He bore our sorrows and carried our grief. He took upon Himself our sins, thus putting an end to the condemnation that the law demanded, and He imputes His righteousness to us, making us co-heirs in the inheritance that He so rightly deserves, and we most certainly do not. None of the rapturous joys that fill the believer’s heart would be the same had it not been for His birth in that lowly stable when God himself took on flesh.

It is that time again. Thanksgiving has come and gone, and many have already frantically begun to prepare for Christmas. The sales are plentiful, the shoppers are swarming, and the decorations and music add warmth everywhere you visit. However, even with all of these things, we can still miss Christmas. To help prepare our hearts, please take a moment with me to imagine what it would have been like to live during a time when they could not celebrate Christmas because it had not yet happened. A time when they did not know the Savior’s name.
It all started immediately after the fall when God told Eve that there would be a seed that would have His heel bruised by the serpent, but that same heel would ultimately crush the serpent’s head. Already, God had promised a remedy for the spiritual death they had brought upon themselves and all subsequent generations. The promised child would also be a remedy for the physical death that was working in their bodies at that very moment.
As time went on, God’s people were taught many things about the future one who would redeem them from the wages of sin. The prophets foretold that He was going to be born in Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2), He would be born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14), and He would speak in parables (Ps. 78:2-4). Along with that, He would be hated without reason (Ps. 35:19), He would be spat upon and struck (Is. 50:6), and He would be pierced (Zech. 12:10). He would do it all to save His people by being a substitute for them to make atonement for their sins (Is. 53:5). Then in the darkest hour, He would walk victoriously out of the grave (Ps 16:10, Ps 49:15).
The prophecies progressively revealed details regarding the coming Messiah. Although His people did not fully understand them, they gave them hope, but having the promise of a Messiah who was to redeem you from the grip of sin is not the same comfort as knowing his name and having that redemption finished. Those among the Hebrews who truly believed longed to know His name and see their salvation.
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Losing Our Religion would be more persuasive if—instead of affecting to be a simple piece of pastoral counseling—it straightforwardly acknowledged its own agenda. Moore has an argument to make, and he wants to advance his project and defeat his opponents. But his book frames the gospel as some pure, otherworldly abstraction that has little to do with power or politics. 

Southerners have a way of burying their actual thoughts under a welter of pleasantries. So it is perhaps worth asking what lies beneath this apparently straightforward morality tale by Russell Moore, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today. As Moore presents it, Losing Our Religion is a guidebook for Christians in troubled times. Drawing on his own disillusioning experience, Moore encourages his readers to put the gospel before the false pursuit of credibility, authority, identity, integrity, and stability. “This book will consider all the ways evangelical America has sought these things in the wrong way,” he writes. “Along the way, I will suggest little choices you can make, not just to survive this dispiriting time, but in order to envision a different future.” The chapters are structured with self-help-style subheadings such as “Prioritize Long-Term Integrity Over Short-Term Success” or “Pay Attention to Means, Not Just to Ends.”
There is much truth in what Moore says. I, too, worry about our overly partisan society and the loss of a vibrant center. I, too, see Christians becoming consumed with the burning issues of the day and losing sight of God’s grace and providence. I share Moore’s dismay at Pentecostal preachers and certain Christian leaders who misrepresent the faith or use it in a cynical fashion. But the book also contains a rather sharp-edged polemic. Moore castigates “culture warriors”; he contrasts Christians who follow the gospel with those who would tie the church “to forms of power.” And he portrays the evangelical church as under assault from all directions by wolves and “hucksters.”
The book therefore sits easily alongside the genre of anti–Christian nationalist, exvangelical memoir, which has arisen in the last couple of years (though Moore himself does not claim such a label). There are clearly many readers who wish to see the sins of evangelicals repeated over and over again. Whatever else these books do, they make Democrats feel better about their disdain for conservative Christians. Or, to put it more generously, they meet the need of liberals for interpreters of the scary world that exists outside of the coasts and major urban areas.
Moore presents himself as a prophetic outsider, but there is a paradox here. Anybody who remembers the evangelical politics of the pre-Trump era will recall that Moore was at the pinnacle of the movement. For many years he held a very influential position within the Southern Baptist Convention, as leader of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Moore wants his audience to denounce and reject the culture and group that he for so many years reigned over and shaped. We are not to think of Moore as the political Christian he has been the past couple of decades. We are not to think of Moore as an operator. No, those epithets are for all those Christian nationalists, theobros, cynical Baptist churchmen, pagans, Trumpists, fake Christians, and everyone else who would array themselves against Moore and the true Christians whom he claims to represent.
But Moore is inescapably political, not least because of the context that has shaped his career. Though I am not a Southern Baptist, nor a native Southerner, I currently live in the Baptist kingdom of the Southern United States. To those outside this world, the internal politics of the Southern Baptist Convention are hard to comprehend. Baptists need to air their grievances because corralling majority support on questions of doctrine and policy is necessary to the functioning of their church. This imperative, combined with a Southern penchant for high drama, gives Southern Baptist culture an energy that can appear distasteful and brutal to church denominations that keep their disagreements more private. Thus Southern Baptist ministers become very effective politicians. Moore rose to prominence in this world largely because of his political skill and his calm, confident style.
Given this background, Losing Our Religion would be more persuasive if—instead of affecting to be a simple piece of pastoral counseling—it straightforwardly acknowledged its own agenda. Moore has an argument to make, and he wants to advance his project and defeat his opponents. But his book frames the gospel as some pure, otherworldly abstraction that has little to do with power or politics. Moore calls on Christians to lose respectability and authority; this may seem a little strange from the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today and a former fellow of the prestigious Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago.
The leitmotif of the book is one of conversion: the altar call. Moore tells us evangelicals are in need of one. At root, the problem is that those who claim to believe the gospel actually don’t. “We see now young evangelicals walking away from evangelicalism not because they do not believe in what the church teaches, but because they believe the church itself does not believe what the church teaches.” Those who leave the church, in Moore’s view, do so because the church itself “would disapprove of Jesus” if he were among them. Many evangelicals are more concerned about the culture and power than about the gospel; they shout down faithful preachers and leaders. Their own leaders are “narcissists and psychopaths and Machiavellian power seekers,” to be contrasted with the real Christians, who exhibit “winsomeness,” “persuasion,” and “gentleness.”
This would all be more plausible were Moore not so one-sided in his treatment of his opponents. At one point, he holds up for our disapproval a supposed “fundamentalist Calvinist,” who appears to be the theology professor James Wood. In 2022 Wood, of course, wrote a thoughtful article for First Things praising Tim Keller, while also gently criticizing the limitations of Keller’s ministry, its “winsomeness” and emphasis on “public witness.” In Wood’s words: “‘Public witness’ most often translates into appeasing those to one’s left, and distancing oneself from the deplorables. I didn’t like what this was doing to my heart and felt that it was clouding my political judgment.” Moreover, Wood wrote, “If we assume that winsomeness will gain a favorable hearing, when Christians consistently receive heated pushback, we will be tempted to think our convictions are the problem.”
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How devastating to neglect this staggering fact: if you are in Christ, you already possess this unconditional love. You are known and fully treasured by God himself. What an imperishable delight: one that cannot be withdrawn. Nor can it be earned. God’s love is a majestic gift. We are his image-bearers, and therein lies our complete worth.

