The Lang Gang’s 2021 Christmas Letter
“…as a groom rejoices over his bride, so your God
—Isaiah 62:5
will rejoice over you.”
Dear Family and Friends,
At Christmas time, we celebrate the fulfillment of long-awaited hopes. As children, we woke as early as possible and raced to the tree to see what Santa had brought us. In Bethlehem, “the time came” (Luke 2:6) for Mary to give birth to a long-awaited Savior. Shepherds “went with haste” (Luke 2:16) to find the Child the angels had heralded. When the Magi found the newborn King after their long and arduous journey, they “rejoiced exceedingly with great joy” (Matthew 2:10).
When I think of rejoicing exceedingly with great joy, I remember the day Lisa walked down the aisle of a church to become my wife. I grinned from ear to ear the moment I saw her, and by the end of our reception, my cheeks were sore. Our wedding was the fulfillment of my long-awaited hope to find a love that would last forever. How could I help but smile?
Lisa and I saw that same look on our son David’s face as he married Caitlyn on a North Carolina mountain-top in October. It was moving to see our young groom rejoice over his bride.
Scripture tells us God rejoices over his people in the same way a groom rejoices over his bride. Just as a groom experiences the long-awaited joy of perfect union with his bride, so the Lord rejoices when he brings us into intimate fellowship with himself. This year, he did that for my grandmother, Miriam, and for Lisa’s mom, Louise. Both had a deep and abiding relationship with Christ, and both reached their nineties before God called them home. Their long-awaited hope for a love that will last forever has now been perfectly realized.
Families gather to celebrate hopes fulfilled and losses suffered. In March, Louise’s three daughters and their families came from across the country to celebrate her 90th birthday. We all wore camouflage to signify what a “trooper” she was.
In August, we gathered again to say goodbye. Each of our kids dropped everything for the sake of a few final moments with their Nana. So much family came that the hospice couldn’t accommodate us all, so we moved Louise to the home of Lisa’s sister. Louise passed away surrounded by her family, and her memorial service was a moving tribute to a life well-lived.
At both weddings and funerals, we rejoice over a new state of intimacy. Yet we also grieve the change in our relationships. The bride and groom must leave their own families to form a new one. Those who go to be with the Lord must leave the rest of us behind. While their God rejoices over them, we grieve their loss and hope for the day we’ll see them again.
The birth of Christ was the fulfillment of the long-awaited hope for a Savior. Yet it was also the beginning of a new period of waiting: for the accomplishment of our salvation at Easter. Even now, we await the ultimate fulfillment of our hope, when we will be perfectly united with our God and with each other.
This Christmas, no matter what transitions you face, may you put your hope in Christ, in whom all hopes will ultimately be fulfilled. May you rejoice in his love which lasts forever. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a blessed 2022.
Love,
The Lang Gang
David, Lisa, David, Caitlyn, Caleb, Bethany, Alexa, and Josiah
What Can the Bible Teach Us about Love and Marriage?
A few weeks ago, I began a YouTube channel called Bible2Life. Its purpose is to “bring the Bible to life so that it can better impact your life.” Teaching the Bible on video has definitely been a process of trial and error, but I’ve managed to release eight videos, including several on love and marriage.
The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, and there is much we can learn about God’s design for marriage. In this video, I examine the meaning of the term “helpmate,” which comes from the King James translation of the Hebrew phrase ezer kenegdo. Understanding that Hebrew phrase can give us great insight into God’s purpose in creating us “male and female”:
The next video in this series examines God’s first “attempt” to provide this “helper suitable” for Adam, and why it seems to fail. There’s actually a great deal of drama in the Hebrew text which gets a little lost in translation, and it all boils down to the preposition “to”.
Please check both of these videos out. And while you’re cooped up because of COVID-19, be sure to watch the other videos I’ve released.
Super Speed? Not so Much
This blog centers around the idea that Writing is a Superpower. Unfortunately, that superpower doesn’t always manifest itself in super speed. The Flash may be able to crank out a book in record time, but my newly finished book about marriage—The Wedding Blessing: Experience Wedded Bliss of Biblical Proportions—has taken me more than twelve years to write. What’s worse, it’s only about 100 pages long!
How can a man who claims to have a superpower take so long to write such a short book?
To begin with, I did have the whole alter ego thing to contend with. A full-time job and a larger than average family can consume a lot of time, so much of those twelve years have been spent thinking about finishing that book instead of actually doing it! (Procrastination is the writer’s kryptonite!)
Yet this went beyond normal procrastination. All writing is hard, but writing a book of marital advice is especially hard, because you have to contend with the hypocrisy factor. Poor Peter Parker was an angsty superhero, full of self-doubt and worried that he was doing more harm than good. Write a book about marriage, and you’ll know exactly how he felt! After all, every marital spat you have reminds you that you don’t always practice what you preach, and you find yourself setting that book about marriage aside for a while.
Yet like any good comic book story arc, when you persevere as a couple, when you overcome your various challenges together, and—most importantly—when you’re guided in your quest by a divine purpose, you can ultimately triumph in your marriage.
My little book about marriage did not spring up instantaneously like Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. It was forged and refined in the fires of the real marriage of a man with human frailties. Batman is my favorite superhero precisely because he is just an ordinary man without mutations or gamma radiation or a radioactive spider-bite. Okay, so he did have the millionaire thing going for him, but other than that, he was just a regular guy. I too am a regular guy, but I am blessed to experience “wedded bliss of biblical proportions,” and I’m eager to help others do the same.
The Wedding Blessing may not have been written with super speed, but here’s hoping it will be published in a flash!
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History or Gospel?
Can the Biblical Accounts of Jesus’s Passion Be Trusted?
It’s Good Friday, the day Christians celebrate the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It may seem odd to celebrate the horrific killing of the Son of God, and it may seem foolish to call such an evil act “Good.” But it is Good—infinitely so—because Christ died the death we deserve as sinners who have rebelled against a holy God. I can call this day “Good” because “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:19–20).
History or Gospel?
Whenever someone considers the claims Christians make regarding the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, one of the first things they ask is, “Did all this really happen?” Was there an actual man named Jesus? Did he really suffer and die like that? Could he really have risen from the dead? In other words, is the gospel story historical, or merely the stuff of legend?
