Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. (Revelation 1:8; 21:6; and 22:13) Jesus was in the beginning with God, the Father, and the universe and all that is in it was made through Jesus. (John 1:1-3)
At this time of year, we celebrate God descending to become man in Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem into a common family in a far flung place. Jesus was God in his very nature, but he deigned to shed himself of that glory and power to become man, to become a servant to his own creation, and to humble himself to the point of death at the hands of his own creation. (Philippians 2:5-8)
In the end, Jesus will be exalted to the “highest place” with a “name that is above every name.” (Phil. 2:9) Every knee in heaven and on earth will bow to him, and every tongue will acknowledge that “Jesus Christ is Lord,” to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:10-11)
From the garden of Eden to the new heavens and earth and the New Jerusalem in which God will dwell with His people, God has had a plan from the beginning to the end. God set eternity in the hearts of people, but not so that we would know the beginning from the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11) We don’t know, but God knows. Do we trust Him?
That is the question in my mind on this 1st day of the New Year in 2026. That is the question with which I challenge myself. Will I trust Him with my life? With the world? With the insanity that seems to characterize the year that just ended in United States of America where I live?
Since God created the universe and populated it with people and animals, God ordained and allowed people to populate the Earth. God didn’t dictate how the history of His creation would unfold. He created Adam and Eve with the capacity to live in sync with God and the universe, but He also gave them the capacity to go their own ways. God had a plan from the beginning, but He allowed the universe and mankind, His crowning creation, to unfold as it would.
I am beginning a new year of reading through the Bible as I have done many years in the past. I have read through the first handful of chapters in Genesis, and my thoughts gather around the question: will I trust God better in the New Year?
I recently finished a review of the of history of the blogging on this site: Looking Back at 13 Years of Navigating By Faith. One article stands high above the rest in the sheer number of people who have read/viewed it.
I wrote that article, Who Were the Sons of Issachar? And What Might They Mean for Us Today?, during Donald Trump’s second presidential campaign. Christian support for Donald Trump was characterized by a sense of urgency and high stakes. State COVID restrictions jeopardized religious liberty. BLM aroused woke, liberal, mobs in streets around the country. Christians sounded the alarm that people of faith would be canceled by the most anti-faith Democratic ticket in years if Trump didn’t win.
Prominent Christian leaders like Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham argued that Trump was a “strongman” needed to protect the nation from “anarchy” and “socialism.” Jeffress excused Trump’s obvious flaws, saying that American Christians didn’t need a “Sunday School teacher” but a “fighter” who would protect Christian interests in a hostile culture. Lance Wallnau framed Trump as a modern King Cyrus—the Persian king used by God to protect His people and restore them to the promised land.
Support for Donald Trump was increasingly framed as a battle against “darkness” and “anti-Christian” forces. While many traditional evangelicals focused on policy, the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) was mobilized by prophecy, spiritual warfare, and the “Seven Mountain Mandate.” Dozens of self-identified prophets in this network insisted that Trump’s re-election was divinely mandated in a cosmic battle between good and evil controlled by a demonically influenced “deep state.” The current was strong, and a large number of Christians were swept along with it.
A conversation with my best friend from college, who I loved more than a brother, and who I trusted implicitly, left me in full spiritual crisis mode. He expressed his continued support of Trump on the basis of those prophetic claims predicting another presidential victory and the belief that God ordained Donald Trump for this time. My friend urged my to be like the sons of Issachar “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do.” (1 Chronicles 12:32)
I have a healthy respect for God’s ability to speak through people in what we call prophecy. The Apostle Paul commands us not to despise prophecy, but to test everything, hold fast to what is good, and abstain from every evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:20-22) I resolved to give Donald Trump another look and to reconsider him.
I had written in 2020 about wolves in sheep’s clothing with Donald Trump expressly in mind. Jesus said we would know falsehood by its fruit, and the fruit I saw in Donald Trump belied the claims of God’s providential blessing.
That a president is not a pastor made some sense. God can use anyone, even a donkey, right? Maybe Trump is like the Persian King Cyrus who is divinely appointed to restore the Christian heritage of the United States….
