Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Part I

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‘We Pray to Achieve a Future That Reflects the Truth, Beauty, and Goodness of Christ’s Eternal Kingdom in Heaven’: The Unprecedented White House Statement on Holy Week

Presidents tend to put out major statements timed, for example, for major holidays. And so recurringly, when you have, on the Christian calendar, events such as Christmas and Easter, you can count on the fact that most administrations will put out some kind of statement, usually pretty innocuous, just recognizing the fact that there are many Christians who are going to be observing those holidays.

Now at the same time, they present all kinds of opportunities for trouble, and that’s exactly what came last year when President Joe Biden released a statement and then Easter came, and on that Sunday he also declared it to be a day of solidarity with the Transgender Visibility Day that led to a lot of quite deserved controversy.

In his first term in office, President Trump tended to put out the kind of normal statement. What was released this week by the White House catches my attention. It’s simply entitled Presidential Message on Holy Week 2025, and it begins in the natural way you would have an administration used political language, “This Holy Week, Melania and I join in prayer with Christians celebrating the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the living Son of God to conquer death, freed us from sin and unlock the gates of heaven for all of humanity.”

Now, when it comes to some of this language, let me just say that as a theologian, I do not believe that the atoning work of Christ unlocked the gates of heaven for all of humanity, rather for the redeemed. But at the same time, I want to acknowledge that the theological language found in this statement really does set it apart from, so far as I know, any previous presidential statement released by any White House or administration. This is stunningly different language.

Now, who wrote this language? Probably some White House staffer. It was vetted of course by White House authorities. But it eventually carries the weight and the name of the President of the United States who had to agree to this statement going out.

Now so far as I know, President Trump, individually, say, behind a microphone has never articulated the specific doctrinal statements that are found here, but I just want to underline the fact that there’s something more than just a statement here. Let’s look at the words, “During the sacred week, we acknowledge that the glory of Easter Sunday cannot come without the sacrifice Jesus Christ made on the cross. In his final hours on earth, Christ willingly endured excruciating pain, torture, and execution on the cross out of a deep and abiding love for all his creation. Through his suffering, we have redemption. Through his death, we are forgiven of our sins. Through his resurrection, we have hope of eternal life. On Easter morning, the stone is rolled away, the tomb is empty, and light prevails over darkness, signaling that death does not have the final word.”

The point I want to make is that those are explicitly theological claims. That’s not the language you expect to hear from a government official, not to mention the president of the United States. There is something here which should have our attention.

Let me go back and say, as a theologian, there are some phrases here that I would want to clarify. But as a theologian, I also want to tell you there is deep theological substance here, which is rather comprehensively unexpected. This puts the White House on the line on some of these issues. So at the very time you have the larger secularization of the society, and as we’re going to see shortly, you have a retreat on even the articulation of generalized Christian doctrine, to have something this clear stated pointing to the atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ and to his resurrection from the dead, that’s a pretty amazing thing.

But even as the statement then turns to a defense of religious freedom, I want to point to the conclusion because in theological terms and in political terms, this is just incredibly significant. The statement says, “As we focus on Christ’s redeeming sacrifice, we look to his love, humility, and obedience even in life’s most difficult and uncertain moments. This week we pray for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on our beloved nation. We pray that America will remain a beacon of faith, hope, and freedom for the entire world. And we pray to achieve a future that reflects the truth, beauty and goodness of Christ’s eternal kingdom in heaven.”

Now, what stands out in that? What should grab our attention? Well, number one, it’s a presidential statement calling for and praying for and outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon our beloved nation. That’s pretty unprecedented in language. You now have clear explicit Trinitarian language as the structure for this statement. But it’s the last words I read that I want us to note.

The President of the United States is commander-in-chief, chief executive of the nation. He is the President of the United States. The United States is at this point a superpower on the world scene, arguably the most powerful nation ever to emerge in all of human history. It is itself a massive political entity. And yet you have something referenced here in this statement in which the President’s statement says, “We pray to achieve a future that reflects the truth, beauty and goodness of Christ’s eternal kingdom in heaven.” That reference to Christ’s eternal kingdom is very, very interesting because it places the kingdom, so to speak, represented by the government of the United States of America in a very different context than most presidents ever discussed them.

