The Light of the World Is for Everyone

Those who do not yet share our faith can share our wonder at the beauty and comfort of light in the darkness.

Illustration by Stephen Procopio

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.” This luminous verse in Isaiah 9 is traditionally read at Advent as we look forward to the coming light of Christ.

For those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere, this passage is especially apt, as the whole celebration of Christmas in midwinter has an extra layer of meaning, a kind of parable from nature to underline and emphasize the prophecy of Isaiah.

Isaiah is speaking of the darkness of exile, the darkness of our fall, and—at the root of it all—the thick, clotted darkness of sin. This is the darkness that Christ comes to dispel, and John, perhaps remembering this verse in Isaiah, tells us that the light shines in darkness and the darkness has never overcome it (John 1:5).

To hear these readings in the dark time of the year, when the nights draw in and help us see the light more brightly, reminds us of the final triumph of the inextinguishable light of Christ—not just in our heads, but in our hearts; not just by reason, but by a kindled imagination.

When a child comes up in church to light an Advent candle, the gospel is known not only with the mind but with the body as well. And that is especially important as we celebrate the Incarnation, the astonishing truth that God became one of us, that he who is the Light of the World was once as young and vulnerable as the child who lights the candle.

As a poet, I have found myself drawn again and again to “the light within the light by which I see,” as I put it in one of my Advent sonnets. The light that shines in darkness is also an image, a living symbol, to which everyone responds.

Some time ago, I wrote a winter blessing. I wanted to frame my blessing in such a way that it could be shared, perhaps at a candlelit dinner table, with those who do not yet share our faith. I wanted to invite conversation about who the “winter child” really is. Those who do not yet share our faith can share our wonder at the beauty and comfort of light in the darkness, from the stars in the heavens to the candlelight at a service or over a shared meal.

Winter Benediction

When winter comes and winds are cold and keen,
When nights are darkest, though the stars shine bright,
When life shrinks to its roots, or sleeps unseen,
Then may he bless and bring you to his light.
For he has come at last, and can be seen,
God’s love made vulnerable, tightly curled:
The Winter Child, The Saviour of The World.

Malcolm Guite is a former chaplain and life fellow at Girton College, Cambridge. He teaches and lectures widely on theology and literature.

“Winter Benediction” was originally commissioned for Cultivating magazine and published by Cultivating Oaks Press. Used with permission.

This article appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Winter Child".

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Culture

Illustrating the Incarnation

Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt

How art testifies to the incredible truth of Christ with us.

Illustration by Abigail Erickson / Source Images: The Met, Julia Hendrickson

In my art history classroom, I dim the lights and turn on the projector. The image pools on the screen at the front of the room. The heaviness of another news cycle, along with my own family’s fragile health, weighs on me like the thick, damp fog blanketing the college campus where I work. But along with my students, I begin searching the picture on the screen.

We are not looking for a hidden Da Vinci Code cipher or a proof of artistic genius. As we study images of crisp frescoes and architectural ruins, we are seeking out the ripples of Christ’s incarnation.

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us,” the apostle John writes (John 1:14). Jesus, the eternal God, born of a woman, settles in our material, temporal existence. The Incarnation dignifies and reaffirms God’s commitment to the world that he made and that he promises to make whole again. He does not abandon us to our despair but enters into it. Humans’ ability to make art—to materialize meaning—is an echo of not only a creator God but also an incarnate God.

As I leave the classroom, the day’s weightiness still hovers, but it is also pierced. Again and again, art renews and expands my wonder over the miraculous reality of the Incarnation: God with us, a light shining in the darkness. The art I love best invites me to hold things in paradox.

As theologian William Dyrness writes, “[Art] shows us something we can learn in no other way.” Two very different artworks that reference “God with us,” made hundreds of years apart, suggest both the challenge and possibility of this endeavor.

Learning from art in this way might not come easily to us. Our limited expectations of how works of art function might also truncate our understanding of the Incarnation.

Take, for example, the Annunciation Triptych, a 15th-century altarpiece made for a Flemish home by the workshop of Robert Campin. The center panel of the small devotional object depicts Gabriel’s announcement to Mary. The archangel kneels on the left side of the composition and addresses a seated Mary. We can almost hear Gabriel speaking the words from Luke’s gospel: “You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus” (1:31).

Meanwhile, Jesus himself—represented as a miniscule alabaster-white infant carrying a tiny wooden cross—bursts through a window above Gabriel’s head and zips through the air on a sharp, downward diagonal. If we trace the implied line of his descent, we find that he is heading straight for Mary’s womb. To our 21st-century eyes, it is an incredibly strange, even humorous, image.

We might think that the artists of the Annunciation Triptych are offering us an extremely literal illustration. It’s as if they thought, Well, the Incarnation is God with us, so here’s a picture of God on his way to be with us. Very little imagination is required; the painting’s meaning appears to sit on the surface.

The Met

Annunciation Triptych (Merode Altarpiece) by Robert Campin circa 1427–32

We may interpret the painting in this way because we are familiar with pictures that directly tell us something: Advertisements and explainer graphics constantly announce what we should buy, who we should desire, and how we should think. If that is what we expect of images, then that is all we will see in the Annunciation Triptych. And thus, Incarnation becomes limited to a specific narrative moment rather than functioning as a cosmic folding of time and eternity. Wonder trickles away, absorbed by a dogmatic diagram.

There is much more to see in the Annunciation Triptych. But first we need a better way of seeing. Visual artworks do not merely tell us things; they can also form us.

The work of California-based contemporary artist Julia Hendrickson also invites us into the wonder of the Incarnation. Hendrickson is a Christian, and her practice emerges from her faith commitments.

In Hendrickson’s abstract watercolor paintings, feathery tendrils spread like frost across indigo fields. Nets of light pierce midnight clouds. Stars shimmer on a dark pond. We are looking, it seems, at both the entire universe and the tiniest sliver of reality, something that is simultaneously a magnificent galaxy and a magnified drop of water. Our imaginations prickle. What else are we looking at? What artistic alchemy made this possible?

Affection (from the What Lies Beneath series), Julia Hendrickson, watercolor and salt on paper, 22″ x 30″, 2023.

The first paradox of Hendrickson’s work is how she mines seemingly endless variation from a limited process and set of materials. Much of Hendrickson’s daily work follows a rhythm that she frequently documents and shares online. She soaks her thick white paper with wide brushstrokes of water. Then, she repetitively brushes, dabs, or splatters a single hue of watercolor: the warm blue of Payne’s grey.

Finally, while the surface is still wet, Hendrickson sprinkles salt on the pooling paint. The salt crystals both repel the pigment and absorb excess water, resulting in strange and varied starbursts that often reveal the underlying gestural marks of Hendrickson’s initial brush.

As the paint dries, forms shift and fractal patterns emerge. Though the process is purposefully repeated, the results vary in myriad, surprising ways.

This may seem counterintuitive. We tend to despise limitations, especially those in our own bodies. But in his incarnation, the Creator accepts the good boundaries he placed upon his creation. Theologian Kelly Kapic writes that “God is not embarrassed by the limitations of our bodies … but fully approves of them in and through the Son’s incarnation.” I struggle to accept this truth. But when I stand in front of a long gallery wall, covered edge to edge with dozens of Hendrickson’s Droplet paintings, each one different from the others, I marvel at how the God who enters into our humanity continues to multiply unimagined possibilities within its bounds.

A second mystery Hendrickson embraces is the entanglement of the material and the spiritual. Hendrickson began making these process-based paintings while she was in seminary. During that time, one of her friends was about to undergo a serious medical procedure. Anxious and scattered, Hendrickson struggled to pray with words. She turned to paint and paper, ordering her breath and her brush marks as an “integrated prayer.”