This question was the subject of a Dateline NBC special entitled The Last Days of Jesus, which aired around the time the movie The Passion of the Christ was released. NBC anchor Stone Phillips interviewed several Biblical scholars about key episodes in the final week of Jesus’s life. Among the scholars interviewed was John Dominic Crossan, co-chair of the Jesus Seminar and author of numerous books about the “historical Jesus.” Crossan, who describes Judas as a “powerful piece of fiction” and who declares that the “Pilate of the gospels” is “absolutely unhistorical,” has this to say about what he sees as the gospels’ lack of historical authenticity:
It’s not that anyone is telling a lie. They are writing gospel. If you read a gospel as giving you straight history you are denying what it claims to be, namely good news. And if we were to confront them and say, well, that’s not history, they say, ‘I never said I was writing history. That’s your problem. I’m writing gospel.’
Crossan does have a point about what the gospel writers were trying to do. They were not trying to write an objective, historiographical account of the events of Jesus’s life. They were writing to persuade their readers that Jesus is the Christ, the only path of salvation for sinful man. They were not merely reporting historical fact; they were interpreting the events they were describing in order to make a theological or evangelistic point. However, that fact does not rule out the possibility that the events they recorded actually took place. They may have been proclaiming the good news, but they also saw themselves as proclaiming the truth — a truth which was historical as well as spiritual.
To his credit, Stone Phillips also interviewed scholars such as Craig Evans who believe the gospels to be historically reliable. Unfortunately, we never see these scholars actually address the specific challenges to the gospels’ historicity which get raised. I contacted Dr. Evans to find out whether he had been asked if Judas was real or if the gospels’ portrayal of Pilate was accurate, and he was kind enough to send me a partial transcript of his interview. In it he ably defended the veracity of the gospel accounts, but for whatever reason, his answers to those questions never made it on the air. Thus, although Dateline’s viewers were presented with scholars from both sides of the debate, they only got to hear the arguments of those who question the Bible’s historical reliability. The net effect of all this was that Dateline’s viewers were given the distinct impression that the gospels are of dubious historical value.
History and Gospel
John Dominic Crossan’s juxtaposition of history and gospel is typical of those who challenge the historical reliability of the gospels, but where is it written that a document must be exclusively one or the other? If I report that I met Christ when I was fifteen years old, at the end of a dock on a lake in Alabama, is it not possible to reject my religious affirmation without denying my historical assertions? In other words, you may dispute my claim that I did, in fact, have a personal encounter with Jesus Christ, but why accuse me of lying about actually being at the end of a dock in Alabama when I was fifteen years old?
Let’s take this personal example a little further. What if, at another time, I told you that I have spent all my life in Florida and that I became a Christian through a small church in Orlando? Now should you question the historical accuracy of my claim that I met Christ (that is, became a Christian) in Alabama? After all, I’ve just said that I’ve spent all my life in Florida! Of course, the apparent contradiction is easily resolved when I explain that I was in Alabama on a week-long youth retreat, and that I was, in fact, actually living in Florida at that time.
When I give a personal testimony of my salvation experience, I am relating historical facts for evangelistic purposes, but my religious motives do not lead me to bend, distort, or exaggerate the historical elements of my message. In other words, my statements are both history and gospel. Yet scholars like Crossan tend to approach the gospels with the assumption that their authors were not above embellishing the truth if they thought it would serve their theological purposes. Thus, any episode which can be clearly shown to further the goals of the gospel writers immediately becomes suspect. In my opinion, this a priori presumption of guilt leads people like Crossan to see contradiction, exaggeration, and error in all kinds of places where it doesn’t really exist.
Pilate: A Test Case
In order to assess the historical reliability of the gospels, let’s examine an episode in the life of Christ which has often been declared “implausible” and “absolutely unhistorical” by Crossan and others: Jesus’s trial before Pilate.
The gospels portray Pilate as reluctant to crucify Jesus, as doing so only in response to pressure from the Jewish priests and the crowd. Yet other ancient historical witnesses describe Pilate as a ruthless dictator who did not hesitate to resort to brutality. Philo speaks of Pilate’s “corruption, and his acts of insolence, and his rapine, and his habit of insulting people, and his cruelty, and his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and most grievous inhumanity” (Philo, Embassy to Gaius, 302). Josephus tells of several instances where Pilate suppressed minor, religiously-inspired uprisings with violence. John Dominic Crossan summarizes Pilate’s relationship with his Jewish subjects like this:
He would not give in to a crowd. Pilate had his own way of crowd control, which is known as slaughter. He is not the Pilate of the gospels, the meek or the just person who is just trying to be a good governor but that crowd won’t let him go so he finally gives in. That is absolutely unhistorical.
When asked whether Pilate would have crucified Jesus to please the priests, Paula Fredricksen, another scholar featured in the Dateline Special mentioned above, responded, “Pilate is appointed by the Emperor. He doesn’t have to worry about pleasing the priests.”
Scholars who regard the gospels’ depiction of Pilate as unhistorical tend to argue that the gospel writers had an ulterior motive for describing Pilate as reluctant to crucify a righteous man without just cause. Because the gospels were written around the time of the First Jewish Revolt, these scholars see the gospels as an attempt by Christians to distance themselves from Jews. By whitewashing Pilate’s involvement in Jesus’s death and laying the blame squarely at the feet of the Jews, the gospel writers were trying to appease their Roman rulers and avoid being lumped together with the Jews who were proving so troublesome at the time.
Did the gospel writers gloss over Pilate’s cruelty in order to get in good with the Romans? Are Pilate’s actions in the trial of Jesus inconsistent with what we know of him from other ancient sources? Not at all.
To begin with, one of the gospels makes explicit mention of Pilate’s cruelties. In Luke 13:1, Jesus receives news about some Galileans “whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” In other words, Pilate had ordered some Galileans to be slaughtered while they were in the act of offering sacrifices to God, an act which would have been absolutely reprehensible to Jews. Luke’s gospel, at least, does not try to cover up Pilate’s penchant for brutality.
