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…

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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:

  1. Do you unequivocally renounce antisemitism, racism, and Nazism?
  2. When and how does the nation act as a corporate moral person?
  3. What is the purpose of civil government?
  4. What does it mean for the civil magistrate to promote true religion?
  5. Was the First Amendment a mistake?
  6. 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.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Waorani, Ayore,…University?

30 September 2025

Is Charlie Kirk a martyr?

I’ve seen some well-intentioned brothers questioning whether “martyr” is the appropriate word for Charlie. The answer is a hearty and unequivocal yes. He understood — as many Christians do not — that loving your neighbor means seeking the common good. To that end he spoke on political matters, because seeking the common good is what politics is about (at least if you’re a discerning Christian). In the process, he publicly and unashamedly preached the gospel of Jesus Christ on college campuses across the country. He moved easily from discussions of homosexuality, gender, taxation, and family into the gospel, because he correctly saw that they’re very directly related. In this he was like the Apostle Paul, who also spoke to those topics and moved easily from them to the gospel and back.

And he was killed for it. That’s the definition of martyrdom, if St. Paul counts as a martyr.

If you think he should have stuck with just preaching about Jesus, heaven and hell, the promise of eternal life, the cross, and so forth…a lot of people agree with you. So you got that going for you. But that’s not what Jesus did, and it’s not what Paul did. So there’s that.

My first thought, when I heard the news, was “I hope they like those card tables and ‘Prove me wrong’ banners, because there’s gonna be a lot more of them.” To my eye, this is a moment analogous to the murder of Jim Elliot and his friends by the Waorani, or the five New Tribes missionaries by the Ayore. A whole generation of young men have just decided what they want to be when they grow up. The people who were rejoicing at Charlie’s death have no idea what they’ve unleashed.

You no longer need to go halfway around the world to some remote jungle to risk your life for your faith. You can do it at the university campus just down the street. So let’s get to it.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Biblicist and Classical Theist?

29 July 2025

Ever since seminary, I’ve been suspicious of classical theism. Too many assertions that flatly contradict the Bible…or so I thought. To be fair, there was no shortage of classical theists who were happy to confirm my suspicions.

Of late, I’ve found myself in conversation with a biblically faithful classical theist that I respect: Chris Morrison. You can listen in on our first discussion here: “Is Classical Theism Biblical? Starting the Discussion.” Hope it’s helpful to you.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Anatomy of Apostasy

1 July 2025

When someone has–as far as we can tell–come into the faith, but then walked away again, it can be hard to tell exactly what happened. Three things are possible:

1) This person was hanging out with us, being a social chameleon to ‘try on’ Christianity, and never believed any of it. That’s certainly possible–it’s been a time-honored way to access a Christian dating pool, for example. (It’s also a little dangerous; people who start out like this have a way of meeting Jesus if they hang out for long enough.)

2) This person did not understand the gospel and was trying to work their way into being a Christian. Your group may present the gospel clearly, but as every preacher knows, people hear very selectively, and it can be hard to overcome their prior programming. The ‘folk Christian’ idea that good boys go to heaven and bad boys go to hell is very, very strong, and some people will hear absolutely everything you say through that filter. These folks leave because nobody can actually live the life they’re trying to live. They’re exhausted — of course they are! — and they don’t want to keep up the pretense anymore. Who could blame them?

3) This person understood and believed the gospel, and then left the faith for whatever reason. Often this is because Scripture told them a hard truth they didn’t want to hear. Sometimes it’s a costly moral demand, and they’d rather retreat from the faith than grow into obedience. For more status-conscious people, it’s often a realization of just how much their faith — if they take it seriously — will separate them from the cool kids. For prophetically gifted people, it’s often a preference for demonic lies over the hard truths of the Spirit. But then, sometimes it’s none of those things. Sometimes it’s exhaustion from faithfulness, as the readers of Hebrews were experiencing.