Hendrickson calls her practice opera Divina, or “holy work.” The term she coined builds on the Benedictine order’s motto of Ora et labora—“pray and work”—by asserting that our work itself can be a prayer. The movement of her hands across the paper, the slow swirl of paint, the sprinkling of salt, and the quiet waiting are themselves, she writes, “an intentional initiation of a conversation with the Divine.” Invisible offerings of praise, lament, confession, and petition take on material form.

Third, Hendrickson teaches us to anticipate transformation. John tells us that the Incarnation is the light shining in the present darkness (John 1:5). Hendrickson’s time-lapse videos of her painting process begin with the deep blue-gray pigment bleeding across the white paper. But then, when the salt crystals land on the wet surface, the midnight expanse is split open by glimmering light. The darkness is shattered. We wait, and we watch.

More recently, Hendrickson has begun tearing her paintings. She folds the large sheet of paper into 16ths, then unfolds it again and carefully tears along the horizontal creases. She stops three-quarters of the way across the paper then moves to the next row and tears in the opposite direction. Finally, she folds the entire sheet in a meander fold, resulting in an accordion-like booklet. Hendrickson thus transforms her two-dimensional paintings into three-dimensional objects.

Prayer Book, Julia Hendrickson, watercolor and salt on paper, dimensions variable, 2024.

She does so while maintaining the paintings’ integrity. They are not torn into separate pieces, nor is anything added to them. They are still paintings, and they have now become—as Hendrickson names them—prayer books.

When I watched her do this for the first time, my heart stuttered. What a strange sight, to see an artist ripping a beloved work. But she did not destroy it; she remade it.

The paradoxes of Hendrickson’s work stretch my own theological imagination. The Incarnation is not God momentarily slipping into a human skin. Perhaps it is more—yet not completely—akin to the way that the salt and pigment and water all remain themselves yet are utterly and mutually transformed. Perhaps it is more—yet not completely—akin to a painting that has been broken and resurrected.

I cannot claim to understand the doctrine of the Incarnation more rationally or thoroughly after spending time with Hendrickson’s work. But these paintings do expand my capacity for awe. I can more joyfully yield to this mystery: “In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness” (Col. 2:9–10).

We now return to the 15th-century Annunciation Triptych.

Using delicate brushes and luminous oil paint, the artists pack this small three-panel painting full of detail. Instead of locating the Annunciation scene against a sacred gold background, as many medieval mosaics do, the altarpiece artists depict Mary and Gabriel in a recognizable 15th-century Flemish home. We see an oval table in the center of the room and a long wooden bench against a large fireplace.

In the right-hand panel, we glimpse Joseph in his carpenter’s workshop, with a city visible through the window. The left-hand panel depicts a walled garden with a Flemish couple in contemporary dress kneeling just outside the door to Mary’s home. The sacred is brought into the mundane.

In addition to the homunculus—the miniature representation of an infant Christ flying through the room—the artists pepper the scene with symbols that would have been familiar to a 15th-century audience. The lilies in a vase on the table are not just decorative; they represent Mary’s purity. A wisp of smoke curls up from a recently extinguished candle. In other artworks from the period, a lit candle represents the presence of the invisible God. But in this painting, that symbol is no longer needed since God himself is now incarnate and physically present.

While the altarpiece ostensibly depicts a particular moment from Luke’s gospel, it actually shows us, as philosopher James K. A. Smith writes, how the Incarnation is “the collision of time and eternity in Christ.” For instance, the mousetraps in Joseph’s workshop point to the end of Jesus’ life on earth. The little wooden contraptions reference Augustine of Hippo’s declaration that “the Lord’s cross was the devil’s mousetrap.” The painters thus present us simultaneously with Christ’s conception and his death.

But the artists also stretch the intimacy of this pivotal moment into their own present. The couple in the left-hand panel are presumably the work’s owners. They are painted with startling particularity: The man has a small wart near the corner of his mouth, and we can see individual stitches on the woman’s wimple. They kneel reverently on Mary’s doorstep, bearing witness to a historical moment with eternal significance. The painting bends time around the Incarnation, folding these worshipers into a present mystery.

Finally, the Annunciation extends its invitation to our own time as well. When we first look at the room in the central panel, we might think that we’ve found a clumsy mistake. Despite the high level of detail, the space does not recede convincingly. The artists do not follow the principles of linear perspective, resulting in a strangely shallow room that appears to be tipping forward. But the effect, when we’re bending down in front of the altarpiece to get a closer look, is that the space begins to enfold us.

Thousands of years after Gabriel’s greeting to Mary and hundreds of years after a Flemish couple bought this devotional object, the painting spills into our present. Incarnation promises to meet us again and again.

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” These works of art, among others, can translate John’s text into knowledge that reshapes how we engage our present reality.

Both contemporary process-based abstractions and detailed early-modern altarpieces evoke the mystery of the Incarnation; their own strange paradoxes of material and meaning keep us from complacency.

Art helps me be more tender toward all I can’t see in the dark, to believe—even if I can’t comprehend—that the infinite could become an infant and settle here, with me. Art renews my wonder at the wildness of this reality: Christ has come, and Christ will come again.

Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt is associate professor of art and art history at Covenant College and the author of Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art.

This article appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Made in Human Likeness".

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Ideas

In Daniel, the ‘Writing on the Wall’ Is Both Clear and Mysterious

Andrew Wilson

Columnist; Contributor

The four-word warning is outwardly simple. But layers of meaning lurk under the surface.

Detail from Belshazzar's Feast by Rembrandt.

Wikimedia Commons / Edits by CT

One of the most well-known stories in Scripture is also one of the most baffling. Nearly everyone in the Western world has heard the phrase “the writing on the wall,” whether or not they have ever read Daniel 5.

Many people use the phrase in ordinary speech. Visitors to the National Gallery of London can view the Rembrandt painting “Belshazzar’s Feast,” with its depiction of a terrified king and miraculous handwriting. Plenty will have heard Sam Smith’s “Writing’s on the Wall,” the title song for a recent James Bond film, or the Destiny’s Child album with a nearly identical name. I have seen the words “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin” (Dan. 5:25) quoted in all sorts of odd places, including a bestselling marketing paperback.

On the surface, the story is fairly simple. Four enigmatic words of divine handwriting appear while the Babylonian king Belshazzar is feasting with vessels stolen from the Jerusalem temple, and Daniel explains what the words mean: Belshazzar is about to be deposed by the Medes and Persians.

Yet the meaning of the handwriting—like the Book of Daniel as a whole—is multilayered and mysterious, full of puns, wordplays, numbers, and changes of language. Interpreting it requires a combination of understanding and spirituality, as the queen points out in this chapter (v. 11). We might call it Danielic hermeneutics.

We can start at the most literal level. Each individual word is a term of weight and measurement in Aramaic. Teqel is a shekel, a silver coin weighing around ten grams, that served as Israel’s basic unit of currency. Mene is a mina, familiar to readers of Luke’s Gospel and worth 60 shekels in Babylon. And peres (“half”) is probably a half mina, weighing 30 shekels. If we read these words as nouns, we get measurements of weight, adding up to 91 shekels.

Unsurprisingly, Belshazzar is both terrified by the writing and perplexed by what it might mean. What on earth is the significance of the numerical figures spelled out by the words? (We will come back to that in a moment.)

