Why Christians Should Avoid Alarmism (And What To Do Instead)

“It’s easy to have an overactive imagination in the dead of night when you’re expecting danger, watching shadows. Anxiety and expectation can lead you to see threats that aren’t there. It happened to me many times at night when I was a soldier. But mistaking shadows for serious threats is not limited to tired soldiers on watch at zero dark thirty. In an age riven by COVID, by lockdowns and a decade of tectonic societal shifts—it’s easy to get a bit jittery. It’s natural to get nervous. And when we’re in this state, we tend to overestimate threats. Or even see threats that aren’t there. That’s the essence of ‘alarmism’.”

Be Grateful God Isn’t Like You

“Most of our mistakes, when it comes to thinking about God, are the result of the detrimentally false assumption that God must be something like us.”

Sing when you’re losing

“When the church gathers we sing, I hope, because we’re winning. The Christ has conquered Death! The tombs are overturned and the Adversary had been dealt the decisive blow. Jesus has defeated Sin, and Death, and the Devil. The Lord wins. When we gather to worship, part of what we do is declare to each other, and the heavens, and the watching earth, that Jesus wins.”