The Grain of Truth Grows Slowly

To become who God is making us takes time and trust.

I bought my Santa Cruz acoustic guitar a few years ago at a used music shop in Tennessee. As I pulled it down, the sunny Adirondack spruce face smiled back at me. It is sturdy and well made, crafted by hand.

A close look at the grain of the wood of my guitar reveals a catalog of past experiences. Similar to a Steinway piano or an heirloom violin, the instrument’s smoothed surface is a visual timeline, tiny stripes shaped by years of rain and drought. An instrument’s sound tells us something of its origin, whether it is made from new or old or sunken or recycled wood.

Some luthiers and others still construct instruments the old-fashioned way. Ben Niles’s 2007 documentary Note by Note follows the making of a single Steinway concert piano from the Alaskan forest to the concert hall. Technicians from New Jersey describe their work on concert grand No. L1037, which, at one stage of the manufacturing process, rests on its side for 12 patient months as the wood of its frame conforms into a piano-shaped curve.

In the film, we appreciate that wood from a forest is beginning a new chapter, being refined in form and function. But in real life, transition can foster impatience, like wearing braces or anticipating a wedding after a proposal. During the slow work, we may wonder who we are as we wait for what’s yet to be revealed in us.

But there is a grain written in our design, and we have a skillful designer who first made us and is now forming us into who we are meant to be. During our gradual transformation, we become acquainted with God, who personally and graciously tends to us. He is both the creator and luthier, shaping instruments of his glory. “We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to …

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Embracing the Liturgy of Labor Day

In today’s hybrid work culture, Christians should recommit to the biblical rhythms of work and rest.

Over the past few years, many of us have unfortunately become familiar with descriptors like the Great Resignation and the Great Disengagement. Even if you have not heard these terms, you are likely familiar with their meaning.

The former describes the onslaught of people quitting their jobs due to all sorts of current socioeconomic and mental health reasons, while the latter points to people keeping their jobs but having a profound sense of emotional disengagement with their work. Sometimes referred to as “quiet quitting,” such disengagement is especially prevalent in the “helping professions” like the medical industry, the education field, and some forms of ministry.

Both trends are, to some degree, part of what author Jennifer Moss calls the “burnout epidemic” in her book on chronic stress. This problem has accompanied a wider acceptance of hybrid work culture in response to the COVID-19 epidemic—which has further blurred the boundaries between our professional and personal lives.

As a professor of organizational communication, I am fascinated with the way people communicate about work and how that impacts their overall quality of life. And as a Christian, I am especially interested in the degree to which believers understand work as part of our callings.

For those of us who feel especially called to a particular kind of work or who seek to bring a sense of calling into our work, a hybrid work culture can be even more complex. That is because there’s the added pull of holy responsibility on top of structural complexities—a relational commitment to the Caller that can drive us to ignore healthy boundaries.

This year, Labor Day celebrates 140 years of seeking to recognize …

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Why Shamelessness Is a Superpower

In a performative age, brazenness gives an illusion of strength.

For most of the year, a friend in England and I have debated whether his country’s politics are becoming more American. Much of it had to do with the roiling scandals around Prime Minister Boris Johnson. My friend was constantly telling me, “This time, Boris is done for,” but I was never quite sure. Ultimately my friend was right, and Johnson’s Conservative Party forced his resignation. But critics agreed that he stuck it out as long as he did because, as many put it, “Shamelessness is a superpower.”

A sense of personal disgrace used to lead those whose scandalously bad character was exposed to voluntarily step aside in contrition. When the tabloid publishes pictures of the senator with a model on his lap, he would announce that he was going to spend more time with his family. When the tobacco company CEO’s notes are found about how to conceal the addictiveness of nicotine, he would “seek other opportunities.”

This was about more than just a public sense of right and wrong. Most people couldn’t bear the humiliation of the public knowing about their sexual exploitation of an intern or hearing their own recorded voice bragging about how their star power allowed them to grab women by the genitals.

But then the people with this sort of shame were sorted out, leaving behind those who didn’t blush when they said, “It depends on what the meaning of is is” or “This is just locker-room talk.” Those who don’t feel shame have learned that, eventually, most people will be exhausted and move on while their hard-core “base” will learn to normalize whatever the character flaw is.

This is not just in government. If Billy Graham or Mother …

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Meet the Scholar-Activist Who Changed Baptist Minds on Race

T. B. Maston’s views on integration were controversial at his seminary. Today, they deserve a fresh hearing.

In the years before the Civil War, the major evangelical denominations divided into regional factions based in part upon their views of human enslavement. The DNA of each new Southern denominational tradition was imprinted with racism, casting a long shadow over their subsequent development.

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was formed under these circumstances in 1845, and for most of its history, the Southern part was at least as important to the Convention’s identity as the Baptist part. Southern Baptists were a thoroughly white denomination that, for the most part, accepted and often defended the white supremacist status quo.

