I really didn't want to do this, but you raised the stakes to this level...🤦🏾‍♂️ This statement is a poorly polished, snagged tooth rhetorical move, and a theological house of cards that collapses under its own weight once you look at the text. Peter’s sword in Gethsemane was wrong for a very specific reason. Jesus rebukes him not with a general “earthly power is always the enemy of the gospel,” but with the necessity of the cross itself: •“Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” (John 18:11) •“How then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matt. 26:54) •“Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matt. 26:53) Peter was trying to interrupt the redemptive plan. The arrest was the doorway to the atonement. That is not a transferable principle that any use of earthly power by Christians puts something ahead of the cross. It is a unique moment in redemptive history. Treating it as a blanket prohibition on political engagement, just laws, or Christian influence in a nation’s life is a category error. Your statement also runs on a strawman of what most people mean by “Christian Nationalism.” It assumes the position is “use the sword (or the state) to stop or replace the work of the cross.” That is not the actual argument of serious versions of this view. The usual claim is narrower: nations exist under God, the magistrate bears the sword for justice (Rom. 13), and a people may rightly order their public life in ways that acknowledge the moral order God has revealed rather than pretending the state is religiously neutral. That is not the same thing as Peter swinging his sword to keep Jesus off the cross. Jesus himself distinguished the means of his kingdom’s advance in that hour from the ordinary role of civil authority. He told the disciples to buy swords earlier that night (Luke 22:36), then forbade their use in Gethsemane because the time and purpose were wrong. The sword has a place; it just did not have a place in opposing the cup. Romans 13 still stands: the civil authority is God’s servant, and it does not bear the sword in vain. Collapsing those distinctions into any earthly power undermines the gospel is not careful theology; it is a slogan. I do believe there is temptation to put power ahead of the cross. It is real. But so is the opposite temptation: to spiritualize the public square into irrelevance and call the resulting silence faithfulness. This argument only works if you define every form of Christian political engagement as the first temptation and then cite Gethsemane as proof. That is why it feels artful and still reads as a strawman once the actual text and the actual claim are on the table. Most people using the term are arguing about the magistrate’s role under God, the legitimacy of moral order in public law, or the possibility that a people may acknowledge the Christian heritage that shaped their institutions. They are not claiming the state should swing a sword at Malchus to keep the Messiah off the cross. Or assume the sword over the gospel. Equating the two is either willful misrepresentation or an inability to distinguish basic categories. What makes it especially poor is that this comes from circles that advertise themselves as rigorous about exegesis and rhetoric. This move is neither. It is a slogan that borrows the emotional force of the cross while ignoring the actual teaching of the passage, the rest of the New Testament’s treatment of civil authority (Rom. 13), and the distinction Jesus himself draws between the means of his kingdom in that hour and the ordinary function of the sword. This statement is not profound. It is lazy, and the pretension to care makes the laziness more obvious.

The claim is tidy, and tidy claims usually have a way of slipping past the very ordinance they pretend to honor, the way a perfectly set table can leave everyone still hungry. God never handed the magistrate the keys of the kingdom; He never asked the sword to do the Spirit’s work of giving new hearts. But He also never left the unregenerate without a governor. Those are not the same instrument, and confusing them has never produced either revival or order. Civil authority exists, by the plain appointment of God, to do precisely what the post dismisses: to make unregenerate people behave more morally in their external conduct. Romans 13 does not sketch a voluntary society of the redeemed; it describes a sword bearing servant set over a mixed population for the punishment of evil and the praise of good. The Noahic ordinance already required the blood of the murderer at the hand of man long before Sinai and long after the flood. The law of Moses applied its civil sanctions to the stranger within the gates as readily as to the native. None of this was an attempt to force faith. It was an attempt to restrain the lawless, the very purpose 1 Timothy 1:8–10 assigns to the law. There is a difference between the church’s keys and the magistrate’s sword, and collapsing them produces either a sacral state or a lawless one. The gospel alone gives new hearts. The magistrate, by contrast, is given for the common good of the old ones, so that the quiet life the church is commanded to pray for might actually be possible. To call that arrangement a solution God never gave is to read the ordinance of civil government out of the text and then complain that nothing remains to restrain moral decay. The sin is real. The restraint was always part of the design: ordinary, imperfect, and necessary, like bread that keeps a household from starving while the feast of the kingdom is still being prepared or the leaven is getting into the lump. The negligence here is frustrating and brings clearity to why we are in the state we are in. We are ignorant of Scripture.

