The modern West is obsessed with rights, especially in the US. The right to self-determination. The right to free speech. The right to free practice of religion. The right to bear arms. The American Church in particular has made elevation and preservation of these rights (at least, for ourselves), into items of paramount importance, sometimes even to the neglect of our witness (our love for the right to inflict violence on others in self-defense isn’t exactly a historic Christian principle).

These rights we’ve enshrined here in the U.S. are certainly not bad things. In fact, I believe in them wholeheartedly. We as a society have massively progressed as we’ve increasingly recognized the common rights of man, and the very concept of human rights is intimately tied to the idea of the Imago Dei within man. We each hold inalienable rights because of the Creator whose Image we all hold in common.

However, the more I look to Scripture, the more I think we’ve gotten our wires a tad crossed, not as Americans, but as Christians.

We are not nearly enough concerned with the rights of others, while being far too concerned about the rights of our selves.

What Did Paul Think of Rights?

For Paul, the concept of rights certainly existed. But for the Christian, the task was not to defend one’s own rights, but to respect the rights of others while submitting their own freely as a gift of grace to those around them.

In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul gets into the topic of rights—of owed dues. He goes on a bit of a monologue, challenging the criticisms he’s faced as if he has demanded more than his due.

Utilizing Scripture, he defends his right to material support and more from the Corinthians, but he doesn’t make this argument for the sake of securing that right in practice. Rather, he says it all to the shame of his critics, elaborating,

“If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it too much if we reap material benefits from you? If others have this right to receive benefits from you, don’t we even more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right; instead, we endure everything so that we will not hinder the gospel of Christ.

“What then is my reward? To preach the gospel and offer it free of charge and not make full use of my rights in the gospel.”

If the Church of the US wishes to better represent the Kingdom of Heaven, we must spend substantially less time making demands on behalf of ourselves and far exceed selfish demands with those made on behalf of others.

I think if we truly internalized Philippians 2:3-4, American Evangelical public advocacy might look quite different.

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others.”

Paul often receives criticism for not adequately condemning slavery. While I think there is much to be said about the topic—such as reference to Paul’s command to Onesimus to receive his slave Philemon “no longer as a slave, but more than a slave—as a dearly loved brother”—I think one of the simplest responses to the criticism is that Paul didn’t condemn slavery because he expected a posture of servanthood and submission of one’s rights for every Christian.

To Paul, advocacy for one’s own freedoms and rights came secondarily to patient endurance of the violation of one’s rights for the sake of exercising Christ-like love.

The Early Church Understood the Assignment

Clement in 1 Clement 55:2 even tells us that there were Christians who literally sold themselves into slavery to purchase the freedom of others, or even to feed the hungry with the proceeds of their own enslavement.

While such extreme acts are not demanded of every Christian, our unchanging Christian Faith today retains the same Scripture and ethos of submission of self and one’s own rights that drove these acts.

In Letter 138 from Augustine, we see him responding to a critic who complained, “that the Christian doctrine and preaching were in no way consistent with the duties and rights of citizens.”

Augustine clarifies that there is a purpose (and even material value) to the seeming madness of the abdication of one’s rights that was commonly being practiced by Christians adhering to Matthew 5’s commands such as “turn the other cheek.”

“For these things are done only that a wicked man may be overcome by kindness, or rather that the evil which is in the wicked man may be overcome by good, and that the man may be delivered from the evil— not from any evil that is external and foreign to himself, but from that which is within and is his own…He, therefore, who is overcoming evil by good, submits patiently to the loss of temporal advantages…”

He goes on to elaborate that a society in which such relinquishing of rights was commonplace could not to be argued by any to be bad citizenship outside the interests of common society, ending this section of his letter with “…let them no longer hesitate to confess that this doctrine, if it were obeyed, would be the salvation of the commonwealth.”

Ignatius writes of the importance of such submission of one’s rightful response to opposition in his Epistle to the Ephesians,

”Be meek in response to their wrath, humble in opposition to their boasting: to their blasphemies return your prayers; in contrast to their error, be steadfast in the faith; and for their cruelty, manifest your gentleness. While we take care not to imitate their conduct, let us be found their brethren in all true kindness…”

What If the Church Abdicated Her Rights?

It’s easy to read the Bible individually, but I think we often miss messages we should be receiving corporately. What changes if we receive Paul’s challenge to “consider others as more important than yourselves,” or “look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others” not only as individual commands, but as a command of the Church as one Body?

What would change in how the American Church utilizes its platform and messaging if we prioritized the interests of others over the interests of our own as a collective?

How would our advocacy and public platform look different if we embraced our Christian freedom to submit our rights as Christ did, all in the pursuit of loving as He did, too?’

What if, rather than protesting “persecution,” we instead prioritized display of love for those you may feel are persecuting the Church?

How might things be different if we chose love over rights?

Some things to think about.

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You’re on a guided hike through the Andes mountain range. The goal? Reach a remote collection of Incan ruins that your guide assures you come with a one-in-a-million view and far less traffic than the more popular destinations.

This guide came recommended by friends you trust, who themselves hiked this trail a couple of years ago. Their stories of the journey were mesmerizing. A beautiful hike, scenery straight out of a movie, and hosts at the mountaintop who provide shelter, an unforgettable traditional meal of their people, and hammocks from which you can see spirals of the Milky Way in a clear night sky.

At the moment, though, you’re not thinking about your final destination. You’re thinking about a rope bridge lying in front of you, spanning across a 20 yard chasm, that your guide is telling you has to be crossed to reach your final destination.

“Yea, my final destination.”

You have a different definition of that phrase in mind, as you stare down the depths of the chasm and question if it’s possible for you to turn back now.

“It’s safe, see?”

He begins to cross in front of you.

The guide reaches the other side and beckons you to cross now. The bridge looks secure enough. Nothing seemed to strain or stretch as he crossed.

Curious to confirm if your friends crossed this very bridge, you shout across the chasm, “Have you always used this route? Did your trail participants cross it in, say, 2024?”

“Yes, always, my friend! It’s very safe! Hundreds of crossings a year, and strength-tested regularly!”

You know your friends must have crossed this same bridge. You would say, factually, you “know” something with hundreds of crossings and safety certifications is safe. Intellectually, you “believe” him.

But do you really “believe?” If you believed, wouldn’t crossing this rope bridge be easy?

You know that you “know” this bridge is reliable, but you begin to realize that you don’t know if you “believe” it is.

Suddenly, you understand the father of Mark 9, who cried out to Jesus, “I do believe,” quickly follow by “help my unbelief!”

You know—you intellectually assent to—the reliability of this bridge. But do you believe it will hold?

Only your actions will reveal whether you just know, or if you truly believe. And sometimes we have to pray for God to grant us the belief we “know” we need to have, but struggle to find within ourselves.

The Difference Between Knowledge and Belief

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, in a personal capacity. I know the Christian life. I know Scripture. I know God’s commands.

And yet, I also know two things that I am aware I do not always believe (at least not to the extent of fully backing them with my actions or lived trust):

1. God’s ways are for my good and the good of others. Choosing an action, behavior, or path outside of God’s revealed commands is action taken to my own detriment and/or the detriment of others. I am better off following God’s ways in all things, consistently. Specifically, I’m better off proactively abiding in Him (John 15:9-11).

2. God is not holding out on me. He loves me, He wants what is best for me, and I can rest secure in His promises. God is good (Psalms 34:8), and he is for me (Romans 8:31-32).

The past year has been a bit turbulent for me personally. There have been some amazing things that have happened in my life and that of my family, while simultaneously there has been some meaningful uncertainty, and, to be honest, a difficulty in “feeling” God.

It’s been a season in which I’ve had to trust—had to believe—both his promises for me and also the reliability and value in living faithfully, especially in remaining consistent in personal exercise of my Christian faith and not just in the general religious practice of it.

But at times like this, I’m not going to lie, it is tough to set aside time for prayer. It’s tough to open up my Bible just to read it, rather than primarily opening it for specific reference points or in research. It’s tough to abide in Christ, even though that’s the whole point of this thing.

I know abiding in Christ is the source of all else.

I “believe” that Christ is the living water that will nourish and empower me for all else.

Yet, my flesh resists.

True belief—belief that would obviously bear corresponding actions as immediate fruit—that belief is elusive. At times, it can truly be challenging to find, even when I want it.

I know my faith must be more than wrote memorization, muscle memory, and sharing of truths I know intellectually, but does that knowledge lead me to real belief backed by real actions?

I Know God Exists, but Do I Believe Him?

My answer to the question of God’s existence is “Yes, he certainly exists,” but again, words merely reveal what we intellectually know.

Due to a supernatural encounter I had with God through a prophetic vision when I was 14 (and God’s successful prediction of unlikely future events within that vision), I don’t really have an option when it comes to believing in the reality of God’s existence. I’d be foolish to reject what He’s revealed plainly to me.

But belief He exists is different than belief in Him and in what He says.

I can tell you I believe Him, but it is the reality of my actions that reveals (even more to myself than to outside observers) whether that belief is truly held.

Do I cross the bridge? Or do I hold back in fearful apprehension?

Do I travel the fraught path to the destination of promise, or do I take the easy path to lesser destinations?

What we do reveals what we believe; not what we intellectually assent to be true, but what we really believe.

I believe in God, and I believe God, but in this life—as long as I live in this body of the Flesh—I will still always have to consciously reinforce that belief, as do you. Belief must be continually chosen, and followed by actions that match it.

This is What I’ve Been Thinking About

I have to choose to believe. I have to cross the bridge.

I have to choose to abide. I have to pursue personal encounter with Christ, not just adherence to or observance of Christianity.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about over the last week. In prayer on Thursday, I received a phrase, not quite audibly, but clearly not of my own mind.

“Believe me.”

I immediately knew what it was in reference to. Okay God, I hear you.

That word was rapidly followed up by “Taste and see,” which I recognized as a portion of Scripture. A quick Google search confirmed the source: Psalm 34, which I proceeded to read in its entirety.

It’s a great section of Scripture, and if you’ve similarly struggled with believing God, and not just “knowing” Christianity, I’d encourage you to read it right now.

Over the last week, whenever I’ve been tempted, whenever I’ve ignored an impulse to open my Bible, whenever I’ve chased distraction rather than active abiding, that word has persisted.

“Believe me.”

Maybe it’s a word you need to hear as well.

If so, join me in a prayer of response:

“I do believe; help my unbelief, Lord.”

Then go—taste and see.

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I’ll be posting these for the next few weeks throughout August (the rest this month will be more paywalled than this one). If you all appear to want more of this, I’ll continue beyond. God bless, and thank you for caring to read my thoughts below. I’m honored.

As last weekend began, we looked to be on the verge of a new chapter—one of significant escalation—of the Iran war. Notices were issued by US embassies across the Middle East advising US citizens to prepare to leave as “escalation” was likely. Military movements both in Iran and by the US and its allies indicated a significant escalation was imminent, and both sides were preparing.

Then, today, as we’ve become far-too-accustomed to, a “Truth” was posted to Trump’s Truth Social account. The “perimeters of a deal” had been reached, and the big bad war wasn’t going to happen after all (for now).

Oof. Where to begin? There are layers to unpack here, all of which say something about our society; about the rapid decay of our norms and values.

The Typo

First off, I hate the casual and nonprofessional depths we’ve degraded to. I think we often forget that it’s not normal by any standard of history for the President of the United States to issue public notices that could change the course of history via the equivalent of internet post-it notes, typos and all (“perimeters” should certainly have been “parameters”).

I work in marketing. When there is a typo in a professional post, it’s not a small deal. Every so often the guy who used to post content for my team at a nonprofit I previously led marketing/development at would mistakenly post with a typo. It’s not a particularly huge issue, but each time we would have a quick meeting, touch base on our process, identify corrective action to prevent it happening again (typically it was due to a rushed post without proper checks), and go on with our days.

The fact that the President of the United States is making public announcements about extremely significant military actions, actions which would end the lives of thousands (if not tens of thousands), and there are typos in it?

While that may seem like a superficial nitpick on the surface, it betrays how deeply unserious and irresponsible our present leaders (and those in their command) really are.

Typos in posts may be inconsequential enough. Typos in, say, target coordinates? Suddenly much more serious (and we’ve had one too many targeting mistakes in this war). The latter is downstream of the former. We’ve discarded the professionalism that is critical to a highly functional society, and it shows.

The best humor pokes at a real problem, but with good-natured laughter and jest. And the American Church's understanding of tithing is often a real problem.

An Illuminating Quote

One of my favorite quotes on tithing comes from the 20th century theologian and preacher G. Campbell Morgan:

"I hear a great deal about the tithing of incomes. I have no sympathy with the movement at all. A tenth in the case of one man is meanness, and in the case of another man is dishonesty.

I know men today who are Christian men in city churches and village chapels, who have no business to give a tenth of their income to the work of God. They cannot afford it. I know other men who are giving one-tenth, and the nine-tenths they keep is doing harm to their souls."

Sheesh. That's quite a word, right?

Ironically, in pursuing the letter of the Law, many of our churches have today forgotten the spirit of the Law.

What Does the Bible Say?

For the Christian, Paul tells us our financial participation in the Church should be born not of compulsion, should demand more proportionally of the rich than of the poor, and should have this principle at its core:

The Message is Clear

What’s funny is that this should be obvious, right? 10% for someone living hand-to-mouth may be the same “proportion” as 10% for someone making $1 million per year, but it’s obviously neither the same in burden, nor in generosity expressed.

One is giving in a way that may dramatically subtract from their quality of life, while the other is giving in a measure that doesn’t impact them in the slightest. Yet many of our churches would deem a millionaire giving 10% as a moral exemplar, and the single mom on food stamps giving 5% as a sinner.

Excuse me, but that’s a load of skubala.

There are excellent arguments to be made that we misunderstand the Old Testament tithe (there were three tithes, and they were only charged to individuals who owned fields or flocks/herds, not wage earners), and/or that the tithe is no longer demanded of Christians, but rather lives of wholehearted generosity, provision for one another, and sharing of excess.

But those arguments don’t even need to be made for you to at least consider that in enforcing what we understand to be the letter of the Law, we must not violate the spirit of it.

Jesus tells us that man was not created for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man. I think we’d do well to apply the same principle here. The tithe was not created to burden our poorest, but to ensure the wealthiest among us provided for the needs of ministry and the poor.

We as the American Church would do well to preach a theology that more fairly burdened our wealthy, and more fairly freed our poor.

Quick note: Thanks for giving this piece a thorough read! This #memewithamessage format is a bit experimental for me, so would you mind letting me know in a comment if:

a) You liked this approach/Substack’s interface for video was conducive to this format

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b) The interface was clunky for reading and/or you prefer Substack articles to just stick to text and images

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As I create content pulling from Scripture and elucidating different elements of the text, folks often ask me what my preferred Bible translations are. I have three top translations, personally:

1. The NRSV, which I love for being influenced by a variety of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox scholars. I know I’m going to get nuanced and informed translation with that text, pulled from a diversity of views.

2. The CSB, which is my everyday reader. This translation holds a strong balance between “thought-for-thought” and “word-for-word” approaches to translating the message of the text, and is informed by some excellent scholarship, although by a selection of scholars more narrow in their background.

3. The NLT, which I enjoy for both “easy reading” and in contrast with other translations to help decipher the actual message of particularly wordy or complex portions of Scripture. Being a scholarly approach to a more “thought-for-thought” translation, the NLT is both lighter reading and helps make sense of challenging passages.

When reading Scripture in any translation, though, it’s always useful to be aware of their weaknesses and limitations. I was reminded of this particularly acutely one July morning five years ago. For a reason I don’t remember, I had been reading through both the ESV and the NLT versions of a passage. A discovery I made prompted me to send the following message in my family chat:

The passage in question? Hosea 6:1-2. The problem was that the ESV (and the CSB, NIV, NRSV, etc.) read entirely different than the NLT here. And the difference was significant.

The CSB Reading

In the CSB (which I now find to be a slightly better reading than the ESV, although very similar in this case), the verse reads:

“Come, let’s return to the LORD. For he has torn us, and he will heal us; he has wounded us, and he will bind up our wounds. He will revive us after two days, and on the third day he will raise us up so we can live in his presence.”

Notice something interesting there?

“…on the third day he will raise us up so we can live in his presence.” I don’t know about you, but that reads as pretty prophetic to me.

As we Christians now know, several hundred years after this text was written Jesus was raised on the third day after his death, and through that resurrection we can likewise be raised up to live in God’s presence, having his sacrifice attributed to us through faith.

In fact, some scholars argue that Paul himself is likely referencing Hosea 6:2 when he declares in 1 Cor. 15:3-4 that Jesus’ resurrection on the 3rd day was prophesied in the Old Testament Scriptures.

“For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures…”

This additionally appears to be the view of such early Church Fathers as Tertullian, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Jerome.

Contrasting the NLT

The problem is, the NLT omits the specificity of time mentioned in the passage entirely, which is precisely the information from which this potential prophetic meaning would be derived!

In the NLT, the passage reads,

“Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces; now he will heal us. He has injured us; now he will bandage our wounds. In just a short time he will restore us, so that we may live in his presence.”

But the Hebrew doesn’t say, “…in just a short time…” It specifically uses the phrasing of “miyyomayim” (“from/after two days”) and "bayom hashlishi” (“on the third day”). Personally, I think it’s an injustice to the text to translate this passage so imprecisely, especially given the parallels readers steeped in the whole of Scripture are likely to draw.

However, there’s no conspiracy at play here; no ill-intended attempt to quietly bury a Christological reference in the text. The problem comes from the NLT’s dynamic equivalence translation philosophy, which is generally very helpful and respectable.

At times, it makes perfect sense to go with the meaning of the text rather than the letter of the text, as the letter of the text may be nonsensical or misleading for modern readers of different cultures in regard to the original intended message of the author.

For example, many Old Testament passages communicate directly in the Hebrew that God is “long of nose.” Translated “word for word,” this phrasing would be meaningless to an English speaker. However, we know that “long of nose” is a Hebrew idiom translating to “slow to anger.” Thus, the vast majority of English translations tell us that God is slow to anger, not that his nose is particularly large.

The NLT is here taking similar well-intended liberties. In Ancient Hebrew poetry, the use of an amount of numbers plus one (an x, x+1 pattern) was an idiomatic way to communicate a complete total. Below are two examples:

“The Lord says:
I will not relent from punishing Damascus
for three crimes, even four,
because they threshed Gilead with iron sledges.”

Amos 1:3

“The Lord hates six things;
in fact, seven are detestable to him:”

Proverbs 6:16

It is this idiom that some scholars claim is being applied here in Hosea 6:2. With no true knowledge of Jesus’ future resurrection, neither the author nor his ancient readers would have consciously intended a Christological reading of the text.

However, as a Christian who believes the words of Scripture are divinely inspired, I think it’s just as important to aim for communicating what the Holy Spirit inspired these authors to write as it is to communicate what they understood themselves to be writing.

The principle of sensus plenior argues that understanding Scripture is not just about understanding the human authors’ intents, but also the intent of the singular Holy Spirit who inspired them. As Catholic scholar Raymond E. Brown writes, “The sensus plenior is that additional, deeper meaning, intended by God but not clearly intended by the human author, which is seen to exist in the words of a biblical text (or group of texts, or even a whole book) when they are studied in the light of further revelation or development in the understanding of revelation” (SPSS, 92).

In light of the principle of sensus plenior and the relevance of the specific timing mentioned in the text of Hosea 6:2, I see no reason why this passage shouldn’t be translated in the traditional rendering preserved by the NIV, CSB, ESV, NRSV, and other leading translations, with perhaps a footnote in the page explaining the potential grammatical flourish at play for the original audience.

Unlike “long of nose,” the literal verbiage of being raised “on the third day” and restored to God’s presence does have relevance and meaning for the modern reader in light of what Christ accomplished through His resurrection. It just may differ from what the original author understood his text to be saying.

In Summary

For me, this encounter with divergence between translations served as a helpful reminder on how useful it is to cross-compare various translations of Scripture, especially when closely studying a passage.

The YouVersion Bible App even has a feature through which you can click on a verse and select to compare versions, a feature I frequently make use of. This isn’t a paid partnership, but it is a personal feature recommendation from me!

I hope this piece serves as a helpful reminder to you on the true depth of this text we Christians are consulting, and the value in going over some passages with a fine-toothed, multi-translation comb.

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An ancient heresy has crept into the American Evangelical imagination. It’s subtle, easy to slowly adopt without even recognizing the syncretism you’re engaged in.

In fact, when Paul and other members of the Early Church warned against this heresy, it wasn’t because people were “leaving the faith for it,” but because they were mistakenly incorporating elements of it into their Christian faith.

This heresy is called “Gnosticism.”

Gnosis literally translates into “knowledge.” Ancient gnostics believed that the physical world was inherently evil, that salvation came from arriving at the right “knowledge,” and that the goal of life was to be liberated from this world and released to a spiritual plane, enabled by knowing the right things.

Early Christians had to address Gnosticism seeping into the Church and disembodying our faith. It reduced Christianity simply to revelation, to knowing the right things, and, since the world was evil and to be done away with anyways, resulted in a sort of “escapism” and abdication of moral responsibility and proactive presence.

