By Jesse Jost

How do you get people to plug their ears to the cries of a suffering people? How do you get young men to march children and grandparents to their deaths? You encourage a spirit of hate that dehumanizes the other.

The only way a human can cope with killing and torturing another human, is to refuse to look at the other’s humanity and see them instead as an animal, a social menace, or a threat to personal safety.

The apostle John wrote that he who hates his brother is a murderer. Jesus warned of the danger of anger and hate by comparing them to committing murder in the heart.

Hate reduces our view of other people to a label or a one-dimensional threat to the causes that are important to us.

When viewed through the lens of hate, other humans are no longer thinking, feeling individuals, with dreams and hurts and insecurities. They are instead problems that need to be fixed or dangers that need to be quarantined or eliminated.

None of us would ever let hate so infect our hearts that we would commit genocide… right?

Hate doesn’t start with murder. It starts with a subtle irritation toward those with differences in opinion.

By Jesse Jost

This past year has been so difficult because we have been cut off, to varying degrees, from in person fellowship and human touch and real life community.

We are desperate for human contact. Without it, we turn to the substitute of social media.

It has been wonderful to see babies being born, and cute stories and embarrassing moments. These good things from social media have been a gift.

But among the positives, have been the way social media has stirred up so much fear and frustration.

People feel frustrated that they can’t make more of a difference in the real world right now, so they turn to social media activism. At least we can bring awareness to the problem, they feel.

Awareness is such a vital first step to solving problems and injustice. It used to be that you were blissfully living your life, and someone would show you a graphic image of a slave ship. You were shocked. You woke up to the problem. You wanted to make a difference. You could take real action.

The problem today is the non-stop bombardment of social media activism. As I scroll through my facebook and twitter feed, I see activism about global warming and the need to reduce emissions, I see activism warning me that global warming is a hoax and part of an agenda to reduce human population.

By Jesse Jost

I want to be clear up front that the church needs to gather. We are commanded to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. We desperately need fellowship and communion with other believers. We need their encouragement and exhortations. We need their example and listening ear.

However, I am concerned by the idea that we are only the faithful church when we are packing out a building on Sunday morning. Assembling can take many forms, and where even two or three are gathered in His name, Jesus blesses it.

There are places in the world where the church is unable to meet in large groups in public buildings. Have they stopped being the church? If there comes a time in North America when churches are not allowed to meet at all in public buildings, will the church cease to exist?

For years it has bothered me that for many in North America, “church” has been reduced to a building or a ritual we do once a week.

In the New Testament Church is the community of the Bride of Christ. The emphasis is on relationships in the body, and how the individual members serve each other during the week, and live out their Kingdom mandates.

By Jesse Jost

The tricky thing about freedom is that the exercise of one man’s freedom almost always entails limiting another’s freedom. My freedom to play my music loud in the room limits everyone’s else’s freedom to have quiet or to enjoy their music.

This creates dilemmas for society: which freedoms should be protected by law and which freedoms should be limited? Should women be free to abort their babies? Should we be free to smoke pot?

The New Testament, while instilling love for liberty, does not call us to unlimited freedom. In fact, believers are often called slaves of God. We are to pursue liberty, but our freedom is to be limited by love. Gal 5:15-17

We are commanded to have the mind of Christ, who though He had the ultimate freedom as God, unhindered by any other power, voluntarily limited his freedom and took on the form of a slave, one who had no rights and freedoms. Jesus limited his freedoms instead of fighting for his rights, so that he could make us free. Phil 2:5-9

To the question of which freedoms should be honoured and which freedoms should be limited, the biblical answer is: We should be free to love and obey God in all He commands us, and we should be free to love our fellowman and be able to meet their needs.

However, the Bible does not give us full freedom of conscience. The Bible takes a dim view of our conscience in that it can become seared and be deceitful, and acknowledges that we have a tendency to justify and rationalize just about anything.

By Jesse Jost

If God stepped into your room and offered you a pill that was guaranteed to boost your happiness level, would you take it?

God made our brains for joy and peace and pleasure. In His presence there is fullness of joy. (Psalm 16:11)

Jesus said that He came that we might have life more abundantly. (John 10:10) “That your joy may be full,” were some of His final words to his disciples (John 15:11). Paul urges us to “rejoice in the Lord always.” (Phil 4:4)

But on this broken planet, we rarely enjoy God’s presence. Our minds are weighted with anxiety, resentment, discontentment, and guilt.

How did we get stuck in misery and how do we get unstuck?

Happiness Booster #1: Replace Regrets of the Past with Gratitude

The past can be tormenting… mistakes, missed opportunities, and the criticisms and abuse heaped on us. Toxic reflections like these create a yearning to rewrite events gone by.

But the past can’t be changed. It can, however, be reframed or reinterpreted.

By Jesse Jost

We have a deep psychological and emotional need to understand what is really going on. We are driven to figure out how events and actions are connected,

so we can predict what is coming. This need to know the story is connected to our desire to know the future.

The story we believe we are in informs our view of what the problem is, and what solution is needed. It tells us who the enemy is and what we must do to counter him/it.

We feel adrift and aimless if we don’t have a clear understanding of what story we are in. But a compelling story can light a fire of motivation, making us willing to sacrifice everything for that story.

The story we believe gives us a compelling vision of what needs to be done, and what can be accomplished if the stories ends are achieved. It determines what we are willing to sacrifice to achieve the stories’ goals. It is the root of humanity’s greatest accomplishments and most horrendous atrocities.

Socialism, the most deadly idea of the 20^th century, was a captivating story about the world’s primary problem and what could be done to fix it.

By Jesse Jost

A look around at the present trends we are seeing in North America does not give a Christian much reason for optimism. In the past year we have seen numerous freedoms disappear. Churches are facing draconian restrictions and fines for trying to obey our biblical mandates. Censorship of conservative ideas is becoming widespread.

Society as a whole seems to be embracing ideas that run contrary to sacred core biblical values. It feels like faithfully preaching biblical Christianity is becoming cultural suicide.

I have seen alarming parallels between what is happening now to what happened in other nations as they slid into dictatorships and police states. Is history bound to repeat itself? Have the restrictions and freedoms lost in the name of this pandemic shoved us down the slippery slope toward a totalitarian dystopia?

The idea of a slippery slope, or the idea that if we grant one thing it will inevitably lead to another thing, is a powerful rhetorical device. “If we let government dictate masks for the church, then we will also allow the government to stop our preaching the whole Bible.” “If we relinquish one freedom, where will it end?”