The Wide and Narrow Road Reconsidered

The Wide and Narrow Road Reconsidered

Jan 21, 2026 | Theology

If you’re not active on Twitter, you likely won’t know about the big blow up about Kirk Cameron that happened some weeks back. On his podcast he was having a conversation with his son about the topic of Hell. They questioned the concept of Eternal Conscious Torment (ETC), and Christian Twitter went nuts. Words like heretic and apostacy were thrown around like confetti at a New Year’s Eve celebration. The other option for conservative Christians who believe in hell but question or wonder about the eternality of conscience torment is annihilationism. At some point after God’s “judgement of the living and the dead,” these people will cease to exist, they will die, forever. So the punishment is eternal, forever, but the person is not consciously being punished in misery forever. They’re dead.

I have no desire to debate or explore the topic because I believe God is just, and whenever difficult issues arise in life, or death, I lean on Moses’ declaration in Deuteronomy 32:3 I will proclaim the name of the Lord.

3 I will proclaim the name of the Lord.
    Oh, praise the greatness of our God!
4 He is the Rock, his works are perfect,
    and all his ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong,
    upright and just is he.

That is the hill I live and die on, and to which I give my life, my fortune, such as it is, and my sacred honor.

One of the many comments about this was regarding the wide and narrow gate and road Jesus speaks about in Matthew 7:

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

The person who commented was affirming that most people will go to hell and not be saved. For all of my Christian life until August of 2022 and my embrace of postmillennialism, I believed that too. From Jesus’ words it seems obvious this is the case. I’ll never forget hearing for the first time the idea that more people will be saved than damned to hell. It sounded so strange to me, but it sounded so right given everything I was learning about my newfound optimistic eschatology. I’ll get into that below, but first let’s see why a la Vizzini in The Princess Bride, I don’t think that passage means what you think it means.

The Context of Matthew 7 and Jesus’ Ministry
People forget that Jesus was a Jewish Messiah sent to “the lost sheep of Israel,” and not to anyone else. When a Canaanite woman came to Jesus to heal her daughter (Matt. 15), first he ignored her, then replied: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” Her response to Jesus’ rejection so impressed him that he healed her daughter. Here we see both dynamics in play. On the one hand he is telling us his first mission was to Jews only, but also confirming the Old Testament witness of the blessings of God extending to all peoples and nations. Jesus used the same phrase in Matthew 10 when he sent out the Twelve, “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.” We get off track when we think Jesus’ words always apply equally and always to all people in all times. That is not the case.

We must remember that Jesus came in fulfillment of 2,000 years of redemptive history through the people of Israel. The promises and commandments while in some sense universal, were as Paul says about the gospel, “first to the Jew, then to the Gentile” (Rom. 1:16). As we know, he would always go to the synagogue first when he visited a city, and if they rejected him, which they often did, he would go to the Gentiles. Many Jews didn’t like that, at all. But God’s plan of salvation was never only to the Jews. It took a while for early Jewish Christians to figure this out. Even Peter had to see a vision from God and then be reminded, and even be rebuked by Paul, because he so easily forgot that it may have been the Jew first, but it was always also to the Gentile.

From the beginning, the blessings of salvation from sin were intended for Gentiles, as can be seen from God’s first calling of Abram in Genesis 12. He picked only one man on earth and said to him, “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you,” and this promise is reiterated two more times to Abraham, and then to Isaac and Jacob. In Genesis 46 and 49, the Lord tells us that his servant will be “a light to the Gentiles” (42:6 and 49:6), and the latter passage adds, “that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” The same word translated Gentiles in these verses is also used in the great Incarnation passage of Isaiah 9. We’re all familiar, in the elegant language of the King James Version, with verse 7:

6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

We’re generally not familiar with the verse that introduces the transforming life of this child, which talks about God now honoring “Galilee of the Gentiles.” As we know Jesus was from the Nazareth in the region of Galilee. Most translations, for some reason translate Gentiles as nations, but it’s the same Hebrew word as Isaiah uses the in the previous two verses. The point is that the Gentiles are part of God’s redemptive plans, but their salvation will only come through the Jews. In the metaphor Paul uses in Romans 11 of the olive tree, the Gentiles are the ones needing to be grafted in. In another conversation with a non-Jew, although not a Gentile, the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), Jesus tells her that “salvation is from the Jews,” but because of that encounter with her, many of the Samaritans came to believe in him. Salvation is from the Jews, but not only for the Jews. It is for all peoples and nations.

When we come to the context of Matthew 7, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is speaking to Jews and for Jews. Yes, there are universal principles throughout, but he is communicating to Jews in a Jewish context because that’s why he came as their Messiah. They are the lost sheep he is going to find. Chapter 5 very much has a Jewish flavor as he directly discusses the law of Moses, the Ten Commandments and other laws from that period of their history. Chapter 6 is mostly universal, but in the last passage about worry he contrasts the Jews he is speaking to with the pagans. Chapter 7 again is more to the Jews because he speaks of false prophets and disciples, and it is here that we read of the wide gate and the broad road that leads to destruction.

Seeing how Jesus’ life and ministry played out, his declaration about the few definitely applied to the Jews. After his resurrection and just prior to Pentecost, there are only 120 among what Luke calls “the believers.” That means every other Jew in the Roman Empire did not believe in Jesus as their Messiah. You can’t get much smaller and narrower than that! The road to destruction for the Jews was indeed broad and many entered through that gate. Even after 40 years of the ministry of the Apostles at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70, Christian Jews were a tiny minority. Taking Jesus’ prediction about only a few finding life as applying to Gentiles cannot be inferred from this text. It may be true, but Jesus isn’t saying that here.

To me, whatever the nature of hell, and it exists, God would never allow Satan to win more souls to send there. No way, no how. I used to believe that He did allow that because I didn’t understand the context of Matthew 7.

The Redemptive Plan of God and His Mighty Saving Power
Many Christians, most I dare say, believe God is stingy with his mercy and grace. I’ve often heard Christians referred to as a remnant, a reference to the few Jews saved from Israel’s rebellion in the Old Testament. I get it, the world can be a horrific place, and if we do the math in our head solely based on appearances, and history up to this moment, Satan definitely has the lead. However, we’re not at the end of the story yet, and instead of judging by what we see, I suggest we go to God’s word to see what he says about the salvation Jesus accomplished for His people on the cross.

The first thing we notice is that multitudes will be saved, and in the word God used with Abram, be blessed. The Lord uses three images to give us a sense of the magnitude of His saving work as he communicates his covenant promise to His people: stars, dust, and sand. We read of stars in Genesis 15:

4 Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

And dust in Genesis 13:

16 I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted.

And after the Lord changes his name to Abraham and introduces him and his household to circumcision, he adds sand (Gen. 22):

17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

The Lord reiterates his multiplication promise to his son and grandson. To Isaac he says (Gen. 26):

4 I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed.

And then to Jacob (Gen. 28):

14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring.

