The Friday Update - Mercy & Justice

— January 31, 2025 —

Happy Friday,

“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”…  At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left... Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Jesus, John 8

Among the many things this story implies is that Jesus is not a blend of mercy and justice. He is one hundred percent of both. 

Yet Another: Jonathan Rauch—a self-described “liberal atheist”—is one of the latest to leave the “religion-is-poison” camp and join the “I-don’t-believe-Christianity-is-true-but-I-hope-everyone-else-does” camp. I’m heartened that people are recognizing Jesus as the source of much we now call good—e.g., humility, forgiveness, human rights, etc.—but I’m praying that those who now identify as “cultural Christians” (J. Rauch, D. Murray, R. Dawkins, et al.) take a step toward full faith.

WOTW: Honorable mention goes to boomerasking (a derivation of boomerang that describes those who ask a question in hopes of being asked it in return), attention capitalism (the way markets now pursue—and exploit—our attention), and oligopoly (a market controlled by a few). In the last week, DeepSeek—China’s AI entry—has upset the Big Tech oligopoly. Full honors go to premortem (which was featured in this WSJ piece.) In this specific case, it involves imagining what will be important to you on your deathbed and attending to those matters now. 

Without Comment: 1) Per the National Institutes of Health, 91.5% of men (and 60.2% of women) admit to accessing porn in the last month; 2) Per the WSJ, the average number of days off taken by those offered unlimited paid holidays is 16, only two higher than those granted finite vacation time; 3) Per the WSJ, 20% of US homeless live in L.A. County; 4) Per this piece, more people are killed by toasters than sharks; 5) The CBO’s latest demographic projections show the US population growth dropping from 0.4%/yr (2025 – 2035) to 0.1% (2036 – 2055); 6) Per this piece, average US reading scores for both 4^th and 8^th graders dropped five points from 2019 to 2024; and 7) this Atlantic piece contends that our current “loneliness epidemic” might be “the most important social fact of the twenty-first century.”

The Viral Debate: Canadian Christian apologist Wesley Huff so bested Billy Carson (a popular “expert in ancient civilizations and spirituality”) that Carson lawyered up to keep the debate from being released. The resulting brouhaha landed Huff a spot on Joe Rogan’s podcast, where he made a case for faith and shared the Gospel.  

Psalm 23—the Tech Version: The Algorithm is my shepherd; I shall not lack. It guides me to the best search results; it refreshes my data streams in the quietest corners of the web. It restores my bandwidth; it leads me on the right pathways for its name's sake. Even when I navigate through the dark valleys of spam and malware, I fear no error, for the Algorithm is with me; its code and its logic comfort me. It prepares a digital table before me in the presence of my online foes; it uploads my profile with positive updates; my cloud storage overflows. Surely, its optimization and efficiency will follow me all my digital days, and I will dwell in the Cloud forever.

Overheard: 1) I seldom have a great idea while sitting in front of a computer. But every good idea I have makes me want to sit in front of a computer; 2) The biggest financial decisions we make—e.g., who we marry, how we treat our body, and how we spend our free time—have nothing to do with money; 3) What does it say about our sexualized culture that we intuitively know that The 40-Year-Old Virgin is a comedy?; 4) Virtual Reality is not ultimate reality, but it is increasingly “a reality” (when Her came out in 2013, it portrayed a guy with an AI girlfriend living in 2025. And it’s pretty much unfolding per the script); 5) When children get frightened, they run to their parents. When adults get frightened, they call their fear “stress” and keep it to themselves. We get trained out of community; and 6) In a moment when we are “free to craft our identity,” many play small ball, defining themselves re: politics, sports teams, consumer products, and sexual practices.

Resources: I will be speaking on CS Lewis at Cherry Hill Church (Denver, CO) on the evening of February 24 and at Corinth Reformed Church (Hickory, NC) on the evening of March 23. I will be preaching at Lake Norman Church (Charlotte, NC) on March 16 and at Corinth Reformed Church (Hickory, NC) on March 23. If you are interested in registering or learning more about the Lakelight tour of Istanbul next October, click here. 

Closing Prayer: Grant me, O Lord, to know what is worth knowing, to love what is worth loving, to praise what delights you most, to value what is precious to you, and to reject whatever is evil in your eyes. Give me true discernment, so that I may judge rightly between things that differ. Above all, may I search out and do what is pleasing to you; through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen (Thomas à Kempis, 1380-1471)

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