Church Disappointment Is Multilayered

by | Oct 11, 2024 | Uncategorized

Why are people leaving the church or their faith behind? Some answers boil down to platitudes, like a supposed desire to pursue a sinful lifestyle. But apologist Lisa Fields has found the reasons to be much more complex.

Fields, founder of the Jude 3 Project, which equips Black Christians to know what they believe and why, has sat across from many people leaving the church. During these “exit interviews,” she’s discovered that somewhere in nearly every story lurks the specter of personal disappointment with God or Christianity. She addresses this thorny issue in a new book, When Faith Disappoints: The Gap Between What We Believe and What We Experience.

CT national political correspondent Harvest Prude spoke with Fields about walking with God in the midst of a broken world and our own disappointments.

Something from your book that really struck me is when you talk about unanswered prayers. How do we navigate times in our faith when we’ve sought out God for something and we feel overlooked because he doesn’t seem to answer?

For me, when God doesn’t answer my prayers, I have to have a real conversation with him about what he has not answered. My relationship with God is very open. There are times where I’m angry, and I have to get those feelings out of my mouth and out of my heart—because when I don’t voice my frustrations, I end up filled with bitterness and resentment.

There’s a quote from Tim Keller where he says—and I’m paraphrasing—that if we knew what God knows, we would want our prayers answered the way he answers them. I’ve had this experience in my own life. I remember a time when I wanted to connect with a particular person, a major donor who could help my ministry. But I didn’t have enough extra income to get to New York City, where he was based. I remember being frustrated, feeling like there were all these obstacles to networking and getting ahead. Only later did I learn that this person had just gotten arrested for embezzlement.

Sometimes, in your disappointment, you realize that God is letting you see things that you wouldn’t see otherwise or protecting you from dangers that you didn’t know about. In the book, I talk about a man I had been dating for almost four years. In the middle of our relationship, he got married to a woman he had been involved with behind the scenes for most of the time. This other woman had been married herself during most of the affair.

That whole time, I had been praying that God would make this man my husband. But I didn’t realize that he was actually protecting me from someone who had poor character, despite being a preacher. In the middle of my disappointment, I voiced my frustration. Then I gave myself time to ask what God might be trying to protect me from. What different direction was he trying to push me in?

In the book you talk about doing exit interviews with people who are leaving the church. As a reporter, I cover the intersection of faith and politics. How do you think political conversations have impacted people’s relationship with faith?

I think the political climate in America has really impacted how people there think about faith. Christians often go to rhetorical and ideological extremes in the name of faith. Recently, I noticed a group of faith leaders on social media saying that if you’re voting for Kamala Harris, you can’t be a Christian. Rhetoric like that, I think, creates this confusion gap for many in our culture, where they don’t understand what we’re talking about. Because the Bible doesn’t tell you which political candidates to vote for. In fact, it doesn’t even speak about voting in any conventional way, because the world of the biblical writers was a world ruled by kings and emperors.

When there’s a gap between what the Bible says and what some believers claim it says, for political reasons, it makes a lot of people want nothing to do with the church, especially when political leaders hijack the church for their own gain. And it makes believers look like hypocrites, which creates a problem for those who want to be part of something genuine.

In your conversations, how often do you find that people leaving the church are struggling with its failures and flaws? And how often, by contrast, do they seem motivated more by a desire to live without moral restrictions or guilt?

I think both answers can be correct, sometimes at the same time. Church disappointment can have so many layers. Perhaps we’re disappointed with God. Or we’re disappointed with God’s people, or people in general. And then there are certain things we just desire and want to do in our flesh.

There’s always a multiplicity of factors. When I’ve done exit interviews with people leaving the church, I’ve seen that it’s never just one thing. It’s layers of things that rock them.

If you could design a toolkit of practices for being a faithful witness to those who are struggling with the church or their faith, what would you include?

The first thing I’d encourage is to live out what you believe as best you can. And that doesn’t mean perfection, but it does mean progression. If I hold to the Bible being the Word of God, then I obey the Word to the best of my ability.

Because we all fall short, though, we have to be honest about when this happens. If I portray myself as living a sinless life, I’m actually undermining the authority of Scripture, because Scripture tells us we’re born and shaped in iniquity. Living out our faith means acknowledging our sins and committing to repent of them.

Another essential habit is loving people well. In The Message Bible paraphrase, there’s a passage in Philippians that I post every Valentine’s Day, where Paul is saying, don’t just “love much” but “[love] well” (1:9–11). That really struck me when I read it years ago, because there’s a difference between loving somebody much and loving somebody well. I want to be someone who tries to love people well. That means listening attentively and holding space for their doubts and frustrations.

Third, I think we need to practice being merciful. Like Jude says, “Be merciful to those who doubt” (v. 22). Remember what it’s like to have doubts of your own, and treat others who doubt accordingly.

And finally, remember to pray with people. With my own friends, I’ve been enjoying a beautiful season of us praying together. I can’t give any prescription on how to do it right. It’s not like we’re doing anything grand. We simply share our frustrations; I pray, they pray, and healing has taken place. And it’s not like my friends are well-known spiritual leaders. But that’s just a reminder that you don’t need somebody to be a spiritual leader for their prayers to make a difference in your life. 

You write about the importance of forgiveness to any process of healing from faith disappointment. How do we respond well when a fellow believer has hurt us or broken our trust?

In my own life, I was having trouble trusting someone who had sinned against me and claimed to have repented. My therapist said, “I’m not asking you to trust them. I’m asking you to trust God.” And that has helped me a lot.

