Generational Blame Game

  • July 19, 2023
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  • Erin Newton

Scripture Focus: Judges 2.10-11, 18
10 After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. 11 Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. 

18 Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them. 

Reflection: Generational Blame Game
By Erin Newton

In Judges, timelines are divided by generations and individual judges. Each generation is characterized by their failures and fleeting restoration under a judge’s leadership.

Judges describes this generation as forgetting God and serving the Baals. The description is vague. Forgetfulness has a generic sense that includes a myriad of sinful practices. They could have been entrenched in greed, injustice, sexual abuse, pride, oppression, idolatry, deceitfulness, or malice. The plural use of “Baals” is the author’s catchall phrase to demean any foreign deity. This generation is simply unfaithful.

The repetitive assertion that the next generation begins with failure reads like popular headlines today: “Atheism Doubles Among Generation Z” or “Almost Half of Practicing Christian Millennials Say Evangelism Is Wrong.” Faith is measured by church attendance, participation in religious practices, or involvement in parachurch organizations. When one generation breaks from the norm, it is labeled as a failure.

Today, some pastors dreamily speak of the “greatest generation” and pine for things to be like “they were in the 1950s.” Is this retrospective vision true to reality? Is each generation truly worse than the generation before? Such statements disregard the prevalence of injustices.

Although the failing generations and redemptive judges represent a cyclical storyline in Judges, God remains unchanging. It is not the sins of the people that should attract the spotlight here. The immutability of God shines through the shadows of evil.

God is forever faithful while people are reliably faithless. We will never arrive at a place of pure obedience to God without the snares and traps of our sinful conduct. The tendency to either look back with fondness at prior generations fails to realize the injustices that existed openly among Christians. The tendency to look forward in disgust at the new generation as “more wayward” disregards the unchanging nature of God to save, sanctify, and revitalize the people.

Despite all the failures of the ancient generations, God saved them.

The cycles of Judges, however, reveal that revivals are not permanent. Children cannot rely on the faith of their parents to establish their own faith for tomorrow. We must realize the power of this world will continue to negatively affect each generation.

But God remains as unchanged and faithful as he was five thousand years ago. Despite all our failures, God will save.

Cling to the hope of revival. Trust in God-appointed leaders. Pray and persevere for the restoration of the people.

Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading
Finally, brothers, let your minds be filled with everything that is true, everything that is honorable, everything that is upright and pure, everything that we love and admire—with whatever is good and praiseworthy. Keep doing everything you learned from me and were told by me and have heard or seen me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you. — Philippians 4.8-9

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Judges 2  (Listen 3:19)
1 Timothy 3 (Listen 2:10)

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Readers’ Choice 2023

Read more about A Generational Lament
“Every generation blames the one before…” Old and young scoff at each other’s sufferings, separating into camps of division and bias.

A Generational Lament

Learning to Live in the Land

  • July 18, 2023
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  • Park Forum

Scripture Focus: Judges 1.1-2
1 After the death of Joshua, the Israelites asked the LORD, “Which tribe should go first to attack the Canaanites?” 2 The LORD answered, “Judah, for I have given them victory over the land.” 

From John: We have five bonus Student Writers this year who are writing for us this July. These students attended meetings and trainings with our other students and received similar coaching on their writing submissions. We are so thankful to everyone who helped make this year’s Student Writers Month the biggest we’ve ever done, including the students themselves, our special guests and speakers, and of course our donors who make everything we do possible.

Reflection: Learning to Live in the Land
By Alyssa Stockdill

The book of Judges begins on the heels of Joshua’s “happily ever after.” What has, until this point, been a story of getting to and conquering the land, now becomes a story of trying to live in the land. 

God continues to remind Israel that as he has already he will continue to bring victory, but for them to truly settle down, the current inhabitants must be driven out. 

Judah and Simeon are successful. They live and fight based on the reality of God’s promise. Others are not. God’s intent was to keep Israel set apart from the people and influence of Canaan, but when faced with opposition, they settle for a tenuous arrangement. They allow the Canaanites to remain, either as forced laborers or uneasy neighbors. God’s vision for the flourishing of his people required faithful execution of his commands and faith in his promises. This compromise sets the stage for colossal failure ahead. Israel’s turn from, and return to, Yahweh is a cycle that will repeat throughout the rest of Judges and far beyond.

As followers of Jesus, we have already found our victory in him. However, we are also on a lifelong journey of transformation into his image (2 Corinthians 3.18). We may have arrived in the land, but now we must learn to live in it.  

