Mountain View Chapel

When There's No Rule for That

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:14:16 +0000

Good and evil are determined by the conformity of a thought or act to God’s character. When we bring principles of good and evil into our concrete world and apply them to particular behaviors we tend to call good “right” and evil “wrong”. In everyday thinking, we judge right and wrong in two key places: morals and law.

Let’s discuss morals by which I mean those behaviors judged by the individual conscience or by the general consensus of a community to be good and acceptable—or not.

Some aspects of morality are clear-cut, especially for Christians, because of biblical precepts. “You shall not murder” and “you shall not steal” are clear. Murder and stealing are evil and wrong. But—and this is the moral challenge that many conservative Christians fail to grasp—there are not as many straightforward precepts in Scripture as we might want.

For example, though the Bible presents gluttony and drunkenness as works of the flesh, it nowhere provides clear lines exactly defining either sin. The apostles counsel modesty in demeanor and dress but nowhere draw specific lines distinguishing appropriate from inappropriate. How do we know, then, what is appropriate and what isn’t?

The Bible warns about avarice and greed, but it never tells us where the line is between acceptable provision and those sins. There are warnings about debt being dangerous, but taking on debt is never prohibited. How much debt is too much? For what things is debt acceptable or unacceptable? Is it immoral to have a mortgage or use credit cards?

Likewise, we know that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are “the fruit of the Spirit”, but particular explanations of how each of these things must manifest themselves is, for the most part, lacking in the biblical instruction. Must I always be joyful—or is there a time to mourn and be sad? Is peace violated if I feel anxiety, and is anxiety always a sin? Can I be too patient and put up with too much wrongdoing? Can I be too forgiving? Is there a time for “tough love”? Does “tough love” violate kindness? If I rebuke someone is that a lack of patience on my part, or is there a time for rebuke? How do I know which is which?

These and many other things are not answered by biblical precept. For some of them we may find examples, e.g. David’s immorality or the self-righteousness of the Pharisees. Most of the time, however, we “feel” these things out by inference. We do our best to build our inferences on the principles of Scripture and by our own consciences and the perceptions of consciences around us.

There are problems with that, aren’t there? Our consciences can be poorly instructed or seared, hindered by the blindness resulting from original sin as well as our finiteness. Individual consciences can be misguided and so can social conscience. An entire society may have bad judgment about some matters, and different societies may judge matters differently. Societal perceptions change over time, so what is immoral in one time may not be deemed immoral in another.

For example, in the period from George Washington to James Monroe, men wore knee breeches. Only roughnecks and sailors wore long pants. With the shift to populism and the importance of “the little guy” under Andrew Jackson, the long pants of the average working man were suddenly a sign of that which was virtuous and knee breeches signaled that you were an out-of-touch aristocrat that didn’t care about the average person.

It’s not that good and evil change, or even that principles of morality change. People and human perceptions are not eternal. We change—our perceptions change—and so the things that signify and represent moral principles to us change. That makes moral practices fuzzier at the edges on certain points, and that makes anyone who demands certainty about everything uncomfortable, and in my experience one of the chief characteristics of conservative evangelicals has been the desire to be morally certain about everything.

There is not a divine precept for every moral point. To behave as though there is, is to believe a lie. Building some points of morality on inferences is just the nature of the world and of divine revelation, which is sufficient for us, but not exhaustive. Such moral principles can be held firmly but must be held tentatively, with a looser grip and a mind open to the possibility of different and better inferences.

The Law Behind the Law

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 18:02:58 +0000

Some people equate the law of Moses with the eternal law of God (true good and evil). But the New Testament makes clear that the Law of Moses (or at least a portion of it) is not eternal—and was never intended to be. Jesus declared all unclean foods “clean” (Mark 7.19 cf. Acts 10.15). Paul says the cross “abolish[ed] the law of commandments expressed in ordinances” (Ephesians 2.15) and that “[God] set aside” and “cancel[ed] the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands” (Colossians 2.14). Likewise, the bulk of the book of Hebrews (chapters 7-10) argues that the Old Testament law (and priestly rituals in particular) were illustrative, pointing forward to Jesus, and Jesus’ mediation of a new covenant made the Law of Moses “old”, no longer in force.

Circumcision, kosher laws, and some would say strict Sabbath observance were tied to the old covenant people and were done away by the new covenant of the Christian faith.

Laws tied to the old Israelite agrarian economic and social structures—the fifty-year jubilee and land sabbaths, laws allowing the poor to glean the fields after harvest, and levirate marriage (i.e. a man marrying his brother’s widow to protect the widow and raise up children to inherit his brother’s land) we no longer find directly applicable to our non-agrarian social structures.

Changes in social structure and criminal law enforcement have also removed the death penalty for adultery, Sabbath-breaking, religious apostasy, and incorrigible children. Likewise, we no longer practice the “avenger of blood” or “cities of refuge” to manage revenge in long-standing family feuds.

There are real principles of good and evil behind all these laws that can be practiced in new and different applications, but these applications no longer fit our world.

God hasn’t changed; people have.
God’s law is still applicable; it wears different clothing that we understand better.
God hasn’t written totally new law codes comparable to Moses’. Now, the responsibility falls to us to look through the lens of the Law of Moses and the prophets and more especially the corrective lens of Jesus and His teachings through the apostles and apply good and evil to our ever-changing situations.

That generates several important results that I believe we are forced to embrace.

First, in any given circumstance there may be more than one correct way to avoid evil and practice good. Different people, or different groups of people, may discover different applications, all of which may be correct, though some applications may prove better than others.

Second, this is hardly an exact science. It is more utilitarian, more practical—one person learning from another, one community learning from another—improving our doing of good and avoidance of evil by comparison of results of our differing methods and making deliberate changes.

Third, it seems to me that our application of good and evil will show up in at least two particular places—morals and law codes. Morals are generated by the consciences of individuals and communities and enforced by personal conscience and social pressure from the family, community, or the church. Law codes are generated by government and enforced by reward or punishment.

These are the next spectrums we will consider—moral vs immoral and legal vs. illegal—in upcoming blogs.

Parapets

Tue, 18 Aug 2026 23:36:25 +0000

When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if anyone should fall from it. (Deuteronomy 22.8)

Here’s an unusual law that makes no sense to us upon first reading. A parapet is a small wall built at the edge of a roof. Why would we want to add a small wall to the edge of the roof of our house? It makes no sense to us because we are accustomed to houses having steeply pitched roofs and we usually don’t go on our roofs unless we have to make repairs to them.

But houses in ancient Israel had flat roofs, and the roof often served as a sort of extra room. On hot nights, for example, people would sleep under the stars on the rooftop.

Once you understand the way Israelite culture worked—how houses were built and how roofs were utilized—the law makes very good sense. A parapet would prevent sleepers from accidentally rolling off the roof at night or small children from falling over the edge while playing during the day.

This particular law places the burden of responsibility on the homeowner to keep anyone going onto the roof safe from harm. If there were no parapet and someone fell off, God’s law says he has failed in his responsibility toward those who might fall off the roof. If there is a parapet, he has done his due diligence to protect others; if someone falls over the parapet, their injury (or death) is not the fault of the homeowner.

What does this law say to us—since we don’t go onto our roofs and don’t need parapets?

What is clear is the intent behind the law. A homeowner is responsible to do his due diligence to make his property and his home safe for anyone he welcomes onto his property. If someone is injured because he has failed to take sufficient protective measures, their injuries become his responsibility.

This law provides a particular way to live out God’s law and love your neighbors—build a parapet. But is God only concerned about falls from a roof and not falls elsewhere? Is God only concerned with falls and not other forms of injury, say—burns or poisoning? The law is case law and case law intends by its nature broader applications. Loving your neighbor means doing your due diligence to keep safe those welcomed onto your property.

We don’t utilize our roofs as living space, so we have no use for parapets. But we have stairs; having handrails on stairs is a way to keep people safe. Some people have swimming pools; building a fence around the pool to keep children from accidentally drowning is an application of the “parapet” law. Locks on closets or drawers containing dangerous poisons are another application of the law.

What I’ve just provided is an example of how biblical law works. It’s not that every law is able to be exactly applied; some are. But behind every law of Moses is a law of God—absolute good and evil—of which the law of Moses is a particular application. That particular application is a lens into God’s heart—real good and evil—which we then turn around and apply in our own context.

For Christians who believe in the authority of the Bible, this is the first step in understanding morality, i.e. good and evil applied in our daily context. We read the law of Moses, derive the principle that functioned there, and then reapply it in a culture that is nothing like Israel’s.

This process is admittedly difficult—hardly an exact science. Our perception of truth is dimmed by sin, and our understanding of the ancient laws is at times limited, making applications foggy. We do our best and our shortcomings in perception and understanding we trust to be covered by the patience, grace, and mercy of God.

Monkey Wrench

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 08:45:57 +0000

Good and evil are absolutes determined by God’s character. Christians should always seek to align character and behavior with God’s character, with that which is good.

Christianity, however, throws a monkey wrench into that endeavor. Catholics called it “original sin”. Protestants called it “total depravity”. Christian theology in general refers to it as “spiritual death”.

When God said “In the day that you eat of it, you will surely die” (Genesis 2.17), He clearly didn’t mean physical death. Adam and Eve ate and still lived long lives. But Christian theology doesn’t believe God lied. He was referring to a different ‘death’. Man’s sin separated the race spiritually from God. We no longer knew Him; we didn’t go looking for Him to confess what we had done wrong. Instead, we tried to hide our guilt and shift the blame. We were driven from His presence, left to ourselves outside.

The New Testament says we were “dead in our trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2.1) and that by nature we do not know God (e.g. Galatians 4.8, 1 Thessalonians 4.5). Our understanding has been darkened and we are alienated from God’s life because of ignorance and hardness of heart (Ephesians 4.18).

Some Christians argue that our spiritual death means we inherently know nothing about God nor can we learn anything on our own. We are dead, they say, totally unable to function in a Godward direction. While I understand the interpretation, I think it reads too much into the imagery and ignores other Scriptures that indicate man in his natural state has some perception of God.

