The Star Wars Prequel trilogy has suddenly become highly relevant again, as online users have been identifying the many eye-opening parallels between the events of those movies and the world of 2026.

I decided to do a Friday night stream about the movies, examining the major characters and how we see them represented in the church and culture today.

Watch below, listen above, or catch it on-the-go with the Church Reset podcast.

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The Christian’s participation in Halloween has been debated for as long as I can remember. But, for some reason, it feels like the debate is a bit harsher this year.

I first saw the following meme going around a few weeks ago, and I have to tell you, I don’t appreciate it.

“Jesus knows the difference between devil worshipping and your 2 year old dressed as a pumpkin.”

You can almost feel the eye-rolling as the person typed that sentence.

But, the condescension certainly doesn’t run in only one direction. On the other side, we find posts like this:

“We celebrate the cross, not the skull. Our home does not celebrate Halloween. We celebrate JESUS, who died for our sins.”

In both cases we see rather uncharitable mischaracterizations of the other side, and Christians shouldn’t act that way toward each other.

The first one reduces a long list of reasons why someone might oppose celebrating the day down to a complaint about toddlers in pumpkin suits. The second presents a false dichotomy between celebrating Jesus, or celebrating “skulls”—whatever that means. In both cases, it’s ridiculous, self-righteous, and unloving.

This actually provides a great opportunity to see how we should navigate differing opinions in the church.

Thankfully, God gave us Romans 14 for times like these, when one side is morally convicted that they shouldn’t do something, and the other side has no problem with it. What’s the solution? Leave each other alone, and respect each other’s convictions.

Those who celebrate will be tempted to view those who don’t as having a frivolous complaint based on a lack of knowledge. A contempt grows for those who they see as being wound too tightly. Thats what the first meme obviously shows.

But that’s also exactly what Paul told that party not to do. 14:1 says not to pass judgment on their opinions, and 14:3 says not to view them with contempt. Rather than rolling one’s eyes at the restrictive brother, we are to let him have his opinion and refrain from making him stumble (14:13).

On the other hand, those who don’t celebrate will be tempted to judge those who do as being less spiritually serious than they are. That is what I see coming through in the second meme above.

Of course, this was also addressed by the apostle. 14:3 tells this group not to judge the other, and 14:4 reminds them that those who celebrate answer to God, not them.

So, this shouldn’t be hard. We have to develop the skill of staying on the same team even when we disagree about some things.

What Romans 14 doesn’t say

Notice that the chapter tells us how to navigate disagreements, which is much different than telling us to silence our disagreements. It’s healthy for us to hear out each other’s arguments and love each other enough to continue on alongside each other with no hard feelings.

Unfortunately, too often we think we only have those two choices.

We either fight to the death on a subject, or dismiss it as “not a salvation issue” that is therefore unworthy of dialogue lest it escalate into a fight.

This is just immaturity on display. We shouldn’t be afraid of or allergic to disagreement. It is good for us to think through our beliefs, hear out our brother’s differing beliefs, grasp their point of view in a way they would endorse—and not as a straw man—and then come to our conclusion.

Instead, many just demand we avoid discussing non-bindable issues like these, while others put out snarky, holier-than-thou memes to take shots at each other. How are those options better?

When we can talk these things out, it becomes clear when both parties are doing their best to glorify God, even though we may reach different conclusions. That helps us build grace, patience, and appreciation toward each other.

Romans 14:6 reminds us to see each other this way: “He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord, and he who eats, does so for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who eats not, for the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God.”

In my calculation, the best way to do that is to have the discussion, openly disagree with each other, and then finish in a place of love and respect.

We don’t need to mock each other with memes. We need to love each other enough to talk it out.

In my experience, the people who refrain from Halloween often do so because they take God very seriously, and they are deeply uncomfortable with so much of what is and has been celebrated on Halloween, with all the gore, death, witchcraft, and horror.

Even if you disagree, how can you not at least see where they’re coming from when you drive past a front yard that’s adorned like a blood-soaked zombie movie?

On the other hand, the people who do celebrate generally don’t do so because they’re in favor of all those dark things. Many times, they just see it as a fun time for kids to dress up as their favorite characters, share some candy, and enjoy what has long been a childhood rite of passage in our culture.

Once again, it’s easy to see where they’re coming from.

So whether your kid will be gathering candy as Spider-Man or Bluey this weekend, or whether they’ll be sitting this one out, let’s stay united in a shared desire to glorify God, even if we don’t always agree on the best way to do it.

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Notes

• Early bird pricing for Men’s Excellence Workshop ends early next week, so be sure to sign up today! Get all the info you need at the link below.
  

• Our Think Deeper episode on Halloween from our first year remains one of our favorites, as there was a good bit of lively debate about celebrating the day. Check it out below if you’d like to hear the argument from each side.

The Bible is one of God’s great blessings to us, as He has given it to let us know Him and how we may be reconciled to Him.

But such a weighty gift requires a weighty approach to it, and unfortunately, that approach isn’t always taken.

It’s easy to get in the habit of cherry picking Bible verses, ignoring their context so we can twist them into the meaning we want them to have. Then, because we have a Bible verse behind our argument, it looks like our words have authority.

That’s why we all have to have a vigilant spirit like the Bereans, who checked the Scriptures to verify the truth of what they were hearing (Acts 17:11).

One of the best ways we can learn to have such discernment is by training ourselves on commonly misused verses. When you see the tricks that are used to pull a verse out of context, you’re more equipped to see through the next misuse.

For the purpose of this article, I’ve chosen to avoid the verses about salvation—verses like John 3:16, Romans 10:9-10, etc. Those could be an article unto themselves (and probably will be), and so we’re going in another direction today.

Rather, these are verses that are far more likely to come up in day-to-day conversation.

These are the verses you hear people quote when talking about life, and current events, and how to make sense of the world—but since they are so often used incorrectly, that leads to a rather poor understanding of it all.

So, without further ado…

Here are the 6 most misused Bible verses of our day

The Lucky Charms

Philippians 4:13

“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

This one has been used as encouragement for everything from winning a football game, to passing a test, to overcoming an illness, to finding a job, and more.

Obviously, God cares about the things we do in our lives. He answers our prayers, and He is with us in the ups and downs. But are those the kinds of “things” this verse has in mind?

In context…

Paul was speaking about his ability to endure any hardship while ministering to Christ’s church (4:11-12), because Jesus strengthens those who serve Him. Ultimately, his point was about contentment and trust, that no matter what you go through when following Christ, you can be okay because you know He’ll carry you through it.

That’s a profoundly comforting thought, but we can’t divorce it from the idea of serving God. So many times the popular usage of this verse is about God following us around and giving us a boost, rather than about Him giving us strength to endure as we follow Jesus through life’s ups and downs.

Jeremiah 29:11

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

The graduation card special—God has plans for you! He’s going to make everything work out for you, because you have a future and a hope!

It sounds so comforting. But while God is guiding our lives and using us for His purposes, is it really this straightforward? What do we do with this verse when tragedy hits and it isn’t getting better any time soon?

In context…

The context tells you that this promise actually meant a lot of hardship for a lot of people. They were headed for 70 years of captivity under Babylon and Persia, with most of them taken from their homeland (29:10).

God’s promise was given to them as a people far more than it was to them as individuals.

So, God plans to bless His people, but in the history of the church we know that has meant persecution for some, poverty for others, and all kinds of cases of people getting by through tough times so the church can live to see a brighter day.

You and I could be in for such tough times, but we can know that God will reward our faithfulness by blessing those who come after us, so long as we seek Him with all our hearts (29:13).

The Excuses

Matthew 7:1

“Judge not, that you be not judged.”

Believe it or not, this one seems to have fallen out of favor as the transitional era of tolerance has ended. “The Bible says ‘don’t judge’” was just a catchphrase weaponized by those who wanted to set themselves up as the judges, resulting in “cancel culture.”

However, for a time it was probably the most misused verse of all. Any Christian who disagreed with any popular sin, such as LGBT causes, abortion, and marijuana, was told they were violating the Bible’s teachings on judgment.

In context…

This section is not about judging, but hypocrisy. In the very next verse, Jesus cautioned His listeners that their standard of measure for others would be used to judge them. Even in telling them to pull the plank from their eye, he was telling them to make sure their lives were in order before trying to fix others.

Judgment isn’t just acceptable—it’s unavoidable. Every person makes judgments every day. That’s why we should be cautious to ground our judgments in the truth and not hold people to a standard we won’t follow.

