In Numbers 21, Israel found themselves under siege by poisonous snakes. God gave Moses an odd command: Make a bronze serpent, raise it on a pole and let people look at it to live. And it worked. A gift of grace. A sign of healing in a desperate moment.

Fast forward centuries later to 2 Kings 18. That same bronze serpent was still around, but now the people were bowing down to it, burning incense, giving it a name: Nehushtan. What was once a good gift had become an idol. King Hezekiah had to smash it into pieces.

That story is more than history; it’s a warning. Human beings have a way of turning God’s gifts into substitutes for God himself.

William Stringfellow, a theologian who spent his life exposing America’s idolatries, saw the same thing happening in modern institutions.

He said the Bible’s language about “powers and principalities” wasn’t just about demons. It was about real-world structures—nations, corporations, ideologies—that take on a life of their own. They aren’t neutral; they demand loyalty. They promise security. And when we give them our hearts, they end up enslaving us to death instead of bringing life.

Nehushtan isn’t just an artifact of Israel’s history. It’s a parable of how something meant for good—like family, money or even a nation—can become an idol when it gets lifted higher than Christ.

That’s why I worry about Christian nationalism. At its best, it tries to honor God’s place in public life. At its worst, it turns America into Nehushtan—demanding the loyalty, devotion and worship that belong only to God.

Christian nationalism has its defenders, and they make arguments worth hearing. But when we measure them against the gospel, against Stringfellow’s insights on the powers, and against the cruciform love of Jesus, we begin to see cracks in the foundation.

A needed reframing

The research from Neighborly Faith suggests what gets called “Christian nationalism” isn’t always a single, dangerous ideology. Instead, it often shows up as a mix of attitudes, cultural instincts and fears about losing values—sometimes more about identity and belonging than about consciously idolizing the nation.

Some people labeled as “Christian nationalists” are motivated by love for their families, gratitude for their freedoms or concern for cultural changes they don’t fully understand. Many are willing to work across differences and do good in their communities. That’s not the same as an organized, militant ideology.

So maybe a reframing is needed.

Christian nationalism as ideology

This is the “Nehushtan” version: America is treated as God’s chosen nation, the cross gets fused with the flag, and political enemies are treated as enemies of God. That’s where it becomes idolatrous and dangerous.

Christian nationalism as instinct or mood

This is what you see in a lot of ordinary folks: love for family, gratitude for freedoms, fear of cultural changes they don’t understand. Often, they’re not trying to worship the nation. They just don’t have language to separate love of country from loyalty to Christ.

The first category likely calls for clear resistance: name it, call it out and show why it’s idolatry—“cleanse the temple.”

The second calls for patience and dialogue: listen, affirm what’s good and gently help people untangle their patriotism from their discipleship—“explain the way of God more accurately” (Acts 18:26).

That kind of reframing gives us more room to engage people in the pew without lumping everyone together but still being clear about where the gospel draws the line.

The distinction between the state and the church

This is where another important distinction comes in. The state has a mission from God. And the church has a mission from God. They are not the same mission.

The state’s mission is limited but necessary. God uses governments to keep basic order: punishing theft, restraining violence, protecting citizens. That’s good.

But notice: it’s always external. It can tell you what not to do, but it can’t change who you are. Laws can prevent a thief from breaking into your house, but they can’t make that thief generous. They can’t make him love his neighbor.

The church’s mission is different in kind, not just degree. The church exists to show the world Jesus crucified and risen, to embody his life by the Spirit.

That means not just restraining evil but creating new life—sharing possessions so no one goes hungry, forgiving enemies 70 times seven, laying down power to wash feet. That’s something no government ever can legislate. It takes the Spirit. It takes the cross.

That’s why it’s so dangerous to confuse the missions. When we ask the state to do the church’s job, we lose both. The state becomes an idol, pretending it can change hearts. The church becomes a lobby, chasing laws instead of embodying love.

But when each stays in its lane, they both serve God’s purposes. The state keeps order in the world. The church shows the world a new creation.

With that in mind, next week we will look at the main arguments for Christian nationalism and see how they hold up when measured against the gospel, Stringfellow’s insights on the powers and the cruciform love of Jesus.

Nick Acker, a native Texan, is co-lead pastor of Grace Ventura Church in Ventura, Calif., adjunct faculty member at Stark College and Seminary and a resident fellow at East Texas Baptist University’s B.H. Carroll Theological Seminary, and author of Exegeting Orality: Interpreting the Inspired Words of Scripture in Light of Their Oral Traditional Origins. He finds his greatest joy in his wife and three children. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

The world is a very different place than it was when Baptists formed their first churches four centuries ago. The intellectual and cultural shifts that created the modern world were only just beginning, and many of the views Baptists championed were thought to be both heretical and dangerous.

Subsequent developments have proven out the wisdom of those fathers and mothers of our tradition.

They advocated for, and sometimes died for, a world that was more free and more humane. Whether they meant to or not, they reframed the way Christians view their disagreements, and they prepared western societies for a world far more diverse than many imagined possible.

Nevertheless, there always were questions about the kind of Christianity for which Baptists advocated, and though we may not like their methods, the persecutors of the Baptist faith gave voice to concerns still viable today.

Moreover, voices have emerged within the Baptist tradition that question the validity and applicability of some of our most cherished distinctives.

For more than a century, Baptist individuals and institutions have displayed a significant vulnerability to heresy and a particular resistance to efforts at theological, moral and political accountability. One cannot help but wonder whether these trends are related to how Baptists understand themselves and to how they construe the basic doctrines of the Christian faith.

Examining Baptist identity

I will examine the various components of Baptist identity, asking hard questions about their biblical basis and their consequences in a rapidly changing religious and cultural context.

