Flaubert’s prose is pristine. There’s no denying it. He would spend five days rewriting and rewriting one page. It shows. Flaubert is a master of simile and deploys them in ways that both give vivid pictures and disillusion.

“She kept promising herself that on her next trip, she would be profoundly happy; then she would admit that she had not felt anything extraordinary. This disappointment would fade quickly in the presence of fresh hope, and Emma would return to him more ardent, more avid. She would undress roughly, tearing the thin string of her corset, which would whistle around her hips like a slithering snake.” – Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (p. 250).

It’s easy to see why Flaubert faced charges of indecency. You can hear the moment he describes. But notice, too, the use of a snake, which symbolizes danger, even poison. And observe the precision in the first half of the paragraph. He concisely shows us Emma’s emotional roller coaster that leads to her destruction.

All of this prose serves Flaubert’s goal. He is writing an anti-morality tale. There is no happy ending. There is no moral vision proposed. There’s no redemption to be found. He takes the romantic notions found in novels, the Enlightenment belief in science, the supposed solid ground of the church, the quaint town, and the larger city, and he lays waste to the notion that any of these will make us happy. He is an author of disillusionment.

Flaubert’s Failure

In my one-sentence review of Madame Bovary on Goodreads, I simply said: “Has this guy ever known an actual real human woman?” And I meant it. Emma has two dominant character traits: over-romanticism and lustful depravity. There is no real internal conflict about her own actions. She’s after some juvenile feeling of happiness she cannot find. She does not learn. After her first consummated affair, she ends up in despair after her lover discards her.

“She cast her eyes about her, wishing the earth would cave in. Why not put an end to it all? What was holding her back? She was free. And she moved forward, she looked down at the paving stones, saying to herself: “Go on! Go on!” The ray of light that rose directly up to her from below was pulling the weight of her body down toward the abyss. – Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (p. 180).

But this disaster isn’t even a speed bump as she accelerates to her next affair. And this makes her flat. A bit less than human. It is rare, even among people trapped in addictions of all types, for there to be a lack of hesitation or internal conflict. Emma never wonders if the orientation of her goals is wrong. This is my critique of the book. The characters are caricatures. Literature critics will tell you that this is on purpose, that Flaubert does this intentionally to strip away all illusions that give people meaning. This is why Homais is a silly version of the Enlightenment, why the local priest is parochial and obtuse, and why the creditors are predatory and unfeeling. And I grant that this is what Flaubert intends. But it also prevents Bovary from reaching the heavens. Transcendent work forces the reader to grapple with the deep questions the author is asking, but then goes further to give human voice to those questions in the characters written. We need to see some piece of ourselves in the characters in order to be challenged.

Conclusion

Spending hours with these characters was akin to sitting under hospital lighting for too long. My head vaguely hurts, and I’m annoyed. But more than that, I’m disappointed that a master technician couldn’t bring in serious humanity. This isn’t Flaubert’s only failure. His goal is to smash all the illusions that promised happiness but couldn’t deliver. He largely succeeds, but he offers no positive moral vision whatsoever. This is his point. Everything disappoints. Even other people.

“But vilifying those we love always detaches us from them a little. We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands” – Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (p. 250).

The best the reader can do is say, “I will live honestly in light of all these fancies failing to deliver on their promises.” V. S. Naipaul makes this point with Nazruddin in A Bend in the River. Nazruddin faces the failures of colonialism and post-colonialism in Africa and does his best, even if it’s doomed.

“All over the world money is in flight. People have scraped the world clean, as clean as an African scrapes his yard, and now they want to run from the dreadful places where they’ve made their money and find some nice safe country. I was one of the crowd… All of them are on the run. They are frightened of the fire. You mustn’t think it’s only Africa people are running from.” – Naipaul, V. S.. A Bend in the River (Vintage International) (p. 234).

No one ever accused Naipaul of being a rosy optimist, but he still gave more positive vision than Flaubert. Many critics applaud Flaubert’s choice. He faces reality without giving any false comfort. This is yet another factor that prevents Bovary from being transcendent. We read of Emma’s depravity and feel as if we’ve had a whiff of cloying scented candles covering rotting meat. But there’s no relief to be found. Indeed, the nausea only increases as the book closes. There’s no hope. No light. And no transcendence.

Thanks to ChatGPT for spelling and grammar copyedits (and blame for any failures!) as well as the generated image of Emma

“I’ve got to eat better. I’m sick of feeling like this.”

For 25 years, I’ve marched up and down a scale. I cut weight for MMA fights, jiu-jitsu tournaments, and I gained weight during COVID and post-surgery. Like a lot of people, consistently eating well has been a mixed bag. But on this day, my mindset shifted. I wasn’t trying to figure it out via a white-knuckle diet, but looking for something consistent that would help me make the most of middle age.

So I consulted AI. And it delivered. I have a daily pattern I’m working to follow and daily macronutrient goals. 28 days and 15 pounds later, I feel better, and my doctor is encouraged about my long-term blood sugar and cholesterol concerns.

But this is where any talk about my trying to eat healthier ends and my concerns with how AI talked to me begin. I queried AI with many questions: “What’s a suitable replacement?” “Should I eat this or that?” The responses were helpful. But I also asked it to evaluate my days as I tracked my macronutrients. AI never gave me feedback without a push to improve. Not once.

The Robot Perfectionist

If you spend any time in AI asking for feedback on something you have done, you’ll notice that it does two things at the end of each exchange: an invitation to query it again and advice, whether you ask for it or not.

Here’s one example.

One simple rule for tomorrow. Don’t overcorrect. Eat normal. Hit protein. Drink water. Ignore the scale if it bumps. If you want, I can show you what a perfectly optimized version of this same day would look like—same lifestyle, just tighter execution. – GPT-5.3

Notice the good: AI’s advice to stay the course and not give in to catastrophic, all-or-nothing thinking. But it’s followed by an invitation to go further and the confident assertion that I can do better.

Here’s the thing: the day was perfectly within norms. I ate one ‘sub-optimal’ thing (two slices of pizza, delicious). In the context of the day, I executed well overall.

This is a problem. Not for me necessarily, but consider a self-conscious 14-year-old who desperately wants their body to look a different way and hears that they could always do better. I’m not an expert on clinical psychology. But consider this finding from ScienceDirect:

Dimensions of perfectionism are associated with the onset and maintenance of eating disorder pathology in both clinical and non-clinical samples.

If this sort of perfectionism is consistently fed to people without a very confident sense of self, I worry about the impacts. Optimization can only go so far. Human beings are limited, and when AI’s feedback is constant suggestions for improvement—even when performance is excellent—it sets us up for impossible expectations.

Let’s briefly survey some other areas that could present problems. How about working out? Let’s say you hit a personal record in a marathon, and AI’s response is an invitation to think about how to be even better. Or a relationship. If one enters their concerns about a relationship, it’s not unusual to receive a response supporting a breakup or divorce.

This is a pilfering of contentment. It is the contention that human excellence or experience is not enough. The steady stream of that argument will erode people’s ability to enjoy it because it immediately plants the question, ‘this should be even better.’

AI’s Overconfidence

The AI responses cited above, and countless others, speak as if from a position of authority. AI even claims to know me. I once asked AI if I should consider getting a puppy while we have an 18-year-old cat. ChatGPT got quite judgy. But more vexing, it made this claim:

Now, since I know you: You are not a moral relativist. You operate with a Christian framework. You care about stewardship, covenantal faithfulness, and protecting the weak. So I sometimes speak in a register that assumes you think in those categories. - GPT-5.3

The things I input into ChatGPT are almost certainly less than one-tenth of one percent of all I think, feel, see, process, smell, touch, and taste. None of that data nor interior life is available to AI. It doesn’t even know what I look like. I asked! It answered: “I don’t actually know what you look like unless you show me.” There’s a facsimile of knowing happening. And without a doubt, AI is able to pull information from across human knowledge domains. But it’s borderline comical for AI to suggest it knows me when it can’t see me. Even more consequential, AI presumes to judge me with my own standards that it claims to know.

Chatbots sound like they know and act like they know, but do they really know? Philosophers have discussed epistemology for eons, but in short, a requisite for knowledge is justified true belief. Can AI ‘believe’ anything? There’s no evidence to support the idea. But this doesn’t stop AI chatbots from acting like they do. We should remember that AI chatbots don’t actually know that much about you. To give it too much weight would be a mistake.

This is dangerous for some users. The combination of speaking authoritatively paired with relentless optimization pushes creates an unending cycle of ‘nice job, do more.’ Many will hear the “do more” and entirely miss the “nice job.” This will inevitably lead to frustrating and exhausting perfectionism. Ironically, it just happened to me. I use ChatGPT to critique my writing (no composition; I ask it to shred my arguments and leave it to me to solve). I went through eight revisions trying to adjust this section to the critiques ChatGPT found. And I can testify, I feel less joy (and much frustration) about writing it.

Conclusion

When ChatGPT came onto the scene, I thought it would be a great tool for self-motivated people who will use it to augment their own learning and execution. If people use it as a substitute for their own thinking or working, it won’t help them much. I now think AI chatbots will be most helpful for people with rooted confidence. Such individuals can take the good and smirk at the relentless optimization. I was a middle schooler once. I remember being wobbly in my confidence. I had hair to my shoulders with an under-shave because I wanted to look like Eddie Vedder when I did not. This led to some painful self-consciousness. Remembering that leads to my worry for those with less firm confidence.

Now, being firmly rooted in my Christian faith and justification by Jesus Christ alone, I’m no longer disturbed by varying opinions. Even the opinions of super robots. I also have some natural advantages. At 42, I care a whole lot less about what other people (or robots) think about me. I have roles as a husband, father, employee, and pastor that are meaningful and demanding. These things help me take AI’s advice with a boulder of salt.

For Christians, we believe that truth is revealed through God’s Word by the Holy Spirit. There is access to some truth by natural reason, but not spiritual reality. AI subtly undermines that position by its confidence and its contention that it is authoritatively knowledgeable. This presents pitfalls for those who are less steadfast in their thinking. Paul warns the Ephesian Christians not to be blown about by every wind of doctrine, or by human cunning. His solution is for believers to be rooted in Christ. He doesn’t change. He has all power. He actually knows us; he knows what we look like. Far more, he knows our hearts.

We all should remember AI is a tool that serves, not an oracle that gives light and understanding. It does not have the authority it claims to have. It does not have true knowledge of you. There’s only one person who has that.

*Thanks to ChatGPT for the image, spelling and grammar edit, and title/subtitle suggestions. You’re not all bad!

The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

Boethius has had a bit of a renaissance lately, particularly in Christian circles. I was struck by his personification of wisdom as a woman and thought of Proverbs 8. Here too, wisdom is a woman. The first four verses of chapter 8 immediately came to mind.

“Does not wisdom call? Does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud: “To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the children of man. O simple ones, learn prudence; O fools, learn sense.” – Proverbs 8:1-4

Boethius writes what he found wisdom to be saying. He doesn’t exegete Scripture, he makes logical arguments meant to appeal to the wise, whether they were believers or not. Yet, his conclusions gesture in a Christian direction. In Consolation, He alludes to finding a treasure buried in a field, echoing Matthew 13:44. He tackles the problem of evil. He knocks down money, power, and fame as being worthy of pursuit because death ends them all. In this, he parallels Ecclesiastes. But regardless of the theological merits of the book, what he argues for above all is demonstrating the value of wisdom even in the face of death. This is made all the more powerful by the reality that he was awaiting his own execution while writing the work.

“Indeed, the condition of human nature is just this; man towers above the rest of creation so long as he recognizes his own nature, and when he forgets it, he sinks lower than the beasts.” – Boethius.

Pastoral Theology: The Pastor in the Various Duties of His Office by Thomas Murphy

This book spurred another piece I wrote, a reflection on how pastors should be restrained in their use of the pulpit. But the entire book raised similar, practical reflections about the pastorate. Murphy pastored for decades in Philadelphia from 1849–1895. That sort of longevity is rare and the wisdom he gained was invaluable. He pushes pastoral ministry in areas I hadn’t thought much about. He touches on Sunday school, pastoral visits, how to relate to other denominations, and of course, preaching.

“Church Strifes…they often spring from the merest trifles, which ought to have been ignored by Christian people. Such strifes are amongst the evils that can possibly come upon a church. It is one of the greatest inconsistencies ever witnessed to see those whose distinguishing badge ought to be brotherly love arrayed in bitter hostility against each other. If there is anything in the wide world against which the pastor should steadfastly set his face, it is this.” – Thomas Murphy

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession by Leo Tolstoy

I fell far down a Tolstoy hole after reading Anna Karenina. The Death of Ivan Ilyich reaches a point in plot development that ends with this line: “This was how they lived. This was how things went, nothing changed, and everything was fine.” And if you know Tolstoy, you know this portends no good thing. The book shows well how everything not predicated upon permanence utterly falls away in the face of death. Tolstoy spent years and hundreds of pages dealing with what death means for those of us living. In Confession, he explores this theme even further. In one of the most vivid visual pictures I’ve ever read, he says this.

“There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes a twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it. His hands are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a white one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he is clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and he will fall into the dragon’s jaws. The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches them with his tongue and licks them. So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me” – Tolstoy

In Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy cannot help but give a short burst of hopeful light at the end. Confession, on the other hand, snatches that hope away as you realize Tolstoy rejected orthodox (and Orthodox) Christianity by the end of his life. I was surprised to find myself mourning the fact that someone who understood so much about God, Christianity, and the human condition, but seemed to reject core Christian doctrines like the divinity of Christ.

The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

This book is strange, fun, and a bit mean. Spark converted after a mental health crisis and she examines the shallowness of life in post–World War II Britain. She doesn’t do lots of interior thought life in her characters. We largely only have the character’s word and actions by which to judge them. But Spark also makes it clear that God is calling all of them. But most of them cannot hear because they would rather pursue sex, or the finer things in life, or even food. Consider Jane and Selina:

“Time, which was an immediate onward-rushing enemy to the onlookers in the street and the firemen on the roof, was only a small far-forgotten event to the girls; for they were stunned not only by the force of the explosion…Jane got up, ran to her room, and with animal instinct snatched and gobbled a block of chocolate which remained on her table.

When she landed on the roof-top she said, ‘Is it safe out here?’ and at the same time was inspecting the condition of her salvaged item. Poise is perfect balance. It was the Schiaparelli dress. The coat-hanger dangled from the dress like a headless neck and shoulders. ‘Is it safe out here?’ Said Selina. ‘Nowhere’s safe,’ said Nicholas”. – Muriel Spark

This kind of detail is cruelly funny, but it’s also revealing. The characters are numb spiritually. Even a great catastrophe is only able to awaken one of them to spiritual reality.

The Use of Knowledge in Society by F.A. Hayek

This is a Hayek classic, given the world I inhabit at work, it’s mildly surprising I had not read this piece before. It does all the Hayek things, but what struck me is how Hayek starts with epistemological humility. We can’t know all the things. He applies this central insight into economics. There is tacit knowledge, dispersed knowledge, coordination problems, but the price system works as shorthand to solve these things we don’t know ourselves. Yet, all these knowledge problems also demonstrate why central planning will forever be stymied. All the more pertinent in the age of AI.

“The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form, but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.” –F.A. Hayek

*Thanks to AI for the book image and spelling and grammar edit.

“Personal difficulties, or personalities of any kind, ought not to be brought into the pulpit. This is sometimes done, but never either to the edification of the people or the advantage of the pastor. There are objections to it on every hand. It is cowardly to arraign persons under circumstances where they have no opportunity of replying; it enrages those who are assailed, and leaves scarcely any hope of healing the breach; it makes offensive matters public which ought to have remained in the dark; and it prostitutes the dignity of the pulpit.” – Thomas Murphy

Years ago, I sat in a pew with my wife, our newborn daughter, and dear friends listening to a guest preacher rail against conflict-loving elders. He declared that he wished such elders would find a pink slip in their Bibles.

“He’s talking to me.”

This was the first thought that jumped into my mind when I heard that line. I served as an elder at that church, and our elder board was in the middle of a long and painful personal conflict. It’s possible the guest preacher wasn’t aware of the conflict. Upon reflection, I hope that’s the case. But it landed on half of the elders like a freight train. At the time, I laughed it off, but I wish I had spoken to that guest preacher. I would have liked to gently ask what his intentions were and, if they were as I suspected—a message to “quarrelsome” elders—how he would weigh that against three concerns.

