Month: September 2025

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Many Parts, One Body. Many Personalities, One Mind?

There are a lot of different kinds of people out there. Think about all the different personality types you’ve dealt with. There’s usually something specific that characterizes each one. Some people are amazingly creative. Others have a strong sense of loyalty, or compassion, or are optimistic, or have a dangerous temper.

It’s interesting to me that when you consider all the different personalities out there, when you boil down the essence of each of these types, that central thing is usually something that can be considered a trait of God. The things I just listed…there are examples in the Bible of God displaying each of those characteristics:

  • Creativity – With no point of reference, God just kind of…invented a huge diversity of living things, from centipedes to elephants, mosquitoes to squids.
  • Loyalty – How many times did the Lord get sick of the Israelites complaining and abandoning Him after leaving Egypt, but He stuck with them anyway?
  • Compassion – Multiple times in the Gospels, Christ was moved with compassion to help people, either because of their spiritual plight or because of the faith they displayed.
  • Optimism – Despite all the evil in the world, God knows how this story ends, and He’s shared enough of the story with us to give us hope.
  • Wrath – There’s some pretty intense stuff in the Old Testament about God’s wrath: putting down an insurrection against Moses, 10 plagues on Egypt, destroying the world with a flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, kicking the money-changers out of the temple, etc.

Normally when I think about the character of God, these “right brained” aspects are the first to come to mind. Something we don’t often think about is the highly ordered and symmetrical side of God’s character. There’s actually quite a bit of orderliness and symmetry God displays. We don’t often think about it because it’s usually in more macro terms than we think in, or it’s captured in parts of the Bible we don’t like to read.

For example, did you ever stop to think about how the Old Testament is arranged? There are 39 books in the Old Testament. You might think they’re thrown together in a random order, but their layout is quite deliberate and makes sense once you realize the arrangement’s significance. Those 39 books encompass history, wisdom/poetry/praise, and prophecy.

The book of Ezekiel captures a lot of God’s orderliness and symmetry. In the Millennial kingdom described in Ezekiel, the land of Israel will be broken down into 13 “zones,” one for each tribe plus one for the temple and public use. Within the temple/public use section, there are very deliberate instructions for how the land’s boundaries and layout are to be set up, including where the temple grounds are to be situated. This includes the temple itself, areas for the temple priests to live, areas for growing crops, other areas dedicated to public use, and two very large areas dedicated to the prince (the human governor or administrator of the land at that time).

Zooming in even further, Ezekiel chapters 40-43 describe the layout and dimensions of the temple yet to be built. The largest building’s main opening faces east. There are inner and outer courtyards, multiple gates, kitchens and storage areas for the priests, and the altar. It’s arranged in a very detail-oriented manner, with each element serving a purpose.

This is one of the things in the Bible you probably don’t pay all that much attention to, but it’s definitely some supporting evidence that God doesn’t just cater to those who are strong on intuition/creativity/holistic thinking. He definitely has a logical/analytical/detail-oriented nature to Him, too. If you’ve been looking at the Bible and wondering why there’s so much emphasis on the emotional, artsy side of things, maybe you just need to look in the right places to find more rational thought, sequential logic, and specific instructions.

Praise You, Lord, for the immense variety of life and personalities You’ve created. Since we are made in Your image, the good things in us are reflections of some of Your personality traits, and we thank You for that ever-present reminder. Help us remember even if someone is different from us, they, too, are made in Your image, and need to hear the good news about You. Amen.

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How Did We Get This Bad?

Well, the Charlie Kirk saga has been covered pretty extensively by now, but I figured I’d throw in my two cents, too. Prior to a week or two ago, I don’t think I’d even heard of him, but now he’s a household name.

Sorry, but I have to get political in this post. I ordinarily try to avoid that, but it seems necessary to help explain some of this. There’s an old political saying that goes something like: “If you aren’t a liberal when you’re young, you have no heart, but if you aren’t a middle-aged conservative, you have no head.” The strategy of the Left (by which I mean Democrats/Liberals) is to appeal to peoples’ feelings; they tug at the heart strings rather than appeal to logic.

Donald Trump has effectively confounded the Democratic Party in the United States. Right now Democrats struggle to even articulate what their platform is. All they do is oppose whatever Trump advocates for. Party leaders stoke anger in their base because when you keep people seeing red, it reduces their capacity for rational thought. At this point fostering rage is the only thing they have. That’s how we’ve arrived in our current absurd situation; even if something is a good idea, if Donald Trump happens to support it, it is to be violently opposed. We now find ourselves in an environment where the Left opposes cracking down on violent crime and drug use, releases those with violent criminal histories, and opposes the enforcement of laws that have long been on the books, simply because Trump supports them and they believe there’s no possible way to find common ground with someone they label as so terrible.

