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I am glad you are here! Maybe we can narrow down your recipe choices for your next Christmas get-together and find something that will work for all your precious people.

The fourth-century African theologian Athanasius is known for standing contra mundum, against the world. When much of the church had turned toward Arianism, he stood firm on the truth that Jesus is, and always has been, fully God. For this, Athanasius endured opposition and exile. Yet he never wavered. Contra mundum, however, doesn’t capture the fullness of Athanasius’s approach to the world. He was against the world for the sake of the world. He opposed the idolatry, heresy, and injustice of the world because he was for the redemptive flourishing of the world. In a culture shaped by compromise and confusion, Athanasius shows us what it looks like to hold fast to Christ with courage and love. Hostile Environment To understand Athanasius’s apologetic, we must begin with his context. He wasn’t writing from history’s sidelines but from the heart of one of the world’s most influential cities. Alexandria was the cultural capital of the Roman Empire, a bustling crossroads of trade and ideas. Home to the greatest library in the ancient world and filled with representatives from every major school of philosophy, Alexandria was a melting pot of cultures, religions, and competing worldviews. To be a bishop there was to be at the center of global conversations about truth, meaning, and power. As bishop, Athanasius faced constant attack. His opponents launched theological challenges, political schemes, and personal accusations. These battles often forced him into exile, five times in all, equating to nearly 20 years away from his church. Yet those exiles shaped him as a theologian. In the deserts of Egypt and in the cities of the empire, Athanasius found both refuge and perspective. Cut off from his familiar responsibilities, he wrote many of his most enduring works, sharpening his vision of Christ and clarifying his defense of the gospel. Athanasius’s apologetic wasn’t abstract. It was forged in the crucible of cultural diversity, political pressure, and personal suffering. His life in Alexandria taught him to engage competing ideas with clarity. His years in exile gave him space to reflect and to write for the good of the wider church. Out of this unique context came an apologetic that was both deeply theological and profoundly pastoral. Vision of the World Re-Created If Athanasius stood against the world, it was only because he believed so deeply in God’s good purposes for the world. Unlike theologians shaped by Gnostic instincts that see salvation as merely spiritual, Athanasius began with the goodness of creation itself, affirming that the world was made through the Word and intended for life with God. If Athanasius stood against the world, it was only because he believed so deeply in God’s good purposes for the world. He was equally clear-eyed about sin’s ravaging effects. For Athanasius, sin is not only disobedience but de-creation. It unravels God’s design, corrupts human dignity, and sets the world on a path toward death and nothingness. Salvation, therefore, can never be reduced to forgiveness alone or escape from the material world. In Christ, God entered creation to re-create it. The incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus weren’t a detour from creation but the renewal of creation. As Athanasius put it, “The renewal of creation has been wrought by the self-same Word who made it in the beginning.” Redemption is nothing less than the re-creation of God’s good but fallen world. This vision fueled Athanasius’s apologetic. He was against the world’s distortions precisely because he was for the world’s flourishing in Christ. Athanasius’s Apologetic Method Athanasius’s apologetic wasn’t abstract debate but a deeply pastoral strategy. He wanted to unmask falsehood, proclaim Christ, and prepare believers to face the questions and objections of their age. His method is on display in his two-volume work Against the Gentiles and On the Incarnation, and can be seen in three movements. 1. Expose the world’s logic. In Against the Gentiles, Athanasius begins by exposing the emptiness of pagan religion and philosophy. He shows that idols aren’t only false but also irrational, unable to account for the world as it really is. Pagan worship, he argues, dehumanizes people and corrupts societies. “They turned from the contemplation of God to evil of their own devising,” he writes, exposing sin as misdirected worship. By laying bare the incoherence of false belief, he clears the ground for a more compelling vision of truth. 2. Present a positive vision. In On the Incarnation, Athanasius turns from critique to proclamation. He begins with the goodness of creation, acknowledges the corruption of sin, and then unfolds the story of God entering the world to restore it. “The Word assumed a body capable of death,” he writes, “in order that it, through belonging to the Word Who is above all, might become in dying a sufficient exchange for all.” In Christ, Athanasius sees the fulfillment of the deepest human longings: the defeat of death, the restoration of dignity, and the renewal of creation itself. His apologetic isn’t merely defensive; it’s an invitation to life. 3. Anticipate critiques. Athanasius anticipates the objections of both Jews and Gentiles. To the Jews, he shows from the Scriptures that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. To the Gentiles, he answers their skepticism with bold examples. Who else, he asks, has the power to overthrow magic, silence demons, and expose the emptiness of Greek gods? Who else has brought an end to pervasive sexual immorality and turned enemies into friends? Who else has humbled kings of the earth? Athanasius points to the transformed lives of believers as living proof of Christ’s power: “The Savior’s achievements are so great that to try to number them is like gazing at the open sea and trying to count the waves.” Taken together, this threefold method shows the brilliance of Athanasius’s apologetic. He refutes what’s false, proclaims what’s true, and anticipates every objection with confidence in the risen Christ. His apologetic isn’t about winning arguments but about leading people to worship the Word who became flesh for the life of the world. Apologetic Relevance for Today Athanasius helps us see that we don’t have to choose between being against the world or for the world. Nor should we settle for some vague balance between the two. We must be intensely against the world’s idols and distortions precisely because we’re wholeheartedly for the world’s goodness and redemption in Christ. His apologetic isn’t about winning arguments but about leading people to worship the Word who became flesh for the life of the world. Just as Athanasius revealed the emptiness of pagan idols and philosophies, so we can unmask the false promises of our own age. Expressive individualism cannot bear the weight of identity. Secular materialism cannot satisfy the longing for meaning. Political idolatry cannot bring the renewal we desire. These systems may seem powerful, but they’re hollow at the core. Yet critique is never the end of apologetics. Athanasius moved from exposing falsehood to proclaiming Christ, and so must we. Only Jesus renews. Only in him do we find a Savior who conquers death, restores dignity, and re-creates the world. Our task is to speak with both courage and compassion, resisting the patterns of the world so that the world might see and know its true hope in Christ.

