Full Contact Christianity

Questions on Sex Education

10 March 2026

On a discussion forum I’m part of, someone, a parent of teenagers, I believe, posted a list of questions about sex education. I think it’s a great list, and bears discussing. I’ll give my answers below, but I’m going to just give you the questions first. I’d encourage you to take a crack at answering them for yourself before you read mine.

Is there a genuine difference between “Christian sex ed” and secular information, or do we just add a few Bible verses to the same biological facts?
What is God’s actual design for sex? (Looking for biblical evidence here, not just traditional “churchy” opinions.)
Does the Bible even offer a blueprint for sexual education, or have we been winging it for centuries?
How do we stop the cycle of “sex-negative” or “sex-neutral” parenting? Can we actually give what we never received?
Is “taboo” ever healthy? Is there any topic that should remain strictly off-limits between parent and child?
Is there a “too early,” or is our silence just giving the world a head start?
Is it time to scrap the “mom talks to girls, dad talks to boys” rule? Who is truly responsible? Does the gender of the parent or child even matter in these conversations, or is that just a cultural tradition?
Silence is not consent—if a child never asks, are we failing them by not forcing the issue? How do we handle the “shut down” and the averted eyes?
If we aren’t the primary source, who is the safest “second-in-line” for our kids?
Is the church (or small group) actually stepping up, or are they just outsourcing this uncomfortable job back to parents?
How can we advocate for “waiting” today? (I’m looking for arguments that a teenager can relate to, even if they haven’t had a conversion experience yet!)
Can we define “boundaries” before marriage without turning it into a legalistic checklist of “how far is too far”? What is your exact answer if your kid asks for it?
How do we address the “puberty gap”? What should a young person do with being biologically mature when marriage is still far (5-10-15 years) away? When the Bible was written in the Middle East, women often married at 12-16, which almost coincided with puberty—this meant something entirely different back then!
How do we dismantle the “test-drive” argument? Is compatibility something you find or something you build?
Our own marriage as a “silent teacher” of intimacy. How/What kind of example can we set for our children in this area through our own marriage?

Give yourself some time to think those over. I’d love to hear your answers to these questions. I’d especially love to hear what you think is missing from the list here—what other questions that should be here? What other insights need to be part of a well-developed perspective? What do you think?

When you’re ready to continue, my answers are down below.

Is there a genuine difference between “Christian sex ed” and secular information, or do we just add a few Bible verses to the same biological facts?

Yes. The materialists are wrong about everything, all the way down to the ground. The world is not what they think it is; humans are not what they think we are; heck, even matter is not what they think it is. And they don’t know what anything actually means. Secular information is not “right as far as it goes,” it’s fundamentally wrong about absolutely everything. That doesn’t mean we can’t draw information from pagan sources, but when we baptize it, we need to make sure we’ve done a thorough job. We’re going for “dead and resurrected,” not a light rinse, and that’s harder than most people think.

What is God’s actual design for sex? (Looking for biblical evidence here, not just traditional “churchy” opinions.)

Natural law gets to weigh in here, too: designed things “want” to be used in particular ways. It doesn’t take you too long to figure out which end of the paring knife to hold. Fruitfulness is a major purpose of the design: sexuality is our reproductive mechanism, and we’re powerfully driven to exercise it. The hormonal effects of sexual union are also a big deal, and show that bonding and communion are also major purposes of sex. It’s enormously pleasurable, and that’s either an accident or it’s intended that way. Since it’s God we’re talking about, it’s intended. Say thank you.

Looking to Scripture, we find that fruitfulness is the very first recorded blessing and command to man and woman (Gen. 1:28). Zooming in on the creation of humanity in the next chapter, we find that sexual difference is specifically designed by God, and designed to motivate a man to leave his parents and take a wife. This moves the conversation in a different direction than the way I was raised. Instead of my constant young male horniness being sinful fleshly weakness, it’s the motivator God designed to create a new household. On this account, then, the fact that the desire is so powerful isn’t because you’re extra sinful, it’s because sexual desire is the mainspring of the household, which is in turn the building block of civilization. Of course it’s strong! We’re supposed to be exercising dominion over the whole world! Weak, take-it-or-leave-it desire wouldn’t do the job, would it?

Does the Bible even offer a blueprint for sexual education, or have we been winging it for centuries?

Neither. The Bible is authoritative on everything it speaks to, and it speaks to everything – but not necessarily in the format we were wishing for. It’s not enough to let the Bible supply our answers; we also need to let it critique our questions. So no, the Bible doesn’t provide a blueprint for sex education; it provides an extensive set of blueprints for marriage. The Church has not been winging it for centuries; what we’ve been doing (in our better moments) is building our education on the Bible’s blueprints for marriage, so that when we teach about sex, it’s in its proper context.

How do we stop the cycle of “sex-negative” or “sex-neutral” parenting? Can we actually give what we never received?

You can’t give what you ain’t got, but you can and do give your kids all kinds of things that you didn’t get while you were a kid. Unless you seriously think that we’ve gotten worse every single generation since Adam and Eve, then yes, you can give your kids something you didn’t have as a kid. That’s how generational advance works: our ceiling is their floor.

Is “taboo” ever healthy? Is there any topic that should remain strictly off-limits between parent and child?

Strict taboo, absolutely not. Are there topics that we must not approach casually or flippantly? Of course, and I suspect that’s how the taboos come to exist to start with. Some topics are very high-stakes, and you can’t afford to do them badly. We then begin to fear making mistakes, and from that fear, we begin to think it’s safer not to approach those topics at all. We start saying stupid things like “You just have to be so careful…” no matter how someone is approaching the topic. That’s nonsense, and God has not given us a spirit of fear. It’s precisely in giving due weight to consequential topics that we render the taboos ridiculous.