Neither do the gospels depict Pilate as being particularly eager to please either the priests or the crowd. When the chief priests bring Jesus before Pilate, the gospel of John portrays Pilate as dismissive: “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law” (John 18:31). Later he says to them, “You take him and crucify him” — knowing perfectly well that they have no authority to crucify anyone. When Pilate presents Jesus to the crowd, he repeatedly refers to Jesus as their “king,” almost as if he is enjoying the fact that they are calling for the death of a Jewish king. His famous act of “washing his hands” is not meant to appease the crowd, but to make it clear that they are responsible for Jesus’s crucifixion.
Why would Pilate behave like this? Why didn’t he just condemn Christ immediately and be done with it? Was it because he was so convinced of Jesus’s innocence? Was it because he didn’t want to participate in a miscarriage of justice? I don’t think so. The gospels do not portray Pilate as the “meek or just person who is just trying to be a good governor” (see Crossan’s quote above), but as a politician trying to work out the best way to handle a difficult situation.
Paula Fredricksen is right that Pilate was appointed by the Roman Emperor and therefore did not have to answer to the desires of the Jewish priests. But she is being far too simplistic when she says that he didn’t have to “worry” about pleasing his Jewish subjects. After all, the Jews could, and had, appealed directly to the emperor in cases where they felt Pilate was being unjust or doing something which violated their religious traditions. Philo reports of one instance where Pilate was harshly reprimanded by the emperor for not removing some objects from Jerusalem which the Jews found objectionable. Josephus tells us that Pilate was ultimately removed from office when his Jewish subjects complained about his cruelties to the higher-ranking governor of Syria. In other words, Pilate may have had all the power in Jerusalem, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t accountable to any higher authority or that he could do whatever he wanted. Like most politicians, Pilate likely spent a lot of time looking over his shoulder and trying to figure out how to hold on to his position or to advance his career.
So when the Jewish religious leaders came to him to demand the death of a popular preacher, Pilate found himself in a political quagmire. I doubt there was any love lost between Pilate and the Jewish authorities, but Pilate depended on them to help keep the Jewish populace in line. If he completely alienated them, they were sure to cause him further headaches in the future. On the other hand, if he put to death this popular preacher during the festival of Passover, he was likely to end up with a riot on his hands. And while Pilate certainly wasn’t afraid to put down a riot with violence, there was always the risk of more political fallout from such an action. Pilate may even have suspected the Jewish authorities of trying to set a trap for him. After all, whatever he did with Jesus, it had the potential to backfire.
Pilate therefore did what any good politician would do. He began by trying to pass the buck: sending Jesus off to Herod when he learned that Jesus was a Galilean (Luke 23:6-7). Luke notes that when Herod sent Jesus back dressed in an “elegant robe,” Pilate and Herod became “friends” where previously they had been enemies (Luke 23:12). This new political alliance seems odd considering that Herod failed to take the Jesus problem off Pilate’s hands, but apparently Pilate was so pleased with Herod’s mockery of Jesus’s claim to be king of the Jews that he began to see Herod in a new light.
Pilate then seized upon another opportunity to avoid responsibility for the condemnation of Jesus. All four gospels record that it was customary for the Roman governor to release a prisoner to the crowd at Passover: sort of a low-cost way to show the benevolence of Roman rule. At the time, Pilate had a prisoner named Barabbas who had led an insurrection. It is doubtful Pilate would have wanted to release such a man anyway, and it was apparently clear to him from his interviews with Jesus that this people’s preacher posed more of a threat to the religious authorities than he did to the authority of Rome. By releasing Jesus, Pilate could appear benevolent to the crowd, go forward with the execution of a political prisoner, and, perhaps best of all, irritate the priests who had good reason to see Jesus as a threat. If it had worked, it would have been a pretty savvy bit of political maneuvering.
Unfortunately for Pilate, the crowd did not give him the out he wanted. The priests, who had no reason to want a man like Barabbas released either, may have surprised Pilate by calling for his release rather than Jesus’s. The gospels say that they “stirred up” the crowd to call for Barabbas to be released as well.
Paula Fredricksen finds this whole scene to be “incoherent”:
The whole scene even if you look at it within the woof and weave of the gospel stories is incoherent. Jesus is popular enough to have been celebrated by pilgrims and danced into the city. He was so popular that he had to be arrested by ambush. That was the only way they could risk getting him without causing popular uproar. And yet by morning, there’s a hostile crowd screaming for his death. Where does this hostile crowd come from? Did it really exist? … It doesn’t square. If this were a script for a “Law & Order” episode, you’d say, wait a minute, this is inconsistent. And that’s where you have to sort through.
But is it really that hard to understand? Consider how quickly we can turn on popular celebrities when they get into legal trouble or do something scandalous and the situation immediately becomes more believable. In the four days since he had entered Jerusalem to great fanfare, Jesus had been embroiled in controversy: terrorizing the money-changers at the temple, challenging the religious authorities, prophesying the temple’s destruction, and on and on. By Friday, I’m sure some of those who had hailed him as Messiah were beginning to wonder if they had been mistaken. We must also consider the fact that Jesus was not universally celebrated on Palm Sunday — many Jews were likely suspicious of this latest Messianic figure and nervous about the attention he was receiving. When, on Friday morning, this man appears in chains and looking like he has been in a fight, these people likely would have felt that their suspicions were being confirmed.
Jesus may have been too popular to arrest publicly, but Fredricksen seriously underestimates the effect of his suddenly appearing to people disgraced and already in custody. The same people who might have been outraged to see Jesus arrested right in front of them could easily have felt disillusioned to see him bedraggled and in chains. Finally, we need to consider the composition of the crowd which gathered before Pilate that morning. Many of them may have been Barabbas’s supporters hoping to push for his release. Others were likely just curious onlookers wanting to see the Roman governor release a Jewish prisoner. Such people probably could not have cared less who was released, and could easily have been swayed one way or the other. They might even have enjoyed the irony of seeing Pilate release a known insurrectionist. The point is that there are lots of possibilities which make this episode entirely plausible and quite coherent.
