Peter may have meant that the earth and all the works done on it will be exposed, in the sense of being judged, which would fit the broader context of his argument quite well. He may also have meant that the earth and all the works done on it will be refined, a quite intriguing proposal in light of images from the book of Malachi. Whether either of these proposals or even another is the best way to ultimately understand the meaning of 2 Peter 3:10, a simple evaporation of everything, burning up with nothing left, is not the meaning Peter intended.

Many moons ago when I was in college and dinosaurs roamed the earth, as a relatively new Christian, I was an environmental studies and public policy major, something that was a relatively new concentration at that point at the academic level and something that made me somewhat suspect among many Christians in the United States. I remember talking with a friend of mine, and she said, “I don’t really worry that much about protecting the environment, because it’s all just going to burn up anyway.”
I remember at the time, not knowing that much about the Bible yet, but thinking, “That just feels like it can’t be right.”  But I didn’t really know what else to say, because, after all, that was the end of things, right?
A bunch of years and two careers later, when I became a Bible professor and started teaching, the same question would come up, though not in the same way. People would, in essence, say, “Well why do the arts matter? After all, God’s just going to burn up this world and take us to heaven.” Or, “Why worry about justice on this earth?” Or, “Why dig wells for villages that need water?” Or, “Why feed the hungry? All we need to do is save souls, because that’s all that really will last, anyway. The rest is just going to burn up at the end.”
As a professor and pastor, I would always reply, “But yes, what type of a fire is it? Yes, a refiner’s fire.” I always got away with it, but that was largely from the power dynamic of me being the professor and the so-called expert. And I always worried I was bluffing…
The issue is largely 2 Peter 3:10: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed” (2 Peter 3:10, ESV).
And if that is not enough, many translations, including the old RSV, which many Protestants used at the time; the Jerusalem Bible, which was a major Roman Catholic translation; and the King James Bible, all translate the last word, “burned up,” ending the verse, therefore, as “the earth and the works that are done on it will be burned up.”
Well, if that is the case, again the question — why do we care? About the environment, culture, the arts, urban planning, any of that? It will all just going to dissolve and burn up at the end of time. If so, whither any Christian doctrine of social engagement, much less of creation care, business, government, or anything else?
Gabriel Chevallier wrote about the trenches of World War I in his novel Fear, “This Earth is a burning building, and all the exits have been bricked up.”  Many Christians repurpose that quotation as about the broader evangelistic task of the church, bringing in 2 Peter and adding, “I’m just trying to get everyone I can out of the building, off the earth, before it collapses.” After all, that is what Peter says is coming.
Part of the challenge is the very word typically used for the end of time: apocalypse, as in the “the Apocalypse of John,” a common name for the last book of the Bible. The immediate images engendered by the word are grainy and gritty, maybe nuclear annihilation or environmental catastrophe. Under the influence of the book of Revelation (the aforementioned Apocalypse of John), as well as modern culture, Christians hear “apocalypse” and immediately think of burning barrels and the world of Halo or Cloverfield Lane or Furiosa, some post-apocalyptic societal breakdown, grim and dark, gritty and ruinous.
This, however, is emphatically not the Bible’s vision of the end. The Bible’s picture of the end is beautiful, not that world of nuclear disaster and burning oil drums. The book of Revelation does have fire and terrifying images, of course; however, those images are the prelude to the end, not the end itself. The end of the book of Revelation is actually a picture of beauty, a city, a city the Bible calls the New Jerusalem, one perfect and gleaming in every way. The New Jerusalem is not just the city at its best, but the city as if it were perfect:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:1–4, ESV)
This fundamental image of the end is God with us. John goes on in the next verse: “And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’” (Revelation 21:5, ESV). The picture that follows is beautiful, meant to be the most beautiful picture of a city a Jewish-Christian audience could possibly envision: John’s description of the New Jerusalem. Far beyond beauty, though, John’s picture is meant to evoke all sorts of Old Testament images, that the entirety of the New Jerusalem is not just a redux of the Temple, but a Holy of Holies, a place perfect for God to be.
Even more to the point, John’s image of the end purposely evokes all sorts of images from the Garden of Eden in Genesis 1-2: the river of the water of life, the tree of life, nothing accursed, a place fitting for God to be with mankind. And Jesus declares to John through the angel, “These words are trustworthy and true” (Rev. 22:6, ESV).
As Nicholas Piotrowski wrote for The Washington Institute in 2020, apocalyptic is not what Christians typically think it is. Apocalyptic is, in fact, a type of literature, one whose essence is to show the reader a more-real world that is unseen, a genre of writing in which an otherworldly being narrates a revelation to a human recipient. That revelation discloses some sort of transcendent reality which relates both to this world and to the supernatural world. There are approximately 40 examples of this type of literature from Jewish and Christian sources from about 250 BC to 150 AD, some canonical and many from outside the Bible. Apocalyptic, then, does not of necessity even involve telling the future. An apocalyptic work might tell about the future, but it might not. It just has to be in this form and tell about both this world and the supernatural world. What makes something an apocalypse, then, is that it shows us there is a more-real reality than the one we think we are living.