And He further clarifies the nature of these peoples (Gen. 35):

11 And God said to him, “I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase in number. A nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will be among your descendants.

We can’t necessarily infer a majority from these passages, but images of stars, dust, and sand don’t exactly bring to mind God as a grinch miserly with his saving grace. Why do I, and specifically we postmillennialists, believe God will in fact save more people than he allows to be lost? Because the word that best describes God’s redemptive plans on earth is what his mighty saving power is accomplishing—victory.

An Eschatology of Victory
That is the title of a book by J. Marcellus Kik I read in the early days after my embrace of postmillennialism. I found this new theological journey I had embarked on after almost 44 years as a Christian changed not only my perspective on “end times,” but on everything. In 2024 I had the privilege of being invited to do a podcast on a YouTube channel called Eschatology Matters, which says it perfectly. What we think about “end times” shades our perspective on everything in life—past, present, and future. Eschatology, the study of end things, does indeed matter, a lot.

Prior to this shift, not only did I think more people would be lost than saved, but I believed the devil had the upper hand “down here” in this fallen world. When I was born again in the Late Great Planet Earth late 70s, I naturally embraced the dispensationalism that was everywhere at the time. Rapture theology was common. Things were getting worse, and Jesus was coming back soon. Not exactly an “eschatology of victory.” After I got burned out on such “newspaper eschatology,” I became an eschatological agnostic, what I came to call pan-millennialism because everything will pan out in the end. The Bible, or so I thought, doesn’t give us clear guidance on “end times,” so why worry about it. By the way, I put that phrase in quotes because it became dominant in the 70s to refer to what happens at the end of time, to the end of the world as we know it, as the end times. The 90s into the 2000s had the Left Behind phenomenon, so “end times” became even more engrained in the culture.

I’m generally not a negative or pessimistic person, so for most of my pan-mill life I believed we could change the world for the better, and even though I thought the devil would win on earth, Jesus would come back to save the day and usher us into eternity. As the creed says, “He will come again to judge the living and the dead.” When I embraced amillennialism in 2014 because I learned the Bible does indeed say something about eschatology, I found that it turned me into a pessimist. Either I learned or came to believe that sin and man’s rebellion were a more powerful force in a fallen world that I mistakenly believed belonged to Satan. In August of 2022 I started to understand just how wrong I had been. On this earth, in this fallen world, the gospel declares in the words of another book I read early on, Victory in Jesus. This one by Greg Bahnsen, and the subtitle says well the nature of this new eschatological perspective I now have: The Bright Hope of Postmillennialism.

I had for decades believed postmillennialism was a secular distortion of the biblical record, turning it into a belief in unending human progress, and specifically because of man’s efforts. It had nothing to do, or so I thought, with the gospel. Given the track record of us humans over the millennia, I considered it unworthy of even considering, a joke. What really surprised me was that it only took me listening to a YouTube video on a walk one Saturday afternoon to convince me it was likely true, that I had been wrong all these years, pre, pan, or a-mill.

My objective here isn’t to convince anyone of my now optimistic eschatological convictions, but to convey that how we interpret something like Jesus talking about wide and narrow gates is not only determined by the context as I argued above, but also by our eschatology, even if we don’t think we have one. We do!

 

 

The Dominion Mandate for Today

The Dominion Mandate for Today

Jan 14, 2026 | Theology

For most of my Christian life the Dominion Mandate was not something I gave any serious thought to. For me what counted was what some call the Cultural Mandate. From early in my Christian life, I always thought we should bring our Christian worldview and thinking to bear upon all of life, but that didn’t have anything to do with “dominion,” or so I thought. Both of these mandates come from the same place, Genesis 1, but they are two different perspectives based on two different theological understandings of the church’s role in the world. For those focused on it as a cultural endeavor, it is primarily an intellectual exercise of applying a Christian perspective to the world and what we do in it. Dominion, on the other hand, implies rule and authority, not just influence. it’s taking over, becoming the boss, so to speak.

There is a third option where neither culture nor dominion is relevant, and that is the basic Pietistic Christianity of the vast majority of Evangelical Christians. For most Christians their faith is primarily a personal affair with little relevance to the wider world. I’m not talking about being personally pious, but a movement in 17th century Germany as a reaction to a dry scholastic form of Christianity. Eventually through the two Great Awakenings, revivalism, and fundamentalism, by the mid-20th century Evangelical Christianity became culturally irrelevant. Christianity was now about personal spirituality, and cultural or societal transformation was beside the point. Plus the world would get increasingly worse and Jesus would come back soon to consummate all things. This is slowly changing, but it still dominates the church. What I’m talking about here is a completely different orientation for the Christian life.

I was inspired to write this because of a book I’m reading by a new friend of mine, David Bostrom, Get Dominion: You’ve Been Called to Fulfill a Mission. The paradigm shift from a personal, Pietistic Christianity to a dominion mindset is dramatic. As I discovered, it can also be dramatically different from a worldview, cultural influence perspective. I like David’s definition of dominion: “to fulfill a mission,” a mission to accomplish. Speaking of which, the movies, and the old TV show, Mission Impossible, give us some sense of the momentous task before us. When he was given a mission, Peter Graves would listen to a small reel-to-reel tape recorder which would self-destruct after it explained the mission. He was told, “You’re mission, Jim, should you decided to accept it . . . .” and then the tape would self-destruct in five seconds. Finally, he was wished good luck. We don’t need luck! We have a mandate from the Living Creator God, Christ having redeemed the world and taken it back from Satan, and the Holy Spirit living in and through us to transform creation as Adam and Eve were supposed to do. Most importantly, the Dominion Mandate is theologically grounded in the ascension of Christ now sitting at the right hand of God “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come” (Eph. 1).

What Exactly is the Dominion Mandate?
The Dominion Mandate comes from the charge God gave Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 1.

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

This is the NIV translation which uses the word rule, as do most modern translations. The term dominion mandate comes from the King James which translates rule as “dominion over.” According to Strong’s, the word means, “make to have dominion, prevail against, reign, bear; to tread down, i.e. Subjugate.” Like I said, become the boss.

For most of my Christian life I didn’t think this mandate to rule, to “have dominion over” applied to Christians; it fell after the fall, never to rise again until the second coming. This is because like most Christians I tended to over spiritualize my faith, even as a worldview Christian. Basically I thought the world belonged to the devil, and only at Christ’s second coming would he take it back. I was wrong. In fact, Christ came at his first coming to take the world back. He began an inch by inch, step by step, brick by brick process of transforming the world by extending his reign over it, and advancing his kingdom in it. Both John the Baptist and Jesus said the exact same thing as they were declaring his coming ministry: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” At his death, resurrection, ascension, and Pentecost, it fully came. His life on earth was the foundation upon which his kingdom would be built, and his church, his body, would carry out his reign throughout the earth, just as we’ve seen over these last two thousand years.

