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Train Up a Village

When I learned I was pregnant with our youngest, I knew our church shopping had to end.

My family had moved to Pittsburgh about a year prior, and it took us longer than we expected to find a church. We arrived in the summer of 2021, when many congregations weren’t back to full post-pandemic capacity. Most had in-person services again, but childcare was iffier. With 2-year-old twin boys, nursery was a must-have if we wanted to retain anything from the sermon.

So we spent six months trying one church (big, older congregation, hard to meet people), then six months at another (small, and services during our dinner time meant cheese and crackers in the pews). Then we visited a third church—they’d finally gotten the nursery going again—and, two months later, I found out about the baby.

We were leaning toward joining this church anyway, but looking at that pregnancy test, the decision was made. It felt like running for shelter when you see a storm on the horizon, scanning for cover at that first sniff of rain. Was there even a choice? We had to commit. We couldn’t have a baby without a church.

People do, of course, and I can only suppose they’re more courageous than me. I can’t imagine navigating those early months with a newborn without the support of a local congregation. It’s not just the casseroles, though certainly those are a boon. It’s knowing that there are dozens, even hundreds, of people physically nearby who care that you had a baby—people who will help you, tangibly and spiritually, now and for years to come.

They will help not because they’re all blood relations or even good friends. Some you may barely know. They will help in ways large and small because they and you are the church together. They will do this informally and institutionally, but they will also pledge their help—explicitly, publicly, before God and each other—and train one another, one generation to the next, in how to make good on that promise.

In some churches, this happens during infant baptism. In others, Christians dedicate babies and baptize them later. In either case, the congregation’s part tends to be the same: We promise to support the children and their families in their lives and faith. We welcome them into the community, and we actively commit ourselves to their care.

This may not seem like a big deal if you’re a cradle Christian. Isn’t that standard? Isn’t it just what you do? Let me assure you: It is a big deal. It’s always a big deal, but it’s a particularly big deal in a culture like ours, where parenting often feels isolating and exhausting, where it’s socially permissible to opine that young and imperfectly behaved children should be banned from many public spaces, where the work of child-rearing is increasingly expected to fall exclusively on parents’ shoulders.

I should pause here to note that the modern West is wildly inconsistent in how we think and talk about kids (even before you get to the politics of it all). We have anti-child misanthropy alongside pro-child graciousness. We have falling birthrates and ever more elaborate and exacting parenting practices.

Some pockets of culture are more pro-child and pro-parent than average. Still, it seems clear that the average has moved in a decidedly lonely and “family unfriendly” direction. As Atlantic contributor Stephanie Murray has observed, the rising norm is that your kids are your problem, a personal project to be kept out of everyone else’s way until they’re old enough to be reliably appropriate and useful.

The trouble with this view is that it’s not how parenting or maturation work. Raising kids is primarily parents’ right and responsibility. But it’s also “a fundamentally social endeavor,” Murray writes, in which everyone has some role—a role more and more adults are “essentially renouncing” in our increasingly low-trust society where parenting is seen as an optional lifestyle with consequences to be borne by those who choose it.

Growing up is a social endeavor, too. Kids are part of society, and they only learn how to act around other people by being around other people, especially other people who care enough to issue corrections and offer a hand after a fall. When the village renounces its role, parents aren’t the only ones who feel alone and adrift.

At church, though, you can’t renounce that role. You verbally affirm it with every new baby. In infant dedications and baptism, we deliberately welcome children and their parents qua parents into Christian life together. In promising to help parents “train up a child” (Prov. 22:6, KJV), we train ourselves, too, in what it means to be a community.

Much has been written recently about growing secular interest in Christianity’s practical benefits: how the church can encourage good behavior and foster friendships and stabilize society. With that talk has come warnings against instrumentalizing our faith—that is, societal advantages aside, it matters whether Christianity is true, whether Jesus really is God, whether he really defeated sin, death, and the devil (Heb. 2:14–18), whether we really can expect him to come again and complete his redemption of the world. We don’t go to church only for community and casseroles (or, if we do, we likely won’t go for long).

Yet neither are community and casseroles irrelevant. We don’t “want people joining churches for the social perks,” as theologian Brad East recently wrote for CT, but the “Lord and his family come together.” We don’t have to disambiguate our allegiance to Jesus and enjoyment of the benefits of his church. In fact, we shouldn’t try. They are of a piece. The church is not a building, as my mother always drilled into my head, but it is a sturdy shelter in all kinds of storms.

Bonnie Kristian is the editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today.

The post Train Up a Village appeared first on Christianity Today.

Yours, Mine, and ‘Our Father’

The church today is divided, polarized by the many social and political factions vying for our attention and allegiance.

In the US, we’re emerging from a contentious election season in which many Christian voters felt strongly about their choice (whether to vote for a particular candidate or to abstain altogether) and expressed dismay at fellow Christians for choosing differently.

As we look toward gathering with believers who think very differently than we do—whether our fellow congregants at church or our friends or family members for the holidays—how can we aim to be agents of reconciliation instead of polarization?

Perhaps it starts with prayer; and specifically, learning the way Jesus taught us to pray.

The Lord’s Prayer is familiar to many, but I’ve been experiencing it with fresh eyes recently. Not only does it radically reorient and reform the community of saints as God’s people, but it undermines some of our persistently problematic ways of navigating life. Jesus’ prayer takes aim at our self-centeredness—including our rugged individualism, selfish ambition, and attempts to justify ourselves—replacing it with a bold invitation to belong to a countercultural community.

Let me show you what I mean.

Have you noticed the pronouns of this prayer? Instead of I, me, and my, the Lord’s Prayer tutors us to pray with collective pronouns: our and us. “Our Father” is the one to whom we pray (Matt. 6:9, emphasis added throughout). God is not my personal genie in a bottle, ready to grant my wishes. He is the divine parent in whose family every follower of Jesus finds a home.

To pray to God as our Father recognizes simultaneously that you are my sister or brother. Instead of thinking only of myself, I must immediately think of others.

It’s worth noting that in the first-century world, the sibling relationship was primary, exerting a strong force of loyalty—greater, even, than that of a marriage. Brothers and sisters were deeply committed to one another. Jesus redefines the boundaries of loyal commitment by speaking of the community of believers as a family.

One of his most startling teachings was the one that subordinated the concerns of his birth family to the family of faith: “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? … Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (12:48, 50). If you and I are siblings in this newly formed family, then we bear a deep responsibility for one another.

This same message is emphasized in the rest of the prayer.

“Give us today our daily bread” (6:11). I do not pray only for my needs but for our needs to be met. Jesus’ prayer is for daily provision, the bread for this day. God does not guarantee a successful financial portfolio. He offers provision for today. This daily provision begins in the wilderness of Sinai, where God gave the Israelites manna—enough for each mouth, enough for each day.

Any extra manna collected would spoil because it wasn’t meant to be hoarded. It was meant to ensure that everyone had enough. This suggests that if I have more food than I need, I should participate in sharing to meet the needs of others. The Lord’s Prayer recognizes the urgency of daily food and makes us aware of and sensitive to the needs of others.

“Forgive us our debts” (v. 12). Not only does the prayer make us siblings who recognize our shared needs, but also it lumps together our respective liabilities. In other words, your debts are our debts. What I owe is what we owe. We share a collective responsibility for the harm we’ve done to others or for the promised goods we’ve withheld. The forgiveness Jesus urges us to pray for is no easy way out; it causes us to confront the consequences of our communal failures … together.

