I’m back from another week of busyness and procrastinating with more thoughts on exile. So let’s get right into it! First, I want to recap where we’ve been and summarize why I think this topic is so important, then I want to look at two more ways the phrase exiles in Babylon has been used.

First, for Jeremiah (and Ezekiel and Daniel and Esther), being an exile was not an abstract theological metaphor. It was a concrete historical socio-political reality. The Israelites had lost their home and lived as foreigners in a kingdom that worshipped all kinds of strange gods. From this place of powerlessness, they were foreign residents that Jeremiah called to bring the flourishing of the garden with them wherever they went. They were to name wrongs, like Ezekiel. And when given political influence, they used it to seek peace and help their people, like Daniel and Esther. Jeremiah ruled out violent rebellion as an option, as Babylon was God’s judgment on his people, but he also ruled out total assimilation, promising to rescue Israel someday.

Peter later adopts this language to refer to the Church in first-century Rome. Like the Jews in Babylon 500 years earlier, the Church was in a place of very little power. Their king, Jesus, also ruled out violent revolution as an option and total assimilation to the Roman way of life. But is it appropriate to adopt the language of exile to apply to the church now? Especially to American churches in the twenty-first-century? It depends…

If it’s being used as a metaphor for political persecution, like the church was persecuted in Rome, then no. This might be controversial, but American Christians are not currently persecuted. We still enjoy many privileges of living in a country with a Christian heritage. There is still a norm of at least nominal Christianity across much of the country. It would be more than a little dishonoring to those who undergo real persecution to imply that religious liberty is under threat for Christians in the United States. In fact, I’d side with David French, who says that though Christianity is publicly less popular now than it was in previous generations (sometimes for good reason), religious protections for Christians have expanded in recent years. They haven’t diminished. While Christians lost some cultural credibility, and that feels like loss of protection or power, today’s Supreme Court is far more protective of religious liberty than they have been the last hundred years. Religious Constitutional rights are stronger than ever (for Christians, other protections for other religions might be more up in the air right now). So if Peter used the picture primarily to describe the Church’s powerlessness in how it related to Rome, then it’s not an appropriate picture for today. But I don’t think that’s what Peter is doing. Especially since he doesn’t seem to frame exile as a place the Church should try to escape. He doesn’t encourage Christians to gain any political power. In fact, he seems to command the opposite, urging Christians to get along with authorities. Religious liberty is not Peter’s goal. Which brings us to another understanding of exile: The Benedict Option.

The Benedict Option Exiles

This political perspective sees all culture as Babylon. It draws a very black-and-white dividing line between church and state, as the book of Revelation does. The state is a satan-powered beast, and the Church is the embodiment of God’s kingdom that stands against it. This view agrees with Jesus in Mark 10 that cultural power and influence aren’t how the kingdom of God expands. Rather, it stresses that the Church should be a counter-culture. It should, to an extent, follow the Amish in removing itself from the world, and being radically different, developing its own Christian culture. An exile culture. And push back against the culture of this world (Babylon). It plants gardens, as Jeremiah says. But doesn’t seek to influence Babylon through coercion. Rather, it waits for Babylon’s demise at the return of Jesus and the coming of God’s kingdom.

There are many things I find appealing about this view, but it wanders into some idealistic landmines. One thing I repeatedly find myself saying is that there is no Christian culture. Christianity is, by definition, transcultural. Which actually means it shouldn’t be counter-cultural, as Lee Camp points out in his book Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians.

Cultures are like individuals. Individuals are sinful. They have unique temptations and faults. But they’re also each an image of God. They have their own unique gifts, talents, and God-given goodness, whether they’re Christians or not. Hopefully, if someone is Christian, then they grow in love and overcome their temptation and sin, with the help of the Spirit. But there is no Christian personality or non-Christian personality. Rather, each person reflects Christ in their own way and sins in their own way. As Esau McCaulley puts it, as God says “yes” and “no” to each individual, God says “yes” and “no” to every culture.

So the Church should be the best expression of any particular culture. It should celebrate the unique gifts, history, and practices that culture inhabits. It should praise the parts of that culture that exemplify attributes of God’s goodness. And the Church should critique all parts of any culture that do not reflect God’s goodness. Sometimes that means transforming practices and symbols, giving them new meaning, and sometimes it means wholesale rejecting practices and symbols. This isn’t colonialism because it isn’t measuring one culture by another culture’s standard, but by the trans-national, multi-cultural kingdom of God.

So the Church shouldn’t be strictly counter-cultural. Rather, it should engage in what Miroslav Volf calls soft difference. Noticeably different while fully engaged as members of culture, able to see where God is moving in unexpected ways. We are not those who stand above the world and condemn it, but those who bring the best of it out and speak truth to the worst of it.

Cosmic Exiles

I sympathize with the Benedict Option’s refusal to seek power and influence, especially in a Machiavellian ends-justify-means kind of way often displayed in dominionism. But if you’re a US citizen, then you’ve been given a small measure of power. And you’re responsible for how you use it. The Benedict Option, though drawing on the language of exile a lot, often loses the fact that Daniel wielded the power he had for the good of Babylon, even though he didn’t seek it. Daniel wanted to protect his people. And Jesus calls us to love our neighbor, not just our Christian neighbors, but our Babylonian neighbors also. Daniel wanted peace and flourishing in Babylon as well. Not idealistically; he never believed Babylon would become Israel or God’s kingdom if he instituted Torah law or something like that. But he sought Babylon’s good as an expression of love. We don’t seek political power to bring God’s kingdom. We can’t bring God’s kingdom with political power. But if we are given political power, we are to use it sacrificially in love, because that’s how Jesus used his power. We seek justice for the marginalized, Christian or not, because when we do it for them, we do it for Jesus. We don’t do it to make America great or to make it God’s kingdom. We do it because Jesus is lord over every part of my life, and that includes my political life, and so I have a responsibility to love my neighbor there if possible.

This leads to what I believe is the healthiest adoption of the phrase exiles in Babylon. It’s similar to how Preston Sprinkle uses the term in his book Exiles in Babylon: The Church in the Shadow of Empire, though sometimes I think he leans toward the Benedict Option view. It’s that we are exiles not first and foremost politically, but cosmically. Our home is the new creation. Our home is not in this dimension. It is in the next. And this creation will become that new creation, but it hasn’t yet.

We experience that new creation when we gather as the church to eat the meal of the kingdom, when we live like we will live there, loving our neighbors and enemies, and we embody that creation now. We are like little colonies of the kingdom in each person in this world. And God will turn this world into that one, but until then we are simply to be signposts toward it. We aren’t its builders. We are its anticipators.

We don’t reject this world pretending to live in the kingdom all the time already; we become living testimonies of it to this world. And we follow our individual callings for how to live it out. Sometimes that looks like Ezekiel protesting injustice. Sometimes it looks like Daniel serving in leadership in Babylon while praying for God’s return. But being a cosmic exile means we serve because we love the people wherever we find ourselves. It’s not about political power, but loving in every aspect of life.

As Christians were described in the early church letter to Diognetus, “They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers.” Christians are to feel just as at home in our homeland as where we find ourselves on vacation. Or where we find ourselves displaced. Because we are exiles everywhere on this earth. Not because we are persecuted everywhere on this earth, or because we withdraw from every culture on this earth. Rather, we engage this earth with everything we have out of love, but not utopianism or desire for power. We love it because God loves it enough to rescue it. So we are exiles in a way, in that we are not home, and our countries are not our permanent homes. But they are the places we find ourselves in, and so we must do everything we can to love those around us.

For the record, I don’t enjoy breaking these posts into PARTS…but I keep writing way more than I’d expect anyone to read, so…let’s bring it back to circumcision one last time! I promise we will approach baptism very soon. Before we jump into what the New Testament has to say about circumcision of the heart, here are some important recaps of last week, which will lead us to the conclusion that circumcision of the heart does not replace physical circumcision of the foreskin:

• In ancient Hebrew, the word heart had less to do with passions, feelings, or emotions and more to do with thoughts, willpower, and desires. Your faithfulness, allegiance, or commitment to someone or something is driven by the heart. So a hard heart is not a bitter feeling, but a fixed will.

• Circumcision of the heart, softening of the heart, replacement of the heart, and having biblical law written on the heart are all prophetic metaphors for receiving God’s Spirit.

• God’s people receiving God’s Spirit is the sign of the renewal of the covenant (which had ended with exile), so that they can actually maintain covenant faithfulness.

• So, essentially, circumcision of the heart describes Israel’s unwavering faithfulness to God, which Israel was never able to accomplish without the empowerment of God’s Spirit.

The Book of Acts opens with Jesus resurrected, spending time with his disciples. Despite his apparent victory over death, the disciples ask Jesus, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6b). Jesus had been saying that the kingdom was at hand, and now he claims he has all authority. The kingdom clearly has come, but some key parts of the kingdom promised by the prophets are still missing, and the disciples notice. For example, the 12 tribes have not regathered and reunified. Only Judah and Benjamin have experienced the risen king. Also, the disciples seem no more capable of following biblical law than before. Jesus had done it, sure. But as a whole, it seems the people of Israel’s hearts remain uncircumcised. Jesus had participated in and exhausted the penal consequences (death, Deut. 30:19) of breaking the first covenant, but where are the markers of its renewal?

Jesus answers by promising them power (v. 8). This sets up the events of Pentecost in Acts, chapter 2. You probably know the story. The Spirit descends on the disciples and spreads from them to those from the diaspora gathered in Jerusalem. Peter even quotes Joel 2:28-32, announcing that this event is the fulfillment of the restoration of Israel. Pentecost is the circumcision of Israel’s heart. From there, the Spirit even spreads to the gentiles. This becomes Paul’s understanding of the Church.

Paul’s Ontological View of the World

Romans 6-8 is some of Paul’s densest prose. Without getting too lost in the weeds of it, Paul spills a lot of ink articulating a nuanced picture of biblical law and how it explains the arrival of the Spirit. Romans 7:14-25 is a famous passage about how “I” want to do one thing, but the members of my body end up doing another. NT Wright persuasively argues that this passage is not a description of Paul’s day-to-day inner life, as relatable as it may sound. It’s a way of telling Israel’s story as a whole. Israel received biblical law as a gift from the Spirit (v. 14). Importantly, Paul doesn’t see it as a burden or a bore, but as God’s description of loving fidelity and fullness of life. Even though Israel embraces that gift, and agrees to live into it, they were never really able to embody that long-term faithfulness. The prophets said that it was due to their hard-heartedness, their hearts of stone, or uncircumcised hearts. But Paul uses another picture. He says it was because they were composed of flesh and sold to sin (v. 14). Even though Israel wanted to do what was right, they couldn’t due to the members of their bodies being flesh and acting contrary to their minds. This is where it gets a little complicated, so let’s define these terms real quick, because it’s easy to assume Paul means things here he doesn’t.

For another project, I’m currently writing an insane amount on what Paul means by flesh, but I’ll try to keep it brief here. I believe Paul sees the world through an ontological lens. This is a controversial claim, and it can get confusing. I mean that Paul views God as the most real thing there is. He sees God as Life, Love, Goodness, and Beauty himself, all wrapped up into one Being. Not a being (among beings), but Being itself. And everything else that is real or exists simply borrows its existence from him. He lends his existence to things that are not him by sustaining them. He creates all good, because he is good, sustains it, and invites it all back into himself to reach its fullness (or maximum goodness). He ultimately finds his home in all his creation, and creation finds its home back in him. To prove all of this would require another series of articles, and maybe I’ll get to that one day. But I think this thoroughly Hebrew sacramental view of the universe is set up all the way back in Genesis, and I think Paul takes it for granted.

I also think this explains Paul’s conception of evil. I would agree with Augustine that evil is not really something that exists. We perceive it as existing, but it’s really a way of experiencing lack. We experience cold as a real thing that affects us, but really cold doesn’t exist. It’s merely an absence of heat (the fast vibration of atoms). There is no real dark either, but merely the absence of light (a wave/particle). Likewise, God is goodness. God is light. God is love. And evil isn’t an equal opposite force against God. It’s simply the lack of goodness and love. It’s not a competing power, it’s privation.

If Paul thinks this way, and I think he does, based on his understanding of the Scriptures and Greek philosophy, then it explains his flexibility with the word sin. There is a consensus among Paul scholars that in Romans, when he talks about sin, he doesn’t just refer to sins as immoral actions, but as a spiritual power called Sin (capital S). Whether he sees this as synonymous with the satan or as another power or a metaphor is up for debate. I believe Paul sees it as a catch-all term for the infection of privation on the cosmos. It is a word that sums up all of the lack that infects this world like a parasite, dragging it back into the waters of nothingness from which God called it into existence. It is the parasite of non-existence, like a black hole. And death is one manifestation of this, where life goes back into non-life, away from the direction God has called it. So for Paul, Israel was called to be a community of life (Deut. 30:19-20). But because Israel lived in a world of death, because humanity had left the garden that held the Tree of Life, human bodies are subject to death and privation. That means every part of a human being: the body subject to sickness and death, and the mind/heart subject to ungodly and fickle desires. The individual human bodies and the corporate body of Israel were subject to death and failure. Therefore, they could not live up to their calling. At least not yet.

With that context in mind, let’s define flesh. I think first it’s important to distinguish it from the body, which is a piece of creation, and therefore very good (Gen. 1:31). I tend to define flesh as the body subject to privation. It’s tricky because flesh can also just be a synonym for physical. And which one Paul means has to be discerned contextually. Privation, as well, can mean either a privation of love (sin) or a privation of life (weakness/sickness/death). Or both. But ultimately, the privation of either is actually just a lack of God’s Spirit. Human bodies were created to be joined to God’s Spirit in order to reach their goal. This is why Paul cries out about Israel’s plight at the end of the passage in Romans: “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (v. 24). But he immediately answers his own question! He says, “Now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the instructions of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus have set you free from the instructions of sin and death (8:1-2). In other words, the presence of God’s Spirit in the body now instructs how your body acts rather than the privation (moral and deadly).

This is Paul’s elaborate description of what the circumcision of the heart actually means. It’s not simply replacing our old desires with new ones, or purifying our spirits or intentions, but filling our whole bodies of death (which led to sin) with God’s own desires and life. This is what it means to put off our flesh and put on the Spirit. Not to neglect our bodies, but to perfect them.

Paul frequently contrasts what it was like for Israel to have biblical law before the giving of the Spirit, which only led to covenant divorce and death, because it could not be kept faithfully, and after, where Paul claims it now can be kept faithfully. He compares it to a marriage in Romans 7. It’s another obviously covenantal picture. If a woman’s husband dies, the covenant ends, and she can marry another without cheating on her spouse. Likewise, in Jesus, God took on flesh. He “became Sin” (2 Cor. 5:21). He embraced privation by inhabiting a body subject to privation (though without sinning), and experienced privation to the fullest extent by dying. By doing this, his body was subjected to the full consequences of unfaithfulness to the covenant. Which then allowed him to resurrect in a body free from those consequences. A body ontologically united to God’s Spirit in a new way. A resurrected body, only good. Only loving. Living forever. Just as darkness is not killed by light, but merely disappears at the presence of the fullness of light, Jesus’s flesh (the privation of his body) is eliminated by the presence of God’s Spirit. His flesh is removed. The privation is swallowed up by death. Nothingness collapses in on itself, thus his body is transformed into its fullness: resurrection. This is a complex idea, and we don’t have to catch it all here. We’ll return to it when we look at Colossians’ description of baptism.

We are likewise called to leave our flesh behind and embrace the Spirit. This doesn’t mean we neglect our physicality. Quite the opposite. We embrace the fullness of our bodies by rejecting privation. And we know we have God’s Spirit when we start to live out biblical law. If you were to ask a street evangelist why Jesus died for us (not to diss street evangelism, but to prove a point), you’d probably never hear that it’s so we can live out biblical law. But Paul says as much! “For God has done what the law--weakened by the flesh--could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh [in our condition of privation] and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3-4). Essentially, the Son of God inhabited corrupted creation in a human body subject to privation and condemned that privation in the condemnation of his own body. This was so that we might not be subject to our own privations but to God’s fullness in his Spirit of life, which will allow us to actually be people of justice (righteous) because we will actually live out biblical law.

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Circumcision of the Heart Is NOT the New Circumcision

When Paul is trying to defend the gentiles’ place in the renewed covenant, he argues that it should be obvious they have been included because they have received God’s Spirit (so they’re spiritually circumcised/heart-circumcised), evidenced by the fact that they are living out biblical law. “When gentiles, who do not possess the law, naturally do what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, as their own conscience also bears witness” (2:14-15a). Gentiles living out biblical law = circumcised hearts = membership in the renewed covenant. I would even go as far as to say that for Paul, circumcision of the heart would be synonymous with what he calls justification. Not God seeing you as righteous despite your wickedness by seeing Christ’s righteousness instead, or something like that. But justification as actually becoming people of justice because God’s Spirit is in you. So justification can be used by Paul as something that happens once when you receive God’s Spirit, something that happens continually as you grow in God’s Spirit (what he also calls sanctification), and something that happens at the end when we’re resurrected and fully united with God’s Spirit (what he also calls glorification). Paul seems comfortable using justification in all of these ways in his letters. But the initial receiving of the Spirit, the initial step in sharing God’s nature in your own body, the circumcision of the heart, is the beginning of a lifelong process.