I enter into relationships that have been broken, knowing that the person, being human, could break that trust again. But I’m aware that I’ve probably caused hurts myself and I could do it again. And because I want grace, I know I need to give it as well.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. I spoke earlier about the man who cheated on me during our relationship. It took me years to get to this point, but by now I’ve seen him many times since he got married. By the time he apologized, I was able to accept his apology. I was able to trust that it was sincere because I had done a work in my heart to forgive him.

Sometimes, you have to give yourself time. Years ago, I read a book on forgiveness. It said there are occasions when we tell people we’ve forgiven them too abruptly because we don’t know the full impact of their actions. If we announce forgiveness too soon, we’re only forgiving the initial impact when we don’t yet know all the layers. How will these actions affect me a year from now? I might have to forgive again, but at least I’m choosing forgiveness. I’m choosing not to treat you like you owe me because you hurt me.

When Christians face disappointment, you argue, a sort of syncretism can creep in. They might seek out New Age practices, for instance, if they feel that God has failed them. How should we approach apologetics in a culture marked by intense interest in alternative modes of spirituality?

Before criticizing the what in these alternative approaches, try to find out the why. Perhaps you know someone who uses crystals or consults horoscopes. Well, what’s behind that? Figuring out the why will help you get to the root of the issue.

Maybe this person was going through a difficult time and heard from a friend about something that could help manage the stress. And so, okay, so that’s how you got into that. Maybe this person had tried prayer and Christian faith but, for whatever reason, didn’t find them adequate. You can help someone walk through these deeper issues. For me, this is a far better approach than simply saying, “Don’t use crystals—they’re demonic.”

Love is a better draw than fear. As a pastor’s kid, I used to go to youth conferences around the country, and there was always an element of fear in the way we were encouraged to give our lives to Christ. And so everybody gave their life to Christ at every event—the same people every year. I “became” a Christian probably a million times as a teenager because I was scared.

But when life disappointed me, that fear wasn’t what was holding me. It was God’s love. I believe in a real hell, and I believe that Jesus is the only way to eternal life, but we can communicate that with love, rather than fear, as the motivator. Because the fear will always wear off. Fear will never be your keeper.

The post Church Disappointment Is Multilayered appeared first on Christianity Today.

You Don’t Need a Rule of Life

by | Oct 10, 2024 | Uncategorized

Contemporary culture is brimming with exhortations to discipline. From Jordan Peterson’s runaway bestseller 12 Rules for Life to Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic to James Clear’s Atomic Habits, we have no shortage of guidance for embracing a life of order. And that guidance isn’t all bad; wisdom from many corners can deepen our understanding of how to live well. Psychologists, Stoics, and even motivational speakers have contributions to make.

Some are even noticeably resonant with Scripture. Peterson’s rule “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world” echoes Jesus’ admonition to “take the plank out of your own eye” before issuing judgment (Matt. 7:3–5). And Clear’s suggestion that we reduce exposure to bad habits before building good ones fits well with Psalm 1:1. For popular fare, we could do worse than commending self-control in a culture entranced by the illusion of endless possibility.

The Christian take on this genre is more explicitly scripturally attuned and increasingly described, with a nod to the monastics, as a “rule of life.” These books offer practical instruction for Christians seeking to bring their finances, prayers, and daily habits into one cohesive vision, and some try to recover classical disciplines rooted in the Decalogue or in historic catechisms. But they can evince too little distinction from their secular counterparts and, relatedly, too little use for the church.

Of course, it makes a difference that Christian books cite Scripture instead of Cicero, advise habits of prayer instead of silence, and teach self-discipline in service to the mission of God instead of success in business. But whether secular or sacred, contemporary rule-of-life material tends to function at the level of technique (tactics to make our lives more streamlined) rather than discipleship (which frequently doesn’t move in such a straightforward fashion). These are programs by which we may pull the fragments of our lives into a coherent whole, and we are generally expected to do so alone, or at least alone with Jesus.

Some Christian rule-of-life authors recognize this, to an extent. Consider, for example, John Mark Comer’s enormously popular Practicing the Way. “The current micro-resurgence of Rule of Life in the Western church is a joy to my heart,” Comer writes. “Unfortunately, it’s mostly being run through the grid of Western-style individualism, with individual people writing their Rule of Life.” 

Comer is correct as far as he goes. But if one goes looking for an antidote to that individualism, “community” and “church” appear very briefly, discussed explicitly in just over 4 pages out of over 200. Comer offers resources for churches beyond the book, which makes it all the more surprising that even here, church community is more an appendix than a core element of these rules. 

Comparing modern rules of life to their ancient counterparts is instructive. In some ways, the concerns about loss of discipline and meaning are very similar across the centuries. Monks of the fifth century complained about not being able to focus for long periods of time, just as we do today. Christians of the ancient world bemoaned being tired, distracted, envious, and divided in their lives. 

But after that common starting place, these books’ guidance for a coherent, Christ-centered life differs dramatically from modern recommendations. Reading The Rule of Saint Benedict, we should be struck by a very curious thing: The first five chapters almost never discuss things you should do. 

Instead, the prologue begins with a vision of the Christian life as one that is traveled in the company of others. The book’s intention is to establish “a school for the Lord’s service,” and it is not remote learning. The opening chapter, which catalogues different kinds of monks, allows that select monks who “have come through the test of living in a monastery for a long time” are able to go out into the world alone after benefitting from “the help and guidance of many.” But most of the instruction is for monks living together, gathered under a rule with their leader, the abbot.

