, we forget that Jesus is the light of the world (John 8:12). Feeling the pressure to give everyone important to us a thoughtful and worthwhile gift, we forget that Jesus is the greatest gift of all (John 3:16). We struggle not to overindulge and overeat, forgetting that Jesus is the bread of life (john 6:35) and the fountain of living water (John 7:37-38). In all the hustle and bustle, we forget that Jesus promises rest (Matthew 11:28-30) and peace (John 14:27) for all who turn to and trust in Him.
Instead of finding Christ at Christmas, we find ourselves over-stimulated, overworked, overfed, and overwhelmed. As Christians, if this is how we experience Christmas, perhaps we need to ask ourselves an important question: In the midst of all that is Christmas, where is Jesus? Have I somehow missed or obscured Him in all the traditions and expectations, new and old, that now surround this increasingly hectic and frenzied season? Have I sought to keep Him at the center of it all, or have I let other things conceal, crowd Him out, and push Him away?
Fortunately, the aforementioned story has a happy ending. We never gave up hope that baby Jesus might appear someday, and several months later, He was found safely tucked away in my youngest daughter’s dresser drawer where she had laid and then forgotten about Him. We restored Him to His rightful place of centrality in our creche, and all was right with the world again.
Similarly, every Christmas, we have an important choice to make concerning Jesus. Because of all the distractions and expectations crowding Him out and drawing us away from the real reason for the season, we must decide: Will we let Him be lost in all the trappings and trimmings of this increasingly secular and market-driven holiday, or will we, like the wisemen and shepherds long ago, make Him the central focus of our interest by continuing to seek Him and joyously make Him known to all who will listen?
Recently, a Michigan student was using Google’s AI Chatbot Gemini to research challenges and solutions for aging adults when he got this response: “This is for you, human. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die.”
As shocking as this AI-generated response sounds, essentially encouraging suicide and euthanasia, it actually makes sense in the context of contemporary secularism.
The term, “euthanasia” comes from the combination of two Greek words, “good” and “death.” It is an English transliteration of the notion that you can have a good death. In the past, it was sometimes referred to as “mercy killing,” but the word “killing” had too many negative connotations, so a more recent referent is “death with dignity.” This is a clever relabeling to make the notion that you are actively killing someone (perhaps even yourself) more palatable and morally praiseworthy.
As I hinted at above, one of the reasons euthanasia has become more accepted in our time is that we live in what has been called a “secular age.” Unlike in premodern times, the basic mindset is oriented away from religion as publicly significant and toward the notion that things like political power, science and technology, secular education, and economic forces are the only publicly significant aspects of culture. And in secularism, this is true, even if religion is still considered a (necessarily private) social good.
The result is a society where spiritual and religious concerns are largely unwelcome (implicitly and sometimes explicitly) in the public square. Materialism becomes the only acceptable basis for determining societal policies. Consequently, only material concerns (economic, political, technological, and educational) should be considered when making such decisions. Public policy becomes only interested in what people can actively provide economically, politically, technically, and educationally to the common good. We must be good for something and are only good for something insofar as we are able to contribute material goods to society.
In a purely material world where death is the end of existence, if we find ourselves infirm, imbecilic, in pain, or incapacitated, then our basic reason for living—subsidizing society’s gross domestic product—has been lost or severely inhibited. If there is no reasonable prospect for regaining our usefulness and death only means eternal inexistence, then like an aging pet or a sick animal, going on living is not merely inconvenient, it’s embarrassing for yourself, cruel to others, and bad economics for society. In short, euthanasia makes good social and economic sense, even to the one being euthanized.
That we should recoil in horror at the callous and flippant way such a view treats human life (our own included), and yet don’t, is a tragic illustration of the economic and materialistic age in which we live. Rather than joyously affirming the infinite value each and every person has by virtue of being a divine image bearer, we have reduced ourselves to mere cogs in a grand but ultimately meaningless system of products and producers. When we and those around us cease to produce more than we consume and when existence isn’t much fun anymore, why go on living? The big (and presumably dreamless) sleep is clearly preferable when we reach our product expiration date. In a world like this, euthanasia becomes a matter of “dignity,” “personal autonomy,” and even a duty to oneself and society as a whole.