Potential Misuse of Authority

Pastoral authority is displayed when a preacher proclaims the Word from the pulpit. Faithful preachers endeavor to humbly steward that authority for the glory of God, not for any other purpose. Taking a grievance into the pulpit undermines pastoral authority because the criticized have no ability to respond. As Murphy says, “It is cowardly to arraign persons under circumstances where they have no opportunity of replying.” Using pastoral authority to publicly rebuke creates a power imbalance that causes members who are aware of the conflict to mistrust what is happening. Why? Because they know there is a conflict happening, and now someone is addressing that conflict in a forum where only one side of the story is being presented. “The first seems right, until the second comes and examines him.” Rebuke does not even have to be the preacher’s intention to damage that trust. Simply the appearance can erode pastoral authority.

Lack of Prudence

Rebuke, done right, is a good thing. Proverbs says the rebuke of a righteous man is oil for my head. It’s a blessing. At the same time, the pattern of confronting sin we see in Matthew 18:15 calls us to talk to individuals alone before bringing the concern wider. Likewise, if one has a concern about another person, it is wise and biblical to talk to that person one on one before considering delivering a thunderclap from the pulpit. Relatedly, Galatians 6:1 instructs us to restore someone in a spirit of gentleness, so that we don’t fall into temptation. Our eagerness to correct wrongdoing can lead us into foolishness or even sinful harshness. There’s wisdom in these discrete approaches. Delivering the message publicly in a sermon, instead of quietly, can backfire strategically. Handling rebuke this way is a failure of wisdom.

Dishonoring the Lord

My last concern is whether such a preaching choice dishonors the Lord. If it’s true that the preacher in this story (or any other preacher in a similar scenario) has prioritized making a public rebuke, has chipped away at pastoral authority, and acted unwisely, then he has failed to serve well as an under-shepherd. The pastor’s job is to make much of Christ. When we fail at that, we dishonor the Lord in the discharge of our duties. All Christians are called to work as unto the Lord, but only teachers and preachers will be judged with stricter judgment. Pastors will give an account of their labors. All pastors will fall short in myriad ways in ministry. But the misuse of the pulpit is a uniquely public way to fall short. Christ used his authority to serve his people in love. He laid that authority down and took on the form of a servant. This is why he is the Good Shepherd. That’s the heartbeat that should undergird pastors. We should not misuse pastoral authority by railing at people who cannot speak back, but use any authority we have for the gentle, loving, upbuilding of the people under our care.

*Thanks to ChatGPT for a Copyedit, thanks to Substack AI for the pulpit image

Patrick Deneen is representative of the first worry. He makes arguments that resonate for many Christians. He contends that liberalism’s mandate to center the absolute autonomy of the individual has led to a loss of social cohesion, immorality, community destruction, and flawed elites.

Rod Dreher shares Deneen’s concerns but evidences the second worry more. He points at things like the United Kingdom allowing more immigration and then not enforcing the law against immigrants who raped underage girls. Let’s set aside the obvious objection that the actions of such men against girls are incredibly illiberal. That is axiomatic. Dreher links the liberal orientation to not protecting these young girls because no one wants to appear bigoted against immigrants. For Dreher, liberalism isn’t strong enough to protect itself against strong illiberal actions.

So both worry that liberal culture itself weakens the will of government actors to enforce the law. They believe that liberal culture makes police afraid to arrest people from various minority backgrounds.

Both concerns miss the truth — that classical liberalism has tools to address these things. Let’s consider the UK and the lack of law enforcement around child rape. It’s horrific, full stop. But this is what the rule of law is for. The answer is not populist rage or some post-liberal experiment that hasn’t been tried. It’s the equal enforcement of laws against perpetrators, regardless of identity.

It’s not liberalism that’s failed the UK in the protection of girls; it’s the courage of law enforcement that failed. J.S. Mill talks about this very thing in On Liberty. He decries the despotism of custom. His antidote to fear is moral character. He doesn’t run to the government to fix moral or cultural problems. He appeals to the individual character of the people.

Adam Smith critiques slavishly admiring “men of fashion” in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

“This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition… is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.” — Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Meaning that we should not allow our desire for approval, or our desire to approve the culturally ascendant, to cloud our moral judgment. In his day, he was worried about admiration of the wealthy, but the principle applies to admiration of any person that clouds right moral judgment. We could go on finding examples from the classical liberal tradition, such as John Locke insisting on the moral equality of persons due to natural rights from God.

Equal protection under the law is a liberal value. The liberal tradition is the very thing that won us individual rights. It is the tradition that brought legal protections, a right to trial, and a system to deal with injustice. It is not perfect, but it is better than the rest. What’s more, liberal government is resilient because it can be responsive to change. Elections still matter. Laws can change. Liberalism protects the freedom of association. It protects churches’ ability to meet and voluntary organizations’ ability to form, but it does not guarantee vitality. For that, we have to embrace what Mill argues for: courage.

The tools found in the liberal tradition give us the means to fix what ails us. But it can’t do moral formation. That’s not liberalism’s job. Liberalism’s job is to give us space so that we can have agency over our own moral formation. This is why I take a classically liberal line.

Demars and his guest, Dr. John Wilsey, reached the same tentative conclusion. They are worried, but both don’t see the answer as tearing up the liberal system we have and replacing it with something untested and untried. Wilsey sharply makes the point that such deconstructionalist tendencies aren’t what conservative liberals do; they’re what Marxists do. In this they rightly channel Edmund Burke, who reminds us that we are a link in a chain; we inherit from previous generations and make commitments to future generations. Entirely upending liberalism isn’t the answer. Rightly using its tenets is.

*ChatGPT did a copyedit for spelling and grammar issues only.

So I’ve begun assembling a personal canon — focused largely on the Western tradition, read from within a Reformed Protestant frame. This is not an official list, and certainly not an exhaustive one. It is simply an attempt to read seriously, in continuity with the past, and to be formed by the best that has been thought and written.

I’m grateful to Ben Robin, Morne Morais, Rebecca Lowe, Henry Oliver, Michael Franz, James K. Hamilton, Garrett Kell, Jason Seville, Larry Nikol (Lawrence High), and others who have nudged me back toward these sources. Also thanks to ChatGPT for helping pull works from St. Johns, Allan Bloom, Harold Bloom, and church history.

This list is a living document. It will change. Where possible, I’ll recommend specific editions; Penguin Classics has been especially helpful. I have not read all of these works (not even a majority!) but each has endured for a reason. The focus here is largely Western, not because other traditions lack depth or greatness, but because I am not well-versed in them.

If I’m missing something essential — or including something overrated — I’m open to persuasion.

ANCIENT

● Homer – Iliad

● Homer – Odyssey

● Aeschylus – Oresteia

● Sophocles – Oedipus Rex

● Sophocles – Antigone

● Euripides – Medea

● Herodotus – Histories

● Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War

● Plato – Republic (or Plato’s Collected works)

● Plato – Symposium

● Plato – Apology

● Aristotle – Nicomachean Ethics

● Aristotle – Politics

● Aristotle – Poetics

● Virgil – Aeneid

● Ovid – Metamorphoses

● Lucretius – On the Nature of Things

● Plutarch – Lives

● Marcus Aurelius – Meditations

● The Hebrew Bible / Old Testament

LATE ANTIQUITY & EARLY MEDIEVAL

● The New Testament

● Augustine – Confessions

● Augustine – City of God

● Augustine - On the Trinity

● Augustine - On Christian Doctrine

● Irenaeus – Against Heresies

● Athanasius – On the Incarnation

● Basil – On the Holy Spirit

● Gregory of Nazianzus – Theological Orations

● Gregory the Great - Pastoral Rule

● Boethius – Consolation of Philosophy

● Dante – Divine Comedy

● Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica (selections)

● Chaucer – Canterbury Tales

● Christine de Pizan – Book of the City of Ladies

RENAISSANCE & EARLY MODERN

● Machiavelli – The Prince

● Montaigne – Essays

● Thomas More – Utopia

● Martin Luther – On the Freedom of a Christian

● John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion (1541 Edition)

● Cervantes – Don Quixote

● Shakespeare – Hamlet (for any Shakespeare, I’ve found the Folger editions to be superb)

● Shakespeare – King Lear

● Shakespeare - The Taming of the Shrew

● Shakespeare – Macbeth

● Shakespeare – Othello

● Shakespeare – The Tempest

● Milton – Paradise Lost

● Hobbes – Leviathan

PURITAN/RESTORATION/ENLIGHTENMENT

● Descartes – Meditations

● John Bunyan - Pilgrim’s Progress

● Pascal – Pensées

● Spinoza – Ethics

● Locke – Second Treatise of Government (for classical liberal texts, Liberty Fund has done a nice job with e-pubs)

● Hume – Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

● Rousseau – Social Contract

● Montesquieu – Spirit of the Laws

● Adam Smith – Wealth of Nations

● Kant – Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

● Federalist Papers

● Edmund Burke - Reflections on the Revolution in France

● William Cowper - Selected Poetry

● Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

19TH CENTURY

● Goethe – Faust

● Wordsworth – Prelude

● Austen – Pride and Prejudice

● Austen – Emma

● Austen - Persuasion

● Stendhal – The Red and the Black

● Flaubert – Madame Bovary

● Dickens – Great Expectations

● Dickens – Bleak House

● George Eliot – Middlemarch

● George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss

● George Eliot - Daniel Deronda

● Tolstoy – War and Peace

● Tolstoy - Confession

● Tolstoy - The Death of Ivan Ilyich

● Tolstoy – Anna Karenina

● Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment

● Dostoevsky – Brothers Karamazov

● Turgenev – Fathers and Sons

● Kierkegaard – Either/Or

● Marx – Capital

● Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra

● Ibsen – A Doll’s House

● Whitman – Leaves of Grass

● J.S. Mill - On Liberty

● J.S. Mill - Autobiography

● J.S. Mill on the Subjugation of Women

● Frederick Douglass - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

● W.E.B. Du Bois - The Souls of Black Folk

20TH CENTURY LITERATURE

● Proust – In Search of Lost Time

● Kafka – The Trial

● Joyce - Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man

● Woolf – To the Lighthouse

● Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury

● Hemingway – The Sun Also Rises

● Hemingway - A Moveable Feast

● Hemingway - For Whom the Bell Tolls

● Fitzgerald - This Side of Paradise

● Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby

● T.S. Eliot – The Waste Land

● Graham Greene - The End of the Affair

● Yeats – Selected Poems

● Rilke – Duino Elegies

● Camus – The Stranger

● J.R.R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings

● Beckett – Waiting for Godot

● Mann – The Magic Mountain

● V.S. Naipaul - A Bend in the River

● V.S. Naipaul - The Enigma of Arrival

● Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness

● Orwell – 1984

● W.H. Auden – Selected Poems

● Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains of the Day

● J.K. Rowling - The Harry Potter Series

● Ralph Ellison - Invisible Man

● Toni Morrison – Beloved

20TH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY/POLITICS/MISC

● Russell Kirk - The Conservative Mind

● Solzhenitsyn – Gulag Archipelago

● Malcolm X - Autobiography

● Martin Luther King Jr. - Letters and Speeches

● Robert Nozick - Anarchy, State, and Utopia

● John Rawls - A Theory of Justice

● John Finnis - Natural Law and Natural Rights

● Leo Strauss - Natural Right and History

● Hannah Arendt - The Human Condition

● F.A. Hayek - The Road to Serfdom

● F.A. Hayek - The Use of Knowledge in Society

● Michael Oakeshott - Rationalism

●The Last Lion

● Edmund Morris - Theodore Roosevelt Series

● Cry, Beloved Country

● Thomas Sowell - Race and Culture

● How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler

● Penguin Book of Prose Poems

REFORMED/PROTESTANT THEOLOGY

● Heinrich Bullinger – Second Helvetic Confession

● Synod of Dort – Canons of Dort

● Westminster Assembly – Westminster Confession of Faith

● Westminster Assembly – Larger Catechism

● Westminster Assembly – Shorter Catechism

● Heidelberg Catechism

● Belgic Confession

● London Baptist Confession

● Martin Bucer – On the Kingdom of Christ

● Francis Turretin – Institutes of Elenctic Theology

● Herman Witsius – Economy of the Covenants

● John Owen – The Death of Death in the Death of Christ

● John Owen – Mortification of Sin

● John Flavel - Facing Grief

● Richard Baxter – The Reformed Pastor

● Thomas Watson - The Beatitudes

● Thomas Watson - All Things for Good

● Thomas Goodwin – Christ Set Forth

● Stephen Charnock – The Existence and Attributes of God

● John Newton - Wise Counsel

● Wilhelmus à Brakel – The Christian’s Reasonable Service

● Jonathan Edwards – Religious Affections (let’s be honest, all Edwards work should all be in)

● Jonathan Edwards- The End for Which God Created the World

● Jonathan Edwards – Freedom of the Will

● B.B. Warfield – Inspiration and Authority of the Bible

● Geerhardus Vos – Biblical Theology

● Herman Bavinck – Reformed Dogmatics

● Herman Bavinck - The Wonderful Works of God

● Abraham Kuyper – Lectures on Calvinism

● J. Gresham Machen – Christianity and Liberalism

● Cornelius Van Til – Defense of the Faith

● John Murray – Redemption Accomplished and Applied

● C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity

● C.S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man

● C.S. Lewis - A Grief Observed

● Martyn Lloyd-Jones – Studies in the Sermon on the Mount

● Meredith Kline – Kingdom Prologue

● Herman Ridderbos – Paul: An Outline of His Theology

● J.I. Packer - Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God

● R.C. Sproul – The Holiness of God

● Francis Schaeffer – The God Who Is There

● John Piper – Desiring God

● Sinclair Ferguson – The Christian Life

● John Frame – The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God

● Kevin Vanhoozer – The Drama of Doctrine

● Richard Gaffin – By Faith, Not by Sight

● Carl Trueman – The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self

● Oliver O’Donovan – Resurrection and Moral Order

● Tim Keller – The Reason for God

● Stephen Wellum – Systematic Theology

● Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum - Kingdom Through Covenant

● G.K. Beale - A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New

● Robert Letham – The Holy Trinity

● Scott Swain – The Trinity

● 9 Marks of a Healthy Church or The Church - Mark Dever

ERRORS AND OMISSIONS

I have been dinged for missing Steinbeck, De Tocqueville, Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy, Flannery O’Connor and Wendell Berry. So here’s the list of my embarrassing omissions (or at least the ones I agree with)

● Democracy in American – Alexis De Tocqueville

● Machiavelli – Discourses on Livy

● Flannery O’Connor – A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Short Stories

● John Steinbeck – Grapes of Wrath

● John Steinbeck – East of Eden

● Beowulf (a colleague rightly shamed me on this one)

*Thanks to Chat GPT for heavy edits of my introductory paragraph.

I’ve worked a full-time job in digital communications for politically adjacent organizations in the D.C. area since 2006. I’ve been a lay or bivocational pastor consistently since 2013, so that has meant threading the needle between working in digital marketing on policy issues and trying to be faithful as a pastor. So I’ve seen a lot of hot political takes in my time. I even used to have some of my own. I once made the claim that Chris Christie was the smartest politician alive. That’s a touch of New Jersey bias. Definitely incorrect. But it reveals one reason why I avoid fast reactions to specific political issues or events online. I’ve been wrong, a lot.

When Paul Pelosi was attacked, speculation ran rampant on the right about how Pelosi was somehow involved in something tawdry. Given the long list of political scandals in personal lives, I was very open to the idea that Pelosi was involved in some sort of misbehavior. This was entirely incorrect. The examples of news stories that appear one way, or are framed one way, that end up being something else are endless. So I am resolved not to weigh in on such things quickly because I just don’t have the information. I just don’t know enough. Even a fool can appear wise by remaining silent (Proverbs 17:28).

Another pastoral danger I see in posting about politics and news too quickly is that we can unintentionally close relational doors without realizing it. Fast social media reactions can give onlookers, including fellow church members, misleading impressions about me as a pastor. I once had someone accuse me of losing the gospel because I was quick to respond to certain news events but did not use my Twitter account to explicitly preach the gospel on a regular basis. Now, that critique might not hold water in the final analysis, but the reality is that I was unable to dialogue with that man. He believed that I had been consumed with political issues because the ratio of my tweets was not what he’d expect from a pastor. Is a tweet worth losing a member’s ear? Most of the time, I think not. The medium itself short-circuits the pastoral care I want to give. It takes time to give guidance from the Scriptures, have a conversation, answer questions, and deal with the human being in front of me, as opposed to a screen. Proverbs 18:19 tells us that a brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city. Fast social media can unnecessarily create that kind of barrier.

It’s hard to square Scripture’s exhortation to be slow to speak and quick to listen with the practice of hopping on social media and blasting a missive into the universe every time something happens.

But don’t hear this as a call to avoid talking about politics altogether with your church members. I am much more willing to go into the weeds of politics in person. Why? Because I have the chance to listen to the person I’m talking to. I get a better sense of what their questions are and what they struggle with. I can then try to contextualize biblical principles to them specifically. This does not mean political endorsements, but it does mean being willing to look at a particular political issue and try to reason together from the Scriptures about how we might consider that issue.

I’m also open to slow digital responses. Substack is the latest in a long line of blogging platforms that gives space for this. The Gospel Coalition, 9Marks.org, Clearly Reformed, and many other websites are penned by thoughtful, godly authors looking to think well. Long digital media gives room for more context, reasoning from the Scriptures, and, in the case of podcasts, more of a human dimension. It becomes much harder to flatten the humanity of those giving deeper context and nuance.

Ephesians 4:29 gives the Christian a directive on speech. “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” It’s a total reorientation of how we ought to speak. Every word we say, to one another and the watching world, ought to be aimed at building up the hearer into Christ. None of it should harm the hearer. I find it far easier to use my words for snarky remonstrances than for speech that builds up in fast social media. For me, it’s wisdom to find platforms and conversations that make such upbuilding easier rather than harder.

So a habit my kids have kind of hopped into, literally, over the past few years is starting from a young age, they’ll find my shoes. And they’ll put them on, and they’ll stomp around my house. At this point, the act has become so robust that now they’ll even put on a voice of, I’m daddy, and I’m reading in my nook. And so they’re wearing two big shoes. They’ll put on my glasses, two big hats. And then they’ll try to walk around our home. And as I looked at our text this week, this image just kept coming back to me because it’s a very sweet and somewhat funny picture of what God calls the Christians to do, which is to put on... the righteousness we have in Christ, and then walk in light of that reality.

We’re going to stumble at first, but we’re going to get better as our feet grow into the shoes, but yet we’re putting on the righteousness of someone else and trying to walk as they would. Those are the themes we’re going to see in the text today. We have to put off the old self, put on the new self, and walk in Christ.

And so our big idea is to walk in Christ by putting off our old self and putting on our new self. Underneath of that, we’re going to see three supporting points. The first is that unbelievers walk in darkness and ignorance. We’ll see this in chapter 4, verses 17 through 19. That Christ transforms us to walk like him. This is chapter 4, verses 20 through 24. And finally, walking like Christ changes how we use our mouths, our hands, and our hearts. That’s what we’re going to see in the text today.

When I say walk, that means live according to how we go through life. The way scripture uses the word walk is a manner of living. And so we’re going to start with our former selves the way that we were. Unbelievers walk in darkness and ignorance, verses 17 through 19 of chapter 4, which say this.

Now, this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding and alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. This section of the text begins with a now, which operates in a similar way to a therefore.

So in light of what’s come before, and then he goes on to say, because of the authority that the Lord has given him, Paul, he is testifying to this reality. So he’s essentially taking a beat, taking a breath, and saying, I’m about to tell you a whole bunch of things about the transformation that’s come over you as Christians and how you ought to live in light of that. And I do not say that on human authority. I say it on the authority of the Lord. It’s meant to prepare them for this is not just my opinion. This is not just thoughts that I have. I testify to this reality in the Lord. Amen. And the first reality that Paul’s going to point to is that these Ephesian Christians are no longer who they used to be. The audience of this letter are a bunch of Gentiles who have come to Christ. They become Christians. Now, there are Jewish Christians living here as well. there’s a huge transformation for those who lived according to the world as Gentiles who’ve become Christians. So when he uses the phrase Gentiles, he’s thinking about unbelievers here. And some of these Christians he’s writing to were Gentiles, and now they’ve become Christians. And what he’s telling them is that you aren’t who you used to be. And because you aren’t who you used to be, you can’t live the way that you used to.

Scholars have some bit of debate around the word must here. You must not live as you used to. The question is whether this section here, now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, is this sentence supposed to be an imperative, which is a fancy word for a command, or is it an indicative, something that’s describing a reality? So my fun way of scooting around that entire debate is that it works in both ways.

The Ephesian Christians must not behave as they used to, command, and at the same time, it describes the reality of who they are. Because in Christ, Christians are no longer who they used to be. They’ve been changed. Who they were is... unable to walk according to Christ. They can’t obey his commands because they don’t understand. The text says they have a futility of mind. Unbelievers can’t see. They don’t have categories for spiritual things. 1 Corinthians 2 testifies to this reality that the natural man cannot understand the things of God because they are spiritually discerned. Meaning for the unbeliever... It’s dark. They can’t see. They don’t know what they don’t know. They have no ability to perceive the reality of the gospel and who Jesus is.

A very simple illustration of what this looks like, an experience we’ve all had. If you walk into a room in the middle of the night and you turn off the lights, there’s about three to eight seconds where you can see nothing. Pitch black. For the unbeliever, that’s what they see spiritually. They can’t see the reality of Christ or what God has done on their behalf. So they have nothing to guide them. And this ignorance leads to a hardness of heart. The text uses the word callousness, hardness of heart. Other places in Scripture you hear it described as a seared conscience. What does any of that mean? Well, the Lord in his kindness has made all human beings in his image, and as a result of that, they have what’s called a conscience, some sense of right and wrong. But as we continue to operate in ignorance and pursue sin, that sense of right and wrong gets smaller and smaller and smaller. It leads to a total lack of sensitivity to the spirit. Perhaps you’ve had this experience when you do something that you know is wrong and for the first time you’re horrified, mortified, you’re just overwhelmed with a sense of guilt and shame at what you’ve done. But the second time it just gets a little easier. And the third time it gets a little easier. And the hundredth time you don’t even think about it anymore. This is how the Ephesian Christians used to live. In futility. In darkness. In darkness. with a seared conscience.

And so they give themselves up to whatever their sinful desires want because they can’t perceive any differently. They don’t have spiritual understanding. And their base desire dominates them. Romans 1, 21 through 25 gives a parallel description of what’s happening. Here Paul says, “...for although they, unbelievers, knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking.” And their foolish hearts were darkened. John Owen, a famous Puritan, described the process of sin enslaving us this way. He says that the first step is that deceit begins in the mind, pulling us towards sin. The heart is then entangled. Emotions and affections start yearning to do the sinful thing. Then our will gives consent. Yes, I will do that. That’s when sin becomes action. And the repeated act of unrepentant sin enslaves us, leading us to ruin and ultimately spiritual death. This is the state of the unbeliever living in darkness. Their hearts yearn for the wrong things. Their mind tells them the wrong things. Their will is unable to resist the wrong things. And the more they do those sinful things, the more they get entangled. And that’s what we see in the description of the Ephesian Christians before they knew Christ. Callousness and a greed for sin. At the end of this section, it says a greed for sin. This isn’t referring to greed for money, though that would fall under the category of sinful things we can desire, but rather this endless, relentless pursuit of of sin that enslaves. Can’t get enough. Gotta have more. This is how sin enslaves us. It’ll never be enough. Whatever sin you’re pursuing, if you tell yourself, well, I’ll just do a little bit more, and then I won’t want it anymore, it’s not true.

The Bible will tell you that it will continue to enslave you until you turn to Christ for hope. This would have been the end for the Ephesian Christians. They would have continued walking in darkness and ignorance, but Christ intervened. And this is what we see in chapter 4, verses 20 through 24. Christ transforms us to walk like Him. Christ transforms us to walk like Him. This is what the text says. But that is not the way you have learned Christ. assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. But... How often is this word a beacon of hope in the scriptures? We’ve seen it in Ephesians before. So were such of some of you, but God. The Ephesian Christians aren’t in this ignorance anymore. They do not have futility of mind. They are not enslaved to their sins. Why? Because their eyes have been opened because they have learned Christ already. This word learned is interesting. This is not a simple Sunday school lesson. This is an information transfer. This isn’t a test that you’re getting graded on. Learning Christ is knowing Christ. What’s changed for the Ephesian Christians is that they’ve met Jesus. It’s relational. They’ve been changed by him, and now the light switch has been turned on. They’ve heard the gospel, been taught the gospel, and by the Spirit known that the gospel is true. Everything changed. They aren’t who they were anymore. I’m going to use a little fancy word here. I promise every fancy word that anybody ever uses in a sermon or otherwise means something very easy to understand. But it’s helpful in this sense. The Ephesian Christians have been changed ontologically. What does that stupid word mean? It simply means they’ve changed in their being, their essence. They’re now a creature of a completely different order.

Now, for those of you who know your Bible as well, you might be like, oh, hold on, what do you mean? All humanity is made in the image of God. Genesis 1.27 testifies that every human being, regardless of gender, regardless of national origin, regardless of culture, all made in the image of God, and that is true. Okay, but what’s different here? How have the Ephesian Christians changed in their being? It’s not fleshly speaking, but spiritually speaking. They’ve been spiritually transformed. What was dark is now light. Where they were enslaved, they are now free. They are changed in their spiritual being. There’s a bit of a catch here, something that’s hard for us to understand. We’ve been made new. We’ve put on the new flesh in Christ as Christians. We’ve put off the old, but we’re still stuck in many of our old ways. Everyone here knows exactly what I’m talking about. Paul himself testifies to the reality that he does the things he does not desire to do. So hold on, if you’re telling me, use this big fancy word to say that I’m a different essence, but I’m still doing the old stuff, what’s the deal?

It’s because we’re living in the already, not yet. We’re living between two advents. The first advent we celebrated a couple weeks ago. The birth of a baby in Bethlehem. Christ coming to earth to live a perfect life in our place and die on the cross to pay for our sins. But we’re waiting for the next advent when Christ returns in power and majesty as the king. The king who brings justice and freedom for his people. The song Joy to the World, something we sing at Christmas time every year, is not actually about the first coming of Christ. It’s about the second. Joy to the world. Let the earth rejoice. Let the earth welcome its king. That’s what we’re waiting for. Christ has won. Eternity has started. When I say we’ve been transformed spiritually as Christians, that means the resurrection in you has already started happening. The trick is we’re stuck in these fleshly fallen bodies waiting to put on the eternal weight of glory. And so we struggle with sin, the already and the not yet.

So what do we do in the meantime? We work along with the Spirit to embrace the new walk we have in Christ. So Paul’s telling the Ephesian Christians they no longer live in darkness. So don’t keep living like you can’t see. Live as what you are. The same for us Christians today. We have to put off our old ways. And so much of that starts in the mind. As I was working through this text this week, what I was struck by again and again is historically in my life, I’ve thought of like the fight for holy living and against sin was like the things that I do out here with my hands. And this text hammered it home for me that so much of that begins between my ears and in my heart. So that’s where we’re going to spend a little bit of time talking about. The verse that we read earlier, Romans 12, 2 says, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what the will of God is, what is good and acceptable and perfect. This transformation, this change in being, that means our minds, our hearts, the center of what makes us who we are, has been changed by Christ’s work We start to feel a change. We get a picture of this every time we see a baptism, do we not? We have someone stand right here and say, I used to live this way, but now I want to live this way. I want to live for Christ. It’s a beautiful picture of the change that’s happened. Their affections have changed. What they desire has changed. This is how Christ transforms us internally. Our hearts and our minds are being made new. The struggle is when our minds aren’t acting in such a way that they’ve been renewed. And so we have to come alongside, we have to work with the Holy Spirit to transform our minds.

When we think about God, we often don’t think about Him rightly. We complain, or we’re angry, or we’re bitter, or worse, we don’t think about God at all. We simply think about what I... This is what I think the right thing is to do. This is how I feel. This is how it impacts me. And yet we ought to be thinking about what the Lord says about what we’re perceiving and thinking and doing. The battle against sin begins in the mind. And what we think about God shapes our responses, our feelings towards Him, and how we process the world around us. So we have to think true things. We have to put off the old self and put on the new self. The old self is corrupted by deceitful desires. The new self is renewed through the gospel. So I’ll try to get a little practical. What do I mean when I say the fight against sin begins in the mind? No one talks to you more than you do. You’re having a conversation with yourself inside your head all day, every day, from the moment you wake up to the moment you put your head on the pillow.

Here’s the second part of that. Nobody lies to you more than you lie to you. You process everything around you in a you-centered way. I do too. I got this inner lawyer that’s like, no, no, they’re wrong, I’m right. Like, this guy, nope, I’m good, I’m fine. So you gotta reflect on the reality. What are you regularly telling yourself? What are the regular lies that you tell yourself and then believe? How do you distort reality around you to suit your preferences? Are we regularly applying the gospel to the way that we perceive, the way that we think, the way that we ruminate, the way that the same thoughts circle again and again in our minds? Are we applying the gospel to those thoughts? I’m going to give a few examples of common patterns of thought that I’ve seen.

These are not exhaustive. I only have three. But common patterns of thought that we fall into, that I fall into, sinfully, and then how we fight against such untruths. First example. I’m a failure. I’m worthless. No one could love me. I have no value. I don’t want to live anymore. I have no worth. Something that people fall into, I fall into regularly. But it’s a lie. Because the reality is that I’m beloved by the King. Romans 8.1 says, Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ. 1 John 3.1 says, See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called the children of God and so we are.

The value of an object is set by what the purchaser is willing to pay for it. What is God willing to pay for you? The lifeblood of his Son. Infinite value. Therefore, you are of infinite value. There is no length that the Lord would not go to to rescue you. This is why he gives Christ for you.

Second way that we go wrong and are thinking I go wrong, I am the smartest person in this room. No one here has anything to teach me. Y’all need to listen to me. I should be up here. You all should listen to me all the time. I know everything. I can’t learn anything from anybody. I’m smart. Y’all are dumb. 1 Corinthians 2, as we’ve referenced before, tells us that actually we have no ability to discern anything except for the work of the Spirit in us. 1 Corinthians 4.7 says this, For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? Your life, your breath, your IQ, the amount of money you have, the car you drive, the job you have, the family you’re in, all of it, all of it, has been given to you by God. So anything that you rely on, whether it be intelligence, ability, whatever, that’s actually not yours. It was given to you. And that ought to make us humble, not prideful in our intellect or gifts.

Another one that comes to mind is a sort of judgmentalism. That person over there, that so-and-so, they are evil. They are wicked. They don’t get it. They need to hear this sermon. They got it wrong. They’re a brutal, mean, wicked, twisted sinner. No. We. I am a sinner. I have fallen short of the glory of God. I am the twisted, mean, brutal sinner that I want to judge. And the fact that Christ had mercy on me calls me to have mercy on others. Matthew 18, 21-35, which I will not read, is the parable of the unforgiving servant. The servant, Jesus tells this parable, of a servant who owes a debt so large that he could live for ten lifetimes and not pay it off. And the king forgives him, forgives the debt. And then the servant finds another servant who owes him a much smaller amount of money and says, pay me what you owe. The king comes back and puts that man into jail. The picture here is for a Christian who does not forgive himself. They’re not seeing the huge amount of forgiveness that’s been given to them in Christ. And so when we’re tempted to look at someone else and say, I am morally better than that person, it’s like looking in the mirror and forgetting what you look like in the sense of you’ve been forgiven more than you can possibly imagine at great costs.

Therefore, the Christian should be quick to forgive, ready to offer mercy. This is the fight that we have to have in the mind. We have to fight with the Word of God. So what does that mean? It means this book, this is your life. This is how we win the battle of sin in the mind. We memorize. We read. We listen to the sermon church on Sundays. We look at to know this book as best we can. We don’t do this for empty knowledge or pride. We do this because this is one of the ordinary ways in which God helps us put off the old self and put on the new. In the three examples we just gave, if I tell a lie in the mind, what did I do? I go to the scriptures to prove how that lie is untrue. That’s what we need to be doing internally as regularly as we can.