Paul depicts pagan Greeks as groping towards God (Acts 17.27). The apostle tells the Romans that God’s “eternal power and divine nature” can be perceived in the creation (Romans 1.19-20) and that Gentiles, by nature, can do what the law requires and their consciences can bear witness to them (Romans 2.14-15). In Genesis 20, Abimelech, a pagan king with no covenant relationship to God, hears from God in a dream and recognizes that taking another man’s wife is displeasing to God.

It’s not that we have zero reliable access to understanding God. It’s that our access is mixed. It is partial and incomplete and because we don’t inherently know Him exhaustively, it is difficult for us to determine accurately which of our perceptions of Him are accurate and which are not.

This separation from God, this blindness in us, requires God to reveal Himself to us. But even revealing Himself to us, we are incapable of grasping His character and goodness exhaustively. Because of God’s enormity and complexity, we are unable to see “His face”. He mediates knowledge of Him to us on our terms. John Calvin called it “God lisping” to us, the way a woman simplifies speech to an infant.

God reaches down to us. I’ve often said that the Bible is more of a coloring book than a divine encyclopedia. What God reveals about Himself in His Word is not exhaustive, but it is sufficient—sufficient for us to know Him to the extent that we need to. What He reveals to us is limited in scope, but not in accuracy.

Our inability to see good and evil perfectly ought to humble us. Though we wanted to be like
God knowing good and evil, we don’t really have the capacity for it—and I believe that’s why it was withheld from us in the first place. Since we grasped for it, God gave us what we sought: the responsibility of determining and judging good and evil. History shows that again and again we fall short of the glory of God in our attempts. We need His gracious mercy and instruction.

Evil Parasite

Tue, 04 Aug 2026 15:43:12 +0000

If God is good and everything He created is good (Genesis 1.31), then God did not create evil. What, then, is evil, and where did it come from? The answer is simple: evil has to be a good that has somehow “gone wrong”. This is consistent with the opening chapters of Genesis.

In Genesis 2.18, God says “it is not good that man should be alone”. In the midst of the creation process where everything has been good, the Spirit of God speaks this sour note about a lack of goodness. It is not that there is an outright evil, but that there is a sort of void—a gap—that needs to be filled before God can finally declare His entire creation “very good”. He fills that gap, that aloneness, by creating a woman.

But God proposes that she be created for the man—fitted perfectly to him—to be his helper. In other words, there is something (or things) that he cannot do without her. She completes him, and without her, he can’t accomplish the calling given him by God.

As I noted in the last installment, a chief characteristic of goodness is that a thing does what it was made to do. Being deprived of its ability to do that is not good. God doesn’t call it outright evil, but He does say that it is not good—being incomplete.

It is not that “not-goodness” is a separate entity that exists on its own. It is rather a distortion or privation of the good itself. The creation was good. Adam was good. But there was an ingredient missing—the woman—that deprived him of being what God intended him to be, and that lack deprived the creation of being what God intended it to be.

That initial hint about non-goodness shows up again when the man and his wife stand before the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and are tempted by the serpent. The first mention of the tree was Genesis 2.17 in the sentence immediately before the statement that it was not good for man to be alone. The man is told not to partake of that tree and that in the day that he does so, he will surely die.

God had created nothing evil; there was only good. And yet God speaks of the possibility of the existence of evil. Both good and evil, and the distinction between them, can be known. Presumably eating the tree would give such knowledge. That God can speak of such knowledge would indicate that He has it—and that would make such knowledge, in and of itself, good. That God prohibits man from having it would indicate that man’s possession of it would not be good. It is a knowledge not intended for man.

Genesis 3 confirms these ideas. The serpent’s temptation is strange because he uses truth—good things—to lie. He uses God’s words, but reinterprets them, giving them a meaning other than the meaning God intended.

God had said “in the day you eat of it you will surely die.” The serpent said they would not surely die (3.4). This was true in the sense that they did not immediately expire, and not dying is a good thing. (Theologians usually argue that a different kind of spiritual death occurred in them that day.)

The serpent said their eyes would be opened and they would be like God, knowing good and evil, all good things. God confirms that these points are true (Genesis 3.7,22). Their eyes were opened to their own guilt of being disobedient to God’s commands—and they experienced shame. It was an experience of real evil.

Evil was not merely a being or entity equal and opposite to the good God. Rather it was the distortion, the twisting, the misuse of the divinely created good in ways and toward ends that God did not intend those things to be used. As C.S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity, “Goodness is, so to speak, itself. Badness is only spoiled goodness…Evil is a parasite, not an original thing.”

Consider how this works out practically. Because every evil has within it a distorted good, temptation focuses our attention on the root goodness and ignores or distracts us from the distortion of that good—which is the evil. Most people who end up doing evil believe that they are doing good because they are focused on the grain of good that has been distorted. For example, we don’t talk about killing the unborn; we talk about a woman’s freedom to choose, women’s healthcare, and reproductive freedom. We don’t say “I abandoned my marriage or family”, but “I needed to find myself” or “to be free” or “to be happy”. We don’t say that we slandered someone but that we’re just “keeping it real” or “telling it like it is”. Evil is always some form of distortion of good.

God can’t distort His own good will because He only wills goodness. Evil arose, not from Him, but from other beings that He created—beings that are not Him—beings created with freedom to choose (a good thing)—who choose to reinterpret, distort, and misuse the good things in ways or toward ends that God never intended. The serpent did so and so did the man and the woman who obeyed him rather than God.

Because evil is a parasite upon good, disentangling evil from its good “host” requires discernment—sometimes very fine-tuned discernment. It requires knowledge of the hidden details of hearts and minds that only God possesses.

In my experience of life, I have found that God’s throne of judgment is too big. I cannot comfortably take a seat there. But the first man and woman left us with little choice. The need for discerning wisdom is a necessary part of our life. We must do our best knowing what we know of God’s wishes to figure out good and evil, though we often find that our best falls short of His glory.

That’s why we need God’s grace to forgive us and His wisdom to instruct us.

The Mighty Good Umpire

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:38:23 +0000

In the last blog I introduced six spectrums that we use in moral thinking: good/evil, right/wrong, holy/common, legal/illegal, moral/immoral, and wise/foolish. I’d like to discuss each of these, and I’ll start with the one I believe is foundational to all the others: good/evil.

What do we mean when we say that something is good? That seems like it should be an easy question to answer, but the more you ponder it, the more difficult it becomes to define.

The first thought that comes to my mind is that something is good if it is beneficial. But then we need to ask: “Beneficial to whom?”. I might find exposure to sunlight a beneficial thing; a person with pale skin and freckles who burns easily will not.

If that is the way to see, define, and understand goodness, there isn’t really such a thing as goodness in itself. There are only different people with different ideas of goodness. Goodness is an idea in someone’s head, not a real quality that exists in the thing itself, and any talk of good and evil becomes essentially meaningless. We can’t say a thing—or an act—IS good or evil, only that some people think it is.

That is exactly how many in our society think about good and evil and that is why many conversations about good and evil deteriorate into a cycle of fruitless assertions of my opinion against yours. There is no way to resolve this difference if good is merely subjective.

To speak meaningfully about good and evil, there has to be an umpire—a judge of some sort—outside of us, above us, with the ability (and the right) to judge between our opinions and determine what is good and what is not. In our Christian faith, God (and His Word) stand in that place because the Bible puts Him in that place from the very start.

A key theme in the opening chapters of Genesis is good and evil. In Genesis 1 God creates all that exists and declares seven times that as it comes from His hand, that creation is good; the final summary says it was very good (Genesis 1.31). I find five important truths tucked into that presentation.

First, God IS before all things. This is a contrast with all other ancient views of the gods, who were depicted as arising from the already existing material world. And God’s name is “I am”—the One who is—He is, in His essence, “being” itself—and He gives other things independent of Himself being.

Second, He calls their being, separate from His own, “good”, implying that He is good (as 1 John 1.5 states plainly: “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all”) and has the right and ability to determine what is good. Goodness is pronounced, not self-declared. Creation doesn't certify its own goodness — God, standing outside it, renders the verdict. Goodness comes from the umpire, not the thing itself.

Third, goodness is material, not just spiritual. God's "good" falls on light, water, land, plants, animals, bodies—ordinary physical stuff—before humanity appears. Matter is not lesser or suspect by nature.

Fourth, order and distinction are part of goodness. God separates light from darkness, waters above from below, day from day—differentiating things out of formlessness. Rightly ordered distinction is itself part of what "good" means, not a later imposition on neutral chaos.

Finally, goodness includes a thing fulfilling the purpose for which it was made—an observation made by Aristotle (4th century BC) and baptized by Thomas Aquinas (13th century AD). Genesis spells out the function of things before God pronounces them "good”. Light divides day and night and mark seasons. Plants and animals reproduce "according to their kinds". Man, made in the image of God, is made to reproduce and rule the earthly creation. Goodness goes beyond bare existence. A created thing is ordered toward a designed end.

So, God is good and defines goodness. What He sees as good and calls good IS good. Everything that He made was good.

Goodness is the foundation of all things. Nothing God made was evil. Making evil would require Him to make something He hated, and the goodness of His nature did not allow Him to do that. Evil did not exist in the universe as God made it.

But if we’re going to talk about the spectrum of good and evil, we have to understand evil itself. If God didn’t create it, where did it come from? I’ll address that in the next blog.

Good and Wrong -- At the Same Time

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:44:43 +0000

Pharaoh’s law commanded midwives were to kill all baby boys born to the Hebrew slaves. The midwives disobeyed and would not kill the babies. Saving the babies was good, but illegal. A thing can be good and illegal at the same time.

If a teenage son has a bad temper that is always getting him into trouble, the father who always rescues his son from the consequences has good intentions but his actions are foolish (Proverbs 19.19). A thing can be good and unwise at the same time.

When Peter drew his sword to protect Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus rebuked Peter for interfering. Peter’s impulse to protect Jesus was good—but wrong. A thing can be good and wrong at the same time.

