I’m a Christian pastor serving full-time as a funeral home chaplain. Learn more about me by perusing my brief bio and confession of faith.
Here you will find various notes, journal entries, and rough drafts I’ve written (on a Freewrite for the most part). Get updates by email or RSS.
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Since 1971, John Lennon has been telling us to imagine a world without religion. It’s easy if you try, he claims, but history tells a different story. Every tribe, people group, and nation has practiced one form of religion or another. Even today, as postmodern secularism does its best to persuade us that science and human reasoning have replaced any need for faith, billions of people are still religious.
Why?
August 2020 has brought an end to the COVID-19 pandemic. More accurately, this month has revealed there never was a pandemic.
First, the CDC confessed the median age of COVID-19 deaths is the same as our life expectancy. In other words, most people who died would have statistically died anyhow.
Though I’d rather avoid political discussions, remaining silent is difficult when the current state of politics is increasingly spiritual. The Marxist ideology that enamors so many young, naive people is anything but morally benign. “Communism abolishes eternal truths,” wrote Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto. “It abolishes all religion and all morality.”
Charles Spurgeon, the dynamic 19th-century Baptist pastor who lived in the same time and place as Marx, saw the dangers:
After a discussion with my wife about our young children’s potential future—what kind of world will they live in?—I am reminded of the following article I published on April 11th, 2020. While I focused on the fears and uncertainty regarding COVID-19, this message feels increasingly relevant.
As I glance at the news each day, Romans 1 comes to mind. God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity— (Ro 1:24). God gave them up to dishonorable passions— (Ro 1:26). God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done— (Ro 1:28). Perhaps 2 Thessalonians 2 is also appropriate to cite: “God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false” (2Th 2:11). See also Revelation 20:1-3.
Imagine a small get-together with a few close friends or family. You share your joys and challenges and offer meaningful support and encouragement. Later that evening, you feel grateful for your tribe and drift to sleep with them in your prayers.
Now imagine going to a large cocktail party. You bounce from person to person internalizing snippets of conversation; a friend’s co-worker has cancer, someone’s son is getting married, a neighbor’s dog got hit by a car, a stranger’s father has dementia, another got her dream job. Here is an uncomfortable debate about politics. Later that evening, you feel completely drained and have trouble sleeping.
The latter is an apt description of social media and Facebook in particular.
In recent days the topic of social justice has received much attention within the church and without. As Christians we are committed to living according to God’s Word, and so we have rightly been turning to the Bible to learn how it would guide us. We have been scouring its pages to see what it says about matters of justice. That is well and good, but I have become convinced that even as we’ve done this, we may have overlooked one important resource. In fact, we may have overlooked the one book that is explicitly and specifically intended to give us wisdom for this very topic. We may have skipped over the best place to begin when learning about social justice.
Disasters come in two kinds. There are objective disasters, such as tsunamis, earthquakes, and hurricanes, and there are subjective disasters, such as the global panic we are experiencing now.