Dr. Piotrowski therefore explains an apocalypse with the following story. He says, imagine you have a beautiful spring weekend day. You decide to take a drive, and the air and the day are beautiful. You put on your favorite music, and you drive. Without knowing it, you get used to the speed, so you start going faster and faster and faster. Off in your thoughts, singing along with the melody, the wind in your hair, you have not a care in the world. Everything is absolutely perfect. However, what you are not seeing, because you are off in your own world, is the police cruiser right behind you in your rearview mirror, carefully tracking and calibrating your speed. There is a more real reality just behind you, about to break in. You see, it turns out you were living in a dream world, with a disaster just behind you, more real than the world you were thought you were living in, until suddenly the real truth of the unseen world becomes manifest to you. Dr. Piotrowski often calls this “the apocalypse of the police car.”
In the book of Revelation, then, the Bible says there is a more real reality than this one we see, a message essential for the persecuted church of John’s time to hear. And that reality is that, in the end, after the fiery judgment, God is going to make this world something perfect, something beautiful. The ordeals and judgments end in Revelation 21:8, but the book does not end until chapter 22. After the fire, there comes a city, a perfect and beautiful city.
Read More

Related Posts:

.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{align-content:start;}:where(.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap) > .wp-block-kadence-column{justify-content:start;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);row-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-md, 2rem);padding-top:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);padding-bottom:var(–global-kb-spacing-sm, 1.5rem);grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd{background-color:#dddddd;}.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-layout-overlay{opacity:0.30;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kb-row-layout-id223392_4ab238-bd > .kt-row-column-wrap{grid-template-columns:minmax(0, 1fr);}}
.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col,.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{border-top-left-radius:0px;border-top-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-right-radius:0px;border-bottom-left-radius:0px;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{column-gap:var(–global-kb-gap-sm, 1rem);}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col > .aligncenter{width:100%;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col:before{opacity:0.3;}.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18{position:relative;}@media all and (max-width: 1024px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}@media all and (max-width: 767px){.kadence-column223392_96a96c-18 > .kt-inside-inner-col{flex-direction:column;}}

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email
Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

God knows we really do need all these things like food and water, shelter and work, companionship and love. He knows we need all these and even still other things. And yet, those alone aren’t enough. We do need food day by day. And yet, someday the day will come when our body quits eating, when we are past the golden years into the time when our body no longer works, when food will no longer be enough to sustain us, when we have to face mortality. What will we need then? We will need to be right with God. In Matthew 4:4, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy when tempted by Satan, reminding us “Man does not live by bread alone.” And in this, Jesus reminds us that bread can become idolatry.

In 2019, Derek Thompson suggested in the Atlantic that work for college-educated Americans had become workism, “the most potent of new religions competing for congregants.” He noted, “No large country in the world as productive as the United States averages more hours of work a year. And the gap between the U.S. and other countries is growing. Between 1950 and 2012, annual hours worked per employee fell by about 40 percent in Germany and the Netherlands—but by only 10 percent in the United States.” Nor did the now-defunct Great Resignation change things. Not only was it predominantly in fields such as hospitality, but the work simply moved around, as the Great Resignation was really the Great Change Jobs.
Further, Thompson noted, “The shift defies economic logic—and economic history.” At the time, he suggested several causes for the development and spread of workism, including student debt, social media, the shift from jobs to callings. All valid. But if the diagnosis of the causes of workism is incomplete, the medicine will be as well. So, may I also suggest two more: fear and greed.
Why has work has become a functional religion for at least one class of people in America? Because our god is the thing we think will ultimately take care of us. And, because we think our work will ultimately take care of us, we make it our functional god. Or, if we step back just one more step, we think we are the one who will ultimately take care of ourselves, so we make ourselves our own functional gods. And self-worship leads to so much of our societal and moral mess today, because we are unwilling to let anyone else have authority over us, meaning we refuse to accept a God who tells us that some of our impulses and desires are wrong. Workism may be making work our god, but it even more may be us making ourselves our gods.
What is the antidote? Thompson suggests that we remember the purpose of work is to buy free time. Maybe, but readers of TWI will know our deep commitment to the idea that calling is a good thing, that work ought to be more than just a means to buy other things that we really desire. One of our very purposes is to pursue Dorothy Sayers’ challenge: “Christians must revive a centuries-old view of humankind as made in the image of God, the eternal Craftsman, and of work as a source of fulfillment and blessing.”
How might we avoid workism while also preserving an understanding of work as something more than a means to buy leisure? We might ask, with Thompson, how work has become workism, what drives the shift from work as a good gift of God to work as an idolatrous other religion. And the answer to both the fear and greed of workism is found in the fourth petition of the Lord’s prayer, “Give us today our daily bread.”
If we believed our daily bread would be given, we would rest.