“As we also have forgiven our debtors” (v. 12). Together, we are called to forgive those who have harmed us or who have kept us waiting for what we are owed. There is a reciprocal relationship between the forgiveness we extend and the responsibility we have to follow through in our commitments to others.

The Lord’s Prayer undermines our self-centeredness by redefining us. If God is our Father and this is our food and these are our debts, then we’re meant to work all these things out together. Your neighborhood is my neighborhood, and I am your neighbor, no matter how far apart we might live. We are, in a sense, rightly entangled.

The prayer decenters us in other ways as well. “Hallowed be your name … Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus does not invite us to approach God with our plans and seek his stamp of approval. He affirms that God’s will is the one that should occupy our hearts and focus our energies. His name is the only one we must seek to honor.

Honor for God’s name undercuts our fantasies about the platforms, pulpits, penthouses, and political offices by which we can build our own kingdoms. The kingdom of God is the one we pray into being. Lord, let your kingship continue to exert its influence. Let your will be put into effect in our midst.

There’s no room for us to pursue personal power or to angle for our own agendas. All this is surrendered in our quest for God’s kingdom, God’s will, God’s glory, and God’s name. The kingdom of God will outlast any other, and it is the only one to which we owe our allegiance. In other words, we surrender our will so we can embrace God’s.

To be blunt, as a friend pointed out, every time we pray this prayer, we are ultimately praying for the end of America and every other nation-state on earth—because when God’s mission is finally accomplished on earth as it is in heaven, Christ alone will be ruler over all creation. All forms of human government will be dissolved, and we will bow at Jesus’s feet. What a powerful reminder in an election year!

For Jesus, this prayer was not simply lip service. When he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane “Not my will but yours be done,” it cost him everything (Luke 22:42). It may cost us everything too. Jesus’ prayer is a powerful wake-up call for us to rethink our priorities and get to work doing what matters to God.

When Jesus prayed “Hallowed be your name” (Matt. 6:9), he surely understood that God’s reputation is attached to the people who bear his name. Throughout the Old Testament, we read of generations of covenant unfaithfulness who had seriously compromised the mission of representing God well among the nations.

In his prayer, Jesus demonstrates commitment to a life of holiness and righteousness—of living faithfully according to God’s commands—and he models how to fulfill our vocation. For God’s name to be revered, God’s people have to take seriously their mission to bear his name well (see Ezek. 36). How can we make God’s name holy? In the same way: by living according to God’s commands.

Jesus’ prayer closes with a fervent request to “lead us not into temptation.” We all depend on God to protect us from times of trial and testing. Our attitude should never be Bring it on! I’ve got this! Offering an antidote to our self-sufficient mindset, Jesus’ prayer recognizes our human vulnerability and calls upon God for protection.

He also prays for God to “deliver us from evil” (Matt. 6:13, ESV). This phrase can also be translated as “the evil one,” that is, the devil—whom Jesus himself faced during his temptation in the wilderness. But even in the more generic reading, “deliver us from evil,” scholar Daniel Block suggests we should read “evil” with the lens of Deuteronomy, where YHWH’s punishment would come “on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me” (Deut. 28:20, NRSV).

The Old Testament repeatedly testifies that our greatest threat comes at us not from the outside but from within. In essence, Jesus prayed for God to rescue us from the evil of apostasy, especially given the impact on God’s reputation when his people are unfaithful. That’s what should motivate our prayer for protection.

We find ourselves in one of the most segmented and polarized times in modern history. It takes little to start a fight on social media, and it’s become increasingly difficult even to hold a civil conversation about our disagreements. Right now, the only thing succeeding in politics is cancel culture, and it’s happening on both sides of the aisle. The levels of angst and fear are alarming.

In this hostile environment, it can be easy for us as Christians to forget our purpose. As God’s image, we bear God’s name, and our mission is to represent God to the nations. We cannot do this if we are busy digging trenches and stockpiling weapons to use against the “other side.” We’ve got to be willing to cross the street, shake someone’s hand, and listen to their story.

Jesus’ remarkable prayer has the potential to heal our divided nation. It begins by decentering my needs and my agenda, forming instead a loving community in which we recognize shared needs and responsibilities. It resets our priorities by orienting us toward God’s kingdom and God’s name.

Instead of pointing out the faults of others, it cultivates an honest dependence on God by acknowledging our collective vulnerabilities in the face of universal temptations.

The Lord’s Prayer is so familiar that we often switch to autopilot when we pray it and so miss its weighty implications. But if we slow down and really think about what Jesus’ words mean and what they demand of us, something truly transformative can begin to take root.

In the wake of the recent election, what if Christians from across the political aisle were to kneel together and pray for God’s kingdom, God’s glory, and God’s name to be exalted in our nation?

Carmen Joy Imes is an associate professor of Old Testament at Talbot School of Theology and the author of Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters.

The post Yours, Mine, and ‘Our Father’ appeared first on Christianity Today.

Kids Should Learn the Minor Prophets Too

A decade ago, I was teaching through the Minor Prophets in a prison. As a chaplain for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, I had the chance to dive into these often-overlooked books with inmates.

The response was incredible. Inmates would come up to me, eyes wide open, to share how they saw their own lives reflected in these ancient texts. I often heard them say that they wished they had encountered these stories earlier in their lives.

As I pondered the powerful impact these scriptures were having on those behind bars, it struck me: My own children, and countless others, were missing out on these profound yet underappreciated books of the Bible. The Minor Prophets are often relegated to the realm of Christian satire, like the clever jabs from the Babylon Bee, but their messages are rich and relevant.

Consider the vibrant ancient world where Amos calls for repentance and justice or where Micah inspires hope and reverence. Hosea shows us the beauty of fidelity and the warmth of God’s love and Zechariah demonstrates grace and boosts our spirits toward obedience. Each of these lessons adds a unique splash of color to the rich tapestry of faith in our spiritual heritage.

So, inspired by both my ministry work and my family, I felt led to do something that had never been done. Why not create a children’s picture book series on the Minor Prophets? Sure, there are books on Jonah and a few snippets of others in various picture Bibles, but most of these prophets and their messages have largely remained unexplored in children’s literature.

I shared my idea and proposal with a long-time friend and mentor, John Brown, and asked whether he’d like to join me on this groundbreaking project. With his enthusiasm and support, we embarked on this exciting venture with Christian Focus Publications. Our goal? To unfold these ancient stories in a fresh, engaging way that connects with young readers and brings these powerful narratives to life.

As seminary-trained pastors and parents, we crafted this series with a deep commitment to theological depth and accuracy. Each book is carefully designed to convey the core message of a minor prophet while linking it to the larger story of redemption and the gospel woven throughout Scripture.

With titles like Obadiah and the Edomites and Joel and the Locusts, we wanted to capture the essence of each prophet’s message through memorable, child-friendly narratives. One way we tried to make the prophets’ messages stick like glue was to add some catchy rhymes. For instance, at the end of Habakkuk, rather than just saying he composed a song of praise, we crafted a fun rhyming song that still echoes his original message.

We paid close attention to historical accuracy in the illustrations, from Assyrian armies to Babylonian gates, to give children an authentic glimpse into the world of the Minor Prophets. The characters are portrayed realistically to emphasize their historical significance, and the language mirrors the original Hebrew texts, ensuring that the series remains true to Scripture.

By integrating archaeological insights and theological research, we’ve aimed to create a series that stands out in its commitment to accurately represent God’s inspired Word. Our hope is that these books will not only excite children about this often-neglected part of the Bible but also provide parents and teachers with a valuable tool for teaching these important truths.

Open book spread of HabakkukCourtesy of Christian Focus / Edits by CT

The book of Habakkuk concludes with a song from the prophet himself. Therefore, we end with a song featuring memorable rhymes that capture the essence of the Hebrew text.

Open book spread of ZephaniahCourtesy of Christian Focus / Edits by CT

Just as Jesus used “all the Prophets” to teach about himself (Luke 24:27), each minor prophet directs us to Him. Zephaniah, for instance, foretells a time when people will call on the name of a mighty one who will save—whom we know as Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Open book spread of HaggaiCourtesy of Christian Focus / Edits by CT

The five messages of Haggai are dated in the Hebrew text, and Bible scholars and historians have translated these into modern calendar dates. This provides a tangible reminder that Haggai was a real person who really spoke these words to God’s people on these specific days.

Open book spread of JonahCourtesy of Christian Focus / Edits by CT

While many children’s picture books on Jonah focus primarily on the big fish, this series explores the full story, including chapter 4, where Jonah becomes angry and departs from the city of Nineveh.

Open book spread of MalachiCourtesy of Christian Focus / Edits by CT

Among the many prophecies found in the Minor Prophets, this one in Malachi describes the messenger sent by God to prepare the way for the Messiah. We now know him in the New Testament as John the Baptist.

Brian J. Wright is the founding pastor of Redeemer Community Church in Pensacola, Florida, and author of more than a dozen books, including The Rhythm of the Christian Life and Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus.

The post Kids Should Learn the Minor Prophets Too appeared first on Christianity Today.

How to Get Through the Next Four Years

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

Someone walked up to me in an airport last week and said, “So, what do you think about the election?” I was in a less-than-ideal mood at the moment, for reasons that had nothing to do with the election, but I stopped myself from saying sarcastically, “What do you think I think about the election?”

The last thing I wanted to talk about, after ten years of talking about him, was Donald Trump. Now the news cycle will be the Donald Trump Show all day, every day, for four more years.

The nonstop news cycle and drama won’t be some unforeseen circumstance. It’s what the American people voted for. The theory that people would want to “turn the page” on all that, offered by Vice President Kamala Harris, proved false. Turns out most people liked the drama just fine. So here we go.

I have very little to say that I haven’t already said, very little to write that I haven’t already written, and there are very few people who think like I do. I can’t control that. But neither can you. As a matter of fact, there is very little any of us can do to control the next four years—with a news cycle that will be, like the last near-decade, all Trump, all the time.

Just like during the last near-decade, those who support Trump and those who oppose him will continue to look at one another the way Adams and Jefferson did over the French Revolution: “How could you support (or not support) that?” You can control very little of that either.

And that’s surprisingly good news.

The passivity of Americans in their own civic order is always a problem. The word woke—before it became associated with identity politics—spoke to the sense of waking people from their slumber about injustice. The opposite of passivity, though, is often not responsibility or engagement. Sometimes it’s a kind of passivity that feels like “doing something.”

Wherever someone falls on the political spectrum, that’s where “doomscrolling” comes into play. We feel we are informed by having a steady stream of drama in front of us, our emotions driven up or down by the news cycle.

We’ve seen the end result of that. The constant flow of (real and fake) information spikes our adrenaline, activating our “lizard brains.” We throw our limbic systems into the sense of having to support or to oppose something—when, much of the time, there’s actually nothing we can do about it. And this works because many people like it.

What we call “politics” these days offers people a sense of meaning and purpose, an interruption to the dead everydayness of life. A jolt of adrenaline can feel almost like life—for a little while.

This kind of political “drama” is related to actual political life the way that pornography is to intimacy. Porn gives the same physical sensation as sexual union. The nervous system responds the way it is meant to respond in the union of a husband and wife; it just does so by getting rid of the love, the connection, the other person. In other words, it gives the physical sense without what actually brings about the joy.

Someone might think that porn use will kick-start their flagging passion, that it’s a temporary step toward intimacy. That person is left, though, feeling deader and lonelier than before. A news cycle can be like that too—ultimately leaving people not more informed and thoughtful but with worn-out attention spans and burned-out expectations.

One of the things you owe your country is your attention. By that, I do not mean your constant focus. I mean, quite literally, your attention: your ability to think and to reflect apart from the roar of the mob.

During the tumult of the 1960s—war, civil unrest, assassinations—Thomas Merton argued that his ability to speak to all of those things was not in spite of but because of his vocation as a Trappist monk, devoted to silence and solitude.

“Someone has to try to keep his head clear of static and preserve the interior solitude and silence that are essential for independent thought,” Merton wrote. He continues,

A monk loses his reason for existing if he simply submits to all the routines that govern the thinking of everybody else. He loses his reason for existing if he simply substitutes other routines of his own! He is obliged by his vocation to have his own mind if not to speak it. He has got to be a free man.

Merton concludes by saying, “What did the radio say this evening? I don’t know.”

I believe in the priesthood of all believers and, in this way, I suppose, in the monkhood of all believers too. News and information are important in helping a free and attentive mind discern what’s happening and how to make sense of it. News and information as sources of a sense of personal “drama” or belonging, though, will fray your attention, scatter your thinking, and affix you to whatever mob it’s easiest to mimic.

It’s hard to maintain sanity with a mind like that. It’s hard to love your country with a mind like that. It’s hard to love the Lord your God with a mind like that.

The stakes are too high for us to see our country as a reality television show. You can’t opt out of the country, but you can opt out of the show. In some ways, you get there by subtraction. Don’t rely on social media for your news, for instance. Don’t fall into the trap of every-ten-minute hits of dopamine about how your side is losing something or winning something.

But maybe an even more important factor is not subtraction but addition. You are meant to have a life of drama and adventure and excitement. Politics—of the left, right, or center—can’t deliver it. News cycles can’t replicate it.

For those of us who are Christians, we already have it. We need no Jungian hero’s journey. We are joined to the life of Jesus of Nazareth. His story is our story. Our lives are hidden in him (Col. 3:3). We are crucified under Pontius Pilate. We are raised out of the grave. We are seated at the right hand of the Father.

All of that is true, right now, for those who are joined by the Spirit to the life of Christ. And we are waiting a trump—not a Trump—to tell us when the action of our lives will really get interesting, in ways we cannot even imagine yet.

Realize that this is true for you. You don’t need to be part of some make-believe drama. You don’t need to adopt some politician as a father figure. You have an actual Father who is making plans for you. And when you realize how temporary, how fleeting, and how pitiful much of what is counted as glory is in this moment, you can learn how to love it without placing on it the burden of making you happy or driving you crazy. We always come to hate our idols—whatever they are—because they never give us what we want.

That means you will need the Bible—and more than just the devotional cherry-picking or doctrinal proof texts to which modern American Christianity is accustomed. You will need to immerse yourself in the stories there until you gradually start to sense they are your stories. You need to plunge into the poems and songs there until you find they are telling you the story of your own life too.

You need to spend enough time with the Jesus found in the pages of Scripture that he starts to surprise you again. You don’t have to understand what you’re reading all the time. Read it anyway. Let the Word do its work. Don’t immediately Google “How to understand Psalm 46” or “What does Colossians 2 mean?” Wrestle with it. Be baffled by it.

And sooner or later you will start to hear, as though calling to you personally from those words: “Who do you say that I am?”