So how has Gnosticism seeped back into much of the American Church today? I’ll touch on three ways, though you may note there are other hints of its presence in our culture beyond these.

First, Gnostic Escapism

Let’s start with the escapism. Rapture ideology and dispensationalism has primed an entire generation with the belief that this world is destined for destruction and we fortunate elect will escape those horrors into a disembodied heavenly reality.

That is not the Gospel. As N.T. Wright argues in Surprised by Hope, the Gospel is about the restoration of all things, the eventual resurrection to eternal life in everlasting bodies, and the overall emphasis on the here and now, not there and then.

“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” - Col. 1:19-20

The Gospel invites us into continual participation in this ongoing work as we prepare the way for our eventual returning King.

“Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” 2 Cor. 5:18

Think less Left Behind, more Return of the King; Gondor restored, not abandoned.

Second, the Disembodiment of Sacraments

Point number two: our wispy reduction of the physical sacraments God has granted us.

A huge proportion of the American Church has reduced communion to a mere moment to consider what Jesus did for us. This approach is called “Memorialism” and it is not in Scripture.

It also was never taught by anyone in the Church for about the first 1500 years of our faith, originating with Zwingli. This is an innovation, one I grew up under myself. But communion is not just a chance to think about Jesus and what he did for us.

It is an opportunity to uniquely experience the presence and grace of Christ, participating in his sacrifice just as the Hebrews who ate the Passover Lamb in Exodus participated in the sacrifice of that lamb for them. Something unexplainable happens in this holy sacrament.

Or how about baptism? Much of modern evangelicalism has somehow gotten the idea that baptism is a mere profession of faith, something we’re just commanded to do, but just like we’re commanded to do good.

This is not how the Church has ever seen baptism until relative modernity. There is not a single time in the Bible in which someone comes to faith and remains unbaptized. Yet in much of the Evangelical Church we see people baptized 10 years after coming to faith, or even never at all. That’s a failure in discipleship.

To be baptized is to physically exercise your joining to the Body of Christ. Baptism is a part of becoming a Christian, again, in a holy mystical way in which a spiritual reality of our faith is physically embodied.

And this kind of leads to my third point.

Third, the Mere “Spiritualization” of Christianity

Becoming a Christian is not reciting a passcode. It is not a magic spell. It is not downloading the “right information,” simply knowing or even intellectually assenting that Jesus is God and he died for you.

The Greek word translated as faith in Scripture, pistis (or pisteuo in verb form), translates perhaps best as “allegiance,” (as argued by Matthew Bates in Salvation by Allegiance Alone), or “entrusting oneself to,” and with that comes certain things, including the Fruit of the Spirit.

John Calvin and Martin Luther both clarified this in their own words.

“We are not saved by works; but if there be no works, there must be something amiss with faith.” - Luther

“It is therefore faith alone which justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone: just as it is the heat alone of the sun which warms the earth, and yet in the sun it is not alone, because it is constantly conjoined with light.” - Calvin

A mistake common to Evangelicalism is that we often divorce Christian faith from Christian life, allowing one to be claimed without the other.

One cannot be a soccer player and not play soccer. A true Christian identity, trusting oneself to Christ, will be reflected by Christian pursuit of Christ and His ways.

In Hebrews 11, the faith of the heroes who preceded us is described in their physical exercises of faith, not mere intellectual assent.

Perfection is not expected, but physical expression of faith, real pursuit of Christ’s ways, is.

We need to be very careful to reject the efforts of the same demons active today who snuck this false philosophy into some of the very churches Paul confronted in the New Testament.

Do not reduce Christianity to spiritual fufu.

Embrace Our Real, Tangible, Embodied Faith

The Christian life is embodied. It is physically expressed. It bears tangible fruit. It partakes in the sacraments. It lives as a member of Christ’s Church, global in reality, local in expression.

This is why I hate the phrases, “It’s a relationship, not a religion,” or “I’m spiritual, not religious.” They are two sides of the same coin, as the Christian “religion” is good, and it is merely the corporate embodied exercise of our Christian faith.

“Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” James 1:27

Christianity includes real religious observance. It is represented in both the spiritual and the physical. And that is good.

Exercise pistis. Be the goodness of God to this world, as the embodiment of Christ we are collectively described as.

“Now you are the body of Christ, and individual members of it.” 1 Cor. 12:27

One of the most frustrating parts of being informed about diplomacy is watching people who shouldn’t be leading war and negotiations horribly flub both. Here’s what I wish our present leaders actually understood.

1) Desperate ground.

Over 2000 years ago, Chinese strategist Sun Tzu wrote, “When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.” He elaborated elsewhere on the strategic utility (and danger to attackers) of desperate ground for a defending force. I wrote thoroughly on this strategic principle of war here last week.

You never want your opponent to be in a situation where their only options are fighting you in desperation or giving themselves up to death (or fates they view as worse than death). They will fight you, and while you may win, they will make it cost you as much as they can.

This is not what you want in war.

2) You have to leave something to lose.

For peace negotiations to work, your opponent needs something to preserve — or something to gain. Iran’s economy is in ruins. Their domestic standing was already shaky. We killed much of their leadership immediately, including Supreme Leader Khamenei, and even the wife of the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.

The problem is (although I think this is actually a good thing), we lack the appetite to commit the ground presence necessary to “finish the job” and install a new regime, meaning we need to negotiate some sort of peace with what remains of the regime.

But then you have to ask yourself: what exactly are they supposed to be negotiating for? The regime has much less to lose by continuing fighting now than they have to gain from continued pressure, both tangibly and “emotionally.”

While there are some strategic objectives the Iranians would desire, such as guarantees of no future strikes, right now, fighting back is the only move that lets them save face, even if continued war were to logically be a negative for them.

Which brings me to the next point.

3) You have to understand who you’re fighting.

Retired U.S. Army lieutenant general H.R. McMaster calls this “Strategic Empathy.” Understanding the dynamics and motivations of your opponent is critical. Iran operates in an honor/shame culture. When we and/or Israel struck them in the past, they responded with dramatic, flashy retaliation with minimal real damage — loud enough to look strong at home, careful enough to avoid real escalation.

It was calculated performance. It met their domestic objectives of preserving their pride while avoiding further escalation that would put them at serious risk.

But what if there was no meaningfully “further escalation” to fear or desire to avoid? And what if the “dishonor” they felt they’d received was far more acute than a handful of bombed military facilities?

By coming in at 100 and destroying everything/everyone they’d want to preserve in any future peace negotiations, we removed motivations for restraint. We killed their leadership on day one. We’ve destroyed thousands of military targets. The incentive to stay measured? Gone. What do they gain (or not lose) now from suing for peace? In their mind, not much.

No, now they feel a need to save face. Not good.

4) Ideologies cannot be defeated with guns and bombs alone.

The Islamic regime within Iran is motivated by extremist Shi’a theology. To die is to be martyred. Death can be a victory itself.

If you don’t understand the Karbala paradigm, you’re going to risk ironically strengthening the regime’s hand with the damage you succeed in. Not only that, but every civilian death is an opportunity for the IRGC to say, “I told you so,” to their domestic population.

And brings up the last thing I wish our leaders demonstrated more cognizance about.

5) Populations rally against outside attackers.

To date, over 1,400 Iranian civilians are believed to have died in this war. As resources dwindle and further bombs fall, the population may begin to no longer see the regime as the primary cause of their frustrations, but the US and Israel.

The IRGC narrative regarding the popular revolts of several weeks ago has been that the Israelis and Americans manipulated the people; that we were the ones behind the uprising, and were merely using the people as pawns to achieve our strategic objectives. “The Americans are your oppressors, not your liberators,” they argue.

When we bombed the girls school in Minab, and/or if we at any point resort to bombing civilian infrastructure such as power facilities, we lose some of the very goodwill we were hoping would result in a domestic revolution. This war of supposed liberation could very quickly turn into a war that cements a foe who was previously fracturing, especially if we put boots on the ground.

In Summary

The reality is, none of Donald Trump’s predecessors initiated such a war because they recognized the massive costs and risks such a war would incur, not only militarily in the region, but also across both the regional and international economy. I remain doubtful that we can secure what we claim our objectives for this war are, absent boots on the ground (which I very much do not want to see).

At the same time, working towards peace will require far more tact and care than this administration seems to be interested in exercising. Donald Trump knows one language: the exertion of power. Not only power, but a very Western framing of power, in which everything is decided by calculus and self-preservation.

His understanding of motivations and self-preservation worked with Venezuela. Delcy Rodriguez (formerly Maduro’s VP), along with the rest of the Venezuelan regime, is primarily interested in her own self-preservation. Allowing her to cut deals to preserve her standing while selling out her boss worked in our favor.

Iran however, is not Venezuela.

Ideas of the priority of self-preservation and Western reasoning simply will not work here, and we desperately need diplomats in the picture who understand our enemies and how we can avoid any further development of worst-case scenarios and, hopefully, move towards some sort of peace before the cost of this war becomes scarring for us all.

Death ground.

While it may sound like a heavy metal band name, this is a concept any student of war or diplomacy should be aware of, along with its corresponding cousin: the golden bridge.

Right this moment, the Iranian regime is standing on death ground, and if we don’t build a golden bridge with them in negotiations, many more will die than necessary.

Let me explain the basic scholarship on negotiation I wish our present leaders understood.

An Ancient Principle of War

Over 2000 years before Donald Trump wrote The Art of the Deal, a Chinese general and strategist, Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War. Today, The Art of War is commonly cited in war and diplomacy curricula. In fact, it is listed as one of THE West Point History Department’s Top 10 Military Classics.

Many an officer in the US military has read this book.

In Chapter 7, paragraph 36, Sun Tzu writes, “When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.”

A surrounded foe with no way out stands on death ground. And if you press them rather than providing an outlet they view as preferable to death, they will fight you with every ounce of might in their body.

(Side note: This is why it is really dumb for our “Secretary of War” to say that we will offer “no quarter” and “no mercy” in this war. You want people defeated in battle to surrender, not fight to the death.)

In Chapter 11, Sun Tzu further writes on this concept of death ground, or desperate ground, even communicating that it can be ideal to place your army upon it intentionally, as “it is the soldier’s disposition to offer an obstinate resistance when surrounded.”

An Ancient Example

This is actually precisely what Chinese General Han Xin did in 205 BC (several hundred years after Sun Tzu’s life), when he placed his army of 30,000 men with their backs to a river bank as they fought off 200,000 in the Battle of Jingxing. The 30,000 fought valiantly, drawing the full force of the opposing Zhao army into combat. Simultaneously, a mere 2000 cavalry under Han Xin’s forces descended from flanking mountains and raised their flag in the enemy camp, causing a panicked retreat among their enemies.