Is there a “too early,” or is our silence just giving the world a head start?

That’s a judgment call you have to make in your context. If you’ll pardon a horrible example, there are ages where it’s “too early” for a kid to learn about rape, but if it happens to them or one of their friends, you’re not (I hope!) going to tell them “It’s too early to talk about that.” It might be too early, but so what? If that’s what they’re dealing with, then we’re gonna talk about it. In a sane world, a lot of this stuff might wait until later…but we don’t live in a sexually sane world, and you can’t fight lies with silence.

Is it time to scrap the “mom talks to girls, dad talks to boys” rule? Who is truly responsible? Does the gender of the parent or child even matter in these conversations, or is that just a cultural tradition?

This would be a good place (like #2, above) to ask for biblical support. Where did this “rule” even come from? It certainly doesn’t come from Scripture. Of course the gender matters in these conversations, and that’s precisely why God gives a kid a mom and a dad. Every kid should hear from both of them.

The first time we did a unit on this in youth group, we had a 6-week series on marriage and sexuality, and we had only a portion of one session that we split by gender. It’s important to have that opportunity, because kids sometimes raise questions that they wouldn’t raise in a mixed-gender group, but the kids also need to see adults interacting intelligently and calmly with members of the opposite sex on these topics. They take their cues from us: if we’re afraid or uncomfortable, they will be too. If we’re sober, reverent, and clear-headed, they’ll learn to be that way themselves.

Silence is not consent—if a child never asks, are we failing them by not forcing the issue? How do we handle the “shut down” and the averted eyes?

You are failing them if you don’t deliver what they need to know, in exactly the same way you’d be failing them if you didn’t teach them division or reading or how to eat their vegetables. “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child;” it’s not their job to dictate what they’ll learn. And also, if you manage to deliver the material in a way that’s forced and makes them hate it, you’re failing them, in the same way that you can make them hate math by approaching teaching division poorly, or make them hate broccoli by boiling it until it’s grey. As with food, so with education: nothing is so good you can’t bungle it. There’s no substitute for knowing your kids well and leading their hearts well, in any topic. This one too.

If we aren’t the primary source, who is the safest “second-in-line” for our kids?

First of all, you should be the primary source. Unless you’re radically disqualified in some odd way, you have no business shirking your responsibility to speak to your children about sexuality. And also, as with anything else from driving to calculus to piano lessons, there’s nothing wrong with outsourcing a portion of the work to trusted members of the community. There’s no rule that says your kid has to learn only from you.

As far as who you trust, of course that’s a judgment call you make in your context. I think it’s safe to say that if you’re relying on government-funded schools to do the heavy lifting for you, you’re bound for trouble. You hand your 5-year-olds over to enemies of the faith to be catechized for years on end, and then be surprised when your 16-year-olds act like they’ve been catechized by the enemy. So stock their lives with people that you trust to talk with them about topics that matter. Too many Christian parents isolate their kids. Sometimes it’s out of fear, but often there’s an ego component. It starts with a (possibly well-intended) sense that “I should be the person my kid talks with about this,” but then proceeds to wondering, “What does it say about me as a parent if my kid talks with someone else?” Finding that option intolerable, the parents attempt to deny their children other options. Listen, I’ve been doing youth work for a really long time. I promise you, if you draw the circle too tight, they’ll find someone outside your circle, and it won’t be someone you’d have picked. It’s much smarter to give your kids easy access to interested and trustworthy adults, and then trust the adults to do the job. Paradoxically, if you’re not afraid, your kids will see that, and most of the time they’ll come to you.

Is the church (or small group) actually stepping up, or are they just outsourcing this uncomfortable job back to parents?

Again, depends on your context. But first of all, whaddaya mean “uncomfortable job”? Who says? Kids are naturally curious about everything, and educating them is a natural part of preparing them for the world. Why do we just accept that we’re somehow obliged to be performatively uncomfortable telling them about sex? There’s nothing inevitable about that, and mostly the recipe for being comfortable with it is “decide you’re going to be comfortable with it.” Emotions are contagious; the kids will mostly take their cues from you. So govern yourself. If you dramatize it, they’ll treat it like forbidden fruit. If you hem and haw and look at the floor, they’ll be uncomfortable. If you’re at peace with it, they will be too—and then sex won’t have the wrong kind of mystery attached to it.

There’s a lot of weird evangelical folkways around this. Different families handle things differently, and some parents are really spiky about other people answering their kids’ questions, so people are understandably cautious. If you surround your kids with a community that can actually handle adult matters like adults and give straight answers to serious questions, then you’re gonna be fine. Just don’t be overly precious about it, and let your community do its job.

How can we advocate for “waiting” today? (I’m looking for arguments that a teenager can relate to, even if they haven’t had a conversion experience yet!)

This would be another place to go back to Scripture first. Because God says to. If your 15-year-old isn’t prepared to remain chaste simply on that basis, then you have much, much bigger problems than who they’re gonna sleep with.

But it turns out that God has pretty good ideas, so if we dig into how all this works, we will discover that His instructions are also a wise way to live. You wait to ignite sexually until marriage for the same reason you wait until you’re out at the fire pit to start your fire, instead of starting it while you’re sitting on the couch: sex is unbelievably potent, and marriage is the container that will hold it safely. There’s a lot of potential starting points, but here are two of mine:

A. If you’re not ready to pay for the doctor bills, the diapers, the baby food, the whole shebang, then you’re not ready to do the things that lead to babies. And don’t tell me about birth control; it fails. Not a ton, these days, but if you’re the one it happens to, it won’t much matter that it is statistically rare. You made that kid; you owe your child the best launch into the world you can manage, and that means having adult money. Feeling really impatient and horny? Excellent—channel that energy into building the life you need; that’s the very first thing your sex drive is for.