The rule put forward by Augustinian monks has a similar orientation. It too begins with an admonition that assumes participation in a larger body of believers: “The chief motivation for your sharing life together is to live harmoniously in the house and to have one heart and one soul seeking God.” Before beginning to speak about the values or habits of monasticism, this rule spends the whole first chapter describing how monks prepare for the common life. 

The pattern holds beyond monastics, too. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together gives ample discussion to habits of prayer, eating, and personal disciplines. But the first thing he discusses is the necessity of pursuing discipline in common. The Christian, he writes, is “the man who no longer seeks his salvation, his deliverance, his justification in himself,” but recognizes that “God has put this Word into the mouth of men in order that it may be communicated to other men.”

To put a fine point on it, modern rules of life too often omit what Bonhoeffer and the ancients took for granted: that the ordered life cannot be lived alone. This omission may not be surprising in secular books of our isolated age. But we should not see it in Christian rules. Contemporary Christians should take for granted that our spiritual lives are knit together and indeed are impossible under ordinary circumstances without a gathered community: the church. 

When the Gospels speak of Jesus’ mission, they speak of a rabbi who gathers a community of disciples. And the apostle Paul’s preserved writings, with few exceptions, are letters to whole communities. His instructions to seek the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16) and pursue lives of humility (Phil. 2:1–3) were not first given to individual Christians. They concerned virtues to be pursued together. Indeed, Paul’s caution against being “yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Cor. 6:14) assumes a common—and communal—way of life for all believers, joined together as the people of God (2 Cor. 6:16).

Why do contemporary Christian rules of life no longer begin with this vision of the church? I suspect it’s because we can no longer count on the church life presupposed by Christians in older eras—and this loss is precisely why individualistic rules are proliferating. We still long for discipline and order, and if we don’t find it in a local congregation, we turn to these books and their individual programs instead.

That’s understandable, but we can do better than accommodating ourselves to the situation at hand. Singlehandedly pulling together the fragments of our lives may be possible, but the ancients wisely never thought it sustainable. “When God created man, in order to commend more highly the good of society, he said: ‘It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a helper like unto himself,’” reflected Aelred of Rievaulx, the 12th century author of Spiritual Friendship. “How beautiful it is that the second human being was taken from the side of the first.”

Here Aelred points us to the weakness of making do by ourselves: To be a human is to be drawn from the body of another, and to be a Christian is to belong utterly to another. Whatever rule we adopt, whatever order we seek, we must not do it alone.

That doesn’t mean there’s no place for personal disciplines in the Christian life. Benedict’s Rule recognizes that the spiritual life is not a one-size-fits-all vision. There’s ample room to apply the rule according to particular needs. Not all the monks need the same attention or struggle with the same vices, and the abbot tailors the rule for each. But the worshiping community still worships together, and its members do not first follow individual rules that pull them away from life together as the church. 

So none of this means that there’s no place for individual rules. A common life provides the space for nuance, for tailoring. Benedict noted that some monks would need more sleep or more food than others; Augustine’s rule made provisions for monks who needed different work to do; Bonhoeffer speculated on what life together might look like for families with young children or work schedules that make gathering difficult. But while you can improvise from a common premise, it’s difficult to build a common life if everyone already arrives with their own rule firmly in place. 

To reclaim this older vision, we must begin by unlearning deep habits of solo reading, praying, and planning for isolation. We must calibrate our sermons less to individual application and more to common aims. We must foster spiritual practices that require our assembly together instead of assume our absence.

This is not as daunting a task as it may sound, for, by God’s grace, we already have what we need to pursue it: the Scriptures, ample historical witnesses, and a clear hunger for disciplines and communion with others. What remains now is to count the cost, and then to begin.

Myles Werntz is author of From Isolation to Community: A Renewed Vision for Christian Life Together. He writes at Christian Ethics in the Wild and teaches at Abilene Christian University.

The post You Don’t Need a Rule of Life appeared first on Christianity Today.

Which Church in Revelation Is Yours Like?

by | Oct 10, 2024 | Uncategorized

Revelation is often interpreted out of context based on current concerns and fearful speculations about the end times. But after a study trip to Turkey—and years of teaching Revelation at my local church in Rome and for conferences—I have come to realize how contextual the book is.

Throughout Revelation, John of Patmos uses powerful imagery to exhort early Christians to resist conforming to the Roman world and to encourage them to remain faithful to Jesus in a world of rival rulers and false deities vying for their loyalty. The book addresses ancient believers in seven cities, like Ephesus and Laodicea, that faced struggles similar to those many Christians experience today.

Most scholars date Revelation back to the reign of Domitian, who issued coins depicting imagery associated with his reign. Remember when Jesus picked up a coin and said, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s” (Mark 12:17)? That’s because Roman emperors often stamped their faces on coins to project their political-religious propaganda.

But these Roman emperors weren’t just making idolatrous claims. They were also using imagery to assert their authority and subjugate the Jewish people, many of whom had embraced Jesus as their Messiah. After the Jewish revolt was crushed by AD 70, Domitian’s father, Vespasian, and later his brother Titus issued coins that portrayed humiliating imagery of Jews and Judea.

The Arch of Titus in Rome narrates the family’s triumphal entry into the city, followed by Jewish captives and spoils stolen from Jerusalem’s temple. Around 97,000 Jews were either killed at various arenas or enslaved and sent to work at mines in Egypt (in a sense, reversing the liberation of the Exodus). Some of them were even tasked with helping build what would become the largest and bloodiest arena of all: the Colosseum.

Can you imagine the anguish of early Christians, many of whom were Jewish, during this time?

