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, and 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 if we 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.
  • 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. 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 the people could worship in peace. A cop with a taser would be an acceptable substitute, I suppose.

Maybe next time…

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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:

  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?

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.

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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

Whining About the Bulletin Board

7 October 2025

Over the past several years, I’ve noticed a number of people asserting their right not to be argued with on social media. The rant typically goes something like this:

“I’m posting MY opinions on MY personal page. I’m not here to debate you; don’t come up on MY page and argue with me. You got something to say, feel free to post your personal opinions on your personal page.”

I’m not gonna mince words here: this is a bratty, stupid, morally incoherent position, despite its pretense of even-handedness. A public statement has a privilege (people see it) and a cost (people get to respond to it). A private archive has a privilege (immunity to criticism) and a cost (nobody sees it). The rant above attempts to claim the privileges of both a public statement and a private archive while paying the costs of neither. Let’s break it down:

There’s an important sense in which “my personal Facebook page” doesn’t exist. When we’re talking about a blog or a website, it makes a lot of sense to talk about “my personal page;” people have to intentionally navigate to your page to see it, and when they do, they can’t complain about what they get. It’s your page, after all. But that’s not how social media works. When someone logs onto their social media feed, they don’t have to navigate to your “personal page” to see your content; it gets served up to them in their feed. Which means your “personal page” isn’t some private archive of your thoughts; it’s a public bulletin board where you post your thoughts so the algorithm can share them with the world.

And let’s be honest, you know this. The reason you post something on Facebook rather than a blog/website because you want more people to see it. So you are setting out the reap the benefits of airing your opinion publicly. That’s fine; there’s nothing wrong with that. But you can’t wimp out when it comes time to pay the costs. Basic conversational norms dictate that if you get to speak to me, then I get to reply. It’s not a one-way street.

If you just wanted a private archive of your thoughts, you can certainly do that. And if I’ve somehow hacked my way into your private diary and I’m replying, you’re totally within your rights to complain. But when you post on social media, that’s not what’s happening.

Somebody will say, “but I use my personal Facebook page as my private archive,” but that’s like saying “I use my F-250 as a bicycle” and then getting salty when someone doesn’t like it that you’re driving down the bike path. You’re attempting to assert a right to use your Facebook page in a counterfactual manner, and attempting to get everybody else to join you in your pretense. You don’t have a right to that.

Now, depending on your platform, you may have the ability to delete the comments you don’t like, but that doesn’t change the moral nature of the situation. You will state your opinion to the world, someone will respond, and you’ll delete it. They’re the reasonable person who gave a public response to a public statement, and you’re the dictatorial twit that censored it rather than replying. You’re hardly the first person to notice that it’s easier to exercise power than reason. If that’s who you want to be…good luck with that.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Why Complementarian?

19 August 2025

From the time I became aware that Christian egalitarianism was a thing (age 18 or 19), I have been self-consciously complementarian. The sexes are made with different and complementary natures, with corresponding complementary duties and biblical commands. Those commands are not arbitrary, but rooted in the realities of the world God created. It was not a new concept to me even then; it’s just that I was 18 or so before I knew there was a term for it. 

Learning the term was quite a discovery, because that meant there were other views. I looked into alternative views and concluded that they weren’t convincing. I remained complementarian. At the same time, over the years, I noticed various self-professed complementarians who I found appalling, either because they had no understanding of the natural world, or because they read the church epistles as though they had been written to Ward and June Cleaver (about which more later). Nonetheless, centering the complementarity of the sexes seemed to me the best way to describe the Bible’s teaching, so I stuck to the term complementarian.

Of course, people to the left of me have been trying to drive me away from both the term and the convictions it represents for decades, arguing that my adherence to complementarianism implied endorsement of various abusive and denigrating views of women that I don’t hold and never have. But I knew what the term meant, so I ignored them. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to have the conversation, but I’m not moving on the term.)