As politics has shown, fear is a powerful motivator, sadly far more powerful than ethics for many, even most humans. Personally, Matthew 6 may contain the most difficult passage in the entire Bible for me to believe, at least if one wishes to measure belief by behavior. Jesus raises the question of trust, the question of belief in a good God who will provide abundantly for us. He teaches:
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matthew 6:25–34, ESV)
You see, I come from a long line of worriers. And that’s not to blame things on my upbringing. If one will permit the aside—students and young adults, yes, your parents messed you up. And you will probably mess your kids up just as badly, probably just in different ways, so let us all have some grace for our parents. But in my case, coming from at least a generation further back than my parents, at least one side of my family knows how to worry. It is one of our core competencies.
Another name for worry is fear. And here is what that fear does to me. It means I never quite stop working. And even when I technically stop working, my mind cannot fully stop. And it means I have real trouble saying no to an opportunity. And I try still to be a good father and husband while I do it, so I can end up grinding myself to a pulp. I end up in workism.
Because I have read all the same articles you have about how much money it takes to retire comfortably, and about how life expectancy is going up, and about how the long tail of life is getting more and more expensive. And I know college is coming for the kids, and how uncertain investments or jobs can be. And, so, I feel this deep drive—which is more a fear than anything—that I have to keep striving, keep driving forward. In case. In case.
And the root of that worry is this: at some fundamental, instinctual level, I am convinced that I provide my daily bread, that I’ve got to do it on my own, that I’m the provider. And yet, Jesus teaches us something quite different: that God is the provider and that he’s good: “Give us this day our daily bread.”
So, the way to get what we need day-by-day is, at the end of it all, to ask. To ask, not to earn.
Any promised gift immediately raises the question of the reliability of the giver. Promised gifts from Nigerian princes via email, for instance, prove rather unreliable. When Jesus teaches us to pray “Our Father,” he uses a term of both deep respect and deep endearment, a term of trust and affection and love, of deep familiarity but also deep respect.
Can I trust God for my daily bread? Well, that depends. Is he trustworthy? Here the two presentations of the Lord’s Prayer in the Bible are helpful. Jesus gives the Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6, shortly before the passage quoted above. But the Gospel of Luke, chapter 11, also records it. There are small differences between the presentations, differences related to what Matthew and Luke are respectively emphasizing as Gospel writers and also to the fact that Jesus, over a three-year public ministry, probably taught people to pray multiple times. Like any good teacher, he could well have phrased all these same petitions slightly differently himself as he taught different groups of people in their own situations.
Luke follows the Lord’s Prayer immediately with a somewhat curious sounding parable:
And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:5–13, ESV)
What is Jesus saying here?  And why does Luke order it to follow the Lord’s Prayer? Because Jesus is reminding us of who God the Father is, that when we pray to him, he is so much more than a grumpy old man who does not really like us, but eventually gives in so we will stop bothering him. Instead, Jesus says, God is a deeply loving Father, one who loves to give us what we need.
Some—and I am certainly blessed to be one—have wonderful fathers, and this image makes inherent sense, because it matches the human father we have. But this image of God as father can be so very tough for others, because we had or have a human father who was something very different, one who hurt or harmed us or ignored us. And one can quickly then—because God is termed our Father—map all the problems of a bad human father onto God, to envision him as a begrudging benefactor who does not have time for us at best, abusive at worst, or just a really angry old man.
When the Bible talks about God our Father, it means God being everything a human father should be, not what we often are. God as “our Father,” is what even the best human father ultimately points to. And God looks at us wanting to give us good. John 3:16 does not say, “God the Father really hates you and wants to smite you, but Jesus got in the way and took the bullet.” No, John 3:16 says “God [meaning God the Father] so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.”
This raises a curious question. Why ask? If God knows everything, he already knows what we need. In fact, in that passage from later in Matthew 6, Jesus said exactly that. To quote it again, he said, “and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” He knows what we need before we ask, and yet he tells us to pray and ask. God wants to hear it. Why?
Well, not because we pray and God suddenly says, “Oh, man. I was distracted. Glad you brought that to my attention. I had missed your email.” No, he knows—better than we do—exactly what we need. God does not tell us to pray for our daily bread for the sake of him learning something. He tells us to pray for our daily bread for the sake of us learning something.
God tells us to pray this to remind us that we are actually in humble dependence upon him. This petition implies our essential neediness, our own inadequacy. We are actually people who need to be given even our very basic needs. This petition exposes and debunks our own myth of self-reliance. We are not providers, but instead we are little children who need to be given even our most very basic needs.
In other words, we must realize that Bart Simpson’s blessing was funny, but terribly wrong. Way back in Season 2, when asked to pray for the food, Bart prays, “Dear God, we pay for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing.” Instead, this petition reminds us that such self-reliance is—even if terribly funny as a quip—actually a myth. We are people who need things. So, why does God tell us to pray for them? Because we need to know from where they really come.
