There was a time in my life when my belief in God and Jesus was not matched with any particular interest in learning, or in gaining knowledge. Then I started to read Ravi Zacharias, and that all changed. I started to love reading non-fiction, and especially books which were heavily dependent on the classics. I eventually figured out what my teachers had always hoped I’d discover – that learning is not only healthy and necessary, but it can also be enjoyable. I started purchasing his books and filling my shelves with them, even after I returned to school and earned my degree.
But then the author who had acted as my distant mentor through that phase in my life was revealed to be something more than what he seemed, or rather, something much less. As the details of his twisted double-life emerged during the first quarter of 2021, I realized that, because of his impact on my life, I was going to have to process what I was learning about his life.
On my desk are two small items: One is a newsletter from RZIM, describing the exposed details of its founder, Ravi Zacharias, who had been discovered to have lived with deep, secret sins of a sexual nature as he was ministering around the world as an apologist and preacher; the other is a little book written by him. It’s a book about a conversation. This tiny book imagines what it might have been like for Oscar Wilde, a few moments after his death, to have finally found himself in the presence of Jesus Christ, and to have tried to account for his life and his beliefs to the one who created all life.
How can I process the revelations about this man in a way that makes sense of the things he was able to accomplish? How can I retain and honor the improvements in my own life which came about as the result of his outward, false ministry? Perhaps I can use this very model; maybe I can at least make a start by hoisting my memory of him on his own literary petard. So I wonder – what would it have been like for Ravi Zacharias, in the very first moments after his death, as he was being asked to account for his entire life in the presence of Jesus Christ? I wonder, and as I wonder, my mind conjures the scene slowly – as slowly as a dark cloud creeping across the sky obscures the sunlight...
 
