Considering

Blessed through suffering

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (James 1:2-4)

“We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” (Romans 5:3-5)

My thoughts as I’m considering these passages:

How similar they are, even though they’re written by two different authors.

The use of the word know in both passages. No excuse for not rejoicing. We know that suffering develops perseverance.

“Pure joy”? Not just some joy? Don’t think I’m there yet. But it helps to consider a pastor’s teaching from years ago. He said that the Greek word for “consider” is an accounting term. James isn’t telling us to expect to walk around in total bliss when life is at its most painful, but to rejoice as we look at the balance sheet and see that the profits far outweigh the costs (2 Corinthians 4:17).

What really stands out as I’m reading them this time around, though: The appeal to my selfish nature.

Consider it pure joy when I suffer, because it will bring me to the point where I’m not lacking anything. Rejoice in my suffering, because it will produce hope.

God isn’t saying here, “Rejoice in what I’ll do for others through you.” He isn’t even saying, “Rejoice because I will use this for My glory.” He’s saying plain and simple, “Rejoice because I will bless you in this situation.” As selfish as it sounds, it must be okay for me to do that.

Pressuring myself

My life verses, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” The key words in my mind: so that.

In trying to resist our me-centered culture, I get hung up on sacrifice and denying self. I consider it absolutely necessary to turn my thoughts every time from “How does this benefit me?” to “How can this bring glory to God?” or “How can I use this to minister to others?”

The Christians who earn my greatest respect (and envy) are those who don’t consider themselves, but live lives of sacrifice. I end up making an idol of my own sacrifices and turning a blind eye to God’s generous blessings for me.

It can be so confusing. We’re told to put others ahead of ourselves. Jesus says to deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Him (Matthew 16:24). To hate our own families if they turn us from our total commitment to Him (Matthew 10:37). Nothing less than dying to self is demanded of us.

And yet here God is, in the very challenging passages quoted at the beginning of this post, telling me to do something because it benefits me. Period.

Sometimes I need to hear this. Sometimes I need to remember that God rejoices in blessing me, that He takes pleasure in my joy and even in my happiness.

The pendulum

During certain periods in church history, the judgment of God was emphasized much more than His grace. Christians lived in terror of Him rather than in fellowship with Him.

Church leaders used that fear of God to control people. If they could threaten members with punishment and damnation, those members would be more likely to do what their leaders said. It was a source of intoxicating power.

The impact of the Protestant Reformation came from its return to grace, not works. To a God who loves us even when we’re sinners. Who forgives us when we simply believe and repent. But the pendulum always swings back and forth.

My understanding of twentieth century Christian history is that it began with a tendency to legalism, as expressed in the fundamentalist movement. Then in the fifties or sixties the pendulum started swinging back to an emphasis on grace, as modern evangelicalism spread.

Many Christians in my generation grew up in legalistic Catholic or Baptist churches. When they saw the light of the gospel, they were freed from the burden of fearful obedience to the law and began living in the joy of grace.

But through its own momentum, the pendulum has swung too far. From a legalistic focus on the law to an obsessive focus on my freedom. Christians began to consider the love of God for me as more important than any other aspect of the gospel. His righteousness and holiness and judgment and glory took a back seat to my importance in His eyes.

Self took center stage. In our evangelism. In our worship. In our prayers. In our teaching. In our lives.

I struggle with this. I’m part of this culture. Sometimes I can’t even tell when I’m being selfish because it comes so naturally and because it’s reinforced by everyone around me, including my fellow believers.

When I do see what’s happening, I overreact. I harshly judge myself and the Christians I know by how much we’re sacrificing, how much we’re giving up, how much we’re putting others ahead of ourselves. No room for grace.

It hurts. It’s not healthy. I pay a price for it.

Encouragement

Maybe that’s why the Holy Spirit leads me to these passages. I don’t usually read them back to back and make the connection between them. But for some reason, I recently read them just a few days apart and began to consider them, not in isolation, but together. When God repeats something in His Word, He’s emphasizing its importance.