Whatever the reasons, the crowd did call for Barabbas to be released instead of Jesus. Still, Pilate wasn’t completely off the hook. The whole episode could easily have been “spun” as another example of Pilate’s cruelty and injustice: Pilate releases a known murderer and crucifies a popular religious teacher. So Pilate goes to great lengths to show that this time, he cannot be blamed for the bloodshed. First, he has Jesus flogged. His soldiers crown Jesus with thorns and beat him with a staff. When he is returned to Pilate he is seriously disfigured, clothed in Herod’s robe, and wearing a crown of thorns. Still, the chief priests are not appeased. They cry out for him to be crucified.
Why would they not have been satisfied? The cynical answer is that a beaten and humiliated Jesus would have been even more of a threat to their authority. Jesus could have used his flogging at the hands of Pilate to curry sympathy among the Jewish people, as proof that he was more courageous and more faithful to God than the collaborating Jewish priests. The more sympathetic answer is that these men were zealous for the Law, and as a blasphemer, they saw Jesus as deserving of death — a flogging was simply not enough. Whatever their motives, these men wanted Jesus dead.
The gospel of John, which records Jesus’s trial before Pilate in greater detail than any of the other gospels, describes the ironic conclusion like this:
From then on, Pilate tried to set Jesus free, but the Jews kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”
When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judge’s seat at a place known as the Stone Pavement (which in Aramaic is Gabbatha). It was the day of Preparation of Passover Week, about the sixth hour.
“Here is your king,” Pilate said to the Jews.
But they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”
“Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked.
“We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.
At last Pilate had what he was looking for. There was now no way the chief priests could use this episode against him. Even better, he had their assertion that they had no king but Caesar.
I suspect Pilate enjoyed the irony of forcing a Jewish crowd and their Jewish priests to repeatedly call for the death of a Jewish king. Again and again, Pilate refers to Jesus as “your king,” as if to remind the crowd that the only king Jews could produce was this pitiful figure before him. And how did they reward their “king”? By crying out for his crucifixion!
The gospel of Matthew describes Pilate’s final bit of drama:
When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. “I am innocent of this man’s blood,” he said. “It is your responsibility!”
Was this the protest of a just judge who was unwilling to accept the guilt of innocent blood? Or was it a crass way of taking what the crowd had just done and throwing it back in their faces? Either interpretation is purely speculative, but it is certainly possible to see Pilate as saying to his Jewish subjects: “This one is your doing. You who act so righteous and who have called me cruel, how are you any better than me?”
Whatever his reasons and motivations, Pilate had escaped the political trap, and had most likely enjoyed himself in the bargain. I suspect that he also enjoyed the priests’ objections to the notice which he had posted to Jesus’s cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” What a coup for a petty political dictator: he got to crucify a Jewish “king” and he couldn’t even be blamed for it. He got to warn other would-be messiahs about the dangers of achieving prominence, and in the process managed to extort a vow of loyalty to Caesar from the Jewish priests!
My point in all this is that the gospels do not whitewash Pilate or his soldiers while demonizing the Jews. Rather, they depict the complex multiplicity of factors leading to Jesus’s crucifixion. More often than not, it is the modern Biblical “historians” who end up flattening and oversimplifying history by failing to consider the full scope of the events being described. It is simply easier to dismiss the gospel writers as being unhistorical than it is to try to understand the subtle, hidden, and sometimes contradictory motives which drive people to do what they do.
Are the Gospels Historically Reliable?
So are the gospels historically reliable? Can we trust the accounts they give of Jesus’s passion, his death, and even his miraculous resurrection? Obviously, I believe we can. Have I proven the gospels’ historical accuracy in this article? Not by a long shot. But I hope I have shown that the gospel accounts cannot be dismissed as easily as scholars like Crossan and Fredricksen would have us believe. Yes, they are gospel, and we may choose not to accept the “good news” which they proclaim. But they are also history, and they should not be rejected as such simply because the gospels were written for theological and evangelistic purposes.
The Lang Gang’s 2017 Christmas Letter
“when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son,
born of a woman … so that we might receive adoption”
—Galatians 4:4
Dear Family and Friends,
On our kitchen counter, we have a little decorative chalkboard on which to write the number of days left until Christmas. Each day, Jo Jo (8) writes a new number on the board and then delights to remind us that Christmas is now one day closer. When I was his age, I remember wondering if Christmas would ever arrive. For children, who see only the promise of presents under the tree, time just seems to drag on interminably in the days leading up to Christmas. Parents, meanwhile, have a different perspective on time: each day that passes is one less day to buy presents, decorate the house, plan get-togethers, and otherwise try to have the “perfect” Christmas. For us, time seems to fly by in a mad rush toward “C-Day.”
It’s funny how our perception of time is affected by our perspective. When we’re waiting in hope for something good to happen, time seems to slow down. Later, we look back and realize how short the time of waiting actually was.
When I was a young man fresh out of college, it seemed as if it would be forever before I could find a dream job or meet and marry the girl of my dreams. Now that David (22), Caleb (21), and Bethany (19) have all graduated from college, they are each taking their first tentative steps in pursuit of their own dreams. At times I see in them the same impatience to get started that I used to feel, and I know they’re wondering as I did, “Will I really ever be able to get there from here?” Looking back now, I’m amazed at how quickly I managed to find both my dream job and my dream girl. From my current vantage point, I can see clearly how God was directing my steps the whole time, and I can casually minimize that period of waiting and uncertainty as “a few short years.”
Of course, at the time, a “few” years of waiting seemed anything but “short.” Likewise, it is little comfort to my kids when I tell them they have “plenty of time” in which to see their dreams come true.
Ironically, while our adult children cannot fully appreciate my perspective on their current stage of life, they are already looking back at the challenges of college from a completely different vantage point. Right now their younger sister Alexa (16) is busy filling out college applications, taking entrance exams like the ACT, and scheduling auditions in the hope of becoming a violin performance major. These hurdles all seem capable of determining her entire future, so she is naturally anxious about getting over each one. Her older siblings just shake their heads knowingly and say, “Of course you’ll be accepted. Of course you’ll pass the test. Of course you’ll nail the audition.” Already they seem to have forgotten the fear and trepidation they themselves experienced just a “few short years” ago.