The battle’s outcome gave rise to a Chinese idiom, “fighting a battle with one’s back facing a river” (背水一战), which is used similarly to the American idiom of “do or die.”

No one fights so viciously as a foe whose only other alternative is destruction. The last thing you want in war is to place your foe upon clear death ground and then press him. That will go bloodily for them, sure, but likely also for you. And it just might actually work against you altogether.

We’re Pressing An Enemy on Death Ground

This isn’t just relevant for battles, but also at the level of strategic negotiation.

Before this war with Iran had even begun, we had maneuvered the Iranian regime onto death ground. Our sanctions had their economy in a freefall. Our military pressure had been steady and growing. A valuable goal would have been to use that pressure to push them to the outlet of your choosing, building what William Ury, cofounder of the Harvard Program on Negotiation, calls “a golden bridge.” Instead, we chose to engage in a full on military conflict just as negotiations appeared to be making progress.

With the launch of this war, we began to close in on the enemy we’d placed on death ground. Our previous pokes and prods (even our bombing campaign last summer) were not intended to push the enemy off the precipice, were not intended to directly destroy them, but merely to pressure them and achieve limited objectives.

They likewise responded by more or less by simply swinging their swords in our direction, launching strikes they knew would be neutralized easily enough. Their response was more in-line with saving face in their honor/shame culture and building a narrative of response they could feed to their people than an actual military threat.

But now that we truly are attempting to force them off the cliff, we risk them attempting to cut their way through us, desperate to go out with a fight, take as many down with them as possible, and perhaps find some sense of victory in the obstinance of their resistance.

So What Now, Then?

So what’s the solution?

Your suggestions of peace have to be better than continued war. You have to provide a serious outlet. Peace needs to bring benefits for both sides, especially now that blood has been spilt.

In war, you must either crush your foe altogether or, absent that capability or will to engage in such a costly fight, find a peace that meets some form of mutual criteria. The problem is, everyone engages in peace talks with the goal of either a) avoiding worse outcomes or b) gaining better outcomes.

We already played our cards, though. We began the war with killing the “Supreme Leader” and much of his inner circle. We’ve bombed much of their infrastructure they’d otherwise want to preserve. We’d strangled their economy before we even began the war.

The question now is: What does the Iranian leadership have left to lose? What remains on the Iranian side of the ledger? If the answer is “nothing,” then we aren't just fighting a regime; we are fighting an entity that sees resistance to the point of death as its only remaining path to either honor in death or continued future life of any quality. If they perceive they have nothing left to lose, their strategic calculus shifts from survival to “obstinate resistance.”

The paradox of our current position is that the 'sunk costs' of the conflict have made the price of diplomacy exorbitant. We have no appetite for the concessions peace would now require. The blood and destruction already inflicted don't disappear at the negotiating table—they become demands for compensation, security guarantees, and pledges of non-aggression that we simply aren't willing to make.

This piece isn’t about whether it would be tactically useful or morally valuable for us to have avenues to continue future military pressure against the despotic regime. It’s simply about what terms realistically would or wouldn’t satisfy negotiations in which both sides hold agency and have their own interests to meet, and their own forms of “death ground” to avoid.

In our arrogance, I worry we’re determined to avoid the concessions that would be required to accomplish such a negotiation, and we didn’t begin this war with thought as to how it might end absent the physical removal of this regime from power. With that in mind, I worry our leaders are determined to fight our opponents at this precipice, no matter the cost.

And that just might mean boots on the ground against a desperate foe.

By demonstrating too much force, too quickly, against an ideologically driven foe now eager to save face and avoid destruction, we’ve placed ourselves in quite a predicament, with an opponent on “death ground” with whom we are unwilling to build a path to deescalation.

You know the story of David and Bathsheba, but do you know the revenge narrative that follows it?

If you grew up in Sunday School, you probably think you know the story of David and Bathsheba. It’s often framed as a cautionary tale about the spiraling danger of sin, and sometimes even twisted into a narrative of seduction. In a version of the story common to Evangelicalism, Bathsheba is cast as a temptress, or at the very least, a willing participant in a scandalous affair.

But if you don’t know the revenge narrative that follows in subsequent chapters of 2 Samuel, you’re missing some key clues as to the nature of what really happened to Bathsheba.

To understand what actually happened between David and Bathsheba, adultery or r*pe, we have to talk about a man you’ve likely never heard of: Ahithophel. He is the linchpin that turns this story from a possible love affair into what seems to be a fairly plain case of sexual abuse.

Add in some core takeaways from Nathan’s parable and, between that and Ahithophel’s counsel, the case is closed. Let’s dive into the text.

First, Let’s Get Past Arguable Details

Before we get to the “smoking gun,” let’s briefly address common arguments around the narrative and why I’m not referring to them here.

Arguments fly back and forth regarding the Hebrew phrasing and grammar in 2 Samuel 11. Some point out that David “sent messengers and took her” (2 Samuel 11:4), emphasizing a forceful seizure of a subject by a king by (likely) armed guards. Others counter by looking at the book of Ruth, noting that Boaz “took Ruth and she became his wife” (Ruth 4:13), or pointing out that Bathsheba “came to him” (2 Samuel 11:4).

People go back and forth over whether details in the text point to either Bathsheba’s innocence or culpability: Why and where was she bathing? Were the “messengers” sent to her armed guards? Could Bathsheba have said no to David as King?

But, in my opinion, these arguments can easily devolve into unnecessary distraction when two very clear clues are given to us in the chapters of 2 Samuel following David’s sin.

Clue #1: The Parable of the Lamb

Immediately after David’s sin, the Prophet Nathan confronts him with a brilliant, devastating parable in 2 Samuel 12:1-4.

Nathan tells David about two men: one rich, with many flocks, and one poor, who had nothing but one little ewe lamb that he had bought and brought up. The text says the lamb “ate of his food and drank from his cup and lay in his arms, and it was like a daughter to him.”

When a traveler comes to the rich man, the rich man refuses to take from his own flock. Instead, he takes the poor man’s lamb and “prepares” it for the guest. In other words, he slaughters it.

Ask yourself: In this narrative, who is the lamb? The lamb is Bathsheba. Does the thief in the story love the lamb and cherish it as a beloved addition to his flock? No. He slaughters it for reasons of appetite and convenience.

So, is the lamb (aka Bathsheba) a sinful participant in its own slaughter, or is it a victim?

By using this specific metaphor, the Holy Spirit—through Nathan—defines Bathsheba not as an adulteress, but as a “precious thing” that was stolen and consumed by a man who, blessed as he was, needed to seize even more to meet an unquenchable appetite.

Yet, some, like the author of this Got Questions article, still want to defend David from the accusation of the specific sin of “r*pe.”

In their effort to justify David, they’ll twist themselves into knots, even creating entirely manufactured third categories of “took advantage” rather than simply calling David’s sin what it was.

Well, when you look at the narrative of Ahithophel’s vengeance, even that weird distinction falls apart.

Clue #2: The Revenge Narrative

This is where the story gets incredibly dark and incredibly precise. Enter Ahithophel.

Ahithophel was one of King David’s most esteemed advisors. 2 Samuel 16:23 says his counsel was as if one had “consulted the word of God.” But in 2 Samuel 15-16, we see Ahithophel serve as a bitter enemy to David, allying with his rebellious son, Absalom. Why?

Well, let’s do some “detective work” in the genealogies:

1. In 2 Samuel 11:3, we learn that Bathsheba is the daughter of Eliam.

2. In 2 Samuel 23:34, when listing David’s “Mighty Men,” we find: “Eliam the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite.”

Ahithophel was Bathsheba’s grandfather.

When David “took” Bathsheba and murdered Uriah, he didn’t just commit a sin in a vacuum; he decimated a family in his most loyal inner circle. He took the “ewe lamb” of his own advisor’s household, disgracing her father and killing her husband in the process (both of whom had likely served with him for years, potentially even before his kingship, given their labels as members of his Mighty Men).

The Vengeance of the Grandfather

Fast forward years later. David’s son, Absalom, leads a rebellion against his father (2 Samuel 15). If you’re unaware of his relation to Bathsheba, Ahithophel defects from David seemingly randomly to join the rebellion.

But we’re not unaware of that connection, and that connection is important to note in exactly what Ahithophel advises Absalom to do.

Ahithophel’s advice to Absalom is chillingly specific. He tells him to ““Go and sleep with your father’s concubines, for he has left them here to look after the palace. Then all Israel will know that you have insulted your father beyond hope of reconciliation, and they will throw their support to you.” So they set up a tent on the palace roof where everyone could see it, and Absalom went in and had sex with his father’s concubines.” (2 Samuel 16:21-22).

At first glance, this looks like a political power move. But in the context of the family history, it is a calculated “mirror” punishment. Ahithophel is directing David’s own son to do to David’s wives in public what David did to Ahithophel’s granddaughter in private.

This exact evil was predicted by Nathan in 2 Samuel 12:11-12: “I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor... For you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel.”

Conclusion: Seeing Through the Narrative

If Ahithophel’s revenge was a mirror of David’s crime, then we have to accept the reflection.

What Absalom did to those concubines was, by any modern or biblical definition, sexual assault. If the “repayment” for David’s sin was sexual assault, then the “original debt”—what David did to Bathsheba—should logically be categorized the same way.

It’s important to note that the Ancient Near East didn’t use our modern vocabulary for “consent” or “autonomy.” They used categories of property, honor, and theft.

In the ANE, the only actions really categorized as r*pe were forcible physical assault. Other situations of non-consensual sexual relations, due to factors such as intoxication (e.g. Lot’s situation at the hand of his daughters 🤮 or Jacob’s situation with Leah), coercion, threats, or power imbalances (e.g. a king and a subject) were rightly labeled as trickery or wrongs, but wouldn’t be slapped with the same label by Biblical authors as a violent assault, despite the fact that we categorize this all as one crime based on consent/non-consent today.

Individual autonomy simply wasn’t perceived the same way we handle it today. Injustices like those discussed here were considered to be committed not against the woman, but her family as a whole. Additionally, women were viewed essentially as property to their fathers or husbands, so restitution for such a crime against a virgin, for example, included paying a woman’s father and marrying her.

We have to recognize that the Bible doesn’t use our language because it was written by people who simply inhabited a very different world. But it is plain to see that what happened to Bathsheba is what we would categorize as r*pe today While the Bible doesn’t use that word, it does present her as a victim, not a participant in David’s sin.

The narrative structure is clear. Bathsheba wasn’t a “femme fatale,” as often portrayed in Hollywood and many a Bible study. She was a woman caught in the crossfire of a powerful man’s appetite.