The news cycle will be crazy for the next four years. You don’t have to be.

Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.

The post How to Get Through the Next Four Years appeared first on Christianity Today.

And the Word Became Accessible: Publishers Release Dyslexia-Friendly Bibles

The lines land with slightly thicker strokes and dashes at the bottom. The letters leave little spaces inside as they curve up, like a stencil.

This new typeface, a curly variation of a slab serif font, is called Grace—made especially for millions of Christians who struggle to read Scripture due to dyslexia.

Major Bible publishers partnered with a specialty design firm to develop the inclusive Grace Typeface and are now releasing Bibles using the new lettering.

Lifeway Christian Resources has made two dyslexia-friendly versions of its Christian Standard Bible (CSB): CSB Grace Bible for Kids, out now, and the CSB Grace Bible, coming in February. Crossway Publishing, which prints the English Standard Version (ESV), plans to release the ESV Holy Bible: Dyslexia-Friendly Edition in January.

Graphic design company 2K/Denmark specializes in typesetting and production of complex texts like Bibles and spent years developing the typeface. 2K/Denmark was founded by Danish designer Klaus Erik Krogh, who has been called a “living legend of Bible design.”

Krogh was teaching at an Evangelical Christian Publishers Association event in Nashville five years ago when a woman approached him to discuss funding a Bible that was easier for people with dyslexia to read than typical Bibles, which have narrow fonts and thin pages.

“She just got the notion that she had to go to this conference to find somebody that might be able to help her to create a dyslexic typeface,” Krogh said.

Krogh decided to take on the project. 2K/Denmark began testing typefaces, designs, and concepts to make a Bible specially for those whose learning disability kept them from focused study in the past.

A Bible open to describe features of a dyslexia-friendly edition.

Up to 20 percent of people in the world have difficulty processing language due to dyslexia, though only a fraction receive a diagnosis for the condition. 2K/Denmark worked in partnership with Cambridge University, where researchers have spent decades developing methods and tools for testing reading and reading disabilities.

The Grace Typeface was created to help make letters and words easier for people with dyslexia to read. The thicker weight at the bottom of the letters “anchors” them to the baseline, mitigating the tendency for letters to bounce or float in readers’ eyes. The letters have different spacing or serifs within them to make it easier distinguish between similar letters, like b and d or p and q.

Plus, there’s more spacing throughout the text. Designers optimized the size of the type and the leading, or space between lines, to ensure the best possible experience for readers with dyslexia. None of the sections run longer than 11 lines. The font is 11 point, and there are no bold or italicized lines and no footnotes.

Working with Cambridge, “2K can then present solutions that are better than the ones they tested,” Krogh said. “We have full accessibility to all their electronic reading testing tools, and we use those as an inspiration to try to develop typefaces that actually are more efficient.”

The new typeface appears in a pair of new releases from Lifeway, including the first dyslexia-friendly children’s Bible, called CSB Grace Bible for Kids.

“We knew that this segment of readers was being underserved in the market when it came specifically to Bibles. Once we heard that some of our partners were working on the special typeface for dyslexic readers, we knew we had to do it,” said Andy McLean, publisher for Bibles and reference at Lifeway’s B&H Publishign Group. “Our goal as a Bible team is to help people of all ages engage meaningfully with God’s Word.”

Crossway decided to publish a dyslexia-friendly ESV Bible for similar reasons.

“We care deeply about making the Bible as accessible to as many people as possible. This particular edition flows out of that passion,” chief publishing officer Don Jones said. “All of the design elements are really exciting for us. We are hopeful that taken together this Bible will help those with dyslexia encounter the life-changing power of God’s Word.”

McLean said the early feedback has been positive after Lifeway distributed the new Bibles to families with reading challenges within their households. The kids’ edition also contains colored overlays, which are designed to reduce the contrast on the page and therefore reduce the visual stress for the reader.

So far, parents say the new Bibles working—they’ve seen kids spend more time reading.

Other companies have identified the need in the market as well. YouVersion has made the OpenDyslexic font available on the Bible app for better accessibility.

The British and Foreign Bible Society completed a dyslexia-friendly Bible earlier this year after starting with the Psalms and the Gospel of Mark in 2014, publishing the series in short volumes that are easier for readers to navigate. The UK Bibles are “laid out like novels rather than in traditional columns and use shorter paragraphs” and “use thick paper so words don’t show through from the next page.”

Krogh hopes to expand the use of his dyslexia-friendly font design to include other books as well, enabling readers with dyslexia to have better access to a range of materials beyond the Bible. Typically, his company sells its products to a singular publisher to own, but he intentionally opted to make the Grace Typeface nonproprietary.

“A typeface like the Grace Typeface works better the more you see it and get used to it,” said Krogh. “I’d like to have it out in all translations.”

Beyond Bible publishing, he plans to make the typeface available for a fee for both commercial and nonprofit organizations and free to individuals for personal use. Sarah Grace Publishing, a UK imprint dedicated to accessible books, including Christian kids books, has already adopted the new font for its offerings and on its website.

“I think the ability to do good—not necessarily to make the most money but actually to change people’s lives by giving them a tool where they read better—was suddenly more important for us than necessarily squeezing out the last dollar of the idea,” Krogh said.

“What really is the difference of a good life and a mediocre life is that you have the ability to read a novel, read maybe even a collection of poems, or sing your hymns from a hymn book,” he said. “That’s my faith, to use whatever God gave me to enrich other people’s lives. Something this important you should use to the best of your ability.”

The post And the Word Became Accessible: Publishers Release Dyslexia-Friendly Bibles appeared first on Christianity Today.

‘Heretic’ and the Truth That Sets Us Free

Years before gifting our daughters with pet rats, I tried my hand at training one of the furry critters myself. My psychology professor had tasked me with conditioning my subject to press a lever for food, but I fantasized instead about designing a convoluted maze and teaching my little Theseus to win freedom from the enclosure in record time.

I had no interest in distressing my diminutive friend. Instead, I conceived my plan in humane terms. Pushing his tiny brain to its limits would help him develop his full potential, winning my gratitude and a monstrous hunk of cheese.

The Greek myth of innocent Athenians escaping a labyrinth and its man-eating minotaur has spawned many a variant over the centuries. In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Pit and the Pendulum,” a captive of the Spanish inquisition struggles to survive a lethal dungeon. Wrongly imprisoned brothers strategize escape in the popular TV series Prison Break. A kidnapped, routinely assaulted young mother risks death to free her child in Emma Donoghue’s critically acclaimed novel Room (and its equally lauded adaptation by Lenny Abrahamson).

Each tale provides audiences the opportunity to imagine what they themselves might do if confronted with capture, their options as limited as their mobility. Which relational ties would we preserve, and which abandon, to gain our freedom? What ambitions would suddenly appear trivial? Which values disposable?

And what of faith? Can we never know the mettle of belief until our lives are on the line?

Jesus proclaimed himself the path to true freedom, audaciously redefining an ideal grasped tightly by a people under Roman occupation. Granting “freedom for the prisoners” (Luke 4:18) meant not a reordering of the social matrix but a recalibration of expectation—a transformation of desire itself. Becoming “free indeed” (John 8:36) had little to do with political revolution undertaken to eliminate stigma and usher in material equality. Instead, this new freedom promised first an escape from the weight of sin (Rom. 8:1–2), a release enabling radical, equalizing acts of caritas (Gal. 5:13) hidden from both a spectacle-hungry public and one’s own ego (Matt. 6:1–4).