But that doesn’t get to the question of exactly what this mandate is, how it works, how we are involved. David in his book does a great job of making it practical for every one of us, and it is for all Christians. When we trust Christ, our salvation from sin doesn’t just reconcile us to God, but it gives us a mission to fulfill on this earth, to “have dominion over” it. Because of the rise of both secularism and Pietism, people today are adrift in the world. They are looking for meaning, hope, and purpose, but are stuck as Henry David Thoreau said, leading “lives of quiet desperation.” As Christians that shouldn’t be us! Not only has Christ given us a holiness mandate, but a dominion mandate in his creation as well. Here is how David begins his introduction:

Are you having a hard time figuring out where you fit in this world? Are you frustrated because your efforts don’t seem to have a significance you think they ought to have? Do you know deep down there’s more to life than what you’re experiencing, but can’t seem to get a handle on what it is? Does a lack of meaning or vision for your life make you feel like you’re dying inside?

It doesn’t have to be this way because Jesus imbues everything we do in this material world with spiritual significance.

The Priesthood of All Believers
In the Middle Ages prior to the Reformation, there was a stark societal dualism between the clerical class and the laity, what Martin Luther called the “temporal” and “spiritual” orders. The religious professionals, priest, monks, nuns, etc., did the spiritual stuff, and everyone else just survived and did their spiritual stuff on Sundays and holy-days. Martin Luther changed all that. The Reformation he unwittingly started began a transformation of the lives of everyday, average people, and ended up transforming the world. The dominion mandate for the most part had been lost, and now was found. We need to find it again.

In his Address to the Nobility of the German Nation (1520), Luther criticized the traditional distinction between the two orders—the laity and the clergy— and he puts his argument this way:

It has been devised that the Pope, bishops, priests, and monks are called the spiritual estate, princes, lords, artificers, and peasants are the temporal estate. This is an artful lie and hypocritical device, but let no one be made afraid by it, and that for this reason: that all Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office alone.

The Apostle Peter agrees:

9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

In other words, there is no difference between the religious professionals and everyone else, except the calling we’ve received from God and how we serve others. Luther says it beautifully:

A cobbler, a smith, a peasant, every man, has the office and function of his calling, and yet all alike are consecrated priests and bishops, and every man should by his office or function be useful and beneficial to the rest, so that various kinds of work may all be united for the furtherance of body and soul, just as the members of the body all serve one another.

In our current day this could be expressed as, “A plumber, a doctor, a lawyer, a builder, a homemaker, has the office and function of his or her calling, and yet all alike are consecrated priests and bishops . . . “ In 1520 this was insane. No wonder the church and the government of the Holy Roman Empire wanted him dead. This would turn the world upside down! Just like the Apostle did.

Most of us in the daily grind have difficulty perceiving what we do as a “spiritual estate” of any eternal value. Part of the reason is that we have reverted to a Middle Ages mindset before Luther’s Nobility address, mainly because of the Lutherans who came in the century following his death who developed the Pietism I referred to above. Building a house, or selling a product, or fixing a car, doesn’t seem “spiritual” to us, but everything human beings saved by Christ do is spiritual! Everything we do, every single thing, is done unto the Lord (Col. 3:23). Paul puts it this way in I Corinthians 15:58 in a verse I used to read dualistically:

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Certainly my work as a carpenter, or sales guy (what I do five days a week), or nurse, or trash collector, or you name it, is not “labor in the Lord,” right? The labor that will last forever are things like evangelism, or prayer, or Bible reading, or church, or fellowship with other Christians, but surely not grubby old work. Nope, it’s all spiritual, all labor in the Lord, and none of it is in vain. The reason is the Dominion Mandate tied to the life, death, resurrection, ascension of Christ, and Pentecost.

The Fall to the Ascension, Pentecost, and Dominion
Lastly, let’s see how the spiritual significance of everything we do is rooted in Christ’s mission on earth, and how that connects to the Dominion Mandate. At creation, Adam and Eve had everything they needed to fulfill the mandate the Lord had given them, but at some point Adam allowed Satan to slither his way into the garden as a serpent, and he broke it into a million pieces. Christ came to accomplish what Adam couldn’t. Two thousand years later and a very lot of water under the bridge, God became a man because as he says through Isaiah (63:5):

I looked, but there was no one to help, I was appalled that no one gave support; so my own arm achieved salvation for me, and my own wrath sustained me.

I write this in the season of Advent in which we celebrate the incarnation, God the Son coming down from heaven, born of a woman, becoming man, to be “pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities.” In that prophecy from Isaiah 53, we’re told that although “he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth,”

10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand

In other words, because of what Christ accomplished, the Dominion Mandate can now be fulfilled. We are his offspring, and because of his accomplishment, his obedience unto death, the Lord’s will for us to rule, to have dominion, will prosper in his hand. Dominion is not our work, but the Lord’s will working through us.

Most importantly, is what the ascension means for us, his people on earth, those he left behind to fulfill his mission, and to take dominion over the earth. Before Christ ascended to heaven, he told his disciples (Matt. 28) that “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go . . . .” Paul tells us in Ephesians 1 that when Christ was seated at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms, he had achieved a position “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” This authority is what gives the Dominion Mandate its power. Christ ascended that he might send his Holy Spirit at Pentecost that he might be with us always, to the very end of the age (Matt. 28:20)

What the ascension enabled was God the Holy Spirit acting through His people to do and accomplish significant things for the advance of God’s kingdom on earth. But what cements this concept in the heart of God’s people is what Paul says a little later in Ephesians about our own spiritual resurrection from the dead (Eph. 2):

4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

Think about that. We are seated with him, meaning we partake of his authority in this age, and in the age to come! When we’re trying to hammer the 2×4 on the frame of that house, it’s not just a hammer and nail and a piece of wood—it’s us in Christ taking dominion! Serving that customer? We’re taking dominion!

The ancient world became the modern world because of Jesus enabling his people, his body on earth, to accomplish what Adam could not. This has profound spiritual and material implications because these are one and the same. Whatever God accomplished spiritually for His people as he reconciled them to Himself in Christ, will always have material implications. Rejecting any kind of false dualism, we need to be about fulfilling the mission we were given when we placed our trust in Christ. Everything we do is imbued with profound eternal meaning and purpose and hope. As Jesus said in John 10:10:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

 

 

What is Sphere Sovereignty and Why is it a Necessity?

What is Sphere Sovereignty and Why is it a Necessity?

Jan 7, 2026 | Politics & Government

Secularists, including Christian secularists, which is most Christians, unfortunately, have a problem with Christianity exerting power in the political sphere of life. Because of a kind of Pietistic dualistic thinking, they believe that messy political stuff has to do with this world, not Christianity. But Scripture declares Jesus King of Kings and Lord of Lords, meaning he has ultimate authority and power over the politics and governments of nations. Before his ascension, Jesus declared that “All authority in heaven and on earth” has been given to him, and because of this he says:

19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Notice, and I’m not sure how people miss this or explain it away, but it’s nations that are to be baptized, not merely individuals in nations. And everything Jesus taught, entire nations are to obey. What that looks like is up for debate, and Christians disagree, but what is not debatable is our obedience to Jesus’ command.

