President Trump’s pattern of renaming public institutions and government programs after himself — from the U.S. Institute of Peace to the Kennedy Center, from a new class of battleships to prescription drug benefits and children’s savings accounts — seems to offer a good contemporary illustration of what the Bible calls “the pride of life.” In warning against loving “the things of the world,” the Apostle John identifies a spiritual danger that transcends any era: the human temptation to seek immortality and significance through the perpetuation of one’s own name. This self-glorifying impulse, which transforms public institutions meant to serve the common good into monuments to individual ego, exemplifies the kind of worldly vanity that Biblical teaching warns against.
Continue reading “Pride and the Things of This World”Category: church
Kingdom of Love
It often seems that people approach Scripture through different lenses. Some see it as a form of legalistic instruction manual. Others see it as a historical document. To anyone trying to understand the fundamental truths revealed in the Bible, it can seem confusing. In trying to do this myself, I noticed that Jesus basically states what all of Scripture is all about and, with that in mind, it’s clear throughout the rest of the Bible.
In several places, Jesus stated that all the “law and the prophets”, essentially all of Scripture, can be summed up by loving God with our whole being and loving others as we love ourselves. Love God and love others. In other words, the fundamental lesson of Scripture, at least according to Jesus, is to love. His statement implies that, when we try to understand anything in the Bible, we should look at it through this lens.
Continue reading “Kingdom of Love”The Paradox of Christian Nationalism: When Law and Grace Collide
At the heart of American democracy lies a foundational principle: the rule of law. The United States operates under a constitutional framework where no individual—not even the president—stands above the law. This commitment distinguishes our republic from monarchies and dictatorships, establishing a system where every citizen, regardless of status or power, is equally bound by legal standards. This framework has proven essential to maintaining ordered liberty and protecting individual rights.
Christianity, by contrast, centers on something fundamentally different: relationship rather than regulation. The Christian faith emphasizes a personal connection with God that then naturally produces transformed behavior—what Scripture calls “good fruit.” This is a crucial distinction: good works flow from relationship, not the other way around. Many Christians express this as the doctrine that we are not “saved by works”—that no amount of rule-following can establish or earn our standing with God. The relationship precedes and produces the behavior, not vice versa.
This principle appears most clearly in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, where he vigorously opposed those who insisted that adherence to Jewish ceremonial law was necessary for salvation. While Paul’s immediate concern was a specific set of religious regulations, the underlying principle extends far beyond that historical context: legalistic compliance cannot create spiritual life. Authentic faith transforms from the inside out, not from the outside in.
Of course, this doesn’t mean Christians are exempt from civil law. Believers are called to be model citizens, obeying legitimate governmental authority as an expression of obedience to God. But this obedience is an outflow of an already-established relationship with God, not the means of creating one. The motivation differs entirely from legalism: Christians obey laws not to earn divine favor, but because they already possess it.
Christians have also historically engaged with legal systems to advance human flourishing. The abolition of slavery, efforts to care for the poor and the establishment of social safety nets, child labor laws, civil rights protections—these required legislative action, and Christians often led these efforts. Since Christ calls his followers to demonstrate God’s love through tangible care for others (the call to love one’s neighbor), pursuing just laws becomes a natural expression of faith. This engagement with law is about loving neighbors, not achieving salvation.
These two frameworks—American constitutional law and Christian theology—occupy separate spheres. The United States is built on the rule of law, and Christians rightly work within this legal system to serve others and promote justice. Yet this civic involvement remains categorically distinct from the gospel message of grace.
Christian nationalism, however, collapses these separate categories, fusing them in ways that distort both. It seeks to encode specific theological positions into civil law, transforming doctrinal beliefs into legally mandated behavior. Gender ideology becomes enforced through legislation. Public display of religious texts like the Ten Commandments becomes a legal requirement. Public prayer becomes a governmental function.
While proponents may not explicitly claim these measures “save” anyone, the practical effect reinforces a fundamentally legalistic message: that proper behavior and outward conformity define authentic Christianity. The public rhetoric surrounding these efforts often confirms this, emphasizing moral compliance as the marker of genuine faith. People absorb the implicit message that Christianity is primarily about following the right rules, displaying the right symbols, and enforcing the right behaviors on society.