This matters for the Church today, because how we see Bathsheba will be reflected in how we perceive and treat victims of sexual abuse (and their abusers) in our own churches today. Will we excuse victims and try to paint their situations as mutual sins between two people? Will we even go so far as painting victims as intentional seductresses? Or will we protect victims and confront their abusers, just as Nathan did in 2 Samuel?

Our perspective on this story, just like others in the Bible, will logically bleed into our real lives.

What do you think? Were you aware of these connections in the story? Let me know your takeaways or thoughts in the comments!

First, a Summary

First popularized by Tim Keller, the term "Third Way" for Christians means to move beyond the rigid 'either/or' of modern politics and culture. It is neither Left, nor Right.

Instead, it is an invitation to elevate the Gospel as a distinct way of life with Christ as the standard, holding the failings of both left-wing secular progressivism and right-wing MAGA politics to scrutiny against Scripture, with allegiance to neither.

Christ alone holds our allegiance, not corrupt human institutions of politics, which will often manipulate our faith for their own nefarious purposes.

Third Way Christianity rejects Secular Progressivism, it rejects MAGA politics, and it even rejects Christian Nationalism. Here’s what it speaks to each of those.

Rejecting Secular Progressivism

The evils, false promises, and flawed worldview of secular progressivism are largely known and acknowledged in the American Church. Progressive ideology on gender, sexuality, abortion, and more often tells you one thing:

“You are your desires, your desires are good, and you should generally get whatever you want.”

Christ tells us differently:

“The heart is deceitful above all things.”

“You are more than your desires.”

“You are made in my Image.”

“As your Creator, I have desires for you that are better than your own. Walk with me.”

What Causes This Misperception of Self?

Many of the flaws of Secular Progressivism can be tied to an error of Marxist worldview, separating humans into two categories: oppressed (innocent) and oppressor (depraved). There are no moral boundaries besides just refraining from “oppressing” others.

However, the world does not consist of a binary of the innocent "oppressed" and the depraved "oppressor."

In the mid-20th century, political philosopher and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in The Irony of American History:

“Invariably those who suffer from the arrogance or the power of others wrongfully assume that the evils from which they suffer are solely the consequence of the peculiar malice of their oppressors; and fail to recognize the root of the same evils in themselves.”

Niebuhr points to this externalization of evil and false perception of one’s own innocence as a dangerous risk to Marxism and other ideologies. I think he’d point out the same risk in much of Progressivism today.

According to Christianity, we are all alike born predisposed to the same flaws of excessive elevation of self, sinful impulse, and exercise of control over others.

Whether you call this Original Sin (Protestants & Catholics) or Ancestral Sin (Orthodox), we all know the human condition is in need of repair. That comes through Christ, not redistribution or self-realization.

Secular Progressivism makes the mistake of diagnosing the human condition only in a select handful of humans: those who have had the most opportunity to exercise the worst of their evil desires.

What it fails to acknowledge is that, given the same opportunity and no outside moral restraints, we would commit the same exact wrongs, finding our own ways to justify them (as was found time and time again in the nations in which Marxism flourished in the 20th century).

And even if your sins are never aimed at others, they can be aimed at yourself. God’s ways are for our good, intended to rescue us from not only destruction of others, but also destruction of self.

Progressivism calls for some good things, but it can easily risk a constant flipping of oppressed to oppressor when not metered by objective moral bounds and a critical self-awareness and humility. Christians must hold it accountable to objective truth.

Rejecting MAGA Politics

Many Christians today argue that the ends justify the means, that the evils of the Progressive Left are so significant that any degree of moral compromise in support of the Right must be acceptable.

If 1 million babies are murdered per year, how could you ever vote for the party that has enshrined abortion? While reasonable at face-value, this approach to politics fails in that it gives unceasing loyalty to one political party with zero accountability or moral boundaries.

This undying loyalty is extremely easy to manipulate, and has turned the Church into a political pawn to be played by empty rhetoric.

Our Faith is Not a Fiddle to be Played

For example, many voted for Trump in 2024 because he was supposedly more pro-life than Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris' elevation and promotion of abortion as "healthcare," framing elective abortion almost as a moral good to be desired in a moral society, was extremely concerning. However, we can see a year into Trump's presidency that his own rhetoric was no more than vain manipulation.

Preliminary data shows abortions either slightly increased or were flat in 2025, an outcome that likely would have occurred with either candidate. No actual proactive efforts are being made to reduce abortion by the Right at the federal level today. The topic has been reduced to a rhetorical box to check, not lives to advocate for.

“The most recent data from the Society for Family Planning’s #WeCount project show that the average monthly abortion volume during the first half of 2025 was higher than the monthly average in 2024. From January to June 2025, there have been more than 590,000 abortions compared to 1.14 million abortions in all of 2024 and 1.06 million abortions in 2023.” - Abortion Trends Before and After Dobbs, Diep at al., 2026

Contrast this with the previously steady decline in abortion rates successfully realized under both Presidents Bush and Obama (and Clinton), as they each made their own proactive and intentional efforts to reduce abortions during their presidencies. That trend reversed under Trump’s first presidency. We’ve been played, y’all. Democrats have abandoned “safe, legal, and rare,” and Republicans have abandoned anything besides checking a box on political legislation. There is no longer a pro-life party willing to do the real work to advocate for the life of the unborn.

Mere legal battles won’t win our nation over to goodness. We have to persuade. We have to inform. We have to reach people with truth personally, and we have to demand our politicians take proactive action to reverse this new decade-long trend, helping address root problems behind it.

Enough about that one topic, though. In the meantime, the American Evangelical Church, as one of Donald Trump's most reliable, stalwart, and unwavering blocks of political support, has deeply compromised our own witness on other matters.

As we turn a blind eye to violations of the rights of our neighbors, unrestrained and manipulative greed, and even (ironically) the breaking down of the rule of law (e.g. immigrant violations of law being used to justify ICE’s own violations), we are being revealed as hypocrites whose goal was not a moral society, but one in which we rule at the cost of any moral compromise.

That cannot be what the Church is known for. Christian Conservatism has been too easily manipulated and compromised.

We Need to Follow Christ's Narrow Way

The Church has always been supposed to stand as a prophetic voice to the powers of the world (even before the New Testament, when the Elect was still restricted to the Jewish people).

The Major and Minor prophets are filled with powers being held to account to the standards of God, both in matters of "social morals" and "personal morals." God is concerned with our sexual practice AND with how we treat the poor. God is concerned with our respect for rules and order AND with evil men consolidating power to themselves.

To follow the Narrow Way of Christ is to hold all powers of our day to account, utilizing the same prophetic voice that led to John the Baptist's execution.

P.S. Third Way Christianity rejects Christian Nationalism

Many seem to want to make the United States into a “Christian Nation” purely through civic action today. Friend, this massively misunderstands what it is to be “Christian.”

Things are not Christian. People are.

A nation is not made a Christian one by laws, but by hearts. The "Christian" Puritan colony of Boston was lead by religious magistrates, who mandated church attendance and religious observance. Yet they also burned Mary Dyer at the stake for minor doctrinal disagreements.

We risk repeating the same mistakes when we view ourselves as benevolent philanthropists to society, deserving of full accumulation of state power due to the virtue of our religious nature.

As Niebuhr quotes from John Adams, “Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all of His laws.”

It is true that many of the original US colonies had state churches. These were abolished for a reason, though, as the fledgling Americans observed how European Christians had killed each other in the millions over doctrinal disputes taken advantage of by those seeking power and influence.

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries." - James Madison

Fusing Church and State doesn't redeem the state. It hollows the Church. We know this from many examples of history. A nation with entirely "Christian" laws with few Christian hearts will itself come undone. A nation full of Christian hearts will naturally trend towards Christ's ways.

The order matters. Win souls to win the nation. Don't win the nation to win souls.

We Christians must stand for the Gospel and participate civically in our nation with hope, but never compromise our faith for political influence.

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When we think of Jesus’ most famous teaching moments, the Sermon on the Mount often tops the list. There are few words of Jesus’ that are as well-known in our society today. The Beatitudes (”Blessed are the poor in spirit,” “Blessed are the meek, etc.”) are some of the most quoted lines in history.

But here is a question that might surprise you: Did Jesus simply come up with these sayings? Was this akin to an original speech from Christ himself? Or was he actually doing more to reinforce and drive home existing teachings?

While Jesus is God Incarnate and certainly speaks with His own authority, He didn’t just pull these concepts out of thin air. He was doing something that every good teacher of the Word does: He was using Scripture.

Even the God incarnate Himself referred to His own written Word to teach the people.

The Beatitudes and Their Ancient Roots

If you look closely at the opening of the Sermon on the Mount, you will find that it is deeply woven with the threads of the Old Testament. Jesus wasn’t replacing the Hebrew Scriptures; He was amplifying them.

Let’s look at the side-by-side comparison of some of Jesus’ words and the Old Testament prophets and psalmists.

Matthew 5:3

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.”

Compare this to Isaiah 57:15.

For the High and Exalted One,
who lives forever, whose name is holy, says this:
“I live in a high and holy place,
and with the oppressed and lowly of spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
and revive the heart of the oppressed.

Other Bible versions such as the NRSV use the terminology of “the contrite and humble in spirit” in place of “the oppressed and lowly of spirit.” Either way, Jesus’ words echo Isaiah’s here. God dwells in his Kingdom, and those who are “lowly of spirit” will dwell there with Him.

Matthew 5:4

“Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.”

And what does Isaiah 61:1-2 tell us?

1 The Spirit of the Lord God is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives
and freedom to the prisoners;
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,
and the day of our God’s vengeance;
to comfort all who mourn,

Jesus is clearly citing the one of the promises about him in Isaiah 61. All who mourn will be comforted by the Messiah.

Matthew 5:5

“Blessed are the humble,
for they will inherit the earth.”

This one is virtually a direct quote of Psalm 37:11.

“But the humble will inherit the land
and will enjoy abundant prosperity.”

There’s not a whole lot to add there. Once you’re aware of Psalm 37:11, it’s easy to see it’s clearly being referenced by Jesus here. Now let’s jump ahead a little bit.

Matthew 5:8

“Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.”

Take a look at Psalm 24:3-4.

3 Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?
Who may stand in his holy place?
4 The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who has not appealed to what is false,
and who has not sworn deceitfully.

The one who has clean hands and a pure heart may stand in the presence of God, where, as Jesus says, “they will see God.”

These are just a few examples. The broader Sermon on the Mount is saturated with references to the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms.

Why This Matters for the Modern Church

Recognizing that Jesus quoted the Old Testament isn’t just a fun trivia fact; it has two major implications for how we practice our faith today.

