Christianity – Page 2 – Family Council

Guest Column: That Bible Verse Is Not About Immigration (and Other Ways How Not to Read the Bible)

Aug 7, 2025John StonestreetChristianityBible, Christianity, Religious Freedom, Religious Liberty

Recently on X, the Department of Homeland Security posted a video that featured immigration enforcement officers riding in Black Hawk helicopters and toting rifles to a cover of Johnny Cash’s song “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.” A narrator quoted Isaiah 6:8: “Here am I, send me.”

Democratic Congressman Hakeem Jeffries utilized a similar hermeneutic a few days later. Quoting from the Gospel of Matthew during a record-breaking speech to delay the passing of President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” he said,

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.

According to Jeffries, this passage applies to government assistance programs. “It’s not just in [U.S.] law, it’s right here in Matthew,” he said.

As Christian statistician Ryan Burge pointed out in a post on X, “there’s been empirical work” demonstrating how both the Right and the Left “emphasize Bible verses that [reinforce] their own political perspectives,” while conveniently ignoring the context of those verses.

Selective proof-texting points to how widespread and deep biblical illiteracy is. In addition to an ignorance of the actual content of the Bible, there is ignorance about what the Bible even is, and how Christians throughout the ages have used it. It’s bad when this ignorance shows up in politics. It’s sad when it shows up in our churches and Christian subcultures.

Who hasn’t seen a “verse of the day” calendar that overlays a singular motivational Bible quote on a field of flowers or a sunset? Before the DHS misused Isaiah 6:8, thousands of church conferences and short-term mission trips have, with “Here am I, send me” printed on banners and t-shirts. Often missing is Isaiah’s near-death experience and repentance beforehand, not to mention what God actually sent Isaiah to do (basically, fail as a prophet until he was eventually sawn in half).

Christian publishing, much of Christian music, and maybe the majority of Bible studies are afflicted with this same bad habit. Christian bookstores are full of “Bible promise” titles filled with de-contextualized verses meant to directly apply to the reader. But how many books of Bible curses are there, though the Bible includes those, too? How many Americans, in the habit of “verse plucking,” gladly claim Deuteronomy 28’s national blessings, but don’t read on about the national curses for disobedience that directly follow? How many Bible studies ask the question, “What does this verse mean to you” before truly wrestling with, “What does this verse mean?”

For years, I led a session for Christian school leaders entitled “How (Not) to Read the Bible.” But of course, the point isn’t to take the Bible out of anyone’s hands. Rather, it is to help us know and understand this essential way that God has made Himself known. Rather than treat Scripture as a fortune cookie, we have what Peter called, “the prophetic word more fully confirmed.” More confirmed than what? Astonishingly, Peter wrote that the Word of God is more sure than his own experience with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration.

A simple, effective way to understand Scripture is to ask where the verse in question fits, within the chapter, the book, the testament, and redemptive history as a whole. Who was speaking, and why? For example, best not to quote an observation about God or life out of the middle of Job, when his friends give “darken[ing] counsel by words without knowledge.” Answering these questions always requires reading more than a single verse.

Also, we should always ask where a passage fits within the four-act drama of the whole Story of Scripture. Seeing the Bible’s larger movements from Creation to Fall to Redemption to Restoration de-centers ourselves and our stories from the text and re-centers God and His story. This will also require reading the Bible not in isolation from other Christians or from Christian history. God’s Word, like the Christian faith it reveals, is personal, but as Peter goes on to say, it is not private. The Bible tells the story of God and His creation, so we must ask, “Where do I fit into it?” rather than “Where does it fit into my life?”

None of this means the Bible ought not be personally applied or, for that matter, brought into policy discussions. Rightly understood, the Bible speaks to all of life. We must be careful to bring the Word of God to our discussions, rather than our opinions masqueraded as a Bible verse. After all, unlike our political class and inspirational calendars, God has not revealed Himself in soundbites.

Ready to Change the World? Eat Dinner With Your Family: Guest Column

Dec 16, 2024John StonestreetChristianityChristianity, Family Time

If the Christian’s civic duty is only to vote, then it is now safe to return to life as normal, at least until the next election cycle starts in a few months. However, much more is involved in the fight for the soul of any nation, including this one. Our civic duty extends beyond the ballot box.

The historic shifts in the platforms of both parties during this past election are not just due to changes in popular opinion. Rather, they point to how dramatically our collective cultural imagination has shifted, a shift that reflects our institutions. Public schools, universities, media outlets, digital platforms, publishing houses, Hollywood, corporate America, and even churches have become more progressive. Critical theory and gender ideology not only dominate the required reading lists of many schools but are also embedded in the community guidelines of countless digital platforms, the HR policies of many businesses and healthcare systems, not to mention the personnel of various government agencies.

But this collective cultural drift so evident in our politics has not simply resulted from bad ideas or personnel. The conservative Jewish political scholar Yoram Hazony once argued, “It is not disbelief that plagues us but dishonor.” Specifically, he meant the dishonor of the most essential institutions and the traditions kept by them. The breakdown of the family, the compromise and collapse of our religious consensus, and the loss of civil society has contributed greatly to an uncritical acceptance of bad ideas and destructive patterns of behavior.

As Hazony reported, even those who claim to be committed to and excited about conservatism have little intention of actually engaging in those practices worth conserving. Keeping the sabbath, reading Scripture, attending religious services, and hosting regular family dinners are more than just nostalgic traditions. And yet, as Hazony explained, these essential habits of a healthy and flourishing society are losing out weekend after weekend to heading to “the mountains or the beach, or staying home ‘to finish something for work.’”

Civic duty and political change cannot be reduced to how one votes. It’s how one lives, especially with those to whom we are (or should be) the closest, that matters more. For example, studies have long shown that regular family dinners bring enormous benefit, especially to children. According to the Director of the Family Dinner Project Dr. Anne Fishel, regularly gathering around the dinner table results in better nutrition, less obesity, and better mental health:

Regular family dinners are associated with lower rates of depression, and anxiety, and substance abuse, and eating disorders, and tobacco use, and early teenage pregnancy, and higher rates of resilience and higher self-esteem.

Even more, regular family dinners are also a predictor of long-term success. For school-aged kids, frequent family mealtime is “an even more powerful predictor of high achievement scores than time spent in school, doing homework, playing sports, or doing art.”

Yet, for all these benefits, only 54% of American families sit down to a daily mealtime, and for many who do, family dinnertime is constantly besieged by digital distraction. Even before the advent of smartphones and tablets, Neil Postman warned that “(a) family that does not or cannot control the information environment of its children is barely a family at all.”

It may sound too simple to be true, but it’s not. One way that Christians can make a lasting, significant difference in politics is by protecting and cultivating the dinner table. The future of our nation may indeed depend on whether Christians make family mealtimes, as one non-Christian sociologist has described, a “sacred space.”

It matters greatly who is in the White House, but it matters so much more who we are in our houses, in our houses of worship, and around our dinner tables.

Iran’s Jesus Revolution? Mosques Close as 1 Million Muslims Accept Christ: CBN News

Aug 21, 2024Jerry CoxChristianityChristian Persecution, Christianity

CBN News reports about major changes in the Middle East as people convert from Islam to Christianity and seek changes in their countries:

An unprecedented number of Muslims are choosing to follow Christ, especially in Iran as people search for a better life.

Iranians are growing tired of the ayatollahs and a nation led by the empty promises of their Islamic theocracy. An anonymous internal poll found that 80% now prefer a democratic government, and many are leaving Islam.

You can learn more by watching the video below.