You’re an idiot and God is not. That’s the shocking thesis of Revering God: How to Marvel at Your Maker by Thaddeus J. Williams, associate professor of systematic theology at Biola University. We’re all theologians, even the most irreligious of us. Everyone wrestles with questions of the divine, but only some do it well. A good theologian, Williams argues, “realizes what a total idiot he or she is about the deepest things of God, yet seeks to mitigate his or her idiocy as much as possible by bringing it often to the Sacred Scriptures” (xvi). Good theologians are also fanatical about God’s glory, nerdy about knowing him, violent in their fight against sin, and enthralled by the Creator. Amid a cultural pandemic of expressive individualism, Williams offers an antidote. He reminds us that despite all our best qualities and achievements, we’re “nowhere near as interesting, awesome, or worthy of worship as the Creator of the universe” (xiii). He calls us to reorient our hearts away from our culture and tear our eyes from our screens to behold God’s glory. He wants to teach us to be good theologians. Countercultural Theology Consistent with the theme of Williams’s Don’t Follow Your Heart, this book calls readers to resist cultural pressures as they think theologically. “We need an entire generation of [cultural] heretics, iconoclasts, renegades, mavericks, and rebels who refuse to march like good little cows, mooing in unison with the herd,” he writes (56). This generation of revolutionaries will confess the one true God, living in ways that rebel against the culture’s evolving norms. Being countercultural in our day means believing that God is the author, source, and standard of reason. Williams shows that mere human inquiry leaves any person aimlessly dependent on authority sources that aren’t eternally reliable. The modern age assumes the autonomous discovery of knowledge; the Creator begs to differ. True wisdom is only found in confessing the true omniscient Being. Being countercultural in our day means believing that God is the author, source, and standard of reason. Furthermore, real satisfaction is only found in God. This is a radical claim in an age that looks for satisfaction in all kinds of outlets. For those plagued by feelings of shame, doubt, and anxiety, the goodness of God offers hope. God alone—not iPhones, Taylor Swift, or Double Stuf Oreos—satisfies the soul. However, sometimes God feels distant. Yet this is how God draws his people toward himself. “God hides for our happiness,” Williams writes (55). Our world is filled with idols that autoplay, pop up, and send us unwanted alerts. In comparison, God seems remote. So we need to sit down, slow down, and ruminate on his character. That’s where true enjoyment is found. Practical Theology There’s “something utterly unique about the God we meet in the Bible,” Williams asserts (113). He’s not like the gods of the Mormons, Muslims, Hindus, or Jehovah’s Witnesses. We see his attributes in Scripture: God is victorious, transcendent, sovereign, and loving. There’s no god like him. And to really know God, we have to think theologically. Therefore, the study of the triune God is immensely practical. It helps us live out apparent paradoxes in the teeth of cultural headwinds. For example, our loving God calls his people to love, yet he doesn’t endure sin. That’s hard to acknowledge in a culture that argues “sin is calling anything sin” (134). Yet our hope isn’t in increasing human wisdom. Only in God do we find the redemption of our souls. Good theology puts on display the goodness and beauty of the divine life. The complexity of the truths about God is staggering. Yet God is simple. And so, appealing to divine simplicity, Williams challenges God’s people to be “integrated selves centered on Christ” (194). Every act of Christ was “simultaneously an expression of faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, steadfastness, godliness, brotherly affection, love, discernment, purity, blamelessness, righteousness, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (195). May we all strive to live this kind of life that’s light-years away from expressive individualism. Electric Theology Williams’s rhetorical energy jars the stodgy theologian’s sensitivities. Yet the punchiness has a purpose: to keep the interest of a generation distracted by their phones. It electrifies the content to make it incandescent. Each chapter explores an attribute of God, interlacing eclectic sources to make sound theological points. Williams talks about Batman, Star Wars, Elon Musk, and Joaquin Phoenix. He juxtaposes these references with traditional theological sources like Martin Luther, Herman Bavinck, Charles Taylor, Albert Camus, and the Westminster Shorter Catechism. He includes excerpts from influential contemporary theologians to point readers toward further study. The combination of Scripture, historical thinkers, modern theologians, personal experiences, and pop culture works well. It’s a fun but bumpy ride. The study of the triune God is immensely practical. It helps us live out apparent paradoxes in the teeth of cultural headwinds. Though it’s bouncy, this isn’t a beach book. Readers can’t simply sit back and let the words float by. Feeding the longing of younger Christians for thick spiritual formation practices, Williams calls readers to meditate, pray, and reflect on God’s nature. He offers meaty passages to meditate on like Numbers 23:19: “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.” His suggested prayers and exercises call for deep reflection and heartfelt repentance. Their purpose is always to turn attention to the one true God. There’s so much to learn and enjoy in Revering God. It’s an accessible introduction to the doctrine of God, but one that doesn’t sacrifice substance for style. It helped me become a better theologian. It left me marveling at my Maker, dazzled once again by the light of our glorious God, even as it reminded me I am, in fact, an idiot.

Every Christian wants to know how to read the Bible well. Don Carson provides foundational principles for rightly handling God’s Word and addresses challenges that may arise in biblical interpretation. He teaches the following: Principles of biblical interpretation that emphasize understanding cultural context The importance of using the whole Bible to interpret difficult passages The role of the original languages in understanding the Scriptures How prayer shapes our study of the Bible How to handle difficulties, using examples about baptism and the kingdom of God

ABC’s debate moderators’ performance in Tuesday night’s presidential debate made CNN’s performance in June look like a master class in fairness, objectivity, and balance. It was exactly the kind of debate moderation left-wing commentators on X have been demanding for months—years, really. They don’t want anything approaching objectivity. They wanted moderators to “fact-check” former President Donald Trump every step of the way while allowing his opponent to pontificate on questions they think will be beneficial to Democratic Party fortunes. And that’s essentially what happened. ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis continually “fact-checked” Trump in real time, arguing with him after nearly every answer. That makes for a horrible debate format. ABC debate moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis pose for pictures with ABC News crew members at the end of Tuesday night’s presidential faceoff in Philadelphia. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images) Were the Lincoln-Douglas debates fact-checked by interjecting moderators? Of course not. The debate was between the two men and their ideas. But in Tuesday night’s debate, the moderators didn’t even bother to create the mirage of objectivity. They hounded Trump every step of the way while stepping aside to allow Harris to make her points. They weren’t fact-checking on behalf of the American people, they were interjecting on behalf of their partisan interest. The fact-checks weren’t even particularly accurate, not that that really seemed to matter to the moderators. For instance, when Trump said that Democrats in some states support after-birth abortion, Davis interjected that “there is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after birth.” As The Daily Signal has reported, there are many states—including Minnesota, the home state of Harris’ running mate Gov. Tim Walz—that allow babies who survive abortions to die. The ABC moderator decided to inject herself into the debate. HERE is a fact check on babies left to die after surviving abortion in Tim Walz's Minnesota:https://t.co/mpFMhmH11H pic.twitter.com/dQdt15vT1E— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) September 11, 2024 Harris didn’t get this treatment at all. Moderators politely allowed Harris to say whatever she wanted. Even in the most obvious case of Harris going with the tired fabrication about Trump calling white supremacists “very fine people” in Charlottesville, Va.—fact-checked as false by even the reliably left-wing Snopes—Muir and Davis said nothing. The fix was in. To a certain extent, left-wing journalists demanding this kind of rigging is understandable. They know that the ABCs and the CNNs of the world are in the tank for their candidates. Why not use their power of control over these debates to direct it in a way that benefits Democrats, who are so clearly on the right side of history? That mentality won out on Tuesday night and lefty commentators were giddy on social media. Excellent job by the @abcnews moderators— Jeffrey Toobin (@JeffreyToobin) September 11, 2024 ABC moderators doing an *excellent* job.— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 11, 2024 “I will say it ABC moderators have exceeded expectations. They are fact-checking and confronting, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin posted on X. “Shows how abysmal CNN was.” I will say it ABC moderators have exceeded expectations. They are fact checking and confronting. Shows how abysmal CNN was.— Jen "We aren't going back " Rubin ?? (@JRubinBlogger) September 11, 2024 That mirrors how the Left generally thinks all our society’s institutions should work. Alternatives to the narratives the Left peddles should be carefully managed and massaged so the people are led to only one point of view. That’s why the Left had a full-blown meltdown when entrepreneur Elon Musk bought the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. It meant that they would no longer have the power to put the finger on the lever of amplifying the messages they like while suppressing the ones they don’t. But this sort of bias comes at a cost. Institutions that ply on their objectivity as their main selling point risk surrendering the power of that credibility when they blatantly put their finger on the scale for a particular ideology. The public’s attitude toward ABC and their cohorts and the media has followed the same course as public health institutions in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns. When after months of telling everyone to lock down for everyone else’s safety, they largely came out in favor of Black Lives Matter protests because “racism is the real pandemic,” they lost an enormous number of American who will never trust them again. ABC’s moderators’ performance Tuesday night is a perfect example of why we have “populism.” Tonight’s ABC moderators are a total disgrace, obsessed with their left-wing agenda instead of giving Americans a fair debate. It’s no wonder Americans distrust the legacy media.— Kevin Roberts (@KevinRobertsTX) September 11, 2024 Did Trump fall into the traps ABC and the Harris campaign set in this 3-on-1 debate? Yes, probably. They will now pat themselves on the back and think of it as a job well done until Election Day. With some Americans, that’s all good and well. Trump is too dangerous to be given a fair shake. With a fair debate, the people may choose poorly. But the stacked deck highlighted the theme that Trump has always used to great success with his supporters since he became the Republican presidential nominee the first time way back in 2015. The system is rigged against you. The system hates Trump because it hates his supporters. The system hates Trump because it hates his supporters. That message was driven home on Tuesday night. Maybe this was mission accomplished for ABC, but Muir and Davis did a disservice to the American people and certainly discredited themselves. The post 3 on 1: Trump Clashes With Harris—and the Debate ‘Moderators’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If the leader of North Korea were to give some sort of speech or participate in some multilateral event, one could reasonably expect the North Korean state media to gush to its captive audience about the Dear Leader’s muscular and virile performance. This is on par with MSNBC’s analysis at the conclusion of the debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. Except, perhaps, that the North Koreans might be more restrained in their gushery. MSNBC began praising Dear Comrade Kamala as soon as ABC cut the feed. Lawrence O’Donnell praised Harris for shaking Trump’s hand. Of course there was gushing about the handshake. Of course it was MSNBC. pic.twitter.com/9PaLsId3Nk— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) September 11, 2024 LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Let's start at the beginning. When they entered I was wondering what was going to happen. Would there be a handshake? We’re going to see that video more than once. It’s Donald Trump running away from her. It’s Donald Trump trying to turn away as the adult in the room approaches and crosses to do what every presidential candidate before her has done in that situation, which is to extend her hand to the other candidate, and Donald Trump runs away from it until he can’t. She literally has to corner him to shake his hand and she does it.  Of course, no such thing happened. Harris walked up to Trump, introduced herself, and initiated the handshake. Everything else is a product of O’Donnell’s fevered imagination and regime worship.  No one should be shocked that MSNBC, as charter members of the Regime Media, marveled at ABC’s moderation of the debate which, it has to be said, WE WARNED YOU ABOUT. Naturally, the panel gushed over David Muir and Linsey Davis’s moderation which was so awful, one-sided and intrusive that Candy Crowley is now officially off the hook as worst moderator in recent memory, if not ever: Of course, MSNBC cheers ABC's debate moderation pic.twitter.com/LTPlYukbrJ— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) September 11, 2024 NICOLLE WALLACE: ABC did a very fine job. CHRIS HAYES: Fantastic job. JOY REID: Yes. Excellent.  WALLACE: They did reporting on the eating of pets.  HAYES: Which is important, you’ve got to say it.  REID: Yes. WALLACE: And I think sometimes people are reluctant to put themselves in the story. David Muir didn't hesitate to say “I went back and watched the tape. You didn’t sound sarcastic to me when you said ‘I lost by a whisker’”. Kamala Harris got Trump on three sides of whether or not he won in 2020. He said “I won”, and then he said, “I said sarcastically that I lost by a whisker”, and David Muir ended it by saying “no, that wasn’t sarcastic.” So what the American people heard was Trump on three sides of the outcome of 2020 and David Muir and Linsey Davis played an important role in that.  REID: They were excellent. I think- kudos to them because they did just enough fact-checking not to be inter- you know, a part  of the debate but to make sure that, you know, really egregious lies were shut down. Consider that they are cheering David Muir for a fact-check of sarcasm.   Not only was Harris v. Trump the single greatest debate performance OF ALL TIME according to the Regime courtesans at MSNBC, but we must also contend with the unmitigated greatness of the Taylor Swift endorsement of Harris in all its exquisite timing: MSNBC: Not only is Harris-Trump the GREATEST DEBATE PERFORMANCE OF ALL TIME, but the Taylor Swift endorsement is the most important ever pic.twitter.com/bvULy5bA9u— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) September 11, 2024 LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: I’ve never been impressed by celebrity endorsements. I think they are helpful to the base you already have. They tend to be people who the base already identifies with. This is someone who crosses it all. This is, I think, the most important celebrity endorsement we’ve ever seen in a presidential campaign. Especially because it is so close. It can make that kind of difference. The Harris for President campaign now has the two most perfectly timed and important endorsements of this campaign. Joe Biden's 27-minute timed endorsement after he said “I'm not the candidate”. Perfect timing. It just put a rocket on her to the nomination. This, about 27 minutes after the debate. And it’s so important, I think, to the people who are going to be consuming that Taylor Swift endorsement. Including those fathers of 8-year-old girls. And that she said, “I watched the debate. I didn't decide this yesterday. This is a new candidate. It’s a new candidate for all of us, and so I watched a more than 90 minute debate. I watched this candidate against the other candidate and I thought about it and here I am. And here is my endorsement.” The timing on it is absolutely exquisite. The wording of it is flawless and perfect, right down to the cat lady stuff. It is- for someone who’s never been impressed by a celebrity endorsement, this is perfect and powerful. RACHEL MADDOW: There is also something that is amazing non-bookends about the Taylor Swift endorsement and the Dick Cheney endorsement. It’s a same campaign. (CROSSTALK) MADDOW: Really big coalition. This is what passed for post-debate analysis over at MSNBC. Regime Media, regimeing very hard over the Regime’s performance at a Regime Media debate. The North Koreans are surely blushing right about now.  

While the pundits argue over how the candidates performed Tuesday night, NewsBusters can say that the performance of the ABC moderators was abysmal as they forced former President Trump into a three-versus-one fight. The night was filled with contentious moments where the moderators took on Trump with slanted/combative questions and targeted him with six fact-checks, evening inviting Vice President Harris to take part in one. Meanwhile, Harris received ZERO fact-checks. The first question to Trump came from World News Tonight anchor David Muir, who took Harris’s claims about Trump trade policy as fact and ridiculously asked him if he thought Americans could “afford” a 20 percent “national sales tax” he wasn’t proposing: The vice president brought up tariffs, you responded. A let's drill down on this because your plan, as what she calls, is essentially a national initial sales tax. Your proposal calls for tariffs, as you pointed out here, on foreign imports across the board. You recently said you might double your plan imposing tariffs up to 20 percent on goods coming into this country. As you know, many economists say that with tariff at that level, costs are then passed on to the consumer. Vice President Harris has argued it would mean higher prices on gas, food, clothing, medication, arguing It costs the typical family nearly $4,000 a year. Do you believe Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs? Of course, there was a question about January 6. “You did send out tweets but it was more than two hours before you sent out that video message telling your supporters to go home. Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day?” Muir sniped. A few of their so-called ‘fact-checks’ lacked facts, making their actions worse than those of former CNN moderator Candy Crowley.     Moderator Linsey Davis tried to muddy the waters on the Democrats radical abortion polices by suggesting they didn’t support late term abortion and pretending like former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam didn’t talk about killing babies after they were born. Meanwhile, Muir downplayed how many illegal immigrants were in the country: DAVIS: There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it is born. (…) MUIR: How would you deport 11 million undocumented immigrants? I know you believe that number is much higher. Trump even had to school Muir on how the FBI wasn’t properly counting violent crime in Democratic cities, thus making seems as though violent crime was down in America: MUIR: President Trump, as you know the FBI says, overall, violent crime is coming down in this country. TRUMP: Excuse me. The FBI were defrauding statements. They didn't include the worst cities. They didn't include the cities with the worst crime. It was fraud, just like their number of 818,000 jobs they said they created turned out to be a fraud. At one point, Muir invited Harris to take part in a fact check of her involvement with Ukraine negotiations; despite the fact she was about to get time to respond to him anyway. And yet, Muir and Davis opted to not fact-check Harris on anything. By NewsBusters’ count there were at least 5 major and easily falsifiable claims made by the Vice President: She peddled the ‘very fine people on both sides ‘ hoax, the “bloodbath” hoax, tied Project 2025 to Trump, lied about Trump’s position on IVF, and falsely claimed no American troops where currently deployed to war zones (Iraq, Syria, the Red Sea, etc.). In terms of a breakdown of the political leanings of the questions, NewsBusters determined that there were 7 questions with a decidedly left-wing tilt, 11 neutral, and only 4 with a right-wing slant. The four right-leaning questions were actually all to Harris: Are Americans better off than four years ago (noting it’s one of Trump’s arguments, and it was the first question of the night), if she approved of any abortion restrictions at all, why she and Biden kept Trump’s tariffs if they were bad, and why they waited until six months before the election to act on the border crisis. The decidedly lopsided three versus one match up tracked with a NewsBusters’ recent study showing that ABC gave Harris 100% positive coverage. The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read: ABC’s Presidential Debate September 10, 2024 9:03:22 p.m. Eastern (…) DAVID MUIR: I want to begin tonight with the issue that voters repeatedly say is their number one issue and that is the economy and the cost of living in this country. Vice President Harris and President Trump were elected four years ago, and your opponent on the stage tonight often ask his supporters, are you better off than you were four years ago? When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago? (…) 9:11:54 p.m. Eastern MUIR: Mr. President. I do want to drill down on something you both brought up. The vice president brought up tariffs, you responded. A let's drill down on this because your plan, as what she calls, is essentially a national initial sales tax. Your proposal calls for tariffs, as you pointed out here, on foreign imports across the board. You recently said you might double your plan imposing tariffs up to 20 percent on goods coming into this country. As you know, many economists say that with tariff at that level, costs are then passed on to the consumer. Vice President Harris has argued it would mean higher prices on gas, food, clothing, medication, arguing It costs the typical family nearly $4,000 a year. Do you believe Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs? (…) 9:13:33 p.m. Eastern MUIR: Vice President Harris, I do want to ask for your response. And you heard with the President said there. The Biden administration did keep a number of the Trump tariffs in place. So, how do you respond? (…) 9:19: 13 p.m. Eastern LINSEY DAVIS: There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it is born. (…) 9:24:06 p.m. Eastern DAVIS: And Vice President Harris, I want to give you time to respond. But I do want to ask, would you support any restrictions on a woman's right to an abortion? (…) 9:26:30 p.m. Eastern MUIR: We're going to turn to immigration and border security. We know this is an issue that is important to voters across the board in this country. Vice President Harris, you were tasked by President Biden with getting to the root causes of migration from Central America. We know that illegal border crossings reached a record high in the Biden administration. This past June, President Biden imposed tough new asylum restrictions. We know the numbers since then have dropped significantly. But my question to you tonight is, why did the administration wait until six months before the election to act? And would you have done anything differently from President Biden on this? (…) 9:30:54 p.m. Eastern MUIR: I just want to clarify here. You bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there, he told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community. DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’ve seen people on television – MUIR: Let me just say here. TRUMP: The people on television, say my dog was taken and used for food. So, maybe he said that. And maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager. MUIR: I’m not taking this from television. I’m taking it from the city manager. TRUMP: But the people who are on television are saying there dog was eaten by the people who went there. MUIR: Again, the Springfield city manager says there is no evidence of that. (…) 9:34:16 p.m. Eastern MUIR: How would you deport 11 million undocumented immigrants? I know you believe that number is much higher. Take us through this. What does this look like? Will authorities be going door-to-door in this country? TRUMP: It is much higher because of them. (…) 9:35:41 p.m. Eastern MUIR: President Trump, as you know the FBI says, overall, violent crime is coming down in this country. TRUMP: Excuse me. The FBI were defrauding statements. They didn't include the worst cities. They didn't include the cities with the worst crime. It was fraud, just like their number of 818,000 jobs they said they created turned out to be a fraud. MUIR: President Trump, thank you. (…) 9:45:09 p.m. Eastern MUIR: Aides in the West Wing say you watched it unfold on television off of the Oval Office. You did send out tweets but it was more than two hours before you sent out that video message telling your supporters to go home. Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day? (…)

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