I wasn’t looking for a NASA researcher, I was looking for goat cheese.

I must have seemed perplexed as I surveyed the half-dozen or so options in the display case. My mission was to find a substitute for ricotta. Instead I found characters.

Enter the cheese stocker guy. You know, the one with the big apron whom you usually hope doesn’t ask you if you’re looking for anything, even though you are. I might have replied with a dismissive, “Nah, I’m good,” but for two reasons:

1) I actually needed help, and

2) I’ve developed a fondness lately for getting into unusual conversations with strangers.

I write all sorts of stuff but I prefer to write books, especially fiction. All fiction is character driven, and there is only one way to create great characters: Know people.

It was with that in mind that I noticed the NASA pin on the cheese guy’s lapel. I spotted it while he described how I could pulse-blend a goat cheese gouda with almond milk to get the substitute I was looking for. I put the cheese in the cart and said, “That’s a cool pin. Is there a story attached to it?”

“Oh, I’ve worked for NASA since the mid-70s.” He smiled and went back to stocking cheese.

I could have walked away at this point, but I was all in. I simply had to know what an almost fifty-year NASA veteran was doing, working the cheese counter at Freddies. Is he retired? Did he spend a decade working on how to cram 500 calories worth of dried cheddar into an ice cube tray for Skylab? Could he lend some confirmation about fake moon landings or the mysterious deaths surrounding Apollo 1?

“Which project?” I asked, confident that the book I’d just read on the history of NASA research would yield me at least some reference point for conversation.

“Oh,” he sheepishly grinned while opening a box of Gruyere, “I worked on the Andromeda project…” and then he listed several others, including a study he headed with a very NASA-esque seven-word title that I can’t remember. Something about refractory, maybe?

I shook my head and thanked him for his advice, convinced that when a NASA researcher gives you culinary advice, you take it.

It worked marvelously, by the way.

I respect characters, real or imagined, and by characters I mean someone worth knowing or knowing about. The more unique the better. It didn’t take me long into writing my first novel to realize that creating believable, interesting characters wasn’t as easy as it seemed. Some characters are disposable; I’ve offed hundreds of them in my books, sometimes with good riddance.

But you can’t just kill a character like Andy, for instance. Andy might have a wife or a girlfriend you’ll have to deal with. He certainly has a mother, probably, who’s going to cry at the funeral service later on…if you decide to write one.

So Andy needs fleshed out a little – and so does Abby, or Archard, or even the scary old man you don’t plan on naming. Not yet anyway, because maybe he’ll pop up later, maybe even in a different book.

Characters you didn’t know existed come into the story when you least expect it, because they need to. They’re what make the scenes memorable. Otherwise, it’s just another routine trip to the post office.

And believe me, the post office, or grocery store, or the dump (especially the dump) are teeming with characters. You just need to look for them.

I recently switched my PO Box to a USPS auxiliary location closer to my house. It’s tucked away inside this shabby trailer-esque quaint general store along the highway, and it definitely has some characters.

I enter past rows of overpriced thrift store furniture and a shelf of bug spray into a hallway that meanders eventually to my mailbox. Before getting there I need to acknowledge the dog. I can’t remember her name and I’m pretty sure it’s a source of contention for her because she always looks at me as if saying, “Well Vince, what are you doing here again?”

(She, of course, remembers my name.)

I smile at her despite having to step around her to enter the hallway. Everyone steps around her. That spot at the entrance is hers till the Lord calls her home and we all know it.

I pass a wall of Mario and Luigi posters that nobody wants, mounted beside some dusty Black Panther ones that were equally ignored since their day in the spotlight.

I check my box, add most of my mail to the trash can overflowing with political ads for candidates who are about as appealing as the Mario and Luigi prints. A lady next to me does the same, groaning as we share eyerolls in a silent lament of election season.

You have to ring the bell on the counter—which used to be an actual bell, you know, the kind with a satisfying lever and age old ding! but was replaced last year with one of those electronic ones that you have to pay a monthly subscription to own. Progress?

But I ring it because the lady who runs the place bounces between here and the other counter selling soda, screwdrivers, paint, used DVDs, and a thousand other useful things that come in handy when you’re desperate for a birthday present on the way to your kids’ friends party.

She appears with a smile at the sound of the bell, like Jadis from Narnia minus the homicidal bent and fabulous dresses.

She (the mail lady, not Jadis) knows your box number without having to check your pick-up slip. She also wonders why you haven’t been there all week, and why you didn’t bring the kids because you’ve got a leaning stack of Thriftbooks orders in back that are about to crest the wave and bury Sandy’s Amazon Prime meds. And don’t nobody dare lose Sandy’s Prime meds.

I wait at the counter. One of the other dogs who lives there – I think his name is Apollo but I could be wrong; I’m not going to call him that and find out – walks by with the indifference I wish the other dog had.

Another patron steps in line behind me, which prompts (let’s go ahead and risk it) Apollo to leap up from behind the counter, panting between the flat-rate envelopes and the vintage package scale.

The man behind me breaks his news to the dog. “Sorry, Apollo,” (I knew it!) “Jane’s not with me today.” Jane’s his dog, of course.

Apollo droops, sadly descends to the floor in a puddle of lost opportunity of canine love and lets out a sad whimper before slinking back into his dog bed. It’s tucked next to a stack of those open top, plastic crates made of material that only ever seems to exist in the post office or in political yard signs. (Why is that? That stuff is crazy sturdy.)

An old timer walks in a second later and asks if my kid wants an unopened box of cookies. “Go ahead if you want one,” he says. “I bought five of ‘em.” Boxes, that is.

In the car, my five-year-old asks why he bought five boxes of cookies.

“Characters,” I say, “We’ve got characters.”

He looks confused, but he’ll understand someday. He’s being raised by two writers.

Most of my book characters begin as he, or she, or the soldier, or something equally vague. Their larger identity is still a mystery to me. It will be revealed in due time, and might shift occasionally as I get to know them better.

But that, too, is part of the fun. For instance: I had no idea that one of my characters had a father who was a Coast Guard veteran, and we’ve known each other for years! Why didn’t he tell me that in book One? Secretive jerk; I could have used that 100,000 words ago.

Note via

I’m not exactly sure how old he is either, or what he plans on doing when I’m done with him. We’ll figure it out. I like him and I’d hate to leave him where I last saw him. He’s got a really fabulous scar now.

I’ve heard that some writers create elaborate histories for their characters before they ever write their first scene. I met a guy last week who’s got something like 60 books in the queue. Or maybe he said 6? Either way, I wasn’t surprised because writers are like that. Maybe that’s the way to go, but it’s not my style.

I meet the characters as I write about them. They show me who they are by what they do, and only after we’ve gotten to know each other do I feel the freedom to put them in greater and more dangerous circumstances, because I don’t know what might happen to them there. They might live, they might die. They might win, or they may suffer a trauma worse than defeat. You just never know until you get there. And sometimes I just don’t want to go there. Other times I’m eager to.

I say all this as way of encouraging us to talk to people a little more. Look around, and don’t be afraid to speak to some strangers. Most of us don’t bite (although they tend to bite Willy, but that’s a different set of characters I’ll tell you about someday). Even the cheese guy at Freddies might surprise you.

If you want to write good characters, you need to experience some real ones.

And if you’re still unconvinced, how about this?

These little conversations are also the reason AI will never beat us. Skynet will never write realistic, interesting characters because it never gets to know them. They’ll never meet the NASA cheese guy, or Apollo at the post office, or his sometime lover Jane, or that other dog at the entrance. Whatever her name is.

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Post image by Eugenio Mazzone on Unsplash, not Skynet.

Hang out in church leadership circles long enough, and you might hear something like this:

The fastest way to grow the body of Christ is to get more butts in seats.

Which means the more people we can get into a church service, the greater the odds of reaching the ones who’ll be receptive to the message being preached, whatever that may be. They usually emphasize appealing to a diverse swath of the community—casting a wide net, in church speak—in order to snag those folks “whose shadows would otherwise never darken the door of a church,” as I’ve heard pastors say.

The more broadly appealing the church, the more people will give it a shot. The larger the crowd filing through the door, the more conversions will inevitably follow. This is the More Butts In Seats philosophy. Fill enough seats in your sanctuary (or get enough website hits, or sermon streams, or online followers) and watch the church grow, because More Butts In Seats = Expansion.

Once the church outgrows it’s venue, it can then expand farther, maybe open up another campus, or plant a church in another town.

If, like me, you’ve spent a significant portion of your life in the business world, this progression might sound familiar. It’s marketing. It’s the Customer Acquisition Funnel.1 It’s free samples. These are predicated on a numbers game, a basic formula: Pitch your free sample to 100 people, and a percentage of them will buy your product.

In business terms, you’d describe the More Butts In Seats principle like this:

The fastest way to increase your profits is by increasing your customer base.

I know the idea of equating new believers with profits is off-putting, and not at all what most church leaders mean when they talk about growing the body of Christ. Their motivations are, by and large, about salvation and discipleship, not expanding temples unto themselves. But it’s the concept of More Butts In Seats that I’m getting at.

Wittingly or not, the American Church has adopted a corporate model for operation and growth. This is one of the great criticisms I hear, and I tend to share it generally, but when you drill down on the specifics—which “corporate” things we’re talking about—I think there’s some wiggle room. You might even say we’re getting overly critical about certain corporate things the church employs that are, in fact, essential.

They can be both good and bad, and often they’re just the practical realities of dealing with a crowd.

When Jesus Shows Up

If you were able to time travel to the first century and follow Jesus around as He ministered, you’d probably have to struggle to get close enough to hear Him.

Jesus generates crowds. Always has, always will.

Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed. When they heard about all he was doing, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon.

— Mark 3:7-8

So there’s nothing inherently wrong with large churches. They may not be preferable for some of us for a variety of reasons, but you can’t say that just because a congregation is in the thousands, Jesus isn’t moving powerfully there.

We all know there are plenty of examples of massive churches derailing themselves from following Jesus. That’s a reality, but it’s not baked into the cake. They aren’t inherently problematic just for being big; small, stagnant churches have plenty of problems of their own, perhaps even worse ones.

So, large and small congregations —be they in a strip mall, warehouse, million-dollar building, or someone’s living room—share the same dilemma, and it looks something like this:

Preach Jesus2 —>people turn to Jesus—>add them to the church—>preach Jesus—>more people turn to Jesus—>more people are added to the ever growing church—preach Jesus...

Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.

— Acts 2:41

It’s a challenge the church has been wrestling with since the beginning. Paul had to deal with the influx of new converts and gently teach them to not eat blood anymore. Peter probably had kids and families surrounding him as he preached while also trying not to get stoned to death. Barnabas probably had to juggle travel plans and find a way not to get saddled with jerk companions for a year. And all of them, women and men of the early church, just like today, had to organize and assign roles of responsibility.

This by necessity means structure. And structure can seem rigid, like a corporation’s flow chart, or an organizational hierarchy.

But there is no hierarchy in the kingdom of believers. There is a king, Jesus, and one rank underneath Him: Follower of Jesus.

So the modern church therefore faces an age-old problem:

How do we embrace the Holy Spirit’s prompting without hesitation, while honoring and loving one another in the process of large scale gatherings?

It’s not easy. And this is where some of the critics who decry the church becoming too corporate are perhaps out of touch with reality and history. It’s easy to say the church has become too structured. It’s much harder to find a coherent balance between the natural and supernatural needs of a congregation, no matter what the size. And growing the Church is kinda the point.

Market Expansion

Whether you’re running a business or planting a church, you’ll want it to grow. In business speak this is called Market Expansion. To do it, you’ll need to find an audience...cast a wide net. Expanding a church in the current Western environment often requires a few key elements:

• A modern website

• Appealing decor

• Good music

• Quality coffee

• A greeter for first time attendees

• Security

• Engaging sermons

Did you notice something about that list?

They’re all things most of us want in a basic church. These are not corporate goodies for churches with grand designs for massive expansion. They’re simple, modern functions that don’t require a lot of money. In fact, all of the things on that list are good. Who wants crap coffee on Sunday morning?

“Come along! Here’s coffee that is coffee. Can nothing be done about the Hall coffee, Steve?”

“Yes, if you’ll start a coffee-fund,” replied the Bursar. “I don’t know if you’ve ever worked out the finance of really first-class coffee for two hundred people.”

— Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night

So why all of the criticism that these and other amenities are anathema to following Jesus, just because they’re modern?

You’ll find all of these things in my church and probably yours as well. They’re just part of the venue for gathering in fellowship, a framework that can and often does lead to personal transformation, connections, and worship. The “stuff” is just structure for facilitating healing and loving others—the real meat and potatoes of Christ-centered ministry.

But here’s the flip side argument, which I also think is legitimate: That bullet list might draw a lot of people into a church, and generate a lot of cash flow, but it may not move the needle at all in fostering relationship with Jesus.

A church can do all of those things without ever mentioning Jesus, much less inviting Him to set the agenda. No doubt you’ve got some examples of this in your own experience. How well Jesus permeates any body of believers is directly dependent on how often He’s invited to join them.

And that is dependent on how well the Holy Spirit (famously unpredictable) fits that church’s brand.

Which leads us to a not-so-good way the American church has adopted the corporate model.

Branding

Branding is tested, it works, it grows the church.

Branding generates exclusivity, the idea that they’ve got something special over there and you’re gonna want in on it. T-shirts, stickers, hoodies, and mugs grow the brand, and those who love the brand become loyal to it.

We came up with this term called Institution Creep, where more and more, the institution matters more than the people who are in that church. And when the institution matters more than the people, you have problems.

When the pressure comes on, they think: How can we preserve this church and my position, rather than that person who’s been wounded?…We discovered that toxic churches, toxic institutions, value loyalty. I can’t tell you the number of people who’ve used the word loyalty as though it’s the most important value in that church. Loyalty to the pastor, to the leader.

— Scot McKnight, Expedition 44 podcast Aug. 24, 2022

Conferences and special events with rock star evangelists follow, and so too our need to build a larger venue. Next, the church needs a million-dollar building, maybe a Christian school, with 501c3 designations and all the strings that come with it.

Bigger, better, vibrant, growing! This is the successful business model. This is also the corporate church model.

But if the Holy Spirit is too wild, it may be off-brand. So Holy Spirit isn’t welcome. No flag waving or dancing in the aisles. No worship sets extending past the 33-minute slot.

If the Holy Spirit is given reign, that’s just gonna cause exhaustion for the childcare workers and the volunteers, right?! And you can’t have the Holy Spirit blowing up Second Service because we’ve got a tight turnaround for Third Service.

The crowds necessitate structure, but the Spirit demands obedience. What are we supposed to do with that?

This is why a fast-growing contingent of believers is rethinking the entire American church model in favor of home churches and more organic gatherings, but what to do when even those outgrow their venue?

Old Problems

Any sizable group of people on a mission—whether it’s preaching Jesus or growing a business—need to organize and adapt to a variety of challenges. Personality and expectations are two major ones:

Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preached the word of the Lord and see how they are doing.” Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him, because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not continued with them in the work. They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and left, commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord. He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the churches.

— Acts 15:36–41

From the beginning, then, the church had to deal with the messiness of administration. Spreading the gospel of Jesus requires people, and people are difficult.

In fact, people can suck. Even people who love Jesus.

Policies and procedures may smack of corporate speak, but the fact is they have a crucial role in the church. Failure to deal with the messiness of relationships can, and often does, cause division when inevitable squabbles arise.

Or worse. Failure to contend with personalities can lead to aggression (overt or passive), or deceit, or even crimes. There’s a solution for this.

Management With Accountability

I mentioned earlier that there is only one rank under Jesus. We’re all on equal footing—from the oldest elder on down to the smallest child, women and men—with the same level of access to His power and presence. A healthy church embraces this, and encourages those with giftings to preach, teach, minister, prophesy, evangelize, and lead.

And yet...

It would be unwise to hand a microphone to just anybody, not the least reason being because there are a lot of weirdos out there but also because not everyone is learned enough or coherent enough to speak in line with the heart of Jesus.

It’s incumbent on church leaders to know whether or not someone claiming to have a Word of knowledge, or someone wanting to pray for the congregation, or someone wanting to lead everyone in a declaration, actually has an abiding relationship with Jesus, and is competent and responsible enough to do so.

That means vetting them, and vetting people is another one of those corporate processes that people don’t like.

We don’t hand chainsaws or drivers licenses to anyone who wants one. No, we examine them to make sure they’re competent, and instruct them in understanding that responsibility. We train them, test them, and then (when we’re reasonably confident they’re not a whackjob and that they know what they’re doing) we let them try it out under supervision.

This is called management, which is also corporate but necessary.

Here’s an example:

I was once leading prayer ministry at a previous church. During a worship and prayer time, a person came up who was just diagnosed with cancer. They asked for healing and I was happy to join them in that. However, the person next to me—who was placed on the prayer team by the previous leader—went into one of the most unBiblical, faith-shattering declarations I’d ever heard. I had to counter everything he said to wash the stink of Satanic lies off of the person we were praying for.

[Side note: No, God does not want you to suffer and maybe die of cancer, for any reason, ever. If you ever hear someone say that, tell them to get the heck away from you.]

I’ve seen this kind of thing play out to various degrees for years. People have weird opinions, disjointed views and shoddy grounding on all sorts of topics. Often, people are thrust in to roles they’re ill equipped for just to fill a ministry need, with no examination about their personal walk with Jesus and beliefs. Leaders, especially church leaders, need to understand that and establish policies to deal with it.

The proficiency and skill necessary to accurately teach on scripture is astonishingly lacking in many congregations to where many pastors haven’t even read (much less understood and studied) the entire Bible. Having read the Bible and being cognizant of its context should be a foundational prerequisite for teachers, and a group of elders (which should include women, by the way) ought to be responsible for ensuring it.

And yet, there are also a lot of credentialed pastors—some with megachurches and millions of followers—who are spouting nonsense. Some of them even promote spousal abuse and marital rape.

When a pastor goes on-stage and tells the women in your congregation that a new bride needs to “stand where[her husband] tells her to stand, wear what he tells her to wear, and do what he tells her to do,” what will your church do about it? Will the elders fire him, or will they allow him to continue?