On a small, mechanized bed of off-white sheets, his body is slowly shutting down after a long fight. He has gone from pleasantly healthy, to weak, to frail, and now the last moments of his life are ticking away, ever slower, a second hand winding down, a watch coming to a standstill. There is no more energy to give it another turn. The sorrowing family members around him strain to hear any further sound of his breathing. The room is dark. At last it becomes clear that he is gone.
Only he is not gone. With a rush of awareness that he hasn’t been able to summon for days now, he feels light – impossibly light – and he sits up, then stands. The oppressive weight of his body no longer pulls downward on his soul. He realizes he is free from that diseased, withered vehicle. Somehow he is aware of it behind him, and of the gloom of his surroundings, and of the sound of weeping. But none of these things cause him any distress. From in front of him there is a suggestion of light, and as he walks toward the wall he realizes he has passed through it. On the other side, bright sunlight, and an empty lawn which has no smell. It is merely green. It feels as though he is floating above the blades of grass; he can’t feel them on the bottoms of his feet, and he can’t feel any heat from the strong light overhead. None of his senses seem to be working fully, even though he can see well enough, though the brightness of the light is making it difficult for him to make out any of the details around him.
Suddenly, a sound. He tries to turn himself around and is surprised to see that the building in which he had recently been interred is gone. There is nothing anywhere except flat, unremarkable green, stretching out toward a hazy horizon. But as he continues to turn, he senses someone close by, and finally he sees a figure walking toward him. A man, probably in his thirties, olive complexion, strong eyes which may be stern, or compassionate, or both at once. The expression on the man’s face encompasses all feelings, and all things. Immediately, he knows who this man is.
RZ: “You, are you... is that you, Jesus?”
Jesus: “Hello Ravi.”
RZ: “I’m seeing you at last. I’ve imagined this moment many times, but only about other people.”
Jesus: “It would have done you good to imagine this moment as it would relate to yourself.”
RZ: “Are we going to talk about me and my life now?”
Jesus: “We are. You and I are going to finally speak.”
RZ: “What do you mean, ‘finally’? I’ve spoken to you many times.”
Jesus: “You have, in one sense. There have been times you’ve talked at me. But what about letting me speak back to you?”
RZ: “I don’t understand.”
Jesus: “Every conversation requires listening as well as speaking, and you haven’t heard my voice speaking to you for a long time now.”
RZ: “I know that I didn’t want to hear the truth about my secrets, but I still studied, I still contemplated your word, and I tried to find ways to communicate your truth to many people. Isn’t that listening?”
Jesus: “Ravi, what you are describing is the kind of listening that anyone can do. Anyone can pick up a bible and think about what it says, then try to creatively communicate those ideas to others. That kind of activity requires literacy, not intimacy.”
RZ: “Are you saying that the things I said were useless?”
Jesus: “If they didn’t penetrate your heart, why would you expect them to penetrate the hearts of other people?”
RZ: “But I truly believed the things I taught!”
Jesus: “Perhaps. Perhaps you did ‘believe’ them. But by raising that issue you have taken us, very neatly, away from the point I was trying to make. How long since you heard my voice, my Spirit, speaking directly to you about your own heart?”
RZ: “I’ve never heard an audible voice. I don’t know anyone who does.”
Jesus: “You know what I’m speaking about. I’m speaking about the kind of personal knowledge where deep calls to deep; where my Spirit brings to your mind things that matter to you and me, things that become unavoidable and crucial. I’m speaking about the act of listening. How long since you experienced that?”
RZ: “It has been a long time, it’s true.”
Jesus: “Ravi, the last time I knew for a fact you were really hearing my voice, you purposely tried to ignore me. But you knew you couldn’t ignore me, so instead you postponed thinking about your secrets, and you side-stepped them in your own mind, and you ended up virtually relegating my insistence to the level of an annoying unpleasantry.”
RZ: “I know what you’re talking about, but it wasn’t intentional! I never felt like I could really face the guilt I was living with, so I learned not to pay attention to it.”
Jesus: “Why did you do that?”
RZ: “Who wants to feel shame? Nobody! I couldn’t preach to others about the freedom of forgiveness if I was mired in a sensation of guilt.”
Jesus: “True. It would have been much better for you to have preached about the freedom of forgiveness having received it, instead of having imagined what it must feel like. But sometimes shame is appropriate – don’t you agree?”
RZ: “We teach people that shame is never appropriate.”
Jesus: “Who teaches that?”
RZ: “Christians... preachers... writers...”
Jesus: “I’ve never said that.”
RZ: “But surely you don’t want people wallowing in shame?”
Jesus: “Are you ashamed now? You look away in silence. Do you not have an answer for me?”
RZ: “Yes. I am ashamed.”
Jesus: “Of course you are. Shame is a reflex, and like any reflex it can be a response to a healthy situation or to an unhealthy situation. Also, it can be conditioned out of all usefulness. When people are told that shame is always bad, they are attempting to remove feelings of guilt and unworthiness in an artificial way. In some ways it would be like dealing with a sore finger by cutting off your hand.”
RZ: “But you said it’s better to cut off your hand than to be thrown into hell.”
Jesus: “Always a response; always a clever answer. You got used to relying on your prodigious gifts – gifts which I freely gave you – to side-step your own culpability. And by ignoring the incessant prompting of my voice, you went from not listening to not being able to hear. You became deaf by virtue of your own choices, and so doing you eventually couldn’t even hear the truth of your own sermons. The ultimate irony, and the ultimate tragedy.”
RZ: “But I believed everything I ever said! You offer forgiveness; won’t you forgive someone who dedicated his life to serving you?”
Jesus: “Serving me? Is that what you were doing?”
RZ: “I admit I enjoyed the popularity; I admit that I enjoyed the success I experienced. Why is that wrong? Shouldn’t people enjoy the work you’ve given them to do?”
Jesus: “I came to earth to live for the human race in order that your joy may be full. But having joy isn’t the same as getting joy out of life. One is a condition of giving; it overflows into the world, becoming a source of goodness. The other one takes; it plucks and consumes the pleasures of life in order to feed itself. You got joy from the adulation of crowds, from the success of your books, from the way argumentative critics often shut their mouths and succumbed to your use of rhetoric. You derived joy from all of those things, and you fed on them.”
RZ: “That makes me sound predacious.”
Jesus: “You drew personal satisfaction from your successes, and you drew selfish pleasure from the women whom you harassed and violated by virtue of your presumed spiritual authority. Wouldn’t you say that made you predacious?”
RZ: “I always started out with a desire to help them!”
Jesus: “I agree that is certainly what you told yourself. But I know the truth, and here, between the two of us, you cannot insist on something which is untrue. For once, speak truth.”
RZ: “I’ve spoken truth my whole life.”
Jesus: “No, Ravi – you’ve spoken facts. A fact is something which can be observed and reported. A fact is a horrid, neutral thing, a lifeless puzzle-piece in the mystery of the universe. Truth is something else. Truth is the natural, spiritual fabric of the universe. Truth is the movement and action of my design in the lives of billions of people living simultaneously, either within or without my will. Truth is the way I designed the universe to be. A fact is an observation about the universe; truth is recognizing and living within the force and purpose of it all. Facts can be spouted by anyone; truth is limited to relationship. You spoke earlier of freedom, but what many people don’t understand is that freedom isn’t a byproduct of the existence of truth. Freedom is living within truth. It’s not that ‘the truth will make you free,’ it’s that ‘If you live in my words, then you are my disciples. And you shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ Truth is objective reality, but freedom is conditional.”
RZ: “Are you saying that everything I’ve done, all that I’ve written and preached, all of it is worthless?”
Jesus: “Do not seek to limit me. If I have acted through of your words, that is my prerogative. If I have used your message to change lives in spite of your secret sins, that is also my prerogative. But none of that has anything to do with us, just we two, here and now. This isn’t about the effect you had on others, but the effect I have had on you.”
RZ: “You gave me a mind, and I used it. You gave me the power to speak, and I used that.”
Jesus: “You did; but I also gave you a conscience. I gave you the gift of being hurt and sickened by your own weaknesses. I gave you the privilege of feeling sorrow and pain over your own sins. What have you done with that gift?”
RZ: “Is that a gift?”
Jesus: “How can it not be? When your doctor diagnosed your illness and suggested a treatment, did you blame him for the distress you felt? Were you angry at him for drawing attention to your disease? Did you seek to ignore him because he wanted to talk to you about the thing that was killing you? Yet my voice was stifled in your heart. My hand was heavy upon you, when you kept silent.”
RZ: “That’s the second time you’ve alluded to the Psalms. Why do you keep bringing up the Psalms?”
Jesus: “You know why, if you think about it.”
He turns away, contemplating this specific idea, a new element in the conversation. As he does, he realizes the connection with a sudden burst of insight, and he feels a quick rush of something like excitement, or the memory of adrenaline, the way he always felt when his mind formed connections between distant ideas and lofty concepts. Suddenly wary, he continues turning, expecting a new face to appear. Eventually he spies another man – just as he expected. This one is also about 30, just a shade shorter but with the same dusky skin tone. He has marvelously lustrous, curly hair and an intimidating beard. His eyes are sparkling like vivid starlight. He seems to be bursting with energy and enthusiasm. His cheeks are glowing in a wide, healthy grin as he approaches. Ravi calls out...
RZ: “You! Are you him? Are you the one who wrote these words?”
David: “I am the one.”
RZ: “I have always wanted to meet you.”
David: “Have you? Why, I wonder?”
RZ: “You are one of the most famous of all the biblical characters. You killed Goliath. You were the great king of Israel. You were described as a man after God’s own heart.”
David: “You realized I would be here for this conversation, and I think you knew exactly why.”
RZ: “Of course! You also hid a secret! You lived through a lie just like I did, believing that you would be able to take your secret to your grave forever! We are alike, and yet you stand here forgiven!”
David: “In so many ways we are alike, you and I; in so many ways we are different. Completely different.”
RZ: “I don’t understand.”
David: “Is that true? Do you truly not understand?”
For a long moment the three of them stand in silence. The first is waiting, waiting for his voice to finally penetrate the long years of deception so that truth can have its day. The second has just appeared, ready once again to live out loud the details of his great fall. The third is lost in thought and in trepidation. Nothing about this conversation is going the way he imagined it, and he is suddenly beginning to realize what it means that there is nothing hidden that will not be brought into the light. After a time, he speaks again.
RZ: “I can see the similarities of our stories; can you tell me though, how are we so different?”
David: “I’ll start by confessing how we are alike. Both of us know what it’s like to wither underneath the weight of the shame of our own actions. Both of us know the pain of living a secret lie.”
RZ: “Yes, but of course I never went so far as to commit a murder.”
David: “Of course you never committed a murder. You had other ways to conceal your sins. But both of us sought to put a heavy stone over our crimes. Me, by murdering the husband of my victim, you by killing the reputation of your victim.”
RZ: “I had to protect my family, and the ministry I had built.”
David: “If your ministry was doomed to fail because of accusations levied against you, then your ministry was built on yourself alone.”
RZ: “There were dozens of employees, and they were all of them trying to do God’s work. At least I protected their individual contributions as they served around the world.”
David: “Anyone who knows they’ve been called to minister by God will do so whether or not they have an official position. I never abandoned my anointing even when I was living among the Philistines.”
RZ: “But you used deception then, didn’t you?”
David: “You are obfuscating things in a way that you never would have let someone else get away with during one of your famous ‘Question and Answer’ times. I hid my vocation as king, which was a gift from God. You hid your sinful acts toward a helpless woman.”
RZ: “But what about your sin with Bathsheeba? What about hiding that sin?”
David: “That was when I truly learned the pain and misery of trying to hide from God. I’ve come to understand that my suffering through guilt and shame was itself a mercy. That’s what allowed me to repent.”
RZ: “Ah. I knew that we would bring the question of repentance into this discussion.”
Jesus: “Yes Ravi, that is the crucial distinction between you and David. When David was confronted by Nathan the prophet, he broke. His shame forced him to confess his sins and seek forgiveness. He remained pliable beneath the pressure of conviction. When you were confronted publicly, instead of admitting your wrong-doing you called your victim a liar, and you attacked her with a lawsuit. You dug your own hole deeper and duplicated her victimization all over again. First, you used your reputation and the force of your personality to prey upon her; then you blamed her for it. You were intransigent. By covering your sins more and more, you chose precisely the opposite path of my servant David. You both sinned; you both lied about it; you both made it worse; but when his sins came into the light so that everyone could know the truth, he saw it as an opportunity and confessed. You saw it as a threat, and did not confess but continued in a lie. Therefore, in spite of his sins, David is still known as a man after my own heart.”
David: “You also said something else that was misguided. Not only were you trying to protect your ministry, but you also said that you wanted to protect your family. How could you possibly think that lying would protect them? You must have known the truth would come out, and when it did, you’d be powerless to ask forgiveness or seek healing. Now they are stranded, and they will have to process all of this on their own. How do you think they will come to regard you now that you’re gone? What will go through your wife’s mind and heart every time she looks at a photograph of you? The time to protect your family was long before any accusations started to be made. You should have protected them right where you failed them: in your heart.”
RZ: “This is my greatest agony.”
Jesus: “That is the agony which you will carry with you forever.”
RZ: “Forever? Do you mean that I’ve been cut off from forgiveness, in spite of the fact that I believed?”
Jesus: “How can any sin be dealt with in eternity if it was never dealt with in life? How can repentance be genuine if it’s postponed until it’s no longer voluntary? If you don’t take responsibility for your sins while you still have a choice, do you expect them to magically disappear once you come face to face with your destiny?”
RZ: “What about grace for those who believe?”
Jesus: “Once again, I ask you this: Did you believe? Did you believe all the things you said of me? Did you embrace faith, or did you embrace me? Did you believe in Christianity, or did you believe in me? And how do you define ‘belief’ anyway? You are such a fan of defining terms and using logic, but you must remember what I said to Nicodemus on the earth. It’s not about believing certain things to be factual, it’s about being born again. That means, becoming a new person.”
RZ: “But I was. I gave you my life on a bed of suicide as a young man – practically a child. I asked you into my life. I have been looking forward to the resurrection since I was a boy.”
Jesus: “You asked me into your life, but then you excluded me from your heart. You didn’t merely keep your sins secret; you cherished them. You protected your sin the way you should have protected your devotion to holiness – passionately and aggressively. You were as protective and sensitive toward your sins as any mother is toward her newborn child. That’s not what I died for.”
RZ: “David, you claim that I wasn’t protecting my family when I lied about my accuser, but look what happened to your family! When your sins came to light your entire household was split apart. Your daughter was raped by your son, who was then murdered by another of your sons. He went on to rebel against you and defile your wives. He nearly cost you your life and your throne, and even though you survived you had to experience his death, on top of the death of the son he murdered, on top of the death of the infant born to Bathsheeba. Can you blame me for wanting to protect my family from those kinds of disastrous consequences?”
David: “Anyone can escape judgment; but nobody can escape sin’s consequences. Every choice we make to defy God produces negative effects. I’m not merely talking about God’s judgment – that may be avoided through repentance and forgiveness. I’m talking about the very natural consequences of sin. The problem with trying to avoid sin’s consequences by adding more sin is that eventually all of those effects are compounded. Choosing sin is like climbing into a dead tree. There is every chance you will lose your balance, or that the limb might break. But if you choose to drop from the tree back to the ground you will almost always be able to deal with the results. When you add more sins to try to cover or avoid your earlier choices, it’s as if you are climbing higher into the tree. With every lie and denial it’s more likely that you will fall, and the higher you climb the more disastrous your fall will eventually be. I climbed very high indeed – but you clung to the topmost branches until your dying breath. You never even tried to come back down to earth.”
RZ: “Are you saying it’s too late for me, even after all the good I did?”
Jesus: “Many people do good things in life in spite of their sins, but even the holiest saints are not granted my forgiveness in exchange for what they have done. You can’t earn my acceptance. Surely you know that. Surely you remember that.”
RZ: “But I believed! I took the powers of deductive reasoning – which you created – and I brought those into the daily conversations and evangelistic efforts of millions of people. You used me for greatness!”
Jesus: “I used an anonymous servant girl to reach a Syrian general. I used crows to keep a prophet alive. I used a donkey to preserve the life of Balaam. No one is worthy merely because they are capable of being used. Not even you.”
RZ: “So all of the things I accomplished, everything I managed to achieve; they are all nothing, all worthless?”
Jesus: “Every human accomplishment is nothing compared to what I accomplished by dying and rising again. Every human achievement is worthless unless it is done in my power.”
RZ: “All I ever wanted was to make a difference for God.”
David: “Is it? Is that all you ever wanted? Did you never once, not even for a moment, feel the wine-sweet dizziness of seeing yourself glorified and feted and celebrated by the masses?”
RZ: “You know exactly what that’s like, don’t you?”
David: “Of course I do. It’s a profound danger for everyone who lives a public life. Anyone who is granted fame and power on earth is subject to the horrible temptation to embrace those things for their own sake. It is, quite literally, the oldest temptation in the universe.”
RZ: “Do you mean that my failing is comparable to Satan’s?”
David: “In the long run, every human sin is comparable to his. But his specific sin was hubris. He wanted to take God’s glory for his own. Isn’t that what you struggled with?”
RZ: “Of course I did. I always tried to remind myself of the need to be humble. I spoke of it often.”
David: “That puts you in a ludicrous dilemma; talking about how important it is not to become proud to millions of people who love you and buy your books.”
RZ: “It was a dilemma. I did worry about it.”
Jesus: “And you took the absolute worst approach to your danger. You tried to handle all of the temptations which came your way all by yourself.”
RZ: “I tried to rely on your strength!”
Jesus: “I never lend my strength to someone who lies about their need. It cannot be done. It is an impossibility.”
David: “Was it just hubris though? We already talked about the shame you felt which caused you to hide your sins. I wonder, how much of it was pride, and how much of it was shame of being discovered? Or was it fear too? Fear of losing everything you’d built?”
RZ: “It was all of those things together, I’m sure of it.”
Jesus: “That’s why my word says that perfect love casts out fear. You cannot be more afraid of being exposed before you die than you are of being exposed after you die. The idea that you would successfully hide your crimes should have filled you with dread, because it would mean that you would carry them in your heart all the way through your life – all the way here, to this point, with me.”
RZ: “I have nothing to say. I’m never at a loss for words, but now I see there’s nothing I can say.”
Jesus: “Ravi, your sin was great, but at no point during your life was it too great for forgiveness. Do you remember when I forgave my servant Peter for denying me? Do you recall that I told him over and over that, if he loved me, he should take care of my sheep? That was my calling upon his life. That’s my desire for every man and woman who is ever given any kind of leadership over my children. I want my people to be nurtured and ministered to by leaders who will keep them safe from the attacks of the enemy. You remember my warning about false shepherds, who don’t care about the sheep and so they run away when the wolves come? I poured out my Spirit on my disciples so that they could begin a long tradition of faithful, sacrificial shepherding. That was what I offered you as well. I gave you the gifts to lead and care for many. I gave you opportunities to use your gifts for the benefit of others. I gave you the determination and skills required to build an international ministry with a reputation for defending truth. Yet in your zeal to defend the truth you failed to defend my flock. You were trying to defend me – but I can defend myself. You should have been watching out for my little ones.”
RZ: “I thought you would approve my words...”
Jesus: “Another one of my servants once said that the only thing worse than a wolf in sheep’s clothing is a wolf in shepherd’s clothing. Now, knowing that you preyed upon the vulnerable who trusted you as a spiritual shepherd, and knowing that your zeal was misplaced, and knowing that you purposely put a protective hedge around your willful sins, and knowing that you accused the innocent, betrayed your vows, violated the helpless, broke faith with your ministry partners, sullied the church’s testimony, misled the public, and in place of a heritage of faithfulness you left everyone with the carnage of your spiritual debacle; what do you think should happen here now, at the end of your time on earth?”
RZ: “I only know what I wish for.”
Jesus: “Wishing is nothing. Wishing is for people who don’t have sufficient desire to lay hold of the truth. What you want – what you truly want – is lived out in the span of your lifetime, just as it is for all people everywhere. Wouldn’t you say that you got what you wanted in life?”
For the first time since he found himself on that lawn, Ravi dares to raise his eyes and look up into Jesus’ face. And he knows the answer even though he can’t speak. So it happens that a man who was never at a loss for words is silent as the brilliant light begins to dim, and the vivid colors diminish, and darkness finally descended on the vision. The three men and the green lawn slowly vanish. I’m sitting at my desk, the book on one side, the newsletter on the other, my laptop open and silent.
I have to stop. My imagination cannot quite reach the end of the conversation; but of course, that’s just as well. You and I weren’t meant to decide how it ends.