We do know, however, that a discipled nation, or a Christian nation, is not what its detractors say it is, a means of forcing people to believe and behave as Christians. That’s what liberals, progressives, and leftists (i.e., Democrats) do, not Christians. Rightly understood, a Christian nation is a self-governing nation with maximal liberty, like the United States of America for much of its history. Because America was a Christian nation, created because of Christian assumptions and beliefs about the nature of man, its government was limited. In the early 20th century with the rise of progressivism and secularism, government expanded its control over every area of life. That kind of totalitarian instinct is what secular government will always produce, and it is Christianity alone that stands in its way. Unless the state has a higher authority to which it is accountable, it will always tend toward Babel.

This brings us to the topic of this post, and a phrase most Christians are unfamiliar with, sphere sovereignty. I recently heard someone use a phrase which describes what this is: Kuyperian jurisdictional theology. I’ll get to Kuyper below, but in short, God has created different spheres of responsibility and authority, or jurisdictions, even as He has created hierarchy within those spheres to work out responsibility and authority. The person who used that phrase also said, the church is the government’s conscience, which means the pulpit, as well as the people, must address politics. Notice the church isn’t the government, a claim of the secularists, but the church keeps the government accountable. The government has a very narrow lane, and if it starts expanding its lane it begins to go outside of its jurisdiction and becomes tyrannical and unbiblical. The founders with few exceptions got this right, and modern America has veered far from their intentions. The concept of sphere sovereignty is a way to bring America back in line with those intentions.

The Necessity of Sphere Sovereignty
The concept of sphere sovereignty is critical in the never-ending battle against the spirit of Babel (Gen 11). All things without God in Christ tend toward a concentration of power, a profoundly unbiblical concept. That concentration is what Babel represents. God said if allowed to do this, then “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” It is this hubris of fallen, sinful man that Christianity and sphere sovereignty confronts with the dignity of the liberty of the children of God and all his creatures. And fallen, sinful man will do everything in his power to avoid having his power limited. Thus the ever present battle over the size and scope of government. Thankfully, the founders of America gave us a solid foundation upon which to build a Christian republic, and I think post Charlie Kirk’s assassination, more Christians than ever are realizing that our faith isn’t just personal or for church, but for all of life, including government and politics.

The concept of sphere sovereignty, while directly not found in Scripture, can be inferred from it. It was first introduced by the great Dutch theologian, statesman, and journalist Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) in a public address at the inauguration of the Free University of Amsterdam (Oct. 20, 1880). The question comes down to authority and who wields it. Absolute sovereign authority rests in God alone, and He has delegated His authority on earth to human beings.  As Kuyper explains, “so that on earth one actually does not meet God Himself in things visible, but that sovereign authority is always exercised through an office held by men.” In this he asks two pertinent questions:

And in that assigning of God’s Sovereignty to an office held by man the extremely important question arises: how does that delegation of authority work? Is that all embracing Sovereignty of God delegated undivided to one single man; or does an earthly Sovereign possess the power to compel obedience only in a limited circle; a circle bordered by other circles in which another is Sovereign?

These circles (i.e., spheres) interact and overlap in society, but one sphere must never usurp the authority of the other. The only way this possibly works, and thus the only possibility of true liberty in any society, is the acknowledgement of the absolute Sovereignty of Christ. Kuyper explains why:

But behold now the glorious Freedom idea! That perfect and absolute Sovereignty of the sinless Messiah at the same time contains the direct denial and challenge of all absolute Sovereignty on earth in sinful man; because of the division of life into spheres, each with its own Sovereignty.

Stephen Wolfe explains it well in his book on Christian nationalism:

[I]t follows that every sphere of life requires a suitable authority, with a suitable power, to make determinations. For this reason, God has granted specific types of power by which the authorities of each sphere make judgments. The family has the pater familiar with patria potestas (“fatherly power”); civil life has the civil magistrate with civil power; the instituted church has the minister with spiritual power, and the individual has a power unto himself. The nature of each sphere dictates the species of power required. These powers and their differences are not arbitrary but arise from the nature of each sphere.

Although as a Thomist he attributes this to “natural law,” there is nothing natural about it. It is only when those in power acknowledge the power of God in Christ as the ultimate authority that the state will recognize its limits.

If we go back to ancient Israel, we can find the concept of religious freedom. The state has no authority to compel anyone to believe anything against their will. The religion of Israel was never imposed on the foreigner or alien. Jesus is a wonderful example of this because he went out of his way to discourage people from following or believing in him; it was their choice. Prior to Martin Luther at the Diet (assembly) of Worms in April 1521 declaring the freedom of conscience, Christians should have known better, but when the church got mixed in with the state, both became tyrannical. The individual in his thinking and actions has his own sphere of sovereignty within the confines of the law. While there were glimpses of this in English history, it wasn’t until the Puritan inspired first Great Awakening, and the American experiment in self-government coming in its wake, that true religious liberty was codified in the law of a nation.

Another aspect of life in ancient Israel implies the concept of spheres of authority. The Lord never allowed the offices of prophet, priest, or king in one person, until the Messiah came. Indeed, those offices pointed forward to one who would accomplish what all three intended, truth, mediation, and rule. Christ fulfills them all. King Uzziah is an example of someone who would not “stay in his lane.” He entered the temple to burn incense on the altar (2 Chron. 26), and God punished him for it. We also see Jesus affirming limited powers to the state when he said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” This was truly revolutionary at the time, and would take many centuries through English history to eventually come to full fruition in America.

Before we talk a little about the spheres themselves, we as Christians must disabuse ourselves of the notion that any kind of secular state is the answer. Many Christians dislike the concept of “Christian nationalism,” but I ask if a nation is not to be Christian (again, in obedience to the Great Commission), what is it to be? Since no Christian wants our nation to be a Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist nation, they assume the only answer is secular, the state having no religious affiliation whatsoever. The problem, as we’ve seen in our time, is that state always assumes some ultimate moral standard to back up its laws. If that standard isn’t God in Scripture, it will be anti-God. In America and the West that is woke, DEI, and all the tyranny associated with it. Christians are delusional if they think there is a way to have a secular nation without that, or some other form of tyranny. Liberty is only possible in a Christian nation.

Differing Aspects of Sphere Sovereignty

There are three assumptions that undergird the concept of sphere sovereignty.

  1. The kingdom of God and the church are not identical. Wherever God reigns, which is everywhere, is where the kingdom is. Kuyper put it memorably:

There is not one square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, “Mine!”