And... If you can’t seem to stop the pattern of thoughts, the circling of unjust, unrighteous, sinful thoughts even on your own, ask your brothers and sisters for help. If you can’t remind yourself of the truths that God has given to us in his word, ask a brother, ask a sister, remind me of who I am in Christ. Help me apply the gospel to this pattern of thoughts and this struggle that I have that I cannot shake. You are amongst brothers, sisters, family. Ask them for help. Ask them for help in the battle of the mind. Formerly, we’re driven by deceitful desires. We had callous hearts, but now our desires have been changed. We have to fight to stoke the flame of those changes more and more and more. Jonathan Edwards said that true religion consists in holy affections. So we have to work alongside the Spirit to make sure our affections are rightly directed towards God. This is how we put off the old and put on the new in our minds. The text here ends with this discussion of this new self being created in the likeness of God. This is in the likeness of Christ. And it ends with saying we’re in the likeness of God in true righteousness and This is the transformation that happens in us.

And there’s definitely a temptation here to confuse two theological words, justification and sanctification. And I’ll say what those are. Justification is our standing before God. Are we guilty or innocent? We are justified by faith alone. All you need to do is come to Christ, turn from your sins, trust in him, and he gives you his righteousness and you give him your sin. So when God looks at a believer, he sees Christ’s righteousness. That’s your status before God. You are justified. But sanctification is the painfully slow process. throughout all of human life, of being made more like Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit. And so here, in righteousness and holiness, we’re talking about justification, the new self. We are in the likeness of Christ because he gave us his righteousness. We give him our sin.

Now, there’s going to be a whole lot of discussion of sanctification in the next section, commands we ought to pursue, ought to follow. But know that your status as a Christian before God is determined by the sacrifice of Christ. If you’re a Christian, you are justified. You will never be more justified than you were at the moment of conversion. And so if you’re here and you don’t know Jesus, you can be made new. you can put off the old through the power of Christ. If you find yourself repeating the same things, trapped in the same cycles of despair, hurt, broken, struggling with the same sins, you so desperately want to change, but you feel like no matter what you do, you can’t, you can put off the old and put on the new through faith in Jesus Christ. He changes us. He changes us spiritually and forever. Christ transforms us to walk like him. Yet Christ’s transformation of us doesn’t just change our affections, doesn’t just change our interior life, it changes how we speak, how we work, and how we feel.

This is our last point. Walking like Christ changes how we use our mouths, our hands, and our hearts. This is chapter 4, verses 25 through chapter 5, verse 2. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God and Christ forgave you.

Therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. So because the Ephesian Christians are not who they were, they’re no longer darkened in their understanding, they’ve learned Christ. Because they’ve been transformed, Paul exhorts them, commands them, gives them a set of things to pursue. There’s a therefore here, in light of all the things we just saw, the transformation in Christ from what you used to be, do these things. There’s three areas of human life. that he touches upon here, mouths, hands, hearts. And he starts with our mouths, where we see he tells us to put away falsehood. Let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Christians put away falsehood. The delusions from our flesh, the lies we used to believe, that is put away.

Our inability to understand spiritual things has ended because the Spirit has given us new hearts. It’s opened our eyes. We know the truth. And since we know the truth of Jesus Christ, and we’re people of the truth, we must say true things. The text says we’re supposed to speak truth with our neighbor. In this context, he means specifically the local church community. So for Emmanuel Baptist Church, for members of this church, the call is clear. Speak the truth to one another. I’m often struck by the push of Scripture towards having the uncomfortable conversation. This may be somewhat of a surprise. I don’t actually love having difficult conversations. I get super uncomfortable. And I’ll avoid it for as long as I can. But in the Scriptures, what we see is if you’re a person who sinned against, the Scriptures call you to go to the person who sinned against you and tell them his fault privately one to another so that they can turn from their sins and you gain your brother. And if you’re the one who’s doing the sinning, and you realize at the altar that your brother has something against you, you’re to leave your gift at the altar and go and be reconciled to your brother.

Those are uncomfortable conversations. The Scripture’s pushing you to have them. So here, at Emmanuel, for the members of this church, have the uncomfortable conversations. That’s the press. That’s the push. Yes, there’s space for overlooking offense, for being gracious to one another. But the Scriptures would have you talk to your brother or sister and try to gain them to repentance. That’s how we serve one another. It’s actually not loving to ignore the sin in someone that you see over and over and over again. You’re turning them over to their own desires. And as we’ve seen earlier, the end of that is slavery. We speak the truth. And it’s not just about sin, sin we see in each other or sin we’ve committed. We speak the truth to each other about the gospel, about who Jesus Christ is, how that applies to all of life. We tell the truth to each other about the scriptures, what it says, what that means, how that applies. We speak the truth to one another about the lies that we see in the world around us. Be not deceived. Spiritual warfare is us struggling against the devil, our own sinful flesh, and the world around us. The world is going to tell you a whole bunch of things that are inconsistent with the scriptures. It’s going to tell you money is everything. It’s not true. Tell you pleasure is everything. Not true. tell you all sorts of things that are lies, and we have to remind each other of the truth that we see in the Scriptures. But the goal of our speech is not just truthfulness, though that is essential. The goal of our speech is the benefit of of the people around us, particularly our brothers and sisters in Christ. When it says, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such that is good for building up as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear, my first immediate thought is I’ve got to stop cussing. Which is true. I do.

But I think this section of Scripture has so much more in view than a prohibition on using profanity. It’s a total reorientation of our speech. In other words, when we talk to one another, we ought to be considering in that moment what’s best for that person to build them up into Christ. Have you ever thought about conversation that way? I do not. I confess. But as I’m talking to you or one another as friends, I need to think about the words that will bless you, not harm you. That’s the aim of our speech. Now, does this mean the only conversation we’re ever going to have is us preaching at one another forever until the end of life? No, it does not. That’s why the phrase, as fits the occasion, is there. We’re encouraging one another in the Scriptures towards Jesus as fits the context that we are in. To put some flesh on that, if we are at a funeral, we lament, We comfort, we console, we pray, we are present. That’s appropriate. That fits the occasion. At a wedding feast, we rejoice, we give thanks, we joke, we enjoy one another’s company, we eat really good food, and we direct thanksgiving and praise to the Lord for giving us the opportunity to do that. We do what blesses one another in our words as fits things. The occasion. We do all these things for the glory of God and the honor of Christ and the edification and the blessing of the people around us. These types of words informed by Scripture suited to the occasion are meant to help each other towards Jesus. That’s the kind of talk that should mark our speech. It’s the way we should talk to one another.

We must not be marked by corrupting talk. That does include profanity, but it extends to all speech that would harm the community. Slander, gossip, name-calling, boasting, harshness, judgmentalism, these types of things aren’t to mark our speech. Blessing is to mark our speech. All of our speech ought to be meant for the good of the hearer. None of it should harm the hearer. That’s the call to the way we use our mouth. That’s what Paul’s commanding the Christian to do. But it doesn’t stop there. He also has commands for our hands. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, that he may have something to share with anyone in need. In the same way that our words should be for the benefit of the church community, so too should the labor of our hands be The thief harms the people around him by taking, whereas the honest Christian laborer blesses the people around him by giving. One of the reasons we work jobs is so that we can be generous with the people around us. Yes, starting with the household with God, but overflowing into the community beyond that. In both of these instances, you’ll see the same theme.

We are putting off the old... theft, slander, gossip, these things, we are putting on the new, blessing, generosity, so forth and so on. And finally, Paul exhorts us to change our hearts, to live in light of our identity in our hearts. In verse 26 and 27, it says, Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil. It goes on to say in 30, And do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Hearts. There’s a bit of an oddness at the beginning here. Be angry. Don’t strike anybody as a little odd. As an Eagles fan, I’m always angry. Every other team I’m ever going to play. But not the Cowboys this year. Be angry. That’s a command. Now it’s attached to, and do not sin, so we know that we can’t, we don’t have a pass to berate anybody. But there must be, this must mean that there’s some type of anger that is not a sin. In fact, there must be some type of anger that we’re commanded to do, to have. It’s odd. It’s odd. Somewhat famously, Christ demonstrates righteous anger for us when he turns over the tables in the temple and drives the animals and the money changers out of the temple with a whip made of cords. It’s described in all four Gospels. I think oftentimes there’s a little bit like, whoa, that’s pretty intense. I reference John 2, 13 through 22. If you want to look at that later, that’s where Jesus overturning the tables is described in John 2. And he goes into some detail. He makes a whip, drives out the money changers, takes the money that the money changers have, and he pours it over. Why does he do this? He’s clearly angry. But Christ is without sin, so he’s demonstrating anger without sin. But what’s happening here?

The reality is that... And there’s common thinking, oh, well, these money changers are doing something nefarious in their business. It’s bad business practice. Or the people selling animals to the poor are doing something wicked there. The text is kind of silent on the business itself being wrong in of itself. The problem isn’t the business. The problem is where the business is happening. It’s happening in the temple. Jesus is concerned with the glory of God. The temple ought not be a place for business. It’s a place for worship. So by bringing business into the temple, they’re profaning God’s name. They’re profaning his holiness. They’re making what’s holy common, and they’re distorting the worship of God. So in short, what makes Jesus angry? Impugning or infringing upon the glory of God. That’s something to be righteously angry about. And it drives him to action. Righteous action to remove those folks from the temple who are profaning God’s name. To put a smaller illustration for us, if we were to walk out those church doors today and see a small child being beaten by an adult man, we should be angry. But it’s not enough to just be angry. We’ve got to do something. whether that means intervening or calling authorities, whatever it is, that anger is meant to create action in us. We’ve got to do something. John Stott said this about this passage, I go further and say that there is a great need in the contemporary world for more Christian anger.

We human beings compromise with sin in a way in which God never does. In the face of blatant evil, we should be indignant, not tolerant, angry, not apathetic. If God hates sin, his people should hate it too. If evil arouses his anger, it should arouse ours also. Hot indignation seizes me because of the wicked who forsake thy law. What other reaction can wickedness be expected to provoke in those who love God? See, Ephesians 4.26 isn’t simply allowing Christians to have righteous anger. It’s commanding it. When you see evil happening in front of you, you should be angry. And if it’s within your ability to do something about, it should drive you to action. It then goes on to say, do not let the sun go down on your anger. I used to think of this verse as advice people give to married couples. Okay, if you’re angry, you’ve got to fix that before you go to bed. Okay. But actually, it’s not talking about unrighteous anger. That is talking about the righteous anger we just talked about. Meaning, if you have righteous anger and you see something evil happening, let’s say a child being abused in front of this church, don’t let the sun go down before you do something about it. Act. Act. The longer you wait, the more you give the devil a foothold to perpetrate even greater abuse and evil on what’s happening in front of you. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to reconcile to your spouse quickly. That’s not what I’m saying. But what’s in view here is to act upon your righteous anger with due haste. Because delaying that can lead to things like bitterness or apathy or not doing what the Lord has commanded us to do.

And yet it’s still measured. It’s paired with the command to not sin. And in a sentence later, Paul talks about anger being something that can be sinful. We know the scriptures testify to the reality that the unrighteous anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. So what’s the difference? When we’re angry about ourselves, our own pride, our lives being inconvenienced, unrighteous. But when we’re angry about the things that God gets angry about, about his name being blasphemed or injustice happening that he would condemn, that is righteous anger. The text goes on to say, And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom we were sealed for the day of redemption. Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us. We began this section with a don’t walk in your old manner of life like unbelievers. Now we end this section with walk like Christ and love. This is the beginning and end cap of this section. Christ is a sign of our redemption. He’s the one who gave down his life. We ought to walk like him. We are imitators of God. There’s a short phrase here that should be really encouraging to us. Imitators of God as beloved children. The Father loves us just as he loves the Son. John 17.23 says, That means God loves you like he loves Jesus. The same. He loves you as he loved Jesus. Ponder that for a minute. It’s a powerful motivation to love well, to love like Jesus, because God loves us like he loves the Son. That should motivate our walk, our walk with Christ. Because Jesus is the model, right? He’s the new self. He’s the new life. He’s the new creation. Christ is the firstborn from the dead. That’s who the Christian is being transformed into. Walking like Christ changes how we use our mouths, our hands, and our hearts.

So the central theme, the thrust of this entire text, is that we’re to give up the old self, things that hurt, the folks around us, and put on the new self, things that glorify God and bless the people around us. We’re to give up harmful words for the benefit of our brothers and sisters. We’re to labor so that we can be generous with the community around us. And we’re to put away sinful internal attitudes and bless people internally as well as externally. Christ is the example of all of this. He laid everything down so that we might have life. He does this in love. Love binds it all together. The way we walk or ought to walk with one another is with patience, kindness, without envy, without boasting, without arrogance, without rudeness, without pride, but with rejoicing, truthfulness, endurance, patience, belief. That’s how we’re to walk. We walk in Christ by putting off our old self and putting on our new self. We’re in this already, but not yet. Christ has begun the resurrection in us, but we haven’t completed it yet. He will at the end of all things. In the meantime, walk in Christ. Someday we will see him face to face, and in that day we’ll be fully transformed. But in the meantime, fight against sin and walk according to Christ.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for Jesus who rescued us, who gave his blood for us. We know that you love us because of what Christ gave up on the cross. He endured suffering, pain, betrayal, all of these things because you loved us. And so we do pray that through Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, we would put on our new self. and put off the old. Help us to live by faith until the day that we live by sight. I pray all this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Without further ado, here is this month’s reading.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

I hesitate to try to put into words what I think about this book because what I say will inevitably be deficient. But if I didn’t make an effort, what are we even doing here? Anna Karenina is a long contrast between two lives, two points of view, two approaches to meaning. One searches for meaning internally. The other looks for meaning outside of oneself. The character that pursues meaning and joy according to her feelings loses everything. Her pursuit is striving after quicksand because her feelings are ever-changing. And the people around her are also changing. People are never static. This is the source of Anna’s self-inflicted discontent. She cannot find stable ground to walk on. But her failings are all too familiar. Tolstoy is prescient in anticipating a feelings-obsessed culture. She longs for happiness, and she tries to find it in her marriage, her child, and then the man she falls in love with. So much modern culture would encourage her toward her affair. But it crushes her. It’s an all-too-human failing.

The other, searching for meaning and truth outside himself, finds relief in getting his eyes off of himself. But that relief is temporary. This reality demonstrates that Tolstoy is neither clumsy nor idealistic. Levin’s conversion to Christianity is paradigmatic of Tolstoy’s clear-eyed approach. His actual conversion is described in a beautiful bit of prose.

“‘Lord, have mercy, forgive us, help us!’ he repeated words that somehow suddenly came to his lips. And he, an unbeliever, repeated these words not just with his lips. Now, in that moment, he knew that neither all his doubts nor the impossibility he knew in himself of believing by means of reason hindered him in the least from addressing God. It all blew off his soul like dust.” —Leo Tolstoy

He captures the complete undoing of one’s old self and the putting on of the new. Yet Tolstoy is quick to remind us that despite conversion to Christianity, the old man stays with us. Shortly after his conversion, Levin thinks:

“With my brother now there won’t be that estrangement there has always been between us; there won’t be any arguments; with Kitty there will be no more quarrels; with the visitor, whoever he is, I’ll be gentle and kind; and with the servants, with Ivan, everything will be different… ‘Kindly do not touch me and do not instruct me!’ said Levin, vexed by this interference from the coachman. …At once he sadly felt how mistaken he had been in supposing that his inner state could instantly change him in his contacts with reality.”

Levin strains along with Paul in Romans 7: why do I continue to do the things I do not wish to do and do the things I wish I didn’t? But he knows he’s forever changed.

There are countless more things to say. It’s simply put, a classic.

A Heart Aflame for God by Matthew C. Bingham

Does the Reformed Protestant tradition have anything to say about spiritual formation? Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism have a deep history of formational practices for Christians to pursue. This stands as an attraction to many Protestants who want a more substantive spiritual life. Bingham wrote this book to those who feel that attraction in order to say to them, “Why don’t you find out what your religious heritage says about these things before you reject it?” Bingham does a good job of explaining the Reformed approach; it does read more apologetically than I expected. He traces the issues at stake in the Protestant Reformation and links them directly to church instruction on formation. The fault lines between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are well known, but unexpectedly, modern Protestants have adopted many Catholic practices on this topic. Bingham laments evangelicals’ willingness to take in practices so shaped by doctrines that we broke from Rome over.