And here we get to the question of functional belief versus orthodox belief. If you are a follower of Jesus already, you hopefully know that it is just fine to laugh at Bart’s blessing, but we do not actually believe it. Yes, we do pay for the food, but we realize that the money we used to pay for the food was God’s gift to us, even when that money is the salary or wages from working really, really hard.
Read More
Related Posts:

Luke the historian and the theologian gives this call—we do know these things about Jesus—that he lived, taught, performed miracles, was hung on a cross and died, then rose from the dead, validating his claim to be the son of God, the savior of the world. When we realize these things about Jesus, we become part of something bigger than ourselves. We become part of this fire that has spread through the entire world.

A few years ago, my daughter and I were playing Battleship, and she shot misses on spaces C 8,9, and 10. Or that’s how I remember it and had it marked. But later she said “C9,” and I said, “you already tried that one, sweetie.” She said “No I didn’t. I shot J 8,9, and 10.” And I said, “No, I marked them; you said C 8,9, and 10.” She insisted just as vehemently, “No, Dad. I said J 8,9, and 10.” Now, of course, there’s a true answer to that question, but we’ll never recover it, because we were the only two people there, and we just flat out are both sure—even to this day!—that we were right.
That’s a bit of a parable, you might say—a silly example of a big problem in our world these days. Any truth seems to immediately get challenged by a flood of false claims. We live in the middle of an infodemic, as Ed Yost at The Atlantic termed it a couple of years back, and that infodemic wasn’t just about COVID and vaccines. It seems to be about everything—the environment, the government, foreign policy, race—you name it. A society awash in information has no way anymore to control and debunk false information. Now add in the power of AI and deepfakes, and, well…
And in a few things—a VERY few things—I’m an expert; I know a lot. But in most things, I hardly know this or that for sure for myself. It depends on who you read and where you get your news. How can you possibly know what’s true anymore? It’s easy to despair of knowing the truth on much anything, to just throw up your hands, say “Who knows?” and then go on with life as a cynic.
But here’s the thing—there’s no doubt that my daughter and I did play Battleship. Even if we can’t be certain of every detail of the past, we can be certain of some things—and here’s the important point—certain enough to act.
To switch the example, if you want to drive from Washington, DC down to Charlottesville, VA, you can get out a map and figure out the route. Now are you truly, 100%, no matter what, certain you read the map correctly? Is it truly impossible that you misread the map? Of course not. But you still get on the road and start driving.
Or maybe you get directions these days more by trust. You let the Waze lady, or the Apple Maps voice, or the Google Maps Voice direct—you just do what she says. Now do you absolutely, no matter what, know that the GPS hasn’t made an error? That the programmers didn’t mess up, or that the phone didn’t get north and south backwards? No, you can’t know it in that sense. But you DO get in the car and trust that voice and start driving.
Even if you don’t have true, undeniable, perfect epistemic certainty, you can live your life, you act on what you know to be true.
In our education system, we teach people to question assumptions, to overturn ideas, to test if what they think is really true. The ancient philosopher Aristotle said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
BUT the purpose of that questioning is to find out what really is true and correct and good, not to wallow in uncertainty forever!
And the biblical historian Luke wrote to make sure we realize that we can be certain of the gospel, certain enough to stake our lives on it.
Luke’s history is a two-part narrative, starting with the Gospel of Luke, which bears his name. That got us to Easter. Now he brings us further with the book of Acts. Starting with the beginning of the book, v.1-3, Luke tells what we know about Jesus:
“In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.”
Luke packs a lot in here, first that we are reading the sequel, or maybe better put, we’re reading volume 2. Luke had always planned this to be a 2-book series, so to speak, and he makes it clear right at the start. Look at his first words: “In my first book”—that this is the continuation of the story he has been telling since chapter 1 of the gospel that bears his name.
In fact, if we look at the way he addresses this in v.1—“O Theophilus”—he’s meaning to tie this book tightly to what he had already written. In antiquity, if you wrote a multivolume work, you added a preface to the first volume that was supposed to apply to the entire series. And Luke is widely recognized as a detailed and accurate historian. What he writes comports very well with what we know of the Roman world of the time and his style matches that of other historical authors.
So, the purpose statement for both books is really verse 4 of chapter 1 of the Gospel of Luke. There Luke writes:
“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.”
Luke had spent years with the apostle Paul, and he had also spent years researching what he wrote. Later in Acts, he begins saying, “we” as in “We did this; we went here; etc.,” meaning that later he becomes an eyewitness, but he carefully researched everything before he became part of the events himself.
Read More
Related Posts:

We all feel alone at certain times. It’s common to human experience. Even if we aren’t alone, we feel it. And when we feel alone, we run to the wrong things, things that destroy us. What is it for you? Is it the chemical version? The relational version? The internet version? Or some other version? Do you see how it’s ruling you? How it dominates you, even threatens to destroy you? We need to run to Jesus. How do you do that? Next time you feel alone, instead try praying, try your Bible, try worship, try fellowship with other believers. God hasn’t given up on you; don’t give up on him.