This stands in stark contrast to understanding suffering and physical decline as a sin-induced tragic loss of capacity that gives others in society the opportunity to show unconditional love and Christlike care to those who desperately need and deserve it, even if they do not want and cannot see it for themselves. It is a gravely sick and appallingly confused culture that only sees the strong and the productive as worthy of dignity and life and all others as essentially disposable.
Against this secular calculus, Christians ground human worth and dignity in the fact that every human being, by virtue of God’s creative action, is a divine image-bearer. This is true regardless of our age, race, gender, capacity, or giftedness. We honor God, ourselves, and others as worthy of respect because His image bestows on us infinite and eternal worth, irrespective of our social standing or societal productivity quotients.
And while Christians should be horrified and grieved at our growing cultural acceptance of assisted (and sometime even encouraged) suicide, we also have the responsibility to demonstrate concrete and sacrificial concern for the suffering, weak, and aging. Indifference is complicity in a culture of death, and we must not merely stand against the tide with our words but also with our actions and our resources.
This recently came home to me in a very profound way as my relatives and I reflected on the death of my wife’s uncle who passed after a protracted and debilitating battle with dementia that lasted several years. He was once a great and highly successful man, an air force officer and a wealthy senior commercial pilot, but the dementia stole his memory, his sensibility, and his ability to care for himself. By the end, he was a mere shadow of the man he had once been.
Nevertheless, we all agreed that despite the exhausting difficulties associated with his care (especially for my mother-in-law), and the seeming pointlessness of extending the inevitable, he was honored, dignified, and humanized. In addition, his caregivers became better persons through the process of loving and caring for one who could no longer provide proper appreciation or adequate care for himself.
It afforded a concrete illustration of the fact that love—true love—is not a storm of emotion but a daily, moment by moment sacrificial commitment to do what is kind and right for another, even when that kindness is not reciprocated or perhaps repaid with anger, aggression, and ingratitude. This kind of deeply countercultural love is most clearly embodied in the person of Jesus Christ whose love was directed toward those who were not only unlovely, but unloving and hostile toward the One who loved and gave His life for them.
He is not only our model but our life-giving Savior who forgives and empowers us to do what is foolish and vain in the eyes of the world, but precious and beautiful in the eyes of our loving, kind, and gracious God.
The rise of LGBT+ movement in our world today has produced a growing debate within the church about the nature of sin and temptation in relation to internal desires. The silver lining is that it has forced Christians to think more deeply and reflect more biblically on the nature of these questions.
In a very basic sort of way, I used to think that when ungodly desires arise, you simply avoid sin by resisting and not fulfilling them. But as I have thought more about same-sex attraction, there is an important difference from other kinds of desires. Not only is the fulfillment of same-sex desire wrong, the desire itself is something that ethicists call, “disordered.” That is to say, the desire cuts directly against the grain of God’s original creation order and would never arise in a pre-fallen world.
Adam and Eve, for example, certainly desired one another sexually before the fall and were able to righteously fulfill those desires in the context of marriage, but pre-fall, they would never have experienced same-sex attraction. That kind of desire can only arise after sin has entered the world. Thus, the desire itself is misdirected and one of the many results of sin and evil coming into the world. But here is where it’s easy to get confused.
Some Christians have assumed that same-sex attractions will (at least eventually) subside if we only continue to wrestle against them and repeatedly affirm and live out our new identity in Christ. Thankfully, for some this does result in a profound and lasting transformation of these desires, especially over time. For many others, however, disordered desires like these persist and continue to assert themselves in powerful and intrusive ways throughout their lives, even as they seek to forsake and resist them.
We therefore need to avoid the simplistic and judgmental attitude that suggests that mere repentance and resistance will inevitably and assuredly cause the desires to cease or be transformed into properly ordered (in this case, heterosexual) desires. This can even suggest that one of the primary goals of Christian holiness is heterosexual attraction rather than godliness. Again, merely practicing repentance and continual resistance and avoidance alongside affirmation of our new nature in Christ still may not fully resolve or eradicate all same-sex desires.
However, we should not be so quick to therefore dismiss these desires as neutral or nearly harmless, just so long as they remain unfulfilled in concrete practice. Unlike desires that are appropriate to creation order so long as they are fulfilled within the parameters set up by God in His word, same-sex attraction is inherently opposed to God’s creation order. In short, the desire itself is inherently rebellious and therefore dangerous and disordered.
