The Christmas rags remind us that God has shown His greatest love in the most ignoble birth. In that, He can empathize with us He too was brought down low. He left the splendor of heaven to recline in a feeding trough made for pigs. Why? So that we would never wonder if God was too busy to notice us, too high and lofty to care for us, or too concerned with other matters to reach you. He proved His love for us when He left the highest places in heaven to dwell in the lowest parts of earth.

When our Lord visited the earth, He didn’t come in on a 1000-horsepower jet-fueled celestial chariot for everyone to see. He didn’t topple the world’s greatest empire with heaven’s version of the seal team six. And He did not sit down upon His rightful throne to reign. At least not at first. He came initially to the warm, quiet darkness of a poor virgin’s womb, just as He promised (Gen. 3:15).
In so doing, our Lord submitted to the same human gestation that He joyfully designed. He was fed from the same umbilical cord He artfully invented. And He became dependent upon the mother He wove together in his grandmother’s womb. The artist indeed painted Himself into His own masterpiece.
Upon His birth, the King of all glory wasn’t welcomed with festivals, celebrations, and feasting befitting His majesty. No heralds were sent out from Bethlehem that evening. There were no government holidays or observances sanctioned. Just the humble cry of a newborn babe wrapped in common rags. But why?
Here, we must lift our gaze above the Hallmark card nativity scenes to see the point of what was happening. Jesus wasn’t draped with a warm, cuddly, baby blanket his mother got at Target. He was not swallowed up in a plush baggy onesie because auntie Elizabeth bought him the wrong size. Instead, he was bound with tight strips of linen, making him look more like a miniature mummy than a precious moments model. But again, why?
At that time, such a tight and restrictive binding was used to simulate a mother’s womb. A newborn child had recently spent more than 9 months cramped in an ever-tightening uterus. So, bindings like this would have made the baby most comfortable as he adapted to a wide-open world. But for Jesus, the symbolism is far more profound and gets right at the heart of the Gospel. Let us explore.
First, we know from Scripture that the angels directed a group of herdsmen to go and find the child. He also told them to view these linen rags, wrapped around the body of Christ, as a great sign unto them, convincing them of who He is and what He had come to do. It says in Luke 2

“In the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.” – Luke 2:8-14

The rags upon Jesus’ body were a sign meant to be looked at, noticed, and pondered in such a way that they would come to believe these three specific truths.

He was born for their good news.

He was born for the world’s great joy.

He was born to be Savior, Christ, and Lord.

Born for Their Good News
When the Shepherds viewed those shabby rags, it was meant to be a sign unto them. It was to be a good message. A joyful message. It was a definitive statement from God that communicated eternally good news to His people. But there is more for us to consider here.
The word used in the text by the angelic fleet is the Greek word εὐαγγελίζω, which is where we get our verb “to evangelize” or, more accurately, “to proclaim the Gospel.” In those days, that word did not have a religious connotation. Instead, it was purely political. At that time, a “gospel” message was a good news report about a victory in battle, a call to celebrate an emperor’s birthday, or a declaration that a new child had been born into the royal family. When these good news events occurred, singing heralds would be sent throughout the empire to alert the people so they could celebrate together.
But, just because something was good news in Rome did not necessarily make it good news worth celebrating in Judah.
Read More
Related Posts:

As the process of re-enchantment continues, I believe we will see more and more people dissatisfied with the hollow cave of materialistic atheism and seeking experiences of the transcendent. Will the church be ready to offer compelling answers to their questions? And will the worship and fellowship of the church be so imbued with the presence and power of God that visitors stop and say “God is really among you” (1 Cor. 14:25)? May God move in mighty ways to not only draw the lost to Himself but to revive our churches to be vibrant outposts of Kingdom life.