Daniel, however, interprets the words not just as nouns but as verbs. “Mene: God has numbered [menah] the days of your reign and brought it to an end. Tekel: You have been weighed [teqal] on the scales and found wanting. Peres: Your kingdom is divided [peras] and given to the Medes and Persians [paras]” (vv. 26–28).

The first two words have a double meaning: a numerical weight and a warning of judgment. The final word has a triple meaning: a weight, a warning, and a specific prediction that the Medes and Persians (paras) will inherit the kingdom (which they promptly do). A fourth meaning to this final word—that the kingdom of the Persians (paras) will itself be divided (peras) with the Medes—is hovering in the background.

After moving from nouns to verbs, the next element to consider is numbers. We recall that the combined weight of the measurements is 91 shekels, for whatever reason. Well, there are 91 Aramaic words in Daniel’s interpretation. And based on the Hebrew custom of assigning numerical values to letters, Elohim, the Hebrew word for God, yields a figure of 91.

This is unlikely to be a coincidence. It suggests that there is number play happening alongside wordplay in the passage. In Daniel as a whole, numbers like 3½, 7, 70, and 2,300 play significant roles in the book’s enigmatic prophecies. Given these symbolic patterns, we might also ponder a possible connection between a shekel, two minas, and a half mina and “a time, times and a half-time,” a mysterious phrase appearing twice in Daniel’s later chapters (7:25; 12:7).

One further layer to the riddle may be a piece of ancient Aramaic snark, aimed squarely at Belshazzar himself. In the dream of Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar was the great king of Babylon, represented by a head of gold, and Cyrus the Great was the great king of Persia, represented by a head of silver. But there was no mention of Belshazzar, who came between these giants and was a very minor figure by comparison.

The handwriting on the wall tells the same story. There is a weighty “mina” king (60-shekel Nebuchadnezzar), and a fairly weighty “half-mina” king (30-shekel Cyrus). But sandwiched in between them is a one-shekel featherweight who will be dead by the end of the evening. As Daniel declares to Belshazzar, “you … have not humbled yourself … Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven” (5:22–23). We all know what happens to kings who do that.

Sometimes, reading Scripture is like watching a Christopher Nolan film. When you first see The Prestige or read the Book of Daniel, you get the main idea, but the finer details and triple meanings pass you by. When you keep looking, however, you find all sorts of wisdom and creativity lurking beneath the surface, which reinforce the main point and illuminate its significance. Daniel 5 asks readers the searching question at the heart of Danielic hermeneutics: Are you watching closely?

Andrew Wilson is teaching pastor at King’s Church London and the author of Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West.

Spirited Life: Spirited Life is a collision between biblical reflection and charismatic practice, aiming to make people happier in God.

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Ideas

Advent Begins in the Dark

Joy Allmond

We bear the tension of both joy and sorrow.

Illustration by Abigail Erickson / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

This edition of Christianity Today is likely in your hands as you finalize plans for the holidays and anticipate all they hold—both their blessings and their burdens. Results of political elections may stoke polarization and unrest, and you may gather around a Thanksgiving table with empty chairs this year; it may be hard to shift gears toward Christmas, with its cheery lights and traditions. But in the Christian year, Advent doesn’t rush in. In her book Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ, theologian Fleming Rutledge writes of this season we’re entering:

In the church, this is the season of Advent. It’s superficially understood as a time to get ready for Christmas, but in truth it’s the season for contemplating the judgment of God. Advent is the season that, when properly understood, does not flinch from the darkness that stalks us all in this world. Advent begins in the dark and moves toward the light—but the season should not move too quickly or too glibly, lest we fail to acknowledge the depth of the darkness.

We are an Advent people, bearing the tension of joy and sorrow, of light and darkness. As you journey through this last issue of 2024, you’ll encounter stories and ideas that carry the gravity of our fallen world Rutledge describes.

We share an up-close reflection from Carrie McKean on family estrangement and how the church can care for people who find themselves estranged (p. 52). We report on how the gospel shines a light into the darkness of addiction, galvanizing the church to work among people who are in the grip of drug addiction, both domestically and abroad (pp. 30, 42). And we present the testimony of a man lured into the pornography industry but rescued from its captivity by the light of Christ (p. 16).

Darkness envelops relationships and systems and even all of creation, as Paul reminds us in Romans 8:22. You’ll also read of the pollution of a watershed running through one creek in West Michigan and the hope for its renewal in a first-person essay by Sara Kyoungah White (p. 74). You’ll read of artists wrestling with the challenge and burden of limitations (p. 62).

As we wrestle with the darkness, we have a sure and certain hope in the person of Christ. In an essay on the doctrine of providence, Brad East reminds us that “the axis of history turns on the resurrection of Jesus” (p. 82). While Advent begins in the dark, the darkness has not overcome the light (John 1:5).

When we were planning this issue, our editor in chief, Russell Moore, reminded me of some lines from “O Little Town of Bethlehem”:

Yet in that dark street shineth
The everlasting light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

As sons and daughters—image bearers—of the King, our aim through these pages is to shine that everlasting light in the dark streets where evil, hardship, and suffering travel among us. We do this because we were once walking in darkness and “have seen a great light” (Isa. 9:2).

Take heart, there is a second advent of our King. He’s coming soon. And when he does, he’ll eradicate addictions, mend brokenness in our families, restore the dignity of the oppressed, shatter the yokes that burden us, and make all things new.

Joy Allmond is executive editor at Christianity Today.

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News

When a Stanford Bible Study Led to an AI Startup

Emily Belz

Two young Christians made a college counseling tool, saying AI should serve those on the margins—not just the rich and powerful.

Hadassah Betapudi and Elijah Kim met at a Stanford Bible study.

Courtesy of Hadassah Betapudi

Bible studies at Stanford University sometimes lead to an outbreak of datasets.

Hadassah Betapudi and Elijah Kim met at a Christian fellowship at Stanford in 2022 and got to know each other by leading a Bible study together. Soon the duo—with their backgrounds in data organizing and computer science—was building an artificial intelligence startup.

The two sought to solve a problem: They had heard from students needing a lot of guidance on the essay-writing part of college applications. That mentoring wasn’t available to many because of their financial or cultural backgrounds.

“I see education as a super critical way to directly bless people in a way that closes opportunity gaps,” said Kim.

Neither Betapudi nor Kim felt that they had entered the application process with a lot of guidance themselves; Betapudi was the first in her family to go to college in the US, and Kim was homeschooled his whole life before college.

“Applying to college was a little scary because I lacked a lot of the insight and guidance that I think a lot of students take for granted,” said Betapudi, who was born in Memphis to Indian immigrant parents. “It’s not just about your test scores or your GPA but about presenting who you are holistically to a college admissions committee, which is very different than the way things are done in India.”

This year the duo launched their startup: an AI tool that provides college admissions essay feedback. The founders see it as more like a guidance counselor and editor, not a content producer like ChatGPT. It doesn’t write essays for students.

Called Esslo (a mashup of essay and Elo, the chess rating system that influenced their proprietary algorithm), the AI engine was born after Betapudi and Kim trained it on good and bad essays from students who were admitted to top schools like Stanford. They taught the AI how to generate feedback on those essays. They beta-tested the tool this spring and launched it this summer.

Now Esslo is growing. The founders say the tool has been pulling in 100 new sign-ups a day.

Dustin Nguyen is one, a senior at Bronx Science, a STEM-focused public high school in New York City. He’s planning to apply to 22 colleges, and he’s already applied to 6 to meet early-action deadlines. But he must write essays for all of the applications. His public school counselors don’t have time to help him refine his essays.

