Blessings to you, my friends.

(Yesterday on the blog: Are We Performing or Are We Participating?)
One Month After the Roe Leak: Reflections on the Supreme Court’s Draft Opinion
Though we saw many hot takes on that leaked draft of the majority opinion of the Supreme Court, Steven Wedgeworth waited a month to offer some slightly more mature reflections.
Expressive Individualism and the Death of Mental “Illness”
“Everyone who knows anything at all knows you must never attribute someone’s character or behavior to their identity. It is universally agreed in polite society that no person is ever good or bad at something because of their gender, or their race, their family, sexuality, etc. To indulge in this reasoning is at best a crude stereotype, at worst an expression of flagrant bigotry.” Or that’s what we’ve been led to believe…
Why the Promise that Jesus Will Build His Church Does Not Mean He Will Necessarily Build My Church
This is a key distinction.
Beware the Free Steak Dinner and Financial Advice Retirement Seminar
“I recently received another one: an invitation in the mail to a ‘free dinner and retirement discussion.’” I am starting to get those too! Chris Cagle tells what they are about (though from a distinctly US-based perspective).
Letters from Lockdown: A Shanghai Pastor on Pandemics and Persecutions
“Though the church I serve in Shanghai still rents a physical space for worship, for many weeks it seemed useless. As much of the world—and many of the churches in it—moved on from strict pandemic protocols, a viral uptick here kept many Chinese Christians in an extended lockdown.” I was challenged by this one.
Embodied Discernment: Learning to Discern with Our Minds, Hearts, and Actions
“If discernment is a spiritual gift, you’ve got it. You never turn off your discerning brain—it’s always engaged and evaluating the words you read, hear, and sing. You have a stack of theology books on your desk and a tattered, marked up Bible. Whenever a theology question comes up during Bible study, all heads turn to you.” This is all good, but it comes with certain temptations.
Flashback: Could You Use Some Joy Today?
But we do not need to be Christians for long before we learn that the greatest joy connected to wealth does not come from gaining but from giving…Where we tend to associate joy with how much we get, higher joy comes from how freely we give.

Reading the Bible isn’t just reading words on a page but listening to one who loves us more than life itself, and who has a very clear agenda for our lives and our world. —Gary Millar

With due respect to my Reformed Presbyterian friends, I think it’s difficult to make the argument that singing in the local church must not be accompanied by instrumentation. But with due respect to everyone else, I think it’s equally difficult to make the argument that singing in the local church must be accompanied by instrumentation. It seems to me that we have a lot of freedom here—freedom to sing in a way that matches our convictions and freedom to sing in a way we judge appropriate to our setting.