B. Bad things happen when intimacy and commitment don’t match. If you get commitment too far ahead of intimacy, you’re a stalker. If you get intimacy too far ahead of commitment, you’re going to get really hurt. These two things are meant to go together, and intimacy within the shelter of that commitment is an entirely different experience than having sex in sales-and-marketing mode, trying to elicit commitment. (In a way, it’s analogous to the difference between doing good works because God graciously saved you versus trying to earn your salvation with your works.)

Can we define “boundaries” before marriage without turning it into a legalistic checklist of “how far is too far”? What is your exact answer if your kid asks for it?

That’s a conversation to have, not a set of rules to give. I usually aim to elicit the boundaries from them rather than just give them an answer. (Depending on the kid. I’m not averse to just giving an instruction if they really need it, but it’s better if they think it through themselves.) If they understand what marriage is for, and what sex is for, and how sexual attraction is designed to work in the mating process, then it’s not that hard to reason out a set of guidelines that makes sense.

“How far is too far?” is fundamentally the wrong question. It’s the question you ask when you’re chasing pleasure for its own sake, playing stupid games trying to stand as close to the edge of the cliff as you can without falling over. We’re not trying to just-barely-not-miss the target; we’re trying to hit the bullseye! There’s a better question to ask.

“What is my sexuality for?” is the right question. The goal is to deploy sexuality as a tool and enjoy it as God’s good gift without damaging each other in the process. We’re on a mission to take the world here, and sexuality is the mainspring of the whole enterprise. Once we’ve accepted that, we’re no longer preoccupied with how close to the line we can get without falling over. We’re pursuing the goal, and that’s a whole different conversation.

Once you’ve got the right question in front of you, it’s pretty obvious that if you don’t have a life and a marriage, but your hands are down somebody’s underpants, you took a wrong turn somewhere. If I need to get more directive at this point, I can, because now the “rules” aren’t a system to game, they’re just trail markers to let you know you need a course correction. If I need to: keep your clothes on. Keep your hands out of each other’s clothes and off each other’s genitals. Clothes notwithstanding, keep your genitals off each other too; until you’ve built a life and a marriage, you have better things to do than dry hump. This very minimal rule set is not in the Bible and I make no promises that if you keep them, you’re in the clear. NOT A CHANCE. No list of rules can do that; “if there had been a law that could have given life, truly righteousness would be through the Law.” That’s just not how it works. You have to reckon with God, and He knows your heart. Keep your heart in the right place, and you’ll be fine. Get sidetracked into pursuing momentary pleasure for its own sake, and I can’t help you no matter how many rules I give you. No amount of rules can save a wrongly directed heart.

How do we address the “puberty gap”? What should a young person do with being biologically mature when marriage is still far (5-10-15 years) away? When the Bible was written in the Middle East, women often married at 12-16, which almost coincided with puberty—this meant something entirely different back then!

As much as you can, minimize the gap. In my community, we’re raising them to be ready to step into adulthood at 18, and marry soon after. The ridiculously protracted childhoods we visit on our children do them a lot of damage. When teenagers make big drama out of something stupid, it’s frequently because they’re emotionally capable of caring about big things, but we won’t let them have anything big and consequential to care about. A 14-year-old can have a business they run themselves with a little oversight (that’s late, actually). A 10-year-old can cook a meal for people that won’t eat tonight if he doesn’t get it done. Expect and empower them to do consequential things, and they will. Nice side benefit: having perspective cuts down on stupid drama.

In God’s good providence, we may have kids that marry older, and they’ll have to learn how to live a chaste single life long-term. They’re not alone; Isaac didn’t marry Rebekah until he was 40 (Gen. 25:20). We can’t control everything. But there’s no reason why a 25-year-old should be struggling with long-term chastity because the kid is just not marriageable. We can get them ready early, and we should.

How do we dismantle the “test-drive” argument? Is compatibility something you find or something you build?

No two sinful human beings are compatible, period. You build compatibility with patience, self-control, and care for each other. Your brains aren’t fully developed until you’re 25, so that’s another good reason to marry young—God designed us to grow together in our latter years of development. It’s easier to become compatible if you get married while the concrete is still wet.

The stats on “test driving” are actually not that encouraging, so that’s worth looking into as well.

Our own marriage as a “silent teacher” of intimacy: how/what kind of example can we set for our children in this area through our own marriage?

Embody the distinction between private and secret. Your sexuality is private, shared between the two of you, but it is not secret. You have sex. You enjoy it. You are attracted to each other. We all know, and that’s ok. These things are not secrets, and you should not treat them like secrets. Struggling with what private-but-not-secret looks like? You poop. You do it in private. But it’s not a secret, and you’re not overly disturbed if someone happens to realize that you’re pooping right now, behind that door over there. In fact, for someone to be preoccupied with you pooping would be a sign of fairly serious immaturity. You poop discreetly, and intelligent, mature people discreetly leave you to your business. We all appreciate the same consideration from you; not everything needs to be a topic of preoccupation or conversation. Some things were made to be private.

You need not sneak about like adulterers in your own house. You’re living righteously in front of your kids; why would you model sneaking around? It’s ok for your kids to learn that if the bedroom door’s locked, they shouldn’t knock except in a real emergency. When they ask why, it’s ok to tell them “Mom and Dad need private time” and leave it at that (or however you choose to handle it). It’s ok for them to figure out what’s happening behind that door. It’s ok to teach them not to be preoccupied with it; don’t they have math homework to do or something? And those baseboards are starting to look pretty dirty…there’s an old toothbrush and a spray bottle under the kitchen sink….

What about you? How would you answer differently? What questions would you add to the list?

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Who Were the Nicolaitans?

3 March 2026

Reading the early chapters of Revelation, have you ever wondered who, exactly, the Nicolaitans were? So have a lot of other people. There’s not really an answer in the Bible itself.