Biblical scholar Jason Staples suggests that when Paul read about God telling Abraham that one day all of his children would be circumcised, Paul might have interpreted that as a promise of spiritual circumcision one day. But hopefully it’s clear why spiritual circumcision wouldn’t replace physical circumcision. Spiritual circumcision of the heart is the gift of the Spirit. It’s the generous gift of God. It’s grace that enables faithfulness by aligning our desires and life to God’s. To fall back on analogies from previous articles, if physical circumcision is a cultural symbol that represents faithfulness (like wedding rings) then spiritual circumcision is the ability to actually maintain marital faithfulness by becoming one with one’s spouse. All cultures need that faithfulness. But in no sense would that replace the rings. But not all cultures need rings to represent that faithfulness. I think, for Paul, as he looked at gentiles’ faithfulness to Jesus and his law, he saw no need for ethnic conversion and Judaizing. He saw the faithfulness as evidence that they are members of the bride of Christ, and that’s enough. For Jews, he believed they also needed the Spirit to enable faithfulness, but that doesn’t mean he would have them stop circumcision practices amongst themselves. Why would they? It’s always been an important culturally specific symbol.

So, that should be the end of diving deep into physical circumcision. But now that we have looked into circumcision of flesh and heart in these four articles, we finally have all the tools we need to look at Colossians’ picture of baptism and why Paul brings up circumcision with baptism there in the first place. All the pieces will fall together to fill out the richer, deeper, and more mystical meaning of baptism.

Evangelical churches have a problem. Movies have a problem. It might sound silly, but as someone who constantly contemplates the realms of both, I believe at their core, they have the same problem: consumerism. So how do they fix it?

I’ve been traveling a lot over the last few weeks, which has left a lot of time for in-flight movies. Scrolling through the available entertainment, I was struck by just how many sequels have emerged year after year. Even now, as I’m writing, the nearest theater to me is playing Toy Story 5 (sequel), Supergirl (spin-off), Jackass: Best and Last (sequel), Moana (remake), Minions and Monsters (sequel), and somehow still Obsession (the only original). Don’t get me wrong, some sequels advance the themes of the original film, exploring new territory worth engaging in. But most sequels are shallow cash grabs. The problem of sequels epitomizes the problem of neoliberal consumerist art.

Before diving into this, let’s break down these terms.

Neoliberalism is a political and economic ideology. It prioritizes the rights of the self. Independence is a chief virtue. Privatization, deregulation, and globalization are essential, anything to keep the government small. And technology that promotes individual independence, freedom, and expression should never be regulated.

Neoliberal consumerism is the American ethos. Everything is a commodity. Everything is a competition. Everyone is a commodity. And your primary identity is that of a consumer. Material goods and our contribution to this consumerist economy determine our value. Art is determined by its economic function. Religion is determined by its economic function and ability to create consumers.

James K. A. Smith says neoliberal consumerism is the dominant religion/ideology in the West today. It’s the main competitor for our hearts against Christ. And he compares an Apple Store to a cathedral dedicated to neoliberal consumerism, directing attention to a false reality where the self is solely a consumer seeking comfort. It’s not surprising when movies fall into the traps of consumerism. The movie industry, especially Hollywood, is a neoliberal consumerist machine by definition. So when a movie is successful, critically or commercially, then there’s money to be made. Everything needs to become a cinematic universe to be sustainable.

When churches fall into this trap, it’s far more devastating. Kristin Kobes Du Mez has shown that American evangelicalism isn’t actually united by shared theological beliefs, practices, or church structures, but by the same consumer habits. It’s more of a consumer category (shaped by its individualist liturgies) than a denomination. Many churches don’t realize this, but even if they do, what next?

Given that movie sequels often fall into the same temptations of evangelical churches, I want to briefly talk about three sequels I saw on my most recent flight and how they reflect three church responses, all of which should sound pretty familiar.

The Bad

Why do movie studios pump out sequels, prequels, spin-offs, and remakes? Because they’re safer. At least, they promise a more predictable profit. Sequels rely on already established fan bases. And if we’re letting AI determine which screenplays get produced (as some major studios already are), then the goal will always be maximum profits. The way the industry is set up, it’s the only thing that makes sense.

Bad sequels expose Hollywood for what it is in its icky center. A machine of megaconglomerates amassing wealth, effectively convincing moviegoers that fandoms are identity markers rather than manipulable consumer bases. There is far less respect for the individual who wants to engage a movie as a piece of entertainment and art, and far more care for the shareholders.

The first film I saw on the plane was The Hangover Part II (2011). The first film (though a bit dated) is iconic. I had never gotten around to seeing the second. Now I wish I never had. It was joyless and had nothing new to offer. I could envision the studio head telling Todd Phillips that he had to make a second after the first’s success. The Hangover (2009) was so surprising, so shocking, so funny. It even spawned a new genre of mystery-comedy that every TV show seemed to adopt for one episode.

The sequel’s pitch must have been: What if we did it again, but in Bangkok? And no one is surprised. There was no sense that the first film felt incomplete, and this one was definitely only for the money. The once edgy humor became predictable, cruel, and lacked creative energy. And I finished the movie feeling like I just subjected myself to AI slop (though it was written before AI).

The Meh

The second movie I saw was Joker: Folie à Deux. Coincidentally, also Todd Phillips. I didn’t hate this movie, but I didn’t like it either. The second Joker film is hyper-aware of what the studios want and what the fans want. And it refuses to fall into the trap.

Perhaps Phillips learned his lesson, but no room for consumerism here. If the studio and fans want one thing, this film will purposely give them another. If you loved the first one, you’ll hate this one. If you want a character study about how Gotham’s scariest villain rises to power and loses his mind, you’ll have to adjust your expectations to a romantic musical that becomes a tragic courtroom drama. And the ending kills all expectations that it’s leading somewhere meaningful. This movie knows exactly what it’s doing.

In classic Joker fashion, this movie takes your expectations and turns them over, giving the middle finger to its production studio, executives, and modern Hollywood as a whole. It’s a deconstruction movie. Disillusioned with the issues of neoliberal society, it holds up a mirror to the audience, letting them know that they are participating in systems of harm with their consumer choices. And it’s effective. You don’t feel good when its over, and you question why you wanted what you wanted. It also does it with a beautiful yet grotesque aesthetic.

But here’s the problem: though it rightfully dissects and then guts the expectations of superhero movie consumerism, it doesn’t offer anything compelling in its place. It takes us on the journey of realizing our vapid desires for a certain kind of movie, but then offers no positive vision of what a good movie could look like in contrast to these systems. And in the end, there’s nothing to feel but hollowness. It presents any counterformation against the ideology we swim in as depressingly hopeless.

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The Great

Finally, I re-watched Rogue One (2016). It’s sooo good, man. It may be one of the most deserving sequels of all time, up there with Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), The Dark Knight (2008), and The Godfather: Part II (1974). Whether you are a Star Wars fan or not, nobody likes the sequel trilogy. Even if you prefer one of those movies to another, the last 3 Star Wars movies, as a whole, suuuck. It’s blatant greed triumphing over original, creative ideas. But Rogue One (2016) stands apart. I guess it’s more of a prequel-spin-off. But as an expansion on a well-known franchise, the point stands. It has everything: heart, humor, a compelling story, lovable characters, plot twists, beautiful visuals, tragedy, and something deeper and spiritual to say about humanity.

It doesn’t have to connect to the sequels. Despite being a part of one of the biggest franchises of all time, it doesn’t rely on the traps of nostalgia. It simply exists as its own great story. It would have been a compelling piece of art whether or not it was Star Wars. Its very existence as a great movie puts all other recent Star Wars films to shame without needing to draw an explicit comparison. It condemns them with its positive creativity. The same way low-budget films are currently outperforming franchises at the box office. Why aren’t there more movies like this? This drives home my final thesis: Creating something good is so much harder than condemning something bad.

Why Do We Go to the Movies? Why Do We Go to Church?

Independent films like Obsession (2026) are crushing at the box office right now. Because the movie is original, respects its audience, and reflects the director’s love for horror, psychology, and entertainment rather than a formula for maximum profit. But Hollywood never learns the correct lessons from things like this. Will the church?

The Hangover Church

It’s not hard to find evangelical churches that full-send the neoliberal consumerist ideology. It forms its people to be consumers of “Christianity” as a brand rather than followers of Jesus. In fact, if you are an evangelical like me, the evil of consumer Christianity probably runs through the hearts of you and me as much as the consumerist evangelical churches out there. They’re profit-driven, numbers-driven, hype machines, looking to build fans of Christ and contemporary worship music rather than a self-dying, humble, Christlike community that shares all things in common.

The Joker Church

But what happens when you break out of this system? When you recognize the harm that’s been done and want to condemn it? Well, one thing many have done is create churches of deconstruction (many of which still partake in neoliberal individualist formation). They spend the majority of their time and energy naming the issues with the consumerist evangelical church and condemning them. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s the Church’s job to be a prophetic critic of itself. And naming harm is an important part of healing. But you’ve likely, like I have, seen churches that get stuck here. Stuck being formed around hating the bad rather than loving the good. It engages in a culture war and is known more for what it’s against than what it’s for. It’s defined by what it’s not rather than what it is.

The Rogue One Church

The healthiest churches I’ve seen are churches that grow from naming the harm into forgiveness and becoming something new. Something creative and thoughtful enough to construct new liturgies that go directly against neoliberal consumerism. And form into something counter. By sharing your things, by prioritizing spiritual growth over material growth, by valuing people based on God’s image in them rather than their social or economic contributions. Churches that put in the work of doing that. You don’t notice mainly what they’re not. You just become inspired and grateful for what they are. They’re hopeful, yet realistic. They’re not toxically positive, but they have deep joy and don’t take themselves too seriously. They are intentional with relationships and always prioritize the weak and powerless. They don’t engage in culture wars, but are curious, love conversation, and practice epistemic humility and wisdom. Liturgies that form people into little Christs are what will shape the church away from consumers of Christianity. Can we become something so beautiful that it puts other ideologies to shame without pushing for constant comparison? I’ve seen it be done, so I’m hopeful, but it will take intention, community, and the willingness to step out of the comfort of consumer structures. Hollywood does not have the Spirit of God, but the Church does, so I am hopeful.

Then again, my friend recently told me that the new Minions movie is somehow the best of the franchise and a love letter to classic Hollywood cinema. I have no idea how that’s possible, but maybe dumb movies can be important art sometimes after all.

All right, I fell behind. I ended up just taking the whole week off last week. The jet lag caught up to me. I also figured that during the 4th of July, if you’re an avid Substack-er, your feed is probably flooded with political hot takes. Rather than contribute to the mess, I thought I’d spare you any further political thoughts until the festivities ended. We’re back, and today we’re going to begin thinking about the picture of exile.

If you’ve ever dipped your toes into the deep and scary waters of political theology, you’ve likely heard the phrase exiles in Babylon more than once. It’s a way of describing Christian political identity. Preston Sprinkle’s Exiles: The Church in the Shadow of Empire and Stanley Hauerwas’ Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony have been two major sources of this expression in popular evangelicalism. Though a popular expression, it means many things to many people. And I’ve recently realized that some of the meanings are extraordinarily helpful in describing the Christian political identity, and some are deeply malforming. So I want to look at the original context of this phrase, what it means to the authors of Scripture, and how it’s been used in recent years to discern where and when being an exile is a helpful picture for modern Western Christians.

The Original Context of Exile

The phrase originates in Jeremiah and is later given a theological framing by Peter. In Jeremiah, the phrase is anything but metaphorical. Jeremiah is writing to the people of Judah as they are invaded and deported to Babylon as a result of their unfaithfulness to God. Jeremiah confronts Judah’s leaders and actually commands them to go willingly into Babylon. When they don’t, they are burned down and exiled. In chapter 29, Jeremiah encourages them to get comfortable. They’re going to be in Babylon for a while.

“Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to YHWH on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:5-7).

The command to plant gardens clearly references Eden imagery. Israel is no longer a kingdom of its own. But their identity is to remain Edenic. They are Israelites who live in Babylon. They are not Babylonians. At least, not first and foremost. That said, while they’re residents, they are to seek Babylon’s good. The good of Babylon is their good. Despite Babylon’s destructive beastliness, its peace will be Israel’s peace. And the people of Judah are to reflect God’s love (even for his enemies) toward the Babylonians around them. So, they have to walk this tension where they cannot fully assimilate yet cannot violently revolt. They have to sit in what Tim Mackie calls subversive loyalty to Babylon. Usually, this tension is what modern Christians are referring to when they draw on exile language.

There are many stories following the exile where the lines of this subversive loyalty are tested. For example, Daniel and his friends are deported to Babylon. They study Babylonian philosophy. They are not strictly counter-cultural. They engage culture and affirm the goods of Babylonian culture. They end up with government jobs and in seats of power. But they won’t eat non-kosher food (surrendering their Israelite identities). They won’t pray only to the king of Babylon. They won’t worship Babylonian gods. And the book of Daniel highlights God’s faithfulness to Daniel and his friends because of these boundaries. They realize where Babylonian culture and law contradict their identities as members of God’s kingdom first, and they draw lines.

Ezekiel, on the other hand, is called to a more prophetic role. He calls out the evils of Babylon more directly (while not neglecting to call out the evils of his own people). He performs protests and strange and startling sign-acts (like eating food over feces, Ezek. 4:12-15) to call people’s attention to God’s perspective on the political events around them. On the even further opposite extreme, Esther is called into the halls of power over Persia (and thus Neo-Babylonia). She embraces a certain level of Persian identity, hiding her Jewish identity out of safety at first. And she is called not to call out Persia’s evil, but to embrace the authority she has been given to do good to her people, saving them from certain death.

Though called to different spheres and given different tasks, none of these figures rejected their true identities. All sought the good of the nations to which they were subject. All did their best to love their neighbor in that location. None of them tried to topple the government (they trusted God to bring about justice). Yet, none of them worshipped any god other than YHWH. None of them forgot their truest and primary identities in YHWH. And they all likely prayed for the return of God’s kingdom (which would mean the downfall of the kingdom they found themselves in).

New Testament scholars have noted how Jesus and Paul seem to continue in this ethos. Neither is above critiquing the Roman Empire (even calling the ruling authorities foxes, Luke 13:32). Revelation will even call the Roman Empire a beast empowered by the forces of the satan. But they also believe it’s important to honor those in authority to some degree (Matt. 22:21, Acts 23:3-5, 2 Pet. 2:17, Romans 13:1-7). This comes from an ancient Israelite conviction that God will bring about his will through everything that happens (Gen. 50:20), including through forces of chaos and evil (Exod. 12:23, 1 Sam. 16:14-15). Not that God approves of their actions, but he directs them for his purposes, making them his unwitting servants. In ancient Israelite cosmology, all the nations of this world are subject to these powers (Deut. 32:8) and are thus doomed, though they may act as God’s servants from time to time, like Babylon (Jer. 27:6). So Jesus and Paul resist the empire by loving those in it, rather than by accumulating power.

1 Peter’s Reappropriation of Exile

In 1 Peter, Peter refers to a church community in the Roman Empire as exiles in Babylon (1:1, 5:13). This is strange for a handful of reasons. First, Babylon fell like 500 years ago at this point. The Jews are back in their land, as they have been for a long time. Second, this would not have been a community of only Jews, but gentiles also. What gives?

Exile is still a hotly debated topic in biblical scholarship. But Jason Staples has convincingly argued in his book Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites that the prophets consistently described the return from exile as the reunification of all 12 tribes of Israel. Because only 2 tribes (Judah and Benjamin) had returned to the land, exile was not over. Even in the land, the Jews continued to see themselves as exile. This is why Ezra-Nehemiah ends in such disappointing fashion. It seems clear from various second-temple literature that it was the prevalent view of the Jewish people that exile had not ended. It had simply shifted from Babylon to the Medes and Persia to the Greeks to the Roman Empire.

But the announcement of Paul’s gospel is that Jesus has flipped everything upside down. He has re-established the kingdom of Israel and brought it to his followers, even extending it to gentiles. Because of his defeat of the nations through his death and resurrection, Paul says the gentiles are now a part of the commonwealth of Israel (Eph. 2:12-13, Gal. 6:16, Rom. 11:26). Yet, the satan still appears as the ruler of this age (2 Cor. 4:4), and the nations of this world still have a time to reign before Jesus returns. We’re sitting in a strange time, like between a president’s victory on election night and his inauguration. We sit under overthrown leaders who are allowed to continue for a time. And God’s people live there, while citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20). Heaven not meaning a place of luxury you go to when you die, but as God’s rule arriving on the earth.