Nguyen found Esslo this fall. To use Esslo, students feed their own essays into the model and get detailed feedback on the quality and suggestions for improvement. Sometimes, Esslo can tailor feedback to specific schools or admissions standards.

The tool gives line-by-line comments and scores the essay on traits like “detail” and “curiosity.” Then it gives overall feedback on the essay, followed by “brutally honest thoughts,” which might say something like “The writing in this essay is mediocre.”

After using their scientific knowledge to build the AI engine, the founders incorporated their own writing knowledge into the algorithm. For example, Betapudi edited a Christian journal while at Stanford. The machine tells students to have a “hook,” or a strong opening line, and to “show, don’t tell.” The creators recognized that a winning college essay is different from a typical writing assignment a student might do in high school.

“Technology with humans is always stronger than technology that’s existing in a vacuum,” Betapudi said. “It’s the beauty of a conversation with someone else that’s able to unlock thoughts about yourself or insights that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. I mean, that’s why people love therapy or coaching.”

When Nguyen fed Esslo an essay he wrote about being Vietnamese, the tool highlighted one anecdote in his essay and told him to elaborate on it and make it feel more personal.

“It’s helped me refine my writing,” he said.

Nguyen grew up in a low-income family. Most students can pay a monthly fee to use the tool, but Betapudi and Kim have enough paying customers to be able to give Esslo access to high schoolers who meet certain financial criteria, like being on free or reduced lunch or being at a Title I school.

“It levels out the playing field, especially since I can’t afford private counselors or special programs,” Nguyen said. “Esslo is a really good example of using AI to the benefit of a lot of people, especially underrepresented and underprivileged people and communities.”

That was part of the faith-based motivation for Betapudi and Kim.

“The truly dystopian outcome of introducing AI into education or into the world is that these oppressive regimes or governments will have access or will develop better AI than the good guys—those who fight for the widow, the orphan, the poor, or the lame,” Betapudi said. “I have been gifted through grace the ability to go to Stanford. … As a believer, my charge is then to build tools that not just benefit the top richest 1 percent who is already using this sort of thing but making it equitable and making it easy to access.”

Kim sees helping students as an “extension of discipleship. …… Jesus discipled a few, and then those disciples went out and discipled others.” He has seen the impact of personal mentorship and guidance in his family. His grandfather didn’t know anyone when he came to the United States from Korea, but Kim said someone came alongside him, “poured a lot into him,” and helped set him up to care for his family.

“That is very motivating to me personally,” he said. Education “sets people up in a way that they’re able to not just help themselves in the future but … help others.”

One college counselor sees potential for Esslo to serve those without counseling resources in Mongolia. Khongorzul Bat-Ireedui used to run a private school in the large central Asian country, where she counseled students going to college. She still does this but now from California, where she is in graduate school. She has been using Esslo to analyze her own counseling feedback on student essays and said it helps her see things she might have overlooked or observations from a different perspective.

Bat-Ireedui has a substantial following on Facebook in Mongolia, and she shared the tool on her page. She thinks Esslo will be helpful there because Mongolian public schools don’t have counselors.

“Essay writing itself is hard for an [American] student,” she said. She thinks about Esslo for the Mongolian public school students she knows who have worked hard to learn English and have good test scores but may not have money for a private counselor. “We don’t have schools that teach these things.”

Another college counselor, David Heinemann, has also used it to analyze student essays.

“I was skeptical in the beginning. … I don’t like the use of AI in the college process: the way colleges are using it, the way students are using it, and even the way counselors are using it,” said Heinemann, who works at Vail Mountain School in Colorado. “But … I was blown away. The specificity with which Esslo gives feedback was almost scary. … It just did a good job of doing what I do.”

Heinemann said the machine doesn’t give generic feedback but offers ideas for different directions the student could take the essay. Given the 650-word restriction on a typical essay, he said the feedback sometimes almost gives students too many options. But he thinks that is good for students: they must make decisions about what advice to listen to.

“It’s not like cheating—it’s not giving you the answers or rewriting the essay,” Bat-Ireedui agreed. “It’s giving you the feedback a human counselor would, but it’s picking up stuff that a human counselor might have missed.”

Heinemann thinks the founders could make “a ton of money” off their AI model, but it seemed to him like they were developing it to help people rather than cash in.

Both Betapudi and Kim think about their creative work with AI as reflecting God’s creative work.

Kim works in a lab at Stanford now studying energy efficiency in new computing technologies, and it puts him in awe of the human brain that can do tasks using 20 watts of power when the same task might require an entire data center for AI. Kim can’t build a brain, but he’s always loved building new things and understanding how they work.

“God is the ultimate designer, the ultimate engineer,” Kim said.

- More from Emily Belz

Books

Excerpt

When Deities Promise Answers to Dating and Money Woes

Tony Chuang

Until the gospel starts explicitly addressing daily needs, most Taiwanese non-Christians will likely remain uninterested.

People pay their respects to the sea goddess, Mazu, at a temple in Taiwan during the first day of the 2023 Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage.

Chris McGrath / Getty

As a first grader, I had the same daily after-school routine. I had a five-minute walk past bustling skyscrapers and scooters crowding the streets of downtown Taipei, Taiwan, to my family’s apartment, where my grandparents would greet me. My grandma would remind me to greet the ancestors before I could play with my Transformer robots. I’d pick up a stick of incense, clamp my palms together, and pray a simple prayer to the ancestral shrine in the middle of the living room.

I asked for health, wealth, and good grades. Then I’d snack on the crackers that had been offered to the ancestors and deities in the shrine. Life was good. My hardworking parents provided for me, my grandparents watched me, and my ancestors blessed and protected me.

At the time, I had never heard the gospel, and what I did hear about Christianity from my grandparents was negative: Christians were out to get my money, and Christianity simply was “not our way.” Our way was Chinese folk religion, which mixed elements of Confucianism and Daoism (Taoism) with a plethora of deities, ancestors, and shamanistic rituals.

My mother always taught me about the efficacy of prayer to a deity called Jesus, so I prayed to him along with the others. It was not until high school that a classmate told me the gospel and I gave my life to this Christian God.

About 30 years later, I wrote Religiosity and Gospel Transmission: Insights from Folk Religion in Taipei to explore how folk religion shapes the worldview of Taiwanese people so that Christians can share the gospel effectively. Today, Christians only make up 6 percent of Taiwan’s population, while adherents to folk religion compose 44 percent, according to Pew Research Center. Taiwan has the third-highest percentage of folk religion followers in the world.

While my research focused on my home of Taiwan, Chinese folk religion is a widely held belief system among ethnic Han Chinese around the world. The specific practices may differ across geographic contexts, but the ideas and religiosity, such as feng shui or the unseen realm, of the people are quite similar.

Through interviews with 25 people in the streets and temples of Taipei on their thoughts on religiosity, I began to see two key questions that Christianity needed to answer for Taiwanese people enmeshed in the world of folk religion, whether they believe it deeply or not. How does Christianity engage with the spiritual realm? And how does it help the everyday life of the Taiwanese?

The gospel to believers in the spirit world

Chinese American sociologist C. K. Yang noted that Chinese folk religion is a diffused religion—meaning that it pervades everyday life, intruding secular spaces in a way that institutional religion does not often do. For instance, in ethnic Chinese communities around the world, it is common practice for stores to offer up food and incense to certain deities at their grand openings to ask for blessing and prosperity.

This means that instead of disenchanting folk religion like it has the rest of the world, modernity has had a vastly different effect on Chinese religiosity. Folk religion ensures that secular institutions and social groups are “imbued with a rich folklore of a supernatural character,” Yang wrote in Religion in Chinese Society. “The social environment as a whole had a sacred atmosphere which inspired the feeling that the gods and spirits, as well as man, participated in molding the established ways of life in the traditional world.”