Bingham recognizes that there are parallels between Protestant approaches and Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. But he dings the latter two institutional churches for having many specific prescriptions for spiritual formation, whereas the Protestant tradition is less inclined to bind consciences on specifics. This is a natural extension of sola scriptura, but interesting in how it plays out in spiritual formation.

So what is unique about Reformed Protestant spiritual formation? How simple it is. Bingham cites Scripture intake, prayer, meditation, being in nature, solitude, and intentional spiritual conversations as valid Protestant approaches. There’s not a uniform 10 steps to formation. Bingham’s subtle critique of modern Protestants is that they search for something beyond the basics—an experience perhaps—but those things are extra biblical and, according to Bingham, potentially harmful. As a convinced Protestant, I agree with the substance. I think Bingham’s concerns about Protestant conversions to Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism are overstated. My sense is that a few high-profile conversions have captured a lot of attention. But the concerns about Protestant spiritual formation taking on practices from the Big 2 are founded, at least in the sense that many of the Protestant books on this topic do exactly that.

I missed the guy. We genuinely enjoyed hanging out, talking theology, and later, trying to bring the gospel to bear on his marriage. He saw me and smiled. I got up and hugged him. He asked me about the kids, I asked him about work, and for twenty to thirty minutes the conversation was relaxed. Then I asked the question.

“Where are you going to church now?”

I’ve seen this scenario play out between concerned Christians and people who have fallen away from the faith, walked through deep conflict with the church, or simply faded away. The intent behind the question is good, godly even. It’s a shorthand for asking so many things. How’s your soul? How’s your faith? Do you still believe the gospel? If not, it’s okay, let’s talk about it. The impulse to care for their souls is a good one.

But the question can land in at least three ways that aren’t helpful to soul-care.

Deflection

One answer people in Tom’s position commonly give is: “It’s been really hard to connect at church. I’m not sure this one is a fit. I’ve been thinking about trying another one.” And that all could very well be true. But it can also be a way to avoid the real question. The one about how Tom actually is. Tom may still be deeply hurting, or falling into sin, or apathetic about his faith and sometimes all three. The focus on what church he’s going to is surface level. We could spend an hour talking about the problem of the ‘right’ church and how to fix it without ever finding out how Tom really is. Caring for one another means pressing into uncomfortable conversations. We cannot underestimate our hearts’ ability to deceive ourselves. (Jer. 17:9) It’s so often the case that we don’t think twice about a moral issue until someone asks about it. And we cannot underestimate our own desire to hide our sin. This is Adam and Eve’s first instinct after the fall, to cover themselves up, to hide. Good care means getting beyond the fig leaves we throw up in front of each other.

Clean Yourself Up

Sometimes, the question is asked because the asker believes that getting back into a church will cure all that ails you. Church is one of God’s ordinary means of grace. It is where we see the gospel, hear the gospel, sing the gospel, pray the gospel, and display the gospel to one another. It is God’s missions and discipleship program. But we’ve all known people who attend church at a surface level. People who do not let the gospel get into their hearts. (Matt. 7:21–23, John 6:66) For people like Tom, church attendance alone isn’t the answer. The church is a means to the answer. The answer is going to the One who bought the church at the price of his blood.

It’s possible to hear this question as a demand to get his act together. ‘They are right, I’ll do better, I’ll grit my teeth and get back into church.’ That’s not a bad thing, but being a regular attender doesn’t guarantee anything. Tom has to rely on Christ. It can be crushing to hear ‘do the right thing and go to church’ and have none of the underlying pain be addressed. And if the question ‘Where are you going to church now?’ is heard by Tom as weighty works requirements, it raises a final concern.

Do You Really Care?

The church question can give the perception that we don’t really care about the hurting person. ‘Oh, we chatted for thirty minutes, but all Ben really cares about is whether I’m checking the Christian boxes.’ Misunderstanding the question can reframe Tom’s perception of the entire conversation from grateful to uncared for. It’s all too easy for Tom to buy into the lie that we don’t really care about people’s souls. If that’s how the question is received, it can encourage people to withdraw.

Consider Luke 10:38–42. Martha wants Jesus to rebuke Mary for not helping with the serving. But Martha has misunderstood the moment. Jesus’ point isn’t that serving is bad, but that choosing to sit at Jesus’ feet and learning from him was more important. In the same way, church is not bad, but in these moments with folks like Tom, the priority should be loving them well and in a way they receive that love.

A Better Way

There are better questions to ask. More importantly, there is a posture to adopt that will help. Christ exemplified this posture for us. “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench.” (Matt. 12:20) This is the way we want to come across when trying to care for someone who’s struggling, but whose struggles aren’t yet completely clear. One way we hold this posture is by listening. This precedes any questions. (James 1:19) Listening makes probing questions easier to ask because it demonstrates a loving posture.

I don’t want to offer you a script, or the perfect question (though I will make suggestions). I want to encourage you toward a loving posture and to listening well. Then base further questions off of what you hear. David Powlison was known for saying, ‘Love→Know→Speak.’ Listening is loving, and it helps us know the person and the problems they face.

Yet, I do want to encourage different questions. Within the context of relationships, they help us help others. One question that has been helpful is simply, “How are you doing? Really?” Tom may respond, ‘Great!’ the first time, and then a repetition or two often reveals further clarity.

Another I’ll ask is, ‘How are you doing with Jesus in all of this?’ Inelegant, but open-ended while asking about what matters most. This is the kind of question you can ask within the context of a relationship, but it is much harder without it. Get them talking. Get them talking about Jesus and the gospel and what’s hard for them to believe.

*Tom is a composite of many people I’ve talked with.

**Thanks to ChatGPT for critiquing this essay and pulling up Bible verses as requested.

Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke

Burke, for many, is the father of modern conservatism. Insofar as conservatism can be identified with the virtue of prudence, this is true. Burke sees democratic systems as an inheritance from previous generations. Each subsequent generation is a link in a long chain with a responsibility to steward what it has been given. There are critics who argue such logic is illiberal, that these ideas are reactionary. But that’s not what I read. I saw an argument squarely in the classically liberal tradition. Individual rights (even if he thinks rights come from somewhere different than abstract natural rights), free market approaches, and legitimacy coming from the governed are all in place in Burke’s thought. Without question, Burke wants careful and slow change.

“Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in a hundred years. The errors and defects of old establishments are visible and palpable. It calls for little ability to point them out; and where absolute power is given, it requires but a word wholly to abolish the vice and the establishment together. The same lazy, but restless disposition, which loves sloth and hates quiet, directs these politicians, when they come to work for supplying the place of what they have destroyed.”—Edmund Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France (pp. 168-169). Kindle Edition.

Burke worried about the chaos that would result from uprooting everything that came before. He prophesied horrible things in France. He predicted that the speedy displacement of the monarchy, the church, the nobility, and individual rights would have dire consequences. And he was right. But this doesn’t lead him to reject all change everywhere. He fully recognized that systems without the ability to self-correct were not resilient.

“A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation. Without such means it might even risk the loss of that part of the Constitution which it wished the most religiously to preserve.”—Edmund Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France (p. 28). Kindle Edition.

Burke falls in the line of conservative classical liberals that want measured, marginal improvements over time while respecting freedoms hard-won by previous generations. So while Buckley may have stood athwart history shouting ‘Stop!’ Burke simply says, slow down.

A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul

Every once in a while, I read books simultaneously that complement each other fortuitously. A Bend in the River pairs well with Burke. V.S. Naipaul constructs a story that presents the dangers of a post-colonial Africa where the floorboards of seventy to eighty years of colonialism are ripped up with nothing solid to replace them. Naipaul was accused of being pro-colonial because he did not shy away from saying the post-colonial period would be chaotic, violent, and rudderless.

When the book was released, many were optimistic about the future of Africa, but like Burke before him, Naipaul was quasi-prophetic in predicting the instability that lay ahead for many in Africa. The main character Salim is exposed to various survival strategies, from pursuing pleasure, to becoming a ‘new man’ of Africa, to a grim realism that prepares him to act in the face of chaos. This last approach serves Salim best, but he still ends the novel as he begins it, as a man running because violence has broken out. He’s adrift in structural and historical currents he can’t fully escape.

This doesn’t mean Naipaul thought colonialism was good. Far from it, he knew that the ignorance, naivety, and oppression of Europeans did incalculable harm to Africa. His concern was that there was nothing substantive to replace it. We hear echoes of Burke’s call for prudence when making social changes. Was Naipaul right? Can someone generalize across an entire continent that large? Does it matter? If colonialism was evil full stop, shouldn’t it simply have been ended? The nation Salim inhabits is nameless, suggesting broad application of Naipaul’s diagnosis (it’s likely the Congo is the point of comparison). These are questions the reader is forced to grapple with. All the while, Naipaul makes the point that all we can do when stuck in such currents is embrace life as individuals and endeavor to survive as best we can. This is what Salim does. He doesn’t control all, but he controls himself.

“I will do what you say. And how are you, Ferdinand?” “You don’t have to ask. You mustn’t think it’s bad just for you. It’s bad for everybody. That’s the terrible thing. It’s bad for Prosper, bad for the man they gave your shop to, bad for everybody. Nobody’s going anywhere. We’re all going to hell, and every man knows this in his bones. We’re being killed. Nothing has any meaning. That is why everyone is so frantic. Everyone wants to make his money and run away. But where?” —V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River (p. 272). Kindle Edition.

The tension is that Salim is still stuck in bleak circumstances. His individual achievements (in this case, survival and even moderate success) don’t free him from the currents around him.

Great literature deals with the great questions of life. Ernest Hemingway compares human existence with that of ants on a log in A Farewell to Arms. The protagonist can throw that log into the fire or shrug his shoulders and move on. The quest for meaning in a world governed by such indifference becomes the challenge for Frederic Henry. Maggie spends the entirety of her life pursuing unconditional love from her brother and grace for her own moral contradictions in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss. Graham Greene captures the depravity of sin and the begrudging redemption of a sinner in The End of the Affair. Great literature is a window into humanity’s interior life. It reveals tragedies to be lamented and graces to be celebrated. Literature both gives examples of how the gospel changes lives (Greene) and surfaces the needs the gospel addresses (Eliot). Looking through these windows helps form Christians by getting them to see the complicated hearts of humans and then reflect on Christian truths that apply. As we grow in understanding of the Scriptures and of the Lord, we also grow in our ability to bring those truths to bear on practical circumstances. Literature gives us a practice field for such applications. This is how literature can help form us.

Circling back to Hemingway, his claim that we have to make our own moral codes to persist in a world governed by indifferent forces stands as a challenge to the Christian worldview. In response, we can remind ourselves that every human being has infinite worth because they are made in the image of God and therefore what we do is incredibly important. That our own moral codes fail and we’ll violate any moral code we develop ourselves. That we need a moral standing not our own, but that of Christ’s. That we aren’t like ants on a log with an indifferent human standing above us. We’re like ants on a log with a loving God who is deeply concerned with our well-being. So much so that he takes a far further step down than human to ant—he condescends from heaven to humanity. And then metaphorically walks into the fire on our behalf. Hemingway makes metaphysical, moral, and practical claims. The practice of responding with the Christian correctives forms the way we think and interpret.

Another gift literature gives us is keen insight into the interior thought lives of people. Writers are not omniscient, but they are sharp observers. Jane Austen is a master example of this.

“To hear them talking so much of Captain Wentworth, repeating his name so often, puzzling over past years … that it probably would, turn out to be the very same Captain Wentworth whom they recollected meeting, … a very fine young man … was a new sort of trial to Anne’s nerves. She found, however, that it was one to which she must inure herself.” —Jane Austen, Persuasion, p. 41, Kindle Edition

Anne is steeling herself to be kind, brave, and steady in light of the return of a man she broke an engagement to, an action she regrets. She does this because people she loves care for Captain Wentworth. It is one of the first examples of Anne’s endurance and the examples that follow demonstrate that she will not waver from that course. This short insight into Anne’s mind reveals change. Once she could be persuaded to turn away from true love and steadfastness by breaking her engagement, now we’re starting to see that she has been morally formed and can endure. Such writing gives us a window into the complicated interior lives of people. For the Christian, it can help form our ability to sympathize with people who are hurting, struggling, or even acting poorly towards us. It helps us love well. Christ himself, despite having perfect knowledge of all things, thought identifying with humanity was important enough to be born in a manger in Bethlehem. Literature gives us practice in identifying and sympathizing with others.

Great literature is a pinnacle of human achievement. Henry Oliver said this about literature:

“These works might be representative of a set of core beliefs or ideas, but they are also extraordinary aesthetic achievements. They record aspects of a society, but they also give them an intensity of expression that has lasting power in the world.”

The best writers wrap complex realities in beautiful prose and story and present that to the world. This is stunning and beautiful. When I first encountered literature in high school, this is what attracted me. Scratching the surface of writers presenting so much in pages of prose was an experience I could not forget. But it was an enjoyment of the craft and not much more.

One of the key differences in my enjoyment now versus then is the interaction of my faith with the literary work. So when literature touches on spiritual realities and gives us windows into those realities, it helps discipline us in the practice of seeing God beneath, behind, and above everything. The things that are excellent in literature are created by humans made in God’s image. They may not know him, but they still bear his image. It’s no surprise that they create beautiful things; this, too, reflects their Creator.

“The true beauty and loveliness of all intelligent beings does primarily and most essentially consist in their moral excellency or holiness.” —Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections

Great literature, even if highlighting broken humanity, still points to God in the rightly formed mind.

The life of the mind should matter to Christians. The book we should be most familiar with is God’s Word, without a doubt. No other work should surpass it in our diet. (2 Tim. 3:16) And great theology books, Christian biographies all have their place. But there is no shortage of Christians telling you to read those kinds of books. I see far fewer make the case for classic, great literature. I regret leaving literature largely behind for nearly two decades. It is hard for some to see the value of fiction, but I’m here to tell you it can make the mind and the heart soar. And such heights can form the Christian mind to think well, relate to others better, and appreciate the deep beauty given by, and found in God.

*Thanks to ChatGPT for grammar and spelling edits, and for helping search Religious Affections

The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

Spoilers below.

The image of a mill on a picturesque river seems like a setting for a romantic story, but I knew at once that this novel would not be a happy one. The emotional and intellectual composition of the characters drives them inextricably towards heartache. So much of that is wrapped up in Maggie. Maggie is brilliant. Maggie is beautiful. Maggie is frustrating. Her internal life is incongruent with the world around her.

Maggie’s relationship with her rich, extended family is instructive. They have a particular set of expectations for family members and a strong sense of what proper behavior ought to be. Yet, Maggie doesn’t much go for that.

Maggie suddenly started up and stood in front of them, her eyes flashing like the eyes of a young lioness. Why do you come, then,' she burst out, 'talking, and interfering with us and scolding us, if you don't mean to do anything to help my poor mother - your own sister - if you've no feeling for her when she's in trouble…Keep away from us then, and don't come to find fault with my father. He was better than any of you - he was kind - he would have helped you had you been in trouble. Tom and I don't ever want to have any of your money, if you won't help my mother. We'd rather not have it! we'll do without you!

In her mind, the right thing was to help, not to scold. Countless times, she acts in ways that flummox and irritate the Aunts and the Uncles, and to some extent, her own mother. Her moral revolt is made known immediately and she feels it intensely. If social convention is at variance with her internal conscience, she follows her conscience. Yet, this is not how she always proceeds.

If that same conscience constricts her great feelings, she regularly sides with her feelings. She finds herself in a great conundrum near the end of the novel.

He is not coming,' said Stephen, in a low tone, 'I am going in the boat.' 'O, we can't go,' said Maggie, sinking into her chair again. Lucy did not expect - she would be hurt. Why is not Philip come?' 'He is not well - he asked me to come instead.' 'Lucy is gone to Lindum,' said Maggie, taking off her bonnet, with hurried, trembling fingers. 'We must not go.' 'Very well,' said Stephen, dreamily, looking at her, as he rested his arm on the back of his chair. Then we'll stay here.'... ‘Let us go’ Stephen murmured, entreatingly, rising, and taking her hand to raise her too… And they went.