If God says an act is wrong, and we echo Him, and we are willing to apply His standards to our own lives, Matthew 7 hasn’t been violated when we call that act wrong.

Matthew 9:10

“Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples.”

Jesus did, indeed, eat with sinners. The religious leaders of His day were appalled that Jesus would go to the untouchables of their society to minister to them.

This has become the new sidekick to “Don’t judge,” as “Jesus ate with sinners” is pulled out to tell Christians to temper or silence our objections to those who flaunt sins like those mentioned in the previous point.

In context…

Two verses later, Jesus told us why He was spending time around these people: He viewed them as sick people who needed to be healed (9:12).

That’s the major difference between what Jesus did and what the people who use this argument do. They use “Jesus ate with sinners” to leave people comfortable in their sins. He didn’t endorse their sins, or tell them they were fine just as they are because “we’re all broken.” He showed them their sins and called them to repentance.

We should be engaging the world just as He did, and that means both associating with those who are far from God and telling them the truth of their spiritual condition. Both are acts of Christ-like love.

The Culture War Weapons

Galatians 3:28

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

This one has been used to justify some of the biggest progressive talking points of our day: feminism and egalitarianism in the church and home, mass immigration, the erasure of the concept of nations, etc.

In context…

In context, Paul is speaking about our salvation in Christ and how it is not through heritage or Law-keeping. In fact, he said right before this that we are in Christ through faith and baptism (v. 26-27), and he said immediately after that that those things make us all children of Abraham (v. 29).

So, the point is that in Jesus there is no caste system of salvation. Everybody who has put their faith in Christ is equally saved by Him.

It does not mean that men cease to be men, women cease to be women, and so forth, thanks to the waters of baptism. The same Paul who penned this verse still considered himself a Jew (Romans 9:3-4) and wrote all the verses we have about male leadership and women’s roles (1 Corinthians 14:34, 1 Timothy 2:9ff, 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1, etc.).

Matthew 22:39

“And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

This one has been turned into a bludgeon to swing at anyone who disagrees with the status quo of our day. During the Covid years, you had to do everything somebody told you to or else you didn’t love your neighbor. Others will say you have to respect trans pronouns or else you don’t love your neighbor. Still others will say that you can’t oppose mass immigration or you don’t love your neighbor.

Obviously, Jesus did not have all of that in mind when He called this the second greatest commandment.

In context…

This verse doesn’t just require immediate context, but the context of the whole Bible. Warriors who “loved their neighbors as themselves” killed people in the Old Testament. Prophets who “loved their neighbors as themselves” spoke uncomfortable truths to people.

“Love” doesn’t mean “give them a warm and fuzzy feeling.” It means that we are to care about our neighbor, and look out for their good. And that means all of our neighbors.

Sometimes we have to choose which one to prioritize. The idea that it’s an easy “Just shut up and take whatever you’re told” command is nowhere found in the text.

Don’t miss the point

What these twisted verses show us is that eisegesis is easy to fall into if we’re not careful with the text. Eisegesis is the practice of reading meaning into the text, rather than taking the meaning out of it.

Whether it’s our own experiences, the culture around us, or what we’ve always been taught, we have to do our best to strip away what we think a verse means or what we want it to mean, and instead look at it in context to see what it really means.

The better we get at that, the more the Bible will make sense as a whole, as we can fit verses together in a cohesive manner to give us a clearer picture of the God we serve.

Got others to add to the list? Got suggestions for the piece on salvation verses? Leave me a comment below!

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Notes

• Registration is NOW OPEN for the Men’s Excellence Workshop, coming up next April. Find details at the link below

• This week’s Think Deeper Podcast continues the discussion of gluttony, obesity, and the Christian that I started with last week’s article. Listen on YouTube or search Think Deeper on your podcast app

I’m excited to say the registration is NOW OPEN for the first Men’s Excellence Workshop!

The gathering will take place at Camp Meribah in Centerville, TN from April 22-24, 2027.

This is an idea I’ve been talking about for a while, and now we’re finally ready to make it a reality.

Here’s the description I shared in my original post on the idea:

The early bird price of $190 will be available until November 1 before it goes up to $225, and we’re capping the attendance pretty low for this first gathering.

So, if you plan to attend, sign up as soon as you can!

Register Now

For more information about the camp and what you will get for the cost of registration, watch the video below. If you have any questions, leave a comment or email me at jack@focuspress.org.

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There’s been a bit of a controversy brewing in certain circles recently about the matter of gluttony and obesity. CREC pastor Doug Wilson fielded a question on it for his Ask Doug series, and his answer yielded no small backlash.

To be clear, this discussion is not relevant just because of Wilson.

This is a society-wide issue. According to CDC estimates, 40% of Americans are obese, and 70% are overweight. This problem plagues both men and women, both the young and the old, and people of all different races.

It’s also especially an issue for us, because the church certainly isn’t showing the world a better way. The most recent data shows that there is no measurable difference in weight management between those who attend church and those who don’t.

So, is gluttony a sin that Christians commit?

Let’s first look at Wilson’s response to the question he received: “What exactly is the sin of gluttony, and are my two eyes all I need to know that someone has committed it?”

Wilson spoke to the etymological definitions of the word as a matter of riotous eating, often connected to drunkenness and wild partying. He highlighted that Jesus was accused of the sin of gluttony for the kind of people He ate with (Matthew 11:19).

Wilson went on to say that “Gluttony is not a second helping of mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving. Gluttony is not to food what drunkenness is to wine.” Based on that, he explained that the sin the Bible described is not really the kind of thing that happens today.

Despite all of that, He landed on the conclusion that it is wrong to be overweight (specifically as a preacher) if it’s because you are gluttonously given to habitual overeating. But, it’s okay if you are overweight because you have “the metabolism of a large flat garden rock”—Wilson’s description of his own case.

Why that doesn’t check out

The change from “gluttony doesn’t really happen today” to “some people are guilty of it” should tell you the argument falls short. Why can’t we just acknowledge that the word technically meant something more specific to their day, but also that being obese is still bad, whether it counts as gluttony or not?

The other problem with Wilson’s explanation is the side door he gave himself to step out of. Yes, being overweight is bad if it’s because you eat too much, but not if because you have a bad metabolism. So… who determines that? How will the first group know they need to repent if the scale can’t fairly tell them?

The truth is, this is a problem we need to be honest about. It’s one of those things that has become so common that we just decide not to talk about it. But shouldn’t it be the other way around? If a problem is plaguing that many of our people, shouldn’t we talk about it even more?

Does it matter?

The counterargument will usually be that this doesn’t really matter. “Flesh and blood won’t inherit the kingdom” and “It’s all gonna burn” and whatever other gnostically-twisted catchphrases we want to throw at the problem should suffice.

But God gave you a body for a reason, and how you treat it will determine many things about your life on this earth. Paul spoke of self-control and noted that he disciplined his body to make it his slave (1 Corinthians 9:25-27). He also said that he would not be mastered by anything, and then immediately connected that point to food (1 Corinthians 6:12-13).

I can’t understand why anyone would say we as Christians shouldn’t be separating ourselves from the world on this issue. Instead, rather than showing the world a healthier path, we just do what they do and insist it doesn’t matter. But it matters greatly.

Your health matters to you more than you realize

A study found that being overweight leads to an excess cost of $600 per year, obesity $1861 per year, and severe obesity $3100 per year. I would say that matters.

Further, obesity shortens your lifespan. I would say that matters, too.

And neither of those stats measure the day-to-day feeling, the energy you have, the sleep you can get, the soreness. It makes a difference.

Your health matters to your kids more than you realize

Being overweight or obese gives your kids double the odds of being obese and overweight themselves. The food you serve in the home, the activity level you have, the way they think about snacks and treats, it all comes from the decisions you make. You’re either setting them up for success or setting them back for life.

Your health matters to others more than you realize

One study found that people assume overweight people lack self-control. But what popped out even more from that study is this: people also assume overweight folks are less competent.

Whether this is fair or not doesn’t matter—it’s a reality we have to deal with. You literally lose respect of the people around you when you’re not in control. That, too, matters.

Acknowledging the difficulties

There’s no clear line

This discussion is not unlike the modesty discussion: there is a safe zone, an obviously unsafe zone, and a gray area in the middle. We of course don’t want to be in the unsafe zone, but, as Wilson showed, it can be hard to be objective about that.

Still, even if you can’t know when exactly you’ve gone from unsafe to gray to safe, it’s better to just take care of your health and try to bring your weight and food consumption to a healthier place.

It’s harder than ever.

We are drowning in junk food. You will not get anything healthy from a drive-thru, and 99% of the time you won’t get something healthy out of a bag or a box at the store. It’s usually going to take time to make food that isn’t actively harming you.

To make things worse, even when you try to be healthy, others will present you with a constant stream of opportunities to backslide. Church pot lucks and in-home fellowship almost always include desserts and other foods that aren’t going to help you be healthier. It’s hard to be the one who eats a little and then goes home to fill up on something better. But even though you don’t have to do that every time, that might be the kind of thing it takes sometimes.

For reasons like these, it takes far more foresight and restraint to eat healthy than it may have in times past. That should not mean we just resign ourselves to poor health.

Common health issues can complicate things

Because of years of living in a bad food situation, and thanks to all kinds of other negative environmental factors, digestive and metabolic issues are very real. Eating poorly doesn’t just cost you that day. It slows down your metabolism over the long run, making for a vicious cycle in which you have to keep eating less to stay ahead.

Still, that’s not an insurmountable problem. It just takes the honesty to admit that there is a problem.

It’s not an overnight fix

One of the frustrating parts of caring for our health is that it can take weeks or months to even start to see progress.

For this reason, sometimes you will hear the struggle compared to other self-control issues like anger or gossip. To an extent, that’s a fair comparison. Those are bad habits that can take a while to address. On the other hand, that’s not a pass. We can’t say “Well she gossips, he’s impatient, and I eat too much. Nobody’s perfect.”

Don’t we want the gossip to stop gossiping, and the impatient man to gain patience? Don’t we believe that with God’s help, they can? Then we should see chronic overeating the same way.

Take stock, and make it happen

I can honestly say, I speak from experience on this subject more than most. I’ve tried intermittent fasting, I’ve tried low carb high fat, I’ve tried high carb low fat, I’ve done the protein craze, I count steps, I have (and still do) put time into regular exercise. Aside from chemical intervention like GLP-1s, if you name it, I’ve done it or am doing it.

And, longtime readers will know that I once was morbidly obese thanks to a horrible diet. After that, around the time I started this site, I got a bit too thin by long-term under-eating. Then, I gained some weight back on purpose to build up my strength and be a bit healthier. But, I gained a bit (I’d say ~10 lbs) more than I wanted that I’ve had great difficulty losing, thanks in part to health issues.

I say all of that to say, I have seen this issue from almost every perspective. I can sympathize with the claims of a poor metabolism while also knowing that that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck, cursed to life-long poor health.

And the truth of the matter is, with enough time and effort, nearly every single one of us have the ability to achieve (or maintain) good health through nutrition and exercise.

And, since God has given us these bodies, we should use that ability to take care of our health.

No, you don’t have to become Arnold Schwarzenegger or a marathon runner or an exclusive salad consumer or anything like that. It’s a false dichotomy to pretend that we either have to be vainly obsessed with our physiques, or be completely at the mercy of what our bodies decide to become.

As I often say, asking “Is it a sin?” is usually a copout to avoid discussing what we ought to do by dismissing it as something we don’t have to do. We shouldn’t be looking for technicalities to see if we’ve crossed the line of gluttony. We should be striving to be good stewards of the one body God has given us.

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Notes

• The Men’s Excellence Workshop registration page is pending final approval, and then emails will be sent out! You can join the early bird mailing list here.

• I’m not a nutritionist, but I have learned a lot along the way through a ton of trial and error.

  If you’re interested, I shared some of that in this post and this appearance on the Godly Young Men podcast.

With capital punishment in US headlines twice in recent weeks, the pope decided to weigh in to reiterate the Roman Catholic church’s (recent) teaching that the death penalty is immoral. He wrote:

The death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person. The common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment: effective systems of detention have been developed that protect citizens while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption. #NoDeathPenalty

As you might expect, this received a good deal of pushback since, you know, the Bible quite clearly supported the very death penalty that Leo calls inadmissible.

Right after Noah stepped off the ark, God said that “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man” (Genesis 9:6). The dignity the pope appealed to in order to oppose the death penalty is the same reason God said the death penalty must be enforced.

However, this capitulation from Rome is nothing new, and neither is it solely a Roman Catholic problem. When the Bible clashes with the world’s godless tenets, many who claim Christianity will ignore obvious Scriptural teaching in order to show the world how nice they can be.

We must reject nicer-than-Godism every time we see it.

We are to show the love of Christ in everything we do, but that doesn’t always mean people are going to think we’re nice. If you’ll read the Gospels, people didn’t always think Jesus was nice, either. In supposedly attempting to be like Him, many end up making Him look like the bad cop to their good cop.

Speaking the truth in love gives people a chance to draw near to God. Nicer-than-Godism attempts to get people to come closer to us.

This Nicer-than-Godism manifests itself most often in these three ways.

First, it reads cultural views into the Bible rather than the other way around.

We can see this in the Catholic Church’s 180° on capital punishment that began in the 1960s, but plenty of other examples can work just as well.

Consider women leadership in the church. The Bible so obviously opposes this that there’s really no case to be made to the contrary… and yet, plenty of people try.

They apologize for the church’s meanness in excluding women from the pulpit and the eldership. They point to obscure women in the Scriptures like Junia or Phoebe to insist that those women override the obvious teachings of 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2.

Nobody thought those women were leaders of the church until feminism became the culture’s standard for male-female roles. Then, all of a sudden, a new Bible teaching showed up, pushed by people who want women to know that they themselves are nicer than what Paul wrote by God’s inspiration.

If the Bible is not our standard of truth, then we have no standard of truth. If cultural changes make us change our reading of the text, then we’re not serious about God’s Word.

Second, it’s ashamed of the Old Testament.

Megachurch pastor Andy Stanley infamously insisted that Christians need to “unhitch” our faith from the Old Testament, because the severity found in it is off-putting to the lost. In other words, Stanley told Christians that God wasn’t nice enough in the Old Testament, and we need to ditch those books in order to help our image with those outside the church.

This is a constant refrain I run into when citing the Old Testament—that those books don’t matter as much, and that Jesus represents a change of direction.

While I don’t believe we are under the Law of Moses, it remains inspired and has much to teach us about who God is. And, to pit Jesus against how God behaved and spoke in the Old Testament is literal heresy. The Jesus who said “turn the other cheek” is also the one who commanded Israel to eliminate the Amalekites.

If you’re trying to be nicer than the God of the Old Testament, you’re also trying to out-nice, Jesus, too. Don’t do it.

Third, it ignores the verses that don’t fit its view.

To be nicer than God, you have to pretend God didn’t say things He clearly said. A few examples:

On an issue like modesty, nicer-than-Godism lectures young men about the verses on looking with lust (Matthew 5:28), which are certainly valid, but it ignores that women are told to dress modestly and discreetly (1 Timothy 2:9).

When they do acknowledge that verse, they will tell you that the technical attention is actually about drawing attention to oneself… as though going to the beach in one’s underwear doesn’t draw attention. But it’s hard to sound nice when you say that women should dress up.

On immigration, they can always tell you that God said “Treat the foreigner like one of your own” (Leviticus 19:33-34). They seemed to pass over the ones that demand the sojourners assimilate to Israel’s religious practices like observing the Sabbath (Exodus 20:10) and undergoing ritual cleansing (Leviticus 17:15).

They especially miss the one that says that it’s a sign of judgment when the alien rises up to rule over them (Deuteronomy 28:43-45). You don’t sound as nice when you read those verses, but they’re most certainly in there.

On the death penalty discussion, Jesus did indeed say to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39), and passed on stoning the adulterous woman in John 8 (though He legally had no jurisdiction to do so anyway).

At the same time, He gave governments a sword (Romans 13:4). If your view acknowledges those first two Scriptures but not the third, you may be trying to out-nice God.

"Hide the socially unpopular parts of the Bible or else the lost might not listen" is not a Biblical evangelism strategy.

What are we trying to do here?

Were we sent out to get the world to like us? Or were we sent to tell them that Jesus is Lord, and that they must respond accordingly?

Telling somebody that they are not lord of their own lives, and that they have no authority to decide what is good and what is evil, is going to get a lot of them to dislike us. That doesn’t come across as very nice. If that surprises you, go re-read the book of Acts.

But ultimately, that’s what we have to do if we’re going to preach Jesus as Lord. This is not about being nice. It is about being loving.

You, me, the Pope, and everyone else have no shot at being more loving than God. So, the best thing we can do is point people to Him, rather than trying to attract them to us through our niceness.

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This week’s Think Deeper Podcast discusses spiritual burnout, and when to take a step back from involvement for a season of rest.