Do you feel that you are in a battle for the life God promised to you? Sometimes we battle against our own flesh (Galatians 5.17), struggling to live in freedom from our sin and brokenness. Sometimes we battle against the powers and the principalities of this world (Ephesians 6.12). This is the heartache of living in the “already-but-not-yet.”

Will we compromise and allow the challenges we face to sow seeds for future failure? Or will we fight these battles with confidence that God has already done so on our behalf? Will we take heart because we know the one who has already overcome the world? 

The good news is that we serve a God who is faithful even when we are faithless. Failures big and small may play heavily into our story, but they are never the final word. The course charted in these early pages heads straight for destruction and exile, but this is the story of a God who is willing to go to the greatest lengths to bring his people home.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Small Verse
The earth is the Lord’s and all the fullness thereof, the world and we who dwell within. Thanks be to God.

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Judges 1 (Listen 5:08)
1 Timothy 2 (Listen  1:38)

Read more about Transformed by Koinonia
Within us are exalted idols and habits that must be torn down…fruits of the spirit that we have trampled under selfish feet.

Transformed by Koinonia

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Our Merciless Culture

  • July 17, 2023
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 1 Timothy 1.13-14
13 Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. 14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Reflection: Our Merciless Culture
By John Tillman

The mercy and forgiveness offered to Paul is staggering, scandalous, and in our own time, practically impossible.

One of the least Christian things about American culture today is how we feel about forgiveness and mercy. We frown at forgiveness in general, but to forgive someone who harmed you or to forgive someone outside one’s tribe or group, is anathema. If you want to be an outcast, forgive someone outside your political party, your race, or your gender.

Every culture is a bit cynical about mercy and repentance. Reasonable skepticism is justifiable. Even the apostles didn’t accept Paul until Barnabas spoke up for him. The type of mercy extended to Paul and many others in scripture would never be tolerated or allowed today. 

Our culture has become anti-mercy, going past skepticism and walking into the wilderness of hatred and retributive violence. In recent years, when people have offered public forgiveness to individuals that everyone agreed did not deserve it, our world wouldn’t tolerate it. We are opposed to forgiveness. We go beyond refusing to forgive—we label forgiveness and mercy, not just foolish, but evil.

A culture that is invested in and glorifies hatred, retribution, payback, and vengeance cannot allow an act of mercy to stand as a simple act of mercy. It must be critiqued and spun. Media and pundits immediately will attempt to twist it, politicize it, and discount it.

Our world is desperate to explain away Christian forgiveness as something else. It must be enabling evil. It must be the result of racism. It must be a naive and foolish gesture. It must be anything other than Christian, gospel forgiveness. Never that.

Otherwise, we might be forced to set down our weapons of vengeance. Otherwise, we might be forced to question our treasured value of total war against our ideological enemies. Otherwise, we might have to abandon our “ends justify the means” political machinations. Otherwise, we might be forced to admit we need mercy ourselves.

Our world would like to pretend that it hates mercy because it cares for victims. But it requires it’s victims to stay victims, suffering eternally. Healing or restoration doesn’t fuel hatred, only pain does. Our culture’s interest in victims is mostly as fuel for hatred. Our world hates mercy because it loves hate.

As Christians, we must defeat hate by truly caring for victims and by forgiving in shocking and scandalous ways.

*Forgiveness and mercy do not mean abandoning the pursuit of justice through the law. It also does not mean asking victims to be quiet or to stop sharing their pain and their stories. For a short brush-up on the tension between forgiveness and justice, see this Veritas Forum video with Rachael Denhollander.


Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick…and indeed I did not come to call the the virtuous, but the sinners. — Matthew 9.12-13

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Joshua 24 (Listen 5:49)
1 Timothy 1 (Listen  2:59)

Read more about When God Has Mercy…Will We?
Jonah held his bitterness so deeply that the depths of the sea couldn’t wash it away and the sun couldn’t burn it away. How deeply will we hold on to ours?

When God Has Mercy…Will We?

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Born to Serve

  • July 14, 2023
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  • Jon Polk

Scripture Focus: Philippians 2.5-8
5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

6 Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

Reflection: Born to Serve
By Jon Polk

In what is traditionally known as the “Christ Hymn” in Philippians 2, Paul describes who Christ is, and by extension, who God is, and furthermore by example, who we should be.

Who is Christ? Christ was in his very nature God. He was God himself, even though he was uniquely human, too. 

However, Christ didn’t behave the way people expected gods to behave. In the first century, they were more familiar with the volatile, angry gods of the Greek pantheon, who used power to advance themselves or to subdue others. 

Gods didn’t live their lives in humility. Gods didn’t come among their people as servants. And gods especially didn’t sacrifice their lives for the sake of their subjects. 

Paul writes that Christ took the very nature of a servant. He uses the Greek word doulos, which is more properly translated “slave.” A slave existed in servitude to others without advantages, rights or privileges.

Christ became nothing. He emptied himself by pouring out his grace to others. He humbled himself by entering into relationship with lowly humans. He obeyed death, freely giving his life.

Who is God? God’s strength is not in his ability to manipulate or subdue his subjects, but in his willingness to take on the form of his subjects. Not only does God condescend to human form, he chose not to come as a ruler or king but a servant.

Jürgen Moltmann writes in The Crucified God, “God is not greater than he is in this humiliation. God is not more glorious than he is in this self-surrender. God is not more powerful than he is in this helplessness. God is not more divine than he is in this humanity.”

Who should we be? Paul states we should “have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” Not only does Christ present us with a radical picture of who God is, he presents us with a radical challenge about who we should be: humble servants giving ourselves on behalf of others.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes “The church is the church only when it exists for others… It must not underestimate the importance of human example which has its origin in the humanity of Jesus.” 

Jesus Christ is our ultimate example. For certain, none of us could ever be sinless and perfect, but that’s not the example that Paul wants us to see. Jesus is the full representation of God, but he also represents what it means to be fully human: to live life completely in service of others. 

Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading
Jesus taught us, saying: “Enter by the narrow gate, since the road that leads to destruction is wide and spacious, and many take it; but it is a narrow gate and a hard road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” — Matthew 7.13-14

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Joshua 20-21 (Listen 7:02)
Philippians 2 (Listen  3:45)

Today’s Readings
Joshua 22 (Listen 6:16), Philippians 3 (Listen  3:21)
Joshua 23 (Listen 2:31), Philippians 4 (Listen  3:20)

Read more about He Stoops to Raise
In every aspect of his life, and death, he intentionally moves from the highest place, to the lowest place.

He Stoops to Raise

Read more about Greater Footstool, Greater God, Greater Redeemer
Christ, who is higher and greater than anyone has imagined, would become less and lower than anyone would imagine, to do for us what no one could imagine.

Greater Footstool, Greater God, Greater Redeemer

Transformed by Koinonia

  • July 13, 2023
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: Philippians 1.4-6
4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Reflection: Transformed by Koinonia
By John Tillman

The word Paul uses to describe the partnership that he feels with the Philippian church is koinonia. Like many Greek words, it has multiple shades of meaning. The word in English primarily refers to the “fellowship” of the church as a community. This meaning is not incorrect, but another interpretation is of being a business partner or having a “share” or investment together in a business. 

Paul knows what it is to have partners in business, having supported himself at times through the skilled trade of tentmaking which he had in common with Priscilla and Aquila. However, the business to which Paul is referring, that we all have a share in, is the gospel.

The business of the gospel is the “putting right” of everything in the cosmos. And the means by which we do so is by “fellowship” or “partnership” with Christ Jesus, whose work continues until “the day of Christ Jesus.” There is no koinonia with Christ without change.

In this phrase, Paul is redefining the ancient Jewish concept of the “Day of the Lord.” This is the “last day” to which Martha refers when discussing her brother Lazarus’s future resurrection and is sometimes called the “eighth day” to symbolize that God is both ending and renewing creation.

This is a day when all will be put right. The day of Lord will be a day of leveling. It will mean tearing down those who have built themselves up and lifting up those who have been crushed.  Earth will be transformed into another place—a place in keeping with all that God desires for us, but we are too foolish to ask for or seek.

Christ’s correction of the cosmos is not limited to all that is without us but includes all that is within us. It is not just Earth that will be transformed but Earthlings. We, each of us, have an inner cosmos that must succumb to a “Day of the Lord” transformation. Within us are exalted idols and habits that must be torn down. Within us are fruits of the spirit that we have trampled under selfish feet.

As we submit to him, Jesus will, with axe and fire, tear down in us what must burn, and with tender nourishing care will tend and cultivate the fruit that he always designed to grow in us. Christ is our partner and our koinonia with him means every trial, suffering, isolation, loss, and sadness, shall work together for our betterment, strengthening, and righteousness.


Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading
Jesus taught us, saying: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit he cuts away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes to make it bear even more. You are pruned already, by means of the word that I have spoken to you.” — John 15.1-3

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Joshua 18-19 (Listen 9:59)
Philippians 1 (Listen  4:03)

Read more about Jesus with Axe and Fire
May we ask him regularly to cut down our idols. May he burn out of our souls impurity and selfish desires.

Jesus with Axe and Fire

Read more about A Rebellion of Repentance
The repentance John describes is a rebellion more radical than violent insurrection.

A Rebellion of Repentance