Giving to those in need is a good thing, but obtaining the goods you wish to give by stealing them from someone else is immoral. A thing can be good and immoral at the same time.

David, while running from Saul, took the holy bread from the tabernacle as sustenance for himself and his supporters. Yet Jesus used this example to show that some violations of holiness are not evil. A thing can be good and profane at the same time.

Some may protest that I’m complicating things. I would counter that reality can be quite complicated.

When we learn how to make moral decisions as children, our young minds can only handle simple categories—what I’m calling “binaries”. A thing is legal or illegal, moral or immoral, wise or foolish, right or wrong, good or evil. All good things (holiness, legality, morality, wisdom, right) cluster at the “good pole”; all bad things (uncleanness, illegality, immorality, foolishness, wrong) at the “bad pole”.

This is the best way to teach little children moral behavior and decision-making. But childhood is only the foundation of life—the starting place, not the finish line. Maturing and growing wise requires more.

We assess reality using, not one spectrum (good and evil), but several—and they don’t always overlap perfectly. I’ve identified six that I use regularly when I’m making moral decisions.
There are likely a few more (e.g. beneficial/harmful, loving/unloving, beautiful/ugly, public/private).

The foundational spectrum is good versus evil. It describes what a thing is in its nature, prior to or apart from choices made. A sunset is good, but it isn’t a moral agent making choices. On the opposite end, evil doesn’t have to involve choices either. Birth defects, diseases and natural decay (e.g. rust) are examples of “evils” that do not involve choice.

Right and wrong bring good and evil into the realm of choice. Choices are weighed against a standard. If they meet the standard we call them “right”; if they don’t, they are “wrong”. To determine right and wrong we must ask “What does the chooser owe?”, i.e. is she doing what she ought to do?

Morality involves right and wrong behaviors as understood by a particular group of people. To determine the morality of an action one must ask “What does this particular group currently approve (or shun)?”

Another particular expression of right and wrong is legality. Legality measures an action against a standard demanded by a civil authority.

Holiness (vs. commonness or “profanity”) is a spectrum that asks “whether and how a thing has been set apart (or not set apart) for God”.

The sixth spectrum is wise versus foolish. It is the practical outcome that leads to final decision-making. It asks this: “Given everything I’ve culled from the other spectrums, what is the prudent course of action in this circumstance at this time?”

Sometimes these spectrums all overlap perfectly, but often they do not. When they don’t, wisdom must recognize where the distinctions lie and make decisions accordingly.

A Pastor's Mid-Year Musings

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 14:52:18 +0000

When you insist that VBS songs have too many hand motions coming too rapidly for normal human being to learn—and then you see the entire row of early elementary school girls in front of you performing the motions with ease—you know it is no longer “your day”.

People detest prophets because they warn of danger when everything seems to be going rather well.

I’ve learned from umpiring baseball that the people who know the least express their opinions with the greatest vigor and the most volume.

For the longest time I was annoyed at the growing number of people who had terrible diction. Then I got hearing aids.

It’s amazing how sensitive teeth are. If something as fine as a piece of hair enters your bite, you know it immediately.

The best education is learning how to learn.

Think about how precise language can be. There is quite a difference between saying “take time for yourself”, “take your time”, and “you certainly took your good old time”.

I used to think watching birds was something only old people enjoyed. But in the past few years I’ve really come to enjoy it, and I’m only 65.

Some people believe capitalism is evil because it doesn’t distribute resources to everyone equally. But nature doesn’t distribute resources equally either.

In a fallen world, you must learn to embrace the imperfect and work to improve it gradually—and repeatedly.

Traveling doesn’t necessarily make you better at living among your neighbors.

Perhaps the most liberating aspect of growing older is discovering that it is acceptable to say “I don’t really have an opinion on that.”

Botanically speaking, oranges, zucchinis, and cantaloupes are berries, but strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries are not.

Coffee in Church: Part 2

Mon, 06 Jul 2026 17:46:10 +0000

To allow coffee in the church service, or not to allow coffee in the church service—that was the question! I chose not to prevent people from bringing beverages into our services. Here’s why.

First, there are no divine commands prohibiting beverages in a service in a church building—in large part because there are few instructions about church services and none about church buildings.

Some may claim that 1 Corinthians 11.17-34 prohibits eating and drinking in church. It’s a long passage and the details of the context aren’t entirely clear. Paul’s solution to the problem, however, is clear: “So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another” (11.33). It is clear that (a) Christians were eating at church meetings and (b) Paul offered regulatory instruction but didn’t disallow the practice. There is nothing inherently evil about food and drink in church.

Prior to the 4th century Christians met in homes and secret places to avoid persecution. They prayed and sang together, studied Scripture together, and as noted, ate together and shared in communion as part of that meal. After the 4th century, Christianity was legalized and Christians began building public buildings for worship. They were called basilicas, modeled after Roman public meeting places and intentionally distinguished from pagan temples (which housed idols but weren’t constructed as meeting places for large groups).

At the same time Christian leaders began using the terminology of Jewish Temple worship to speak of Christian worship, e.g. making connections between bishops and high priests, churches and the Temple, the communion table and the altar. Church architecture over the next centuries developed to follow that language and churches were built to be—and viewed as—Christian temples. Rails separated the congregation from the holy place where the priest served and the inside of the church became sanctified—a sanctuary.

These developments were man-made traditions. They are old, long-standing traditions but that doesn’t make them divinely commanded. There may be great value in these traditions, but they are still subject to change.

The change was introduced by the Protestant reformers of the 1500s. They moved the sanctification from the building to the congregation. The people are the church sanctified by the Holy Spirit in them. God dwells in them—not the church building. They are God’s house, the Temple (e.g. Ephesians 2.19-22; 1 Peter 2.4-5).

The Reformers didn’t make radical changes in attitudes toward church buildings as sanctuaries. Protestants still treated their buildings with reverence while at the same time unwittingly planting seeds that would eventually germinate into radical changes.

Strangely enough those radical changes on how church buildings were viewed eventually arose among conservatives—evangelicals in particular. From the mid-19th century on, mainline denominations retained traditional formats (e.g. architecture, robes, liturgy) but became extremely liberal in doctrine (e.g denying the miraculous, the virgin birth, the deity of Christ). Conservatives retained traditional doctrine but gradually jettisoned traditional formats, largely in the name of making better connections with changing culture—which increasingly lost its concern for ecclesiastical symbols.

Evangelicals—meaning ‘gospel-preaching’—were concerned with evangelism, with reaching a culture that was changing with the saving message of Jesus Christ. The old symbols, once rich with meaning that was now lost to the common man, were shed—and that included the use of buildings. In the 1940s, amid much contention, churches began to add social halls and gyms that allowed practical opportunities for personal connection with people. By the time I entered ministry in the 1980s, a church having that kind of space was a necessity and not an option.

Church architecture soon focused more on practical efficiency and economy and “sanctuaries” became multipurpose rooms—by definition the opposite of a holy place. Holy places are set apart only for special use; multipurpose rooms are intentionally built to be used in many ways.

I don’t think this change from church building as sanctuary to church building as multipurpose is without theological significance. The old traditional churches were built to create a sense of God’s transcendence. In cathedrals, basilicas, and even many churches, attention is drawn upward. There is amazingly detailed artwork on the ceiling where it can only be appreciated by God. The artistry of the buildings and their décor is magnificent and grand, to make one feel small in the presence of a great God. There is nothing wrong with this tradition and upon entering these places one can still experience the same feelings. Many, in fact, recognize that modern church architecture does not give that feeling.

Modern evangelical architecture seems to me to focus, not on God’s magnificence or transcendence, but on His immanence—that God is with us, became man, walked among us, and still, by His Spirit in His people works in the world through such ordinary people in simple and ordinary ways. Our buildings reflect that. They are functional and economical. The people, not the architecture, must be the bearers of the message of the gospel. That is the evangelical tradition.

Our churches don’t point you to a God who is distant and far away, but to a God who has come down and walked among us and who works among us. He is a God “with skin on him”.

And He ate and drank among us and with us.

So now, people accustomed to having beverages in public places come into our services and they bring their morning Joe with them. If I welcome them at the door with a smile but insist their coffee is unwelcome in “the holy place”, I am asking them to behave according to a symbol whose meaning was lost to our culture long ago and which my own tradition does not honor. It gives too much weight to a trivial detail that contributes more to driving them away—I believe unnecessarily so—than drawing them to the Savior we’re trying to point them to.

Coffee in Church

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 18:17:24 +0000

Over my years of ministry, I have often found myself between two groups of sincere, committed Christians—one wanting to change a church practice that the other wants preserved. Everything from paint colors to pulpit or no pulpit, from how to run VBS to whether or not beverages should be permitted in the sanctuary.

I have found that the greatest obstacle to effectively navigating these questions is the emotional investment that people have in their side of the issue. We all claim to want to follow Scripture, but most things that people disagree about in our churches are NOT direct commands from God’s Word, but rather man-made traditions.

Traditions are often born as symbols to represent beliefs, so much so that the symbol becomes the public expression of the belief. For example, in early America respectable men wore knee-breeches, stockings, and buckled shoes. Long trousers were the apparel of ruffians—sailors, frontiersmen, and the poor. The French Revolution changed all that. French revolutionaries called themselves sans-culottes (“without breeches”) because they rejected the nobility and showed it by rejecting aristocratic dress. Long trousers became a symbol of the common man and republican virtue; knee-breeches weren’t just “old-fashioned”; they expressed scorn for the working man.

The same thing happens in churches. Traditions are created to represent beliefs, and then the tradition becomes the belief. But over time, the perceptions of people change and that often changes perceptions of the meaning of the traditions.

For example, one long-standing tradition was that the church building is a sanctuary, i.e. a holy place. God is there and so we don’t use the church building for common things. Special behaviors are required in the church e.g. reverent silence, no food or drink, no playing of sports or other common diversions, and so on. Many people have grown up with that idea of “church”.