If you think this is profound, you're retarded This is the equivalent of "why can't we just be nice and all get along" dressed up as thoughtful political insight

Over 80 million Christians eligible to vote did not vote on November 3rd, while 98% of all adult muslims voted.

Conservative Christians were among the biggest losers in this election, and a lot of them chose to be. Many simply stayed home. I’m sure the experts will give us the official reasons in due course, but anecdotally, I’ve heard a lot of people saying they just didn’t like the candidates. Early numbers suggest evangelical turnout dropped 7 points this year from the last midterm cycle. I'm sure the experts will give us the official reasons in due course, but anecdotally, I've heard a lot of people saying they just didn't like the candidates. Responding to this, many Christian leaders have said we're always choosing the lesser of two evils in a fallen world or something like that. Of course, Christians would love to have godly, virtuous people to vote for. People that fit that description are becoming increasingly rare these days, so we've got an electoral supply and demand problem. There's just not a lot of virtuous people running for office for us to vote for. In much of the country, the choice was between a radical leftist or a "conservative" Republican who would have been to the left of Bill Clinton. That was simply a bridge too far for many Christians. Some Christians said, "they didn't earn my vote." So they stayed home. And we ended up with a blue wave. Here's my question: if we want godly, virtuous candidates running for office, where will they come from? Churches. And what have churches been doing the last twenty years to encourage talented young men to run for office? Not much. On the one hand, Christian leaders will lament the lack of virtuous candidates worthy of their vote. On the other hand, godly Christians who might consider a life in politics are warned about the dangers of power and told "Jesus' kingdom is not of this world." You can't expect godly political candidates to seek political power while simultaneously warning them that political power is evil. Our purity tests for political candidates eliminate a lot of options, but we also discourage the men who would pass the test from pursuing office. We tell them they'd be better off serving as missionaries or going to seminary. I'm not against godly men being missionaries or going to seminaries. But somebody is going to run for political office, someone will win, and someone will make decisions. If politically gnostic pastors tell their congregants that seeking office is selfish ambition or sinful "grasping for power," then don't be surprised if the only options on the ballot next election are a Democratic Socialist and a "conservative" Republican homosexual atheist. This is why we lose. And we’ll keep losing until churches start raising up men for public office.