I tend to think the most difficult position to justify from the Bible is the one that seems to be in effect in a great many evangelical churches today—that music is at its best when there is a full band of skilled singers and musicians who play so loudly as to drown out the voices of the congregation. Where instrumentation was traditionally used to enhance the beauty of the music and help direct the singing of the congregation, today it often seems to dominate so that instead of using a band to complement and accompany the congregation, the congregation now merely does their best to sing along to a band.
A friend recently distinguished between two helpful categories: worship services that are performative and worship services that are participatory. A performative worship service is one that could merrily go on even if there was no one there but the people at the front of the room—the pastor(s) and the band. A participatory worship service is one that would have no meaning unless the congregation was present and doing their part. And while the congregation can and should participate in more than the singing (e.g. prayers, ordinances, responsive readings), they should certainly not participate in less than the singing. Yet this is the reality in so many churches today—singing is performative far more than participatory. In fact, the less we can hear the voices of the unskilled singers in the pews, the better the music is judged to be. Singing has gone from being the domain of the many amateurs to the domain of the few professionals.
The New Testament says precisely nothing about instrumentation in worship services and, like the majority of Protestants, I take this silence to allow room for wisdom and conviction. I have joyfully sung acapella in some churches and have joyfully sung with a full band in others. But if the New Testament is silent on instruments, it is clear on voices, and it seems to say that singing belongs to the entire church, not just to a band. In two of Paul’s epistles he states with clarity that we are to all sing when we gather for worship. We are to address “one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord” and we are to sing “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness” in our hearts to God (Eph 5:19; Col 3:16). As good as instruments may be, voices are better, for voices express praise and worship in ways even the most skilled musician cannot. 
Hence, it seems a reasonable conclusion that if we are to use instruments and lead vocalists, they should make it their task to serve the voices, not dominate them, not displace them, and not drown them out. And the voices should not be just the one or two skilled singers at the front of the room, but the entire congregation who together bear the responsibility for obeying God’s commands. It is the whole church, not just the best singers, who are to mutually encourage one another through the singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. And to do that, they must be heard! Their voices must not be drowned out by instruments, but rise above them.
So I say it is high time that churches emphasize participation ahead of performance. If the band is having a great time while the congregation is struggling to keep up, if the band is audible and the congregation silent, if two voices are being heard while hundreds more are going unheard, something has gone terribly wrong. It would be far better to sing without instruments than to have the church stay silent with them. It would be far better to turn off all instrumentation than to tune out all the voices. Serve the people as they sing, I say—serve the people as they sing of the gospel, sing for one another, and sing to the Lord—just as He commands.

Westminster Books has just refreshed its children’s fiction section and is offering some pretty good deals.

Today’s Kindle deals include at least one good book from RHB.
The indelible conscience and a month of “pride”
“In case you haven’t heard, June 1 no longer marks the end of the school year or the unofficial beginning of summer. It’s the start of Pride Month. Initially conceived in 1970 to commemorate the first anniversary of the Stonewall riots, Pride Month has become a government-promoted, corporate-sponsored, 30-day celebration of LGBTQ acceptance and achievements.” Kevin DeYoung reflects on the cultural significance of Pride Month.
Declaring and Clicking in the Word of Faith
“I was one of those people. You know the ones telling you to watch what you say because death and life are in the power of the tongue. It is with certainty and irony I can say my actions drove family members nuts at times. Decreeing and declaring were integral in what was considered prayer time. When faced with a possible negative outcome in life, it was not uncommon to say, ‘I do not receive that’, because receiving the negative would make it a reality. This was seen as a lack of faith. Rather, we were to declare a thing and see it come to pass.”
Truth on Fire (Free ebook!)
The Good Book Company is giving away a free ebook of Truth on Fire by Adam Ramsey. In the book, Adam encourages readers to know God truly and experience him deeply. (Sponsored Link)
Nevertheless
I appreciate this reflection. “I’m not sure I would have ever considered that my sorrow could be associated with my good. That is, unless Jesus told me so. Nor could I work out how Paul could pair sorrow and rejoicing in the same sentence—maybe he understood something about Jesus I’d missed. I don’t feel too bad, though, and neither should you if these matters are confusing to you too, I mean, the other disciples didn’t really get it either.”
Pastor, Jesus Doesn’t Care How Big Your Church Is
Pastors need this reminder from time to time. In this case it’s Jared Wilson delivering it.
Time
Paul Levy: “It strikes me, that as Christians we need to be more aware of our finitude. I suspect more of us struggle with wasting time than we are willing to admit. The internet has it’s obvious problems with pornography and online gambling, but the way that it distracts us and robs us of time without our realising it.”
Benefitting From A ‘Bubble’
Here is something good that came out of a COVID bubble.
Flashback: Friends to Christ, Strangers To His Church
The call to community is a call to familiarity. If we are to love and serve others, we need to know them…We can love others in precise and meaningful ways only to the degree that we know them.

It is the sovereign decree of heaven that nothing can make sinners truly happy but God in Christ… —A.W. Pink

May the God of love and peace be with you today.