Happily, we don’t actually have to know which of these things happened to know what to do. Where this person belongs is back in the fold, walking with Jesus. No matter whether that will be a prodigal son returning or a fake believer becoming a real one, we preach the gospel to them and the goodness of God that calls them to repentance. Paul preached the gospel to the Romans (Rom.1:1-17) even when they were faithful. We can certainly preach it to the faithless, confident that it’s what they need to hear.

If it turns out this person actually grasped the gospel all along, great! This is an opportunity to help them see how the same truths they’ve already grasped work out in daily life. For MANY Christians, their honest answer to Paul’s question in Gal. 3:3 (“Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?”) would be “Yes, of course! How else would you do it?”

Anytime someone says “I just couldn’t do it anymore,” I always ask them what it was they were doing that they could no longer stand to do. Because, mark it down, they didn’t get sick of all the Spirit-produced love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control that was overflowing in their life, and wish instead for hatred, misery, conflict, short-temper, cruelty, evil, coarseness, betrayal, and impulsiveness.

But something happened. Listen. Find out what, if you can. But even if you never figure out what happened, bring them to Jesus. That’s always the answer.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

As Ideology, Useless

17 June 2025

As an ideology, an arrangement of mental furniture, Christianity is absolute trash. If all you’re after is a way to arrange your head, an “I like to think of things like this…” kind of thing, then save yourself a pile of trouble and just go Buddhist-lite. You’ll be a lot happier. Your ideology won’t comport with reality in spots, but you can always blame that on residual Western dualistic thinking, and just try to transcend the contradiction.

Christianity doesn’t claim to be an arrangement of mental furniture that will make you happier, more satisfied with life, or a better person somehow. That’s not the claim. The claim is that it’s actually true. God incarnate walked the earth in the Man, Jesus Christ. He lived in perfect harmony with the Holy Spirit, and empowered by the Spirit, He healed the sick, preached freedom to the captives, cast out demons, and was murdered by a coalition of the respectable people. When He died on the cross, every sin, every dark thing, every character flaw and sickness, everything that stands between you and God — it was all nailed to the cross with Jesus, died on the cross with Jesus, was buried in the heart of the earth with Jesus. And when God raised Him from the dead three days later, He did not come out of the grave dragging a Hefty bag of your crap. It’s all done, it’s gone, it’s taken care of.

Now as an ideology, that’s pretty useless. You can think of your unfortunate actions as sins, and your sins as forgiven, but that doesn’t really change anything much if it’s just a way of thinking about it. But if it’s true, then it’s a truth that remakes the entire moral and physical universe. If it’s true, then all the things you’ve ever done that make you just sick to think of them? There’s a medicine that cures that sickness. You need only accept the reality of what Jesus has done for you; you could be free today, and stay free for the rest of your life.

And it is true.

People often object at this point: “I did those things. If someone has to suffer for them, it should be me.” Sure. If God had consulted with you beforehand, you would be morally obligated to object, wouldn’t you? But He didn’t consult you. He just did it. He loves you that much, so He just conspired to pay all the costs on your behalf and set you free forever. And now it’s too late to object; it’s done.

You can either pretend He didn’t do it, or say “Thank you.”

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Posted by Tim Nichols

De-Christianisation as Apologetics

20 May 2025

Rough way to find out, but here we go…

Watch the whole interview here. If you’re not familiar with her work, Louise Perry is the author of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution and one of the more incisive commentators of our day when it comes to sex and gender issues. In this interview, she talks about her journey and why she intends to raise her children Christian even though she’s not a Christian (yet).

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Posted by Tim Nichols

What Would Jesus Doubt?

31 August 2014

So the other day a feller named David R. Henson delivered himself of the passing odd conclusion that God’s Not Dead is not a Christian movie. Here, from the horse’s mouth, is the critique:

I’m not going to mince words about this.

Heaven is For Real and God’s Not Dead are not Christian movies.
They are not even religious movies. They are schmaltzy, vacuous, “inspirational” movies.

If a film leaves viewers with a fist full of answers rather than questions, with declarative reassurances that heaven is real and God is alive, then it’s not really a movie about faith and it’s certainly not a Christian movie.