One might, like Paul and Silas, remain truly free while yet a prisoner, retaining invisible agency though a victim of injustice.

The film Heretic, directed by screenwriting duo Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, explores the plausibility of this kind of freeing faith. Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) has entrapped two young Latter-day Saint missionaries, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) in his home.

It’s the sort of situational crucible familiarized by 21st-century horror. Instead of being forced by a hidden antagonist to saw off limbs or kill a friend to obtain freedom, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton verbally spar with a captor they can see while seeking a way out of his underground maze.

The adversarial dialectic which unfolds touches on the evolution of world religions, shifts in church doctrine, and the nature of personal belief. At the center of this ideological maelstrom—an exchange that grows stormier once the women realize they have been kidnapped—lies a question once posed by the Roman governor of Judea: “What is truth?” (John 18:38).

Mr. Reed claims to have found a definitive, ancient answer following years of academic study, and he attempts to methodically break down the missionaries’ own belief system by spotlighting the malleability of religious truth. He opens by asking, in a deceptively gentle manner, how they feel about polygamy. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chose to outlaw the practice in 1890, he notes, because the determination to grow their numbers kept stumbling over public disdain. He steamrolls Sister Paxton’s argument that God temporarily consecrated this ancient practice, suggesting instead that Joseph Smith desired license for an uncontrollable libido.

Physical passion, Mr. Reed implies, is a universal imperative, a physiological truth religion has only sanctioned when it has benefitted particular leaders. And fickle emotions, not intellectual assent, he argues, motivate the faith of many a layperson. When Sister Paxton observes that she knows the Book of Mormon to be true because of how it makes her feel, Mr. Reed pounces. Is emotion the final arbiter of human destiny, a shifting but foundational truth beneath all other apparent truths?

Or could it be that the unshakable fact of human existence is the one Mr. Reed ultimately discloses, a conviction that frees him to practice cruelty without moral scruple? I’ll allow you to discover for yourself.

The two missionaries presumably live by a code of honesty, a key virtue in Joseph Smith’s 13th Article of Faith. Yet they begin lying as swiftly as they cease proselytizing once they suspect Mr. Reed’s motives.

Is integrity of word and mission a principle held only when safe and comfortable? What happens to prayer and a belief in miracles when we’re shut up in a cage with no key? Are these twin elements, rooted in transcendent reality, vital organs that work the harder when life hangs in the balance or skins we quickly shed to escape constricting circumstances?

Heretic poses, rapid-fire, even more questions than I’ve framed here, doing so in a way that avoids the didactic and eludes easy answers. Fortunately, we don’t need to share the missionaries’ religious affiliation or Mr. Reed’s cynicism to appreciate the film’s aggressive interrogation of faith. Belief in Christ rooted more deeply than rhetoric will only grow stronger in the face of such a challenge. A determination to know the Truth is more than enough to set us free.

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Church of England Leaders Kept Evangelical Beatings Secret

The British evangelical lay leader John Smyth beat boys at a Christian camp and a boarding school in the 1970s and ’80s, telling them the violent punishment would cure them of their sins, including masturbation, dishonesty, and pride. He beat them until they bled and had to wear diapers.

More than a dozen Church of England ministers knew about this and kept it secret, according to an independent report commissioned by the Church of England in 2019 and released last week. The ministers didn’t notify higher church authorities or the police, though at least one acknowledged at the time that the beatings were “technically all criminal offences.”

Victims, some as young as 13, described Smyth sweating and heaving as he hit them with a cane on the buttocks and back of the legs.

“He sounded like a Wimbledon tennis player, a man serving,” one told an investigator. “There was kind of like this grunt every time he did it.”

Another recalled Smyth, who died in South Africa in 2018, breathing hard as he struck him ten times, took a break, struck him ten more times, took another a break, then continued with another rep of ten, drawing blood. Each blow, the victim recalled, was “absolutely ferocious.”

Some victims bled for weeks after Smyth beat them.

When an Anglican minister wrote a confidential report about the abuse in 1982, he spoke to a psychiatrist who told him Smyth’s behavior was sadomasochistic. But church leaders discussed Smyth’s “Christian usefulness” and the need for secrecy. They said secrecy would be better for everyone, including the victims and their families, as well as the evangelical ministries they believed would be harmed by scandal. 

“I thought it would do the work of God immense damage if this were public,” one of the men told investigators Keith Makin and Sarah Lawrence, who compiled the 251-page report.

According to the report, people who knew of Smyth’s abuse in the early 1980s include: 

  • David Fletcher, who ran the Iwerne Camps
  • Peter Wells, a minister at the Iwerne Camps
  • Mark Ruston, the Cambridge vicar who investigated in 1982
  • Hugh Palmer, a vicar who ministered to one of Smyth’s victims in the hospital and who would go on to serve as rector of All Souls, Langham Place
  • Alan Martin, head of the Scripture Union
  • John Eddison, a traveling youth minister
  • Mark Ashton, a prep school chaplain 
  • Andrew Cornes, a canon who went on to be a member of the General Synod
  • Michael Green, rector of a church in Oxford
  • Peter Sertin, rector of an Anglican Church in Paris
  • John Trillo, a bishop who reviewed Smyth’s application for ordination
  • George Carey, the principal of a theological school in Bristol, who would go on to become Archbishop of Canterbury

Justin Welby, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, worked at the Christian camps while Smyth was there and knew Smyth. One victim claimed Welby learned about the abuse in 1978. Welby said this is not true. He said he heard some vague accusations from a minister in Paris 1981 but didn’t learn detailed allegations until 2013, when he became archbishop.

In 2013, Welby was told that the matter had been reported to police. He did not inquire further. There is no evidence that a police report was actually filed.

“The review is clear that I personally failed to ensure that after disclosure in 2013 the awful tragedy was energetically investigated,” Welby said in an apology.

On Tuesday, the archbishop announced he would be stepping down.

“I must take personal and institutional responsibility,” Welby said in a letter he posted on X. “I hope this decision makes clear how seriously the Church of England understands the need for change and our profound commitment to creating a safer church.” 

Victims’ advocates said one resignation is not enough, though.

“The Church’s failings on safeguarding are systemic & not limited to one individual,” Richard Scorer, a lawyer specializing in abuse cases, wrote on X. “Mandatory reporting and independent oversight cannot come soon enough.”

If Welby had pushed for accountability in 2013, Smyth could have been brought to justice before he died. Others had the power to stop him from abusing more boys 31 years prior but chose to deal with it discretely, “trying to put up their own spindly fences around John Smyth,” as Christian writer Lucy Sixsmith described it, “assuming, with breathtaking levels of entitlement, that the matter is theirs to deal with amongst themselves.”

In 1982, the church leaders who knew about Smyth’s abuse of boys at the camp and boarding school negotiated with him, offering their silence if he agreed to some conditions. They wanted him to see a psychiatrist, cut off contact with his victims, and agree not to work with children anymore. 

Several of the leaders called this the “price of our silence.” The report argues that this constituted a cover-up.

“This interpretation of what occurred has been questioned by many,” the report says, “but our firm conclusion is that a serious crime was covered up. The correspondence includes words and phrases associated with ‘keeping things quiet’ and ‘secrecy.’”

The church leaders who negotiated conditions with Smyth later told people that he had signed a statement agreeing to the conditions and that no one needed to be concerned, because he would never work with children again. The investigators could not find a signed document, though. And if a piece of paper ever existed, Smyth had no trouble ignoring it. He did not go into therapy, maintained contact with many of the young men he’d abused, and started his own evangelical Christian camp in Africa, where he beat more boys.