When an idea generates too much heat in public debate, it can have the same effect as when a stove generates too much heat under your grilled-cheese sandwich; and the results are similar.
Recently, I re-read Sir John Glubb’s treatise, The Fate of Nations, in which he highlights several observable characteristics of nations and empires in decline, across centuries and continents. One of those characteristics is what’s called “Intellectualism”. The “ism” on the end of that word tells you what you need to know about it: It’s a pervasive faith in the human intellect. This faith is both implacable and unwarranted. Basically – it’s a cult of knowledge.
Here’s his description of a culture which is deep into such a stage: “Intellectualism leads to discussion, debate & argument... [while] public affairs drift from bad to worse, amid an unceasing cacophony of argument.”
An unceasing cacophony of argument. That’s where we’re at right now, and there’s no indication on the horizon that we will emerge stronger or more enlightened from this cultural moment of confusion. In fact, there aren’t even any indications that we could if we wanted to.
I acknowledge that by adding another post to the shouting-match of American discourse, I’m essentially cranking up the burner another notch. However, the sandwich is going to be ruined whether you keep adding heat or whether you just ignore it. So since everyone else is using their God-given right to speak freely, I’m going to do so as well. I’m going to take a moment here to acknowledge that the cheese is on fire and that we ought to do something about it even though I know we won’t.
Concrete examples are important, and the one I’m going to use (and I’m certain that this will be offensive to many people) is an essay by Phil Christman, an instructor at the University of Michigan. It’s interesting, as all travesties are, and the topic under consideration is the question “What Is It Like to Be a Man?”. In that essay, Christman gets very real about his personal struggles to understand his own masculinity in our current culture.
Christman is clearly extremely bright; he’s also well-educated and articulate. Judging from this essay, he’s self-aware to a degree, and thoughtful. He writes beautifully and with feeling. And he’s also (again, judging from this article) a complete victim of the cult of Intellectualism.
As he tries to come to terms with the fact that he has not inherited a functional definition of manhood from post-modernism, he tries to identify elements within himself that will help him discern what it is. Along the way he encounters famous – and infamous – intellectuals such as Simone de Beauvoir and Jordan Peterson, who each contribute something to the froth in his mind; but none of it is helpful. De Beauvoir shows him that discussions about womanhood are more interesting and affirming than any such discussions about masculinity. Peterson shows him that people who want to affirm traditional masculine virtues are spouting “unsophisticated opinion”. He laments that we “have plenty of talk about masculinity, but talk is all it is, aimless and nonconsecutive, never the sense of anything developing.”
He refers to Norah Vincent’s memoir about having spent a year dressed as a man (possibly the most convoluted source available) and tries to find in it some help understanding male aggression. He sprinkles in supporting observations by “political theorist and pundit Harvey Mansfield”. He mines pop-culture as well, borrowing from The Godfather, Breaking Bad, and Riverdale. Anthropologists (Peter McAllister!) and sociologists (Arlie Russell Hochschild!) contribute additional data but no clarity to his conundrum. Quotations from famous Christians (Chesterton and Lewis) lend a sheen of spiritual seriousness. A science fiction novel from the ‘70s about an attempt to “revive True Manliness in a polymorphously perverse far future” loiters around near the end of his article; unsurprisingly, it doesn’t make things better. His reference to this novel simply underscores the fact that, not only has the confusion of our present moment been building up slowly, but it has also reached what turns out to have been a predictable and ludicrous outcome.
Intellect is a gift, and it is finite, being limited by the very fallible human beings who wield it. Intellectualism makes that gift into an idol. Whenever we make an idol, we very naturally expect it to give us insights and clarity, to help us understand ourselves and our place in the world. That’s one function of the gods. But if our gods are imaginary, the insights we need from them will never materialize; that, or we’ll come up with substitute insights, just like methane can be substituted for oxygen – but not without killing us.
Basically, I’m lamenting Mr. Christman’s entire, painful confession. Throughout, he derives no helpful wisdom, comes to no life-giving conclusions, and undercuts his own prior understanding. By the end, he’s grateful to partake in the kind of hapless, clueless maleness which exists in our consciousness as a joke because, being a joke, at least he can reassure himself that he’s not toxic. This is where we’ve come: We don’t know what we’re supposed to be, we only know what we should avoid, so we take refuge in maleness as a joke with ourselves as the punchline. (Actually, insofar as that’s true, women, being human, must be part of the joke as well, and the only advantage men might have at this point is that at least society forces us men to confront our own absurdity.)
The problem with seeing ourselves as a cosmic joke is that the human race really does have dignity. If we didn’t, Christman wouldn’t have a conundrum in the first place! He senses he was made for greatness but his life’s experience, his culture, his education, and his network of friends, all tell him that he’s the comic relief. He assumes that traditional Masculinity, a very ancient concept, has been discredited by several recent generations of highly enlightened and obtuse thinkers who believe all traditions (especially Masculinity) are a farce, and several concurrent generations of loudmouthed macho pop-influencers who seem intent on proving them right.
There’s no question that he has a puzzle, that it affects him deeply, and that it will require some resolution if he’s going to ever be at peace in his own soul. Because he’s so smart, Christman looks to two sources for some help. He looks at his own experience, and at the collected wisdom of the modern intelligentsia which has set itself up as the progressive alternative to centuries of old, human wisdom; the new traditions handed down to today's generation.
The problem – or, one of the most obvious problems – is that the intelligentsia is composed of lost modern souls every bit as bewildered and unfocused as Christman himself. That’s why he ends up looking at apocalyptic sex novels and cross-dressing women spying on male culture, together with some professorial observers and script-writers, in a misguided and pointless effort to gain clarity. He hasn’t simply interacted with their ideas; he has relied on them, and of course they let him down. Instead of making his situation better, Intellectualism makes it worse. He looked for insight, and in return the wise leaders of this world gave him an unceasing cacophony of argument. He dug a deep well into the best available modern thinkers, but that well turns out to have been cracked, leaky, and empty. When he dropped a bucket hoping for some spiritual refreshment, it came back up dry. We’ve abandoned a working well for one that has nothing to offer.
And in our useless efforts it’s always the same: artists and academics.
Christman’s conclusions demonstrate the ultimate insufficiency of Intellectualism. Intelligence is like a sword; if you use it as it was intended, it’s an incredibly valuable tool. But if you lean on it for support, you will either collapse and fall, or pierce yourself through.
One of the things that I love most about following Jesus Christ is that he cuts straight through so much of the BS. Here’s poor Christman, muddled and tormented about his basic identity, tortured by who he is... or by who his culture tells him he is. Or isn’t. Or something. Meanwhile, if he looked beyond the voices of the intellectuals to the real source, if he trusted human processes a little less and the authority of Jesus Christ a lot more, the pressure of our society’s disaffection with masculinity wouldn’t weigh him down so much. At the very least, he'd realize that he can trust Jesus with the answers until such time as those answers become a little less opaque to the rest of us.
Jesus acknowledged that it’s important for us to find ourselves, to make sense of our identity, our nature, our essential being; and he gives us hope that we will find our lives, but only after we lose them. That brings us directly back to Christman, because it’s obvious that through his reliance on intellect – his own, and others’ – he has lost something. He’s lost himself. He’s lost his life. That may turn out to be helpful - but then again, if you know what Jesus said, then you know that simply “losing your life” isn’t enough. I know, I know; ‘not all who wander are lost’. But most of them are. Just straggling along, disconnected from meaning and purpose, disconnected from who you were made to be, aimless, wandering, meandering, lost... that’s not enough. You have to lose yourself for the right reason – for Christ’s sake.
We’re an entire lost generation depending on Intellectualism to save us. But Intellectualism can’t offer salvation, because intellectuals are just as dumb as the rest of us. Turns out we’re all lost, and for all the wrong reasons.