Is there a method for holding abusive church members accountable?

Is there a system in place for mandatory reporting of harm when a congregant becomes aware of it?

Is there a system in place to make sure sexual predators don’t have free reign?

If an active shooter or an abusive father with a gun comes into the childcare wing of your church, do you have a plan to deal with it? And do you have a written Standard Operating Procedure so the rest of your staff knows how to respond?

If you discover two teenagers sneaking off during youth group to be alone in the dark, what is the process for making sure it never happens again?

Management with accountability is a foundational pillar that the corporate world understands, an essential element that all successful organizations use. And yet, proper management with adequate accountability is something the American church has been woefully unable or unwilling to embrace.

The downstream result of that is a history of church scandal and cover-up that has left decades of trauma in the wake of its absence.

The Best of Both Worlds

I hope that you’re not hearing this as an argument that the Church needs to be more corporate in its operation. That’s not what I’m saying. But a church that doesn’t set up the structure necessary to deal with the day-to-day management of people — in support of the larger mission of preaching Jesus — is ripe for failure, scandal, and abuse.

The greatest tragedy of the modern American church is that so many young people raised in the church want nothing to do with it as adults. That’s largely because of how often they’ve witnessed first-hand how messed up the church can be when leaders don’t have a system in place to deal with the messiness of life. These kids saw scandals get brushed under the rug, abusive messages taught from the pulpit, hypocritical lifestyles among leadership, and tenured incompetence common at all levels.

By contrast, these same young people are working at jobs with highly competent small businesses, and at large successful corporations that tolerate none of that nonsense.

They see how the secular world deals with interpersonal conflict and wonder why the church so continuously fumbles it up: Nobody wants to piss off Betty at church, so just go ahead and put up with Betty’s abrasive attitude. No counseling notices, no coaching logs, no performance reviews. Just admonishment to cope, because that’s how the church deals with it...or doesn’t.

They heard the pastor tell them that the boys’ lust problems were dependent on the girls’ attire and other purity culture double standards, and wonder why the church can’t just have a simple standard for everyone like their employer does, and leave it at that?

And perhaps worst of all, they hear messages about how Jesus loves everyone, yet endure snarky tribalism from leaders dehumanizing entire people groups, something that doesn’t fly in professional circles and also doesn’t square with Jesus, or any of the Apostles, either.

In short, the corporate world focused on the mission, on the business at hand. It manages everything else professionally in a way that doesn’t tear people down. It designs systems to protect individuals as it grows, because that’s a net positive for everyone invested in it.

So at this point, perhaps we should ask: Why the church can’t do it like that?

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Most of us learned in elementary science class that the human body is composed of around 60% water. It’s even more so for infants (75-78%). You also probably learned early on that water is a molecule consisting of two hydrogen atoms bonded by a single oxygen atom (H2O). That’s about as far as most students got in the science of water, or molecules, or atoms for that matter.

But did you know that atoms—all atoms—are in constant motion?

In science nerd-dom, this is referred to as the Kinetic Theory of Matter, which dictates:

• All matter is made up of tiny particles (atoms, molecules, or ions) that are always in constant, random motion.

• The speed and type of motion depend on temperature and the forces between particles.

• Higher temperature = faster movement = higher kinetic energy (energy of motion).

Solid matter like ice cubes, handguns, and those overdue library books you forgot about have particles tightly packed that vibrate in place. They’re sort of like an older white guy at a concert, just leaning a little in tune with the music.

The particles in liquids are moving faster and can roll around, flowing here and there. Keeping with the live music analogy, these are the hand waving guys and gals who sway with the groove; they go with the flow.

Gas particles are the wild ones. They just let it all hang out, going wild, with dancing and spinning and not a care in the world. They fill whatever space is available and sometimes blow stuff up.

In short, all matter is in motion, including the molecules in your body that make up your muscles, veins, blood, brain, bones, and organs. In part 1, we discussed what frequencies are and how the specific frequency of 440Hz came to be the standard for all tuning and recordings.

In this round, we’ll discuss how matter (specifically the matter composing the human body) might be affected by the music we hear, the words we speak, and the way we worship.

A Design Feature, Not A Flaw

We know that everything is made up atoms, and atoms are in constant motion, vibrating and oscillating due to thermal energy, which generates specific frequencies.

Existence is vibration. The entire universe is in a state of vibration, and each thing generates its own frequency, which is unique.…You might think, Existence is vibration? Even this table? This chair? My body? How can everything that can be seen and touched be vibration? It is indeed difficult to believe that things you can pick up with your hands and examine—things like wood, rocks, and concrete—are all vibrating.

But now the science of quantum mechanics generally acknowledges that substance is nothing more than vibration. When we separate something into its smallest parts, we always enter a strange world where all that exists is particles and waves.

— Masaru Emoto,1 The Hidden Messages in Water

And yet, the universe is so intricately designed that atoms themselves are made of smaller parts, each of which is subject to its own complexity of movement:

In fact, atoms are not fundamental building blocks. The atom has structure. It was found experimentally that the atom is made of a small nucleus surrounded by a cloud of electrons. As experiments probed the nucleus, structure was again found. The nucleus of the atom is made of individual protons and neutrons, which are themselves made of fractionally charged particles called quarks.

— What is the World Made Of? Cornell University, March 1995

Going back to elementary science class, molecules inside us are vibrational, and highly susceptible to outside frequencies. Not only that, they experience resonance with certain frequencies (more on that in a minute).

What does it mean for us, then, when we bombard our bodies with harmful frequencies?

How might those who seek to harm us use those frequencies?

And what might nefarious actors do to divorce us from spirit-lifting, healing frequencies?

Taking all of that science into account, it’s worth noting what frequencies our instruments, words, and voices are emitting, and how the words we speak and the sounds we make are resonating with the world around us. There’s that word again: resonance.

I guess we better define it.

What is resonance?

The wordy-nerdy definition usually goes something like this:

Resonance is the phenomenon where a system or object responds with increased amplitude (vibration, oscillation, or reaction) when driven at a specific frequency that matches its natural frequency.

If you find that definition kinda confusing, don’t be discouraged. That’s because it’s trying to generalize a term that’s actually highly specific to whatever is being discussed.

There are lots of different kinds of resonance: mechanical resonance, nuclear magnetic resonance, electrical resonance, mesomerism (which deals with chemicals), orbital resonance (think astronomy and celestial motion), and several others.

These entail complex relationships, but they all operate on the same basic concept: Resonance is nature’s way of transferring or increasing energy when frequencies match.

When a tuning fork is hit with a rubber hammer, creating a la sound, and a singer responds with a la, the tuning fork and the voice create a single frequency sound wave. This is called resonance.…When frequencies are fundamentally incompatible, they cannot resonate. We cannot accept what is fundamentally different from us.

— Masaru Emoto, The Hidden Messages in Water

For our purposes in discussing resonance, I want to focus on acoustic resonance, and also perhaps what some refer to as social resonance.

Breaking Glass and Healing Brains

Once again we visit the elementary science class. Most of us know that if you turn a soundmaking device to the right pitch (frequency), you can use that sound to break a wine glass.

Or, if a jet plane flies fast enough it will break the sound barrier2 (and also a lot of glass, if it’s at a low enough altitude). The sound barrier shattering is an example of sound causing a pressure shock wave. But the wine glass experiment is different, an example of acoustic resonance.

When the frequency of the sound bombards the wine glass, it vibrates. Once that sound frequency matches the wine glass’s natural frequency (400-2500Hz depending on the glass) it resonates by breaking.3

The same principle exists with a cochlear implant for those hard of hearing. This process is much more complex but essentially the device filters sounds, bypasses damaged areas of the ear, and distributes them directly to nerves in the ear so they can resonate with the brain.

In humans, resonance is a physical response our bodies have to an outside stimulant. It’s also an emotional one. We respond a certain way when words and sounds overwhelm us. Brain scientists call this the Default Mode Network (DMN) but you might have heard it referred to as a schema, which is sort of a mental flow chart we create for ourselves dictating how we respond to situations, subconsciously and instinctively.

Mental schemas and DMNs are actually different but highly intertwined, both contributing to that flight, fight, freeze, or fawn4 response that humans have in traumatic situations.

Words and sounds illicit those responses, for better and for worse.

Toxic negative thinking produces increased activity in the DMN, and activity in the [Task Positive Network] TPN5 decreases. This results in maladaptive, depressive ruminations and a decrease in the ability to solve problems. This makes us feel foggy, confused, negative, and depressed.

God is a god of order and balance, and he has fashioned our spirit, soul, and body this way. So it is quite simple; when we don’t follow his ordinance, there will be consequences. The brain moves into unbalanced chaos.

— Caroline Leaf, Switch On Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health

There is a well-established connection between the sounds we hear and the way our bodies respond. Foul words can create foul moods; grating music can lead to agitation and physical pain.

Science, then, merely confirms what His word and our bodies teach us: The frequencies we bombard ourselves with matter.

So this begs the question we posited in part 1: Does it matter which frequencies we use in worship?

And here’s another question: How have instruments (worship) and voices been used throughout history on the fields of battle?

The Holy Hand Grenade

When I and all who are with me blow our trumpets, then from all around the camp blow yours and shout, “For the Lord and for Gideon.”

— Judges 7:18

You can’t get away from the fact that God uses words and sounds all over the Bible in conjunction with displays of power, or proceeding miracles, or providing comfort, or many other purposes.

One of the most dramatic, though, is in the book of Judges where God commands Gideon to use sound to defeat an entire army.

Gideon and the hundred men with him reached the edge of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, just after they had changed the guard. They blew their trumpets and broke the jars that were in their hands. The three companies blew the trumpets and smashed the jars. Grasping the torches in their left hands and holding in their right hands the trumpets they were to blow, they shouted, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!” While each man held his position around the camp, all the Midianites ran, crying out as they fled.

When the three hundred trumpets sounded, the Lord caused the men throughout the camp to turn on each other with their swords.

— Judges 7:19-22

The Lord could have accomplished this miracle without the trumpets. He could have slain all of the Midianites quietly in the night. So why the sound blast?

I have no idea, but I do know that the shofar—the ram’s horn instrument used by Gideon and his 300 men in Judges 7—typically produced a fundamental frequency around 376 Hz, which is slightly higher than an F note. But since most of us don’t use shofars in our our worship sets (and probably don’t want to), perhaps it would be spiritually wise to find out what frequencies are being blasted from our sound systems on Sunday morning.

Our lives contain a seeming infinity of rhythms, with vibrations at the atomic and molecular levels and within biochemical reaction rates. The physiological correlates of the rhythms of the breath, heartbeat, and brain have been extensively studied and shown to be intimately related to our emotions, thoughts, and psychospiritual state.

— David Muehsam and Carlo Ventura, Life Rhythm as a Symphony of Oscillatory Patterns: Electromagnetic Energy and Sound Vibration Modulates Gene Expression for Biological Signaling and Healing, 2014

This, friends, is how the natural world operates. It’s the way God designed it, and it’s also how the enemy perverts and uses it.

When you go into battle in your own land against an enemy who is oppressing you, sound a blast on the trumpets. Then you will be remembered by the Lord your God and rescued from your enemies. Also at your times of rejoicing—your appointed festivals and New Moon feasts—you are to sound the trumpets over your burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, and they will be a memorial for you before your God. I am the Lord your God.

— Numbers 10:9-10

In part three of this series I’d like to explore the controversy associated with why the standard pitch presets are at 440Hz. Recent science and historian research has tackled this topic, and an ugly conclusion is taking shape:

According to existing scientific studies, music tuned at 432 Hz, compared to 440 Hz, can significantly decrease the heart rate and slightly decrease mean respiratory rate values; it results in better cardiovascular benefits including slowing heart rate and it promotes relaxation. It significantly decreases dental anxiety levels, significantly improves the sleep scores of patients with spinal cord injuries and leads to increased levels of perceived arousal.

— Pilot Aquaphotomic Study of the Effects of Audible Sound on Water Molecular Structure, Stoilov et al, 2022

It should come as no surprise that the link between sound frequencies, our bodies, and the international standardization of sound frequency has a lot to do with psychological warfare.

It also may not surprise you that the work of American and German scientists in the 1930s and 1940s was pivotal in setting that standard just in time for a major war, and coincidentally timed with unprecedented breakthroughs in the technology of music and film...and propaganda.

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And just for fun if you’ve never heard of a Holy Hand Grenade:

If you missed part 1, you can find it here or click the thumbnail below. Subscribe for part 3, coming soon.

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If you tune an instrument, chances are you’re tuning it to 440Hz, and probably unwittingly because 440Hz is the standard all instrument tuning apps are set to by default. We can change that in the settings, but how many people actually do so?

And why might we want to?

In every form of energy, whether it be mechanical, electrical, or heat, there is stored up a force which is in incessant activity. 

—  Nikola Tesla, from his lecture before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Columbia College, May 20, 1891

The frequency of sound isn’t something most people think much about — even musicians or worship leaders — but we should. Scientists, mathematicians, New Age and other non-Christian religious practitioners, medical technicians, engineers, and thousands of others understand frequencies and how they affect us.

But for some reason, Christ followers don’t seem to think much about negative and positive frequency correlations between sound, mind, and body. Or if they do, they often deem it as dangerous New Age quackery, “worldly” distraction, or merely irrelevant.

All science is God’s science, and just as we’d be foolish to put anything in our mouths and call it food, the same goes for what sounds we put in our ears. Or taking it a step farther, what energy we expose our bodies to.

And frequencies are all over the Bible, especially in music.

Praise Him with trumpet sound;
Praise Him with harp and lyre.
Praise Him with tambourine and dancing;
Praise Him with stringed instruments and flute.
Praise Him with loud cymbals;
Praise Him with resounding cymbals.

— Psalm 150:3-5

But perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

What are frequencies, exactly?

Well, a frequency is the number of complete waves or cycles (often sound and electromagnetic waves) that occur in a specific unit of time. Frequencies are typically measured in hertz (Hz), where one hertz equals one cycle per second.

For example, if you listen to AM radio, say AM 500 for example, then you are tuning your radio to catch the sound being beamed from the station at 500,000Hz. If you listen to FM radio, say 88.5 for example, then you are catching the sound broadcast at 88,500,000Hz (88.5MHz).

Your phone is connecting to a cellular network that beams out a certain downlink frequency (1900MHz, 3500MHz, etc.) and your phone’s antenna and transmitter are using another frequency to connect to it, and its electrical components are creating electromagnetic fields of another frequency while drawing current to power it. Your phone’s charger has another frequency, the wall outlet still another.

In other words, they’re all around you.

It’s easy to get lost in the science and the numbers here, but suffice it to say that you and I are surrounded with more (and increasingly more harmful) frequencies than anyone in history has ever been.

But we can counter that, and we can do it the way Jesus and scripture tells us to. It’s real easy; all we have to do is speak and worship. And yet, as with all things God instructs us to do, we can do it in either a mediocre manner or in a highly effective manner.

Questions For The Sound Makers

I’ve made no bones about the fact that I’m all for innovative, unrestrained worship in whatever form the Holy Spirit moves us to create it. Modern American churches tend to keep the music simple, using guitars, keyboards, and a muted drum set.1

The reason for keeping it simple is because that’s what your average congregation knows how to play. We’re not likely to find a trumpet or a harp in most churches, and most of us would probably prefer it that way. I was once in a service where they incorporated a tenor saxophone and I wanted to hide in the bathroom until the set was over and the Hall & Oats vibes subsided.

We all have our preferences and biases; worshiping Jesus is the key element though, not the method in which we do it. That said, when it comes to the science of the matter—and I mean the literal matter: your body, and the instruments used—it’s appropriate to pose a few questions:

For the musicians:

• Do you know what frequency you tune your instrument to?

• Or why your app is set to that frequency?

• Have you ever experimented with changing it?

And for the sound engineers:

• Do you know what frequency your speakers and mics are set to?

• What are the reasons for your current presets?

• Do you use an app to fine tune everything, or do you adjust manually?

And for the pastors:

• Have you ever considered how different frequencies affect the human body?

• Do you know why the terms “loud” and “clanging” are used in Scripture?

• Have you ever searched the Bible to see what it says about frequencies?

It’s worth asking these questions because frequencies matter much more than we realize. There are three examples of them right at the very beginning of Genesis:

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said,“Let there be light,” and there was light.

- Genesis 1:2-3

Hovering. Speech. Light.

Motion. Sound. Waves and particles2 that emit radiation.

They all equate to frequencies in the natural world, and consequently, the natural world responds. So does the supernatural world, by the way, but for now, let’s just focus on the natural. God speaks and the universe resonates; we’ll get to frequency resonance later on as well.

We’re under constant bombardment from various frequencies, from the the rays of our lightbulbs, the WiFi signals surrounding us, the metal fillings in our mouths, the phone in our pocket, the earbuds we wear, and also (especially) the music we fill our spaces with.

We can’t do anything about a lot of the frequencies that effect us—cell phone towers and public lighting, for example—but we can do something about the frequencies we use while entering into worship.

The only question then is: Should we?

Let’s look at the history of how we got where we are, because it might inform our understanding of the science God created and how He’d like us to use it.

Concert Pitch

The reason your app is set to 440Hz is a long and convoluted one. For brevity’s sake, I’ll simplify a hundred years of musician drama, mainly pertaining to orchestras.

Different instruments give off different levels of sound.

This becomes an issue when composers and bands try to play a piece of music utilizing many different instruments. The solution is what’s known as Concert Pitch, a standard reference pitch used to tune musical instruments so they play elegantly together during a performance.

Getting a French horn to sound nice when paired with a piano is a daunting task, and for centuries composers experimented with ways to solve that dilemma. Eventually, orchestras learned to write music in different keys for different instruments, but how to tune them presented another challenge.

Artists being artists—and musicians being a particularly fussy brand of artists—meant that the musical pitch varied wildly from country to country, orchestra to orchestra.

For example, the tuning fork used by Handel set the A at 422.5Hz, whereas Beethoven’s was at 455.4Hz. If you’re a layman like me, that may mean nothing to you. But your ear will understand the difference if everyone in the group is tuning by different criteria, and your ear won’t like it.