WikiMedia CommonsVespasian’s denarius showing a bound Jew

WikiMedia CommonsTitus’s Denarius showing a kneeling Jew

WikiMedia CommonsArch of Titus exhibiting Judean captives and spoils

WikiMedia CommonsThe Colosseum built between AD 72-80 in part by Jewish captives

It is against this backdrop that John uses competing imagery to fortify his fellow suffering believers. He shows Jesus holding the seven stars and walking among his lampstands and describes winged creatures around the throne of “the Lord God Almighty.” He depicts scrolls, trumpets, and bowls as symbols of God’s authority and judgment—and elders who lay aside their crowns to sing, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power” (Rev. 4:11).

When we interpret Revelation in its historical, not present-day, context—following its concrete biblical references, not our abstract speculations—we see that the powerful objective behind much of the book’s counterimagery was to exalt the supremacy of Jesus above all other ancient rivals.

Yet the temptations and challenges the local churches faced in these ancient cities are not unlike the ones many Christians encounter to this day. While there are many such challenges to explore, we can learn a few lessons from Jesus’ relatable rebukes to these seven churches.

Pergamum and Thyatira call us to remain true to God in a world that exalts power.

Two chapters into the book, John’s prophecy records Jesus addressing the church in Pergamum: “I know where you live—where Satan has his throne” (2:13).

This could be a reference to several familiar religious landmarks in the city: the local altar to Zeus, a sanctuary dedicated to Egyptian divinities, various temples to Greco-Roman divinities, the first temple dedicated to Caesar Augustus and imperial worship—or all of them.

Photography by René BreuelThe Altar to Zeus in Pergamum

Photography by René BreuelThe Red Hall (Egyptian Divinities) in Pergamum

Photography by René BreuelHadrian’s Temple in Pergamum

By the time John was writing, a man had already been martyred at Pergamum (v. 13). Given the immense pressure, it’s understandable that some Christians at the time were advocating for a policy of assimilation and compromise.

Yet Jesus knew that a diluted gospel was far more detrimental to a church than persecution. The symbol for the city of Pergamum was a sword, so Jesus said, “Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth” (v. 16).

Similarly, the church in Thyatira (where Lydia, who hosted the church in Philippi, was from) also struggled with false teachings that justified sexual immorality and eating foods sacrificed to idols. So Jesus addressed himself to this congregation as “the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire” (v. 18).

In what ways do politics and religion intersect in your context? Do politicians expect undue allegiance from Christians? Do some churches defend a syncretistic compromise with human powers? And does such compromise lower our ethical standards below those of Jesus?

If so, take to heart Jesus’ admonition: “Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (v. 29).

Smyrna and Philadelphia show us how to suffer redemptively in an unstable world.

Smyrna was a harbor city with temples dedicated to the goddess Roma and the emperor Tiberius. It also had a large Jewish population that was legally exempt from emperor worship. Yet certain members of Smyrna’s synagogue argued early Jewish Christians should no longer be protected under this exemption and often reported Christians to civil authorities for treason—even though they believed in a Jewish messiah.

Below Smyrna’s marketplace were a dungeon and holding cells. Imagine being held there after being denounced, possibly even betrayed, by your own relatives, friends, or those who claimed to share your faith. So Jesus assured the church, “I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich! I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan” (v. 9).

Photography by René BreuelAncient Agora in Smyrna

Photography by René BreuelUnder the Agora in Smyrna

Photography by René BreuelAncient remains in Thyatira

Photography by René BreuelRemaining 6th-century pillar in Philadelphia

Photography by René BreuelSynagogue next to a Roman gymnasium in Sardis

Photography by René BreuelPillars in the synagogue next to the Roman gymnasium in Sardis

Jesus offered similar encouragement to Christians in Philadelphia, some of whom were also being imprisoned. Located in an earthquake-prone zone, the city was destroyed again and again. But when I visited it, I got to see a remaining 6th-century pillar. I found this a moving image, for Jesus told harassed Christians in a shaky Philadelphia, “The one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it.” (3:12).

What makes you despair and tremble? Has perseverance in the Christian walk been difficult lately? Has conflict with fellow believers destabilized you? If so, hear the acknowledgement of our Lord: “I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name,” (v. 8) and his assurance “I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown” (v. 11).

Ephesus and Sardis remind us to keep our love alive in hardworking cities.

Sardis’ synagogue (which assumed its current enormous size in the 3rd century) was centrally located next to a Roman bath and sports complex. On the outside, the church in Sardis seemed to be thriving. Yet Jesus admonished it: “I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up!” (vv. 1–2).

Jesus knew our reputations don’t always match the state of our souls, so he charged Sardis to “remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent” (v. 3).

Ephesus also had an industrious spirit, evidenced by its monument dedicated to Nike, the goddess of victory, and its ancient coins imprinted with the city’s symbol: a bee. The Ephesians were hardworking and prosperous like bees. The city had a spacious agora, a 24,000-seat theater, and a port that brought significant wealth into the city.

It also had a temple dedicated to Domitian, a temple dedicated to Artemis—which was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world—and other majestic buildings like the Library of Celsus, where you still can find a Jewish menorah lampstand sketched onto one of the steps.

Photography by René BreuelTheater in Ephesus

Photography by René BreuelRoad leading to a port in Ephesus

Photography by René BreuelAgora in Ephesus

Photography by René BreuelNike, the goddess of victory

Photography by René BreuelLibrary of Celusus

Photography by René BreuelA Jewish lampstand on the step of Library of Celusus

Jesus’ words to the church in Ephesus are often quoted: “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. … You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first” (2:2–4). Ephesian Christians abounded in work but neglected the greatest of virtues: love.