I hope to help Baptists understand why some of our institutions are under so much strain.

I am not an expert in North American religious history or systematic theology. I simply am an informed observer who wants every branch of the universal church, and especially the one I inhabit, to be faithful representatives of Jesus.

I will be using Karen Bullock’s rubric for understanding Baptist identity as my guide. Dr. Bullock is an imminent historian of Anabaptists and Baptists, and she has been a friend since I was in seminary a quarter of a century ago.

More importantly, her rubric—presented and developed in her Pinson lecture of 2024—is clear and comprehensive, even if others would prefer to present Baptist identity with different emphases.

Telling my story

A friend used to describe himself as “a 9-month Baptist,” by which he meant he was a Baptist nine months before he was born. My roots in Baptist life don’t run quite that deep, but they do frame much of my acquaintance with the teachings and institutions of Christianity.

My mother was from an Assemblies of God family, and to this day her theology retains a mildly Pentecostal tinge. My father was part of a Landmark Baptist denomination. When they got married, they compromised by attending a Southern Baptist church, though we also attended churches in these other denominations from time to time.

Like many who grew up in the rural South, I did not have as wide an exposure to the church’s vast variety of denominations as those from more urban settings.

Studying in an ecumenical divinity school for my doctorate helped me see the church, and my own tradition, from vantage points I had not before. It also helped me contextualize the conflicts that by that time had afflicted Baptists in the southern United States for decades within a more comprehensive accounting of North American religion.

A preliminary question: Is Baptist identity parasitic?

There was one experience, however, that got me particularly interested in Baptist identity—and especially in its problems. A friend of mine was looking for a new denominational home. He also was teaching in a school that had been deeply influenced by Reformed thinking but whose students were often from Baptist or quasi-Baptist churches.

One day, my friend asked me what I thought was distinctive about the Baptist tradition. I rattled off some of the things I had learned from H. Leon McBeth in my Baptist history course while my friend listened politely.

When I finished my unplanned soliloquy, my friend said something to the effect, “So, Baptists did not take a unique position on the core doctrines of the church?”

I understood what he meant. He was thinking in terms of the soteriological controversies between Calvinists and Arminians (or Wesleyans) or between Lutherans and Catholics. As many observers have pointed out, much Baptist soteriology in those early days was intentionally Calvinistic or semi-Calvinistic in flavor.

So, were Baptists really just parasites? Were they moochers off of the Reformed tradition, or did they make a meaningful contribution to the theological discourse of the church?

We can acknowledge with gratitude that most of the Trinitarian and Christological issues that have been important in defining orthodoxy were settled long before Baptists came along.

We can also acknowledge there has been no consensus among Baptists about soteriology—except to affirm the Protestant view that salvation is acquired by grace through faith alone. Indeed, though most Baptists have leaned Calvinistic, others have adopted a more Arminian soteriology.

Baptists’ own identity

Nevertheless, I am convinced Baptists do have a doctrinal identity of their own, and I am convinced they need not be ashamed of their place in the pantheon of Christian traditions.

As I will discuss in subsequent parts, Baptists confronted the church with serious questions about its nature, composition and purpose.

Moreover, as Russell Moore pointed out in his 2024 lecture at Dallas Baptist University, Baptists rightly emphasized the personal nature of salvation and explicated the implications of that truth for a wide variety of controversial topics.

It even could be argued Baptists provoked serious discussions of what sola scriptura really means.

In Part 2, I will turn to the question of Scripture. Its authority is the undisputed starting point for most Baptists as they consider their heritage and theology, but it also has been the source of significant controversy among Baptists for decades.

Wade Berry is pastor of Second Baptist Church in Ranger and has been resident fellow in New Testament and Greek at B.H. Carroll Theological Seminary. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

CORRECTION: Spelling of Arminian has been corrected.

CAUTION: This editorial discusses sexual abuse and its consequences.

Two Dallas-area megachurch pastors made the news during the last week. Their stories give us a chance to think about how we respond when pastors sin.

Two megachurch pastors

On Oct. 5, following a restoration process after admitting a year ago to an undisclosed sin, Tony Evans told his congregation he would not return to lead Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, the church he founded.

On Oct. 2, Robert Morris, founder of Gateway Church, pleaded guilty in an Oklahoma courtroom “to five counts of lewd and indecent acts with a child” he committed in the 1980s. He resigned from Gateway in June 2024 after Cindy Clemishire accused him of molesting her.

Stories like these have been too common over the last several years. They raise important questions about how Christian leaders should be held accountable for their sin, what that accountability should be, when or if a Christian leader can or should be restored, and what restoration should be.

A Baptist Standard reader asked me some of those questions the day after Morris was escorted out of the courtroom by Osage County sheriff’s deputies.

Questions

The reader, who gave me permission to include his questions here, asked me: “Since there is no evidence of any similar activity” by Morris in the last 40 years, and since he went on to grow a prominent church, “when does your past sin stop following you while you are building good things on behalf of God?”

I feel you bristling. While you bristle, consider that the questioner is trying honestly to grapple with the messy meeting of sin, accountability and reconciliation. We all need to grapple honestly with this.

In answer to the question, though: Morris’ sin didn’t need Clemishire’s accusation to pick up his scent and start following him. His sin followed him just fine on its own all those 40-plus years. That’s what unconfessed sin does.

If a person kept sinning, our reader continued, he shouldn’t be in ministry.

Some would say Morris did keep sinning by not telling the truth for 40-plus years.

“Should something that was committed 40 years ago be enough to stop anyone from repenting and going forward in the name of God? When does he recover?” our reader concluded.