According to the report, Smyth abused at least 26 boys in England and another 85 in Zimbabwe.

Some of Smyth’s victims told investigators he used evangelical theology and the Bible to justify his violence. He liked to quote Hebrews 12:4, which says to resist sin “to the point of shedding your blood,” and Isaiah 53:5, which says, “By his stripes we are healed” (NKJV). Smyth would change the words of the prophet slightly, telling the boys that by their stripes they would be healed.

“John Smyth used these verses to suggest to us that the time had come in our spiritual growth to begin to show proper repentance for the sins that we were committing,” one victim said. 

Some of the boys said they were later able to see that Smyth was twisting Scripture. Others could not separate Smyth from their faith. 

“I just rejected everything,” one told the investigators. “I rejected my friends, I rejected my faith, I rejected everything.”

Smyth moved to Zimbabwe in 1984. Leaders over him were warned of his behavior in England, according to the investigative report, but decided it wasn’t fair to disqualify Smyth from ministry just because he had “once fallen in a particular fashion.” 

In 1987, parents heard reports Smyth was frequently naked with the boys at the Christian camp, slept with them in the dormitories, and beat them with table tennis paddles. The punishment left bruises. 

Smyth assured his trustees these were misunderstandings and agreed to make changes to avoid causing concern in the future, the report says. But he appears to have continued his abuse, unchecked.

In 1992, a 16-year-old boy named Guide Nyachuru was found dead, drowned naked in a pool. His body was bruised from one of Smyth’s beatings.

The death prompted a group of Zimbabwean ministers to ask for an independent investigation and sparked a criminal prosecution. Smyth was arrested by authorities in 1997, but the case got bogged down in legal technicalities and was postponed indefinitely.

Smyth relocated to South Africa in 2001 and lived there until his death at 77.

According to the investigative report, the ongoing impact of his decades of abuse is “impossible to overstate.” It could have been stopped, but church leaders preferred to keep things secret or chose to look away. 

“Further abuse could and should have been prevented,” the report says. “The steps taken by the Church of England and other organisations and individuals were ineffective and neither fully exposed nor prevented further abuse.”

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The Consolation of Providence

Christians believe in providence, which holds that God is the wise and sovereign governor of all creation. But what is providence for?

Unlike some doctrines, this one refuses to stay in the study or pulpit. Providence makes public claims—about the public, the shared space and time in which we all live together. It gets called in to do work whenever something momentous happens. 

Not just Christians, but most people look at an event and point and wonder, Is this the work of God? And if so—or at least, if it unfolded in accordance with God’s purposes—does that give the event a stamp of divine approval? 

That’s what many of us are after, if we would admit it: confidence that God is with us, with our tribe, or with our country. Though often bent into a too-narrow shape, this longing is the right one; it’s an instinctive search for Immanuel. It’s a question, therefore, that we should keep asking, but we should do so while on guard against easy answers or convenient solutions.

Claims and counterclaims of providential affirmation invariably intensify during election seasons and the interregnum period that follows. And this political year has been especially rocky. A presidential candidate was nearly assassinated—more than once. The sitting president announced he would not run for reelection. November was heralded, as it is every cycle, as the most important vote of our lifetime, its stakes existential.

I’m writing these words before that vote is counted, and you’ll likely read them after the winner—and whatever else awaits us between Election Day and the Inauguration (not to say Judgment Day)—is revealed. But the very point of the doctrine of providence is that I don’t need to know that outcome to trust that God will be with us in the weeks to come.

In fact, the doctrine of providence has a number of roles to perform, and one of them is to turn down the volume on the frantic speculation to which we are prone in such moments. Providence isn’t a decoder ring for history, and it certainly isn’t for the present. To switch metaphors, it’s got bigger fish to fry. 

But that’s not to downplay its power. Providence is a lifeline for Christians in a fallen world where chaos threatens to overwhelm us. But we need to understand what it is and what it teaches before we can receive the consolation it is meant to offer.


Providence begins and ends with God, his identity and activity. God alone is maker, sustainer, and savior. “For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens” (Ps. 96:5). Loving what he has made, God rules wisely over his creation. As part of his rule, he orders all things to their final end in himself.

Providence is the word Christians use for this hidden, ordered provision guiding history to its appointed terminus. Every book of the Bible testifies to this divine prudence, though one could construct a theology of providence out of nothing but the Psalms, perhaps even Psalm 104 alone. There we learn of God’s universal creative power, his unrivaled sovereignty, and his immediate, active care:

These all look to thee,
to give them their food in due season.
When thou givest to them, they gather it up;
when thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good things.
When thou hidest thy face, they are dismayed;
when thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created;
and thou renewest the face of the ground. (vv. 27–30, RSV)

Absent the Lord’s hand, the history of not only humanity but the whole universe would be meaningless. Lacking all order, it would have no
rationale or goal. 

Thankfully, the universe is not meaningless. God’s providential care is boundless. “All things are subject to divine providence,” writes medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae, “not only in general, but even in their own individual selves.” Or take Augustine in the fifth century, in a more elaborate passage from his treatise On the Trinity:

The whole of creation is governed by its creator, from whom and by whom and in whom (Rom 11:36) it was founded and established. And thus God’s will is the first and highest cause of all [creatures and events]. For nothing happens visibly and in a manner perceptible to the senses which does not issue either as a command or as a permission from the inmost invisible and intelligible court of the supreme emperor, according to his unfathomable justice of rewards and punishments, favors and retributions, in what we may call this vast and all-embracing republic of the whole creation.

Let me unpack these claims, because although they are dense, they are universal across Christian tradition. Three are paramount, and simply stated.

First, God’s providence is comprehensive; nothing is excluded from it. Second, God wills some things actively, and these are “incontrovertibly good,” as the seventh-century monk John of Damascus puts it in Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. Third, God permits other things, and these are defects, errors, sufferings, or evils, including those of the political variety.

At this point, differences arise between theologians and denominations—the position of sin in relation to God’s plan, the reason he allows evil, and the role and character of fallen human will—but agreement is firm on this point: Nothing falls outside the sovereign power of God. Nothing is outside his providential grasp. If anything were, then some things would exceed his reach. And if that were true, God would be unable to save us. Either providence is all-encompassing or our redemption is in jeopardy.

That’s not to say the world is as it should be. If it were, Jesus wouldn’t command us to pray that God’s kingdom come and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt. 6:10). Such a prayer would be redundant if the status quo left nothing to be desired. In that case, earth would already be heaven.

But providence holds together two truths in a single mystery: Regarding God, “everything that he wills comes to pass,” John of Damascus says. If that weren’t true, God wouldn’t be God. God is good and does good; he abhors sin; he cannot be an author of evil. 

Regarding us, we do what is wrong: We sin, transgress, and turn away from God’s love. And because of our first sin, this world is sunk in evil and death—the two very enemies opposed to life that God sent his Son to defeat.

Taken together, it appears that the horizon of God’s will overlooks or permits—with patience but never resignation—rebellion and defection from his manifest purposes for our good. But he never causes, desires, or blesses those evils.

Hence, providence does not mean that evil does not happen. Providence means that evil is not ultimate, that it does not and will not have the last word. It means, further, that in spite of the evils we witness and suffer, God has not abandoned us; the story is not without a plot; the author has not lost control of his narrative. 