  1. The priesthood of all believers means, for example, we are as fully priests in our work as is any pastor at a pulpit. In addition, man is God’s viceregent over creation, called to exercise dominion to rule over everything in creation.
  2. Neither the church nor the state rules over other spheres since each sphere is part of the kingdom and under God. One sphere cannot interfere with the other.

The only place where the state interferes with the other two is for public justice. If laws are broken in the church or home, the state has the right to “wield the sword,” just as I said the church is the conscience of the state.

Since there is no chapter and verse command or explanation of it, there will always be debate about the nature of the concept and its extent. In addition to these three foundational spheres, other spheres might be businesses, community organizations, charities, educational institutions, etc., but conceptionally the three are the most important. If the boundaries of these are not respected, all kinds of problems develop, as we’ve seen throughout history. The primary danger comes from the most powerful sphere, the state, usurping its limited, well defined role.

Most importantly is the state usurping its role when people think it has the authority over the family, especially, but in the church as well. There are many examples, but one of the most egregious began in the early 1960s with Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” Instead of families, private charities, and the church taking responsibility for the needs of the people, Americans allowed the government to take over that responsibility. As a result, all kinds of perverse incentives it created destroyed the black family. Black out of wedlock births in 1960 were approximately 25%, higher than white Americans, but far less than the 70% today. Sociologists agree that welfare created disincentives to build intact families, and the suffering that has resulted has been tremendous.

In fact, since the rise of progressivism in the early 20th century, the state has become not only a god but is seen as Savior as well. Think of what government now provides. The Bible says the state has the limited functions of justice and self-defense, but now government provides healthcare, food, clothing, shelter, unemployment wages, retirement, money, and tomes of books full of regulations. This is the battle of the modern age, and if we want the liberty bequeathed to us by America’s founding fathers, we must limit the scope and reach of government. The problem is that most Americans like their government to play daddy. The most pathetic example of this mindset was a video the Obama campaign put out in the 2012 election called, “The Life of Julia.” “The slide show narrative follows Julia, a cartoon character, from age 3 to age 67 and explains how Obama’s policies, from Head Start to Obamacare to mandated contraception coverage to Medicare reform, would provide Julia with a better life than Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan could.” I remember thinking at the time, is this what we’ve come to in America? Is this the land of the free, and the home of the brave, of rugged individualism? Indeed it is not.

A proper, biblical understanding of the state would see this for what it is, evil. Which is why it’s critical as Christians for us to be involved in politics and government to bring a Christian and biblical view to public policy. We can build on the growing awareness in the church that while we understand the unique spheres of state, church, and family, true human and societal flourishing can only come from insisting on a biblical orientation for our entire society in which Christ is acknowledged as the true king. This means, America must again become a Christian nation in obedience to Christ. Too many Christians denigrate this as “Christian nationalism,” and take all the worst examples of its proponents as evidence that it’s not biblical. We can debate what our Christian nation is and should be, and work toward that, but we should all agree, the goal of the Great Commission is that all nations should be Christian.

In America and the West we are fighting an uphill battle against Pietism and secularism, two sides of the same coin. Both view Christianity and religion as primarily personal, something for the home and church, but not to bring into the public square. Charlie Kirk’s influence, especially after his tragic death, has seemed to open many more Christians to this idea and how important it is. Secularism and the myth of neutrality, as if there could be a morally neutral public square, is being questioned by an increasing number of people. Sphere sovereignty is a helpful concept in convincing people that true liberty can only be had with a biblical understanding of the family, the church, and the state.

 

The Miracles of Jesus and their Meaning

The Miracles of Jesus and their Meaning

Dec 31, 2025 | Parents and Family, Theology

I was inspired to write this post because of an unpleasant Twitter interlocutor who claimed to know things about me from one sentence I wrote in a comment: “Jesus’ healing ministry was a metaphor for spiritual reality.” He came back in so many words with, why do you hate Jews? What? He used the word “literal” a number of times as if my statement somehow implied I didn’t believe Jesus physically, “literally” healed Jews. Not too many responses in and it was clear he was not interested in a conversation. Such is part of the downside of social media and interacting with sinful human beings, but alas I get to flesh out here what I did in fact mean, and why I think it’s important.

As a Reformed Christian I embrace the doctrines of grace, which refers to a Calvinist understanding of how God saves sinners. Man is unable to save himself because he is dead in his sin, not merely sick or crippled, but on the bottom of the pool dead. That was the metaphor I was presented the first time I was introduced to Calvinism. For my young Christian life up to that point, over six years, I believed all people had the ability to decide to believe in and follow Christ. Jesus died for everyone, and those who choose him will be saved. Instead of being at the bottom of the pool, dead, they were flailing around in the water yelling for help. Jesus was the life preserver, and anyone is free to grab it, or not. I remember thinking, Calvinism is upside down from how I had conceived the Christian faith, but it made sense logically; more importantly, it made sense biblically. I went home and reading the Bible I saw it everywhere, thinking, how could I have missed this?

You might already see where I’m going with this. If someone is blind, he can’t make himself see. Only Jesus can do that. Deaf, lame, or crippled? Only God can heal that. Not to mention literally (there’s the word) bringing someone back from the dead, which included Lazarus and Jairus’s daughter. All these healings, and almost all of them were Jews, point beyond the healings, to a much more important spiritual healing to come. First, Jesus didn’t heal people to show off his power, but as evidence of his authority to fulfill God’s covenant promise to save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). Jews were expecting a different Messiah than Jesus turned out to be, which is why he could never have been made up by Jews. They were looking for a Davidic king who would finally end their oppression, the Romans only the latest of their tormentors. What Jesus the Messiah came to bring was a transformation in spiritual reality by paying the ultimate price for sin that would eventually transform this material world.

The Material Implications of Jesus’ Healing Ministry
Using the word “spiritual” in the modern church context is a problem because of Pietism. I used that word with my unpleasant interlocutor, and he went on a rant that I was against being pious, or against a personal, experiential relationship with God through Christ in devotional Bible reading, prayer, and worship. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve never been as emotionally invested in my faith as I am now. What I do mean by Pietism is the 17th century German Lutheran movement that developed in response to a dry, overly intellectual approach to the faith called scholasticism. Through the First Great Awakening, Wesley, the Second Great Awakening, Revivalism, and fundamentalism, Pietism came to dominate the modern Evangelical church.

As a result, the word “spiritual” came to mean other worldly, heavenly, non-material. The word that best describes this state of mind is dualism, an upstairs/downstairs reality. Upstairs is the important, “spiritual” stuff, Bible reading, prayer, evangelism, worship, downstairs the not so important, mundane, material stuff like work and politics and cultural pursuits. My interlocutor was stuck in his dualistic perspective on spirituality, so when I wrote “spiritual” he interpreted it as having nothing to do with downstairs, physical, “literal” reality. In fact, biblical speaking, the “spiritual” has everything to do with the “material.” There is no dualism separating them in a biblical view of the world. This is why it’s good to immerse ourselves in the Old Testament because the Hebrews, then Jews, were a deeply this material world oriented people, and they saw salvation as connected to material reality. To them, spiritual meant material, and material meant spiritual. It was the Greeks who brought us dualism, and eventually that made its way into Christianity over many centuries.