The authorities who killed Jesus were a Cancel Culture.
Don’t believe me? Watch this.
In Matthew 9 they discovered he had been hanging out with people who were part of the systemic oppression in the government... i.e., “tax collectors”. Because they felt he was showing support for injustice, they made a huge deal of it, hoping people would stop following him.
It didn’t work, but it’s scary how little has changed since then.
So they tried to find ways to make it look like he was doing something illegal in Matthew 12; they accused him of “breaking the Sabbath”.
That didn’t work either.
As the tension grew and Jesus gathered more followers, the Pharisees got their feelings hurt. I’m not making this up; read Matthew 15.12: “...the disciples came and said to him, ‘Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying?’” As it turns out, Jesus was exercising a right to freely speak his mind, which hurt their fragile feelings, which motivated them to try to stop him.
The story devolves from there. His opponents set up deliberate traps to see if they could get him to say something unpopular – or illegal – to cost him followers and cancel his influence (Mt. 19.3, 22.15) and when that didn’t work, they organized themselves with other groups who had also been offended by Jesus (Mt. 22.34). Together, they thought they might be able to find a way to shut him up forever – however violent they would have to get.
If you believe that people should be truly free, then you won’t engage in canceling anyone for anything. So if you want freedom, you should – ironically – cancel “Cancel Culture”. But those who truly believe in freedom don’t want to just cancel the people in our society who are canceling others. For the good of society, Cancel Culture should be cancelled – but ethically, the only ones who can cancel it are the ones who are doing it. If I try to cancel Cancel Culture, then I’m doing the thing which I believe is wrong. My only choice is to use arguments to persuade.
Those who are Canceling businesses and individuals are not using arguments to make their case; they are pronouncing certain things as either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ according to their own, internal standards. This results in self-righteously calling down active wrath and judgment on anyone whom they find ‘offensive’. Meanwhile, the other side is appealing to ideals and abstract concepts of social cooperation. The feeling which I get from this lopsided action is that people who truly believe in individual freedom have armed themselves with pillows to fight the zombie apocalypse.
Some people, of course, will object to this. If I have communicated clearly, the activists who want to go around canceling people will understand that I’m comparing them to the opponents of Jesus, and they’ll be offended. It’s sad, but it’s also the only way to measure whether or not I’m actually getting the idea across. Some people may even assume that by casting the offended ones as the bad guys, I’m comparing myself to Jesus. Not at all! The frequent victims of mass public outrage and hurt feelings are not Jesus. But of course, there were three crosses raised on the hill that day, proving that you don’t have to be Jesus to get crucified.