This helps highlight the fact that avoiding sin and moving toward holiness involves much more than merely resisting certain behaviors. It also involves resisting inappropriate attitudes and desires. Jesus was very clear when he said in Matthew 5:28 that “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” The phrase “lustful intent” (ESV) captures the idea here well. It is not the mere presence of a lustful thought, but the “lustful intent” and entertaining of that thought as well as a refusal to immediately take it captive and mortify it that results in sin. Such sin is still very real even though it is only committed within the heart and mind of the one who lusts and is prior to any concrete action to fulfill it.
To take the idea further, in Ephesians 5:3, Paul not only talks about high standards of sexual purity: “there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity,” just before this in 4:31 he also lists “bitterness, rage and anger,” as problematic, and not merely their results: “brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.” “Bitterness, rage, and anger” are not behaviors per se. They are, at their root, emotional states of mind that can easily set us on a trajectory toward ungodly (re)actions. And here Paul clearly demands that we should seek, by the power of His Spirit (5:18), to eliminate them from our lives.
Is same-sex attraction parallel to these kinds of sinful emotional states? James 1:14-15 helps answer this questions when it says, “each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” The progression here is that although the desire is described as “evil,” it only becomes sin after it “has conceived and gives birth” to a willful sinful mindset and not merely wrong actions leading to “death.”
It is still possible, for example, to be angry and yet not sin (see Ephesians 4:26). If I refuse to entertain same-sex attractions each time they arise, must I still repent simply because I experienced a disordered desire? Again, the desire to have sexual relations with someone of the same sex results from life in a sinful world and subverts God’s creation order. It must never be entertained, embraced, or fulfilled.
This stands in stark contrast to “normal” and “ordered” desires like heterosexual attraction. While these desires can be (and often are) badly abused and misapplied in very sinful ways, when fulfilled in their biblically-revealed (and therefore proper) contexts, they constitute the fulfillment of good and God-desired ends. A disordered desire, on the other hand, should always be resisted and understood as opposed to the goal of godliness. Thus, it is decidedly not a neutral desire.
Still, only when we let an evil desire fester and fail to take it captive does it actually become sin. As Martin Luther quipped, you cannot keep the birds from flying overhead, but you can prevent them from making a nest in your hair. The desires themselves might be wrong but having them does not automatically or inherently make me guilty of sin.
This has important implications for discipleship and how we characterize and deal with wrong and sinful desires. We know, for example, that toward the end of His earthly ministry Jesus desperately wanted to follow His own will by escaping the suffering and horrors of the cross (Luke 22:40-44). In short, He desired to do something other than God’s will. Just like the temptations at the beginning of His public earthly ministry delineated in Luke 4:1-13, it was another time of profound testing. But we also know that in the midst of that very human but clearly wrong desire to escape the cross and death, Jesus remained sinless (Hebrews 4:15).
It would be easy to simply say that every time I experience an evil desire or thought, I must repent. But that can lead to a profound sense of shame that may be unnecessary since the mere presence of a wrong and evil desire may not itself constitute sin. Yes, I might have to repent if I entertain or let that desire begin to move me away from devotion to Christ, but what I do at the moment of experiencing the desire, no matter how wrong, is what matters the most concerning whether I need to repent or simply resist and as quickly as possible find something—better, Someone—else to focus my heart and mind upon.
To briefly summarize, same-sex desire is disordered, pushing against God’s intended creation order. And while having such a desire is one result of living in a sinful world, having such a desire is not, in and of itself, automatically sinful. When desires like these come, we are called to actively resist and forsake them, taking them captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). This will often require accountability and encouragement (and perhaps rebuke at times) from other Christians also seeking to be holy, but it is a journey toward wholeness and holiness well worth taking. Praise God, we also know the One who has gone before and walks that hard road of temptation with us, our battle-tested yet still perfect and sinless Savior and loving Lord, Jesus Christ.
It’s all over the internet, a picture of baby Jesus lying amidst the rubble of a bombed-out building. The idea is that if Jesus was born in Gaza today, He would not be safely lying in a manger on silent and holy night, but in a war zone with His life in desperate danger.