The politicians themselves don’t believe the statements they’re making about how dire the situation is. It’s theater. It’s for the cameras. They don’t really believe Trump is going to throw them in jail for opposing him. If they did, they’d flee the country or go into hiding. It’s simply the rhetoric they use to keep their base engaged and fired up. A normal human being understands these people don’t believe the things coming out of their own mouths. For a while they tried the whole “he’s a threat to Democracy” thing, but that approach lost a lot of its effectiveness when the landslide electoral victory which installed Trump in the White House a second time was the direct result of Democracy in action. The Left, decimated and leaderless in the wake of the election, then had to crank up the rhetorical intensity, to the more recent claims of aspiring fascist dictator.

The problem is that when you keep things at a boil for so long, even if you don’t buy in to what you’re saying, there are people listening to you who do. They figure “a Representative/Senator gets to see it up close each and every day, they know even better than I do what a $@&#! that guy is.” The average Joes and Janes who get hyper political tend to spend time surrounded by people of the same opinion. Then, when they search things on YouTube, it follows each video with suggestions on similar videos. They don’t hear any other viewpoints, so they get further entrenched in their own. The boil builds further.

After living in an echo chamber of hate and vitriol for so long, eventually somebody from the more easily influenced among us says to themselves “here’s this threat, this guy who’s a danger to the country, and even to the world, who shouldn’t be president. Everybody I talk to knows it, but nobody’s doing anything about it! You know what? If nobody else is willing to do anything about it, I will!” This type of rhetoric and environment already radicalized two men enough to attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. One guy actually pulled the trigger and even struck then-candidate Trump, and the second attempt was foiled before the shooter had Trump in his sights.

For a while people on both sides started to realize the heat had been turned up too high. They backed off for a little, but a 24-hour news cycle demands something to report, even if nothing’s there. News cycles of this sort are incapable of toning things down; they can only ratchet things up. (Case in point – the word “unprecedented” has been used so often the word’s now lost a lot of its impact.) News channels simply cannot throttle back; they have to up the ante just to maintain ratings. Try going back and watching news coverage from the days of George W. Bush, who at the time was a highly controversial president. You’ll long for those “simpler” times. Is it any wonder people who watch a lot of news coverage for any length of time experience increased levels of anxiety?

Well, imagine you’re someone who’s been radicalized enough to become violent. You’ve seen Trump survive two assassination attempts, and figure he’s a pretty hard target to reach and his security has only increased. So who else can you take a look at?

Details are still emerging, so I don’t want to speculate on specifics, but evidently the shooter at the Utah Valley University campus determined it was acceptable to snuff out the life of someone who espouses a viewpoint contrary to his own. Charlie Kirk voiced such an opinion, was a known Trump supporter, and presented an opportunity. The gunman saw an opportunity and took it.

I’ll concede that while neither side is completely guiltless of exaggerating the rhetoric, it’s far easier to find inflammatory remarks from the Left than it is from the Right. (For every Marjorie Taylor Greene there’s a “Squad.”) I’m not sure why higher numbers of radicalized criminals come from the Left than from the Right. Maybe it’s the Left’s dependence on emotions, or would-be Right-leaning radicals having the viewpoint of “as long as Government stays out of my business, I don’t care.”

We need a reset. We need to be willing to listen to people with different opinions. Republicans: continue pointing out that this level of highly charged rhetoric contributed to the loss of life, and it can’t continue. Democrats: turn down the heat and for goodness’ sake, come up with a platform that appeals to people in the center rather than on the fringe. You’re on the wrong side of just about every 80/20 issue. Both sides: You need to work together to get something done. Start with some bipartisan stuff like stopping Daylight Savings Time or something easy for both sides to agree on. News media: diversify your coverage! With multiple 24-hour news channels there’d better be more than six to eight main stories…there’s more going on in this world than politics; mix in some good news, too, even if it means your ratings take a hit. Don’t worry, you’ll still get sponsors as long as people are watching you.

We’re losing our capacity to accept that not everyone thinks the way we do. Charlie Kirk didn’t spread hate; he challenged the basis for viewpoints. Healthy debate over ideas used to be an important thing in this nation, but we’ve moved from attacking ideas to attacking their supporters. Pray we’d all take a step back from the brink and see those with opposing viewpoints for who we are…fellow humans.

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This Year’s Patriot Day Message

Today we mark another somber anniversary. Believe it or not, it’s been almost a quarter century since one of the darkest days in the nation’s history.

