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: Leaders
False Witness and the Politics of Blasphemy
Revelation pulls no punches in unveiling how empire works against God’s kingdom. The dragon’s chosen servants are not only soldiers and governors, but storytellers—mouthpieces who shape the imagination of the world. Revelation 13 portrays the beast rising from the sea, armed not only with power but with propaganda:
And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months. It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven. Revelation 13:5–6 (ESV)
Here we learn something critical: empire’s greatest weapon is not its armies, but its lies. It reshapes God into its own image and invites the world to worship the counterfeit.
Blasphemy is not merely swearing or mockery—it is the slander of God’s character, the peddling of false testimony about who He is and what He desires. It is the beast taking the holy name of God upon its lips and twisting it into a justification for its violence, its greed, its lust for power. And this, Revelation insists, is not an ancient relic but an enduring temptation for every age. The beast still speaks.
Continue reading “False Witness and the Politics of Blasphemy”Seeing the Mark of the Beast
In the book of Revelation, the “mark” or “number” of the beast has often been used throughout history to target particular people, movements, or institutions. In many end-times interpretations, someone is linked with the number of the beast as if Revelation were predicting a specific person, event, or organization. The number itself—666—most likely refers to Nero, the cruel Roman emperor who was the first to really persecute Christians. Although Nero died before Revelation was written, rumors persisted that he might return.
Yet, given the symbolic nature of Revelation, the number was probably never meant to point to a single individual alone. Instead, it seems to represent recurring spiritual forces—patterns of evil—that can appear in many forms throughout history.
Continue reading “Seeing the Mark of the Beast”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.
Exploring Antioch and Laodicea
As discussed in earlier posts, I think that evangelism – proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God – is a key aspect of the Christian faith. It’s a vital part of the way we should live in this world, which is why Jesus pointed to it many times, trained and sent out disciples, focused the disciples on it in the beginning of Acts, and perhaps even why God has given us the book of Acts as the main picture of the early church.
Given the clear directive and the amount of effort put into evangelism, one would expect continual growth of the kingdom. However, this clearly isn’t happening, and it seems to many people that the world is getting spiritually darker every day. Whatever tactics are being used today to grow the kingdom, it’s clearly not working.
Trying to understand this led me to the letter to the Laodiceans in Revelations. In that letter, Jesus rebukes the church in Laodicea as being lukewarm, which in the context of the letter, likely meant that the church was ineffective and not fulfilling its purpose, just like both cool refreshing water and hot healing water became unpleasant, even useless, when piped from their sources to Laodicea, because the water was lukewarm.
Continue reading “Exploring Antioch and Laodicea”Breaking Natural Cycles
When people look at trends in society, especially their relationships with history, it’s common to point out times when similar things happen over and over. This is sometimes captured by the statement that “those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.1 Beyond that, various people have suggested that history proceeds through cycles, that similar behavior happens over and over, regardless of the political situation. It would seem that such cycles occur in varying situations because human nature itself is constant, so that large groups of humans will inevitably follow similar behavioral patterns.
For those who seek to make improvements to human society, it seems these cycles need to be addressed. But any attempt to break out of them would run into the same issue of unchanging human nature. Regardless of the social and political systems that we come up with, they don’t change our nature. And without a change to our nature, there will always be a tension drawing societies back to the same behavior.
Continue reading “Breaking Natural Cycles”Refining the Discipleship Model
In my previous post, I discussed a ministry model based on statements about Jesus’ activities in Scripture. There are a handful of repeated statements that summarize Jesus’ activities and these are reflected in the rest of the narratives. The thought was that those summary statements give a grouping of actions that a follower of Christ would want to emulate if we are to be growing in likeness to Him. However, in thinking about those statements more, I noticed one other detail that I think can result in a more effective model.
Continue reading “Refining the Discipleship Model”A Model for Congregational Discipleship
As disciples of Jesus, Christians should be growing into His likeness. This means we should become more and more like Him, and it seems this should include all of His attributes, behaviors., and so on. We often study the Scriptures to find these attributes, and different people have produced different models of Jesus’ activities.
However, in addition to the many detailed accounts of them, the gospels include many statements that summarize Jesus’ activities. These tend to repeat the same three things over and over, so perhaps they represent a way to think of His actions in a way that we could grow into.
Continue reading “A Model for Congregational Discipleship”
Exploring Antioch 