Bible

A Christian Response to the Attempted Assassination

Like many of you, I’ve been attentive to the news cycle since the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. The news is disconcerting and troubling in the midst of our increasingly divided political climate.

Like many of you, I gathered with my congregation at worship on Sunday July 14. One of our lay elders, Steve Robinson, preached a fantastic message about our hope in God in the midst of trial. Another of our lay elders, Vince Adams, prayed for our country, the former President, the current President, and the political atmosphere in our country. Worshiping with God’s people on Sunday was a reminder of the necessity of trusting in a sovereign God in the midst of turmoil and uncertainty.

As I’ve wrestled with the events of this past Saturday, here are a few observational reminders for us as Christ-followers.

We must align ourselves with truth and justice, not speculation and conspiracy theories. The memes, political commentary, and conspiracy theories are running rampant. From social media to mainstream media; from podcasts to water cooler conversations, opinions, theories, and speculations are prevalent. I’ve had some of these conversations myself. We may never know all the details. Sixty years from now the information surrounding this assassination attempt may be just as convoluted as the information surrounding the JFK assassination. It is our nature to speculate, wonder, and attempt to figure out. These pursuits are not wrong in themselves. But as Christians, we are to pursue truth and justice, not foolish speculations and conspiratorial wonderings. Our cultural moment situated between mainstream media and social media is primed for conspiratorial and political divisiveness. When we inordinately focus on these speculations, we can be driven to fear and anxiety. Fear and anxiety drown out faith and peace in our lives. As a result, the attention of our hearts and minds must be rooted in the eternal Word of God and the truths that bring calmness and peace. God’s Word not only addresses the peace we need in this moment, but even more importantly points to eternity where God’s justice and truth will reign forever.

We must pursue loving-kindness and compassion for our neighbors, even those with whom we disagree politically. Paul wrote, “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another as Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32). Jesus preached, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). The political division in our country is evident in our communities, on social media, and in many of our relational interactions. Too many people in our country view the other side of the political aisle as true enemies rather than political opponents. Too much vitriol and anger has been spewed through political rhetoric. Christian should not be part of the vitriolic speech and combative, enemy driven terminology. Yes, as Christians our values and morals are in conflict with prevailing culture. And, yes, we should participate in the political processes available to us to engage Christian morality in our culture . But we must remember that our kingdom is not of this world. We do not enter this conflict playing by the world’s rules or the standards of our culture. Our character and conduct must rise above the vitriol and political divisiveness of our land. Our demeanor must reflect that of our Savior and King who teaches us to live for eternal victory in the world to come, not political victories in the world of now.

We need a revival that stems from God’s work in our country and repentance in our hearts. We must lament, pray, and seek God’s face for ourselves and for our country. While we should be grateful the assassination attempt was unsuccessful, we should grieve for the family of Corey Comperatore as well as the shooter’s family. Pursuit of revival will mean personal and corporate repentance and prayer. Pursuit of revival will mean unapologetic, prophetic preaching from our pulpits against the sins of our land. Do not misunderstand. To love one another in compassion and to love and pray for our enemies is not to condone sinfulness or ignore the unrighteousness surrounding us. If you want to see Jesus’ example of prophetic preaching with lament for the sinfulness of his people, read Matthew 23. What this means for us as Christians is a proper balancing of political and revival perspective. The proposed solutions of political parties and candidates can only be partial solutions (if that) to the problems and issues in our land. The real solution, the ultimate need is not for our politics to get fixed, but for our hearts to repent and revival to attend our land. See God’s invitation in 2 Chronicles 7:14. May God bring to our land another Great Awakening where his people are found in lamentation and repentance and those far from God are found and rescued by the Good Shepherd.

We practice faith and confidence in God’s rule by gathering for worship regularly to declare our allegiance to Jesus . Our primary allegiance is to our King. The Kingdom of Jesus is now (the rule of Christ in the spread of the gospel through the works and words of his church) and future (the rule of Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords when he sets up his throne over heaven and earth). The reason our laments, our frustrations, our prayers, our concerns for each other, and our gospel works and words in the world have meaning in the broken world today is that they point to the coming King who will bring peace and perfection when he returns. The way we declare allegiance to Jesus today and prepare for the future is to worship Jesus now–regularly and consistently. Author and theologian N.T. Wright described the role of Christian worship as a declaration of allegiance to Christ and our positive affirmation of the kingdom of Christ (now and to come) as well as our act of protest against the prevailing wickedness in the world today:

All kingdom work is rooted in worship. Or, to put it the other way around, worshipping the God we see at work in Jesus is the most politically charged act we can ever perform. Christian worship declares that Jesus is Lord and that therefore, by strong implication, nobody else is. What’s more, it doesn’t just declare it as something to be believed, like the fact that the sun is hot or the sea wet. It commits the worshiper to allegiance, to following this Jesus, to being shaped and directed by him. Worship the God we see in Jesus orients our whole being, our imagination, our will, our hopes, and our fears away from the world where Mars, Mammon, and Aphrodite (violence, money, and sex) make absolute demands and punish anyone who resists. It orients us instead to a world in which love is stronger than death, the poor are promised the kingdom, and chastity (whether married or single) reflects the holiness and faithfulness of God himself. Acclaiming Jesus as a Lord plants a flag that supersedes the flags of the nations however ‘free’ or ‘democratic’ they may be. It challenges both the tyrants who think they are, in effect, divine and the ‘secular democracies’ that have effectively become, if not divine, at least ecclesial, that is, communities that are trying to do and be what the church was supposed to do and to be, but without recourse to the one who sustains the church’s life. Worship creates or should create, if it allowed to be truly itself—a community that marches to a different beat, that keeps in step with a different Lord.”
–N.T. Wright, Simply Jesus, 217.

