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Series: Five Mere Christians
Devotional: 4 of 5

Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable. (Matthew 13:34)

Jesus revealed God’s kingdom primarily through culture rather than politics. He never sought a seat on the Sanhedrin or in the Roman Senate. Instead, he changed the world with parables—tiny tales that stirred hearts to long for God’s kingdom.

Yet despite Jesus’s example, many Christians put far more faith in political solutions than cultural ones to fix the world’s problems today. We believe electing the “right people” and appointing the “right judges” will finally bring God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

This mindset explains why William Wilberforce, a member of the British Parliament in the 18th century, gets the lion’s share of the credit for abolishing the slave trade—even though historians and Wilberforce himself gave equal credit to Hannah More, a poet, playwright, and novelist who outsold her contemporary Jane Austen ten-to-one.

Eric Metaxas, a biographer of both Wilberforce and More, says, “How Wilberforce came to be the chief champion of abolition...has everything to do with Hannah More.” While Wilberforce worked to change politicians’ minds, More worked to change the people’s hearts through art that exposed slavery’s horrors.

Jesus’s parables and Hannah More’s poetry point to an important truth: We mere Christians glorify God by advancing his kingdom culturally and not just politically.

What might this mean for you today? Consider abortion as a case study. Murder has no place in the kingdom of God. And so it is right to ask the question, “What is the political response to this problem?” But the far more powerful question is, “What is my creative response to this problem?”

If you’re an artist like Hannah More, your response might be to write stories and songs that break people’s hearts toward orphans and birth parents. If you’re a business leader, it could be creating generous maternity and paternity policies or funding adoptions for employees. If you work in a café, it might mean setting up a board with resources for pregnancy centers.

Here’s my point: Please don’t wait for politicians to reveal God's kingdom—be the creator who makes it visible today. Whatever the issue is—abortion, racial injustice, gender transitioning, pollution, etc.— glorify God not just by working to change things politically but first and foremost culturally. Because as Andy Crouch said, “The only way to change culture is to create more of it.”

Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no one lives, an uninhabited desert (Job 38:25-26)

Most people didn’t view the Great Depression as the best time to launch a toy company. But that’s exactly when LEGO, the most successful toy brand of all time, was born.

The company’s founder, a devout Christian aptly named Ole Kirk Christiansen, had spent years building a traditional carpentry business. But by the early 1930s, business was slumping while his debts were soaring. So he pivoted to making toys like yo-yos, toy cars, and eventually LEGO bricks.

And everyone told him he was out of his mind.

“I think you’re much too good for that, Christiansen,” one friend said. “Why don’t you find something more useful to do!” The world was in crisis after all. People needed food, not toys.

But Christiansen disagreed. In his own playful life and the life of the business he created to help others play well, Christiansen demonstrated a deep understanding of this truth: We mere Christians can glorify God by embracing fun, beauty, play, and “useless” work because our heavenly Father does the same.

That’s what we see in today’s passage. God says that he sends “torrents of rain...to water a land where no one lives.” Why would God make it rain in an uninhabited desert? Apparently just for the fun of it!

Commenting on this verse, theologian Dr. R. Paul Stevens says that God’s playful nature should produce in his people a “freedom from the tyranny of utility.” In other words, godly play—not just productivity—pleases God.

I’ll be the first to admit that I am glacially slow to learning this. But by God’s grace I am coming to see that play is productive for my soul and my goals. As Dr. Stuart Brown says, “In the long run, work does not work without play.”

If you, like me, are not used to playing, let me encourage you to adopt this practice I recently found very helpful: Take stock of your play history. Ask yourself what you did as a kid or as an adult that felt like play.

Based on my study of the work of Dr. Brown and others, I define play as any activity that has these 5 characteristics:

1. I would say I “get” to do it rather than “have” to do it
2. I lose track of time while I’m doing it
3. I can’t wait to do it again
4. I can’t stop talking about it with others
5. I have no deadline to complete the activity

Once you’ve made a list of things that have historically felt like play, schedule 30-90 minutes this week to engage in one of those activities knowing that you, like LEGO’s founder, can glorify God as you do!

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Series: Five Mere Christians
Devotional: 2 of 5

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. (Luke 6:27)

Fannie Lou Hamer had just given birth, but the only cry in the room was her own. Twice now, she had watched her body grow along with her hope, only for her labor pains to usher in death rather than life. And then there were the miscarriages—losses that came so early she never even felt the joy of kicks in her womb.

Those losses—coupled with her extreme poverty and slave-like work as a sharecropper in Mississippi in the early 1900s—ensured that Hamer moved through her days in a fog. Until a doctor gave her hope: With surgery, the doctor assured her, all of her infertility problems could go away.

Hamer eagerly signed off on the procedure. But after the surgery, Hamer discovered the unthinkable: The doctor had removed her uterus in a complete hysterectomy done without her knowledge or consent. Hamer’s dreams of having her own children were now utterly and truly dead.

Believe it or not, this was arguably not the most tragic thing to happen to Fannie Lou Hamer who would go on to become one of the most significant civil rights activists in the 20th century, largely responsible for giving African Americans the right to vote.

But here’s what’s remarkable: Whether it was the surgeon, the police who beat her in prison, or the politicians who threatened her life, Hamer is never recorded as speaking a single word of hate against her perpetrators. One time when U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey proposed an egregiously unjust compromise, Hamer replied, “Senator Humphrey, I’m gonna pray to Jesus for you.” And then she walked out the door as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. followed behind her.

Jesus said, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” Hamer shows us an example of what that looks like and reminds us that we mere Christians glorify God by doing justice without hating the unjust.

The world often tells us that doing justice requires that we also publicly shame and “cancel” the unjust. But God calls his people to a different way (see Micah 6:8 and Matthew 5:43-44). So, how can you and I practically do justice without hating the unjust today?

First, take a risk to speak out against injustice. As God’s ambassador in your workplace, you are called to speak out against injustices respectfully (see Ephesians 5:11).

Second, refuse to take revenge against the unjust knowing that vengeance is God’s alone (see Romans 12:19).

Finally, pray for the unjust per Jesus’s example knowing that you, like Christ, will be glorifying your Father in heaven as you do (see Luke 23:34).