It knocked me off my judgmental pedestal and threw me to my knees in thanksgiving. These verses tell me that it’s okay to consider what God’s doing for me. Not for how I can use it to glorify Him or minister to others, but just for my own sake.

That’s how much He loves me. That’s how well He understands me.

Of course I need to consider these words in the context of the Bible as a whole. They can’t be seen as an excuse to dive into greater self-centeredness.

But right now, He’s using them to comfort me, to encourage me, to let me rest in His great love for me without judging or condemning myself. Without pressuring myself. And it might just be that He’ll use that comfort and encouragement and rest to glorify Himself and minister to those around me in ways that I’m not even aware of.

 

 

Light in the Darkness

Expectations

Let your light shine!

There’s a dark world out there. But if you’re really a good Christian, then you’re always filled with a cozy warm glow. You’re doing all you can every day, every minute to pump up the brightness. You’re making sure it’s always flowing out of you to where it’s needed so badly.

That’s how I usually take this admonition. And I don’t take it well.

Then one Sunday morning we’re singing in church and the words jump out at me: Let your light shine*! But this time I get a new mental image.

What if I’m dim and dreary inside? Can I shine a bit of light even when I’m hurting? Will my attempts to crank it up turn it into a cold artificial glare?

Can God shine His light through me when it seems like there’s nothing but darkness within me? The darkness of a painful loss. The darkness of financial fears. The darkness of loneliness or depression or guilt.

Can God still use me, when I’m in this condition, to brighten other people’s lives without denying my own darkness?

In the same service, the pastor comments on our responsibility to praise God even when we don’t feel like it. I’ve always been intrigued by the phrase “a sacrifice of praise” (Hebrews 13:15), which Pastor mentions here.

How can praising Him involve sacrificing? Sacrificing hurts. I usually associate praise with feeling good. Isn’t that why we sing happy songs?Aren’t those the only ones that truly praise Him? (That seems to be the subtle implication in many of our worship services.)

But maybe that sacrifice of praise occurs when we’re suffering and we don’t seem capable of praising Him in that moment. Or when we’d really rather be doing something else. Or when we’re actively rebelling against Him. To resist our impulses and follow His will (not just lip service, but genuine praise) would be a sacrifice. Maybe it’s an example of intentionally letting His light shine in spite of our own darkness.

An illustration

A few years ago, I was in one of those bleak places. One Saturday night I got bad news concerning a family member. It hurt so much, I seriously considered skipping church in the morning. I didn’t think I could make it through the service without weeping, and I hate to cry in public.

I couldn’t share my burden with anyone, because it concerned a confidential situation. I wouldn’t be able to explain my tears if they came. But it hurt so much, I knew I needed to be there, in my community, in worship with my sisters and brothers in Christ.

As I was leaving my house on Sunday, in an attempt to turn around my obsessive thinking about my own problems, I prayed, “Lord, let me be a blessing to others.” I didn’t think of it this way at the time, but I was basically saying, “Let Your light shine through me in spite of this darkness inside.”

It wasn’t until I was almost ready to head home that I realized that God had answered that prayer without my even trying to make it happen. He allowed me to be honest with Him about the suffering I was enduring. No denial. No fake smile. No pretending it didn’t hurt. But He also used me to minister to others.

During the service, Pastor interviewed a couple about a difficult experience that they’d been going through for the last several years. They didn’t minimize the pain and confusion. They’d had a tough time understanding what God was doing and why.

But He was there for them in ways they hadn’t anticipated. They could see (and so could I) how much they’d grown in their relationship with Him because of their circumstances. The service was a time of celebrating God’s goodness and wisdom.

(One of the fascinating things about the morning was that during the nearly ten years that I’d been at this church, Pastor had never replaced the sermon with a conversation with someone from the congregation. He hasn’t done it since then, either. The timing of this unique presentation was perfect in light of my prayer and my need.)

