Some coffins are quite beautiful. Polished mahogany, brass fittings, silk lining, with flowers as the finishing touch. Craftsmen spend careers perfecting them. But nice coffins don’t fool anyone. However fine the box, we all know what’s inside and none of its external beauty can change it.
That’s the best picture I know of the difference between external religion and Christianity. One decorates the outside of death. The other empties the coffin.
External religion has never been hard to come by. Every culture in every century has produced some version of it: a set of rules, habits, and rituals designed to make you a better, more moral, more presentable person. To its credit, outward religion works. It can change the outside and help put one on wiser paths. It can reshape how you dress, speak, and act. It can make you impressive and help you live better in relation to others.
But Christianity doesn’t offer external religion.
You see this all over the New Testament. Jesus said to see or enter the Kingdom of God one had to be “born again” (John 3:3, 5). The Apostle Paul said that, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). He also explains to Titus that God “saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). When the Apostles preached, they didn’t hand out to-do lists, but made announcements. “God has done the work!” was their claim and the result was that people’s hearts were changed and their lives followed suit.
God’s inner work doesn’t stop at salvation but continues on throughout the Christian life. Paul prayed that God would strengthen the Ephesian Christians, “with power through his Spirit in [their] inner being” (Ephesians 3:16). And this renewal isn’t a one-time event that fades. “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). The Spirit goes inside. Religion works on the surface. The power of the gospel works at the core.
It’s not only a New Testament reality. In the Old Testament, God promised centuries earlier through Ezekiel: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you” (Ezekiel 36:26–27). God doesn’t promise better rules, stricter discipline, or a more rigorous program. He promises surgery. A heart transplant. His own Spirit taking up residence where the stone used to be.
That’s salvation from Old Testament to New. It’s also where Christianity stands in stark contrast to every other religion. While other man-made religions’ exterior paint chips and peels, the Spirit’s work moves in the opposite direction: deeper, fresher, more alive with every passing day. Heart first, then life. Not outward behavior management, but inward transformation. Regeneration and renewal, not mere moral reformation. Through gospel proclamation, the Spirit doesn’t tidy up the old life; he creates a new one.
As the glorious preacher-ism goes, God doesn’t make bad people good. He makes dead people alive. He doesn’t paint coffins. He raises the dead. “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11). The same power that emptied a tomb outside Jerusalem now lives inside everyone who belongs to Christ.
Where external religions offer new costumes, Christ alone offers a new heart: a life from the inside out. The Spirit of the living God taking up residence in your inner being and beginning the work that no amount of rule-keeping could ever accomplish. The inside-out life makes sense of Paul’s famous exhortation, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2). Conformity is external religion’s specialty: pressure applied from the outside to change the outside. Transformation is the Spirit’s specialty: inner resurrection where life works its way out from within.
External religion can change what you do. Only Christ can change what you are.
In the children’s book, “Are You My Mother?” a baby bird hatches while his mother is away from the nest. Having never seen her, he sets off to find her. He comes across a kitten and sincerely asks, “Are you my mother?” After realizing the kitten isn’t his mother, he continues his quest by asking a hen, dog, boat, and more. His question is sincere, innocent, and heartbreaking. The little bird doesn’t know what he’s looking for. He only knows it’s missing something important.
Our Search
Scripture tells us that human beings are in a similar situation.
We were made in the image of our God. Just as Seth was born “in the likeness and image” of his father Adam (Genesis 5:3), we were created to reflect the One who made us (Gen. 1:26-27). Our identity, our dignity, and our very sense of self are rooted and found in who He is. Image Bearers can only know who they are if they know the One in whose image they’re made. As Calvin wrote, “Man never attains to a true self-knowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself.” If we don’t know whose we are, we’ll never know who we are.
But, unlike the little bird who hatched in his mother’s absence, our first parents were created in God’s presence and chose to run. He didn’t know her and went looking. We knew him and went running.
Now we wander and try to find what we long ago lost: the source of our identity. We tirelessly seek out accomplishments, relationships, pleasures, accolades, or carefully curated personalities and ask not “Are you my mother?” but, “Are you my god?” We know something deep is missing so, like little bird, we search and search. Unlike the little bird, we often settle for answers that don’t fit.
The reason nothing satisfies is that we were made from and for a specific Someone. Paul writes, “I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Ephesians 3:14–15). God alone is Mankind’s Father – the original, the source, the one from whom all belonging flows. If we don’t know our Father, in whose image and likeness we were made (Gen. 1:26-27), we can’t possibly know ourselves.
Our Rescue
In the children’s book, the fretful and anxious little bird returns to his nest where his mother eventually arrives. The little bird joyfully identifies her. She’s not a kitten, hen, or dog. She’s his mother. In Scripture, the story ends a bit differently. Instead of us returning to Him, God in Christ comes looking for his lost ones. He doesn’t wait. He rescues. He doesn’t ask us, “Do you know who you are?” but tells us, “You were lost, but now you are found.”
“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8
“God sent forth his Son…to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Galatians 4:4-5
“See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” 1 John 3:1
The little bird’s question was never really about finding his mother, but finding himself. And the answer, when it finally came, wasn’t ultimately a fact to learn, but a person to find. So it is for us: in Christ finding us, we find ourselves. Knowing whose we are is the beginning of knowing who we are.
C.S. Lewis ends The Last Battle the way only he could: by making death sound like waking up.
If you have never read the Chronicles of Narnia, here is what you need to know. Seven children, across seven books, have traveled in and out of a world called Narnia, a wonderful land ruled by Aslan, a great lion who is thinly veiled as Christ. They have fought battles, met talking animals, and been sent back to their ordinary lives again and again when their time in Narnia was finished.
In The Last Battle, the final book, Narnia itself comes to an end. The old world passes away. And the children, who have just been in a terrible railway accident back in England, find themselves standing in a new Narnia, brighter and more real than anything they have ever seen. They do not yet know what has happened to them.
Then Aslan tells them.
“Then Aslan turned to them and said: ‘You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.’
Lucy said, ‘We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. And you have sent us back into our own world so often.’
‘No fear of that,’ said Aslan. ‘Have you not guessed?’ Their hearts leaped and a wild hope rose within them. ‘There was a real railway accident,’ said Aslan softly. ‘Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.’
And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
This is the line: “The dream is ended: this is the morning.”
In this passage, Lewis takes the thing we fear most, death, and reframes it as graduation day. “The term is over: the holidays have begun.” Life as we know it becomes the title page of an even greater story that never ends.
Lewis is not pretending death does not hurt, but he’s insisting it isn’t the end. On the contrary, it’s the beginning of something greater than we know, a life where every chapter is better than the one before.
For those of us who know the Author, that promise is not fiction.
There is a phrase Christians repeat constantly in evangelism, counseling, and debate. Many have been taught it from well-intentioned folks. There is some truth to it, but that’s buried by the untruths it breeds.
“All sins are equal.”
The problem with this phrase is, if not heard correctly, it does a lot of damage. When a sexual abuse survivor hears that her abuser’s crimes are “the same” as a white lie, something breaks in her heart. When a new believer is told that a moment of gossip and a lifetime of heinous crimes land in the same moral category, they stop trusting their most basic, God-given moral intuitions. When a pastor tries to call a serial adulterer to account and someone in the room says “well, all sins are the same,” the pastor and church’s ability to deal with the situation righteously is stolen. God does not think all sins are the same, nor should we.
Like I said above, the phrase usually intends something true. The problem is repeating that phrase alone in its bare, bumper-sticker form ends up saying something false. And the false version causes real harm.
Three Ways to Think About Sins
To help you tease out the right and the wrong of this phrase and avoid the damages mentioned, here are three truths about sin we must hold together without collapsing them into each other.
1. All sin makes you guilty before God.
This is what the phrase is usually meant to get at. Any violation of God’s law, however small by human reckoning, makes you a lawbreaker who needs grace. James writes, “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10). A single sin is enough to land you in the courtroom. You do not need to commit the worst sins to need a Savior. The thief who took a paperclip and the man who destroyed a family both stand before God as lawbreakers in need of forgiveness.
This is necessary news for the proud moralist who thinks his relatively clean record puts him in a favorable position. It does not. Any sin is enough to deserve judgment and cause guilt only God’s grace can pardon. This truth deserves to be said clearly and often.
But it is not the whole truth.
2. Not all sins are equal.
This is where the phrase fails. Scripture is clear that sins differ in their weight, guilt, consequence, and degreeofcondemnation.
Jesus told Pontius Pilate, “He who delivered me over to you has the greater sin” (John 19:11). He did not say Pilate was innocent. But he recognized a moral difference in degree. Judas bore more. Some sins are greater than others.
Jesus also warned that it would be “more bearable on the day of judgment” for Sodom and Gomorrah than for Chorazin and Bethsaida (Matthew 11:20-24). The judgment is not uniform. It is calibrated to what actually happened.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus compares calling someone a fool to murder and connects lust to adultery. He escalates the moral gravity in each case, which only makes sense if there are degrees to begin with. He is not collapsing the categories. He is showing how far the category extends.
The Mosaic law itself built in distinctions. Intentional sin carried different penalties than unintentional sin (Numbers 15:27-31). High-handed sins, committed with defiance and contempt for God, were treated with particular severity. The law assumed that circumstances, intent, and degree matter morally.
Jesus taught that the servant who knew his master’s will and did not do it “will receive a severe beating,” while the one who did not know “will receive a light beating” (Luke 12:47-48). Knowledge increases culpability. Greater judgment is reserved for those who “knew better”. Not all lawbreaking is the same before God.
Ezekiel distinguishes between the “abominations” of Israel and draws comparisons of degree (Ezekiel 8:6, 13, 15). The prophets regularly describe some sins as worse than others. Even within idolatry, some idolatrous acts are “more detestable” than others.
God does not see sin in black and white, but perfectly sees all the dark shades it comes in. He observes every sin with perfect clarity along with what made it what it was: the knowledge behind it, the harm it caused, the contempt it expressed, the pattern it formed. The good news is not only that he perfectly sees what we see dimly, but he will judge each sin perfectly and proportionately. True and perfect punishment will be given to perfectly fit each and every crime.
3. The gospel offers forgiveness for them all.
Here the good news where both truths ought to lead us to: every lawbreaker, small and great, has the same door of salvation open to them. The Apostles preached it to guilty sinner, great and small, everywhere they went:
“Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).
The substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus is sufficient to wash away any and every sin. The Savior who bore the weight of the worst sins ever committed offers full forgiveness to anyone who trusts him. The ground is level at the foot of the cross, not because all sins are the same, but because all sinners are equally in need of God’s grace and equally invited to drink it down deep.
All sins make us guilty. Though not all sins are equal in degree, the degree of of our sin does not close the door on salvation. The blood of Jesus covers the sins of the gossip and the war criminal alike.
Why These Distinctions Matter in Ministry and Witness
Getting this right is not theological nitpicking. It dramatically affects how we care for people and give witness to the gospel of grace.
It takes victims seriously. When we blur the line between minor wrongdoing and serious abuse, we communicate to victims that their harm was ordinary. It was not. Naming serious sin as serious is a form of pastoral care. It validates what they already know in their bones.
It enables honest confrontation. When a pastor or elder needs to call someone to account for a pattern of serious sin, they need language that reflects the gravity of the situation. “All sins are equal” can function cut the teeth of needed accountability by leveling the moral playing field with all other sins.
It makes the gospel more credible. Unbelievers often object to Christianity on the grounds that Christians seem to lack moral seriousness or proportion. When we tell someone that a lie and a genocide are morally equivalent, we sound absurd. Acknowledging real moral differences while proclaiming a gospel that covers them all is far more compelling.
It clarifies genuine repentance. The person who has committed serious sin needs to understand the weight of what they did and not have it minimized. Cheap comfort is no comfort. The gospel is most powerful when the sin it covers is seen clearly for what it was.
It guards the character of God.A God who judges all sins identically is not a just God. He is a bureaucrat who unjustly takes teeth for eyes and eyes for teeth. The God of Scripture sees every particular, weighs every circumstance, and judges each with perfect equity. That is terrifying and wonderful at the same time.
All sins make you a lawbreaker who needs grace, but not all sins are the same. And, praise be to God, Jesus Christ offers forgiveness for every last one.
To cap off our year together in theology, I gave my high school students an assignment I’m fairly sure several of their parents would later email me about (they did): plan your own funeral.
Pick the songs. Pick the Scripture readings. Pick three people to speak and write what you’d hope they genuinely say about you. Choose two prayers. Finish it off with a one-page letter for the people in the pews. Tell them what you want them to know, remember, and do when they walk out the doors of the church.
I called it the memento mori project. I warned the kids up front: this is going to feel weird and a little unsettling. That’s kind of the point. Christians have been doing this for two thousand years. Desert fathers kept skulls on their writing desks, Puritans resolved to “think much, on all occasions, of my own dying”, those who keep Ash Wednesday are yearly reminded: remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. None of these are meant to make us morbid. They are meant to help us live with greater clarity.
I want to tell you why.
What Is Memento Mori?
The phrase is Latin and, I am told, means something like: remember that you must die. It’s not a practice foreign to Scripture. Moses himself once prayed, “teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). Thinking about our inevitable death is a time-honored tradition throughout church history, yet the modern church, with her diligent sanitizing efforts, has almost forgotten it entirely.
Today, the dying are quarantined in hospices and only visited by intentional effort. Funerals are tucked away. Caskets are rarely opened; even then the dead are so made up they look better than when they lived. Whereas cemeteries used to be the walkways into church, they’re now hidden in the deepest corners of our cities. Far from remembering death, we work hard to forget it.
Yet, as Flannery O’Connor once quipped, “The truth does not change with our ability to stomach it.” We can ignore death, but we can’t erase it. When we try to, the effects are real. When we ignore death, we’re prone to treat small things like big things and big things like small ones. Worse, the less we think about death, the less equipped we are to deal with it when it impolitely intrudes into our life.
The Christian tradition takes the exact opposite approach. The wisdom from our fathers is this: don’t ignore death, but look it straight in its cruel eyes and let it teach you how to live. Memento mori is the antidote to our trinket-chasing delusions of forever-life. For the Christian, it is an intentional way to remember Jesus’ empty tomb and glorious throne. For those in Christ, death is not the end of the story, but the beginning of chapter one.
The Blessings of Remembering Death
Here are some of the gifts memento mori offers anyone willing to receive them.
1. It clarifies what actually matters. Standing at the edge of your own grave has a way of reshuffling your calendar. The trivial ceases to be urgent. Petty grievances lose all their power. The phone call you keep putting off to your dad finally gets made. Death is a great editor.
2. It humbles pride. It is hard, as Ryle observed, to be proud when you are standing near a coffin or an open grave. Memento mori deflates the bloated ego. You will soon be dust. With that in mind, it’s hard to value your finely curated resume like you once did.
3. It produces gratitude. Nothing will make you appreciate a working toe more than having a broken one. You see healthy-toed people walk around and think, “They’ve no idea how good it is to walk around freely without pain.” In the same way, facing death makes us deeply appreciate the gifts of life we so often take for granted. Your spouse, your kids, your friends, your morning coffee, the way the morning sun warms your face, none of it is owed you. When you remember that, the ordinary becomes precious and the boring becomes beautiful. Everything is finally seen as the gift it is and you stop waiting to enjoy the life you have now.
4. It loosens your grip on the world. A man sentenced to death doesn’t complain about the thread counts in his bed sheets. Memento mori puts the things of earth in their proper, smaller place. Money, status, sports, or our silly grievances shrink to actual size when measured against eternity.
5. It kills sin’s appeal. Pride, greed, lust, hatred, unforgiveness, laziness, procrastination feed on the illusion that we have unlimited time to feast on them. Remembering that your heart will one day stop makes it all the less attached to empty promises and impotent saviors. The coffin exposes sin’s ugliness in a powerful way.
6. It creates urgency for what’s eternal. People who remember they will die love better, forgive sooner, and share the good news of the empty tomb more boldly. They have the hard conversation. They make the phone call. They take the time. They stop waiting until “later” because they realize it might not come.
7. It tests faith. Confessing Christ as Lord in health and prosperity will hit different when you’re laid low in the hospital bed. Practicing memento mori now will help you make a distinction between the things you say you believe and the things you actually believe. Whatever sifts lip-Christianity from heart-Christianity is well worth your time.
8. For the Christian, it stirs joy. This may be the strangest gift of all. For those who belong to Jesus, death is not the epilogue, but chapter one. Not an exit from life, but an entrance to it. It’s the moment the weary and worn pilgrim finally gets home. Remembering you will die is also remembering you will arrive.
9. It strengthens faith. Outside of Scripture, few things have strengthened my trust and gratitude for Jesus’ empty tomb than my loved ones’ full coffins. I remember preaching for my grandparents’ funerals thinking, “My God, it is so good to know the One who’s defeated the monster of death.” When I think about the day I’ll finally be laid to rest, I am all the more grateful to remember, “He is risen.”
A Closing Word
You are going to die. So am I. Pretending otherwise has never made anyone wiser, kinder, or more whole. Remembering it just might.
Number your days, fellow pilgrim. Take a note from the desert fathers and get yourself a desk-skull. Walk a mile or two through a cemetery. Read an obituary. Pray Psalm 90:12 from your heart the moment you rise from bed. Each night you lie down, think of it as a dress-rehearsal for the last time. Maybe join my students in spirit and write out your own funeral. Remember death to get a heart of wisdom.
The grave is not the end of the road for the Christian. It’s the last bend before home. Remember that, and you may find, as the saints have always found, that thinking often about death is one of the surest ways to finally start living.
Last September, the day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated on the campus of Utah Valley University, I wrote a piece arguing that the recent uptick in political violence is not random. Words and ideas have consequences. Specifically, I argued that the American Left has spent years adopting and mainstreaming ideological frameworks that make violence feel like righteous resistance. The pattern of political violence we’re seeing reflects that reality.
The piece drew understandable and welcome push back. After all, those who promote ideas in the public square should be expected to defend them with good-faith interlocutors! That is how we learn best. So, I’d like to revisit my argument and examine the objections in light of it. I think the months after the piece have only sharpened the point.
My Original Argument
My thesis was simple: the recent uptick in political violence is downstream of ideas being mainstreamed disproportionately on the Left. Specifically, the Left is using words or promoting ideologies that demonize or dehumanize opponents or frame them as oppressors who must be stopped. Both of these activities construct a moral permission structure that tells the most unstable citizens that violence is not a crime but their calling.
I was careful to say this was not a blanket indictment of everyone on the Left. Not all Liberals play this game and some call it out. Nor was it a defense of everyone on the Right. They can and sometimes do the same dangerous game. Right-coded sources of violence do exist and when they do they must be condemned. My main focus was about the disproportionate prevalence, mainstreaming, and tolerance the Left practices with their unique words and ideas that isn’t matched by the Right. Asymmetry was the point. Not monopoly.
The Understandable Push Back
The most common objection went something like this: “But what about Trump’s rhetoric?” Several thoughtful readers wanted to point out that Trump has contributed to the violent rhetoric too. They offered quotes like Trump’s 2016 “I’d like to punch him in the face,” and his 2017 “please don’t be too nice” remark to police. One commenter argued that my piece amounted to an “us vs. them” framing that gave one side a pass while villainizing the other.
I take these objections seriously. There is truth to them. Trump has indeed said things that are inexcusable, foolish, demeaning, juvenile, and politically divisive. But, Trump’s communicative shortcomings are not the same kind of speech my piece highlights.
A Taxonomy of Political Speech
To avoid you thinking I am being partisan, allow me to demonstrate the categorical distinction by sharing a taxonomy of different kinds of political speech in the public square, inspired by and adapted from a framework articulated by Ben Shapiro.
We can agree that not all harmful speech is the same. Collapsing the distinctions does not make things better, but worse. It makes us less precise and therefore less able to address the actual problem. Here is a framework of political speech worth remembering.
Tier 1: Illegal Speech (Incitement)
This is speech that commands immediate lawless action and is likely to produce it. A simple example: “Go kill the congressman right now.” Thankfully, most ugly political speech never gets here.
Tier 2: Inflammatory Rhetoric
These are reckless and provocative words, but they do not direct or justify violence. This is like Trump’s “I’d like to punch him in the face” or Hakeem Jeffries’ recent calling for Democrats to “unleash maximum warfare against Republicans.” It hardens our political hearts, enrages emotions, and deepens divisions, but no one is going to shed blood because of it. Unhelpful, but not imminently dangerous.
Tier 3: Demonizing or Dehumanizing Rhetoric
This speech frames others as intractably evil or strips them of their humanity without explicitly calling for violence against them. They’re “Vermin,” “Enemies of the people,” “Nazis,” or “The Gestapo.” This does not explicitly command violent action, but does make violent action feel more morally justifiable. Calling Trump the Orange Man is disrespectful, but repeatedly calling him Hitler is dangerous. I mean, what should good people do with Hitler?
Tier 4: Ideological Permission Structures
These are ideas or frameworks that make violence not only plausible, but actually make them feel righteous. There are right-coded examples of this. QAnon’s Pizzagate told followers that Democratic elites were trafficking children. This inspired one man to drive from North Carolina to Comet Ping Pong with an AR-15 on no evidence but the conspiracy. There was no pedophile ring, no victims, and not even a basement where the operation was conducted. All he had was an ideology that told him Democratic elites were abusing children and a righteous will stop them.
With that taxonomy in place, some brief reflections.
First, Trump and most politicians live in Tier 2. Politicians often say provocative and inflammatory things because it riles up their base. It’s not good and, sadly, it is not uncommon.
Second, my thesis in the original piece is that the Left has leaned into Tiers 3 and 4 in ways the Right largely does not. Yes the right has certain figures who use dehumanizing rehtoric (e.g. Nick Fuentes) or promote permission structures or conspiracy theories similar to those on the Left (e.g. Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson), but they are routinely rejected and condemned by the Right as accurate representatives of the party. The Left is different not in the presence of this rhetoric or ideologies, but in their number and their promotion within the party. The demonstrable increase in Leftist violence I noted in the original piece reflects that asymmetry. The disproportionate and passionate Tier 3 and 4 speech that lives on the Left is conditioning the minds of citizens to approve of, celebrate, or even commit violent acts against those they’ve been trained to see as incarnate evil or existential threats to all that is good. No side is completely innocent of this kind of speech, but it is disingenuous to say they’re both equally guilty in the current moment.
Third, we all ought to condemn Tier 3 and 4 speech no matter which side of the aisle it comes from. Many on the Right are quick to condemn QAnon’s poison, Candace Owens’ antisemitic conspiracy theories, or Nick Fuentes soul-rotting filth. My hope is that the Left is willing to do the same with the dangerous people or frameworks within their camp. For the good of our nation, we should all — Right, Left, and Center — be willing to call out genuinely dangerous speech wherever it appears. Those who refuse may be showing their allegiance lay somewhere else.
Why the Objections Miss the Point
With this taxonomy in mind, let’s return to the “what about Trump.” First, let’s point out that it is a logical fallacy called tu quoque. It doesn’t address the actual argument, but instead deflects by pointing to something on the side of the arguer. It changes the subject rather than answering it. It doesn’t engage the argument, but changes the focus. Second, not one of the Trump quotes offered constructs a systematic framework that signals to the mentally unstable that their violence is righteous resistance. His schoolyard rhetoric definitely falls into Tier 2. Reckless words are ugly. But mainstreamed ideological permission structures for violence are deadly. These are not the same category of sin. For me, pretending they are isn’t fairness, but is evasion.
Then came April 25, 2026. Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old CalTech-educated engineer from Torrance, California, rode cross-country by train, checked into the Washington Hilton, and attempted to assassinate President Trump and multiple high-ranking officials at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He had attended No Kings protests, was part of a progressive activist group, and donated to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.
Now, I would agree that a person’s political leanings don’t make their party responsible for their acts. However, if there is evidence that their evil intentions have been nurtured and promoted by the party, then the party bears responsibility for their contributions. Allen’s manifesto demonstrates he was not a fringe lunatic with no ideological home, but a man whose worldview was shaped by his party of choice.
His manifesto is the taxonomy made flesh. In it, he wrote that he was “no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat his hands with his crimes.” He did not invent those descriptions. He was taught them. “Pedophile.” “Rapist.” “Traitor.” These labels have circulated in mainstream progressive media and political commentary for years. That is Tier 3 language absorbed, internalized, and then acted upon by someone who took them seriously. Later in his manifesto he outlined his “rules of engagement” and stated he believed it was his righteous duty to target the administration. That is Tier 4 in purest form. He did not act with unhinged, impulsive rage, but within a moral framework that cast him as a begrudging, but selfless hero acting on behalf of the oppressed. To him, his violent plans were not an immoral excess, but a logical and righteous obligation. Those who knew him have expressed deep shock because he never gave signs of being mentally unstable. He was a normal, church-going man that, over years, seems to have been discipled into a worldview that did not produce hot-headed impulsiveness, but a deeply distorted sense of righteousness.
A Word to Those Who Pushed Back
This isn’t an “us vs. them” piece. It is a call for all citizens who care deeply about society to recognize and condemn speech on each other’s side and our own side that can contribute to the bloodshed we all lament. My hope is that all Americans — Left and Right — work together to oppose and reject truly dangerous words that are sickening our society in deadly ways. That way, we can get back to arguing about tax reform and medicaid without anyone dying.
The increase in political violence we’re seeing is not random. Words and ideas have consequences. It’s not restricted to one side only, but there is a disproportionality that’s undeniable. The evidence keeps confirming it. If we are unwilling to admit that, we may be practicing the very double-standard we accuse others of simply because it’s on our side of the fence.
In a recent Substack, Michael Foster beautifully showed how small, faithful habits we do everyday are far more transformative than big, audacious pipe dreams that never come to be.
Small actions when repeated have powerful results, but those results aren’t immediate.
I bought some rocks for my kids for Christmas. I even told them I bought them rocks for Christmas because I knew they wouldn’t believe me. They were geodes—rocks with crystals inside of them. You can open them with a single swing of a sledgehammer, but that’ll often destroy the cool formations inside. A better way to crack them open is to use a chisel and hammer, slowly tapping until a crack forms, then gently opening it. It’s like 99 taps, and you don’t see anything. And then all of a sudden on the 100th tap, a crack forms.
Now, which tap formed the crack? Well, all 100 did. It just didn’t produce the desired result immediately. Whether good or bad, that is how habits work. Their power is realized over time and seemingly come out of nowhere.
Do you want a productive life? I do.
It’s a good goal. But I want to suggest that your resolve be aimed at cultivating habits and not the outcome of the habits, the end goal.
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there.
This year, spend less time focusing on outcomes and more time focusing on the habits that precede the results.”
Big goals don’t deliver big results. It’s a consistent system of daily habits that produces results. Funny enough, big goals can actually undermine long-term lasting results.
It reminds me of something Charles Spurgeon said, “The way to do a great deal is to keep on doing a little. The way to do nothing at all is to be continually resolving that you will do everything.”
Maybe instead of doing big things for God, start with small things and go from there. You can accomplish big things through faithful baby steps.
When a public figure posts something foolish, blasphemous, or beneath the dignity of their office, Christians who voted or support that figure in any way often face an immediate accusation: you are a hypocrite. How could you vote someone who doesn’t live up to your own faith?
The answer is simpler than the accusation assumes: Christians don’t require their political leaders to be Christians, or even moral exemplars in every way.
What Is Not Hypocritical
This is an observable pattern that goes back to Rome. The early church prayed for Caesar, submitted to governing authorities (Romans 13), and sought the welfare of cities in which they were strangers (Jeremiah 29:7). None of these things were done with the qualifier that their leaders share their faith or character.
The reason is straightforward: civic life and church life operate in different spheres, have different qualifications for leadership, and have different aims. The state is not the church so we relate to her differently. We rightly require our pastors to meet high spiritual qualifications (1 Timothy 3, Titus 1), but we require no such thing of our mayors, senators, or presidents. The church’s mission is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus to make and grow disciples (Matthew 28:18-20). The government’s mission is not the salvation of souls but the ordering of society. As Paul says in Romans 13, to restrain evil and promote the common good. These are different goals, held by different kinds of institutions, accountable to different standards. A leader can fulfill the aims of civil office without being a Christian.
The distinction is not complicated. The chart below fleshes out the two spheres (civic and spiritual) across four categories: their jurisdiction, their aim, the qualifications they require of leaders, and the duties they call Christians to fulfill.
Surely, Christians ought to prefer leaders of integrity and principle. Where competence exists, character and faith only strengthen it. But preference is not requirement.
Given the reality of these two distinct spheres, the question for a Christian at the ballot box is not, Is this person morally worthy of my approval? but, Whichcandidate will govern best toward the common good? That is a policy question where there is a lot of room for disagreement amongst believers. A Christian’s vote isn’t about spiritual faithfulness within the church, but neighbor-love for the nation.
That said, it is worth noting that the range of legitimate Christian political disagreement has limits. While there is real liberty in how Christians weigh competing policy priorities, some platforms move far enough from basic Christian beliefs and values that supporting them requires increasingly significant theological compromise. Without turning this into a separate post, I will simply say that the current Democratic platform has, in my view, drifted into that territory in ways that make enthusiastic Christian support difficult to reconcile with historic Christian teaching. But that asymmetry does not change the basic question every Christian voter must still answer. Casting a vote is not a full character endorsement nor a baptism. It is an imperfect attempt to love the people around you by supporting whomever you believe will serve them best.
This means a Christian can vote for a candidate and still condemn that candidate’s sin without being hypocritical. These two things are not in tension. They never were. The vote is about policy and governance. The condemnation is about moral accountability. Both are Christian responsibilities.
That said, the hypocrisy charge doesn’t disappear entirely. It just belongs somewhere else.
What Is Hypocritical
There are two kinds of people who stand on completely different sides of the political aisle, but are mirror images of each other. The first defends everything their preferred leader does and refuses to condemn any wrong. The second condemns everything the opposing leader does while never acknowledging any good. Both trade eternal principles for temporal team jerseys. Both let political identity become the standard by which they judge.
The consistent Christian position is neither. For those we support and don’t support, Christians must be willing to call out wrong when wrong occurs. For those we reject, we must refuse the impulse to reduce that person entirely to their worst moments or best ones. As lovers of the truth, Christians must grow in their skill and practice of calling balls and strikes. This isn’t easy. It requires courage, intellectual honesty, nuanced moral reasoning, and theological maturity that goes beyond Bible verses painted on coffee mugs. Sadly, in the absence of those things many people opt for reactive, mindless partisanship instead.
Some Questions for the One in the Mirror
It is not difficult to critique a leader you did not vote for. The real test is whether you will critique the leaders you did support. I was encouraged to see that, after President Trump’s latest foible, many of those who voted for or supported him publicly condemned his recent post passed that test. The question worth asking is whether people, Christians especially, on the other side of the aisle will apply the same standard to their own preferred figures when the moment comes.
Here are three diagnostic questions worth asking yourself:
When a candidate I oppose does something genuinely good, am I willing to say so? If the honest answer is no, or if the question feels uncomfortable, that is a sign that political identity has outpaced moral integrity.
When a candidate I support does something wrong, am I willing to name it clearly?Not just privately, not only with excessive qualification, but with the same directness I would apply to someone on the other side. If the standard shifts depending on who is doing the wrong, do you even have a standard?
Do I hold my preferred leaders to the same measure I apply to those I oppose?Consistency does not mean treating every failure as equally serious. It means the framework does not change based on the jersey.
These questions are not best asked to others, but to the one in the mirror. The only political tribalism we have the power to heal is our own, so start there. As believers, our ultimate allegiance is never to a party or a candidate, but to Jesus.
Consistency is not complicated, but it sure is countercultural. With such a divided day, it might be one of the clearest witnesses a Christian can offer.
I dated my wife for six years before we got married. We met in high school. For those years, I was very much in love, but also was very broke and very jobless. Since husbands are providers, I couldn’t sign up for that responsibility until I had an income. Eventually, thank God, I got there. My only frustration is I couldn’t marry her earlier.
Professionally, I’ve taught and worked with high schoolers and college students as both a teacher and a professor for over 20 years now. I have watched a lot of young people get the love bug and experience a lot joy, beauty, and good and others a lot of pain, confusion, and heartbreak. With two decades of front-row seats, I’ve developed some opinions.
Nobody asked, but I am giving them anyway. The following are seven pieces of unsolicited dating advice that could ensure a lot of good and help avoid a lot of bad.
1. Don’t Date Non-Believers
Why would you go on a road trip with someone who is heading to a completely different destination? Dating isn’t just hanging out, but taking a journey toward a potential destination called marriage, family, and a shared life. If Jesus Christ is the center of your life, the Sun whom all other planets in your life revolve, and the person you’re dating doesn’t worship him too, you are not on the same road. Heck, you’re not even sharing the same universe. You might enjoy the ride for a while, but eventually the GPS is going to ask you to make a turn that only one of you wants to take.
This isn’t saying that non-believers are terrible or inferior in value. It’s simply acknowledging they, by definition, serve another god. Jesus doesn’t play nice with false gods so, in love for Him, believers shouldn’t date those who love them.
If you want to road trip to Canada, don’t jump in the car with someone heading to Mexico (2 Corinthians 6:14-16).
2. See Dating as a Road, Not a Destination
Nobody camps on the freeway. The freeway is not a destination, but how you get to a destination. Dating works the same way. A lot of students treat dating like a status, a category, or a social achievement. “I have a boyfriend” or “I have a girlfriend” becomes the whole goal. Once they reached it, they just stay there. Indefinitely. They’ve foolishly believed being in a relationship is itself arriving.
It is helpful to not see dating, therefore, as a status, but an activity; as something you do to gain clarity about someone. Your goal in dating should not be companionship for its own sake, but something you do to figure out: is this the person I can confidently give my life to? Do we worship the same God? Do we have the same values? Is this someone I want my future daughters or sons to be like? Have I seen enough of their character to know what kind of person they are and want to become? Seeing dating not as a relationship, but an activity toward a potential relationship (i.e. marriage) will sharpen your focus, guide your actions, and make you hungry to not merely feel nice, but to learn crucial truth about the person with whom marriage is a possibility. It turns a relationship from a cul de sac to a highway that’s going somewhere.
3. Character > Rizz
For the uncool adults: “rizz” is what young people currently call charm or charisma. The magic that makes people melt for you. Rizz is fun. Who doesn’t want to be charming or be with a charming person? I get it. But rizz fades. Rizz does not take out the trash. Rizz does not sit with you in the hospital. Rizz does not apologize well or show up consistently or love you when you’re not at your best.
Rizz is fine and good, but not the goodest.
When it comes to dating, getting your priorities right matters more than most people realize. Before you pursue anyone, make two lists: principles and preferences. Preferences are optional. Principles are not. Know your preferences, but never let them crowd out your demands for principles.
How attractive someone is, how tall they are, how effortlessly cool they seem: none of those things compare to the character of the person you’re actually dating. Before you ask “Are they cute?” ask “Are they kind? Are they honest? Are they someone people trust?” You can enjoy rizz, but you’ll have to live with character. Evaluate accordingly.
4. Good Relationships Make Gooder Relationships
One of the most telling signs of a healthy relationship is what it does to the rest of your life. A good dating partner should make you better, your relationships with others included. They should make you better to your friends, more present with your family, more focused on fulfilling your responsibilities to those God has already entrusted you. Your “special friend” (lol) should enrich your other relationships, not drain them. They should serve as an add, not a subtraction.
If your friendships are suffering, your family is worried, your grades are slipping, and your whole world has contracted down your dating partner, that’s not romance but a warning sign. Your sweet honeybear should be a positive, not a parasite. True love builds. It doesn’t destroy.
5. Be Who You Want to Attract
The bait you use determines the fish you catch.
A lot of young people spend time asking: “Why can’t I find someone good?” But the more useful question is: “What kind of person am I attracting and why?” How you dress, how you speak, how you act, what you post, what you laugh at, what you prioritize are all sending a signal. Are those signals attracting the kind of person you actually want? Or are they attracting people you’ll later wish you’d never met?
If you want to date someone of who loves Jesus, has wise habits, healthy goals, and good character, then strive to become a person just like that. Like attracts like. Be the person you’re looking for. Running as fast as you can toward Christ will attract others who are doing the same.
6. Listen to Your Community
Infatuation is a heck of a drug. I mean that sincerely. When you fall for someone, your heart and mind do genuinely strange things. Everything about them seems wonderful. You’ve a knee jerk reaction to paint any red flag green. “He’s not that bad, you just don’t know him like I do.” Every concern your friends or family raise is heard as jealousy, judgmentalism, or uninformed. When head over heels, you think down is up and live accordingly.
This is why your community — your family and church — matter so much. The people who love you and have known you longest can see things you cannot always see in the moment. Before that season arrives, you need to have already decided that you will listen to the people around you, especially when what they have to say is uncomfortable or inconvenient. Their perspective and honest feedback on your relationship is not a threat, but a gift.
Sometimes people’s counsel or perspectives can be wrong and its fine to reject it, but, as a simple rule of thumb to trust, if everyone who loves you shares the same concerns, take their unanimity with the utmost seriousness.
7. Don’t Kiss
Before you have a strong emotional reaction to this one, I want to ask you to do something: don’t let emotions do your thinking. Hear me out.
I’m not talking about a peck on the cheek like the one you can give grandma. I’m talking about making out, french kissing, extended physical intimacy. Any kind of kissing that is sexual in nature. In his scholarly article on making out (yes, this exists), Pastor Gerald Hiestand offers the simple argument:
Premise 1: All sexual activity must be reserved for the marriage relationship.
Premise 2: Some forms of kissing are sexual.
Conclusion: Therefore, sexual forms of kissing must be reserved for the marriage relationship.
You can read the article to see if you agree in the sexual nature of making out (though I wonder if you can think of a non-sexual form of making out). Regardless, the syllogism is worth some serious thinking. As Christians, we are called to not conform to the world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1-2). By today’s sexual standards, making out is practically the same as holding hands. It may do us well to think before we smooch.
Deciding not to kiss in this way has a lot of practical wisdom to consider. Making out is not a finish line, it’s an on-ramp. It clouds your judgment when you need it most. It bonds you emotionally to someone in ways that have nothing to do with whether they’re actually right for you. Make sure someone loves your heart well before they touch your body. A person who respects that boundary is showing you something true about their character and their love for you. A person who keeps pushing against it is also showing you something true about their character and their (lack of) love for you. If you want to make sure someone loves you and not just what they get from you now, this is a pretty reliable test of someone’s character and intentions.
Now, if you’ve read this list and are now filled with shame, guilt, or regret because you got a few things backward, allow me to remind you: in Christ, you have been washed, sanctified, and justified from sins you’ve done or sins done against you (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). In Christ, you are a new creation and by the power of the Holy Spirit can live toward a different future. Rejoice anew in Christ’s grace and walk in the loving wisdom of his way from here on out.
Nobody has to take this advice. You never asked for it, anyways. But after six years of dating the woman I love and twenty-plus years of watching students navigate this season of life, I think these seven things can make a difference. Dating doesn’t have to be confusing or painful. With the right priorities and a little wisdom, it can actually be what it’s supposed to be: a purposeful, joyful road toward something wonderful.
A three-legged stool needs all three legs to stand. So the Christian life requires three legs to know the joy Christ has saved us for.
Learn the Word of God
Not packaged devotionals, but Scripture. Not neglecting, dipping into, or skimming, but studying. Not just the New, but the Old Testament. Not just the familiar, but the unfamiliar: Leviticus, Obadiah, Amos, Obadiah, and even Nahum. Not for vibes, but understanding unto obedience and worship. Not part, but the whole. Not just personal reading, but public teaching. Not only privately, but corporately. Words, grammar, context, meditation. Page after page. His Word is my soul’s food.
Lean on the People of God
The Church is family, so I am obligated to the Church. Christianity is a team sport, so I need the Church and they need me. The church is not an event but a family and that family holds a weekly Sunday reunion I make sure to attend. Jesus’ Church is the team, school, hospital, and family I cannot live without. Without her, I am like an orphan on the street. With her, I am a son, brother, and father with a family to be loved by and to love.
Love the Heart of God
I have been created by the Word of God, made in the image of God, saved by the Son of God, filled with the Spirit of God, and I hunger to be satisfied by the beauty of God alone. His creation is marvelous, but the satisfaction my soul craves is sold separately from it. My deepest desires are met, my most painful wounds are healed, and my greatest joy is supplied by simply knowing Him in Christ and making Him known to others.
Among the many good habits I’ve learned, these are my food, drink, and oxygen. Without them, I fall. With them, I stand with joy unsurpassed.
A Pilgrim's Friend 