Now that we have definitions out of the way, what exactly do I mean by these “material implications”? This is a paradigm shift for most Christians, so stick with me.

We’re familiar with the story in Luke 5 about the paralyzed man who is lowered through the roof because his friends were desperate to get him healed by Jesus. When God put in Scripture He had to have Hollywood in mind, it is that dramatic. Luke tells us:

19 When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.

The crowd must have been enormous. Luke says that people had come from “every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem.” The news of the power Jesus had to heal had gone far and wide, and now the show was ready to begin. What does Jesus do? The unexpected, of course:

20 When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

What? I can imagine the people thinking, “What in the world does that have to do with healing a crippled man?” The Pharisees and teachers of the law were horrified because they rightly thought, “Only God can forgive sin.” To them Jesus was blaspheming. Then Jesus asks a question nobody could have made up, except Jesus of Nazareth:

23 Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?

This is almost funny because it’s easy to say either one. The issue is, can you pull it off, whether you have the authority and power to do these things. Here is where we see an example of the material implications of a spiritual reality. So Jesus tells them:

24 But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” 25 Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. 26 Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”

If you’ve ever seen Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, the 1977 miniseries, he portrays this episode masterfully. Nobody, most especially no Jews, could conceive of a Messiah who would have the authority to forgive sin. If he could, he would be God! Exactly. Jesus proved his authority to forgive sins by overcoming one of the consequences of the fall, disease of the human body.

Metaphorically, then, Jesus healing disease points to a powerful spiritual reality of the transformation of this fallen, sinful world, and a pushing back against the material effects of the fall. Contrary to what our Charismatic and Pentecostal brothers and sisters might believe, Jesus and the Apostles were not telling us that supernatural healing would be the common, normal way people would be healed. Rather, it would be the result of the permeating of the good news of the gospel into the dark, fallen world. The two parables that speak most directly to this are the parables of the mustard seed and leaven in Matthew 13. Jesus prefaces the parables with, “The kingdom of heaven is like . . .” The scope and extent of the spreading of gospel influence, i.e., God’s kingdom, will ultimately affect every square inch of reality like leaven or yeast through a batch of dough. The question is what this spiritual-material influence looks like.

The Christian Transformation of the World
We have to go back to the very beginning when God gave Adam and Eve the dominion mandate to rule God’s creation, to fill the earth and subdue it. When they rebelled, sin and death enter the world, and Satan took control of God’s creation. God’s plan was to take it back, and he promised the seed of the woman would strike or crush the serpent’s head. Then God in Genesis 12 promises Abram that “all peoples on earth would be blessed through” him. The word blessed is used some 65 times in Genesis because the whole point of redemptive history is for God to bless his creatures and his creation, to bestow his favor upon it, and not in dualistic “spiritual” terms, but in every way human beings interact with material reality. Look around you. Open your eyes. What do you see? Blessings!

One way I define blessing is with the idea of empowerment. When God blesses people He empowers, He enables, them to do a wide variety of things, to flourish. We easily see the blessings of “spiritual” flourishing in personal terms, in our own relationship to God, forgiven, loved unconditionally, living in harmony with others, but not so much in material terms, those we easily take for granted. Try to imagine living in a world without electricity. You can’t! Electricity empowers us to control our environment so we can live in a swamp like Florida or a desert like Arizona. Try counting the modern amenities electricity makes possible, and you would be at it for a while. Blessings! Prior to the late 19th century people couldn’t conceive of any of them. Petroleum used to be a nuisance in the ground, and the knowledge gained from science and technology has enabled us to transform civilization with it.

We would go on, but the material flourishing we live with every day is the spiritual reality of God’s covenant promise expressing itself in materially significant ways. In other words, what God promised Abram, and then confirmed consistently throughout redemptive history, and fulfilled in Christ, we’re experiencing right now in material blessing. That is spiritual! It is the result of what Christ accomplished on the cross. The Lord through Moses in Deuteronomy 8 tells is:

18 But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.

One of the reasons Jewish people have been materially successful wherever they’ve lived throughout the millennia is because wealth isn’t merely a material thing to them, but a sign of God’s covenant faithfulness to them, a result of God having established a relationship with them. This mentality got into the Jewish DNA so that even secular Jews have some kind of residual blessing effect in what they accomplish.

My last post was on developing an attitude of gratitude, and in it I compare life in the modern world to what it was like in the ancient world so we get a graphic picture of the profound blessings we have all around us and live with every day. I won’t repeat all that, but in the first century before science and technology and modern medicine, and the explosion of knowledge in the last two hundred years, life was extremely hard. English philosopher Thomas Hobbs describing life in his own time more than 1500 years later as living in “continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In the ancient world even more so. Life was terribly difficult until the 20th century, but in the ancient world it was positively brutal. Because of God’s promises to Abram and the Patriarchs it is so no longer.

What I’m trying to say is that when Jesus died on the cross, was buried, rose three days later, ascended to heaven and sent his Holy Spirit at Pentecost, material wealth and prosperity have been one of the many blessings of his saving work. We’re so caught up in that Pietistic and dualistic mentality that we limit Christ’s saving work to our own personal salvation from sin and personal holiness, but not saving the material world from the horrible effects of sin. Jesus has enabled us, his body, by the power of the Holy Spirit to fulfill the dominion mandate Adam could not. I’ve often referenced and quoted Tom Holland’s book Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World here and in my books, and if you haven’t read it, it’s well worth the effort. He says in the preface:

So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilization that is has come to be hidden from view.

And this transformation from ancient and brutal to modern and civilized and wealthy is not merely from the ideas of Christianity, but from Christ defeating the devil and sin and death on the cross! Salvation from sin is not merely personal or relational or just for the church but for the entire world. As Isaac Watts says in his great Christmas hymn, Joy to the World, “He comes to make His blessings flow Far as the curse is found.”

I know how counter intuitive this is to most Christians today because our conception of “spiritual” is so other worldly. But God so loved this world that he gave his only begotten son for it. One day it will be fully transformed when Christ returns and sin and death are finally destroyed, but God began the transformation at Christ’s first coming, and it’s been slowly happening ever since, and will until he has put all his enemies under Christ’s feet (I Cor. 15:25).

One of my favorite passages pointing to Christ’s transformational power accomplished in the gospel is Isaiah 65. I used to think it applied only when he returns and transforms all things ultimately. This verse seemed to confirm that:

17 “See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.

How could this not be at his second coming? Now I realize given the rest of the passage, this is describing what is happening because of this first coming, his first Advent. It’s a metaphorical description of what Christ came to accomplish, and will be literal as well when he returns. Think about it. Can you even imagine a world without the gospel, without Christianity, without the multitudes of transformations, personal and societal, it brought? No! You can’t.