The announcement that the Ft. Hood shooter would be executed on a publicly-available livestream has caused no small amount of debate and commentary.

I check in with the latest episode of Cultural Breakdown to discuss:

• What does the Bible have to say about such a decision

• How G.K. Chesterton saw the issue, and the wisdom in his take

• Proper balance in our response

Watch below, or catch it on the go by subscribing to the Church Reset podcast (Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app)!

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If you’d like to support my work, you can do so by going here.

I always get a chuckle when I watch a football game with my kids and they ask me to skip the ads.

They’ve yet to grasp that live TV is not YouTube, and therefore not all ads become skippable. They really wouldn’t be able to get their minds around the fact that skippable ads did not even exist when I was a kid. We just sat there helpless for the entire, agonizing three minute break.

Of course, skippable ads on streams are just one of countless ways life has gotten faster and more convenient. All cooking used to be done at home, and then there were restaurants, and then there was fast food and microwave dinners from the store, and now there is DoorDash and UberEats (for anyone who likes paying $20 extra for mushy food, that is).

You could see movies at the theater or when they were played on TV, and then there was Blockbuster, then mailed Netflix DVDs, and now there are a dozen streaming services.

Believe it or not, all of this development hasn’t exactly made us more patient. That creates a rather big problem:

When something important can’t be done instantly, a lot of people want to throw their hands in the air and quit.

We know the nation is struggling, so we want to cast the one vote for the one person who can fix it in one term. And if that doesn’t happen, we’re ready to give up on the whole thing.

Many people’s marriage and household are not where they want them to be. They sometimes hope a couple of sessions with a therapist can turn things around, or that a vacation might get things back on track. When the painful work of changing their ways takes center stage, it’s easier to just give up or get complacent.

And, I talk a lot about how the church can be improved (thus the ‘Church Reset’ name). Because of this, I get to chat with a lot of people who agree that changes must be made. But, this often just creates discontentment. We don’t like how things are, and the path to making things better is unclear, so it’s easier to just be unhappy.

Things don’t get bad overnight. Why would we expect them to be fixed overnight?

The nation has been subverted for decades by people who put in the time to take positions in the press, the education system, and the entertainment system to push their views. They worked patiently. Why would we think we don’t have to work patiently to match them?

The home’s struggles often come from generations of bad habits and ways of speaking. That’s not something that changes easily.

The church’s decline can be attributed to a number of factors. Recreating leadership pipelines and getting people to rethink what we do to help the youth stay faithful isn’t the kind of thing that gets fixed in a weekend.

All of these things are going to take time. We have to be okay with the idea that we might not see improvement—much less full-scale revival—for years.

I want to point your attention to King David.

The man loved God, and he wanted to build God a richly-appointed house of worship. Because the king was a man of bloodshed, God declined David’s offer. The temple would have to wait for the next generation, when Solomon would oversee its construction.

David did not throw a fit or feel sorry for himself that he would not get to do this great deed and see its completion. Instead, he did as much as he could to make the dream a reality by stockpiling materials to leave for Solomon (see 1 Chronicles 22).

That is the kind of thinking we need to adopt.

Your household might not be as well-run as you want it to be overnight, but the more you work at it, the better it will get, and the better you will prepare the next generation to have strong families of their own.

The challenges in your relationship with your spouse, or your difficulties with a child, will probably not be fixed with one conversation. In fact, it will only get harder after the one conversation, as everyone will then have to strive to be consistent in their follow-through. But it’s worth doing.

The nation has a long, long way to go, and impacting it from the top down might not ever be the kind of thing we get to do. But, we can make our communities a better place through our prayer and involvement.

My small, Bible Belt town is having their pride parade this weekend, and it both saddens and sickens me. Lord willing, one day we will get it shut down. But that’s probably not just one election away. It will take time, prayer, and patient effort.

The church might not look as close-knit and dynamic as you and I want it to be by next Sunday, or by next year, or even by the next decade. But we can certainly try to move it in that direction, and leave it in a better place for those who come after us.

Your congregation might not be ready and willing to start engaging in table fellowship and deep, spiritual conversations. And, one hospitable dinner or two probably won’t change that. But putting in years of time together will certainly move it more in that direction.

Think long term

The first century church had heard Jesus was coming back, and it seems that some of them at Thessalonica took that to mean they should give up on daily life and start watching the sky. 2,000 years later, aren’t you glad that mindset didn’t win out? Aren’t you glad the church’s leaders kept walking straight into the buzzsaw of persecution to keep advancing the church, even though they weren’t around to see what it would become?

Like them, we don’t know that we have tomorrow… but in another sense we should labor as though mankind has two thousand more years, and as though we believe what we do today will affect how those millennia go.

As it’s often been said, “People overestimate what they can accomplish in a single year, but they underestimate what they can achieve over a decade.” Frustration comes from the overestimation. Fulfillment comes from putting in the decades worth of work.

So, we go all-in on faith and start walking. If we could see the result from here, we wouldn’t need faith. If we could hit a button and skip the tough parts, or make it happen immediately, we wouldn’t grow. Give thanks for these trials.

Everything might not be great now. It will probably not be great tomorrow. Stop looking for instant results, but rather, give it a decade or two of steady, faithful plodding and see what God does with it. You’ll be glad you did.

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• The Men’s Excellence Workshop dates have been set! It will be April 22-24, 2027 in Centerville, TN. More info to come, so be sure you’re on the email list.

• Subscribing is free, as are almost all of the posts on this site. If you’d like to support my work, you can do it here or for a few bucks less at Bible101.
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Muslims and Hindus have come into the United States at increasingly rapid rates in recent years. Is it "unloving" to have a problem with it?

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With Democratic Socialism on the rise, it's important that we articulate Biblical principles of economics... even if that might not look like what we've been doing.

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As I continue my series on headship and submission, it’s important for us to take note of words, attitudes, and behaviors that can undermine the entire system. We’ve looked at plenty of those from the women’s side of the ledger, because that’s where the majority of the problem lies in our day.

However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a ditch on the other side of the road. We looked at one such pitfall when I wrote on how a lack of personal virtue will hurt a man’s authority. This time I want to look at another way men can upend the Biblical hierarchy God gave us for the home.

If a man won’t submit when the Bible tells him to submit, he shouldn’t be surprised if his wife follows his example.

Literally every human on the planet has a Biblical mandate to submit to someone. Between elected officials, employers, and church leaders, most of us have multiple people over us in various ways.

Unfortunately, some Christian men have decided they either don’t need, or don’t respect, any of the authorities placed over them.

If you’re always walking around the house tearing down the people over you as incompetent and not worthy of your submission, you can expect your wife and kids to follow in your footsteps.

Since these relationships have obvious differences, and the husband-wife relationship is the closest of them all, the applications are not going to be the same in every instance. But certain principles apply across the board.

In these relationships, there is a time to reject the authority and not submit when there is overreach or the authority demands sinful behavior.

That’s true for citizens, church members, wives, and children—in other words, in all of the hierarchical relationships God has given us.

When government says you can’t go to church because there’s a new flu going around, you don’t have to submit. When an eldership says you have to give them full audit of your finances to make sure you’re giving enough, you don’t have to submit. When a husband tells you to help him cover up embezzlement, you don’t have to submit.

However, in each of these we are still to give honor to those over us as far as possible.

We can disagree with an elected official and want them removed, but we don’t get to do the “not my President” or “Let’s Go Brandon” or “86-47” thing. We can disapprove of how the boss at work runs his department, but running him down all the time is a bad look. And, we can be frustrated with decisions our elders make at church, but that doesn’t mean we get to go home every Sunday and talk about how terrible they are, or work behind the scenes to circumvent and undermine their authority.

Take, for example, the man who ends up hopping from congregation to congregation since he won’t come under anybody else’s headship. Even though he isn’t an elder, and no one would think to make him one, he has decided that no group of elders is worthy of his submission.

Hebrews 13:17 tells him, “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you.”

It’s easy to say “I’d happily submit to them, if they just did their job right!” And there’s the problem. That’s exactly the kind of responsibility dodging and blame shifting we are not going to allow women in the marriage relationship. So we don’t get to take that pass, either.

Why would a man disrespect every authority in his life, and insist he only has to follow them when he agrees with them, and then be shocked when his wife views his headship the same way?

Now, mind you, even if a man is this insubordinate, it’s not a pass for his wife to respond in kind. She is still accountable for following the commands to submit to and respect her husband.

But why shouldn’t he embody the kind of joyful, team player, respectful attitude he’d like her to have in the home?

If you want your wife to appreciate your authority in the home, and give you grace even when you don’t get it 100% right, set the example by doing the same for your leaders.

There’s a difference between loving hierarchy because God established it, and loving hierarchy because it puts us in charge. A good, Godly man respects and appreciates all of God’s hierarchies, even when it means he has to follow.

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Notes

• I just cleared 500 subscribers over on YouTube, and I’d like to keep on climbing toward 1,000. If you’re not following me there, please be sure to subscribe!

• The Men’s Excellence Workshop is starting to take shape. I’m hoping to share a registration link in early October for a Spring 2027 gathering. You can find info and fill out the form to be notified at www.excellentmen.work

• Think Deeper Podcast this week was a fun one, as Marco Arroyo and I made our case against Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

The following is a talk I did at the Engage Conference in Waxahachie, TX on ‘How Can Christians Know Right from Wrong.’

I give an overview of popular counterfeit versions of Christianity, along with a checklist for evaluating the teachings you hear so you can avoid getting taken in by false versions of Jesus.

You can watch below, or listen on the Church Reset podcast (Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app)!

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John 13 is one of the most shocking, beautiful chapters in the Bible.

Unfortunately, it has also become one of the most abused and misunderstood chapters, as well.

There, Jesus famously girded Himself with a towel and washed His disciples’ feet to teach them that greatness comes through service, and that if their Master wasn’t above washing their feet, they had no grounds to see themselves as being above washing each other’s feet (13:12-17). It was also a ritual that brought them together, as those who had their feet washed were told they had a part together with Jesus (13:8)

It is truly incredible to see the Messiah, just hours before His betrayal, trial, and death, humble Himself in such a way. It’s no wonder the foot washing story remains such a compelling account.

Unfortunately, “Jesus washed feet” has been taken out of context and blown out of proportion. Now, Jesus’ foot washing has been taken as a sign that Christians should give acceptance and deference to all people at all costs.

The ‘He Gets Us’ Super Bowl ad is the best distillation of what “Jesus washed feet” has become. Jesus wouldn’t be one of those meanies who protest abortion… He’d just wash the feet of the mom who wanted to kill her kid. Jesus wouldn’t care about immigration laws… He’d just wash their feet as they crossed the border.

The commercial ends by telling us that “JESUS DIDN’T TEACH HATE. HE WASHED FEET.” So, don’t oppose abortion or crime or LGBT causes or anything else, because that would be hate. Just wash feet.

Last week I was told that we should welcome the construction of mosques in America, that we shouldn’t have a problem with the new Narnia series turning Aslan—the story’s Christ-figure—into a female, and that husbands aren’t actually supposed to lead their households. What common argument held those points together? Each one appealed to “Jesus washed feet” for its Scriptural backing.

This is the skin-suit religion I’ve written about before. It dresses itself up in Christian lingo and appeals to Bible verses and accounts, but totally twists them to make a point the Bible never made. We have seen this before with “Don’t judge” and “Love your neighbor,” and now “Jesus washed feet” has entered the Bible-twisting lexicon.

There are reasons Jesus washed feet only once in His ministry instead of opening a three-year foot washing business.

When you actually look at the text, it’s not some “hold hands and sing kum-ba-ya” appeal to inclusiveness that trumps everything else said in Jesus’ ministry and in the Bible as a whole. Quite the opposite, actually.

Jesus didn’t wash feet to ignore truth.

If the Savior were living out the ‘He Gets Us’ commercial, He should have washed the feet of the woman at the well (John 4), the adulterous woman (John 8), Zacchaeus (Luke 19), the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7), and countless other social outcasts and “sinners.”

And yet… He didn’t. He washed feet once, at the end of His earthly ministry, and never did it again.

In fact, not only did He not wash those other people’s feet—He also did the kinds of things the He Gets Us folks would view as abhorrent.
He told the woman at the well her religion was wrong, and he called out her disastrous relationship situation.
He told the adulterous woman to go and sin no more—meaning He acknowledged her sin as sin.
He honored Zacchaeus’ emphasis on restitution.
And, He called the Syrophoenician woman a dog, and initially denied her request.

If foot washing is about making everybody feel welcome by not standing for truth, Jesus wasn’t that kind of foot washer. If it is about just being nice to people in hopes they’ll respond with a desire to obey, Jesus wasn’t that kind of foot washer, either.

Foot washing isn’t about being nice to people. Yes, we should treat them lovingly, but inclusiveness, especially at the expense of truth, is not the point of foot washing at all.

The right way to see it:

Jesus washed feet to make a point that His apostles needed to learn. When He met all the other people just mentioned, He taught, reproved, encouraged, and/or rebuked them, because that was what they needed to learn. In fact, in the days before washing feet in the upper room, He had been going toe-to-toe with the Pharisees, pronouncing woes on them and telling parables to predict their doom… because that’s what they needed to learn.

We do not have to pick between truth and love. Rather, we have to learn to discern the need of the moment, and have the courage and willingness to meet it, no matter how humbling the task may be.

Jesus didn’t wash feet to include everyone.

What has been turned into a message of inclusion was actually extremely exclusive. John 13 begins by highlighting Jesus’ special love for “His own who were in the world” (13:1). An incredibly small group of people received Jesus’ act of service, which is conveniently left out of the recent usage of the story.

Even Judas’ inclusion just further adds to the point of the camaraderie the foot washing was meant to establish. If Jesus washed everybody’s feet, it wouldn’t be shocking if somebody betrayed Him with clean feet. Judas violated a precious bond that Jesus only shared with a select few men.

The right way to see it:

“Jesus washed feet” was aimed to teach His apostles how to view each other. It was such an exclusive lesson because those men who received it were going to be handed the baton of the kingdom, and their unity was going to be crucial to its success (John 17:20-23).

So, Christians are not to jockey for status with each other, as the apostles had repeatedly done. Rather, they were to serve one another and love one another with the sacrificial love of Christ (13:34-35), because the world was going to hate them (15:19).

So, the Christian’s love for, service for, and attitude toward each other is to transcend what we give anyone else. We were told to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:39)… but we were told to love our brethren as Christ loved us.

Jesus died for the world, but He only washed His closest disciples’ feet. In the same way, we are to serve the world, but we are to give even greater love and service to the household of faith (Galatians 6:10). The message isn’t “make everybody comfortable.” It’s “never think yourself above your fellow Christian.”

Jesus didn’t abandon authority to wash feet.

The thing that makes His act so shocking is that He was, and continued to be, their Teacher and Lord (13:13-14). This was not His way of setting up the “Awww shucks, who me?” style of leadership that’s so praised today.

For example, in a recent Think Deeper episode, we discussed the division of labor in the home. When we noted that such a division is going to lead to an imbalance of duties, and that the wife who is a homemaker is going to do more dishes than the husband who is away working the 9-5 (or more), the shrieking started.

Paraphrasing, the response went something like, “Oh, you think you’re above doing dishes? Well Jesus washed feet! You’re supposed to be a servant leader like Him!”

Does John 13 demand that husbands do just as many dishes or other household chores as wives? Similarly, does it demand church leaders bend to the wishes of the congregation? Is that the kind of thing the passage is teaching?

The right way to see it:

Interestingly, we have a pretty clear answer not too far along in the text.

In Acts 6, the apostles—the very men who had received the Savior’s foot washing—had to deal with the challenge of fair bread distribution among the congregation. So, they went out and started serving bread, right?

Quite the opposite, actually. “Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables” (Acts 6:2 KJV).

Wisdom dictated that they appoint other men to serve the bread so they themselves could continue teaching. In other words, they served and led by not serving in that particular way.

Did they already forget Jesus’ message? Of course not. They understood what moderns seem to miss: serving doesn’t mean doing what people want you to do. Serving means doing what needs to be done to accomplish God’s task for you.

Even in John 13 we see this principle, as Peter attempted to decline the foot washing. Jesus did not “servant lead” Peter and acquiesce to the man’s wishes. As Lord, He set a boundary and demanded Peter accept it, or be left out of Jesus’ number (13:8).

Foot washing is about the humility Jesus requires us to use in our authority, not a call to stop using authority altogether.

Be careful with the text

“You also should do as I did to you” is not a universal command to go out and make everybody feel good about themselves. Nor is it a command to be whatever people want Christians to be. Nor was it a command to shut up about the truth because it might make somebody mad.

Rather, it was a command for those who would lead Christ’s people to do so with humility, emptying themselves of a desire to be exalted above others.

We have to sharpen our discernment, or else we’ll gullibly fall for every twisted Scripture someone throws at us. Yes, “Jesus washed feet.” But don’t make it mean more than what Jesus said.

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• Thanks to everyone who has helped You Are Saved: The Christian’s Assurance cross the 50 review threshold with a 5 star rating!
  If you haven’t picked up a copy, grab one at Amazon today!

• The Men’s Excellence Workshop is starting to take shape. I’m hoping to share a registration link in early October for a Spring 2027 gathering. You can find info and fill out the form to be notified at www.excellentmen.work

In my nearly 20 years of doing this, I’ve run into two consistent themes in the church with regard to the kind of work I and my colleagues do:

A lot of preachers think cultural engagement is “icky…”

and a lot of people in the pews are starving for it.

“Ugh, you’re one of those guys who talks about issues instead of Jesus,” is the general response from many in the ministry crowd.

Those preachers can’t understand why someone would talk about names like Charlie Kirk and Lindsay Clancy, issues like abortion and immigration, and other hotly debated issues that grab the culture’s attention. We’re just here to preach Jesus, they say.

Meanwhile, many people in the pews want to know what the Bible has to say about those issues—and perhaps also where their church leaders stand on them.

One survey ahead of the 2024 election found that 82% of evangelicals wanted to hear a sermon about the Bible’s stance on immigration. That’s over 4 out of 5 churchgoers who wanted a sermon on immigration. Yet, less than 1/3 of them got one. If they want to hear about that issue, we can reasonably assume they want to hear about others, too.

Anecdotal experience certainly backs that up for me. The comment we get more than any other regarding Think Deeper Podcast is, “You guys talk about the things nobody else talks about.” I am not saying that to pat myself and my cohosts on the back. I’m saying it to point out that there is a tremendous void to be filled. We’d be far better off if the local church were having these discussions more than podcasters are.

But we don’t, because cultural issues are icky.

To be clear, only the cultural issues that the world tells us are icky are actually icky, in this approach. Taking a strong stand against feminism is unhelpful, but “we cannot be silent” about racism when the world tells us we have to talk about it.

The end result is that both Christians and the lost see that the church exists to push the left-wing status quo on some issues, and to protect it from ever being cross-examined with Scripture on other issues.

Why is cultural engagement seen as icky?

I can’t speak to anyone’s motives, but I can tell you what is often said. The claim is that issues divide, but Christ unites. Why speak about something that might drive people away when you could tell people about Jesus?

So, when somebody puts out a strong stance on abortion, Lindsay Clancy, or immigration, the ick factor sets in. Cringing responses flow. “This could keep us from reaching people for Jesus! If church members find out where their preacher stands on these kinds of things, some of them might leave!”

Those charges are worth our concern, but they aren’t the end of the story.

Here are three reasons why we shouldn’t let backlash keep us from cultural engagement.

First, that’s not what Jesus did.

Jesus was divisive because He claimed authority over every aspect of people’s lives. He couldn’t have “just preached the Gospel” to the rich young ruler instead of talking about money. He was preaching the Gospel by laying down the requirements that come with it.

And, that’s what we aim to do by discussing the issues. People need to know that the Gospel is going to require them to be transformed by the renewing of their minds.

Second, abstention is also divisive, it’s just a little more quiet.

When the church doesn’t take a clear stand on some hot button issue that the Bible addresses, maybe we kept from angering the blue-haired, nose-ringed Starbucks barista who hates religion, but we might have also pushed away the blue collar guy who sees what’s wrong with the world and wants to know if the church does, too. Somehow, the latter almost never enters into our calculations.

Third, we hurt people when we avoid the issues that affect them.

I posted recently about the catastrophic decline in marriage rates among young people, and one of the responses I got is that the church shouldn’t be focused on these kinds of things. Why not?
Does the Bible not establish the importance and goodness of marriage?
Does it not say that spouses and children are a blessing, and that it’s not good to be alone?
Shouldn’t we expect a church with a healthy culture to be one where young people can find like-minded spouses, raise families in the Lord, and grow into church leadership?
Does it not hurt the church if we have an elder shortage because not enough men could get married and have families?

I could keep asking questions, but I think you get the point. The world has some serious problems to solve, and by abdicating our job on these issues, we’ve failed to show them a better way. We’re little closer to solving these problems than the world, when we have the blueprint!

People need icky Christianity

If we’re going to have a prophetic voice in this age of so much confusion, we’re going to have to say some things that will get us labeled as “icky” by the “respectable” people.

Some people will probably leave. Some will be turned off. We can either fire the preacher and insist we keep our Christianity firmly in the building and our own hearts, or we can embrace the parts of the Gospel that others find distasteful, and thereby help Christians rise above the modern world.

The truth has always had an off-putting effect—just go see what happened to Jesus in John 6. Paul told us the same in 1 Corinthians 1:18 and 2 Corinthians 2:15-16. That doesn’t mean the truth is not the truth, or that it’s not worth saying.

Preach the Word, be instant in season and out of season—when people want to hear it, and when they think it’s icky.

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Notes

• My book Church Reset: God’s Design for So Much More is now permanently just $9.99 on Amazon, and features an all-new cover! Grab a copy here

• You can catch all 4 lessons I presented at the Engage Conference, along with lessons from Brad Harrub, Will Harrub, and Joe Wilkie, on the Brown St. Church of Christ YouTube channel!

The following is a talk I did at the Engage Conference in Waxahachie, TX on ‘Toxic Masculinity vs. Biblical Masculinity.’

I discussed the world’s view of masculinity, how the church has largely failed to correct them, and practical ways men of God can avoid the two ditches of unbridled masculinity vs. a denial of it.

You can watch below, or listen on the Church Reset podcast (Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app)!

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There’s a common misconception in the headship discussion that men who advocate for man’s leadership and woman’s submission only do so out of a desire to live like a king at others’ expense.

They seem to see it similarly to the little kid who demands the biggest piece of birthday cake, or cuts to the front of the line at batting practice.

This comes from what I’ve called the Dictator/Doormat dichotomy, in which people believe a man can only choose one of those two paths for his role in the home. The dictator takes all of the blessings of being the head of the house, without any of the burden. Obviously, that is not good.

Jesus said the greatest of all would be the servants (Matthew 23:11). He got down and washed feet (John 13). He wasn’t here to be served, but to serve (Mark 10:45). So, being the head of the household does not mean living large at everyone else’s expense.

However, we shouldn’t overcorrect.

In our feminist society and the Christian world that has been indoctrinated by it, the Doormat man has all of the burdens of the household, but none of the blessings.

The buck still ultimately stops with him when it comes to making sure the family is financially taken care of. If his wife is miserable, he is supposed to say “Yes, Dear” and “I’m sorry” and live by “Happy wife, happy life.” And if she isn’t happy, it can only ever be his fault for not “stepping up.” It must be because of something he did (or didn’t do—see “the mental load”).

As for the blessings, men have been told that accepting this role would help them gain appreciation and even sexual prioritization (“Nothing’s hotter to a woman than a man who cleans the kitchen!”) but
1) it doesn’t work,
2) the wife almost never agreed to that deal, and
3) it would be an even bigger problem if she did.

What kind of relationship has the man filling out a chore chart to get some consideration from his wife? Not a healthy one. But that’s the system that is often taught, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly. So, instead of any blessings that come with the responsibility, he becomes the constant butt of the joke and is expected to defer to his wife in all things or he isn’t “serving her like Jesus.”

This paradigm has chased a number of young men away from marriage entirely. Who would sign up for any job where you bear all the responsibility, take all of the blame, and get none of the benefits?

No, we should be able to find a balance.

The ideal is for men to sacrificially take on the challenging burden of leading the family, and to receive the blessing of being recognized and respected for doing so.

If that sounds radical… why? Why should the role of husband and father be a thankless job?

We are all effusive in our praise of mothers, and rightly so, as Proverbs 31:28-29 shows. A good husband who loves God, cherishes his wife, leads his family to obey the Word, and takes on the responsibilities of protecting and providing for the household, should be respected for who he is.

Truth be told, the Bible commands his wife to respect him even if he isn’t all those things. But the godly husband will strive to take on the burden of his task, and for that the blessing of respect should be his as well.

Getting practical

For wives

This is the way Christian women can be Sarah’s children, as 1 Peter 3:6 discusses. You don’t exactly have to call your husband “lord” as she did, but you should be showing the kind of respect and deference contained in that verse.

This kind of teaching is often countered with the charge that the wife is not her husband’s slave, or child, or whatever. No, but she is his wife, and as such God commands her to submit to Him and respect Him (Ephesians 5:22, 33). She should be in the habit of making it clear to her husband, their children, and anybody observing their interactions that she respects and appreciates him for who he is and what he does.

There’s a real beauty to be found when we abandon the feminist battle of the sexes and get back to these Biblical commands. He’s going to bear the burdens of leading and providing for the family… she can lighten that load by making him feel respected for it.

For husbands

Bear the burden, get the blessing. Seeking the blessing of being the lead man without taking on the burden just makes your family resent you. Bearing the burden while not being respected just makes you resent them. So, do your job, and communicate clearly that you and everyone else in the house will be expected to follow the Biblical commands given to each person in their role.

There’s a common thought that no good leader has to remind people of his title and authority. That’s not always true, though. Jesus did it. Paul did it. Any leader who is being undermined has to address it somehow. But there’s a right way and a wrong way to do it.

If a man is constantly pointing to his title to get his way, that’s not the right use of authority. On the other hand, if a man has to tell his wife she can’t keep disrespecting him and overriding him in front of the kids, that would be a necessary part of managing the household well.

After all, as her spiritual head, he is doing her no favors if he doesn’t take her back to the Word when she needs to hear it. At the same time, he’ll be a lot more effective at that if he’s living consistently by the Word himself.

For all of us

The church should be leading the charge against young people’s growing disillusionment with marriage. Too often we hammer men for not stepping up enough, and we make them the butt of the joke for being less competent than their wives.

What if, instead, we presented the role of husband and father as a high calling with great responsibility to be borne, yet also with great honor coming to those who do it well? What if we taught the wives and young women what a blessing it is to have a good man to lead and protect them, and how good it is for them to respect their husbands?

To do this, we are going to have to shake off decades of feminist indoctrination, and we’re going to have to drop a lot of tropes and witty quips about men from our vocabulary. This will receive no small amount of pushback along the way. That’s but a small price to pay for Godlier, happier families.

Don’t fall in a ditch

As we swing back from our long foray into feminist-structured households, there will certainly be overcorrections, with some men trampling their families in the name of headship. Keep these two things in mind: that is still the far smaller problem than the opposite, and, that misapplication does not mean we have to throw any babies out with any bath water.

The Bible is incredibly straightforward about these things, and natural revelation backs it up. A man has a great duty to his family, and he should be honored for taking it on, even if he does it imperfectly. Don’t hand him the burden while holding back the blessing.

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Notes

Join me, Dr. Brad Harrub, Will Harrub, and Joe Wilkie this weekend at the Engage Conference in Waxahachie, TX!

Go here to see the schedule and to register

Author joined me to talk about his new book, 'Manmade: St. Anthony's Guide to Surviving the AI Apocalypse'

We discuss:
- What innovations like A.I. reveal about our shaky philosophical foundations
- Where God comes into the A.I. discussion
- Why "It's just a tool" misses the point
- Wiley's view on A.I. "writing" and sermon prep

You can order 'Manmade' here (Amazon affil.)
Check out Wiley's site at crwiley.com

Watch the interview below, or catch it on the go by subscribing to the Church Reset podcast (Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app)!

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I’ve been teaching through a study on Nehemiah, and every time I read the book my admiration grows for the man. He was in a tough situation, confronted with all kinds of difficulties, and yet he navigated it with perfect leadership.

Every decision he made struck the right note and helped the Jewish people restore the strength of Jerusalem by rebuilding the wall on an astonishing timeframe. While the Bible is filled with many great men and women, somehow Nehemiah is often overlooked among the greats like Daniel, Joseph, David, and others.

But that should not be the case. His book is a masterclass in leadership tactics and characteristics.

Here are 8 ways Nehemiah taught us to lead

1. He cared (1:4)
   It’s a simple one, yes, but it’s non-negotiable. Unless something really matters to a person, they’re not likely to get it done. Nehemiah cared about God, about God’s people, and about God’s city, and his care came through in everything he did.

2. He relied on God (1:4-11)
   Throughout the book, Nehemiah sought God’s blessing and relied on Him for strength and guidance.
   But notice, he prayed AND worked. Both of these are good, but they are incomplete without each other. Nehemiah prayed for God’s blessing on work he knew God wanted him to do, and then he didn’t wait around for God to make it happen. He acted.

3. He equipped the people (ch. 3 and 4:16)
   Nehemiah did not seek to be a one man show, nor did he micromanage them, but neither did he let himself be steered by the people. He cast a vision, put people in place to help him carry it out, and let them do their work. Any organization can learn from this structure, but churches especially can lean on “what every joint supplies” (Ephesians 4:11-16).

4. He inspired the people (2:17-20)
   Getting people excited about what they can accomplish and making them feel like they’re a part of something important and something bigger than themselves goes a long, long way. Practically every important man in history has done this for the people in his charge, and so anybody who would aim to get big things done must be able to inspire as Nehemiah did.

5. He stayed focused (4:6; 6:3, 10-13)
   There will always be a million things competing for our attention, and many of them will even be good things. Still, we can’t be everywhere all at once. Nehemiah was there to build a wall, and every decision he made came back to that central question: what is going to get this wall built? Focus is key.
   Part of that focus includes being shrewd. Not everyone who asks for your time asks in good faith, as Nehemiah’s opponents showed in chapter 6. A leader does not have to be everything to everyone, lest they tear him away from his purpose.

6. He cleaned house (5:6-7)
   When Satan can’t bring a good work down from the outside, he’ll try to bring it down from the inside. The Jews faced great internal strife in Nehemiah 5 as the haves took advantage of the have-nots, and Nehemiah would not stand for it. He angrily confronted those who caused the problem and pressured them into doing the right thing.
   These kinds of tactics are often not tolerated in our day, but they should be. No group can succeed without healthy internal confrontation.

7. He put his people first (5:14-19)
   Nehemiah was not there to live high on the proverbial hog—he was there to get the job done. He had every right to take the salary set aside for him, but he knew that would set him apart from the very people he was trying to lead, so he declined it.
   As Jesus told us, the greatest will be those who serve (Matthew 23:11). Nehemiah was not a “servant leader” in the modern, spineless sense. Rather, he was a ruler who did what was necessary to take care of his people.

8. He set the example (5:16)
   It’s very hard to get people to care more about a project than their leaders do. Churches, families, and any other organization will follow the cues of those who are in charge. For Nehemiah, that meant he had to work on that wall like his life depended on it, and when he did, the people did the same.

Take a read through Nehemiah again sometime soon. Let the man’s dedication to serving God inspire you to step up and get things done for God in your context, knowing that God aids and blesses those who step up in faith for Him as Nehemiah did.

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Complaining is one of mankind’s favorite pastimes. I have things to complain about, you have things to complain about, and so we’ll always have that in common. We hate Mondays, hot weather, cold weather, difficult coworkers, family members who don’t act the way we want them to, and so forth.

Unfortunately, this creates a perverse incentive for some people to put a magnifying glass on these grievances and “tickle our ears” by telling us how put upon we are by having to deal with the things and people we don’t like.

Every grievance has its own “Bitterness Brigade” online to commiserate and encourage one another to hate and resent the people around us.

As crazy as it is, there are people who make a living teaching others not to give grace, such as:

- Therapists who help clients blame every problem they have on things their parents did wrong, spamming words like “toxic” and “narcissist” to encourage breaking contact.

- Influencers who tell women to view everything their husbands do through a critical lens and constantly tell them how put upon they are in their marriages. Sheila Gregoire, Abby Eckel, etc.

- Influencers who tell a man that all women are untrustworthy and should be kept at arm’s length, even including the one he’s married to. Manosphere bros, MGTOW types.

- FB groups and reddit threads that will tell you that divorce and ghosting are the answer to all your problems.

- “Deconstruction” groups that will tell you to desert your church full of imperfect yet caring Christians because of a sermon you didn’t like or a rude comment from someone one time.

People will come across groups like these, feel a kinship over a common experience or two, convince themselves they’ve “found their people,” and next thing you know, they’ve blown their lives up thanks to the bad company that corrupted their good morals.

When you come across these types of groups, scroll their pages for a while and you’ll see they are almost always deeply unhappy people who attract a following of other deeply unhappy people—and remember that misery loves company.

Many of them are quite obviously just seeking validation by getting others to make the same choices they made.

Divorce is contagious because divorced people often spread their misery and tell others to look for greener grass, too. Going non-contact with family has snowballed in recent years as that is often the only tool some can loan from their toolbox. These things become social contagions long before many of the adherents stop to think if their choice was wise.

But evaluating the wisdom of our choices is the task before us.

Does God condone these kinds of Bitterness Brigades?

As always, measure the fruit.

Evaluate the influencers and commenters against 1 Corinthians 13 and see how much bearing and believing they’re encouraging. Spoiler alert: none.

Watch a TikTok video of a mom complaining about her annoying kids or lousy husband and ask yourself if she’s considering it all joy to endure her various trials, or rejoicing in the Lord always, and if she’s helping you do the same.

Read some forums about cutting off family members and see if the people there are dedicated to forgiving just as God in Christ has forgiven us.

Just slamming the door for the slightest offense isn’t the answer, no matter how many maladjusted Redditors say so. We aren’t perfect either, so we had better give the grace we hope to receive on our worst days, too.

You have to be so careful about who you’re listening to. No, you don’t have to ignore every offense a loved one commits, but even in conflict we have to start from a place of love and grace. Look at the fruits of doing otherwise and you’ll see that this kind of advice does not make one more Christlike.

That’s why enduring these hardships matters: this is our sanctification.

People are difficult. Sometimes, life is difficult. We were not promised otherwise.

We can either complain about it, and throw blame and resentment toward the people we are commanded to love, or we can see our struggles the way the Bible presents them: as opportunities to grow in Christlikeness.

We think our sanctification will come from a great worship service, or a good personal devotional time, or the spiritual high of a camp or a retreat. All of those are great. But where God really shapes us is in our faithful obedience to the day-in, day-out commands we don’t always want to obey.

A tough day with your spouse or kids is a new opportunity to submit ourselves to the Bible’s commands to love them, not be embittered toward them, and fulfill our God-given role for them. Hurt from your parents or someone in the church is a chance to learn how to bear with people. Removing your pains and obstacles won’t make you more joyful. Faithfully bearing them will.

Patience, humility, love, and grace are the answers. Finding people who will encourage our bitterness and validate our anger and annoyance is not.

If the people who have your attention online are making you more resentful toward the people you are called to love, use that unfollow button wisely.

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Notes

• My book Church Reset is just $10 on Amazon nowadays in either paperback or Kindle and has a slick new cover - Grab a copy here!

A few months ago, I wrote a piece here asking, “Who’s Going to Challenge the Women?” My premise was that young men have received a lot of tough love, and it has been a good thing for them.

At the same time, women have received nothing but coddling in the media and in the church, and it is not doing them any favors. They need someone to lovingly but firmly give them a course correction away from the path of feminism.

Now, the world is seeing that truth in 4KHD.

The Lindsay Clancy case is making it painfully clear that modern women are in a horrible way.

For those of you who aren’t heavily online and aren’t familiar with the case (and bless you for it), Lindsay Clancy was a married mom of three who sank into postpartum depression and then alleged psychosis before strangling her three children to death.

We can feel awful for her that her mental health was suffering so greatly. We can acknowledge that pharmaceutical interventions can sometimes wildly exacerbate the problems they are intended to help. And, at the same time, we can acknowledge that this was a horrific crime, and she should receive the full force of the law for her actions.

Instead, many women have decided that Clancy is the real victim.

Today, women rallied outside the courthouse dressed in pink in solidarity, cheering Clancy’s defense attorney. A GoFundMe has raised nearly a million dollars in support of Clancy, as women flood the page with encouragement for the face of their cause.

Other women have posted videos of themselves holding their children with the caption “Same, Lindsay,” either unaware of the horrific implications of identifying with a woman who killed her kids, or unbothered by them. They see Lindsay Clancy as their opportunity to talk about the struggles they’ve faced, leaving out the fact that they didn’t kill their kids.

The end result is that a woman who strangled her kids has become a hero and a vicarious avatar for an alarming number of women.

And none of them will entertain the idea that Clancy is responsible for these terrible actions.

Violating the 9th commandment, and contradicting Clancy’s own defense team, the women of TikTok have decided that Clancy’s husband may actually be the culprit. It’s the husband’s fault, they’ll tell you—whether they think he actually did it, or that he wasn’t supportive enough, or that he was guilty of driving her to it by some unreported abuse he must have committed.

If it’s not him, it’s the drug companies’ fault. It’s the therapist’s fault. It is everybody's fault but the woman who killed the kids.

The responsibility Clancy bears, one woman told me, is the unfortunate responsibility that she will have to live without her kids. Unsurprisingly, the same woman suspects the husband—you know, who also has to live his life without his kids because his wife murdered them—may have been the cause.

I am telling you, women are not okay.

Not all the women, of course—though the ones who aren’t included in that diagnosis are also the kind who can deduce that on their own.

But many women are suffering from a similar total lack of accountability across the board. All of this TikTok mommy-sleuthing and searching for evidence and “following the trial” with gossipy speculation and “just asking questions” is an elaborate attempt to avoid facing an uncomfortable but obvious conclusion: women sin, too.

Consider how often you see attempts to avoid this conclusion…

• If a woman gets an abortion, it’s the man’s fault for impregnating her, and the doctor’s fault for carrying out the procedure. Don’t you dare suggest we prosecute the mom who hired the hitman.

• If a woman is promiscuous, it’s because of the lust-filled men who took advantage of her.

• If a wife blows up the family because the internet convinced her that her husband was a toxic narcissistic abuser because he left his socks on the floor instead of in the laundry hamper, then the divorce is his fault. She’ll get the kids and probably the house. The social circle will side with her. (In most but not all cases, I know).

• Even in the church, many won’t preach Ephesians 5 without telling the wives they are to submit on the condition of a man’s perfect leadership, and if he fails in her eyes in any way, then it’s his fault that she didn’t submit. She gets to decide when she’s supposed to follow, if at all.

What kind of “equality” exempts one party from being responsible for their actions?

The kind of “equality” sought by Godless frameworks.

This case is oddly reminiscent of last year’s Karmelo Anthony case, when a young black man murdered a young white man and received an enormous outpouring of support. His GoFundMe, too, brought in a seven-figure windfall. It, too, was filled with messages of us against them rhetoric. Older folks might remember the O.J. Simpson trial going the same way.

What this shows is that we are dealing with mass demographic enmity. That’s what Marxist Critical Theory, with its oppressed/oppressor dynamics, has given us. “Oppressed” classes are pumped with delusions and fears about their supposed oppression. As a result, they are convinced that they can do no wrong as the alleged underdog in a class war.

So, women view themselves as the underdogs in the eternal struggle against men. Being a victim is the path to victory in this framework, so finding a way to become the victim is the gameplan.

Thus, when a woman kills her children, she couldn’t possibly be responsible. In fact, the first person we should question is her husband. It just had to be him, they instinctively deduce. And you know what that means… she is actually the victim here.

I’m sorry, but this is insanity.

We cannot go on living like this. God willing, we won’t.

This is why I have been beating the drum so loudly about restoring Biblical man/woman dynamics. Many will warn you about what will result if we get back to men leading and women submitting… and then those same people will give women a pass for tens of millions of abortions and strangling little ones in one’s own home.

Plenty of men and women are seeing just how many women are reflexively siding with a murderous mother over three innocent children and her devastated husband, and that toothpaste doesn’t go back in the tube. This is the kind of thing that will contribute to a huge swing back toward Biblical and historical gender roles.

100 years of so-called “equality” led us to this shocking dead end. Don’t be surprised when people start looking in other directions. Feminism must be rejected, and women must be taught to reject it for their own good, and for the good of all around them.

I realize this will fall on many deaf ears among those who are unashamed feminists. But there are also many who aren’t there, yet are still drawn to Lindsay Clancy’s defense.

Once again, we should be sympathetic to mental health struggles, and it’s long past time to question the kinds of drugs that are handed out like candy. However…

Just think about this for a second. Three kids are dead. A man lost his family at the hands of his own wife. Those are the victims, and they aren’t victims of a nameless, faceless entity. They were victimized by a woman—their mother and wife—and she bears responsibility. Let’s not lose the main thread here.

Time for a change

The only way out of this is God’s way, in which we abandon the feminist war between the sexes and acknowledge that men are responsible for being good men, and women are responsible for being good women.

Men should honor, love, and cherish their wives. Women should respect and submit to their husbands, and love their families (and work diligently as housekeepers to avoid gossip chains, which seems particularly relevant right about now - 1 Timothy 5:13-14). Whatever this current thing is, it isn’t that.

So long as we accept a system of competition between the two sexes, the scales will be tilted. Women will be unconcerned with what’s right, but who wins. And men will start to respond in kind. That only gets worse from here if we don’t turn it around. It’s time to restore the beauty of the sexes as God intended.

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Notes

• For a longer discussion on this case, check out our Think Deeper Podcast livestream