This seems to be how Peter sees the church. As communities that function as colonies, embassies, an exiled people, who dwell in a foreign land that will pass away (the Roman Empire). Exiles in Babylon seems an appropriate image. Many church fathers (Clement of Rome, disciple of Peter, Polycarp, disciple of John, and many others) use the same image to address local churches. Early churches in the Roman Empire are somewhat like exiles in Babylon. They might be Roman in origin, but their status as Roman was severely subordinate to their status as God’s people. So they can dwell in the land, take on Roman names, study Roman philosophers, but lines have must be drawn. They cannot compromise their identities as members of God’s kingdom. They cannot worship the gods of Rome. They might become the best citizens of Rome, participate in the best elements of Roman culture, love their Roman neighbors, but precisely by not being very Roman. It’s because they expect God to bring justice on Rome and replace it with his kingdom one day. So here the question emerges: Is it appropriate to say Christians today are still exiles in Babylon?

The Persecution Approach

We’ll examine three ways the phrase exiles in Babylon gets used in the United States. The first way functions almost like a lament from conservative Christians. It suggests a specific story of Christianity in the States that goes something like this:

The Church used to hold moral authority in the United States. Its credibility has now been lost, perhaps pushed out, and the moral majority is becoming the moral minority. The Church now has to learn to speak from the margins. That is, until Christians achieve seats in places of significant influence again. In this way, being an exile is an undesirable social location. If we can gain those places of influence, we can transform the world into the kingdom of God.

This is the way I’ve heard the phrase most often used in evangelical spaces. Here’s the issue. The first churches had no cultural power. Nor were they trying to gain it. As Bishop Graham Tomlin says, “Christians did not set out to change the world. They sought out to worship Jesus and changed the world by accident.” They did not seek to make the Roman Empire the kingdom of God. They saw the Church as the habitation of the kingdom of God in the Empire. A colony or embassy of sorts. They did not want to overthrow the monarchy, fight for women’s rights, or bring about the abolition of slavery.

Some of those things I wish they had pushed for, but it’s telling that they didn’t. Rather, they formed communities of equality where they declared Jesus true Lord over all. This might trouble us, but we live in a world where rebellions have succeeded, and we are frequently told we have the power to make changes in the world, with our vote, our voice, our rights, etc. This is a world completely foreign to 1st-Century Rome. There you rebel, you probably die. You challenge the empire’s authority, you end up imprisoned. Paul encouraged churches to do the right thing when lines needed to be drawn, but also to respect authorities and live quiet and peaceful lives when possible. Paul did speak anti-imperially. But he also did not want the Church to be perceived as a social or violent threat to the government. He trusted that God would bring justice, while praying for the kingdom of God to come (which would imply that Rome would fall).

There are many Christians in the world today who can relate to the context of the early Church. They experience mass persecution, hold no political power, and must discern the lines of subversive loyalty for themselves in their own contexts. They see the reality of the evil of empire, yet they counter with peace and love, knowing Jesus will bring justice where needed. If not in this age, then in the next.

Is the US like this? I hate to say it, but Christians are not persecuted in the States. Not even close. Our religious liberty has legally never truly been threatened. I can’t get into that too much here, but it’s fascinating to go through legal cases of religious liberty in the US and see its consistency. The States have an overtly and thoroughly Christian heritage. I appreciate this, as a Christian, as well as the privileges that have been granted to Christian ideas in the public square. Christianity has, however, grown less popular in the last decades, and in many spaces, that privilege has been reduced. Confusing that the loss of privilege for persecution is immense self-importance. It dishonors those who face real martyrdom from governments that are antithetical to the faith.

So used in this way, I don’t think the term exile is an accurate description of the Christians’ political experience. The US has not become more Babylonian. It’s always been Babylon. It may have ebbed and flowed in its favoritism toward Christians, but it’s an empire of this world no matter what we call it. And Peter does not seem to desire the churches to which he is writing to seek influence. Esther and Daniel did not desire power. They didn’t seek it out. They were just given it and had to learn to steward it well. Christians should absolutely steward the power they have been given well. But desiring power over others is a sign that one belongs to the nations rather than God’s kingdom (Mark 10:42). Escape from exile only happens at God’s return, not through human effort.

So, if by exiles in Babylon, we mean that the Church is a marginalized people group in the States with little cultural influence, then no. I don’t think American Christians are exiles in Babylon. But that’s only one way this phrase has been used in recent years. Two other ways bring their own benefits and concerns.

Heart and Spirit

The conference days are over. I’m exhausted, but I’ll get this one in just before Sunday. We previously explored how circumcision is not one’s entrance into the covenant. Rather, it’s an ethnically-specific symbol of faithfulness to the covenant. Circumcision is never abolished as this symbol, and baptism plays a different role altogether. There have been some who have suggested that, rather than baptism replacing circumcision, the circumcision of the heart has replaced physical circumcision. As we will see, this comparison faces similar issues, but circumcision of the heart becomes essential to understanding Paul’s description of baptism in Colossians 2.

The first time the Bible uses circumcision as a metaphor is in Leviticus 26. Here, Moses is describing the blessings and curses of the covenant. If Israel betrays God, they will be sent into exile, dispersed among the nations, and forfeit the land. But, if after that, “if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors—their treachery against me and also their continued hostility to me, so that I in turn was hostile to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—if, then, their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, then will I remember my covenant with Jacob; I will remember also my covenant with Isaac and also my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land” (vv. 40-42). Here, the metaphor is clear. Israel’s heart is uncircumcised: it’s proud and fixed against God, leading to exile. But if it is humbled, God will save it.

Heart in Hebrew is similar to the way we use heart in English, but a bit more expansive. We say follow your heart, or I give you my heart to describe our desires, loves, emotions, and passions. In Hebrew, the heart was a way of talking about all of this, but also intellect, consciousness, thoughts, and will. Notice, in the Old Testament, you are to love God with all of your heart, soul, and might (Deut. 6:5), but in the New Testament, Jesus adds with all your mind (Matt 22:37). This is because Jesus is quoted in Greek, but in Hebrew, mind would have been implicit in the idea of one’s heart. So an uncircumcised heart is a way of describing proud and stubborn desires, thought-patterns, ways of thinking, and wills.

Deuteronomy 10 is the first place a command is linked with this image. Moses, in summing up the law, says that the point of the law is loving God and neighbor so that it will go well with Israel in the promised land. He then says, therefore, “circumcise, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. For the YHWH your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the foreigner, providing them food and clothing” (10:16-18). Interestingly, here it seems that Moses thinks Israel can circumcise their own heart if they are willing to be compassionate toward their neighbor. They can remove the stubborn outer hard heart and turn a soft heart toward the needy. It’s a choice. One that should sound familiar after Exodus’s description of Pharaoh’s hard-heartedness, representing his fixed position against God, ending in his destruction. This calling to Israel is repeated in Jeremiah, where the southern kingdom of Judah is acting in an oppressive posture against the needy, like Pharaoh, and Jeremiah says to “Circumcise yourselves to YHWH; remove the foreskin of your hearts, O people of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem, or else my wrath will go forth like fire” (4:4).

David takes this image in a new and important direction when repenting of the murder of Uriah and the rape of Bathsheba. He asks God to blot out his sin and to be delivered from death, but then he asks to become a better person. He seems to think he is unable to change himself, and he knows that God’s Spirit has been empowering him to rule Israel in wisdom, like the judges before him. He calls out to God, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and just spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit” (Psalm 51:10-12). He does not ask for a heart circumcision here. Instead, he asks for a whole new heart, a clean one to replace his impure one. And he ties this plea for a new heart to a plea for a new spirit. Now, this is important to the way the prophets speak later, so let’s see what he means by spirit.

In Hebrew, one’s spirit is not the true you or the ghost that inhabits your body. Spirit was the word for energy. It is life. One’s animation, energy, the thing that makes you alive. The animation that animates the animated, to paraphrase John Behr. Every living thing has a spirit, in that every living thing moves forward, physically but also mentally to some degree, and in life. It’s one’s motivation, attitude, and determination, all tied up in their process to grow and evolve. So in the ancient Israelite imagination of a human being, each human body has a spirit empowering it, like its battery, charged from God’s own energy and animation, the Holy Spirit. And in some cases, when leaders needed God’s power and wisdom to rule Israel, God would charge their spirit with his Spirit. David seems aware that he has had God’s Spirit guiding him, but that his spirit is corrupted. His life is forfeit because his attitude and motivation have been pointed toward death and abuse. He fears losing God’s Spirit and asks for a new spirit. He wants a new attitude, a new motivation, a new animation toward life, energy toward the right things. This is almost synonymous with a new (or circumcised) heart, and from this point onward, the two images are frequently used in parallel. For example, in Ezekiel’s call for Israel to repent, he says, “Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, all of you according to your ways, says the Lord YHWH. Repent and turn from all your transgressions; otherwise, iniquity will be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord YHWH. Turn, then, and live” (18:30-32). God commands Israel to get a new heart and spirit. They need new thought-patterns, new desires, new motivations, new animations, and, like Jeremiah, it seems like a choice Israel is capable of making, but refuses to.

Another way to put the picture of an uncircumcised heart and an unclean spirit is that within God’s covenant marriage to Israel, Israel has been called to be a people of justice, and when they act oppressively, they are considered adulterers. So the uncircumcised heart is a picture of their unfaithfulness to the needy, and therefore their unfaithfulness to God himself. A heart circumcision and a new, clean spirit in them would mean they decide to live in faithfulness to God again. Jeremiah draws a parallel between the physical uncircumcision of the nations and the heart circumcision of Israel (9:26). If we continue with the picture we used last week for circumcision, then this verse is basically saying, “I know we wear wedding rings, but your unfaithfulness makes you like those who never put on a ring and married me.”

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The Prophets’ Promise

Though the prophetic books are largely downers, they often know how to end on a hopeful note. They always see God’s faithfulness as more persistent and powerful than Israel’s unfaithfulness. And since Israel seems incapable of circumcising their own hearts or renewing their own spirits, they consistently promise that after enduring exile, upon the renewal of the covenant and the return to the land, God will ensure their faithfulness. So, after experiencing the loss of divorce (the end of the covenant), upon God’s merciful remarriage to Israel (the renewal of the covenant), they will somehow not be unfaithful again. Even Moses guarantees this at the end of his speech in Deuteronomy. He describes the return from exile, God swooping in and drawing Israel back from all the nations, all 12 tribes, reunited. Then he says, “Moreover, YHWH your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, so that you will love YHWH your God with all your heart and with all your soul, in order that you may live” (30:6). God will circumcise their hearts. He will guarantee their faithfulness, rather than asking them to guarantee it themselves. But how?

Isaiah comes to the same conclusion, but describes it another way. In the pictures of the renewal of Israel near the end of the scroll, Isaiah describes a new creation where Israel finally acts justly toward the needy, and justice reigns in wastelands (32:14-18). How can God guarantee Israel will act this way? Because he will pour a heavenly spirit upon them (v. 15). They will receive a new animated energy, a new motivation in life, one that isn’t limited in its power or focus. Isaiah goes on to say it will be God’s own Spirit bringing life to Israel’s future like water bringing life to dry ground (44:3). This comes to a climax in chapter 59, where he says, “this is my covenant with them, says YHWH: my Spirit that is upon you and my words that I have put in your mouth shall not depart out of your mouth or out of the mouths of your children or out of the mouths of your children’s children, says YHWH, from now on and forever” (v. 21). God’s renewed marriage covenant with Israel is defined by the fact that he will gift them his Spirit to cleanse theirs. His verse echoes right back to Moses’s promise in Deuteronomy 30, that when Israel turns its heart back to god and away from idols, when God brings Israel out of exile, then biblical law will not seem distant to them. Rather, it will be “very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe” (v. 14). So, the promise for Israel to come out of exile, for the renewal of the covenant, for the circumcision of the heart by God, for the receiving of God’s own Spirit, and for the capability to be faithful to biblical law, are all different ways of describing the same event. It’s a promise that Israel will be as faithful to God as God is to them, because God’s own motivation and energy will be theirs, and faithfulness will be assured.

To solidify the tie between receiving a new motivation and faithfulness to the covenant, Jeremiah gives similar promises of a new heart capable of faithfulness upon return from exile (24:4-7). He describes this heart as the key difference between the first covenant and the one to come, saying that the difference will be that God will give them a heart with biblical law written on it (31:31-34). Their thoughts and desires will become God’s thoughts and desires, they will live in faithfulness, and all know and fear God forever (32:38-41).

Ezekiel ties all of the images together again, promising, “I will give you the land of Israel. I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, so that they may follow my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them. Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God (11:17-20).” He mixes the metaphors and sees the new heart and new spirit as the one event of a new attitude and energy that is compassionate toward the needy (heart of flesh) and capable of following biblical law (follow my statutes). He also sees this as happening at the end of exile and repossession of the land. He expounds on this in chapter 36, “I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my Spirit within you and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God” (vv. 24-28). He confirms all of the elements again:

1. Reuniting in the land from exile

2. New/clean spirit

3. New/circumcised heart

4. Ability to follow biblical law/covenant faithfully

5. New covenant

And he clarifies this time, the new spirit is his own Spirit, which is how he can be sure of their guaranteed faithfulness. This is actually what the whole apocalyptic image of the valley of dry bones is all about. It’s a resurrected Israel, receiving a new spirit from the death of exile, alive again. He confirms this interpretation in Ezekiel 37:13-14. And finally, in Ezekiel 39:25-29, Ezekiel again connects all 5 elements in one passage, making it known that when Israel sees that it has received God’s Spirit, evident by the ability to be faithful to God’s law, then they will know that they are members of the new covenant and have returned from exile.

The only minor prophet to speak as clearly about this is Joel, who mentions the power that will come with receiving God’s Spirit as a whole people: “Then afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days I will pour out my Spirit.” He seems more fixed on the mystical power the Spirit will give Israel than on the attitude and ability to follow biblical law. It’s like a supercharge connected to the battery of Israel, allowing it to operate in a divine capacity, straight from God’s will, desires, and animation, to theirs, leading to seeing and speaking the way God does through prophecy and dreams.

I’ve written a lot here, and we’re getting close to midnight, so we’ll focus on the fulfillment of these promises in the New Testament next week. But for now, it’s worth noting that circumcision of the heart is a metaphor for receiving God’s Spirit. It’s the refocusing of Israel’s thoughts and desires by receiving God’s thoughts and desires. It’s not a replacement for physical circumcision. That (again) would be like replacing the ring as a symbol of marriage with the ability to maintain faithfulness to one’s wedding vows. It shouldn’t be one or the other. For Israel, it should be both! It does become tricky once gentiles are included, though, because physical circumcision is not a sign of fidelity commanded to them, but circumcision of their hearts is essential for membership in this renewed covenant community of Israel. So we’ll get there, but for now, may the Spirit of God be poured into you every day, and may your spirit continually be renewed by him, as your heart softens and you live out justice to those in need. God bless.

I’m at a theology conference this week, and my brain is fried on theology. So, I’m going to write about Obsession (2026) again. And I’m not going to get too heady or too theological in detail. I’ll spare you and myself. This will be more like some random theological meanderings that have returned to my mind again and again since seeing the film, without any profound conclusions to cap them off. So, here we go, and in case you still haven’t seen it…SPOILER ALERT!

Free Will?

Obsession says a lot about what it means to be a human being. As real Nikki is trapped in Wish Nikki’s body, her freedom of choice is taken away. This comes to a clear conclusion…free will is essential to what it means to be a human being. Or is it?

I’m no expert on free will and the many debates surrounding the topic, but I’m aware that it’s far more complicated than often presented. In a libertarian world, where individual autonomy is the highest cultural value, of course, free will seems like a good thing! The ability to choose helps transcend oppressive limitations! But is that true? Or is that a lie that we have often come to assume, living in the neoliberal West? Our Reformed brothers and sisters have told the Church for generations that free will is not so simple. Humans always make decisions in service to something greater. Or out of a desire for something greater. And in that sense, humans are never really free. We are all slaves to something. The question is: what thing?

Humans are actually heavily defined by their limitations. And thank God humans have limitations! Without them, we would have likely all destroyed each other by now. With them, we’ve come close enough. Christian anthropology would attest that humans are most really free when they are operating in accordance with their created purpose, when they live in alignment with their God-given identity. When they, like Jesus, act fully in service to God, reflecting God’s character in their life, then they are truly free. When they make choices to act less than Godly, they act less than human, and they enslave themselves to malevolent forces instead.

To put it another way, we are always enslaved. But when we are enslaved to God, who is self-giving Love, then we are what we were meant to be, and we are truly free. A libertarian freedom that allows us to choose to enslave ourselves to idols is not true freedom, but the illusion of freedom. It is like the Israelites choosing to go back to Egypt.

So, in that case, Christians should want their desires for things other than God to be rooted out. They should want to seek true freedom by surrendering their self-destructive choices to God’s will. And in our resurrected, perfected state, where we will be most truly human, we will not have the ability to desire things less than godly. We will not have libertarian free will, but true freedom to live in alignment with our humanity instead. So maybe free will is not essential to being a human being.

BUT Obsession (2026) complicates this. For some mysterious reason, God doesn’t form humans perfected or complete. Not even Adam and Eve. Rather, he forms them with potential. Potential to grow into a loving relationship with him and others, and potential to fail to love. That potential to love or not to love is slightly more specific than free will. It affirms the developing nature of the other. For God to bring humans into his divinity, where their true home is, it seems it must be invitational. It cannot be coerced, since coercion to love is not love. And Obsession drives this home more than any philosophical argument I have read.

Now, Bear is not God…thank God! Bear is a very flawed human being. And so Nikki’s ultimate good and destiny is not necessarily to end up with Bear. Regardless, it seems to me the biggest theme of the movie is that love cannot be forced. Love can be experienced and received and returned, but not coerced. Coercive love is violence, and by definition, a lie. It’s not love. Even though God knows humans experience maximum freedom when they unite themselves to divine love, he persuades, invites, and gives us experiences, but he doesn’t force us to believe. So in that sense, I suppose a libertarian-type of choice involved in the will to love is a vital part of what it means to grow, especially in a relationship with someone who is loving.

Again, no hard and fast conclusions here, but it leads into the next topic I’ve been thinking about…

AI Relationships?

Relationships require sacrifice. The last scene of the film might be one of the best ways of depicting this fact. All relationships, and especially romantic ones, require a level of self-dying to the other. This is why marriages reflect the love of Christ to his people. It is a pouring out, a submission or service toward the other, rather than prioritizing oneself. Without sacrifice, negotiation, and the difficult parts of living alongside another different human being, there is no real relationship.

Bear wants a relationship with Nikki, and he gets it. But it’s one that simulates the relationships many are concerningly developing with AI. It’s the illusion of a relationship but without sacrifice. Wish Nikki only affirms Bear, wants to be what Bear wants her to be. And when Bear realizes that, he doesn’t like it. He wants her affection to be real. The most terrifying line in the whole film is when the One Wish Willow operator says, “Just because you chose this for her doesn’t make it not real.” Nikki was never with Bear, so the love was not real, but the consequences were very real. Bear learns the only way he can free Nikki is to die. But is he actually ready for a real relationship? Does he really love her enough to lay down his life for her? The greatest love, according to John 15:13. Or does he just want to be with her without the sacrifice?

It turns out, he’s not ready. At his bravest moment, he decides to sacrifice himself, but then almost immediately tries to undo it. His cowardice gets the best of him. Many are concerned with how AI simulates relationships without the complexities and difficulties of real relationships. It requires no real sacrifice and is constantly affirming. Will we become narcissistic, anti-relational, cowardly, and unsacrificial if we continue down this path? And will the destructive consequences for those who engage AI relationally be any better than the ending of Obsession? Finally, leading into my last thought…

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Passive Destruction?

The main debate I’ve seen online surrounding this movie is: Who is the real villain of Obsession (2026)? I’ll spare you all of the takes. Instead, go read Laura Robinson’s 4-part Substack series on how the internet has handled this question. Nikki is clearly the victim in the movie. Wish Nikki brings all kinds of destruction and is a villain of sorts, although she is a conjuring of Bear’s will. Which leads us to Bear. Clearly, Bear is a kind of villain, but the internet tends to lack nuance. He is not the sexist, assaulting sociopath many make him out to be. He is more complicated. From what can be discerned in the film, he would have never wished that Nikki love him had he known what would happen to her. But what’s truly disturbing is that he is too afraid to do anything.

It’s when the real Nikki calls out for him to kill her, and he replies selfishly, that seals his fate. He was too afraid to ask her out normally, he was too afraid to admit his feelings, he was too afraid to be around her while she spiraled, and in the end, he was too afraid to sacrifice himself for her well-being. He is not a dictator-type monster. But he is something equally scary. He is a passive observer to atrocities, too afraid to do the right thing. Granted, he might not know what to do all the time, but his fearfulness drives his character’s actions. Even as Nikki gifts him a token of willpower and bravery, he only uses it for a moment. It’s his passivity that leads to Nikki’s continual suffering and the suffering of others.

And this is a terrifying twist to me. For me, it’s easy not to see myself as an evil person. But am I the kind of person who would do what’s right when it costs me everything? Am I brave enough to be that person for the people I love? And can I do just as much harm in cowardice as others do with malicious intent? It’s easier to see one’s own weaknesses in Bear, which is what makes his character so infuriating yet interesting.

Conclusion

That’s all I got for now. This will be the last piece on Obsession (2026) for now (I promise). Looking forward to getting into the theology of some of the new movies that have come out this month, including Disclosure Day, Toy Story 5, and others.

Biblical Law in the Context of Salvation

In 2025, Texas Senate Bill S.B. 10 was codified into law, stating that all public school classrooms display the 10 commandments. The bill is presently being challenged in court on the grounds that it violates the separation of church and state. Whether or not that’s true from an American legal standpoint, it certainly misunderstands the 10 commandments from an ancient Israelite one. Carmen Imes, associate professor of Old Testament at Biola University and Torah expert, known for her YouTube channel, Torah Tuesdays, commented on the bill in a recent podcast interview. She explained that the commandments aren’t meant to be just 10 good rules for life for everyone. They are a description of the beginning of the covenant between God and Israel, preconditioned by the rescue of the people of Israel from Egypt.

In the Exodus story, Israel lived oppressed in Egypt, forced to do hard labor. Pharaoh had just killed most of the firstborn Israelite boys, and Israel had called out to their God for salvation. This is the story the Old Testament uses to describe God’s character as the liberator of Israel. God calls to Moses from the burning bush to rescue the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And he introduces himself as the one who is and will be (YHWH), then more specifically, the one who listened to their groaning and will mercifully rescue them from Egypt (Exod. 3:16-17). This is the God of grace, the God of salvation, the God of rescue. It’s only after he has saved Israel from the powers of Pharaoh and the Reed Sea that he calls them to his mountain to live with them. And only then does it make sense to gift to them biblical law. And what’s the first command that he gives them from the mountain? What’s the first “law” to introduce the rest of them? Not just the first of the 10, but the first of all 613?

It’s: “I am YHWH your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery (Exod. 20:2).”

This is the context that sets up all the other laws. Because God has saved his people from death to himself, revealed himself to them through his presence and grace, and because they, in turn, commit themselves to God, he gives them his wisdom to live by. It’s a context in which they already know who he is, what he’s done, and why he’s trustworthy.

Carmen Imes suggests that if public schools put up any Christian religious imagery in the classroom, it should be a picture of the Exodus and the splitting of the sea. Without the context of God’s grace and rescue first, his wisdom seems like a list of rules rather than a faithful way to live toward flourishing. Without believing in and knowing the God who dies for you, his love, and his goodness first, his way and wisdom will likely appear constricting rather than liberating. Putting commandments up in a classroom of students (who are likely not Christians) is getting the salvation story backwards, and could give the wrong impression of who God is.

It would be like learning about all of the compromises you will have to make in a commitment to your spouse without meeting and falling in love with them first. Giving the 10 commandments to those who have not received God’s rescue yet misunderstands biblical law. It acts as if they are a list of universal principles (or worse, legalistic prohibitions) rather than the ancient Near Eastern revelation of God’s wisdom within a narrative of salvation.

Biblical Law in the Context of Covenant

The context of salvation is inextricably joined to the context of covenant. Once Israel has been rescued, they commit themselves to God by covenant. They choose to carry his name, and he commits himself to them, promising everlasting faithfulness. Obviously, one of the most frequent pictures used by the prophets to describe this covenant relationship is a marriage, where God is the husband, and Israel is his bride. God promises a unique faithfulness, and biblical law then functions as the marriage vows for Israel to express their fidelity. Here, biblical law works as the beautiful and culturally specific ways the community was to live as an expression of love.

If we keep reading the Old Testament, however, eventually Israel commits herself to false idols, neglecting the needy, and shedding innocent blood. They reject their vows to God, and God (for a time) rejects them as well. They fall under judgment: God’s presence leaves the temple (the source of their protection against foreign invaders). God moves out of the house, and Israel is dispersed, crushed, and subjected to exile. The prophets drive home that these are the consequences of Israel’s unfaithfulness to biblical law. They broke their vows, chose other lovers, and their faithful husband left.

Now, we know this isn’t the end of the story, but it highlights something important. Israel is God’s covenant bride. Israel, by agreeing to the covenant, was held to the standard of biblical law, and judged when they did not live up to it. But what about the nations around them? What were Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, and Persia judged for? What was Rome judged for? Well, it wasn’t unfaithfulness to biblical law, because they never vowed to keep it. They didn’t inherit God’s name. They never agreed to enter a covenant with God. Judging them for breaking God’s law would be like holding someone accountable for violating another person’s wedding vows.

In the Old Testament, when the other nations are judged by God, it’s for breaking the Noahic covenant. In Genesis 9, right after the flood, God makes a covenant with all of humanity, all the animals, and all creation. It’s far broader than his covenant with Israel. Instead of a particular faithfulness, God promises that he will not destroy his good creation again. Then he tells humanity not to abuse or kill each other, but to respect life (including the animals, Gen. 9:4-7). This is grounded in the belief that humans are the image of God, and every nation is held to that standard.

So when any nation does violence, especially to the most vulnerable (the poor, the immigrant, the orphan, and the widow), God judges them. When nations wage war or hoard wealth, leading to the suffering and death of their inhabitants, that’s when God gets involved and brings his wrath and justice. Often, that justice looks like ensuring that nation’s own self-destruction. God takes violence against the vulnerable seriously, no matter who does it. But God doesn’t judge whole nations for a specific law code they never received and agreed to.

In the New Testament, Jesus and Paul create Israel restoration-communities, claiming the covenant with Israel has been renewed and that God has sent his Spirit to empower these communities to live out faithfulness to God. Paul calls these communities churches, and they are new in that they include Jews and gentiles. And Paul goes on to highlight how biblical law applies differently depending on the ethnic group. Regardless, Paul sees biblical law (especially as interpreted by Jesus) as binding to these communities, and he warns them that God will judge the communities that carry the name of Jesus but do not take God’s wisdom seriously. Biblical law matters to the Church.

Though these churches now include Romans, there is no indication that Paul thought that Rome was in a covenant with God. The Church is. To expect Rome to follow biblical law before the return of Jesus would have likely been absurd to Paul. “To make disciples of all nations (ethne)” is not to make all national governments Christian, but to make Christians out of every ethnic or people group (Matt. 28:19-20). Sure, one day, at Jesus’s return, every nation will fall, and God’s kingdom will consume the whole earth. Until then it’s the church’s job to be an embassy of that kingdom. To live out what that kingdom is like. The church is a political body, a counter-kingdom, a multi-national colony of God’s rule and law in the midst of the nations. It stands against the rule of this world. It doesn’t need to conquer them through worldly means.

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Two Kinds of Theonomy

Theonomy comes in many forms. The form I grew up with is called Pentecostal dominionism. This kind of theonomy divides certain spheres of society into seven “mountains:” Religion, family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business. Obviously, government is the key mountain here. It encourages Christians to gain influence in society and conquer these mountains. This ideology often presents Christianity as not just losing privilege in the United States, but as experiencing persecution. It frequently considers the separation between church and state a mistake, and sees biblical law as universal principles.

This is the perspective at work in Patriot Academy’s Biblical Citizenship course. It refers to the United States as God’s City on a Hill, a term used by John Winthrop to describe the Massachusetts Bay Colony (not the whole US project). Winthrop actually claimed that they had entered a unique covenant with God akin to ancient Israel. This term was also later popularized by JFK, and then Reagan, to refer to the United States among the nations. But the analogy originated in Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, where he used it to describe his followers, those belonging to his renewal movement, the Church. Jesus describes the Church as a light to the nations, shining with the truth about reality, an image taken from Isaiah. It is a calling for the multi-national Church to show the nations who sit in darkness what God’s wisdom looks like. To take this picture and apply it to any other particular nation, like the United States, both blasphemously elevates the role of the nation in the world and blasphemously demotes the Church’s holy calling.

All of this to say, as much as I would love it if US law embodied more of God’s wisdom, I am not as concerned with whether the US remains faithful to a covenant it never entered into and was never even invited into. I am very concerned with the US’s tendencies toward violence and abuse of the vulnerable (especially the needy and the immigrant right now, the very things Sodom was destroyed for). And I am very concerned with where the Church does not embody God’s wisdom revealed in his law.

The other form theonomy often takes is Reformed covenant theology. Again, I want to give credit where credit is due. I very much appreciate covenant theology’s rejection of antinomianism, its ability to see the continuity between the old and new covenant, and its prioritization of biblical law. But it makes two vital errors. First, it splits biblical law into 3 distinct categories: ceremonial law, moral law, and judicial law. This is something the Bible itself never does. It’s a convenient way to pick and choose which laws should still apply, but I’m not convinced biblical law views itself in these terms. This allows theonomists to see judicial law specifically as parallel to modern statutory law. The second mistake could require a whole series of articles in response, and that’s postmillennial dominionism. It’s the belief that the Church should enact Jesus’s rule over the nations here and now. Mainly, through gaining influence and instilling biblical law in the governments of today. This wouldn’t be to replace the Church, but it would be like the Church now having control over the nations of this world, on behalf of Jesus.

I’m sure I’ll compose a longer response to postmillennialism one day. But for now, the biggest issue I see with this is the Gospel. Specifically, the way Jesus gains his authority. He wins by surrendering. He conquers through dying. He is victorious over the nations by loving them unto death, and then he calls his followers to do the same. And they do! The early church sees themselves as conquering Rome not in their increase of influence, but in their martyrdom. It’s the nations, as Jesus puts it in Mark 10:42, that rule through coercion and political power. In Jesus’s kingdom, the ones with the most influence are the ones who make themselves slaves to others. When one makes themself less, God will grant them more in his new creation.

So where does that leave us? Does that mean biblical law has nothing to say about how Christians should engage the public square? By no means!

How to Live Out Biblical Law in the Public Square

I wanted to write this article because I’ve seen many Christians critique theonomy with legitimate concerns, but bad arguments. Often, they’ll say that biblical law shouldn’t be taken seriously because the law is now replaced by grace, or Jesus has done away with the law, or gives his own law of love instead. Hopefully, I’ve made it clear I don’t think any of these are the case. But I also share their concerns about the theology of theonomy.

I think Christians should take biblical law very seriously. Seriously enough to treat it like what it is and not impose modern conceptions of law onto it. Passionate enough to follow it like they would their wedding vows. Not out of fear or any ability to earn God’s favor, but out of faithfulness and loving devotion.

How, exactly, gentile Christians should follow biblical law remains complicated, but there are now more resources than ever. Carmen Imes’ Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters, Dru Johnson’s Understanding Biblical Law: Skills for Thinking With and Through Torah, Paul Sloan’s Jesus and the Law of Moses, and BibleProject’s new podcast series on the 10 commandments are all fantastic places to start. Meditating on biblical law has actually never been so accessible to Christians, and I hope more and more churches in the West find the wisdom biblical law has to orient us toward love of God and neighbor. I pray that the Church increasingly grows in wisdom and faithfulness to biblical law. And, an important thing the Biblical Citizenship course gets right is that God is not just the God of your heart, but the God of your whole life. That includes your political life. So I want to ask the question: What role would biblical law have in an American’s political life? A huge one! Just not in the way we’ve been talking about it.

Now, I don’t believe the United States of America can be a Christian nation. This requires its own article itself, but I don’t think a Christian nation can even exist. Don’t get me wrong, the US has a Christian heritage. It is mixed with deism, Enlightenment humanism, and Platonic elements of Classical Liberalism, but there is definitely a strong Christian influence. Its Protestant heritage is actually why it’s set up to be a secular nation. I agree with Michael Bird that not all secularism is a bad thing. There are fundamentalist, destructive, atheistic forms of secularism and cultural narratives of secularism that are damaging, but there are also forms of benign secularism that promote freedom of religion. And that is an expression of the Christian value of the love of neighbor and non-coercion. Whether or not American secularism has been effective is a different conversation. But the US’s secularism has also paved the way for its current pluralistic identity.

In San Francisco, it often feels that I am just as likely to live next to a Christian as a Buddhist, an atheist, a Hindu, or a Muslim. And that pluralism can be a social good while bringing with it significant challenges we haven’t had to face before. It’s difficult to work toward a common social good when social values aren’t commonly shared. And any sense that personal religious or philosophical convictions shouldn’t be brought into politics or the public square is a kind of secularism that is destructive and simplistic. It’s silly to say we shouldn’t legislate morality, as nearly all legislation is an expression of somebody’s moral framework. So I would reject any form of secularism that limits religious dialogue as much as a theonomist. That’s a form of atheistic fundamentalism, not a pluralist secularism.