As theologian John Webster puts it in an essay on the doctrine, “Providence is not asserted on the basis of the insignificance of evil but on the basis of the belief that God outbids any and all evil.”

Indeed, in his famous treatise on The Bondage of the Will, Reformer Martin Luther once observed that if all we had to go on was the evidence of the world, we would conclude that God is evil or must not exist. 

Providence, therefore, is not an empirical doctrine; it’s not a reasonable guess based on the way our lives go. Rather, it’s a confession of faith in God incarnate, the God of Calvary, whose death on a cross seemed to almost every onlooker to refute his message.

Providence, in short, makes a promise. It says that human history may sometimes seem like one long crucifixion, but at the end of it lies an empty tomb. Confidence in providence thus begets perseverance. It takes God at his word no matter how dark life becomes.

According to each of the theologians I’ve cited, the truth of providence has great theological stakes because it is rooted in the nature of God, both his goodness and his power. His goodness, because the evils of the world seem to belie it; his power, because none but God can bring good out of evil. The watchword for providence in all ages is Joseph’s response to his brothers: You intended it for evil, but God intended it for good (Gen. 50:20).

John of Damascus saw two sides to providence: a practical charge and a theoretical danger. On one hand, with a view to the life of faith, he writes that “when they are accepted with thanksgiving, all the vexatious things that happen to us are laid upon us for our salvation and most certainly become occasions of benefit for us.” On the other hand, he warns that “the ways of God’s providence are many and can neither be explained in words nor grasped by the mind.”

Put these together, and you come to see that providence is a call not for speculation but for action. It is a gospel truth built on the rock of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, meant for our consolation and hope in the face of trials, sufferings, and calamities. Providence names a mystery deep in the heart of the church’s life, one that explains her courage, her boldness, her stubborn refusal to shrink back from faith. Providence is a secret whispered from one martyr to another until the end of time.


We’re now far afield from contemporary political turmoil, and rightly so. The church’s teaching about providence preexists American and modern politics. It stands wholly independent of the day’s news. 

In the summer of 1933, following Hitler’s rise to power and the Nazis’ intrusion into church affairs, Swiss theologian Karl Barth composed a plea for Christians to stay faithful to the gospel. He asserted that, for his part, he would carry on with theology as if nothing had happened. 

This bald claim has scandalized many of his readers over the past century, even as it did at the time. But Barth didn’t mean that Christ-ians should remain aloof from the events of their era. This is the same man, after all, who the following year helped draft the Barmen Declaration against Nazi influence in the German churches. By saying he would carry on as if nothing had happened, then, Barth meant that the gospel stands or falls on its own terms, not the world’s. 

The axis of history turns on the resurrection of Jesus. If Hitler or Stalin could bend the arc of history to their will—if theology had to “change” in light of later events—then God would not be sovereign. A rival would sit on the throne, and our trust in his promise would be called into question.

Providence, therefore, is not affected by the news. But neither is it rendered inert by current events. True, we’re not meant to speculate; that would mean looking at providence rather than using it, properly, as a lens to view our lives. Looking through providence, we see a fallen creation governed by its loving Lord, not random atoms colliding aimlessly or human happenings devoid of meaning and, often, full of terror.

This is why it is perfectly reasonable for people to wonder about God’s involvement in shocking, significant, unexpected, or improbable events. The conversion of Constantine, the fall of Rome, the battle of Tours, the rout of the Spanish Armada, the evacuation of Dunkirk—many Christians, rightly or wrongly, believed they could discern the Lord’s hand in these events. 

The trick is to avoid cherry-picking. Vulgar providentialism sees the smile of heaven in any happy occurrence and its absence whenever things—whether in reality or from our own perspective—go wrong. Worse, such convenient providentialism can become confirmation bias projected onto history: When my guy wins, when my policy passes, when my promotion goes through, I know that I was right because God is telling me so. Of course, when my guy loses or my policy fails or my promotion stalls, I don’t assume I was wrong all along. I know that life’s not that simple.

Here’s the difficult truth: The sheer fact that something has happened—that God willed or allowed it to happen—tells us nothing whatsoever about the thing itself. It may be a cause for celebration or lament or, more likely, a mixture of both. On their own, events are illegible. We may never know in the moment what God is up to, much less how God might work good out of some bewildering or shocking occurrence. 

Wise discernment and faithful response are a long game, so long that you and I may not live to know the answer. Sifting history for the work of God is thus a task for a community, not an individual, over a span of centuries, not weeks or months or the few moments it takes to post on social media. At any given time, what seems like a very good thing may turn out for ill, just as a very bad thing may turn out for blessing. The people of God must be patient. Spiritual hindsight is the prerogative of the church, and even then it’s touch and go.

For these reasons, providence is an ill-shapen tool for imprinting Christ-ian approval on current events, and this realization should help believers turn popular recourse to providence inside out. Far from a means of explaining why something has happened, it should instead become an occasion for humility: We simply do not know. Our trust in God remains unshaken, but rarely if ever can we predict or unveil his purposes with confidence. We know the final outcome—each of our graves vacant in a flash (1 Cor. 15:52)—not the twists and turns by which it will arrive.

Scripture supplies many examples of this fundamental ambiguity of providence. Foreign empires appear on Israel’s borders. Is this from God? Yes, it is. They threaten to attack God’s people. Is this too from God? Yes—though repentance could change their fate. Soldiers lay waste to the temple and perpetrate injustice against the innocent. Could this also be from God? Well, the answer is complicated. Isaiah 47 reveals that God did employ the Babylonians to punish Israel but they went too far; now he will raise up another empire to punish them for their transgressions.

Or consider ancient Israel’s monarchy. A line of kings is a key component of God’s purposes for Jacob’s children, for it will culminate in Jesus. Yet when the people beg for a king, it is an act of mistrust on their part; they spurn the Lord in order to be like the other nations (1 Sam. 8:4–9). And as it turns out, Saul, David, and many of David’s descendants often prove disastrous for Israel. The lesson for us: Be careful what you wish for. And perhaps also: Be cautious in divining the Lord’s will. In the moment, it may seem clear what he is doing and why. In the long run, though, you may live to regret your rush to judgment.

And yet: Out of the long disaster of the Davidic kingship God brought Jesus, the Son of David and the final king of Israel. It only took a thousand years. Perhaps it will likewise take a millennium for keen-eyed observers to gain true clarity on our own political trials and conflicts.

In any case, the rule stands: For all Christians, whether Calvinist or Methodist, Catholic or Baptist, providence is by nature ambiguous. God permits things; God wills things; God does things. We do not always know which is which, and we very rarely know why—and never without a long backward glance. Even when we are sure God’s hand was at work in an event, his purposes are likely to be obscure, especially to contemporaries. 

We must remember to root the doctrine of providence in the good news of Christ—his cross and resurrection, his love and promises for his people, his pledge to be with us to the end. Recast in that light, providence doesn’t make history easy to interpret. It makes living through it endurable. 

Brad East is an associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University. He is the author of four books, including The Church: A Guide to the People of God and Letters to a Future Saint.

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What to Salvage from Fundamentalism

In a fallen world, reform efforts never perfectly hit their marks. They address one problem only to sow the seeds of others. Or they so aggressively attack an infection that they weaken or destroy what’s healthy and vital.

Blunders in this delicate dance between correction and overcorrection are familiar in the political arena. Yet the same pattern is found in matters of religion, as Reformation people can readily understand. 