As you likely know, the holidays, which are a time of joy, feel like a curse for so many—because during a time of celebration, many people are never more aware of feeling alone. Whether from memories of lost love ones, regrets of things that have happened, feelings of abandonment—those or many other things—depression spikes, loneliness hits, and sadness reigns instead of joy. Have you experienced lonely seasons among the crowd? Have you found yourself there, hoping that maybe showing up at church will help? Truth is, even if you’re not suffering holiday depression—whatever time of year you’re reading this piece, you and I can understand and feel the loneliness. Pretty much everyone feels alone at some point, because being alone and feeling lonely are two different things. Loneliness is a subjective feeling, so it can happen even if you’re not socially isolated. In fact, often people are most lonely when they’re anonymous among so many people. New York is one of the loneliest cities in the world—all 11 million people of it.
But the irony of being connected but alone isn’t isolated to big cities. Despite internet connectivity—Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and 15 new startups that we haven’t even heard of yet—we’re connected like never before and yet more isolated than ever. We can reconnect with high school classmates, but we feel less known and connected with those who live across the hall. And the worst can be when you’re in a relationship, but that person’s not really with you—loneliness in marriage, loneliness in family, a college student out on your own, with roommates but not really known, a mom or dad home dealing with young kids. Here are the news headlines, sampled from a Google search: “Loneliness is a modern-day epidemic.” “Loneliness is a threat to public health.” “Widespread loneliness is killing people, and we need to talk about it.” According to one BYU researcher, Julianne Hold-Lunstad, the negative impact of loneliness on our health is the equivalent of 15 cigarettes per day.
In the end, we all feel a need for someone to really be with us, and in the Bible Matthew 1 works with the text of Isaiah 7 to remind us that in Jesus we have exactly that.
Way back in the year 734 AD, Ahaz, the king of the land of Judah, was in a terrible spot. He was diplomatically and militarily alone. His land had been invaded by a coalition of nations that included the kingdom of Israel up to the north and most all of modern-day Lebanon and Syria. In other words, he was facing an enemy about 40 times his size and power. It wasn’t a fair fight. And that enemy coalition had conquered pretty much his entire land and had Jerusalem, the capital city, under siege. They intended to conquer the last bit of Judah, forcibly annex it to their coalition, kill Ahaz, and install a puppet king in his place. Ahaz’s options were few—alone, surrounded by an enemy army that would settle for nothing less than destroying him.
In that situation, God sent the prophet Isaiah to king Ahaz and said, “Trust me, and I will deliver you.” I know it looks like you’re alone, but you’re not. I will save you. But you have to trust me, not anything else. And Isaiah was about to get married, in fact, but his wife was still a virgin. And Isaiah said to the king, “Look, by the time I get married, and my new wife has a child, and that child grows up to be a young adult (which to them was probably more like a teenager), God will have destroyed this whole coalition that is threatening you. The name of the child will be Immanuel—God with us—because God will be with us in this terrible, threatening situation. God will be with us to deliver us from peril.”
1 In the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, king of Judah, Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remaliah the king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but could not yet mount an attack against it. 2 When the house of David was told, “Syria is in league with Ephraim,” the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind. 3 And the Lord said to Isaiah, “Go out to meet Ahaz, you and Shear-jashub your son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Washer’s Field. 4 And say to him, ‘Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands, at the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria and the son of Remaliah. 5 Because Syria, with Ephraim and the son of Remaliah, has devised evil against you, saying, 6 “Let us go up against Judah and terrify it, and let us conquer it for ourselves, and set up the son of Tabeel as king in the midst of it,” 7 thus says the Lord God: “ ‘It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass. 8 For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin. And within sixty-five years Ephraim will be shattered from being a people. 9 And the head of Ephraim is Samaria, and the head of Samaria is the son of Remaliah. If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.’ ” 10 Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz: 11 “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” 12 But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.” 13 And he said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? 14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. 15 He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. 16 For before the boy knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land whose two kings you dread will be deserted. – Isaiah 7:1–16 (ESV)
But Ahaz didn’t trust in God with him. The prophet warned him to stand firm in faith, but Ahaz decided that another, more visible answer, was far superior to trusting God. Way off to the north and east, on the other side of that huge coalition, was a mighty empire, called the nation of Assyria. And 2 Kings 16 tells us that Ahaz decided that trusting the emperor of Assyria was a safer bet than trusting the God of Isaiah. He sent a message to that emperor saying, “You come save me from these people who want to destroy me.” Ahaz’s answer to being diplomatically and militarily alone was to call for the king of Assyria, not to trust God. He preferred the visible answer of a human military power, not the invisible trust that God would be with him. And before we’re too hard on him, how well does the invisible hold us?