By the time I got to the end of our reader’s email, I had so many thoughts lining up in my mind that I opted to take the weekend before responding. And when I did, I still couldn’t address all the questions adequately. I can’t here, either. We need a conversation for that.

We can start, however, by looking at similarities and differences in Evans’ and Morris’ stories. The similarities in their stories are striking, but they pale in comparison to the significant differences.

Comparing situations

Evans’ sin, still publicly undisclosed, seems to have occurred recently. Morris’ sin occurred more than 40 years ago.

Evans maintains his sin was not a criminal act. Morris’ sin absolutely was criminal, punishable by the state.

As far as we know, Evans admitted his sin on his own and took himself out of church leadership.

Two days after Clemishire’s accusation, Morris told The Christian Post he “was involved in inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady” while in his early 20s. He left out how old she was. When Clemishire’s accusation made that detail known, Gateway leadership said Morris had confessed to “a moral failure,” but they had “no idea the person involved was a minor.”

Evans underwent a restoration process. Morris may or may not do so, unless one thinks incarceration and sex-offender registration is a restoration process. It is not.

At the conclusion of his restoration process, it was announced Evans announced would not return to staff or leadership role at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship. Morris, well, we’re not that far yet into Morris’ story.

How long?

Let’s go back to the questions our reader posed and focus as he did on Morris.

Should there be a statute of limitations for Christians? Going back to the facts of Morris’ story: Morris wasn’t forthright about what he did until he was publicly accused. Meanwhile, his sin impacted Clemishire for a full 40 years and more. As the old spiritual says, “You can run on for a long time, but sooner or later, God’ll cut you down.”

About repentance: Nothing and no one can stop a person from repenting, but repentance is different than accountability. Repent or not, we’re still accountable for our sin. When that sin violates human law—which Morris’ did—we’re also accountable to the state.

How about forgiveness? Should Morris be forgiven? While Scripture tells us to forgive those who sin against us, this again is a different thing than accountability. We need to let go of the fallacy that holding people accountable for their sin negates forgiveness.

Sexual abuse is wrong; it is evil. Sexual abuse is sin, and sin has consequences.

Sexual abuse harms a person in profound ways that are not easy to “just get over.” Clemishire has lived more than 40 years with the consequences of Morris’ sin. Anyone who thinks she hasn’t worked on “getting over it” doesn’t know what sexual abuse does to a person or how much work she’s likely done.

Restoration?

And then there’s that last question: “When does he recover?”

That question really sent my mind to work. First, what do we mean by “recover?” Sometimes, we use “recover” and “restore” interchangeably. Their definitions typically are person- and situation-specific.

Second, recovery or restoration is not the same thing as returning to a ministry position, much less one so prominent, though a person eventually might serve in a completely different capacity. This doesn’t mean that person hasn’t recovered or been restored. Also, just because a person is “restored,” doesn’t mean that person has “recovered.”

If I was making the decision, I would not return Morris to the pulpit and absolutely would not give him leadership over minors.

I still haven’t answered “when.” We need a conversation for that, and the affected people need to be part of it. We can’t do that in an email thread or editorial.

Tony Evans and Robert Morris are two very public and prominent figures. They’ve held themselves up to countless people for decades as examples of Christian living. We ought to learn from them now, even if we’d rather not have to learn how to face a pastor’s sin, or our own.

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.

I received an email from a business associate in New York. We were supposed to visit this week about a launch date for one of my books. She apologized for not following through.

She emailed in part: “Hello, Johnny. I was going to contact you yesterday, but honestly, my heart was too heavy. The overwhelming senseless loss of life lately is truly awful.

“I can see it in my own life,” she continued. “Friends I have had for most of my adult life are suddenly questioning our friendship all based solely on different political views. It’s just awful. I pray the angels in heaven will somehow show us the way to peaceful debates again.”

There is a division because of a broken cord. Let’s visit about this.

Two instances of brokenness

Charlotte, N.C.: A young woman from Ukraine, looking for a better life, boards a train heading home after taking care of some errands. A few minutes later, she is stabbed repeatedly.

The young girl is left in her seat, bleeding and horrified. She knows she’s been hurt, but that’s not her thought. Her confusion is: What just happened? Why did this man attack me?

She might not even have known for sure she was stabbed, nor was she aware she was bleeding out. Silently, 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska slumps, dead within minutes. Why?

Orem, Utah: A man not much older than Iryna takes his seat under a portable white tent. He has a heart for young students. He does not use a gun or a knife. He chooses to use the instrument of words.

He chooses to speak the truth as best he can and to encourage others to dialogue with him, to prove him wrong when possible. He believes the truth can permeate even the darkest thoughts. Charlie Kirk’s influence is effective. He is holding court with 3,000 students hanging on every word.

Charlie can be seen on a little platform, under his tent, in clear view from 22-year-old Tyler Robinson’s vantage point. The man has climbed a building 200 yards away, lying on a perch with his rifle and scope. He has decided to silence Charlie rather than debate him.

At exactly 12:23 p.m., Robinson squeezes the trigger. In a millisecond, Charlie is hit by the bullet, right after speaking of his faith in Jesus.

A cord has been broken in our nation, which has brought division. What cord? The cord of truth. When people leave truth, division follows.

Our nation is divided. We have been here before. In the Civil War, half the nation walked away from the truth that no man ever should own another. Because the South walked away from that truth, our nation divided. A Civil War ensued to decide if we would stand with the truth or stand with a lie.

Truth versus division

I am not writing about my truth or your truth. There is no such subjective thing. There is only the truth.

For years our nation was united in the truth that life begins at conception. But half of our nation has moved away from that truth. So, now there is division.