Around a quarter century ago, theologian Richard Mouw wrote a short book surveying the evangelical landscape of that time. He had much to celebrate. But he worried that evangelicalism had too thoroughly eclipsed the fundamentalism that preceded it. His reflection, titled The Smell of Sawdust: What Evangelicals Can Learn from Their Fundamentalist Heritage (2000), models a healthy approach to reckoning with a flawed past that still tugs on your heartstrings.

In one sense, evangelicalism has existed ever since Jesus first gave us the Good News to share with the world. As a contemporary movement, however, it emerged in the 20th century as a correction to the fundamentalist overcorrection.

As I never tire of reminding those who casually deploy fundamentalist as a slur, the term is no mere synonym for Bible-thumping zealot. Fundamentalism responded to the late 19th-century advent of “modernist” Christianity, which reengineered supernatural elements—like Jesus’ virgin birth or bodily resurrection—that offended science-loving contemporaries.

Fundamentalists drew essential lines in the sand. (The name derives from The Fundamentals, an essay collection defending core Christian doctrines.) But over time, they turned quarrelsome and insular, growing preoccupied with moral-purity tests and esoteric threads of Bible prophecy. Rattled by cultural rejection, they devoted more energy to speculating about the world’s demise than to shining the light of Christ within it.

The Smell of Sawdust asked evangelicals at the turn of this century: Are you flirting with overcorrection?

For Mouw, the subject is deeply personal. Born in 1940, he grew up immersed in a tight-knit fundamentalist world. He learned dispensational theology at its Bible conferences, staffed kitchens at its summer camps, and inhaled the aroma of its revival tents, which his title evokes.

Like many believers of his generation, however, Mouw ended up charting a different course. Anxious to avoid modernist heresies and fundamentalist habits of cultural retreat, he took the “neo-evangelical” path that launched leaders like Billy Graham, publications like Christianity Today, and institutions like Fuller Theological Seminary (where Mouw served 20 years as president).

Mouw doesn’t regret that journey. In fact, much of the book champions evangelical achievements. But for all this, he retains a sense of “indebtedness to . . . the fundamentalism that nurtured me in my early years.”

My own childhood had few, if any, fundamentalist hallmarks. Still, The Smell of Sawdust moved me to ask which features of that inheritance may be worth salvaging. I can’t cover everything here, but 25 years after Mouw’s book, I’ll propose three areas where the pendulum might be swinging too far toward overcorrection. 

The first concerns personal piety and morality. Fundamentalists weren’t shy about setting behavioral boundaries. That often led to legalistic dead ends and petty judgmentalism about drinking, dancing, cards, and other presumed gateways to naughtiness. But they weren’t wrong to guard against a sinful world’s enticements. 

My wife and I sometimes joke about evangelical writers enlisting the Incarnation as a versatile moral permission slip. Jesus lived on earth, you see, which means the world is good, not tainted. Presto! A handy rationale for tasting its fruits with an untroubled conscience. 

That’s a caricature, of course. Rightly understood, evangelicalism rejects antinomian license and follows Jesus in looking at the heart’s posture. I don’t want evangelicals to be known primarily for the priggish hang-ups of yesteryear. But when I think of how I’ve reassured irreligious friends with my conspicuous lack of hang-ups, I worry I’m failing to seek the set-apartness that God commands of his people.

Second, I’ve come to value fundamentalist warnings about the pitfalls of intellectualism. Contrary to the lunkhead stereotype, Mouw notes that fundamentalists often brought prodigious intellectual energy to their pursuits. At their worst, they also cultivated an unhealthy suspicion of secular knowledge as a distraction, an irrelevance, or a rival to biblical authority.

That mindset clashes with my dearest convictions about the inherent goodness of reading and learning. Mouw has little patience for it either. But he shows where the fundamentalist caution is worth heeding: Theology can lodge in the head without transforming the heart, and some strains of Enlightenment rationalism do rule out religious belief.

I’d add another danger of intellectualism, one that rises as we evangelicals ponder our place in America’s social hierarchy. Evangelicals should always obey God’s call to renew the mind. But when braininess functions as a status symbol, intellectual ambitions can devolve into quests for esteem from secular peers or distance from fellow evangelicals. 

Finally, I think we could stand to recover something of the fundamentalist emphasis on the eternal fate of individual souls. 

Mouw writes of revivalistic altar calls “where people were encouraged to make deep and abiding commitments.” He knows, of course, that emotional appeals can yield ephemeral professions of faith. He knows, too, that cathartic moments of conversion can’t substitute for regular church fellowship and patient discipleship. But he helpfully stresses the high stakes involved. It matters whether people get saved!

Obviously, evangelicals believe this. But in recent years, evangelical leaders have taken great pains to portray the cosmic scope of God’s redemption. God isn’t just gathering lost souls and depositing them in paradise. He’s renewing creation itself and reigning as King forevermore.

I want pulpits to ring out with this glorious message. But I cringe at the thought of dismissing a perennial source of existential dread—What happens after I die?—as selfish or unimportant. The gospel promises abundantly more than “going to heaven,” but surely not less.

I give thanks for the evangelical tradition, warts and all. But like Mouw, I remain grateful for the fundamentalist streams still nourishing it. Yes, you’ll find some corroded junk in those waters. But also some precious gems. 

Matt Reynolds is senior books editor at CT.

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The Light of the World Is for Everyone

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.” This luminous verse in Isaiah 9 is traditionally read at Advent as we look forward to the coming light of Christ.

For those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere, this passage is especially apt, as the whole celebration of Christmas in midwinter has an extra layer of meaning, a kind of parable from nature to underline and emphasize the prophecy of Isaiah. 

Isaiah is speaking of the darkness of exile, the darkness of our fall, and—at the root of it all—the thick, clotted darkness of sin. This is the darkness that Christ comes to dispel, and John, perhaps remembering this verse in Isaiah, tells us that the light shines in darkness and the darkness has never overcome it (John 1:5).

To hear these readings in the dark time of the year, when the nights draw in and help us see the light more brightly, reminds us of the final triumph of the inextinguishable light of Christ—not just in our heads, but in our hearts; not just by reason, but by a kindled imagination. 

When a child comes up in church to light an Advent candle, the gospel is known not only with the mind but with the body as well. And that is especially important as we celebrate the Incarnation, the astonishing truth that God became one of us, that he who is the Light of the World was once as young and vulnerable as the child who lights the candle.

 As a poet, I have found myself drawn again and again to “the light within the light by which I see,” as I put it in one of my Advent sonnets. The light that shines in darkness is also an image, a living symbol, to which everyone responds. 

Some time ago, I wrote a winter blessing. I wanted to frame my blessing in such a way that it could be shared, perhaps at a candlelit dinner table, with those who do not yet share our faith. I wanted to invite conversation about who the “winter child” really is. Those who do not yet share our faith can share our wonder at the beauty and comfort of light in the darkness, from the stars in the heavens to the candlelight at a service or over a shared meal. 

Winter Benediction

When winter comes and winds are cold and keen,
When nights are darkest, though the stars shine bright,
When life shrinks to its roots, or sleeps unseen,
Then may he bless and bring you to his light.
For he has come at last, and can be seen,
God’s love made vulnerable, tightly curled:
The Winter Child, The Saviour of The World.

Malcolm Guite is a former chaplain and life fellow at Girton College, Cambridge. He teaches and lectures widely on theology and literature. 

“Winter Benediction” was originally commissioned for Cultivating magazine and published by Cultivating Oaks Press. Used with permission.

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