As it turned out, vocalists didn’t like it either.

Trying to keep up the pitch meant strained voices—so much so that the French passed a law in 1859 establishing that all tuning was to set the A above middle C at 435Hz.

Other nations experimented and in Stuttgart, Germany in 1834, the Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians set the standard tuning at 440Hz. This was a compromise based on the work of physicist Johann Heinrich Scheibler, inventor of the tonometer.

In 1938, the standard of 440Hz was established by a conference organized in London by the British Standards Institution. It was largely influenced by the advent of radio and other broadcasting signals, and especially influenced by both German and American delegates.3 The 440Hz standard was later reaffirmed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 1955, and again in 1975.

The Science of Frequencies

That’s the how and the why your worship team—and pretty much every musician, radio and television broadcast, music player, movie theater, YouTube video, streaming service, video game, or website—defaults to the frequency of 440Hz.4 The vast majority of modern audio content across virtually all platforms and mediums is created and broadcast in this frequency.5

Take a moment and check for yourself. Open up your tuning app, click on the setting tab, and see what its presets are.

The frequency of 440Hz is the standard because it ensures compatibility across devices and also with live performances. While reading this article, you may be listening to something in 440Hz (I’m currently listening to Dvorak on Spotify, and it’s almost certainly in 440Hz). If you’re listening to an AI-generated audio version of this article, that’s also being beamed to your earbuds in 440Hz. Blame Substack because I can’t do anything about it.

But what about when we can do something different?

What difference will it make if we change the frequency of our worship, or what music comes out of our devices? What effects does sound have on our our bodies, emotions, and in the heavenly realms?

This isn’t mere speculation; scientists have been studying the effects of sound on humans for as long as we’ve been able to. Some recent findings merely confirm what we innately understand: Music affects us.

The analysis regarding cheerful music, in turn, found that the participants, this time, experienced higher levels of vitality compared to sublimity, and higher levels of sublimity compared to unease. In the most comprehensive analysis with no reference to the cheerful or sad character of the sample, the participants who listened to 440Hz pieces reported rather negative moods after listening to music compared to the participants who listened to 432Hz pieces. Moreover, men were observed to report even higher levels of negative moods after listening to 440Hz pieces, compared to their moods after listening to 432Hz pieces.

— Journal of Human Sciences, Volume 18, Issue 1, pages 12-33, January 17, 2021

This should come as no surprise to most of us. Every coach, military unit, and boss at every job site knows that their people perform faster and more aggressively when the music is pumping. Conversely, every masseuse, cafe owner, and doula knows that soothing music generates a peaceful climate better than pure silence.6

Consider how often the Lord instructs His people in scripture to use music and words as offense weapons.

In part 2, I’ll take a deeper look at that history: the way sound can impact the physical and spiritual world, and what our bodies being composed mostly of water has to do with all of it.

The enemy will use music, even worship songs, to speak pain, or anger, or resentment, or any number of other harmful messages into the sounds we hear.

If that’s the case—and if were honest, all us have examples of sounds or songs that negatively affect us—then isn’t it important that our worship does everything possible to explore what sound and frequencies correlate to our bodies and our spirits?

This battle in our spirit between aggression and peace is therefore a ripe field for psychological manipulation, and the enemy knows how to use sounds, words, and music against us as triggers. We spend countless hours fine tuning our church services, from prayer to childcare to security to hospitality and everything else. If we’re going to spend a few hours every week fine tuning our worship, it only stands to reason we should consider the weapons the enemy might use against it, and learn how to counter them.

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What an eye-opening moment.

Here I was, thinking I was informed enough to make an assertion about a complex topic I’ve been studying for years.

But alas, Random Pseudonym-Cloaked Commenter, your entry has shown me the light. And with only twenty words, to boot. Such insight.

Imagine: All those thousands of pages of books and articles I’ve read, all of those personal testimonies I’ve studied, and all of those nuanced debates I’ve endured—exploring both sides of this issue—were merely barren before the twenty-word product of your acumen.

If only your comment had existed in the early ‘90’s when I was first began thinking on this; think of the time I could have saved.

In fact, perhaps I should print out your comment (yes, I’m old enough to own a color printer) and frame it. I think a nice 4x6 maple frame would do it justice. Very retro, and I’m sure I have one in my shed.

I can add your comment to the wall next my writing desk as an admonition.

Should I be so arrogant in the future to generate perspectives based on facts and logic, I’ll see your beautiful twenty words and say, “Tut tut, Vince. Remember, Random Pseudonym-Cloaked Commenter is watching.”

I suppose I can also place that stack of highly referenced, exhaustively researched, scholarly history books from my library in the dumpster. Or maybe I can stack them under your framed comment instead, like a warning against too much research. Perhaps whenever I see those 400-page literary paperweights—imagining myself informed for having read them—your words might generate the underappreciated epiphenomenal prudence that says, “Someone on the internet will say you’re a dunderhead,” and set me straight.

What Was I Even Thinking?

You’ve changed my life, Random Pseudonym-cloaked Commenter.

Entirely without equivocation,

Silly Old Me

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If you liked this article pseudo-rant, you may enjoy these as well:

It’s a folly of humans to simultaneously think too much and too little of ourselves.

If we act as though we’re essential elements to God’s plans, we can fall into prideful arrogance and self-idolatry. Or worse, become cult leaders and genocidal maniacs, justifying everything we do as a divine assignment.

On the other hand, if we shrink into habitual smallness, thinking God is so big and we’re too insignificant to matter, we deny the very reason He created mankind in the first place.

The beautiful paradox is that even though God doesn’t need our assistance, He designed us to be the intermediaries between Heaven and Earth.

We have a part to play in the cosmic battles: sometimes large, dramatic roles with global implications that get documented in history, other times (most of the time) those cosmic battles play out in small scale, interpersonal moments where we choose to love people, and in doing so, strike a death blow to the forces of darkness.

“Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”

— 1 Corinthians 2:12-14

Of course, doing the hard things is, well, hard. Sometimes they’re even devastating. Jesus never said following Him was gonna be easy, and taking on His assignments, as rewarding as they can be, can also be quite a slog.

“You must risk that,” said Dimble. “ I can offer you no security. Don’t you understand? There is no security for anyone now. The battle has started. I’m offering you a place on the right side. I don’t know which will win.”

— C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

He created us for so much more than fantasy football and doomscrolling. Whether we know it or not, like it or not, or are ready for it or not, the Lord is constantly priming us to walk in our authority, both collectively and individually. The sooner we get on with it, the better.

But it might be a good idea to refresh ourselves with the Gospel first.

The Simple Gospel We Forgot

One of the reasons we may feel inadequate to fill the role God calls us to is because we don’t understand the Gospel.

We might think we know it, but do we really?

For many of us, the Gospel is man-centered. It’s been presented to us with an emphasis on our sin, instead of Jesus and His power. We feel inadequate to storm the gates of Hades because we’re constantly told that we’re miserable, sinful creatures who need to crawl to the cross every day. We’re told that but for the grace of God, we’re just addicts, adulterers, hypocrites, and frauds.

For many of us, our first encounter with Jesus was when a pastor called us out, asked us to walk to the front of a church, pray some magic words, and become a member of the God Team.

Then we were instructed to go looking for other people to recruit to our team, to go awkwardly knocking on doors or accosting people in parks with the good news that they’re miserable sinners who we are here to save. And granted, a lot of people meet Jesus that way, but just as many fall away a few years later, because it was about us, not Him.

Given that high pressure conversions are elicited by focusing our our ineptitude, it’s not surprising that most Christians tend to think of themselves as unworthy to do anything super dicey in the the spiritual realm. And they’re right, because we don’t; He does the supernatural stuff, and that’s the true Gospel. It’s all about Him:

Jesus is the son of God. He was born, lived as a man, performed miracles, was crucified, died, and rose from the grave. Now He holds all authority over Heaven and Earth. Jesus is awesome. And He’ll dwell in you if you let Him.

That’s the Gospel. Our job is merely to spread it.

Did you notice what’s missing in that presentation? The focus on us. No altar calls, no “praying the prayer,” no list of prerequisites, no script. Just Jesus—who He is, what He did, and what He’s doing now.

Altar calls are not in the Bible. They are a uniquely 20th century American invention.

“This Gospel that we now know as the Gospel was largely the construction of men like D.L. Moody, combined with Billy Sunday, and then perfected by Billy Graham and Bill Bright…It is designed to precipitate decisions, not to make disciples. Here’s something that we now know as fact: 90 percent of people who pray this prayer of accepting Jesus in their heart as a result of this Gospel when they’re teenagers, have nothing to do with church when they’re 35.

Those are not good numbers.”

— Scot McKnight, Pepperdine Bible Lectures, 2015

You don’t need to raise your hand and walk up to the front of some church to follow Jesus. I didn’t, many people never do, and He dwells in them all the same.

We don’t need to fix ourselves to get right with God; there’s no laundry list of duties and disciplines you need to adhere to.

There is no set formula about hours in prayer to tally, no requisite Bible verses you have to memorize, no prayers of renunciation required to begin a relationship with Him.

Those things may come later, but learning who He is is the prerequisite to unlocking everything else He offers us. Getting to know Jesus is the cheat code for playing the rest of the game.

“I am writing these things to warn you about those who want to lead you astray. But you have received the Holy Spirit, and he lives within you, so you don’t need anyone to teach you what is true. For the Spirit teaches you everything you need to know, and what he teaches is true—it is not a lie. So just as he has taught you, remain in fellowship with Christ.”

— 1 John 2:27-28 (NLT)

But not everyone is ready to level up. If you’re in a new relationship with Jesus, rest in it. It’s okay.

Just focus on how Jesus lived and loved people until you’ve made it a lifestyle. In fact, many Jesus followers never learn how to do that, and it’s sad because love is the most potent weapon we have against the enemy. If only more people used it.

Use Your Words

Once you learn how to recognize His voice, He’ll eventually ask you to take on tougher assignments. That next level is where the devil loves to operate, getting us to question our authority and God’s ability.

Couching self-doubt with, “Who am I, Lord?” statements might feel pious, but it’s really just an excuse to deteriorate into safe obscurity. Travel too far along that path and we begin referring to ourselves as sinners, or addicts, or the fallen.

When we see ourselves that way, life becomes a daily exercise in coping, praying we can endure our current struggles just long enough for Jesus to return and make it all better. The problem with that is that again, it’s all about us. When we wear our sin as an identity, when we’re constantly revisiting our failures instead of learning about His power and presence, we wallow in swamps He already called us out of.

That’s not our mission. Our mission is to do whatever God designed us for, difficult or not.

Third Heaven Warfare

In 1945, C.S. Lewis completed his Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945).

They’re an amazing fictional depiction of mankind’s role (and responsibility) in Third Heaven warfare1 and well worth your time if you’ve never read them.

In Perelandra, the main character, Ransom, is transported to a virgin planet2 populated by an Eve figure.

Soon after arriving, a Satan-like character emerges on the scene, lying and attempting to corrupt the woman and the fresh world. Ransom, knowing history and the enemy’s tactics, realizes God has selected him to stand in the gap and hopefully spare Perelandra (and the woman’s future offspring) the fate experienced on Earth as a result of Adam and Eve’s Fall.

Ransom, perhaps as you and I would also be, was filled with self-doubt in his ability to meet such a task.

“What was the sense of so arranging things that anything really important should finally and absolutely depend on such a man of straw as himself? And at that moment, far away on Earth, as he now could not help remembering, men were at war, and white-faced subalterns and freckled corporals who had but lately begun to shave, stood in horrible gaps or crawled forward in deadly darkness, awaking, like him, to the preposterous truth that all really depended on their actions; and far away in time Horatius stood on the bridge, and Constantine settled in his mind whether he would or would not embrace the new religion, and Eve herself stood looking upon the forbidden fruit and the Heaven of Heavens waited for her decision.”

— C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

But then it dawns on him: God designed His Universe to incorporate ordinary men and women as the intermediaries between the natural and the supernatural. We have a role, and God designed us for it.

“Either something or nothing must depend on individual choices. And if something, who could set bounds to it? A stone may determine the course of a river. He was that stone at this horrible moment which had become the centre of the whole universe. The eldila of all worlds, the sinless organisms of everlasting light, were silent in Deep Heaven to see what Elwin Ransom of Cambridge would do.”

— C.S. Lewis, Perelandra

There’s a lesson in this for us. The opportunities to fulfill our role as image bearers of God are all around us, and we’re more than capable.

When we see a dejected woman in the parking lot, crying, alone, the heavenly hosts look to see what we will do about it.

If we apply that knowledge to our daily grind — the actions we take, the words we speak, the messages we send, and the counsel we give — things change rapidly and dramatically. If we don’t, the demons breathe a sigh of relief.

When we notice a marriage teetering on the edge of divorce, or that child wrestling with depression, or that government official grieving orders that go against his or her convictions, the angels and demons wait with bated breath, excited or terrified to see what those who carry the authority of Jesus are going to do about it.

Or, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis: The Heavenly hosts are silent in the supernatural realms, waiting to see what you and I are going to do.

You can follow me on Telegram, Substack, GETTR, Gab, and X. You can subscribe to receive new posts to your inbox for free, as well as get information on our books and other endeavors.

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It was nothing close to the 90mph windstorms that we’d endured earlier that winter, which had left much of our borough without power for days on end.

Nope, just a mild, breezy January evening in Wasilla, Alaska.

But suddenly we heard a loud crunch outside. Curious, my boys looked up from their Lego project and my wife asked from the upper story, “What was that?”

I looked out the window. “Um, that was a tree falling on Hobbes.”

“Hobbes” was a 2014 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport, a vehicle the Lord miraculously provided for us for us two months earlier for a mere $100. It was the nicest, newest vehicle we had ever owned up to that point. We loved it.

And a tree had just fallen on it.

Let me repeat that, with emphasis: A tree had just fallen on the beloved vehicle that God had miraculously provided for us for a mere $100, only two months earlier.

Even more coincidental, Hobbes was parked in a spot that we never normally park in. I had moved it there temporarily to accommodate driveway space for something. And in that span of five hours, a tree had smashed it.

But we’ve learned enough about God to know something was brewing, and so we laughed.

“Well,” I shrugged, sipping coffee and staring at the smashed Hobbes through the window. “I can’t wait to see what He gives us to replace it.”

The ReepiJeep

To get the full impact of what happened in that moment we’ll need to back up to six months earlier.

In July of 2025, my wife had been driving Reepicheep, our ‘05 Ford Focus1 when the accelerator cable suddenly snapped, leaving her and two of our kids stranded on the road.

After about two months in shop—accelerator cables for an ‘05 Focus are pretty hard to find, apparently—Shannon began asking the Lord to replace Reepicheep with a new vehicle. It did have almost 300,000 miles, after all.

“Lord, can we have a new Reepicheep?” she prayed. “Maybe a Jeep? Oooh!!” She grinned. “How about a ReepiJeep!?” We had a Jeep once upon a time, a 2000 Jeep Cherokee, which we had to sell in favor of a minivan once baby #3 came around.

Eventually, the shop found a cord that could be modified to work for Reepicheep. It was taken from a...you guessed it, a Jeep. And while we were grateful to have the car back on the road, Shannon was not impressed with this answer to her prayer for a ReepiJeep.

Enter Hobbes

Around that time we were sitting in church when the pastor handed me the mic and asked Shannon and I to lead the congregation in praying for financial breakthrough.

Less than ten minutes after that prayer, the service ended and Shannon received a phone call. A relative of ours had just received a trade-in for her 2014 Hundai Santa Fe, and the dealer would let her buy it back for only $100.

“Would you and Vince like a car for $100?” she asked.

So we purchased Hobbes for $100 and loved it from day one. The boys loved it because it was a metallic orange color and named it Hobbes after Calvin and Hobbes.

Hobbes was the nicest vehicle we had ever owned, but alas, it had one drawback: It only seated five...and there are seven of us. As great as it was, we still needed a new family vehicle and had no money to spare in finding one.

Then the wind.

Then the tree.

Then a month of insurance uncertainty before they finally informed us that the vehicle we loved was totaled, and offered us a cash settlement that was less than we had hoped for: $7675.67.

Pay attention to that price because it’s going to be important in a moment.

Now we were in the lurch to find a replacement vehicle that seats seven...that’s not falling apart...in Alaska.

After scouring Facebook Marketplace for a few days, I texted the lovely friend who’d been fixing my sad vehicles for nearly 20 years. He pointed me to a local Christian car dealer he works closely with (I should mention that we’ve avoided car dealerships like the plague for our entire marriage) and said I should give him a call. Another friend also recommended him, and prayed jokingly that we would find another vehicle with enough cash left over to fill the tank with gas.

Reluctantly we checked out his website and, lo and behold, we knew this guy. And he had a Jeep that seated seven.

We rushed to see it the next business day, and now it’s sitting in our driveway.

Now let’s get back to that dollar amount I mentioned earlier, because the Lord is the God of math every bit as much as he’s the God of trees and windstorms and $100 vehicles.

• Price we paid for Hobbes: <$100>

• Amount we got for smashed Hobbes: $7675.67

• Minus the price of the new Hobbes (ReepiJeep): <$7500.00>

• Subtract for a minor replacement part: <$7.99>

• Minus that tank of gas my friend prayed for: <$68.98>

• Total remaining in our pocket: $98.70

Did you catch that? We got all but $1.30 of our original $100 back.

Not only that, but a Jeep that fits our entire family. It’s yet another memorial stone to add along the highway of the Lord’s provision to us.

The Lord knows every need you’re currently facing, and is willing to meet them in unique, possibly snarky, powerful ways.

The antidote to fear is gratitude, even when a tree falls on what we thought was our answer to prayer, because He may have an even better upgrade up His sleeve.

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If you were a Christian in the early 2000’s, you probably read Left Behind, and perhaps other books in the bestselling series. If you didn’t read it or watch the movies, or if you came to Jesus a decade or so later, consider yourselves lucky; you probably learned better end times theology than many of us.

It’s sort of like how Millennials and Gen Z should be thankful for missing the era of big hair and Afterschool Specials. Or, how Gen X is grateful that none of our, ahem, extracurricular activities were captured on social media.