Those films are little more than mindless memes.

You can read the rest of the article here. I haven’t seen Heaven is for Real, so I’ll confine my comments here to God’s Not Dead.

Twenty years ago, I had a chance to hear Billy Sprague speak on the interaction of Christian truth and art. He told us about his own grief when his fiancee died, and how angry he was at God for allowing it to happen. He described his feelings when he got in his car one day and Twyla Paris’ song “God Is In Control” came on the radio.

God is in control
We believe that His children will not be forsaken
God is in control
We will choose to remember and never be shaken
There is no power above or beside Him, we know
Oh, God is in control,
Oh, God is in control

Furious, he turned the radio off. Of course God was in control, he thought. The problem was, God just didn’t seem to care.

Later, another song, “Show the Way” by David Wilcox, got his attention.

You say you see no hope
You say you see no reason we should dream
That the world would ever change
You’re saying love is foolish to believe

‘Cause there’ll always be some crazy
With an army or a knife
To wake you from your day dream
Put the fear back in your life

Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify
What’s stronger than hate
Would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late?

He’s almost in defeat
It’s looking like the evil side will win
So on the edge of every seat
From the moment that the whole thing begins, it is

Love who makes the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we’re alone

In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote the play
For in this darkness love can show the way

So now the stage is set
Feel you own heart beating in your chest
This life’s not over yet
So we get up on our feet and do our best

We play against the fear
We play against the reasons not to try
We’re playing for the tears
Burning in the happy angel’s eyes, for it’s

Love who makes the mortar
And it’s love who stacked these stones
And it’s love who made the stage here
Although it looks like we’re alone

In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it’s love that wrote the play
For in this darkness love will show the way
Show the way, show the way

He sang the song for us. Then he said, “Did you notice that they both make the same point?” Both songs tell us that God is in control, that He cares about us, that it’s going to be okay in the end. But “God Is In Control” just says it straight out. It’s–Billy’s words–“a sermon set to music.” “Show the Way” isn’t. It’s a parable. It takes you down an indirect, more artistic path show the truth to someone who might not be ready to hear the sermon yet. Then he said something that I wrote down in my notebook, something I’ve never forgotten: “Art takes truth past doors where truth can’t go alone.”

Then he did something else I’ve never forgotten: he urged us not to be contemptuous of “God is in Control.” There’s nothing wrong with a sermon, he said. There’s nothing wrong with setting a sermon to music. It didn’t have the power to reach him in his deep grief, but that’s not a defect in the sermon. At that time, he needed a song that would take the indirect path, and help him to see God at work. “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.”

“God’s Not Dead” falls into the same category as “God is in Control.” It’s a cinematic sermon, and a bit of a heavy-handed one at that, telling rather than suggesting, driving home its point without a hint of self-doubt, posing questions only in order to answer them.

That’s what bothers Henson so much. “If a film leaves viewers with a fist full of answers rather than questions, with declarative reassurances that heaven is real and God is alive, then it’s not really a movie about faith and it’s certainly not a Christian movie.” In Henson’s mind, a proper Christian movie would make you struggle. It would leave you questioning, doubting.

Henson goes on in his article to talk about one such film, and I’m looking forward to watching it. I expect it to be a good experience. There’s certainly room for such films, and we could do with a few more of them.

Doubts and questions are okay–God can handle them. When we have doubts and questions, we certainly should be honest about that. And it’s true, sometimes good art can reach us in our doubts and questions when simple assurances leave us cold. Art takes truth past doors where truth can’t go alone. But it is possible to be too much the cynic, too enamored of the doubts and questions. It is possible to fall in love with one part of the process and forget the goal.

Isaiah had answers by the bucketload, not that anybody wanted to listen. Jeremiah’s answers were likewise unpopular. John the Baptist got himself tossed into jail for having one answer too many, and being a little too certain about it. If only he’d had some tolerance for ambiguity where Herod’s marital choices were concerned…. And what they did to him was nothing compared to what they did to Jesus for speaking out His answers a bit too loudly.