The Protestant Reformation (1500s) refocused the definition of “the church”. The church, the reformers said, was not the building but the people of the congregation. Initially, the church building retained the sense of “holy place”, but as Protestantism grew more aggressively evangelistic, use for mission surpassed the importance of the church building’s holy status. Churches built food pantries for the poor and social halls for fellowship gatherings and gymnasiums for youth activities—and not without much now-forgotten argument and consternation! The traditions were reformed and those reforms have become our traditions.

When I became a pastor in the 1980’s, traditions were shifting again. Keeping costs down led to the “sanctuary” being constructed as a “multipurpose room”. On Saturday it may house a youth concert or wedding reception (common use), on Sunday a worshiping congregation (sacred use). If it’s multipurpose, and if some of the purposes are common, then technically, it’s no longer a sanctuary.

When we constructed a new building in 2003, we designed the “sanctuary” as a multipurpose room. But some people saw it as (and called it) “the sanctuary”—a sacred term. Others called it “the auditorium”—a secular or common term.

That may seem like a small distinction, but how you speak about a thing reveals how you think about it. If you’re thinking of it as an auditorium, a multipurpose room and not as a holy space, why not bring a beverage into it while you listen to a sermon?

And this is where the two sides approach me and ask me to adjudicate the matter.

In one ear I hear:
…“Is this God’s house or a cafeteria?”
…and “Doesn’t the Bible say that we have houses to eat and drink in?”
…and “Why can’t people respect God’s house and just drink their coffee before they come to church?”
…and “People are going to spill on the church fabric and the stains will ruin the chairs. Don’t you care about that?”

And in the other ear I hear:
…“I don’t understand—we can drink beverages in the auditorium at a wedding reception on Saturday but not in the church service on Sunday?” …and “What’s the harm of bringing a beverage into the service?”
…and “Other Bible-preaching churches allow coffee in the service? Why wouldn’t we?”
…and “Does the Bible say we can’t bring a beverage into the church service?”

When confronted with this, I chose to allow people to bring beverages into the church. In next week’s blog, I will explain how I arrived at that decision.

Questions God Doesn't Answer

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:04:09 +0000

The biblical prescriptions for Israelite worship and community life are numerous and detailed. By contrast, the New Testament directions for operating Christian churches are vague and sparse.

We are to meet regularly (Hebrews 10.25), to observe baptism (Matthew 28.19) and the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 11.23-26), to proclaim the Word (2 Timothy 4.2), to be generous and giving, and that elders and deacons are the prescribed church officers (1 Timothy 3; Titus 1). There may be a few more but that’s about as much as I could round up.

Now consider things that AREN’T commanded, questions we may have that go UNANSWERED in Scripture:
…What should be included in a church meeting and what should be the order of service?
…What should music be like and what instruments should (or should not) be used in the church?
…What should we wear (or not wear) to church?
…What kind of bread should we use for communion?
…Must we use wine or can we use grape juice for communion?
…How often should we take communion?
…Who may (and may not) take communion?
…Who may (and may not) be baptized? Believers? Children? Babies?
…Who may (and may not) baptize? Only leaders—or anyone?
…What are the different job descriptions of elders and deacons?
…Do the elders run the church or can church members vote on things?
…Can we add other offices beyond elder and deacon (e.g. treasurer, secretary, etc.) and who decides that—and how?
…Who chooses the leadership?
…Must leaders be ordained?
…How long should sermons be and who may preach them?
…May we use responsive readings?
…May we use written prayers or must they always be spontaneous?
…Who may pray in public—only the leaders or anyone in the church?
…Can we (should we?) have creeds or doctrinal statements?
…Must a church have by-laws?
…May we give altar calls? Must we give altar calls?
…Who may (and may not) be a member of a church—or should we even have formal membership—and who determines that?
…What kind of furniture or art or decoration may we use (or not use) in the church building? Crosses? Flowers? Pulpits? Pews or chairs? A communion table? A sound system?
…Should we even have church buildings?
…How should our church buildings be designed (e.g. may we include a social hall and a gym)?
…What holy days should we (and should we not) celebrate and how? Should there even be “holy days”?
…Must we worship on the Sabbath (Saturday) or must it be Sunday (the Lord’s Day) or can we meet anytime?
…How do we choose and support missionaries?
…Can we develop age-appropriate ministries: nursery, Sunday School, youth group?
…Can we have special children’s ministries (e.g. AWANA, VBS)?
…Are weddings and funerals the concern of the church, and if they are, how are they to be conducted?
…What may (or may not) a church building be used for and who determines that?
…How do church members give to the church—or should they?
…Is there a required level of giving?
…Who determines how offerings given to the church are to be used?
…Can people use credit cards to give? Can they give stocks or properties as gifts? Can they leave money to a church in their will?
…Can a church utilize online giving—or must we pass baskets?

These are just a few of the questions we might ask (and about which I have been asked)!

And we haven’t even touched on questions of biblical interpretation or theology (e.g. views on loss of salvation or the end times) or everyday life (e.g. daily devotions, use of alcohol, dress standards, schooling of children, dating, birth control, and political issues)!

We don’t have clear-cut commands from Scripture on most of these things. Christianity grants more breathing room and requires, not that we follow explicit commands on these matters, but that we create traditions built on biblical principles.

And over the centuries, many different traditions have been built on all these things. Under close scrutiny, though we don’t often think about it, most of the details about what we believe and practice are traditions built upon principle—and designedly so.

We—especially we conservatives—often forget the distinction between God-given law and traditions built on God-given principles/law. We identify the two as the same thing. We resist the notion that truth can update its wardrobe; that if we support such change we are somehow abandoning God’s Word.

I believe—especially for us conservatives—the first thing we need to grasp to balance the polarities of tradition and reform is the distinction between God’s Word and traditions based on the principles of God’s Word. They are indeed two different things and must be treated differently.

Truth Changes Clothing

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 19:04:11 +0000

I’m a dyed-in-the-wool conservative but I’ve also lived through being the one to lead in bringing about change. Some of my readers have encouraged me to elaborate my thoughts on these things, traditions and change, so let’s survey the components of tradition and change in religious matters. (Secular matters are a slightly different concern.)

I believe in a God who doesn’t change. What He likes, the good, and what He hates, the evil, is eternal. His character and tastes are always the same—yesterday, today, and tomorrow. HE doesn’t change.

But people change. We were not made to be immutable. We are always learning and changing, constantly adapting to God’s world and finding new ways to use it and live in it. Every new discovery changes the way we live and behave and think. We change and we change the world, and the changing world changes us.

Though God Himself stays the same, He doesn’t hesitate to change His dealings with us. He is always good, faithful, and true to Himself, but there are points at which He will adapt to our changing understanding. The illustration I like to use is truth changing its clothes. There is unchanging truth from an unchanging God, but it expresses itself in different clothing to the changing understanding of people.

I think that’s true of the Law of Moses. Many think of the Law of Moses as the eternal and unchanging Law of God. But the book of Hebrews depicts all priestly rituals as temporary illustrations (or types) pointing to Christ. A planned obsolescence was built into them. They were of no further use once Christ appeared.

Kosher food laws are another example of the same principle. The New Testament makes clear they had no further use. I believe there are other commands in Moses’ Law that operate the same way. They fit in the original context in which they were issued but no longer fit in changing contexts, e.g. the commands to wear tassels or leave beards untrimmed. These laws in an ancient context expressed a truth of God’s eternal character, but as people changed, the expressions lost their relevance. Truth didn’t change, but its clothing did, and that was part of God’s design.

The final component in this discussion is man-made tradition built atop the Law of Moses. Originally, these traditions were “new clothing” for truth. Pharisaic tradition created detailed explanations of how to carry out Moses’ Law. For example, if I must cleanse myself after contact with something unclean, what is sufficient cleansing? The Pharisaic traditions described exactly how much and what kind of water to use and what parts of the body must be cleansed and so on.

Jesus’ clashes with the Pharisees were usually over this third component. The Pharisees, He argued, tied all three components together too tightly. They saw their traditions as the only proper execution of the Law of Moses, and the Law of Moses they saw as the perfect expression of the person of God. In theory they may have seen a distinction between these three things, but in practice, they treated their traditions as the voice of God that ought not be adjusted.

Jesus argued against this point repeatedly and on two fronts. First, some traditions were held mindlessly and for their own sake: We always did it this way, so it must be important (e.g. Matthew 23.23—tithing herbs). Trivial points were raised to importance and weighty truths were missed (i.e. straining at gnats and swallowing camels).

Second, some traditions undermined the spirit of the Law—the core truth of God’s unchanging person. The Law was twisted by tradition to avoid obedience to God (e.g. Mark 7.9-13—claiming family inheritance was dedicated to God and so couldn’t be used to “honor” and care for aging parents; when the parents died, the money was recharacterized as personal inheritance).

The problem, according to Jesus, was not God’s will, the Law of Moses, or even the Pharisaic traditions themselves, but how men connected and used them. I believe that Jesus’ criticisms are on point and apply to today’s Christians, including and perhaps especially us conservatives.

For Christians there is a complex theological problem here. Jesus said He didn’t come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it (Matthew 5.17-20) but that fulfillment appears to have, in some sense, abolished the Law (Ephesians 2.15; Colossians 2.13-23; Hebrews 8-10). I think the value of studying the Law is seeking to understand how an eternal truth was temporarily “clothed” in the ancient context so that I may understand proper ways to clothe the same truth in our own context. The core truth will be the same but will wear different dress. I can only flag this tension for now; it requires far more than a paragraph.

The second (and in practice, I believe, the more prominent) difficulty has to do with man-made traditions. The New Testament didn’t replace the Law of Moses with a clearly written code. Instead, the Spirit of God works in our hearts so we “sense” the first level of truth—the heart of God. Then we live based on what we know of His heart, and we construct our lives, both as individuals and as churches, on that foundation.

Do we ever perfectly understand the heart of God? Or are we always learning, growing, and changing? But if I can only live on the basis of what I know—if my understanding tomorrow will differ from today’s—how can we go about building our lives and the lives of our communities and churches in a way that truly pleases God?

