‘Show hospitality’. Is there really much to say about that? Doesn’t showing hospitality look the same for everyone? Well, it depends on your definition. If you think hospitality is fundamentally opening your home and giving people meals (which is a great way to be hospitable) you have to ask how a believer who doesn’t have a home, or a dining table, or potentially any food, could achieve that? If they can’t, then perhaps the issue lies with our definition. Christ’s universal commands that apply to all believers everywhere must be achievable by all believers everywhere in some respect.

At church, we are fast approaching the end of our series in Hebrews. Yesterday, was the penultimate sermon covering the first part of chapter 13. In essence, the passage gave the instruction to ‘let brotherly love continue’ and then outlined four ways we are specifically to do that. Whatever else you might want to say about Hebrews 13:1-6, it ain’t a very tricky passage.
At least, it’s not tricky to understand. It is, however, a little bit tricky to preach. Not because the meaning is hard to convey (it isn’t), but because it is difficult to know exactly how best to preach a list of instructions without descending into moralism or a 30-minute guilt trip. It’s so easy to end up preaching a do-this-and-live style sermon – which really is not what these instructions are there for – or, if we avoid that, to basically make people feel guilty over these various things. I’m not 100% sure either is the most helpful. I’m not 100% I always manage to avoid these things. I suspect I probably don’t preach moralism, but I might well fall into guilt trips.
So, how do you preach lists of instructions without making your message moralistic or spending the whole sermon guilt tripping people about their efforts in these different areas? Here are some things that might help.
Be clear about context
Most New Testament instructions are not given in a vacuum. Usually, they come in the context of other theological points being made or other things going on in the wider context of the book. The particular instructions in Hebrews, for example, come off the back of the writer encouraging his readers to pursue holiness and serve the unshakeable kingdom of God as the only thing of any lasting and ultimate value. So, the instructions are not given as “four steps to Heaven”, but rather as outworkings of what it means to serve the kingdom that will last. If nothing but the kingdom matters, then do these things because they will have lasting value and worth on the last day. Knowing that context makes a bit of difference to how we understand the instructions. The same is true for any of the instructions in scripture.
Be clear about the gospel
If we know the gospel, we know that we are not saved by our works. If we know the gospel, we know we are not saved by faith but then kept by our works thereafter. If we know the gospel, we know that our holiness and justification are not a product of our works, but the work of Christ. I know it’s not it’s not rocket science, but when we are clear about those things we know that the approach to these New Testament instructions can’t be that we are made holy by doing them or that we are adding to our salvation through them. They must be achieving or accomplishing something else.
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In the end, it is the Spirit who makes us holy and it is he who changes otherwise ordinary, seemingly mundane things into spiritual matters. After all, the earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof. It is strange and heretical teaching that says do not touch, do not taste, do not handle. That sort of ascetism is of no value. What transforms ordinary matters into spiritual matters, mundane works into spiritual works, is the Spirit at work within us causing us to glorify God and enjoy him in everyday things.

What makes a work and good work? What makes an ordinary task into a spiritual task? What turns an ordinary, mundane thing into a God-honouring, Christ glorifying thing?
After all, we are created to glorify God and enjoy him forever. We are created by God to walk in the good works he has prepared for us to do. But what, exactly, makes any work one of the good ones he has prepared for us? What makes anything we do glorifying to God?
This is one of those questions that Christians have a habit of tying themselves in knots over. It is one of those matters that really give Christians a reputation for sucking the joy out of anything. Many simply can’t enjoy a thing, they must be sure it is a good and spiritual thing first. In handwringing about that, they are never free to enjoy God’s creation and the fullness thereof because they are too busy agonising over whether they are enjoying it rightly, if they should even enjoy it at all and, if they do enjoy it rightly, whether they have done so too much.
But I think there is a simple answer to the question. An answer that frees us from all the handwringing and agonising over everything. What makes any old work a good work? What makes an ordinary task and spiritual task? The answer, simply, is the Holy Spirit and our union with Christ.
What changes enjoying a nice meal into a “good work” and a spiritual activity? The Spirit at work within us causing us to give thanks to God for it. What turns ordinary rest into a spiritual activity? When we give thanks to God to allowing us to rest. What turns your work into a spiritual activity?
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The depths of God and his word are too deep – even the things he has revealed in his Word – for a finite mind to grasp all in full. And yet God has revealed himself in his Word, we can know what he intends for all men to know, we can grasp – any one of us – the essence of what he has chosen to reveal. We may never know everything, but we can all know what God wants all of us to know.

As regular readers will know, I not so long ago came off twitter. You can search this blog, if you’re bothered, to find out why. I much more recently decided to jack in Facebook too. I haven’t said specifically why and, frankly, don’t intend to either. But I am away from them both.
Particularly with twitter, much less facebook which I was on much less, I sometimes find myself wondering what I am not seeing or hearing. I don’t worry about that for long because, frankly, I remember what I was seeing when I was on it. FOMO being what it is, you wonder what you’re missing and then, when you find out (or just remember), wish you hadn’t bothered. Clickbait is built entirely on this principle and twitter is not far behind. What of significance on twitter won’t eventually make it to the usual news channels? What that isn’t significant do I really need to know?
But this led me to thinking about something else related. The bounds of what we can know. Or, rather, the bounds of what we should know. Is it the case that there are things that we are just not meant to know? Things that might, in actual fact, be deeply unhelpful and problematic for us to know? The Bible is unequivocal that the answer is yes. There are things we cannot know and there are things that are not good for us to know.
Job, in his reply to God, says:
I know that you can do anythingand no plan of yours can be thwarted.You asked, “Who is this who conceals my counsel with ignorance?”Surely I spoke about things I did not understand,things too wondrous for me to know.
There are things we don’t know that are simply too big for us to comprehend.
Indeed, Moses – speaking to the children of Israel in Deuteronomy – makes clear, ‘The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children forever, so that we may follow all the words of this law.’ There are things that God purposes for his people to know, and things that are hidden from them and are not for them to know. King David, speaking of the knowledge of God and how he knows the innermost thoughts of mankind, says ‘This wondrous knowledge is beyond me. It is lofty; I am unable to reach it.’ Trying to get to the bottom of the knowledge of God is not possible for us.
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We need to stop talking about faithfulness as sacrifice. It isn’t. It is for our own good that we obey the commands of Christ. It is in full knowledge that there is something better for us in being faithful.

We need to stop calling obedience and faithfulness to the commands of Christ “sacrifice”. There, I said it. It is not sacrifice to do what Jesus asks us to do. Full stop.
There are a bunch of reasons we need to stop this. First, we subtly convey God’s commands to be hard and burdensome. But Jesus specifically said, ‘my yoke is easy and my burden in light’ (Matthew 11:30). John tells us ‘this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3). The Bible insists these things are NOT hard. When we call our obedience and faithfulness a matter of sacrifice, we suggest otherwise.
Second, not only do we suggest Jesus’ commands are difficult and burdensome when he says they aren’t, but we also convey that they are not fundamentally good when we call it a sacrifice to do them. The reason Jesus commands the things he does is not because he loves bossing us about. It is because he ultimately wants our good. Indeed, his commands are good because he is good. But when we call it a sacrifice to obey, we are suggesting that we are having to give up something good for the sake of Christ.
But this simply isn’t true. When we reject sin, we are giving up something bad for us and pursuing what is specifically good for us. We are shunning the sin that would ensnare and ruin us and pursuing what Jesus says makes for human flourishing. The language of sacrifice suggests Jesus is keeping us from good stuff and we nobly give it up because we love him and he wants us not to do it. But actually, we are rejecting what will damage us and obeying Jesus because his commands keep us from what will not serve our good.

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We should expect opposition to the gospel. If the same gospel preached by Jesus, the Apostles and the Early Church faced opposition, why would we assume things will be any different for us? If those who will be won are drawn by God’s Spirit, it is hardly that surprising that those who will not be won will be repelled by that same Spirit. Opposition to God is inherent in all of us. We are all by nature hostile to him. It only makes sense, then, if we were not drawn by him to Christ we will necessarily be repelled by that same good news that are words of death to us. Which means opposition is inevitable. 