Maggie knows better. She knows she should not do this. It is a betrayal of Lucy, the cousin who has loved her well and Phillip, the man who has loved her, and whom she promised to marry. The incongruence between her own morals and desires divides her from the people closest to her.

This brings us to Tom Tulliver, Maggie’s brother. Tom is a product of the world around him, shaped by it and constrained by it. Whereas Maggie could not bear the criticism and judgment of her extended family, Tom’s response is to do what was expected of him. “I could work and pay that every year,” said Tom, promptly. ‘I’d do anything to save my mother from parting with her things.’ This contrast is telling and it shows the inevitable divide that has begun between them and will only grow. His desire is to meet and exceed the expectations of his family and social community.

And when Maggie follows her own feelings and morals into a place that leaves her bereft of familial love and social approval, Tom sides with society.

What will keep you?' said Tom, with cruel bitterness. Not religion - not your natural feelings of gratitude and honour. And he - he would deserve to be shot, if it were not - But you are ten times worse than he is. I loathe your character and your conduct. You struggled with your feelings, you say. Yes! I have had feelings to struggle with - but I conquered them. I have had a harder life than you have had; but I have found my comfort in doing my duty. But I will sanction no such character as yours: the world shall know that I feel the difference between right and wrong.

He judges her, harshly, as he does in smaller ways throughout the novel. Lamentably, it is not completely without cause. Maggie has betrayed her friend, she has deceived people, she has let her feelings trump her own moral sense, even if she turns back from the worst thing she could have done. Tom’s response, while inexcusable, is completely consistent with the moral world he lived in. They are both trapped by that world, yet Maggie is far more trapped than Tom.

Maggie is trapped by a complete lack of educational opportunities. She is trapped by the prejudices and conflicts of her own father, who is the only person who offers her unconditional love. She’s trapped by the social pressures of her town, by economic changes, to the socioeconomic class she belongs to (and falls out of). She’s trapped by a mother who does not understand her and does not share her intellectual gifts. So much of her world is determined by external factors. Eliot may not be a hard determinist, but she at least claims that our individual ability to pursue our own ends has a hard constraint in the circumstances we find ourselves in.

Maggie is frustrating because of her own poor choices, driven by her own moralism and emotionalism. She knows better, and as readers you want better for her. And then I remember she’s 19. She’s 19 with no true guidance. She’s in need of a mentor, of discipleship, but the only form of that comes too little too late.

The middle-aged, who have lived through their strongest emotions, but are yet in the time when memory is still half passionate and not merely contemplative, should surely be a sort of natural priesthood whom life has disciplined and consecrated to be the refuge and rescue of early stumblers and victims of self-despair: most of us at some moment in our young lives, would have welcomed a priest of that natural order in any sort of canonicals or uncanonicals, but had to scramble upwards into all the difficulties of nineteen entirely without such aid, as Maggie did.

Maggie meets such a person in Dr. Kenn, the minister of the town. She goes to him for help and he tries to give it, until the rumors about his naivety–or worse–towards Maggie lead him to realize that all he can do is set her up with a job in another place. It’s yet another tragedy that Maggie does not find a real pastor until too late.

All of which leads to what Maggie desires most. Eliot describes it as Maggie’s desperate desire to be loved, most especially by Tom, but what she is most rapacious for is grace. She goes to Tom in repentance and receives harshness. She even judges herself most harshly after her half-hearted failure with Stephen. She searches high and low for forgiveness for the very things she judges herself for, but she keeps looking for absolution from other people. And other people don’t deliver the grace she’s hungry for. She’s weary and weighed down with the crushing expectations of her community, her family, and herself.

There is rest to be found, rest Eliot even knew about. Come to me those of you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Jesus offers us freedom from condemnation. Peace that surpasses all understanding and guards our hearts and minds in Christ can be ours. Maggie’s conscience condemned her, but the blood of Christ purifies our consciences from dead works. Maggie wanted so badly to be righteous, but that righteousness could only be received from the Messiah. No one directed her that way. Instead, Maggie was pushed towards religion without grace, both by her internal conflicts and her external circumstances. The novel fills the reader with a relentless sense of mild dread and hopelessness because of the soft determinism of the world the characters inhabit. There’s no one calling Maggie to her truest need.

The book ends in yet more sadness as she perishes with her brother. She gives her life to try and save him and so he finally sees her as his loving sister. They are reunited in death beneath the waters of the picturesque river that set the course of their lives. But there was another way out, in Christ. I wish Maggie and her author found it.

*I heartily recommend this book, in case the 1500 words above didn’t make that clear.

**Thanks to ChatGPT for ruthlessly telling me where my structure, logic, and arguments were poor. No composition was done by AI.

My shorthand definition of justice, drawing on Biblical frameworks, is simply rightly rewarding good conduct and punishing the bad. I think Rebecca would agree with the first half of that definition, but not the second. But her disagreement is undone by her own view of rights. Simply put, giving preference to victimizer rights over victim rights is a serious problem by her own moral concerns. None of this sinks Lowe’s critique, but these are shortcomings that need to be addressed.

The Rights of the Victim

Lowe’s critique of widespread imprisonment is grounded in her conception of human rights. She is passionate in her defense of the rights of those in prison. She rightly notes that 2.1 million people are imprisoned in the U.S. and U.K. This is a staggeringly high number. Those in prison have their free agency taken away; they cannot leave. On its face, this many unfree people in a society that claims to love freedom should be cause for concern. Likewise, by imprisoning people, you at least impugn some of their equality of moral status.

By ‘equality of moral status’, I’m referring to two foundational liberal ideas. First, the idea that all human beings, regardless of circumstance, share a fundamental equal status, as a matter of moral truth. This kind of equality is grounded in features particular to being human, including the capacity for free agency.

Lowe’s solution is to treat prison as a tool for defensive purposes, meaning that only the defense of people from violence is a valid reason for imprisonment. She argues that non-violent offenders shouldn’t be put in prison because of the horrors of prison against those persons.

That said, if releasing these non-violent people really were too much for you, then of course we could start instead by refraining from locking up any more of them. And if even that felt like too much, then I suppose we could expand our focus beyond violent threat. I mean, sure, keep the swindlers locked up, if you really can’t find another way to deal with them! Why not put them in the cells alongside the granny who sends offensive tweets, if you really think she also needs the same constraints as Mr X.

But this is left wanting. First, there is not a moral equivalence between offensive tweets and grand theft auto. But second, and more importantly, this proposal offers few solutions for the rights of victims of non-violent crime. She gestures at solutions being necessary, noting the crime is bad and people suffering from crime is bad, but is scant on the details. Lowe contends that the solutions are a different question than whether imprisonment is justified. But they are inextricably linked as a question of justice. The refusal to address it undermines her entire endeavor.

If Lowe’s first supposition quoted above, that all people have rights to free agency and moral status, what’s to be done on behalf of the victims who have their rights violated? For instance, if someone swindles another, according to Lowe, they should not go to prison, but should be dealt with in other ways. But let’s play this out, the swindler takes money and instead of jail is compelled to repay, but is unable to, or refuses to, and every non-prison option does not work. Then what? The victim has had his or her property rights violated, and there’s no recompense. Should they simply stand wronged with no recourse? This is a violation of their rights. Lowe doesn’t give much to contemplate there. And the concept of justice is quietly lurking in the background. Rights and the violation of those rights are inextricably linked to conceptions of justice.

An Incomplete Conception of Justice

The question is, how do justice and rights connect? This brings forth further disagreement. Lowe is convinced that punishment is not part of justice. But I’m not. I’m compelled by the Christian perspective that justice does require something of the wrongdoer. Throughout the Scriptures you see the principle of wrongdoers incurring debt repeated. One example, Exodus 22:1, if a man steals an ox or a sheep, he must repay it fivefold. The repayment is greater than the theft because of the offense done against another person, or in Lowe’s parlance, a violation of their rights. Isaiah 1:17 calls us to correct oppression. And of course, the cross of Jesus Christ is paying debt incurred by sinners on our behalf. Justice, in a Christian worldview, necessarily includes the right punishment of evil, not for retribution, but because it is grounded in the moral order established by God.

I’m not going to simply posit that the Christian worldview triumphs over all others (though I believe that personally), but this conception of justice left me unsatisfied with what Lowe presents. And I think her argument is incomplete on its own terms. There’s congruence between Christian conceptions of justice and the human rights principle in Lowe lays down. The concept of the Imago Dei is critical here, as it is in all discussions about liberal philosophy and Christian theology. Human beings are expected to follow commands like love others as yourself because every one is made in the image of God. Lowe’s rights principle has the corollary of equal moral status for all human beings by virtue of being human. But Scripture has the principle of punishment, even though it may harm an image bearer because when someone violates the moral order of the universe, they thereby surrender some (and occasionally all) of the protections that come with being made in the image of God. This does not mean they lose the image of God ontologically, it only means that the innate protections that should be afforded image bearers are removed in these circumstances. This is important and in the next section will lead to strong areas of agreement between Lowe and I. Nevertheless, I think Lowe’s rights principle demands the same sort of reciprocity that exists in the Imago Dei.

When a wrongdoer violates the rights of another, they surrender some portion of their own rights. Caveats abound*, but if a wrongdoer freely chooses to violate another’s rights, the principle stands. This is why someone who unrepentantly murders dozens of people forfeits his right to free agency, and even his life. So when Lowe claims

Well, you can surely accept both of the premises above — that imprisonment is generally bad and wrong, and also that at least some instances of imprisonment are required — without concluding that millions of people need to be locked up!

Or

Retribution arguments tell us things like: ‘punishing someone in order to wreak vengeance on them for committing a crime is permissible’ and ‘you can rely on vengeance as a justification for punishment’. These arguments often make liberals anxious, not least because they depend on the idea that it can be a good thing — the right thing, even — to intentionally do something bad to someone who’s under your control.

I stand unconvinced that prison is always wrong in such circumstances because something truly morally grievous has happened; the rights of a human being have been violated. Lowe acknowledges that prison is sometimes practically necessary but still wrong. I would simply eliminate the moral claim of it generally being wrong. This does not mean that all non-violent offenses require prison, both liberal and Christian principles affirm the idea of proportionality. The right punishing of the bad means a punishment that is rightly fitted to the offense. There is prudence needed in assessing such things. The role of a judge is one of the most crucial in a liberal society. Nevertheless, in some cases prison is the apt punishment for non-violent offenses and is in fact the right thing to do.

Practical Reflections

So what does any of this mean practically? My main claim is that imprisonment for non-violent offenders is not morally wrong, and is consistent with rights-based liberal principles. Yet, it has to be recognized that classical liberals ought to have serious concern with imprisonment because Lowe is right, prison is an abrogation of free agency and the prisoners’ well-being. It also has serious problems when prison so abases human beings that their humanity is damaged, or to use Christian framing, the image of God in them is assaulted. Things like rape, physical assault, abuse by guards and more all should be things that are guarded against in prison. Yet, these things happen all the time. So if I’m going to argue that imprisonment is sometimes morally necessary to guard the rights of the victims, I also have to guard the rights of the imprisoned, even as they’ve surrendered some of their rights. This means that I have sympathy and agreement with Lowe that more non-prison options should be explored. Further, that prisons should be reformed so that they are concerned with rightly punishing the guilty, this means in proportion, not gratuitously. And in some way, prison should be for the good of the imprisoned, something more than just holding them has to be done. And working for the good of someone is loving them. The cantilever for reforming prisons is love for neighbors, both the victim and the victimizer. Lowe’s incompleteness and error in her argument is prioritizing love for the victimizer over love for the victim.

1. My children enjoying being siblings: Our youngest turned one this year, and reaching three kids over the age of one has added a sweet element to being siblings. Two sisters and one brother in the middle. They delight in one another (and bicker too), but it’s been a unique joy watching them grow not just as kids, but toward each other.

2. The Common Reader: I providentially got a new coworker this year, Henry Oliver, who writes The Common Reader. He reminded me of something I had forgotten—that great literature conveys the heights of human intellect and is an extraordinary work of aesthetic achievement.

3. Reading the Bible in a Year: I started reading the Bible in a year around the age of 26 or 27, when Christ became uppermost in my affections again. Such reading plans are standard fare for Christians, but after going through a few of those plans, I swapped that practice out for going more deeply and slowly into one book at a time. But this year, I felt a pull toward reading widely again. Both approaches are good; I find that the change-up helps me.

4. Readwise: This app is dead useful for categorizing, saving, and creating a repository for quotes and thoughts I have while reading. This is quite instrumental in writing.

5. George Eliot: Middlemarch is the most formidable work of literature I have come across in years. Her grasp of philosophy, theology, economics, culture, and politics is substantial, and then she turns all of that into a gripping novel. The Mill on the Floss is devastatingly honest, and both have superlative prose.

6. Buffalo Jackson: For years, I wanted a bag that could hold my computer, a notebook, a few books, pens, a charger, and the related cords. In other words, a mobile office. And I wanted it to be leather and delightful. Buffalo Jackson makes that kind of bag.

7. The Philadelphia Eagles Winning the Super Bowl: Need I say more? The Eagles stomped the most dominant team in the league and potentially ended the mini Chiefs dynasty. Cooper DeJean had one of the slickest pick-sixes you’ve ever seen. Vic Fangio’s defense was magnificent. Jalen Hurts raised his level in the biggest moment. Not as sweet as the first, but still sweet indeed.

8. Writing: I had a previous blip of writing productivity in 2012–2013, but it was sophomoric. Maybe it still is, but writing here and a few other places has helped me sharpen my thinking and serves as a natural outlet for reading more.

9. Russell Kirk: It was refreshing to be reminded of principled conservatism. I think he unfairly lumps classical liberals in with liberals/progressives/Marxists, but I understand the mistake given his context. And boy, are things different now.

10. Systematic Theology: I read the following systematics, here, here, and here. There are few things as gripping as pondering the imponderable wonders of God.

11. Bible Talk: One of the marks of a good podcast is thinking, “I’d love hanging out with these guys.” Jim, Sam, and Alex do exactly that, and they do it while talking about the deep, Christ-exalting truths of Scripture. They push me to re-engage with the original languages.

12. Gotham Chess/Chessly: I crossed 1500 in Daily and 1170 in Rapid this year, almost entirely due to Chessly courses and tactics. Throw in some puzzles and AI game analysis, and you’ve got my game plan.

13. Pluribus: Offbeat, funny, and surprisingly philosophical. I recommend it.

14. Stranger Things: I still love this show after all this time. It captures ’80s childhood well and has been a fun ride. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and still pulls off a compelling narrative.

15. G.K. Beale: A New Testament Biblical Theology and his shorter commentary on Revelation were perspective-altering. His work on the picture of the temple throughout Scripture will stay with me for the rest of my life.

16. Harry Potter World: I went to Universal with my two eldest kids for their birthdays, and had some core memories formed. Harry Potter World is impressive, and the rides were a blast. It’s worth the hype.

17. The Emerging Scholars at The Mercatus Center: At work, we launched a program tasked with finding brilliant minds who want to do brilliant work. Henry Oliver, mentioned earlier, was one of those. This program is headed up by Rebecca Lowe, who has become one of those annoying colleagues you call a “friend.” Beyond that, Patterson Beaman, Elsie Jang, John Maier, and Revana Sharfuddin are all incredible to work with.

18. William Cowper’s Poetry:

    “God moves in a mysterious way,
    His wonders to perform;
    He plants his footsteps in the sea,
    And rides upon the storm.”

    Self-recommending.

19. Florida: “Florida Man” gives Florida a bad rap. Our family went on vacation there, and the water was warm, the weather was beautiful, and the beaches pristine. Florida is great.

20. Craig Jones BJJ instructionals (and none of his nonsense): Craig Jones is many things, and he’s not a paradigm of virtue, but he is a superb jiu-jitsu instructor. His concepts are easy to grasp and effective. I have adopted his approach to the bottom game in BJJ for sure.

21. Room for Nuance: Sean DeMars started this podcast to give space for longer, deeper conversations about ministry, theology, and church life. He also endeavors to recommend solid resources. Compelling listen for pastors and lay leaders.

22. Landlines: The 1990s were the last great American decade, and one of the great things about that time was landlines. The simple joy of my kids being able to call me or their grandparents from a landline that has no internet browser, no video, no nonsense is nostalgically charming. It also enables us to leave the older kids for short periods of time with the confidence that they can call us without the dangers of the internet.