The era we grew up in influenced our education, for good or bad, and that includes our understanding of scripture and what we get from our Bible studies. I believe the Lord is priming His Church to unlearn generations of bad teaching, and end times discussions are no exception.

Folks my age got our Biblical end times doctrine from Left Behind. Characters like Nicolae Carpathia, Moshe, and Eli, were portrayed as biblical characters straight from scripture. Concepts like the rapture, rebuilding the Third Temple, and a plague of flying scorpion things were dramatized to make sense of the book of Revelation. And a Kirk Cameron film adaptation was offered to capture the non-bibliophiles in the net.

All of this was interesting fiction, and nothing close to what ancient readers would have fathomed when reading the Revelation that John penned around 67-68 AD, just before the literal stone-for-stone dismantling of the Second Temple1 in Jerusalem, and during the ongoing persecution of Christians under Roman Empero Nero.

Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.

—Matthew 24:33-34, NIV

Theologically, Left Behind was inaccurate, but being inaccurate never prevents something from being popular. Unfortunately Left Behind derailed an entire generation of (mostly American)2 Jesus followers down a path that is making many of them jumpy every time they turn on the news. We watch with those underlying, false doctrinal presuppositions and we wonder:

Maybe vaccines, biometric scanning, or central bank digital currencies are the mark of the beast?
Maybe [insert celebrity boogyman ] is actually the antichrist?
Surely Daniel’s beasts represent the Russian Bear, the American Eagle, and the Russian Dragon, right?

The problem is, none of that is scriptural, and wouldn’t have been the least bit applicable to John’s audience. We must always remember who these scriptures were written to and by: ancient Israelites and 1st Century Christ followers.

And while all scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17), 21st century Americans who love action movies were not John’s intended audience. Historical and scriptural context is pivotal, and when we study Revelation through that lens, it all begins to make a lot more sense.

Now let me emphasize, end times studies probably aren’t all that important for most of us. We can certainly fulfill our basic mission—leading people to Jesus—without getting lost in the weeds of these cumbersome debates.

Studying Revelation, Daniel, and related books is more of an academic discussion in the grand scheme of everyday ministry. But it is important in shaping our understanding of God in relation to humans, and what He wants us to prioritize locally and internationally, especially if we watch the news (which I pretty much never recommend anymore).

So, if we’re going to discuss end times prophecy at all, we better educate ourselves on what the Bible actually says and means. We can begin by discussing how we got all mixed up in the first place.

Eschatology Gone Wild

Eschatology is a fancy word used by Bible theologians and smart people in your church. You should consider inviting them over for dinner once in a while because the conversations are intriguing, and we don’t get nearly enough of this kind of thing in Sunday sermons.

From the Ancient Greek ἔσχατος (éskhatos) meaning “last” and the suffix -λογία (-logía) “the study of,” it basically means the study of the end of the world, or End Times in popular language.

Many cultures, religions, and religious sects have wildly varying eschatology. The Left Behind series fostered what’s known as a dispensationalist view of Revelation, and we’ll need to define that term too:

Dispensationalism: belief in a system of historical progression, as revealed in the Bible, consisting of a series of stages in God’s self-revelation and plan of salvation. (Oxford English dictionary)

The dispensationalist view of the Bible is that it’s an account of literal events that begin at the beginning (Genesis) and go on till the end, in one long narrative. The book of Revelation being written last, and situated at the end of our printed Bibles, dispensationalists believe that what’s described in Revelation hasn’t happened yet, and won’t happen till the last days, right before Jesus comes back.

If that’s what you’ve been taught, you’re not alone.

It’s what I was taught, and what I told my kids, but then, I wasn’t a Bible scholar; most of us aren’t, we simply repeat what we’re told. I was just a dad working 40 hours a week and trying my best to raise a family who followed Jesus. Joking that Obama might be the antichrist seems moronic in retrospect, but I did it because I didn’t know any better.

Moving forward, let’s know better.

Now, before we start, I should caution that this is merely a simple article that will hopefully spark your interest in learning much more. There are some great teaching series that go much deeper that I’ll link at the end.

[Note: I’ve been joking-but-serious with a nerdy theologian friend that we need to collaborate in writing a lighthearted book about all of this. If you want to help fund that effort, see the Give tab at the end of this article.]

The dispensationalist view has muddied some of the most important revelations John provides us with. We need to wipe the grime off our Biblical windshield if we stand any chance of staying on the straight and narrow path, calibrating ourselves with the Holy Spirit GPS and going where He wants.

Many Antichrists Have Come

Since it seems be a hot topic on Twitter these days (still can’t get used to calling it X), let’s begin with a discussion on Nicolae Carpathia the Antichrist. *Cue ominous music.*

If you look around for what people say about the Antichrist, you’ll get a lot of things like this:

“October 7th was horrible—Gaza looks like a dumpster. In Ezekiel 38 and 39 it talks about nations rising up against Israel, and that’s where the Antichrist will come from. Are they God’s chosen people? I thought there was a new covenant that encompassed all of us—am I wrong about that?”
— Shawn Ryan in discussion with Ruslan KD, 2025

“Over the past month, Thiel has hosted a series of four lectures on the downtown waterfront of San Francisco philosophizing about who the antichrist could be and warning that Armageddon is coming.”
— The Guardian, 2025

I used to wonder who the antichrist was, too. I even joked about it being equally likely that Obama or Trump were the antichrist. As it turns out I may have been right, and also wrong. That’s because the antichrist isn’t a single person—not George Soros, Elon Musk, or anyone else. In fact, you might be surprised to learn this but the term antichrist is only used five times in scripture, all by John, and three of those in the same passage:

Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son.

— 1 John 2:18-22

This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

— 1 John 4:2-3

I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.

— 2 John 1:7

It should be clear from scripture that the idea of an international political figure taking the world by storm, suffering a deadly head wound and mystically being risen from the dead via black magic isn’t what John was talking about. He was describing a spirit that deceives, and denies the Savior Jesus Christ.

Take a look around and ask yourself who the modern antichrists are, because they are many. And they’ve already got the Mark of the Beast all over themselves.

God’s Mark Vs. the Beast’s Mark

“This observance will be for you like a sign on your hand and a reminder on your forehead that this law of the Lord is to be on your lips.”

— Exodus 13:9

One of the most-scrutinized concepts in end times theology is the Mark of the Beast. Let’s look at this in Revelation:

“The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.”

— Revelation 13:15-17

That seems pretty specific, and conjures up thoughts of QR codes, digital currency, or scanable UPC tattoos that some future authoritative government will implement. However, the underlining reality is that the Mark of the Beast is always about worship of the beast (Rev 14:9, 14:11, 16:2, 19:20 and 20:4) and it’s never described as something a person is deceived into. Rather, it’s a spiritual heart posture one willingly adopts, something we freely give that reveals who and what we worship, be it an idol, an empire, a national flag, or even a person.

“They will become like them,” that’s important. Saying, “you have ears, let him hear”...that is essentially that you become like the thing you worship, and you will be blind and deaf to the things of the Spirit if you don’t kind of wake up. What he’s saying is that those who are caught up in the idolatry of the empire can’t discern the things of the Spirit.

Those who serve the beast, those who are worshiping the beast, can’t see and discern the things of the Spirit. It’s a deep entanglement.

— Dr. Matt Mouzakis

The Mark of the Beast is always about who and what we worship. Our allegiance is already stamped out our foreheads. Is it Jesus, or something else? Take an inventory and decide.

Where To Go From Here

We could spend the next several weeks and a dozen articles digging into every facet of Revelation and the other prophetic books but fortunately there actual Bible scholars who’ve done that already. Please look into them if you’re interested in this subject.

The Left Behind books aren’t the worst things Tim LaHaye ever wrote3 (but they’ve got to be a close second), yet they laid a foundation of confusion about scripture, God’s priorities for the nations, and even about a Christ follower’s authority in the heavenly realms.

Suffice it to say, the scary notions of modern tech devices leading you unwittingly into a soul-trapping pit aren’t grounded in God’s Word. Nor is the idea that a coming apocalypse led by secular nations doing very un-Jesus-like things are harbingers of Jesus’ Second Coming. War, famine, and evil days can always occur and it’s prudent to take precautions but our salvation is secure in Christ. Yes, the enemy can deceive us into worshiping one of many antichrists, but only if we choose to take our eyes off of Him.

Who and what we worship are all that really matters, so who are we worshiping today?

The truth of all scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, is that as long as we give our hearts to Jesus, and nothing else, we need not fear. Period. When we do that, when we stop worrying about fitting the news of the day into our personal doctrinal boxes, we become free to get about the business He actually calls us to: Loving God with all our hearts, and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

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Here is the first in a four-part teaching on Revelation by Expedition 44:

And here is the first episode of a meatier, six-part series covering Revelation line-by-line by Cultivate Relationships:

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My teacher had enough and turned off the VCR. The room was dead silent.

For the previous three minutes, our 11th grade class had watched a scene from Helter Skelter, a film based on former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s (now largely discredited) account of the Manson Family murders.1

Actor Steve Railsback, portraying Charles Manson, testified in court. This was part of my group assignment’s book report presentation. We wanted to show the class that in order to truly understand the twisted pathos of evil minds, they needed to see it personified.

Railsback captured the essence of Charles Manson perfectly, even hauntingly, and it was too much for my teacher; she couldn’t handle it and had to turn it off.

It’s disturbing, because that’s what evil is.

Anyone with a lifelong interest in criminal justice or has spent an inordinate amount of time researching very bad people and what they’ve done to each other throughout history will conclude: The propensity of human beings to do evil to one another is unimaginable.

It just is.

When we filter the world through that lens, we tend to listen up when others scoff at outlandish, kooky conspiratorial claims about acts of evil happening in the dark underbelly of our world.

So many of us have read enough, researched enough, and listened to first-hand accounts enough to know this stuff happens. It happens every day.

News feeds postulating the “absurdity” of the Pizzagate allegations were dismissed by media fact-checkers, assuring everyone it was too crazy to be true.

Could there possibly be a vast network of pedophiles and Satanists practicing their dastardly craft while hidden in plain sight? Could there be a worldwide cabal of traffickers preying on children and transporting them across borders? Could there be a strange subset of individuals with a penchant for cannibalism?

History, scripture, federal and state documents, and whistle-blower accounts all testify that every one of those things from child sacrifice to cannibalism have happened, still happen, and aren’t all that uncommon.

I once had a weekly Bible study with a man whose adopted daughter was rescued from Satanists. She was conceived with the expressed purpose of ritual sacrifice.

There are stone structures and historical sites where such things occurred all over the world. Author Mary Roach has an entire chapter in her book Stiff detailing modern cannibalism; it’s a great book, but I recommend skipping that chapter. You’ll thank me later.

Prominent people are on record telling their stories of abuse, and many others have either been cancelled or found dead after leveling allegations or investigating widespread human trafficking, especially child trafficking.

Is it that hard to believe that worldwide ritualistic pedophilia and murder are rampant?

We don’t bat an eye when we see the Coast Guard take down a mini-submarine loaded with millions of dollars worth of drugs, so why do we find the notion of those monsters transporting children too fantastic? Children are worth a lot more by the pound. There’s a lucrative market even just for their organs.

We know drug traffickers are ruthless murderers, so it stands to reason the sex traffickers are even more so, even if you subtract the ritualistic murder element. Do we minimize the scope of sex traffickers’ reach just because we don’t want that reality to hit too close to home?

And if satanic (or even conventional) pedophilia is happening, why exactly wouldn’t celebrities and world leaders—the ones with all of the money and their lavish, perverted, secret lifestyles—be involved in this stuff?

That some find it so hard to believe the most powerful people on Earth are complicit (if not guilty) of such awful crimes is frustrating for those of us who’ve seen the images, heard the tapes, and know the history.

Evil people look just like you and me, and are all the more brazen when cloaked with the air of respectability. But so often we simply won’t consider the evidence in connection with the figures we’ve chosen to elevate, so we discredit anyone who dares to suggest it.

After a few weeks, we accept it when investigations get sidelined, or never bother to check up on whether they even began in the first place.

We can clearly see someone using a bed sheet to climb out of the window at Buckingham Palace, captured on a tourist’s video. But the idea that someone in there could be a pedophile is too much, so we jump to accept the explanation that comes out much later, saying it was part of a publicity stunt for a television show. And then we trust the fact checkers and commenters who parrot the most head-scratching cover explanations available.

Those excuses line up with our worldview, eye witness evidence or not, so we go with it because it’s easier to stomach than a network of elitist pedophiles raping and killing children.

And zero investigators ponder why the Queen signed off on such a ridiculous cover story that desecrates a historic landmark, even as British Royalty continues to be embroiled in related scandals. And then the raw footage largely disappears.

These things matter.

Ask any cop, social worker, pastor, or historian, and they’ll confirm: People do awful things to each other—things we don’t want to talk about, things we don’t want to know about, things we want to get away from, like a foul odor upsetting our Sunday stroll through the meadow.

But the odor is a warning, similar to the low battery chirps from a smoke alarm, and we all know how annoying those are. How often have you just pulled out the battery to deal with it later on?

The satanic grip over the nations, and the institutions tasked with combating evil, need to be dealt with. Yes, that includes law enforcement, certainly, but it also includes you and I discerning evil in our own neighborhoods, and even within our own churches.

We need to recognize patterns of abuse, grooming, supernatural influences, and demonic manifestations, and ask the Holy Spirit what we can do about them.

We need to deal with the chirping battery in the smoke alarm.

It’s much easier to write off stories that haunt us, lest we face the reality of living in a world steeped in them. Our default mode is to shake our heads in disbelief and move on with our lives rather than really examine what others are saying — in some cases, for years.

And there are a lot of people out there saying what we don’t want to hear.

Perhaps the next time you hear about a celebrity or your favorite international figure involved in Satanic rituals, or a powerful individual preying on young people, or a conglomerate of media heavyweights fact-checking the allegations out of the public sphere, you might want to check out a few documentaries, sift through a few boxes of legal discovery, or examine the case files of convicted monsters.

You might just get a taste of the evil history the record keepers haven’t yet scrubbed from existence, and learn a few current details about the horrors all around us.

It’s no coincidence that the news about these matters lines up perfectly with what the Bible describes time and time again, or that it corroborates a multi-generational pattern evidenced by historical documents, modern and ancient. Some things never change, including the worship of demons. It’s out there, right where you and I live, and as followers of Jesus we’re going to have to come to terms with that reality if we stand any chance of combating it.

[Originally published Sept. 2020 on vinceguerra.com]

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You’ve probably heard more than a few sermons that went something like this:

David wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Instead he was lusting, and spotted Bathsheba, then committed adultery. Afterward he betrayed Uriah, and essentially had the man murdered to cover his tracks. David’s punishment was the loss of his newborn son, and immediately after that, David accepted the hard lesson and turned back to the Lord.

Sin to repentance to redemption. And yes, that’s David’s story. It’s a tale we tell frequently because it shows how someone (even a man after God’s own heart, 1 Samuel 13:14) can commit atrocious sins and still find redemption.

Bathsheba’s story is quite different.

Whenever we tell this story of David and Bathsheba, something usually gets completely ignored: David didn’t just commit adultery with Bathsheba, he sexually assaulted her. If saying that out loud makes us uncomfortable, we need to consider why. Here’s why we should call it what it is:

David was her king, and not only that, he was the anointed king of God Almighty. Bathsheba was David’s subject. Just like Esther, Bathsheba had no choice in the matter of having sex with her king. Or for that matter, doing whatever else her king desired of her.

Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home.
— 2 Samuel 11: 4 (NIV)

There is no scenario where Bathsheba could have freely given consent to whatever happened in that palace. There is no consent in a harem, it just didn’t work that way. In every other similar situation, we would call what happened here sexual assault or rape.

The reason for that—and I believe this is why teachers leave this element out of the story—is because whenever there is a power dynamic (whenever a leader makes a sexual proposition to his subordinate) there is always an element of coercion. It’s either expressed, implied, or threatened.

This is a problem for those who hold that Biblical marriage means women must submit to men in all areas. If women aren’t free to offer or reject sexual consent, where does that leave complimentarian pastors? In a tight trap.

Better to just avoid the conversation, and focus on David instead.

To put it another way, there is no equality in a relationships where one person holds all the cards, be they a boss, a commander, a prison guard, a parent, a spouse, a king, or what have you. The subordinate can either obey or resist, but those are really their only options.

Let’s take this scenario outside of the Bible for a moment and apply it to everyday life.

Scenario 1: The teacher sees one of his students’ Instagram pictures. He texts someone to bring her to his office. The teacher has sex with her there and then she goes home.

Scenario 2: The Governor sees one of his staffers looking beautiful in a meeting. Later he sends some state troopers to bring her to the Governor’s mansion that afternoon. She arrives, the Governor has sex with her, and then she goes home.

Scenario 3: At a summer beach picnic, a pastor sees one of the women in his congregation in a swimsuit. When it’s over, he instructs his deacons to bring her to his office. He has sex with her, and then she goes back home.

Hopefully we all see the evil inherent in each of these scenarios: A man in power coercing a woman under his influence into sex.

“But what if they are willing participants?” one might ask. What if they’re like Monica Lewinski, or a Lolita?

The corporate and secular world understands that you don’t mess around with your employees, or students, or staff members. You certainly don’t proposition them, or have others “bring them” to you. That kind of reckless misconduct will get you fired in practically every field. And it should.

We have tens of thousands of real life testimonials about this—from women and men—and frequently the victim relates that they were paralyzed in fear of what might happen if they dared to refuse. Nobody shies away from calling it sexual assault when it comes to kids being seduced by teachers or babysitters.

The victims ask themselves:

Will there be retribution if I refuse? Would anyone ever believe me if I expose them? Will they smear me or my reputation? If I just go along, will it just be over faster and I can go back home and forget it ever happened? If I tell my spouse/parent/friend, will they lash out at me? Or will my husband kill him? Will they blame me for bringing it on myself? Will there be a scandal, loss of income, demotion? What will happen to my kids? What will my parents say? What will my youth group think?