Merriam-Webster defines “idolatry” in two ways: “the worship of a physical object as a god” and “immoderate attachment or devotion to something.” Using either of those definitions, it’s not a stretch to say most of us are idolaters with our smartphones. Smartphones are physical objects we take everywhere; they’re rarely more than an arm’s length away. When was the last time you went out for errands without your phone? Left for an overnight trip without your phone? We shudder at the thought. We go through our days with near-constant attachment to these mobile devices. In every in-between moment of waking life—in line for a coffee, sitting in a waiting room, walking from point A to point B, stopped at a red light—we instinctively pull out our phone and scroll, text, check notifications, aimlessly toggle between apps. It’s not just a nervous habit. It’s a liturgical impulse: muscle-memory habits of devotion. When was the last time you sat still in a pause moment and meandered in thought or daydreamed, rather than grabbing for your phone? Most of us don’t do that anymore. This is the behavior of idolaters. We’re immoderately attached to our phones. We treat them like deities who deserve and demand our constant devotion. It’s idolatry because these digital deities are the focal points of our attention—far more than the King of the universe. Attention Fuels Worship (and Idol Worship) Where our attention goes, our hearts will follow. Attention—the limited resource of what occupies our thinking space, and how we spend our time—is a fundamental building block of any relationship. If you pay no attention to your kids or your spouse, those relationships will suffer. But if you’re attentive to a person, your bond with him or her will likely grow. A marriage where a husband and wife are present with one another and attend to each other’s words and needs—even sacrificing other good things to make this attentive fidelity possible—will be a strong and flourishing marriage. We’re immoderately attached to our phones. We treat them like deities who deserve and demand our constant devotion. The same goes for our relationship with God. If we never spend time with or give attention to God, our relationship will be weak and fragile. We love what we give our attention to. If I spend all my free time playing video games or cooking or gardening or [fill in the blank], I’ll love that thing more and more. Our habits of attention both reflect and reinforce our loves. Jealous for Our Attention The smartphone is the greatest attention grabber in human history. The device—and the apps that populate it—are designed with one simple goal: to seize your time and attention. In the contemporary “attention economy,” more money is made when eyeballs are glued to devices, apps, games, and streaming content. Tech companies have every incentive to make smartphones as addictive as possible—as fiercely jealous for our attention as a spouse or child. And they’re succeeding in this goal. Look around you in public spaces like waiting rooms, coffee shops, or queues of any kind. Almost everyone has the same posture: heads down, eyes glued to their devices, oblivious to the other humans around them. It’s a disturbingly common tableau that underscores the ubiquity of the problem. We’re all hooked. We can’t stop. Our attention is focused—glazed eyes, fingers scrolling and swiping—on the object of our affection. Which is to say, the object of our worship. If an idol is anything that takes our attention and love away from the one true God, then the mass-produced, internet-connected devices in our hands are among the most insidious idols history has known. How to Fight Phone Idolatry The scrolling age is a spiritual battle with high stakes. Will we let our souls be captured by the algorithms, our worship directed to the demigods of Silicon Valley? Or will we renew our commitment and give our attention more faithfully to the one true God? He is jealous for our attention. He wants it and deserves it. Choosing him over our phones may well be the fight of our lives. Here are three ways we can succeed in this battle. 1. Repent and Confess The first step in breaking free from idolatry is recognizing it as idolatry. This is harder than it sounds because few of us fancy ourselves idolaters. It can be hard to see your own addictions. An honest audit of your attention-time allocation can be a helpful diagnostic. How much time are you giving to God each day (prayer, Bible reading, worship) compared with the time you’re giving to scrolling or streaming? Our habits of attention both reflect and reinforce our loves. Be honest and then repent. Confess to God—and others in your life—that your priorities have been out of balance. Commit to change. Surround yourself with people who can hold you accountable in your desire to grow. Start making more time to pray and be still with God during those times you’d normally grab your phone and distract yourself. Pray that your heart would be renewed with zealous passion for the Lord and that you’d be more satisfied in his presence than by whatever passing pleasures the algorithm might serve. 