I must leave you with these unanswered questions and tensions for now…

The Fork That Scandalized Venice

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 18:06:00 +0000

Giovanni Orseolo, a prince of Venice in the early 11th century, married Maria Argyropoulina, a Byzantine princess who brought with her a fascinating little piece of technology that the Venetians had never seen: a two-pronged golden fork. She shocked everyone by using it to eat her meals. Peter Damian, a fiery monk, denounced the fork as a sinful luxury. As the story is told by some, Damian insisted that God gave us “forks”—our fingers—so using the fork was an affront to divine design. Princess Maria died of the plague, but supposedly Damian declared it was a divine judgment for her use of the fork.

Despite that divine judgment, forks are now commonplace in the Western world. Even at church dinners.

This strange anecdote illustrates an important truth: nearly everything that becomes tradition was once a radical and unwelcome change. All truths seem to pass through three stages—first, they are ridiculed, then they are violently opposed, and finally, they are accepted as self-evident. Changes become new traditions which eventually yield to further change. Despite the regular repetition of this cycle, many people struggle to accept it as the way the world works.

From infancy we learn to navigate the world. We take that learned navigation as “the way things are—and have always been”. Changes require that we re-learn a new way of seeing, thinking, and doing, and most of us aren’t fond of that exercise.

Back in the mid-1980’s our church wanted to add contemporary Christian guitar-led choruses to our singing of hymns (accompanied by piano). The choruses weren’t in the hymnal; lyrics would have to be projected with an overhead projector. When I proposed the change, one old saint protested, “JESUS NEVER USED AN OVERHEAD PROJECTOR!” It never dawned on the dear soul that Jesus never used a hymnal or a piano either!

Some people objected that a guitar didn’t belong in church. They insisted that the piano was the appropriate instrument for church music—not realizing that just a century before church-goers protested the piano, an instrument from the saloon, replacing the pipe organ. A century before that the Puritans dismantled pipe organs in English churches, complaining that they were worldly instruments.

Many have complained about modern music replacing the “ancient” hymns. But I analyzed our hymnal and found that…
…almost half of the hymns were from the 20th century;
…40% were from the 1800’s;
…10% from 1700’s
…2% from the 1600’s
…1% from the 1500’s
We have very few truly “ancient” hymns. Some of the oldest still known hymns are those of Isaac Watts (1674-1748)—Alas and Did My Savior Bleed; When I Survey the Wondrous Cross; O God Our Help in Ages Past, and the Christmas favorite, Joy to the World. Ironically, Watts was fiercely opposed by his contemporaries for the audacity of composing his own lyrics (rather than using the biblical Psalms).

Church music provides many examples of the cycle, but there are others. When Sunday School was introduced in the 1780’s much of the clergy opposed it. Within 25 years it had spread to nearly every Protestant denomination.

In the 1940’s many people condemned the new trend of church social halls as worldly. Churches were for worship, not socializing. Today, providing a social hall for funeral luncheons, wedding receptions, and other large gatherings is a given of church architecture.

Changing times and changing perceptions led to changes in traditions. Ridiculed and opposed at the outset, the changes ended up becoming the new traditions.

If everything we call ‘tradition’ was once radical change, what exactly are we defending when we defend tradition? And what are we attacking when we attack it?

The Tension Between Tradition and Change

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 22:48:06 +0000

I converted to evangelicalism as a teenager convinced I was leaving error for truth. I left Catholicism because so many practices seemed unbiblical and its traditions of repetitious liturgy seemed to lack life. Evangelicalism, I was sure, would be different. Evangelicals trusted the Bible, the Word of God rather than the traditions of men. How could evangelicalism go wrong with that foundation?

My college years cured me of that confidence. I discovered that evangelicals had their own unexamined traditions, entrenched leaders, and gaps between profession and practice. For a season, I became an angry young man convinced that reform to “fix” the last generation’s errors was the answer. Replacing dead traditions with my “better informed” practices would bring spiritual health back to the church.

I was not entirely wrong, but I missed the mark by a wider margin than I realized. I had to learn that tradition and change are not enemies, but two goods in permanent tension with each other. Wisdom is not choosing one over the other but learning how to hold both in tension.

The traditionalist in me said “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever”. I felt our evangelical churches had moved away from biblical traditions in our previous reforms. “Good change” meant returning to biblical traditions—doing things exactly the way the Bible prescribes.

That sounds like faithfulness to God’s Word—a good thing. But I found it difficult to put that principle into practice consistently. Should we have a church building (the apostles didn’t) or did we need to sell our building and meet in home or a rented hall, as early Christians did in Acts? The apostles didn’t use pianos or organs or hymnals, pulpits or overhead projectors or offering baskets? Could we? What about head coverings or jewelry or braided hair for women (1 Corinthians 11; 1 Peter 3.3-4)? Did we have to do everything the way it was done in the first century?

In sermon preparation I discovered that first century synagogues preached first (and the preacher sat to speak) and then closed with congregational songs of praise. I decided to follow biblical tradition and sat down, preached the sermon, and then closed the service with several hymns. The immediate response of our people was: “Don’t EVER do that AGAIN!”. The change was too extreme and too uncomfortable.

Going back to the Bible was not as simple a proposition as I had thought. Though God Himself never changes, He never hesitated to adapt His dealings to ever-changing humanity and its customs!

I would need to rethink my understanding of both tradition and change. Both are necessary. Deciding when to use which, and how to do so, is the real challenge.

A Pastor's Pain: Wounding with Truth

Tue, 26 May 2026 18:26:45 +0000

As a pastor, I have often been put in a difficult place by people I love. They claim that something I have taught or that our church stands for has hurt them. “If you were teaching truth,” they say, “I wouldn’t feel hurt. And if you really love me you will apologize, recant what you’ve said, and change your teaching.”

Every time a pastor experiences this—and all pastors experience it—he is placed in a tension between truth and mercy. Which is more important: maintaining a belief or maintaining a relationship? If I prioritize truth and risk the relationship, I am portrayed as cold and lacking love. If I prioritize the relationship and try to alter biblical teaching, I am seen as a spineless people-pleaser.

How should a pastor think about this—and what should he do?

If the situation is seen as merely binary (one pole is right and the opposite is, of necessity, wrong; see my previous blog), then I must simply choose the “right” pole. But if the situation is polar (both poles are good things) then I must find the right relationship between the two goods and navigate them accordingly.

The first problem to be navigated is the complainant’s binary perspective. “If you were teaching truth, I wouldn’t feel hurt.” Look at the binary beliefs tucked into this complaint:
(1) Truth doesn’t hurt; therefore, falsehood does.
(2) Feeling pain is bad; therefore, feeling good is always good.
(3) Love wouldn’t make someone feel pain; therefore, those who make me feel pain don’t love me.

Each of these binaries is an oversimplified view of the world and a person committed to them has “rigged the game”, so to speak. The simplistic thinking forces me to compromise and love them—or to stand for the truth and hate them.

But each of these oversimplified binaries can be false. Many lies, flattery in particular, are designed to do painless damage. Truth often hurts and those willing to risk hurting you may be your truest friend: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, profuse are the kisses of an enemy” (Proverbs 27.6). Pain is nearly always a necessary part of healing, and absence of pain (or inability to feel pain) is not necessarily a sign of health. Many die of diseases that present no painful warnings.

These things are true spiritually as well. Jesus said following Him meant taking up your cross daily (Luke 9.23)—not a painless prospect. Likewise, Jesus taught that all men speaking well of you is not a good thing (Luke 6.22-23,26). Conviction of sin and the personal discipline of confession and repentance are painful but productive (e.g. Psalm 32.3-5; Hebrews 12.11; Revelation 3.19).

To understand this, however, one must abandon binary thinking and grasp polar thinking. The problem here is not good versus evil, but good versus good. How do I navigate relationships to truth versus relationships with people?

My experience has been that if the person refuses to abandon binary thinking for polar thinking when the situation requires it, it is a no-win situation. They insist that the matter can only be understood their way.

That forces me as a pastor to navigate the channel between two other goods: maintaining the truth or maintaining the friendship. The strain I feel when that happens isn’t intellectual; it is emotional and relational.

When I refuse to concede the truth or revise our beliefs, it isn’t because I want to alienate a friend. I am protecting something that pastors are called to protect: the integrity of the gospel and the authority of Scripture. False teachers have always compromised truth to make people feel better, saying “peace, peace” when there is no peace. False teachers don’t like having enemies and prefer to avoid conflict. It seems easier. It is easier. Always.

But I am also protecting something else when I side with truth and risk friendship. Though my alienated friend sees me as cold, uncaring, and lacking compassion—maybe even hateful, I am protecting the truth of the only real mercy that can resolve the guilt and pain for sin. Not only for him, but for others. That is what it costs me on the love side of the tension.

My choice for the truth doesn’t make the tension go away. It maintains the tension. I must bear the pain of one lost friendship for the sake of a truth that I believe will be a far more important blessing to many more people in the long run.

I hate losing friends for the sake of the truth, but I don’t hate them for walking away from me. I am more disappointed than angry. It is part of a pastor’s dying to self and bearing the cross.

But more than once a good God has turned my disappointment to joy, sometimes after many years, by powerfully turning around my ‘enemy’s’ perspective and making them my friend once again.

Succeeding Without Teeth

Mon, 18 May 2026 15:40:58 +0000

The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, recently proposed “free” (i.e. taxpayer-funded) dental care for the city’s crystal meth addicts because “you can’t succeed without teeth!”

This proposal is compassionate, and showing compassion is good.
Those who support the proposal are compassionate, support a good thing, and are therefore good people.
Opponents of the proposal must lack compassion and must therefore be bad people.

That is how most of us learn to think. As children we were taught simple binaries (opposites). Big opposes small. Loud opposes quiet. Good opposes bad. Simple binaries form the foundations of a child’s thought.

The foundations.

Functioning adequately in the adult world necessitates a more complex moral superstructure to be built on those foundations. I had to unlearn the assumption that every important question is a matter of two opposites, one good and one evil.