Doubtless, such an image helps shake us from the contemporary temptation to forget the radical nature of Christ’s coming to earth, not as a conquering messianic King like the Jews expected, but as the vulnerable suffering servant, born a defenseless baby in a tiny backwater town to a displaced peasant couple.
And when the angels appeared to announce His coming, they did not come to the rich, powerful, and well-connected. They didn’t even come to His parents. Instead, they appeared in the middle of nowhere to the lowliest of the low, a dirty, despised, and devalued class of people—shepherds—to make their declaration. And what was the message of this terrifying event? A Savior is born “who is Christ and Lord.” In short, He was the long-awaited Messiah (Christ in Greek), and He was Lord, the King above all Kings.
We know this in part because of Isaiah’s prophetic promise in chapter seven telling us that “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel,” and later in chapter nine that “the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end.”
In this light, we would be deceived to think that Jesus’ birth was somehow safe, sensible, and apolitical. Herod understood all too well the nature of Christ’s coming, and his paranoid political madness cost the lives of countless boys below the age of two because Jesus was a clear and present danger to his godless earthly reign.
Herod’s attempt to eliminate Jesus as a political threat, however, betrays the perennial tendency in our own time to make Jesus primarily an earthly political figure in a world of God-defying injustice, as if Jesus came to save the world by becoming another (presumably better) earthly king. To be sure, He came as King, but a King who first and foremost came to serve, suffer, and sacrifice Himself to save us from the disordered debris of a world damaged and shattered by sin.
But it takes deep humility to recognize and admit our dire and dreadful state of disorder. Instead, we desperately try to rebuild and renovate the wreckage of our lives, devising many creative and clever ways to deny or sweep it aside, reform it into more acceptable shapes and sizes, or even to somehow make peace with it.
The profound irony is that this seemingly helpless baby Jesus amidst the rubble is our only hope for restoration and peace. He lovingly dwells in the midst of our battered and broken lives, miraculously molding us into something strong, significant, and beautiful. But He only does this when we finally relinquish our futile attempts to redeem ourselves and fully trust in Him alone to forgive, restore, rebuild, and transform us from the inside out.
There’s a lot of talk these days about social justice. Caring about and correcting injustice has suddenly become fashionable and trendyin popular culture. Many in the Church have jumped on board the social justice bandwagon. Who, after all, is more concerned about societal justice than Jesus?
There’s nothing wrong with following a cultural trend that moves society in the right direction, of course. Who can seriously argue against the need to eradicate racism, abolish sex-trafficking, and advocate for fair wages and safe working conditions for the underprivileged? Still, I as argued in previous posts, Christians must avoid being misled by false or inadequate definitions of justice. They also need to discern what are the means and ways used to rectify such wrongs, unmasking and repudiating any use of ungodly and unhelpful methods masquerading as “social justice.”
But what about Jesus? Was He a “social justice warrior,” or has the contemporary movement simply used His name and made Him into a caricature of the biblical portrait? One of the primary passages cited to prove that Jesus was all about social justice is Luke 4:16-21. Used by Jesus to formally inaugurate His earthly ministry, the passage mentions proclaiming “good news to the poor,” providing “liberty for the captives,” “sight for the blind,” and freedom “for those who are oppressed.”
Another popular passage is Matthew 25:31-46, which comes at the end of His earthly ministry. Here Jesus lists the activities and criteria He will use to judge between the righteous and the wicked. He puts it this way to the righteous: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”
On the face of it, this looks like a program of social justice at its finest, and it would hardly be appropriate to question the value and importance of Christians caring for people in the situations Jesus mentions. Christians certainly should be actively caring for the poor, needy, and disenfranchised! This is inherent to God’s kingdom work on earth and should not be relegated to some sort of second or third-class concern.
Having said that, however, when Jesus begins His earthly ministry of social care and service, one looks in vain for any significant political activism, commentary, or critique. This is not due to a dearth of potential material, of course. The moral atrocities, slave system, oppressive racism, and socially sectarian Roman policies of Jesus’ time are well-documented. In addition, Jesus’ followers fully expected and hoped for Jesus to be, as Messianic King, an expressly political figure (see, for example, Acts 1:6). Despite many clear opportunities, Jesus unveils no formal political activist program to rectify the systemic evils of His time and place. In fact, it is remarkable how utterly apolitical Jesus’ ministry of social justice actually is.