The truth is every person should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. This is the truth that united us, thanks to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, but we have moved away from this, and there is division.

The truth is a man cannot become a woman, nor a woman a man. The history of civilization once was united in this truth. But now a large percentage of our nation and world have moved away from the truth. So, there is division.

The truth is a person who wants to live, eat and enjoy life should work and earn their own way if they are physically able. We once held to this biblical mandate as a nation. We were in agreement. But many have left this truth out of misplaced compassion, and there is division.

Truth can be found in the sacred unit of the biblical family. Husband, wife, children once were revered. As a result, our nation thrived. Now, we have left this life-giving unit, and there is division, especially in our own homes.

The truth is there is one God who reigns in heaven. That God sent his Son Jesus to save us by dying for our sins and defeating death for us through his resurrection.

The truth is God’s word is inerrant, unchanging, authoritative and the reference for all truth. Throughout the history of our nation, we believed this, and we righted our wrongs, we healed the breaches, and we reunited time and again.

But now we have left God, his Son, his word, saying all should do what is right in their own eyes, and there is a division for which we have no reference for healing.

Praying for return to truth

Those who speak truth are hated. Truth, God’s word, is called “hate speech” and has been forbidden at every sector of society.

Truth is not subjective. Truth is as irrevocable as gravity. DNA tells us the truth. Mathematics tells us the truth. Nature around us declares the truth as all creation bows down before our shared Creator God.

The truth: Life is valuable. Life in the womb. Life on a Charlotte train. Life in the center of Utah Valley University. All life, which God gave.

Pray with me that we return to the truth as a nation. If we do, divisions will be sewn back together in unity and senseless murders will become a rarity.

Johnny Teague is the senior pastor of Church at the Cross in West Houston and the author of several books, including his newest The Lost Diary of Mary Magdalene. His website is johnnyteague.com. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

Aug. 15, 2025, was a difficult day for First Baptist Church and the community of Muleshoe. Within a 24-hour period, three influential men passed away.

The first was Dr. Bruce Purdy. Jim Daniels was the second. The last was James Byers. Each of their funeral services was held at 11 a.m. on three consecutive days. Jim’s service on Thursday, James’ on Friday, and Dr. Purdy’s funeral on Saturday.

Jim Daniels

Jim Daniels was a much-beloved agriculture and world geography teacher. Before coming to Muleshoe, Jim was a nomadic “ag” teacher. He and Lynn settled in Muleshoe and stayed for 18 years.

He possessed a warm personality that drew students to him. He gave most students a personal nickname. Jim taught with a relaxed demeanor, while John Wayne kept an eye on the students from an obvious bulletin board. In retirement, Jim won a seat as a Bailey County Commissioner.

He was a living lesson: Regardless of our profession, we are first and foremost in the relationship business.

Yadira Garcia was the lead paramedic on the Bailey County Ambulance Crew who carried Jim home to begin his hospice care.

Yadira told Jim’s wife, Lynn: “I am a paramedic because Jim told me, ‘You can do whatever you believe you can do.”

His funeral service was well attended by Muleshoe Independent School District faculty, former students, community members and church friends.

James Byers

James Byers was a model of Christian service and marital devotion. James’ wife, Terry, passed away in October 2024. She struggled with Crohn’s disease for more than 50 years.

They lived most of their married life with an immediate medical need. James retired from the local phone provider to give 24-hour care to Terry. He learned to lift, manage medication and operate a home dialysis machine, along with many other tasks. He was a model of constant selfless giving.

After Terry’s death, James told his doctor, “I am having trouble swallowing.”

The series of tests revealed James had throat cancer. It was beyond treatment.

I asked, “James, have you been ill for a while?”

“Yes, I knew something was going on, but I could not go to the doctor. I needed to care for Terry.”

It was another example of James giving himself for Terry. Members of the church, phone cooperative and community came to pay tribute to a man who lived out Christian service.

Bruce Purdy

On Saturday, patients, nurses, physician assistants, the community of Muleshoe and friends from across Texas gathered to say, “Thank you,” to the hometown doctor who served our area 44 years. Bruce’s highest ambition was to be the town doctor in the place where he grew up.

Dr. Purdy delivered more than 2,000 babies, traveled to the emergency room at 4 a.m. countless times, stitched endless cuts and set numerous bones. He practiced medicine in both English and Spanish.

His best friend noted Bruce was willing to give anything for any patient. At 44 years of age, he had his first heart attack. The helicopter waited on the pad while Bruce wrote prescriptions for his hospital patients.

Bruce was also the Boy Scout troop leader, who assisted 14 young men in earning Eagle Scout badges. Eagle Scout projects dot the landscape of our small town.

Dr. Purdy enhanced the landscape and the lives of the people in Muleshoe.

Three funerals

On three consecutive days, First Baptist Church in Muleshoe held funeral services for beloved members of our church and community. Behind the scenes, dozens of people gave their time, energy and gifts to support these families.

There is a locally owned funeral home with deep roots in the community, offering personalized service and meticulous attention to detail. The staff of the flower shop was sleep-deprived.

Two of our members took care that our grounds were presentable each day. The pianist gave time and effort to meet the requests of each family. The sound and video team was present early to ensure the equipment was ready, livestreamed every service and made sure the unique elements of each service were provided at the right time.

The deacons of First Baptist Church were present and prepared to assist the families and those who attended the service. If the sanctuary was filled, they were prepared to provide additional seating.

The security team was at their post before, during and after each service.

The hospitality committee served two meals to large families. For the third service, the committee provided a dessert reception for more than 300 people. Innumerable members of the church provided food for all three services.