This is going to be a little raw.
There’s a part of me which hates whenever a program like AGT showcases handicapped performers singing or making music while everyone stands up in amazement and applauds them wildly. There’s a part of my heart that seethes with resentment at every single such performance; but not because of the performer – because of the audience.
If you’ve read this far, you’ll wonder why I feel so strongly about it. The reason is simply that I have a daughter who’s severely handicapped. Being her father has taught me things I couldn’t ever have learned any other way. I know what it’s like to struggle to understand her needs, and to try to take her out in public, and to stay awake too late at night worried for her safety and be jerked awake too early in the morning to take care of her. And especially, I have seen many, many people out in public either stare at my daughter, or walk quickly away from her, or (on occasion) make extremely disparaging comments about how obnoxious they think she is. I’ve experienced all of those things, but I’ve never seen a group of perfect strangers applaud her.
Here's the seed of my resentment: A person with an obvious disability stands on stage while the audience braces themselves for something they can’t imagine. A blind pianist? A deaf singer? A non-verbal comedian? For one moment, a person who struggles unbelievably to overcome daily life gets to be the center of attention, just because they are entertaining. Most of the people who are watching have no direct experience with handicapped family or friends. So in that coliseum, the audience finally looks at a handicapped (disabled? differently abled? I’m not even sure which adjective to use anymore) person with something besides curiosity, fear, or bemusement.
The performer always triumphs (otherwise they wouldn’t have made it to that stage of the competition) and the audience always celebrates, and it turns out to be validating for the individual on stage. In fact, it may be something like a crowning achievement for them, and I’m so glad they get to experience that thrill. But for the audience... it reeks of hypocrisy. After all, they finally notice the marginalized, the suffering, the struggling ones in life, but only because they are entertaining. Meanwhile, millions who struggle to scrape through the suffering of their everyday life continue to elicit pity and revulsion from so much of the public.
We’ll feel bad for you if we remember to think about you, but if you entertain us, we’ll applaud.
It’s shallow but it’s inevitable, because it’s a reflection of how we treat celebrities in general. Some people with nothing more than looks or acting chops – or even just the honor of being famous – receive our attention and admiration when, in reality, their opinions and ideas are no more valid or important than the forklift driver you work with, the young lady handing you a hamburger through the drive-through window, or the old man standing inside the door at Walmart.
We know you exist, but if you entertain us, we’ll applaud.
Our priorities aren’t just out of whack; they’re a bog of misplaced preferences and habits, reinforcing our reflexive desire for mass-produced distractions. Those priorities will continue to mire us down unless we can derive some good from those shows. Fortunately, for the audience as well as the performer, there’s something powerful that we can gain from all of this, but only if we recognize it and embrace it. Because in those moments when the majority of the audience discovers – shockingly, amazingly! – that the forgotten and fragmented human beings around us are capable of great beauty, those who applaud are offered a brief, infinitesimal point of view which is normally reserved for God.
In that moment the audience sees people who have often been classified as “a drain on society” or “a public menace” or “inconvenient” and they realize that those people have depth, and a kind of glory. They recognize that there is something profound which is intertwined with their identity as someone with a disability, but which is capable of reaching us through, and in spite of, our propensities. We look at weakness, and are astounded by something majestic.
That feeling will only last for a moment, and the first time it happens is the most powerful. No matter how many times you re-watch the video on Twitter, you have to grab hold of it quickly right at the start. And then, you have to expand that sensation so that it grows to include The Rest. The blind children who can’t play piano; the deaf teenagers who can’t sing; the non-verbal, wheelchair-bound, drooling, seizing, loud, non-verbal, incomparable representatives of our most ignored and unknown fellow human beings. In that moment it might just be possible to extend the glory of the performer to The Rest of those who are normally marginalized in our society, and to see them the way God sees them. There is something deep down inside them which is glorious, and majestic, and noble, and amazing.
And beautiful.
And although a few such blessed individuals have the ability to find that special key which unlocks the secret of their greatness so that everyone can see it, most of them don’t. Most of them will remain mysterious forever; a door without a key, a king or queen without a kingdom.
If we can gain that discovery from the TV producers making all that money off of the hopes and dreams of contestants, then we can maybe turn our amazement into something more substantial than a hypocritical, momentary burst of approval. And if we do, perhaps we’ll deserve to share this world with those whom we have finally noticed; the ones whom God has been applauding all along.