More recently, I’ve found myself on the receiving end of pressure from the right, which has been something of a surprise. These attempts argue that “complementarian” implies various defections from biblical authority that I do not hold and never have held. As with my favorite lefties, they can point to actual humans who profess to be complementarian and commit the defection in question. Certainly they exist — as one commentator famously noted, “The left wing of complementarianism is the right wing of egalitarianism.” This testimony is true, but I’m not going to be driven off a thick view of complementarity because somebody else is complementarian in name only. As with the lefties, I am happy to have the conversation, but I’m not much impressed with the attempt to drive me off the term. (And I would point out that their preferred terms also have some impressive vulnerabilities.)

Very recently, Aaron Renn has weighed in. (And you should read it!) He’s not involving himself in the gender debates so much as making some observations about the generational development of different ideas. He correctly argues that the Grudem/Piper version of complementarianism was not traditional, but an attempt to respond biblically to feminism while also self-consciously breaking with the past. On that basis, he considers his article title justified: “Complementarianism is New.” That’s quite a leap, considering that in the article itself, he also says “The traditional view that Piper, Grudem, and company rejected was also complementarian.” (emphasis his)

Just so. The traditional view was complementarian, the teaching of the Bible is complementarian, and no one need be embarrassed to use the word “complementarian” to describe their complementarian view.

Speaking for myself, I’m complementarian (and patriarchal); have been my whole life. I know what the word means, despite the various weirdbeards and feminists-in-all-but-name who wrongly claim it, and despite the various haters who wrongly try to tar me with one or the other of those groups. If I may put it bluntly, nobody needs the permission of some self-appointed gaggle of word police to use an appropriately descriptive term for their view. So let the word-scratchers say their bit, but don’t be disturbed by them. If you’re getting harrassed from the left and the right at the same time, perhaps you’re onto something.

Now it is true that all man-made symbols, including terms, have a lifespan. The day may come when for whatever reason, “complementarian” ceases to be useful, and it’s time to put it to bed. But it’s not today, and by my lights, it ain’t likely to be tomorrow either.

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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

Simply Believe

22 July 2025

Belief is simple the way language is simple. If there’s a bunch of different sized and colored buckets in the corner of the garage, and you send me over there to get the big red one, you say it exactly like that: “big red bucket.” You never say “red big bucket.” Do you know why? Probably not; that’s just how it’s said. Simple, right?

Well…not exactly. When you start examining the order of English adjectives, you’ll discover that there’s a very strong, nearly inviolate rule. Linguists have mapped it, and use the acronym OSASCOMP (opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose). Size comes before color; there ya go. That’s pretty complicated, isn’t it? Who thinks about that? Nobody but linguists, and people learning the language as adults. If you’re a native speaker of English, you can live your whole life without ever being consciously aware of the rule — all the while keeping it.

Thus also with belief. We can get deep in the philosophical weeds on what belief is and how it all works — it’s complex the way everything in God’s world, especially everything human, is complex. But you don’t need to grasp all the deep philosophy to just believe something. We do it every day. Wake up, there’s light streaming in the window — you believe it’s morning. You glance at the clock, which reads 5:45 am — you just believe it’s true. Check the weather for the day and see that there’s an 80% chance it’ll rain this afternoon — you trust them enough to take a jacket with you when you leave the house. Of course you’re not sure it will rain (and the weather guy isn’t either), but you believe that it’s likely enough to be worth taking a jacket. And so on….

And that’s not even to speak of all the things you’re just assuming: the reality of the physical world, personal existence, causality…somewhere in the aether, the spirit of David Hume seethes with envy. (Not really. He admitted he assumed those things too — couldn’t seem to stop himself.)

The places where the gospel is presented in Scripture also don’t get deep into the philosophical weeds. The biblical accounts of human nature will stand up to deep and rigorous examination, but most people never go there, and never need to. So whether we look at a particular evangelistic encounter between Jesus and Matthew, say, or Nathaniel, or Nicodemus, or whether we’re looking at a work like John’s Gospel as a whole, we see a pretty commonsense presentation of belief.

That’s because the biblical accounts focus the reader on Jesus, not on the reader himself. The goal is not to gaze at yourself in the mirror as you believe in something. The goal is to look to Jesus. Focus on Him, not on your own belief.

As we encounter people who need to meet Jesus, that’s what we want for them, too. So again, we don’t get deep in the weeds over what believing is; we don’t need to. What we do need to do is live like Christians, which provokes the questions to which Jesus is the answer (1 Peter 3:15). Then we tell them who He is and what He did.