Living in Montreal, I am used to encountering deeply secular people. No heaven above, no hell below, no God at all. Can you even show me one solid piece of evidence for your God? Why would you believe in old debunked myths? These are the kinds of questions they ask. How does one share the hope of the gospel with such people?
Depending on the particular stripe of unbelief, it may be to poke holes in the materialist fortress, to point out self-evident echoes of eternity in their own beliefs, to show the moral implications of atheism, or any number of similar approaches. All of these are types of pre-evangelism: tilling up the hard ground of unbelief so that the seeds of faith in Jesus might have a chance to grow.
Over the last few years, however, I’ve been bumping into another kind of person who is asking very different kinds of questions: Are the spiritual beings around us benevolent or malevolent? How can we more deeply connect to the spiritual realm? Or, like one young man asked me: Can I ever be free from the spiritual forces I opened myself up to by engaging in occult practices?
In another case, a new convert at my church shared with me how, soon before coming to Christ, she had travelled to Brazil to experience a shaman-guided experience with the psychedelic Ayahuasca. Thankfully the ceremony was cancelled at the last minute. These are people with a very different set of beliefs than the typical secular young person, and they lead to very different conversations.
What is going on here? It seemed to me that I was encountering a new wave of the New Age.
Growing up, the people I knew of who were into New Age beliefs and practices were generally middle-aged women. In high school, the mother of one of my friends had a room in their house where she “spoke to angels.” For a few bucks, she could even tell you what they had to say. I avoided that room – there were lots of strange things hanging from the ceiling.
Then there was Oprah, who symbolized the smiling non-threatening face of New Age spirituality. All of this seemed to me far more like wishful thinking, scams, and mushy sentimentality than anything engaged with serious spiritual forces.
So my assumption was that the appeal of the New Age was mostly for that demographic. The young people I encountered were either deeply secular or, if their families had not had a decisive break from organized religion, mildly theistic.
The Rise of Long-Form Podcasting and Joe Rogan
While New Age beliefs never went away, they certainly fell off my radar for a few years. Around the time of Jordan Peterson’s rise to fame, I became aware, like many others, of an online world where serious conversations were taking place in long-form podcasts and YouTube interviews. The format seemed to foster nuanced, open, and surprisingly deep conversations at a time when the content of primetime news shows was devolving into 90-second shouting matches between talking heads.
One strange little corner of that online world was Joe Rogan’s podcast. With marathon 3-hour episodes of – shall we say – wildly varying quality, no one (least of all Joe) expected it to become so popular. Rogan is vulgar and blunt, but he has a winsome personality, a good dollop of common sense, and perhaps his most dynamic qualities: an insatiable curiosity and a capacity for wonder. Listen to him and his guests talk about grizzly bears or ancient Egypt and you’ll quickly find your own curiosity and wonder awakened.
Recent controversies have continued to polarize opinion about him and, ironically, broaden his reach. To some he is a dangerous purveyor of misinformation who platforms discredited and dangerous fringe thinkers (and to be fair, he certainly talks to some strange folks); to others he is a voice of sanity and one of the few remaining spaces where free speech is defended. But one thing is for sure: his audience is massive, easily eclipsing other podcasts and cable news shows. And the lion’s share of that audience seems to be young men – millions of them.
These are the men facing the meaning crisis – the existential inheritance of postmodernism. Or, more simply, the meaning crisis is what happens to a soul when you teach it that everything is a cosmic accident and therefore nothing has any real or ultimate meaning. They have no interest in organized religion, but they love the masculine competence and self-respect that the podcast exudes.
To these young people, Rogan offers not only entertainment through interesting interviews but also a taste of re-enchantment through his curiosity and wonder, the promises of technology, and his experiences and endorsements of psychedelic substances as gateways to wisdom and knowledge. This is where I see a connection between Joe Rogan’s massive popularity and influence and the unexpected reappearance of New Age spirituality in young people.
In this article, I want to focus on aspects of Rogan’s project that I think the church should take note of because they are illustrative of much broader societal trends which present Christians with both challenges and opportunities. But first, let’s see how this fits within the broader cultural narrative.
Streams of Re-enchantment
In his book ‘Return of the Strong Gods,’ R.R. Reno, editor of First Things magazine, shows how the disenchantment – a kind of spiritual malaise – that has spread across the West is not simply a byproduct of secularization but the result of a specific strategy adopted in the aftermath of the two World Wars.
Traumatized by the horrors of Auschwitz, Western intellectuals embraced what Reno calls ‘the post-war consensus,’ the idea that strong beliefs, convictions, and claims to truth are what give rise to the passions that caused such atrocities. In order to ensure that such things never happen again, these ‘strong gods’ were cast out and replaced with weak ones: pillars of objective truth gave way to plastic values, solid moral virtues dissolved into liquid cultural preferences.
If this is the case – and I found the argument of Reno’s book to be, on the whole, persuasive – then the intentional suppression of the human hunger for transcendence in the West since the end of the second World War dovetailed with the natural effects of secularization to create a situation where souls have been starved for a taste of eternity as never before.
This dual process of secularization and suppression brought low the ceiling of the world and drained the vibrant colors of life to a paltry grey, leaving young people with a gnawing hunger to come into contact with something beyond what they can see and touch, to be swept up into something bigger than themselves.
Like a mighty river held back by a hastily-built dam, this God-given hunger was artificially restrained. But now it seems to be breaking forth as that dam comes apart in pieces. The wave of re-enchantment washing across the West manifests itself in various ways. In what follows, I select just three streams that have struck me as particularly relevant to Christians, the third of which will bring us back to Joe Rogan.
First, the spiritual shape of political ideologies.
Many seek and find an echo of transcendence in the crusader-like pursuit of political and cultural goals.[1] Invariably these beliefs take the shape of grand narratives that mimic the Biblical story, including some pristine Edenic state, a fall into sin, a path of righteousness, and an eschatological hope. Radical environmentalism, the LGBTQ activist movement, and the progressive Left all fit this pattern and hold increasing cultural and institutional influence in our day.
Some movements on the far-Right such as white nationalism take the same general shape and likewise require a whole-life commitment.
Read More

Specific strengths I appreciate about the book: Clary explains how men and women flourish when they live according to God’s good design. This is insightful: “Men are prone to certain vices that are curbed by social relations with women. … Women have the power to help men become the best version of themselves. … Women have a different power than men. A woman’s presence can catalyze male virtue and direct his masculine strength toward her desires. Put simply, masculine virtue can flourish under feminine influence because masculine strength was given for the protection and provision of a woman. Men tend to be at their best when their masculine energy, strength, and independence is channeled for the benefit of the women (and children) who are depending on them” (pp. 227–28).