One of the things that we consistently believe is that if we just got our arguments right, if we were just more convincing, more people would believe the gospel. Quite why we believe this, I’m not sure because the Bible is clear that it often just isn’t the case. The issue is rarely that our arguments were not as good as they might have been (even if they weren’t as good as they might have been).
One thing we see consistently in scripture – throughout the gospels, Acts and the letters – is that sometimes the same preaching that persuades in one instance leads to dissent and aggression in another (cf. Peter in Acts 2 and Stephen in Acts 7). Sometimes the same miracles that cause people to believe lead others to hate and oppose (cf. John 7:31, 12:37). Consistently, those who oppose the message begin with apparently legitimate questions of interpretation, but are really just as a means of trying to trap someone (cf. Matthew 22:15-40, Acts 6:9-10). If this fails to work, it moves on to outright lies (cf. Mark 14:56-58, 15:11, Acts 6:10-14). Soon enough, these things descend into plotting to do harm in a bid to stop this person saying the things they are saying (John 11:53, Acts 7:54-60).
We are clearly mistaken if we think the preaching of Jesus, Peter or Stephen needed to be a bit more persuasive. If we think the Lord Jesus just needed to nail his arguments better, more people would have believed, we must surely wonder how any of us could possibly say anything of any value ever! The issue in all these cases was not unpersuasive preaching or lack of familiarity with the requisite scriptures. It wasn’t even failing to understand the hearts of the people because, certainly in Jesus’ case, he knew exactly what was in their hearts. Yet, they were not won to Christ, but set against him. The sound of the same gospel that was life to some was the aroma of death to others.
Why is this the case? The bible tells us, in Jesus’ own words, ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him’ (John 6:44). Unless God is at work, no one will believe. Unless the Spirit has imparted new life, no amount of convincing arguments and gospel clarity from us will do anything about it. It is not the soundness of our arguments that draws people to Christ, but the Father at work by his Spirit. The same gospel offered with the same arguments may draw one and repel another. The drawing is not down to the arguments, but the Spirit who blows where he wills.
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In the clearest terms possible, 1 John 5:8 says that believers are kept by the power of God and the evil one does not touch them. It seems clear enough just from these scriptures that the believer, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, cannot be demon possessed. Almighty God is not going to share space in a believer’s heart with demons.

Depending on the particular Christian tradition you come from, two “explanations” for mental health issues frequently do the rounds. If you are of a Reformed persuasion, some will try and chart your mental health crisis to some underlying sin. Some will be so insistent that this must be the reason they will deny your need of medication and force you to keep digging away until they can go, ‘aha! This is the sin we must address!’ It is a deeply damaging approach.
I don’t deny that sin may well be tied up with the mental health issues. Sin is pretty much tied up with everything. But that doesn’t mean the cause of this mental health issue must be sin. That makes as much sense as me insisting that your broken leg is a result of your sin. I don’t deny that broken leg might lead you to some sinful actions to mitigate the pain (though it doesn’t have to). I don’t deny that you might have goaded someone so much that they chose to stamp on your leg and break it, so some sin was in the mix there (but the immediate cause of the break was actually the force which could have come from any morally neutral source). Nevertheless, most of us reckon broken legs happen and there is no reason to assume they’re the result of sin. Usually, they are not. The same is also true for broken minds.
The other so-called Christian explanation that does the rounds is demonic attack. Naturally, this tends to come less from Reformed quarters. But nevertheless, it does knock around. Perhaps, some aver, your mental health issues are demonic. Maybe what you need is not tablets and psychological support, but an exorcism. Or, if folks are being less dramatic, prayer and fasting. Cast out the demon and you’ll be right as rain. I want to spend the rest of my time in this one pointing out why I think this explanation is a big mistake, particularly if you are a believer.
The reason I say particularly if you are a believer is that believers have the Holy Spirit dwelling inside them. If the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you, do you really think a demon might be able to have possession of you? Can a demon really take control of you? Even if the answer does not seem immediately obvious (and it should), the scriptures are fairly clear on this.
Here is what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6:
15 What agreement does Christ have with Belial?[c] Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement does the temple of God have with idols? For we[d] are the temple of the living God, as God said:
I will dwelland walk among them,and I will be their God,and they will be my people.[e]
If we are the temple of God, and God’s Spirit dwells with us, what space is God going to make in his temple for demons? What space is the Holy Spirit, dwelling in our hearts, going to make for Satan? Scripture seems pretty clear that the answer is none!
Again, Paul in Romans 8 is clear that nothing can separate us from God’s love for us in Christ, including angels and demons:
35 Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
Because of youwe are being put to death all day long;we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.[m]
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Indeed, he says we are ‘more than conquerors through him who loved us’. Paul says in Colossians 1:13 that God ‘has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.’ 1 John 2:13 tells us that we have ‘conquered the evil one’ in Christ. He goes on in 4:4 to say the Holy Spirit is greater than Satan, who has been conquered: ‘You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.’ In the clearest terms possible, 1 John 5:8 says that believers are kept by the power of God and the evil one does not touch them. It seems clear enough just from these scriptures that the believer, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, cannot be demon possessed. Almighty God is not going to share space in a believer’s heart with demons.
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I dare not say that anyone believes until they pray. I cannot understand a dumb faith. The first act of faith will be to speak to God. Faith is to the soul what life is to the body. Prayer is to faith what breath is to the body. How a person can live and not breathe is past my comprehension, and how a person can believe and not pray is past my comprehension too.