It’s Zondervan who is headlining today’s list of Kindle deals.
(Yesterday on the blog: Prayers That God Will Not Answer)
Fantastic Fireflies (Video)
The John 10:10 Project continues its stellar series of videos on the wonders of God’s creation.
God’s Sovereignty, Our Suffering, and Robots
“Christianity faces a tough question regarding the conflict between the Bible’s claim toward God’s sovereignty and our suffering. This question can be asked in a variety of ways—from skeptics’ challenges (‘How can you say there is a God?’) to saints’ laments (‘Why God, why?’). In this article, written more to the saint than to the skeptic, I’d like to address one weak answer to this question and offer three better ones.”
The First Lesson of Prayer
“Prayer is essential to our spiritual lives. That’s probably not a surprise to anyone. But what is a surprise is how many of us think we are terrible at praying.” J.A. Medders addresses this well.
Heap burning coals on his head?
What does the Bible mean when it speaks of heaping burning coals on a person’s head? This article offers a plausible explanation.
The Miseducation of the Pastor
“When it comes to theological education, this means most students enter seminary thinking that what they need above all is to master theological truths, when what they chiefly need is to be mastered by these truths. To say this another way, what seminary students most need to learn is the way of life that emerges among those who have received scriptural truths not merely as facts to be memorized, preached, and defended, but as theological givens, as bricks in a foundation upon which they live and move and have their being.”
20 Scriptures to guide our online speech
Just like the title says, here is Scripture that can help guide our online speech.
Flashback: Accomplishments as High as Heaven, Character as Low as Hell
No one ever resigns. No one ever steps aside. No one ever has such integrity that he counts himself disqualified and removes himself from public ministry. Or very few, anyway.

The price of victory is constant vigilance. Yes, there is grace to cover all our sin; but that grace leads us to mortify it, not to tolerate it. —Sinclair Ferguson

There are times when it seems like God does not hear us. There are times when it seems like God has become deaf to our prayers and unresponsive to our cries. There are times when we seek but do not find, knock but do not find the door opened. Why is it that God sometimes does not answer our prayers?

