Compassion is an important biblical term that means having pity on or showing mercy to someone. It is a character trait of God. The Old Testament speaks of having compassion on the “orphan, the widow and the stranger” (Deuteronomy 10:18) and on the “poor and afflicted” (Micah 6:8; Psalm 141:9). Compassion is used by Jesus at several critical moments in His ministry (e.g., Luke 15 of the father of the prodigal son; the Good Samaritan in Luke 10). One should not necessarily expect to see the virtue of compassion among unbelievers, but it is reasonable that one would see it powerfully among believers; among those who name Christ’s name.

Anti-Semitism has an ugly history. It was central to the plans of Pharaoh Ahmose who enslaved the Hebrews (see Exodus 1). It was a key element in Pharaoh Amenhotep I’s policy of genocide recorded in Exodus 1:15-22—to kill all Hebrew boys at birth. It was the driving force in Haman’s motivation to ask the Persian emperor Xerxes in 474 BC to issue a decree annihilating all Jews in the Persian Empire (see the book of Esther). In the 20th century the genocidal policies of the Nazi movement in Germany reached its apex with two monumental strategies

In a recent article, columnist David Brooks reports on the increase of disturbing behavior within American culture: “. . . reckless driving is on the rise, the number of altercations on airplanes has exploded, the murder rate is surging in cities, drug overdoses are increasing, Americans are drinking more, nurses say patients are getting more abusive . . . Teachers are facing a rising tide of disruptive behavior. The Wall Street Journal reported in December: ‘Schools have seen an increase in both minor incidents, like students talking in class, and more serious issues, such as fights and gun possession. In Dallas, disruptive classroom incidents have tripled this year compared with prepandemic levels, school officials said.’

Christian sociologists, Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk, have just published an important book, Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation. They validate what the Bible says so clearly in Deuteronomy 6—parents shape the religious worldview and spearhead the moral and spiritual formation of their children.

Since we are in the early weeks of 2022, it is important for us who name Christ’s name, to remind ourselves of the priorities of our God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. To that end, let’s give focus to the church, the most important institution God created for the proclamation and living out of His rescue plan for lost humanity. At conversion we are placed into the body of Christ, the church, which, among other things, is the family of God. “I” becomes “we” and it is in the local church where we begin to live out this family name. We are now free in Christ; the bondage to sin has been broken and selfishness, self-centeredness and self-indulgence are replaced with an other-centered love for people. We are willing to surrender our rights and liberties in Christ for the common good—for our families, for our local church and for our communities. How does the church relate to key biblical concepts?

Sometime during the 2021 Christmas season, you have no doubt heard the reverberating words from George Friderich Handel’s imposing oratorio, Messiah. Written in just twenty-four days in 1741, Messiah has three distinct sections: part one, the “Christmas Story;” part two, “The Redemption Story”; and part three, “The Resurrection and Future Reign of Christ on Heaven and Earth.” Initially, Handel’s oratorio was performed more during the Easter holiday, but gradually it became associated with Christmas, such that today it is almost always performed sometime in December by community, church and college choirs throughout the nation.

The Economist, a conservative British publication (in the historic British “liberal” tradition of Edmund Burke and Walter Bagehot), first made the case for assisted dying in 2015. It argued that freedom should include the right to choose the manner and timing of one’s own death, while also cautioning that the practice should be carefully monitored and regulated to avoid abuses.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1785 and the subsequent Land Ordinance organized the territory the United States gained by the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War. Among other things, these acts organized the territories into townships and set aside one section in each township for a public school. In the early decades of the new republic called the United States, it was understood that public schools would be a cooperative effort between the parents, the church and the school itself. Indeed, in these early decades well into the 19th century, schools were often held in the churches.

In the 1992 Supreme Court case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice Anthony Kennedy penned his famous “mystery passage”: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Robert Bork called the phrase indicative of “New Age jurisprudence”; William Bennett derided it as an “open-ended validation of subjectivism” that paves the way for drug abuse, assisted suicide, prostitution, and “virtually anything else”; George Will said it was “gaseously” written; Michael Uhlman labeled it a “thing of almost infinite plasticity”; the editors of First Things called it the “notorious mystery passage.” What seems clear is Kennedy’s underlying conception of human beings as autonomous individuals, choosing their own values and mapping out their own life courses.

In 1923 German historian and philosopher, Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), published his famous two-volume historical analysis in one volume, entitled The Decline of the West. Spengler analyzed the various civilizations of world history, arguing that each went through a time of flourishing followed by a period of decline. His central argument was that Western civilization was in a period of decline. [He wrote in German and the term translated “decline” could actually be translated “downfall.”] As civilizations decline, they gravitate to dictatorial power that preserves what they cherish (e.g., stability, order, security). What once marked the core defining elements of the civilization (e.g., religious beliefs, ethical standards) are abandoned as the civilization embraces raw rationalism, skepticism and power.