I highlight this to make a critically important point: Jesus did and does care about those who are oppressed, disadvantaged, and damaged by a sinful system and society. But the solutions He offers, while endowed with supernatural power, are not especially political or external in nature. Instead, they are mainly invitational, educational, and especially spiritual and moral. And while many are manifest in clearly material ways, those solutions point beyond the material toward our need to first and foremost be reconciled to God.
In contrast, many contemporary Christians advocating for social justice tend to couch it almost entirely in political and systemic terms. In their minds, social justice means the political reformation of societal systems and norms so that marginalized people can be empowered, heard, and taken seriously. The unjust social systems are assumed to be the primary (if not sole) reason these people are marginalized. What is often ignored or discounted is the individual problem of sin. In this sense, marginalization is real, but the reasons for it are not merely political and systemic, grounded primarily in the sins of others. There are intensely personal moral and spiritual problems here as well, and the means to providing genuine solutions must also account for our individual need to repent and be reconciled to God as well as to others.
I say this to demonstrate that when talking about Jesus’ brand of social justice and the gospel, the kinds of priorities and programs promoted by those passionate about social justice today often miss the primary problem of personal depravity. If you disagree, consider the book of Acts. Granted, in Acts 2:42-47, they “had all things in common.” The picture presented sounds very socialistic and just, but it was an entirely voluntary kind of sharing and not governmentally mandated or coerced. In addition, the rest of book says virtually nothing about these types of arrangements among Christians. It’s not that they had or didn’t have them. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t. That’s beside the point. What’s important to notice is that they prioritized sharing the gospel, planting churches, and making disciples. They pursued virtually no formal program for rectifying the overtly racist and unjust social systems of their time.
Instead, they directly ministered to the spiritually poor and blind as well to those who were materially afflicted in various ways. As Matthew 15:14 and Revelation 3:17 make clear, the problems highlighted by Jesus in Luke 4 were not simply material, they were also deeply spiritual. They had material manifestations, of course, but every physical solution He provides points beyond itself to the spiritual significance of His miracles.
In this way, the need for physical healing ultimately points beyond itself to the need for spiritual help and healing. As Jesus points out in Mark 2:17, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Beyond a normal doctor, we need the Great Physician to spiritually heal us. Our need for physical sustenance points beyond itself to our spiritual need for heavenly bread. Thus, Jesus is our real physician as well as our “true bread” (John 6:32). While we need healing from physical blindness, our deeper need is for spiritual light and guidance. Thus, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).
In light of this, the ministry accounts of Jesus’ early followers show that they were largely disinterested in much of what many today consider “social justice.” Instead, they primarily focused on proclaiming the simple message of the gospel concerning our need to trust in the crucified and gloriously risen Christ for the forgiveness of sin and helping those who believed to grow together in their new-found faith. But again, this does not mean that Jesus and His followers were unconcerned about people’s physical problems and needs. After all, when there was a famine in Jerusalem, many churches took up a collection to help the poor and needy there (see 1 Corinthians 16:1-4), and Paul speaks about his eagerness to “remember the poor” in Galatians 2:10. Not only this, Jesus makes it clear in Matthew 25:31-46 that Christians are supposed to feed the hungry, give drinks to the thirsty, welcome strangers, cloth the naked, and visit the sick and imprisoned.
We cannot and must not ignore our Christian obligations to care for people in need. There is no dichotomy between sharing the good news that Jesus Christ came and died to save sinners and meeting the social and physical needs of people made in God’s image. But the ministry of the early church reveals that their primary mission was concerned about helping people be reconciled to God. They met physical and social and educational and economic needs, but not through political action committees or any educational, economic, and social initiatives enforced by local, state, and federal governments.
Instead, while proclaiming this divine message of healing and hope, they also fed the hungry, gave drinks to the thirsty, healed the sick, visited the imprisoned, clothed the naked, parented orphans, educated the illiterate, prayed for their leaders, loved their enemies, and cared for one another. And they did all of this at great personal and communal cost, placing no demands or expectations upon the governments of their time to rectify these widespread and on-going social injustices. They understood that before Christ’s second coming, the “kingdom of God” was not, first and foremost, a political and material kingdom, but a spiritually powerful kingdom that in Jesus’ own words was “not of this world” (John 18:36). As a result of this kind of ministry, they radically change the course of history and “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6).