Well, it’s the morning after. And if you’re someone who understands progressivism to be the cancer that it is, your head is pounding. Both chambers were flipped. That’s extremely rare. And while we’ve seen losses like this in the House before, the losses in the Senate are truly historic. This is arguably one of the worst midterms ever. It’s certainly the worst in the last 20 years. It’s terrible. But I’m not dooming. Instead, I’m going to keep working on what I’ve been working on for the last seven years and prepare the best I can for whatever’s coming, which might rightly be called preparing for the worst. So what have I been working on? The philosophy behind it I simply call biblical localism, by which I mean giving priority to the people and place God has put right in front of you. I have a sort of 80-20 rule. I try to put 80% of my time, money, effort, and thought into my locality. For me, that means I’m most interested, after my own household, in Batavia Township, Clermont County, and the immediate region around it. As you grow in influence and power, your reach will sometimes extend far beyond that. But for most of us, it rarely goes beyond our county. That’s the place that touches our lives most and where our actions can have the greatest consequences. Hence, that’s why you give it the most attention. I want to add that this doesn’t mean you don’t care about what’s going on elsewhere. You can care. You can be aware. To some degree, you should, simply because communities are connected to other communities, counties to states, and states to other states. But you want to avoid falling into the trap of spending all your time talking about what’s happening elsewhere while taking no action in the world right in front of you. That’s what I mean by biblical localism. And that’s how I organize my life. Even the 20% of my energy I spend elsewhere is usually directly tied to enriching my locality. Now, to the particulars of the project. When I was studying the early Reformation, the development of these city-states during a time of political and religious turmoil really stuck out to me. Places like Geneva and Strasbourg became refuges. I believed something like that would probably be needed again, given the failure of evangelicalism and the growing political instability in America. I originally had these thoughts before 2016. I started calling them sanctuary cities, in the sense that they provided sanctuary for people who were Protestants and looking for a place to build a life while things broke down. The problem is that the term “sanctuary city” is loaded with modern baggage. Sometimes I refer to them as fortress cities. I think they are that, and should be that. But that makes it more of a military idea than I was going for. I’ve heard some people recently refer to them as boroughs. It’s okay, but still odd. Whatever you want to call it, I wanted to find a place that already had some of these features and labor to make it into a sanctuary of sanity, a fortress of peace, a burrow of life. So I started looking for communities in the Ohio Valley that met certain criteria. One was being close to a major economy that could provide diversity in work and amenities that kept commerce possible and strong, things like an airport, major highways, etc. It was pretty simple to settle on Cincinnati because it’s where we’re from, and it met those basic requirements. But I didn’t want to be right in the thick of it. I wanted us to be able to have real influence within five years and growing influence afterward. Sometimes this is called finding a worthwhile, winnable hill. So I looked at all the counties surrounding Hamilton County, where Cincinnati is located. Clermont County stood out. One reason I was drawn there was its very small, undervalued county seat in the village of Batavia. Only about 3,000 people in a county of a quarter million. I noticed that property values were still quite affordable, and it was just an underutilized place. I thought we could come in and really make a difference. We had a plan, and we could stretch our dollar further here than in most places. My goal was to first plant a church, start businesses, and then support Christian education options. Once that was moving, I wanted to start some sort of regional church-planting network that would reproduce those efforts throughout the region. Then, as church communities, we could work together on various ecclesiastical projects, share resources, and hopefully, in time, see regional transformation. So that’s what I’ve been working on. We planted East River Church in 2020. We support the planting of two other churches: Silver City Church in Sterling, Kentucky, and Little Miami Fellowship in Xenia, Ohio. By God’s grace and providence, I was able to bring Maddox Transformer to the township. We opened a shop, bought three buildings on Main Street that we’re rehabbing for our new offices, and now have about 70 employees, with plans to hire more. My associate pastor, John Weis, started Clermont Christian School. While it had a slow start, things are really beginning to pick up. We’ve had members of our church get directly involved in local politics, and people like me who are indirectly involved, mostly through business. We’ve also had a lot of solid people move here from across the states, bringing their gifts to bless our county and seeing the county bless them in return. And I hope, in time, this place will grow into a Christian stronghold where everyone benefits from our salt and light. I said earlier that my work outside my locality is usually tied back to it. What a lot of people didn’t know was that all the travel you saw me doing a couple of years ago was me going to trade shows and applying myself as hard as I could to my work at Maddox. I wanted to see the company do well, but I also wanted to be able to persuade them to invest in Clermont County if the door ever opened. And when it did, by God’s grace and their favor, I was able to help make that happen. Even right now, I’m writing this as I walk the streets of Richmond, Virginia, because I’m here for an intensive at Grimké Seminary. The reason I said yes to this opportunity to serve as a professor here is, first, that I really respect what they’re accomplishing. I think it’s awesome. But I’m also part of the lecturing coming through the Carey Center, which focuses on church planting. And it’s my hope that some of these men will adopt my way of thinking and approach. Perhaps some of them will even want to come to the Ohio Valley and join in what we’re doing. So that’s what I’ve been up to. I’m putting the place in front of me first and trying to build something that will help us weather the storms that appear to be in our future. Will it allow us to weather all storms? Of course not. But it will allow us to weather many, and maybe build something that really turns the tide for Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. Don’t lose heart. Don’t blackpill. Dig in. Build up. Keep going.

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He’s still here. He’s got a fan club. Including us.

Well, I saw Nathan Fielder's documentary You Can See Everything last night, and it's really a pretty stunning movie. One that's particularly timely for some of my own personal ponderings. First, let me give you the premise. Nathan Fielder is a deadpan comic who likes to set up these absurd situations and has had a couple of popular television shows. A couple of years ago, he was contacted by a guy named Billy, who, if I have this straight, is actually married to Elizabeth Holmes. Elizabeth Holmes, or Liz as they call her in the film, was one of the founders of Theranos, a company that claimed to have developed a device that could run all these health tests with just one drop of blood. The company grew to be worth billions of dollars. Holmes became a superstar because she was a young woman with a strangely deep voice who modeled herself on Steve Jobs. Problem was, the device couldn't do what they said it could do. Eventually, she and her business partner and lover, Sunny, were brought up on fraud charges, among other things. After a lengthy court battle, both were found guilty. Holmes was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Billy popped into Holmes' life just as this news was breaking, roughly seven years before the start of the film. They quickly fell in love. They have two kids. And they are working on some new business venture together. The film picks up 34 days before she goes to prison. Billy's offer to Nathan Fielder and the film company A24 is that he can, with his crew, actually stay with them and film the last 34 days of Elizabeth's freedom. The goal, so they claim, is to show Elizabeth for who she really is, help humanize her, and basically rehabilitate her public image. Believe it or not, it's hard to say too much about this film without spoiling several wild twists and turns. But I do think I can say it's basically a game of cat and mouse. The question being asked is: Is Elizabeth Holmes a full-on liar? For example, she repeatedly claims that she's not motivated by money and that her device did what she claimed it did. Fielder repeatedly confronts her on this claim, which then makes you ask the question: Is there something innocent or naively broken about Holmes, and has she just been used as a pawn by her lovers, perhaps again? Is there something broken in her form of communication and her ability to understand how she comes across? That leads to a fascinating scene where Fielder has her watch Abbott and Costello's famous Who's on First? bit and asks her, "Why is it funny?" To which she gives a pretty mystifying answer. And as the story unfolds, the question isn't just whether it's a cat-and-mouse game, or who's the cat and who's the mouse, but whether these are two cats, and the mouse being played with is Fielder himself. The reason this film really hit me, besides just being filmed beautifully and having a wild premise, is that it touches on the issue of people being deluded and perhaps lacking self-awareness. My career, both ministerially and vocationally, has ended up being about dealing with situations that aren't what they seem to be on the surface. My background includes my early years working in collections and fraud, and dealing with complicated HR issues. As a pastor, I've found myself involved in some pretty horrendous abuse cases, three of which eventually involved me working with the police to varying degrees. In many of these situations, I was dealing with people who had been accused of something that they swore up and down wasn't true. And my job was, to the best of my ability, to get to the bottom of it and make a decision on how to move forward. These cases could be disorienting. The number of sweet, innocent-looking people who lie about crazy things in convincing ways and make you feel crazy for questioning the inconsistencies in their stories is legion. I've dealt with people pretending to be dead loved ones for years to take out loans and credit cards in their names. People who falsely accuse others of abuse only to later admit that they did so. A lot of the people I've worked with, I've seen grow cynical. And the best way to avoid that, if you work in these fields, is to always remind yourself that you're kind of like an emergency room doctor dealing with the most intense cases. It's usually not like this. However, that brings me to why I've been thinking about deluded, lying people. Maybe I'm just getting older and more experienced, but it seems like the number of people who believe crazy things about themselves, things that are at odds with reality in almost every way, is increasing. And I've been pondering: Is this a matter of mental health, where there's just something wrong with people's brains? Or is this willful deception? It's had me thinking about things like where Paul warns about impostors deceiving and being deceived, and God giving people over to delusions. And one of my big takeaways is pretty simple: If you engage in lies for long enough, or are allowed to believe lies for long enough, you start to think of them as if they are true, as if they are reality. Which is why one of the greatest ministries of a parent, a pastor, or someone in some form of leadership is doing the hard work of confronting someone and helping them see the truth about themselves. Parents who aren't willing to call out their children are sentencing them to a life of unreality, which will eventually bring them heartache. This actually comes up later in the movie. There is a fairly understated scene with Elizabeth Holmes' parents where you can tell that they love their daughter but believe some claims she's made that they shouldn't. And now she's ended up with a man who is a deluded, crazy person, perhaps for the second time. Anyhow, it's a really good movie... save one scene. There is a totally unnecessary three- to four-second scene where one of the characters is showering naked and you see everything. It's not the woman, and it's not sexual. And if I had to guess, I would say that scene is left in there to show you the sort of hypocrisy or contradiction of what's happening in the documentary. In one way, they will let you see everything, even themselves fully nude. But in reality, they're trying to hide the truth from you, and nothing is as it seems. It's not a bad metaphor for our age.