Have you absorbed too much of your context’s overachieving spirit? Do you need to slow down to recover your spiritual vitality? Does your external vibrancy match the inward state of your soul?

Laodicea challenges us to remain dependent on God in a self-reliant culture.

Built at the intersection of major trade routes, Laodicea was a banking center and an exporter of fine garments and carpets. The Laodiceans walked on roads paved with marble and erected impressive temples, a stadium for chariot racing, and twotheaters seating thousands of people each.

Yet Laodicea’s resourceful, self-reliant spirit had infiltrated its church. Jesus’ words are relevant to many of us who live in similar contexts: “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked” (3:17).

Photography by René BreuelColonnaded marble road in Laodicea

Photography by René BreuelTemples in Laodicea

Photography by René BreuelThe West Theater in Laodicea

Photography by René BreuelStadium in Laodicea

Though Laodicea was prosperous, it did not have the most basic resource: a local source of water. Nearby Colossae was located next to a river, and neighboring Hierapolis had a hot spring that is active to this day. Thus, the Laodiceans were dependent on these two cities for their water supply. Aqueducts brought water from Colossae and Hierapolis to Laodicea, allowing it to erect grand fountains like the one dedicated to emperor Trajan. Being such a precious resource, the city’s water law (in the sign pictured below) had strict regulations for public use. Isn’t it ironic that a city with no local water supply proudly featured a huge fountain?

Yet by the time it arrived in the city, Colossae’s cold, refreshing water had grown tepid, and Hierapolis’s hot, medicinal water had become lukewarm. By that point, the city’s mixed water had developed such a strong and strange taste that those who drank it were tempted to spit it out.

Photography by René BreuelHierapolis had hot springs

Photography by René BreuelWater leaving Hierapolis

Photography by René BreuelAqueduct arriving in Laodicea

Photography by René BreuelTrajan’s Fountain

In this context, Jesus admonished the church in Laodicea: “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (v. 15–16).

Jesus makes it clear that both cold and hot water are fine. Why? Because both are close to the source. Lukewarm water, by contrast, is distant from its source. Though once hot or cold, lukewarm water has become shaped more by its surroundings than by its source.

Are you allowing yourself to be shaped more by your surroundings than by your Source? Do you crave external validation more than Jesus’ approval? Does your resourcefulness tempt you toward self-reliance and away from dependence on God?

To Laodicea’s church, Jesus presents himself as the “Amen” and “the ruler of God’s creation.” The Greek word for ruler is arche, from which we have the words archetype and architecture. Likewise, Christ calls us to center ourselves on him as our ultimate foundation and affirmation.

Revelation’s historical context shows how intimately relevant the book is to many of the struggles believers face to this day. We will always be tempted to conform to our environment and succumb to worldly propaganda—which is why Revelation’s reminder is needed as much now as it was then.

Like any good pastor should do today, John challenges Christians of all ages to remain faithful in worshiping Jesus in the face of any other earthly rival.

René Breuel is the author of The Paradox of Happiness and the founding pastor of Hopera, a church in Rome. He has a master of divinity from Regent College and a master of studies in creative writing from Oxford University.

The post Which Church in Revelation Is Yours Like? appeared first on Christianity Today.

In Appalachia, Helene’s Water Crisis Taps a Global Christian Response

by | Oct 9, 2024 | Uncategorized

International Christian engineering nonprofit Water Mission usually responds to clean water crises overseas, like flooding in East Africa this year or the earthquake in Turkey last year.

But when the South Carolina–based organization saw the extensive damage to Western North Carolina’s water infrastructure after the historic storm Helene, it decided to activate a rare disaster response in the US.

“We’re able to take our systems and plug them in here,” said Brock Kreitzburg, the director of disaster response at Water Mission, speaking from Boone, North Carolina. “North Carolina is in our backyard, so let’s use our expertise in providing safe water.”

With permission from the state government, the organization drove up to Western North Carolina and put into operation four of its proprietary mobile water treatment systems that can produce 15,000 liters of clean water a day, or enough for several thousand people. Water Mission has also now distributed and gassed up 400 generators for people who need power to pump their wells, assembling a team of electricians to install the generators as needed.

Swaths of Western North Carolina are without running water for an indeterminant amount of time. Helene’s historic floodwaters took out the pipelines to the main water treatment plant serving the city of Asheville, as well as hit hard Swannanoa and Black Mountain, two smaller communities near Asheville. City officials do not have a timeline for when water will be restored but expect it to take weeks more.

Areas in rural Appalachia are struggling with water supply, too, because they are dependent on wells, which need power to pump. Electricity remains out in many parts of the region nearly two weeks after the storm.

First Baptist Swannanoa, a church that has been a key relief resource and distribution point in the hard-hit community of Swannanoa, set up a health clinic on its property early last week. There were no preexisting clinics in the area. Pastor Jeff Dowdy said the volunteer doctors and nurses have been seeing people with health issues related to lack of clean water. Dehydration has hit people of all ages, he said.

“Once you don’t have access to clean water, all sorts of things can happen healthwise,” Dowdy said. The timeframes he has heard for water to come back are four to eight weeks. “This is a long-term crisis that we’re in.”

Spotty cell service, power outages, and destroyed roads and bridges have compounded the difficulty of restoring infrastructure. One of Water Mission’s trucks got stuck on a mudslide.