JC Ryle’s little book – A Call To Prayer – is a great and easy little read. Here he is on private prayer as a mark of genuine conversion:
This is one of the common marks of all the elect of God, “They cry unto him day and night.” Luke 18:1. The Holy Spirit who makes them new creatures, works in them a feeling of adoption, and makes the cry, “Abba, Father.” Romans 8:15. The Lord Jesus, when he quickens them, gives them a voice and a tongue, and says to them, “Be dumb no more.” God has no dumb children. It is as much a part of their new nature to pray, as it is of a child to cry. They see their need of mercy and grace. They feel their emptiness and weakness. They cannot do other wise than they do. They must pray.
I have looked careful over the lives of God’s saints in the Bible. I cannot find one whose history much is told us, from Genesis to Revelation, who was not a person of prayer. I find it mentioned as a characteristic of the godly, that “they call on the Father,” that “they call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” I find it recorded as a characteristic of the wicked, that “they call not upon the Lord.” 1 Peter 1:17; 1 Corinthians 1:2; Psalm 14:4.
I have read the lives of many eminent Christians who have been on earth since the Bible days. Some of them, I see, were rich, and some poor. Some were learned, and some were unlearned. Some of them were Episcopalians, and some were Christians of other names. Some were Calvinists, and some were Arminians. Some have loved to use liturgy, and some to use none. But one thing, I see, they all had in common. They have all been people of prayer.
I have studied reports of missionary societies in our own times. I see with joy that lost men and women are receiving the gospel in various parts of the globe.
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My depression is a thing that exists. Therefore, God is using it to conform me more to the image of Christ, to conform believers around me more to the image of Christ, to potentially bring other elect members of the kingdom to the point of faith so that they become more like Jesus, and in some mad way to do something or other for people I have never met but who in God’s infinite and intricately weaved tapestry of history and circumstance, are somehow affected for their good too and they will become more like Jesus through it.