A year earlier, in 2019, I reflected on those claims that Trump is like a King Cyrus, and I came to a different conclusion. Trump seemed to me more like a King Saul, the king God’s people wanted – the king they wanted because they did not trust God. They wanted a king like all the other nations, though the Prophet Samuel warned them against it. God gave them the king His people wanted, even though they were rejecting God to ask for a king:
“[W]hen they said, ‘Give us a king to lead us,’ this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. 7 And the Lord told him: ‘Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.‘”
1 Samuel 8:6-9
God gave them the king they wanted in the same way that God gives people over “to the sinful desires of their heats.” (Romans 1:24) The people were rejecting God as their king, so God gave them over to the king they wanted.
People of that day might have assumed that God was blessing them to give them the king they wanted, but that was not the case. Samuel warned them against it, but they insisted anyway.
King Saul was rebellious, insecure, self-absorbed, and psychotic. He failed to obey God’s commands. He became obsessed with his power and reputation among the people, and he became jealous of David.
Though Saul remained king, God had already rejected him and anointed David to succeed him. Saul tried to take David’s life multiple times in fits of jealous rage, and David escaped into the wilderness.
This is where the Sons of Issachar entered the picture. Though Saul was still king, they “understood the times.” They could see the proverbial writing on the wall. They knew that David was God’s man, and Saul’s reign was ending.
Many people have argued that Donald Trump is like the foreign king, Cyrus, who protected and funded the nation of Israel to return to the Promised Land. I have argued that Donald Trump is not like the foreign king, Cyrus, but like the Israelite King Saul. Donald Trump is the king that God’s people wanted.
The failure of the German Protestant church to mount a decisive resistance to Nazism has long troubled western Christian conscience. Historians rightly warn against simplistic explanations, but one conclusion has proven difficult to escape: long before Hitler rose to power, the church’s theological confidence had already been weakened. When the state demanded ultimate loyalty, many pastors and congregations lacked the moral clarity and will to refuse.
The nineteenth-century Tübingen School of theology did not cause Nazism. Its scholars were not proto-fascists, nor did they anticipate racial ideology or totalitarian politics. Yet their historical-critical approach to Scripture unintentionally contributed to a Protestant culture in which the Bible increasingly functioned as an object of study rather than a source of commanding authority. When political myth replaced moral truth, the church was unprepared to stand against it because the church had long ago lost its biblical, moral footing.
History does not repeat itself mechanically. The present American situation is not Weimar Germany, and the MAGA movement is not Nazism. Still, history can illuminate how the happenings within the church influence how the church interacts with political culture. That raises a difficult but necessary question for American evangelicals today: what weaknesses in our own theology and habits of thought have made many of us susceptible to the distortions of political power?
The answer is not that evangelicalism has repeated the errors of liberal Protestantism. In many ways, we have made opposite mistakes. But the result—a diminished capacity for prophetic resistance—bears an unsettling resemblance.
Authority Dissolved: The Tübingen Lesson
The Tübingen School, led by Ferdinand Christian Baur in the mid-nineteenth century, treated Scripture primarily as a historical artifact shaped by competing early Christian communities. Biblical texts were analyzed as records of theological conflict rather than as a unified witness to divine revelation. The command and authority of Scripture was diminished, and the sacred became profane. The trajectory of the academy spilled into and watered down the vitality of Christian impact in Protestant Germany.
Clergy trained in historical criticism often hesitated to proclaim Scripture normatively. The Bible remained important, but its authority was qualified, softened, and translated into general ethical ideals compatible with modern culture. Christianity became morally earnest but theologically cautious and politically unimportant.
By the early twentieth century, much of German Protestantism lacked the confidence to say an unambiguous “No” to the state. The problem was not simply fear or cowardice. It was uncertainty—whether God had spoken definitively enough to authorize resistance when power spoke with confidence and force.
Karl Barth saw this clearly. In 1933, as the German church accommodated itself to the Nazi regime, Barth insisted that the church exists only under the authority of God’s self-revelation. Where that authority is weakened, the church becomes vulnerable to captivity by the state.
The lesson is sobering: when Scripture no longer stands above culture, culture will soon stand above the church. Today we can say of Nazi Germany and the church alike, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” (Isaiah 40:8) But, the impact was devastating on Germany, Jews, Europe, and the world at that time, and its effects rumble into the present time.
I do not want to suggest that we can equate Nazi Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s to the United States of America in the 2010’s and 2020’s. Still, there are parallels between the exercise of State power in the vacuum left by weakened theology that bear some attention.
As another year closes out, I look back on my journey of faith and thought that is captured in this blog. The blog doesn’t capture all of my journey. Some things remain private, and some things remain undeveloped and unpublished. Of the things I have put out into the sunlight of the blogosphere, though, I hope they have been helpful, encouraging, and challenging, if not interesting.
I usually launch right into the top ten articles (or so) of the year in review, but I want to take a moment to review where I have been and where I am going. The numbers tell a surprising story (to me), but I realize the numbers might be boring to you, so I will try to keep that part brief.
I expect that the substance of the journey may be more intriguing to the reader, but the substance is also more difficult to capture and to summarize. I will do my best.
By the Numbers
I started this blog in September of 2012 with 20 articles that garnered under 500 views. The top article on attributes of success had just over 100 views, 5 likes, and 3 comments. About 180 of the readers came through Facebook. Those early attempts at writing are somewhat embarrassing to me (so no links are provided).
I wrote over 100 articles each year from 2017 through 2021, with the high water mark being 149 articles in 2017. My writing has slowed in the number of articles I have written over the last 4 years as the words per article have increased (peaking at an average of 1908 words per article in 2025)
In 2025, I have published only 57 articles all year, but viewership for the blog is projected to top out around 110,000. That is nearly as many readers as the blog had from 2012 through 2021 combined.
The top article this year was viewed over 23 times more than all the articles published in 2012. In the fact, the top article in 2025 was viewed more times (11,790) than all the articles in any year prior to 2020 (11,016 in 2020).
The climb from 500 views to 110,000 views was not a sudden thing. Readership increased with jumps and plateaus through 2019, with a peak of just over 11,000 in 2018. In 2020, readership jumped over 20,000 views, which I attribute to the pandemic. People were limited in their activities. They stayed inside, and they read more. Perhaps, people were more contemplative because of the psycho-emotional impact of COVID.
I was excited about the increase in readership in 2020 and the increase again to 30,000+ in 2021 as the world began to emerge from the clutches of COVID. With the world getting back to “normal” in the following two years, readership settled around 30,000 views each year for several year.
Just last year, in 2024, the views skyrocketed over 61,000. The upward trajectory has continued in 2025 with projected views on pace to top 110,000.
The sudden increase in readership has taken me totally by surprise. I have not done anything differently than I was doing before, as far as I know. Perhaps, my writing is developing in ways that I do not realize. I do tackle more difficult subject matter and get into greater depth, but I would assume that might turn some people away.
I began writing out of a sense of obedience to God. I felt compelled to make use of the gifting He has given me. My main goal was to be faithful, and that focus continues to be a driving force.
I have tried to stay true to the theme of the blog, which is “navigating by faith.” I try to write out of my own experience, to write in keeping with my own thought and faith journey, and to write as I sense God is leading me.
My Faith Journey
In 2012, I was coming out of a long, slow regression in my faith. Perhaps, others might call what went through a deconstruction. That long, difficult segment of my like journey of my life set the stage.
I wandered for more than two decades in a spiritual malaise. My faith became stagnant. I stopped seeking. I stopped reading the Bible. I stopped praying with purpose. I eventually stopped going to church. I was shrinking back from God.
My priorities had shifted from a spiritual focus to career and providing for my family. The cares and concerns of the world overtook me as I pulled back from spiritual seeking and devotion to God. I moved with my family back to the area where I grew up, and I found myself attracted to and tempted by former ways of thinking and way of life.
As I look back, I can say that I had accumulated baggage that was holding me back and stifling my spiritual growth. I had accumulated theological structures that God needed to strip away. That “deconstruction” was long and painful as I languished in spiritual ruts for over 20 years.
I came to a point at which I had nothing to cling to but God and His mercy. I didn’t even know if He would “take me back” when I came face to face with the realization that the spiritual life within me was in danger of petering out completely, like a pilot light flickering in a cold windy place. I turned to God, and I said, “Where else will I go? Only you have the words of life.”
In that moment of surrender, God had mercy on me. With no illusions of grandeur that characterized my early Christian walk, I sought God and embraced faithfulness. Around that time, I began to sense that God wanted me to write. He didn’t overwhelm me, with it but it was persistent, like the nudging of a gentle wind.
I noticed, and I flirted with the idea for many months before I finally relented in my heart to do it. I set up an account in WordPress, and I began to write in September of 2012. The summary of the last 13 years tells the rest of the story.
As I think about the hiddenness of God, the mind of the skeptic plays in my ear: “How do you know God exists? Why does God seem hidden? Maybe it’s because He doesn’t exist!” Believing in a “hidden” God is belief without evidence; it’s belief in the teeth of the evidence (as Dawkins says).
My response is that we all have faith in our basic assumptions about reality. The scientist assumes only matter and motion. He sees evidence for things like gravity and neutrinos, and dark matter and dark energy that cannot be seen. The scientist reasons to the best explanation for the things that cannot be seen in order to make sense of the reality in the world, and he does so within the “limitations” of materiality.
Science, after all, is the study of the material world. That is is the scope of science as it is defined in the modern world. Science is based on what is quantifiable, measurable, observable, and reproducible.
When I do theology or philosophy, I also start with assumptions. I start with an assumption, or a theory if you like, that God exists. The proof of God, however, is necessarily different than scientific proof.
God is not a substance in the universe to be quantified, measured, observed, or reproduced in the way we can study the natural world. He is not a component of the universe. He is not comprised of matter and motion like the universe. God is not a principle of physics that can be observed in its regularity and tested by its regularity.
If God exists and created the universe, He is separate and apart from the universe. That does not mean that God is not present in some way; it means that He is not present in the same way that you and I are present. Rather, God is transcendent. He is imminent (near in some way), but not contained within the creation.
God also must have agency to have determined to create. We understand the necessity for agency by our own agency. This makes sense of the question: why is there a universe; why is there something, rather than nothing.
For the life of me, I can make no sense of the assertion that a universe can create itself. What kind of voodoo magic is that? That conclusion is based on an assumption that matter and motion is all that exists, but we cannot prove that assumption.
To say that God must have agency is not to be anthropomorphic about it but to reason to the best explanation based upon what we know, which is our own agency and the way we conduct ourselves in the world. Where does a universe come from? The simple answer is that it comes from a creator who has agency, who has intentionality, and the ability to will and to act according to His purpose and design.
Where does intricate, fine-tuned complexity that is complex to the nth degree come from? It comes from a mind, from a creator who conceives a plan and then implements it. We know that from the way human beings create things. Where did we get that capacity? Like things produce or reproduce like things.
We know that the universe is “winding down”. That is what the law of thermodynamics tell us. Entropy is the rule. This means the universe is not getting more complex; it is breaking down, evening out, cooling, and becoming less complex over time.
Over course, this is occurring over a very, very long period of eons, so (perhaps) there is enough energy in the universe for complexity to form in areas of the universe even while entropy is working its very long way toward the inevitable heat death of the universe as a whole.
Maybe, but where did the energy come from to cause the so-called Big Bang? What triggered the universe to begin to begin with?
No one can explain that who doesn’t believe in a “Big Banger”, a Creator. It is the best explanation that we have. It makes the most sense of the reality that the Universe had a beginning.
The multiverse doesn’t solve the “problem” of a beginning. It just kicks the can back down the road further. What triggered the multiverse into being? It’s an endless regression.
The Christian (Jewish and Muslim) conception of God is that God is the timeless, eternal being who always existed and was never created who chose to trigger the universe (or multiverse) into existence.
This, frankly, makes much more sense than a past eternal, non-sentient universe that just poofed life into existence. How do you get life from nonliving matter? What animates that matter?
But the questions don’t stop there. What triggers consciousness from inert, non-conscious matter? How do the fundamental “building blocks” of matter develop consciousness? It’s a complete mystery, and there is no mechanism known to modern science to explain it – other than the brute fact that human beings and (to some lesser degree) animals (and maybe plants) are conscious beings.
Consciousness is proven by the sheer fact that we are conscious of ourselves. It seems to “reside” in or be attached to the brain, but the brain by itself is not consciousness. The brain is a perfect, intricate receptacle for consciousness, but the brain and consciousness are not perfectly coexistent. They are not the same things, and science has no adequate explanation for that.
Because these things suggest looking outside the limitations of the material world for our answers, we have theology and philosophy, which can be “scientific” loosely in method and approach, but defies the limitations of scientific inquiry.
That doesn’t mean that theology and philosophy should be divorced from science (or that science should be divorced from theology and philosophy). All reality must ultimately cohere harmoniously, or we cannot call it reality.
But, I have digressed (only slightly) from the point, which is the mystery of the hiddenness of God.
Navigating by Faith 