Galatians 4:4 tells us that “God sent forth His Son” when “the fullness of time had come.” In other words, Christ was born at the perfect time—not a moment late, nor a moment too soon. The events which marked His birth were set in motion centuries, even millennia, prior to the first Christmas. Seven centuries earlier the prophets Isaiah and Micah prophesied his virgin birth in the town of Bethlehem. Many millennia before that the “star of Bethlehem” was appointed to appear at exactly the right time. God’s timing encompasses a mind-boggling array of actions and events, and there’s no way to hurry it along or argue with it. Yet when the “fullness of time” finally arrives, God’s orchestrating hand is clearly evident.
Before we met, Lisa and I each broke off a previous engagement. By the end of those relationships, we each felt that we were pressing to make something work that just wasn’t right. Neither of us was eager to start all over again or face a period of loneliness, but we each traded the security of a less-than-ideal relationship for the hope of something better. And then we waited. At times, we felt lonely. But in the “fullness of time,” God brought us together, and we thank Him every day that He made us wait for His best.
This Christmas, whatever your hopes, your dreams, and your secret longings, we pray that you will look to the Savior who came in the “fullness of time.” He came not merely to deliver His people from political bondage and exile, but to deliver all people from bondage to sin and the resulting exile from God’s presence. He accomplishes this reconciliation through adoption, so that by faith in the Son of God we ourselves become God’s children.
Consider for a moment what it means to be a child of God. At Christmas, we go to great lengths to ensure that our children receive the gifts they most hope for. If we, fallible and imperfect as we are, “know how to give good gifts to [our] children, how much more will [our] Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?” (Matthew 7:11). Yet we also make our children wait until the “fullness of time” to receive those gifts, even when it means seeming deaf to their pleas for an “early Christmas.” In the same way, our Father in heaven is eager to give us every good thing, but only when it is truly good and only at the perfect time, a time when we are truly ready to receive it. Until then, He makes us wait until the “fullness of time.” After all, it is the Christmas presents we unwrap early which are most quickly forgotten, and the ones we had to wait for which are most deeply cherished.
So whatever you’re waiting for this Christmas, look to the Father who loves you, and trust that He will act in the “fullness of time.” Merry Christmas and God bless.
Love,
The Lang Gang
David, Lisa, David, Caleb, Bethany, Alexa, and Josiah
The Gospel Does Not Affirm Sin; It Transforms Sinners
A few days ago, a number of evangelical leaders released a statement affirming the Bible’s clear teaching that “God has designed marriage to be a covenantal, sexual, procreative, lifelong union of one man and one woman, as husband and wife” and denying that He “designed marriage to be a homosexual, polygamous, or polyamorous relationship.” Known as the Nashville Statement, it contains a series of affirmations and denials regarding what the Bible teaches about human sexuality.
In any previous age, Christians and non-Christians alike would have looked at this statement, yawned, and said, “Of course that’s what the Bible teaches!” Yet in a culture where gender is seen as a fluid social construct and any kind of sexual “love” is regarded as good, the Nashville Statement is being reviled by progressives as an attempt by “powerful people of means” to “use the platform of the Church to demean the basic dignity of gay, bisexual, lesbian, trans, intersex, and queer people.”
This last quote comes from A Liturgists Statement, a progressive response to the Nashville Statement which offers its own set of theological affirmations. It is a stunning example of the self-contradictory and unbiblical worldview currently being promoted as “Progressive Christianity.” It also clearly demonstrates that what is at stake in this debate is nothing less than the Gospel itself.
The Liturgists Statement begins by casting doubt on the Bible’s clarity on the subject of sexual sin:
“Biblical” morality has been used to justify slavery, resistance to interracial marriage, genocide, and war. The scope of the Bible’s narrative allows a broad interpretation of what is right and moral, and both the church and society at large have moved toward universal justice and acceptance on issues once thought to be “crystal clear.”
In regards to Christians across the spectrum of sexual orientations and gender identities, it’s past time to accept and affirm them as they are. In the same way that we no longer accept the morality of slavery based on its inclusion in our scriptures, we can no longer project first century notions of sex and sexuality on people today. The very notion of “orientation,” or even “heterosexual” would be completely foreign to the authors of both the old and new testaments in the Bible.
This argument can best be summarized as follows: In spite of the Bible, our views on slavery have changed, so why not our views on sexual sin? The problem with this is that although the Bible was used by slaveholders to justify slavery, it was also used by abolitionists to call for slavery’s end, and over time, the biblical arguments against slavery proved more compelling than those in favor of it. It’s not that the Bible clearly said “slavery is good” and “freedom is bad,” and we suddenly decided to read the Bible a different way. On the contrary, the Bible promised freedom from human bondage in the exodus of the Old Testament and freedom from bondage to sin in the Gospel of the New Testament. In the end, slavery was rejected because it violated the clear teaching of Scripture.
The Liturgists Statement argues that “we can no longer project first century notions of sex and sexuality on people today.” It goes on to argue that concepts of sexual “orientation” or even of being “heterosexual” would be completely foreign to the biblical authors. Instead of making a biblical argument for their understanding of sexuality, the authors of this statement simply brush the Bible aside as irrelevant to the discussion. Those first-century biblical authors simply didn’t think about sexuality the way we do! Okay, so why do we think our understanding is right and their understanding is wrong? How is this anything other than chronological snobbery, the fallacious assumption that the thinking of our own age is inherently superior to that of previous ages?
By the way, shouldn’t the argument that the biblical authors had no concept of “orientation” and “heterosexuality” simply lead us to conclude that such concepts are unbiblical? The authors of this statement are not seeking to live in accordance with what the Bible teaches, but are simply trying to make the Bible conform to an external standard which is foreign to it. In the end, it is not the Bible, but rather some undefined concept of “universal justice and acceptance,” which they use as their ethical foundation.
The Liturgists Statement goes on to make a series of affirmations of what they believe about human sexuality. Here is the first:
We believe that people of all sexual orientations and gender identities are fearfully and wonderfully made, holy before God, beloved and beautiful as they are.