The author of a new book on human sexuality knows what time it is in our culture. Michael Clary, lead pastor of Christ the King Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, is the author of God’s Good Design: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Guide to Human Sexuality (Ann Arbor, MI: Reformation Zion, 2023).
Clary’s Thesis
Clary’s thesis is that God’s design for sex is true, good, and beautiful. Embracing God’s design should delight you, not frighten you.
What is actually frightening is how the world has twisted God’s design by means of Gnosticism (which undergirds the modern idea that a person’s sex and gender may be different), feminism and androgyny (which pressure women to try to act like men), contraception (which encourages casual sex by separating marriage, sex, and childbearing), so-called gay marriage (which reduces marriage to a legal sex contract), and transgenderism (which is the offspring of feminism that is now devouring its mother). “The sexual revolution is like a runaway train that has no breaks” (p. 17). Next up: pedophilia, polygamy, polyamory, and bestiality.
Clary’s Argument
Clary develops his thesis in eleven chapters:
1. The human household is a copy of the cosmic household of God the Father. God reveals himself in Scripture as masculine: “The Bible never describes God’s being with feminine language. God may do things that seem more feminine, but God’s being is never described that way” (p. 34, italics original). “Headship is masculine,” and it’s good for both men and women (p. 38).
2. God beautifully designed men to have male bodies with masculine souls and a masculine nature, and he beautifully designed women to have female bodies with feminine souls and a feminine nature. A woman is a potential mother—physically and expressed in other ways.
3. Stereotypes recognize patterns, and it is wise to recognize that men and women are different. Men are better equipped to lead and provide and protect, and women are better equipped to help and nurture and refine. That doesn’t mean that men don’t help or nurture or refine or that women don’t lead or provide or protect. It simply recognizes that men are better at structuring society and that women are better at domesticating and beautifying. It’s in their DNA. For example, a woman’s “entire body is designed for and oriented towards reproduction. Her brain, hormones, joints, bones, cardiovascular system, immune system, breasts, and reproductive organs are all designed for the bearing and nurturing of children” (pp. 74–75).
4. Modern industrial households are very different from older agrarian ones. In Bible times, a household consisted of several generations living together who worked together within a community. A husband and wife worked as a team with the man tending toward outward “forming” tasks (like subduing the earth) and the woman tending toward inward “filling” tasks (like child-bearing and managing a household, which was no small job). Men can relate to others in the household in four ways—as sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers. And women can relate as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers.
5. The way men and women sin and express virtue are not identical. Men sin and express virtue as men, and women sin and express virtue as women. The world (and even some Christians) encourages men to behave in more characteristically feminine ways and encourages women to behave in more characteristically masculine ways. “For example, strong-willed, independent, truth-oriented, and direct-speaking men are often considered arrogant, whereas passive, compliant, and egalitarian men are considered more Christlike” (p. 107). Masculine virtue includes courage, and feminine virtue includes giving life. Masculine vice includes exaggerating masculinity (e.g., using strength to oppress others) and diminishing masculinity (e.g., failing to use strength properly and instead being passive and effeminate). Feminine vice includes exaggerating femininity (e.g., using sexual desirability to manipulate men, immodesty, playing the victim) and diminishing femininity (e.g., grasping for power, lesbianism).
6. Pursuing a common mission is what holds a household together and makes it productive. People in the industrial world typically think of work as something you do away from home, which is a place to retreat and relax. Before the industrial revolution, the household and work were inseparable. We shouldn’t idealize the past as if the Amish way is the godly way, but “it is arrogant to regard the modern world as more advanced, liberated, and enlightened than previous generations” (p. 148).
7. Fathers are critically important to the health of a home. According to modern sociological studies, “The single biggest indicator of adult success is growing up with an intact family” (p. 166). A boy becomes a father by maturing in strength, leadership, courage, and wisdom and by marrying a virtuous woman who will help him accomplish his mission.
8. Our culture conditions us to devalue motherhood and to more highly value a woman who pursues a successful career outside the home. Feminists “asserted that the key to overturning the oppressive family structure was to dismantle marriage, separate sex from procreation, and promote sex as recreation” (p. 194). But nature is a stubborn thing. God designed women to instinctively want to be a mother—physically and metaphorically. That’s why struggles with infertility can be so crushing for a woman. Homemaking is a list of chores that you can outsource, but mothering requires a mother’s nurturing presence. A woman may work outside the home, but home should be her primary domain.
Read More
Related Posts: