Friends, there is nothing in the Word of God that says you must post a response to every issue that comes up or event that happens. There’s nothing in the Bible that says that you must have every conversation about every hot topic with every friend you have, every time you hang out. I’ve been meaning to share these helpful, timely thoughts since Kevin DeYoung wrote them, back in November. Enjoy:

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to think about something other than politics, read something other than politics, breathe something other than politics.

Before I go any further, it bears repeating: politics matters. As a pastor, I am eager for Christians to be informed and engaged in politics. In fact, after theology and church history, I probably read more on politics, political history, and political philosophy than anything else. I am not against reading, writing, thinking, and speaking on politics.

And yet, I can’t help but question the wisdom of so many Christians—in particular, Christian leaders whose ministries are ostensibly not about politics—voicing specific opinions, sometimes passionately and sometimes frequently, about every political person, place, and thing. I understand that some Christians do punditry, advocacy, and opinion journalism for a living. I’m not surprised when they comment on political matters or weigh in on the events of the day. That’s what they do, and some of them do it really well, helping Christians think Christianly about what they are hearing and reading in the news.

So, again, I’m not against Christians offering cultural and political analysis. I’m not against discipling Christians to see all of life through the lens of Scripture.

What I am against is the instinct shared by too many Christians, including pastors and leaders, that assumes, “If everyone is talking about it, I should probably say something too.”

I worry that people will not first think of gospel convictions or theological commitments when they hear of our churches and ministries, but they will first think of whether we were for or against a certain candidate.

I am nervous that our lines of Christian fellowship will be drawn not according to Reformational principles of ecclesiology, worship, and theology, but according to current expressions of cultural antipathy and identity politics.

I am concerned that weighing in with strong public comments—from both the left and the right—about everything from voter fraud to judicial philosophy to energy policy to why we should all celebrate (when my candidate wins!) and come together in unity (when your candidate loses!)—does nothing to persuade our foes, but much to alienate our friends.

More than anything else, I fear we are letting the world’s priorities dictate what the church is most passionate about.

This isn’t a blanket denunciation of ever saying anything about political issues or political candidates. I have before and probably will again. But perhaps there are questions we should ask next time before joining the online cacophony.

Am I making it harder for all sorts of people to hear what I have to say about more important matters? Think about it: most of us are annoyed when athletes and movie stars feel the need to enlighten us with their political opinions. At best, we roll our eyes and still watch their movies or their games anyway. At worst, we turn them off for good. People will do the same to us. It’s good to think twice before we cash in our goodwill chips, doubling down for or against a particular candidate.

Is my online persona making it harder for my in-person friends to want to be around me? You may feel like, “I only post a few things each day on social media. There is so much more to my life.” True, but what you post on social media is the only part of your life that most of the world knows and sees. People don’t see your fully formed, full-orbed personality and personal life. They see the fifteen things you posted last week, ten of which had to do with politics, seven of which drove half of your friends absolutely bonkers. At the very least, we should consider if adding this stress to family and friends is really worth it.

Am I speaking on matters upon which I do not have special knowledge and for which no one needs my opinion? If my knowledge about something is limited to the three minutes I’ve been angry, or even the 30 minutes I’ve been surfing online, I probably don’t need to download those thoughts to the world.

Am I animated more by what I am reading in Scripture or by what I am seeing on the news and in social media? I’m convinced one of the biggest ways the world is currently shaping the church is by simply setting the agenda for the church’s concerns. We may think we are transforming the world by offering around-the-clock political commentary, but if all we talk about is what media outlets are already talking about, who is influencing whom?

You may argue in reply, I hear you, but the issues are too important. Christians can’t sit on the sidelines as the world argues about the important issues of our day. Fair enough. But consider: is posting your quick thoughts on the daily news cycle really the best way to make a long-term difference? Why not slow down and read some books and comment on those? Or write something online that goes back to first principles? Or write a book if you have opportunity? Or invest in liberal arts education that draws from the best of our Western tradition? Or simply and gloriously disciple young believers to know their Bibles, bear the fruit of the Spirit, and be committed to their local church?