All of these fears may flash in the victim’s mind in the blink of an eye, and often the shock is too much to overcome. Submission is the default for many people, so they obey, and the violation is often over almost as fast at it began.

Stunned disbelief follows. How did that even happen? Disassociation sometimes sets in to cope with it.

If human nature and the history of domestic violence studies are any indication, this is exactly what happened to Bathsheba.

There are all sorts of terrible fictional accounts of this that portray Bathsheba as some willing participant, which is in no way supported by the Biblical text. What is supported by the text and what we know of the culture and situation at the time, is something more like this:

She had just finished bathing after getting over her period. Her husband was off at war. Suddenly, armed men show up at her door.
“You must come with us,” one of them says, perhaps with a smirk. “King David wishes to see you at the palace.”
“But why? Who am I to appear before the King?”
“Never mind that, come along with us.”
“Now?”
“Yes, right now.”

Bathsheba is escorted through the streets and up to the palace, past the king’s guards, past whispering servants who glance as she walks by. Perhaps one or two of David’s wives or concubines see her and roll their eyes. Bathsheba’s heart begins to race.

She is taken to his bedroom where he looks her up and down. He approaches, touches her.

Soon it’s over. Bathsheba is free to leave.

She hurries home, wondering how her world has just been turned upside down. She longs for her husband to be there but just as quickly is relieved he’s not. He must never know.

A month passes, and suddenly she knows.

The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”

— 2 Samuel 11:5

More time passes while David tries to cover the tracks of his abuse. Failing that, David arranges her husband’s death in battle.

When Uriah’s wife heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. After the time of mourning was over, David had her brought to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son.

— 2 Samuel 11:26-27

In modern churchianity, that’s usually where the story ends. Sometimes we discuss the prophet Nathan’s rebuke of David, but that’s side dressing to the main point that David committed this great sin of adultery and murder because he wasn’t where he should have been doing what he was supposed to do.

He was out of position. He lusted, because we’re told that’s “everyman’s battle.” The moral of the story: Position yourself so you don’t do what David did. But if you do, turn back to God after you’ve sinned.

But do we ever talk about what Bathsheba lost?

• She was forced into another man’s bed and then sent back like dirty laundry.

• Her husband was killed by another man trying to cover his tracks.

• Widowed, scandalized, and pregnant she was taken from her home and brought into the king’s sizable harem.

• When she finally gave birth, she at least had a child of her own, someone to cherish in this lonely palace.

• But suddenly the Lord Himself declares her child—the only good thing to come from this surrealistic nightmare—will die for David’s sin.

Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

Nathan replied, “The Lord has taken away your [ḥaṭṭāṯəḵā, singular] sin. You are not going to die. But because by doing this you have shown utter contempt for the Lord, the son born to you will die.”

After Nathan had gone home, the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and he became ill.

— 2 Samuel 12:13-15

Eventually Bathsheba is given another son by David—Solomon—and also their children Shammua, Shobab, and Nathan. In church we tend to end this story on a high note, but I circle back to my original question:

Why do we refuse to recognize that what David did to Bathsheba is not merely lust-driven “adultery” (a word not actually used in the biblical account), but sexual assault or rape? Or if we recognize it, why do we refuse to teach on it?

I believe the answer to that is because of another great lie underscoring modern church culture, something we also don’t like to discuss or teach on: Headship. The truth is that Biblical headship means “source,” as in, the source of a river, not ruler.

I made the case earlier that when a hierarchical structure exists, where one person is subordinate to another, true consent is never possible by the subordinate; they will either submit or resist.

And modern Christianity often teaches that women are subordinate to men, that they must submit to male leadership in all things and in every room of the house.

This was not the authority pyramid in the Garden of Eden. It was not taught by Jesus, and where one might argue it’s discussed in the Mosiac Law (Numbers 30 for instance), it’s enmeshed in cultural norms for specific circumstances. The notion of all-male authority was not a characteristic of the early church either, not until around 300 years later when some Christians began erecting non-Biblical hierarchies all over the place.

Another reason why this isn’t taught is because good, well-meaning teachers and pastors just haven’t thought much about it. Or if they have, they haven’t thought about it from a woman’s perspective. This is another reason why we need more women teaching and pastoring in church, and not merely in Sunday school classrooms or women’s events.

Imagine if it were to become common in Sunday sermons to hear pastors teaching that, “No, ladies, you don’t have to submit to your husband’s carnal, often selfish appetites in the sack. You have equal footing in every room of the house, and mutual consent is required for all decisions, especially for ones that involve your body.”

The idea that men are in authority over women is highly problematic in the context of marriage. Marriage implies sex, and sex between two individuals on different tiers of the authority structure isn’t tolerated anywhere else in civilized society.

No matter how you frame it—coach over player, principal over teacher, manager over supervisor, supervisor over employee, lieutenant over sergeant, director over starlet, executive over aide, President over intern—we always recognize sexual pressure from the powerful over those beneath them, as sin.

Comply or resist; those are your two options. But since the text doesn’t say Bathsheba resisted, why didn’t she?

It is a common assumption that any woman threatened with being raped would do everything in her power to physically resist...but that’s not what we find...In fact, most women who are sexually assaulted do not resist. The fear is overwhelming. They often feel helpless. Sometimes the make a conscious choice not to resist because they are afraid if they resist, they will be hurt even worse.

— Dr. David Lisak, clinical psychologist

Absolute male leadership over women is a perversion of Paul’s specific teachings to specific congregations in specific locations and cultures. But some in the Church have taken that perversion as license to subjugate women in many areas, including their own bedrooms, with catastrophic results for marriages and families.

I believe this is one reason why few people recognize—or if they recognize, refuse to say out loud—that David raped Bathsheba. Another is that doing so makes David’s sin that much more atrocious, and we don’t like to forgive rapists. We certainly don’t like to call rapists men after God’s own heart, even if they’ve repented and embraced the restoration He provides.

But God primary focus, for us and for David, is not what we’ve done but who we worship. And even in his sin, David never worshiped another.

The history of Israel’s kings illustrates the point. King David was guilty of the worst of crimes against humanity in the incident with Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite. He was clearly in violation of the law and deserving of death. Nevertheless, his belief in who Yahweh was among all gods never wavered...Yet other kings of Israel and Judah were tossed aside and both kingdoms sent into exile—because they worshiped other gods. Personal failure, even of the worst kind, did not send the nation into exile. Choosing other gods did.

—Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm

If we can come to terms with the fact that our identities are not our actions, that all persons are image bearers regardless of their worst sins, then we can begin to understand the story of David and Bathsheba as a much grander redemption story. We can dare to see other sinners—including rapists, abusers, murderers, pedophiles, drug traffickers, terrorists—the way God sees them: as lost sheep in need of rescue from the snatches of death.

That begins with us coming to terms with what David’s assault on Bathsheba actually was: a powerful man coercing a subordinate woman into satisfying his sexual desire. Fortunately for him and for us, that’s not where the story ends.

You can follow me on Telegram, Substack, Truth Social, GETTR, Gab, and X. You can subscribe to receive new posts to your inbox for free, as well as get information on our books and other endeavors.

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P.S. If you have a bunch of arguments in your mind about Bathsheba “being on the roof” or the word “adultery” in scripture, here is an excellent article addressing many facets of traditional misteachings.

P.S.S. If you are wrestling with the idea of marriage and male headship, or have questions about consent and/or marital rape, here are some wonderful resources to consider.

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In the last two weeks I’ve heard at least three people lament “the world is on fire.” They might be referring to any number of issues and I’ve thus far refrained from asking them to elaborate on which one they’re focusing on. Because the truth is, the world is always on fire somewhere.

On any given day there is societal upheaval (with varying degrees of cultural awareness about it) proportional to the algorithms Facebook and X like to rage bait us with. I’ll bet everyone reading this is at least somewhat concerned about devastating events occurring nowhere near their front door. A shooting, a war, a genocide, persecutions, protests, encroachments, civil strife: There’s always a cause du jour to embrace. Hundreds, in fact, all across the globe.

One person kills another. One person’s family member is dead, and another person has to live with the reality that they just killed another human being. Others witness it, or saw it online. All are traumatized to some degree. Many more become desensitized, or worse, celebrate it. Nightmares follow, and more hate, and more justifications.

It doesn’t matter the circumstances; the enemy loves it, delights in it. It’s all he cares about. We care about the who, what, when, where, and we debate who’s behind it and why.

The enemy doesn’t. He just wants more.

More anger, more scrolling, more arguing, more fear, more time, more death!

All of this raises the question: Why are we so viscerally affected by the current thing?

And why are we doomscrolling and arguing with people—often people we think of as friends—about things we have no control over and no proximity to?

[Note: If the world is “on fire” in your community or right outside your door, this post is not necessarily for you. You need to follow the Holy Spirit’s lead, not man’s.]

Also, why are we cursing the state of our nation or other parts of the world with inflammatory declarations?

We should care about the parts of the world that are, so to speak, on fire. They’re important, and real people’s lives and livelihoods are on the line. Disregard the plight of humans anywhere, and we quickly violate the second greatest commandment: to love others as ourselves.

That said, everyone needs to take a step back—or a step away from the screens—and ask ourselves what Jesus would have us do about the current thing, whatever the current thing may be.

Truth be told, there may not be much we can do about that issue that’s blowing up our social media feed. We can rant about the current thing with like-minded friends, but that serves little purpose other than to cement us into tribes.

Pretty soon we’re slapping labels on people and bloviating about the unquestionable rightness of our position; and also ridiculing those who disagree, regardless of whatever knowledge or experience those other people possess, which we don’t really want to hear anyway.

Healthier people might choose to enter into grown-up conversations about the current thing with people of differing opinions. That can be rewarding, but at the end of the day if all we do is agree to disagree, was the time well or ill spent?

What is a Christ follower to do?

Answer: Set down the phone and pause. Pray. Turn off the internet or the TV.

I know that may sound strange coming from writer, but less time swimming in the information swamp is likely the cure for many of these fires. Let’s commit to less time on the internet and more time listening to the voice of God.

Lord, align my thoughts with your thoughts, my priorities with Your priorities. If something is breaking my connection with You and what you want to communicate with me today, remove it from me.

If something it distracting me from hearing Your heart about an issue, remove that accusing spirit as well.

If some dark force is feeding off of my anger, fear, words, attitude, or anything else, I rebuke it in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, who was born, died on the cross, rose from the dead, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father, and who has all authority over heaven and Earth...and over my social media feed.

If any accusing spirit is whispering to me via the news, internet feeds, podcasts, or conversations with others, deafen me to that foul spirit’s lies. Bring me back into communion with the Holy Spirit who reigns in me. And put the words in my mouth that you want me to speak, and keep me silent when I need to be.

If you’re still wrestling with that agitation so prevalent in modern discourse, still lamenting the world being on fire, or rushing to finish reading this so you can go back on Facebook or wherever to check what so-and-so replied to your last thread, perhaps go back and read those prayers out loud.

Or just say the name of Jesus aloud. The enemy hates that and can’t stand being around it.

I know it’s easy to get sucked into daily, sometimes hourly, outrage. It happens to me all the time. But self-control is a fruit of the Spirit for a reason. We need to practice it to get good at it. Do that and pretty soon we’ll attain that sweet spot of being able to know what’s happening in the world without getting disconnected from God over it.

We’ll be able to see the terror that strikes at mid-day and not be shaken by it. We’ll be able to assess the latest atrocity and not lament the world being on fire, but rather intercede for it as a job requirement. The news of the day merely highlights to the lost how desperately each of us need the Savior.

With Holy Spirit perspective, we’ll be able to see the supernatural underpinnings of the current thing and pray effectively against it. And we’ll also begin seeing our fellow image bearers—and that’s everyone, by the way—as humans, even if they’re doing things we find abhorrent.

Chances are we’re only seeing those “bad guys” as the enemy wants us to see them; there’s probably another side to the current thing you don’t know about. Our echo chambers may not reveal that, and only occasionally are we interested in hearing about it.

Jesus calls us out of that posture. He knows that even His people are capable of becoming situationally vicious.

To counter that, again I say: Put down the phone and step away. Ignore the static and get in His word. Play a game with your kids. Or maybe, before you put that phone down, call up your friend and arrange to go out for coffee first.

Much of the world’s fires could be extinguished by calm people sitting over a cup of coffee, or merely turning off the news.

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Over the years I’ve learned the hard way that there are a number of things a guy should never do in bed. These may not be what you had in mind when you clicked on this article, but believe me, my wife says your wife will appreciate you reading on.

1: Don’t flop onto the bed.

Whether she’s sleeping, quietly sitting up reading, or scrolling on their phone, women almost always despise it when you flop those 180+ pounds down next to them.

And they absolutely hate it—and when I say hate I mean the special kind of hate reserved for large spiders dropping on their heads—when you plop down next to them if they’re nursing a baby. Guys have no idea the turmoil caused when a violent detachment occurs. And if you’re the one who causes it with your Richter-scale spike centered on the mattress, God be with you.

2: Don’t fling off the covers.

Remember in sports during a break in practice, your buddy thought it would be so cool to pour a cup of ice water down the back of your shirt? Yeah, that’s pretty much what your woman experiences when you fling off the covers, exposing her body to the rush of air from outside her blanket igloo of warmth.

If you’re climbing into bed, inch along and only lift enough of the comforter necessary to join her. After that, you may freely move within, under the confines of the dome. If you’re climbing out of bed—perhaps while she’s still sleeping—proceed operation in reverse order and pray she doesn’t wake up. And don’t flop down on the bed to kiss her goodbye, either (see #1).

3: Don’t snore.

I know this may seem like something beyond your control but it’s not; there are entire industries dedicated to alleviating this marriage strainer.

I never really snored—or at least I never snored to a degree that she seriously considered whacking me in the face with nunchucks mid-REM—until I was in my forties. After that, I began honking so loud it may have been responsible for loosening the fillings in her teeth. It’s debatable.

Of course when she told me my snoring was becoming unbearable, I didn’t believe her at first, and played it off (don’t do that). After being kicked to the sofa in the middle of the night, I also whined about it (especially don’t do that, either).

It may seem like something to shrug off but it’s not. Habitual snoring can—and often does—lead to insomnia for the other partner, and insomnia can cause an entire tree of related health problems, with branches including mental and physical health challenges. Our marriage suffered dramaticaly during this period.

Fortunately, I eventually got my head out of my *** and got to work solving the problem.

I tried those nasal strips, then some silicone inserts to keep my nasal airway open, and when those failed, I tried an overly-expensive mouthpiece you wear at night that eventually hurt my jaw. None of them worked very well.

Eventually I learned that the keys for me to avoid snoring are 1) to avoid fatty foods too close to bedtime, 2) keep my weight down, and 3) sleep on my side, with my head slightly elevated.

If I have a quesadilla, a burger, or ice cream etc. too close to hitting the pillow, or if I lay flat on my back, it’s going to be buzzsaw city until she pats me on the side of the head; with varying degrees of psi proportional to the decibel level I’m generating, or how tired she is, or whether or not I risked waking the baby. Or at this season of our lives, the neighbors.

But that’s just me. Do the homework, get methodical about what triggers your snoring, and experiment. Troubleshoot, maybe keep a journal, and then debrief with your wife in the mornings to figure out what works for both of you to each get healthy restorative sleep again.

4: Clean up.

You may not want to take a shower after coming home late from working in the dusty, greasy shop all night, but she doesn’t want to cuddle up with a guy smelling of sweat and transmission fluid. Take a shower, or at least scrub whatever needs it before climbing under the sheets.

5: Mind your feet.

Any grit on the bedroom floor will make its way under the covers and onto the foot of the bed even if you’re climbing in freshly showered. Wipe ‘em off before you hoist those size 12s under the blanket. And maybe sweep or vacuum the bedroom once in a while to alleviate the necessity.

6: Be nice to her cat.

Sure, that cat of hers is sitting on your head, trying to steal your pillow. And yeah, (for the dog people) maybe her 80-pound mastiff is crushing your ankle. Even still, DO NOT blanket toss that furry friend across the room, even if you think your wife is sound asleep and will never know you did it. Her feline will rat you out; somehow they always do.

You’ll get home from work the next evening and the feline who outranks you will be sitting on her lap. They’ll both give you that strict teacher stare while your wife calmly sets down her tea. Then she’ll gently pet her feline bestie and ask her, “Okay, Sophie. Now, tell me again so he can hear **eyes flashing** what he did to you last night.”

You’ll be cooked. Don’t put yourself in that vice.

[Note: I don’t know if dogs have this clairvoyant back channel communication with their female owners, but I know cats do. And they use it.]

7: Turn off your phone when she goes to sleep.

She may not complain about it, but science shows a phone’s EMF is going to affect her sleep rhythms and health. Yours, too. Scrolling social media or YouTube late at night is a major component of that. Don’t blame me; blame Samsung/Apple.

I know, it may be your only chance that night to catch up on your team’s gameday highlights. Save it for the bathroom in the morning.

If something negatively affects her sleep, it needs to change, and her lack of sleep is also hazardous to your health. Which leads me to (and this is from the makers of that sage proverb: Never wake a sleeping baby)...

8: Never wake a sleeping wife.

I once had a sign made for my wife that read:

Let her sleep for tomorrow she will move mountains.

I’ve learned that if I don’t let her sleep, the only mountain she’ll be interested in moving will be me, straight to the couch. Get up and do morning with the kids. If the baby doesn’t need to nurse, get up with the baby in the middle of the night and learn how to rock them back to sleep.

If your wife needs to go to bed early, go with her if you can—you can always use the extra sleep—and if you can’t, refer to tips 1 and 2 when you do join her. If she needs a nap in the middle of the day, encourage her to take it.

Putting it all together.

Basically with all of these, put on your big boy pants and make sure you’re meeting her bedroom needs, all of them.

Now, you may have clicked on this post expecting a different flavor of tips. If so, you’ll want to check out this article, or buy these books, or this one, to further enhance your bedtime prowess, and invigorate both of your bedtime experiences.

Sex might be the Superbowl of bedtime activities (and ought to be, for both of you) but everything else that happens there is like the regular season. If you don’t do the little, respectful things right, day by day, you may not win enough contests to even make it to the Superbowl. That’s not what God has planned for you and your marriage.

He wants you to win, big…even if she has a cat.

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Where to begin?

Well, let me just start with this: The last thing in the world I wanted to do was read another Christian marriage book. We’d read, studied, and taught from so many of them over 28 years of marriage and 20+ years of ministry that I figured these would just be covering well-trod ground.

Boy, was I wrong.

The Marriage You Want by , and The Great Sex Rescue by Sheila Gregoire, Joanna Sawatsky, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach hit home in all the right ways.

I thought about doing a review of each book separately, but they—like sex and marriage—really go hand in hand. You can’t have a clear discussion about marriage without dealing in-depth with the sex question; and you can’t deal with the physical and psychological barriers to mutually fulfilling sex without first cleaning up the day-to-day marriage arena.

Together these books provided eye-opening answers to the perplexing marriage realities we’ve seen in ministry. Like, why are so many Christian marriages on life support? Both parters love Jesus, both read the Bible, both show up every Sunday. Yet something is crashing, hard. Why?

These books have answers, and the number of aha moments my wife and I had in studying these books is off the charts. They register with what we’ve been seeing in the Church. Essentially, the Church by and large has adopted an unbiblical, destructive dogma for marriage and sex. And Christian separation and divorce rates show it. And for many for whom divorce isn’t even in the vocabulary, enduring abuse or mundane cohabitation is the new normal.

These books explain how and why that is, and also what we can do to reestablish marriage priorities in line with Jesus’s heart for women and men. Suddenly the Church has data and testimonials that make sense in light of what we’ve been seeing in ministry:

Maybe the fact that women feel so upset by this “everyman struggles with lust” message isn’t because women simply need to understand men better; maybe it’s because women are being asked to accept something that reflects the kingdom of darkness rather than Christ...

According to the Bible, once we are indwelled with the Holy Spirit, we should expect that lust will be defeated.

— The Great Sex Rescue

This is something that the Church needs to grasp, teach, and offer solutions for.

Gender roles are a perfect example of how things can go wrong, because all too often they sacrifice adaptability and replace it with inflexibility. Rather than trying to live up to what someone else says you should be, you’d be so much better off focusing on what actually works for you both.

— The Marriage You Want

The Fruit of the Spirit

One of the concepts that rang particularly true is that women become the unwitting “gatekeepers” in the sex realm. Researchers now see—after years of real life experiences—that this may be one of the single greatest lies the enemy has used to destroy Christain marriages, and the joy of what should be one of God’s greatest gifts to women and men.

When we tell girls that a boy will want to pressure them, we set a very low standard for boys and a very high one for girls. If all guys will push your boundaries, and you need to fight off every one of them, then will girls even know that they deserve to date and marry someone who’ll respect their boundaries?

Girls are frequently warned as soon as they hit puberty: boys are going to push your sexual boundaries... He pushes the accelerator, and I push the brakes....

— The Great Sex Rescue

The concept that self-control is a fruit of the Spirit applying to women only has led to devastation in marriages.

In looking back why she could never respond sexually to her husband, Charlotte believes this gatekeeper role was one of the main reasons. She never allowed herself to feel anything while they were making out. She was constantly asking herself, When do I put on the brakes? Is it now? Is it now?

When she married, she was so used to that observer role that she couldn’t just drop it...she reverted to judging what was going on rather than experiencing what was going on, and that made the arousal piece very difficult.

— The Great Sex Rescue

Righting the Ship

My wife and I have been doing marriage ministry in one form or another for many years. We’ve used, studied, and recommended many of the best selling Christian books on marriage and sex. Yet now that the data is in, I can’t help but desire to call up all of those couples we fellowshipped with and warn them about how wrong the Church has been, and continues to be, in teaching falsehoods that destroy sex and marriages for countless Christians:

As difficult as it may be to make a change, if the pace of your life is not sustainable long-term, you need to make a change now, before a change that you can’t control happens to you.

— The Marriage You Want

This can be applied to all variety of marriage issues but especially in the bedroom, where a disporportionate amount of damage has been, and is currently being, done:

The pastor berates her, “Don’t you know sex is a gift from God in your marriage?” [She] hears the words but they don’t penetrate. She has been reduced to a physical receptacle for Jared to orgasm into in order to keep him from temptation. If that’s what sex is, she not having it, any of it...

Women who get married believing they need to have sex with their husbands to help prevent their porn use are 19% more likely to experience significant sexual pain unrelated to childbirth. Women who believe now that frequent sex will prevent porn use are 18% more likely to report being disinterested in sex, 37% more likely to have sex out of obligation, 24% less likely to orgasm reliably during sex, and 24% less likely to be confident they well be aroused during sex. They are, however, 42% more likely to have sex at least twice a week.

If sex is worse for her, then why is she doing it more often? Because we have threatened her if she doesn’t.

— The Great Sex Rescue

There is much to unpack in correcting the mistakes of the past. When my wife and I first began exploring this new information, we were floored by how close to home it all hit. I have no doubt that reading these books will likewise generate the same response from so many of you. If so, please reach out to us and let us know.

The good news is that it’s never too late to repent, forgive, and move forward. In Christ it’s even possible to miraculously reconcile, and restore the years and marriages that the locusts have devoured. But even more importantly, it’s never too late (or too early) to begin laying a proper foundation for the young people considering getting married today.

In many ways the Church has blown it. As soon as we admit that, we can start fixing it, and these books are great way to begin.

You can follow me on Telegram, Substack, Truth Social, GETTR, Gab, and X. You can subscribe to receive new posts to your inbox for free, as well as get information on our books and other endeavors.

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Where do these new books go?

This is a problem that rears its head a few times every year. It’s always an issue in January for a family of devout bibliophiles, but also in September when new school books arrive, and usually in May when summer reading’s future indulgences show up, like seedlings anxiously awaiting their moment to flower in the July shade.

And then there’s June books, right on time because we just completed the May books.

A friend once called us “homeschool preppers,” and it’s true, unashamedly. When the grid collapses, the power goes out, and everyone is frantically eating the last ice cream western society might ever see, wondering about edible foliage and water purification, come on over; I’ve got a book on that.

My passion for buying books began in September 1995, the month The Lost World by Michael Crichton was released. Up to that point the only three books I’d owned were an unopened Bible my faith-filled mother primed my bookshelf with, a copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull from my father, and a paperback of Martin Luther King Jr. quotes I may or may not have lifted from somewhere; I’m not sure how else I would have attained it, and I still have it.

I was a reader, it’s just that the books I read in high school were rarely worth the time to read, much less buy. I’m looking at you, Steinbeck.

Of course there were the Scholastic Book Fair books, but none of them were made to last and they likely ended up in a garage sale box shortly after the school year, read or unread. I do remember reading the book adaptation of Spaceballs, and it was certaninly a letdown; Mel Brooks sight gags don’t translate to the page.

But on that noteworthy day in 1995, I remember walking past a Waldenbooks in the Santa Monica Mall. Eyeing a display for the sequel to Jurassic Park, I was intrigued. And since I figured it would be a while before the book was adapted for the screen, and since people always say the book is better than the movie, I absorbed my nineteen-year-old sticker shock like a man and plopped down $22 to begin my library.

As the years went by, my collection grew and was eventually combined with my future wife’s. College texts, fun twaddle, classics, instructional books, and all varieties of history and fiction filled the surfaces of our little condominium. The History Book Club got me good, in the worst way.

A baby brought board books, book baskets, and variable height shelves attempting to bring order to the chaos of twelve-inch high Dr. Suess books alongside dainty Beatrix Potter sets. This is where all of the trouble started, really, because we also acquired books on parenting (mostly worthless), and marriage (also mainly worthless, stay tuned1), and books on how not to loose your s*** when the toddler detaches The Hobbit’s cover from its binding.

And then, homeschooling.

Starting our own business expanded the library seven-fold, and every day, new topics arise as research for the books we’re writing or ministry work we’re doing.

When I was writing my Modern War series of novels, after a dozen hours researching medical procedures online, I broke down and bought a book on war surgery in (it resides on a way-up-high shelf, because eww). It’s just easier to study from an open book than from a phone’s screen.

Thanks to that season, I now have volumes of U.S. Military publications I need to find space for; jettisoning them is out of the question because that data may prove scarce one day, and already we’ve seen rare copies of books detailing uncomfortable history skyrocket in price, proportional to their artificial scarcity.

As the collection increases, the shelves get crammed. New shelves go up, but that doesn’t solve much because the issue isn’t only how to store them, but where to display them, and this is constantly in flux.

In a few months, last year’s bedside shelf will be full of mostly new titles. The old ones need a home and they can’t go just anywhere. Mother Warriors was a decent read and I don’t feel like parting with it since it’s full of important info, but it has no place near the other paperbacks of the same trim size. Maybe we can make a high shelf for Important Books With Mild Profanity, up there next to Ayn Rand and Mary Roach.

When I finished The Cold War: A New History, I noticed that sadly its paperback trim size means it must go on a high corner shelf instead of a more prominent location. Why? Because book organization matters. The Science of Interstellar is too large and floppy for my theoretical science shelf; it must go near Celestial Navigation and the atlases, which have bled into the oversized art books.

I can hear Michelangelo, Norman Rockwell, and Mary Cassatt whispering to each other, “What’s this guy doing up here?”

Of course, if I just get rid of that Neil deGrasse Tyson book I’d forgotten I had…What’s he still squatting in this library for, anyway? I thought we evicted him during Covidiocy.

Where exactly does one shelve An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Mars? Or Packing For Mars? Or anything by Erik Larson, for that matter? History, Biography, Science, Biology, they all apply. On second thought, Erik Larson gets his own shelf. I love (most of) that guy’s work.

And don’t even get me started on all finding spots for all of the P.G. Wodehouse we’ve acquired.

The books shift with the tide. Much like how our home needs to be reorganized with each new baby or every young adult launched out of the house with fireworks and tears, so too our book shelves change with every Thriftbooks delivery.

Perhaps we could take a sabbatical from book aquisition, but one simply cannot walk into a thrift store, see two hardcover volumes of Bruce Catton’s Centennial History of the Civil War and not buy them. Even if he already has a full set. They’re in the original dust jackets, babe. And they’re only four bucks each!

What? Am I supposed to not buy a copy of David Lifton’s Best Evidence if I find it cheap? You do know it’s been memory-holed out of existence, right?

Sometimes we purge the library, but more often we reshelve, because preserving the printed word is a value most civilizations have recognized as essential throughout history. The day may come when our personal libraries are all that we have left.

And you just never know when someone may come to your door seeking to learn how to perform an orotracheal intubation, or what Edmund Burke really thought of the Jacobins, or how Sigmund Freud covered up sexual abuse. That’s when I might light up and proudly say, “Hang on, I’ve got a book on that.”

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the library

I was flabbergasted. I’d just found out that one of the most educated guys I know has almost no physical books…

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10 months ago · 13 likes · 5 comments · Vince Guerra and Shannon Guerra

So a few years back we initiated Movie School, where we dedicate one week out of the year for a personal film festival. In the late mornings and afternoon, we watch family-friendly movies that are either film versions of the books we’ve read the past year, or movies that reinforce topics we’ve been studying.

In the evenings, we watch more mature films for the older (high school) students. Here are some of the movies we’re watching this year for Movie School.

Films Appropriate For Most Audiences

Sarah, Plain & Tall / Skylark

Subjects: U.S. History, Science, Agriculture

Synopsis: A single woman from Maine answers a widower’s ad for a wife and mother for his two children.

Cautionary Notes: There are some intense scenes involving childbirth and general homestead life challenges.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Subjects: British Literature

Synopsis: The third (and final) film in the most recent Chronicles of Narnia franchise. Lucy and Edmund Pevensie accompany King Caspian on a sea voyage to discover the fate of the seven missing lords of Telmar.

Cautionary Notes: Not a great movie, but my younger kids loved it. It veers significantly from the source material in sequencing, which provides a good opportunity to discuss book adaptations to film. Some violent action sequences.

Additional films for most audiences:
The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
Pride & Prejudice (1995)
The Prince Of Egypt
Miss Potter
Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
Sense and Sensibility (2008 TV Mini Series)
To Kill A Mockingbird
Mr. Holland’s Opus
Harriet (2019)
Emma (2009 TV Mini Series)
Interstellar
A Man For All Seasons
North and South (2004)
Amazing Grace
Wives and Daughters
The Hundred-Foot Journey
A Man For All Seasons

Mature Films For Older Kids

Red Dawn (1984)

Subjects: Military and Cold War History, Geopolitics, Propaganda

Synopsis: A man leads a group of teenagers in conducting guerrilla warfare in the mountains of New Mexico during a fictional World War Three.

Cautionary Notes: Sometimes bloody war violence and adult themes throughout.

Romeo & Juliet (1968)

Subjects: British Literature (Shakespeare)

Synopsis: Do I really need to describe the most famous play in history?

Cautionary Notes: When we were discussing this film with our older daughter, it provided an opportunity to discuss topics like age of consent and child exploitation. The lead actors in this film were tricked by director Franco Zeffirelli into performing an infamous nude scene. Olivia Hussey, who played Juliet, was 15 and Leonard Whiting, who played Romeo, was 16 at the time. Ongoing litigation against the filmmakers for this crime is currently outstanding.

Additional films in this category:

12 Angry Men (1957)
Schindler’s List
Gods and Generals (2003)
Amistad
Hidden Figures
The Patriot
Valkyrie
A Few Good Men
Ben Hur
Gettysburg
The Longest Day
Dead Poets Society
Gone With The Wind
Glory
The Help
The Right Stuff
The Last of the Mohicans
Judgment At Nuremberg

Films Appropriate For All Audiences

Ratatouille

Synopsis: A rat with an uncharacteristic love for fine cuisine joins forces with a budding chef.

Subject: Culinary Arts

Cautionary Notes: You may find your kids asking for kitchen knives and pots and pans for Christmas.

All Creatures Great & Small

Subjects: Animal Husbandry, Science, British History

Synopsis: A film adaptation of veterinarian James Herriot’s fictional stories.

Cautionary Notes: Some adult themes regarding love and loss, and veterinary procedures.

Additional films in this category:

Anne Of Green Gables (1985 Mini Series)
Little House on the Prairie (Pilot episode)
Temple Grandin
Rikki Tikki Tavi (1975)
The Jungle Book (2016)
The Wind in the Willows (1995 TV movie)

Drop any suggestions you may have in the comments. And Happy Thanksgiving!

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I avoided watching the TV show Stranger Things for about eight years. My wife had no interest —when I suggested it, she rolled her eyes. “Ugh. No thanks.” So one night while riding my exercise bike I decided to give it a try. By episode three, I was in.

After hearing me and another guy at our home church casually discussing it, my wife was curious enough to give it a try. So I rewatched the first three episodes, this time with her, and by episode three she was also in.

If you’ve never heard of Stranger Things, it’s a Netflix show set in the 1980s that’s kind of a cross between E.T., X-Men, and The X-Files, and it’s certainly not for everybody.

Now, let me throw out a big disclaimer: Unless you’re highly knowledgeable about spiritual warfare and have solid grounding in Biblical truth, I don’t recommend watching it. Read the Parent’s Guide on IMDB and you’ll know what I mean. It’s certainly not clean fare.

If, however, you’re discerning about the reality of the supernatural realm and the interplay between humans and the demons, then there are some important concepts Stranger Things touches on. I’d like to discuss them here. It might influence how we see ourselves and our mission in Christ, and may provide some vehicles by which to engage our secular friends and acquaintances. With these kinds of shows—Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Avengers, The Book of Eli, etc—you need to consider the concept of mixture to remain grounded in Christ.

But one of the things Stranger Things gets (perhaps inadvertently) right is the existence of what it calls the Upside Down.

The Upside Down

Stranger Things opens with a group of four kids living rather ordinary Gen-X childhoods. When one of them goes missing, the search for him unravels a mystery involving a parallel dimension which they soon refer to as the Upside Down.

Those who enter the Upside Down see everything they’re used to seeing—their homes, the city streets, parks, their school—but it’s all tainted with an eerie darkness and floating dust, where monsters who’re usually invisible lurk in plain sight. Things that exist in that supernatural realm are suddenly visible, and our protagonists have to deal with them. Sometimes indirectly, sometimes face to face.

As the characters learn more about the Upside Down, they learn that what happens there effects the surface realm they normally live in, though most people will never actually see it.

Now, let me emphasize: This is a secular TV show, not a Christian allegory.

Stranger Things is not remotely Jesus-adjacent and in fact there are several instances in season 4 especially where it takes shots at the so-called “Satanic panic” trend of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Some may argue that Stranger Things is a potential conduit toward unholy mixture, and one that Christ followers should avoid. I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, depending on the individual. Pray on it.

That said, there are several Biblical concepts that Stranger Things broaches:

• Trauma opens doors to supernatural oppression, psychologically and physically.

• The enemy knows our history and uses it against us.

• Fear, shame, and isolation are his main tactics.

• Highly discerning individuals are often marginalized as mentally ill.

• Self doubt leads to greater withdrawal and even more confusion.

• Our beliefs about our identity direct how we respond.

• Demons lie to breed disunity and strife.

• Battles we see in the flesh are often manifestations of what’s happening in the spiritual realm.

• Love is the most powerful weapon we possess.

• Music has profound spiritual impact that we don’t fully comprehend.

I could go on, but hopefully you’re getting the picture.

We are spiritual beings, and likewise our battles are highly if not mostly spiritual in nature. And while not every situation has a demon driving it, a crap ton of situations do have demons driving them, especially in our minds and our understanding of identity, relationships, and healing.

The Right Side Up

One night while discussing the Upside Down with my wife, she mentioned that given how the enemy perverts everything that’s true, the Upside Down in Stranger Things is kind of a perversion of the true spiritual realm, the Right Side Up, if you will.

So what‘s going on in the spiritual realm around us right now, as you sit here reading this? We may never know but sometimes God grants His people the ability to see in the Spirit, to glimpse into the heavenly realm, and there is Biblical precedent.

For those who don’t know the Bible: Moses and Elijah were historical figures by the time Jesus walked the Earth, legends of the faith and long since departed from this world. But when the eyes of Jesus’s disciples, Peter, James, and John were opened to it, the supernatural realm was suddenly visible to them.