For those on the younger side, I’m sure you’ve heard of 9/11 and you know what happened and all that, but it’s hard to really convey everything the nation went through that day and how it changed things for us. Imagine the nation as a whole feeling a blend of confusion, horror, fear, anger, grief, patriotism, and rage, all at the same time. As strange as it sounds, people of just about every political persuasion got along with each other in the weeks that followed, because being Americans united us more than it divided us.

There were three sites physically impacted that day: the field in Pennsylvania where the plane whose passengers rose up against their hijackers ended up crashing, the World Trade Center in New York City, and the Pentagon near DC. Watching the images from the site in Manhattan had the biggest effect on me; I had been up on the observation deck multiple times before, and within the previous year or two I’d had lunch with my Mom, Dad, and sister in a park made famous by a picture of an exhausted firefighter. Even though the Manhattan site was the most personal to me, there were lives lost in all three areas, either airline passengers or unassuming souls on the ground. Even though it’s 24 years later, that memory is still powerful to me, and I’m sure many people have similar powerful memories of that day.

This probably isn’t the last time we’ll get a bloody nose (or worse) as a nation. What I can tell you for sure, though, is that it’s not going to be the last time you see a wicked scheme succeed.

The Bible addresses incidents where wrongdoers seem like they’re getting ahead in life. David saw it and wrote about it. In Psalm 37:7-9 we read some of the most difficult instructions in the entire Bible: when you see wickedness seem to prevail, be patient.

“7 Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.

8 Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil.

9 For those who are evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.”

This Patriot Day, take the time to pause and remember the innocents who lost their lives, but remember as a Christian that two wrongs don’t make a right. When you witness evil succeeding, be patient and wait on the Lord; He sees it and will deal with it in His time.

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You Can be 100% Right and Still Lose the Debate

One nice thing about having very young kids is having the freedom to vacation without being at the mercy of the school calendar. Before our kids were old enough to start school, we took them for a beach vacation the week of Labor Day, when rates dropped but the weather was still warm.

The Labor Day weekend was packed, of course, with lots of people wanting to cram in one last beach trip for the summer. Once Tuesday rolled around, though, we had the beach to ourselves. Even the lifeguards stopped working. The kids could chase seagulls all they wanted without worrying about anyone else on the beach.

While the kids ran around on the sand, I noticed a guy who was probably in his 50s standing in the dunes, just kind of keeping an eye on us. He was almost, I don’t know, disapproving in the way he watched us. After awhile he came walking across the sand to speak to me. He wanted to remind me that there would be no lifeguards on duty at all that day, and that “even he” wasn’t going to stick around much longer. In my mind I thought “dude, if you left, I’d probably be more at ease. Don’t stick around on my account.” He added something like “it would be a real shame” if we let the kids get too close to the water and something happened to them. Thanks buddy, we drove all this way to come to the beach and not watch the 3-year-old and the almost-2-year-old. I just assumed he was some kind of senior lifeguard switching off summer mode, but without introducing himself, the whole “even he” statement and his “helpful” advice landed in a way he probably didn’t intend. I believe he meant well, but without even introducing himself or stating his role, you can imagine that he just kind of came across as a little condescending.

Have you ever tried to tell people about Christ without taking the time to “read the room” first? Even if you have the purest of motives, people don’t often take kindly to folks who jump into a conversation with them and tell them how they should be living their lives. I’m not saying God can’t use the encounter, but it seems prudent to consider how the people you’re engaging perceive your entry into the conversation. Maybe at least try a little chit chat to demonstrate your willingness to listen to their perspective before hitting them with fire and brimstone or “sinners in the hand of an angry God.”

I’ll concede, though, that if it comes down to a choice between having a curt discussion about the need for Christ and saying nothing at all, being curt takes priority. The Gospel doesn’t get spread without people spreading it. My point here is simply that when you’re about to tell people they’re destined for eternal punishment because they’re living life apart from Jesus Christ, it’s best to have a little empathy because making people defensive right off the bat tends to help them reject what you’re saying.

Going back to the guy on the beach, nothing he said was incorrect. I even think he meant well. It was his attitude and delivery that overshadowed his message and made me want to tell him to buzz off, and I want to prevent anything like that from getting in the way of someone’s acceptance of Christ as their Savior.Lord, I know You call us all to spread the message. Even if I don’t feel well-practiced, give me the words and the boldness to jump in when I feel you calling me to do it. Help me remember that even though I could obsess over not “doing it right,” You can build poor attempts into something magnificent, and are pleased by my obedience.