The Bible does indeed teach that all people are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14), their bodies being “knitted together” in their mothers’ wombs (v. 13). The Bible also teaches that all people are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27; 9:6), designed to reflect God’s glory on earth and therefore intrinsically valuable. Yet the Bible also teaches that human nature was radically marred and corrupted by mankind’s fall into sin (Romans 3:23; 5:12). Because of this, our only hope is to be set free from sin through the redemptive and transformative work of Christ (Rom. 6:19–23), by which we become a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17). It is therefore contrary to the Bible to affirm that any person, apart from the saving work of Christ, is “holy before God, beloved and beautiful as they are” (emphasis added). It is only those who are in Christ who are “holy before God,” since they have had Christ’s righteousness imputed to them and they are being continually transformed into his image. If you tell anyone—whether gay or straight—that they are holy, beloved, and beautiful “as they are,” you tell them that they have no need of the saving work of Christ. Such “I’m okay, you’re okay” theology may leave them feeling “affirmed” in the short term, but it ultimately damns them to perish in their sins.
The Liturgists Statement then affirms:
We believe all people have full autonomy over their bodies, sexual orientations, and gender identities, and the diversity of identities reflects the creative power of a loving God.
This affirmation clearly articulates the heart of the philosophy behind our culture’s view of human sexuality: the desire for absolute “autonomy” over one’s personal identity. The notion that a fundamental aspect of our identity (our sex) lies beyond our control is completely galling to modern man’s fetish for self-determination.
The irony of this affirmation of “full autonomy” is that it completely contradicts the preceding affirmation that “all sexual orientations and gender identities are fearfully and wonderfully made.” The first affirmation asserts that homosexuals and transgenders were “born this way,” and that it is therefore unloving to ask them to change their sexual orientation or gender identity. But the second affirmation asserts their absolute autonomy over their own “bodies, sexual orientations, and gender identities.” In other words, if they choose to, they are able to change any of those aspects of themselves.
So which is it? Are those who embrace homosexual desires or who reject their own biological sex born that way, and therefore unable to change their sexual orientation or sense of their own gender identity? Or are they autonomous beings capable of choosing any number of options when it comes to orientation and gender? If the latter, why not choose to identify with the gender and orientation which corresponds to the body they were born with?
The second affirmation also asserts that “the diversity of identities reflects the creative power of a loving God” (emphasis added). The irony of this statement is that when it comes to sex, only one pair of corresponding identities and orientations actually has “creative power”: the heterosexual coupling of male and female. All the rest of that “diversity of identities” is completely sterile and incapable of creating new life. If God has chosen to show his own creativity by making some people desire members of their own sex or feel as if they were born with the wrong body, he has done so while simultaneously denying those individuals the “[pro]creative power” he grants to heterosexual couples. The theological implications of such a view of God are troubling to say the least.
The third affirmation of the Liturgists Statement attempts to make an argument from Scripture:
We believe that God is love, and that ‘anyone who loves is born of God and knows God’. (I John 4:7) God is honored in any consenting and loving relationship between adults, and therefore, all such relationships deserve honor and recognition.
Note the equivocation when it comes to the use of the word “love.” The Bible says that love is from God (1 John 4:7), and then a few verses later explains what kind of love it is talking about: “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (v. 10). The context of this passage is not at all focused on sexual relationships, but on God’s redemptive love for sinners. Yet the Liturgists Statement uses this passage to argue that “any consenting and loving [sexual] relationship between adults” is an expression of divine love. Such an ethical principle will inevitably lead to absurdity. For example, is “God honored” by the consenting and loving relationship between a man and his mistress, even though that relationship constitutes a betrayal of the man’s wife? Is marriage a requirement for God to be honored in a “consenting and loving” sexual relationship, or is any sexual relationship to be regarded as God honoring?
The last affirmation I’ll deal with draws an unequal equivalency:
We believe that same-sex relationships and marriages are as holy before God as heterosexual marriages.
The equivalency being affirmed here is that same-sex marriages are equally “as holy” as heterosexual ones. Yet notice the inequality which got slipped in there. On the homosexual side, it is “relationships and marriages” which are regarded as holy, while on the heterosexual side, it is only “marriages.” Is this just an unintentional slip? I don’t think so. The Liturgists Statement is careful not to require marriage as a condition of holiness for same-sex relationships. After all, that would condemn the many homosexuals who prefer serial monogamy or outright promiscuity to the long-term commitment of same-sex marriage. An ethic of universal acceptance of any sexual relationship cannot impose marriage as a requirement for holiness, even though it is the only kind of heterosexual relationship which the Liturgists Statement describes as holy.
While the Liturgists Statement is written in the form of a Christian creed, it ends up being an illogical jumble of contradictory affirmations and theological assertions which strike at the very heart of the Gospel. The Bible proclaims that a just and holy God lovingly provided the solution to human sin and corruption in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.
The corruption of sin is readily apparent in the countless ways we have perverted and twisted God’s good created order. Hands designed to cultivate and keep the Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:15) are now used to commit murder (Gen. 4:8). That’s a perversion of God’s good design. Mouths designed to taste God’s goodness and praise his holy name are now used to engage in gluttony and cursing. That’s a perversion of God’s good design. The sexual distinction between male and female designed to fill the world with love and new life gets discarded in favor of sterile forms of coupling between members of the same sex. That too is a perversion of God’s good design.
All these perversions result in misery and death, and the only hope for any of us is to turn away from our sins and trust in the finished work of the resurrected Christ (Rom. 10:9–13). The good news of the Christian gospel is that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). The Liturgists Statement rejects that gospel in favor of the empty promise that sinners are “holy before God, beloved and beautiful as they are.” Rather than calling sinners to repent and believe, the Liturgists Statement simply redefines sin so that Christ and the cross are no longer necessary.
By way of contrast, hear the message of hope contained in Article 12 of the Nashville Statement:
WE AFFIRM that the grace of God in Christ gives both merciful pardon and transforming power, and that this pardon and power enable a follower of Jesus to put to death sinful desires and to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord.
WE DENY that the grace of God in Christ is insufficient to forgive all sexual sins and to give power for holiness to every believer who feels drawn into sexual sin.
Ultimately, the Nashville Statement is not merely about defending the Bible’s teaching about marriage and sexuality, and it is certainly not about “demean[ing] the basic dignity” of LGBTQ persons. On the contrary, it is about holding fast to the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is the only hope for sinners of every stripe and color of the rainbow.