Though some questions are that simple, those are usually the easy ones. The more difficult questions of life involve two choices, each of which is good. These kinds of choices stand in tension against each other. They are not equal but opposite binaries. I describe them as polar—like a magnet, with each pole attractive to different goods. I must weigh the goods. It’s not that one pole is completely right and the other wholly wrong. Rather, I must figure out the relationship between the poles and determine how each good must come into play in my decision to act. I must figure out how to navigate the poles.

Let’s use the example from Mayor Bass. Compassion—the capacity to be moved by another person’s pain and to act to reduce or eliminate that pain—is a real and genuine good, one of the most Christlike things we can experience.

But compassion standing alone without qualification can lead in a bad direction. Mayor Bass was correct that you can’t succeed without teeth. But she has ignored the fact that you can’t succeed while addicted to crystal meth either!

The flaw in Mayor Bass’s vision is not her compassion, but the failure to recognize the important good at the opposite pole: calling the meth addict to personal responsibility for his own life! The Mayor’s binary sense of compassion places that burden on the taxpayer and sends the message that sloth (an evil) is actually a good. Compassion is a good thing, but an equally important good is requiring each soul to take personal responsibility for his own life.

Another pole that may lie opposite compassion is restraint. Imagine a child permitted to forego studying because he wants to play with friends. The parent, wanting to show compassion (“Childhood is so short; let the child be a child!”), allows the child to play. The child fails the test the next day and cries to his parent that the test was too hard or was unfair. The parent demands a meeting with the teacher and insists that the child be permitted to retake the test or that the grading be curved.

In this parent’s simple binary mindset, the good of freedom to play (and it is a good!) was placed against the evils of the pain of self-discipline, of learning self-restraint for a greater good. The pain of failing—the natural consequence of freely playing—the parent treats as an evil by demanding that the teacher (rather than the student) alter the way they have behaved. Compassion was shown by the parent and felt by the child, but because of the failure to balance the poles with the good of self-discipline, the child was actually taught entitlement and a fragility that makes him unable to absorb failure and make changes that lead to success.

But in polar thinking, parental instruction in restraint and correction are good things—as are compassion and understanding. It’s not that one pole is freely indulged as good and the other totally avoided as evil, but that the poles must be weighed and used in appropriate measure in the relevant circumstances.

I began my own journey practicing simple binary thinking. The opposite of the good was always evil. I was, in the terminology of Proverbs, simple.

Mature thinking isn’t about unlearning right versus wrong; there are times where questions are that simple and binary. But mature thinking has to distinguish those simple binary questions from the more difficult polar questions—weighing good against good—and navigating issues by balancing the poles in our thoughts and deeds.

Why I Rarely Give Simple Answers

Tue, 12 May 2026 19:55:44 +0000

I've noticed a pattern in how people respond when they bring me hard questions. Sometimes they leave satisfied. But sometimes — maybe more often than not — they leave with more questions than they came with. People come hoping for a clear answer and instead find me saying something like it depends or there's more than one thing true here or I'm not sure that's quite the right question.

I want to explain that. Not to defend it — but because I think understanding why might be more useful than any simple answer I can give.

I didn't start out this way. Early in ministry I was much more certain. I had a system. I had positions. I had frameworks. I could tell you fairly quickly what I thought about most things. All of it was genuine conviction and most of it was the confidence of youth. But a good bit of it — I can see now — was that I hadn't yet been sufficiently schooled by the real world.

Reality is a demanding teacher. It doesn't care about your framework. It just keeps presenting you with situations that I have repeatedly found don't fit as neatly into my framework as I’d like. Real lives were much more complicated than my neat categories. People had to make decisions where every available option cost something real. And I often found moments where two things I was completely sure of pointed in opposite directions.

You can respond to things like that in a few ways. You can maintain a tight grip on your framework and force reality into it — which produces a certain kind of confidence at the cost of actually paying attention what's in front of you.

Or you can abandon your frameworks altogether and just react — which produces a different kind of confidence but no wisdom at all.

Or you can let reality teach you something harder and more useful: that most important questions aren't puzzles to be solved but tensions to be navigated.

That third path is the one I’ve learned to choose and is what I want to write about in this series.

I'm not going to present a system because I don't think wisdom comes in systems. Instead, I hope to share a little bit of what four decades of paying attention has taught me — about how reality is actually structured, about what it means to think and live well inside that reality, and about why the shortcuts our culture offers are often shortcuts to places we don't really want to go.

I'll warn you in advance: some of this will be uncomfortable, not because I'm trying to be provocative, but because honest thinking is often uncomfortable. It was for me.

We live in a moment that rewards certainty and treats complexity as weakness. I will suggest almost the opposite — that wisdom requires holding things in tension without collapsing them into a simplistic answer to a complex problem, and that developing wisdom takes time, costs something, but, as Solomon said repeatedly in Proverbs, is worth everything.

I'm writing this partly because people have asked me over the years why I think the way I do and I want to put it down on paper to help me figure myself out. I'm also writing it partly because I am increasingly aware of my mortality—that I won't always be here—and that there are things I should leave with those that will be here when I am not.

Perhaps you will be able to use some of what I have learned. I don’t believe the world you're inheriting is going to reward simple answers, and I feel a responsibility to leave my congregation with some things that might equip you for that.

Christianizing the Christians

Tue, 05 May 2026 14:18:32 +0000

We seem to be living at a time when “the centre cannot hold” for much longer. The nation is polarized. Politicians and the media call for unity but they can’t unite around ideology or practice. They perpetuate the division. Social media extends the battlefield to the citizenry. We heatedly re-argue the points put out by the media without any resolution. We on the right see the world falling into chaos and disorder, while the left fears that we are losing our democracy to rigid right-wing despotism.

When the world is coming apart at the seams, people want to understand what is happening. We, Christians included, seek certainty. Christians seek it in biblical theorizing about the end-times or in theories about ‘evil’ groups or organizations controlling the world. These theories provide a sense of certainty about the out-of-control external world, and we take comfort in our “interpretation”.

I do not lead in either of these directions. I came to evangelicalism during the 1970s end-times craze that proved utterly mistaken. Church history reveals a long line of completely mistaken end-times crazes that discredit the faith when they fail. I try to avoid those speculations.

Conspiracy theories are appealing because government and the media have earned our distrust. Conspiracies need only be suggested, not proven, and by design cannot be disproven. Built on suspicions rather than solid evidence, they don’t warrant the confident assertions they make. I find their certainty illusory and trust in them ill-founded.

The pendulum will always swing between the desire for liberty and the desire for order. But America’s founders identified a deeper force that moderates that swing: Christian morality. John Adams observed, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

What did Adams mean by “a moral and religious people”? Like most of the Founding Fathers, Adams refers, not to the rituals of Christianity but to the established points of morality that governed European Christianity in the 18th century.

Each soul is required to govern himself, having a sense of accountability to God (above the state). The cornerstone of self-governance is taking personal responsibility for one’s actions—to pursue, wherever possible, those things that make for peace and prosperity and to avoid actions that disturb the peace of the community. Sobriety and temperance—the control of and resistance to appetites that can enslave and destroy self and others—are important virtues.

Not destroying, harming, or killing others is crucial (“you shall not murder”). Justice—treating all people as equals, regardless of social standing—is another important value (“do unto others as you would have them do unto you”).

There is a high premium placed on truthfulness (“you shall not bear false witness”) and integrity in all dealings—honoring promises, oaths, vows, and contracts.

The foundational social unit is heterosexual marriage. Fidelity within marriage (“you shall not commit adultery”) for the creation of a stable atmosphere for the birth and rearing of children is a central value. Parents are responsible to train children, and children are responsible to obey and honor parents (“honor your father and mother”). This becomes the template for proper relationships with legitimate authorities beyond the home.

Work, a part of the original creation, is a blessing and honest labor and industriousness are virtues to be pursued (“six days you shall labor”). The right of personal property—the fruits of labor belonging to the laborer to be disposed of as he sees fit—is an important Christian value, as is the necessity of respecting the property rights of others (“you shall not steal”).

“A moral and religious people” will hold these principles to be true and right and will seek to live by them. Doing so, the Founders believed, would moderate wild swings of the pendulum between liberty and order. If the moderating force is the unchanging set of values held by “moral and religious people”, and the moral and religious people compromise those values to appease an unbelieving world, should we expect anything but wild swings of the pendulum?

Not only are these values not practiced, but they are also no longer held sacred or, in some cases, even believed—not even by many who name the name of Christ. They have been eroded by unbelief, and the cost of experiencing the disdain of the unbelieving world has become too much for many.

Many believe the answer is political activism (i.e. “culture wars”)— Christianizing the unbelieving world by law. Perhaps we need more work on Christianizing “the Christians” by faith.

Jesus’ admonition to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” was this: “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.” (Matthew 5.13)

Israel had lost sight of its holy calling. Jesus came to restore them. Though the national machinery resisted, God powerfully used those that were willing to believe and obey to change the world.

He is still in that business.

When the World Comes Apart at the Seams

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 17:35:39 +0000

The pendulum of human history swings along a spectrum. On one end there is liberty and personal freedom; on the other, order and restraint of chaos.

We all want two things at once. We want the freedom to choose, to speak, to own, to worship—the freedom to pursue happiness. But we also want predictable rules, stable families, stable markets, social trust, and deterrence of wrongdoing and protection from violence.

The great challenge is that when the pendulum swings too far one way, it undermines the other ideal at the other pole. Too much concentrated power and an overly rigid sense of order can become tyranny and oppression—the crushing of freedom. Freedom without limits, without any moral discipline, can become chaos and disorder—unleashing selfishness and violence.

People, nations, and the world are always seeking to strike the proper balance. We are always moving along that pendulum line, always seeking that sweet spot at the center. Rarely have we found it.