Also, unseen in those days was the custodian who cleaned the sanctuary and fellowship hall four times in one week, the music minister who organized and sorted out the various media requirements for each service, the youth minister and children’s minister who learned to test the video feed, just in case.

Our media manager was paying attention to every detail during each service.

The reality of ministry

When young ministers struggle with a call to serve and the realities of life, we often say things like, “I just want to love Jesus and help people.”

When we say that—at least when I said it—it is a statement of ignorance. We assume loving Jesus and people are easy. I uttered that pseudo-spiritual phrase trying to justify my poor effort in a college algebra class.

The reality of ministry is helping people in the name of Christ requires a great deal of time, energy, organization, commitment and flexibility. It involves stamina.

We all can be grateful for the body of Christ that rallies with great effort and energy to give witness to the gospel in acts of kindness and respect.

Stacy Conner is pastor of First Baptist Church in Muleshoe. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

We live in divided times. Divided times are conflicted times, testing times. Remembering one thing—that Jesus is Lord and we are to obey him—will guide our way through these divided, conflicted, testing times.

In divided times, when our allegiances are tested by seemingly every word we utter, we need to know one test stands above them all: Who is Lord and will we obey him? That is the litmus test that matters.

Why we use litmus tests

Divided times feel unsettling, even unsafe. Most unsettling is when we thought the people around us were of one mind with us, only to discover we are not. In divided times, we feel safer knowing who’s really with us and who isn’t.

When we can’t tell the difference between who’s with us and who’s not, who’s OK and who’s not, who we can trust and who we can’t, we devise ways to make the difference clear. We use litmus tests.

Just as a thin strip of treated paper will tell us whether a clear liquid will nourish us or will corrode or even kill us, we anoint certain words, phrases and ideas with the power to separate us friends from foes.

We draw lines between danger and safety, and we use litmus tests to show us who’s on which side of the line. We use litmus tests to reveal the other’s political leanings, theological views and social positions. We think this knowing makes us safer.

Even among brothers and sisters in Christ. Even within our own local church.

Litmus tests proliferate in divided times. We are surrounded by them now. We Christians have made the mistake of baptizing them, giving them undue authority. We use them to separate the sheep from the goats, forgetting it’s Jesus who does the separating and not necessarily along the same lines we use.

The test that matters for us is to know who is Lord and will we obey him.

Doing away with litmus tests

Ah, I make it sound so easy, don’t I? If we’d all just agree Jesus is Lord and we are to obey him and him alone, all our differences and divisions would melt away.

I make it sound too easy, as though I don’t take seriously even our more substantive differences and divisions, such as where we stand on matters like predestination, the nature of salvation, and more recently, abortion, marriage and sexuality.

Maybe I sound naïve, like we can just dust off all the things we’ve said and done to each other over the last few years related to such things as COVID, race, presidents, sexual abuse and women, hold hands in a circle and sway as we sing together “They’ll Know We are Christians by Our Love.”

Are we too far gone for that?

But that’s just it, isn’t it? Where exactly would we meet to hold hands and sing? If all the places we might suggest are too indicative of any one theological position, can we find anywhere neutral?

And holding hands and swaying? Don’t get us started on that.

And that song? Does it have to be that song? What am I, some sort of hippy?

As I say, litmus tests are everywhere. Even in the songs we sing and don’t sing. Sing the right songs, and you’re a faithful Christian. Sing the wrong songs, and you’re a hippy.

How will we have the strength to oppose worldly tests if we can’t even reject the ones we impose on each other in the church?

There are worldly tests we must oppose to pass the one test that matters: Who is Lord, and will we obey him?

These worldly tests sometimes are disguised in Christian Scripture, often in service of human authority.

Current examples of litmus tests

The intersection between quoting Scripture and serving human authority has piqued interest more than once over the last several years.

At least one current example stands out. It involves the Trump administration, but what I’m critiquing here is not a uniquely Trumpian or Republican problem. It’s an issue to which many American Bible readers are prone, whatever their party or politics.

The example involves a video Secretary of War Pete Hegseth posted to his X account in which he is reciting the Lord’s Prayer over footage of American soldiers and military craft. The short video closes with the new U.S. Department of War logo.

Certainly, we should pray for the men and women serving in our military. More certainly, we should pray for God’s will to be done on Earth as it is in heaven. But whether the two should be conjoined is not as certain as the Department of War video portrays.

Maybe God will use the U.S. military to accomplish God’s will, but it’s going too far to suggest the U.S. military is God’s will and is out accomplishing God’s will on Earth as it is in heaven.

Here’s the litmus test: The fact I’m even critiquing Pete Hegseth, or his reciting the Lord’s Prayer, or his promoting the newly renamed Department of War with the Lord’s Prayer puts me on one side or the other of human-drawn lines.

Only one test matters

Depending on what side of what line you are on, my critique above may make me OK or not OK with you. You and I are both making those determinations, even though as Christians our relationship isn’t supposed to depend on those tests.

Even among us—brothers and sisters in Christ—we worry about what is safe to say to each other, because we don’t want to lose a friend, a prayer partner, a church member, an ally. We also don’t want to find ourselves on the wrong side, lumped in with those who aren’t OK, who can’t be trusted, who aren’t with us.

And we are doing this almost all the time, parsing almost every word from almost everyone, anxiously making sure we’re on the right side of all the lines. It’s exhausting.

Why do we do this? Because we’ve forgotten that for us, brothers and sisters, only one litmus test matters. It’s stated clearly in Scripture: Jesus is Lord. Will we obey him?

And no, getting that one right doesn’t make all our difficulties and differences go away.

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.

Violence is one of those features of the world we no longer recognize so much as simply live with. School shootings, international wars, political killings and suicides now are just background noise to the daily hum. The wars and rumors of wars barely register notice.