Perspective for Homeschool Moms
My wife and I have been homeschooling our kids for some 17 years now. As a homeschool dad, I have always seen my primary job as helping my wife, Lisa, to have perspective on the whole homeschooling journey. Like most homeschool moms, Lisa has always placed a tremendous amount of pressure on herself to make sure she is giving our kids the best education she can. She has fretted over which curriculum we should use, agonized over whether she is organized or disciplined enough, worried about possible “gaps” in their education, and wondered if other moms (or various private and public schools) might be doing it better.
For you homeschool moms who are putting that same pressure on yourselves at the beginning of this school year, here’s a bit of the perspective I’ve tried to offer my wife over the years:
1. The advantages of homeschooling have little to do with your educational expertise or ability to teach. Sure, a professional teacher specializing in a single subject might be able to explain that subject matter better than you can. But that teacher can never match the personal attention you are able to give to your child. Even if your attention is divided among a large number of children, the biggest families are still a fraction of the size of a typical classroom. And, of course, no teacher can love your child and respond to their individual needs the way you can.
2. Don’t compare your “closets” to other homeschool moms’ “formal living rooms.” A formal living room is a room that always stays presentable because nobody in the family is allowed to go in there. When company comes over, they are ushered into the formal living room and get a completely skewed perspective of your home. A closet on the other hand is a place we throw all our junk in order to keep it hidden when company arrives.
When you look at other homeschool moms, you see only their “formal living rooms”: their organized school room on the first (never the last) day of school, their most creative lesson, their coolest craft. You never see the times when both mom and child dissolved into tears over a math lesson, when a craft or experiment completely fell apart, or when half the week’s schoolwork had to be hurriedly finished over the weekend. You know what’s in your own home educational “closet,” but all you see of other homeschoolers is their “formal living rooms.” Any comparison you make is therefore a false comparison.
When you’re tempted to compare yourself to someone else, remember that if they were to see only your best homeschooling moments, they might actually be intimidated by you!
3. You won’t know how successful your homeschooling (or parenting) was until you see the finished product, and you won’t see that until your kids are grown and nearing the end of their educational journey. So homeschool for the long haul. It doesn’t matter if your kid takes longer to learn to read or multiply than someone else’s kid. If one of your older children learned something quickly and your younger child is struggling with it, that doesn’t mean you’re now doing something wrong. It simply means that each child is different, and hey, that’s where you can take comfort in the individual attention homeschooling enables you to give (see point 1 above).
As my mom told herself when I had a hard time learning to tie my shoes: “No kid ever went to college not knowing how to tie his shoes.” I may have run around a few years with untied laces, but eventually I got it (and thankfully, that was well before college!). Your kids will eventually get it too. One day that inscrutable math concept or point of grammar will just click, and you’ll have the joy of seeing the light of understanding in their eyes. Until then, keep at it and don’t worry. Reassure them (and yourself) that they’ll get it eventually.
As far as I can see, the advantages of homeschooling are such that it takes serious negligence or apathy to really mess it up. And if you’re constantly putting pressure on yourself, that’s a pretty sure sign that you’re not one of those negligent/apathetic homeschool moms. So relax, rejoice, and rest secure in the knowledge that you are giving your kids a tremendous advantage. It may be hard for you to see from day to day, but one day soon, everyone will see it.
…Because of His Mercy
More than thirty years ago, an angry young man came to the end of himself and gave his life to Christ. Here’s a brief account of how it happened:
On this night thirty-three years ago, I sat on the edge of a dock looking out at the waters of a small lake. I had come there on a retreat with a friend’s church youth group. Not brought up in the church, I didn’t have any preconceived notions about how to pray, so I just began pouring my heart out to God: confessing my sin, my futile self-reliance, and all the reasons I was unworthy to come to Him. I understood that I was sinner, and I was keenly aware of my need for God.
There is a famous quote, variously attributed to Pascal, Augustine, or Ambrose, which says, “There is a God-shaped vacuum inside each of us which only God can fill.” For me, that vacuum was all too real and palpable. As I sat there praying to God, I remember looking up at the vastness of the night sky and clearly sensing that He was there all around me, filling every space—every space except for the tiny insignificant void inside of me. Then it dawned on me that in His divine greed, He wanted to fill that space too!
While I can remember the perceptions and emotions of that night quite clearly, I recall almost nothing of the things I actually said in that prayer. The only thing I do remember saying is this: “God, I don’t know what kind of servant I’m going to be for you, but I want to the best I can be.” That moment when I spoke those words is the closest I think I’ve ever gotten to genuine humility. My pride was broken, my vanity spent, I knew I had nothing to offer. And yet, somehow, I knew that God wanted all of me, and I wanted nothing more than to be of some use for Him.
As I got up from the dock and headed off to bed that night, I remember feeling as if an enormous weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I had just been freed from the burden of my sin, and all the separation, guilt, anxiety, and utter loneliness that go with it. That night, my step was light, and my heart was full.
But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:4-7)
The Lang Gang’s 2016 Christmas Letter
“I am the light of the world. Anyone who follows Me will never walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)
Dear Family and Friends,
One of the iconic landmarks of our little town of Mount Dora
, the lighthouse on Lake Dora is designed to guide boaters safely to the marina after dark. Florida’s waterways are a great source of recreation and adventure, but they are not without their dangers, and lighthouses like ours help those adrift in darkness to find their way home.
Consider for a moment what it’s like to be “adrift in darkness”—to have no sure foundation and no clear sense of direction. If you do nothing, you surrender to the ever-shifting waves and currents which may take you where you do not wish to go. On the other hand, if you strike out into the darkness, you may run aground or become hopelessly lost. In such dire straits, a light that points the way home is a light that gives life.
In the days of the prophet Isaiah, the people of Galilee, in the north of Israel, were a people living in darkness. A foreign army had invaded their land, disbanded their government, and carried much of the population off into exile. The only Israelites who were left were too poor and weak to be much of a threat to their new overlords. Yet God promised that they would one day see a great light:
“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; a light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness. … For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on His shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:2–6)
It is this child whose birth we celebrate at Christmas. Jesus came as a light that gives life, the “light of the world” (John 8:12) which “shines in the darkness” and which the darkness has not “overcome” (John 1:5). No matter how adrift in darkness we are, no matter how desperately lost we find ourselves, the “light of the world” will lead us home.
It’s interesting how many Christmas songs and stories center around this idea of coming home: “I’ll be home for Christmas,” “no place like home for the holidays,” even “the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be on your own front door.” Somehow, the celebration of Christ’s birth always seems to direct our steps homeward, much as the Roman census led Joseph to travel with Mary to his ancestral home of Bethlehem.
This Christmas, the majority of our children are now adults who are merely coming home to visit. David (21) is out of college and having a ball (pun intended) working as a dance instructor. Caleb (20) and Bethany (18) are both at Florida State University majoring in Theatre. We’re looking forward to having them here for a few weeks, but then they’ll be back in Tallahassee and who knows where beyond that. Our “gang” is no longer all in the same boat, and Lisa and I are learning to trust that they will be able to explore new shores and experience new vistas without losing their way. When they were children at home, we could help light the way for them, but now, we live in the hope that “no matter how far away they roam,” they will always look to Jesus and walk in His light.
As for the two who are still at home, Alexa (15) is already beginning to look to the horizon. Her passion is playing the violin in the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestra, and she will have the opportunity this summer to travel to Europe on tour. Thankfully, Josiah (7) does not currently have any travel plans, although his imagination takes him on daily trips across the rooftops of Gotham City and New York, across the sea to pirate ports-of-call, and across the universe to galaxies far, far away. It would seem that even when they’re little, our children are preparing themselves to one day strike out on their own.
That, of course, is as it should be, and we parents must adapt to our children’s change in orbit. Our homes must transition from being the center of their worlds to being that safe harbor that beckons whenever life’s waters get too rough.
This Christmas, we pray that wherever you are and whatever you’re facing, you would look to the Light of the World and follow Him “out of darkness and into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). Christmas is the celebration of that moment when the “true light, who gives light to everyone” (John 1:9) came into the world to bring us Home. We’re not meant to remain adrift in darkness. The Light shines. Safe Harbor awaits.
Love,
The Lang Gang
David, Lisa, David, Caleb, Bethany, Alexa, and Josiah
The Lang Gang’s 2015 Christmas Letter
“God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
—1 Corinthians 1:25
Dear Family and Friends,
This Christmas, take a moment to consider the difference between intelligence and wisdom.
There were a lot of really smart people in Jerusalem when magi from the east suddenly showed up asking, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him” (Matthew 2:2). Herod the Great was a ruthless but brilliant politician who had turned an insignificant province into a wealthy and prosperous client state. He had innovative architects and skilled craftsman building a Temple and palaces that were wonders of the ancient world. Jerusalem was teeming with religious scholars, legal experts, captains of finance and industry—experts in every conceivable field of knowledge. Yet it is those strangers from the east who are universally regarded as “wise men.”
The magi certainly had academic credentials of their own. They were scholars from Babylonia or Persia who had studied languages, literature, history, culture, religion, and of course, astronomy. But that’s not why we remember them as “wise men.”
The wise men were not merely content with making an academic discovery—the sighting of a star signaling the Savior’s birth. On the contrary, they left their ivory towers to embark on a life-changing journey of faith: a costly and dangerous pilgrimage to find the Savior and bow down before him. A merely intelligent man may know something, but the truly wise man acts on what he knows—even if it means turning his entire life upside down.
For our family, 2015 was a year of academic milestones as we had no less than three of our five children graduate from high school or college. David (20) graduated from Florida State University with a degree in International Affairs. He is now working and getting settled in his own apartment. Through the miracle of dual enrollment and a lot of hard work, Caleb (19) and Bethany (17) earned their high school diplomas as well as their Associate of Arts degrees from Lake-Sumter State College. They are now both majoring in Theatre at Florida State. Thankfully, Alexa (14) won’t graduate for a few years, so we have a little time to catch our breath. Then again, she recently joined the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestra and is already researching colleges that can help her become a concert violinist. We keep dropping not-so-subtle reminders that Florida State has one of the best music schools in the country!
Of all the things our older kids have learned at college, perhaps the most valuable lesson is this: there are lots of highly intelligent, advanced degree-bearing people out there who cannot see the forest for the trees and who therefore make incredibly foolish choices in life. Education is extremely valuable, but it is no guarantee of wisdom.
At the other end of the educational spectrum, our little Jo Jo (6) is now in the first grade and learning the basics of Reading, Writing, and ‘Rithmatic. Yet somehow, he never ceases to amaze us with his ability to connect any subject back to the most foundational truth. One morning at breakfast, we were talking about how Jo Jo shares his name with a Biblical king, and I asked him, “How many ‘kings’ are there at this table?” He pointed at me (David), at himself (Josiah), and then, having run out of people at the table named after Biblical kings, he surprised us all by pointing up to the sky. His meaning was clear and wise beyond his years: God is our King—the King of all kings—and He too is present at our table.
Jesus Himself affirmed that sometimes a child can see things even the most learned of men cannot: “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and the learned and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, because this was Your good pleasure” (Luke 10:21). That was true even at Jesus’ own birth, which was celebrated not by the intelligentsia of nearby Jerusalem, but by the simple shepherds of the “little town” of Bethlehem.
Of course, we can hardly blame all those Jerusalem scholars for overlooking the birth of this “King of the Jews.” What could be more foolish than to expect the long-awaited Messiah to be born in a stable and laid in a feeding trough? Three decades later, those same Jerusalem scholars would see Jesus clearly identified as “King of the Jews.” In fact, it was spelled out for them in no less than three languages on his cross, yet most of them still refused to believe it. Again, who can blame them? Kings are supposed to conquer their enemies; not be crucified by them!
A few decades later, the apostle Paul would ask, “Where is the philosopher? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Hasn’t God made the world’s wisdom foolish?” He then explained that the message of a crucified and risen Savior was widely regarded as foolishness by those who claimed to be wise. “Yet to those who are called … Christ is God’s power and God’s wisdom, because God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:20–25).
The magi are remembered as “wise men” not for all their learning, but because, foolish as it must have seemed, they followed a star in search of the Savior. This Christmas, may we all seek that same Savior and bow down before Him. Only then will we be truly wise.
Love,
The Lang Gang
David, Lisa, David, Caleb, Bethany, Alexa, and “Jo Jo”
David Allen Lang 