But I would be acting fundamentalist myself if I said the United States should assume my Christian approach to politics, and other religions should leave their beliefs out of the public square. The only way I find common ground with those of other religions is through dialogue, bringing our whole selves to the political world. I would recommend the work of Miroslav Volf, who can articulate Christian solutions to pluralism in a more elegant and detailed way than I. But to prioritize my religion or approach to politics over others would be ruling in the way of the nations. Not the way Jesus does, who came “seeking to persuade, not to compel us” (Ch. 1, Epistle to Diognetus).

As a Christian, I vote and protest for causes I believe in. I do my best to base the causes I believe in on God’s wisdom. And I try to discern this wisdom by meditating on biblical law and the teachings of Jesus in dialogue with others in the Church. But first, I prioritize living out biblical law in my church. And then, after, because Jesus is lord of my political identity as well, I seek to be wise with the power I’ve been given. This means I cannot be a slave to partisanship. In conversation with others doing the same, I look for the issues I feel strongly about and advocate for them, seeking to persuade my neighbor for the common good. Not by assuming they are Christians with the same convictions I have, because they likely aren’t, but by finding common ground in the beliefs we share. Then I vote for what seems reasonable and profitable for the good of all, especially the vulnerable.

Having wisdom to contribute to the public conversation, and wisdom in shaping legislation for the good of all the people of America, is important. But just turning biblical law into legislated law misunderstands both kinds of law. Legislative change can be very important in protecting the vulnerable. And we should take that seriously. But in the same breath, as Jeremiah and Daniel would likely have put it, we are to plant gardens in America…but America is temporary. Spend most of your time living out biblical law in your church community and neighborhood. Because those actions are what will last into eternity (1 Cor 15:58). Then, secondarily, be wise in your voting, not to make America a Christian nation, but as an expression of love to others and faithfulness to Jesus.

After all, every time we pray for God’s kingdom to come, we are simultaneously praying for America (along with every other nation) to fall. So if you have a calling to politics and legislation, let the wisdom of biblical law inform how you approach your career. But for most of us, let’s spend our time meditating on God’s law in our community. Let’s learn about the coaching God had for ancient Near Eastern Israel, so that we can discern God’s coaching for us here and now. And let’s pray to be led by his Spirit, through whom he writes his law on our hearts, making us into people of love.

Welcome back to why baptism does not replace circumcision as the symbol and/or means of entering the covenant. Part 1 established the stakes of this question and why supersessionism has no place in the imagination of Paul. If you haven’t read that article first, I highly recommend going back and checking it out before diving into this one.

Where does the idea that baptism (especially infant baptism) replaces circumcision come from? Actually, just one passage from Paul. Well, one passage, and a lot of commentaries extrapolating on that one passage. That’s Colossians 2:11-13:

“In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by the removal of the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses…”

There’s a lot packed in there, including the question of whether Paul is referring to physical circumcision here at all. Regardless, this is the only passage in the Bible that joins together the practices of circumcision and baptism. I’m not going to exegete this passage in depth (that’s what my dissertation will be for). Rather, I want to look across the whole Pauline corpus within the context of 1st-century Judaism to see what Paul thinks the unique purpose of circumcision is in the life of a Jesus-following Jewish man.

Circumcision…Why??

Like everything under the sun, the exact purpose of circumcision has been hotly debated by rabbis for millennia. So let’s start with what we can gather from the Pentateuch and from Paul. It’s worth noting that circumcision is not just a Jewish cultural practice. In the Pentateuch, it’s described as a command from God to the people of Israel for all time (Gen. 17:10-14). Every Israelite male is to be circumcised on the eighth day after they are born. And it’s unmistakably described as a sign or symbol of the covenant (v. 11).

Because this conversation can get super technical, I’m going to try to use an analogy to help track with the main purpose of circumcision. Like all analogies, it’s not a perfect one-to-one, but hopefully it gets a general picture across. In comparing the covenant between God and his people Israel to a marriage (as Paul and Israel’s prophets do frequently), circumcision functions like a wedding ring. If you’re an American, you know what a wedding ring symbolizes. It’s an outward display of devotion. It marks you out from others as taken, a symbol of loyalty and faithfulness to the one with whom you are in a covenant relationship (It might be closer to getting your partner’s name tattooed on you in terms of permanence, but let’s go with rings for now).

Monogamy is also traditionally an important implication of wearing a wedding ring. You aren’t looking for another man, and your man isn’t looking for another woman. You’re settled. Similarly, circumcision was one of many key instructions from God that distinguished Israel from the nations around them. By Paul’s day, circumcision became synonymous with Jewish identity as the people of God. Because one is circumcised, they’re not Greek. This is important because, according to Paul, while Israel was called to serve God, all other ethnic groups were enslaved to the kings, gods, and powers of this world (Gal. 4:3, 1 Cor. 12:2, Eph. 2:11-12). This is why Paul can call the Jewish people the circumcised and gentiles the uncircumcised, or more literally, the foreskinned.

So circumcision served as an ethnically cultural-specific public symbol of dedication to God’s covenant. Public because circumcision would be much harder to hide in Paul’s day than ours due to differing gym taboos. Ethnically cultural-specific because circumcision didn’t mean anything to the Romans; it was a symbol uniquely commanded to the people of Israel. And dedication to the covenant, like a wedding ring. This is different, however, than functioning as a symbol of entry into the covenant people of God. The analogy of the rings still works in this way. The wedding rings are a symbol of dedication to your covenant vows, but putting on the ring isn’t what initiates you into the marriage. The marriage is initiated when you say yes to the vows and promise faithfulness to your partner. The rings are simply one culturally specific way of expressing that promise. Wearing a wedding ring also might be a public symbol that you are married, but the ring itself is not what keeps you married. Embodied faithfulness to those vows is what keeps you married. That’s real evidence that you are in the marriage with your partner. Paul himself points this out when discussing Abraham’s circumcision! According to Paul, it’s not circumcision that granted Abraham entry into a covenant with God. It was his embodied faithfulness (faith/loyalty) to God. And it was his yes to trust God’s faithfulness to him. And all of that happened long before he was circumcised (Rom. 4:9-11). Circumcision came later as a culturally specific symbol of that fidelity.

Circumcision also isn’t magic. It doesn’t help one maintain fidelity to God any more than a ring helps one maintain fidelity to their spouse. As Paul says in Romans 2:25, circumcision is only of value to the one who obeys the covenant instructions. Rings only mean something if the partner is faithful. If a man wears his wedding ring, but goes around cheating on his wife, not only does the wedding ring not mean anything, it’s a sham! Again, it’s not the ring that determines faithfulness to a covenant. It’s embodied faithfulness.

But faithfulness to Jesus doesn’t negate the importance of circumcision any more than fidelity in a marriage negates the importance of wearing your wedding ring. If a man went around talking to strangers at bars not wearing his wedding ring, that would probably make his wife suspicious of unfaithfulness. Cultural symbols are deeply important, especially when commanded by God. For Israel, circumcision is a deeply important symbol of fidelity. This might be the reason for that one high-stakes situation in which Moses almost died for not circumcising his sons (Exod. 4:24-26). Moses had been chosen to lead the people of Israel, but he had grown up Egyptian. If he was wavering in his identity as an Israelite because of his Egyptian upbringing, he might have chosen to wait and not dedicate his children to the God of Israel. He had to commit. He didn’t, so his wife, ironically a Midianite, saved his ass by dedicating their family to God as Israelites.

Importantly, just like a marriage can exist apart from rings, the covenant exists before the circumcision command is given to Israel. And a marriage doesn’t flourish or fail based on the status of the rings, but the commitment to love and fidelity. In the same way, God’s covenant with Israel flourished or failed based on Israel’s embodied faithfulness to the covenant instructions, especially love for God and neighbor.

Why Does Paul Care if Gentiles Get Circumcised?

If circumcision is a good symbol commanded to publicly represent covenant faithfulness, why doesn’t Paul want gentile Christians to circumcise themselves? One can easily imagine a Jewish Christian seeing all of these Greeks join God’s covenant family for the first time. What would step one be? The rings! Or in this case, the knife! It just makes sense. But Paul spends much of his letters arguing about gentile circumcision. Not just that they don’t need to be circumcised, but that they shouldn’t be circumcised! Why?

Paul sees that gentiles are already members of God’s renewed covenant. This is clear because, like Abraham, they’ve said yes to trusting God’s promises, and they vow faithfulness to Jesus (Rom. 10:9). In Deuteronomy 10:16, Moses calls for Israel to circumcise the foreskin of their hearts. He clarifies that he means: Don’t be stubborn! Follow the covenant instructions faithfully. Love God and neighbor. Paul sees gentiles in churches doing just that! They’ve said “I do” to the covenant, and they’re living faithful lives dedicated to God, despite not being Jewish, by the power of Christ’s Spirit (Rom. 2:13-14). They’re a part of the marriage to God! Full-stop. Like Abraham, there’s nothing else they need to do to get in. But now that they’re married, and they’re maintaining faithfulness, do they need to wear the ring?

Paul says no. Remember, the ring is an Israelite public symbol of loyalty to God. It was never a command given to the gentiles. It’s ethnically and culturally specific. It symbolically identifies one as a Jewish member of the covenant of God. Now, post-Jesus, in this special time when gentiles have already joined the covenant family, the foreskinned have been welcomed, their gods have been defeated, and the question of whether gentiles need to be circumcised is a question of whether gentiles need to become Jewish. And again, for Paul, the answer is no. No assimilation required. In fact, according to Galatians 1:7, to say that a gentile would need to become Jewish to follow the King of the Jews would be to deny Christ’s work of conquering the kings of all nations, and therefore reject the gospel, which necessarily includes ethnic reconciliation, and therefore unity and difference.

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Different Strokes for Different Folks

So for Paul, circumcision is still an important symbol of covenant faithfulness for the Jews. But it means nothing to gentiles, was never a command to them, and therefore does not apply to them. To drive the analogy into the ground, there are some regions in India where brides wear marriage necklaces rather than wedding rings. This does not mean that marriages in those countries are invalid. Rather, the symbols we use, though important, are culturally specific. And to force those people to wear wedding rings to count it as a “real marriage” would be a forced assimilation to American culture and a misunderstanding of marriage, which is initiated and maintained by vows of faithfulness. Even if an American had the best intentions in wanting the people in these regions to express a symbol of faithfulness in the rings, it would still be wrong to insist on doing it the American way. I think this is akin to what Paul was constantly battling with his Jewish interlocutors. To insist that gentiles be circumcised would be forced ethnic assimilation. Throwing back to last week’s post, to insist that Jewish Christians end circumcision would be economic supersessionism. Jewish Christians likely maintained kosher restrictions as a symbol of devotion to God. Gentile Christians did not. Neither marks one in or out of the covenant family, because both are culturally specific expressions of faithfulness to God’s commands (Rom. 14:6).

Some have a hard time imagining imposing different culturally-specific requirements of faithfulness to Jesus on different ethnic groups in the Church. I doubt Paul had the same difficulty, as he was used to a world of different cultural expressions. Sometimes this comes from the mistaken idea that circumcision was a burden, rather than a symbolic expression of faithfulness. I think purchasing wedding rings is likely more of a burden for us than circumcision was a burden for them. The burden on the gentiles wouldn’t have been an uncomfortable medical procedure, but the felt need to change their ethnic status (Acts 15:28-29, Lev. 17:8-18:30). Besides, in the Evangelical world, we often don’t bat an eye in assuming that men and women might be called to faithfulness to God in uniquely sex-specific ways, yet there is no male and female in Christ. For Paul to say the same is true for Jew and gentile would not have been surprising to the 1st-century multi-ethnic Church.

I find it likely that in the earliest church, most Jewish Christians found it important to continue the practice of circumcision as part of their obedience to the renewed covenant with God, which they enter by embodied faithfulness. As Paul instructs, they did not need to assimilate to the Greek way of life and leave circumcision in the past as an outdated symbol. I think this is likely why Paul circumcised his coworker Timothy, whose mother was Jewish, and who would be entering Jewish-dominated spaces. He saw it as a valuable, perhaps commanded, symbol.

And likewise, as Paul instructed, gentile Christians were not to assimilate and become Jewish to follow the King of the Jews, since he is also the king of the cosmos. Their embodied faithfulness also initiated them as members of God’s covenant, and circumcision was not a part of their cultural expression of obedience to God. Which is probably why Paul fought for his gentile coworker Titus not to be circumcised.

So circumcision and no circumcision are nothing concerning entrance into God’s covenant family (1 Cor. 7:19). All join by fidelity to Jesus. It may, however, still be an important expression of faithfulness to God’s commands in one ethnic group in a way that it is not in another. Like wedding rings might be an important expression of faithfulness to a marriage in one culture but not another. And forcing one of those cultures to act like the other would be wrong, since Jesus is lord of all ethnicities and the Church is one transcultural family.

So What about Baptism?

Baptism cannot replace circumcision since circumcision was never abolished. Paul doesn’t see circumcision as a symbol of the past and not the present. Rather, he sees it as a Jewish expression of faithfulness and not a gentile one. So what does Paul have to say about baptism, then? Importantly, it’s something he seems to expect from both Jews and gentiles. And what exactly is the spiritual circumcision of the heart? Colossians seems to relate it closely to baptism. Some scholars have suggested that heart circumcision (rather than baptism) replaces circumcision. I think this is also mistaken. BUT a deeper dive into circumcision of the heart will reveal much about the importance of baptism. And that’s where we’ll turn next.

We are a month away from the release of Christopher Nolan’s newest Summer blockbuster, The Odyssey, based on the Greek epic. I, for one, am stoked to see such a massive adventure brought to the big screen with Nolan’s signature style and practical effects. But prior to its release, the movie has already been subjected to some online controversy.

Based on the trailers, some have criticised the film’s historical accuracy and star power. The armor in the film resembles something closer to a blend of an Imperial Roman costume and Bionicle gear than an ancient Greek uniform. I can see why historians might get into a tiff, but that stuff never really bothers me as a moviegoer, as long as it’s well made and a fun time.

The Odyssey also features a stacked cast, with Matt Damon, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland, Zendaya, Anne Hathaway, John Leguizamo, Mia Goth, John Bernthal, Charlize Theron, Lupita Nyong’o, Elliot Page, Benny Safdie, and (for real) Travis Scott. Even if you don’t recognize all of those names, you’ve likely recently seen movies starring a handful of them. And I’ll be honest, it’s hard to imagine being swept into Homer’s fantastical world of gods and monsters when I can’t stop seeing Batman, Spider-Man, Andy Sachs, and the Fein music video in my head. But character focus has never really been Nolan’s forte anyway. Like Tarantino, he’s a story-centered director, and he makes you care way more about the script and the aesthetic than the characters. He knows how to keep the focus where he wants it, and I think he can pull it off.

But you might have seen that others have criticised the movie for being too “woke.” Woke has become a frequently used descriptor in online discourse in 2026. It instills an emotional reaction (nods of agreement or an eye roll), though the use of the word is expansive and increasingly vague. While reading an article on the potential “wokeness” of Nolan’s The Odyssey, 2 questions began boiling in my gut:

• What does the word woke actually mean?

• Is it a word that Christians should use?

The second question might seem funny, but I take Paul very seriously when he says, “Let no evil (often translated unwholesome) talk come out of your mouths but only what is good for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear” (Eph. 4:29). Now contrary to popular interpretation, Paul isn’t talking about swear words or taboo language here (he seems privy to taboo language himself when useful for communication, see Phil. 3:8 in the Greek). He’s referring to language that puts people down, treats them like less than a full image of God. In his argument against slavery, 4th-century Greek bishop Gregory of Nyssa stated that if God is an infinite mystery (which he is), then humans as his image, and for whom he paid an infinite price, must also be infinitely mysterious. So to gossip about another human, degrade another human, or dehumanize someone with language is evil to a Christian and in direct contrast to language that “builds people up.”

So when words are used flippantly or vaguely, it can be helpful to dive into their original meaning to determine whether the word functions as an appropriate, helpful descriptor, or just as a word to put others down. Only then can we discern what woke really means, if it’s appropriate to use, and whether The Odyssey is indeed woke.

A Brief History of the Term Woke

The word woke was first used by folk and blues singer Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter in 1938. He had a song titled Scottsboro Boy, about nine young Black men who were falsely accused of raping two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama. In one recording of the song, Ledbetter warns Black Americans of the dangers of passing through Scottsboro, saying that they “best stay woke, keep their eyes open.” By the 1970s, the word had become a common term used primarily in Black communities to refer to an awareness of subtle racism in American politics and culture. This is more or less what the term referred to for decades.