We are a funny people: planning, mapping, strategizing. We purchase gym memberships and anti-wrinkle creams, free-range this and organic that, paralyzed by anxiety of our inevitable aging and death, fearful of missing out on a life-changing blurb awaiting us on social media, and agonizing over insufficient retirement funds. So much preparation for worldly things, while prone to disregarding our soul’s eternal future.
Fellowship with God on streets of gold or scorching flames and torment without him will be our forever. One or the other. There is no middle ground.
We rage against our story.
What beauty might erupt, if this year we chose instead to press into our own narrative, divinely written by God our Maker? Palms held loosely open, (Your will, God, not mine) humbly and graciously accepting his path, trusting him implicitly by way of adoration and bowed obedience?
Our past, present, and future is mysteriously braided together by God himself. His plan unfurls through our unique stories.
Just imagine if we treasured our fleeting lives enough to surrender them fully and generously to the Lord, no strings attached.
Not so long ago, I bumped into a woman whom I had not seen for a bit. One minute into the conversation I slipped away. My feet did not move, and I may have nodded at appropriate moments, but after a short time, she lost me.
Honestly it was not really a conversation at all. It was more of a soliloquy revolving around her children’s accomplishments:
4.0 this, President of that, Honors Society Member and Dean’s List and Straight A’s and Star Athlete and on and on and on it went. It had been awhile since I had seen her, and it pained me afresh to recognize that her children’s worth is so poorly measured by fleeting accomplishments, tangled and jumbled in earthly awards that fade in due time. I could picture her pressured offspring, burdened by weighty backpacks of accumulated winnings, soul-exhausted with their lot in life, and feeling quite powerless to escape.
As she rambled, a familiar feeling floated upward in my mind. Suddenly, I was nine years old and swinging my legs in the shiny wooden pew of my childhood church.
It was a chilly January morning, and the promise of a brand new year glowed brightly as the sunshine danced its way through the sanctuary windows. There was a delicious excitement in the air: a brand new calendar flush with possibilities. That magical sensation in which wrongs may be righted and the sky is the limit and this year, yes this year will be golden! (Of course this feeling crashes and burns as winter unfolds, and the snow turns to dirty mush along with our resolutions and we wail: Where is spring?)
I was holding my own hymnal that day, feeling quite grown up as our minister asked our congregation to please stand and sing: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. As the organ sounded, and the richness of those words sprung forth, their meaning jolted my soul. Especially verse two:

Did we in our own strength confide,Our striving would be losing;Were not the right man on our side,The man of God’s own choosing:Dost ask who that may be?Christ Jesus, it is He;Lord Sabaoth His Name,From age to age the same,And He must win the battle.

My heart quickened, as my eyes filled. This Christ Jesus was wonderful, and I knew him.
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