We are always surrounded by the grace of God.

The free gift of God, revealing his nature and love, weaves through every moment of our lives and in everything we experience. It is not enough for God that we are born, that we are created, that we begin to exist. No, God, being who he is, sustains and guides our lives ever closer to him through what we deem simple and ordinary, though they are anything but that.

Everything is a miracle. Nothing is ordinary.

That a man and woman, only children yesterday, could fall in love and tomorrow, from the union of that love, bear not one or two but seven children. That God gives to humanity the gift of creation, and in that gift, we reflect his creative power even in the fact that our greatest creative act is enacted through love.

The miracle of the woman goes beyond conception itself, in that she bears and provides and feeds from her own body, first within herself and then outside herself, the child created from their love. That, before birth, if she did not feed herself, her body would break down her own bones to feed her unborn child. That, after birth, her breasts make milk from her own blood to suckle that child.

God has imprinted his love into our very nature.

That we live in a physical world woven together by strings or molecules or some other kind of magic, which no one really understands. From these unknown substances or energies, countless trillions of layers are bound together by the grace of God to make everything we see, even the picture I hold in my hand of our son, scanned using a machine almost no one understands that can reveal him in a place I cannot see, where only the Spirit of God moves across the face of the waters.

Where can we flee from the grace of God? Behold! God is near even our child who makes his bed in the watery depths of Sheol. God is there!

If creatures in an alternate universe, one defined by the greatest fantasy authors, knew anything of our world, they would quickly realize that their world is incomparable to ours and that we live in the greatest of fantasies.

Our world is one large miracle made of miracle upon miracle upon miracle upon miracle. Seemingly infinite miracles only superseded in number by an infinite God.

My wife and I were confirmed into Anglicanism on Trinity Sunday last year. During the past year, our children have been baptized, we have implemented morning and evening prayer in our household, and we have partaken of the weekly eucharistic services at our parish in submission to our priest and in communion with the saints. In short, we have immersed ourselves in the Anglican tradition.

And though we are still newbies, we are overly thankful to God for leading us in this direction. I’m not going to hide the ball. We love it so much that we think you should become Anglican. Especially if you are a Baptist.

It has been an interesting year, one mixed with joy and pain. Life continues regardless of which church you attend. In a year of new discoveries, we’ve also dealt with job loss and a sister’s wedding, car troubles and a birth announcement, frozen pipes and seeing family for the first time in several years. Still, time flies onward.

And yet, I’m awake. It’s past midnight here, and though I haven’t had the time between two jobs to write for a while, here I am reminiscing over our past year as Anglicans.

Perhaps a few words will be lucid.

1. The Book of Common Prayer

Bravo, English Reformers! If the Bible is the triumph of God speaking through man, The Book of Common Prayer is the triumph of man responding to God. The early separatists, in all their fervor for individual liberty before God, too quickly eschewed the rightful companion to the Good Book. And yes, The Book of Common Prayer is the proper companion to the Bible for the English-speaking world.

I don’t know how to explain the impact The Book of Common Prayer has made on me. It has completely upended the way I comprehend my devotional life. Before discovering the Prayer Book, I had developed a relatively healthy pattern of devotion. Still, it could not compare to the richness I found within the very book I was once told was a tool of the devil meant to keep God’s people from praying directly to him.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for a new article in your inbox every Monday.

Subscribe now

In a prayer within, we come before God’s presence to confess our sin, “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done; and apart from your grace, there is no health in us.”

Or how in one phrase of the “Phos Hilaron,” an evening hymn, is found the entire purpose of man, “You [God] are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices…” In a few words of praise to God, we also remind ourselves every evening that our life’s purpose is fulfilled when we glorify God through our happy satisfaction in Him.

And on Sunday, we approach the very altar of God, not as husband and wife, father and son, or mother and daughter. No. As we approach the bread and wine, my wife and daughters are my sisters, and my sons are my brothers. We come together, equally heirs of God and humbly expecting to eat the same flesh of Christ and to drink his blood,

We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness,
but in your abundant and great mercies.
We are not worthy so much as to gather up
the crumbs under your table;
but you are the same Lord
whose character is always to have mercy.
Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ,
and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body,
and our souls washed through his most precious blood,
and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

These are but a few of the jewels within The Book of Common Prayer. Don’t even get me started on The Great Litany.

Sure, I could pray words of my own making, and I still regularly do. But I find that even my personal prayers are increasingly formed by the psalms, canticles, and collects of those who came before me in both Scripture and the inheritance of Church tradition, prayers and praises that I have, through the influence of the Prayer Book, made my own. And as I pray them, my understanding is formed by the very prayers I pray. In this way, by making the prayers of the saints my own, I have grown more in my prayer life over the past year than in all years prior. To hear my children grow through the same process is a blessing upon blessings.

2. The Sacrament

I was still a Baptist pastor when Kayla and I partook of our first Eucharist at an Anglican parish in the winter before our confirmation. We knew immediately that we were on a countdown. Nothing else, not our deep study, our meetings with the man who would become our priest, or beginning morning and evening prayer as a family, made us move with as much urgency to become Anglican as partaking of the body and blood of Christ.

The culmination of the Lord’s Day, as in other liturgical traditions, is the Eucharist. Every prayer, every hymn, the confession of sin, and even the Word proclaimed in the homily prepares the flock for feeding upon Christ in the sacrament. Why? Because in receiving the bread and wine with faith, we partake of the very body and blood of Christ. Because our salvation is only possible through union with Christ, the Eucharist is a special means by which God draws us deeper into the mystery of his salvific work.

And to hold the truth of all this in my mind and heart as I partake with my parish. And not only with my parish, but with the whole Body of Christ in that mystical reality which knows no borders or languages. Across time, the Church Triumphant rejoices with us in its perfect union with Christ as we feast with them in the courts of heaven. The very angels sing, “Holy, holy, holy,” as we eat and drink the body and blood of their Creator.

And my children, with simple childlike faith, look up to me, “Daddy, this is Jesus’ body?” “Yes, given for you.”

3. Accountability

For you outsiders to Anglicanism, everyone in the ACNA is in an uproar at the moment over several major trials within the Anglican communion here stateside. Especially noteworthy is the trial of Archbishop Steve Wood, who was accused near the end of last year of sexual misconduct and bullying.

It’s a new world for me, and I don’t completely know what to make of it. Holding a leader accountable was never really an option before, so we’ve never had a reason to discuss the best way to do so. I don’t really understand the debates because I’ve never experienced anything like this, so I’ve mostly stayed out of it and simply asked questions. Why? Because in my Baptist times, I have personally attended multiple churches where the allegations against Steve Wood would simply have been shuffled under the carpet without recourse.

Forget trials. In the Baptist circles I inhabited, there is no way to remove a pastor other than through a physical arrest. Your only other option was to leave the church. The closest Baptists have to trials are church discipline cases contained within the local church, and those, quite conveniently, always seem to go the way the lead pastor plans they should. If you are being exploited in many Baptist churches, the response often boils down to, “Oh well. Too bad.”

I was recently reminded of this as I talked to a Baptist friend who is in bi-vocational ministry. After being beaten up and churned out by several churches, he complained to me that he felt safer at his corporate job because of its accountability structure than he did at his own church. God forbid.

No church structure guarantees that abuse will always be handled properly, and Anglicans are weak sinners, as in every other denomination. But having a canonical appeal beyond the parish priest is not only Biblical and historical, but it also adds a significant structure of accountability. If abuse occurs in my parish, the priest himself is not the final court of appeal.

That difference is significant, and its effect on my heart is stark. As a sheep of the flock, it gives me no little comfort to know that my family and I have some form of protection against spiritual exploitation if it were ever to take place, when, even in the best Baptist churches we attended, we effectively had no protection beyond the pastor. But what if the pastor is abusive? Unfortunately, that situation is all too common.

Again, lifetime Anglicans, I really don’t think many of you grasp how big of a deal this is to us Baptist and nondenominational converts. Quite candidly, I think many of you take it for granted. I have personally experienced and know of several Baptist churches that have welcomed and, in some cases, retain to this day pastors who have received overwhelmingly credible accusations of sexual abuse, domestic violence, financial impropriety, and even the molestation of children. I have watched men yell down individual teenagers from the pulpit and receive applause from the congregation.

I am overjoyed to belong to a communion of churches where the question is not whether allegations should be investigated and the guilty punished, but how best to establish the truth and administer justice while protecting the flock.

4. Heritage and Ecumenism

I don’t remember how the conversation came up, but about a year before I became Anglican, I was walking with some ministry friends when the topic of whether Catholics are Christians came up. I was confused by the question and answered, “Yes, they are Christians. Christians we disagree with on some important matters, but still Christians.”

I was surprised to find that they were radically opposed to my answer. Sure, the segmented and fractured circles I had come from thought that way, but I had expected these men, who stood outside those circles, to recognize how far the arms of God stretch forth. They told me that many Catholics they had spoken with could not explain the Gospel and believed they had to merit their way into heaven. I gave them pause when I responded that many people in our Baptist churches hold to the damnable heresy of easy-believism, yet we would still generally consider Baptists to be Christians.

The Baptist tradition is fundamentally one built upon a posture of separatism, not communion. Many Baptists see the different denominations as concentric circles. They are at the center, and the further your circle is from the Baptist one, the less likely you are to be a Christian. Presbyterians might be ok, but Lutherans and Anglicans are most often too far gone (as I have learned). Forget Catholics or the Orthodox altogether.

As an Anglican, I have been wonderfully overwhelmed by the catholicity of our tradition. I am no longer in the untenable position of doubting someone’s salvation simply because they stand further from my particular denomination. So long as they remain within the consensual tradition of the Church, I can generally regard them as brothers and sisters in the faith even if I disagree with them sharply on important doctrines.

Now, when I read the great Christian writers of ages past, I can learn from St. John of the Cross without the slightest uneasiness about whether he was “truly Christian,” any more than I would have doubted the faithfulness of St. John Bunyan of the Celestial City.

5. Some Bridges Aren’t Worth Saving

I was naive.

I thought that if we were gracious and exemplified God's love, those closest to us would be confused but willing to hear us out.

In some cases, that held true. I have several Baptist friends who will be lifelong companions and with whom I share a deep bond of brotherly love and gratitude for their faithfulness and loyalty. I also think of the Baptist church I left, whose members have only shown me the depths of God’s love since I became an Anglican. I will always be honored to have spent a brief time as one of their pastors and to have served alongside the two men who shepherded me during those years.

Others, and many more than I expected, rejected us as heretics immediately, including longtime friends and mentors. I was angry for a time. It was good for me to be angry, to bear it, to feel the weight of the sin committed against my family by many close to us, and yet to withhold speaking in anger. I am no longer angry. So now, I can speak.

While they were not the reason we converted to Anglicanism, their reactions only confirm to us that we made a wise choice to disassociate from them and their separatist influence in favor of true communion. While I did my best to preserve channels of communication and avoid burning bridges, at times it is best to recognize the relationships for what they are: unfruitful.

Some bridges are best left to burn. I have learned to stop exerting effort to repair those bridges and leave them to burn to ash. If God so chooses to rebuild them in his time, whether in this life or in eternity, that is his prerogative, and I will receive the restoration gladly. How beautiful it is for brothers to dwell in unity! Perhaps he will. Perhaps he won’t. It is no longer my concern.

I look forward to building more fruitful bridges elsewhere.

Everyone knows the best place to find a wife is at church. And if you want to supercharge your dating life, you’ve gotta find one with a singles ministry. After all, why else would a singles ministry exist?

I remember being young and unmarried. I had no purpose in life. Nothing driving me upward towards a higher goal. Yes, I was carefree, but I was also aimless. That all changed when an older woman in my church pinched my cheek and said, “Bless your heart, when are you gonna get married?” She was right. I was getting old.

That one moment changed everything. I immediately begin preparing myself for my mate. I started exercising. I tried talking to girls. I even memorized 1 Corinthians 13.

Unfortunately, at fourteen, I was too young to join our church’s singles group. I might have found a wife sooner if I had. But no worries, when all else fails, there was always Bible College. Bible College is the Christian version of Tinder Platinum minus the premarital sex. Usually.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

Why can’t we stop harassing the singles?

Now, I’m not saying there aren’t many singles that need some holy prodding. I am a strong advocate of marriage and generally think most people should work hard, marry young, have lots of babies, and live an ordinary life to the glory of God and the well-being of their souls. But, on the whole, our posture towards singles needs some serious reframing.

To be fair, you singles don’t have the best representatives.

You know Carl. Carl wears a fedora. He has a neckbeard that extends down to his belly button, like an unkept grassy airstrip in the middle of the Amazon. The only time he ever has an interaction with the other sex is when he pauses his World of Warcraft quest to yell at his mom for more cheeseballs. Carl would never do the extra work to make himself more attractive to the opposite sex.

How about Alexa? She’s a boss babe who hustles more than a squeegee-Latino during rush hour. She’s looking to influence the world, build her brand, and provide herself stability before she ever considers a family. But one look at her designer clothes and Louis Vuitton bag lets you know that influence, brand, and stability are her euphemisms for power, fame, and fortune.

Or consider Jack and Jill. There is so much sexual tension between them, but it would never work out because Jill is a feminist who hates men yet still sleeps with a different one every few weeks, while Jack believes the socioeconomic framework of marriage unjustly benefits women and should therefore be abolished in favor of a harem-style arrangement that benefits Jack. Jack and Jill are weird. Don’t be like Jack or Jill. You might break your crown and tumble off a hill.