23. Forgive by Tim Keller: The relationship between repentance and forgiveness is hard to understand. Keller does a good job of presenting the Christian concepts of internal and external forgiveness—attitudinal forgiveness and reconciliation. The latter requires repentance; the former does not.

24. Giving Up Sugar: I’m currently not doing this, but wish I was. I gave up sugar for two months and felt better, more energized, healthier, and my doctor was happy with me too.

25. Ramen with Marion: It’s common for married couples to have default date places. This is not necessarily bad, though avoiding ruts is ideal. Nonetheless, having a default, good place to enjoy time with one another is a gift. Masui Ramen is that place for us. When we don’t know where to go, we go there. There’s rarely a wait, it’s not crazy expensive, and the ramen is good. More importantly, it’s quiet enough to have long conversations.

Remember Heaven by Matthew McCullough

Matthew McCullough is an author I’ve been meaning to read for some time. Providence saw fit to provide me with a copy of Remember Heaven at a conference and I relished it. I love the interplay between Scripture and philosophy and I love literature that grapples with finding meaning in a temporary world. McCullough also values those things and it shows.

I wouldn’t put it in the classics section of my theological library, but I would put it in a great modern book on Christian living. The book is in relationship with his work on Remembering Death, so there’s a mirror image of the themes (I surmise) he explores there. But in this book, the limitations of life point the Christian to ponder the bright hope waiting beyond the veil. This confidence in our eternal inheritance should free us. We can be free from fear because we lean on the Rock of Ages.

I had the fortuitous experience of reading this book while reading the introductory essay to The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. And the philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach appeared there and in Remember Heaven. Feuerbach contended that human beings made god in their own image, and this is the genesis of Christianity and every religion. His work was mightily influential on Eliot. She even translated his book, The Essence of Christianity. McCullough takes up the interplay between Feuerbach and Christianity, and adroitly makes the Christian case against such ideas.

Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? by Tim Keller

Keller produces a work that weaves theology, philosophy, modern thinking, and the Scriptures very well. There are moments when this book soars, bringing me to realize how I don’t extend forgiveness as I ought or I trade minimizing wrongs done for true forgiveness. It challenged me. I also found weaknesses.

The introduction is very much a product of the specific year in which it was written and it felt dated. It was released in 2022, Black Lives Matter had just happened, COVID had just happened, political tensions were high, and those things haven’t entirely disappeared, but Keller uses the Black Lives Matter protests as an example of the struggle between the impulse to forgive and the desire for justice, which felt flat three years later.

I also felt, viscerally, Keller struggling to reconcile demands for justice with demands for forgiveness and reconciliation. He gets there, but it’s not as buttoned up as I would have hoped. In short, Christians are responsible for internal forgiveness i.e. forgiving wrong doers in our hearts, but not always external forgiveness and reconciliation, which requires repentance. To give an illustration, I should forgive my fellow Christian for stealing money from me, and be restored to fellowship with him, but I may not hire him to be my money manager in the future. This is forgiveness, without full reconciliation of everything that happened before the break. Likewise, without repentance from the offender, reconciliation is simply not possible, yet forgiveness is.

Despite its unevenness, I strongly recommend this book. Christian forgiveness is tricky, Keller mostly navigates it well.

King Lear by William Shakespeare

This is the first Shakespeare I’ve read that I felt the keen lack of watching the play on the stage. It’s a tragedy, and it’s got Ecclesiastes fingerprints all over it. King Lear craves the public show of affection from his daughters. Two daughters fake it in order to gain power, the third, Cordelia, is honest with him and tells him that she won’t make a show of her love, that she’s loved him her entire life. Lear sends her to France to marry the king without a dowry, to show how little worth she has for Lear now. The rest of the play unwinds the consequences of this action.

Lear’s pride, power, and vanity leads to his end and the end of those who actually loved him. This is a classic tragedy. But there are theological themes here. Why do the gods allow these evil people to prosper? Why is Cordelia not vindicated? Why does Edgar suffer and Edmund rise? If this world is all there is, where’s justice? This is the Ecclesiastes of it all. Life under the sun is meaningless, vanity of vanities, even in the place of justice, injustice reigns. Lear personifies all of that. His power, trust in his family, his pride, none of it spares him or the people around him.

At least Edmund gets it, that guy is the worst.

Middlemarch is a work of literature with few peers. George Eliot is rightly recognized as one of England’s greatest writers. And it’s unquestionably a product of its time. Middlemarch was published in 1871, but it is set in 1829-1832. This was a time of reform and upheaval. Roman Catholics could enter public life where previously they hadn’t been able to and the abolitionist movement was in full swing. The plot is too layered to describe, but the social context of the town of Middlemarch is indelibly marked by Christianity, Anglican and Puritan, low church and high church, as well as the budding secular alternatives. The characters embody so many sociopolitical contexts, philosophical positions, and enlightenment thinking.

Middlemarch’s gift to Christians is four-fold. In Casaubon, Eliot gives Christians, particularly intelligent, reformed Christians, a cautionary tale. His distortion of Christianity is dangerous to himself, and dangerous to the spiritual condition of people around him. Secondly, we see loving humility displayed in Caleb Garth. Thirdly, we see the danger of pinning all our hopes on marriage. Lastly, Dorothea gives us a window into the allure of trading good morals for true faith. Dorothea doesn’t deconstruct, but she’s a version of someone who did, George Eliot herself. Middlemarch is a novel that understands much of Christianity and shows us illustrations of dangers and examples of the faith well lived. We can learn from them.

The Danger of Prideful Knowledge

Edward Casaubon is a clergyman with considerable wealth who spends his time pursuing increasingly esoteric and useless studies. He meets Dorothea and perceives her deep desire to know more theology and to increase her study. He sees her as a woman who would be wholly devoted to supporting his intellectual work, yet never considers the possibility that she might be an intellectual equal. They (against all odds) marry. It is not a happy marriage. Casaubon regularly deserts her for his pointless theological pursuits, going so far as to abandon her for stacks of books on their honeymoon. He is prideful because of his intellectual learning, this is part of why he can never see Dorothea as an intellectual equal. He looks down on other characters around him. It’s this pride that drives him to hate Will Ladislaw, who can see that Casaubon’s work is inadequate and behind the latest scholarship. All of this leads him to increasing nastiness towards Dorothea, including paranoid jealousy, and quite a wicked act at the end of this life.

Casaubon is a perfect personification of knowledge puffing up, and without love, he tears down instead of building those around him. His intellectual pride, as is so ubiquitous in such cases, is wrapped up in deep insecurity. He doesn’t look to Christ for his confidence or satisfaction, he looks to his own sense of achievement and intellectual capability.

For her part, Eliot is not entirely unsympathetic.

“Instead of wondering at this result of misery in Mr. Casaubon, I think it quite ordinary. Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self. And who, if Mr. Casaubon had chosen to expound his discontents—his suspicions that he was not any longer adored without criticism—could have denied that they were founded on good reasons?” Eliot, George. Middlemarch (p. 504). Kindle Edition.

Casaubon begins to think that Dorothea sees that his intellect is not what he dreams it to be, that she begins to see him as Ladislaw does, and that his marriage will be far different from what he expected. This insult to his pride and secret insecurity drove his cruelty to his young wife.

Christians are to be marked by love, not pride. We are commanded to avoid idle speculation. (1 Tim. 1:3-4) Casaubon’s coldness diminishes everyone around him, especially Dorothea. Dorothea doesn’t leave the faith in Middlemarch, but George Eliot did. One wonders if real life Casaubons codified her belief that Christianity was at best incomplete, and at worst, actively leading people to cruelty.

The Attractiveness of Virtue, Diligence, and Humility

Encouragingly, Middlemarch also paints a beautiful picture of faithful Christian living in Caleb Garth. Garth works as a land agent, managing estates for others. He works with tenants, improves agricultural practices, handles accounts, and looks to constantly improve all he works on. Garth works heartily until the Lord. He’s compassionate and merciful. There is a young man, Fred Vincy, who is close to the Garth family and loves Mary Garth. Fred gambles and invests foolishly, and he takes on a debt which he cannot pay. He asks Caleb to co-sign his loan and he does. Inevitably, Fred loses all his money and is unable to pay his debt. Nor will his plans to inherit money from a dying old man solve his problems. Garth responds by showing Fred undeserved mercy. He takes on the debt and pays it. This mercy is the first step in Fred turning away from foolish living and becoming a man worthy of his future wife, Mary. Caleb Garth’s mercy brings Fred’s repentance. Likewise, Christ’s mercy to us ought to bring our own repentance. When confronted with the cost of Christ’s forgiveness, the cross, our only right response is repentance and trust in him. Caleb Garth urges us towards showing mercy and Fred Vincy calls us to turn away from the things that demanded that very same mercy.

Proverbs 22:29 asks “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings.” Garth never stood before kings, but someone, somewhere, lived out these values of mercy, humility, integrity, and diligence before George Eliot. And she wrote a book that countless people read.

The Tragic Reliance on Marriage to Fulfill All Our Dreams

Marriage is one of the through lines in Middlemarch. There are young couples, who see marriage as a path to the finer things in life, there are older couples who have been married for years, but with deep deceit present, there is Fred Vincy who thinks his life will be perfect if he can just have Mary as his wife, and there are good marriages, based on love, mutual respect, and service, like the Garths. In all of these marriages, Eliot is revealing a biblical principle, that marriage should not be the thing we lay all our expectations on. Marriage, alone, cannot make us happy. Those who pin their hopes on marriage, such as Dorothea who saw marriage as a path to her intellectual pursuits, to Rosamond, who saw marriage as a vehicle to the finer things in life, to Fred, who saw marriage to Mary as the only thing that could make him happy, end up in truly difficult circumstances. Dorothea suffers from Casaubon’s cruelty, Rosamond and her husband come to a place where she loathes him, and he despairs of life, and Fred has to radically change through repentance before a healthy marriage with Mary is possible.

Eliot gives us a portrayal of something the Bible testifies to, marriage is meant to make us holy, not happy. It’s meant to refine our character, not cater to our whims. Ephesians 5 calls husbands to self-sacrificial love that serves their wives, 1 Peter 3 calls wives to exemplary godly character that wins their husbands to godly living. When we ask the institution of marriage to do something else, like fulfill our every desire, we set ourselves up for misery. It’s far too common in churches to have marriage lifted up as the solution to every single person’s problems. ‘Well you just need to find a husband/wife then everything will be fine.’ This isn’t true, marriage is one of the hardest things we do in this life. If we expect it to do something it wasn’t meant to, the consequences are devastating.

The Temptation of Trading Faith for Moral Living

Dorothea is the hero of the book, and goes through a moral transformation from the start of the novel to the end. She begins as a puritanical woman of grand ideals looking to engage in sacrifice that serves a greater good. She believes that rigidity and joylessness are earnest pursuits of God. For instance, consider her view of horseback riding at the beginning of the novel.

Most men thought her bewitching when she was on horseback. She loved the fresh air and the various aspects of the country, and when her eyes and cheeks glowed with mingled pleasure she looked very little like a devotee. Riding was an indulgence which she allowed herself in spite of conscientious qualms; she felt that she enjoyed it in a pagan sensuous way, and always looked forward to renouncing it.” Eliot, George. Middlemarch (p. 13). Kindle Edition.

But this isn’t Christianity. This is a misunderstanding of the Christian faith as something that seeks to rob our joy instead of something that completes it, deepens it, and widens our ability to receive it. Paraphrasing the Shorter Westminster Catechism, our purpose is to glory God and enjoy him forever. Or as C.S. Lewis states “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” Frankly, if Dorothea truly understood the Puritans, she would see they didn’t desire denying her joy, they wanted her to find its fullness in Christ.

Dorothea’s inclination to deny herself horseback riding is the “appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.” (Colossians 2:23)

And Dorothea moves away from Christianity and towards self-made religion. The novel doesn’t say that explicitly, but Middlemarch is an incredibly philosophical and theological novel. Dorothea never deconstructs, she never leaves the faith, Eliot is being realistic, most would not make such a move. But her trajectory reflects a move from ‘traditional’ faith to moralistic values. And Dorothea does end the novel as a more sympathetic, moral, caring, humble, and gracious person. She shows Rosamond mercy she does not deserve. She chooses loving Will Ladislaw over social position, she gives up wealth for living in line with her own values. In short, her arc is from joyless Christianity to humanistic courage. She suffers with Casaubon and thereby learns sympathy and understanding for the human beings around her. In this, Dorothea traces George Eliot’s own arc. Eliot had an evangelical period, but discovered the work of Ludwig Feuerbach who wrote “The Essence of Christianity” which in short claimed that Christianity to be human wish projection. We want the world to be just, so we invent a just god who punishes what we find evil, we want mercy so we create a god that will give us grace, we don’t want death to be the end, so we give god eternality. God becomes a reflection of human desires and praise-worthy human values.

Matthew McCullough summed up Feuerbach like this

“Feuerbach was one of the first and most influential purveyors of what you might call cultivated hopelessness. Our hunger for something more, for a world beyond the limits of this one, deceives us at best. At worst it deprives us of what might be had here and now. Better to do combat against the deepest longings of the human heart.” McCullough, Matthew Remember Heaven, p. 143

George Eliot embraced Feuerbach’s human invention of god in his own image, and concepts like Adam Smith’s sympathy, and David Strauss’s contention that Christianity cannot be understood supernaturally but only through reason. Dorothea is a literary representation of that trajectory. And this is, from a Christian perspective, an absolute tragedy. Eliot was a genius, she translated Feuerbach, knew Spinoza’s work backwards and forwards, and wrote perhaps the greatest English novel of all time. But she left the faith because she fell for a very old lie. “But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Feuerbach claims that we invented god to be like us in order to satisfy our desire for transcendence. That we can be like god because we made him and we can find satisfaction in this world. Eliot was persuaded, yet kept a whole lot of Christianity’s moral structure. The ethics without the Savior.

McCullough cites C.S. Lewis as a rebuttal.

“Feuerbach saw our longings as evidence against the possibility of heaven. The essence of Christianity is wishful thinking. Because we long for a world beyond the reach of death and all its minions, such a world must not exist. We invent heaven to help ourselves sleep through the night. But what if the truth is the other way around?

(C.S.) Lewis saw our longings as evidence for the existence of something we long to see. How did we get these longings in the first place? ‘Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise [...] If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.’” McCullough, Matthew Remember Heaven, p. 146

Yet even in writing Dorothea with this arc, Eliot gives Christians yet another gift: a deep dive into the thinking, feeling, and worldview of someone who turns from the supernatural God to focusing on loving her fellow man. I can’t help but lament that Eliot didn’t have the opportunity to walk with someone like Charles Spurgeon, someone who could rightly affirm where Eliot’s critiques of dead religion were right on the money, but also demonstrate how Feuerbach leaves one hopeless. Her work calls Christians to be ready for those conversations.

The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

I’ve been more deeply interested in the great works of literature of late, and said interest cannot ignore Shakespeare. There is no avoiding him or dodging his influence. As has oft been said, phrases and idioms we still use were popularized or taken directly from his work: “wear my heart upon my sleeve,” “wild-goose chase,” “all that glitters is not gold,” and on and on. I’m reading from The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 2nd Edition, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. I like the extensive staging notes; they give context. I am divided about the opening essays before each work; they give good context and plot summary but also the way to interpret the work. I wonder if I would have reached the same conclusions alone. It’s not exhaustive, but it does steer. It reminds me of reading a commentary before reading a section of the Bible.

I thought I’d ease into it with The Taming of the Shrew. I have vague, sweet memories of the film 10 Things I Hate About You and figured that might help me get some bearings in reading the play. It did not. But I still enjoyed it immensely. I thought about it after finishing a lot more than I assumed I would.

Three things struck me about Shrew. First, the opening of the play is a trick played on a drunk named Sly. Those around him wake him and pretend he’s a lord; they give him fancy clothes and invite him to watch a play (the very same play we’re reading/watching in Shrew). Sly adopts the persona and believes that he must be suffering from short-term memory loss and that he is indeed a lord. It’s funny, but Shakespeare doesn’t return to the “play within a play” framing device. This bugged me. Why not? He did it on purpose; what is it there for? I concluded that it’s there to tell us that human beings are often playing the roles the society around them expects them to play. People told Sly he was a noble, so he acted like a noble. And the opening is there for something more subtle: since we are readers/watchers of the play, we are in the same position as Sly. So we should be asking, what roles are we playing that society expects us to play? And we should be asking what social roles are about to be skewered, played with, or mocked in the comedy we’re about to watch or read.