Throughout history the pendulum has at times swung wildly—the collapse of the ancient Bronze Age world of the Mediterranean (c. 1200 BC), the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the American Civil War and the Reconstruction, and the 20th century transition of Europe from monarchy to more democratic forms of government. To borrow W. B. Yeats’ phrase, in times like that, “the centre cannot hold.” The world seems to come apart at the seams and people search frantically for stability and direction.

The Old Testament prophets, Jesus, and the apostles spoke of days like this in apocalyptic terms: the sun being darkened, the moon turning to blood, the stars falling or no longer giving their light, and mountains shaking or melting. Some people believe these are to be taken literally—and that is possible—but I’m inclined to believe that such imagery depicts things that have long been certain becoming uncertain. It’s not that the world ends but that “the world as we have known it ends.” Though one day there will be a final end—an end to the entire process of history—history has experienced many lesser ends that launched a new start and a new direction.

At the moment we seem to be living in such a time when “the centre cannot hold”—or we are at least approaching such a time. Everything seems to be topsy-turvy.

American politics is being radically re-aligned. The names of the old parties remain but neither party is what it was even 50 years ago.

Mass migration is reshaping the ethnic and cultural composition of Western nations. Islam is making powerful inroads into European nations and has a foothold in America.

The Arab Gulf states are more pro-Israel than much of the West is.

International institutions (e.g. UN, WHO, NATO) are growing less credible and old alliances are weakening.

COVID and international political tensions revealed the fragility of global supply chains.

Each step of communication technology—the internet, smart technologies, social media, and most recently AI—radically changes the way people and economies function.

Though the West is rapidly secularizing, there is also a simultaneous global explosion of religion and spirituality, especially Christianity and Islam.

These large issues (and many lesser ones) easily unsettle us—even we Christians. Some of us retreat fearfully into apocalyptic thinking (“the world is ending soon!”) and disengage from the present. Some of us, knowing that leaders and institutions have proved false in the past, look for order and certainty by recognizing patterns of hidden forces manipulating events behind the scenes, taking comfort in the thought that we understand what’s really going on.

I think there’s another option…but I’m out of space and it will have to wait till next week’s blog.

A Door That Never Closes.Part 2

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:29:42 +0000

In my last blog, I outlined the covenant cycle between God and Israel (Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28-30) that always leave an open door for the Israelites to repent and return from dispersion and exile.

STEP 1: Obedience to God brings blessing in the land
STEP 2: Disobedience brings hardship to lead Israel to repentance
STEP 3: Failure to repent leads to Israel’s expulsion from the land
STEP 4: Israel’s repentance leads to her restoration to the land

That final step matters. If the door to restoration is never shut, does Israel still have a claim to the land today? Are God’s promises to Israel still in force?

The promise of the land did not originate at Sinai; it predated the law entirely. God promised the land to Abraham and his offspring centuries before Moses was born (Genesis 12.1, 7; 13.14–17; 15.7–21; 17.8; 28.4; 35.12), and as Paul said, the law does not negate the promise (Galatians 3.17–18). The promise of the land remains in force.

The covenant at Sinai does govern Israel’s enjoyment of the land in the four steps of the covenant cycle. While the promise of the land is eternal (Genesis 17.8), the enjoyment of the land is contingent upon covenant obedience.
The messages of the prophets, God’s covenant lawyers, are explications of the four-step covenant cycle. Prophets usually come on the scene either to announce a coming hardship (Step 2, e.g. a locust plague as in Joel) or to threaten expulsion from the land (Step 3, e.g. Jeremiah 25.8–11). At either stage, repentance can forestall the judgment, since each step of the covenant cycle presents a contingency.

But the prophets also refer to the final step—the hope of restoration based on God’s faithfulness in keeping the covenant cycle. Though the prophetic wording often looks like a prediction, restoration is a contingency tied to repentance because the prophet is operating within the covenant cycle. Israel’s repentance is not inevitable, but the hope of restoration upon repentance is.

The prophets express that exile does not need to be the end of the story. The covenant cycle always provides hope for restoration to the land (Isaiah 43.5–6; Jeremiah 30.3; Ezekiel 37.12–25; Hosea 3.5; Amos 9.14–15; Zechariah 8.7–8). The prophets are not introducing something novel in the message of restoration, nor are they guaranteeing a fixed historical outcome; that is, they are not predicting a necessary return to the land. They are reminding Israel of the certainty of God’s covenant faithfulness and reiterating the covenant cycle established in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28–30. The door always remains open. God is free to fulfill His covenant promise of the land exactly as He gave it.

In Romans 11.26–27, Paul echoes this covenantal hope of Israel’s future salvation, citing the prophets. “The Deliverer will come from Zion; he will banish ungodliness from Jacob; and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”

The faithful God promised the land to Abraham’s descendants, so there is always a hope of restoration to the land held out to Israel. There is no passage—Old or New Testament—that explicitly revokes the promise of God’s commitment to give Israel her land. The New Testament expands the scope of the promise (Matthew 5.5; Romans 4.13—“heir of the world”), but that expansion is not cancellation of the promise, but fulfillment of another part of the promise. “In you will all families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12.3).

If, in the unfolding of His sovereign providence, the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ (Revelation 11.15), then there is nothing implausible—biblically or theologically—about Israel being restored again to the land promised to the patriarchs. If that happens, it will not be because Israel has earned it. Scripture is explicit: it will be for the sake of God’s own name (Ezekiel 36.22, 32; cf. 20.42–44).

God’s faithfulness to His promises always insures hope for Israel. Exile is never the end of the story.

A Door That Never Closes

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 09:32:21 +0000

How is it that despite continued Jewish hostility to the gospel and despite seeing Gentiles outnumber Jews in the Christian church Paul can still hold out hope that the Jews will someday turn to Christ (Romans 11.12,15,23-24,26-27)? I believe the answer is to be found in the nature of God’s covenant promises which, Paul says, belong irrevocably to the nation of Israel (Romans 9.4-5 cf. 11.29).

Many evangelicals have a habit of reading the Old Testament in terms of prediction. The Law or Prophets speak in advance of an event that must take place. Once such an event comes to pass, it is “fulfilled”, over and done with, never to be repeated.

But the covenant promises of God were not predictions of single events, but the promise of a repeating cycle in God’s interaction with His people. Moses presents that cycle in Leviticus 26 and in a longer formal covenant in Deuteronomy 28.1-30.20.

STEP 1: When Israel obeys God, she will be blessed in the land (Leviticus 26.1-13; Deuteronomy 28.1-14)

STEP 2: When Israel disobeys God, she will be disciplined with hardships to lead her to repentance (Leviticus 26.14-26; Deuteronomy 28.15-24).

STEP 3: Failure to repent will eventually lead to Israel being driven from her own land (Leviticus 26.27-39; Deuteronomy 28.16-68).

STEP 4: If after being driven out of the land, Israel repents and returns to the LORD, she will be restored and returned to the land (Leviticus 26.40-46; Deuteronomy 30.1-10).

The covenant promise cycle is then set to repeat.

Paul, a Pharisee immersed in the Old Testament, would have been familiar with this covenant format. Though Step 4 doesn’t predict Israel’s return to the LORD, it always allows for it, because of God’s faithfulness to His covenant promises. This covenant faithfulness, highlighted at the end of the Leviticus passage, makes the gift and calling of God irrevocable (Romans 11.29).

Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them, neither will I abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and break my covenant with them, for I am the LORD their God.
But I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the LORD. (Leviticus 26.44-45)

Paul’s hope for Israel’s eventual turning to Christ is grounded, then, not in prediction but in the faithfulness of God to His promises that remain perpetually in force. As long as the cycle Moses outlined in Leviticus and Deuteronomy holds, the door is never finally closed—and for Paul, God’s faithfulness guarantees that it never will be.

The Jews: Beloved Without Belief

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:49:52 +0000

As regards the gospel, [the unbelieving Jews] are enemies for your sake.
But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. (Romans 11.28)

How can unbelieving Jews be enemies of the gospels and yet “beloved” in terms of divine election at the same time?

Paul qualifies his statement with two phrases: “as regards election” and “for the sake of their forefathers”.

First, unbelieving Jews are loved by God for the sake of their forefathers. They are a part of the people descended from Abraham (Romans 4.1), Isaac, and Jacob—renamed Israel—for whom the nation was named. While the Jews may have overemphasized physical descent (e.g. Matthew 3.9; John 8.33-40), that physical descent from the patriarchs means nothing in God’s providential plan swings too far in the opposite direction.

Second, Paul ties God’s special love for the Jews for the sake of the forefathers to divine election. When the word “election” occurs, people think of arguments about predestination. But that’s not what Paul has in mind.

Moses wrote the book of Genesis to present the context of Israel’s call to be God’s chosen people (Exodus 19.5-6). Genesis 1-11 presents a rebellious world opposed to God, scattered at the Tower of Babel. From among the lost nations, God chooses Abraham to be a mediator of divine blessing to those nations (Genesis 12.1-3). Abraham isn’t chosen to be saved automatically; he must exercise personal faith in the promise. He is chosen, rather, to be the vehicle of divine blessing to the world.

Moreover, not only Abraham personally but also his descendants—a nation that will arise from him—will become that vehicle of blessing (12.2-3). God chooses Abraham’s son, Isaac (21.12) and then Isaac’s son, Jacob (25.23, 28.13-14, 35.12-14). Jacob’s sons become the tribes of Israel, chosen (i.e. elect) and loved because of the oath God swore to the fathers (e.g. Deuteronomy 7.6-8; Psalm 105.6-11).

Paul simply repeats this theme in Romans 11.28. The nation of Israel was chosen in Abraham to receive God’s covenant love so that they might bring blessing to the Gentile world.

The argument of the New Testament is that Jesus, the perfectly obedient Jew, son of David, son of Abraham, is the true and proper heir of all the ancient promises (Matthew 21.38; Romans 8.17; Galatians 3.16; Ephesians 3.6; Hebrews 1.2). Those who have faith in Jesus, the heir, are ‘Abraham’s children’ and thus inherit those promises in Christ (e.g. Galatians 3.9, 29), whether Jew or Gentile.