1. The Standard for Preaching

If Jesus—the very Word of God made flesh—found it necessary and useful to study, memorize, and pull from Scripture to inform His sermons, how much more does that apply to human preachers?

Jesus didn’t rely solely on original, “off-the-cuff” wisdom. He anchored His teaching in the text. This sets a clear bar for our leaders today: If you attend a church where the pastor never references Scripture, it might be time to find a new church.

2. The Danger of “Un-hitching” the Old Testament

There is a popular trend among some modern Christians to identify strictly as “New Testament” believers. Some go as far as neglecting the Old Testament entirely, or viewing the God of the Old Testament as incompatible with the Jesus of the New Testament.

This isn’t a new idea. It is actually an ancient heresy known as Marcionism.

In the 2nd century, a man named Marcion taught that the “vengeful” Creator God of the Old Testament was separate from and opposed to the “loving” Father of Jesus.

The early church rejected this teaching vehemently. The church father Polycarp famously called Marcion the “firstborn of Satan.” Strong words for the leader of a dangerous heresy.

This heresy also doesn’t stand up to scrutiny when we look at Jesus’ own regard for the Old Testament scriptures. If the Old Testament God was truly opposed to Jesus, why would Jesus hold the Old Testament Scriptures in such high regard? Why would He build His most famous sermon upon Old Testament books such as Isaiah and the Psalms?

Conclusion

Jesus did not come to abolish the Old Testament; He came to fulfill it. Shortly after preaching the Beatitudes and referring to this array of Old Testament scriptures, Jesus says this plainly, in Matthew 5:17.

“Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.”

Jesus is the one who can carry these Old Testament words to their intended conclusions. When we read the Sermon on the Mount, we aren’t just reading something new. Rather, we’re hearing the source of these words Himself provide illumination to them.

So the next time you read the Beatitudes, remember: You are reading a Master Teacher handling His very own inspired words with precision.

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“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the humble, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.”

Matthew 5:3–10, CSB

See that word repeated over and over? “Blessed.”

As modern Westerners, we have a very specific cultural definition of this word. To us, being “blessed” usually means being favored by God in tangible ways. When we scroll through social media and see someone claim they are #blessed, it’s typically accompanied by a picture of a new car, a promotion, a happy family, or a vacation sunset. We think of abundance, wealth, and security.

But there is much more happening here than our modern vocabulary suggests. To understand the shock of what Jesus was actually saying, we have to look at the Greek word underneath the translation.

Defining Makarios

The word Jesus uses in Matthew 5 is “makarios.”

While it is correctly translated as “blessed,” it carries a wider nuance. It can also be translated as “fortunate,” “happy,” or even, “to be envied.”

In Ancient Greek culture, makarios wasn’t a word used for just anyone. It originally described the blissful state of the gods—beings who were above the cares of the world. Over time, society began using it to describe the human elite: the wealthy, the powerful, and the untouchable.

These were the people who were makarios. You looked at the rich man living in luxury and thought, “I envy him. He has the good life.”

This word was certainly not fit to describe the poor, the mourning, the submissive, or the persecuted.

The Great Reversal

This is where Jesus turns the world upside down. He takes a word reserved for the elite and the gods—a word meaning “to be envied”—and applies it to the people society pitied the most.

The humble (meek) are to be envied? That wimpy guy who needs to stop letting people trample all over him?

The pure in heart are fortunate? The guy who got passed up for a promotion because he refused to bend the numbers a bit?

The persecuted are living the good life? C’mon. Who in their right mind sees someone suffering for their faith and thinks, “Wow, if only I could be so lucky as to have a life like that?”

And yet, that is exactly what Jesus is saying.

He is teaching us that the measures, weights, and priorities we use in this world are not the measures and weights of the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Kingdom, the hierarchy is inverted. God’s Kingdom is upside down.

A New Definition of Success

Jesus wants his audience—and us—to look at the merciful, the peacemakers, and those hungry for righteousness and say, “Man, that is the life. I want more of that.”

He wants us to recognize that living that life is the path to fulfillment, blessing, and the true meaningful goals of life.

Take a look at verses 11-12:

“You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me. Be glad and rejoice, because your reward is great in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

Fortunate are the persecuted? They’re to be envied? Well, when you have Kingdom priorities, maybe so, and not only for the anticipated reward, but also for the confidence Christ brings in this present life; the confidence we can have in his promises of good in the end.

The natural human instinct is to envy the powerful and the wealthy. The Kingdom instinct is to envy those who have such deep security in God that they can endure persecution with joy. Do you envy those who have that kind of security of faith?

Some things to consider, eh?

So, Christian, beware of the voice in our culture that denigrates these traits as “weakness.” In Christ’s Kingdom, the people practicing these things are the truly successful ones. They are makarios; fortunate, blessed, and the ones truly to be envied.

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There can be no doubt that the population of Muslims in the US is growing. While Muslims historically have made up less than 1% of the US population, their share of the population is expected to rise to as high as 2.1% by 2050.

Many on the political Right have quite a problem with this, with many even suggesting that, if the US isn’t careful, we could end up under Sharia law within our lifetimes. (We could get into how American Christians misunderstand what šarīʿah is in the first place, but that’s maybe a topic for another time.) After Zohran Mamdani won the NYC primary, late political commentator Charlie Kirk tweeted the following:

This false equation of Muslims like Mamdani with terrorists who have committed grave evils is not only offensive, but it’s also deeply misinformed, and reeks of a lack of real exposure to followers of Islam and genuine conversation with them about the things we respectively believe.

I think the fears that a lot of Christians have demonstrated regarding the growing presence of Muslims in our society betrays a lot of misunderstandings of Islam, of Muslim people, and of the opportunity we Christians have before us in ministering to people of the Islamic religion.

So, I reached out to a missionary who follows my page, who I know has spent years in ministry to Muslims in Palestine. She, along with 7 other missionaries in MENA (Middle East and North Africa) nations, was kind enough to put together a document responding to common questions sincere American Christians may have about Muslims, their faith, and how we should respond to their growing presence in our nation.

Below is their compiled response, which I hope you find helpful. Ultimately, may we Christians see the growing presence of Muslims in our country not as a threat, but as an opportunity for the Gospel and the evangelization of the nations, right here in our own backyards.

First, a caveat:

We are all people who’ve lived in various countries in the Levant and Northern Africa. We don’t have much experience with Muslims in other areas of the world, and we want to emphasize that Islam is a religion, not a culture or nationality, and Muslims are not a monolith. Just like a North American Christian would have cultural differences with a Christian in South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, or Oceania, Muslims in the Middle East will have cultural differences with other Muslims worldwide. Because of this, most of our answers about Middle Eastern culture also apply to Arab Christians.

1) What do you think American Christians misunderstand about Muslims?

The first thing we want American Christians to know is that Muslims are human beings made in God’s image. Full stop.

The second thing we want you to know is that Muslims are not out to get you. They are a people that love us, love Americans and several aspects American culture, and welcome us with an inordinate level of hospitality. What they don’t love is the blatant immorality they see in many American movies and shows, so when they get to know us as true believers in Jesus and see that we love God and pursue holiness, they go beyond just welcoming us to also respecting us.

The third thing we want you to know is Muslims are people who are trying really hard to honor God. For Arab Muslims this means things like praying five times a day, fasting during Ramadan, and regularly giving to charity, and their pursuit of holiness is so intertwined with their identity that it affects their entire day and everything they talk about. Arab Muslims love to talk about God. It’s so much easier to share the gospel with a Muslim in the Middle East than with the average American because it’s not a taboo subject and there’s constant, rich dialogue surrounding theology in normal places like the dinner table and coffee shops.

The fourth thing we want you to know is Arab Muslims understand some of Jesus’s teaching, such as the Good Samaritan story, better than Westerners. They understand going out of their way to help people, even at extreme detriment to themselves, and truly loving their neighbor. In fact, if the American Church understood the Good Samaritan parable like they should, these questions about Muslims wouldn’t even need to be asked because American Christians would have figured them out through interactions with their Muslim neighbors, and love would have already replaced the fear.

The fifth thing we want you to know is though Muslims’ committment to holiness is admirable, they need the gospel. We desperately want them to know that God already loves them and has made a way to reconcile them to Himself through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Theologically, they don’t understand the difference between atoning for your sins vs. making a God who has already atoned for your sins happy.

So that leads to the sixth thing we want you to know that is actually something we want you to do. We want Christians in America to love their Muslim neighbors, get to know them, and share the gospel with them.

2) Why are some Muslims extremists and some not?

There are Muslim extremists for the same reasons there are extremists in every religion, group, philosophical track, political party, and even hobby.

The main reason is because people are in pain, pain becomes part of their identity, and they want something to hold on to. The most effective America ever is in foreign policy is when we reach out with food and aid in order to ease pain. The same is true in the Church when we bring a cup of cold water in the name of Jesus. We create MORE extremism when we reach out with bombs and harm. The reason there’s more extremism in some areas of the world, like the Middle East, is because WE (Westerners, mostly post-World War II) have reached out with bombs and gerrymandering and greed and king-making.

The second reason is because people are deceived. There are people who want to please God, and that’s exploited by leaders who use religious texts as an excuse for power and personal gain. Think of the Crusades when Christians slaughtered people because they were told by their leaders that it would please God. If you combine this desire to please God with the pain from the first reason, the exploitation is even easier.

3) When a Muslim comes to Jesus, is it true that their life will be threatened as an apostate?

We’ve seen this run the whole gamut. In most countries there’s freedom of religion and the state won’t go after them and will even punish any individuals who do. Where we live, a Muslim has complete freedom to walk into a church and ask to be baptized as long as it’s their own choice and not done under compulsion. It will be a bit of a process to change their paperwork, but there’s freedom to do so. The same is true of many countries over here.

On a domestic level, it is totally dependent on the family and clan. Sometimes it just means their families express sadness at their choice. Sometimes it means something a bit harsher like their families won’t talk to them or invite them to holidays. Sometimes it means their community lashes out and they lose their job. We have definitely seen examples of people who’ve had to leave their families for fear of their safety, though out of all of us we only know of one person who’s actually been killed, and that was in another country and is a story from friends of friends. We also know a lot of families who, while the first generation faced some pushback from the community for converting, after that they were considered a Christian family in subsequent generations. We imagine somewhere along the lines of our own families, someone had to be that first generation to make the jump, and we now reap the benefits. What a privilege to be there to help an entire family line make that jump!

For refugees specifically, who are away from their community and extended family, the domestic threat is removed. So again, we’d call on American

Christians to share the gospel with their Muslim neighbors who are oftentimes separated from extended family.

4) How can someone effectively share the gospel with a Muslim friend?