In 2008, neo-soul singer Erykah Badu released the song Master Teacher, where the chorus repeats the line “I stay woke,” popularizing the term for a larger audience, and in 2016, Childish Gambino used the phrase “Stay woke” in his song Redbone to refer to an awareness that one’s partner might be cheating. With the popularization of the word to a much larger audience, it became a hashtag, #staywoke, that referred to a progressive suspicion of paradigms based in the status quo. It still held primarily racial connotations, though it was occasionally applied to economic or gender paradigms apart from race.

So the word has always had political connotations, but after the racial and political tension in the United States after 2016, post-George Floyd and the election of Donald Trump, conservatives and progressives alike were constantly adopting new terms to function as tribal boundary markers. Terms like CRT (critical race theory), woke, or most recently DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), all of which refer to real, complex theories and ideas, were reduced to simplistic pejoratives and dog whistles. They’re useful because they allow conservatives to signal to other conservatives that they are on the same team, and against whatever the woke person or thing is. Over time, these terms grew so detached from their original meaning that almost anything can be labeled woke, and it might have nothing to do with race.

Lazy Tribalism

There are several blatant issues with using words in this way. First, using woke as a pejorative is co-opting it in a way that dishonors its original context. Woke was used in Black American vernacular to refer to a specific idea that has almost nothing to do with the way most white progressives and conservatives use it today. That’s one main reason I would caution anyone from using the term as a pejorative.

But another problem is that it’s also just lazy. By calling something woke or DEI, it allows one to write something or someone off without real engagement and dialogue. It’s easier than elaborating on what someone has an issue with, revealing whether it’s a real problem or based in prejudice. Even if the issue is legitimate. Look, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I went to school at a UC. I can tell you, in my experience, the constant progressive virtue signaling going on around you at the time can be exhausting. Many topics feel socially unacceptable to discuss. There’s an unspoken pressure to toe a blue party line on every political position. At times, it can feel like a bubble of progressive fundamentalism that isn’t in touch with the rest of the world. By fundamentalism, I mean a philosophy that requires ideological conformity, alignment with partisan orthodoxy, and often uses illiberal coercion to maintain it. Progressive fundamentalism is real, just as real as conservative fundamentalism, and I don’t want to downplay it, it’s a real problem. Especially when communities grow extreme and shut down conversation with anyone outside the strict boundaries of the camp. When any ideology leads to controlling behavior, shunning, and policing ideas, it grows illiberal and dangerous. I think this is the discomfort many conservatives feel when they use the word woke. And there should be a term for this kind of problem, perhaps something catchier than progressive fundamentalism, but woke is just not the appropriate term.

The woke label often functions like a modern-day McCarthyism in conservative spaces, where everyone with progressive leanings is a communist and is to be excommunicated from the public sphere. And frequently, it becomes a descriptor of anything considered progressive in the United States, fundamentalist or not, healthy or not, creating stronger partisan boundaries. This also falsely collapses all progressive ideas into one thing.

And progressives often fall into the same temptation. MAGA originally referred to Trump’s specific political vision for America, especially a restorationist movement rooted in xenophobia, nationalism, racial ignorance, and illiberal authoritarianism. When progressives referred to a person or idea as MAGA, they often meant someone who aligned with this vision. But increasingly, I’ve seen progressives use it as a pejorative to refer to anyone who voted for Trump for any reason, as if every reason is the same. This reduces all of the complexities, hesitancies, or fears someone may or may not have had while voting, and collapses them into one kind of person that reflects Trump’s brashness. Maybe some just wanted to avoid another war, something Trump ironically promised again and again, and voted while holding their nose at what they believed to be the slightly-less-harmful candidate. To put that voter in the same box as a xenophobic Trump enthusiast is not kind, accurate, or helpful either. Not every conservative is MAGA, and not every conservative idea is MAGA. Individuals are infinite mysteries, and people vote the way they do for all sorts of reasons.

I’m not saying every vote is for a valid reason. I’m only saying when we reduce human beings (or complex philosophical ideas) into a label we can throw at it to distance it from our tribe, it’s not helpful for anyone. It actually enforces a fundamentalist black-and-white worldview, and Christians especially should never speak this way. We should evaluate each idea by its fruit and each person by their character, even if we disagree with the decisions they’ve made. We should honor each other, even our enemies, with our language, and seek to understand with curiosity before judging and branding. And we especially shouldn’t do this using words co-opted from their original context. If we disagree with an idea, an agenda, or a person, let’s get really specific.

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OK, So Is The Odyssey (2026) Woke?

All right, so this article isn’t really about The Odyssey. But let’s return to The Odyssey. It’s been labeled “woke” and “DEI” online, mainly due to the diversity of the cast. The decisions to cast Lupita Nyong’o, a Black woman, as Helen of Troy, and Elliot Page, a trans man, as the Trojan warrior Achilles, have been the main centers of controversy.

With all pejoratives out of our system, one can sanely ask: Is the casting of this movie a symptom of progressive fundamentalism? Will this movie give a preachy message of progressive fundamentalism? I don’t know, but I doubt it. The movie hasn’t come out yet, so I have no idea if there’s a progressive message to the movie that is helpful or unhelpful from a Christian perspective. Personally, I don’t see any evidence of any kind of fundamentalism in the casting of the film. I see historical inaccuracies in the fact that none of the actors are Greek, but I don’t think that’s what online people are worried about. The diversity of ethnic groups represented in the cast seems to reflect the progressive (and deeply Christian) desire for ethnically diverse unity. Lupita Nyong’o will likely make a great Helen, and I’m almost certain she’ll outshine Damon. Achilles, a warrior hero in The Iliad, is dead by The Odyssey, and appears as a small, former shade of himself, and Page could do excellent in this role. Whether the actors give good performances will be clear when the movie drops. I don’t see a fundamentalist agenda represented here at all, though. One might disagree with the concept of gender transition, but that disagreement is not particularly relevant to whether Elliot Page, a seasoned actor, will be a compelling shade of Achilles.

More worrying to me is that a certain tech CEO who doesn’t need more attention right now has made several racially insensitive comments about the Black actors in the movie, and he has been at the forefront of calling the film woke. He doesn’t seem to care much about the historical accuracy of the film, but is using the movie as a partisan litmus test. Are you pro-progressivism as a whole or against it? As if every progressive issue is the same. So, is The Odyssey woke? Doesn’t look like it. Does it have a progressive agenda? Maybe in the diversity of representation in the cast. Is that bad? Not from a Christian perspective. Does it force a fundamentalist progressive message? I don’t know, but I don’t see any evidence that it will.

Long story short, words matter. And hopefully I’ve tackled this with sensitivity and nuance. It can be a trendy idea in masculine Christian books that everyone should be “unoffendable,” and words shouldn’t have a significant impact on one’s emotions. “They’re just words after all.” If you can be unoffendable, that’s great! That’ll make life a lot easier. But that goal is more stoic than it is Christian, and the Bible consistently gives lots of power to the danger of speaking foolishly (Prov. 10:19, 12:18, 13:3, 15:4, 17:27-28, 18:21, 21:23, 29:20; Jas. 3:5-10). It would be nice if words didn’t affect us, but as the Bible points out, it’s not super realistic. And Christians are called to be more sensitive to the words they use than those in the world, not less. So let’s stop calling each other woke or MAGA, and if we have a problem with a movie, person, or idea, let’s practice verbalizing our issues specifically so that others are allowed to evaluate, affirm, and kindly but firmly challenge them. This is how we build each other up, even in our criticism, rather than tearing each other down.

I love biblical law. And to be clear, when I say biblical law, I mean Torah, the (more-or-less) 613 commands that God gives in the first five books of the Bible. I’ve been on a bit of a biblical law kick in the last year. I had the privilege of leading a Bible study on how to read biblical law at my church, and after that, Josh and I did a series on biblical law on our podcast, Kingdom Commentary. Both were a great time! They forced me to meditate more on God’s commands than I ever had before, wrestle with the weird ones, and see the beauty in God’s instructions in a new way. The podcast also gave me an opportunity to speak to experts on biblical law, like Templeton senior research fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, and director of the Center for Hebraic Thought, Dru Johnson. Johnson stretched my imagination on how biblical law was originally read and carried out. In our conversation, he started with a doozy, saying that biblical law is not even law…at least not in the way we often understand it. But we’ll get to that.

Some commands in biblical law seem obvious. Don’t murder (Exod. 20:13), don’t cheat on your spouse (Exod. 20:14), etc. But others are more bizarre, like don’t eat shellfish (Lev. 11:9-12). And others might seem immoral, perhaps even legitimizing slavery (Exod. 21:2-6). The 10 commandments are truly the tip of the iceberg. I can now joyfully and honestly say that I often feel like I encounter the love of God in biblical law, even when reading these strange laws, but it hasn’t always been this way.

Christians have long had a difficult time relating to biblical law, many writing it off as irrelevant now that we’re in a “new covenant,” others splitting the laws into social, ceremonial, and moral categories. While I find both of those approaches deeply problematic, I have recently seen another approach that strikes me as far more dangerous: treating biblical law like it’s meant to be statutory law, often even going so far as to propose that American laws adopt biblical law. Maybe not all 613, but many of them, and often with the intent of carrying out the punishments described in biblical law, seeing Torah as God’s universal statutory principles for every nation.

In theory, a modern nation-state governed by biblical law is called theonomy. The concept was ever-present, though inconsistently applied, in Patriot Academy’s Biblical Citizenship course. It presented biblical law as God’s desired way to run every nation. And it argued that if American law could simply adapt these principles, it would flourish. Sometimes it even seemed to claim that America was intended to be a theonomy from the beginning.

First, to give them credit where credit is due. I can fully appreciate that this approach actually seeks to take God’s law seriously (you know, like Jesus told his followers to do, Matt. 5:17, 20). It doesn’t write off biblical law as Old Testament stuff no longer relevant. While I’m glad it avoids this pitfall, the desire to make America a theonomy also completely misunderstands what biblical law actually is. So, while resisting the urge to present a comprehensive class on biblical law, and assuming that biblical law is God-given and in some sense still binding for his people (as Jesus claims it will be until this world passes away, Matt. 5:18), I’d like to touch on just a few points that theonomists get wrong when discussing biblical law.

Biblical Law Is Different from Modern Statutory Law

As I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest problems with how we think about biblical law is that we call it law at all. In my conversation with Dru Johnson, and in his excellent and very accessible book on the subject, Understanding Biblical Law: Skills for Thinking With and Through Torah, he says that biblical law and modern American law have about as much in common as football and curling. Sure, they’re both sports. They both have competing teams… But that’s about it. It’s a totally different game. Building on the work of Rabbi Joshua Berman, Johnson argues that Torah is better translated as instruction or coaching than law.

Modern statutory law (and nearly everything we think of when we think law) comes from the Enlightenment, about 3,000 years after the giving of biblical law. Biblical law is common law, as Berman calls it, not a list of statutes or legal rules. Common law works entirely differently. For example, if someone caused injustice in the community, and it was brought to the town elders for judgment, biblical law likely would not have been recited in deciding the consequence for injustice. And the punishments were not often carried out as described in biblical law. It just didn’t work that way. Instead, common law was a way of describing an ideal of justice to be discerned through meditation (continual re-reading). Some biblical laws come off like commands (the 10 commandments, for example). Some come off like hypothetical situations. Sometimes very unlikely situations (see Deut. 25:11-12). And all of these don’t exist in a section of the Bible called “the biblical constitution.” They exist embedded within stories. Often, stories that reflect the wisdom to which the commands and hypotheticals are pointing. The instructions, the hypotheticals, and the stories were meant to be read together, over and over. And when a judge or elder did this, they would see connections between the commands, see the heart of God for love and justice in them, and become a wise person. This is why the Psalmist in Psalm 1 meditates on God’s law day and night for wisdom. Then, depending on the context of any given situation, the leaders of the community could discern justice and make just decisions based on the wisdom they have obtained by meditating on biblical law together. As Johnson says, you don’t break or keep biblical law like you do modern law. You cultivate it as God’s wise coaching in your community, or you cross against it and disrupt your community.

This is consistent with how Jesus interpreted biblical law. As Paul Sloan has pointed out in his important book from last year, Jesus and the Law of Moses: The Gospels and the Restoration of Israel Within First-Century Judaism, Jesus had a very high view of the law (Matt. 5:19). He saw cultivating it as the evidence that one is on the path toward eternal life (Mark 10:17-19). But Jesus isn’t a legalist. He doesn’t see biblical law as a list of rules. He sees the commands as pointers to a different reality, a new way of living in the world marked by God’s love and wisdom (Matt. 22:37-39). In Jesus’s poorly-named antithesis in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus cites various biblical laws and then explores the wisdom of each. As Sloan points out, Jesus is not innovating on or contradicting biblical law here. He is participating in the standard Jewish tradition of extrapolating the wisdom of these instructions based on the wisdom of other instructions and the hypothetical situations of biblical law. Jesus has clearly meditated on biblical law and can articulate the way Israel was always meant to live. He calls his followers to live toward that trajectory, becoming the loving, wise people Israel was always intended to be by loving God, neighbor, and enemy (Matt. 5:48). He meditated on biblical law and saw a vision for God’s family to live out of self-sacrificial love for the other. If we don’t see that, we probably need practice reading it.

So biblical law was not legislated like modern law, not enforced in the way modern law is, and was thought of as a mode of operating toward flourishing rather than primarily restrictive. Biblical law also includes culturally-specific social norms that would have been standard in the ancient Near East which weren’t practical for Jesus to follow in his day, and aren’t practical for us to follow in ours. But they’re still a part of the law because they still function in the larger story of self-giving love and wisdom. Which leads us to our next misunderstanding, that biblical laws are universal.

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Biblical Law as an Adaptable Source of Wisdom

Tim Mackie, lead scholar of BibleProject, calls biblical law triage. Johnson seconds this. It’s not God’s ideal for his people for all time. It’s his realistic ideal for Israel nomadically in the desert in the ancient Near East. That gives it a specific context. For example, Johnson points out that ideally God doesn’t want to dwell in a tent (or a temple) with his people. God wants to dwell in his people and in his cosmos everywhere. BUT he chooses to limit his power and location for the safety of his people. He restricts himself. Johnson also notes that biblical law itself never “seems jazzed” about slavery or polygamy, and it’s clear in the narrative of Genesis that God’s ideal is that there is no violence in his cosmos. Yet, in his faithful commitment to use his people Israel to bring about cosmic rescue, God operates in sub-optimal conditions. And biblical law does the same, often correcting one element at a time in a push toward the ideal. Jesus, and Paul after him, are able to see the wisdom in even these commands, adapting them in new ways for the different world they lived in (Matt. 22:29-32; 1 Cor. 9:9).

Because biblical law is not the ideal, but points toward the ideal, that means biblical law is contextual and adaptable. It’s not a list of universal principles for all topics and all places. It’s directed toward a specific people in a specific place at a specific time. To put it another way, biblical law has nothing to say specifically and directly about capitalism, socialism, modern immigration laws, secularism, or what system of government a modern nation-state should have. But the wisdom of specific instructions can always be adapted to new contexts. And this isn’t just some postmodern free~flowy way to read God’s law. It’s what we see God’s people doing in Scripture all the time! For example, the daughters of Zelophehad.

The story of Zelophehad’s daughters takes place in Numbers 27, right after a list of commands about how to split up the promised land based on family size. The previous generation of Israel had died in the desert, including Zelophehad. According to the setup just established, his land would go to his sons. The problem: he doesn’t have any. Only daughters. And they aren’t going to inherit any of their father’s promised land. They see this as wrong and out-of-step with their understanding of God’s character. They don’t shrug their shoulders and assume God’s law is comprehensive. They go straight to Moses! They tell him that biblical law hasn’t taken them into account, since this situational context has never come up before. They argue that just following the plain meaning of biblical law in this case would actually be unjust. Moses takes the issue seriously and goes straight to God! And what does God say? He says they’re right (27:7)! It would have been unjust to see this new context and not adapt the wisdom of biblical law to this new situation. So God comes up with a bunch of new hypotheticals to communicate his wisdom in other situations where there is no male heir to inherit land.

This kind of thing happens all over the Bible. It’s basically the point of the entire book of Deuteronomy. When Israel enters the promised land, their context is different from the desert, so Deuteronomy repeats the commands of God, but slightly differently, altering them based on the new context, even contradicting commands that came before because the situation has changed (like Exod. 12:8-9 and Deut. 16:7). That wouldn’t be considered breaking biblical law. It would be meditating on and cultivating it. This is what the rabbis and Pharisees were attempting to do in Jesus’s day, bringing biblical law into the Hellenized world, and Jesus often corrected their lax adaptations, proposing his own instead. This is also what the Church should be doing today. We should meditate on and cultivate the beauty and justice of God’s law of love.

Biblical Law Without Wisdom Can Lead to Injustice

Throughout the Old Testament, there are many examples of biblical law being adapted unwisely, leading to injustice. One of the clearest examples of this comes in the scroll of Ezra-Nehemiah, or in our modern Bibles, the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah. In the story, 3 well-meaning Jewish leaders herald the restoration of Jerusalem. The question the scroll wants the reader to raise is: Is this the end of exile and restoration that the prophets had promised? And it builds to disappointing answers.