No, this article is not about those singles. It’s about the good ones. Those singles who love Christ and serve quietly. They bear their loneliness without turning it into some sort of public cross. And yet, the Church often treats these beautiful souls as secondary citizens, as if they are leftover Ikea furniture no one ever got around to assembling.

Singleness is not a waiting room for those poor, unfortunate souls eager for their name to be called. No, singleness is the ultimate state of all Christians.

Nor is singleness a product of the fall. But, let’s not pretend that loneliness is God’s intention for the final state, “It is not good that man should be alone.” God gave Eve to Adam. Marriage is good, true, and beautiful. Eve is the answer to Adam’s solitude. Marriage is honorable.

But loneliness is not the same as singleness. We must hold Scripture in balance with itself. Christ refers to the goodness of a singleness that is purposed towards the kingdom, “There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”

Nor is Christ the only one who speaks about the benefits of a singleness that is focused on God. St. Paul also writes,

“I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.”

— 1 Corinthians 7:32-34

St. Paul is not anti-marriage. He is saying that Christ’s coming has radically transformed our present age. The kingdom of God has entered the world, and in anticipation of that kingdom, a singleness that is focused on pursuing God is better than marriage insofar as it allows an undivided devotion to the Lord.

Marriage was God’s first answer to loneliness. Then Jesus came, God with us. When we see God, we will no longer be lonely. In the resurrection, marriage is not abolished because love dies. Rather, marriage fades as loneliness dies. Something greater than marriage is already here and will be finally consummated when Christ comes again to receive his bride, when all will be single yet lonely no more.

The single is a reminder of our ultimate state, in which we will be satisfied with no one other than God alone. It is not good that man should be alone, so God gave us himself. When we stand before God, there will be no more marriage, for we will no longer be alone.

Singleness is a remembrance, yes, in its frequent solitude, to a time before marriage. But it is also a sign, a reminder of what is to come, when we shall be so wholly satisfied with God that no other will do. A single man or woman living their life fully devoted to God, longing to fill their loneliness with the presence of their Savior, is an immense gift to the Church that a married couple, with all their unique riches, cannot provide.

The Church should treat faithful singles with dignity, not as unfinished Christians we should foist up to the altar. They are performing a ministry that the married cannot. The married display Christ’s covenant love for his bride. The faithful single displays the age to come when God will be all in all.

“Virginity has brought from heaven that which it may imitate on earth. And not unfittingly has she sought her manner of life from heaven, who has found for herself a Spouse in heaven. She, passing beyond the clouds, air, angels, and stars, has found the Word of God in the very bosom of the Father, and has drawn Him into herself with her whole heart. For who having found so great a Good would forsake it?… And indeed what I have said is not my own, since they who marry not nor are given in marriage are as the angels in heaven. Let us not, then, be surprised if they are compared to the angels who are joined to the Lord of angels. Who, then, can deny that this mode of life has its source in heaven…”1

— St. Ambrose of Milan

Were Adam and Eve unsatisfied in the Garden of Eden? Even a little? If not, how were they tempted?

Temptation is the enticement to seize unsatisfied desires by disobedience rather than through faith. Now, there are good desires, and there are bad ones. Those good desires are good in that they are ordered according to God’s nature and ours as his images. Those bad desires are bad in that they are discordant with God’s nature and thus our own. As a result of the fall, we struggle with bad desires, otherwise called concupiscence.

But that does not mean that Adam or Eve did not have desires before the fall; they were just not concupiscent ones. And yet, to be tempted, even by good desires, means that there were good desires left unfulfilled for Adam and Eve. In some real way, Eden was incomplete and, though mostly satisfying, even in some small way unsatisfying. Otherwise, Satan would not have been able to deceive Eve with the promises of the forbidden fruit. After all, the best possible life is one in which you know you are living the best possible life, or else you would not be wholly satisfied.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

There is a major hint of Eden’s incompleteness written into the creation story. God had just breathed life into Adam and set him about tending the garden. He tells Adam to avoid the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And then, God says something that should cause the reader a moment of reflection, “It is not good…” Up until now, everything had only been declared good. Nor had sin yet invaded the cosmos. How then could there be something “not good” in the perfect world God had created?

Simply put, Eden was imperfect.

That there was a “not good” before the fall of man indicates a lack of perfection even before sin had entered the world. To be clear, “not good” does not always mean evil. Evil is one sort of not-goodness, but there is also another sort. An artisan weaving a tapestry on her loom would not call a half-finished piece “bad.” Yet she would not call it complete either. However, if she found a hole or rot in some completed portion of the piece, she wouldn’t merely call it incomplete, but also “bad.”

Eden was good, but incompletely so. There was no rot or stain, and yet, neither Eden nor man was as good as God planned for them to ultimately be. In this sense, Eden was “not good.” There was still more work to be done to complete creation, especially the creation of man, the cardinal member of the garden.

And what exactly was “not good”? It was not good that man should be alone. But did God not walk among man in the garden? And yet, God still declares that man was alone. Why was man created in such a way to be left unsatisfied with the Edenic presence of God? How could the first man stand before God and yet remain lonely?

God would provide Adam with an other to aid in the fulfillment of this deficiency. Indeed, marriage was more satisfying for Adam than the alternative because Eve was “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Though previously, Adam was in the presence of God, God is not a man. God is not bone of my bones, nor flesh of my flesh. God now gives his grace to Adam in a manner fitting his bodily constitution, as God created man to receive it.

We may assume that the creation of the woman and the couple’s subsequent union completed Eden and resolved man’s loneliness, but that would be assuming too much too quickly. After all, Adam fell after the creation of Eve, not before. Marriage, with its abundant blessings, was better than the prior arrangement, yet still insufficient to fully satisfy the inner longing of man for the other.

When God gave Eve to Adam, and when, through loving her, Adam’s satisfaction was magnified, his pleasure was only real because Eve reflected those aspects of God of which Adam, in his person, both lacked and desired. And Eve also consisted of that which God created Adam to so desire but which God himself lacked, namely, a fleshly body after his own kind. The same can be said of Eve’s natural longing for the bodily Adam.

Only God is ultimately satisfying because God is satisfaction itself, yet man cannot understand this satisfaction unless it be through bodily means. Eve, an image of God, is quite satisfying to Adam but not ultimately so because she is not God, yet she is fleshly unlike God and can thus communicate the satisfaction found ultimately in God more fully to Adam.

Adam or Eve would never be ultimately satisfying to the other, for neither were God fully, but images, created to reflect, worship, and enjoy God. The enjoyment they had in each other was real, but not maximal. A light may be reflected in a mirror, and yet the mirror will always be lacking the full splendor of the original light.

Thus, man sinned. They were not forced to sin, and indeed, they could have chosen against it. But the possibility of their sin is only explained in their lack of total satisfaction in the gift of each other, given to them by God. Further, while God intended that gift to be temporally satisfying, he never intended the gift of the other to be fully satisfying in and of itself.

Heaven differs from Eden in this fundamental way: we will be completely satisfied with God. And only when we are completely satisfied with God can it be said that God has completed his creative work in us. We shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

We will see God, and seeing God will be enough. This is the beatific vision.

The nagging discontent is always present. The truth—I know I am missing something. I am incomplete. Every moment of happiness is tinged with sorrow. Every smile hides a tear. I am not enough.

I hunger, and I thirst, and am never full. I leave my marriage bed only to battle lust yet again. I stare into the innocent eyes of my children as I rock them in my arms and blink—they have grown. I work and work to build a future I will never fully enjoy, and for my reward, I barely have enough to live. I read and learn and am rewarded with sorrow. It is never enough.

In response, Christ tells me to partake of himself, and I will be satisfied. So I drank of the living water and only grew more discontent. I have had a part of heaven and will not be satisfied until I have had the whole. I’ve learned that a taste of the living water does not immediately quench my thirst. It only makes me more discontent about that which truly matters most. If anything, it leaves me more parched, longing even more for the celestial rain.

My thirst becomes an all-encompassing motivation—that I may gain Christ!

He promises untold rewards and riches. That is not enough.

He promises victory and status in his kingdom. That is not enough.

He promises vindication after the dark night of this life. That is not enough.

If I gain heaven, it would not be enough. For what is heaven without the light?

We will see his face, and his name will be on our foreheads. And we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. As he truly is. This is the beatific vision. The end of our dissatisfaction. The end of our sin. The end of our loneliness. Fully man as God intended us to be, forever gazing into the face of God, the beginning and end of all things.

How is heaven better than Eden?

Man was not finally satisfied with the Edenic presence of God because, while man was made like God, God had not yet become like man. We are embodied beings. God is not. Sin, the penultimate problem, is solved by Christ’s death and resurrection. But man’s first deficiency, solitude, is solved by his incarnation. God with us. Our marriages are mere shadows of Christ’s love for His bride. Marriage was never meant to solve solitude permanently. It ultimately cannot.

Christ’s incarnation solves original solitude. And while sin is not good by any sense of the imagination, Christ can redeem even evil for his good purposes. It is the climate of sin into which Christ is incarnated and demonstrates the greatest of possible loves for us. And he endears his bride to himself by facing our brutality to free us both from our original solitude and sin.

God made man embodied, with bodily appetites that can be ultimately fulfilled only through bodily means. This is not a flaw of creation. This is God’s intention. God is a spirit, yet He enfleshes himself for us. The incarnation was always part of that plan. His creative work in us can not be completed until God becomes man. Eden was not yet complete because God had not yet clothed himself with the veil of our flesh. But now that God has become man, we are closer than ever to God’s creative fulfillment.

What is the creative fulfillment? It is heaven. To completely know and be known by another. To know God. To know thyself. And we only fully know ourselves through knowing another and seeing ourselves through their eyes. To know and be known by God is also to know thyself perfectly. To see God’s face and be seen within the eyes of God.

God is the object of our desire. Even when we desire lesser things, that is only an indication of our ultimate desire for God. And God’s beloved will truly experience the Triune God. We will partake of the divine nature mediated through the incarnated Christ. And we will be satisfied, not merely in spirit, as in Eden, but also in our flesh, both body and soul.

And on that day, we will fully realize that seeing God is enough.

Some pictures from Credo Conference 2026

Q&A with Louis Markos, , and Gavin Ortlund

A Representative from New Aberdeen College

leading an Anselm House session on Thomas Aquinas

New friends

Michael Allen, The Lamb is All the Glory in Immanuel’s Land

Taking notes

A friend of mine with Gavin Ortlund

John Piper has done it again! He has twisted the panties of internet Christians everywhere. Color me floored, flabbergasted, and otherwise flummoxed. John Piper, after all, is not known for saying anything that the Twitter-verse would ever consider inflammatory.

I think Sproul briefly paused from spinning in his grave over the Ligonier and St. Andrew’s debacles just long enough to flash Piper a broad, satisfied grin. Sproul could probably power Reformation Bible College with all the rolling over he’s been doing lately.

But back to Piper.

I met Piper once. I was in the audience of the-conference-which-must-not-be-named. I saw him from a small distance, maybe around five miles away from the nosebleed section. In the middle of thousands of other pastors who, along with me, paid an outrageous sum to enter the Kentucky International Convention Center, Piper looked me dead in the eyes for about a half second. It was predestined to happen. And don’t try to tell me he was looking at one of the other thousands of pastors sitting around me! He was obviously looking at me! The elect! Ok?

To be fair, Piper had some great advice about longevity in ministry. I’ve always respected him highly. His book, Brothers We Are Not Professionals, is on my top shelf, which isn’t saying much because I’m dreadfully short. Also, anyone who, in response to the question, “What keeps young men from the ministry?” writes an article entitled “Missions and Masturbation” about how pleasuring oneself keeps men from the ministry, has my undying respect.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

That being said, I am not a Calvinist.

That’s not for a lack of trying on the part of many of my friends and even some of my mentors. There always seems to be a bearded IPA-drinking chain-smoking cage-stager behind every bush lately. Honestly, they often make the best theological sparring partners and even better lifelong friends. So out of respect for them, I’m not going to go out on a limb and try to prove whether or not most Calvinists would agree with Piper here. I’m simply going to respond to the tweet as is. Or the X. Whatever the youth call it nowadays.

The original statement Piper posed has issues, but not necessarily the ones he points out. Let me explain.

“God didn’t die for frogs. He died for humans, implying we were worth the sacrifice.”

Piper sees issues with the second half of the statement about the value of sinful humans. We’ll get to that soon enough. But my issue is actually with the first part of the statement, “God didn’t die for the frogs.”

Piper would claim that “God did not have to die for the frogs,” or, put simply, the frogs do not need the sacrifice of Christ. After all, they didn’t sin. Right? And yet, God did die for the frogs. I really think Piper should have caught this. In fact, I think it would fit into his theology like a warm hand in a sweaty glove.

This is not a technicality. This is the whole point of God’s providential plan. That the Father so loved his Son that he would give him as an inheritance the entire cosmos, and all things would be reconciled in the person of Christ. Christ, in his death and resurrection, is not merely sacrificing himself in our stead, but is claiming that inheritance as his own.

When Adam fell, all of the cosmos was thrown into sin. When Christ rose again, he claimed the cosmos as his rightful inheritance. Frogs included. They will ribbit “holy, holy, holy” for all eternity alongside the saints and under their dominion, redeemed from the brokenness we brought upon them. That’s why all creation groans, or croaks, awaiting our resurrection bodies.

So yes, frogs do need to be saved and not just the gay ones.

But as we approach the more controversial part of the tweet, let’s be clear: a frog cannot merit God’s wrath because, unlike a man, a frog is not a moral agent. The frog can only do what God has programmed the frog to do. The innocence of a frog is not innocence in any moral manner of speaking. Therefore, frogs are not actually more holy than humans.

Were a frog to kill a man somehow, it may be blamed for resurrecting the overly-sophisticated show 1000 Ways to Die, but no one would suggest that the frog was morally culpable of murder. The frog has sinned neither in the sight of God nor man because the frog, again, is not a moral agent. He is just a frog—a frog who happened to kill a guy.

Regardless, I think Piper here misunderstands the original statement, “He died for humans, implying we were worth the sacrifice,” or else he equivocates “worth” here with “deserving” later.

Of course, apart from Christ’s ministry, our good works merit no smile on God’s face. Without Christ, we are completely incapable of earning grace. But Piper overstates the matter. In effect, Piper is saying, “God didn’t save us because we were worth saving. After all, we are less deserving than the frogs.” A non-sequitur.

Man may be utterly sinful and still be of immense worth. Whether or not man deserves salvation has no bearing on whether we are worth saving. Piper assumes that if grace is really grace, then man must be spoken of as though he has no worth to begin with.

But that is against the nature of love. Love itself is the recognition of worth in another and the self-giving pursuit of that person’s good in a manner fitting their worth. And God’s love is the measure of God’s valuation of humanity and our redemption. And not only of our redemption but of the whole creation.

I think there is a certain masochism in some (Not all, calm down) Calvinist circles, which is probably a reaction to the self-love culture that denied any teaching of depravity and held modern evangelical Christianity in its grip for much of the late-20th century and into the 21st century. I say this as a non-Calvinist who will shamelessly ignore my own weaknesses for the present moment.

But depravity, while affecting the whole man, does not render man valueless. The image of God may be disfigured, but it is still an image of God. While we must recognize the depths of our sin and our utter helplessness apart from God, we must never abandon the wonder that is the love of God for us, the love that both reveals and expands humanity’s worth.

Even with our sin, the whole of our being is far “more good” than frogs, which have not sinned. Why? For a simple reason. We were made in the Image of God. Frogs weren’t. We are worth far more than many sparrows. Or frogs. I cringe at a theology that would make the alternative practical in everyday life.

In The Relevance of the Stars, Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete recounts a story about Msgr. Luigi Giussani, which strikes at the heart of the modern sexual crisis,

One day, Giussani was walking around looking for a parking space, and he came upon two people making out in a car. He suddenly appeared in his cassock and said, “Hello.”

Well, you can imagine!

When they saw him, he said, “I hate to interrupt; I just have one question to ask you:

What you’re doing now, what does it have to do with the stars?”1

“How absurd?” we might think. It seems a little pretentious, doesn’t it? These priests, bound by their vows to live in celibacy, posturing about how procreation relates to the cosmos! Sex is just…sex, isn’t it?

To our modern ears, Giussani sounds awkward, even intrusive. But his question is worth pondering precisely because we have reduced the sexual experience to a mere appetite. He asks whether sex means far more than we are willing to admit.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

But we have made sex small.

We have made sexual gratification private.

We have disconnected it from wonder.

We have detached sex from covenant, fruitfulness, and the soul’s upward movement into the heavens.

First, we degrade sex into something merely pleasurable. Then it becomes recreational rather than holy. Finally, it becomes utilitarian rather than transcendental. In its utility, the object of sex, the body, becomes a thing to consume rather than a person to cherish. Degradation becomes a kink.

The obsession. The fetish. That overwhelming curiosity that promises ultimate fulfillment, but when gained, only drives the soul deeper into lust. Rather than leaving the sexual experience with a smile, the end thereof is guilt and shame.

Our culture speaks of sex only in the language of appetite and consent. We have so over-therapized sexuality that it has lost its meaning and glory. It has become nothing more than what “I” think of it. And has this understanding of sexuality truly left people feeling liberated and happy?

All the while, we scoff at “romantics” like Giussani while we roll around in the gutter of modern sexuality, flailing in our discomfort. If we deeply considered Giussani’s words, we would have to deal with an uncomfortable truth: that sex means more than we dare admit and that our culture fails to realize an ounce of its potential beauty.

There must be more.

What does sex have to do with the stars?

Some of the Ancients, especially the Platonists, would have agreed with Giussani that sexual love (eros) should reach beyond pleasure to contemplate the transcendental. Plato defends eros in the Symposium as a first step towards discovering divine beauty,

“[H]uman nature can find no better workmate for acquiring [the divine Beauty] than Love. That’s why I say that every man must honor Love, why I honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligence, and why I commend them to others. Now and always I praise the power and courage of Love so far as I am able. Consider this speech, then, Phaedrus, if you wish, a speech in praise of Love.”2

To Plato, eros is the first step on a stairway to that ultimate Beauty—divine, pure, and eternal. The erotic love for another, to Plato, is a recognition of that person’s beauty. As he indulges in that beauty, he discovers something yet more beautiful: the person’s soul. And in his love for the soul and for the sake of that beauty, he learns beautiful things, beautiful customs, and lessons. And as he continues deeper into this upward spiral of beauty, he finds Beauty itself, that to which eros ultimately points, what Christians would call God.

That’s why sex, even disordered sex, bears unwilling witness to God because it longs for beauty and union, however distorted those desires may be. But in such cases when desire is twisted by selfishness, the enjoyment of beauty is profaned.

That is why “no strings attached” or the term “casual sex” are false. All sex is serious. All sex is bound by transcendental chains.

This is also why sex that only sees pleasure as its end is also misguided. The gratification of sexual desire as an end in itself neglects the beauty of the other. It bypasses virtue and sees in the other only a resource to be consumed. Plutarch notes,

For love that is bred in a young and truly generous heart, by means of friendship, terminates in virtue.3

On the other hand, Plutarch recounts Aristippus’ reply to someone who tried to cure him of his infatuation. After being told that she did not love him, Aristippus answered,

Pure wine or good fish do not love me either, and yet I willingly enjoy both. For the end of desire is pleasure and enjoyment.4

Plutarch continues,

But love, having once lost the hopes of friendship, will neither tarry, nor cherish for beauty’s sake that which is irksome, though never so gaudy in the flower of youth, if it bring not forth the fruit of a disposition propense to friendship and virtue.”5

What the Pagans sought in the dark, Christianity brought to the light

While the ancient philosophers made many mistakes as they stumbled toward the truth, they did grasp something real about eros and beauty, though only dimly. Christianity brought to light what they could only stumble towards in the dark.

For the Church, love is not merely an emotion or appetite, and though it can include eros, it extends far beyond sexual longing. Nor is love a useful tool. It is not a means of utility. No, love is the telos of all reality, “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” Or as St. Clement of Rome wrote,

The binding power of the love of God—who is able to set it forth? The radiance of His beauty—who can voice it to satisfaction? The sublimity to which love leads up is unutterable. Love unites us with God…. Apart from love nothing is pleasing to God…. Because of the love which He felt for us, Jesus Christ Our Lord gave His Blood for us by the will of God, His body for our bodies, and His soul for our souls.6

How easy it is for us, in our sinful concupiscence, to worship the creation over the Creator! To see the beauty of the other, to well up with forceful desire, and to forget that the one standing before us is made in the image of God. We rob the beauty for ourselves, rather than see in the other God himself, the ultimate fulfillment of all our desires. Our ultimate pleasure can only be found in him and him alone.

Can our God, who created us, not please us? Is he not the one who has made us male and female? Did not God tell us to be fruitful and multiply? Did he not command us to “rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.”? Was it not the lover of God’s anointed king who wrote, “My beloved has gone down to his garden to the beds of spices, to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he grazes among the lilies.”?

True pleasure is found in God alone. We can experience that pleasure in this world when we see God through his creation, rather than his creation as the ultimate good. Sex is beautiful because in it, we can experience the mystery of God’s love. Sex is pleasurable not merely because it is sex, but because in it, rightly received, God means to draw us toward the goodness that has its source in him. Reducing sex to pleasure inevitably makes sex less pleasurable.

What does sex have to do with the stars?

This is the great Christian premise behind sex. Marriage, sex, the two becoming one flesh—the union of husband and wife is the holy sign of Christ’s love for his bride.

Disordered forms of sex are not wrong because they are sex, but because they deform a good thing. Sex, by its nature, is good. Its corruption does not make sex vile but desecrates it. The corruption of sex blunts its wonder, dims its glory, and mars the image it was meant to bear. And because it leads away from God, it leads away from human flourishing.

It is a sin to stomp on a rose. The rose is not the sin. The violence against it is.

Even where tenderness and affection are deep, the fulfillment of sex can still be incomplete. Desire may reach toward transcendence and yet be misdirected by the manner in which it is sought. The tragedy of disordered eros is not that it desires too much, but that it seeks the infinite by insufficient means. Disordered love will always fall short of reflecting the good, beautiful, and true.

This is why the Church can seem so fussy about sexual ethics. Not because sex is evil or sinful, but because it is awesome in the truest sense of the word. It inspires awe. Sex is holy in that its practice should lead to wonder, to a realization of your place within God’s creation, to a sense of purpose, and to a deeper love for one another as we approach our Creator by reflecting his love in our sacred union.

Marvel with St. Methodius at the beauty of a godly eros, the one that saves humanity and brings them into participation with the divine nature,

The Church has been formed from His flesh and bone. For it was for her sake that the Word left His heavenly Father and came down to earth in order to cling to His Spouse, and slept in the ecstasy of His Passion. Voluntarily did He die for her…for the reception of that blessed spiritual seed which He sows and plants by secret inspiration in the depths of the soul; and like a woman the Church conceives of this seed and forms it until the day she bears and nurtures it as virtue. So too the word Increase and multiply is duly fulfilled as the Church grows day by day in size and in beauty and numbers, thanks to the intimate union between her and the Word, coming down to us even now and continuing His ecstasy in the memorial of His Passion.8

In Methodius, eros is shown in its highest form. The marriage bed reflects the cosmos, and the union of husband and wife mirrors that eternal love through which the Church bears countless souls from her womb.

Sex reminds us that life isn’t utility. It is the longing for the other and for the giving of oneself. And as Christ gave himself for the Church, so the Church finds all her pleasure in her Bridegroom. Human desire is an itch for the divine. It is that physical sign of a higher spiritual reality, of Christ and his passionate love for us. And if it is tied to Christ first loving us, sex carries with it a responsibility to love Christ in return.

Sex is not an end in itself but a first rung on Jacob’s ladder. It is a gift to those who find, past their sexual desire, the blessing of selfless love. It is a misery for those who reduce their desire only to the language of appetite.

What does sex have to do with the stars?

Everything.

At night, I slipped beneath the belfry’s shade
and snapped the lock that hid the treasure’s gold,
such riches for my secret blasphemy.
A hallowed chalice on the altar where
the blood of Christ was poured—for them, perhaps.

But me? No, not for me. The evil I
had done! More evil still my lips to taste.

I took the sacred cup. A flask of wine.
The candlesticks. And with the crucifix
I smashed the tabernacle wide to snatch
the consecrated bread the priest had stored.

And once I bound my plunder fast, I stole
back home. I ate the host and filled with wine
the chalice up and drunkenly did swill
until I heard hell’s chuckling demon horde.

And as his blood was streaming down my face,
I threw the chalice gold against the wall,
and challenged God himself to strike me down
if from above his gaze could reach me here.

A whisper from the cellar deep—now louder.

Then, a screech, ”Come.”

Pale hands, they grasped the candlesticks. My legs,
like leaden stumps, dragged on against my will.
I strove to turn, but strength did not avail.
I felt his breath, a chill upon my neck—
that spirit in the candlelight now moaned,

“Upon the ground, it cries! Innocent blood!”
And wroth the blood-red wine did boil to life
upon the floor, sealing my fate as dark
the spreading shadows drew their quiet swords.

The bells thrice tolled.

And as blades plunged, a man stepped forth and took
the blow, and outward flowed water and blood.
Though stunned, my strength returned, and bending low
to broken body—shattered, what, for me?
I fell and held him close against my breast
as shadows fled across the waking walls.

He wiped my tears away and gazed into
my eyes as blood once more did stain the ground.
Then softly kissed my face three times and sighed,

“I have bought you.”

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

The period between Good Friday and Easter is often forgotten, yet it has a special impact on the story of Christianity. What is the Harrowing of Hell? What is this doctrine that has been affirmed in various forms across Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and some Protestant traditions?

The Harrowing of Hell is a doctrine that is often overshadowed by both the death and resurrection of Christ, which is unfortunate. A basic understanding of Christ’s ministry in the underworld only serves to magnify his death and resurrection. The doctrine is drawn from several New Testament passages and confessed in the Apostles’ Creed, “He descended to hades.”

A Lutheran Confession, The Formula of Concord, states in Article IX,

For it is sufficient that we know that Christ descended into hell, destroyed hell for all believers, and delivered them from the power of death and of the devil, from eternal condemnation and the jaws of hell.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church further clarifies in paragraphs 636-637,

By the expression “He descended into hell,” the Apostles’ Creed confesses that Jesus did really die and through his death for us conquered death and the devil “who has the power of death” (Heb 2:14). In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went down to the realm of the dead. He opened heaven’s gates for the just who had gone before him.

Article III of the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles simply says,

As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also is it to be believed, that he went down into Hell.

It becomes necessary to define what “hell” means in both the creed and the doctrine. In the Apostles’ Creed, “hell” is translated from the Greek hades and means “the place of the dead” or “the abode of the departed.” Before Christ’s coming, hell did not always refer to a place of punishment. Many times, it referenced the realm of the dead, where the damned awaited judgment and the righteous awaited resurrection and eternal life.

Therefore, while there are different views on the doctrine, generally, the Harrowing of Hell is the triumphant descent of Christ into the place of the dead to claim victory and take captive the forces of evil, and deliver believers past and present from the devil, death, and hell.

That Greedy Leviathan!

Oh, that greedy Leviathan, that gluttonous monster feasting on the souls of men! Not one of us could escape his maw. Each image of God a collection piece in his pantry. Satan the devourer. Satan the glutton. Satan the drowner of our souls. With a gulp, we were brought within his jaws down to the lowest hell as a man in the belly of the whale.

So God himself came in the image of God. The fisherman made himself bait for us. That seven-headed dragon, that sea monster, deceived by his arrogance and unending hunger, envied the Christ for his collection of doomed souls. The Christ would be the prize of his collection. He must have the Christ-soul. In his hunger, he did not question why this Christ offered his flesh and blood as a meal so willingly.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

There is no hope in the belly of the whale, or we think there shouldn’t be. Yet, Jonah cries from the stomach of Leviathan, “I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.” Sheol is the Hebrew equivalent of hades. “But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

Jesus is the true Jonah, the prophet who would rob that greedy fish,

An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth…behold, something greater than Jonah is here.

–Matthew 12:39-41

If Good Friday is the prophet sacrificing himself to save his fellow sailors, and Easter is his vomitous resurrection upon the Mediterranean shores, then the Harrowing of Hell is Jonah’s victorious prayer in the belly of the whale.

Leviathan bit off more than he could chew. In death, Jesus plundered death. He saved all who believe in him from hell and took captive Satan and his forces. And if Christ has saved us from death and hell and has claimed a prisoner of every Satanic force, we have no need to fear the forces of hell.

Think on our Christ. Very God of very God yet born of a virgin. God in the flesh. And in his deepest of loves, he offers himself to the poisonous bite of that sea serpent. And as Christ opens his eyes, Satan flinches. Next to Satan stands death. Now he bows as a footstool to the King of kings. And the iron chains that once enslaved the images of God now snap around every demonic neck.

Hell itself cannot handle the presence of Christ. The grave vomits up Christ, but not Christ alone. The chains hold fast every demon to that accursed ground, but every believer emerges with Christ, an army of the dead-no-longer. “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ Son of man, can these bones live?”

Yes. Yes. Yes! These bones do live again!

The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

–Matthew 27:52-53

Death, who sought to swallow the God of the universe, is now swallowed up in victory! Death, where is your sting? Oh, grave, where is your victory? Christ has robbed your victory. And those souls whom you held fast have been stolen from your hellish collection.

This is the significance of Holy Saturday, that there is no darkness into which Christ has not gone to save our souls. There is no prison he cannot open and no enemy he has not already put under his feet. Because he descended, the dead in Christ are not lost. Because he rose, the grave is no longer a mouth that devours but a door to eternal life for “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.”

And because Christ has conquered death, we do not sorrow as those who have no hope. Our Lord owns the keys of death and hell. He who conquered hell will not leave our souls in hell. “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his (Romans 6:5).”

The world is slowly waking to the dangers tech poses to children. For many, the damage is done, and those responsible will be addressed too late.

Last week was a bad week for the social media giant Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. On Tuesday, a New Mexico jury found that the company had knowingly misled the public about the dangers its platforms posed and had enabled harm to its users, including child sexual exploitation, and will incur civil penalties to the tune of $375m.

“Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew. Today, the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough,” said Raúl Torrez, New Mexico’s attorney general.

State attorneys presented compelling evidence that predators often use Meta’s messaging platform because its encryption helps to hide crucial evidence of their crimes. Further, several law enforcement agencies testified concerning deficiencies in Meta’s reporting of criminal behavior within text exchanges. Internal company records also documented that several employees and outside experts had warned the company about the risks posed by Meta's platforms to children.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

Only one day later, Meta and YouTube were found liable on all charges in a landmark ruling concerning social media addiction. The jury awarded $3 million in damages to a 20-year-old California woman, Kaley, who alleged that the social media companies hooked her when she was a young child and fed her content that led to anxiety, body dysmorphia, and suicidal thoughts. TikTok and Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, were also named in the original complaint but settled for an undisclosed amount before the trial.

In both cases, the social media giants have staunchly defended their innocence despite the overwhelming evidence against them. And yet, when questioned on Capitol Hill in 2024, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, had to apologize when confronted by the brutal facts of the harm his platforms have caused to children across the country.

Meta and YouTube are not the only tech giants under legal scrutiny. Two weeks ago, three teenage girls, two of whom are minors, filed a lawsuit against Grok for using their pictures to generate and distribute child pornography. The pictures were then shared on a Discord server without their knowledge.

These teenagers are not the only victims. According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a UK nonprofit focused on making the internet safer, Grok has generated approximately 3 million sexualized images, including 23,000 that appear to depict children. Sexualized images of children uncovered by the study included:

• “A selfie uploaded by a schoolgirl was undressed by Grok, turning a ‘before school selfie’ into an image of her in a bikini. As of January 15th this post was still live on X.

• An image of six young girls wearing micro bikinis, generated by Grok. As of January 15th, this image was still publicly available on X.

• Four images depicting child actors.”

While the CCDH study could not always determine whether the images were generated from photos of real people, broader studies of AI image generators have found that they often are. Major nudify websites, those that turn images of real people into pornographic material, draw roughly 18.5 to 21 million monthly visits while similar mobile apps have received over 705 million downloads with an estimated $117 million in revenue.

Perhaps more alarming is that children are not only the victims of this technological leap forward, but have also been made instruments of its abuse. Many adolescents now frequently use such websites and apps. A study published earlier this month in PLoS surveyed 557 English-speaking individuals aged 13-17 and found that 55% of participants had created at least one image using nudification tools, and 54.4% had received at least one image using nudification tools. 36.3% of respondents reported having had a non-consensual image created, and 33.2% had at least one such image shared without their permission.

Nor are the problems caused by social media, AI, and other technologies confined to the United States. Poland plans to ban phone use in the classroom for children under 16. In the UK, Ofcom, the government’s communications regulator, has urged social media and gaming companies such as Meta, Snap, and Roblox to enforce the age restrictions already in their policies and adopt modern age-verification tools to keep children under 13 off their platforms. And Australia has gone further, banning social media for all children under 16, yet one-fifth of minors still use prohibited apps. Tech giants have shown little incentive and even less willpower to enforce their own age restrictions.

Indeed, even tech CEOs are now recognizing the issue. In support of the Australian restrictions and the need for some form of legal protection in the United States, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready wrote in a recent Time article,

Children today are living through the largest social experiment in history. For years, kids around the world have been given unfiltered access to social media platforms. The companies building these platforms gave insufficient forethought about the consequences, the worst of which include exposing them to unknown strangers and fueling screen addictions. This social experiment has been conducted at scale, and thus, the results are now painfully clear: rising anxiety and depression, eroding concentration, and classrooms competing for attention…. The cost of inaction is a generation of young people overwhelmed by anxiety and depression.

The tech industry has become a modern slave trader, and our children are its most valuable assets. Like slavers throughout history, it captures, trains, exploits, and profits from human beings. Nor is this some fringe misuse. These platforms are built to draw children in systematically and feed on their attention and innocence. Only when regulators force their hand do they yield any ground.

The child becomes a product, sold by the adults she knows to those she does not. Her presence generates engagement. Her innocence generates data. Her loneliness and insecurity generate dependence. Her image can be sexualized and circulated without her knowledge. Her vulnerability is not guarded as something sacred, but exploited as something profitable. The platform is a plantation; our children are both the slaves and the crop.

This is not merely a failed business plan or misguided corporate ethics, but a violation of the image of God in children. The Church stands resolute against the commodification of God’s image. To commodify a child’s body and soul is a sin of a different magnitude altogether. It would be better for a millstone to be tied around one’s neck than to face the judgment God has prepared for those who defile his little ones.

St. Gregory of Nyssa, a fourth-century Church Father, reminds us that slavery stands against God’s perfect plan. Whether slavery physically shackles the body or chains the soul, the commodification of humanity is a sin against God himself who made man in his image,

Tell me what sort of price you paid [for your slave]. What did you find in creation with a value corresponding to the nature of your purchase? What price did you put on rationality? For how many obols did you value the image of God? For how many coins did you sell this nature formed by God?

God said: “Let us make human beings in our own image and likeness” (Gen 1.26). When we are talking about one who is in the image of God, who has dominion over the whole earth and who has been granted by God authority over everything on the earth, tell me, who is the seller and who the buyer? Only God has this kind of power, or, one might almost say, not even God. For scripture says that the gifts of God are irrevocable (Romans 11.29).

God would not make a slave of humankind. It was God who, through his own will, called us back to freedom when we were slaves of sin. If God does not enslave a free person, then who would consider their own authority higher than God’s?1

St. Gregory saw clearly what modern CEOs and angel investors refuse to see: to treat a child as a product is not merely a social evil, but an offense against God’s just order. The child is not raw material for a platform. She is not a data point to be extracted or a target market to be exploited. And she is not a body to be manipulated and passed around online. She is made in the image of God.

That is why this fight cannot be left to lawsuits and regulators alone. Parents must regain the courage to say no to the tech giants, and to say no to their children for the sake of their happiness and safety. Christians, too, must boldly proclaim that any industry built on the monetization of children must be resisted.

The world is slowly learning. But, for some of these little ones, it is already too late.

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – Scientists have trained living human neurons to play Doom, a popular 90s video game where players control an unnamed marine fighting hordes of demons and the undead. Cortical Labs accomplished the feat by creating a device called the CL1, which contains a microchip with approximately 200,000 living human neurons to power its computing capabilities.

The neurons receive game information via electrical stimulation and transmit responses that a program interprets as actions within the game. They can send commands to move their character, find enemies, shoot, spin, and even explore the virtual landscape for clues to advance to further stages of the game.

To enable programmers to send and receive information from human cells, the lab had to translate the world of Doom into the “biological language of neurons,” namely, electricity. David Hogan, Chief Technology Officer of Cortical Labs, explained how the CL1 can process a programmer’s code and interact with cells via electrical stimulation,

When a demon appears on the left of the screen, specific electrodes stimulate the sensory area of the neural culture on the left side. The neurons react to that stimulation. We then listen to their response, the spikes, and interpret that activity as motor commands. If the neurons fire in a specific pattern, the doom guy shoots. If they fire in another pattern, he moves right, and so on.

To Cortical Labs, the possibilities are endless for this new form of “wetware.” They claim that the CL1 uses “a fraction of the energy other technologies use,” with estimates suggesting that a 30-unit server rack consumes only 850-1,000 watts. Compare that to current computing technologies, which drain megawatts.

One can imagine a world where AI corporations no longer need gigantic warehouses to store their servers and dedicated power grids to run them, and instead, run smaller, exponentially more efficient operations on living human tissue, saving countless dollars in the development of new technology. These savings could, in turn, significantly accelerate AI development and raise its energy consumption ceiling at a time when experts are concerned that AI may plateau due to energy demands.

The company is already seeking to capitalize on its breakthrough. The CL1 can be bought, ready to plug-and-play, for $35,000. But if someone is unable to afford the price tag of buying one of the biological computers outright and still wants to get in on the new tech, Cortical Labs offers a cloud-based service at $300/week per machine.

But using living human neurons to power computers raises serious ethical concerns. And it forces Christians to deal with significant theological questions. This advancement by Cortical Labs demands that Christians be ready to provide an answer to the following questions:

• Is it possible for biological matter to experience human consciousness apart from a body or soul?

• If human neurons can power computers, is AI still artificial?

• Is it ethical to commoditize human biological matter?

What does it even mean to be human?

The human body and the unity of its parts are true expressions of the person. Man is not merely a soul with a body, but a composite of body and soul. Our souls love, think, desire, and feel, yes, but not apart from our bodies, but in an entwined togetherness, a sacramental union between spiritual and material in which true mystical grace is communicated through our physical bodies.

Therefore, no “part” of the body is a mere part. To remove a member from the body does not merely hurt that member, but the whole body and soul. If it were possible to separate the soul and cast away the “lesser part,” we would intuitively recognize the loss as horrific, both to our inner and outer being. But we forget that our bodies, just as our souls, are true aspects of our identity as embodied images of God.

No doubt, when a member is separated from our bodies, that part is no longer considered a full human person in that it has been removed from its body and soul, but that does not mean it is not human. And whatever is human should be treated with greater dignity than what is not, considering its holy origin. We instinctively know this to be true. No one but the morally hardened or mentally infirm would treat a severed limb as he would a piece of plastic, metal, or wood.

Human consciousness, then, must derive from both body and soul, for the human is body and soul. Humans know themselves, others, and the world by means of who they are, namely, through their body and soul. Therefore, apart from that human body and soul, any existing consciousness is not true human consciousness, but a pale image of the human form.

If these scientists were able to train these human neurons to follow the ancient Delphic maxim, “Know thyself,” the neurons would discover themselves to be less than fully human. And if they ever became conscious in any sense, they would find the experience decidedly inhuman, not because of a difference in kind, but because of an overwhelming lack of fullness.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for a new article in your inbox semi-regularly.

Subscribe now

Human consciousness is not bare computation but the human experience in all its fullness. How does it feel to smell a flower? Or to gaze at the moon on a summer night? My eyes shifting in anticipation as I prepare to surprise my son with a gift. My heart racing as I embrace the woman I love. Can these machines, yes, made with human matter but without a body or soul, ever have the capacity to understand for themselves what it means to lose a child, to hold her in your hands, to dig a grave, tears dripping onto the ground, knowing that for the rest of your life you will be a different person, forever changed by that one moment?

No, the CL1 and other such projects can never be conscious in any fully human definition of the word. Yes, their intelligence is still artificial, even if it is also biological.

Our flesh is holy.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote his Catechetical Lectures around 350 AD to help catechumens prepare for baptism. In Lecture XII, St. Cyril defends the Incarnation of Christ. Responding to gnostic arguments, St. Cyril notes that our bodies, and therefore the flesh of Christ, were holy by virtue of their creation by God. God does not create anything evil. Therefore, our flesh and every one of its cells, tissues, organs, and yes, even neurons, were created holy,

There is nothing corrupt in man’s frame unless he defiles it with adulteries and wantonness. He who formed Adam formed Eve also; and both male and female were fashioned by the Divine hands. None of the members of the body as fashioned from the beginning is corrupt. Let all heretics be silent who slander their bodies, or rather Him who formed them.1

But St. Cyril recognizes that we have corrupted our flesh. In fact, we have so corrupted our bodies that we cannot save our bodies from this corruption. We are sick patients in need of a Physician to gird himself with a linen and wash away our infirmities. We are orphaned children in need of a Teacher to instruct us in our foolishness. We are hungry beggars in need of the Bread of Life to fill our heavenly desires. The prophets recognized that men were unable to save themselves and begged God, “Bow your heavens, O Lord, and come down!” (Ps. 144:5).

And in our corrupt flesh, we made idols of our own bodies. We worshipped wood, clay, and metal gods made in our own image. We worshipped gods of our own likeness through the degradation of our bodies in adultery, pornography, homosexuality, and other sexual deviancies. And we created a tower of Babel in our own honor, a technological marvel crafted by our own brain matter, by our own flesh, to mimic us. In seeking to elevate ourselves above God, we cheapened our flesh to a commodity, a mere product among products. We took what was holy and made it base.

But God did not see it fit that his images should be so debased. And to elevate the flesh once more, very God of very God took on that flesh. And to save the flesh from its corruption and destroy death itself, Christ wielded the flesh as the sacred weapon of his holy crusade,

Men, having abandoned God, fashioned images like men. Since, therefore, the image of man was falsely worshiped as God, God became truly man, that the falsehood might be destroyed. The devil had made use of the flesh as an instrument against us…. We have been saved by the very weapons which the devil used to conquer us…. His body, therefore, was made a bait to death, that the dragon, when hoping to devour it, might disgorge those also whom he had already devoured. For: “Death having waxed mighty, devoured”; and again: “God wiped away the tears from all faces.”2

The flesh is raised above its original honor to an even greater glory through the Incarnation. In taking on a human body, Christ elevates humanity to the right hand of God, where he reigns in the Celestial City. It is of this elevated flesh and blood from a true man that we are sustained both in body and soul. And if the flesh of humanity has been made so holy in God’s sight, we ought to treat it as worthy of dwelling above the angels, for in its resurrected form, it does.

Christians are all too quick to despise the flesh, treating their bodies as the ultimate enemy behind temptation and sin rather than a gift from God to be cherished. Such an inadequate understanding of the body is not only unprepared to face the moral quandaries of modern technological advancement, but is also incompatible with the historic Church tradition. Without a doubt, our flesh often urges us towards sin. But it is through this struggle in denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Christ, that our flesh will be sanctified.

St. Cyril saw the body as a blessing, a true part of God’s image and something to be inestimably valued. The flesh was not meant to be treated as an unalterable evil. Nor was the flesh meant to be treated as a resource to extract and export to the highest bidder. No, to the Church throughout the ages, the flesh has been respected as a blessed gift from God and a way to experience his love and grace.

Let us respect our bodies, which are to shine as the sun; let us not for the sake of a little pleasure defile so great and noble a body; for the sin is fleeting and of the passing hour, but the shame lasts many years and forever.3

“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” –Matthew 4:1

Original solitude

Adam gave names to all the cattle and to every bird, to all the animals and to every living creature. But for Adam, there was no companion. It is not good for a man to be alone.

Solitude is described as “not good.” God, ultimately wanting to solve the problem of solitude by uniting man with himself, creates an excellent solution for the solitude of man that reflects God’s eternal love: Marriage.

But marriage was never meant to be the final solution to solve our loneliness. Instead, marriage foreshadows a greater relationship we will have someday with Christ. And marriage isn’t enough to fulfill the desires of humanity. Even as good as it is, and even though their marriage satisfied much of their loneliness, it wasn’t enough to completely satisfy their solitude, or, for that matter, all of their desires.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for a new article in your inbox semi-regularly.

Subscribe now

Why else would Satan tempt Eve, “If you eat of this fruit, you shall become like gods”? Every man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desire and enticed. And when that wrong desire has conceived, it brings forth sin. And when sin has run its course, it brings death.

Adam and Eve had it all backwards. What did the serpent say? “Eat this fruit, and you shall become like God!” A lie, of course. They could not do anything themselves to become any more like God. God had made them wonderfully complete in his image. No, they were not to become more like God by their own doing.

Marriage was the picture of something better to come, an ultimate end to our loneliness. That end where Christ, in the flesh, is standing before us, his bride, full of pleasure at the sight of us. The end, when we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. When the dwelling place of God is with man, when God shall be with us, and he shall be our God, the Lamb as was slain for us.

But until then, we struggle with the same loneliness that Adam did. Single or married, we are all at times lonely in our own thoughts. Sometimes we are even lonely together. And our sin further exasperates this solitude. And we cry. We mourn. We struggle. We ask God, “Why?” Why is life so lonely?

Life is lonely, so we might desire God. So that we might long for the union of our souls with his, as a bride longs for her wedding. Life is lonely because God made us to be with him, and when we are not, we are broken.

We can only be whole when we are with God. As St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in God!” In this way, our restlessness points us to seek an ultimate end to our loneliness: God himself.

The temptation of Christ

Look at Christ. The God-man who put on the veil of our flesh and stepped into our brokenness. Not only does he experience the everyday struggles we face, but he also meets us in our loneliness. Christ, the one who will ultimately fulfill our longing hearts, also becomes lonely for our sakes.

Notice here, then, that when you are lonely, you do not sin. No, but because our Christ was lonely, we can have confidence that our loneliness does not affect our purity. In fact, it was the Spirit of God who drew Christ into the lonely wilderness:

“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.” –Matthew 4:1-2

The Holy Spirit led Christ into loneliness. The Holy Spirit brought him into hunger. The Holy Spirit guided Christ to the place where Satan would tempt him.

Christ, recently baptized, accepting the honor of the Father, “This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” is immediately brought by the Holy Spirit, the very dove who lighted upon him, into the desert to be hungry, alone, and tempted.

And here is a crucial point for you to consider. The burdens, the temptations of Christ, the hunger, and the pain were not signs of the Father’s dissatisfaction with the Son, but of his approval. Therefore, we cannot assume that when we are hungry, broken, alone, and facing Satan, God is distant from us.

Rather, it is in those moments when God is often nearest, when he is stoking our desire to be near him as well. To long for him, to desire him, to seek him with all our being that he may be found and that we may evermore be pleased with him above any happiness we have ever felt or longed for. Longing for us to draw near him in faith and love. To say with the woman looking for her beloved when she finally found him,

“I held him and would not let go. My beloved is mine, and I am his.” –Song of Solomon 2:16; 3:4

Like the psalmist who cries out to God,

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, So panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: When shall I come and appear before God?” –Psalm 42:1–2

The temptation of Christ, like all true temptation, is all about one thing: love. You will desire what you love. You may love many things, but that which you love the most will overrule all lesser desires.

So that when we sin and confess our sins, we are confessing primarily that we have not loved God in the way we ought. What does King David say in his wonderful Psalm of confession?

“For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.” –Psalm 51:3–4

But this is a prayer that Christ will never pray, because the love Christ has for his Father is perfect. The love that Christ has for you, his neighbor, is perfect. See how Christ responds to temptation. Observe his love. His ultimate desire is revealed in his loneliness, revealed in the absence of the object of his desire, all while Satan tempts Jesus the first time,

“If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” –Matthew 4:3

By bread alone? No.

As in the Garden of Eden, when Satan tempted Eve with the fruit, Satan began with one of our most basic bodily desires: hunger. Adam and Eve, who had had their fill of the Edenic harvest, were tempted with a fruit. Christ, who had fasted for forty days and nights, now hungered, and Satan tempted him with bread.

Yet, unknown to Satan, Christ, though he had fasted for forty days from earthly food, had feasted for forty days on the banquet of heaven. He had dined on angelic food. Yes, the love of God is the bread that angels eat. And though he hungered in the body, he responded,

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” –Matthew 4:4

Like Job, Christ cried,

“I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food!” –Job 23:12

But our culture tests us too. And we often allow our fleshly lusts, our bodily desires, to obscure the love we have for God. We choose the measly bread of this world over the face of God.

Our culture tries to fulfill our bodily desires in many ways. One bite too many at the restaurant. One lustful look in the middle of the night. Another puff. Another drink. Another toy. A bigger house. A better retirement.

Many of these desires are not wrong. Indeed, God gave us bodies with legitimate desires. But how often we twist our bodily desires and elevate them above God’s ordered plan!

Look to Christ! Look to him who sacrificed it all. Who counted his bodily desires as nothing in the face of God’s pleasure. He, who through his deepest of loves for God, was given the first of the resurrected bodies—that body which will never suffer with death or pain, which is utterly satisfied with God himself.

Apart from God, bread or any other fleshly fulfillment will never satisfy.

God has put eternity in our hearts. Our appetite is ever-hungry, and only an infinite God can fill the bottomless pit of our hearts. All our other desires point to God, who is the only one who can bring any ultimate fulfillment. He is our heavenly bread. He is our living water.

Taking advantage of God

Satan comes to Christ a second time. He transports Christ to the pinnacle of the temple,

“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He will command his angels to bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.” –Matthew 4:6

Ah, Jesus, if you are the Son of God, prove it to your people. Show them God will protect you. Show them your command over the angels. Bring yourself fame and recognition! Isn’t that what you want, glory?

“It is written, you shall not tempt the Lord your God.” –Matthew 4:7

If Jesus cast himself off the temple, he would be taking advantage of God’s power, or tempting God with his own premature death so that God would be obliged to save him. But if we truly love someone, we don’t reduce them to a tool to use in a scheme to make ourselves great. No, if we love someone, we sacrifice ourselves for their good.

And yet, again, that is precisely what the world and our flesh would tempt us to do. To use people for our own fame. Or even worse, to use God for our own comfort, for our own glory.

Politicians invoke the name of God to further their careers. False teachers fleece the flock of all their money to expand their empire. They use their ill-gotten gains to buy fancy suits and jet planes. And even we today are tempted to do this on a smaller scale in our families, careers, and in the way we interact with the world.

Look to Christ! Yes, Christ wanted glory. He wanted ultimate glory. He wanted ultimate honor. He wanted ultimate comfort. And for that highest of glories, Jesus lived a lonely life, hated by his countrymen and persecuted by the authorities. Ultimately, he would be killed by the Romans in sight of that pinnacle of the Temple Mount.

“Well done, my good and faithful servant!” That is the glory we seek! To hear the words from the one who loved us so deeply that he sacrificed his own life for us, “Well done.”

Apart from God, fame, recognition, or comfort will never satisfy.

God has made us in his image. We were made to honor God and receive his favor. All glory of this world is fleeting. It is a shadow of the pleasure of God. God is our glory.

Choose today whom you will worship.

Satan came to Christ the last time. He now makes his ultimate desire known, the desire he had when, prior to earth’s creation, he fell from heaven’s glory,

“Bow down to me! And I will give you all the kingdoms of the world!”

As John Milton so eloquently described Satan’s motivation, “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.”

And Jesus’ response?

“Be gone, Satan! For it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.” –Matthew 4:10

What does it mean to worship? Worship is the honor you give to the greatest of your loves. It is praise, love, and reliance.

Had Jesus bowed to Satan here, he would be signaling that he loved what Satan represented and what Satan could give him. He would be showing his reliance on Satan to provide for him what he thought would satisfy his desires. In the act of bowing, Christ would be showing praise to him for who he was and his power.

But of course, Christ did not do bow to Satan. We worship God alone. Why?

• Because God is the only one worthy of that degree of love. He who created us. Who became like us. Who dies for us. Who restored us. We love him because he first loved us.

• Because he is the only one able to both provide for our needs and satisfy all of our longings. We were made for him, and he gives himself for us.

• And because he is the only person who deserves our worship. He is the only immortal, invisible, God-only-wise.

And again, we are tempted to bow down to the allure of wealth and power. In our feeble minds, it is so easy to be distracted by the meaningless power of this world. It is easy to be anxious, to fear, to think, “Can God really provide?” To rely on something or someone other than God to care for us.

Look to Christ! Not a moment of discontentment! Not a shiver of fear! Only courage, “Begone Satan!” Oh, may God continue to form us into the image of his Son! We are weak. We tremble. We wander. But thank God, his Son does not. May we lean on him. When we struggle, may we grasp the hem of his garment. And when the seas rise, as Spurgeon once said, may we kiss the wave that drives us to the rock of Christ.

Apart from God, wealth and power will never satisfy.

Touched by our infirmities

Life is lonely. It is painful. And Christ did not insulate himself from that loneliness, pain, or hunger. We often feel weak and powerless. But we are never abandoned by God. Look to Christ! When you are tempted. Look to Christ! When you have victory, look to Christ! When you give in to temptation, look to Christ! And say with the Psalmist,

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” –Psalm 51:1, 7

Our decisions in the face of trials, loneliness, and temptation reveal who or what we love most. And when our love for God is proved, our desire for him intensifies into an overwhelming longing for him, a desire which shall be satisfied and shine as an example for those around us.

And in your loneliness, look beside you. Gaze on the Christ who is near by your side, hungry and tempted, yet without sin. Look to him, that High Priest who understands and experiences our struggles. Look to Jesus, very God of very God, who is the answer to our loneliness and the ultimate fulfillment of all our desires.

In the name of that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

A homily delivered on February 22, 2026 at St. Thomas Anglican Church in Halfmoon, NY. The voiceover is not the original live recording.

It is not wise to put a playroom on the top floor of a four-story apartment building, especially when it has ceiling windows that might as well be ladders to the roof. And we were just kids. Unsupervised kids. Bored unsupervised kids.

We started by opening the window and scraping snow off the slanted roof to make snowballs to throw at each other. Soon, there was no more snow within reach. That’s how my ten-year-old self and my eight-year-old brother wound up standing on the roof of our building on an army base near Heidelberg, Germany.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

Of course, as soon as we were on the roof, we just had to throw snowballs at some woman walking down below like a tiny ant under our almighty gaze. Ah, but she saw us! We were made. Quickly, we jumped through the window and ran back to our apartment, hoping she would never find out who we were or where we lived. Thankfully, she didn’t.

I didn’t tell my mom about the escapade until years later. Still, even as an adult, if I had told her in person, she would have probably beaten me within an inch of my life. After all, she brought me into this world…

Boredom led me to chase hogs barefoot in a swampy Florida forest.

Boredom led my brother and me to leave our home in Black Mountain, NC, for hours at a time to climb a nearby mountain without trails, again barefoot, to watch the sunset from the peak, and to find our way home in the near dark.

Boredom led me to read many of the classics when my father kept us from school. They were free online and helped me make up for only having a fifth-grade education.

Boredom led me to bike around town, pick cherries I wasn’t supposed to, and discover new places even my parents had no idea existed.

Boredom led me to see how high I could climb that old cedar tree. I then sliced open my thumb with a pocket knife while working to cut a branch from that tree to make a bow. I have a scar today and still smile whenever I feel it.

Boredom led me to make a dart gun out of a PVC pipe, wire coat hangers, and duct tape. I used it to peg lizards to the fence when we lived in Florida.

Boredom led me into photography, and I began to see the beauty in every part of the world. Teenage me took pictures of everything, from wild bears to bumblebees to sunsets and flowers, all because I was bored.

Boredom led me to the arts. I can still play simple tunes on the piano, and I taught myself to draw portraits; I used to be halfway decent!

I hated boredom, yet boredom was one of my closest friends. I had the privilege of a childhood filled with boredom.

Perhaps you had such a childhood?

And then the machine came and stole our childhood. The algorithm declared, “No more boredom!” and we lunged for stimulation like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, our eyes pried open, not with clamps, but by our dread of silence. And with the loss of our boredom, we lost our sense of adventure, creativity, and connection.

You can watch it in public: parents, fleeing boredom themselves, passing their tech gluttony on to their children. At a restaurant, that family will have no less than one device per person, and often more, their attention consumed by screens lest they have to deal with the boredom of an everyday family conversation. Never mind the fact that such boredom once urged families to do something together, to say something to each other and expect a response. No, little Johnny needs an iPad lest I have to exert any emotional effort. Sally is bored. She doesn’t need parents, she needs Roblox.

Worse, we are guiding our children into this same effortless self-pleasure by our example because we won’t put down our own phones and be parents, much less adults. Given the choice, kids will pick the iPad, the TV, or the console every time. How do I know that? Because you’re an adult, and that’s what you pick. Can we expect children to be more mature than their parents?

Bring back boredom.

In play, we find God. No child plays to his fullest unless he is first bored. His boredom urges him to adventure, and in adventure, he entirely loses himself in the discovery of himself and in nature, the laws of the universe, and ultimately, God. The little girl explores her creativity and, over time, through skill and experience, finds that what she is grasping to create is nothing less than a portrait of the Almighty.

All this is lost if there is no boredom. If there is no silence. If there is no nagging restlessness to do something with yourself.

In our discomfort, we have traded the transcendental for trinkets and baubles. God has prepared a table for us, and the gluttons we are, we have chosen to dine on saccharine dainties instead of God’s satisfying wonders. But if we would deprive ourselves for but a moment of these passing whims, do you think God would allow us to gaze upon him in all his glory? Do you think he might give us the longing to play once again? Will our anxiety ever be satisfied if we do not first ponder our restlessness and sit quietly in it, altogether weighed down by boredom and silence, till, all at once, we have a revelation?

Ah, to run through a forest? Yes! To climb mountains! To paint masterpieces, to read the classics, to play a melody on the piano over and over and over again until you hear the notes as words in your ears saying, “Well done, my child. Well done!” and pride so rises in your chest because you realize you have won! You have accomplished something meaningful that reflects the one who breathed you into existence.

Go!

Do something!

Do anything!

Even if it’s dangerous.

Especially if it’s dangerous.

And the next time your child says, “I’m boooooored,” don’t hand him an iPad. Take it as a compliment to your parenting and say, “Good. Be bored.” And you will have given him something far better than a passing whiff of a cheap perfume; you will have filled his nostrils with a longing for the sweet savor of God.

It is wild to me that two people can view the same video and see wildly different things. It is even more wild to me that they can then act as if their biases and immediate reaction about a 30-second clip must be the truth. And that on both sides.

They don’t merely claim they know the truth; they take it for granted. So much so that if anyone disagrees with them, they aren’t merely disagreeing with their opinion. No, they are disagreeing with the truth.

It may give you a feeling of moral superiority to make an immediate gut-decision, but all it really does is make you angrier. It makes the other side angrier. It makes everyone angrier. And it causes those who are unsure to feel that they must make a verdict, as if they were the jury in an all-important case, and that their lives and the future of their country depend on their wise judgment. If they refuse to make a choice, they draw the ire of both sides.

The issue? Most of us have no clue what’s going on. Most of us are not wise. There are many times for every individual when, in the stressful circumstances of life, he must decide in the face of ignorance. We enter those decisions with trembling and anxiety. Such decisions could have drastic effects on our lives. But such matters pale in importance to these national debates.

Yet, we make judgments of national importance with such light gravity and castigate those who disagree. Instead of trembling, we are confident. Instead of being filled with anxiety, like we are about many everyday decisions, on this, a judgment of life and death, we approach it boldly as if we are the final arbitrators of right and wrong.

To hell with the other side, we are going to exert our powers! After all, we have watched a 30-second clip! And it was clear to me, the greatest of all judges, that so-and-so was at fault! And I am smarter than all those other rubes on the other side! How could anyone disagree with me! Therefore, whatever I say must be true!

Shame on us.

God have mercy on our souls. God have mercy on Minneapolis. God have mercy on America. God have mercy on ICE. God have mercy on the immigrants. God have mercy on the protestors. God have mercy on both Christians and those who oppose Christ.

God have mercy on me. I am an ignorant man trying to do the best I can every day for my family, church, and community. These matters are too large for me.

May you uphold the righteous, whoever they are. May you judge the wicked, whoever they are. Oh God, please protect the innocent. May you draw souls to you, regardless of their political persuasion. Our nation has rebelled against you and deserves all this violence and so much more. May you save us even in our rebellion. May you turn our hearts to Christ out of your steadfast love and for your ultimate glory. May you dwell with us so that our swords may be turned to plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks? We cannot have peace without you, God. We cannot know truth without you, God. Give us your peace. Give us your truth.

Amen.

God is a God of superabundance; some may even ignorantly accuse him of waste.

He delights in the extra, or the useless, that which seemingly tends to no end but the delight of itself. He creates a lavish world intended for abundance, which we often mistake for messiness.

Look at how man is created. The waste from our noses, mouths, sweat pores, dead skin, and other more earthy parts of our bodies. Our hair needs to be trimmed, our nails cut.

This extends to all of creation. Trees must be sheared. Flowers must be pruned. Vines grow where they ought not to grow. Imagine counting every grain of sand, or every droplet of water. Such a task is far beyond the human mind's capabilities. Surely, there are countless stars and planets, as many as the grains of sand on the beach, with their own unique and beautiful abiotic miracles that man will never gaze upon, fragrances men will never enjoy, colors men will never see, siren songs men will never hear—all of these for his pleasure.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

And look at the death of Christ. It is not merely that he died, which is already beyond any expectation we could rightly have. But examine the way he died. Yes, he must be whipped. He must have a crown of thorns placed upon his head. He must have his persecutors divide his robe. He must be nailed to a tree. He must thirst. He must give up the ghost. And he must ultimately be pierced by a spear.

But must he die in this way? Yes. Because it is fitting. It fits his nature of love and opulence. It is a fitting fulfillment of Old Testament sacramentalism. It fits prophecy. But because God tells the story, because everything from eternity past to the cross and far beyond is God’s providential plan, it is God who predestined the passion of Christ, that it must happen as it did with all of its abundant messiness, to be the fitting introduction to his reign.

He could have made a quick death fitting. A noose. A quick snap. Privately with less shame and suffering. And he could have made this sufficient had he predestined different Old Testament signs and prophecies so that the ones concerning the passion had never been written, but he did not. It must be apparent to us that such a quick and painless death would not be fitting according to his nature, wisdom, and love precisely because he did not choose to die in that way.

Why? Because he is superabundant in all that he does. Surely, one drop of blood can wipe away the sins of all mankind when that drop of blood flows from the heart of God. And yet, Christ did not shed one mere drop of his sacred blood, the amount of which, if we possessed it, would be the most priceless gift we could enjoy. He spilled all of it. And he continually and forever calls us to drink of it in the eucharistic wine. His sacrifice is infinitely more abundant than our sin is sinful, so that our cup is constantly and eternally overflowing with his love, and the world becomes a reservoir of grace from the overflow, like a saucer waiting to catch tea. Except then even the saucer overflows, and our tea gushes all over the floor!

So much grace, we don’t know what to do with all of it. So much grace, we wonder if there is even an “all of it.” Its use? None beyond itself. Love for love’s sake. God for God’s sake. An eternal testimony of itself, an ever-flowing fountain bursting forth with magnificent streams of God’s love, larger than any river, enough to embrace infinitely more than all the souls of the whole world in its overwhelming ocean. When his love pours on us, our sin is but a grain of sand in the face of a hurricane: atomically inconsequential.

Ah, yes, let them call him a wasteful God; he takes pleasure in his waste.

And for this cause, he does not here say ‘grace,’ but superabundance of grace. For it was not as much as we must have to do away the sin only, that we received of His grace, but even far more. For we were at once freed from punishment, and put off all iniquity, and were also born from above, and rose again with the old man buried, and were redeemed, sanctified, led up to adoption, made brothers of the Only-begotten, and of one Body with Him, and counted for His Flesh, and even as a Body with the Head, so were we united unto Him!1

–St. John Chrysostom

A man caught in the rain does not stay that way if he has any sense about him. No one enjoys the feeling of wet clothing sticking to his skin while the winds of the storm shiver him from without. Only children enjoy playing in the rain. No, he will seek shelter from the storm.

And if he happens near a bridge, he will find under it a suitable refuge in which to patiently wait while the storm passes by. The man gets no wetter, not because the rain has ceased, but because he has changed his position in relation to the rain.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

He cannot act upon the storm in any real sense. He may leave the safety of the bridge and vainly try if he wishes, still, rain dancing will only leave him in a more discomfiting situation than before, and have as much effect on the rain as trying to nudge a mountain with his pinky finger. It is the rain’s prerogative, as if the rain had any intention, to act as it pleases. In this circumstance, it is only within the man’s ability to react or not react. The rain is the subject while the man is a mere object playing within the rain’s being.

Of God, the Doctors have staunchly noted, there are no passions. And yet, the psalmists and prophets would charge God with anger, sadness, and comedic euphoria. Are the writers of Holy Scripture and the theologians of the Church at odds with one another? Some would claim so: That Scripture is clear, God reacts in passionate empathy to the circumstances and choices of men. Else, how can God rightly be called loving?

I answer, He is like the rain. And contrary to the modern mind, which rejects impassibility as if it diminishes God’s love, I believe it alone provides a stable ground for our emotional life.

Rain cannot properly be called wet, for “wet” is an attribute water gives to other things. Rain is not itself a wet object, but water in motion as droplets falling from the sky, wetting all it pitters and patters upon. Rain isn’t a wet thing. Rather, it is that thing which makes everything else wet.

Likewise, a man may say the bridge is dry to signify its protection from the rain, but he is not, in the strictest sense, talking about the bridge’s own condition. What matters is the dryness it creates in the midst of what would otherwise be wet. In truth, dryness is merely an absence of wetness. The bridge may be dry or dripping; that is not the point. Whether wet itself or not, beneath its span of wood or stone, it provides a measure of dryness. It is not simply a dry thing, but the thing that keeps those under it dry.

To merely call God loving is an understatement of enormous proportions. God is Love. He is that One by whom all true love is known and expressed. We call Him loving only by analogy, because He is not one loving being among others but Love itself. He is like an eternal rain, soaking everything it touches, drenching all things with Himself.

A man can only be said to be loving to the degree that God is in him and extends from him. God is love, or love belongs to His very being. Conversely, man’s love is derivative. Like the man made wet by the rain, he does not have the quality of wetness apart from something outside of him making him wet. The loving man does not create his own love but reflects the love poured on him by his Maker.

All of our emotions are responses to our human perception, whether conscious or instinctual, to this flow of God’s love. Our emotions are reactions to how we perceive God’s affection, either directly from God or indirectly through the reflections of other images of God.

Therefore, we also perceive these different emotions in God’s affection according to our circumstances. Yet this perception, while analogically true, is not ontologically so. In God Himself, there are no shifting moods. His anger is not a second feeling beside His love, but that same holy love encountered by the sinner as anger. His pleasure is that same love tasted by the righteous as God delighting in holiness. What we call His “sadness” is that same love’s settled and ardent opposition to the ruin of His creatures.

Again, the change is not in the rain, but in the position of man in relation to the rain. His affection is not independent of His simplicity. He is one, unchanging, eternal, “without body, parts, or passions.”3 The one simple divine affection is experienced diversely by creatures according to their state, such as favor to the contrite, and anger to the evil. He who dwells in love, dwells in God. But, he who is evil seeks to live in the absence of God’s love or contrary to His goodness. He has, so to speak, chosen to live under the bridge to spite his discomfort for the rain.

Because we understand the world through our own limited experience, we instinctively imagine that God feels and reacts as we do. A God without reactive emotions or passions strikes us as a terrible prospect, as if He were uncaring or incapable of understanding the intensity of sorrow and joy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

To say that God is without passions is not to say that He is without affection. In us, passions imply multiplicity, change, reactivity, and fluctuation. The affection of God is real, but unlike our passions, it is single, eternal, proactive, and unchanging. He is the Lord. He changes not. What we call “feeling” in the Godhead is thus single, eternal, proactive, and unchanging.

The affection of God is far stronger, deeper, and more settled than our highest joys and deepest sorrows. What we feel cannot compare with the eternal reality of God’s limitless affection. This means that, far from God being unempathetic or “unfeeling,” the weight of His affection far surpasses any of our emotional understandings.

We are made in His image, though we are not Him. God has ontological power; man’s power is derivative of His. Whatever wisdom man has is only reflected light from Wisdom Himself, God. And, yes, man’s emotion is derivative as well, specifically of God’s affection. Just as our power and wisdom are dependent, reactive, and changing in relation to His power and wisdom, so our emotions are dependent, reactive, and changing in relation to His independent, proactive, and eternal affection.

Therefore, to best image God in our emotions, we must seek, through them, to reflect His affection. Because God’s love is immutable, our emotional life matures as it is ordered by that love into something stable, patient, and holy. God’s impassibility is not the enemy of human emotion; it is the pattern that our creaturely, reactive hearts are called to reflect.

The hope of glory is this: that we are perfectly united in Christ, and our perception of God’s affection, whether conscious or not, is so aligned with Reality Himself that we react emotionally in perfect concord with His eternal, proactive love, and our passions eternally mirror the steady affection of our Creator.

On that day, we shall become childlike once again, forever playing in the rain.

Brainrot is symptomatic of a positive change in our culture. Don’t believe me? Give me a chance to explain.

By brainrot, I mean that flood of absurd, self-canceling digital content that is intentionally low quality and lacking any rhyme or reason. Examples of brainrot include the skibidi toilet meme or the incoherent “6-7.” Brainrot is extremely pervasive in Gen Z culture.

Many call it cultural decay. Doubtless, doomscrolling or an overconsumption of senseless content will have harmful effects on any frequent viewer. Nothing is charming about the memes themselves; however, brainrot as a phenomenon is a brutally honest indication of a step toward a culture that prioritizes objective truth, an earnest inner cry for the good, beautiful, and true.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

It’s 1916 in Zurich. World War I is still raging. The horrors of the war were like none that came before it. Modernized weaponry led to the unforeseen tragedies and losses associated with trench warfare. The Great War put a definitive end to any romantic notions of battle that had come before it in previous ages. The reality of significant and widespread horrors led to a radical shift in the cultural understanding of many topics, including religion, objective truth, and, most relevant here, art.

The dire pessimism resulting from the war gave rise to an art style known as Dadaism, with the express purpose of mocking the ideas of the world before the war. It saw the ideas of the “old world” as the cause of the war and sought to protest everything associated with those ideas. Dadaist artists rejected logic, reason, and traditional aestheticism and embraced chaos and absurdity as a way to protest what they believed led to the senselessly violent conflict.

In brief and somewhat simplified terms, Dadaism at its core originated as a means to mock the concept of objective truth in an “aesthetic” way.

Dadaism’s assault on traditional art helped give rise to Surrealism, with its fascination for the dreamlike unconscious of the artist and disregard for objective reality, and later to Abstract Expressionism, which sought to emphasize subjective feeling over rational control. In response to this stark subjectivity, Minimalism pursued an austere, impersonal clarity, stripping art to its most basic elements. If Dada mocked the old certainties, Minimalism stripped away almost everything that remained.

In the 2010s, Minimalism made a significant resurgence. Significant may be an understatement. Likely fueled by Apple’s successful design choices, it was the art style of choice everywhere, whether in art museums, commercial packaging, or in architecture on streets around the country. It seemed, for a time, like every week, a new business would rebrand its long-held, so-called “busy” logo with a sleek, clean, new minimalist one.

Gen Z, with their beige moms, experienced this minimalist resurgence as children. Instead of appreciating the form and function of the art style, they rejected Minimalism as being as strikingly bare as an emperor wearing invisible clothes. Millennials cried, “Less is more!” Gen Z responded, “No! Less is actually less!” To Gen Z, Minimalism is the prioritization of function at the cost of meaning. It is productivity without purpose. It is cold corporatism without soul.

Brainrot is the antithesis of Dadaism. Dadaism is a mockery of the objective, the logical, the very idea of truth. It rejected the good, beautiful, and true. The absurd becomes more absurd, but, thankfully, the progression is not endless. The cycle ultimately ends with the absurd mocking itself. Brainrot is nothingness mocking nothingness.

Brainrot does not mock reality, like Dadaism, but the absurd. It mocks a world devoid of the good, beautiful, and true. Once the absurd mocks itself and proves unacceptable, relativism becomes infeasible. Gen Z’s mockery of the void, however clumsily, reveals their longing for the transcendental life.

Gen Z will not be satisfied with smoke machines, TV screens, rock bands, expensive lights, or nifty after-service goodie bags. In a world of absence, they long for substance. When meaninglessness becomes ridiculous, meaning is the only thing left to try.

And as the Church, we offer Meaning Himself.

This summer, my family and I became Anglican. Some friends and family were surprised to learn, from our announcement, that we had seriously considered Roman Catholicism in our journey. Other Roman Catholic friends of mine were confused as to why I had not crossed the proverbial Tiber. Many of those close to me and some online have asked me to tell my story. Well, here it is.

First, I do not use “Roman” Catholic in a derogatory sense as some Roman Catholics claim Protestants do (some do). I use it to distinguish among the catholic traditions. Because I am not Roman Catholic, I do not believe that the Roman expression of the catholic faith is the only form of that faith, even while I recognize that the Roman expression is a valid form of the catholic faith.

The Nicene Creed says, “We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.” Catholic is best defined by St. Vincent of Lérins as the faith “believed everywhere, always, and by all.” In short, the catholic Church is the universal body across geography and time that has held to the same core tenets of Christianity. Where there is consensus on a belief, there is the basic foundation of catholic doctrine. Anyone who wishes to be called catholic should seek to align themselves with these consensual doctrines.

But why should I care to be called catholic?

At one time, I couldn’t have cared less. I was not familiar with the creedal tradition, let alone the concept of Church consensus. I had my Bible, and that was enough. Until it wasn’t. Actually, it’s not that the Bible wasn’t enough. It was that my intellect wasn’t enough. Let me explain.

The Bible is the fountainhead of all truth, but to understand it, we must use our flawed minds and make fallible judgments whenever we interpret Scripture. Though the Bible is wholly true and the final rule of faith and practice, how can I trust that I understood the truth it was trying to convey in the way God intended it to be understood? Like the rest of humanity, my brain is subject to misinterpreting Scripture due not only to my sinful nature, but also the bias I inherit from my background, culture, age, and personal circumstances.

While in college, I was confronted with a practical outworking of this problem, although I didn’t know it at the time, nor could I have put it into words like these. I had been taught by every one of my pastors, parents, mentors, and teachers that only a particular Bible version is acceptable for Christians in the English-speaking world. The Independent Fundamental Baptist (IFB) movement effectively made using the KJV a central dogma of belief.

When, in the last year of my undergraduate studies, I began to doubt that anyone’s conscience should be bound to using only the KJV, it did not end merely with a different understanding of Bible translations. Because I recognized that KJV-onlyism was a central tenet of the IFB, I realized I could no longer be a part of the IFB movement.

Unfortunately, some of my friends did not identify KJV-onlyism exclusively with the IFB, but with Christianity as a whole. Many of these kids had always been taught that the IFB was the preeminent form of Christianity. I know several who ultimately rejected Christianity after seeing the flaws in KJV-onlyism and other fundamentalist teachings. Because these teachings had been treated as central to “pure” Christian doctrine, leaving them felt like leaving true Christianity itself, and they concluded that the faith as a whole was not valid.

But when I left, I realized that Christianity was much larger than the IFB, and many of my long-held beliefs began to be confronted, not by theological liberalism, but by other orthodox Christian traditionalists who interpreted Scripture, often the same passages, differently than I had been taught. Sometimes, it seemed to me, with deep study, these other interpretations were incorrect. At other times, I was convinced they were undoubtedly correct. My doctrine evolved over several years following my undergraduate experience.

Reeling from the recognition that I had been taught incorrect interpretations on numerous topics that seemed to me so easily disproven, I had a moment of realization: how did I know I was right? Could not my interpretations be “easily disproven” by those whom I had left—using a methodology different from mine—or even by those who were merely more intelligent or better read than I?

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

I was interpreting Scripture the way I had always done, but the hermeneutic I had been given left me anxious and uncertain about the truth. I found that, rather than being centered on Scripture, my hermeneutic was centered on my ability to interpret Scripture, and not only to interpret Scripture, but also to determine for myself what constituted the most basic doctrines that defined Christianity as a whole.

In my experience, many in the IFB had decided, based on their understanding of Scripture, that certain doctrines (like KJV-onlyism) were central to the definition of Christianity. Who was I to say they were wrong? How could I rely solely on my own reason to prove the error of their doctrine when some in their camp were clearly more learned than I was?

Fundamentally, what made my reason better than theirs? What made my list of essential doctrines right and theirs wrong? To top it off, many of the men who taught me were undoubtedly more experienced and had walked with God longer and more deeply than I had.

This feeling of uncertainty was compounded by my seemingly ever-evolving understanding of doctrine. After thorough study, my soteriology developed: I rejected dispensationalism, set aside unconditional eternal security, and more. Over the course of seven years, my doctrine underwent continual changes as I discovered new ways in which I had been misinformed.

Yet even as I was changing, how could I know whether the direction of that change was right? I know many godly people in the IFB movement who still have my deepest respect. My dearest mentor, the man through whom God secured my desire to serve Him, was a staunch IFB teacher at my alma mater. Was I implicitly condemning him and others as “less spiritual” by departing from the doctrines they had taught me?

Then I was confronted with Roman Catholicism. While I recognized the weaknesses of my former tradition and was searching for truth, my uncertainty deepened when I realized that many things I’d been taught about Roman Catholicism were straw men. I would also learn that the misconceptions run deep on both sides.

Growing up, prayer to the saints, the Marian dogmas, purgatory, and other Roman Catholic doctrines were painted as extreme caricatures of what I would come to learn were well-thought-out positions that deserved real intellectual attention. When I was confronted with the steelman version of these arguments, I did not have the tools to respond immediately.

But forming opinions on these positions took a backseat for a time in the face of the papacy. To a theologically anxious mind, the papacy is Roman Catholicism's most attractive allure. It is also what defines Roman Catholicism among the Christian traditions. As I began to understand the Pope’s role within the Roman Catholic hermeneutic, I felt a forceful draw to Rome.

If Rome’s claims are right, what the papacy provides is of inestimable value many times over. The Pope truly acts as a father within the Roman Catholic Church. A son has no need to doubt his father’s words; he simply trusts and obeys them. Over time, he studies them more deeply and comes to a fuller understanding of his father’s wisdom and judgment. In his father’s house, away from the confusion of the outside world, a son may recognize his unbelief as a form of misunderstanding and choose to set it aside under the wisdom of his father.

If the papal claims were true, I would be willing to suspend my myriad objections to a host of other doctrines. If the Pope and magisterium define a dogma, I could be like that son who is happy to eat from his father’s hand. I would no longer need to struggle with the anxiety of whether I was right or wrong, at least on the essential topics. I would bypass the first and most anxiety-inducing step of theological inquiry: the question would no longer be which doctrines are true, but why those doctrines are true.

For several months, I struggled both mind and soul with severe doubt. Our lead pastor was on an extended leave for ministry training. In his absence, I was pastoring, working overtime at my secular job, preparing for my next semester at seminary, and parenting four exuberant children. My heart was breaking because I felt the weight of my struggle and knew that, were I to change, I would be disowned by many of my closest friends and family. My sleep and diet were heavily affected. Halfway through this period, while I was overseeing a visiting missions team for the week, my wife had a miscarriage.

Still, I studied. I read the Bible. I read the Church Fathers. Every extra moment, I researched the papacy. It was normal for me to stay up until 3 or 4 am, studying or discussing it with my wife, only to roll out of bed at 7:30 to get ready for work. Every drive, I listened to an audiobook or podcast. In my downtime during my job, I watched videos on every side of the issue (my job at the time allowed for this).

I realized that if the papacy was necessary to the definition of the Church, this was a matter of life and death, heaven and hell. I took Cyprian seriously when he wrote,

Whoever dissociates himself from the Church is joined to a counterfeit paramour, he is cut off from the promises of Christ, and neither will he who abandons Christ’s Church attain to Christ’s rewards. He is a foreigner, he is deconsecrated, and he is an enemy. He cannot have God as his Father who does not have the Church as his Mother.1

I would take the interpretations I had heard and exegete the relevant biblical passages. Then, I would sift them through the Church Fathers to judge whether the Church throughout the ages would accept these interpretations. It was a lot of work. Preaching a series through the Lord’s Prayer only energized my studies.

And then I came to an interesting conclusion, one that, when it first entered my over-busied mind, made me laugh aloud:

The same issue I had faced before was present in Roman Catholicism, though reduced to a single question of infinitely greater weight. Where before I had to use my reason to decide on many lesser doctrines, now I had to use my reason to decide on one: the papacy. I realized then that reason was not the enemy; regardless of what tradition I chose, my fallen reason was a necessary part of that choice. I must trust that God would overcome the fallenness not only of my own reason but also of the reason of those who chose differently from me.

Over time, and through my studies, I became increasingly skeptical of the papacy. Where once I felt weeks away from settling the matter, I was soon backing away ever so slowly. I would never back all the way to where I started: the Baptist tradition. I never will. In my struggle, I had become thoroughly convinced of several doctrines that prevented me from returning to the way I had always been.

In all, our transformation took about a year, with the consideration of Roman Catholicism lasting about six months near the start of that time. Looking back, the most critical part of this journey actually started several years beforehand. I began reading the Church Fathers. In doing so, I realized that many of the doctrines I held had no historical basis.

In 2023, I wrote a paper titled “Guidelines to Determine Heresy from Orthodoxy” for my graduate studies. In it, I became convinced of the necessity of Church consensus—not as a replacement for Scripture, nor as its equal in preeminence—but as an interpretive boundary for reading it. Little did I know, I had ignited the spark that would lead me away from my beloved Baptist tradition. An article based on that paper can be read here.

During our time of discernment, my wife and I also discovered that Sola Scriptura stands in opposition to the notion of “just me and my Bible.” Scripture is our final rule of faith and practice—but not our only rule. Tradition is a genuine authority. Church leaders, such as bishops and priests, are genuine authorities. Yet the final authority remains God’s Word. This differs from Solo Scriptura, which permits a faith without any authority outside of Scripture.

Luther, defending what would come to be known as Sola Scriptura, described the Bible as the norma normans non normata or the “norm of norms that cannot be normed.” As the Word of God (on which all Christians agree), it is the final authority from which all other structures derive their authority. Nevertheless, those other structures do possess real authority.

I am convinced that principles analogous to Sola Scriptura, rightly understood, are not only present among the Church Fathers, but frequently so. I will not claim that it is consensual, only that it is firmly within orthodoxy. On the other hand, I am unconvinced that papal infallibility is present among the Fathers. I cannot find it. While I have found a primacy of honor towards the Roman bishop, I cannot find universal jurisdiction practiced in any meaningful sense at any point throughout Church history.

While Roman Catholics sometimes seek to interpret Scripture to support the papacy, I find that some of these interpretations are relatively recent, while others have been present throughout history. However, I have not found consensus on any of these interpretations in any age of the Church.

Ultimately, I also found it unreasonable to expect the average layman to study all these arguments when I, as a pastor trained in theology and with access to a library of primary and secondary sources, still struggled to discern what was true and what was false. We should never expect a sheep to bear a yoke that is too heavy for the shepherd.

Was Jesus not standing at the door, knocking? Should we not plainly be able to open the door to Him? If the Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church, how could I expect one of the little sheep in my flock to find their way to the one true Church if I, as their shepherd, desperately sought and could not find it? Could it possibly be as simple as, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”?

I became convinced in a modest form of perspicuity. While not everything in the Bible is easily accessible and clear to our broken minds, through the aid of the Holy Spirit, those things which concern our salvation are simply grasped, even if they may be profoundly deep. As some attribute to St. Jerome,

That is not to say that all of Rome’s dogmas are false; rather, many of their dogmas should not be dogmas or matters of faith required for membership in what they consider Christ’s Body and, therefore, a doctrinally rigid matter of salvation.2 Simply put, salvation must be grasped not by the knowledge of a scholar but by the faith of a child.

This also does not mean that I do not appreciate the Roman church or that I do not generally consider her flock to be my brothers and sisters in Christ. I see her as a true church containing the gospel, though that gospel is often obscured by certain novel doctrines and confusing systems, and therefore in need of reform. Though she has significant issues, I must, as an Anglican and former Baptist, be careful before casting the first stone.

Ultimately, my understanding of faith has been transformed, and I have ceased the pursuit of absolute knowledge as the criterion for my contentment and rescue from anxiety. Only Jesus can fulfill that role. Faith isn’t perfect knowledge; that’s why it’s faith. Now, when I doubt, when I struggle with anxiety, or when I wonder if I even vaguely understand the faith as I ought, I cry, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

And beyond this, I have wholly embraced that beautiful and comforting sixth statement from the Thirty-Nine Articles as a reassurance of the simplicity with which God provides salvation through His Word,

Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.3

(A lot of these thoughts came after mulling over this fantastic course by Dr. Mark Garcia at Greystone Connect.)

Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact imprint of His nature. The Father loves the Son. So, in eternity past, this eternal love is the fitting ground for the Father’s determination to glorify the Son. To do this, He ordains that all things be made through the Son, be perfected in due course under His wise providence, and ultimately be brought into reconciliation in the Son. The Son, in loving obedience to the Father, embraces the inheritance and glory of the eschaton and all the responsibilities that providence brings with it.

In Eden, all things were ordered to Him, but creation was not yet perfected to the degree required for the consummation and the full glorification of the Son that awaits in the eschaton. Thus, in eternity past, He permitted the fall (not coercively but in foreknowledge) and wisely ordered even this evil toward a greater good. Eden was excellent, but not final.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

In Eden, man was perfect in their innocence, but imperfect in their completion. God’s redemptive work on humanity after and because of the fall makes them somehow more complete in the eschaton than in Eden. Glorified mankind will reflect God to a greater extent than did Adam and Eve in their innocence. Eden was a stepping stone towards this ideal. To say Eden was reality as God ultimately meant it is to imply that God’s plan was frustrated.

In the OT, God continuously draws near to man in ever-increasing ways, leading to the incarnation to show His desire for unity, for all things to be recapitulated and reconciled to God in Christ. Hidden in the cleft of the rock, longing to see God’s glory, Moses did not see it, for no man can see God and live. Instead, that glory was revealed by God’s self-disclosure in Word. The Word is the revelation of God. His self-revelation is true glory.

The Word became flesh. Interestingly, once John says that the Word was made flesh, he never refers to Christ as the Word again throughout the Gospel. Christ is undoubtedly still the eternal Word, but now we can see the Word. We can see God and not die. Like Moses wearing the veil to protect Israel from the fullness of God’s glory, the Son took on our humanity (“the veil, that is, his flesh”) not to conceal God but to reveal Him savingly, and, in a true way, humanity can now see God in the incarnation. God becomes man that we might become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4), being conformed to the image of His Son.

Christ dies. This is not a sad moment in God’s plan. This is His moment of victory. He is doing the act that will lead to the final reconciliation. He is fulfilling the responsibilities of His inheritance. By His atoning death “for our sins” and His triumph over death, He secures justification and peace with God for the redeemed and inaugurates the new creation (Eden > Fall > Cross > Salvation > Glory).

History under providence reaches its consummation and the eschaton begins when all things are summed up in Christ: the redeemed fully reconciled, every enemy subdued, and creation itself liberated from corruption. This is why the Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” Because we have to see this. We must! Seeing Christ is the whole point. Seeing God is everything. Being in His presence is the entire movement of reality. It is God crafting man anew after the likeness of Christ, renewing them in His image and drawing them into His Son. To be in Christ is not just a rosy feeling. It means becoming truly like Him, and it necessarily means seeing and experiencing His glory.

When a man desires a thing, it is insatiably so. This is to guide him to God, whose immeasurable magnificence is the only satisfaction for an endless appetite. God has put eternity in his heart. Yes, only those who drink from Christ shall never thirst again.

A being with an insatiable appetite can only be satisfied with eternal food, for an insatiable appetite is never full, and eternal food never ends. All other foods grow the ever-appetite weary and strengthen its hungers. But the eternal food and drink are ever-satisfying.

Sin provides a thin satisfaction and hides the true depth of our desire. The glutton, thinking he is satisfied, has not yet begun filling his stomach. Vanity of vanities! But the man who tastes of Christ is always realizing further depths of his appetite and that Christ ever satisfies these enlargements of his desire. A man who follows sinful desires neglects the depths of his appetite and Christ’s ability to satisfy him.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

To be outside of Christ is worse than misery. We are beggars waiting to enter the wedding banquet and feast on the fullness of Christ. But until then, God provides us with what bread we need so that our desire for His eternal presence may deepen, and we may be strengthened to withstand earthly appetites and partake of His suffering. Truly, man shall not live by earthly bread alone.

The manna of our soul is Christ and His body alone. The wine that quenches our eternal thirst is Christ and His blood alone. To be in Christ, then, is ecstasy unending. It is the satisfaction of all our parts and every urge. Union with Him is ultimate enjoyment and endless happiness.

No one who does not eat of His flesh or drink of His blood shall be saved because to be saved is to be satisfied, and no one’s hunger can be satisfied without eating or thirst without drinking. Union with Christ does not merely mean proximity to Him, but being a true partaker of Him and Him of us. No one can partake of Christ and not be satisfied.

We are broken people guided by our anger and following the pernicious disease of bitterness. Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us!

Like everyone else, I was broken-hearted when the news of Charlie Kirk’s assassination flashed across my notifications. I was shocked. Then confused. Confusion brings with it a sense of hopelessness, which gives way to anger. I was not the only one. Millions of users express their fury even now, raging against the injustice of murder or of those who satanically celebrate it.

We live in an era where the whole world is not only accessible but also barges into our minds every second of the day. It’s too much. When every tragedy, outrage, post, headline, and pundit demands attention, the mind goes numb and meaning drains away. In time, it all feels like a bitter sort of nothing. But, meaning is found in the midst of want, not excess, solitude, not clamor, restraint, not indulgence, Bethel, not Babel.

We all have an anger problem, not in that we have anger, but that we struggle to keep our anger holy and free from sin. Righteous anger is a derivative of Godly love. This kind of righteous anger proceeds first from love of God and secondly from love of neighbor. Godly anger never proceeds from love of self.

Love is a misunderstood word in our times. The word conjures up a range of meanings from the innocent to the erotic. But simply put, love means to prefer or to value one thing above another. When a man loves a woman, he values her above his own life and all other women. When a mother loves a child, she values him above her own well-being and all other children. When Christ loves the world, He values us over His own safety and comfort, even to death, the death of the cross.

To love God, then, means to value Him above all other possible objects of love. We are to love Him so ardently that the intensity of all other relationships or interests in our lives pale in comparison to the passion we have for Him. If we do not have such love, we are not worthy to be His disciples.

Righteous anger, then, manifests only when something conflicts with the disciple’s highest loves: God and neighbor. On the other hand, anger derived from helplessness always flows from self-love. It is an anger that puts self first and neighbor second. And when we invoke God to justify such anger, we imagine Him as a tool who conveniently agrees with us.

Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…

Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.

Subscribe now

Loving God above all others would cure us of our helplessness, because even though we are helpless, God is not. Twitter may react in shock, horror, and malice, but God never reacts. He only acts. God is not notified of our tragedies. God already knew beforehand, and He has orchestrated a finale that will redeem the sorrow of every dissonant chord.

What does this mean for our anger? Does God’s providence demand we abandon any form of outrage?

No. An accurate understanding of God’s providence does not lead us to neglect this painful emotion, but to purify it. An anger that flows from and is purified by the love of God can energize us to accomplish our purpose as disciples. And what is our purpose?

Since the first command is to love God and the second is to love our neighbor, loving our neighbor means seeking their highest good—above all, that they too love God. We worship and lead others to worship God. This is our purpose as disciples: to maximize the worship of God. We must do everything in our power to maximize the worship of God first in our own lives, and secondly in our culture.

My wife calls worship “our part in the liturgy of God.” A godly anger can remind us of the dangers of extending our lives beyond God’s script. It can also motivate us to influence others to step into God’s plan.

Anger often bridges principle and action. If self-preservation is the guiding principle, our actions will only deepen our cultural downfall. If worship is the guiding principle, our actions can break the cycle of hatred and cause real change. Righteous anger also aims at the right enemies—not our neighbors, whom the Good Samaritan teaches us to love—but Satan and the sinful ideologies he promotes.

Our warfare does not draw blood. We do not wrestle against flesh. We tear down sinful strongholds and destroy false ideologies. We do not rid this world of sinners. We rob sinners of their sin. In its place, we lovingly give the former slaves of this world a pearl of inestimable value: the knowledge of God. We are Christians. We love our enemies.

“Further, the soul's faculty of temper is useful to us in many of the acts of virtue. When like a soldier who has placed his arms in the custody of his commander, it readily offers help in what is ordered, it can perhaps be an ally to reason against sin. For the temper is a sinew of the soul, producing vigor in it for the accomplishment of good actions…If your temper is not roused against the Evil One, you will not be able to hate him as much as he deserves. For I hold that it is necessary to have equal zeal for the love of virtue and for the hatred of sin. For this above all temper is useful.” –St. Basil the Great1