It is the job of American presidents to stand up and say, “This is the greatest nation on earth. It is the greatest nation that has ever existed. It is the job of the commander in chief and the chief executive of the United States to defend the greatness of the United States and to call for the perpetuation of our national strength and responsibility and America’s rightful place in the world order.” It is, if not unprecedented, incredibly unusual to look to a statement like this when a president of the United States invokes a higher allegiance than allegiance to the United States of America, a reference here to Christ’s eternal kingdom in heaven.

Now, as Christians, we remember that Christ taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” So Christ’s kingdom is indeed His eternal kingdom in heaven. Now, we also understand that that kingdom will one day be fully realized on earth when the Lord returns. But my point is the theological emphasis here that acknowledges an allegiance higher than our proper allegiance to the kingdom, and I say that metaphorically, to the order, to the polity, to the nation which is the United States of America.

I think this is likely to bring a lot of cynical response from people around the world. I think it is likely to be celebrated by many Christians as a very clear statement of Christian affirmation coming from the White House. And even though President Trump has, at least to my knowledge, never made any kind of statement with this kind of clarity, at least the White House has in the President’s name, and I think a lot of people are going to focus on the explicitly Christian content in this statement and I want to focus on that as well.

I also want to come back and say, the acknowledgement of a greater allegiance is, in theological and political terms, perhaps the most revolutionary, acknowledging Christ’s eternal kingdom in heaven. America has such an important role to play in this world, but it is not the kingdom that is coming. Christians at least should note when a president of the United States acknowledges an even higher authority than the United States.

Part II

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Scrapping Easter for ‘Inclusivity’? A Secular Society Eventually Reverts to Paganism

Meanwhile, at the same time of the year, we’re going to turn to a development in Great Britain, the Telegraph of London reporting, that a local school in Hampshire has announced that it is going to be canceling all Easter celebrations in the name of inclusivity. And this is making headlines in the UK, but they’ve crossed also over here to the United States. The headmaster said, or the head teacher in this case, “By not holding specific religious celebrations, we aim to create a more inclusive atmosphere that honors and respects the beliefs of all our children and their families.”

Now, at least in part behind this is a massive change demographically in much of England. England has had a low birth rate as have other advanced countries. England has increasingly been marked in terms of a diversification of its population by immigration. And many of those immigrants have come from places that had formerly been associated with the British Empire. And that includes persons coming with Muslim identities, and from India, Hindu identities. And there is just a lot going on in Britain that would not have been the case at the midpoint of the 20th century. There is a religious pluralism there that for his historical reasons is actually very interesting.

But you’ll see the response here is to pull back on any identification in a public way or on the part of a public school with Christianity, even to acknowledging what those schools have acknowledged for, well, virtually their entire existence, and that is the two Christian holidays celebrating the birth and then the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. That has now become a matter which defies inclusivity. In the name of inclusivity, these celebrations are going to be canceled.

Now, here’s where I want to step back and say I wonder just how much Christian content there was to either of these in the first place. Let’s just focus on Easter. It often comes down to hidden eggs and a celebration of cute bunnies and chicks. You really have to wonder whether or not there was any serious attention to the Christian truth claims concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ in these celebrations. But the point is, that what you do have in those celebrations insofar as there is any reference to Christmas and Easter, there is at least in terms of what you might call cultural Christianity, there is the acknowledgement that you can’t explain British culture, you can’t explain British politics, you can’t explain British history without reference to Christianity, the formative influence and authority of Christianity.

But I want to make a different point, and that is that when you have this teacher, this head teacher in this case, making this announcement, the school says that it is going to leave religious celebrations aside. It’s going to focus on culturally-themed activities. In the letter sent by the head teacher, she said she acknowledged there may be sadness in this, but, “However, we believe that this decision aligns with our values of inclusivity and respect for diversity.” She went on to say, “We are exploring alternative ways to celebrate the season and future years that will be inclusive of all children and reflect the rich cultural diversity of our community.”