Talk to them. Befriend them like they’re a normal person because they are. Invite them over. Respect them and don’t serve things like pork or alcohol just like you wouldn’t serve meat to a vegetarian. How do you share the gospel with any of your neighbors? Apply most of the same ideas to Muslims because, again, they’re people.

For Arab Muslims specifically, remember that they like to talk about God, so that helps open the conversation. You are going to have to overcome specific theological barriers. One of those, which we assume most American Christians probably don’t know, is that a lot of Arab Muslims are universalists. They believe you’re fine to be a Christian and they’re fine to be a Muslim and that we both actually serve the same God and will likely end up in heaven together as long as we’re not bad people. You have to make it clear that Jesus is the only way because we cannot atone for our own sins. That leads to another barrier which is the idea that we can atone for our own sin through good works. You have to make them realize they’re lost and in need of a Savior before you can share the way to salvation.

For more specific information, look up the book Any-3.

5) Are “Western” values and Islam compatible?

This is a difficult question to answer because we don’t totally understand what Western values are. Islam is already a part of Western society and has been for hundreds of years, so it’s already a component. Muslims have always had a consistent place in American society just like Jewish people, Chinese people, Irish people, Catholics, Protestants, etc. E pluribus unum.

If we’re talking about family values, those are compatible with what Muslims believe. Caring for your community, yes. Education, yes. Literacy, yes. Hard work, yes. Things like freedom of the press and information? Sometimes yes in both the US and the Middle East, and sometimes no in both the US and the Middle East. Equality? Sometimes yes in both the US and the Middle East, and sometimes no in both the US and the Middle East. Abortion? No. Transgenderism? No. Nudity in the media or out in public? No. I think conservative Christians in America need to realize that Muslims are actually their ally on a lot of cultural issues.

We do feel like we all need to be careful with this question. Why do you care about western values? Are you trying to build the Kingdom of the West, or are you trying to build the Kingdom of God?

6) Do you think Christians and Muslims can peacefully coexist?

Yes. We have been for over a thousand years. The thirty-two Mohammads in my phone tends to point to our ability to co-exist. Please listen to and learn from Middle Eastern Christians, the descendants of the first Church, on this topic and learn from them.

7) Are non-extremist Muslims considered “bad Muslims”?

No. Muslims in the Middle East are VERY clear that extremists are not following Islam. They disavow it entirely and will give surah and ayah (chapter and verse) to explain why terrorism is wrong. We’ve heard Americans talk about “dancing Muslims” on 9/11, but in reality, the Americans who were overseas at the time remember everyone apologizing to us for our pain, bringing us food, sitting with us in our grief, and uncategorically condeming acts of terrorism.

People from any religion will use their holy book to justify their actions. The FLDS uses the Bible. Westboro Baptist uses the Bible. The Pharisees used the Torah. All of these groups are or were people trying to follow their

religion and please God and miss or missed it horrendously. This should be a humbling warning to every one of us, not an arrogant boast.

8) What do you respect about the Muslims you’ve befriended?

We respect them for all sorts of reasons just like we would any other human being because they’re human beings.

As far as Arab culture goes (both Christians and Muslims) some things that stick out to us are: generosity, hospitality, kindness, patience, a desire to please God, and a desire to talk about God regularly.

We’ve all been blown away by the way Arabs love us. We’ve never been able to outgive a poor Syrian. We might be able to give “more” from a numbers standpoint, but like the widow giving her last mite, they will give their last whereas we won’t. Even if we, as much, much richer people than refugees, can buy something for us to eat when we’re visiting, they will still insist on buying something, making something, and feeding us.

When an Arab loves you, they will fight for you. You are now a part of their family. They will act as if their life depends on your well-being.

Just to give a story to this, one of the couples answering this question once moved into a Palestinian refugee camp. They weren’t given a budget by their company for the move, so leaving behind a furnished apartment in town meant they didn’t end up with much to take with them to the new house. When the neighbors from the camp visited them to welcome them, they saw that all they had to sit on was a couple of cushions on the floor. The next day, a couch appeared on their porch.

You can’t outgive Arabs.

9) Are you alarmed by the Muslim presence growing in the US?

Not even a little.

Historically, no immigrant culture that’s come to the US after its inception has ever “dragged down” the culture in spite of all the propaganda to the contrary. Not the Irish or the Italians or the Chinese or the Swedish or the Japanese or the Indians.

Biblically, one of the things God calls us to do is welcome. This idea that they’re “taking over” or that we should be afraid of them is indicative of fear and othering, not welcoming. Why are we making this us vs. them? We don’t battle against flesh and blood. Any time you’re responding to people in fear, you’re disobeying Jesus and holding onto sacred cows.

We’re more fearful of people in the American Church living idolatrous, disobedient lives under the name of Christ than we are of lost people acting lost. We’re excited to see those idols torn down.

Jesus gave us the Great Commission, and now He’s making it REALLY easy for you to fulfill it. He’s bringing the nations to you so you don’t even have to “go” anymore. Obey Him. Share the gospel.

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Nonetheless, I think you’ll hear some perspectives you haven’t considered as I break down detailed elements of trade involving various real-world examples involved the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, the Netherlands, and more.

I hold a B.A. in Global Development and a Master of International Business, so a lot of this is kind of my bread and butter. I hope you find it informative. Let me know in the comments if you learned something new!

Did Jesus teach wealth reallocation and/or redistribution?

Well, yes. Kind of.

Why is that? Are they really tariffing US goods so dramatically themselves? Not quite. Let’s dive in and discuss.

So let's try Jesus' method of making a point in light pushback he received: Parable

A Parable on Action

One day, a man was walking by a lake near his home. Suddenly, he spotted little hands coming out of the water, about 10 yards in.

Quickly, he rushed over and pulled those hands up.

Out from the water, clinging to his hands, emerges a small child, coughing and sputtering. "Th-th-thank you, sir," the child says, shivering from the cold water he nearly drowned in.

When he saw a child in need, a life he was more than capable of saving, this man sprung into action. After all, what monster would just watch a kid die without making any effort to save them?

A Critical Moment

A few weeks later, our character is at a park watching his children's soccer game. There are multiple soccer fields, with dozens of families and hundreds of children scattered around the park.

Suddenly, he hears a scream, followed by a yell, "The levee broke!," and the unmistakable sound of rushing water, which he sees rapidly approaching.

Water suddenly reaches his ankles, then his knees, his waist, and finally stops just short of his chest. The thing is, the man is 6'2". The children who had been scattered around the park are not.

Suddenly, it's like that day at the lake, but as far as the eye can see. Little child hands, faces, and legs all thrashing helplessly in the water.

Of course, the man gets to work right away. He sees that his children are safely clinging to their mother and directs them to make their way to the roof of their car.

In the meantime, he spots a playground towering above the water and begins wading towards it, grabbing as many small children as he can along the way and pulling them up onto his arms and shoulders.

"The playground! Get the kids onto the playground!," he shouts to any who will help. He can't save them all, but he'll save as many as he can, hoping others are doing likewise.

He reaches the playground and directs the children to clamber onto it off of his shoulders. Then, he wades back into the water, anxiously scanning for more tiny hands.

There's one. He reaches a small girl who clings to him for dear life while sputtering and coughing.

There's another. This one a young boy, bobbing momentarily above the dirty waters, then back under. He realizes he must be jumping from the ground beneath the waters to come back up for air. The man reaches him and pulls him onto his shoulders.

He grabs several more, ending with one on each shoulder, one slightly choking him as she clings to his neck, and one on each arm.

He turns, heading back to the playground to get these kids to safety. He sees others also trying to help, but he also sees more hands still in the distance.

Some thrashing desperately. Then, stillness.

As he unloads the kids from his shoulders at the playground, he sees hands disappear in one direction. Then another. Then another. He won't be able to save more than maybe one or two more.

He runs out to the where the nearest two children just stopped thrashing and begins to feel around under the dirty water. He catches a jersey in his fist. He pulls. A child comes up, gasping. He feels an arm in his other hand. He pulls this child up.

Unresponsive.

He rushes them both back to the playground, laying the unresponsive child down and beginning CPR.

Fortunately, he responds. Coughing up water and crying, the kid is alive. But many are not.

It's impossible to know how many drowned, but some surely did. The man will always have the weight of this experience with him, but he will also always know he did everything he could.

Years later, sometimes some of the kids he saved wave past him when they see him around town. They're alive today, and it's because of him. Not because he did anything great or mighty, but because when he saw them dying, he acted, whether he could save everyone or not.

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Applying the Parable

Foreign aid isn't so different. Ministry to the vulnerable isn't so different. Serving the poor isn't so different.

Yes, the poor will always be with us. No, we will never be able to save every child. But we will not, we must not, be cowardly men and women of inaction simply because the scale of the disasters and needs of our world are intimidating.

We Americans, and especially us Christians, are to be people of action. When we see disaster, we wade in. We spur others to action with our own example and lead the way in might and service.

And we do so not only individually, but also as a society. We don’t watch one wade into the waters alone to do the work. We as a society mobilize the resources and manpower to save lives when disaster strikes.

We don't sit idly by while hands disappear under the water forever simply because there are "too many hands."

Not. Us.

I refuse to allow my generation to be those who choose to no longer be great. America doesn't need to be made "great again." We've led the democracies of the world for decades. We were counted as the heroes of the weak and vulnerable. We've saved millions of lives each and every year with a simple 1% of our budget.

We have heard the call of greatness, courage, and conviction, and have stood up to answer it. Sure, we've had flaws along the way, but our moral fortitude has proven itself consistently, especially in our last 50 years as a nation.

We must continue to answer that call. If we, the richest nation in the world, cannot answer that call, not only does the world lose monumental resources for good, but it also loses inspiration from a giant.

If the richest nation on earth "can't afford" to help others, who can? A spiraling domino effect of cowardice and selfishness will doubtlessly emerge.

I leave you with wise words from Uncle Ben, followed by words from Jesus Christ Himself that likely inspired Uncle Ben's.

Uncle Ben: "With great power comes great responsibility."

Jesus: "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, even more will be expected."

I don’t know about you, but as USAID gets gutted, cuts to Medicare and Medicaid appear to be passed, and elements of US political leadership seem intent on gleefully dismantling layers of provision for the most vulnerable among us, I’ve heard this response from many Christians over the last few days.

But what if instead of holding to this simple refrain, we model what the Early Church practiced, which really got on the nerves of Rome's last pagan Emperor: Julian the Apostate.

An Irritated Emperor

In the early 300s, the last pagan emperor of Rome, Julian the Apostate, wrote to a pagan priest that:

“[W]hen it came about that the poor were neglected and overlooked by the [pagan] priests, then I think the impious Galilaeans [i.e., Christians] observed this fact and devoted themselves to philanthropy.”