Some people will try to tell you that it refers to a kind of clericalism. This is based entirely on etymology, dissecting the parts of the word. The theory goes that “Nicolaitans” comes from two Greek words: nikao, “to conquer,” and laos, “the people.” By this reasoning, the Nicolaitans aspired to be a clerical ruling class in the church seeking to control and subdue the people.

Among those who accept this definition, there’s quite a range of application. Some folks will use it to condemn Roman Catholic clericalism, but be fine with Baptist practice. At the other extreme, some folks will use it to condemn any hierarchy in the church at all. (They have to do some really fancy dancing in passages that talk about obeying your church authorities!) Of course, there’s a range of options in between, with various…let’s say interesting…embroideries on the theme. Some while ago, I encountered a guy who, in all seriousness, discouraged us from having a pastor, lest we fall into Nicolaitanism, and then volunteered to serve as our bishop so that we would have a “proper covering!” In practice, the working definition of Nicolaitanism is often “anybody who has more authority than I do.”

But this is all nonsense. Trying to reconstruct a whole belief system based only on the etymology of the group name is the equivalent of some archaeologist 2000 years hence claiming that the Rotary Club believed in reincarnation, based entirely on their name. It’s just not good evidence. For all we know, it was a cult of personality following a guy named Nicolas, with totally different heretical practices. There simply is no evidence that the Nicolaitans were clericalist, by whatever definition.

The best evidence we have is from the memory of the very early church. There turn out to be some records on this, and they don’t all agree with one another; that’s history for you. If you believe that George Washington, Ferdinand Magellan, and Julius Caesar were real people, this kind of evidence is why. Discernment and sober-mindedness are very much required, but this is a kind of evidence that honest people can work with. If you’d like to explore what our forbears remembered and wrote down, Dan Jennings was kind enough to collect a bunch of the early church references to the Nicolaitans. Enjoy.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

An Introduction to Romans

24 February 2026

A couple months ago, I had the opportunity to cover the introduction to the book of Romans in some detail. Enjoy!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Peach and the Turnip

17 February 2026

When you pick a peach and dig up a turnip, you have two very different things on your hands. Lots of people will eat a peach straight off the tree. There are few better ways to enjoy a peach, actually. Very few will pull a turnip out of the ground, rinse it off, and take a big bite standing right there in the garden.

Turnips can be wonderful, but we have to be convinced. It takes a good recipe and a skilled cook to get us to fall in love. And even then, some people just don’t like turnips. It’s ok; we all understand. Even if we think “You haven’t had turnips until you’ve had Aunt Minnie’s famous maple-glazed basil turnip slaw,” we understand that some folks don’t like them.

Peaches, on the other hand…if it’s hard to improve on a peach straight off the tree, it’s also hard to ruin one. I made a pretty bad peach pie once—bad enough that I wouldn’t give it away—but I happily had a slice with breakfast every day until it was gone. You almost have to burn peaches to ruin them, and even then…I once didn’t stir a batch of peach jam enough, and burned the bottom. I transferred what I could save to another pot, tasted it, and discovering a pleasantly smoky flavor, added a little Laphroig to accent it. It was divine. Everything I’ve ever made with peaches, I’ve been happy to eat, even if I wouldn’t serve it to a guest. Literally everything.

And so it is with school subjects. Geometry is a turnip: delightful in its way, but getting most people to like it takes skilled preparation and presentation. History, though…history is a peach. Everybody loves a good story, and history is one long story, with lots of little vignettes and episodes embedded in it, all of them crafted by the best Storyteller to ever live. When someone doesn’t like history, it’s because they had a teacher that actively ruined it for them.

Unfortunately, the profession seems to be full of people who delight in doing exactly that.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The “Higher Standard” is Bunk

10 February 2026

What does it mean when James says that teachers will face “a stricter judgment”? Most people interpret that to mean that teachers are held to a higher standard than “ordinary” Christians, but if you think about it a little bit, there are major problems with that idea.

First problem: the idea that there are two different moral standards in Christianity is fundamentally incoherent. Jesus is the standard; every Christian is called to be like Him. So if every Christian is already called to be like Jesus, who is the perfect moral standard, what is this allegedly higher standard teachers are supposed to reach? Or are we going the other way and saying that teachers really do have to be like Jesus, but “ordinary” Christians can slack a bit, and it’s ok?

Second problem: the idea that there are two different standards doesn’t really make sense in James. James’ own summary of the book is in 1:19-20: “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” The “swift to hear” section starts in 1:21 and runs through chapter 2. The “slow to speak” section is chapter 3. The “slow to wrath” section begins with chapter 4 and runs into 5.

All three of these sections lay out demands that James makes of “every man.” It does not seem coherent to say that the “slow to speak” section — a duty required of every man — turns around and says that some men have to meet a lower standard than others. But if it doesn’t mean that, what does it mean?

Notice that James doesn’t actually say that there’s a higher standard, either in other people’s eyes, or in God’s eyes. He says that teachers face a stricter judgment. What might “stricter judgment” mean, if not different standards? Well, perhaps we can see this more clearly by looking at how James himself explains his statement. What he does say is that the tongue is particularly difficult to control and particularly dangerous when it gets out of hand.

So “stricter judgment” in this context doesn’t mean two different standards. It means that teachers are called into an arena where failure is particularly likely and greatly consequential. A teacher’s job is to do neurosurgery on a guy who was just airlifted out of a 6-car pileup. This is not like being a pizza driver. When the neurosurgeon messes up, the patient dies, or maybe is damaged for life. When the pizza driver messes up, the pizza is a few minutes late — not good, as anybody who’s had to entertain a hungry crowd of 6-year-olds for an extra 10 minutes can attest — but nobody dies of it. Now, a pizza driver can also make a mistake that kills someone in the course of his work, and if he does, he’ll find that he’s held to the same standard as the neurosurgeon. But there’s a key difference: the pizza driver’s job is to avoid situations where someone could easily get killed; the neurosurgeon’s job is to get into situations where someone could easily get killed.