May we gather weekly to do all the work of the mission by worshiping the Savior King to whom we belong. May we pursue revival in our preaching and our prayers. May we act with the compassion and loving-kindness of Jesus our Savior. May we live our lives seeking truth and justice.

Photo by Pedro Lima on Unsplash

The Day the King Rose…

Billions of people all across the globe celebrated the Risen King on March 31, 2024. Just because billions of people celebrated doesn’t make something true, but the fact that billions of people celebrated one unique story does warrant investigation.

Over the years, I’ve preached on Easter Sunday, taught about the resurrection, invited people to trust in Christ, argued for the resurrection, and defended the gospel to and for people over and over again. There is little doubt that the resurrection is the most important miracle in all of the Bible.

Without the resurrection, there is no Christianity. Theologian and author N.T. Wright has written extensively on the subject of the resurrection.

“There is no evidence for a form of early Christianity in which the resurrection was not a central belief. Nor was this belief, as it were, bolted on to Christianity at the edge. It was the central driving force, informing the whole movement.”

N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 133. 

Wright’s book, The Resurrection of the Son of God is a classic on the subject. The resurrection has been questioned, debated, argued, and defended. The evidence for this miracle has brought skeptics to faith and changed the lives of billions of people across the planet. Journalist turned pastor, Lee Strobel, has written about how his search for evidence against Christianity brought him to faith in Christ in his book The Case for Christ. He’s also written specifically about Jesus’ resurrection in his work The Case for Easter.

Maybe you’re a Christian discouraged by the skepticism that abounds. Or maybe you’re a skeptic willing to consider the evidence for the resurrection. Would you consider reading one of the above books? The entirety of Christianity turns on the historicity and validity of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If you don’t have time to read a book, here are several good reasons for believing in the resurrection:

  1. The resurrection best accounts for the empty tomb. Even the religious leaders in Jesus’ own day acknowledged the empty tomb. Remember, they came up with the suggestion that the disciples stole the body of Jesus in the night (Matthew 28:13). An empty tomb suggests that the body of Jesus was not accounted for in his own day. 
  2. The body of Jesus has never been accounted for. There are really only a couple of options regarding Jesus’ body. He was buried in a public tomb. His followers and the religious leaders knew where he was, so it is not like Jesus’ body remains buried somewhere to be discovered by someone else. The religious leaders would not have taken the body. They were responsible for Jesus’ death. They would have wanted to destroy Christianity before it began. They would have produced the body if they could have. 
  3. If the disciples took the body, then that means they died for a hoax. A theory that goes all the way back to the New Testament is that the disciples took Jesus’ body and perpetrated the resurrection as a hoax. Not only would this make Christianity the greatest hoax in history, but it does’t square with the historical evidence of Jesus’ followers. The apostles all died as martyrs following lives of preaching the resurrected Christ. Would they have all really gone to their graves for a lie that they perpetrated? 
  4. The first witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus were not legally able to testify in court. One of the critiques against the veracity of the Gospel accounts is that they were legends that developed over years far removed from the actual events. This would mean that the Gospel writers put their accounts together for theological purposes with the singular aim of convincing readers of their version of Christ. But all of the Gospel accounts identify women as the first witnesses to the resurrection. This makes little sense if the Gospel writers were trying to convince their readers in the court of public opinion. Women could not serve as witnesses in a court of law. In that case, why would the Gospel writers include them in the story? The only reason for including the women in the story is that they were the first witnesses to the resurrection. This is an incidental detail that lends great credibility to the resurrection account.
  5. The drastic change in the disciples validates the resurrection story. At the end of Jesus’ crucifixion, the disciples cowered in fear in a locked room. They abandoned Jesus after his arrest. They were afraid. Yet in the book of Acts, they were different. The disciples boldly proclaimed Christ in front of the Jewish religious leaders. Even a persecutor named Paul met the risen Christ in a vision and proclaimed the good news in front of kings and emperors. These men didn’t become rich or powerful. They did not live in luxury. Pain, persecution, and death awaited them. Yet, they embraced their sufferings because they genuinely believed the message they proclaimed: that Jesus rose from the dead. 
  6. The rise of Christianity is a powerful witness to the resurrection. Two thousand years later Christianity has more than two billion adherents on earth. People from all walks of life, nationalities, languages, and ideologies have become followers of Jesus. Men and women and boys and girls from all over the world believe that Jesus rose from the dead. More importantly, they have been changed by the Christ they believe in. 

You may remain unconvinced of the reality of the resurrection. Sure, there have been other arguments against the resurrection throughout history. And there are other arguments for the resurrection. But here is my concluding thought in this post. The historical, physical resurrection of Jesus Christ is the best explanation for the evidence we do have. If you are a skeptic or unbeliever, then I challenge you to provide credible answers to the evidences we do have. 

  • Why is there an empty tomb? 
  • Where is the body of Jesus? 
  • Why would the disciples die for a hoax? 
  • Why would the Gospel writers include women as the first witnesses? 
  • What changed the disciples from fear to faith? 
  • What explanation exists for the rise of Christianity? 

If you already believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ or if you study the evidence and come to believe in the resurrection, then you must come to understand this one important reality: If Jesus rose from the dead, then he is both Lord and King. After the resurrection, Jesus said, “All authority has been given unto me in heaven and on earth” (Mt. 28:18). He is the King who rose. This means that we are obligated to believe in the King, worship the King, and follow the King unconditionally.

The truest response to the Risen King is to believe and follow just like the first witnesses and apostles. May the Risen Christ change and lead us!

Photo by Ch P on Unsplash