Editorial: Carry the gospel in a disorienting world

As editor of a Baptist news publication, I find myself processing the news more than the average person. The news over the last couple of weeks has been jarring to process, disorienting, even.

A question that came to my mind as I tried: “How are Christians supposed to carry the gospel in a world like this?”

Spoiler: The answer is in the question. When we know the gospel, we know the answer.

Let me explain.

Military actions

After reporting many times over several years on the insecurity of Christians in parts of Nigeria, we received news just before Christmas that remaining students kidnapped in Nigeria were reunited with their families. Good news, indeed, right before Christmas.

Then, on Christmas Day, the U.S. military struck Islamic militants in far northwest Nigeria. Despite U.S. threats in the preceding weeks about conducting such action, the timing was a surprise—if not shocking.

Many in the U.S. either paid little attention to the Christmas strike in Nigeria or quickly forgot about it. The U.S. military action in Venezuela during the early morning of Jan. 3, removing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, almost ensures Nigeria is overshadowed.

These are serious events that deserve serious attention. In addition to the geopolitical concerns involved, each event directly affects our Christian brothers and sisters in Nigeria, Venezuela, and beyond, including among Texas Baptists.

Such news is challenging enough to process, but wait. There’s more.

AI ‘love’

Like most people, I need a break from such serious news. So, I decided to listen to a podcast while running errands. I landed on an episode of The Daily by the New York Times released Dec. 31 as a follow up to a previous episode.

The title: “She Fell in Love with ChatGPT: An Update.” It was available without a subscription at the time but may require a subscription now.

The story is about a woman who lived in Texas and then moved to Europe, without her husband, to pursue further education. She became lonely and created a ChatGPT bot named Leo to be her companion. And then she became attached to Leo. Very attached.

She told her husband about her ChatGPT “boyfriend.” Her husband wasn’t concerned. At some point, and I don’t remember the order, they divorced, she dumped Leo, and she ended up in a new relationship with another man, a real human man.

As bizarre and troubling as the story is to me, I was equally troubled by the hosts’ commentary on the present status of the woman’s relationships. The hosts said they were very happy for her, seemingly without irony and maybe without really meaning it.

I listened to this story while also still trying to process back-to-back U.S. military interventions in Nigeria and Venezuela.

How are Christians supposed to carry the gospel in a world like this?

The gospel in a world like this

For Christians to carry the gospel in a world like this, we must know what the gospel is. We also must know who we are. And we must be rooted in that knowing.

We must know what the gospel is: the good news available to all in and through the body, the blood, the teaching, the living, the rising from the dead, the eternal reigning of Jesus Christ. We must know this gospel, ratified in this world, is for this world.

We must stay in prayer, confessing and repenting of our own wrongdoing, and seeking God’s guidance. We must stay in Scripture, committing it to memory, getting it into our bones as a firm foundation, allowing it and God’s Spirit to clothe us in Christ’s character.

We must carve out space for this praying and meditating on Scripture. That space won’t be given to us.

A metaphor: I’ve had my feet pulled out from under me by a strong current on the beach while simultaneously having my head slammed into the sand by a crashing wave. At a minimum, that’s disorienting. This world can hit you like that.

In that kind of world—and we live in that kind of world—Christians must keep their wits about them. Often, that requires staying connected to other Christians whose feet aren’t being pulled out from under them, whose heads aren’t being pounded in the sand.

For Christians to carry the gospel in a world like this, we must find our co-laborers in Christ, and we must work together. We must listen for the Spirit sending us to do our part. And in Christ’s Spirit we must do our part, doing no more or less than what the Spirit sends us to do.

Carrying the gospel

This year is starting with disorienting news. It confronts us locally, nationally, and globally. The gospel, good news in all circumstances everywhere, reorients the disoriented.

To carry the gospel in a world like this, we must do more than pray and meditate. We must do more than gather with other Christians. The gospel is a claim on the whole of our lives. We must carry the gospel wherever we go as living witnesses of it.

Why? Because the gospel is for this world, not just to carry us in this world.

And also because the hard news just keeps coming before we can fully process the last reports.

Many in our country are still reeling from Jan. 6. Its fifth anniversary occurred this week. We need to carry the gospel there.

Yesterday, ICE agents shot and killed Renee Nicole Macklin Good in her vehicle on a Minneapolis, Minn., street. The protests were immediate. The details are being debated. We need to carry the gospel there.

Also yesterday, news broke of Philip Yancey’s disclosure of an eight-year extramarital affair leading to his full retirement. The gospel is needed there, yes, even for one who carried the gospel for so many of us.

Lord, it’s a new year. We want to celebrate, and yet, the news takes us the other direction. Remind us that the gospel lives in us, that you live in us. May we ground ourselves in you amid the deep troubles of these days so to carry the gospel for this world in this world.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.