But let us suppose violence is not a blessed feature of the world, not part of what God intends for creation.

If we begin from this very bland presumption, a lot of things we assume as necessities for creation come into sharp relief. Instead of being background noise, they become signs of contradiction to God and offenses to the life in which the people of God are intended to share.

This is complicated further by the paucity of Baptist thought on the matter beyond the occasional appeal to Romans 13: Because governmental entities commend violence, it must be commendable.

Much needs to be done to remedy this situation, particularly in a violent world like ours. But even the best education on this question cannot forget questions of violence are, for the Christian, matters of theology as much as they are social policy.

This brings us to this week’s comments by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

Warfighting words

Speaking to a room full of top military officials this week, Hegseth laid out an agenda for America’s military future, one departing sharply in dramatic ways from the last 75 years. As with any speech, much of the text of his was for the people in the room, filled with marching orders and new directives to modernize America as a warmaking country.

For context, the years since the Second World War have been ones of ascendant international laws of war, rules that exist to moderate and mitigate violence, even if many of them are openly violated.

In his comments, Hegseth addressed issues of combat readiness, and took issue with past policies of promotion, religious accommodation and gender identity. To the outside observer, it could be simply a laundry list of procedural changes.

But within the speech is a distinctly different vision of how this new age of war is to be fought:

“We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement, just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”

For Hegseth, this is precisely because the people in the room represented a kind of people who he at one point called “created in God’s image,” but later refers to as those who “kill people and break things for a living. You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong always in polite society.”

It is easy, in appealing to a text like Romans 13, to simply say the government is able to do as it wishes and to walk past these sentiments. But let us look again: These statements allow us, as Christians, to see what is behind the curtain in the otherwise mundane list of orders for top military officials.

The operating assumption behind turning America’s attention away from peacekeeping and restraint and moving toward a focus on lethality is the people doing the killing are just those kind of people already. They are, for Hegseth, loving children of God created to kill and destroy.

Demonic nature of war

In his fifth-century masterpiece, The City of God, the church father Augustine described the Roman army as those whose “peace will not be everlasting” and stated “the earthly city is generally divided against itself by litigation, by wars, by battles, by the pursuit of victories that bring death with them or at best are doomed to death.”

His description of Rome throughout the book is one of an empire that wages unbridled wars, drunk on the worship of the goddesses Injustice and Victory.

Baptists are not quick to speak about angels and demons, but it is with good reason we ought to, particularly when it comes to violence. For if the final enemy—of both God and creation—is death (1 Corinthians 15:26), then what are demons but those entities that justify death, celebrate the destruction of life and encourage humans to bake death into our very structures of living?

By Augustine’s lights—and by Scripture’s—to promise safety and security through unrestrained violence—through the willing proliferation of death and the dehumanizing even of our own soldiers—is the work not of the wise or the just, but of the demonic.

A different way than war

For the people of God, it is not permitted to think of even our enemies as anything other than those for whom Christ has died.

As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:

“For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So, from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.”

The “message of reconciliation” Paul invites the Corinthian church into just after this is not reconciliation of the soul alone, but of the whole person. Those Christ has died for are meant to be raised up again, body and spirit.

The Christian just war tradition—thrown out in the trash in Hegseth’s comments—holds, above all things, war is for the sake of peace, correction must be the intent even if fighting occurs, and war is lamentable and to be mourned. For there is never a case when an enemy is anything other than one for whom Christ has died.

We routinely struggle to name violence not just as a problem for flesh and blood, but of the powers and principalities. We grasp vainly to name it, not just as a lamentable problem for civic life, but as that which the demons celebrate, for it brings more of God’s creation into the grips of Death.

It is time for Christians to shake off the slumber we are accustomed to surrounding violence and to say once again Christians are those bound to working for a better and different peace—with God, with our neighbors and even with our enemies.

Such a calling invites us to a very different kind of preparation, into a very different kind of way.

Myles Werntz is director of Baptist studies at Abilene Christian University. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

Why does a person stay with the pastoral life? How does one endure when it gets really hard?

Most reading this will know the answer: the call of God. But what is it about the call that sustains a pastor in a life most people would abandon?

One of the elusive mysteries of life for many people is they never discover who they truly are and who God created them to be.

If the person actually is called to ministry, that mystery is settled when she accepts God’s claim on her life to serve as a pastor. When he says, “Here am I,” he begins to live with a uniquely clarified identity.

God’s claim leads one to bypass vocational options in disregard of fanciful imaginings of an ideal life. You are seized at the depths of your being and drawn into the very center of God’s work on earth.

Your life is bound to his mission. You can do nothing else. As you give in to this call, any ambiguities about the purpose of your life fade into the distance.

When my call was made clear

How does one sense such a singular and profound awakening to one’s true self?

For me, it was one word from God: “You!”

I had started school at a local community college not knowing what to do with my life. It was one of those springs when friends were dying in an unpopular war, the culture and nation were in chaos, leaders were being assassinated, and buildings on college campuses were being blown up.

I was deeply disturbed by a world gone wrong and entered a season of questioning, lament and prayer.

One day, I drove to my favorite prayer spot by the ocean and, in a moment of audacity, began to tell God someone needed to do something to keep our world from coming apart.

Right then, God called me.

It was less than a whisper, but I heard God say, “You!”

God’s claim on me went to the depth of every fiber of my being with that grasp I already knew would not let me go. But at that moment, it was like that double-grasp letting me know neither would he let me off.

I looked down at the New Testament I was holding in my hands and instantly realized I was called to preach and serve as a pastor.