Okay, I just want to make a connection that I think a lot of Christians might not make here. There’s more here than meets the eye, and that comes right down to chicks and bunnies and eggs and all the rest. Here is something we need to acknowledge. When you look at the history, for example of human civilizations, you will notice the human civilizations tend to develop holidays. They tend to develop great cultural celebrations. And this was true village by village with the emergence of civilization and culture, even at its say most elementary levels and then expanding out of course to what we now have as mass civilization, mass culture.

But in almost every one of these cultures there was some kind of celebration in the winter tide and also in the springtime. And so there were a couple of celebrations you can just begin to name culture by culture regardless of the particular direction of the worldview. Simply because of the agricultural cycle and the reproductive cycle, there were these different celebrations. Once all the harvests had been drawn in and all those things have been collected as the winter turned cold, you tend to have winter celebrations. And that, in the Christian world, at least in part is the background to the timing of Christmas, the celebration of the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, which by the way in Scripture is not timed to any particular season. That’s just become a part of the Christian tradition.

When it comes to the Christian celebration of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, there were pagan antecedents. There were spring celebrations. And so in one sense, as a part of the Christianization of the culture, what Christians did was to take the opportunity afforded at a celebration that time of the year in a way that was far more closely tied by the way to the calendar in terms of the life and ministry of Jesus on earth because of the Jewish calendar and the Passover and all the rest. We tend to have more historical data there. And thus what was properly, I think, called the Festival of the Resurrection, it has been referred to in the shorthand of Easter, which by the way, harkens back to some of those previous celebrations.

So why am I talking about this? Let’s just say that you want to strip away all the Christian influence, more than a millennium of Christianity there in the UK, in Britain. You want to strip away, and just in the name of diversity and inclusivity, you want to have some kind of celebration. And we’re talking about school-aged children here. Let’s just say kindergarten through sixth graders. You’re talking about little kids. You’re going to have a celebration. And in place of Easter, you’re going to do something else. In place of Christmas, presumably you’re also going to have to do something else if you have any kind of consistency to your argument. So what else are you going to do? My point is what you’re going to see, whether it’s acknowledged or not, is a reversion to ancient paganism.

That might be a shocking statement to you, but I’m just going to tell you, I’m almost certain that’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to end up celebrating chicks and bunnies and all the rest in terms of fertility, but all the Christian context is going to be gone, so all you’re left with is fertility.

The same thing can happen all throughout the calendar. The problem is, of course, that when you secularize a nation that had been forged for more than a millennium in Christianity, it’s not going to revert to nothing. It is going to revert to the paganisms that were there long ago. And trust me, those paganisms are powerful and they are always powerful energies to be brought back. In any event, I hope for helpful and constructive thoughts as Christians celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead.

Part III

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Our Young Adults Need ‘Adulting Classes’ Now? We are Failing at the Task of Helping Young People Grow into Adulthood

Well, all right, let’s shift to a different topic. The Economist there in London has offered in its latest issue, that’s dated April the 12th, an article that really should have our attention. It’s entitled, I love this, typical British wit. The headline in the article is “Oh, Grow Up.” The subhead of the article, which by the way is reported from Austin, Texas, so don’t take any comfort that this is coming from across the Atlantic in the form of The Economist. It is being reported from Austin, Texas, so this is close to home, “Oh, Grow Up.” The subhead, “Need to Learn How to Change a Tire or File Your Taxes? Adulting Courses are on the Rise in America.”

Now, Christians need to take note of this kind of cultural development because it tells us something basic has gone wrong in our culture. One of the things that’s gone wrong is that a lot of young adults are perhaps more young than adult. And when it comes to many of this simple practical issues of adulthood, they don’t have a clue.

In one of the fascinating turns in this article, you have a young man who graduates high in his class from a prestigious university. He gets an entry-level job in a prestigious corporation. But when it comes to, say, washing his clothes, he doesn’t have a clue, or any other kind of mundane thing. Financial details. This young man speaks of being with others his age and having to choose a health insurance plan he didn’t know what to do. And speaking of all the new young adult hires, he said, “Every one of us went out into the hallway and called our parents.” He says, “We were graduates of really elite schools and we still didn’t know what to do.”