This tendency appears most clearly in Christian nationalism’s heavy reliance on Old Testament law and its preoccupation with behavioral compliance as the measure of right standing with God. The Old Testament economy indeed operated under a legal framework where obedience to detailed regulations governed Israel’s covenant relationship with God. But this was always intended as a temporary system pointing toward something better. Christian theology teaches that Christ fulfilled this legal system, ushering in a new covenant based on faith and grace rather than law. Yet Christian nationalism frequently gravitates back toward Old Testament categories, emphasizing legal codes, punishments, and external conformity over internal transformation and grace.
The consequences of this conflation are serious and multifaceted. First, it systematically corrupts the Christian message itself, gradually shifting the faith from a gospel of grace to a burden of legalism. People inside the church begin to believe that Christianity is fundamentally about correct behavior and political alignment rather than about transformation through relationship with God. The message that drew people to faith in the first place—that God offers freely what we could never earn—gets obscured beneath layers of cultural and political requirements.
Second, this approach profoundly alienates those outside the faith. When Christianity becomes identified with political power, legal coercion, and cultural warfare, it creates barriers that make the actual message of grace nearly impossible to hear. Non-Christians see a religion that seems primarily concerned with control rather than love, with winning rather than serving, with power rather than humility. This cultural Christianity drives people away from the very message that might genuinely transform their lives.
The tragic irony is that Christian nationalism, despite its stated goal of advancing Christian faith and values, actually undermines both. By substituting legal enforcement for spiritual transformation, it produces neither true justice nor genuine faith. By collapsing law and grace into a single framework, it distorts both. And by alienating both believers and non-believers from the authentic gospel message, it works directly against the faith’s true mission.
Continue reading “The Paradox of Christian Nationalism: When Law and Grace Collide”God and the Power of Healing
Throughout history, healing has been inextricably linked with divine purpose. From the ministry of Jesus to modern medical breakthroughs, God’s compassionate design for human health has manifested in increasingly sophisticated ways. This evolution represents not just scientific progress, but the continuing expression of divine love through human hands.
Jesus established the foundation of this legacy through His ministry of miraculous healing. These acts weren’t merely demonstrations of supernatural power; they were profound expressions of love, confirmations of His Messianic identity, and the beginning of a tradition that would transform society. The pattern He established—placing value on healing the sick regardless of their status—became a hallmark of the Christian faith that continues to this day.
Continue reading “God and the Power of Healing”The Hidden Idolatry of Modern Christianity
In Christianity, idolatry is traditionally understood as the act of worshiping something or someone other than the one true God. Worship, in this context, typically implies acts of adoration, dependence, and prioritization. This definition often conjures images of carved idols or golden statues—physical objects revered in place of God. Yet, the New Testament broadens this concept, equating greed with idolatry. This perspective invites us to rethink idolatry’s implications for our spiritual lives and interactions with the world around us.
Continue reading “The Hidden Idolatry of Modern Christianity”Pentecost and the End of Slavery
Pentecost is often seen to be the start of the church, as the Holy Spirit filled the small band of believers. Sometimes focus is placed on the result of the Spirit’s filling, namely speaking in tongues, as an indication of the presence of the Spirit. Others see the primary impact to be the fellowship that existed shortly after this event as more and more people entered the community.
In this blog, we’ve looked at the effectiveness of Peter’s speech, how it was the first example of Jesus’ statement that the Father would give us words to speak of Him, and how this example was followed by others in Acts, modeled by Paul’s prayer requests, and described in the theology in his letters.
I think that there’s another way of looking at the Spirit’s effects in the lives of the early believers, and that is to consider the difference between freeing slaves and ending slavery that I discussed earlier. In that discussion, slavery was used as both a literal problem and as a metaphor for the many ways that people are subject to the kingdom of this world, rather than the kingdom of God. The idea is that, while it is good to free slaves, to help people whenever we can in whatever ways we can, it is better to remove the institutions of slavery completely.