It’s clear from the rest of the passage this can only refer to our current fallen world where sin’s effects still exist, including death:

“Never again will there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not live out his years;
the one who dies at a hundred
will be thought a mere child;
the one who fails to reach a hundred
will be considered accursed.
21 They will build houses and dwell in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
22 No longer will they build houses and others live in them,
or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree,
so will be the days of my people;
my chosen ones will long enjoy
the work of their hands.
23 They will not labor in vain,
nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune;
for they will be a people blessed by the Lord,
they and their descendants with them.
24 Before they call I will answer;
while they are still speaking I will hear.
25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox,
and dust will be the serpent’s food.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,”
says the Lord.

It is difficult to see how this refers to a sinless, perfected world where death and the effects of the fall are completely eradicated. Some will say the wolf and the lamb feeding together is certainly in the new heavens and earth, but it could also be a metaphorical account of harmony among us as God’s creatures, and what will happen when everything is made new again.

Also, because of my post-Covid health epiphany, I see the possibility of a hundred plus year healthy lifespan as a real possibility in the generations to come. I also love that the Lord is telling us because of “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17), we will “long enjoy” the work of our hands. As Paul says, our “labor in the Lord is not in vain” (I Cor. 15:58), both now and into forever. All of this is the gospel! All of it the good news! Proclaim it from the rooftops: Our God is the Lord Almighty!

Developing an Attitude of Gratitude and the Atheist Dilemma

Developing an Attitude of Gratitude and the Atheist Dilemma

Dec 24, 2025 | Apologetics

I recently saw an article that attracted me because of the title, “The Ingratitude of the Well-Fed.” The author, Maarten Boudry, explains what the piece is about in the subtitle: “We need to cultivate an appreciation for the abundance that modernity has bestowed instead of taking it for granted.” We have no idea just how much we take for granted. Unfortunately, the article is now behind a paywall on the Quilette.com site, but the first couple of paragraphs give us the basic idea of the author’s perspective. Here’s the first one:

In my June essay “The Enlightenment’s Gravediggers,” I examined the curious phenomenon of anti-Western self-loathing as a supply-side effect. People everywhere like to complain about their life (the demand side), but only free societies offer abundant opportunities to do so with impunity (the supply side). As a result of this asymmetry, free societies become victims of their own success, subject to relentless self-criticism in a way that unfree societies largely are not.

This is primarily an affliction of the left which drinks deeply from the lies of Rousseau and Marx, but a lack of gratitude is a sinful human predilection, and not just for we modern people. My only disappointment with the piece was when Boudry said he’s an atheist. I really didn’t think they existed anymore, but apparently they do, and we’ll discuss that below related to gratitude. But I was inspired by what this atheist wrote to do some reflection on gratitude, and the importance of it for Christians.

Count Your Blessings One by One
This is the title of a hymn from the 19th century, and the chorus says:

Count your blessings, name them one by one;
Count your blessings, see what God hath done;

I’ve often thought over the years if I actually did this it could take days. The blessings God has bestowed on us in the time in which we live are innumerable, not to mention all the non-material and spiritual blessings. As Paul says in Ephesians 1:

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

Paul also quotes a version of Isaiah 64:4 in I Corinthians 2, and I love it in the King James Version:

9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

The verse in Isaiah says our God “who acts on behalf of those who wait for him.” This includes material as well as spiritual and familial blessings, but let’s focus on the material for a moment.

The reason we take for granted the blessings of living in the modern world is our ignorance of history, and how horribly difficult life was for people, from paupers to kings, prior to the 20th century. Recorded history goes back approximately 5,000 years, and for about 4,900 of those years, death, disease, and starvation were a common feature of life. Just staying alive was a challenge. Clean water and basic sanitation were something nobody took for granted because they were so rare—we think it’s our birthright. Cheap filtered water is available to us whenever we want it, and indoor plumbing is everywhere. For all of those 4,900 years people just couldn’t flush human waste away. Disease was often rampant because of it.

Child birth was perilous, both for the woman and the child, and children making into adulthood was something people hoped for, but didn’t count on. It always amazes me that people had children before the 20th century. God made the sex drive so powerful that despite all the risks, people kept having them. Diseases that are easily cured today with antibiotics and medical intervention, killed people. Plagues and famine were common. If someone had a toothache, they either got it pulled or died. One could go on, but we have no idea just how easy we have it. Are we grateful? Given our sinful nature, we have to teach ourselves not to complain and be grateful; that shouldn’t be difficult, but often it is.

Even in the 20th century the abundance to be found in America and the West was inconceivable to most people in the world. Boudry’s article has a picture of Boris Yeltsin visiting a grocery store in 1989 prior to the fall of the Soviet Union. I remember that, and how the news was filled with stories about how blown away he was by the cornucopia of affordable goods available to all Americans. Grocery stores and modern food production, even as we complain about processed food, is a miracle. Like Yeltsin’s experience implies, people were amazed by it in the 20th century. I worked at a small college in Pennsylvania in the early 90s, and some students from Africa visited for a semester. Going to a grocery store for the first time was beyond their comprehension. They had a hard time believing it was real. We don’t have to grow our own fruits and vegetables, kill and prepare animals to eat, milk the cows, or bake the bread. We go to the store, put it in the cart, complain about inflation, go home and cook it on our gas or electric stove, and keep the rest in a refrigerator or freezer. We can now even have it all delivered to our door for a pittance. Thank you, God!

And it’s amazing what’s happened since I grew up in the 60s and 70s. Back then there was something called the Club for Rome, a think tank established in Rome in 1968. They published a report in 1972 called, “The Limits to Growth,” and it “warned of potential global collapse in the 21st century if growth trends continued unchecked.” This pessimistic assessment assumed a Malthusian perspective, (from 19th century British cleric Thomas Malthus), that we live in a world of finite resources, and the more of us there are, the less there will be for everybody. They and others predicted mass starvation as early as the 1980s. In fact, because we live in a world God created to sustain His creatures, the more the merrier! Poverty and starvation have declined dramatically since the 1980s exactly because of economic growth and increased population. Yet leftists still condemn both, while we give thanks. Now instead of overpopulation being a threat, the problem is not enough children being born!

If you want to cultivate more of an attitude of gratitude, a great practice is to teach yourself to be amazed at common, every day features of life (and if you have children, teach them to be too!). A few years ago, for example, I was visiting my sister and her husband and had taken a shower. I walked downstairs and exclaimed to them: You won’t believe this, but I turned these knobs, and hot water came out of the wall! Can you believe it! They rolled their eyes. Open a refrigerator or freezer, and be amazed. Flip on a light switch, marvel. Turn on your computer or phone, and the Library of Alexandria or of Congress can’t match it. I am surrounded by books in my office, and not only are they affordable and widely available, but I can read them! Most people prior to the 19th century were illiterate. And I have my very own Bible! Something unheard of until the late 19th and 20th centuries. Take a plane, train, or automobile and zip to the other side of town or the state or country, and be astounded. One could go on, but you get the idea.