There may be any number of reasons, but before we consider a few of them, we need to acknowledge that often God actually does answer our prayers, though either in a way we cannot yet see or in a way we do not accept. He sometimes answers invisibly or imperceptibly and he sometimes answers in a way we simply fail to see or, worse, fail to acknowledge. Then there are times when God gives us not exactly what we had pleaded for but what he, in his wisdom, has determined we need. Either way, we should always take great care before we conclude “God has not answered my prayer.”
Yet there actually are times when he does not answer. This should not surprise us if we have an appropriate assessment of our own finitude, our own selfishness, our own sinfulness, our own simplicity. We know that God has power that is vast, holiness that is perfect, wisdom that is complete, and plans and purposes that encompass all of time and space. Our lives and the world around would be in woeful condition if God was beholden to each and every one of our petitions.
Our confidence, then, is not in God answering every one of our prayers just as we have prayed them, but in God hearing those prayers and determining if, when, and how to best respond. If God is truly who he says he is, if he is truly our good Father and we the children he loves, we can be certain that if he does not answer, it is only because this is better for us. He is not cruel, nor arbitrary, nor apathetic. Hence his inaction must be for our good, not for our harm.
So what are some of the ways God expresses his love and his goodness through unanswered prayer?
God may not answer our prayers when to answer them would be to rob us of a blessing. This is especially true when we pray to be relieved of suffering or delivered from a burden. The Bible and our own experience makes it clear that God often works mightily through hardships, not apart from them. This being the case, to deliver us too quickly would actually be to rob us of a blessing. It would be to take away the very circumstance through which God is conforming us to his image. There are some flowers that can be plucked only in the depths of valleys and only on the peaks of mountains, and there are some blessings that can be gotten only in adversity. God will not rob us of experiencing blessings by lifting us past the means through which they can be ours.
Then, God may not answer our prayers when they are selfish. If we pray in such a way that we account only for ourselves and not for others, God may not grant our request. God’s mind is much greater than our own and his plan much more expansive. He always accounts for all of his children and will hardly do injury to one in order to bless another. Whether our prayers are knowingly selfish or ignorantly selfish, God may not answer them if giving a blessing to us would prove a sorrow to another.
Of course God may not answer our prayers when what they request is sinful or when we ourselves are living in unrepentance. God will not grant prayers that demand what he has forbidden or that reject what delights his heart. He will not grant prayers to those who are living in unrepentant sin and are rejecting the prompting and pleading of his Spirit. God may close his ears to our pleas as a means of fatherly chastisement that is meant to awaken us to our sinfulness, soften our hearts, and steer us back to him.
Then there are times when our prayers are unanswered only because they are delayed. The God who sees the end from the beginning is not refusing to answer, but is simply waiting until the time is right. We may not yet have character that is prepared or circumstances that are appropriate to receive what we have prayed for. Just as a child cannot take advanced mathematics before he has mastered the basics, we may need divine preparation to be able to receive and appreciate some of God’s blessings. Many who plead for success would be ruined if they received it, so God lovingly delays until their hearts and lives have been made ready.
Then, it could also be that the blessings we want have not yet been fully prepared. We may plant an apple tree and immediately pray for it to bear fruit, but it will take many seasons for it to grow and mature and only then will it satisfy our hunger. And this is true of many of the blessings we long for. There may be a long time of preparation in which we need to wait patiently as those blessings are readied by his hand. God’s silence does not flow from apathy or indifference, but love. He is not refusing to grant us the blessing, but simply preparing it, nurturing it from seed to sapling to fruitfulness.
Where we so often go wrong is in failing to believe that God truly means to bless us, failing to believe that his motives are only and always love, failing to wait for his timing to be right and his answer to be perfect. Our task is to trust him—to trust him in what he will give and what he will refuse, in what he will grant in a moment and what he will grant only in time. Our task is to pray and wait, pray and trust, pray and watch for him to do exceedingly and abundantly beyond all we can ask or even imagine.

Inspired by The Hidden Life by J.R. Miller

There are a few Kindle deals to look through today.

(Yesterday on the blog: Affirming God’s Image)
‘Top Secret’ Maps Reveal the Massive Allied Effort Behind D-Day
National Geographic has a really good overview of D-Day, the planning that went into it, and the weeks that followed. (This is, after all, the 75th anniversary of that day.)
What Is Your Crazy Dream?
I enjoyed Anne Kennedy’s kind of snarky look at the latest lifestyle guru to tell you to discover and pursue your crazy dream. “Do I have to have a crazy dream? Couldn’t it just be that I both try to fulfill my obligations in life, to worship God rather than myself, and to do the things that I find interesting in and of themselves, for their own sake rather than for the ends they might serve?”
10 Questions for Examining Your Life
If you think you’d benefit from a time of deliberate self-examination, here’s a guide that may prove helpful. “God has given two gifts to help you examine yourself successfully. These are his Word and his Spirit. The Word will show you sins and failings. The Spirit will open your eyes to see them. Self-examination, rightly pursued, will bring great benefits to your Christian life.”
Biblical Metaphors for the Christian Life
I love the topic of this month’s Tabletalk magazine: Biblical metaphors for the Christian life. There’s a selection of articles to read.
What Does It Mean When a Product Is ‘Amazon’s Choice’?
Essentially, it probably doesn’t mean much. Do your own research and don’t assume Amazon is guiding you to the best option.
What We Lose When We Collapse the Four Gospels into One
“So what do we lose when we collapse the four Gospels into one? I believe we lose at least three things: the author’s unique perspective, the artistry of the story, and the apologetic of the life of Jesus.”
Against Open Doors
Aaron Denlinger: “Sometimes a closed door simply needs to be pushed on harder. Sometimes an open door needs to be passed by. The wisdom and biblical principles that govern decision making should always take precedence over providential ‘signs’ that Scripture never bids us decipher.”
Flashback: The Bible’s Three Big Lessons on Debt
Debt is not always wrong, but in most cases it is inadvisable. It is the better part of wisdom to avoid debt whenever possible, to enter it with only the utmost caution, and to discharge it at the earliest opportunity.