After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus.

— Matthew 17:1-3

That was hardly the first time in history humans got a look into the Right Side Up. Here’s another example:

When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. “Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?” the servant asked.

“Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”

And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.”

Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

— 2 Kings:15-17

We tend to think of the supernatural realm as something up in the clouds, divorced from the here and now, when in reality—and similar to the Upside Down of Stranger Things—it’s actually all around us, every day, everywhere. We need to get accustomed to that, rely on the Holy Spirit to reveal it, and deal with whatever needs dealt with, even if we cannot see it.

The Battlefield

Modern medicine attributes mental illness to a (possibly mythical) chemical imbalance in the brain, and prescribe mind-altering drugs to temporarily mitigate the troubles. As with all of the enemy’s lies, there’s a little truth mixed in with this one. The enemy didn’t invent the brain, so he cannot control it, but he knows the science of how it works much better that we do and he can manipulate it.

Yes, brain chemistry is a real thing, and yes the physical things we feed our bodies (and by extension, our brain) can have profound effects on mental health; every parent and teacher understands the reciprocal relationship between food, exercise, and academic success. However there are mountains of evidence and testimonies that posit mental illness is also often a spiritual issue requiring a spiritual solution.

In those cases, drugs merely mitigate the manifestations of demonic attack, and certain drugs thin the veil between the natural and supernatural, making victims more susceptible to even worse oppression than otherwise later on.

When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.

— Luke 11:24-26

If we understood the Right Side Up, we might learn to recognize the signs and know that many of these afflictions are a direct result of spiritual oppression. And we might stop spinning our wheels with unnecessary drugs or inadequate therapies and deal with the underlying cause.

Another example is music.

In Stranger Things, a heavy correlation is placed on music—the sounds and frequencies themselves and the associations surrounding it—and the existence of strongholds. This is a topic we should probably tackle in much greater depth another time but suffice it to say, there is a reason why music plays such a prominent role in the Bible. Every worship leader tasked with using it should understand that significance, and should also probably study its effects much more stringently than is commonly done.

A Sunday morning worship set can be a powerless talent contest or a tsunami that topples skyscrapers of oppression. A simple verse sung off-key can have more impact than a ten-piece band of polished musicians; it all depends on the heart posture, and how well we understand the Right Side Up.

If we knew how anger, yelling, gossip, lust, drug use, unforgiveness, ungodly declarations, and oaths formed legal standing for demonic attack in the heavenly realms, we might alter the way we pray, and counsel, and love others through their battles. By living with our radars attuned to the Right Side Up, we’re better equipped to deal with whatever the enemy throws at us.

God is not a legalist, but the enemy is

In the later seasons of Stranger Things we’re introduced to Vecna, a character who uses the shame and trauma of a person’s past to isolate and torment them to death.

“Where others saw order, I saw a straitjacket. A cruel, oppressive world dictated by made-up rules. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades. Each life a faded, lesser copy of the one before. Wake up, eat, work, sleep, reproduce, and die! Everyone is just waiting. Waiting for it all to be over. All while performing in a silly, terrible play, day after day. I could not do that. I could not close off my mind and join in the madness. I could not pretend. And I realized I didn’t have to. I could make my own rules. I could restore balance to a broken world: a predator, but for good.”

— Vecna, Stranger Things

Again, the enemy cannot create anything. He didn’t create the heavenly realms, he merely distorts it for his own purposes.

Those who don’t know Jesus but are too discerning to dismiss the paranormal out of turn are more easily seduced by the supernatural. They may dabble with powers they don’t understand and for a time, can be empowered by it.

Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of the Jesus whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.

— Acts 19:13-16

A number of history’s most notorious serial killers have a background in the Satanic, and any effective deliverance ministry can affirm that secret societies like the Masonic Lodge are often at the heart of demonic strongholds.

There are those who dismiss psychics, witch doctors, mediums, shamans, and those who practice “the dark arts” as kooks and shysters. Those on the front lines of deliverance however, who understand the Right Side Up, know that things like astral-projection, blood oaths, curses, etc, are real, and that there is a Biblical method for dealing with them.

There is a cost in the heavenly realms for making agreements with the enemy; he will enforce them, and it’s crucial for God’s servants to know how to counter that. One thing we can do is imagine that every time we intercede in prayer, we’re entering the courtroom of heaven.

There stands the accuser, trying to enforce some kind of legal indictment on his prey.

Accuser: “He’s harboring unforgiveness.”

or

Accuser: “The doctor said she’ll never have children and she agreed with it.”

or

Accuser: “His family made a blood oath on his behalf.”

In the Right Side Up, the Holy Spirit can expose those indictments, and tell us how to address each count. We know that these accusations, even if true, don’t cancel our salvation in Christ; nothing can prevent that if we give our lives to Him.

But these legal claims by the enemy can, and often do, explain why living the Christian life is often such a messy, difficult slog. What we choose to believe about ourselves matters in the Right Side up. We’ve got unseen enemies all around us, just waiting to use our missteps against us and thus marginalize our effectiveness.

And never forget, he is a liar. He will lie to us every day about everything, goading us to accept a false reality, an Upside Down. And worse, he convices many of us to declare it over ourselves, and over others.

Now ask yourself: What am I passionate about? What am I talented in?

Chances are, those are things you were uniquely designed to thrive at, for His glory and your joy. The enemy knows it, and he will do anything to thwart that assignment.

If we don’t understand the Right Side Up, we don’t realize the everyday battles raging around us and perhaps don’t have the knowledge or tools to deal with it. This is especially true with new believers, or those in churches that deny the operation of the Holy Spirit.

But when we do understand the Right Side Up, we learn to see the battlefields around us and realize we can affect them in the courts of heaven. The authority of Jesus and the superiority of His angels over the demons mean the enemy can only ever operate when we allow him to by ignorance, laxity, or complicity.

Yes, complicity. We often do the work of the accuser against ourselves, or against our friends.

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.

— James 3: 9-10

In the Right Side Up, instead of agreeing with the enemy, we can take those lies into the courtroom of the Father who holds the gavel, submit our defense (the Word of God), and enforce the truth that cancels every claim of the enemy.

We enter that courtroom and tell the Accuser, “Jesus paid the penalty. The accused is forgiven, his case was dismissed. Now go back to the shadow and leave him the hell alone.”

We can even add:

“And now I command you, Spirit of Infirmity, to depart and submit yourself for judgment in front of the throne of the Almighty.”

Sometimes it’s that simple. Other times we may first need to walk that person through forgiveness and renunciations. The Holy Spirit will give us the proper defense for whatever claim the enemy is using. It’s on us to recognize it and enforce it.

This takes practice, courage, and a willingness to look beyond simplistic notions of an admittedly complex system; even the most dialed-in Christ followers admit they don’t fully grasp it. But we keep at it. We keep studying God’s Word, keep holding counsel with one another, and keep asking what the Holy Spirit would like to reveal to us every day.

Perhaps like Elisha or his servant, you’ve seen glimpses of the Right Side Up, or like the kids in Stranger Things, you’ve wrestled the perversion of the Upside Down. Either way, count yourself enlightened: You know there’s more around us than humanistic perceptions that refuse to square with experience.

What are we willing to do with that knowledge? Have you met Jesus, or have you only ever known the lies of Vecna? The Accuser will do anything to keep you from stepping out of his influence, and take on his lies as a false identity, an empty promise of a pseudo-spirituality full of hidden costs.

You’ve got some inside information that much of the public, even a sizable portion of the Christian public, doesn’t grasp. Jesus is not a tame Lord. Yes, He offers freedom, salvation, and unlimited life to all who call on Him, and comfort and peace for the broken hearted. But he also imparts supernatural power to strike fear into the enemy, the kind of wrath that causes demons to tremble at His name. And He offers all of it to you, and strangely all for free. All it costs you is everything.

If your heart is pounding reading this, and you’ve never given your life to Jesus but you want to, you can do it right now. All you have to do is pray something like this:

Jesus, I give my life to you.
I believe you lived, died on a cross, were buried, and rose from the dead.
I believe you are the risen son of God and I choose to follow you all the days of my life.
I repent of my sins, and accept the forgiveness you purchased on my behalf.
I ask, Jesus, that your Holy Spirit enter me and direct me from now on.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.

If you just prayed that prayer, email me or comment below for some next steps. We’d love to connect with you about it.

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Who is Israel? Ask ten Christians that question, and you may get several variations on a few common answers.

Yes, Israel is a nation state on a map, located in the Middle East. But when it comes to the Bible, Israel is much more than that. Both good and bad theology attempt to answer the question of whether or not that nation state is “God’s chosen people,” with passionate defenders in both camps.

In answering that, we’re usually told to either a) support the nation state of Israel because they’re God’s chosen people no matter what they do, or b) oppose the nation state of Israel because they’ve violently divorced themselves from the new covenant in Jesus, by word and deeds.

But in the discussion about politics and the geographic Israel created in 1948—its history, intelligence operations, wars, media campaigns, social media influencer appeals, diplomatic actions, and more—we’re asking the wrong question.

“Who is Israel?” is largely irrelevant. What matters much more is what we do, and what Christ says about that.

Debating the definition of Biblical Israel (those of the Abrahamic covenant in direct lineage, and/or those gentiles grafted in through faith in Jesus Christ) is a distraction designed to get God’s people off mission—to sin by getting hung up on worldly affairs and effectively disengaging from every sphere we might otherwise influence if we were to keep Jesus in focus one hundred percent of the time.

For those of us calling ourselves Jesus followers, our job isn’t to define Israel. Our job is to get about His business.

The problem is that as a collective, God’s people have never been very good at following Him, and that’s been from the beginning.

First Kings

When he took charge of the nation, he was still rather young, but as he grew older he committed atrocities enumerable. He erected pagan altars, practiced divination and astrology, embraced every kind of sexual perversion, and worshiped demonic entities. He even sacrificed his own children to pagan gods.

And there’s no debate about it: He was one of God’s chosen people. His name was Manasseh and he was the 18th king of Israel.

“Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had demolished; he also erected altars to the Baals and made Asherah poles. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them. He built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “My Name will remain in Jerusalem forever.” In both courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all the starry hosts. He sacrificed his children in the fire in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, practiced divination and witchcraft, sought omens, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger. He took the image he had made and put it in God’s temple.”

— 2 Chronicles 33:1-7

And Manasseh was hardly an outlier; in fact, you could say with scriptural and historic authority that the vast majorty of Biblical Israel’s leaders perpetrated evil, sometimes in isolated incidents (I’m looking at you, David) and sometimes (like Ahab) habitually.

Of the 43 kings of Israel and Judah1, only seven did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. For those of you into statistics, that’s a pathetic 16%. And even among those who didn’t categorically do “evil in the eyes of the Lord,” practically all of the time, you’ll find that most would more aptly be defined as “so so” in the area of Godly leadership. That is to say, they either started good and became bad (Solomon, Joash, Amaziah), or had a complex run of it from the get-go (Ishbosheth, Jehu).

Again, some of these were anointed by the prophets of the Lord to lead the nation when it stood as a testament to Yahweh among the pagan nations, long before Jesus would take the stage in the flesh and change everything.

God’s Chosen People

If you’re at all familiar with the Bible, you’ll recognize the phrase, evil in the eyes of the Lord. If you do a Blue Letter Bible search of that term, you’ll find two pages of hits, all of them in the Old Testament.

In the book of Judges the phrase, “Again, the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord,” is repeated four times. Time and time again the people perpetrated evil—and not the being-mean-to-the-guy-on-Facebook variety of evil, but real, bloody, sexually perverse evil.

It was enough for the prophet Samuel to cry out in exasperation,

“Why did you not obey the Lord?”
— 1 Samuel 15:19

You can almost hear him slam his head on the desk at the stubbornness of God’s people, those who had seen miracles innumerable with their own eyes, again and again. As Moses was getting the Ten Commandments Aaron was at that moment leading God’s chosen people in idol worship, and possibly overt sexual perversion as well.2 The priests needed the apostles and prophets to keep them on track, and so do we.

This is the history of why being God’s chosen people wasn’t enough; they needed a Savior. This is why Jesus came in the flesh, to reconcile sinful people to the Lord who’d had enough of their constant propensity toward evil. God decided to dispense with the constant cycle of uncleanliness and sin offerings, and the traditions that created even more sin by those responsible for keeping His temple holy. He broke down the physical and spiritual barriers between us and Him and in the process, relocated the Holy of Holies to within us. In that moment, everything changed.

We call this the new covenant: He chose to dwell within us—no middleman, no constant striving to make amends for our mistakes—a simple, one-time reconciliation with the Father, thanks to Jesus who took the penalty upon Himself on our behalf.

“So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”

— Galatians 3:26-29

His Holy Spirit residing within us is the governor that keeps us in check, so long as we listen and respond accordingly. So why then do so many Christ followers believe that the nation state in the Middle East calling itself “Israel” gets a free pass to do completely un-Jesus like things?

“We’re Christians. We Support Israel.”

A few years back I was at a church pre-service meeting. The state of Israel had been in the news that week for launching another salvo of missile strikes against someone. The ministry leader was discussing how he’d “gotten into it” with a guy online who thought Israel was perpetrating evil. When one of the guys there asked what was wrong with what the guy online had said, our leader replied with an incredulous air of authority designed to end the conversation, “We’re Christians. We support Israel,” and he punctuated it with a chopping motion of his hand as if to emphasize that this is the hard truth, no matter what the circumstances.

But that’s not Biblical.

Nation states are merely large groups of people who’ve organized to provide a level of protection for one another. People within them either follow Jesus or they don’t. Nation states themselves don’t; they’re not designed to. Some nations honor the teachings of Jesus better than others, but they can never attain the collective accountability to say they’re God’s chosen people. Not the least reason being because so many of them reject Jesus outright.

So, going back to that ministry leader and his claim that, “We’re Christians, we support Israel.” My response is: No. No, we don’t. I follow Jesus and that’s all that really matters. Everything flows from that.

If the secular State of Israel follows Jesus, I’ll support their efforts. But they don’t. By their charter, they reject Jesus outright. But before we get on our high horses, we need to be honest and recall that the United States doesn’t follow Jesus, either. These aren’t curses, they’re just additional reminders that God’s covenant is not with a nation in totality, and absolutely not in perpetuity; God’s covenant is individual, and based on personal responsibility and faith.

I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.

— Romans 9:2-8

In other words, being one of God’s people is a choice incumbent on each person choosing to accept Jesus Christ. That’s it.

The greatest of all commandments is to have no other gods before the Lord. How does a nation state that rejects Jesus elicit such blind devotion from those who purport to follow Him?

They committed evil in the eyes of the Lord

Hear me, Church. This is not an indictment on the nation state of Israel. Everyone can do evil, whether they’re God’s chosen people or not (as we discussed earlier with the kings of Israel and Judah). If you or I go out and murder someone tomorrow, or yell at our spouse, or harm one of our children, that will still be evil whether we’ve given our lives to Jesus or not.

Both Jews and the nation state of Israel have perpetrated tens of thousands of documented evils in their long history, but so have my father’s people, the Mexicans, and the Spanish who conquered them. My mother’s people, the Germans, have been on the giving and receiving end of atrocity. So have my mother’s other people, the Irish. And America has an equally ugly history of not remotely following Jesus at times.

These are historical facts, and as a historian and a writer, that’s what I’m most concerned with: telling the uncomfortable history so we can learn from it, align ourselves with Jesus, and not repeat bad decisions during our time on the stage.

Our Story Isn’t Yet Written

Just like the Israelites of the Old Testament, plenty of God’s people have chosen to reject Him and His ways. It wouldn’t be very hard to compile a modern-day A-Z list of prominent Christian leaders who’ve committed evil in the eyes of the Lord, from Tony Alamo to David Yonggi Cho, from Doug Wilson to Ravi Zacharias, there’s no shortage of examples of those who’ve lost their way.

“So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.

That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

— Ephesians 4:17-24 NIV

But while there’s still air in our lungs, it’s never too late to repent and turn back to the Lord. Jesus provides that option of a postscript to everyone, even the worst of sinners this world has to offer:

“The Lord spoke to Manasseh and his people, but they paid no attention. So the Lord brought against them the army commanders of the king of Assyria, who took Manasseh prisoner, put a hook in his nose, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon. In his distress he sought the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his ancestors. And when he prayed to him, the Lord was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea; so he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord is God.

He got rid of the foreign gods and removed the image from the temple of the Lord, as well as all the altars he had built on the temple hill and in Jerusalem; and he threw them out of the city. Then he restored the altar of the Lord and sacrificed fellowship offerings and thank offerings on it, and told Judah to serve the Lord, the God of Israel.

— 2 Chronicles 33:10-13, 15-16 NIV

One of the saddest aspects of modern Christianity is its lack of understanding about what Jesus actually came to do. Sadder still is that so many continue to excuse evil in the eyes of the Lord merely because it’s perpetrated by those who claim unaccountability as a birthright.

But thanks to Jesus, it’s never too late to add a postscript to our stories. We can ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to us our blind spots, our misguided loyalties, and the psychological conditioning that prevents us from seeing things the way the Lord does. Salvation isn’t a promise to an isolated group carrying on as if He doesn’t exist. Unless we realize that tearing down curtains and temple walls was part of the great rescue plan to establish a temple within the hearts of every individual image bearer, we’ll continue to revere places and things, and even nations, that have little to do with Jesus.

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Imagine the Church is a chessboard.

We tend to think of our leaders and pastors as the highly important pieces who make all the difference: the queen, bishops, or rooks. Some of us might consider ourselves a knight because a) they’re cool, and b) they’re capable of getting in on the action here and there.

But as we survey the board, it’s likely that most of us would identify more with the pawns. Pawns take small, simple steps forward, hoping to hang on long enough to share in the victory secured by the “important” players who do wild things like slash all the way across the board in a swift thrust, or jump in deep behind enemy lines.

Modern culture has equated the term “pawn” as a pejorative, which is a shame, because in chess they’re far from expendable. Every chess master understands that pawns are essential, and they quickly learn how to use pawns to drive their opponents nuts. Far from weak, pawns are strategic warriors.