I’d met this couple at another church that I’d attended. I’d listened sympathetically to the wife’s stories about thwarted hopes. I’d shared the burden of her sorrows. But our paths hadn’t crossed very often since then. After the service, I made it a point to find her in the crowd and let her know how much I appreciated their testimony.

Her response: “I’m so glad you were here. I was hoping you would be.”

Without even planning it, without knowing that she and her husband would play a large part in the service, without having any idea that she was thinking about me, my presence had been a blessing to her. Out of my darkness, I’d shone a bit of light into her life.

Later, I talked to two or three people in my Sunday school class. I didn’t want to. I wanted to just sit like a lump and listen to the teacher’s message, hoping it would help me somehow. I had too much pain inside to intentionally reach out to others. But they reached out to me.

And I found myself speaking words that brought them a little deeper comfort and understanding. Being a blessing to them. Shining a light from my darkness into theirs.

The blessing

By the end of the morning, it hit me. God had gone way beyond what I’d expected in answering my prayer. (And I didn’t even cry!)

It doesn’t always work this way, and that’s okay. I don’t want to be pressured, every time I’m really down, to shine my light all over the world. I don’t think God wants me to feel that kind of pressure, either. Sometimes I need to be the one receiving an illuminating and refreshing and purifying light from others.

But when it does happen, when God shines His light through me even when I’m feeling so dark inside, it’s not just a blessing to those around me. I am richly blessed, too.

*Sorry I can’t give a reference here. We were singing a medley of songs, so the title wasn’t given in the bulletin. When I tried looking it up on the internet a few weeks later, I found several different songs with this phrase, but none of them sounded like the one I was looking for.

 

Slow Learners

Jacob’s fear

I’m a slow learner. How many times have I read about Jacob/Israel in the book of Genesis? How many times have I listened to biblical teaching about him? And yet it’s taken me all these years to really see the enormous change in his life that takes place in Genesis 28-33.

Jacob is a slow learner, too. God Himself appears to him in a dream as he’s fleeing from his older brother Esau. The Lord declares that He’s going to give Jacob great blessings and bless the whole world through him. This is the covenant He made with Abraham two generations earlier.

God is telling Jacob that he’s been chosen to be the recipient of all those covenant promises. In addition, He says He’ll be with Jacob and watch over him and bring him back safely to the land he’s leaving.

Could God’s grace get any bigger? Jacob just deceived their father, Issac, into granting him the blessing that should have gone to Esau. Now the Lord is freely bestowing on this liar and cheater and manipulator totally undeserved blessings that far surpass anything Isaac could possibly give him.

Seems like such a vision and such a promise and such grace would instantly erase all of Jacob’s fears. But for twenty years, he still lives in anxiety. Even when God speaks to him (again) and personally tells him to go back to the land he came from, reassuring him (again) that He’ll be with him, Jacob is terrified. Terrified of both Esau and his father-in-law, Laban.

Instead of being honest with Laban and witnessing to him about how God’s spoken to him, Jacob deceives his father-in-law and sneaks away from him, taking his family and possessions with him. Laban pursues him, and they end up making a covenant of peace.

The next challenge to face is Esau. When Jacob finds out that his brother is on his way to meet them with four hundred men to back him up, he carefully places his herds and wives and children and servants ahead of him, so they’ll run into Esau first. Partly to try to soften his brother’s heart. Partly to let the leaders of the group sound the alarm so the rest, including Jacob, can turn and run if Esau is still angry.

Jacob has seen God in visions. He’s been chosen to receive the Abrahamic covenant. He’s been promised repeatedly that God will take care of him. He’s experienced God’s provision ever since arriving at Laban’s home in Haran. But he’s a slow learner. He’s still afraid.

Jacob's faith

And then everything changes.

After sending his family and possessions across a stream (the Jabbok), Jacob is alone. A man appears and wrestles with him all night. Jacob is winning. But he won’t let the man go until the man blesses him.