All these guys were sure–as God’s Not Dead is sure–that God really is not dead, that He really does sovereignly control events, that He really does find people in their time of need, and they really do respond–even people who hate Him, or think they do. Lots of answers there, no question.

That has its place. There’s a time for every purpose under heaven.

In ninth grade, I entered public high school academically well ahead of most of my peers (and lagging behind socially, just to complete the stereotype!) Predictably, I tested into honors classes in history and humanities. There were about 40 of us in my grade who were in all the same classes, and what a mad little coterie of brainy sophists we were! Now, we weren’t so far gone, back in those days, that we just celebrated all the different interpretations of a thing. We argued ferociously over whose interpretation was a better reading of the facts. But — sophisticates, we — we all understood that it was a conflict of interpretations. We would always say, “This is my interpretation,” never, “This is just how it is.”

So one day, the girl who sat in front of me in World History class–a gorgeous, willowy blonde named Danielle–turned around and said, “Tim, I have a question. What does the Bible say about having sex before you’re married?”

No rube I, I said, “I can tell you my interpretation.”

“I don’t want to hear another interpretation, Tim,” she said. “I want to know what it says.”

Now, a philosophy or a hermeneutics professor would be tempted to point out the inevitability of interpretation, and intellectually speaking, the prof would be right. Spiritually speaking, though, the prof would be an idiot to voice that notion at that moment. Danielle didn’t need a lecture on philosophy or hermeneutics. She had a boyfriend that she loved, she was making a really important decision, and she needed a clear word from God. She was asking me, as God’s representative, to give her one.
God be thanked, I was not too sophisticated to see that.

So I told her. “It says to wait until you’re married.”

She gave me a long look. “It’s that simple?”

“Yes.”

And it is.

God’s Not Dead isn’t high cinematic art. It’s direct, simple and straightforward. Perhaps even childlike. But unless you become like one of these, you will by no means enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Science: Universals and Particulars, again

11 October 2009

This universals and particulars thing just isn’t going away.

In this week’s tour (or more correctly, half-tour), Tackett said that philosophy’s task is to deal with the universals, and science’s task is to deal with the particulars, but science is now taking a more philosophical mode and trying to evangelize for materialistic Darwinian philosophy.

This is half true.  The institutions of modern science certainly do evangelize for Darwinian materialism.  But why should scientists stay away from the universals and stick to particulars?  And is that even possible?

No, it isn’t.  Psalm 19 — of which this tour has correctly made much use — works from particulars to universals.  The heavens declare the glory of God.  A scientist rightly studying the heavens will hear them declaring the glory of God, and he will, in turn, glorify God and be thankful.  God has so made the world that the particulars of it educate an observer in certain key universals — notably Yahweh’s eternal power and God-ness — and obligate that observer to worship Him.  When scientists don’t worship, it’s sin.

Moreover, the whole edifice of modern science rests on a Christian worldview to start with, as Pearcey and Thaxton show clearly in The Soul of Science.    The development and long-term support for science in Western culture depends on a series of Christian beliefs:  the material world is really there (Hindus and Buddhists, among others, take it as an article of faith that it isn’t); the material world is separate from God, and valuable, and behaves precisely in an extrinsic order that is comprehensible to man, and so on.  Most of the people in the world do not affirm these things even today, and very few cultures in the history of the world have ever espoused them. So universals and particulars can’t be separated in science because to even do science is to rest on a certain set of universals.

Since these beliefs are Christian, the implication is that science today is subsisting on borrowed capital and institutional momentum, and has been committing a slow and painful suicide for a century.  Exactly.

Everything is an echo of the Trinity.  In the Trinity, universals (one divine Nature) and particulars (three Persons) are equally ultimate.  Universals and particulars must ultimately must be understood together, and in terms of one another, and so it is in science.  Trying to separate universals from particulars is just absurd; we can certainly comprehend partially, but real separation can’t happen in the world God made.  Trying to keep true particulars, but build on false universals, is just as absurd.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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