Before you make a man a leader, whether it’s a sales manager or an elder in the church, there are a couple of simple questions you should ask yourself. First, is his leadership sought out? There are a lot of people who like to talk and insert themselves into the lives of others. Sometimes that can be mistaken for leadership ability. But they could actually just be busybodies who like to talk about doing things more than actually doing them. This is the opposite of leadership ability. They’re avoiding real work under the guise of being helpful. That’s why it’s important to ask whether their leadership is sought out. Is this someone people naturally go to when they have a complex situation they’re trying to figure out? Do people seek out his judgment, advice, and direction? Both promotions and ordinations are essentially confirmations of something that already exists. A simple metaphor would be that there has to be a fire burning. Making someone a leader doesn’t start the fire. It should only throw gas on it. Second, what is the quality of the people seeking out his leadership? This question isn’t all that different from the first. Is it just low performers? Is it just entry-level people? Is it just people starting out in life? Or is it high performers, peers, and people who have been around the block a few times? What you’re trying to determine is whether this man possesses an ability and capacity that distinguishes him from others. Young people and entry-level employees can easily mistake seniority in life for actual ability and capacity. One of the greatest challenges of leadership is leading people who are very much your equals, or even above you in certain ways. That requires something more than simply being older, more experienced, or more outspoken. If no one is seeking out a man’s leadership, or if the only people seeking it out are those on the very bottom rung, chances are he isn’t a leader. Not yet, anyhow. There are certainly many other questions to ask before putting a man in leadership, but in my assessment, these are two of the most revealing

Jesus said, "Blessed are the MEEK, for they shall inherit the earth" (Matt 5:5). Notice he didn't say the WEAK shall inherit the earth. Since the words rhyme, people often treat them as synonyms. They aren’t. Both came into English from Old Norse, but from different roots with different meanings. So what's the difference? The Greek word for "meek" in Matthew 5:5 is praus, which was considered a virtue by ancient Greeks. Aristotle placed it as the mean between spinelessness and rage. In other words, meekness refers to strength under control. Strength to act with force when needed, but restrained. Scripture takes it further: strength restrained by humility and submission to God’s will. Think of it like a loaded weapon with the safety on. The best example of this kind of man in the OT is Moses. Earlier in his life, Moses failed in both directions. In Egypt, he murdered a man in a fit of rage. At the burning bush, he begged God to send someone else to Pharaoh. He was impulsive and timid, poor qualities for a leader. He needed to learn to trust God's power, channel his strength properly, and humbly submit himself to God's will. Later in his life, he became the MEEKEST man on the face of the earth (Num 12:3). Moses began WEAK but God made him MEEK. God made him strong, then chastened that strength with holiness. Jesus said that kind of man is blessed, and he shall inherit the earth. When we confuse MEEKNESS with WEAKNESS, we end up treating a vice as a virtue. Yes, there are times we are weak, either by nature or affliction. God uses those moments to remind us that we can do nothing apart from him and to teach us to rely more fully on his strength (John 15:5, 2 Cor 12:9). But we are not commanded to be weak. By faith, we are commanded to be strong. OT examples * "Be strong and courageous" (Deut 31:6) * "Be strong and very courageous" (Joshua 1:7) * "Be strong and courageous" (1 Chron 22:13) * "Be strong, and show yourself a man" (1 Kings 2:2) NT examples * "Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong." (1 Cor 16:13) * "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might." (Eph 6:10) * "You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus." (2 Tim 2:1) * "Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees." (Heb 12:12). I could go on, but you get the point. Weak men can't be meek men. They lack the strength meekness requires. As Jordan Peterson once said, "If you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of." When King Hezekiah was warned by the prophet Isaiah that one day the Babylonians would plunder his house and castrate his sons to be eunuchs in the king's palace, he said "good," because at least "There will be peace and security in my days” (Isa. 39:8). Giving power to weak men is the last thing we need. They'll use their power to comfort and enrich themselves while throwing the rest of us to the wolves. The MEEK will indeed inherit the earth, as Jesus said. The strength of a meek man is a terror to the wicked. And his gentleness is a comfort to the righteous.