American culture is incredibly diverse. We don’t all watch the same movies or television shows. We don’t all go to church. We don’t all read the same thing or listen to the same music. The one thing that we can all get into is politics, and that’s not healthy. Politics has become the national pastime that brings us all together, only so it can drive us all apart. The task of the church, in this polarized environment, is to slow down, set our minds on things above, and stick to our own script. To be sure, we should not always be silent. But neither should we be the noisiest people in the room, especially when the room tries to tell us what we should be talking about.

Brothers and sisters, it’s OK to have an unarticulated thought. It’s OK to go about our lives in quiet worship and obedience. It’s OK to do your homework, read your Bible, raise your kids, and make your private thoughts prayers instead of posts. Alison Krauss was right: sometimes you say it best when you say nothing at all.

While talking with my kids about Martin Luther King Jr. Day today, I ended up looking up the Wikipedia pages about the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Civil Rights Movement in general. This is only a Wikipedia article, but the bare reciting of the facts alone is inspirational:

The Civil Rights Movement in the United States was a decades-long struggle by African Americans and their like-minded allies to end institutionalized racial discrimination, disenfranchisement and racial segregation in the United States. The movement has its origins in the Reconstruction era during the late 19th century, although the movement achieved its largest legislative gains in the mid-1960s after years of direct actions and grassroots protests. The social movement’s major nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience campaigns eventually secured new protections in federal law for the human rights of all Americans.

After the American Civil War and the subsequent abolition of slavery in the 1860s, the Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution granted emancipation and constitutional rights of citizenship to all African Americans, most of whom had recently been enslaved. For a short period of time, African American men voted and held political office, but they were increasingly deprived of civil rights, often under the so-called Jim Crow laws, and African Americans were subjected to discrimination and sustained violence by white supremacists in the South. Over the following century, various efforts were made by African Americans to secure their legal and civil rights. In 1954, the separate but equal policy, which aided the enforcement of Jim Crow laws, was substantially weakened and eventually dismantled with the United States Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling and other subsequent rulings which followed. Between 1955 and 1968, nonviolent mass protests and civil disobedience produced crisis situations and productive dialogues between activists and government authorities. Federal, state, and local governments, businesses, and communities often had to immediately respond to these situations, which highlighted the inequities faced by African Americans across the country. The lynching of Chicago teenager Emmett Till in Mississippi, and the outrage generated by seeing how he had been abused when his mother decided to have an open-casket funeral, galvanized the African-American community nationwide. Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included boycotts, such as the successful Montgomery bus boycott (1955–56) in Alabama, “sit-ins” such as the Greensboro sit-ins (1960) in North Carolina and successful Nashville sit-ins in Tennessee, mass marches, such as the 1963 Children’s Crusade in Birmingham and 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama, and a wide range of other nonviolent activities and resistance.

At the culmination of a legal strategy pursued by African Americans, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 under the leadership of Earl Warren struck down many of the laws that had allowed racial segregation and discrimination to be legal in the United States as unconstitutional. The Warren Court made a series of landmark rulings against racist discrimination, such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964), and Loving v. Virginia (1967) which banned segregation in public schools and public accommodations, and struck down all state laws banning interracial marriage. The rulings also played a crucial role in bringing an end to the segregationist Jim Crow laws prevalent in the Southern states. In the 1960s, moderates in the movement worked with the United States Congress to achieve the passage of several significant pieces of federal legislation that overturned discriminatory laws and practices and authorized oversight and enforcement by the federal government. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was upheld by the Supreme Court in Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States (1964), explicitly banned all discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin in employment practices, ended unequal application of voter registration requirements, and prohibited racial segregation in schools, at the workplace, and in public accommodations. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 restored and protected voting rights for minorities by authorizing federal oversight of registration and elections in areas with historic under-representation of minorities as voters. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.

There’s much more of course. But I don’t think you can read even this overview without being impressed by the years-long struggle carried on with strength, endurance, and the kind of powerful humility and single-minded purpose that moves mountains. We all have much to learn from Martin Luther King’s unwavering commitment to pursuing these powerful paths of peace and justice in a uniquely Christian way, especially in the days in which we find ourselves. Happy MLK Day, everyone.

Friends here’s a timely post from for the (still) New Year from Tony Defranco:

We Need a New Song: A Mediation on Psalm 96

It is an undisputed fact that songs are one of the most powerful mediums to communicate a message. Whether it’s communicating a protest of something you won’t stand for, a familiar emotion in a lyric, or just something you turn up with the windows down to blow off steam, songs are what people go to in order to find an expression of how they feel. Even in 2020, with no concerts for most of the year, and artists mostly in quarantine for nearly 9 months, songwriting did not suffer. In a recent article, billboard.com actually attributed our global shutdown as a benefit to Taylor Swift. She wrote, recorded, and released one of the biggest albums of the year during the shutdown and got it out less than a year after her last one. They go on to say that platforms like TikTok gave rise to unknown artists, making them overnight success stories in the midst of a year where most other people were navigating great loss. How does that happen? The article states, “if you thought TikTok was influential before, that of course proved to be a gentle nudge compared to the full-body impact it flexed once the youth of America had less reason than ever not to spend all day on their phones.”

Think on that. In the middle of an incredibly trying year the “youth of America” turned to TikTok to shop for various expressions of how they felt. They discovered new content, aligned themselves with what resonated most, and started singing those songs. When things got difficult, when anxiety hit all-time highs, when forced into isolation, people turned to songs in order to find a voice that communicated how we felt. Songs are powerful.

Heading into 2021 I found myself mediating on Psalm 96:1 which says, Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth!

It became very clear to me that throughout 2020 we all aligned ourselves with a “song.” What was the message you rallied behind last year? What was the expression you felt most unified with? What did you sing over the year in conversation, on social media, at work, with friends and family, amongst your church community, or to God in prayer? If we meditate for a few moments I am sure we could identify what we unified under and sang out from our bedrooms in isolation. Was it edifying? Did your “song” build you and others up in your walks with Jesus? Did it express how satisfied you are in God’s glory in the midst of hardship and trial?

Maybe you realize you picked a “song” from the top 100 of 2020. The song of Trump or Biden. The song of masks or no masks. The song of the America of old, or of the “new normal.” The song of love your neighbor, or one of hyper-individualism—I do what I want how I want when I want. The song of “Christians should gather,” or “it’s too dangerous right now for that.” I’ll be honest, I definitely had my fair share of switching my “tune” all throughout 2020. Maybe you can relate. However, at the turn of our new year, I believe the Spirit is saying to us, “2021 needs a new song.”  The “songs” that have been available to us throughout this last year simply won’t do in 2021 (as if they accomplished anything in 2020).

You see, songs throughout history have typically been a unifying expression of society and culture, but the “songs” available to us now are designed to divide humanity and create sides that war against one another. 

We need a new song. 

We need a song that is foreign to 2020, one that will “bless” God’s “name” and “tell of His salvation from day to day.” (Psalm 96:2). I didn’t hear that much last year. It’s time we sing it loud.

We have to completely abandon all other melodies being sung today. 

Identifying with a message to the extent that it is an expression of our lives is an act of worship. Singing, in any form, is worship. We all worship, and there is a “god” behind every song. Psalm 96:4 tells us God is “to be feared above all gods.” We show that reverence to God by removing the expression of every other god out of our lives.

I would encourage you to read Psalm 96 and list all the “new songs” you find available in the passage. Write them down and sing them every chance you get. Who knows, maybe we can unify a generation this year, instead of dividing it.