The man wrenches Jacob’s hip, then changes his name to Israel, meaning wrestles or struggles with God. Jacob realizes that this isn’t just an ordinary human being, saying later that he “saw God face to face.”

He and his family continue on their way. Jacob is now limping. He must be exhausted from spending the entire night wrestling. He’s more vulnerable than ever. And yet, when he once again organizes the crowd, this time “he himself went on ahead.” He’s no longer afraid. He’s finally trusting God.

All those years of hearing His voice, listening to His promises, and seeing those promises fulfilled in many blessings, didn’t change him. He was still Jacob, meaning deceiver. It wasn’t until he wrestled with God that he believed Him.

Slow-learning disciples

In Matthew 14 and 15, Jesus feeds five thousand men (plus women and children) with a few loaves and fishes. He sends the disciples ahead while He dismisses the crowd, then walks on water to join them as they sail across a stormy lake. After getting into the boat, He calms the wind. His followers respond by saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” When they arrive on land, He amazes everyone by healing “the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others.” Miracle follows miracle in a short period of time.

Then the people run out of food (again). Jesus tells the disciples He wants to provide for all four thousand of them. These twelve confused and faithless men reply, “Where could we get enough bread in this remote place to feed such a crowd?” As if they’ve learned nothing from His recent actions.

I’ve heard some speculation that there was really only one supernatural feeding. The details are slightly different, but that happens in eyewitness accounts. The speculators question why the disciples would respond the way they did when Jesus offers to repeat the same miracle. Surely they’d get the message the first time. Surely they wouldn’t experience any doubts in the same situation just a few days later.

But Jesus Himself says in Matthew 16:9-10, “Don’t you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered?” Two different feedings. Two different stories. He knows that slow learners need repeated lessons. He graciously provides for them spiritually and psychologically, as well as physically.

I’ve also heard that the Sermon on the Mount, starting in Matthew chapter 5, is the same event as that recorded in Luke chapter 6. Again, the details are slightly different, but why would Jesus bother presenting the same information twice? Wouldn’t once be enough?

Then a pastor suggested that they’re actually two different situations. One on a mountain (“he went up on a mountainside”). One on a plain (“He went down with them and stood on a level place”).

Why bother repeating His teaching? Because Jesus knows that the disciples are slow learners. They need to hear it again. They also need the reassurance that God understands slow learners.

Other slow learners

Look how long the Lord put up with the Israelites in the desert on the way to the Promised Land. He performed great miracles before freeing them from bondage in Egypt. He supernaturally produced manna for them for forty years. How could anyone question His love and grace when it was so obvious?

And yet they grumbled and doubted time after time. God judged them for their lack of faith. But even that judgment was proof of His existence and His righteous character. He punished them, but He continued to forgive these slow learners and He remained with them as He led them into a land flowing with milk and honey.

The author of Hebrews calls his readers “slow to learn” (vs. 5:11). Based on the length of time that they’ve been Christians, they should be able to teach others. Instead, they still need to be taught even the most elementary truths “all over again.” Hebrews was written to meet that need.

In Galatians 3:1, Paul exclaims in exasperation, “You foolish Galatians!” The gospel has been explained to them so clearly and so carefully. They’ve obviously accepted it. They should know it by heart. And yet they still have to be reminded that salvation is by grace, through faith, not by human effort.
 
A wise teacher

The bad news is we are all slow learners. The good news is we are all slow learners. I’m not alone in this struggle. The people in the Bible weren’t any better or worse than I am. And the Lord handled their doubts and fears graciously, presenting the same lessons over and over again. Like Jacob/Israel, some of them finally got it.

God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He’ll deal with me in the same way as He dealt with all those foolish, slow-learning examples in His Word. Patiently. Compassionately. Maybe with discipline, but always with grace. Like a wise teacher reaching out to the most hopeless cases. And I just might finally get it, too.