Each leader begins with a good goal that God puts on their heart. Zerubbabel wants to rebuild the temple so God can live in Israel’s midst again. But in his zeal, he excludes surrounding nations and his fellow Israelites from participating in the project (Ezra 4:1-3). This ultimately leads to the absence of God’s glory in this new temple (3:12; 6) and confirms that this is not the temple that will be the promised house of prayer for the nations (Isa. 56:7). God has yet to return to Zion.

Then, Ezra the Levite wants to bring biblical law back to Israel. He gathers all the inhabitants of Jerusalem to read the whole Torah aloud to them. But then, in his zeal, Ezra reads Deuteronomy 23:3-6, a section of biblical law that says because the Ammonites and Moabites cursed Israel and didn’t help them, they’re not allowed into the worship assembly for 10 generations. Well, as Old Testament scholar Carmen Imes points out in her book Becoming God’s Family: Why the Church Still Matters, 10 generations have long passed. But Ezra takes the command and sees that many Jews have married foreigners, including Ammonites and Moabites. So, Ezra commands mass divorce, leading to the abandonment of families by the Jewish men, and ironically contradicting Deuteronomy 24’s wisdom about divorce and abandonment. It’s a decision God hates (Mal. 2).

Finally, Nehemiah wants to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, re-establishing it as a legitimate city. The narrative pattern thus far should raise some flags. It seems like a good idea, but again contradicts the eschatological vision for Jerusalem as a city whose walls are decommissioned and gates are never shut (Isa. 60:11; Rev. 21:25). And the scroll ends with Nehemiah observing the unfaithfulness of Israel to biblical law, resulting in Nehemiah beating the crap out of some of them (Neh. 13:25). Hard as he tried, he was not living in step with biblical law. None of the men had cultivated biblical law in a way that led to appropriate application in their new context. Though their intentions were good, they prioritized the wrong instructions at the wrong time, and they all fought injustice with further injustice, resulting in an anti-climactic return to Jerusalem that did not resemble God’s promised kingdom.

Hopefully by now it is clear that biblical law is not modern statutory law. To treat it like statutory law would be a category error, and could lead to real injustice in a nation. Especially if those seeking to impose biblical law haven’t meditated on it, cultivated it, and treated it like what it is. It’s wisdom literature. It’s for the formation of the family of God into a community of justice and love. But this leads to one last issue with theonomy: biblical law is coaching for God’s people within the context of salvation and covenant. That’s what I’ll follow up with next week. I’m sure this post could spark many questions, and I encourage and look forward to them, but just a heads-up, they might be addressed in part 2.

Welcome to the first article in Sacramental Saturdays! Because my dissertation is largely focused on Colossians 2:8-15, if there are 2 things that have been on my mind recently, they’re circumcision and baptism. Not popular conversation starters. But writing about baptism has forced me to reconsider what the Bible, and Paul in particular, claims baptism to be. A lot of my assumptions are being questioned as I try to square how Jesus, Paul, and those in the early church refer to this important Christian rite. While sometimes discerning what exactly baptism is doing feels like getting increasingly lost in a fog of mystery, I do feel like I am grasping a better understanding of what baptism is not doing. And if there’s one thing I’m fairly confident of, it’s that baptism is not replacing circumcision in the New Testament.

Now, if you come from a Christian tradition that exclusively practices believer’s baptism, then this thought might have never crossed your mind. And the argument I develop might feel irrelevant. Hopefully you’ll see why I think it’s important either way. But if you grew up in a Reformed tradition, an Anglican tradition, or some Protestant tradition that practices infant baptism, you’ve likely heard this comparison. In fact, the claim that Christian baptism replaces Jewish circumcision might go as far back as the early 3rd century, in Origen’s commentaries on Scripture. It usually goes something like this:

• Circumcision was the symbol of entry into God’s covenant family/kingdom.

• Before, God’s covenant/kingdom was limited to the people of Israel, so only Israelite males could participate in the symbol (Israelite females were included by belonging to the household of circumcised men).

• Jesus and/or John and/or Paul replaced the symbol of circumcision with the symbol of baptism, the new expression of entry into God’s renewed covenant/kingdom.

• This is preferable, not only because it’s easier to do, but because all people, male and female, Jew and gentile, can all be baptized.

This is then often used as an argument in favor of infant baptism: because Jewish boys were supposed to be baptized a week after their birth, then babies born into God’s covenant family (the Church) should be initiated into the covenant family soon after birth as well. Now, not everything in here is wrong. In my opinion, a lot of it features a good impulse to push back on some of the errors of believer’s baptism. But there are far better, more theologically consistent, and more Bible-rooted arguments for infant baptism than this one. And I want to confront the comparison between circumcision and baptism head-on, because it’s not only an interesting theological thought experiment. I think this confusion actually mistakes a central aspect of Paul’s gospel of ethnic reconciliation in Christ.

I will flesh out the various functions of baptism in subsequent articles, but just so you know what you’re getting into, these first 2 posts are going to be mainly circumcision-focused. So get your laughs out now, because to get to my point, I’ll have to use the words “circumcision” and “foreskin” a lot.

Why Is this Topic Important? A Brief History of Supersessionism

If we want to know why this argument is important, and before we get into the nitty-gritty theology, we have to take a step back. A quick history lesson. The Jerusalem church, the first church ever, was established right after Pentecost, and it was made up entirely of Jews. It was led by Christ’s apostles. From a historical standpoint, we have no reason to think that the apostles or any of these Jewish followers of Jesus believed that they were leaving any part of their Jewish identity or Jewish practices (Judaism) behind to join a new religion called Christianity. The idea that they were converting would have been news to them. That language wouldn’t have even made sense in their world. Rather, they seemed to have seen themselves as faithful Jews, living into the mission of Israel by following Israel’s new king, Jesus, who claims to have renewed Israel’s covenant with God. If anything, this would have been considered a Jewish sect, not a new “religion.” It would not have been dissimilar to the Essenes in Qumran, a strict sect of Jews who lived in the hills and considered themselves a renewed covenant community of Israel, following their messiah figure, the Righteous One.

The followers of Jesus ended up taking a sharp turn, however, when they began to announce that because Jesus has conquered every king, rule, dominion, and power, visible and invisible, then he is not just king of the Jews, but king of all nations. Therefore, all ethnic groups are eligible to join his covenant family/kingdom. This becomes the ground of the Great Commission to go and make disciples of (form churches) of all nations (ethnic groups). The story of Acts is just this story. Paul spread the good news of Christ’s victory throughout the known world, to all ethnic groups. And within a century, the Church became majority Greek.

At first, many Greek followers of Jesus found themselves oppressed by some of the Jewish leaders. But once the Church became majority Greek, and especially once the Empire adopted (a Roman version of) Christianity as its official religion, leaders of the Church began identifying Christianity in contrast to the Jewish people. This would have been impossible in the 1st-century Church. But after the fall of the Jewish temple and diminishment of any Jewish power in “Christian” Rome, the Church adopted a supersessionist theology.

Supersessionism is perhaps the first major systemic sin of the early church. It is sometimes called Replacement Theology, because it describes the new covenant as God’s covenant with the gentiles/Church, replacing God’s covenant with Israel/the Jewish people. This theology would have been unfathomable to Paul. It ignored Paul’s own claim to be a Jewish Pharisee follower-of-Jesus, and paved the way for all kinds of antisemitism in the Church for the next 2,000 years (the Medieval Church and the Reformation often making it even worse). In perhaps one of the biggest ironies of all time, a global community claiming to worship a Jewish man as God and king frequently carried out mass persecution of the Jews.

Antisemitism was also one of the biggest (of many) sins of the historical-critical movement in Germany. Much of modern scholarship on Paul’s letters has assumed an anachronistically anti-Jewish perspective. It took something as devastating as the holocaust for many biblical scholars to wake up to the Church’s long history of antisemitic biases. The Christian scholarship approach to Judaism completely changed in 1977, with E.P. Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion.

Since then, many New Testament scholars have scrambled to find new, less problematic, and more historically faithful frameworks for examining Pauline literature. Some of these have been the New Perspective on Paul and the Paul Within Judaism schools, both of which have many, many forms, some more helpful and historically reliable than others. I’m not going to evaluate all of the pros and cons of these frameworks today, though I have my opinions. I simply want to point out what’s at stake here.

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Paul’s Multi-ethnic Gospel Vision

Paul’s vision for the Church is actually pretty clear. About as clear as any point Paul makes across his befuddling letters. The Church is meant to be one single multi-ethnic covenant family of God (Eph. 2:15). Jesus is the King of Israel, so he’s the king of the Jews, but he’s also ruler of every king, power, and god, making him king of all other ethnic groups as well. So, in the family of Christ, there is no partiality. All are one (Rom. 2:11, Gal. 3:28). Therefore, there is no room for supersessionism. Paul never indicates that the gentiles have in any way replaced Israel in God’s covenant. But this isn’t the only way supersessionism sneaks into Christian theology.

Theologian R. Kendall Soulen has argued that Christian theology can be supersessionist without being overtly antagonistic toward the Jewish people. He calls this more implicit problem economic supersessionism. Soulen describes economic supersessionism as theology that sees Jews and gentiles united in one family, but also sees the Jewish people as essentially obsolete now that the Jewish people have joined God’s kingdom.

To put it another way, imagine Paul goes around forming churches, new Jew+gentile communities, telling them they are one in Christ. He doesn’t go around saying gentiles have replaced Jews as God’s people (classic/punitive supersessionism). But let’s say some Jews seem uncomfortable with gentiles joining God’s covenant people (a la Galatians). They insist that the Greeks in their community transition and become ethnically Jewish through the process of circumcision and observing kosher food restrictions. Paul sees this as unacceptable. Why? Because he believes that the gentiles do not need to assimilate to a Jewish identity to join God’s family. That would imply that Jesus is only king of the Jews, and that his death and resurrection didn’t enthrone him as king over the other ethnic groups and their kings as well. In other words, gentiles can follow Jesus as gentiles, because Jesus is also lord of the gentiles. And it’s the unity of the two ethnic groups (without assimilating the cultural differences) that demonstrates the multifaceted wisdom of God displayed in the reconciliation of the cross (Eph. 3:8-11). So in the Church, unity does not insist on uniformity. Quite the opposite. Unity requires difference.

But let’s run with this thought experiment in the opposite direction. Let’s say that God hasn’t replaced the Jews with gentiles, but brought them both together as one covenant family. You can imagine a Greek church leader then saying that now there’s no need for the Jewish people to practice any of their distinctive practices (commanded to them in the Torah). In other words, now that they’re all in Christ, the Jews should assimilate and essentially become Greek. Messianic Jews should cease circumcision and break kosher food restrictions. “Your ethnicity no longer defines you,” this Greek church leader might say, “being in Christ does, so live into your new freedom.” It’s a sort of “color-blind” “freedom.”

This might sound nice, but here’s the problem. It’s the same issue Paul was fighting, just in the other direction. Paul believes that being in Christ is the believer’s new primary identity. But this doesn’t erase important secondary identities, especially ethnic difference (Jew or gentile). In the same way, it doesn’t erase sex differences (male and female) (Gal. 3:28). It’s not like Paul told men and women to stop living in ways that make their sex unique. Similarly, being “in Christ” is not a new culture or ethnicity. It’s a transcultural, ontological identity. And to insist that a Jewish Christian abandon their unique Jewish practices (like circumcision and kosher restrictions) would have been akin to asking them to assimilate to Greek culture. In fact, as history shows, whenever any groups are told to stop living as ethnically distinct, it is usually a call to act like whatever the majority culture is. If all of the Jewish people began living like gentiles in the Church, the Jewish people would have disappeared. This is economic supersessionism.

I believe that supersessionism of all kinds is incompatible with Paul’s vision of the gospel. As he formed the first churches throughout the Greek world, he believed he was creating one new family out of the two, but not to replace the two. Paul’s not into forced assimilation, and the Church is not meant to be a melting pot, but a kingdom of every tribe and every tongue, which insists that, in unity, multiple languages and cultures remain.

Like Paul says himself: “This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision [If you are Jewish, do not assimilate to become a gentile]. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision [If you are gentile, do not assimilate to Judaism…Let each of you remain in the condition in which you were called [be content to live in the way your ethnic culture embodies faithfulness to Jesus]” (1 Cor. 7:18,20).

Or, to quote the mysterious and anonymous 2nd-century text, the Epistle to Diognetus, “...Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity.”

Instead, every culture and ethnic group is invited to join God’s kingdom and be transformed into its own expression of Christlikeness, just as every human individual is invited to be transformed into their own expression of Christ in them.

Back to circumcision. For Paul, baptism cannot replace circumcision because he likely expected Jewish Christians to continue circumcising their boys. We often miss this because so many of Paul’s letters argue why gentiles shouldn’t be circumcised (and assimilate to Jewish practices) in the 1st-century church that was still majority Jewish. Interestingly, he never uses baptism replacing circumcision as an argument for why gentiles should not assimilate. Rather, he points to the finished work of the cross, which reconciles Jews and Gentiles into one covenant family. But Paul seems to expect that Jewish followers of Jesus also get baptized, just as gentile followers of Jesus do. So there is something vital to baptism that is transcultural, and it seems to accomplish something entirely different from circumcision.

So what is the cultural significance of circumcision? Why does Paul talk about it so often? Why might Paul think that Jewish Christians should keep practicing it, while gentile Christians shouldn’t? Is he saying there are 2 different ways to join the covenant? (By no means!) How is baptism something different? I’ll get to all of that next week in part 2.

Movie Obsession

I hit the local cinema about once a month…sometimes more during the Summer. On Friday, May 15th, I went to watch the new horror, Obsession, with some of my friends. The theater was mostly empty, but the movie exceeded my expectations in every way. I knew I needed to see it again soon. Since then, I’ve seen it four more times, taking different groups of friends. I was surprised to find that during the third viewing, the room was completely packed, and not just packed, but packed with young people (~16-30). Little did I know that the small indie movie I was excited to share with my friends had erupted into a TikTok phenomenon.

The internet is obsessed with Obsession. I’m sure I’m the billionth person to write that. But it’s true. Obsession has made more in its second week out than its first, and even more in its third week. It’s the first movie to accomplish this feat since E.T.: The Extraterrestrial in 1982. Obsession is truly a phenomenon, especially among young people. But why? Usually, when a movie tops the box office and the Tomatometer, it’s a superhero movie or an IMAX Christopher Nolan epic.

It’s almost never an R-rated movie (which immediately limits the available audience),

it’s never a horror movie (which often narrows it even further),

and it’s definitely never an independent R-rated horror movie featuring no major stars on its cast.

Well, they’re stars now, and I look forward to everything they will go on to do. But what happened here? Did the movie just get lucky? Hit the right formula? Or is there something about young people at this moment that needed to see a movie like this?

Obsession’s Plot

If you haven’t seen the movie yet, Obsession is a classic monkey’s paw story, where the protagonist, Bear, wishes for Nikki, his long-time crush and friend, to love him “more than anything in the fucking world.” His wish is seemingly granted, but with a dark twist. Whatever love she has for him is over-the-top, not healthy, and ultimately destructive. Without spoiling it, the film combines elements of classic horror, genuinely scary moments, and surprisingly effective cringe comedy that made me laugh out loud many times. Some elements reminded me of the hopeless tragedy and terror of Hereditary, and some reminded me of the skin-crawling cringiness of 2024’s Friendship. It effectively employs the kind of humor with which this generation has grown up, post-The Office. Its ability to balance these drastic but related tones, without the use of cheap jokes or (any?) jump-scares, is a testament to the direction and the performances of the two main stars.

I almost pity Michael Johnston because his performance as Bear is phenomenal, but Inde Navaratte’s Nikki is absolutely insane. She deserves an Academy Award right now for her ability to shift between characters and tones and scare the shit out of me. And the fact that both actors were somewhat no-names before is astounding. This leads me to the first reason I think so many Gen-Zers are throwing the little money they have at this movie.

Everyone Loves an Underdog Story

Obsession is directed by Curry Barker, a 26-year-old YouTube comedy-sketch creator. He’ll no doubt soon be a legendary horror director. He’s already been handed control of the next Texas Chainsaw movie. He shot Obsession for under $1 million. By filmmaking standards, with that budget, it’s amazing it got a theatrical release at all. Allegedly, he almost uploaded the film to YouTube rather than trying to market it. The film’s already made back 200x its budget. It’s also out for about a month now, and my friend who works at a local theater said that every movie that doesn’t sell tickets right now is being replaced by Obsession, and it’s still selling out.

The film looks amazing. The cinematography, the music, it all works. I would have never guessed it’s low budget. There must have been so many creative work-arounds. Barker admitted that he shot most of the film in his own apartment and edited the final cut himself to save money. Well, it worked. The editing is great, and the performances of the leads carry the movie into iconic status.