Lastly, Hollywood. We watch movies or TV shows set in the past, and things don’t seem all that bad. Production designers do an incredible job, and we think we’re getting a real picture of how life was hundreds or thousands of years ago, but we’re not. As good a job as Hollywood does, nothing can capture just how perilous and fragile life was in the past. Remember, count your blessings, name them one by one . . .

The Theological Grounding for Gratitude
The basis of all true gratitude is in God, the theos in theology, the study of God. Without a personal, sovereign, Creator, and Savior God to whom to be grateful, gratitude can only be a fraction of what it was intended to be. The author of our piece as an atheist can only argue for gratitude on a pragmatic level. It’s better if you are grateful for the benefits of modern life, so be grateful. The atheist, and agnostic for that matter, can be grateful to other people for their role in providing those benefits, but being grateful to a divine benefactor who makes it all possible in the first place is what we were created for. Not to mention the truth that God and not random acts of chance are responsible for all of it. In a sly mocking of atheist pretensions while my kids were growing up, when we would see something amazing, like a beautiful sunset or full moon I would exclaim, praise chance! One has to be educated into atheism because even to a child the created world appears to be, well, created!

One of my family prayers as my kids were growing up was asking God to give us hearts of gratitude. I did this because I know how inclined we are to complain and see the negative. I know this had some traction with them when I’ve heard my daughter, who now has her own growing little family, pray for hearts of gratitude. I also taught them how being thankful, even for the tough things in life, keeps us from falling into self-pity and seeing ourselves as victims. Those two emotions are evil because they reflect a lack of trust in God. In fact, they turn our circumstances into God, as if they were sovereign and He is not. Paul addresses exactly this in I Thessalonians 5:

18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

This was Paul being even more direct than usual. Complaining in any manner, even if it’s just annoyance or frustration (a major challenge for me), is sin. So, I give thanks a lot because I’m so tempted to “trust” my circumstances. My morning prayers always start with repentance and giving thanks, and I try to practice thanksgiving throughout the day, especially when I don’t feel like it. Another verse from Paul is especially challenging in a fallen world living among fallen people in a fallen body, Romans 8:28:

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

I would joke with our kids that Paul couldn’t possibly mean all. Maybe 98%? Nope, all. And notice how Paul prefaces it with, “And we know,” not speculate, hope, but know. We can be certain God will somehow, in some way, use it all, everything and every moment of our lives, for our ultimate good and His glory. It is on this foundation upon which we can obey Paul’s injunction to give thanks in all circumstances, knowing our sovereign Creator God who made us and died for us has our back, always.

Another way to theologically ground gratitude is looking at one of its synonyms, appreciation. To appreciate can connote, “to understand a situation or thing fully,” to appreciate it. When we are grateful in this sense, we understand that the ultimate rationale for a thankful disposition is agreeing with God’s definition of things, not ours. This can be difficult, but from Paul’s perspective gratitude becomes the assessment of reality as it actually is, not what we wish or hope it would be. This is something our atheist friend cannot hope to capture in his perspective of a lonely God-less universe that came from nothing for no reason at all. Not only are we dependent and limited creatures, but our view of things and our reason is clouded by sin. Without God’s revelation to us in Scripture and in Christ we’re in spiritual darkness. As Christians we submit our perspective to God’s omniscient characterization of things, and teach our kids to do the same. Gratitude is obedience.

The Self and Gratitude
The Bible is full of commands to be thankful. But what if I don’t feel thankful? What if the circumstances I’m encountering are really crappy? These reasonable questions assume gratitude is about us, about our feelings and our circumstances. A perfect recipe for misery is to make sure it’s all about us. Who are the most insufferable people to be around? Those who think everything is about them.

Augustine and Luther describe sin as, Incurvatus in se, or being turned or curved inward on oneself. If we are the center of our existence, and if our desires, our ideas, our accomplishments, our comfort, our glory are what counts, we will never be thankful. These things are rightfully important to us, and to God, but they must never be most important. If they are, everything in life will be out of proportion, and reality distorted. By contrast, Augustine defined virtue as “rightly ordered love”:

But living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things: to love things, that is to say, in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what should be loved less, or an equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally.

Understanding the relative value of things is a big part of curing the sinful inward curve.

Some years ago I came across a wonderful example of someone who understands Augustine, a young Christian mother, 35, who learned she had stage four cancer (since recovered and doing well). Kate Bowler is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Duke Divinity School and the author of “Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel.” She didn’t see much prosperity in that moment. Her insights about how Christians ought to think about life, not only in the face of terminal cancer, but every day are worth contemplating:

When we overly‑instrumentalize prayer, we become convinced we’ve connected all the dots between us and God. To be totally honest, I cannot say things like “It would be better for my son not to have a mom, because surely God is working in all things for the good of those who love him.” That sounds like a lie to me, because I’m working from my desires forward toward God’s.

What I can say honestly is things that work backwards from God’s desires to mine ontologically: God is good, God is faithful, God’s desires for me are good. When I work from God to me I can say true and beautiful things. When I work from me to God, I end up lying.

This is brilliant! These are the two stark choices of existence. We either start with our desires and work up toward God, which distorts everything, or from God’s being, his character, to our desires. Charles Hodge explains these choices wonderfully:

Order and truth depend on things being put in their right relations. If we make the good of the creature the ultimate object of all God’s works, then we subordinate God to the creature, and endless confusion and unavoidable error are the consequence. It is characteristic of the Bible that it places God first, and the good of the creation second.

Hodge zeroes in on the heart of the issue and argues something that will not go over well with sinful human beings, especially with we who live in the ubiquitous iEverthing culture:

Few principles . . . have been so productive of false doctrine and immorality as the principle that all virtue consists in benevolence, that happiness is the highest good, and that whatever promotes happiness is right.

Such a mindset leaves little room for living in an imperfect, fallen world. If you want to be miserable, make your life all about your happiness. We will never understand what seems to be a contradiction, how we can be grateful and not happy, grateful and unfilled, grateful and miserable, grateful and dissatisfied, grateful and grumpy, simultaneously. We can’t completely avoid these negative attitudes. The question for us, then, is do our internal responses or interpretation of circumstances actually make them what we interpret them to be?

Gratitude is inextricably tied to God’s definition of things. Rephrasing Groucho Marx and Richard Pryor, who are you going to believe, God or your lying eyes? We are simply not capable of any kind of ultimate, eternal, accurate assessment of anything apart from God’s revelation. Unless we frame things in the biggest of big pictures, that which is eternal, all we are left with is distortion. Our perspective is not authoritative, or accurate, merely because it is ours. Thus we give thanks because we agree with God, we trust God, and that in the end is how we develop an attitude of gratitude.