 

 

Don't Get Used to it

Holy vs. common

The first time I heard a Bible teacher define “holy” as “set apart,” it really bugged me. Being set apart in and of itself doesn’t necessarily mean better or higher or deeper or richer. Or worthy of worship. I could set apart paper plates for casual dining. That wouldn’t make them more valuable than my fine china. I want something more, something bigger, in any definition of that very special word.

Many years later, my Sunday school teacher described holy as the opposite of commonplace. That’s when it clicked. In His holiness, God is the complete opposite of the commonplace. He is set far apart from all that is common.

The common doesn’t hold our attention. God is more beautiful, more gracious, more creative than anything we can imagine. We will spend an eternity with Him and still be unable to take our eyes off of Him.

The common is ordinary, mundane. God is extraordinary, full of surprises. His compassions are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23). We will spend an eternity with Him and still be delighted by His presence.

The common can easily be discarded and replaced when it wears out or when something better comes along. God will never wear out or run down. He is always the same gloriously perfect Lord whose years will never end (Psalm 102:27). There will never be anything better than Him.

We don’t worship the common things in life. In ancient times, people made idols out of the precious metals, gold and silver. One reason those metals are valuable is because they’re rare. Not common.

Our idols today are the best-looking actors, the most skilled athletes, and the most talented artists. They go so far beyond the ordinary that we recognize them as set apart from the rest of us.

Getting used to it

We worship God because of His greatness. He is the King above all kings, the Lord above all lords. We worship Him because of our sense that He is set apart from us. But as we grow in Him, He becomes closer to us. We see His hand working in our lives. We get used to having Him around. We begin to treat Him as common.

The most blatant example of this tendency is Israel’s journey from bondage in Egypt to the blessings of the promised land. God appeared in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to guide them (Exodus 13:21). Their clothes didn’t wear out for forty years (Deuteronomy 8:4). Manna supernaturally appeared six mornings a week to nourish them (Exodus 16:4-5).

But because all these signs of God’s presence and provision happened every single day, they became common in the people’s eyes. Ordinary. Expected. Deserved. The Israelites lost their sense of awe and wonder at the miracles that were happening all around them all the time.

Some professional athletes refuse to honor America while the national anthem is being played before a game. They accept our amazing prosperity and freedoms and legal system as ordinary, everyday, expected parts of life. Instead of being grateful for them, they focus on the faults that remain. They magnify those faults out of proportion to their actual size in comparison to our country’s strengths.

Brittney Griner, of the WNBA, made it a point to leave the basketball court during the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Then she went to Russia. When she arrived, customs officials found vape cartridges in her luggage. She was arrested for drug smuggling, convicted in a closed court with no jury, and given a nine year sentence. She spent ten months in prison before President Biden was able to negotiate her release.

Brittney now stands beside the basketball court during our national anthem (source: WORLD magazine Opinions, “Britney Griner finds gratitude for America,” June 19, 2023). She’s gone from seeing this country as common and ordinary and even despicable, to developing a sense of appreciation for the progress made in trying to offer freedom and justice for all.

As a Christian, it’s so easy for me to take my salvation, my answers to prayer, my many other blessings for granted. I might not say it out loud, but my attitude becomes something like this: Of course God saved me. Because He loves me so much. God is love (1 John 4:8). What else could He do? After a while, there doesn’t seem to be anything spectacular, anything beyond the ordinary in the extraordinary idea that I will spend an everlasting eternity in the presence of the most spectacular Being that exists.

It’s easy to think of God as my big buddy in the sky. In John 15, Jesus calls His disciples His friends. My friends are just like me. Common, everyday people. It’s easy to lower God to their level. Or raise myself to His.

It’s easy to get used to the idea that I can take all my burdens, all my pain, and all my joy to the Lord of the universe. Prayer becomes a routine practice, rather than an incredible privilege.

It’s easy to resent spending time reading my Bible when there are so many other things that I need to do. God’s Word becomes nothing more than an ordinary book, rather than the supernatural revelation of God Himself.

It’s easy to talk about salvation and Jesus and answered prayers as if they’re just common, expected parts of life. Shouldn’t we, instead, feel a powerful sense of wonder and awe every time words like God, forgiveness, and eternity pass our lips?