Well, the sad end of that story is that Ahaz’s call was answered. The king of Assyria did come and destroy that attacking coalition. But he also subjugated Judah. The king that Ahaz called for to end his loneliness ended up ruling him. And, a couple decades later, when Judah rebelled, that same nation of Assyria ended up destroying the entire nation of Judah except Jerusalem itself. Ahaz ran to the visible answer, the king of Assyria, and that answer ended up ruling him and then destroying his land.
And then we realize that we’re just like Ahaz. When we’re lonely, we run to the wrong things. And those things then rule us and eventually even destroy us. There’s the chemical version, where we run to something because we’re feeling lonely again, or a failure, or don’t know how to relate well. That drink seems to save us at first. It loosens us up, or it dulls the pain. It gives the buzz. But before long it starts to rule us—we need it, and we no longer have control. And eventually it doesn’t just rule us, it destroys us.  Or there’s the relational version, where we run to that person that we think will meet all our needs, will fix all our loneliness, will make us feel loved and accepted and connected and secure. But he or she ends up ruling us, controlling and distorting us, and the relationship that we hoped would bring fulfillment brings only toxicity. Or there’s the internet version. Lonely singles run to the dark places of the internet, because for just a moment those videos or pictures give the feeling of intimacy, even if it’s false. And lonely spouses run to the same places, or to the message boards that make it seem like someone will listen to us and accept us.
So, what do you run to? After four years of management consulting and 70-hour weeks, completely burned out, I took a two-month leave of absence and spent the first month of it in California with only a rental car and a plane ticket back a month later. I woke up each morning and followed my nose until I found the day’s fun. That meant is I spent almost a whole month alone. There were whole days where the only person I talked to was the grocery store clerk or the campground attendant. And for me the introvert, of course, it was glorious. But when you spend a month alone, you learn what you obsess about really quickly.
Read More
Related Posts:

Temperance is the attitude of respect and careful consideration and judgement with which the disagreement is carried out.  It is a spirit which is kind, gentle, self-controlled, which evidences the fruit of the spirit.  We ought not think such a spirit will simply emerge, either in ourselves or in our churches.  Instead, we must campaign for it, work for it, sacrifice for it.  In that sense, in fact, temperance is like every other biblical virtue.  It is hard won against sin, not easily achieved, in ourselves or others.  But it is worth it.

Will it be any better the next time?  For several years, the trifecta of COVID, an election, and race tore churches apart.  What was obviously missing was that pesky fellow Paul’s understanding that we ought to put the needs of others first.  (See 1 Corinthians 8 and Romans 14.)  Instead of becoming a hotbed of charity and kindness, churches reflected many of the same warring tendencies as society at large.  Nor was this a new phenomenon; just ask any worship leader from the 1990’s about the “worship wars.”  Christians, like the rest of society, sadly find it much easier to fight for what we want than to sacrifice for others.  We simply dress it up in sheep’s clothing, telling ourselves that we are “fighting for what is right,” often not recognizing our own biases and our own enculturation of our faith, not realizing that we, ourselves are not actually enunciating pure Christianity but instead our own version, one with all sorts of cultural biases.  In other words, the church of the past few years has been, in many — and concerning — ways, resembling society more than leading it.
The past year has felt better, though, as if everyone has been able to just slightly catch our collective breath.  There is a tiny bit more peace now in most churches.  Could it be that this disease has finally begun to generate its own antibodies?  Could we have all taken a look at our failure to act with charity, at our conflict, and realized that we had lost at least some of our moorings?  It could be.  Or could it be that the sparks to light the cloud of fuel vapor are simply not currently present?  It could be that, too.  Or could the splitting already be complete, leaving only monocultural churches who now have nothing left over which to split?  It could be that as well.  We will only know if the church has made progress on its fractiousness once the next set of sparks flies.  We won’t know until the next time.
Society more broadly, at least in the United States, shows some of the same.  No one need rehearse the mess of tribalization and conflict that 2020-2022 generated.  Could it be that societal strife has also begun to generate its own antibodies?  It could be.  Anecdotal reports indicate that traffic on the most extreme left and right websites is down.  Even San Francisco has moved a bit back to the center.  Or could it be that we are, again, simply waiting for the next set of sparks to light the vapor cloud afire?  It could be.  With both the church and society, we simply do not know until the next crisis comes.
That said, there remain huge causes for concern.  The fundamental factors that created the tension and rancor of the past few years have hardly disappeared in a flurry of kindness.  The internet remains, as Jonathan Haidt reminded us in a seminal Atlantic article in May, no longer a place of “techno-democratic optimism” but instead an epistemological disaster.  Social media feedback loops continue to control and radicalize many, especially those with much time on their hands.  It is fashionable to dunk on TikTok these days, but for a reason.  Yan Wu and David Byler’s analysis of TikTok posts on abortion, for instance, concluded that the platform is “almost perfectly designed” to divide, driving “a steadily increasing dose of partisanship and extremism.”  Nor, honestly, is the internet even necessary for this process.  Cable news, whichever one’s ideological perspective, can provide much of the same high, serving as only a slightly less potent drug.