The mere fact itself that God’s will is irresistible and irreversible fills me with fear, but once I realize that God wills only that which is good, my heart is made to rejoice. —A.W. Pink

Good morning. Grace and peace to you.

Today’s Kindle deals include some good picks from Crossway.
(Yesterday on the blog: Husbands in Flirtation)
Grief, but Not Without Hope, from Ames, Iowa
“‘Sometimes there are weeks when the news comes faster than your heart can keep up.’ That’s what Cornerstone Church lead pastor Mark Vance told those gathered at a prayer meeting this morning for two young women shot and killed in the church parking lot Thursday night.”
The House By The Roadside
This is a great little article on hospitality. “We are not instructed to be given to entertaining, but to hospitality. Entertainment wants to impress; but hospitality serves. Entertainment puts things first; but hospitality puts people first. Entertainment communicates ‘this is my home’; but hospitality conveys, ‘this home is the Lord’s’.”
Truth on Fire (Free ebook!)
The Good Book Company is giving away a free ebook of Truth on Fire by Adam Ramsey. In the book, Adam encourages readers to know God truly and experience him deeply. (Sponsored Link)
The Lord Is Their Shepherd
“These fears tug at the heart of all parents no matter if their children have an illness or not. We wonder what obstacles our children will face in their future, what suffering will come their way, what doubts will sink in, and what temptations will overtake them that we can’t foresee. We know the Lord is our shepherd who will navigate us through whatever trials our children may experience, but we often have a harder time remembering the Lord is also their shepherd.”
What is Over-Realized Eschatology?
You’ve probably heard the term “over-realized eschatology.” This article explains what that is.
Pastor, What Are Your 30-Year Goals?
“In my early years of pastoring, I remember reading books and articles on pastoral ministry and leadership that emphasized the importance of vision and mission and 1-year goals and 5-year goals. Those may have their place. But what if real results and fruitfulness are not short-term, immediate results, but long-term?” That’s a question worth asking.
The Queen’s Hope
Ruth Clemence: “As many celebrate Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s 70-year reign this weekend, I thought it fitting to write about her hope and faith in Jesus Christ.”
Flashback: Isn’t This Just The Carpenter Guy?
They thought so little of him, or thought of him so little, that they were offended when he took it upon himself to teach them. They were shocked when they realized he taught with authority.

What the destruction of the sun in the natural heavens would be to our physical earth, the destruction of Christianity would be to the moral world. The sun turned into darkness! —De Witt Talmage

One of the most helpful things I’ve done as a writer is import quotes I collect through my reading into Roam Research where I can then sort them by topic. I was recently going through quotes on marriage and thought I’d pull together a few that are meant to challenge husbands.