It’s no surprise that the largest box-office draw in the last decade has been Marvel movies. They’re large films packed with star power, sequels, and crazy effects. But the larger they get, the safer they get. I’m sure Avengers Doomsday will make a gazillion dollars at the box office, but I doubt it will be remembered like this. There will be thousands of Avengers movies, but there’ll only be one Obsession, and that’s what makes it special.

Marvel also just announced that they laid off the majority of their VFX team and some important creatives they’ve had since the beginning, likely to replace them all with AI. Disney has taken an outwardly pro-AI stance without any sign of thoughtful evaluation of what its limits should be. Warner Bros. has already been using an algorithm to pick scripts they believe will be the most profitable for years now.

This June, millions of college graduates are anxious about their future. Most of them just went into debt and spent at least 4 years of their lives to learn skills and pursue careers that soon might not exist. As corporations and executives sink more and more money into what they believe to be safe and fall back on AI, it’s refreshing to see a young person with creative vision and lots of skill just do it. He made his movie, and it was a hit. Even if the average moviegoer doesn’t know anything about the background of the movie, they can likely feel the difference. So for many, I believe, Obsession symbolizes the power of youthful ambition, creativity, and perseverance. Obsession has outlasted and surpassed Disney’s new Star Wars movie (The Mandalorian and Grogu, which was made with a budget of $160 million). These are the stories young people are yearning for right now. This is the reason so many commencement speakers are being booed off the stage when they praise AI as the next step in human evolution. I believe Gen Z wants to see themselves as Barkers in their own fields, and it gives them hope that they can win against the profit-focused, AI-driven machines.

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Obsession’s Themes

It’s also worth mentioning that another draw for many who went to see Obsession, especially in its later weeks, was the online conversation around it. It’s already won over many non-horror fans (including my dad) because they want to be in on the conversation. The movie is a goldmine of deep themes and philosophical ideas to explore. The internet is flooded with videos and posts theorizing and debating the movie’s points about love, free will, AI relationships, pornography, and who the real villain and victim in the story are. As much as I’d like to explore themes being discussed ( maybe I’ll look at one of them later on), I’ll restrain myself, and if you’re interested in digging into them with a thoughtful guide, I strongly recommend checking out Dr. Laura Robinson’s Substack series on Obsession and the internet’s response here.

Conclusion (I’m Going to Watch It Again)

The explosion of Obsession has been somewhat bittersweet. I am honestly slightly somber that this movie has become such a blockbuster, only because I selfishly enjoy sharing small, well-made, low-budget movies with friends. But I’m also strangely proud that someone only a little younger than me has found so much success in following his passion, and won against Hollywood’s megacorporations. And it seems to be setting a trend, as Kane Parsons (a local to my hometown, Petaluma) just topped the box office with his film Backrooms at the age of 20!

If you scare easily or are sensitive to violence or cringe humor, this probably isn’t the movie for you. But if you love a good scare, or if you’ve been wanting to check out horror for a while now, and want a place to start, I highly recommend Obsession. In theaters if you still can. I know I will be seeing it at least one more time.

I recently paid for and took Patriot Academy’s Biblical Citizenship course (so you don’t have to). It’s a course designed for churches and small groups that claims to teach “biblical principles and how to apply them” by combining elements of American exceptionalism, Christian nationalism, and American pseudohistory. It’s essentially Civil Religion 101. All joking aside, I feel conflicted writing about this course. Many Christians have taken this course with the sincere desire to live their whole lives (including their political lives) in accordance with the Bible. They are not satisfied with a cheap form of secularism that suggests religion remain a private condition of the heart when engaging the public square, and for that I applaud them. I wholeheartedly agree that Christians in America need to be reading their Bibles and thinking about what it means to be a Christian in the political world of today. Unfortunately, this course is not the way to do it.

I will write a long series of articles addressing various claims, sources, and ideas that the course promotes, putting them into dialogue with what the Bible has to say about the role of the church as a politic, what Christians have said about politics throughout Church history, and I will raise some of my own concerns with the state of the American church. But I want to be clear: I am not trying to “take down” Patriot Academy or any Christian who believes it is important to be politically active. I actually agree with the assertion that Christians ought to be talking about politics more right now, not less, and that their faith should inform their politics. There are major problems, however, with Biblical Citizenship, and I write my criticisms not out of fear for the future of America and not out of any sense of superiority in my own political and/or partisan preferences (which I hold very tentatively), but out of love for the Church and concern that she has fallen captive to something far less than her holy calling.

That said, my first criticism isn’t very politically pointed at all. It actually has to do with the course’s title Biblical Citizenship.

What Is Biblical Anyway?

Biblical is a word thrown around all of the time in the Evangelical consumerist subculture. So the problem here is not unique to Patriot Academy, but more indicative of the simplistic nature of all American Evangelicalism (with which I identify, and so feel a responsibility to call out). Here is the issue with the word biblical: it doesn’t mean anything. Nothing coherent in this context anyway.

Etymologically, biblical just means bible-related. If that’s the definition we’re working with, I think it can be an extremely helpful word, but to be clear, it has no moral claim. So biblical Israel might mean Israel as it was in the Ancient Near East as it’s described by the Bible. Biblical text might refer to the text of the Bible. And biblical languages might refer to the ancient forms of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. But that’s not how biblical is often used, especially when used in book (or class) titles. For example, if you saw a book titled A Case for Biblical Marriage, you probably wouldn’t expect it to be advocating for polygamy and marrying your brother’s wife after he dies. Because the word biblical isn’t used solely to describe something related to or found in the Bible. Rather, it’s used to carry an authoritative prescription. If something is biblical, the implication is often that the Bible is commanding (in some sense) how to view a topic. To put it another way, biblical is a claim that an idea carries the authority of the Word of God. This is why so many courses and classes claim to teach biblical principles (authoritative rules) from a biblical worldview (an authoritative perspective on the world that supposedly arises from the Bible).

For the podcast, I recently had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Max Botner, professor at Jessup University and author of a new, important book, How Then Shall We Read: A Student’s Guide to Interpreting the New Testament. The book is brilliant. I was all too happy to promote it, and I’ll be using it in the New Testament class I teach for college credit. It’s far more than an introduction to the New Testament. It’s a must-read for any Christian who struggles with how to apply the Bible faithfully to their lives while honoring the original context in which the text was written.

Beyond the book, I ended up talking with Dr. Botner about the word biblical and asked if he thinks it’s ever an appropriate word to use at all. This led him to ask: biblical according to whom? He cited The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology by David Kelsey, which shows how all the recent major theologians (like Barth and Tillich) use the word biblical slightly differently. We have to acknowledge that biblical is making an authoritative interpretive claim, which differs based on the interpreter. “What we have to own,” Botner said, “is that when we use the term biblical, it’s my interpretation of the Bible…which must not be confused with the authority of the Bible itself.” If I claim something is biblical, I’m claiming it’s authoritative according to the Bible, according to the way I am interpreting it. Only it leaves that last part out. In a way, it shuts down any dialogue around an idea, because what good Christian would want to argue with the authority of the Bible?

The Bible always requires interpretation. There is no plain meaning of the text, that is, unless you’re fluent in Ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek. All that we have in our English translations (which are pretty good) we owe to scholarship, translators, and interpreters that came before us, and they are relying on those who came before them. Because of this, in his book, Botner beautifully asserts that the Bible cannot be read outside of community, since there is always a community of translators and interpreters before the text ever reaches our eyes. Our Bible reading, even before speaking with others, is always catholic (influenced by those in the global church), and historical (influenced by those who have gone before us). It is truly impossible to read the Bible by ourselves.

If this is true, then we should be very careful about using the word biblical to make any authoritative claims. It places one’s own interpretation of the Bible in a place of high jurisdiction. Interpretation is important, but as Botner reminds us, we dare not confuse the authority of the Bible itself with the authority of our interpretation of the Bible.

To make matters worse, I think the reason the word is so popular today is that it functions as a marketing tool. With biblical in a book title, marketers know it will sell to a certain consumer demographic (politically and theologically conservative Evangelical Christians).

Misunderstanding the Purpose of the Bible

Finally, the term biblical just doesn’t do justice to the Bible. Contra the Biblical Citizenship course, the Bible is not a moral guidebook that addresses all of life’s dilemmas. Nor does it claim to be. Rather, it’s God’s message to humanity: a narrative of God’s rescue and plan to commune with humanity in the past, present, and future. Does this mean that the Bible has nothing to say to us about morality? By no means! The Bible is essential to understanding Christian morality. But how we get our moral framework from the Bible is a bit more complicated. The narrative of Scripture is meant to shape the imagination of the Church into the mind of Christ, which, guided by the Spirit, will shape our morality, but not in a vacuum. The Bible doesn’t give a list of biblical principles or laws for all peoples at all times. That’s not how the Torah works (which I’ll talk about in another article), it’s not how Jesus’s commands work (Matt. 19:21), and it’s not how Paul’s commands work either (1 Tim. 5:23). Different biblical commands apply to different peoples in different places at different times. To claim any command is binding today, one has the obligation to show how it fits within the metanarrative of the Bible and how it is to be lived out in our particular context. We have to be better Bible readers by letting the text itself define what it claims to be. Even the most universal principles, like don’t kill a human being, commanded to all humanity in Gen. 9:6, seem to have exceptions and complicated applications throughout the rest of the Old Testament.

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A Better Approach

When it comes to biblical citizenship, the adjective promises a simple approach to politics. It’s a “the Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it” approach. And I completely understand the desire for simplicity in a world of increasingly complicated parties, issues, and ideologies, all of which we are unrealistically and constantly expected to keep up with and evaluate. It would be a hell of a lot easier to believe that one idea is biblical and another isn’t. But God doesn’t call us to be biblical (either Bible-related or to live under the authority of one person’s interpretation of the Bible). Rather, God calls us to be Christlike. Sure, this can be a slippery term as well, but it narrows the field a little more from a list of arbitrary “dos and don’ts” to a person, King Jesus, living and ruling now, present by the Spirit in his church, and as described by the Bible. We can say that being Christlike is, at the very least, a calling to be (1) loving (in the self-sacrificial shape of the cross), (2) wise (more fully human), and (3) righteous (a community of justice and healthy, right relationships). It’s easy to anachronistically claim that a million different political positions are biblical. It’s much harder to claim that those positions are self-sacrificial, wise, loving, promote justice, and are Christlike.

I suggest we use these adjectives rather than biblical when debating public issues. We can and should argue about which issues and ideas these terms do and don’t apply. I avoid the terms biblical worldview and biblical principles like the plague. Not because they are inherently wrong, but because of their aforementioned unhelpfulness and imprecision. Instead, I suggest teaching from a Christlike, loving worldview (of which there are many! Not just one. And what it looks like will change based on one’s context). And I suggest teaching wisdom principles, informed by the story of the Bible and the Spirit in dialogue with the community of the global church, past and present. These terms aren’t as flashy, and they probably won’t catch on in any marketing strategy, but they set the terms of conversation and debate on more concrete goals than authoritative biblical interpretation.

Botner argues that biblical authority is “far grander than a list of guidebook dos and don’ts.” And NT Wright argues that biblical authority is an abbreviation for the authority of Christ handed down to his apostles/Church, manifest by his Spirit in the writing, assembling, and interpreting of the Bible in the Church. So I won’t really be looking for an alternative biblical citizenship than presented in the course. Rather, I want to explore what it would be like for Christians to adopt a Christlike, loving, wise, and righteous citizenship by looking at the story of the Bible in its context and in the wisdom of those in Church history. What would it look like to follow the authority of the living King Jesus as a citizen of the United States right now?

I’m Matt Holiday. I am a high school teacher from the Bay Area. I have a degree in Film and Media, a Master’s in Theology, and am currently working on my dissertation in New Testament Studies. I started this Substack because I wanted a place where I can freely write the ideas I’m processing without everything having to be polished. I am also keenly aware that the longer I write essays for universities or biblical conferences, the worse my writing gets. So, out of fear that I am on the way to becoming theologically pretentious, insufferably illegible, and horrendously out-of-touch, I want to consistently write articles that are raw and in process. I hope that with consistent Substack-ing?, my writing grows accessible and at least a little interesting. I encourage all engagement and pushback on these ideas, especially before I commit to them and put them anywhere I can’t take back.

This Summer, starting today, I am excited to work on the following 3 weekly Substack series:

Civic Tuesdays

To be clear, I am not particularly passionate about politics. I never took polisci, I don’t watch the news often enough, and I don’t like writing on topics out of my depth. I am, however, extremely passionate about the Church and its role in society, and I care deeply about good Bible interpretation.

Recently, I paid for and went through Patriot Academy’s Biblical Citizenship course (so you don’t have to). And it got me thinking, to say the least. For some time now, I’ve wanted to write some responses to the course’s content and underlying ideology. My intention is not to bash Patriot Academy or the people who put it together. It’s especially not to make anyone feel bad who might have enjoyed the course. Instead, I want to critically evaluate the course out of concern for the cultural trends that influence the Church.

One reason I’m hesitant to write anything political is that the conversation in America is extremely complicated (you likely already know that). Not everyone can be an expert in economics, social programs, and foreign affairs, and determining which experts to trust often feels impossible. I believe this is why so many Christians are drawn to this course. It simplifies that morally complex web of topics into a battle between “biblical” and “non-biblical” principles. The black-and-white thinking eases the tension of critical evaluation, which can take years of effort and dialogue. There are claims and underlying approaches in the course that I find deeply troubling from a Christian perspective, and I want to evaluate them by putting them into dialogue with the biblical text itself, the world of biblical hermeneutics (how to read the bible faithfully), and the traditions of Church history.

So, you won’t find any weekly hot-takes, up-to-date news commentary, or partisan pandering here, just some concern for the future of the church, and exploration of how the church should (or shouldn’t) engage the political battles going on around us. I’m also very interested in what good “biblical citizenship” would actually look like in America’s current context, and while I likely won’t come out with a strong answer, I will keep the idea in mind as I wade through various topics.

Theological Cinema Thursdays

I love movies. I have since as long as I can remember. I host a podcast with my friend Josh called Kingdom Commentary that’s supposedly about tracing theological themes through Scripture to the early Church to our contemporary culture. Movies come up as a conversation topic disproportionately, and we constantly find theological themes and cultural reflections in them. We keep trying to limit the film-talk to keep us on track. But I went to film school, and as anyone who went to film school knows, they don’t teach you how to make films. They teach you how to write film reviews. So, I thought I’d bring some more in-depth theology and cultural insights into the movies I end up thinking about. I might write a few pieces about some new movies coming out this year, or on how Christians should approach media more generally. Either way, if you like movies and enjoy online discourse around them, I’ll be sharing my thoughts here in long-form rather than trying to be clever on Letterboxd.

Sacramental Saturdays

I’ve been thinking a lot about sacraments recently. My dissertation directly deals with baptism (and circumcision), so I am in a phase of questioning assumptions I’ve had about baptism and reevaluating the purpose of sacraments on the daily. I grew up in a low-church evangelical context, where the sacraments were little more than “outward expressions of inward beliefs.” My views have changed since then, and I’ve adopted a much higher view of the sacraments, but I am also (like a good Protestant) a semi-biblicist at heart. And the more I look at what the Bible says about baptism, the more thoughts I have to process. Separately, I’m doing a sermon series later this Summer on communion, so I think it’ll be helpful to organize my thoughts here on both communion and baptism as I more formally write about them for my schooling and my church.

AI

I also find it strange and important to say that I won’t use any AI for any articles I write here, in the conception of ideas, in the art/pictures used for the articles, or in the writing or drafting of the articles. It’s wild to have to say that, but here we are. I don’t think AI is outright from the devil, nor do I think it should be banned in any way. Rather, I think we are currently in the middle of discovering what roles it should (and shouldn’t) play in society, and we are already facing unanticipated repercussions for the lack of restrictions put on AI. It’ll keep things simpler just to write the old-fashioned way. Besides, I don’t let my students use AI in their homework, so this is just me attempting to avoid hypocrisy. So I’ll probably use parentheses instead of em-dashes--or hyphens, since I don’t know how to make em-dashes on a Mac--and if you see any typos or grammatical mistakes, I can claim that’s me letting you know that AI was not involved in the generation of these articles.

So, that’s 3 posts a week for the Summer. I am doing this to keep myself on my toes and constantly be writing. Honestly, I’m largely writing these articles for myself, as a way to process ideas, practice communication, and engage with critical feedback. But I would also absolutely love it if these articles cause you to think through these ideas as well! I hope some of my thoughts are helpful in your processing, whether you’re passionate about one of these topics or just have nothing better to do. I expect these series to wrap up and change after Summer ends, and my posting will likely become less frequent when the school year starts up. Maybe I’ll get greedier then and put up some paywalls or subscription tiers. But for now, I’m taking on the challenge of putting out as many free thoughts as I can this Summer. And if you subscribe and follow along, I greatly appreciate it!