Again, churches have mimicked society, not lead it.  Tim Keller commented last year:
In virtually every church there is a smaller or larger body of Christians who have been radicalized to the Left or to the Right by extremely effective and completely immersive internet and social media loops, newsfeeds, and communities. People are bombarded 12 hours a day with pieces that present a particular political point of view, and the main way it seeks to persuade is not through argument but through outrage. People are being formed by this immersive form of public discourse—far more than they are being formed by the Church.
Beyond social and cable media, the more basic challenges of human psychology remain.  The loudest voices get the attention, even if they are irresponsible, eventually shifting the Overton window.  Humans share a common tendency to take anything too far; as Alexander Hamilton famously stated, “The passions of a revolution are apt to hurry even good men into excesses.”  Casting opponents in the worst possible light remains one of the easiest ways to win the argument, even if not to find real truth.  Opponents are easier to shout down than to argue down.  Insults win the crowd, even if they hold no real truth.  Whoever disagrees is an idiot and a menace, not a responsible person with a different opinion.  And, if all of that is not enough, humans still rarely abandon a position once we have publicly taken it.
False witness is alive and well in the world, and not only our society, but also those of us in the church, too often do not pause to think carefully, to stop before we share it.  And, of course, no retraction or fact check ever catches up with the rumor or falsehood that sped out of the gate before it.  There remain many causes for concern.  Do not exhale just yet.
The question is ultimately one of temperance.  “Temperance,” of course, for many of us immediately draws up images of 19th and early 20th century rallies, attempts to restrict or outlaw “booze,” replacing it with the teetotalers’ delight of 1920-1933 (at least in the United States).  The association of the term “temperance” with anti-alcohol legislation is often overpowering.  It can make a wine-lover’s head spin.
Yet “temperance” certainly has a broader meaning than alcohol.  Most broadly, temperance is self-restraint, moderation, self-control.  Such qualities are, of course, necessary when dealing with alcohol, but alcohol consumption hardly exhausts their value or need.  Where older Bible translations used the English “temperance,” many modern translations will use “self-control.”  Such self-control, such temperance, is clearly a biblical value.
Read More
Related Posts:

The world we live in has changed, and the faster the church gets our heads around it, the better. And the past two and a half years of a global pandemic have only turbocharged the change.  In a time of rapid, dislocating change, it becomes easy to want to get back to what we lost.  Instead, we must embrace God’s call into what we are.

Last month Jacob Birch wrote a widely-viewed article at Christianity Today questioning the common use of Jeremiah 29 in the Western church.  In short, Birch complains that the common refrain, “We live in a period of exile” in today’s Western church is an ill-advised framework to understand the church’s relationship to our broader culture.
We can understand the basic thrust of the article.  In essence, Birch states, “It’s really not that bad to be a Christian in the West.  And so, when the Western [and he presumably particularly means the American and Canadian] church starts talking this way, it cheapens people who really have been forced out of their homelands, experienced all sorts of horrors, and suffered mightily.”  Birch raises a valid point.  Those who have fled war, who have been forcibly deported, who will never see their homes again, those who have suffered, deeply – they may rightly take umbrage at comparisons which seem to imply, “Yes, we feel that too.”  No, honestly, we don’t.  We can agree with Birch’s concern at that level.
Yet, we shouldn’t entirely abandon the analogy. We shouldn’t abandon it because the bible itself talks this way.  In fact, in 1 Peter 1.1, Peter calls God’s elect, Christians, exiles in the world:
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you. (1 Peter 1:1–2, ESV)
Other English translations render the ESV’s “exiles” as “scattered,” “sojourners,” “strangers,” and the like, so we should be careful to note the potential range of meaning in Peter’s description.  Not every sojourner is an exile, nor are the terms identical, but they do have overlapping ranges of meaning and signification.  In other words, the ESV, though not the only possible translation of the term, is a legitimate and defensible rendering of Peter’s meaning.
And why that designation?  Those who read the New Testament know what it means to be elect, and verse 2 confirms what Peter means – the ones who were chosen in advance by God the Father, sanctified by the Spirit, for obedience to Christ, redeemed in his blood.  Peter writes to Christians scattered through the Roman Empire, choosing imagery that links them to the dispersion and exile of the Judeans following the Babylonian conquest and destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC.
According to Peter, the elect were scattered throughout the world.  Why?  They were scattered because of persecution.  We should be careful not to read that too far – Birch has a point – the persecution wasn’t yet as bad as it could be…or would be.  But Nero was probably already ruling when this letter was written, and it would keep getting worse.  The Christians of the early church faced hardship and persecution – socially, economically, and eventually physically.  And even when these early Christians experienced social and economic persecution, Peter wrote to them as “strangers in the world, scattered – exiled – among the nations.”  They were in the same spot that the Jews in Judah had been centuries before – oppressed, harassed, living in the midst of a pagan culture that mocked all they stood for.