First, De Witt Talmage makes an observation and offers a warning: “The fact is, that many men are more kind to everybody else’s wives than to their own wives. They will let the wife carry a heavy coal scuttle upstairs, and will at one bound clear the width of a parlor to pick up some other lady’s pocket-handkerchief. There is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it is common among men—namely, husbands in flirtation. The attention they ought to put upon their own wives they bestow upon others.”
J.R. Miller then calls men to be worthy of their own wives:
Every true-hearted husband should seek to be worthy of the wife he has already won. For her sake, he should reach out after the noblest achievements and strive to attain the loftiest heights of character. To her he is the ideal of all that is manly, and he should seek to become every day more worthy of the homage she pays to him. Every possibility in his soul, should be developed. Every latent power and energy of his life, should be brought out. His hand should be trained under love’s inspiration to do its most skillful work. Every fault in his character should be eradicated, every evil habit conquered, and every hidden beauty of soul should burst into fragrant bloom—for her sake! She looks to him as her ideal of manhood, and he must see to it that the ideal is not marred—that he never falls by any unworthy act of his own, from the high pedestal in her heart to which she has raised him.
He also calls men to appreciate how their wives are a means of divine kindness to them. “So it is in the dark hours of a man’s life, when burdens press, when sorrows weigh like mountains upon his soul, when adversities have left him crushed and broken, or when he is in the midst of fierce struggles which try the strength of every fiber of his manhood—that all the radiance and glory of a true wife’s strengthful love shine out before his eyes! Only then does he recognize in her God’s angel of mercy!”
Then, finally, Talmage praises men who are love and respected by their wives. “If a man during all his life accomplishes nothing else except to win the love and help and companionship of a good woman, he is the garlanded victor, and ought to have the hand of all people between here and the grave stretched out to him in congratulation.”

May you know the Lord’s blessings as you serve and worship him this weekend.

There are some great Kindle deals today, including books by Steve Lawson and Gregg Allison.
(Yesterday on the blog: It’s the Air We Breathe)
Showing Up Mattered
“Every Christian who serves sometimes wonders if his or her efforts are having any effect. With some people it’s not obvious that God is working. Am I really helping this person change? Does my faithfulness really matter?” Kraig shares an example of a time when simply showing up mattered.
Welcome to Pride Month, Christian
“If anybody wants to understand what is happening to the public square in America—indeed, if anyone wants to know how America, or at least her ruling class, wishes to understand itself, they need look no further than Pride Month.” Carl Trueman explains why it is so significant an event.
What is the aseity of God?
If you’ve heard the term but haven’t known how to define it, this brief video will be helpful.
The Darkest Deception in the Church
“The worst deception in the church is self-deception on this point: that we believe we’re not self-righteous.” Ouch.
Social Media Shepherds
“There was a time when most things I knew about the Bible came from my pastor, and I learned them while sitting in a pew. These days, not so much.”
A Case for the Longer Ending of Mark
It seems to be generally accepted these days that the final verses of Mark should be treated with suspicion. For that reason, I appreciate this dissenting perspective. It is good to think about these things…
Flashback: Affirming God’s Image
Less than a generation ago, few would have dared suggest that there is no necessary link between biological sex and gender identity. Today, though, it is commonly believed that a person with a female body may actually be a man or a person with a male body may actually be a woman.

Prayer is the antithesis of self-dependence. —Michael Reeves

At the end of the Second World War the Allied nations began to “denazify” Germany. After the final surrender, they began the long process of identifying Nazis and uprooting the influence of Nazism across all of society—in culture, media, economics, and politics. The goal was to create a Germany that was post-Hitler and, therefore, post-Nazi.

It seems to me that in the West today we are witnessing an attempt to “dechristianize” our society—to identify and destroy the influence of Christianity wherever it exists. The goal, of course, is to create a society that is post-Jesus and, therefore, post-Christian. Christian sexual morals are now said to be bigotry, Christian understandings of marriage and family are now said to be oppressive, Christian notions of justice are now said to be discriminatory. On and on it goes and over time this seek-and-destroy mission is transforming society around us.
But there is a strange irony to all of this—an irony few people are willing to understand or acknowledge: the very tools people use to criticize Christianity are tools they owe to Christianity. The values they hold and the goals they wish to see realized are values and goals that would not exist without the influence and dominance of the Christian faith. People long for equality, compassion, freedom, and progress, ignorantly supposing that these can only exist apart from societies that have been formed around Christian values. The reality, though, is that they only long for these values because they have been so long immersed in a Christianized society.
This is the subject of Glen Scrivener’s fascinating new book The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality. “Here’s the contention of this book,” he says. “If you’re a Westerner—whether you’ve stepped foot inside a church or not, whether you’ve clapped eyes on a Bible or not, whether you consider yourself an atheist, pagan or Jedi Knight—you are a goldfish, and Christianity is the water in which you swim.” What he wishes to do is to help his readers awaken to this reality, to help them see that we all “depend on values and goals—and ways of thinking about values and goals—that have been deeply and distinctively shaped by the Jesus-revolution (otherwise known as ‘Christianity’). These values are now so all-pervasive that we consider them to be universal, obvious and natural: the air we breathe.”
He writes the book for three audiences. The first is the “nones,” the growing segment of society who have no religious affiliation. To these he says, “I’d like to take you on a journey from the ancient world to the modern and from the beginning of the Bible to the end of history. I hope that along the way we’ll have some fun, that you’ll get a deeper appreciation for the values you cherish, and, most of all, that you’ll see the power and profundity of Jesus and his revolution.”
The second audience is the “dones,” those who have decided they are done with Christianity. For these people his “desire is to take your critiques more seriously, not less. I want you to embrace those difficulties and press into them since, in truly owning those standards, you may well find yourself coming closer to the essence of Christian faith.”
The third audience is the “wons,” the people who already profess Christ. To these he says “I want to encourage you to see that what we’re witnessing in the world are the ongoing convulsions of the Jesus revolution—a revolution predicted, proclaimed and propelled from the depths of history and experienced in the details of the everyday. In tracing the development of this revolution, I hope you’ll be strengthened in faith and encouraged to share it. Jesus Christ is not a peripheral concern for a few spiritual hobbyists. He’s the Lord of history, and in him our lives, our beliefs, our practices and our world make sense.”
With these introductory matters in place, Scrivener begins a fascinating “journey” in which he first takes his readers to the ancient world to show what kind of society Christianity was born into—a society of slavery, oppression, violence, and partiality. Then, over seven chapters, he explores seven values that contemporary Westerners long for, and in each case shows how they arose from the Christian faith, not apart from it. Thus he dedicates a chapter to equality (the equal moral status of all human beings), compassion (the idea that a society is best judged by its treatment of its weakest members), consent (the powerful have no right to force themselves on the weak), enlightenment (education and opportunity for all), science (the conviction that studying the natural world helps us understand the world and improve our lives), freedom (people are not property and each of us ought to have control over our own lives), and progress (moral improvement over time that allows us to reform the evils of society). The final chapters wrap up the arguments and call the reader to not only acknowledge the influence of Christianity but to turn to Christ.
The Air We Breathe has many notable strengths and space permits me to list just a handful of them.
The first is the way it corrals and extends the arguments of a number of contemporary historians and sociologists. Those who read widely may recognize the influence of scholars like Larry Siedentop, Tom Holland, Rodney Stark, Kyle Harper, and Joseph Henrich, with Jordan Peterson making a couple of key appearances as well. Scrivener shows how even many non-Christians are making these very same arguments.
The second is in keeping the writing simple. Though this could be a very heavy topic, and though it has been debated and analyzed in scholarly tomes, The Air We Breathe is meant for the general reader and is written in such a way as to be accessible to all. Those who wish to dive deeper can easily follow the trail through the many careful citations and recommendations.
The third strength is in making the book not merely educational (though it is certainly that) but also evangelistic. Scrivener does not merely want people to understand that “a man on a cross has made our Western world” but also to acknowledge that “the reason a man on a cross has made our world is because he is our Maker—God himself.” This book may well prove a spiritual encouragement to “nones,” “dones,” and “wons” alike.
The Air We Breathe is one of the most interesting books I’ve read this year and one I appreciated from beginning to end. I hope many people will buy it, read it, and allow it to give them a deeper appreciation for Christianity’s influence on our society. Better yet, I hope it will give them a deeper interest and deeper confidence in the Christ of Christianity.

Buy from Amazon