Somebody asked me yesterday whether I thought my getting depression was part of God’s plan. I thought that was a really interesting question and thought I would share my view on that here. If you can’t be bothered to read past this sentence, the short answer is, yes I do.
Here is the thing, I believe God is ultimately sovereign. He is sovereign over all things. There is not a single thing, in the whole of creation, that does not happen without God’s permission to do so. The Bible is unequivocal about God’s total and complete sovereignty.
If that is true, then simply the fact that I have depression means that it is, in some way, part of God’s plan. If God is sovereign over all things (and he is), then there isn’t anything that happens that is not part of his plan. Even his decision not to act, not to intervene, is a sovereign decision. If God chooses not to stop something that he could otherwise stop, he must be allowing it for his greater purposes. If God is sovereign over all things, there is nothing that happens that he could not stop and nothing that doesn’t happen that he could have chosen to make happen. Everything that does happen, happens because God either actively causes it or sovereignly permits it. It is as the Bible says, he is the one who ‘works all things according to the counsel of his will’.
The issue is, when it comes to stuff like depression, the inevitable question is: do you think God is happy that you’re ill? The short answer is, no. I don’t think God is any happier at the thought of me being ill than he is at the thought of people sinning. This inevitably leads to a follow up question, then why doesn’t he stop it?
The answer is that God orders his priorities. The Bible tells us, for example, that God does not wish for any to perish, but longs for all people to be saved. At the same time, we know that not everyone is saved. How do we account for this? Philosophers, at this point, like to posit the principle of sufficient reason. God wants all people to be saved, but he has a sufficient reason to allow them not to be. Depending on your particular theological bent, you will offer different answers as to what that sufficient reason is. But it is no different to us saying I would like to save £200 every month, but I would also like to buy a load of stuff too. One of those priorities tends to trump the other, meaning that though I would like both, I order my priorities, which is why my bank account is less full than I might otherwise like it to be. Similarly, God orders his priorities such that, though he may want all to be saved, he has higher priorities that mean all are not in actuality saved.
So, where does that leave us when it comes to my depression? It is certainly something that happened in actuality, so I consider it part of God’s plan. Does God want me to have depression? I don’t think he is pleased at the thought of me being sick. Nevertheless, that it has happened tells me he has some greater purpose in allowing it to happen. But, let’s be honest, we all want to know what that greater purpose is.
As a Reformed believer, I think God orders all things so that he will receive maximal glory. So, God’s highest priority is his own glory. What this means is that God has setup the world so that the world as it is – out of every possible world he might have created – brings him the greatest glory.
I cannot explain how each and every thing works ultimately to the praise and glory of God. I can have a guess at how some things – even some pretty heinous things – might ultimately work to his glory. But I am ultimately only guessing. I can highlight how some objectively terrible things definitely work to his glory because the Bible expressly tells us so. The cross of Jesus Christ – which was a gross injustice of the highest order and severe suffering of the very worst kind – was the very means by which God glorified himself most. It was his means of salvation for his people, the means of glorifying Christ, the means of becoming both just and justifier. Through something so heinous, God was ultimately glorified. But I must admit I can’t explain how every terrible thing that ever happens works to God’s glory that way. I trust what God’s word says, that such things will brings him more glory in the end than if it hadn’t happened at all, and I can have my guesses about what some of that might be, but that is all they are likely to be.

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Clearly there is much good in the world. Clearly there is much to be enjoyed. It is not worldliness to enjoy things in the world. If it causes us to give thanks to God and to love Jesus more, and it is not causing us to sin, have at it. Often the views and matters that concern and worry us most have not gotten everywhere and are not as widespread as some would insist or the internet would imply. But even if these things are true, in the end, isn’t the Holy Spirit more active, more powerful and more able to keep and preserve Christ’s sheep than anything might be able to drag us away? 