When you’re telling people about Jesus, don’t soften it with “I believe that…” In polite secular society, “I believe that…” is code for “you don’t need to agree.” We reserve that expression for matters of opinion, not matters of fact. When you’re announcing a fact, you just say it; you don’t lead off with “I believe.” Try it: “I believe that gravity works.” “I believe the sky is blue.” “I believe 2+2=4.”

Sound funny, right? Of course it does — because when you’re mentioning that 2+2=4, your belief is not important. Nobody cares if you believe it; they care if it’s true. So if you wouldn’t say “I believe” there, don’t say “I believe” when you’re announcing facts about Jesus either. Just announce the truth:

“Every evil thing you’ve ever done, every character flaw, every failing, was nailed to the cross with Jesus; died on the cross with Jesus; was buried in the earth with Jesus; and when God raised Him from the dead on the third day, He didn’t come out of the grave dragging a Hefty bag of your crap! It’s all done; He took care of it, and He offers you a new, clean, resurrected life that starts right now. You could quit wallowing in all that right now and be free for the rest of your life! What do you say?”

You don’t need them to say “I believe.” You just want them to believe. Too often, we focus our message on the act of believing. Don’t. Focus your message the way Jesus did: on Jesus Himself. We don’t want this person looking in the mirror watching themselves believe in Jesus. We want them looking at Jesus and believing in Him. Let the focus be on Jesus, not on their belief.

(For the record, I’m not against getting into the philosophical weeds in order to look more closely at how belief works — it’s fascinating, and it’s part of the world God made. We’ll learn good things from the examination if we conduct it well. But that’s a whole other layer, and we don’t need to drag unbelievers through it.)

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Posted by Tim Nichols

How Important is Theology?

8 July 2025

I was corresponding with a fella about practical ministry and seeking Christian fellowship. In passing, he asserted that soteriology is really the heart of it all. I had an intense, visceral reaction to that line, and it made me stop and interrogate it. Soteriology really is important, after all. Different Christians focus on different aspects of theology, and that’s as it should be; if soteriology is his focus, why is that bothering me so much?

Upon reflection, here’s where I’m coming from: Soteriology is not the heart of it all. Jesus Himself is the heart of it all, which I hope is what he meant, but the language matters here, so bear with me in a little folly! The distinction is not trivial: soteriology is an ever-more-detailed set of ideas and convictions; Jesus is a Person. People who prioritize Jesus will work at getting along with other people who prioritize Jesus; they find ways to handle their differences charitably for the sake of serving their mutual Friend and realizing His righteousness in the world. People who prioritize soteriology will turn on their fellow believers over a series of ever-smaller distinctions, all the while congratulating themselves loudly on their keen discernment. I could name names here — I certainly have some in mind — but what for? You can probably think of your own examples, and if you’d recognize the names I would mention, then you can see what I’m talking about anyway. The temptations may be subtle in the moment, but the results are visible from orbit.

I’m easy friends with people who put Jesus at the heart of it all. Whatever their foibles, I got mine too, and we get along all right. Folks who put soteriology at the heart of it all, on the other hand…no. Not even if we agree on the soteriology. They need to repent, hard. I pray that they do. If they won’t, then they can’t backstab their way into irrelevance fast enough to suit me, and I certainly don’t wanna be standing within reach while they do it.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Empathy, Hammers, and Handguns

22 April 2025

Much has been said in certain quarters about the sin of empathy. How ought we to think about this?

Back in the seventies and eighties, Francis Schaeffer used to get criticized for oversimplifying the philosophers he spoke about — Hegel, for example. Professional philosophers would complain that Hegel was actually quite a bit more nuanced than Schaeffer was letting on, and not necessarily vulnerable to the criticisms Schaeffer would level against him. I can’t really discuss the validity of the criticism; I’m no expert on Hegel either. But for the sake of discussion, let’s grant that the professionals are right, and Schaeffer really was oversimplifying Hegel.