In the 1950s, Billy Graham, like many other evangelicals, held segregated revival meetings in the South. However, as he spent time overseas, Graham came to realize that segregation was just plain wrong. He grew into that understanding through his experiences and through his study of God’s Word.
Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1953. Graham was preparing for another revival meeting when he removed the ropes cordoning off the black section of the auditorium. When the ushers threatened to put them back up, Graham told them, "Either these ropes stay down or you can go on and have the revival without me." (We might also add, you can go on and have the revival without the Holy Spirit.) Graham never held another segregated meeting.[i]
A short while ago I posted this statement: “The church has not been silent; the world has been deaf.” I intended it to refer to any issue of evil or injustice across the board, but of course the immediate reaction pertained to racial injustice; specifically, African American and White American relations.
Nobody can ever deny that atrocities were committed, or that injustice persisted, or that challenges remain. I’m not going to deny that, and even attempting to do so would be impossible. My only desire is to defend my statement that (a) the church has not been silent, but rather (b) the world has not listened to her.
Go back two thousand years, and you’ll discover that the church basically invented the concepts which have turned into our ideas of “justice” and “equality”. When the church was born, the first major crisis it faced was how to deal with persecution. The second major crisis it had to face was the integration of two races which were previously hostile: Jew and Gentile. Of course, “Gentile” is too broad, but that’s how the Jews organized the human race for the most part. It was “Us” and “Them”. Incidentally, that’s basically also how every people group throughout history has organized the world population.
The Jews thought they had a good reason for it, because the Torah listed many daily habits which were partly designed to maximize the differences between the Jews and Gentiles – food, appearance, even Sabbath keeping. Specifically, non-Jewish slaves were only allowed to eat Passover after they’d been “Judaized” by being circumcised,[ii] and only non-Jews could be charged interest.[iii] In the Torah, Balaam verified this quality of Separation when he called down a blessing upon the Hebrews, instead of cursing them, as he’d been hired to do: “behold, a people dwelling alone, and not counting itself among the nations!”[iv]
Starting with these principles, and after many long centuries of complex interrelations, the Jews finally established a strong, tough attitude of hatred toward non-Jewish practices and beliefs, which reached an apogee during the Roman occupation.
So, when Gentiles started to presume entrance into the church – which at that point was rightly seen as the culmination of Jewish history and faith, embodied in the Jewish Messiah – many of the Christian leaders (all Jewish at the time) assumed that coming into the church meant becoming Jewish.
The first church council was held over this very issue, and it’s recorded in Acts 15. The opening argument was put forward this way: “It is necessary to circumcise them and to order them to keep the law of Moses.” In other words, Gentiles who wanted to be reconciled to God through Christ had to commit to living like Jews. They had to become Jewish.
Against this view, three arguments were raised. First, Peter recounted his direct experience of the Holy Spirit being given, by God, to a Gentile – a Roman officer, no less – without regard to any Jewish observance; it happened merely on the basis of his faith and trust in Christ. Second, Paul and Barnabas recounted all of the experiences from their first missionary journey, confirming Peter’s account. Third, James determined that these experiences were reconciled with holy scripture. At that point it was decided: race and racial affiliation had nothing to do with full, unequivocal inclusion in the family of God. The church had become the world’s first and only institution to incorporate equality. But the world doesn’t acknowledge that fact, and many people have never even heard of it.
Even at the very beginning, some Christians resisted, and in so doing, they were deaf to the voice of the church. Paul was speaking on behalf of the church when he summed up the new reality of the church this way: “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 2.27-28). The brand-new dream of unity, according to the scriptures, was to be found in Christ. No wonder the world is deaf to such a message: the world says it wants unity and/or equality, but only on its own terms.
The multicultural consequences of such a message go beyond discussions of “faith” vs. “works”, and they quickly became manifest over the whole globe. Today, we’re used to seeing Christians on each continent. In reality, it was that way from the very beginning. In response to the wide-openness of the church’s message, great Christian centers arose in Syria, modern Iraq and Iran, China, India, Mongolia, Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia.[v] Even the greatest church father of the first four centuries was the son of an African Berber woman: St. Augustine of Hippo. The history and the personalities are there for all to see; but many people ignore this testimony, remaining deaf.
The church has been given this message; thus, anyone who fails to speak of (or treat) all races as equal and integrated is not speaking for the church. In reality, this message has been preserved against all the odds of a world which can’t hear it, and in 1953 this voice eventually convinced the most famous evangelical preacher in America that he’d been wrong to segregate his congregations, and to take a stand for justice before he stood behind the pulpit.
In order to demonstrate that the church has not been silent, I’ve pointed to the very earliest shared experience of the church’s founders, the reality of the early worldwide church, and the founding documents which they produced, all in order to demonstrate that equality and inclusion are not only the voice of the church, but also its true outcome. I’ve also demonstrated how that truth – though it took time to develop – gave birth to tangible action in our own country at the very time and place where the civil rights movement was fomenting. But many people will counter by pointing to the negative examples, and many others will assume that the silence which they perceive in their own experience is the true reality.
First of all, there are people who’ve claimed to be Christian who’ve tried to defend slavery and white supremacy (although none of them as effectively as Charles Darwin). When such people speak, they are not speaking for the church. You might think that I’m just making excuses, but this is a legitimate and necessary position. On social media, there are some black people speaking out against the BLM movement. What do BLM supporters say about those people? They say that those others “don’t speak for all African Americans”. In the same way, anyone claiming to be a Christian who violates the scriptures by promoting racism does not speak for the church. In fact, such a person is anti-church, anti-scripture, and anti-Christ.
Those Christians who have spoken the truth have done so loudly. Although it would be possible to demonstrate how the words of the New Testament have been rightly acted upon throughout the whole history of the church, I’ll restrict myself to our modern era. For example, William Wilberforce, the British politician who led the movement to end slavery in Great Britain, was motivated to lead reform only after his conversion to Christ.[vi]
In America, as the Civil War increasingly became identified specifically with the single issue of slavery,[vii] not only the fiercest abolitionists, but also Abraham Lincoln spoke about the evils of slavery in specifically Christian terms:

"'Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?"
-A. Lincoln, 2nd Inaugural Address

At the forefront of these biblical public statments was the support of the abolitionists, so very many of whom were deliberately outspoken Christians. But today, many people are trying to cover up the Christian anti-slavery motives of those who supported Lincoln, and by doing so they are deaf to a historical voice of the church.
Who was the most influential leader of the civil rights’ movement? Martin Luther King, Jr., a Christian and member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.[viii] Today, many people want to remember MLK but they rarely mention that his faith was the defining characteristic of his identity. He was a gloriously imperfect, but also courageous and faithful, vessel of the church’s message. Without true Christianity, we wouldn’t have had MLK; by segregating his faith from his political action, many people today remain deaf to the fact that his was a true voice of the church.
As a young man growing up, I knew precisely one African American boy in my school. Everyone liked him. I had one favorite show – the Cosby Show. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t racist, it does means that I had no idea racism was a thing because I was sheltered. When did I finally meet more people my own age who weren’t white? When I went on a missions trip, joining other young Christian teens who were different from me. When was I challenged to think about the dangers of racism? At a church-sponsored event in the early 90’s (a Promise Keepers’ event) at which numerous speakers, black and white, took turns speaking to us and challenging us to listen to the true voice of the church. Up till then I assumed racism was a problem in the past; the church was trying to tell me differently.
When I took my first pastorate in rural Montana and worked in a community fueled with racism, I wondered what it would take to challenge that reality. When I invited a Native American speaker to come to our church and preach, he did so – right before he performed a foot-washing ceremony for myself and the elders, an incredibly humbling experience which modeled Christ to the entire congregation.
Over and over, the voice of the church has found expression in truth and in courage. Over and over, the testimony of those who speak for the church has been shouted down, ignored, or erased. But the reality cannot be erased. In the denomination which I serve, the immigration of people to the United States from other countries has resulted in ethnic churches serving alongside and sometimes outnumbering our white congregations. Recently, on behalf of a friend, I performed a search for congregations in another state. Typing in the name of the city which we were looking for, five separate churches were found... three of them are non-English-speaking ethnic churches. Again, the church is demonstrating its true nature, but who notices? Not the deaf world.
At this precise juncture, there’s so much sheer noise out there in the news and on social media that the only way to be heard is to shout louder than anyone. The only people willing to shout are those who don’t care what anyone else is saying, who demand to be the only audible voice. In that kind of environment, for the church to try to shout down the world would be the worst possible idea. Not only would it drive people away, it would increase others’ determination to be heard, rather than to listen. No, the only way for the church to be heard is to speak with a different voice, one which is comprised of actions more than abstractions, one which speaks through obedience to our Jewish Messiah. And that is what the true church has been doing for two millennia; it’s what the true church is doing now; it’s what the world denies is going on because the world can’t hear.
Because the world is deaf.
So let me close with a call to action, using the incomparably superior words of One who has the power to cut through all the noise and nonsense, all the blather and bile, all the garbage that’s filling my depressingly unwieldy Twitter feed: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
 
[i] http://www.thearda.com/timeline/events/event_36.asp
[ii] Exodus 12.43ff
[iii] Dt. 23.20
[iv] Numbers 23.9
[v] see Jenkins, Philip. The Lost History of Christianity; the Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia – and How it Died. HarperOne, NY. 2008.
[vi] “Wilberforce’s abolitionism was derived in part from evangelical Christianity, to which he was converted in 1784–85.”  https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Wilberforce.
[vii] Many people question whether the civil war was fought over slavery, but Lincoln didn’t: In his second inaugural address he stated, “These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war.” https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-second-inaugural.htm. So much for the revisionists. Of the many, many explanations of how this worked out in practice, try John Daniel Davidson’s article, in which he explains “...the entire history of the United States prior to outbreak of war in 1861 was full of compromises on the question of slavery... which... eventually led to the election of Abraham Lincoln and the subsequent secession of the southern states. Through all this, we inched toward emancipation, albeit slowly.” https://thefederalist.com/2017/11/02/shelby-footes-civil-war-history-defends-america-insatiable-haters-like-ta-nehisi-coates/.
[viii] Colson, Charles. How Now Shall We Live? Tyndale, Wheaton, IL, 1999. p. 397 ff