He elsewhere wrote to another priest:

“[They] support not only their poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us.”

As a former Christian who had converted to paganism and who desired to see a resurgence of the old Hellenistic faiths and philosophies, Emperor Julian was frustrated by the appeal of the Church to the common people.

He rightly identified that the Christian Church was flatly outdoing the pagans in love and provision for the needs of others, and he was so distressed by the gap that he confronted pagan priests about it.

However, at least as far as I'm aware, the Church never said, "No, the Roman government can't support the poor! That's our job!," or "No, the Pagans can't support the poor! That's our job!"

'Instead, they simply continued to put their heads down and do the work, leaving minimal needs available for the pagans to fill. It almost reads like a competition of goodness, and the Christians were winning.

Now to the Present Day

Sadly, today I do not have confidence that this would be the case. While Christians do give more on average than non-Christians, it is not nearly at the scale necessary to feed the poor, shelter the homeless, care for the orphan, or heal the sick.

If it was, we wouldn't have any need for the government programs that do these things. The government bureaucracy wouldn't be able to keep up.

So when I hear Christians say, "That's not the government's job, it's the job of the Church," all I really hear is, "I don't want my tax dollars going towards that, AND I'm not going to voluntarily meet that need EITHER. They'll just have to suffer."

And that's just kind of messed up.

Christians should be the first to cheer the universal conviction of God's morality in the heart of man, derived from the Imago Dei we're shaped in.

It was Christians who began the first social programs, as we knew a Christ-like society is one who exemplifies the actions praised by Christ Himself in Matthew 25:34-36.

Social welfare and foreign aid exist because the plethora of Christians in our society shaped it to behave more Christ-like! I don’t know about you, but if we can have a society following the example praised by Christ in Matthew 25 as a collective whole, that’s a plus to me!

As a quick reminder, here’s what He says there:

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

“‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me; I was in prison and you visited me.’”

It is pretty strange to me that most Christians in the US seem to want their government and society at large to do less of all of this.

Wait, Do We Want “Christian Laws” or Not??

What's funny to me is how we hear a lot of Christian Nationalists advocate for things like putting the Ten Commandments on the walls of schools, or forcing specifically Christian moral restrictions on others.

But they never advocate for the Two Greatest Commandments to go on walls. This despite Jesus Himself saying that the entirety of the Law hinged on these two things. They similarly never argue for a government to operate based on Matthew 25:34-36.

The moment you shift the conversation from government limitation of sins of COMMISSION to sins of OMMISSION, from prohibition OF actions to exhortation TO action...suddenly they get real quiet. 🦗🦗🦗

Suddenly it's "well that's not the government's job."

Bullcrap. We live in a democracy (and yes, a representative democracy IS a FORM of democracy). As such, the shape of the government will naturally derive from the morality and priorities of its people.

It's for this reason that I always say that the only viable way to a "Christian nation" is to create a nation of actually Christians. If 100 million voters shared the vision of Christ for the world, their government (and society) would probably line up pretty nicely with the actual ways of Christ.

Don’t Leave Me Yet, Libertarians & Conservatives

But hey, even if you are just authentically libertarian in your belief that the government just could never be a good provider of aid, you don't need the government to stop offering services in order to outcompete it.

Do good. Meet needs. Feed the hungry. Support the healing of the sick. House those who lack shelter. Welcome the refugee. Help the former criminal reenter successfully.

Church, feel free to outdo the government and meet all humans' needs. Then it should be easy enough to get the government to stop offering services that no one's using, because no one needs them any longer. That's your only option if it's "not the government's job."

And you know what? As a Christian, I'd love to see us outdo the governments of the world in Good in such a way that Presidents write letters (or perhaps memos or emails) to their agencies saying: "Hey, those Christians are making our social services entirely irrelevant. You need to do a better job at actually meeting needs or I'll have to cut your funding."

That'd be pretty dang cool.

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If you liked this, please subscribe for more! This is actually derived largely from a book I have in the works, and newsletter subscribers will help me get that published.

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Also, the video I posted today to Instagram is a nice additional bit of information pertinent to all of this. I bet 99% of you will learn something new in this video.

“I followed you for memes and theology. Stop with the stupid politics.”

I receive DMs and comments somewhere along these lines a few times a week these days. Always ignored is the fact that I’m almost never putting out partisan points, but merely nonpartisan corrections of lies coming from politicians and being parroted wholesale by Christ’s Bride in the US.

So yea, I’ve been talking a little less about “nerdy theology” in this season. Let me explain why.

Ordering Our Theology

All of the theology in the world, all of the intellectual knowledge of God and Scripture and hermeneutics and big fancy Greek words that the "theologically-minded" throw around and debate (often with minimal real-world implications)...None of that matters if we don't have literally the most basic elements of Christianity active in our lives.

Who gives a crap about the Greek word "kephalē" and how a different understanding of that can change how you understand Scripture's words on women if Christian men aren't loving women properly either way?

Who cares if I tell you the grammatical structure of John 3:16 indicates it should be read more as "God loved the world in this way" rather than "God loved the world sooo much" (although elements of both are in the text) if Christ's Church doesn't share His love for the people of the world in the first place?

Why should we spend any time discussing what we think proper eschatology or soteriology or *insert-other-ology-here* is if we aren't following the greatest and second greatest commandments: to love God and love others.

“Are you infralapsarian or supralapsarian?"

Dude, I don't care either way if you're not loving-your-neighbor-ian.

It doesn't matter if I tell you interesting details about the Priest and the Levite and the historical contention between the Samaritans and the Jews in Jesus' time if you read the story of The Good Samaritan and miss what VP Vance missed recently.

Disordered Loves

The entire point Jesus makes that "your neighbor is not defined by national identity or other markers, but simply by proximity" is skipped when Vance and millions others argue:

“As an American leader, but also just as an American citizen, your compassion belongs first to your fellow citizens. That doesn’t mean you hate people from outside of your own borders, but there’s this old-school [concept]—and I think it’s a very Christian concept, by the way—that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”

What the VP is referring to there is Augustine's theology of ordo amoris (order of love), but he's absolutely butchering it (and missing Jesus' own definition of neighbor).

Augustine places love for God first, love for family (both physically and the household of God) second, and then love for neighbor third. But "neighbor" is just a matter of proximity. Our neighbors are those who we happen to encounter. To them, we display love.

After all, Jesus told the parable of The Good Samaritan in Luke 10 after being challenged with the question, “Well who is my neighbor?” His response gave an example of someone who was neighbor neither by shared community, nation, or really any kind of earthly bond whatsoever.

Instead, the neighbors in the story are a random Samaritan and a random Jew, brought into “neighborhood” through a chance encounter.

Theology Professor Stephen Pope put it well when he wrote in America Magazine:

“Mr. Vance and his supporters hold that we should first love our families and then love our neighbors. They seem to be thinking of “neighbors” in a literal sense, as particular people who live in our vicinity. Their narrow usage does not comport with Jesus’ own expansion of the term to include not just the “near ones” living in our “neighborhood” but all human beings. Jesus considered all the following as neighbors: widows and orphans, the poor, sick and disabled, social outcasts and, yes, alien workers.”

The Pope himself responded to Vance’s statement with, “[T]he true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘Good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

Neither Augustine, nor Scripture, argue a need to love one's own community or citizenry before others. In fact, much of the New Testament is spent countering this exact idea, as favoritism for one's own ethnic/national groups was a common problem.

We’re told in Acts 6:1 that, “In those days, as the disciples were increasing in number, there arose a complaint by the Hellenistic Jews against the Hebraic Jews that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution.”

Literally the entire reason we get deacons in the Church after this is in correction to the human tendency to follow VP Vance’s “order of love” over God’s own order of love.

VP Vance’s order of love is not ordered. It is disordered.

What is Ordo Amoris Scripturally?

The idea argued by both Scripture, Augustine, and Aquinas after him is a matter of proximity.

Love those around you. Love those you encounter in the everyday.

Show preference for the household of God, yes, because they are your family. Your nation is not. Then also, as able, extend acts of charity beyond your immediate vicinity as well. Your true Kingdom is Heaven, not the USA (or any other earthly boundary).

By the way, this means in terms of ordo amoris, Christians in, say, Gaza come before non-Christian fellow citizens of the USA. Try making that statement from a MAGA stage.

When the churches of Macedonia and Achaia sent aid to the church of Jerusalem as the latter struggled through a famine, that was ordo amoris in action.

Many local churches could take a lesson from Augustine's order of loves in that sense and begin to better ensure the needs of their local body (and the global Body in general) are consistently met.

A Critical Caveat

Even still, Aquinas clarifies in his Summa Theologica with his idea of “ordo caritatis” (order of charity) that this prioritization still cannot be universally applied and comes with caveats based on urgency.

“And yet this may vary according to the various requirements of time, place, or matter in hand: Because in certain cases one ought, for instance, to succor a stranger, in extreme necessity, rather than one’s own father, if he is not in such urgent need.”

If “the poor will always be with us,” we certainly can’t used “ordo amoris” as some excuse to indefinitely and infinitely be tasked strictly with getting our own house in order, never providing charity to those beyond our immediate vicinity or body of Faith. That’s just silly.

And you know what, most of us using the excuse of "order of love" aren't even loving those around us meaningfully. 🤷🏼‍♂️

We Need to Get Back to the Basics

Excuse my rant, but this is my point: No level of secondary or tertiary theological knowledge matters if the vast majority of Christ's Church doesn't even know how to love their neighbor

Who cares what your head knowledge is if you’re supporting excuses as to why you don't need to practice love for your neighbor if they don’t share your nationality?

Who cares about your theological insights if you argue that Scripture says to prioritize shared national identity over care for others, and actually entirely neglects to mention the Scriptural elevation of Christian identity itself?

If we as the Church are becoming known for spreading lies, engaging in paranoia, fighting others, and mindlessly supporting people twisting Scripture, there's much more basic work to be done.

So yea, I will definitely touch on fun nerdy theology from time-to-time still (I actually released a video on a nerdy overlooked detail of Joseph's story today), but I also want to help the Church to get back to basics.

It's clear to me that most of the church in the US is in need of milk, not meat.

Once we start loving our neighbors (and understanding that the Nicaraguan migrant down the street IS our neighbor), we can spend more time in the meaty stuff.

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P.S.

This rant was inspired by Chapter 2 of @swordandpencil's new book, Room for Good Things to Run Wild, in which he describes how growing up in the Church and having all of the intellectual Christian answers was found wanting in his life.

Christianity had to be something more than head knowledge. It had to be lived. Deeply. Transformationally.

"Sure, we learned more, lots of knowledge packed into our heads, but how many changed hearts?"

That certainly is the question.

Btw, here’s that Joseph video if you want to see it.