For the Christian who fears and loves God, the steps outlined by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 18 for dealing with church discipline are always worth following, even when you have reason to suspect they will not be received well. In verse 15, Christ says, “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother.” This is the most basic form of church discipline. If someone has sinned against you, Christ commands you to go to him and show him his fault. And if he listens, you have won your brother. What a wonderful thing it is to win a brother! This is a God-ordained means through which the Spirit is pleased to work. Sometimes all it takes for reconciliation is for a person to point out how he was wronged. It may be that the other person didn’t fully realize it. It may be that humble correction brings him to repentance. Many hard hearts have been cracked wide open through the work of the Holy Spirit. So just because we think someone might not listen isn’t reason enough to refuse to go. After all, Christ commands us. When we go in obedience to Him, we go relying on His power. This is not merely a natural thing, but a supernatural thing. But note what Jesus says next in verse 16: “But if he does not listen to you…” Built into this command is the possibility that the first attempt won’t go the way you want it to go. Thinking someone won’t listen isn’t grounds for disobeying Jesus’s command to go to your brother. He has already accounted for that possibility. As a matter of fact, He doesn’t say, “If he doesn’t listen, oh well. You gave it a good try. You can give up.” Listen to what He says: “But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact may be confirmed.” The fact that Christ commands a second attempt if the person doesn’t listen underscores the importance of making a first attempt, when he might listen. The second attempt is an escalation. You bring one or two others to help establish the facts and witness the person’s response to correction. And if he still will not listen, there is a third step: bring the matter before the church. In our Presbyterian understanding, this involves bringing it before the elders who govern the church. Note that even with this third, serious step, there is still the possibility that it will not lead to the resolution everyone is seeking: repentance and reconciliation. The entire flow of Matthew 18 accounts for the possibility that a person will refuse to hear and continue in stubbornness. So refusing to follow the first step because you think, “What does it matter? He won’t hear me,” is disobedience to Christ and a failure to understand how He works through church discipline. It may be that the person’s refusal to listen becomes a further matter requiring discipline. He will not hear the individual, the two or three, or even the church. When the facts have been established and correction is biblical, persistent refusal to hear reveals contempt for the community and its God-ordained authority. That is contentiousness. That is rebellion. And how can you live in Christian community if you refuse to live in subjection to one another and to God-ordained authorities? You cannot. But the person who rejects biblical correction is not the only one who can be in sin. The person who refuses to take the first step for pragmatic reasons can be in sin as well. We should follow Matthew 18 because we love Jesus, because Jesus tells us to, and because we trust Him to work through His Word to accomplish His will. Some people may flee discipline. We must not flee the commands of God. So, brethren, has someone sinned against you? Consider whether you can simply overlook the offense, forgive him, and truly let it go. If you can, wonderful. If you can’t, set up a phone call or a face-to-face meeting this week and deal with it. Keep short accounts. Do it for your own good. Do it for the individual’s good. But by all means, do it for the glory of God.

This is a good thread. Binary thinking is one of the core problems of loser theology. Since the Bible teaches us to suffer well, and the blessings that accompany doing so, therefore suffering should be considered the default posture of the Christian life. Nonsense. That's binary thinking. The Bible teaches us to assert the Lordship of Christ over all of life. And when we encounter painful setbacks and trials in that endeavor, we have biblical resources that teach us how to handle it well. So Christ is honored as we build, protect, govern, expand, and multiply. And Christ is honored as we endure pain, struggle, setbacks, hardships, and loss. In the times of abundance, we need to remember that times of loss will come and be ready for them. In times of loss, we need to remember that Christ empowers us to suffer well, and perhaps get back on our feet and press on. The last twenty years or so, evangelicalism has overemphasized suffering and loss. They've taught us to endure it faithfully, which is good, but they haven't equipped us with a vision for pushing back with strength and overcoming our obstacles. Why has Doug Wilson's popularity grown despite being under an evangelical embargo? He's one of the few evangelical leaders that has given people hope that we can do more than suffer faithfully as doormats under the boot of secularism. My beef is not with Christian leaders who teach us to suffer faithfully. My beef is with those who teach us that's all we can do.