While it costs us nothing to pray today to Christ our Savior, it costs us everything to coronate him our King. C. S. Lewis observed, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. (For an excellent resource, please see Dr. Lane Ogden’s “What does the Bible say about mental health” on our website.) As a result, we’ll see a plethora of information like the Surgeon General’s report in the coming days. In the midst of all the bad news, however, here’s some good news: according to the Wall Street Journal, America is seeing a “surprising surge of faith among young people.”
A recent survey found that about one-third of eighteen-to-twenty-five-year-olds say they believe in the existence of a higher power. This is more than the percentage who doubt such an existence and is up from about one-quarter in 2021. The Journal explains: “Young adults, theologians, and church leaders attribute the increase in part to the need for people to believe in something beyond themselves after three years of loss.”
You and I are just as temptable as anyone else, just as subject to the fallen human condition in which we exert our “will to power” over others as we seek to be our own god (Genesis 3:5). In fact, Satan employs a subtle deception for evangelical Christians by which we are tempted to separate our public moral stands from our private moral failures. Accordingly, God is calling us to take three urgent steps today.
According to Scripture, “secret” sins do not exist: “God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14). The psalmist said of God, “You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence” (Psalm 90:8).
Dwight Moody was right: Character is what you are in the dark.
Famed—and infamous—talk show host Jerry Springer died yesterday at the age of seventy-nine after a brief battle with pancreatic cancer. Jene Galvin, a family spokesperson and longtime friend of Springer’s, recalled how “Jerry’s ability to connect with people was at the heart of his success in everything he tried, whether that was politics, broadcasting or just joking with people on the street who wanted a photo or a word.”
Chances are, however, that most will remember Springer in a different light.
As Neil Genzlinger describes, Jerry Springer “went from a somewhat outlandish political career to an almost indescribably outlandish broadcasting career with ‘The Jerry Springer Show,’ which by the mid-1990s was setting a new standard for tawdriness on American television, turning the talk-show format into an arena for shocking confessions, adultery-fueled screaming matches and not infrequent fistfights.”
So which was the real Jerry Springer? The answer seems to have been a bit of both.
Once we are clear about our God-given identity, we can find transformative ways to use our God-given influence.
The path to our best future lies not through the voting booth or the Oval Office but at the “throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16). Only Jesus can forgive our sins, save our souls, and transform our lives. Only he can make fallen people holy. But because he honors the freedom he gave us, he waits to be invited onto the throne of our hearts.
While the future prospects for recently fired news anchors Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon look vastly different at the moment, both remind us that no amount of success can render us immune from the consequences of our choices. Whether in this life or before the judgment seat of God, we will all be held accountable by the Lord (Hebrews 4:13).
But while that thought often breeds a sense of fear and foreboding, it doesn’t have to. God’s mercy is such that he often holds off on affecting judgment for our mistakes in order to give us time to own them and repent on our own.
Now you and I have a choice to make. We can believe in a generic God and think that because we are religious, we have all of God we need. Or we can follow David’s example by making God our “rock” in every moment of every day as we “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
How do we do this without being monks in a monastery?
It is unlikely that the new legislation will go beyond the House. The Senate has indicated they will not take it up for debate and President Biden has already stated that he would veto the bill if it somehow managed to reach his desk. Still, the nature of the legislation and what it says about the polarization and politicization of the transgender debate is emblematic of the state of our culture today.