To put it a little more in James’ terms, the teacher’s job is to go into a California forest in the third straight year of drought and host a bonfire. There’s a lot that can go wrong, and when it does, as it sometimes will, we face judgment for it. Our judgment is stricter not because standards are higher, but because the stakes are. When we mess up, we damage people, sometimes for life. There’s a reckoning for that, and there should be.

Is this stricter judgment from men, or from God? Yes! As a teacher, I’ve certainly faced consequences from men when I’ve screwed up. No doubt there will be conversations on the last day as well.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Having Something to Show

3 February 2026

Several years ago, a new friend asked why we don’t invest more heavily in worldview and apologetics training in our ministry. Initially, I was surprised, because I think we do invest quite a bit in those things. But what he meant was hosting weekend seminars on Critical Race Theory or how to prove Jesus rose from the dead. Great ideas, but not where we put our focus. Here’s my account of why we do it the way we do.

Clearly, the evangelical church has utterly failed our youth; the American church is losing them in droves. I agree that training in worldview and apologetics is absolutely essential, but at the same time I know plenty of people who’ve had that training and wandered away anyhow. I’d say there are a couple other necessary ingredients for the apologetics training to bear fruit.

For instance, consider a guy like Russell Moore. He’s had those classes; he has all the access to apologetics resources you could ever want, and just look at him. On the other hand, remember Kim Davis, that county clerk from Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses once they told her that two men or two women could constitute a marriage? She was definitely not the articulate spokesperson we would wish for in a highly charged cultural debate, but she had courage enough to stand firm even when she didn’t know what to say. Kim Davis needs apologetics training, but teaching someone like her what to say is much easier than discipling someone like Moore out of his idolatrous lust to sit at the cool kids’ table.

Apologetics is hard work, and well worthy of study. I’ve written a whole year of worldview and apologetics curriculum with that in mind, and I’ve taught the apologetics portion of that in multiple churches, schools, and other venues. But years of practical ministry have shown me that apologetics training is the last thing, not the foundation. Apologetics gives you good things to say, but it’s character – love for God and others – that moves you to step up and say them. Apologetics training only helps if you have the courage to stand up and speak to start with.

Part of growing that character is getting grounded in the Story of Our People, getting your loves and loyalties rightly ordered, and learning what to expect in this part of that Story. I agree with you that there’s a lot of rough water between where we are now and the obvious, end-of-history winning, when Jesus breaks the pagan nations with a rod of iron. But I also think we need to grasp what winning looks like in the middle of the Story. There was a day when winning looked like God Himself being nailed to a cross by the very sinners He came to save. On another day, it looked like Stephen praying for his murderers; on another, they stoned Paul and left him for dead. This to say, God always leads us in triumph, but I don’t expect it to look good from the vantage point of the people who write headlines. They’re going to dance on our martyr graves – and we’ll still be winning. We took Rome in three centuries, and they were killing us the whole time.

So we need to conduct ourselves like we’re winning, even as we expect to be persecuted, driven from the public square, deplatformed, marginalized, and even martyred. We proclaim the truth, and God uses it to confound the “wise ones” of this world, even as they do their worst to us. Our testimony is a powerful part of the total picture here: loving God, loving our neighbor, loving what is true, good, and beautiful. If our marriages are thriving while theirs are falling apart, if our children are healthy and whole while theirs are neurotic and desperate, if we live with purpose while they drift rootless–that’s very hard to argue with, even if they think they have arguments. Apologetics training helps us highlight those things to pagans who are programmed not to see them. But it’s all for nothing if we got nothing to show.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

A Blue-Collar Guy with a Whip

27 January 2026

Of recent I found myself discussing immigration policy and the protests thereof with some folks. One of them—not a Christian, as it happens—quoted Matthew 25:40: “And the King will answer and say to them,`Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.'” This was presented as a mic-drop moment that required no further comment or argument: of course all Christians should be pro-immigration, legal or not, at all times and under all circumstances, because Jesus.

Perhaps you’ve encountered this kind of argument yourself. Are they right? What does one say to this?

We’ll get to the argument itself shortly, but before we do, there’s something we shouldn’t miss. Here we have someone, not a Christian, arguing in all seriousness that our national policy should be a certain way because that’s what Jesus wants. Or at the very least arguing that I, as a Christian, should support a particular national policy because that’s what Jesus wants.

Now, let me be the first to say that I agree! We, both individually and as a nation, should definitely do the things that Jesus wants. But isn’t this the Christian Nationalism that everybody from PBS to Kevin DeYoung warned us about? Why is the pagan, of all people, both encouraging me to be Christian Nationalist and arguably being a little Christian Nationalist themselves?

This is the sort of thing that you should point out when it comes up in conversation. Having done that, you can then proceed to the argument itself. Concerns about Christian Nationalism aside, does Jesus want us to have unrestricted immigration?

The verse doesn’t quite say that, does it? What it does say is that the way you treat “the least of these” is the way you’re treating God. He takes it that personally. So what should you do? Paul offers some very practical advice: “For if there is first a willing mind, it is accepted according to what one has, and not according to what he does not have. For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened; but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may supply their lack, that their abundance also may supply your lack—that there may be equality. As it is written, ‘He who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack.'” (2 Cor. 8:12-15)

So you should live generously. As a person or a church can be generous, a nation might also choose to be generous. But as with personal generosity, so with national generosity: it is accepted according to what one has, and not according to what he does not have. You can’t give what you ain’t got, in other words.