Not always immediately clear

I am aware the awakening to how to live out a vocation is not always sudden and instantly clear for all. In fact, it now seems fairly common for God to lead his servants through a process. But for those led by God to be pastors, that tenacious and unyielding grasp is all-encompassing of every part of who we are.

When the call came upon me, it came with an enveloping peace. There was a rightness about it and a singularity of purpose that left for me no desired alternative. When I sensed that “You!” and surrendered my life, I instantly was enlisted into the royal pastoral office of our Lord Jesus Christ to preach his gospel and serve his body, the church—the local church.

God’s call sustains

Most candidates for the pastoral life are challenged by other pastors to pursue any alternative life or calling if they can. No pastoral candidate at the threshold of ministry or in the early days possibly could know what lies ahead.

From my own observation and anecdotal research, I can tell you only the called survive in the pastoral life.

Many superb men and women have stepped aside from the pastoral life for a season to preserve mental and physical health or pursue the calling in another way. For most, the call remains, and they continue to serve faithfully in ministries complementary to and flowing out of local churches.

Every veteran I know of the challenges and heartaches of pastoral ministry, the chaos and the battles, will tell you the call of God sustained them. No pastor can endure the immense stresses of the pastoral life unless they are seized at the depths.

The ordinary challenges alone can be barely survivable. Add the complex pathologies of human systems, compounded by the forces of evil, and it is just too much.

A hard yet magnificent calling

In my 18 years of teaching in a theological seminary following 30 years of pastoral ministry, I pondered and agonized about how much to share with younger pastors. I usually took the edge off such conversations and stories. I still wonder if that was what I should have done.

Too many already cross the threshold into ministry skeptical and averse to the pastoral life, because they have seen and heard too much in the church.

Early on, I dove deeply into the pastoral life and was jostled immediately by human pathologies and evil forces that threw me on my knees. Many nights I wondered what strange land I had entered and how I could journey on.

Always … always … for me at least, I sensed deeply and profoundly the grasp of God upon my life. I would not trade any life in this world for that.

I know my purpose and who holds me in it and for it. That is probably why I have taken some of the edge off when I talk to younger pastors. You have to be grasped deeply and forged in steel-like resolve to make it, and God does that work individually, uniquely and day-by-day.

The pastoral life is magnificent, but it is hard. Only the grasp of God upon your life will keep you in it. But no life is more meaningful and none more personally fulfilling. I have more on that in future reflections.

Ron Cook is retired from the faculty of Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University. He also served as pastor and interim pastor in several churches. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

RE: Only two-thirds of U.S. Christians believe all have sinned

Barna’s poll that only 66 percent of U.S. Christians believe all have sinned shows a sad lack of the gospel in many churches. Verses like Romans 3:23 and 5:12, Ecclesiastes 7:20, Galatians 3:22 and 1 John 1:10 teach this doctrine.

Those who deny universal sin don’t understand what sin is. It isn’t just theft and murder. It’s anything short of God’s perfect law.

When a scribe asked Jesus what the greatest commandment is, Jesus started with who God is. There is one God; therefore, we must love him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength (Mark 12:30). To fall short of this is to sin.

The gospel begins with one God, who is perfect in all attributes. God is three co-equal, co-eternal persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Jesus Christ is the eternal Son who took on a human nature (Philippians 2:6-7; Hebrews 2:10-18).

He is one person who is fully God and fully man. He was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary, born, lived a perfect life, performed miracles, died, was buried, rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and will return to judge the living and the dead.

In his death on the cross, he bore the penalty of the sins of those who would be redeemed.

To understand sin is to know who Jesus is and why he came. It’s to realize his death and what it did. It’s to know the power of his resurrection.

Sin isn’t a “social justice” problem. The church isn’t a therapy club for social miscreants. The gospel isn’t an Alcoholics Anonymous plan only some people need.

The gospel is an essential doctrine for all. We must live it and preach it to all. Churches need to stop letting the world dictate what Christianity is.

Daniel Mynyk
Castle Rock, Colo.

In the two weeks since Charlie Kirk was killed, for many it has been safer to communicate support for him and his family than to communicate any kind of disagreement, or to say nothing at all.

I expect the world—understood here in the biblical sense—to be such an unsafe place. I don’t expect the church—understood here as the people of God—to be so unsafe. Yet, we are.

Church, we are not a safe place in this historical moment for people to say what they think and feel about prominent political figures or their deaths—unless what people think and feel is in lockstep with the majority around them.

Perhaps most disappointing of all, we are not even safe for our own, for our fellow Christians.

Christians—both inside and outside the church building—we often like to think we are a lighthouse, a beacon warning of danger. We like to think we are pointing people to eternal safety and away from hell.

If we are a lighthouse, too many of us are neglecting our light. We’ve let it dim to near invisibility, we are shining an indistinct color, or we blind rather than guide. Many of us, with clenched jaws and fists, are doing it now in response to Charlie Kirk’s death.

It’s safe to say the way in which we Christians have treated Christian and non-Christian alike during the last two weeks is a poor show of who Jesus prayed we would be and an affront to who Jesus commanded us to be.

It’s safe to say … or is it?

Shape of a safe place

As Christians respond to Charlie Kirk’s murder, the reactions to it, his funeral and the reactions to that, we are not in lockstep agreement about the kind of person he was or the rightness of things he said. The church ought to be a safe place to communicate that disagreement. But it hasn’t been.

To be a safe place means we keep at the forefront of our mind what I have stated before—as recently as last week—that every one of us is created by God in God’s image.

Being a safe place means we don’t forget Paul’s exhortation: In Christ, we don’t live for ourselves anymore, but for Christ; in Christ, we are new creations; in Christ, we are reconciled to God and are given the ministry and message of reconciliation.

It also means we embody Paul’s teachings about loving one another, teachings in line with Jesus’ command that we love one another.

It’s safe to say we are not in perfect obedience to Jesus’ command or Paul’s teaching, both of which we proclaim to be the word of God.

It’s safe to say … or is it?

Criticism of ‘safe’ talk

Some will mock the whole idea of Christians and the church being “a safe place.” What follows are not straw man arguments. They are responses I have encountered.

Some will say: “That ship has sailed. After #MeToo, #ChurchToo and all the other harm churches have caused, nowyou want to talk about being ‘a safe place?’”

This is a legitimate charge we must not deride or evade … even if we or our church didn’t hurt anyone … so far as we know … or want to admit. The ship may have sailed, but that’s no reason not to make amends.

Others will say: “Oh, brother. Here we go again with this namby-pambiness. Jesus never said we had to be safe, or nice.”

Maybe not in those words, but Jesus did command us to love, and not in any namby-pamby kind of way. He commands us to agapate one another, to choose to seek one another’s welfare as Jesus did for us.

And still others will say, “If we’re always trying to be safe in what we say and do, we’ll never say or do anything at all,” which is a different form of namby-pamby.

This is a confusion of such things as consideration, honor and kindness for weakness and impotence. It is possible to be assertive and firm while also not being a danger.

Responses like those above often are the reactions of people who have been hurt themselves, who themselves have not been afforded safety when they needed it.

It’s safe to say we’ve let the hurt go on too long.

It’s safe to say … or is it?

A safe place to start

Because we’ve let the hurt go on too long, we’re not sure we can see a way back. It seems too complicated. The stakes seem too high. The hurt is too deep.

But there is a safe place to start. That place is to listen … to each other.

To listen to each other, we must set aside the idea that those who disagree with us are our enemies simply because they disagree with us. To listen, we must turn off our tendency to prejudge others, and we must not think we are smarter, better or more Christian than them.

In short, to listen, we must have the mindset of Christ, who didn’t use God to his own advantage, who made himself nothing and served others, who even obeyed death.

That ought to be safe to say, but I’m not sure it is.

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.

Headlines and a slew of social media posts have commended three simple yet profound words: “I forgive him.”

These words, as many know, were spoken by widow Erika Kirk at the memorial service for her 31-year-old husband Charlie Kirk in front of a packed stadium of grieving spectators, including President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and many others of prominence and stature.

The resolve and strength this wife and mother displayed, only 11 days following her husband’s horrific assassination, truly is astounding.

The emphasis she placed in her eulogy on revival and Jesus’ gospel message were equally moving.

Even more, the gravitas of the moment coupled with her inimitable bravery, emotional fortitude and agonizing tenderness gave many faith-filled women both hope and inspiration.

What about other women?

But even in that moment, I couldn’t help but think of other women I know who live and serve daily in quieter roles of faith leadership yet who also have suffered overwhelming injustice at the hands of criminals. Their ability to forgive is just as inspiring.

For example, a beloved friend and fellow leader had three young grandsons, mere children, viciously stabbed and murdered on a family fishing trip at the hand of an escaped convict.

Another woman I deeply admire was raped by her college boyfriend, a man who faced no manhunt, no arrest, no consequences, but instead lives his life freely and even has started a family of his own in her hometown.

A deeply wise woman I know had her entire retirement “nest egg” stolen and squandered by a licensed financial professional.

Another, an elderly friend who has served in vocational ministry her entire life, experienced the victimization of a sophisticated internet scam, one that included undetectable deep-fake AI videos impersonating a friend in need.

Four pastors’ wives I’ve met in the last year, leaders in their own right, suffered the injustice of watching their pastor-husbands resign due to the jealous and divisive actions of disgruntled members within their respective churches.

While the latter may not reach the threshold of criminal, these four women certainly suffered too. I, too, have experienced that kind of suffering and know their pain.

All these women have faith in spades, faith that far surpasses mine. Like Erika Kirk, they also have chosen to forgive. They’ve all had to persevere moment by moment, day by day, through tears and anger and all-consuming grief that rarely dissipates.

Can we do likewise, can we forgive those who hurt us, whether anyone knows we did?

A model of forgiveness

Should we applaud Erika Kirk’s public expressions of forgiveness for the horrific murder of her husband? I think so. I do.

While it makes sense Erika Kirk’s response to her husband’s assassination would be so public, I’d like to applaud the less-public model set by so many women.

I give a standing ovation to the unsung heroes, women who have managed to utter those same three words, “I forgive him,” yet have done so alone and in the dark recesses of the night with no fanfare, no crowd, no political platform, no presidential brigade, no financial recompense, no real justice, little emotional support, and limited agency to foster the kind of change Erika Kirk can.

I celebrate them, too.

When these women say, “I forgive him,” their voices reverberate the stadiums of heaven.

Ginger McPherson is a pastor’s wife, mom of three and director of Ministry Wives, a support ministry encouraging pastor’s wives and women in church leadership through the Tulsa Metro Baptist Network. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Baylor University and writes regularly for Lifeway Christian Resources. The views expressed in this article are the responsibility of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Baptist Standard.

A call to heed Paul’s instruction on vengeance

Prolific, revenge-minded President Donald Trump uses his power to get even with his critics by punishing them in some way. Trump and his evangelical supporters should read a chapter from Holy Scripture’s New Testament.

From the book of Romans, read Romans 12, the whole chapter.

Verse 19: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”

Verse 20: “If your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.”

Verse 21: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

I pray President Trump and I will leave vengeance to God. If we do, love wins.

Paul L. Whiteley Sr.
Louisville, Ky.