Why does history matter? Either you already know why, or you don’t care. So no matter which of those describes you, you're not likely to feel much compulsion to follow that headline which means that nobody is likely to land at my blog, which basically sums up my entire online-platform-building strategy.
However, at the risk of alienating hypothetical readers whom I imagine have come this far, let me say that I intend to demonstrate one single, all-important fact: the older a bit of history is, the more it matters.
That idea flies in the face of our modern thinking. We tend to attach more importance to things which are taking place right now, and we feel ambivalent toward any event which happened before our lifetime. In fact, the further back in time it is, the less we tend to care about it.
But if my main point is true, then the habit we have of reading history only occasionally (if it entertains us) while we gobble up tons of information about the present is actually not only backwards, but counter-productive to the point of absurdity. In reality, it should be the other way round: We should know lots and lots about history from every era, even at the expense of paying attention to the present horror of ‘current events’, many of which are not really that current, and many of which barely qualify as ‘events’.
I begin with a concept which may have come from the study of physics, which I would know for sure if I were a physicist or if I could be troubled to look it up online. It’s a concept which many people know well enough to serve us for this discussion – the butterfly effect.
The butterfly effect is shorthand for a small event which has enormous consequences because of a series of exponential results. An example goes like this:
Suppose you wanted to figure out what the weather would do a year from now. With all the computers on earth, we should be able to, right? Well actually, no, because there are too many variables. Let’s say you managed to put every single weather factor into the world’s computers; wind, temperature, pollution, moisture level, number of people breathing out carbon dioxide, number of new trees breathing out oxygen... everything.
But you missed a single butterfly in Singapore. That butterfly flaps its wings, which doesn’t do much at first; it just creates little eddies in the air above its flower. But now, the air directly above the butterfly is moving in a way you didn’t predict. That creates a little bubble of uncertainty which causes the air passing over that garden to move in a way you didn’t expect. Now that breeze is carrying new, unforeseen gusts with it, and because they were unforeseen, they impact the winds which pass over Singapore in ways you could not have quite gotten right. The breeze is picked up by currents of air moving over the South China Sea, which are now heavier by just a little, and drifting more than we thought they would. Suddenly the rising moisture from the ocean’s surface has a more dynamic atmosphere to contend with: fresh currents emerge as a result; patterns collide and stretch; new possibilities multiply every second. Before you know it, a simple gust which had been slowly picking up momentum now turns into a more forceful gale, and, turning in on itself, starts to cascade as it swirls. A seasonal storm finds unexpected energy, then meets a cool front, and suddenly what would have been a windstorm is more powerful than anyone anticipated. A hurricane is born. Entire mainland villages lie in its path, and hundreds are left homeless.
All because of a butterfly.
This illustration of the butterfly has become common coin for many people, so much so that it’s now almost a trope for time-travel stories. But its real value is in helping us understand how every single historical event has implications over time. In fact, as with the butterfly, so with history; the older an event is in time, the more impact it has on subsequent events.
Here’s a real-life demonstration...
Christopher Columbus sailed west. He did so for specific reasons and on behalf of certain financial backers. The immediate impact was felt within a very small circle of people. Ferdinand and Isabella started to plan further expeditions, Columbus tried to demonstrate that he’d proven his theories, and certain indigenous Americans became aware that they were not alone.
Those were momentous consequences, but they were nothing compared to the larger consequences which followed the next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. In fact, the more time you give it, the more astounding the effects of Columbus’ journey become. Native Americans were exposed to diseases for which they had no immunity; Spain received an unparalleled influx of precious metals which led to them overextending their spending which led to more than half a dozen bankruptcies while they were still the predominant world power; more land in the Americas led to plantations becoming increasingly important, which required more manpower, which fed the African slave trade; which presaged Britain’s naval dominion of the ocean trade routes, which made them the next great superpower; which allowed the formation of American colonies which eventually declared independence; which continued to feed the slave trade, which increased public resistance to human slavery on the new continent, which created conflict, which led to a bloody war, which allowed people to take advantage of the depleted south, which created racist counter-reactions, which made an environment ripe for civil rights... and on and on it goes. None of which – not one thing – would have happened the same way if Columbus hadn’t happened.
The further away from Columbus we get, the more his actions impact the world of today.
The same thing is true of every story in your old history textbooks. The further back in time an event occurred, the more impact it has made on the world, and on your life. Stuff which happened yesterday? Well, the effects of those things take time. They may impact the future, but for us they are still only echoes of the past.
The practical upshot of this principle is something like this: The more you know about history, the more you understand the present. The less you know about history, the less the present will make sense – or the right kind of sense – as you try to navigate a world which has arguably been made worse by the ubiquity of instant news.
So, for everyone who’s read this far, I offer a couple observations. If you already value history, now you have another way to explain to other people why history matters, and why they should care. If you don’t like history (first of all, why are you still reading? but more importantly) I hope that you know now why so many people repeat the old phrase about how those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. It’s because history isn’t a bunch of stuff that happened before, to other people.
It’s a bunch of stuff that’s still happening; and it’s happening to us right now.

For a long time, I avoided public political statements for the same reason I avoid putting Christian bumper stickers on my car: I frequently do stupid things, and I don’t want people associating Jesus with my goofball mistakes. I'm about to break that longstanding policy.
As faithful Christians, how can we be political? How can we not? This is one of the most important questions of our time. The first Christians had some things easier than us. They weren’t ‘involved’ in politics, they mostly had a simple choice: obey, or suffer. By comparison, our choices are endless, and the chance of getting them right – or even simply proportionate – is basically nil.
Our job as Christians is to follow Jesus, love one another, and reach people with the gospel. One way (arguably) we can do that is by trying to be agents of positive change, like William Wilberforce. In America, the hurdles we face in that pursuit are legion. First, we have to know the gospel; know it inside out and upside down. Then, we have to set our course by it. Also, it helps if there are, you know, one or two dozen other Christians who all believe the same thing – which is no longer a given. Then we need to know what’s going on in our culture, and we have to accurately assess how the gospel speaks to each issue. Then, we presumably need to have some standard which can help us prioritize, just as Wilberforce prioritized human slavery over animal cruelty and gambling, even though he realized all of those issues could be addressed by the gospel.
Of course, we also need a theology for action. For example, in God’s eyes, how important are results? What means can we employ which will be justified as long as we attain our goals? At what point will our obedience to the authorities cease to honor God, and at what point will our disobedience bring him glory? What kind of language and rhetoric are we justified using? Is sarcasm OK (because it’s sometimes used in scripture) or is it off-limits (because it makes us look like uncaring jerks)? Can we use public nudity, like Isaiah and PETA?
Is it enough if we simply vote, and if not, what kinds of additional action will not get in the way of our parallel obligation to witness the truth of Jesus Christ? After all, if I (hypothetically) speak out in favor of enforcing immigration law just because as a Christian I want the US to continue to be a safe place which blesses those who live here and because I want to honor those who follow the legal process, but someone who hears me assumes that I’m racist, will that affect my ability to witness to that person? What if it does; should I sacrifice my reputation as a loving person (something I know Jesus wants) for a political position which I believe may turn out to be correct (which Jesus never spoke about)?
For all of these reasons and many others, I have long hesitated to speak out on political matters. I want to be a responsible member of American society by voting, but is that enough? When I speak out on anything which has become divisive (i.e., everything) I feel as though I’ve begun a dangerous activity which is guaranteed to put up insuperable barriers with some people, solidifying their negative opinion of me and making witness impossible. If some people deny me the right to speak my mind, should I bear that cross as an act of sacrifice and humility, or push back because I don’t want the truth to be stifled? And if I push back, am I doing so because I want to fight for my rights, or because I want to fight for the other person’s soul? Is ‘fighting for my rights’ even biblically justifiable?
Do I just stop caring about those people, or do I retreat and pray for them in private? Or – do I press my case, hoping that the truth will find some kind of handhold on their hearts, in spite of their opinion of me?
In this modern political climate, I feel lost, and I have no seriously viable model at hand to guide me. A million people in this country will offer me their solutions, but every one of those individuals is just as much a product of the puzzle as I am. Should I be politically active like Daniel, or like Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Should I be like Joseph, or more like MLK? Should I be like Wilberforce, or like St. Telemachus? And if you think the answer is ‘just try to be like Jesus’, remember that all of the people I just mentioned are models of how to follow Jesus; and they all did things differently, and yet they were all correct. (Weren’t they?)
So what should Jesus’ example look like for me now? If someone tries to tell me what it should be, should I believe them more according to how confident they seem – or should I be most suspicious of those who are the most confident? And finally, if things get worse, and the choice suddenly becomes clear, and the path I really ought to take becomes absolutely undeniable... will I have the courage to follow it?