Some churches I’ve attended seem to try to overcome this tendency to get used to the miraculous and the holy by generating excitement. Worship turns into a pep rally. But pep rallies and excitement are common, ordinary things. We need something more, something different, something set apart from the ways of the world.

Near and far away

That’s one of the reasons why I’m thankful for my church. My pastor teaches about the God who loves us so much that He sacrificed His most precious and perfect Son to save us from our sins. Pastor encourages us to take all our troubles to a God who is near to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18). He reminds us that this God cares about every detail of our lives and is ready to forgive us no matter how many times we go astray.

But he also emphasizes the need to remember that we are not just slightly lower than God. By our very nature, there’s a great distance between Him and us. Even the angels in Isaiah’s vision, who are without sin, were so awed and humbled in His presence that they covered their faces and their feet (Isaiah 6:2). They recognized their complete unworthiness compared to His glory. Thank you, Pastor, for helping us to walk in God’s miraculous grace without just getting used to it.

What happens when we start to take God for granted? Sometimes only suffering can bring us back to a better appreciation of who He is and what He’s done. The Israelites’ journey to the promised land illustrates this reality. Every time they treated God as common and ordinary, every time they began to grumble against Him, He afflicted them in one way or another. Their grumbling stopped. Their awe and wonder were restored.

Brittney Griner is an example from the secular world of the way hardship can help us appreciate a blessing or privilege that we’re treating as common and expected and deserved.

God is holy. Set apart. The opposite of commonplace. I pray that we as believers would be better at fighting our natural human tendency to lower Him to the level of the ordinary and expected, to take Him for granted, to get used to having Him around. The consequences of losing that battle are always painful.

Why Should They Believe?

A recent cultural shift

How can we expect our children to be dedicated to the one true God? Bible-believing Christians are a small minority in America. The dominant culture ignores or disdains our primitive ideas. Supporting biblical sexual morality is labeled hate speech.

Our country has changed drastically in my lifetime (sixty-plus years). As a child, my family only went to church at Christmas and Easter, and we rarely talked about spiritual issues at home. Yet I picked up a relatively accurate understanding of Christianity simply by living in America.

It wasn’t specifically taught in my public schools. There were no oral prayers being recited. But the cultural aspects snuck in.

We sang “America, America, God shed His grace on thee” and “God Bless America.” Our music classes presented Christmas programs with songs that reflected the original meaning of the holiday, not just the ones celebrating Santa Claus and snow. Our spelling words included omniscient and omnipotent.

Friends talked about God as if it was perfectly natural and reasonable to believe in Him. Everyone knew that BC meant Before Christ. We were a little confused about AD, though. Some kids speculated that it meant After Death. When we were considered old enough, we were taught—in public school—that it meant Anno Domini, Latin for “the year of our Lord.”

Fast forward to today.

I’m chatting with ten-year-old Michael at my church one evening. His parents are faithful believers. He has a good background in the Bible. He doesn’t openly question it, but he seems to have his doubts about the reality of some of its teachings.

Why should he believe it? He’s being bombarded every day with the message that it’s unimportant, it’s outdated, it’s based on superstition, it’s packed with hateful lies.

A historical cultural shift

For some reason Michael asks me what BC means. (He knows very well that BCE stands for Before the Current Era.) I tell him that it means Before Christ.

And then it hits me.

In spite of all our cultural denials, Jesus’ birth has had a tremendous impact on our entire world. I know that, but how many kids in America today have any idea that it’s true?

I point out to Michael that Jesus’ birth was considered so very important that our entire dating system is based on it. People used to number the years according to when the latest king began to reign, e.g. “In the twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel . . .” (1 Kings 15:9). Eventually they realized that it would be helpful to have an ongoing international system. No more turning back to year one every so often. No more using different dates in different countries.