There were dissenters within the SBC who rejected the racist assumptions of their tradition and encouraged a more prophetic posture against racial segregation. Arguably, the most prominent among them was T. B. Maston (1897–1988), who taught ethics at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1925 until a coerced retirement in 1963, occasioned by his views on race. Maston wrote widely on ethical topics, but one of the driving concerns of his ministry was advocating a biblical view of race that would undermine Jim Crow and ultimately lead to a holistic integration between Black and white communities.

Maston was no mere theorist. He modeled his views on race in his call for desegregating Southwestern Seminary and his personal relationships with Black seminarians. His writings and actions inspired two generations of denominational activists against racism, including pastors, missionaries, and professors.

Three levels of integration

In his new book, Integration: Race, T. B. Maston, and the Hope for the Desegregated Church, Paul J. Morrison offers a detailed study of Maston’s views …

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Instead of Becoming a Pastor, I Minister as a Plumber

While praying and turning wrenches, I discovered a rich Christian life.

Ten years ago, I found myself at a vocational fork in the road.

I had spent years praying and dreaming about pastoring a church—studying theology, writing sermons, visiting hospitals, and interceding with folks toward this goal.

But like many millennials, I was tight on cash. With a growing family, I had to think frankly about the feasibility of seminary, how little money I’d make as a pastor, and how very little progress I felt I’d made in the Christian life. How was I to lead others down a path I had yet to travel?

A pastor at the church I was attending, knowing I was looking for a job, suggested I connect with one of the congregants who owned a plumbing company.

With the possibility of a job that didn’t require an advanced degree and could immediately provide security for my family, I chose to pursue plumbing with a prayer: God, make me the kind of person who can one day be a pastor in your church.

A decade later, I’m still plumbing. It turns out that work, manual labor in particular, had been sitting right under my nose as perhaps the most direct route to learning the skills needed by those who desire to lead the church. I suspect I’m not alone. Any of us can become better at following Jesus by focusing on the demands and spiritual realities of our work. Rightly understood, work is the training ground where good Christians are made.

How does work make us better Christians? How can we “redeem the time” we spend laboring?

If the Christian life can be summed up as being made “partakers of the divine nature” in and through Christ (2 Pet. 1:4, ESV), then I think it could also be said that the core activity of the Christian is prayer.

As defined by one 19th-century Church …

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A Moral Primer on Amazon’s ‘Rings of Power’

Tolkien’s kingdom of Númenor is a cautionary tale for us today.

A charismatic demagogue seduces a mighty empire, winning power with promises to restore past glory. A people betray their founding principles, apostatizing from the faith of their fathers to pursue dreams of immortality. Their great city teeters on the brink of civil war. A faithful remnant is hounded as traitors by a mob hellbent on ruin.

Neither a summary of Old Testament prophets nor of yesterday’s New York Times, these are some of the stories in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion—the lore bible of Middle-earth. Long overlooked, the stories have finally found their moment in the limelight.

Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is upon us.

Reputedly the most expensive television show ever produced, the $1 billion project is an adaptation of a very small part of Tolkien’s oeuvre. In the author’s fictional timeline, Middle-earth’s history unfolds over three ages. Most of The Silmarillion concerns the First Age. The more famous and beloved book and movie trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, covers the end of the Third Age. Amazon’s new TV show is set squarely in the middle.

Tolkien wrote almost nothing about this period. Yet what little he did craft vibrates with political resonance. In the 23 short pages of “Akallabêth,” a chapter in The Silmarillion, Tolkien tells of the kingdom of Númenor’s glory and also its hubris and folly.

In half of the next chapter, “Rings of Power,” Tolkien writes about the eponymous rings and essentially describes World War III—a cataclysmic conflict so destructive that, although the good guys won, the world never recovered.

It’s an extraordinary (and extraordinarily …

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Stop Applauding Pastors Who Publicly Confess Their Sins

When leaders admit wrongdoing, we should respond with quiet sobriety, not clapping.

Yesterday, I finished a 17-year ministry at Southern Hills Baptist Church in Sioux City, Iowa. Our attendance was the highest it’s been in a long time. I did what I’ve done week after week, Sunday after Sunday, since August 28, 2005: preach a text of Scripture.

After church, we had a potluck dinner and enjoyed warm fellowship. Members expressed love for my wife and me, sorrow that we were leaving, and prayers for our future. We received a basket of cards with some generous gifts and messages that made my wife cry. It was a wonderful way to wrap things up.

What I didn’t receive was a standing ovation.

Yesterday, Matt Chandler stood before his congregation to admit to inappropriate text interactions with a woman other than his wife and to announce he was taking a leave of absence. He claimed the messages were not sexual or romantic, but he withheld any further details.

With that in mind, I’m not addressing Matt Chandler’s sin (or whatever other words he used to describe it). Reading about his imbroglio just got me thinking.