I close with an acknowledgment and a warning. First, I acknowledge that in democratic societies, Christians still have genuine opportunities to influence and encourage good governance, and they should take full advantage of that. I also agree that political, educational, economic, and social institutions have an important place in helping to bring about a more just society for everyone, so long as they are willing to hear wise counsel and enact genuinely just policies.
My warning, however, is this: When something (like social justice) becomes vogue in the broader culture, the church should be wary of uncritically jumping on board the populist bandwagon. Given many of the openly hostile and anti-biblical assumptions of contemporary culture, it is no accident that some brands of “social justice” openly embrace things like abortion (touted as “women’s healthcare and reproductive rights”) and the LGBT+ lobby (touted as “justice for the marginalized and oppressed”). In this vein, you can no longer be anti-abortion, question the wisdom of sex-change operations, or consider sexual intimacy outside the context of heterosexual marriage immoral and still be “standing on the right side of history” or an advocate for genuine justice.
I am reminded of the dire reprimand in Isaiah 5:20-21: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight!”
Only when Jesus returns as the conquering King will social injustice and sin be completely eradicated and everything rectified. It is to that eschatological political vision that Christians must continuously look while seeking to bring the healing and hope of Jesus into the midst of a crooked and perverse generation where we are to “shine like stars” in the face of so much moral injustice and spiritual darkness.
I grew up in what many call a “low” church tradition. Besides Christmas and Easter, we did not follow the rhythms of any traditional annual liturgical calendar. I thought that sacred seasons like Lent were only practiced by more “rigid” and “ritualistic” denominations. For my classmates attending such churches, Lent was a time to complain about all the things they wanted but couldn’t have because they had to “give it up for Lent.” Consequently, the practice held little attraction for me. I enjoyed the spiritual freedom of eating, drinking, and doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.
It was only after moving to Singapore that I began to hear and think more seriously about the meaning, practices, and significance of Lent. I learned that because Easter is celebrated toward the beginning of spring, the word “Lent” comes from the old English word that means to “lengthen,” referring to the time when the days getting longer in the northern hemisphere. In addition, I realized that Lent is linked not only to the Easter event, but also to the 40 days of fasting Jesus experienced in the wilderness at the onset of His active earthly ministry.
I also began to appreciate how Lent was really a privilege and gracious invitation to grow nearer to Jesus Christ through acts of identification and participation in His sacrifice and sufferings on my behalf. Jesus willingly left His heavenly position of power and prestige to live the humiliating life of every man (Phil 2:5-8; Heb 2:14-18), endure hardship, temptation, and weakness (Luke 4:1-13), and ultimately give His life as a faultless and sufficient sacrifice for sin (2 Cor 5:21).
In giving up His life, Jesus simultaneously gave us His moral righteousness, divine position, and eternal life, by forgiving us, raising us from the dead, and seating us with Him in the heavenly places the moment we placed our faith in Him (Eph 2:4-9). As we think deeply upon this unwarranted kindness and grace of God in Christ, we should be overwhelmed by His undeserved, sacrificial, and immeasurable love. It should compel us to ask, “How can I thank you, Lord, and how can I more deeply appreciate all that Christ has done for me?”
Leading up to the celebration of Jesus’ death and resurrection at Easter, Lent calls us to a time of voluntary hardship, reflection, and thanksgiving to help us to enter more fully into His sacrificial life, humiliating death, and glorious resurrection. We do this in two primary ways: giving up and giving out. By giving up, we willingly sacrifice something important and pleasurable to us; a beloved food, a favorite TV show, a special drink, an entertaining activity like being on social media. This “What?” must be decided upon between you and the Lord, but the idea is to suffer the loss of something you love and enjoy as a concrete reminder of all that Christ lovingly sacrificed for you.
But Lent is not meant to be merely a call to give up. Just as Christ gave up many things, He also gave out—offering us forgiveness, holiness, honor, hope, and eternal life through His giving up. Thus, Lent also calls us to give out in our giving up. As we sacrifice something for the season of Lent, we are also encouraged to think of it as a time to give to others what we don’t typically or easily give. It might be the offer kindness and forgiveness to someone you would rather remain angry with. It might be the gift of food or drink or money or time or service. Again, the “What?” is something to discern from the Lord. But as you live in sacrifice through Lent, you are also called to live in generosity and joyful thanksgiving for all that God has given you by sharing those gracious blessings with others.