Now the article really is both revealing and in an awkward way hilarious. And we are told that a school in Austin, Texas, that is Austin Community College, actually has a class called “Adulting 101.” We’re told that the students range in age from older teenagers to, well, those who should be adults in their mid-forties. “ACC,” that is Austin Community College, “has been running such programs for six years. The workshops are designed to help people successfully navigate adulthood, even those who legally and practically have been navigating it for quite some time.” “The topics run the gamut from basic how to dress appropriately for the job interview to advance, such as how to file income taxes.” And The Economist then can’t help offering a quip “that subject meaning taxes will surely be top of mind for Americans as their tax filings are due on April the 15th.”

The Economist goes on to report in this Austin Bay story that institutions are “helping people grow up.” Now you have to wonder if that really works. Can institutions really help people grow up? I’m going to answer the question. Yes, sometimes they can. That is exactly what has been a major function of, say, the institution known as the United States military. And you can expand that through history to military service. A lot of young men, and now increasingly young men and young women, really don’t know how to navigate adulthood and they find out when they’re in uniform. And in some cases, they have to make these decisions and they do not have their parents close in hand, and so they have to learn how to do this.

Now in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, and it’s more than a memoir, it’s also a cultural analysis, JD Vance, the vice president of the United States, looked back at this period in his life and growing up in a situation of what he describes as a good bit of deprivation. He didn’t know how to adult. And he really credits the United States military with teaching him how to adult. It was that military service that helped him to adult. And he pointed out the military takes that responsibility very seriously.

In one of the anecdotes in his book, he talks about finally having money to go buy a car. And when he gets ready to go buy a car, it is, as I recall, a sergeant who shows up and says, “I’m going to show you how to do this.” And it’s a substitute family In that situation. I think a lot of young men, especially throughout history, have found themselves learning how to adult when honestly they were put into a situation in which they didn’t have much choice but to do so.

But this article coming from Austin, Texas tells us that this is really a widespread problem. and I think in part The Economist based in London is looking at this and saying, “Look at those Americans. Look at the Colonials. They’re failing in this way.” And yet there is the acknowledgement the same thing is happening in other nations including Britain. There’s a failure of young people to grow into adulthood.

Now, I’m going to leave this article in terms of a lot of the specifics that were mentioned after this. By the way, one of the things that is mentioned is that when it comes to this question, it turns out that common sense is not too common. You’ve heard that before. It is profoundly true.

But I want to speak as a Christian to this because when you think of this in a biblical lens, the big problem is that not going into adulthood is a lot bigger issue than not knowing how to file your taxes or to choose health insurance or for that matter to fix a shirt. That’s another thing that shows up here and just a minor task. The bigger issue is that young people aren’t showing up as adults in the most creation order intensive ways. They’re not showing up ready to be married. They’re not showing up ready to be parents. They’re not showing up ready to take leadership in the society, in the church, and also in their home. And that is a greater tragedy because the biblical worldview tells us it’s not just about the larger group needing leadership, needing contribution. It’s not just about corporations needing workers. It’s not just about armies and navies and the marines needing soldiers and sailors and marines. It is not just about, say, schools needing students and hospitals needing doctors. It is about all these individuals needing to work their way into maturity, into adulthood.

It is not just a problem for society. This failure is a problem for the young people themselves. And at least a part of this should motivate Christians to say, “If we don’t know anything else, we better know how to make certain that the young people in our churches grow up as adults on time and know how to adult” if you’re going to mess up the English language to use that term. If they’re going to learn how to adult, they need to learn how to adult so that they show up adult on time.

Let’s remember the fact that when the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, his protege or one of his sons in the ministry, he said to him, “Let no man despise your youth.” The shocking thing was that he was showing up as a leader so young. We desperately need more and more of that in the Christian Church. That should become more than norm than the exception. And it’s another way the church should be the exception to the cultural rule around us.