The kind of racial problems we have today did not exist once. Let me explain. There was a time in human history – and it was a long time, it covers basically our entire past and all people everywhere – when any outsider was automatically beneath consideration. You were part of your own group, and that was it. Other groups were there to be avoided or used. The Aztecs used prisoners and slaves as human sacrifices. The Romans used other nations for revenue and border guards. The English used India as a source of income and tea. The Jews avoided others unless they first agreed to assimilate. The Native American tribes regularly stole from, enslaved, and avoided each other. The early Americans used African slaves as labor. This is the history of the human race, and although you can find little details here and there which you might try to use to paint a different picture, those are all exceptions; and for every exception, there are thousands of facts which establish the rule.
This was not seen as a problem of race. If it was considered a problem at all, it could be considered a problem of power. How can we be strong enough to conquer, or avoid invasion? How can we benefit without giving away too much? How can we keep people out? How can we sharpen the dividing line? The only racial problem most people ever considered was how to use or avoid other groups.
Today, thank God, there is a different idea at work in the world which turns those old human assumptions on their head; it’s the idea that the different people, the other people, the individuals who are Not In My Group – that those people are just as important as me, and they are worth just as much as me (or more) and I should have genuine compassion for them. Once you believe that people in other groups are worthy, and that you should actually consider them, empathize with them, include them, and be equal with them, you have a new problem. That new problem is something like this: How on earth do we do that, when it’s so hard, or when we’ve been programmed not to think that way?
Now let’s be honest: This is a good problem to have. It’s much better than the problems of how to avoid others, or how to use them. But it’s still a problem because it’s hard to do, it goes against our nature, and it’s rare. That’s where we are today. Our old problem has been transformed. It used to be “Keep out! Members only!” but now it's more like “You and I are equal... why can’t we act like it?” Some individuals in our society are still clinging to the old problem, and we call them racists. But today, many of us have been infused with the other, better problem in a way that is historically unique. Where did this modern problem come from?
To be blunt, it was never stated clearly or blatantly until the early church came along and realized that the racial and religious Jew/Gentile divide had been obliterated by Jesus Christ. Once that sank in, the Jewish habit (to avoid others) and the Gentile habit (to look down on Jews) each became irrelevant within the church, and the new problem became this: Now that we have been united together, how do we make it work? Paul the Apostle started out persecuting those who were outside of his initiated Jewish group, but once he joined the church he realized that nobody – no other race, color, nationality, gender, class, or age group – was to be excluded or used. The new creed became his famous words in Galatians 3: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Notice that this covers the three most common historical lines of separation: Race, Class, Sex.
This is where our contemporary problem really started, and it’s why we are struggling the way we are today. In the United States, most of the people by far who wanted to abolish slavery were Christians who had Christian motives, whose desires were directed by the gospel. Sure, if you look hard enough you can find people who claimed to be Christian who defended slavery, but they are exceptions – and they lost. And when they defended slavery, they were contradicting Jesus (and Paul too) so really, they just clarify the scope of the problem, and their ignorant hypocrisy highlights the reality of the issue.
In our modern world today, we would not have the idea of equality unless Jesus Christ had directly inspired that idea to enter into our history. Just go back and read John chapter 4. Nobody else did what he did for all people everywhere regardless of their race - in his daily life, or on the cross. His true followers realized what he had done, and because of his actions they had to learn how to think and act differently, which meant they had to address a new problem that had never existed before. Then, even though they didn’t always get it right and even though we haven’t always been faithful to the truth, their teachings entered our world anyway, so that now there are millions of people who assume equality is a thing even though they don’t realize their beliefs can be traced back to Jesus Christ. Our problem, the true problem, the problem of all of us who believe in equality, is a new one which can be phrased this way: Since we’re all equal, and since we all deserve justice, and since every human life is worthwhile in God’s eyes, and since everyone deserves compassion and empathy... how can we structure our lives and society so that we honor each other?
We rarely stop to think about how new that problem is; it’s a good problem to have; it demands a solution; and it only exists today because of Jesus Christ. In fact, maybe we won’t be able to actually find a solution to that problem until we acknowledge whom it really originated with, and unless we’re honest about the fact that we’re going to answer to him for how we deal with it.

​I can’t help but notice that, even though there’s a “Greatest Generation” none of the others have been labelled “Worst Generation”. I mean, objectively speaking, there was a worst generation out there. However, since every generation has to have a name now, which is completely, totally, honestly different from putting people into boxes, I decided to catch up on who’s being called what now. Here’s a short list:

​Obviously, the first thing to do with a list like this is hand out some awards.

• The award for ONLY NON-ENGLISH GENERATIONAL LABEL THAT’S ALSO AN ACTUAL WORD IN A REAL LANGUAGE goes to The Interbellum Generation.
• The award for THE LARGEST GAP BETWEEN COOL AND STUPID-SOUNDING LABEL goes to Generation X.
• The award for MOST STRANGELY COOL NAME THAT MAKES NO SENSE BUT STILL WORKS goes to the Xennials.
• The award for LABEL WHICH MOST OTHER GENERATIONS WISHES WAS A LITTLE MORE LITERALLY TRUE goes to the Silent Generation.
• The award for FIRST PRODUCT PLACEMENT EMBEDDED RIGHT IN THEIR GENERATIONAL TITLE goes to iGen.
• The award for MOST PRETENTIOUS GENERATIONAL NAME goes to Gen Alpha.
• The award for GENERATIONAL LABEL THAT COMES CLOSEST TO SOUNDING LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF PETER PAN goes to the Lost Generation.
• The award for GENERATION THAT CAN’T REALLY DECIDE WHAT IT WANTS TO BE CALLED goes to the Millennials.
• And finally, the award for THE ONLY GENERATION SAFE FROM ACTUALLY BEING THE WORST GENERATION goes to the Greatest Generation.

I hope you’ll not only see the value of an award system like this, but also agree with me that something is wrong. I mean, are we sure that ten distinct generations are really enough for such an astoundingly impressive length of time as 100 years? Aren’t we missing a few? I propose that this oversight be amended immediately. The following suggestions are open for serious consideration by whomever is in charge of labeling generations.

“...tell me, I pray thee, how fares the human race: if new roofs be risen in the ancient cities, whose empire is it that now sways the world”?
These words by the hermit St. Paul have a weird appropriateness today. Hermit-like, many of us are sequestered by a disease. Alone, or alone with our families, we feel like we’re losing track of the events of daily life. But of course, we can’t really be as sheltered as he was. We’re instantly informed the moment anything happens around the world, whether it affects us or not, whether we can do anything about it or not.
So in the middle of this involuntary isolation, I wanted to offer up a series of quotations from some of the ancient experts, who chose to embrace the challenges of solitude in order to mine its blessings.
 
“What therefore thou findest that thy soul desireth in following God, that do, and keep thy heart.” -anonymous
“Who sits in solitude and is quiet hath escaped from three wars: hearing, speaking, seeing: yet against one thing shall he continually battle: that is, his own heart.” -the abbot Antony
“It sufficeth... if he sleep for one hour: that is, if he be a fighter.” -the abbot Arsenius
“If in desireing to rebuke any one thou art thyself moved to anger, thou dost satisfy thine own passion; in saving another, lose not thyself.” -the abbot Marcarius
“Indeed, brother, I had forgotten what solace men may have in food.” – anonymous
“Nothing so dispirits the demon of lust as when his assaults are revealed. And nothing so heartens him as when his imaginations are kept secret.” – anonymous
“Behold, here am I alone, and nevertheless [anger] hath conquered me. I shall return to the community, for in all places there is need for struggle and for patience and above all for the help of God.” – anonymous
“When thou hast first laboured in that whereof thou speakest, then speak from out the thing itself.” -the abbot Theodore
“Unless thou shalt first amend thy life going to and fro amongst others, thou shalt not avail to amend it dwelling alone.” -the abbot Lucius
“Grant me this, Lord, in Thy tender mercy, to have at least the beginnings of right living.” -the abbot Arsenius
“This is the story... I tell you, now that I am old... And do ye tell it to those that come after you, how amid swords and deserts and wild beasts, chastity never was captive: and how a man devoted to Christ may die, but cannot be defeated.” – St. Jerome