In the end, there is a certain mystery to Lent. When done for the wrong reasons, it can become prideful, misdirected, and nothing more than a dead or legalistic ritual, devoid of any real meaning or benefit. But when done with the right attitude through the power and love of His Holy Spirit, profound spiritual growth and Christian maturity results, and God is both pleased and glorified.
I often hear this phrase in academic circles: “You must follow the truth wherever it leads.” In a thoroughly post-enlightenment rationalist age where the life of the mind is considered the highest form of human activity, this statement makes perfect sense. From a thoroughly biblical perspective, however, it can be quite dangerous. The key question is what is meant by, “truth.”
The unstated assumption is that pursuing “truth” will always lead toward reality. But if postmodernity has taught us anything, it’s the fact that the idea of truth is value-laden. And I have watched far too many scholars, in the name of “pursuing the truth,” follow paths that clearly led them away from Jesus Christ, the One who declares Himself the truth (John 14:6) and reminds us that God’s word is truth (John 17:17).
In fact, our finitude greatly limits us, and sin infects every aspect of our being, including our intellectual capacity to find and discern truth. As a result, the pursuit of truth is never a neutral enterprise. We have unrecognized assumptions, vested interests, prior propensities, limited perspectives, and underlying commitments that skew our ability and desire to perceive, acquire, and properly apply truth. As James Spiegel puts it in The Making of an Atheist, “Sin corrupts cognition, which leads to more sin, which brings about a further corruption of the mind and so on. The overarching point [of Romans 1] is clear: immoral behavior undermines one’s ability to think straight, at least about certain issues.” As such, genuine truth-seeking requires more than intellectual capacity and curiosity. It also demands virtues of courage, rectitude, humility, and submission.
I have met some truly brilliant thinkers who think at a completely different intellectual level and with a far greater capacity than the rest of us. But the more I see truly brilliant people, the more grateful I am that God did not make me one of them. For all of its benefits and greatness, brilliance is also exceptionally dangerous. When you become convinced that you’re smarter than everyone else (even if it’s true), it’s a relatively small step to believe you are also smarter than God, or at least smart enough not to need or trust Him. Brilliance makes it easier to forget that you are not comparing yourself to other mere mortals but challenging the wisdom and knowledge of the omnipotent Maker, Sustainer, Lover, and Redeemer of the universe.
There comes a time in the life of every honest person when the ability to know is obviously outstripped by our sin-distorted perceptions of reality, our limited capacities of the mind, and the inherently complex and mysterious nature of a finite universe created by an infinite God. At this point, we would do well to demonstrate a certain level of humility and surrender to the incapacity of our finitude and the obfuscating influences of sin.
But like all other noble pursuits, we can make the pursuit of what we want to be true an end in itself, another idolatrous absolute detached from the One and only true source of truth: God made known through Jesus Christ. This detaches truth from its source, giving it an ambiguous independence that is grounded in nothing more than our perceptions of and desires about the way things really are. It essentially denies that truth is embodied in Jesus (Ephesians 4:21) and ignores the exceptionally distorting power of sin and the profoundly limited nature of our knowing. Instead, we desperately need the corrective aid of the incarnate Christ, God’s authoritative word, and His Holy Spirit who says He will guide us into all truth (John 16:13).
Enlightenment rationalism made an idol of human intellect. Postmodernism has made an idol of personal perceptions and desires. But this is nothing new. Back in the time of the New Testament, the Apostle Paul reminded us in Romans 1:18ff that we create idols whenever we suppress the truth in unrighteousness and refuse to give God the thanks and honor He warrants and deserves. We may deceive ourselves into believing we are following the truth wherever it leads when we are really only seeking after the things that we hope and want to be true.
As atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel once (in a refreshingly honest way) confessed in The Last Word, “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God…. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”
In contrast, for Christians, “following the truth wherever it leads,” takes on an entirely new significance and meaning. It entails becoming a Spirit-empowered disciple of Jesus Christ, a faithful and diligent student and doer of God’s word, and a person who loves, thanks, and worships God in spirit and in truth. That’s the only journey worth taking no matter where it may lead and what it might cost.
lewinkler 