The decision was made to base the calendar on the same idea (the reign of a king), but to set it up so that it could continue until the end of time without ever starting over. Which king could be chosen? Which one’s reign could never be surpassed by anyone else’s? Only the King of kings. Jesus.

The expression on Michael’s face is one of thoughtful relief. He wants to believe. And yet it often appears to him as if Jesus’ birth was something trivial, something only a minor few actually celebrate on Christmas Day.

But here is evidence that that hasn’t always been true. There was a time when many intelligent people regarded the birth of Jesus as the most defining moment in history.

Jesus’ importance

Jesus is far more important to our world than modern Americans are willing to admit. Our young ones need to know that. We educate them in the facts of the faith, as we should. We encourage them to learn the order of the books of the Bible and to read it for themselves, as we should. Some groups teach them apologetics at their youthful level. A great idea.

But eventually every kid realizes that only one small group believes all this. Does it really matter? How important can it be if most people simply ignore it?

Most of our children (and probably many adults) aren’t aware of the numerous ways Jesus’ birth has impacted our world. One profound impact was presented by Philip Yancey in his blog post, from March 25, 2019. (The next four paragraphs are based on that article. All of the following quotes are taken from it. Yancey's blog is no longer available, after being deleted in January 2026.)

In America today, one of the most important values upheld by the dominant culture is concern for the marginalized. Those who can claim to belong to one or more oppressed groups are assumed to have a kind of moral authority, which gives them instant respect. Where did this type of thinking come from?

A French philosopher named René Girard did extensive research and “ultimately traced the phenomenon back to the historical figure of Jesus.” The Son of God not only stood up for the marginalized and oppressed, He actually chose to be born into a poor family in a conquered territory, to live as a homeless adult, and to die an unjust death. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection triggered “the most sweeping historical revolution in the world, namely, the emergence of an empathy for victims.”

In contrast, up to that time most cultures supported “a social order in which the strong have a right to dominate the weak.” “Winners, not losers, wrote ancient history, and the myths from Babylon, Greece, and elsewhere celebrated strong heroes, not pitiable victims.” The Old Testament was the only exception to this rule, with its emphasis on helping the helpless, its willingness to tell the history of a nation’s failures, and its powerful expression of God’s love for those who mess up so badly.

Even apart from His saving grace (which is, of course, the most important message in His Word), Jesus’ birth was important. Jesus’ life was important. Jesus’ death was important. The resurrected Jesus continues to be important. “Today, if you Google indices that measure such values as economic freedom, press freedom, charitable giving, earth care, gender equality, quality of life, human rights, and lack of corruption, you will find that with very few exceptions Christian-heritage nations receive the highest ratings.”

The values that our current cultural elites consider so very important are based entirely on Christian theology. Those values didn’t originate with Jesus’ birth, though. He simply embodied them in a way that no one else had ever done before. The God of the Bible has been the same God for all eternity.

In the Old Testament, He demonstrated and demanded empathy and care for widows, orphans, the poor, immigrants, and anyone else who might be vulnerable to abuse by the powerful. Those commands had a real impact on Jewish life and character.

It wasn’t until the crucifixion, though, when “the victim became a hero by offering himself as a willing victim,” that people were motivated and enabled (with the help of the indwelling Holy Spirit) to do as God has always done. Not perfectly. Not consistently. But for the first time in history, it became a priority for one group (Christians) to care about the weak and the oppressed.

One of the messages our kids are hearing everywhere today is that Jesus and the Bible are trivial and irrelevant, or even dangerous. Maybe one way we can counter that idea is by understanding for ourselves and passing on to them the truth that Jesus is the most important person in history. Jesus’ birth was the most important event in history.

That importance can be seen not just in how we date our calendars, but in the powerful impact for good that still flows from His life today, even among those who don’t believe in Him. Even among those who detest His followers. God is continuing to fulfill His promise to Abraham that all nations will be blessed through his offspring (Genesis 22:18). The one whose birth we celebrate on Christmas Day.

 

 

(This article was edited by the author on February 10, 2026.)