In other words, there’s nothing per se wrong with using the analogy of exile for Western Christians today.  We simply must recognize that this is an analogy, and every analogy can be pushed too far.  Our situation in the Western church is not nearly as bad as what many brothers and sisters around the world face daily, nor should we act like we have it so hard.  Yet, we can still profitably look at and learn from the question of what it means to live as exiles in the world.
And whatever analogy we use, it is fair to say the Western church has moved and is moving towards a minority position in terms of its influence on culture.  Now probably, from what all the statisticians say, the number of people who have really met Jesus, been born again, has not changed terribly much as a percentage of the population.  Instead, the well-documented rise of the “nones” is driving this change.  Christianity in America for a long time managed to live in a position of cultural hegemony, where the mainstream, whether or not it truly believed in Christian orthodoxy, still gave lip service, accepted many of its cultural claims, and voted with it, so to speak.  We must remember that was often a hollow faith, but in many places in the West, including until recently in most of America, it was relatively easy, safe, and even socially helpful to say you were a Christian.
That, certainly, has changed in much of the West, somewhat earlier in Europe, then first in the American Northeast and West, then spreading more broadly to cultural centers across the nation; and we have no reason to think the trend will suddenly cease.  The church is moving towards a position of less cultural influence, and whether we describe that as “occupation” (Birch’s preferred analogy) or “exile” (also valid), that requires rethinking how Christians relate to our world.  And Jeremiah 29 remains not just helpful, but crucial in thinking through the question.
These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the eunuchs, the officials of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen, and the metal workers had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. It said: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord. “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” (Jeremiah 29:1–14, ESV)
How did we get here, to this cultural moment?  We might start with how Israel got there.  This is a letter from Jeremiah the prophet, back in Jerusalem, to some of the exiles deported to Babylon, a letter written near the end of the history of Judah as an independent nation.  After Solomon, God’s people split into two separate nations, sometimes allied, often fighting each other.  A couple hundred years later, the northern nation, called Israel, had been wiped out by the Assyrian Empire.  Now, a bit past one hundred years later, the southern nation, called Judah, was in the process of being wiped out by the Babylonian Empire.  The Babylonian judgment happened in three stages, and in each of those three stages the Babylonians deported a portion of Judah’s elite, exiling them, taking them back to Babylon for what basically amounted to a forced reeducation campaign, one that made them into Babylonian civil servants.  Jeremiah 29 occurs in the midst of those three stages.  The prophet Jeremiah, still back in Judah, wrote to God’s people who had been exiled to Babylon.
To understand this situation correctly, we must recognize that Israel ended up in exile because of both injustice AND false worship.  Jeremiah 7:1-7 says – and the OT prophets had been repeating both these themes for centuries – that God had exiled them because of both their religious apostasy and the rampant injustice of their society:
The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’ “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.” (Jeremiah 7:1–7, ESV)
One can almost open the preexilic prophets of the Old Testament at random and find these two themes.
First, as to idolatry, this remained a very religious people.  Atheism was a much, much later cultural movement.  Everyone at this time was religious; the only question was which god you followed.  Further, this remained a people who said they were worshiping the Lord.  If you had asked the people themselves, “Have you turned to other gods?” they would have answered, “No, this is how we worship the Lord.”  Of course, God didn’t see it that way.  In his eyes, they were “going after other gods.”  In other words, they had a religion that claimed it was still the worship of the Lord and even formally looked like, at least in many ways, it was the worship of the Lord.  It had the same ceremonies, the same sacrifices, the same patterns, yet it was a false worship of the Lord.  It had much of the form of Yahwism, but in God’s mind it was something else entirely.
Second, as to justice, this remained an incredibly blind people.  Their stated faith and their market and societal ethics simply did not match.  As long as the Temple continued its work, as long as the sacrifices were made, people considered themselves to be good with God, well set, having done their religious duty.  No matter if one then went out and slept with a prostitute, exploited the poor, oppressed the widow, the orphan, or the refugee.  No matter if one’s business practices were technically legal but corrupt.  No matter if one’s faith had no impact once he exited the Temple courts.  Jeremiah critiques, standing in a long line of Old Testament prophets, the worst of legalistic, formalistic religion.
And, we might add, Jeremiah rejects their complacency in the light of all of that.  They cry out, “This is the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord.”  In other words, they cry out, “We’re good, so long as we meet the obligations of the Temple sacrificial system.  We have nothing to worry about.  God will always protect Jerusalem, because he has promised to.”  To which Jeremiah says, “The Temple’s presence will not save you.  Give me a true religion, one that rejects idolatrous religious compromise and one that seeks justice.”
If the Western church has moved into a position that is much more exilic, even if in a very light form, how did we get here?  Interestingly, the two warring halves of the movement formerly known as evangelicalism each concentrate on one or the other of those causes.
One of the two halves often traces the roots of the church’s loss of influence to false worship, particularly to the rise of liberal theology in the early 20th century, which then really flowered with the 60’s and the sexual revolution and then more recent cultural moves on gender and sexuality.  The narrative goes as follows:
Read More
Related Posts: