We live in a world gone mad, one where violent protests are called peaceful demonstrations and government officials urge citizens to violate the selfsame laws they were elected to enforce. It is truly a time embodying the words of the prophet Isaiah:
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter.
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes
and clever in their own sight.
Answering this insanity as best I can, I’ve assembled a new episode of my Cephas Hour podcast, combining the best of Christian rock and pop from then and now with commentary that hopefully encourages and challenges. We who believe need to fortify ourselves and strengthen each other to stand unafraid and unwavering in the face of our present unholy St. Vitus Day political dance.
Songs in the all-music portion of the show are:
You can listen to the show on demand at its website ( or wherever you get your podcasts as long as it isn’t Spotify because they don’t get it. I hope it helps, and thank you.
I was chatting online the other day with a friend and sister in the Lord who is, unlike yours truly, a naturally effervescent, outgoing, and friendly person. She was not so much complaining as observing that her normal state of being was quite off-putting to many and wondered if she should somehow rein herself in so as not to push people away.
I say, if that is the reason you are pushing, keep on pushing.
The three-prong tyrannic trident people use to push others away is forged from three fears. The first is physical, the terror that the person may be a threat either through direct aggressive action or unintentional biological ones, such as being a carrier of the “new” Covid.
The second is psychological: the aversion to how the open and warm person highlights the lack of, or in more benign cases, the avoidance of such characteristics in the one running away. Related to this is how the individual whose persona reflects the positive joy of life in Christ often repels those who despise the comparison to their own bitter, fatalistic outlook.
The third is rooted in the seeming paradox of seeking public approval of private relationships; the notion that in a society obsessed with contactless communication derived from living inside one’s phone while avoiding non-digital interaction and its inherent demand to treat others as one wishes to receive treatment for themselves lest one suffers impertinence’s consequences, it is most unseemly to see and associate with those whose actions declare them unafraid of, and unaffected by, contemporary demands that one must maintain self-isolation and digital control regardless of consequence.
Even as we are all called to different positions within the body of believers, so we are created and called to be different people. Some of us are made and meant to be outgoing, while others are more taciturn. Some of us are athletic, while others are intellectually-oriented. We serve an awesome and all-encompassing God, One Who can and will use us even as He knows us better than we know ourselves. So be you. Even as we adjust as we grow in Jesus, so the world will have to adjust and deal with it regardless of whether they like it.
We live in a world consumed with victimhood rooted in self-delusional self-definition. People wish to receive fame and acclaim for being not who they are but who or what they wish to be.
Solomon’s weary observation in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun still rings true today. Elsewhere, in Proverbs, he wrote:
A person may think their own ways are right,
but the Lord weighs the heart.
To do what is right and just
is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice.
It’s something to think about.
A phrase often heard is “post-traumatic stress disorder,” referring to a condition when after someone has been in a life-changing, frequently life-threatening situation such as military combat or domestic violence, even though the situation and corresponding danger have passed, they still find themselves reacting to usually unrelated stimuli as though the unconnected moment somehow has the power to resurrect past horrors.
I believe more than a few believers suffer from post-traumatic faith disorder. This is a scenario in which after someone has fallen and gotten back up, they spend far more time brooding over their past failure, dreading that it could happen again, than rejoicing in the saving grace of an Almighty God Who brought them through the rough patch.
The wise person uses the time after the storm has passed not merely to celebrate that the storms have, in fact, passed but to analyze themselves and their reaction to the situation so that, when the storms come again, they will be better prepared to face them and less prone to disengage from the faith they need to carry them through the storm. Faith in Jesus looks forward, not disregarding the past and lessons learned but also not living there.
Editor’s Note: President Trump isn’t going to allow lawlessness to reign in America. We will not have a repeat of 2020’s “Summer of Love.”