The gospel going to the Gentiles expands the promised blessing to its originally intended destination. But many today think that the expansion of the Abrahamic promises has negated and cancelled the original core promises to Israel, that the Christian church is now the chosen people and Israel has been tossed aside without a future. Antisemites go a step further, seeing all non-Christian Jews as wicked and forever cursed. They consider them worthy of disdain and even hatred.

But this conflicts with the tension Paul maintains in Romans 11. The ancient calling of the nation of Israel is irrevocable, says Paul. Jews who reject Jesus may be the enemies of the gospel, but they are still beloved, being part of the ancient chosen nation commissioned by God’s promises.

Israel’s election was never based on their worthiness but on God’s character. He keeps His Word. His character has not changed, and the unbelief of the Jews does not nullify God’s faithfulness. Paul called the Romans (and he calls us) to reject prejudice and hatred, and to remain humble in the presence of a God who can do the impossible and often does the unexpected.

Beware Contempt for God's Beloved Enemies

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 08:58:25 +0000

Do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. (Romans 11.18)

A consistent problem in apostolic Christianity was cultural conflict between Jews and Gentiles in the church. To address the problem, Paul in Romans 11 depicts Israel as a cultivated olive tree growing from a holy root (the promises to Abraham). Jewish Christians, he says, are the natural branches (11.18,21,24). Believing Gentiles are not; they are wild olive branches grafted onto the Jewish tree (11.17-19), partaking of the blessings from the ‘root’ (11.18)—the promises to Abraham.

Paul addresses the judgmentalism of the Jew against Gentiles elsewhere (e.g. Romans 14.2-3b cf. 2.17-29). In Romans 11 he speaks to the arrogant Gentile Christians who despise Jewish Christians. Gentiles, most likely in the majority in the Roman church, would find it easy to be critical of the strange holiness practices of Jewish Christians. Those sensitivities would seem foreign.

Paul commands the Gentile Christians to keep the picture straight. “YOU’RE the foreigner,” he says. “Your Roman culture isn’t the foundation of Christianity; the promises to Abraham mediated to you through Israel and its Christ are. Remember the grace you received and don’t demean your Jewish brothers and sisters! The covenant promises are theirs!”

Paul anticipates the Gentile response: “But the Jews were broken off, and we have taken their place!” (11.19). One can almost hear the Romans protesting: “But the Jews rejected Jesus! They framed him and had him crucified! They persecute you wherever you go while we Gentiles embrace King Jesus with open arms! Surely Christianity can no longer be a Jewish thing! It has become a GENTILE thing, and the Jews must conform to OUR ways!”

Paul agrees that some branches were broken off because of unbelief and that the Gentiles found a place of blessing because of belief. The proper response to that truth, Paul says, is not condemnation of or disdain for the Jews—not even unbelieving ones!—but humility and fear of God who keeps, not only His promises, but His threats (11.20-24).

If anyone had reason to despise unbelieving Jews, it was Paul. But he urges the Gentile Christians at Rome to adopt a different perspective on them:

As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable (Romans 11.28-29).

Unbelieving Jews who oppose the gospel, Paul says, are enemies of Christians. The apostle makes no bones about it. But then his reasoning takes this unexpected turn: “But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers.”

Who is beloved? “They” are—a group, a people—not merely isolated individuals.

Beloved by whom? Who else but God? And beloved by God, not because of good individual life choices; in fact, beloved despite a bad one: unbelief! They, as a people, are beloved by God in their unbelief!

And God loves them, not for their own sake, but for the sake of their forefathers—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to whom God chose to give the original promise of blessing.

And they are loved by God for the sake of the patriarchs because “the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.” Paul applies this irrevocable call, not to Jewish believers, but to the unbelieving Jews.

If they, as a people, cut off from participation in their own covenant promises, are still loved by God in that state of unbelief, Gentile contempt for Jews is not just wrong—it is rebellion against God’s own posture.

Fateful First Steps

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 16:35:01 +0000

This series of blogs is not about opinions on Israeli politics. Like citizens of any free nation, Israelis differ on Israeli politics, so it is no surprise if American opinions on the topic differ. Nor is it about American foreign policy toward Israel or the wars in Gaza or Iran. Political opinions are not antisemitism and not my concern.

Intimations of hatred toward the Jewish people are my concern.

We all know about the mass shootings and death camps conducted by the Nazis. A decisive step on the road to that catastrophe was the publication of Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1925). The propaganda developed from Hitler’s book generated suggestions that shaped how people thought about their Jewish neighbors—repeated themes left just ambiguous enough to grant plausible deniability. In its early stages antisemitism operated more through implication than through verifiable declaration.

Because some Jews were bankers, it was insinuated that Jews secretly manipulated markets for their own gain. Because some Jews owned newspapers, it was insinuated that Jews were secretly shaping public opinion to their own liking. The Nazis falsely alleged that through these means the Jews were spreading cultural corruption: sloth, greed, and perverse sexual lusts (e.g. homosexuality, pedophilia, and prostitution).

Nazis claimed the Jews were a hidden force behind everything. German culture was being degraded and corrupted through the influence of the Jews. The poisoning was so subtle, they said, as to be unnoticeable – until it was too late.

How could the German people have been so easily fooled? Couldn’t they just look at their poorer Jewish neighbors and see that they weren’t bankers or journalists wielding destructive influence? This is where 19th century racial theory came into play.

Religious antagonism toward Jews had existed for centuries. The 1800s saw the emergence of racial theories defining Jews as a biological race, and Jewish evils, the Nazis insisted, were biologically inherited race-wide. Their subtle, cunning ways of corrupting the German-speaking peoples were not merely troublesome behaviors or individual personality traits, but the fixed racial heritage of all Jews.

Why am I saying this? Because these Nazi-era tropes—intimations that demean and devalue Jews as individuals and as a people—the first steps on the road of antisemitism, are re-appearing today. Of more concern to me as a pastor is that over the past year I’ve encountered Nazi-era tropes in our conservative Christian circles. (Why that is the case may be a topic for a future blog.)

History has already gone down that road once to a repulsive destination. Do we conservative Christians really want to take those first steps again? Aren’t those first steps the best place for a pastor to issue the challenge of change? C. S. Lewis said, “If you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road.” The sooner the change of heart, the shorter journey back to what is right.

This was not the essay I had planned to present this week. But it’s an important clarification of the situation I am seeking to address. I don’t personally know anyone advocating physical attacks against Jews, but I regularly encounter intimations that demean and devalue them as individuals and as a people.

One such intimation claims the Jews no longer truly exist as a people and, by extension, that the nation of Israel doesn’t need to exist. I hope to begin explaining what I believe the Bible says about that in my next blog.

A BURDEN I NEED TO SHARE

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:22:05 +0000

I’ve apparently upset some people with my blogs on antisemitism (Sep 2025-Jan 2026). Let me explain why I wrote those blogs.

I regularly receive newsletters from pro-family and pro-life pastors’ groups and last year there was a growing alarm among conservative pastors about the rise of antisemitism in our churches. I thought they had to be overreacting. Conservative American evangelicals were the last people I would have suspected of buying into ideas promoted by the antisemitism of the last two centuries. I was wrong.

Just as these articles appeared, Christian parents started coming to me asking for help because their children were getting caught up in antisemitic propaganda online. While researching the matter I encountered more Christians who were being drawn to these antisemitic ideas. The ideas weren’t new; they were recycled from 20th century antisemitism. I hope you can understand why I found this alarming. I felt it was important to address the matter and felt the blog was a better place than the pulpit. I hoped that an understanding of the history of antisemitism would clarify some things that might open doors for a more profitable discussion.

It didn’t. It upset people. I was sad to discover recently that a few quietly left the church because of what I wrote.

I am very concerned about what this issue is doing in the hearts and lives of believers. I believe there is a lot of confusion and that what is happening at the grassroots is being amplified and complicated by an array of voices in conservative media and conservative politics that claim to be “anti-Israel but not antisemitic”.

I believe a group of policy-driven non-interventionist politicians (e.g., J. D. Vance, Rand Paul, Thomas Massie) are successfully maintaining the line between legitimate criticism of foreign policy and antisemitism. They believe putting America first means the U.S. should avoid funding or fighting for foreign countries. Israel is not singled out; as a foreign nation, it is one of many with which the U.S. should avoid entanglement on principle.

Others, like journalist Tucker Carlson, claim to be in the “anti-Israel but not antisemitic” camp—and most often he is. But at times Tucker flirts with the line between the two positions, and that can be confusing. For example, he sometimes uses language echoing familiar antisemitic tropes, suggesting hidden Israeli influence or disproportionate Israeli sway over the American government. Taken together, these statements can make him sound more antisemitic than anti-Israel.

In a recent interview with Mike Huckabee, Ambassador to Israel, Carlson kept trying to get Huckabee to identify what it means to be a Jew. What are the identifying marks of the Jewish people? When Huckabee offered genetic, ethnic, religious, and covenantal grounds for Jewish peoplehood, Carlson rejected each in turn. The cumulative effect is denial that a Jewish people exists at all. That’s antisemitism.

I’ve noted in the past Carlson’s habit of giving his platform to extremists like Nick Fuentes and Daryl Cooper without challenging their antisemitism.

These practices make it harder for people—especially young Christians—to distinguish between legitimate policy criticism and antisemitism. It makes it easy for the minds of audiences to conflate the politicians, the line-blurring journalists, and the radical extremists. If they all seem to be saying the same thing, supporting the extremist is the same as supporting the politician.

I see this kind of confusion happening. Having a biblical framework in which to sort these difficult matters out is vital to a proper understanding of the Christian faith. I continue to get questions about whether the modern state of Israel fits into the biblical story, and if so how, and if not, why not? What I hope to present in upcoming blogs should help us all understand these difficult issues from a sound biblical perspective.

I wanted to be transparent about the pastoral concerns driving my choice of topic, laying to rest any distress before it arises. We can have political disagreements among us, but we can’t espouse hating people merely for being Jewish. History should have taught us that. I am alarmed that it hasn’t.