It’s not at all uncommon to hear about bit of Christian handwringing about the world. How will our kids manage to live as we send them to school? How will they cope with all the worldliness and pagan ideology on display? How will they (or we) function with the slew of filth that runs rampant on our televisions, in cinemas and – worst of all – across the internet on our computers, tablets and phones? We are bombarded with terrible things continually, whatever will we do?
One response to this, of course, is to just chill out a bit. Our children, at some point, have to learn to live in the world so perhaps it will do them good to figure out how to navigate it now when they are given the leeway of being children who – in the eyes of those who wish to view it as such – would at least consider them to know no better. Might it be that they will learn what others learn, but with the ability to figure it out with the help of parents who love them and want to help them navigate these things scripturally. Might it be that these things are more helpfully figured out now with these things now, where the worst of it on display is amongst their peers who display such things in the childish way children might ever do, rather than letting our kids face it for the first time at, say, university where such things are full grown, unrelentingly on display and without the safety and comfort of any family there to help? You may feel differently, and that’s absolutely fine if you do, but there is a good case to be made for this approach.
Similarly, we could talk about much that is good in the world. Usually, at this point, the bogey-term ‘worldliness’ will rear its head. As I understand it, worldliness is about devotion to the things of the world rather than the things of Christ. Essentially, side-lining Jesus for the sake of some temporal thing(s) that you ultimately value more than him. The Bible does have a lot to say about that sort of attitude, both understandably and rightly so.
But many Christians will use the term to mean something closer to enjoying anything that isn’t effectively Bible studies, sermons and singing hymns. Watching TV, going to the cinema or theatre is worldly. Drinking is worldly. Money is worldly. Holidays are worldly. Clothes are worldly. You name it, if you enjoy it and it ain’t called Jesus, you’re into a whole lot of worldliness. It is the cause of much handwringing and it is, for the most part, a load of crap.
Don’t get me wrong, anything can become an idol to us. And when something temporal has become an idol to us, we have bought into a spirit of worldliness. Loving the world more than Jesus. It is a real and genuine problem. What is not a problem is enjoying stuff in the world that God has made. God has ultimately made a world for us to enjoy. Much talk of edification seems to forget that just enjoying stuff is pretty edifying so long as we thank God for it.
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Our circumstances, even if hard, do not mean God is not at work. Our suffering does not mean God has failed. Our difficulties – even if we are praying for them to be resolved and taken away – do not show God to not be serving our good. Which is why we perhaps need to stop implying that we trust God because he works followed by examples of the Lord finding the money for our rent or healing us of some sickness. Those things are great and warrant our praises and thanksgiving. But they are not the evidence that “prayer works” or “God has it covered” we often think. We know God has it covered because, whatever may befall us now, we have a home in Heaven. 

I have blogged before about how we need to stop saying ‘prayer works’. As I said in that post, but I’ll head of again here, that’s not because I don’t think prayer works. I just think what we tend to communicate when we say that is not very helpful. Often what people mean by that phrase is also not very helpful. But you’ll have to read that other post to find out why.
But we have another close cousin of ‘prayer works’ that does the rounds. It is essentially ‘God works’. The view comes in a variety of forms. In its crasser form, it is the ‘delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart’ brigade. The most favourite verse of all who want God to be their personal genie. But there is a more reformed ‘seek first the kingdom of God’ approach that is just as problematic. It all ends up with either a quid pro quo with God – if I do this, he’ll do that – or, if we’re being less crass about it – a ‘God works’ idea so that I can just trust in the Lord because ‘he’s got it covered’ kind of thing.
Of course, we should trust in God because he does have things covered. Just as we should pray because prayer does work. The issue is that God having things covered and prayer working don’t always work in the way we have decided they must. I don’t think ‘prayer works’ in the sense that God will just give me whatever I ask for every time I ask. I don’t think ‘God has it covered’ by necessarily resolving everything to my satisfaction in the way I would like it resolving.
Often, these sentiments come out in little stories of our own. I was worried about such and such and event, I struggled to get something or other, I just had to trust God and, in the end, it all worked out. We can trust he’s got it covered. Or, I was worried about some operation or other, it was totally out of my hands, all I could do was pray and trust the Lord. But he made me well, the operation was a success, we can trust the Lord.
Now, I get the sentiment, I really do. And, for the record, it is obviously good to praise the Lord when he does what we have asked him to do. It is good when we are sick and God heals. It is good when we are worried and God resolves the cause of our fears. It is good when we are anxious about something unknown and the Lord works it all out for us. It is, of course, good and right to give thanks and praise him for such things.
My concern is, if we have gone hard on the ‘God has it covered’ or the ‘prayer works’ line, what do we say when our family member is sick and God doesn’t heal them and, worse yet, they die? What do we say when we are worried about something and God not only doesn’t appear to resolve the cause of our worries, but our worst fears are realised? What do we say when we are anxious about something unknown and the thing transpires to be even more hellish than we had even imagined? Do these things mean God doesn’t have it covered? Did prayer just not work that time? Has God basically let us down and failed to work for our good?
The problem with this line of thinking is that if God does not seem to have matters covered (as we judge it) or prayer does not appear to work (from our perspective), we quickly wonder whether it is worth the bother of following this God. You don’t have to know much about Israel’s history in Canaan to see this calculation roll round with troubling regularity. If God doesn’t appear to work, we’ll have a little go with Baal instead.
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