For example, my martial arts students and I used to run a team with Denver’s Severe Weather Shelter Network. We didn’t have the manpower to run a shelter all winter, but on the really cold nights (below freezing and wet, or below 20 regardless) we would activate the network. In those days, it was actually illegal, if you can believe it, to house people overnight in a church in Englewood city limits (yet another instance of government actively impeding charity). So we would gather people at a site in Englewood to warm up, and then bus them to suburban churches outside city limits for a hot supper and an overnight stay. The goal was to keep everybody safe on the most dangerous nights of the year. We had the manpower and space to do that for about 30 people at a time.

Unfortunately, there were some nights that we had to turn people away, because we didn’t have enough beds. And even when we had enough beds, there were violent offenders we couldn’t serve in that program—made it unsafe for everybody else. It wasn’t perfect, and it didn’t help everybody, but we did what we were able to do.

These people we couldn’t help…why didn’t I just bring them home with me? Because my home ceases to be a safe place for my wife if I have a couple meth-addicted rapists crashing on my couch. I can only do what I can do. And you know what? Everybody kind of understands this. In all the guilt-tripping I’ve seen in life—and I’m a pastor’s kid; I’ve seen a lot—nobody has ever condemned me for keeping my home a safe place for my wife. My home has a primary mission, and everybody understands these sorts of things when we’re talking about their own living room.

What people seem not to grasp is that the same thing is true for a nation. A nation also has a mission, and finite resources to accomplish that mission with. The United States is presently a place that people flee to rather than flee from, for which all thanksgiving. If we become inhospitable and hostile to everybody that ain’t us, if we just put up barbed wire at the borders and don’t let anybody in, that’s sin, and it would have to be reckoned with. But that’s not really the problem we have right now.

At the moment, we’re confronting the opposite problem: we cannot assimilate an infinite number of people fleeing from the most violent and tribalist places on earth without becoming just another place that people flee from. If we want to remain a place that people flee to, we have to decide how many people we can assimilate, and how we’re going to actually assimilate them. That number’s not zero, but it’s not infinite either–and since it’s not infinite, we have immigration laws and the law enforcement that goes with them.

Now that doesn’t mean that whoever happens to be doing that job in this moment in this country is getting everything right all the time. We need not believe that ICE is administered from heaven and peopled entirely with seraphim to believe that immigration enforcement is necessary. And unless you slept right through the entire Biden administration, you can’t possibly be unaware that we have a major problem with illegal immigration. So on the one hand, the fact that immigration enforcement is necessary doesn’t mean it’s being done well; on the other, we should not be surprised or disappointed to find that we’re in a season of vigorous enforcement.

Which brings us, alas, to Minneapolis. Having discovered in the wake of the Good shooting that interfering with actual ICE operations might have real consequences, protestors targeted a church instead. Now, judging from the video, these folks could stand to spend more time in church! Perhaps next time they’ll learn to listen more than they talk (which is a good rule of thumb for church, even for preachers. Especially for preachers, actually.) Why this particular church? The protestors had learned that one of the pastors of the church also has a day job working as a supervisor for ICE. Feeling that these two roles are a moral contradiction, and moved by compassion for an erring brother (James 5:19-20) and seeking his restoration in a spirit of gentleness (Galatians 6:1), they respectfully sought reasoned dialogue…

…oh wait. No, protestors invaded a church service chanting slogans, shouting down the speaker, and generally making a nuisance of themselves and seeking to intimidate worshipers, which was the point. “But wait, Tim,” you’ll say, “didn’t Jesus kind of do the same thing–or worse–in the Temple?”

Why yes He did. Twice, in fact. And then again, no He didn’t. Let’s look closer.

The Second Temple religious authorities were running a racket, and everybody knew it. According to the Levitical law, when you came up to make an offering, the sacrificial animal had to be without blemish. The original intent of the law was for you to bring your own animal, but of course if you didn’t have an unblemished lamb (ox, goat, turtledove), it was permissible for you to buy one from someone who did. When you brought the animal, the priest would inspect it to ensure it was truly unblemished and fit for sacrifice, and then the ceremonies could proceed. With me so far?

Well, over time, here’s what happened. The Temple authorities decided to provide for sale (for the worshipers’ convenience, of course) pre-approved, unblemished animals, available right there on the Temple grounds. Of course, all that pre-approving and keeping animals unblemished takes effort, so you paid handsomely for the service. And since your homegrown animal competes with that lucrative enterprise, what do you think the odds are of your animal passing inspection?

But we’re not done yet. In the sacred precincts of the Temple, of course only sacred money may be used, so you have to buy your pre-approved sheep with Temple shekels. For your convenience, there are money-changers right there on Temple premises where you can exchange your everyday money for the sacred Temple shekels you need to buy that pre-approved sheep. For a “reasonable” fee, of course.

Long story short, these guys are getting rich fleecing the worshipers, but it gets worse.

The whole operating principle of Old Covenant worship was “draw near to God, but not too near.” Temple was therefore built in a series of layers; who you are determines how close to the center you can come.

At the center, the Holy of Holies, the dwelling of God Himself. Only the High Priest enters there, and then only once a year, on the Day of Atonement.
Just before that, the Holy Place, which housed the altar of incense, the table of showbread, and the golden lampstand. Only specifically consecrated priests could enter that far.
The next layer outward housed the laver where the priests washed and the altar of burnt offering, where (only circumcised Jewish male) worshipers would present their sacrifices to God. This is as close as most Jewish men would ever get.
The next layer out was the Court of the Women, where the women would come to pray–and that was as close as they could come.
The next layer out from that was the Court of the Gentiles, which was specifically intended to be a place where all nations could come approach Yahweh and offer up worship on Mount Zion. The Court of the Gentiles was as close as a Gentile was allowed to come to the physical, earthly dwelling place of God.