In the accounts of Chandler’s actions, I looked for one thing and, sure enough, saw that after he confessed to his congregation, the church gave him an ovation. Another pastor stood to “define the narrative” by telling them what their ovation meant, and then congregants gave Chandler another round of applause.

I am annoyed at this response. I’m an old codger, so I am authorized to do “get off my lawn” rants. When did it become appropriate to give standing ovations to those who have committed disqualifying (or near-disqualifying) sins in ministry?

You might remember Jules Woodson’s public story of sexual abuse. After years of denial and evasion, …

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Helper: You Keep Using That Word for Women

But it doesn’t mean what you think it means.

A recent LifeWay Research study asked American Protestant pastors if women in their congregations were allowed to take on six specific leadership roles.

Views on preaching were predictably split, but roughly “9 in 10 pastors say women could be ministers to children (94%), committee leaders (92%), ministers to teenagers (89%), or coed adult Bible study teachers (85%) in their churches,” according to Aaron Earls. Fewer (64%) said women could be deacons.

The question of where a woman can serve in church “has been debated for centuries with biblical scholars in different denominations coming to different conclusions about what Scripture means,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research.

The first part of the Bible, in particular, plays a key part. Generations of Christians have looked to the creation stories in Genesis 1 through 3 as the paradigm for gender roles. “As Genesis 1–3 go, so goes the whole Biblical debate,” says Raymond C. Ortlund Jr.

The word “helper” from Genesis 2:18 has long been a hinge-point in these debates. Some use it to argue that a wife’s main role is to support her husband’s leadership. Others deploy it to justify strong views on female submission and service. And still others have construed the idea as softly as possible, saying, “God made man as a gracious leader and woman as an essential helper in marriage.”

But what if we’ve gotten that word wrong? The subservient overtones that often come with it are nowhere to be found in Scripture. And our misinterpretation has gotten us into trouble in how we view male and female roles.

The more accurate take, at least as I see it, is significant to those in both the …

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Is Student Loan Forgiveness Biblical?

Christians are divided over whether Biden’s promise to cancel student debt is ethical and just from a scriptural standpoint.

Once President Joe Biden followed up on his promise to cancel $10,000 to $20,000 per borrower in student loan debt for eligible households, Christians responded by invoking a host of biblical references from Old Testament concepts like jubilee to the parables of Jesus in the New Testament.

Over a two-day period last week, searches for debt-related topics surged to 20 times above average on BibleGateway. Four verses—for and against loan forgiveness—were the top-gaining passages on the site:

  • Exodus 22:25 — “If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest.”
  • Deuteronomy 23:19 — “Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest.”
  • Psalm 37:21 — “The wicked borrow and do not repay, but the righteous give generously.”
  • Ecclesiastes 5:5 — “It is better not to make a vow than to make one and not fulfill it.”

Searches for keywords “usury,” “paying debt,” “charging interest,” “debt,” “forgiveness of debt,” “debt paid in full,” and “paying your debts” were up. We heard from three Christian thinkers about how scriptural principles inform our stances on governmental debt forgiveness.

Matt Tebbe, cofounder of Gravity Leadership, author of “Having the Mind of Christ” and Anglican priest in Indianapolis

As Christians, we owe our very existence to debt forgiveness.

Christ loved us by forgiving us the debt of our sins (1 John 4:10), and he commanded us to love each other in the same way (John 13:34). To love as Jesus loves us is to participate in the …

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How Americans Got Away with Abortion Before ‘Roe v. Wade’

Looking ahead, Christians should focus less on enforcement than on changing cultural attitudes.

What does the history of abortion tell us to expect, now that the Supreme Court has decided to give states the option of protecting unborn children? If half the states have protective laws, will the laws be enforced? Or will abortion statutes in many places have as much effect as Section 10-501 of Maryland law (which reads: “[a] A person may not commit adultery. [b] A person who violates this section is guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction shall be fined $10”)?

I cannot find any indication that the state of Maryland is enforcing this law, or that its treasury is bulging from infidelity fines. Enforcement of many laws is disappearing in cities nationwide. For instance, voters in a May referendum in Austin, Texas, where I live, decided in an 86 percent landslide that city police will not arrest anyone found with fewer than four ounces of marijuana.

Initial press coverage of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision ominously suggested that governments would prosecute women and even use data from apps that millions of women use to track menstruation. Journalists rarely told stories of instances when an unexpected pregnancy didn’t ruin a life but enriched it. On the other hand, some of my fellow pro-life advocates were triumphalistic, foreseeing an era in which abortions vanish.

Here’s the historical reality: From the 1840s through the 1940s, public opinion concerning abortion was more negative than it is now, but even during that era, enforcement of abortion bans was rare. Millions of abortions occurred during that century, but only a tiny percentage of doctors did prison time. It was hard to get police to arrest, juries to convict, or judges to support jury decisions and turn …

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