Now, please, I want to say to pastors and church leaders, don’t have a course in your church on how to adult. Make it the course of the church as a part of our responsibility to make certain that the Word of God is preached and disciples are made and adulthood is achieved without having ever to reduce ourselves to talking about adulting, please.

Part IV

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A Deadly Helicopter Crash: In the Wake of Tragedy We Seek Answers, Real Answers, and That’s Revealing In Itself

All right, a final thought. I think all of us were caught by surprise with the horror of the helicopter crash that took place last Thursday there near New York City. It was an aerial tour of New York City. The crash took place on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. It’s a horrifying thing, just the site by the way and just about everything in that area of the country is on some camera. The site of that fuselage, the passenger cabin of that helicopter plunging into the river with such horrible loss of life, it is just absolutely impossible to get out of your mind. And you’re talking about a young Spanish family, a Spanish executive with his wife, and three very young children along with the helicopter pilot who was also killed in this accident. Just even seeing it, it’s hard to imagine anyone could have survived.

Okay, what’s the point here? It’s not just that bad things happen. We know that. It’s not just that it was a tragic accident. And of course, in terms of the math, this kind of tragedy, missing the video and the New York location, something like this is happening all over the world just in terms of accidents. Most of them on the road rather than in the air.

But my point is this. It’s really interesting to see a newspaper such as The New York Times run articles about the crash, and the articles are focused on one thing. We want an explanation as to how it happened. We want to know exactly how it happened. And we want to know was it a failure of the structural integrity of the helicopter? Was it something that struck the helicopter? What can we learn from this? We want to know the facts. We want to know exactly what happened. We want to reconstruct the accident. We want to do so not only because we want to know what happened to that helicopter, but we don’t want it to happen again. That’s a rightful reasonable response.

I just want to point to the fact that when it comes to some kind of news event like this, Americans don’t say just any version of truth will do. They don’t just say, “I think some kind of relative understanding of what happened or a socially constructed meaning of this.” That’s something we can debate looking in the future.

Now they want to know exactly what happened, what bolt failed, what hit that helicopter, what physical pressures on that helicopter caused it to break apart in the air and fall so horrifyingly into the river. It is a reminder that at times, you have a society that says, “We’re not really sure what truth is.” In a moment of urgency, they’re pretty sure they actually do know what truth is. They want to know what actually happened. They want a rational explanation. They want the truth, and I think that also underlines something.

Our hearts are drawn to the tragedy. We grieve with the family. And especially when you think about the loss of that sweet family, young children in that helicopter, you think about the pilot, you think about the terror on that helicopter. But then you think about the fact that in the aftermath, just saying, “Well, something close to a reasonable explanation will be sufficient.” No, the human heart hungers for something more. They want the truth. We want the truth. I think we know why. That’s pretty revealing.

Part V

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A Much Needed Word for Pastors and Parents of Teenage Boys and Young Men: Why I Released a Special Edition of The Briefing on the Problem of Sextortion

Folks, before I sign off today, I put out a special edition of The Briefing last Saturday.

I have never done anything exactly like that before in terms of a Saturday release. And it’s on the problem of sextortion and because it is a threat to so many young people, particularly boys and young men. Ages 14 to 19 turn out to be, it looks like, the most endangered ages. It is deliberate exploitation by online predators. And one of the reasons I want to draw attention to it is simply because it is affecting so many teenagers, so many young men and horrifyingly affecting so many families who are now grieving because this sextortion is leading to self-harm on the part of many of these boys and young men, and it is a crisis that in Christian terms, we can understand.

I just want to arm parents, youth pastors, pastors and others with the knowledge of what’s going on here because we need to intervene and speak to our boys and young men and be really, really clear, number one, about what’s right and what’s wrong, but secondly, what to do when you get in trouble. Come find us. But most importantly in this case, what to do when you’re in trouble because it’s in the urgency of that moment that things can turn so dangerous. So again, that’s a special edition of The Briefing. It’s a special edition because I needed to speak in that setting in a way I would not speak directly to the entire audience of The Briefing. I hope if it is for you, it will be very helpful.