“The amount of destruction here in this region—you don’t see this [in the US],” said Water Mission’s Kreitzburg. The death toll from Helene stands at 227, with most of those killed in North Carolina, making it the deadliest hurricane to hit the US since Katrina in 2005.

Without running water, residents must gather water to drink, cook, flush toilets, bathe, and wash clothes. Donations of bottled water are abundant, but locals said they are beginning to see more large water tanks positioned around town. Tankers with potable water where community members can fill large containers for their homes are the ideal in-between measure, international clean water engineers told CT.

The residents of Appalachia might not have known, but Taiwanese Christians were watching their plight. After the storm, World Vision US heard from the leaders of World Vision Taiwan. The Taiwanese leaders had seen the water crisis in Appalachia and said they already had a solar-powered water filtration system in transit to the United States, a system they had used in Taiwan after a recent typhoon.

The Taiwanese leaders wondered if North Carolina could use the water system.

Reed Slattery, World Vision’s national director of US programs, had an idea for where it could go. He had been in Swannanoa and the Asheville area and met with the head of Western Carolina Rescue Ministries, a Christian organization which is providing emergency housing to about 120 people, including 6 pregnant women and some babies. The shelter needed water. Slattery thought the mobile filtration system would produce the right amount of water for the shelter—providing 1,900 gallons of water a day.

The system from Taiwan was scheduled to be delivered to the shelter this week, and the Taiwanese staff planned to remotely train the shelter staff on using the system.

The uncertain length of the water outage requires more than bottled water, these relief nonprofit leaders say. World Vision’s “chief water officer” is working with local North Carolina officials on those longer-term solutions, Slattery said.

Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian international relief organization whose headquarters are in Boone, also typically responds to disasters overseas. But the organization has set up three water filtration systems in the Asheville area.

Each of its systems can produce 50,000 liters a day, or enough for 10,000 people. The organization has also been airlifting water to difficult-to-reach areas. Dowdy, the pastor in Swannanoa, said his community has benefited from large tankers of water from Samaritan’s Purse.

Other international nonprofits like chef José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen have tankers of water on the ground in the area. WaterStep, which responds to water crises overseas, has established clean-water operations in Augusta, Georgia, one of the places Helene hit hard.

The responding Christian organizations’ leaders told CT their operations are coordinated with emergency management officials, but they are also proactively reaching out to heavily damaged areas and talking to local fire departments or other local officials to learn the needs of the communities. Water Mission is targeting more rural areas where it will take longer to get power and water back.

Local governments have been responding well, said Water Mission’s Kreitzburg, but “it’s just such a wide area of damage. They have to prioritize. So we’re trying to be the supplement between the disaster happening and the restoring of services.”

He added, “It’s a privilege to serve them and serve the Lord.”

The head of the North Carolina Baptist Convention, Todd Unzicker, said the Baptists have semitrucks with water arriving to more than a dozen sites in Western North Carolina every day. Most of that is bottled water, but more tankers of water have been going out. He said the state Baptists are serving 140,000 hot meals a day in the area, and he didn’t know numbers on water distribution but said they were distributing more water than food.

The lack of cell service has made that distribution and communication difficult. Unzicker traveled to the storm-hit area with his daughter recently, and they had to use a map book to navigate.

The presence of so many churches and nonprofits in the region, on top of the government response, meant that the “immediate need is being met,” World Vision’s Slattery said. But residents he talked to were worried about what would happen when bottled water donations dried up or when attention shifted to other crises like Hurricane Milton.

While staffers of these relief organizations are focused on the basics of restoring infrastructure, they are also seeing the hurt and trauma of residents in the aftermath of the storm. People coming into the churches that Water Mission is partnering with have often lost everything, sometimes including family members.

“Wherever we’re responding around the world, we want to partner alongside the church,” said Kreitzburg, adding that his organization would stay as long as it was needed. “The church is going to be in that community a lot longer than we are.”

Dowdy, in speaking to CT from Swannanoa, had to move several times to chase a fleeting cell signal. The area around him is a landscape of cars flipped upside down in trees, destroyed homes, and washed-out roads. But morale is good at his church.

“Everything we’ve gotten in here has been from churches and individuals who have brought it to us,” he said. Outside groups coming in more recently have allowed his church members to rest and attend to their own disaster recovery. “It’s encouraging to see the church in a time of great need.”

Before the storm, his church had been wrestling with the question of whether anyone would miss the church if it ceased to exist. The congregation had begun looking to be more involved in the surrounding community.

“Wow, has God provided that!” he said.

The post In Appalachia, Helene’s Water Crisis Taps a Global Christian Response appeared first on Christianity Today.

The Bible Doesn’t Fit an Information Age

by | Oct 9, 2024 | Uncategorized

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

I recommended the Gospel of Mark to an unbeliever. He read it and found it “creepy.” That’s exactly the response I wanted.

This young man is probably an atheist or an agnostic but has lived in such a secular environment that he doesn’t seem to think of himself in such terms, any more than you would introduce yourself as “non-cannibalistic” or “anti-horse-theft.” He wanted, though, to try to understand—just as an intellectual exercise—why someone would hold to religious views or practices he finds alien.

He asked what he should read in order to do that. There are, of course, many places I would send such a person, but to him I said, “Why don’t you read the Gospel of Mark? Don’t worry about whether you understand it all; just read through it.”

I later ran into the secularist again, and he reported that he had taken my advice. “So, what did you think?” I asked.

He said he was conflicted. Reading the Gospel was, on the one hand, narratively gripping in a way that he hadn’t expected, supposing an ancient religious text would be preachy and propagandistic. On the other hand, he said, “It was kind of creepy.” And that’s when he brought up Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem.