The pervasiveness of folk religion in everyday life and social institutions—including government offices and schools—has made it a key part of Taiwanese consciousness, as much so as modern-day politics. This does not mean that all Taiwanese are still “enchanted by the supernatural,” as philosopher Charles Taylor puts it in A Secular Age, but that the “supernatural” has become part of an accepted experience of the people.

In this context, a presentation of the gospel should directly address the forces of ghosts, spirits, local deities, and ancestors that make up Taiwanese people’s lived realities.

For instance, on certain days of the year, the streets of Taipei are crowded as people carrying statues of local deities parade from one temple to the next. Mao-Hsien Lin, a leading expert on folk religion in Taiwan, explained that the parades are spiritually analogous to the patrol of police officers, as their purpose is to “get rid of evil [spirits] and calm the people’s hearts.”

If the gospel fails to do the same, it would be perceived as useless in Taiwan. Based on the interviews I did, demons and evil spirits are a real concern today in many parts of Taiwan. So the church needs a better theology and practice of exorcism. The gospel must be seen not just as insurance for the afterlife but as protection in this life against real or perceived spiritual forces.

One practical example is telling non-Christians about the power of Jesus’s name to drive back demons that may be attacking one’s house or the power of prayer to do things that no spirits or deities could do.

Taiwan’s charismatic churches are already known for doing this. Because the unseen realm is normal in Taiwan, most churches in Taiwan “have always understood the supernatural aspect of faith as recorded in the Scripture in a literal sense—which can be tasted and seen in the present day,” according to Judith C. P. Lin in The Charismatic Movement in Taiwan from 1945 to 1995. It’s what led the charismatic movement to grow so successfully on the island, she argued, noting that an estimated one-third of Taiwanese Christians have lean charismatic.

In both charismatic and noncharismatic groups, Taiwanese Christians regularly pray for deliverance, miraculous healings, and protection amid demonic warfare. These gospel practices reveal to Taiwanese people the power of God, ways to pray, the danger of spirit-mediums, and other issues are related to their everyday life.

This approach has been taught in churches, especially since the 1980s. Yet in my interviews, few people mentioned Christians speaking to them about the unseen realm. Perhaps this approach could be used more frequently for initial gospel encounters, as a gospel that adequately addresses the spiritual realm will see more responses in Taiwan.

The gospel’s implications on daily life

Another important aspect to consider when reaching Taiwanese nonbelievers is what they are seeking when they approach the gods and deities of folk religion. While gospel presentations in the West focus on more abstract concepts like how Christianity provides forgiveness of sins, new life, and hope for eternity, Taiwanese people are more interested in practical, everyday concerns.

For instance, they ask the god Guan Sheng DI Jun to help them get promoted. They ask the earth God to protect their home from thieves. They beseech Yue Lao to bring them a romantic partner.

Gospel presentations to Taiwanese people need to address how or if the gospel can help them in these practical ways. Today, many Christian teachers exhort us to gospel living—how we as Christians can live according to the grace and responsibilities given to us—but what about the gospel in daily life?

When your business is not doing well, what is the gospel’s answer to that? When you live in a crime-ridden neighborhood, how does the gospel protect you? When you are 38 years old and unable to find a spouse, where does the gospel come in? The easy answers of “have more faith” and “turn to Jesus” are not concrete enough to address the real concerns that people have.

Some Christians who have attended church for a while start to understand how the gospel can apply in specific situations. But non-Christians are not aware of this. In my interviews, I found that many Taiwanese non-Christians viewed the abstract gospel as “irrelevant,” “stupid,” or “arrogant.” Some even mistook it for another mystic chant. Until the gospel starts explicitly addressing situations in daily life, most Taiwanese non-Christians will likely remain uninterested and unconvinced.

Folk religion provides answers and concrete rituals for situations that people encounter in everyday life. Through customs, rituals, and special holidays like Tomb Sweeping Festival, folk religion in Taiwan provides a sense of security and situation-specific assurances. It does not have complicated doctrines for people to grasp—all they need to do is visit the temple and pray to the deity.

Therefore, an abstract gospel does little for most Taiwanese. What many Taiwanese need is a more down-to-earth gospel that addresses the same things that folk religion deities address: daily lives and felt needs. These needs are not a side project for the deities but their sole purpose.

A contextual approach to gospel presentations in Taiwan should frame the Lord as better than the goddess Mazu in her protection of fishermen, better than the earth God in his protection of land, better than Guanyin in her compassion for people, better than Lord Superior Wen Chang in his concern for academia, and better than Yue Lao in his understanding of love.

That doesn’t mean Christians should water down the gospel or make it only about fulfilling daily needs. The gospel has eternal significance and brings a person into a relationship with the Lord. The gospel is also not about fulfilling one’s desires; rather, it is about fulfilling the desires of God. Taken to the extreme, this kind of prosperity gospel robs Jesus’ focus on the kingdom, John’s call to love, and Paul’s admonition to live a life worthy of the calling we have received.

In Jesus’ ministry, he encountered people and provided for both their external and spiritual needs. Jesus spoke about how to deal with a Roman soldier asking a civilian to carry luggage or other items (Matt. 5:41). He spoke about paying taxes (Mark 12:17) and how often to forgive people (Matt. 18:21–22). Abstract truth sometimes came with the fulfillment of daily needs and sometimes did not. Even in large-scale public meetings like the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught people how to act in daily life.

When evangelizing to Taiwanese people, it is important to discuss the challenging issues they are facing. Christians could ask adherents of folk religion about the last deity they visited and what they were seeking. Knowing the answers to these questions can help Christians explain how the gospel speaks directly to their concerns, how God can solve their problems, and how God can do more than any deity.

Sometimes God does not fulfill every felt need. But that does not mean the gospel does not speak on a given subject. For instance, the gospel teaches people not to worry about money or promotions but to “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt. 6:33). On the question of protection, the gospel teaches that God “will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways” (Ps. 91:11). For someone seeking a romantic partner, the gospel teaches us about love itself (1 Cor. 13).

To show that the gospel of Jesus Christ is necessary and vital amid a culture seeped in folk religion, Christians need to show that God is more powerful than the spirits and deities that threaten the Taiwanese people and that he is a better answer to the daily needs of their lives.

The result is a gospel that is truly “good news” for Taiwanese people and an appeal that can take root in this culture.

Tony Chuang is a pastor, conference speaker, adjunct lecturer, and business director from Taiwan who is currently living in Penang, Malaysia. He received his PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

This excerpt was adapted from Religiosity and Gospel Transmission: Insights from Folk Religion in Taipei by Tony Chuang. Copyright © 2024 Langham Academic. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Vets in Ministry Won’t Retreat from the Military’s Suicide Crisis

Maria Baer

Christians say the epidemic is about more than PTSD.

Veterans Day

Jewel Samad / AFP via Getty Images

Pastor Josh Holler says his US Marine Corps regiment had a saying: Suffer in silence.

Holler, who deployed twice to Iraq, served with men who had the phrase tattooed into their skin. It was a useful aphorism in battle, where soldiers stake their lives on each other’s strength and perseverance.

But suffering in silence once they return home can be disastrous.

“If you take that idea with you when you leave the military … It’s not too long to plot out a time period where that person’s going to take their life,” Holler said.

The US veteran community has suffered a suicide epidemic for decades, and it’s getting worse. According to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, 6,392 veterans took their lives in 2021 (the most recent year that data is available)—which comes to about 17 veteran suicides every day. The veteran suicide rate is about twice that of the non-veteran US adult population.

Of the roughly 2,100 members of the 7th Marine Regiment—Holler’s unit—11 have died by suicide since his return from Iraq in 2013.

For Christian civilians, including pastors, the prospect of ministering to military vets can seem daunting. Leaders who’ve never experienced war may feel ill-equipped to tackle veterans’ unique pain and challenges. Asking about their experience in the service could seem invasive or accusatory; not asking could seem neglectful or ungrateful.

Expressing public support for the US military has also become politically loaded. Holler says a friend and fellow vet was frustrated when his Colorado Springs church moved into a new building and chose to take down the American flag inside the sanctuary, which Holler’s friend took as a personal slight.

A recent Pew Research poll found that while 60 percent of all US adults have a positive view of the military, a majority of those between ages 18 and 29 believe the military “has a negative effect” on the country.

But as the suicide crisis among US veterans worsens, particularly among younger men, some Christians are calling for more support—and not just for veterans suffering from clinical PTSD after war.

In fact, the connection between combat-induced PTSD and veteran suicide may not be as strong as previously believed. A 2014 study found that the veteran suicide rate is actually higher among those who were never deployed; and veteran suicides have continued to rise even as US involvement in foreign wars has diminished.

Holler says his regiment witnessed some harrowing violence in Iraq but “comparatively little” to veterans’ experiences in Vietnam or World War II. He was grieved and confused when so many men he’d served alongside died by suicide after returning home.

A few years ago, he started interviewing their family members and conducting his own research, which he turned into a book in 2020. He writes that veteran suicide “is not primarily a problem born out of exposure to combat and PTSD but out of a broken relationship between people and God.”

The US Department of Veterans Affairs has long dedicated the vast majority of its mental health resources toward treating PTSD, according to The Heritage Foundation. But the overall veteran suicide rate has steadily increased since 2001 and exponentially in the last ten years among veterans aged 18–34.

Holler attended seminary after leaving the military and pastors a Baptist church in St. Louis. He says faith is a necessary component of veterans’ healing after war. Damon Friedman, a Christian and special operations combat veteran, agrees.

Friedman survived multiple violent deployments with the Marine Corps and then the US Air Force and struggled with suicidal thoughts when he returned home. He spent a full year receiving treatment from medical doctors (for his mild traumatic brain injury), from psychologists (for his PTSD), and, ultimately, from pastors.

Friedman says it was this spiritual component, along with the physical and psychological treatment he received, that saved him. “My mind, it was so dark and so black,” he says, “and God radically changed and transformed me.”

That’s why in 2011 he started Shield of Faith (SOF) Missions to offer a “one-stop shop” of comprehensive care—including a strong emphasis on the gospel—to veterans struggling with their mental health.

The Florida-based SOF Missions invites veterans from around the country to weeklong Be Resilient Clinics, where they have access to 20–30 health care practitioners, including psychologists, medical doctors, physical therapists, acupuncturists, massage therapists, nutritionists, sleep specialists, and mental health counselors.

The practitioners spend the week getting to know the vets individually and developing each one’s treatment plan for the next year.

It’s all done at a Florida resort—“That’s our hospital,” Friedman says—at SOF Missions’ expense. Ten vets are invited to each clinic, after which they receive free follow-up care for a full year.

The vets also meet with pastors and study the Bible at the clinics. “We spend just as much time on the spiritual component as we do on the physical pillar, the social pillar, and the psychological pillar,” Friedman says. “I would say eight out of ten that come through our program will walk away literally confessing Jesus as Lord and Savior of their life.”

The organization’s name, Shield of Faith, is a reference to Paul’s exhortation to Ephesians 6 to “put on the whole armor of God” (Eph. 6:11).

“Many people associate the shield as a defensive measure,” Friedman said. “It’s true, but it’s also used offensively. When the enemy would get close, a thrust, a blow would literally shatter the ankles and the wrist … it is also a symbol that God is your shield.”

Like Holler, Friedman is convinced that what plagues suicidal veterans is more than the psychological residue of wartime violence.

He says most of the veterans who seek help from SOF Missions are also suffering from what he calls “moral injury.” He’s seen vets struggling with the knowledge that they’ve killed others. Some struggle to find meaning and purpose back at home after spending a year or more performing high-stakes jobs amid life-or-death circumstances.

At SOF Missions’ female-only Be Resilient Clinics, Friedman says almost every woman who signs up is dealing with another kind of moral injury: sexual assault by fellow service members.

For these vets, treating just their psychological and physical symptoms won’t be enough. “Moral injuries are spiritual in nature,” Friedman says.

Holler says he found the same connection between veterans’ spiritual and mental health as he researched the deaths of his fellow servicemen.

“The military is such an honor/shame culture,” Holler says, but with inverted virtues—many habits that are “shamed” back home are “honored” on deployment, such as excessive drinking and porn use.

He found that men he knew who’d died by suicide after deployment had often struggled to kick one or more of those habits upon returning home, thereby alienating friends and family, sinking deeper into isolation, and losing a broader sense of purpose.

But there’s an even deeper kind of moral injury. Along with the entreaty to “suffer in silence,” Holler says his fellow Marines were taught another saying: “Have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”

“It was drilled into you,” Holler said. “It’s not meant to look at people in a demeaning way. … There was restraint there. But it was an essential part of the combat mindset, meant in both a defensive and offensive sense.”

It’s a dark paradox of active duty: The military needs men to think like machines when they’re overseas but return home as people. Holler says mentally preparing to kill others in combat can bring soldiers across a threshold into dangerous ideation.

“If you have considered killing another person as part of your job … I firmly believe that lowers the threshold to then translate to killing yourself,” he said.

Holler and Friedman have different ideas about how the church can best serve veterans more broadly. Friedman says he wishes more churches included specific ministries and support groups for vets, while Holler says what the vets really need is deep, durable relationships with fellow believers.

Serving vets can get awkward. Holler has a sore spot for half-hearted shows of support, like “free meals for vets” or a Memorial Day sale at a mattress company. For his part, Friedman can’t stand when someone approaches him just to share that they “almost served in the military.”

Nevertheless, Friedman and Holler agree the worst way to minister to veterans—even those struggling with clinical PTSD, who may need more intervention besides friendship and community—is to ignore them.

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Space Force Hymn Lifts Prayer to the Heavens

Adam MacInnis

Southern Baptist chaplain says God prompted him to write song for the newest branch of the US military.

Air Force Academy cadets who will be commissioning into the US Space Force cheer after taking an oath during their graduation ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

The upright piano was old and out of tune, but James Linzey couldn’t resist the urge to stop and touch the keys.

Sitting in the former Dalton gang museum building in Coffeyville, Kansas, Linzey clanked until he found the melody he had been searching for. Then he wrote the words:

Creator of the universe,

Watch over those who fly,

Through the great space beyond the earth,

And worlds beyond the sky.

The 66-year-old Southern Baptist minister composed this hymn in Coffeyville, a small town of about 9,000, back in 2020, while cleaning up the historic museum he’d purchased with plans to revitalize. Now, nearly five years later, the hymn is known as “The Space Force Hymn.”

Linzey was a military chaplain for nearly 24 years, but the government didn’t ask him to write “Creator of the Universe” for the newest branch of the service. In fact, the military does not have official hymns, out of concern they would violate the First Amendment prohibition against respecting an establishment of religion. But there are unofficial hymns. The Air Force has “Lord, Guard and Guide the Men Who Fly,” and the Navy has “Eternal Father, Strong to Save.” And the Space Force has Linzey’s composition.

If you ask Linzey why he wrote it, he will tell you it’s because God told him to—although he’s quick to add that it wasn’t an audible voice. He felt an internal prodding.

“I felt very strongly in my spirit that the Lord led me—urged me—to write the Space Force hymn.”

The thought popped into his head when he first heard that then-president Donald Trump was going to create another branch of the military—the first new service since the creation of the Air Force in 1947. Some people mocked the idea when it was announced, but experts said it was necessary for the organization and prioritization of American interests in space, including the security of satellites.

“It’s not about protecting Earth from asteroids or aliens,” said Todd Harrison, who directs the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. “It will create a centralized, unified chain of command that is responsible for space.”

Linzey, who was taking an intensive course in advanced Greek at Westminster Seminary California at the time, started thinking about heaven.

“The Space Force’s mission to explore space and engage in space travel inspires me because, number one, the Bible says that that is where heaven is,” he told Christianity Today. “The OT Hebrew term for ‘heavens’ or ‘heaven’ is shamayim, which can also be translated as ‘sky.’ In the Hebrew Bible, shamayim is the home of God. The NT Greek term for ‘heaven’ or ‘sky’ is ouranos, and … that is where we will go for all eternity, by believing in and living for Christ.”

It’s hard to imagine someone more suited to compose the Space Force hymn than Linzey. He served in the United States Army and Air Force as a chaplain before retiring in 1998 with the rank of major.

His experience has given him a lot of insight into the hearts and spiritual needs of the people serving their country—and what inspires them.

He also has an MDiv from Fuller Theological Seminary and a deep knowledge of biblical languages. He is chief editor of the Modern English Version Bible and general editor of the new Tyndale Bible, which will be released in 2026 ahead of the 500th anniversary of the release of the original Tyndale Bible.

Linzey believes having a strong theological background is important for hymn writing.

“You have to know the Bible,” he said. “You have to know theology so you don’t mess up.”

It also helped to know military music history. The Space Force hymn includes allusions to both the Air Force hymn and the Navy hymn. The first verse of Linzey’s composition references “worlds beyond the sky,” which plays off the Air Force hymn’s line about “great spaces of the sky.” And the final verse of Linzey’s hymn begins with “Eternal Father, strong to save,” which is the title of the Navy hymn.

Linzey said he did this deliberately to show the continuity of the new service. The first members of the Space Force also came from the Air Force, so he wanted to communicate that connection and the development of a new branch in the song.

The official recording was done by Dan Kreider, a professional composer and music minister at a church in Florida, who also has a doctorate in choral music and a business publishing custom hymnals. Linzey laughed and said that it sounds a lot better than it did when he first played it on the upright in Dalton Museum building. Kreider’s version is slow and majestic and allows people to breathe and experience the feeling of praying to God.

“It’s like you’re in a cathedral at this altar with stained glass windows and the sun’s shining through,” Linzey said. “The reverence—they captured it.”

Don Biadog, a retired Navy chaplain who has known Linzey since 2016, had a similar reaction when he first heard the song.

“The hymn impacted me emotionally and on a high spiritual level,” said Biadog, who is also Southern Baptist. “The lyrics and the tune masterfully tug at the heart, soul, and mind.”

He believes the hymn will have a powerful effect on the men and women who serve in the Space Force in the years to come.

“‘Creator of the Universe’ is a prayer that has been set to music, and all military personnel certainly need a prayer such as this that draws the soul of humankind closer to God,” he said.

Biadog hopes the hymn will be sung in lots of churches—perhaps on Independence Day, Memorial Day, and Veterans Day.

“Military hymns became recognized in the civilian churches before becoming ‘military hymns,’” Biadog explained in an article for K-Love. “After that, it became natural for military chapels and military bands to adopt them as their hymns and perform them.”

Linzey is pleased with the response the song has received so far. He doesn’t know how many churches have sung the hymn, exactly, but tens of thousands of people have visited his website, where the sheet music is free to download.

Since its release, the song has been well received, with stories written about it in the local Coffeyville newspaper and numerous religious publications. Linzey has also done his best to let churches and chapels know about it.

“I really hope in my lifetime to see it in a hymnal,” he said.

Perhaps someday it will be sung in the chapel at the Pentagon, where the more than 9,000 members of the Space Force are currently assigned:

Eternal Father, strong to save,

In prayer before Thy light,

In solitude of sov’reign grace,

Grant courage for each flight. Amen.

Wherever people sing the words that Linzey wrote in Coffeyville, though, he knows a prayer will rise to the heavens.

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Beijing, Let My Daughter Come Home

Aimee Welch

China should honor its promises to the last 300 children matched with families through international adoption.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

This week marks World Adoption Day. Poignantly, it’s also my daughter’s 11th birthday, which she will spend waiting in an institution in China—her sixth such birthday since she was told that our family would soon come for her and finalize her adoption.

Penelope, as we call her, has no idea that millions of people have heard her story in news reports and that around the world, people are advocating for her and the other 300 Chinese children whose adoptions have been left in limbo to be allowed to join their intended families.

We adopted our first daughter, Grace, from China in 2017 the day after she turned a year old. She left the kind but temporary caregivers of her orphanage and learned the meaning and permanency of family even as she learned to talk and toddle.

Delighted to add a precious daughter to our family of four beloved sons, we made plans to return to China to adopt another child––a waiting older girl who shared Grace’s birth culture and heritage. As a waiting child’s likelihood of finding a permanent home decreases precipitously with each year of age, we specifically wanted to welcome a child whose hope of a home might be running out.

We were officially matched as Penelope’s promised family in September 2019, when she was five years old. In the photos we received, her bright smile—despite her medical needs and long wait for a family—captured our hearts. We chose her English name, Penelope, because of the ancient Greek myth that told of a beautiful woman who faithfully persisted in hope of being united with her beloved. It seemed providential when we learned that the Chinese name given to her by her orphanage meant “morning light”—especially light that comes after a long night of waiting.

We completed the remainder of Penelope’s adoption process as quickly as we could, and it was approved bythe governments ofboth China and the US. When she turned six, we believed it was the last birthday she would celebrate without us. By January 2020, we had entered the final stages of the adoption process. She was told we would soon become her family and bring her home to the United States.

But then the pandemic struck. China paused adoption processing, making assurances that matches would be honored when health concerns resolved. Instead of welcoming Penelope into our arms the weekend we should have finalized her adoption, we met her virtually on a video call. Her caregiver who served as our translator said, “She has never had a mother or father before.” Although shy, she didn’t hesitate to call us “Mommy and Daddy.” Our bond grew through packages, letters, photos, and videos exchanged.

Yet more than four years later, we find ourselves still waiting to be united, uncertain whether the promise of family made to Penelope will be honored.

In September 2024, the US Department of State shared China’s decision to end its successful inter-country adoption program, leaving Penelope and roughly 300 other children who had already been matched with US families in limbo for years, perhaps never to experience the loving homes they were promised.

The news is dire because 98 percent of the more than 160,000 children in China living outside of a family’s care—a roughly equal mix of boys and girls—have complex medical needs, making them unlikely candidates for domestic adoption.

International adoption was determined to be in Grace’s best interests because she was born without her left hand and forearm. While disability is stigmatized in some cultures, she thrives in our family and is celebrated for her difference and adaptability in the US.

Penelope has a serious but manageable lifelong condition; if she receives good medical treatment and the emotional care a family can provide, we’re confident she’ll flourish as Grace has. The other children whose adoptions are pending live with spina bifida, Down syndrome, genetic disorders, spinal muscular atrophy, cardiac abnormalities, blindness, or other conditions, many of which have only become more pressing as their promised adoptions have been delayed.

More than the sum of symptoms listed in their files though, these children are precious individuals created in the image of God, of infinite worth, perfectly designed (Ps. 139:14–18). Whatever their physical needs, their great and universal need is for the love of families. Their prospective families recognize the privilege it would be to welcome them as sons and daughters.

As Ryan Hanlon, president and CEO of the National Council For Adoption, said, no one questions Beijing’s right to discontinue international adoptions going forward, but the children whose adoptions were already in process should be accommodated: “The adoptions that were happening to the U.S. were older children and children with medical special needs.”

If these children were being placed in caring, permanent families in China, that would be something we could celebrate. But both the US and China determined that, for these children, international adoption was and is their best chance for permanent families.

Beijing should reassure children like our Penelope, who had already been matched with families, that their adoptions will be finalized—rather than leaving them to languish in institutions and, at best, launch into adulthood without adequate support.

In a recent statement, President Xi Jinping pointed out that the China-US relationship is “one of the most important bilateral relations in the world” and expressed a commitment to pursue “win-win cooperation,” working “with the United States as partners and friends, which will not only benefit the two countries but also the world at large.”

Completing the nearly 300 pending adoptions between China and the US is a prime opportunity to achieve these goals. As one of the largest and most successful adoption programs in the world, the China-US adoption partnership thrived for decades as a bridge of friendship and humanitarian cooperation, placing 82,000 children in grateful American families and creating a person-to-person bond of goodwill between our nations.

This is why, earlier this month, 103 members of Congress sent a letter to President Biden in a rare act of bipartisan and bicameral unity, asking him to personally “act in the best interest of these children and families by urging the PRC to fulfill and uphold the commitment the country has made.”

While governments struggle to adequately support vulnerable children, adoption helps them flourish. Adoption can make a world of difference for one vulnerable child at a time. As part of Penelope’s adoption process, we promised to provide lifelong love, care, and support, and we have never given up hope that we might be allowed to keep that promise. The pain of another family lost isn’t what the children in adoption limbo deserve. Nor is it a fitting end to three decades of humanitarian cooperation between the US and China to secure homes for tens of thousands of children.

As parents, we follow the example of the shepherd who left the 99 to seek the one who was lost, believing that adoption can be a partial, if imperfect, answer to the brokenness that leaves children in need of families. We believe these particular children, whom we have loved and prayed for from a world away, were woven into our stories for a purpose.

Waiting children officially matched with carefully vetted and approved adoptive families shouldn’t spend birthday after birthday in institutions. This World Adoption Day, on our sweet Penelope’s birthday, China should honor the promises made to these children and make a way for them to come home.

Aimee Welch is a former journalist and an adoptive parent. The founder of Hope Leads Home, she has been a leading parent advocate for completing China adoptions since 2020.

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Power Without Integrity Destroys Us

Justin Giboney

Contributor

Evangelicals helped elect Trump. Can evangelicals also hold him accountable?

Jeff Swensen / Stringer / Getty

In 1874, Robert B. Elliott, one of South Carolina’s first Black attorneys and congressmen, left Washington, DC, and took a trip home to Columbia to address some serious concerns. The state had become the subject of national ridicule due to the alleged corruption of its elected officials. Among other things, Gov. Franklin Moses Jr., known as the “robber governor,” had been using taxpayer funds to cover his gambling addiction.

Franklin and Elliott were in the same political party, both Republicans, but Elliott wouldn’t turn a blind eye to corruption and incompetence. One of American history’s greatest orators, he told the people of his state, “The power we have will be our condemnation, unless we arouse ourselves to our responsibilities.” Elliott knew that political victories void of honor become pyrrhic victories, and power detached from integrity destroys us in the end.

Pro-Trump evangelicals are understandably in a celebratory mood after Tuesday’s victory. President-elect Donald Trump just pulled off what some are calling the greatest political comeback in American history. And many white evangelicals, though often anxious about their “persecuted” status, find themselves in proximity to power once again, sticking with Trump despite his long and public record of misdeeds, including refusing to comply with the peaceful transfer of power after the last election.

I believe this loyalty was grossly misplaced and this victory was achieved through unacceptable compromises. I can’t ignore Trump’s words and actions, and I’m baffled by the far-fetched rationalizations it takes for my fellow pro-life Christians to continue supporting Trump after he explicitly disavowed the pro-life position.

But now that Trump has won, that support comes with a duty of accountability—just as it would for Kamala Harris supporters if she’d won instead. (In fact, my plan for this article was exactly the same for either outcome; had Harris won, I’d be writing the same things to her Christian voters now.) Those who backed Trump’s political resurgence must arouse themselves to their responsibilities as citizens and—more importantly—as disciples of Jesus Christ.

John the Baptist lost his head for speaking truth to power, and Esther risked it all to protect a vulnerable people. Christians who have the ear of the new Trump administration, whether in formal roles in Washington or simply as part of the new president’s base, must do likewise. Cozying up to the powerful to further our self-interest isn’t part of the Christian’s job description. In truth, it’s in deep conflict with our commission.

What does holding Trump accountable entail? It means recognizing that the concerns of those who voted for other candidates were not all illegitimate. And it means admitting that Trump’s shaky pro-life stance doesn’t justify anything and everything he says and does.

Yes, the Democrats’ abortion agenda is egregious—and their extreme stances on transgenderism and parental rights should be rejected in no uncertain terms. But those wrongs don’t justify ignoring Trump’s serious issues. When Elliott went back home, he didn’t excuse his party’s and state’s failures by pointing to how Wall Street was rigging the markets and fixing railroad stocks at that time. He held his own to account and passionately implored them to do what is right.

Accountability also means Trump’s disparagement of and threats toward suffering immigrants and his embarrassing lack of a health-care plan cannot be dismissed as minor discrepancies. Again, Democrats have their problems, but they do not negate the responsibilities of Trump’s evangelical voters. Christians must take immigration and health-care policies seriously because they are directly related to our care for the orphan, the widow, the stranger, and our neighbors more generally. Christians cannot be faithful in the public square while rationalizing the rhetoric and policies that neglect or violate these groups.

And if Trump’s economic policies are more influenced by Elon Musk than Vice President–elect JD Vance—if they’re friendlier to big business than to the working class—then his Christian supporters must call that out. That would mean Trump lied to his working-class voters and will increase the economic pain he promised to alleviate. Christians who served as Trump’s sword and shield should start weighing in on these matters now.

If Christian Trump voters neglect their responsibility here, overlooking his errors, it will have a devastating impact on the American church in general and evangelicalism in particular. Without a doubt, Trump’s first term served to discredit the church’s moral authority and caused many Christians to question their faith altogether. If Trump’s Christian supporters want to avoid that kind of damage to the church’s credibility in his second and final term, they must acknowledge his wrongdoing and relentlessly use their influence to hold him to account.

Historically, the victors of political contests tend to overestimate what they’ve won. This is because electoral wins are temporary and can produce their own backlash. Furthermore, what’s seen as gain in this world is spiritual loss under God’s calculus if it’s not stewarded properly. Pro-Trump Christians’ regained power will become their condemnation if they refuse to protect others and check the president’s excesses—as any self-respecting and faithful Christian who comes into authority is required to do.

Justin Giboney is an ordained minister, an attorney, and the president of the AND Campaign, a Christian civic organization. He’s the coauthor of Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaign’s Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement.

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