Where did that oversimplification come from? Was Schaeffer just straw-manning Hegel? No indeed, and here we need to remember Schaeffer’s actual ministry context. He wasn’t ministering to Hegel himself, nor to professional philosophers. Overwhelmingly, he was serving college students. When you’re working with a college sophomore who has misread (and oversimplified) Hegel and thinks he has hold of a profound truth, what’s the task at hand? Do we try to make him a better Hegelian? Or do we just start from where he actually is and minister the gospel to him?

Obviously the latter, which is what Schaeffer did. It might be fair to say that Schaeffer’s treatment isn’t up to dealing with all the nuances of Hegel’s actual views, but it his work deals admirably with Hegel as portrayed in popular culture of the time. He dealt with the actual beliefs of the people in front of him, as well he should.

So when my brothers to the northwest wax eloquent on the sin of empathy, I can see their point. They are not (as we will see) addressing what empathy actually means, but the sin they are expertly skewering is a real sin, it is rampant in our culture, and the people who are committing it often call that sin “empathy.”

Why is it that the popular definition so diverges from the real one? For the same reason that we misuse “depressed,” “triggered,” or “autistic.” Psychotherapy is our culture’s unofficial religion. Religious terms with specific meanings always get debased, usually in a quest to apply a virtuous gloss to whatever the adherent wanted to do anyway. (Hence, for example, one of the most intemperate displays of modern times calling itself the “temperance movement” in the early 20th century. In contemporary usage, someone who’s triggered (the real definition) should be treated with compassion, so people describe themselves as “triggered” when they’re just mad, so as to garner more sympathy than they deserve.) The clergy and theologians — psychotherapists and counselors, in the case before us today — always object: “That’s not what the word means!” But people go on abusing the terms anyway. It’s an unfortunate trend, and clearly psychotherapy is not immune to the term-debasing trend that has long afflicted other religions.

Whether our brothers ought to cede the term “empathy” is a separate question. As it is not a biblical word, they are under no obligation to fight for it if they don’t want to. On the other hand, there’s no sin in fighting for the proper definition, either. Since the actual meaning of empathy is both a biblical concept and a necessary spiritual discipline, that’s what I’m going to do below.

Properly defined, empathy is not a virtue and it is not a vice. It is a tool, like a claw hammer, a chef’s knife, or a handgun. That tool can be used to build or destroy, to nourish or injure, to save life or to kill. So what does the word “empathy” actually mean?

Empathy: n. understanding a person from their frame of reference rather than one’s own, or vicariously experiencing that person’s feelings, perceptions, and thoughts. Empathy does not, of itself, entail motivation to be of assistance, although it may turn into sympathy or personal distress, which may result in action. In psychotherapy, therapist empathy for the client can be a path to comprehension of the client’s cognitions, affects, motivations, or behaviors.

APA Dictionary of Psychology

A seasoned psychotherapist I know put it this way: empathy and compassion are two fundamentally different things. The best con artists have perfect empathy, but zero compassion. They can see the world through your eyes so well that they can take everything you have. So it’s fair to say that seeing things from another person’s point of view is not inevitably a virtue.

On the other hand, some virtues are impossible without it. Husbands, for example, are commanded to do exactly that for their wives: “Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.” (1 Pet. 3:7)

The Golden Rule requires similar insight. The proverbial young husband who buys his wife a drill for her birthday because that’s what he would want is obviously not applying the Golden Rule correctly. He would like a birthday present that he wants; therefore he should buy her a birthday present that she wants. But he can’t really do that without seeing the world from her point of view, can he?

Empathy is a component of wise love, a necessary but not a sufficient condition. You can’t love another person well if you refuse to see things from their perspective; that way lies well-intentioned cluelessness.
Neither can you love love another person well if you get so pulled into their perspective that you fail to exercise good sense. You should not believe everything you think or feel; you should not use empathy to substitute someone else’s thoughts and feelings for your own. Discernment and emotionally sober judgment is required: love well, and love wisely.

So what are we to say about the “sin of empathy?” Well, our brothers would defend their position by pointing out that the behavior they are criticizing really is a sinful use of empathy. Sure. They would also criticize the sinful use of handguns, but you won’t see anybody from their camp writing a book titled “The Sin of Handguns” anytime soon. So there’s that.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

An Update

12 July 2024

I had a chance recently to chat with Chris Morrison about the continuing “Content of Saving Faith” debate.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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