This man knew that I had read the science fiction novel last year—and that I had done so reluctantly. A trusted friend had recommended the book to me with a warning: “Don’t give up. You will feel like you don’t know what’s going on and you’ll want to put it down. Keep reading and, you’ll see, it will all pay off in the end.” My unbelieving conversation partner had not read the book but he had watched some of the Netflix adaptation of it, 3 Body Problem.

Mild spoilers here: in both the book and the series, an alien civilization communicates with human scientists through a virtual reality gaming headset. The scientists are put in scenarios where they must solve the gravity fluctuations that are plunging the distant world into unpredictable periods of chaos and calm.

“At times, it was kind of like playing those games,” the young man said about reading Mark. “It was almost as though someone was on the other side, watching me.”

By that, he meant particularly that the “character” (his word) of Jesus in the text sometimes seemed to be written in a way that felt unexpectedly immediate. “Sometimes I had to remind myself that I wasn’t right there in the middle of everything. That kind of freaked me out a little bit.”

Although virtual reality aliens were not on my mind, this reaction was exactly what I had been hoping for when I’d recommended that he read Mark.

Usually if I’m helping someone “get” what Christianity is, I ask them to read the Gospel of John. With someone like this, though—who I don’t know if I’ll ever get to follow up with—I’ll suggest Mark, partly because it’s concise and relatively easy to read.

I also do this because of a story I heard years ago. If I remember right, a man who had been some sort of New Age Eastern religionist, the kind found often in the hippie countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s, became a Christian because a professor in his comparative religion class assigned the Gospel of Mark. Like the young man, he was drawn to the figure of Jesus and started to feel as though he was not only reading the text but that he was being beckoned from the other side of it.

Leon Wieseltier argues that we have too much emphasis on “storytelling” right now—that this leads to a loss of arguments, of persuasion. “Storytelling is designed to inculcate certain responses, certain mental stances, in the listener. They are passivity, credulity, wonder,” Wieseltier writes. “All of them are stances of surrender.”

This, of course, denies that there are important truths one can only see from stances of passivity, credulity, wonder, and even surrender.

Philosopher Byung-Chul Han agrees that we should be worried about how much we hear about storytelling, but that’s because—however much we talk about it—we’ve lost the ability to tell and to hear an actual story.

“We tell fewer and fewer stories in our everyday lives,” Han argues in his new book The Crisis of Narration, because “communication takes the form of the exchange of information.” In an information age, Han writes, an actual story is a disruption. Information, after all, is direct, controllable, and consumable. A story works a different way. A story requires that, in order to be experienced, some information must be withheld as well as revealed.

“Withheld information—that is, a lack of explanation—heightens narrative tension,” Han writes. “Information pushes to the margins those events that cannot be explained but only narrated. A narrative often has something wondrous and mysterious around its edges.” That kind of mystery is startlingly rare in an era of algorithms.

Part of our problem is that we find a plot unsettling in an information age, especially if we start to see our lives as part of that plot. That’s what Han finds diminishing about algorithms. We consume bits of disconnected data—curated by our curiosities and our appetites—to the point that we no longer feel surprise. Reality itself starts to feel dead, like so much abstract data. The deadness brings forth more deadness.

“Bits of information are like specks of dust, not seeds of grain,” he writes. “They lack germinal force. Once they are registered, they immediately sink into oblivion.” The metaphor immediately brought to mind Jesus’ own words: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24, ESV throughout).

Journalist David Samuels laments that we now live in the flatness of a time when story and song are hollowed out by Big Data, replaced by “consuming pornography and propaganda.”

“The goal of their governing algorithms isn’t to create beauty, or anything human; it’s to suck out your brains and then to slice and dice them into bits that can be analyzed and sold off to corporations and governments, which are fast becoming the same thing; it’s a mass mutilation of the human,” Samuels writes. “What that sounds like in practice is like a car alarm that keeps going off, at a higher and higher pitch—a sound that has no meaning in itself, except as a warning that something has been shattered.”

Maybe the three-body problemof it all is not the Bible but the rest of life. On the other side of our digital lives are intelligences seeking to question us—nameless, faceless algorithms designed to test us with just one question, “What do you want?” What if, though, our boredom and malaise are themselves signs that we weren’t meant to live like this?

Jesus said that this is a key reason he taught in parables, “because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand” (Matt. 13:13). A story requires a certain kind of participation, a certain lack of control. One must be prepared for, and often through, the story to hear what it is saying. One must be baffled enough to suspend control, to feel the tension, in order to not just share information but to experience something true. Without that sense of bafflement and mystery, a story lacks the ability to astonish and to linger.

Think, for instance, of the Gospel of John’s very familiar account of Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fishes—a miraculous sign so important that all the Gospels reference it. We tend to remember that there was a crowd of thousands, that there was not enough to eat, and that Jesus provided a feast from almost nothing. What most people don’t think about when recalling that story, however, is just how Jesus sets up the occurrence.

“Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?’” John records. “He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do” (6:5–6).

He himself knew what he would do. The question itself—the kind of momentary perplexity it would create in Philip—was Jesus’ intention. It’s the same pattern God followed with the tribes of Israel in the wilderness after the Exodus. Moses said to them: “And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3).

Jesus does not just intend to feed; he intends that we would first “hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matt. 5:6). He did not simply intend to rescue Peter from drowning, but also that Peter would experience what it was like to go under water, to cry out and to feel a hand pulling him up (Matt. 14:30–31).