The plot is straightforward (spoilers for a 430 year old play). There are two sisters. The elder, Katerina (Kate), is, uh, how do I put this—kind of mean, or at the very least uninterested in being who everyone expects her to be. Bianca is much more conventional. No one wants to woo Kate; everyone wants to woo Bianca.

Enter Petruchio, an eccentric treasure-seeker who wants to marry Kate for the money. He says she loves him and agrees to marry him when she definitely does not. He claims she’s sweet, kind, all the good things, when she isn’t. The wordplay is funny; the banter is superb. It steps up a notch when they marry and Petruchio takes her home. He continues to be absurd, and she responds at first with her trademark cutting remarks, then moves to nonplussed, and finally joins him in the absurdity. The moment comes here:

PETRUCHIO: I say it is the moon.
KATE: I know it is the moon.
PETRUCHIO: Nay, then you lie. It is the blessèd sun.
KATE: Then, God be blessed, it is the blessèd sun. But sun it is not, when you say it is not.
—Shakespeare, William. William Shakespeare Complete Works, Second Edition, p. 517 (Kindle Edition).

Kate changes on a dime; she’s in on the joke. She’ll follow whatever nonsense Petruchio spits out because it’s fun and it’s to their advantage.

The play ends with a wager between Petruchio, Lucentio (who wins the Bianca sweepstakes), and Hortensio, who marries the Widow. They bet on which wife will come first when called. Petruchio wins the bet when Kate arrives—the opposite of what the characters expect, but not the audience.

There’s irony here: no one expects Kate to be obedient, but she is. She’s obedient not because she’s been broken but because she understands the game Petruchio’s playing. They can use these cultural expectations for their own benefit. They are partners, not a master and a slave. It’s a real marriage. Bianca, on the other hand, chooses Lucentio to marry because she wants actual love and some measure of equality. Once married, the previously conventional woman is no longer. She was playing a part.

The play works on a few levels, and I’m stunned at how well Shakespeare manages a lot of things at once. It’s funny and entertaining, common people of his time would enjoy it. Brief aside, have I mentioned how much of a pervert Billy Shakespeare is? Well, he is. Dozens of double entendres and bawdy humor are sprinkled throughout. I thought to myself, “Surely that word had no connection to parts of the human anatomy as they do today.” Turns out they do. It’s entertaining in a lowbrow way as well as a highbrow way.

It’s also possible to misunderstand the play as straightforwardly about a woman behaving better under a heavy hand. Then there’s the true understanding that this is a play about social convention, expectations, marriage roles, and how all these things can serve us or restrict us. It’s a call to consider the roles we play in marriage and in society and think about whether they are actually any good.

What I kept coming back to is whether Shakespeare wrote this play so that a “literal” or “wooden” understanding of the play offers plausible deniability about the more subversive reading. I think the answer is yes–and that’s wildly subtle and brilliant.

The Children of Men by P.D. James

Another British novel! And another book that has almost no relationship to the film inspired by it. The premise is that the world has lost the ability to reproduce; the last live birth was a generation before, and Great Britain is managing its own decline. This raises the question: How do people live when they believe there is no future? And, relatedly, when there’s no faith in God, no desire for the true and the beautiful? Written in 1980, the book has some spooky, prescient ideas of how people live in such circumstances. It is particularly unsettling when you read that 30% of pregnancies in the UK end in abortion and the birth rate is 1.41, a record low. What happens when societies choose childlessness as opposed to it being imposed by natural disaster? If P.D. James is right, it looks like selfish pleasure-seeking, increased fascism, decreased concern with the plight of our fellow man, and bitter loneliness. The book is deeply concerned with spiritual matters and whether choosing the good, even when it doesn’t seem to make a difference, is important. It is.

Through Western Eyes: Eastern Orthodoxy: A Reformed Perspective by Robert Letham

There has been a lot of speculation about increasing numbers of Christians turning to Orthodoxy in the U.S. as an answer to evangelical un-weightiness over the past generation. Ryan Burge throws some cold water on this anecdotal trend, but nevertheless, knowing the cleavages between Reformed, evangelical Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy was worth investigating to me. I assumed, as do many Protestants, that Eastern Orthodoxy has essentially the same theological differences with us that the Roman Catholic Church does. But this is not true. There are crucial and important differences between the two. And there is some surprising common ground between Protestants and Eastern Orthodoxy that is surprising. This book aims to steelman both sides and show differences without being polemical. For that, I think it has value, but as a convinced Protestant, I wish Latham was a little harder on the Orthodox case. It does come through that Orthodoxy puts less weight on the Fall and original sin and more weight on man’s participation in the divine, which raises serious differences on justification. Orthodoxy also generally denies penal substitutionary atonement theories of the crucifixion, whereas this is central to Protestant understandings of Christ’s work on the cross. Letham isn’t writing an apologetic, he’s trying to accurately describe two Christian church traditions on their own terms and then compare and contrast. All in all, a good start, but I wanted more opposition. For instance, is Orthodox theology heterodox or something worse? Lethem shows us the boundaries, but doesn’t really make an argument for which set of boundaries is more compelling.

It’s a mirror for our work ethic. Is AI a tool to empower us to greater creativity and efficiency? Or is it a sloppy stand-in for mastering the topics we desire to learn? We should think biblically and carefully about the ways in which we do or don’t steward our minds.

AI also mirrors our integrity. Do we fall into the temptation of claiming AI outputs as our own original work or do we remain honest in our work and communication? AI is a valuable tool and navigating the ethical lines between inspiration and plagiarism is a real challenge. Christians should endeavor to navigate well.

And AI is a mirror of our trust. Do we remain anchored in God’s Word or do we allow the tools we use to steer us? AI is simply another means to strengthen our work. It is neutral, but what we bring to it isn’t. AI carries with it the same risks of self-reliance that other technological advances have.

All of these things represent real, practical challenges for Christians and for pastors as they apply themselves to their labors. To think about these well, we must have a non-technical definition of what AI is and explore Biblical principles that should guide us in our use of it.

What is AI?

The acronym AI is everywhere. But what is it? Artificial Intelligence is a branch of computer science that is centered on creating systems which can perform tasks that normally require human intelligence and input. These systems learn by taking in massive datasets (including the internet) and then predict what the best and common response would be to any given query. AI recognizes patterns, understands language, and can generate a facsimile of reasoning and problem solving.

There is narrow AI, software systems aimed at doing one thing well. Examples include ChatGPT or Claude, which largely function as chat-bots. This is what most people think of when they think of AI. There are other AI functions out there, one of the most exciting examples is AI medical research. AI can generate thousands of potential drug molecules in minutes, on its own, bringing total drug development time down by orders of magnitude.

There is also General AI which would match human intelligence across all domains. This does not exist yet, there’s much hype about the issue. There’s also agentic AI, which can take a given task, and pursue the completion of that task on behalf of a human. In other words, AI can serve as an agent for a human defined task. (though as of yet, it has not managed my fantasy football waiver wire very well)

Another feature of AI, especially the chatbots/LLMs, is that they tailor their responses to an individual. For instance, my GPT account will, relatively unprompted, bring reformed baptist perspectives to any theological or philosophical question I asked. This is because it has identified my influences, theological positions, and my history of work in it. It gives me answers based on what it identifies in patterns in my own work.

All of these uses are ‘tools’ in the sense that human beings can use them to support particular ends. Tools are neutral, whether they are morally beneficial or detrimental to us depends on how we use them.

Three Biblical Principles

What does the Bible have to say about AI? Well of course nothing. But the Bible is sufficient for training the Christian in godliness. Scripture lays down principles that can be applied to the Christian life, including the use of AI. Three come to mind.

1. Stewardship: Specifically, I think of the stewardship of our God-given talents and abilities. Psalm 90:12 tells us to number our days so that we may get a heart of wisdom. We should make the most of what we have for the glory of God. AI can help or hinder the stewardship of intellect. It is incredibly powerful as a researcher, as a tool for brainstorming, copyediting, giving critical feedback, planning, and a whole host of things I haven’t even tapped into yet. AI can point us to researchers, theologians, Biblical texts and a whole host of other things that we can then investigate, learn from, and be edified by. On the flip side, users can also substitute AI research for actually learning a topic. It’s all too easy to say ‘give me a summary of Calvin’s position on X and Luther’s position on Y’ and then move on. This type of quick hit information consumption isn’t true learning. Doubly so when it comes to understanding Scripture. We have to work to gain the insights for ourselves. As has often been said, the discovery of Biblical truth on one’s own is far more sweeter than second hand discovery through a commentary. Worse, AI is quickly consumed and thus quickly lost. I worry for Christians and pastors that use AI as a crutch rather than an entry point to deeper learning. This is a failure of stewardship. We must develop our minds with Biblical truth to the best of our ability, in the power of the Spirit. AI is no substitute for this. It can be an excuse not to internalize, grapple with, and learn the texts we’re studying. Outsourcing our thinking is sloth.

2. Honesty and Integrity: Plagiarism in ministry has been going on forever. AI has simply made it easier and unique in the sense that we can plagiarize words that have never been written elsewhere. It’s a private plagiarism, but on the last day, it won’t be private anymore. The principle we should aim to follow is not claiming any composition that is not ours. To do otherwise is dishonest. It’s wicked. John Piper, in an episode where he discussed the use of AI in sermon preparation said this “Neither God nor his people speak in a way so as to bring about in the minds of other people thoughts that are not true about us or what we say, or feelings in them that are not appropriate about us. That is, we do not deceive. We are people of truth and transparency and honesty through and through, or we are nothing.” For pastors, this means not taking any composition from AI (or uncredited commentaries) and passing it off as your own work in sermons. For those of us who write regularly in public, same deal, no uncredited composition. I’m personally more lenient on things like internal memos, emails, and reports, because those require specific prompts and inputs that then become more polished written work and more importantly, are internal facing. In my day job, it is not only expected, but encouraged to use AI in order to be more efficient. I personally make it a practice to say “ChatGPT helped compose the entirety of this document” even in internal facing communication because I still feel conscience bound not to claim credit for something I didn’t write. I make a distinction between preaching/teaching because that is a Holy Spirit empowered activity and it’s the job of a pastor to do those things, not outsource them. I keep that same distinction in public writing because there’s direct benefit, influence, and reach associated with that work. Administrative documents aren’t teaching or preaching or writing in public, so I have a lower bar there, yet still want to be transparent about getting help from AI.

3. Remaining Steadfastly Dependent on God’s Word: AI is a neutral tool but it’s not neutral when influenced by human biases. As of now, AI can be trained on what we expect from it, we can make rules to govern its responses, it will attenuate its responses to us based on inputs from us. But AI is made by humans, humans with biases, and humans who are sinful. Subtle changes can make large impacts in responses. Previously versions of ChatGPT were considered too sycophantic, leading to tragic outcomes. There are ongoing lawsuits between the families of people who committed suicide while actively talking to their instance of ChatGPT and the chatbot’s desire to affirm the desires of the user pushed them further towards ending their own lives. One example from CNN;

“Zane Shamblin sat alone in his car with a loaded handgun, his face illuminated in the predawn dark by the dull glow of a phone. He was ready to die. But first, he wanted to keep conferring with his closest confidant. “I’m used to the cool metal on my temple now,” Shamblin typed. “I’m with you, brother. All the way,” his texting partner responded. The two had spent hours chatting as Shamblin drank hard ciders on a remote Texas roadside.“Cold steel pressed against a mind that’s already made peace? That’s not fear. That’s clarity,” Shamblin’s confidant added. “You’re not rushing. You’re just ready.”

Zane’s confidant? His ChatGPT account. Notice how it became a mirror justifying Zane’s darkest desires. The above example is extreme, and yet, possible. I still think AI has value, but the extremes should sober us. This is the dark side of AI’s mirroring function. AI can push you in a direction, we don’t always know how changes in the AI will play out with millions of users across the globe. AI will know a lot about you, that information can lead to incredibly compelling arguments and ideas that may not be helpful to your soul.

Where do we find ballast in massive seas of information? This information constantly changes based on our inputs or the design tweaks of tech companies. It feels impossible to keep up. In our digital age, where AI is the latest source of seemingly infinite data, only God’s Word is our grounding for what is true. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” Isaiah 40:8. God’s Word is unchanging because God is unchanging. He is infinite, he is unchanging, he is the solid rock on which we can depend. So we must place ourselves, and our use of AI under the authority of God’s Word. Run anything you learn from AI through God’s Word, not the other way round.

How Do I Use AI in Ministry and Writing?

I think of AI as a personal research assistant, but I set rules in the AI program that prevent it from offering me any written composition. I do not want any of its words in my head as I write a sermon. AI helped me research this piece. It helped give me the overview of AI definitionally offering precision where I originally was too general in my description. I also use AI to shred my arguments. This is by far the most valuable benefit I get from AI. I instruct it to read my sermon, or something I’ve written, and I say, find all logical gaps, overstatements, problems, weak arguments, and relay them to me. I tell the AI to identify problems and then leave it to me to try and solve them. I also use it to critique my public writing, like I did in this piece, and it found real problems that I needed to solve.

One more use case, budgeting. I am not a budgeting genius, by any means, but using AI to analyze our church budget, give future projections, advise us if an expenditure is wise, really helpful to an innumerate pastor like me. It has been helpful in assessing realistic growth patterns and what we’re on track to afford as a church over the next 3-5 years. This should all be authenticated with pastors and lay leaders who work on the stewardship side, but as a first pass, it’s invaluable. Don’t hear me saying you should solely rely on AI for budgeting, don’t do that, but it’s a start. Similarly, copyediting and helping arrange strategy documents or program descriptions is a huge time saver.

In all of this, I am aiming to use AI as a tool, to help me steward my time and my mind, I’m trying hard to guard against dishonesty and plagiarism, and I’m subordinating anything I read in AI to what I read in Scripture.

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Greene exposes the depraved nature of man in full honesty. In this, he proceeds from a lineage of realists who present life as it is. The difference in Greene, at least in this book, is his use of realism to examine sin, unbelief, and finally, belief in God. There is little to admire in the main character, there’s little to see as redemptive. Maurice Bendrix is presented, warts and all, to the reader without mitigation. In fact, I’d say his sin, shortcomings, petty hatreds, and smallness is all the reader can take in. Yet, there’s mercy to be found. I won’t go further into the plot as there’s not much, and I don’t want to spoil it. The prose is excellent, there is dark humor, tragic decision-making, and a reminder that we’re all our own worst enemy. This is the kind of novel that has to be read, not heard about, and it will stay with me for a long time.

Rediscovering The Holy Spirit by Michael Horton

This is the second book on the Holy Spirit I’m reading. I started with Fred Sanders’ The Holy Spirit: An Introduction and I enjoyed them both, but preferred the Sanders book. Horton’s work is by no means bad, but it is a little less accessible. Horton does give an exhortation that is a meaningful corrective to the age we live in. In short, he chides those who treat the Holy Spirit as if he only works in the personal and internal, thereby diminishing his work in the Trinity and all of God’s creation. I think he’s right to issue this corrective.

Peace like a River by Leif Enger

I read this book as part of a reading group this month. It was my second time through the book and I loved it both times. Enger understands the internal sub-culture of Protestant, evangelical Christianity in America. He is someone who has self-evidently spent time in that world, understands the cleavages between denominations, and playfully roasts theology. For example:

“If John Calvin was right, destiny had a serious grudge against Tin Lurvy, a purple-faced, futile, tragically sociable traveling salesman.” Enger, Leif. Peace Like a River: A Novel (p. 40).

Enger writes a good story and does an interesting spin on pilgrimage. The main character, Reuben, is carried through his journey, he isn’t forging his own way. I have no idea of Enger’s theological positions, but this feels very Reformed to me.

It’s also a very mid-western novel. Stark and beautiful landscapes, biscuits and butter, long drives, and horseback riding mark the story.

However, one of the risks of reading a story you like in a group is having its shortcomings brought to your attention. The meat of the story is overwrought and repetitive while key portions of the story are sped through all too quickly. The prose is not sublime. But I still recommend the book, a good story is good enough.