Guess where the Temple authorities housed their whole money-changing-and-animal-bazaar? That’s right — the Court of the Gentiles. Imagine being a God-fearing Gentile: you come up to the Temple to pray, and the one place you’re allowed to be has been turned into a crooked flea market! There you stand, up to your ankles in manure, trying to pray with swindlers hard at work all around you. Do you see why Jesus quoted the prophets as He did? “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it ‘a den of thieves!'” (Isaiah 56:7, Jeremiah 7:11)

So Jesus trashed the place. Twice. Once at the beginning of His ministry, and again at the end—fitting bookends for a life that was going to put the whole enterprise out of business for good.

Returning to the Minneapolis question: did Jesus interrupt a worship service? Not a bit of it! He interrupted the racketeers who were impeding the worship! If we apply this story to the Minneapolis fiasco, the protestors are not Jesus; the protestors are the money-changers making it hard for people to worship. The part of Jesus would be played by a brawny blue-collar guy who drove the protestors out of the building with a whip so people could worship in peace. A cop with a taser would be a culturally acceptable substitute, I suppose.

Maybe next time…

6 Comments | Apologetics, Christian Nationalism | Tagged: Cities Church, ice, immigration, Minneapolis, protest | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

And the Rest of DeYoung’s Six Questions

20 January 2026

For reasons I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m taking up Kevin DeYoung’s Six Questions for Christian Nationalists. I tackled the first one in that post, and got sidetracked — or did I? — talking about the rhetoric of that one. That turned out to be a discussion unto itself, so we’re handling the rest of them here. To review, here are the questions:

Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism?
When and how does the nation act as a corporate moral person?
What is the purpose of civil government?
What does it mean for the civil magistrate to promote true religion?
Was the First Amendment a mistake?
What is the historical example of the political order you would like to see in America?

When and how does the nation act as a corporate moral person? Based on how God talks to nations, always. Now of course we’re using a metaphor here; a nation is not a person. But a nation can sin; Daniel and Ezra both confess the sins of their nations, and the prophets regularly take whole nations to task for their sins. A nation really isn’t just a collection of individuals; there’s authority in the entity. When we went to war in WWII, it wasn’t just a collection of Americans who all decided to grab a rifle out of the closet and go across the pond to pot a German or three. America went to war. The war is just or not; the treaty that ends it is just or not; we keep it or not. All these are things the nation does, and they have moral qualities.

Likewise, the nation has internal responsibilities, and those responsibilities include limitations. We can’t make certain sins illegal, because they’re beyond the province of the civil magistrate (lust, hatred, covetousness). We must make other sins illegal, because they are within the province of the civil magistrate, like adultery, murder (including in utero), or theft.

What is the purpose of civil government? Paul says the civil magistrate is God’s servant (diakonos) to be a reward to good and a terror to evil. The one time God ever laid out a whole system of law, it was in Torah. God did not say that system should spread to all the Gentile nations, but He did say that the nations would see it in action and be impressed by the wisdom of it. God institutes multiple authorities (family, civil, ecclesial), each with their separate responsibilities and powers.

What does it mean for the civil magistrate to promote true religion? Solomon built the Temple and dedicated it; he didn’t serve as a priest in it. The civil magistrate should never endorse a false religion, should be visibly devoted to the true religion, and should have the sort of public space that the true religion cultivates. Ultimately, every single person in the civil government should be an orthodox Christian, not because there’s some sort of religious test for office, but because every single person in the world should be an orthodox Christian. That’s what the Great Commission means, and it’s high time we embraced it.

Was the First Amendment a mistake? Of course not. Some of the uses to which it’s been put certainly have been, though. We’ve had some absurdly broad readings of the establishment clause (e.g., pretending it requires a federal judge to be officially agnostic on the question of whether God has spoken in the Ten Commandments) and some absurdly narrow readings of the free exercise clause (e.g., pretending that covid panic justified closing churches but not BLM rallies).

What is the historical example of the political order you would like to see in America? Having begun with a trick question, DeYoung is ending the same way. The American political order was historically unprecedented, and he knows it. It was an experiment, widely acknowledged as such at the time, and continues to be widely acknowledged. (For evidence of this claim, if you need it, Google “the American experiment” and have a look at the 575,000 results.)

There’s no reason to think a more Christian America is going to morph into something we can find in a history book. Our past has lessons worth mining, and there have been some wrong turns that we should repent of — taking the Ten Commandments out of the courthouse comes to mind — but we’re headed to the New Jerusalem! You can’t ignore the rearview mirror, but “Eyes on the road!” is an expression for a reason — you gotta look where you’re going. Our goal is to get closer to the New Jerusalem within the framework we’ve been providentially given, not to recapture some bygone age.

DeYoung is, in the main, a grounded and sensible guy, and his work is often helpful. I hope that this reflection on his questions will be helpful to you.

Leave a Comment » | Christian Nationalism, Controversies, Kingdom of God | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

That First Question

13 January 2026

Christian Nationalism has gotten to be enough of a talking point that even I am speaking to it; it has come to this. I commend to your attention Kevin DeYoung’s Six Questions for Christian Nationalists, but not particularly because I’m a fan. Beginning by talking about how he could almost be a Christian nationalist (but not quite), DeYoung positions himself as the loyal opposition, the thoughtful friend who’s just raising some things that more impetuous voices maybe haven’t thought of. By most accounts, he’s eminently qualified to be just such a voice: frequently grounded, charitable, and quite thoughtful.

Which makes his performance all the more disappointing.

While I haven’t felt a need to embroider “Christian Nationalist” on the back of my jacket or anything, I’ve certainly been accused of being one, and I’ve a bunch of friends who cheerfully cop to it. So it seems like something worth speaking to. Without further ado, here are the questions:

Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism?
When and how does the nation act as a corporate moral person?
What is the purpose of civil government?
What does it mean for the civil magistrate to promote true religion?
Was the First Amendment a mistake?
What is the historical example of the political order you would like to see in America?