Continue reading “Pentecost and the End of Slavery”Lukewarm Tools
On its own, humanity lives enslaved to a worldly system of excessive pleasure, greed, and selfish pride.
Jesus proclaimed freedom, the coming of the kingdom of God, in which such slavery would no longer exist. All forms of slavery that could not be eliminated through natural means would be eliminated as He sent His disciples out to announce this good news and bring about the kingdom, changing the nature of the world. To be effective at this work, the disciples learned to be channels through which the Spirit worked to change hearts, not just minds.
From the beginning, Christians followed this call in ways that overtook empires and changed society, altering the very fabric of Western civilization. When freeing slaves looked like healing people, ending slavery looked like establishing hospitals, advancing medicine. Reading and writing became ubiquitous as formal education was made widely available even up to university levels, and the institution of literal slavery itself was dismantled. All these are examples of the Spirit working through those who had more in order to help those with less.
Today, however, we have gone back to natural means for establishing God’s rule, relying on human capabilities. Through things like rationality, organization, and legalism, we have worked to change circumstances and behavior. This seems successful as we continue to free slaves, but falls short of both Jesus’ command and the early church’s example of ending slavery. Many of our efforts today reach only some of those who need to hear of God’s love, and so limit the degree to which the kingdom can advance.
Perhaps as Western society flourished as a largely Christian place, we became complacent to the spiritual needs around us. Perhaps we have allowed ourselves to feel good about freeing the occasional slave while leaving slavery itself intact. However, being a good steward of God’s grace means bringing reconciliation to society, not just individuals.
So, while we’re patting ourselves on the back for how many slaves we’ve freed, Jesus stands at the door, calling us out of lukewarmness with offers of His Spirit.
Creating God
There is a popular quote that expresses the ease with which we can deceive ourselves when it comes to understanding God:
“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” ― Anne Lamott11
The quote makes the point that we tend to map our own preferences and biases onto God so that our image of Him is really just a projection of our own selves.
Although this quote was mainly about our relationships and how we think of other people, it seems the principle can also be applied elsewhere. In fact, there is probably a danger of mapping many of our own theological perspectives onto God, not just how we think about people.
Continue reading “Creating God”The Priority of Christian Nationalism
Christian Nationalism seems to be getting a lot of attention these days. Obviously, there are many non-Christians who don’t think much of the idea. But not all Christians agree with it either, and question whether it’s even Biblical. Of course, it may partly depend on what one thinks it means.
In my understanding, one way to think of Christian Nationalism is that it seeks to establish a national framework of laws and behaviors that promote personal and societal flourishing through the adoption of Christian values and behaviors, possibly reflecting what some people believe to be the original vision of the nation’s founders.
Thus, it can be thought of as a sort of legalism – religious values and ideas are encoded into laws that constrain people’s behavior. However, this isn’t necessarily the sort of legalism that asserts that correct behavior is necessary for salvation rather than a result of it. It merely tries to establish a flourishing society through the change of people’s behavior without there necessarily having been a change of heart.
Continue reading “The Priority of Christian Nationalism”Idolatry and Mars Hill
Although there are various expressions of Christianity, many different denominations, one thing that is common is the belief that idolatry is a sin. In fact, perhaps one of the chief sins.
After all, the Ten Commandments clearly forbids it, and idolatry is clearly taught against all through the Old Testament, especially in the prophetic writings. The Jews were so strongly monotheistic that Rome gave them special leeway to practice their religion. Christians picked this up, of course, and were thus known as “atheists” because they did not believe in the deity of Caesar, only in the one true God.
Against this historical and theological backdrop, it’s interesting to look at Paul’s speech on Mar’s Hill.
When Paul was in Athens, he was very troubled by the amount of idolatry on display there. He started to speak about Jesus in the public square and as a result was asked to speak at the Areopagus, a group of intellectual Greeks. Among the things that they commented on was that he seemed to be speaking of “foreign divinities”.
Given all these things, one would expect a scathing polemic against idolatry and a clear declaration of God as the one true deity, incarnated in the one true Lord, Jesus Christ.
Continue reading “Idolatry and Mars Hill”
Exploring Antioch 