2. Be Ever on Guard In the final words of 1 John are a warning about idolatry: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 John 5:21). Even after we’ve repented and “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thess. 1:9), the lure of idol worship will not go away completely. Because smartphones are so normal and everywhere in our culture, it’ll be impossible for most of us to live without these devices occupying some space in our day to day. The challenge is keeping the phone in its proper place, not allowing it to become an immoderate addiction or colonize our attention. My advice: Use your phone in select hours of the day, and only for designated purposes. Reduce or eliminate “open scrolling” time (maybe find a harder-to-access place for your phone than your pocket). Work toward some hours each day when you’re entirely phone-free. Lock up devices if needed. Put screen-time limits in place. Charge your device in a hidden-away part of the house, where you might actually forget it for a while. Do what you have to do to “keep yourselves from idols.” 3. Destroy If Necessary Sometimes we need a clean physical break from idols. In Scripture, God’s fury over idolatry often takes the form of actually destroying idols. Think about Moses grinding the golden calf’s ashes into powder and making the unfaithful Israelites drink it (Ex. 32:20). Or consider God’s commands in Deuteronomy for his people to burn pagan idols as they took possession of the promised land (Deut. 7:5, 25). Does this mean we all need to chuck our smartphones into bonfires? Probably not. But for some of us, the phone has such a stranglehold that getting rid of it completely might be our wisest move. It’s certainly possible—if rare—to opt for a “dumbphone” or some other phone alternative. Christians should strive to build a critical mass that normalizes this option. If our worship and devotion to God are on the line, what looks to the world like a drastic measure should seem absolutely reasonable to us. Don’t Scroll Yourself to Spiritual Death When we scroll immoderately, we become idolaters, hopelessly hooked into a drip feed of sweet-tasting poison that’ll never satisfy. If we can’t break free of these patterns, we’ll scroll ourselves to spiritual death. God’s wisdom is so much better than AI responses; his love is so much deeper and wider than the “likes” of social media; his presence is sweeter than any screen-based interaction. Choose him. Choose life.

The network evening news, deep in the throes of Trump derangement, have taken an adversarial tack towards coverage of ongoing U.S. operations in the Caribbean. In so doing, they willfully omitted reporting on the daring clandestine mission to get Venezuelan leader María Corina Machado to Oslo, Norway where she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.  Per The Wall Street Journal: Wearing a wig and a disguise, María Corina Machado began her escape from Venezuela on Monday afternoon. The Venezuelan opposition leader was trying to get to Norway by Wednesday in time to receive the Nobel Peace Prize that she won for challenging Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro. First she had to get from the Caracas suburb where she has been in hiding for a year to a coastal fishing village, where a skiff awaited her. Over the course of 10 nerve-racking hours, Machado and two people helping her escape hit 10 military checkpoints, avoiding capture each time, before she reached the coast by midnight, said a person close to the operation. The report goes on to note that a call was made to the U.S. military, so as to give a heads up and therefore avoid being blown up along the route to Curacao like a cocaine-ferrying drug boat. Machado had backup along the way: Around the same time of their crossing, a pair of U.S. Navy F-18s flew into the Gulf of Venezuela and spent roughly 40 minutes flying in tight circles near the route that would lead from the coast to Curaçao, according to flight-tracking data. It was the closest incursion of U.S. aircraft into Venezuelan airspace since the U.S. military buildup began in September. Online speculation has been rampant since the partial reveal of the details of this journey were made public, with questions about the role that U.S. Special Operations forces may have had in this extraction.  Machado missed the Nobel ceremony. Her daughter collected her Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf and gave a powerful speech. Eventually, she made it to Oslo and greeted Venezuelans still gathered outside the Grand Hotel at 2AM local time. None of this, at least the parts that happened before airtime, were reported on the network nightly news. Nothing at all on ABC, CBS, or NBC. The legacy media focused instead on the U.S. seizure of an Iranian ghost fleet tanker chock full of Venezuelan oil and en route to Cuba. That story is easier to keep Trump-centered and Trump-washed.  

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