Jesus’ encounter with us in Scripture is meant to work the same way. We too are meant to find ourselves exclaiming with the Capernaum synagogue, “What is this? A new teaching with authority!” (Mark 1:27). We are meant to start asking the question, “Why does this man speak like that?” (Mark 2:7). We are meant to hear, as though addressed directly to us, “But who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29).

When one finds authority amid the algorithms, revelation among the consumption, that can feel creepy—just as after a time of starvation, the smell of baking bread can seem nauseating. It’s not those who find all this strange who are not “getting it” but rather those who find it all familiar and boring. That’s what a plot does, but it’s especially what a plot breathed out by the Spirit of Christ does, a plot in which we are meant to hear the voice of a Shepherd (John 10:4).

What if someone on the other side of those ancient words knows that you’re there? What if, in those words, you can almost hear the Galilean-accented voice that once disrupted the plotlines of some fishermen by saying, “Follow me”? What if it’s speaking to you? If so, finding that disturbingly strange isn’t the end of the story, but it’s a good place to start.

Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.

The post The Bible Doesn’t Fit an Information Age appeared first on Christianity Today.

Evangelicals for Harris Asked to ‘Cease and Desist’ Billy Graham Ad

by | Oct 9, 2024 | Uncategorized

The ad begins with a clip of Billy Graham, wearing glasses, a gray suit and tie, leaning in toward a pulpit.

“But you must realize that in the last days, the times will be full of danger,” Graham declares. “Men will become utterly self-centered and greedy for money.”

Suddenly, a clip of former president Donald Trump is spliced in. Standing before a row of American flags at a campaign rally in Des Moines, Trump says: “My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy.”

For the next few seconds, the ad, which has racked up over 30 million views, flips between Graham’s 1988 sermon, contrasting his points with shots of Trump using violent language, claiming to be “the chosen one” and talking about kissing women without their consent.

That ad, the result of a $1 million ad campaign by Evangelicals for Harris, is now the subject of a potential lawsuit from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based nonprofit that supports the ministries of Billy Graham’s son and grandson.

In late September and early October, Evangelicals for Harris, a grassroots campaign of the political action committee Evangelicals for America, said it received multiple letters from lawyers representing the association, including a “cease and desist” letter. An October 2 letter, sent from outside counsel and obtained by Religion News Service, threatened to sue Evangelicals for Harris on the basis of copyright infringement.

In a statement to RNS, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association said it does not generally comment on potential disputes, but it acknowledged having communicated with Evangelicals for Harris regarding its concerns about the “unauthorized, political use of BGEA’s copyrighted video,” and said it would continue to address the matter.

“It may be worth noting that, in all of his years of ministry and across relationships with 11 US presidents, Billy Graham sought only to encourage them and to offer them the counsel of Christ, as revealed through God’s Word. He never criticized presidents publicly and would undoubtedly refuse to let his sermons be used to do so, regardless of who is involved,” said the statement. 

In August, the association’s president and CEO, Franklin Graham, turned to the social platform X to voice his displeasure at Evangelicals for Harris’s use of his father’s sermons.

“The liberals are using anything and everything they can to promote candidate Harris. They even developed a political ad trying to use my father @BillyGraham’s image. They are trying to mislead people,” he wrote. “Maybe they don’t know that my father appreciated the conservative values and policies of President @realDonaldTrump in 2016, and if he were alive today, my father’s views and opinions would not have changed.”

In response to the threatened lawsuit, Evangelicals for Harris released a statement saying Franklin Graham is taking a page from Trump’s playbook by trying to silence the group through legal action.

“Franklin is scared of our ads because we do not tell people what to do or think. We merely hold Trump’s own words up to the light of Scripture, the necessity of repentance, and Biblical warnings against leaders exactly like Trump,” it wrote in a post on X.

The lawyers representing Evangelicals for Harris also released their formal legal response to the threatened lawsuit. Originally sent on September 28, the letter asserts that the ad does not constitute copyright infringement or violate the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s right.

They write that the public discussion of Trump’s moral failings is “essential First Amendment expression” and that the use of Billy Graham’s sermon is protected under the Copyright Act.

“EFH will not be removing the ‘Keep Clear’ advertisement in response to your demand. The advertisement is a transformative, noncommercial use of less than two percent of a widely disseminated video, aimed at a market that BGEA (Billy Graham Evangelistic Association) was prohibited from targeting,” the letter says.

Evangelicals for Harris was founded by Jim Ball, an evangelical minister and former head of both the Evangelical Environmental Network and Evangelicals for Biden. Since its launch in August, the group has had over 300,000 people sign up for information about the campaign, according to Ball. Jerushah Duford, Billy Graham’s granddaughter; Bishop Claude Alexander of The Park Church in Charlotte, North Carolina; and Baptist pastor Dwight McKissic are among the group’s ranks. (Alexander is also a CT board member.)

Ball said the “Keep Clear” ad, named after Graham’s admonishment to “keep clear of people like that,” was inspired by a desire to rely on the biblical wisdom of Billy Graham, whom Ball considers a personal hero, and to reintroduce young people to the evangelist.

“We’ve never had a situation where a single individual has threatened democracy and the rule of law like Mr. Trump has,” said Ball. “We’re also hoping to provide a witness to others that love should be at the heart of how we look at politics. … How are we called to love our neighbors in the public square? We think hands down that Kamala Harris is the candidate that everyone should be voting for on that regard.”

The post Evangelicals for Harris Asked to ‘Cease and Desist’ Billy Graham Ad appeared first on Christianity Today.