I’ll take up questions 2-6 in another post, because it turns out that first question deserves a whole lot of consideration.

Antisemitism, racism, and Nazism are sin, and not the subtle kind that takes grey hair and decades of walking with God to see. All three of them are big, ugly, obvious violations of very basic biblical ethics. If you’re feeling like antisemites, racists, or Nazis might “kind of have a point,” I suggest prayer, fasting, and several gallons of brain bleach. Of course, all three terms have been badly debased in current discourse; in their slur-from-left-of-center usage, they apply to anybody to the right of Trotsky, especially if he’s winning an argument. That’s another discussion; here I’m assuming the real definitions of all three terms. Which is assuming quite a lot, but let that go for now.

With that said, why a whole blog post about the question? Let’s look at it again: Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism?

Notice anything odd about this? I see two things that concern me. The first is the rhetorical strategy of leading with this question. The assumption none-too-subtly embedded here is that the mere designation “Christian nationalist” implies some sort of legacy of antisemitism, racism, or Nazism which must be dealt with. If a person is a Christian nationalist, then we should immediately check for those other things too — or so DeYoung would have us believe.

Pardon me, schoolmarm, but who sez? This purported legacy would be news to the Armenians, who were the first to become a Christian nation in A.D. 301. It would be a real shock to the Kingdom of Aksum (in modern-day Ethiopia), which became the second Christian nation shortly thereafter, in the 320s. That’s where Christian nationalism got its start: Asia and Africa. When, exactly, did the idea of a Christian nation acquire antisemitic/racist/Nazi connotations? Or did it ever?

I think this is bald assumption on DeYoung’s part, and a particularly odd assumption given his admission that the term “Christian nationalism” has no single accepted definition. The term is being applied to everybody from George Washington to Randall Terry to pastors who just think America should stop doing things that make God mad. Which is a good idea, come to think of it. What is it about that that somehow suggests antisemitism? Nothing, that’s what — which means DeYoung is just indulging in a little old-fashioned guilt-by-association smear here. Balls.

“Come on, Tim,” you’ll say. “Surely you’re overthinking this. It’s just a question. You can just say you’re against those things and move on.”

Which brings us to the second issue. Look at the question again: Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism? Consulting a dictionary, I find that “renounce” means to give up something once held, to reject something once believed, to repudiate an authority once followed. In other words, “Do you renounce antisemitism, etc.?” is the equivalent of “Have you stopped beating your wife?” I never held to any of that bilge; I have no need to renounce it. DeYoung thinks Christian nationalists need to renounce these things. What’s he trying to say?

Kevin DeYoung may not be doing this entirely consciously — I don’t know his heart, after all, just what he said — but he’s far too educated and articulate not to know what the words mean. What he’s doing with his very first question is positioning Christian Nationalism as necessarily connected to antisemitism, racism, and Nazism in some undefined way. Then he generously offers the particular person answering the question an opportunity to repent of their associations. “Why yes, Kevin, I have stopped beating my wife” is the price of admission to even have the rest of the conversation.

This is a clinic in well-constructed, if cheap, rhetoric. I commend it as an example worthy of study by all rhetoricians. The mechanics of the smear are subtle; the effect is anything but. It is a verbal act of war, and he’s employing it against his brothers.

Kevin DeYoung should renounce his unjustified smear tactics. And yes, I meant renounce.

Leave a Comment » | Apologetics, Christian Nationalism, Controversies, Kingdom of God | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

You, Naively Dead

12 January 2026

A cop of my acquaintance once told me that most people don’t really go all-out when they’re “resisting arrest.” The way he described it, normal people have a kind of internal governor that kicks in when they know they screwed up. Sure, they’ll take a swing to save face, or try to get away, but at the end of the day they know they deserve to be in trouble, and it shows. There are, he said, two* major exceptions: hardened criminals with nothing to lose, and spoiled rich kids who simply can’t believe that a lowly cop has the right to lay hands on them. That spoiled rich kid tends to get really hurt, because he escalates without any appreciation for the consequences.

Various voices are encouraging you to be that spoiled rich kid. They want you to think that you can decide for yourself, right on the sidewalk, what a specific law enforcement officer is allowed to do. What orders they can give. Whether their agency’s jurisdiction requires your obedience.

That’s not how our system—or any legal system—works. In the moment, you comply under protest, and adjudicate the matter later in court. Trying to fight or flee is how you win an award of the Darwin variety. Look, I’m maybe better equipped than average for such an adventure. Against a handful of LEOs, at a moment’s notice, with whatever I got in my pockets that day? Forget it. I would not expect to survive. Whatever is going on, if it’s not worth that, I’m complying on the sidewalk, and we can sort it out in court later.

Should it be that way? Probably yes, but who cares? That’s a whole separate conversation. Lots of things should be some way. Healthcare should be transparently priced. Home builders should be allowed to build what the market wants. Unicorns should frolic in the median along the highway. The courtroom is a fine place for addressing what should be; on the sidewalk, we need to deal with what is.

The voices encouraging you to do a dumb on the sidewalk are knowingly putting you in harm’s way. I repeat, this is not an accident. You, naively dead, are politically useful. Your friends, radicalized by your untimely demise when you were “Only trying to [fill in whatever platitude]” are even more useful.

Me, I just don’t wanna go to your funeral yet. Please be an adult about this, and don’t play stupid games with use-of-arms professionals.

*A couple of LEO friends suggest a third category: people with particular kinds of mental health issues.

Leave a Comment » | Uncategorized | Tagged: ice, law-enforcement, minnesota, protest | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols