GK Chesterton once wrote on why things happen this way: “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” We have a god who knows the way out of the grave. The cross was a place of total and utter disaster for the followers of Christ. That was the mark of a defeated king. But it was only through the cross that this King would conquer the grave. 

The Apostle Paul writes in II Cor. 1 about a time when he and his colleagues experienced a certain degree of affliction in Asia. It got so bad that they despaired of life itself. What was the purpose of all this? It was intended to teach them, yes, even the great Apostle Paul, that he must not rely on himself but on God who raises the dead.
How often do you see this theme repeated throughout Scripture? A man is brought to the precipice and is ready to plunge to his death only for God to show forth His power and glory through weakness.
You might recall the history of Gideon and his men as they were preparing to face the Midianites. Over the course of Judges 7, the Lord cuts down an army of 22000 men to 300 men. When their clay pots break open, the light streams out, and the scene astonishes the enemy soldiers who then go down to complete and utter defeat. Remember. We have this treasure in clay pots. The treasure of the gospel. So that when we are broken open, the Lord spreads His light to a watching world (II Cor. 4).
You may recall the history of Israel passing through the Red Sea and the mighty armies of Egypt being swallowed up as they came in hot pursuit. You may recall the armies of Sennacherib being destroyed by the angel of the Lord. You may recall the many harrowing and dangerous situations King David found himself in, only to have it proven to him, again and again, that the Lord was fighting for Him and rushing before Him like a mighty wind through the trees (II Sam 5:17-25).
It was only when in prison that the angel came to break Peter out of jail. How many times did Paul and Silas bring men to Christ when in prison?
But think also of Christians throughout history. Athanasius was only 28 years old at the council of Nicaea. His life was marked by accusations of murder and he was exiled 5x. Or Calvin who was exiled from Geneva only a couple years after being commanded by the fiery Farel to take up his work there. In the face of imminent disaster the Lord used these men as earthen vessels to spark the light of Reformation, when they were smashed and broken open.
GK Chesterton once wrote on why things happen this way: “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.” We have a god who knows the way out of the grave. The cross was a place of total and utter disaster for the followers of Christ. That was the mark of a defeated king. But it was only through the cross that this King would conquer the grave. Trudeau and Biden have no power over the grave. But Jesus does.
And so Christians do not fear in the face of imminent disaster knowing that God loves cliffhangers, knowing that God loves to use all the circumstances of our lives to advance His kingdom. Those imminent disasters are meant to teach us to rely, not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.
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Do not forget what he has called you to. Our time is limited. “Live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God” (1 Peter 4:2).  If we are bored with the Christian life, I would suggest it is not Christianity leaving us unfulfilled. We likely have one foot in the world and one in the faith, and it is the world that is leaving us uninspired.

Many of us have slipped into an Evangelical assumption about the Christian life that does not align with Scripture. We live a Christian existence that is far from the biblical reality. We have begun to see the spiritual life as not much more than attending church to listen to sermons—some good, some bad, doing our devotions, and then focusing on earthly things the remainder of the time. As an Evangelical, I realize this is not what historic Evangelicalism teaches, but it is how we often live our lives. No wonder so many are bored.
Peter calls us to much more than this malaise in his second epistle. He tells us that “God’s divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3). Yet we seem to have little life and little godliness, yet all of this is available through the knowledge of God. If we think a sermon a week and ten-minute daily devotions is sufficient to know such an awe-inspiring God, we have barely scratched the surface. Nor do we realize that he should encompass everything about us.
“He has granted to us his precious and very great promises” (2 Peter 1:4a). These promises include all things pertaining to justification and sanctification, but we often neglect the latter. Through these promises, “You may become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4b). To be clear, this does not mean we become little gods. It means something less heretical and better for us. Peter is telling us the only true living God has taken up residence in us through the Holy Spirit. He is also telling us we can grow in holiness like our Father in heaven.
This news is glorious because we have “escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire” (2 Peter 1:4c). Or have we?
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This is what totalitarianism means: the infiltration of politics (cultural and otherwise) into every aspect of life. In Huxley’s Brave New World, the Savage was the only sane person there because as an exile, he had been raised ignorant of the corrupt totalitarian culture and its values. I heard the other day about a family — a conservative Christian family — that has been devastated by gender ideology wreaking havoc in the lives of their children. It sneaked up on them. Catastrophe. I mean, honest-to-God destruction of young people’s bodies and souls, and of family relationships.

A reader comments on the “Gender Identity And Your Kids” thread:
There’s a certain kind of conservative who looks at this trend [the corruption of fandom by gender ideology obsessives — RD] and says, “Good riddance. Unplug it all. Now your lazy nerd kids can spend all day at the gym lifting weights, or learn to play a musical instrument, and won’t be wasting time on the fandom of some media-marketed TV show or book series.”
I totally understand this impulse as a utopian ideal, but I also think there’s a horrible lack of appreciation for how difficult it is to raise kids in a world where they are uncomfortable with participating (or forbidden to participate) in popular franchise fan culture. My children are homeschooled and constantly desperate for more peer interaction. When they meet other kids at the park, or the roller skating rink, or on vacation, they are bombarded with aspects of pop culture from which they are being excluded — and they know it. Last month my brother passed along a collection of books and comics that my nephew was reading, and within a few weeks my 9-year-old came to us to confess that one of the books had “the f-word” in it. It ended up featuring a protagonist who was a pre-op transgender boy. At at this point I’m not even sure if her uncle gave it to her out of ignorance, or if he knew but did it anyway as a way to subvert our overly protective parenting style. I don’t have the heart to start a confrontation over it, given the cultural and ideological stress I have with my siblings already. Do you have any idea how wretched I feel that I can no longer trust my own brother as a screen for children’s literature content?
Right now my girls are super-enthusiastic about a book series… and I know they are just a few books away from the one that introduces a lesbian character. We started watching a TV show… and I already know which season has the gay wedding. Every new property (whether it’s original or the rebooting of a Gen X classic) is simply obligated to pay out a wokeness tax now. I’ll let my children watch this stuff with my supervision sometimes, when we can talk about it along the way. But I can’t let them enjoy unsupervised spaces with peers, certainly not in virtual spaces, since those peers are not going to exercise similar discretion. I essentially have to ban my kids from having friends unless those friends are very carefully vetted and supervised, and now I feel trapped in a helicopter-parenting Defcon-alert holding pattern.
It’s hard to exaggerate how besieged the current culture makes me feel as a parent of two daughters leaving elementary school age. I have unceasing dread of a giant industry devoted to prying my children away from my world, my culture, and my values, and to convince them that I’m the sociological equivalent of the stock villains being defeated weekly in their prepackaged media products. I want to give my children the freedom to explore and discover friends without oppressive surveillance, but all of the friends they meet want to create secretive phone-driven modes of contact with them for private conversations. Am I doomed to become a CIA operative, using spyware to catch my preteen daughter having illicit chats about testosterone and top surgery? Will I be the stereotypical killjoy parent, demanding that my girls stop seeing any friends I regard as “a bad influence”? I’m staring into an abyss that has swallowed so much of my world and the things in it that I once loved already, and has designs on my girls as well.
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