by | Jun 27, 2024 | Uncategorized
How Christians can navigate the Trump-Biden showdown with discernment and love for neighbor.
As the 2024 election approaches, so too does our inexorable march toward presidential debates. And while the year’s first debate today takes place far earlier in the calendar than normal, this is far from a normal election.
Joe Biden, already the oldest president in American history, is facing criticism and questions about his readiness to lead and mental acuity. Donald Trump, also advanced in age, continues to spread unfounded accusations of electoral malfeasance in 2020 and, depending on the outcome, in 2024.
God’s people are called to love their neighbors and “seek the welfare of the city” (Jer. 29:7). One way we do this is to be informed and engaged in the contemporary political process. This means researching candidates for office, considering the ways our voting affects not just ourselves and our families but also our neighbors and fellow citizens, and, yes, at times tuning in to debates between candidates.
At their best, political debates highlight differences between candidates and give voters a clear choice when they cast their votes. Debates provide platforms for candidates to share not just specific policy proposals but also a broader vision for their community, state, and nation. This is consistent with the political science idea of “responsible party government,” in which political parties articulate an agenda that voters can reasonably expect from them should they win an election. Debates, in theory, afford candidates the same opportunities.
Unfortunately, debates usually fail to reach these goals. Instead of providing people with rich and substantive information to aid their inevitable voting, debates tend to devolve into scripted soundbites, attempts …
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by | Jun 27, 2024 | Uncategorized
Jesus’ initiation in Jerusalem can guide American churches in raising Christian men.
Twin crises afflict contemporary America: The Great Dechurching and The End of Men, as the titles of recent books label them. Put briefly: Many churches fail to lead young people into Christian maturity, while contemporary culture fails to bring boys into mature manhood.
We cannot solve either crisis without solving both, together. And we have resources for addressing these crises together—time-honored, transcultural resources attested in Scripture, manifested in the church, and affirmed by contemporary research into adolescent formation.
While “the great dechurching” is a crisis for girls as much as for boys, the overall challenges they face differ. As Richard Reeves shows, girls are outpacing boys in schools and, increasingly, in the workplace and in general health. American girls face challenges no less severe, but they are different.
In asking how all of us, especially our boys, can grow into Christian maturity, we should start by considering how our Lord left his boyhood behind in order to be about his Father’s business.
When Jesus was 12 years old, Luke’s gospel tells us, his family went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover, as they did every year. “After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem” (Luke 2:41–43).
This is the sixth time Luke describes Jesus as either “the baby” or “the child”—he never calls him just plain “Jesus” up to this point. But then, at the end of the story, we read, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (2:52, emphasis added).
Over the course of three days, Jesus leaves his boyhood behind. As Jason …
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by | Jun 26, 2024 | Uncategorized
Congregations that don’t comply with its traditional stance have a year to enter a process of discipline and restoration.
Two years ago, the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) clarified its stance against homosexuality. Last week, the denomination clarified its expectations for churches whose LGBTQ-affirming teachings contradict that stance.
At its 2024 Synod, the CRC instructed affirming congregations to repent, retract any divergent public statements, and comply with the denomination’s beliefs on sexuality going forward. Pastors, elders, and deacons at affected churches have been placed on a limited suspension.
The move was recommended by an advisory committee and approved by synod delegates in a 134–50 vote last Thursday.
Many saw the discipline as an opportunity to restore affirming churches back into compliance with CRC teachings and confessions, which hold that all same-sex sexual activity is sinful.
Yet at least 28 churches—including some of the denomination’s most historic—may opt to leave instead. They have a year to submit to discipline or disaffiliate.
“There was no desire for anybody to be removed from office or disaffiliated from the denomination,” said Stephen Terpstra, senior pastor of Borculo CRC in Zeeland, Michigan, and vice president for this year’s synod. “The desire, always, is discipleship, that we would be reunified, that we would see repentance.”
The Christian Reformed Church includes 230,000 members at more than 1,000 churches in the US and Canada. The denomination has roots in Dutch Calvinism, and its synod takes place at affiliated Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which welcomes LGBTQ students but officially upholds CRC teachings on sexuality in its policies.
After experiencing …
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by | Jun 26, 2024 | Uncategorized
Messianic Jewish leader explains how Christians can best engage the ultra-Orthodox Haredim, who tremble at God’s word as they avoid the war in Gaza.
Amid the war in Gaza, Israel’s most religious Jews threatened to emigrate.
The statement issued by the chief rabbi of the Sephardic community in March had nothing to do with fear of Hamas rockets or the continuing fight against them. Neither was it related to protests over the remaining hostages or calls for ceasefire.
The concern instead was the forced conscription of Haredi Jews, popularly known as the ultra-Orthodox, into the military.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled unanimously against them. Though a plan must still be formulated, about 66,000 ultra-Orthodox of draft age are now eligible for enlistment.
Israel requires three years of service for most men and two years for most women. But in 1947, then-prime minister David Ben Gurion exempted 400 yeshiva students who wished to dedicate themselves to prayer and Torah study.
Marked by traditional black-and-white garb with a hat, long beard, and side curls, they call themselves Haredim—derived from Isaiah 66:2, which says God favors those who “tremble” at his Word. The success of Israel, they believe, is tied to Leviticus 26:3, where national flourishing is dependent on their “careful” observance of the law, interpreted as strenuous engagement with the Scriptures.
Today, however, the Haredi community is the fastest-growing in Israeli society and constitutes 13 percent of the population, estimated to increase to one quarter by 2050. Yet while 540 military-eligible Haredi men voluntarily enrolled to fight since October 7, tens of thousands have continued to avoid the draft under Ben Gurion’s exemption.
In 1998, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled a law was necessary to codify this policy, and it was passed in 2002. Israel also established …
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by | Jun 26, 2024 | Uncategorized
The summer’s hit sequel offers wisdom for young Christians worrying about the future.
I don’t, you know, feel God’s presence like I used to. What’s wrong with me?”
“I’m not sure if I really even believe in Jesus. Can I?”
“My Christian high school never taught me about racism in America. What do I do with what I’m learning? How can I ever go back to that kind of Christianity again? Should I?”
I am privileged to sit with Christian young people as they ask questions like these—questions about identity and development, change and growth. Who am I becoming? they want to know. And how is that related to who I’ve been until now?
That interrogation is at the heart of Inside Out 2, the smash-hit sequel of the summer. Pixar fans first met 11-year-old Riley in Inside Out (2015), when Joy, Fear, Sadness, Anger, and Disgust worked together to help her navigate a new middle school.
Now, Riley is about to start high school, trying to find her way onto the hockey team and through the complexities of puberty. Her adolescence introduces the five original emotions to new and disruptive company: Embarrassment, Envy, Ennui, and—most notably—Anxiety.
Anxiety plays a complicated role in our lives—paralyzing on the one hand and prudential on the other. Oriented toward the future, it helps us identify negative outcomes and work to make them less likely. Anxiety keeps us off ledges; anxiety prevents us from taking selfies with bears.
With Anxiety at the helm, we see Riley somewhat successfully navigate through the perils of adolescent life. She makes new, older friends by guessing at the kinds of things high school girls talk about, even risking a conversation with the hockey captain, Val, to make up for a rocky start with …
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