“Pawns are the soul of chess: it is they alone that determine the attack and the defense, and the winning or losing of the game depends entirely on their good or bad arrangement.”

— Francois Andre Danican Philidor 1

You are the soul of the game. You matter. You have the power to make the game a living hell for the demonic forces on the other side. All of you.

You may have limited skills at this juncture; you may have only the simplest strategies for attacking and defending. That’s fine. God will use what you’ve got in the larger scheme and place you where He needs you when He wants to, even when you don’t fully understand how pivotal that role or that position is.

Another thing we as image bearers of Christ and warriors in the kingdom of God have in common with pawns: They’re always either attacking, protecting, or advancing. Pawns never retreat.

“Pawns, often overlooked as the weakest pieces on the chessboard, are in fact the backbone of the game. They control space, shape the battlefield, and ultimately determine the outcome...While their individual value may seem modest, a well-coordinated pawn army can create weaknesses for the opponent, open lines for attacking pieces, and pave the way for promotion into a powerful queen.”

—Magnus Carlson, currently the world’s highest rated chess player (Sept, 2025)

Pawns occupy the front lines.

When you first come to Christ, you might start off feeling like a pawn, and that’s okay; we’ve just established how important and powerful they are. As you advance and expand your knowledge, operating in your giftings in the Holy Spirit and learning your role in the game, you may find you get (to borrow another chess term) “promoted” within the body of Christ.

In chess, if a pawn gets all the way to the other side of the board unscathed, it gets promoted into a different piece of the master’s choosing. As We the Church grow, special skills are developed in some of us, abilities that others don’t have or don’t have a passion for (nobody wants me in charge of children’s ministry, or on the worship team). And some of us are perfectly comfortable with the limited role God has for us.

Others seek to expand their training and take on riskier endeavors. The Master knows best. God can use all of them; He wants to use all of them—all of us—in whatever degree we’re willing to offer ourselves up.

In the Master’s Hands

In 1984, Emil Josef Diemer sat across from chess master Thomas Heiling. Deimer began as most chess players do, with a standard pawn movement. What made this game significant in the annals of chess2 is that Diemer continued to move pawns, and only pawns.

Deimer made seventeen straight pawn moves before finally bringing out his queen, flummoxing Heiling with things he’d never seen and was unprepared to defend against. After a long series of complex, unprecedented traps—facilitated only as a result of those early pawn movements—Heiling eventually resigned the game3, admitting defeat.

We tend to disqualify ourselves all the time, from many different roles. Understanding that every one of us holds value and strategic importance is something that we need to relearn. It’s something good parents and quality teachers hammer home to us when we’re young, but very soon the enemy steps in and goes to great lengths to conceal it from us.

The enemy wants you to think of yourself as a lowly pawn in a rigged game, or perhaps an ineffective knight in a losing position.

Or perhaps the enemy will use a different tactic: pride. Perhaps the Accuser [footnote] will convince us that we’re the all important and powerful queen, and get us to scorn those lowly pawns as we turn our noses up at those inferior pieces.

Any fallacy will do.

God says differently. He says, I made all of them the way they are, and I can use all of them in the game. As we move forward we’ll increase, and even transform into more dangerous foes, if we will allow Him to propel us forward.

Let Him direct you, and move when He tells you to move, even when it doesn’t make sense and you feel like a simple pawn on a board full of knights and bishops.

He knows our capability, and how to use it. Our only job is to keep moving in whichever direction we’re capable.

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The videos are disturbing. You can watch from multiple angles as the horror unfolds and the crowd scatters in terror. Perhaps as disturbing as the images of death were the reactions on social media. The blood was still warm and people across the internet celebrated, cheered, and shared in the lust of another “bad guy” getting what he deserved.

The date was September 17th, 2024 and it wasn’t a famed Christian influencer’s death they were celebrating, but rather the death or injury of thousands of men, women, and children in Lebanon and Syria—victims of Israel’s infamous pager attack against suspected Hezbollah operatives...and anyone near them. More attacks followed the next day with handheld radios detonating, and the celebrations were equally joyful.

It’s okay though, because all of that happened to them, the bad guys, and they deserved it. Right?

Other videos of other bad guys get similar responses on social media. Videos of protesters getting run over by cars, shot in the face point-blank with tear gas canisters, or blasted off their feet by a 100psi water cannon to the head are shared in gleeful abundance across platforms, by conservatives.

FAFO, we say. But what does Jesus think about it? And more importantly, what does He tell us to do about it?

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?”

— Matthew 5:43-47

Is it okay to laugh at the pagans, though? Are they somehow worth less than us?

Dehumanization 101

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”

— Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda

I could give you a list of social media users and quote the vile things they’ve said over the past few years on all of those topics and many others. I’m choosing not to. For one thing, it’s depressing that so many on “our side” are situationally vicious, even professing Christians. It’s also not conducive to our purposes of doing what Jesus instructs us to do: have greater and more intentional love for others.

Another reason I choose not to list their comments is because people change, and it’s not necessarily fair to attribute someone’s misplaced emotional outburst to some kind of lifelong doctrine. Lord knows there are things I’ve said on social media that I regret.

But for the Holy Spirit, so too go I.

What it boils down to is our propensity to dehumanize those on the other side of the fence, whether it’s political, religious, or otherwise. If we see them as...Them, it’s easy to make fun of Them—even when their lifeless bodies are sprawled on the ground, even while their communities are being persecuted, even when their surviving family members are wracked with devastation and grief, and even though they too wrestle with trying to explain to their children why any of this happened.

We (all of us) are susceptible to falling into one of the demons’ greatest traps: dehumanizing others. The enemy of your soul doesn’t care what side of the fence you’re on. If we take our eyes off Jesus and cease listening to the Holy Spirit, Satan can make any one of us vicious about something.

I’ve seen people I’ve known and respected from church sneer at and justify atrocity. I know people who operate in the Holy Spirit on most issues, who love Jesus and pray passionately on behalf of others, set aside that compassion and openly and callously celebrate the death of innocent people...all depending on who they are.

How does that happen?

It happens when we adopt the language of the enemy. It happens when we lump whole populations of God’s children into undefined categories such as Them.

I’ve been guilty of this and so have you. We all have.

We need to face it, and face it quick, because for all of the psyops on social media decrying a coming battle between good versus evil, a battle designed to get us emotional and jumpy, they’re right about one thing: A battle is raging. What might not be clear to us (and especially to new believers) is that this battle is nothing new, it’s been raging forever, and it’s not going to let up until Jesus returns.

We need to learn how to fight not the enemies we perceive—lefties, right-wing extremists, jihadists, Zionists, trannies, evangelicals, commies, religious nuts, illegals, gangsters, pedos, or any of a thousand pejoratives we summarize as Them—but the true enemies of Jesus Christ, those who dance in the light of outrage on both sides, stoking the flames of division with new offenses and fears.

Those enemies are not flesh and blood, and they don’t care which side you fall on; they merely want us dehumanizing someone, anyone, from the tiniest baby in the womb to the most hardened, unrepentant killer. So long as we see them as anything less than an image bearer of the one true God, the enemy is cool with it.

The Bad Guys

When it came to morality I used to be a black and white kind of guy, and considered moderates to be fence-sitting cowards. But the older I get, the more I understand how insufficient our categories are; the term “good guys” is inadequate in almost any context because history is messy, and motivations vary with facts getting lost or diluted in the ether of time and nefarious intent.

But evil is real, and we need to confront it. No doubt about that.

My coming to Jesus is a direct result of my studies into the depravity of man. A group of people celebrating an influencer’s death on social media is evil, but relative to the unspoken horrors taking place right where you live, things that would so shock you that you might lose your lunch, it’s hardly even noteworthy.

Evil takes many forms, and the worst ones you’re better off not knowing about. I wish I didn’t.

And yet, here we are—commanded to show them mercy as we pray for them. It begins by recognizing that Jesus died for them, too. That’s something we’ll be wise to keep in mind the next time we take communion.

In my almost fifty years on Earth I’ve probably learned the most by being wrong. I used to support every war, ridicule the tree huggers, cheer the cruel and unusual punishment for those who “deserved it,” and never gave much thought to those on the other side.

They embraced evil and so now people on our side are openly claiming that we need to confront Them more vehemently and forcefully than ever — because they’ve rejected the confines of civilized society, and as a result they’ve forfeited rights reserved for people who have proper respect for others.

The only problem with that perspective is Jesus, who says our battle is not against flesh and blood, but rather against those in the heavenly realms. Unless we can see Them as human captives in a supernatural war, and unless we rise above flippant flesh responses to depraved words and deeds, and unless we can love others as ourselves, we’re better off shutting up until we can.

Or better yet, we can spend our time having face-to-face conversations, humanize the caricatures, get to know them, and perhaps learn what Jesus wants to do in and through them, too. And instead of fighting them, we can fight for them, whoever they might be. I’m so glad Jesus was patient and merciful with me, because I also used to be one of them.

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This is part of an ongoing series titled, The Bad Guys. Previous articles:
The Bad Guys I: History.
The Bad Guys II: Abortion…and Cobra Kai.
The Bad Guys III: The Feds
The Bad Guys IV: The Uniparty
The Bad Guys V: Intelligence Agencies
The Bad Guys VI: The Courts
The Bad Guys VII: Cops (part 1)
The Bad Guys VIII: Cops (part2)

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When people play board games with friends they often reach for the rule book.

“Wait,” they might say, “that’s not how I learned to play.” Often they’re right; the house rules we sometimes adopt aren’t always in the official instructions.

Everyone accepts that in Monopoly you get cash for landing on Free Parking. Almost everyone also knows that this isn’t in the rule book. It’s a tradition that players have accepted so readily over the decades that it might as well be ironclad. I’ve never met anyone demanding to play otherwise.

Similarly, the Church has adopted scores of little traditions with no grounding in scripture.

For example, here’s one that may incite some pearl clutching: Anyone who comes to Jesus can be a priest — no certification, no seminary degree, no robes, and no approval of a council of starchy dudes necessary. Look it up in your Bible.

“As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

— 2 Peter 4-5 NIV

In fact, let’s take it a step further. Everyone who calls themselves a follower of Jesus Christ ought to consider themselves a priest. And yes, that includes women, too.

Wait, what?

The Old Rules

Long ago we discovered that if you strip away superfluous rules from certain board games, everything flows better. A few tweaks1 to games like Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, Monopoly, or Mexican Train, and suddenly everything is faster and everyone’s having more fun.

The reason for this is because most board games have at least one rule designed to make the game harder to win and to draw out the length of play. In other words: The rules are intended to create roadblocks to victory.

In Settlers of Catan you have the Robber, who steals your resources, blocks your progression, and eventually makes life miserable for everyone at some point. In Mexican Train, you have the dreaded 50-point deduction for doubles you can’t use. There are a hundred other examples in all sorts of games.

These are effective in making the game last longer, but they breed pointless strife and also end up creating limited hangouts for certain skilled players. The more rules, the harder the game. The harder the game, the fewer people willing to play it. The fewer the people willing to play it, the less competition for those who do. Eventually, only the hardcore enthusiasts are left. I’m looking at you, Axis and Allies.

In more serious matters, this layering of unnecessary rules breeds elitist enclaves across society and the Church is no exception. Only doctors get to dispense healthcare advice, under threat of criminal liability. Only certified builders with the requisite permits get to construct something, no matter how small the structure or how skilled the builder. Again, there are countless examples and when it comes to the Christian church, centuries of denominational (and non-denominational) traditions ensure that only the select few attain the requisite training, and get to play.

The rules make it so that no ordinary person off the street can perform the task. The world says you need to earn the right to act, often through exhaustive study, and only after some authority figure ordains you to do so. That might square with certain certifications—lifeguards and teenage drivers come to mind—but that’s not how God’s kingdom was designed to operate. Jesus calls all of us to get in the game, no prerequisite required.

If all of Jesus’ followers knew that, the world would be a very different place. But those who profit from rules and certifications had other plans, and Jesus called them out out on it:

“You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions...Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”

— Mark 7: 8-9;13 NIV

Mankind created hurdles then, and even more now since Christ’s resurrection so that complacency to erroneous rules is common practice for Christians in practically every congregation.

So, what do we do when our game plan is overly complicated? We go back to basics.

Basic Christianity, for those who’ve never heard it

Here’s the simple truth that the Spirit of Religion tries to obscure:

1) Jesus died to take away our sins, and He was resurrected, defeating death.

2) He removed the curtain separating us from the presence of the Lord.

3) Instead of a physical temple, the Holy Spirit took up residence within us.

4) He expects to minister to others through us as we abide in Him. (Ministering simply means to “attend to the needs of.”)

Now go and tell everyone about it. Simple. Easy. Fun.

True story, but that’s not all. Jesus also set the stage so that anyone who knows Him—from a sage pastors we revere to that discerning kid on the playground—can also be an apostle, a pastor, an evangelist, a prophet, or a teacher. Maybe a combination.

“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

— Ephesians 4:11-13

If this is a new concept for you, don’t feel bad; modern churches don’t commonly teach this stuff even though it’s basic Christianity and always has been. If you bristle at the concept of layman priests, prophets etc., I suggest taking it to the Holy Spirit in prayer. And if we don’t believe we can take it to the Holy Spirit ourselves—or if we deny the existence of the Holy Spirit at work in us—then we may want to back up and just spend the next few months reading the Bible.

These are not debatable assertions; they’re right there in scripture. It’s the traditions of man that have intentionally obscured them with centuries of nonsense to keep you and others from victory. In other words, you may be playing the game by rules someone made up because it makes the game harder, longer, and decreases the number of those who can win it.

Whose purpose does that serve? The enemies of Jesus, and there are a lot of them.

Tactics & Countermoves

The ruler of this world and his demons don’t have a problem with safe churchianity where we sing songs, praise Jesus, and go about our lives. Our enemies know that they can use those church traditions to destroy marriages, wound disciples, and sour the next generation against Jesus, with all variety of ways to hide His true nature. The demons don’t worry about tame parishioners following a schedule centered on the clock. They have a huge problem with us following the Holy Spirit’s direction and dismantling their strongholds, exposing their tactics, and empowering new Christians to do likewise.

The spiritual forces of darkness knew better that anyone, from the beginning, that an exponentially increasing army of laymen preaching the Good News—laying hands on the sick, evangelizing the lost, and teaching everyone how easy it is to be restored to right standing with God—was an absolutely invincible force.

They knew (they know) that you and I were (are) far more powerful than they are, and so they convinced mankind to unilaterally disarm itself. They made the game harder with dumb rules almost nobody likes but nonetheless many continue to play by.

But you don’t need to.

If the rules aren’t supported by scripture, free yourself from them. If you’re not sure if a topic is in the instruction book, read it. If the instructions are confusing, read them with your friends or people you respect, and study them. Explore the context, the Hebrew and Greek meanings for words that sound confusing or contradictory—what does the term “head” actually refer to?—and consider whether common teachings line up with the character of Jesus Christ.

If someone’s theology sounds off, challenge their understandings of the instructions and make sure everything lines up with the consistency of Scripture. The pharisees of His day discovered that Jesus is maddeningly consistent, and adept at frustrating their self-serving goals. The religious rulers then and now were (are) equally disturbed by it, and they’re both equally invested in keeping you from understanding the basics of the game in its beautiful simplicity.

Grand Masters In Training

The supernatural contest isn’t like Axis and Allies, it’s more like chess. Chess is a straightforward game that anyone can learn and enjoy at a young age. An adult can play it with a five-year old and both improve as they practice, regardless of what age they begin playing.

As we mature, we formulate more intense strategies, and level up against stiffer competition; there’s always a next level we can attain. But here’s a fun fact: Grand Masters use the exact same moves as your preschooler. They’ve just learned over time how to use them better.

Walk into any chess tournament or public chess venue and you may be surprised at the diversity of players. There are people of all ages, nationalities, races, and social status playing. Sometimes the younger kids cream the old-timers. You might find a homeless guy sitting across from a professional businessman, or a petite woman thrashing a burly dude; everyone respects one another’s skill level and everyone shakes hands when the game is decided.

By and large, the Church doesn’t do this.

Instead of free access to an open tournament, the Church has created elitist clubs playing weird games that few people understand. They’re determined to keep the simpletons away, ensuring its members never have to confront uncomfortable situations, like a rookie showing them up in front of an audience, or pointing out that the rules they’ve constructed are pointless—or worse, damaging.

Do you know what your spiritual gifting is? Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal it. Odds are it will be something you actually enjoy doing, and it’s likely something you struggle to get to do, something the enemy also tells you you’re no good at.

That’s also in the enemy’s playbook: pinpointing your greatest gifts and attacking them relentlessly until you give up on them. If you’ve been seeped in a church tradition that partners with the enemy in stifling that gift, I’m truly sorry. I know people in this boat. But you don’t need to stay there. Jesus gave you that passion and ability; ask Him to rekindle it, teach you how to master it, and how you can minister to Him with it.

Though many will try, nobody can take it from you. Though many, even within the church, will label you disqualified, Jesus says otherwise.

You can follow me on Telegram, Substack, Truth Social, GETTR, Gab, and X. You can subscribe to receive new posts to your inbox for free, as well as get information on our books and other endeavors.

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About those board games:

1

Below you’ll find a few Guerra “house rules” for popular games, which I think make them way more fun. Give ‘em a try and tell me what you think.

Settlers of Catan: Eliminate the Robber. Instead, whenever someone rolls a 7, everyone gets to choose one of any resource they choose. You can also do this when someone rolls a 2 or 12 if you leave those tokens off the board.

Monopoly: Load up Free Parking with a $500 bill. Also, any payments made to the bank, go to Free Parking instead. This includes property purchase, fees, and purchase of houses and hotels. It makes the game so much faster.

Ticket to Ride: If you draw a face down card from the pile and it’s a wild, you still get to draw a second card.

Let us know in the comments if you have other suggestions for more games.

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My wife and I are a donor-supported ministry. If you enjoy our work, please consider a paid subscription in the amount of your choice. If you’d like to make a one time contribution, feel free to Buy Me A Coffee or visit our donations page at Copperlight Wood.

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