This essay addresses the ethical, moral, and theological implications of publicly celebrating the death of a political or philosophical opponent, specifically in response to the killing of Charlie Kirk. I highlight the reactions from some individuals who feel it is unfair that people celebrating his death have faced consequences, like losing their jobs. I argue that there are serious moral, ethical, and theological concerns when someone openly rejoices in the death of another.
In the wake of the murderous assassination of Charlie Kirk, we ponder Ralph Venning’s “The Sinfulness of Sin,” which emphasizes the pervasive nature of sin, where society tolerates some sins while abhorring others. Venning contrasts God’s holiness with humanity’s sinful nature, urging believers to expect persecution and to rejoice in Christ, the light amidst darkness, who offers salvation and righteousness to repentant sinners.
A couple’s intimate moment at a Coldplay concert was broadcast on the jumbotron, revealing an alleged affair between Andy Byron, a married CEO, and HR Chief Kristin Cabot. Their actions drew public scrutiny, emphasizing the harm of adultery. The incident highlights the emotional pain for families and the spiritual consequences of infidelity.
The essay reflects on the futility of life pursuits outside of divine love, drawing from Ecclesiastes and Charles Spurgeon’s insights. I share personal experiences of striving after worldly pleasures, revealing a deep spiritual yearning that only God’s grace can satisfy. The journey from emptiness to fulfillment in Christ is emphasized.
Thoughts on Psalm 32, highlighting David’s understanding of confession’s importance for spiritual well-being. Unconfessed sin leads to suffering, while repentance restores the relationship with God. I encourage believers to confess consistently and underscores the urgency of prayer.
A family walks the beach at dawn. Just a gentle picture to start the essay off… EPrata photo
SYNOPSIS
Christian celebrity culture is complex, with historical examples like John the Baptist and Paul showing genuine fame while Simon Magus demonstrated misguided fame. While some ‘celebrity’ leaders genuinely point to Christ, others succumb to deceit and false teachings. Christians are urged to examine their leaders’ character, ensuring alignment with godly principles and repentance practices, and also to constantly examine one’s own self.
I discuss the concept of social media as a form of theater, highlighting how users often present curated versions of themselves to avoid exposing their own sin and to manage perceptions. While recognizing the dangers of social media, I mention its potential for positive engagement, especially in sharing the Gospel and promoting truth, urging wise and intentional use.
I’m on Twitter a lot (now called X). I get the headlines and weather in just a few lines. I commune with Christian friends, both virtual and in real life that I know personally. I see nice photos of different areas of the country. It’s a good social media for me.
I’ve also seen a lot of headlines lately about public education teachers arrested for lewd or sexual acts with their minor students. Enough to make me investigate whether there has been a noticeable uptick in reported incidents over the past few months. It seems to me there has been, which could suggest increased media coverage—or simply more incidents coming to light. From CA to CT to Delaware to NYC, and sadly, many in Texas, have been in the news just this past month.
Even worse, there has been momentous and tragic news of this sort in Christian circles, too. The news that Steve Lawson had been engaged for five years in an adulterous affair with a young woman in her twenties and thirty+ years his junior came to light a few months ago and was a severe shock to many.
But even this week, Robert Preston Morris, formerly pastor at mega-Gateway Church in Texas, was indicted on charges he had engaged in sexual misconduct with a 12-year-old girl in the 1980s. In March 2025, he was indicted on five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child. A warrant has been issued for Morris’ arrest. What happened was, Morris was a pastor invited to a friend’s home and over repeated visits, molested their host’s 12 year old child. This is an unconscionable evil and betrayal of the worst kind.
This same week, International House of Prayer Kansas City (IHOP KC) founder pastor Mike Bickle is found in a released report which alleges 17 cases of abuse. The report states “The allegations range from spiritual abuse to rape.” Two of the women at the time of the alleged molestation/rape were minors. Another unconscionable evil.
Can you think of anything worse than USING the name of Jesus as a cover and His church hunting ground in order to prey on children?
We know that Jesus was tender about children and toward children. He considers children, and widows, a most vulnerable demographic. Always at risk, children have been misused in every culture and period in history. In ancient Rome a father could kill his child without penalty. They were seen as property. In Hawaii, China, and Japan, many female and disabled children were killed to maintain a strong race without overpopulation. Girl children were not as preferred as male children. Child sacrifice was rampant. (Molech, among other cultures). Child labor was routine.
Sexual predators have always been around. But even lately it seems to be growing worse in every level of society. We read about abductions of children who are trafficked and put up for sale to sexual predator and porn rings.
God puts a high value in children. Almost the first command God gave to the man and the woman was to be fruitful and multiply. “The Bible emphasizes the significance of children from the opening chapters of Genesis, where God makes the earth and every living thing on it to be fruitful—including the man and woman (Gen 1:27–28). Humanity can only fulfill God’s mandate of fruitfulness by bearing and raising children…” The Lexham Bible Dictionary.
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Children were to honor their parents, and were expected to work with the family, especially in that agrarian culture. In return, children, especially boys, were educated in the scriptures, liturgies, and expected to attend the festivals. They were full participants in daily life of the family and the community.
In the New Testament, “Thompson notes that 50 percent of children in the ancient Roman world died before age 10, and Graeco-Roman society valued girls less than boys. Infants born with disabilities or unwanted female infants were commonly left exposed to the elements. As Christianity grew more influential in the Roman Empire, the Jewish and Christian value for human life increasingly pervaded Roman society. Christian emperors of Rome outlawed infant exposure in AD 374“. The Lexham Bible Dictionary.
Jesus valued children.
We are perhaps most familiar with the verse from Matthew 19:13-15, “Then some children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” After laying His hands on them, He departed from there.”
Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 18:10).
The Gospels record that Jesus healed several children and even brought at least one child back from the dead. For example:
• He raised Jairus’ daughter from death (Matt 9:18–26; Mark 5:22–43; Luke 8:41–56). • He healed the Gentile Syrophoenician woman’s daughter of a demon (Matt 15:21–28; Mark 7:24–30). • He healed the demon-possessed son of a common man (Matt 17:14–19; Mark 9:14–28; Luke 9:37–42). • He healed a royal official’s son (John 4:46–54).
By healing such a variety of children—both boys and girls, Jews and Gentiles, poor and wealthy—Jesus showed that He valued all children, for their own sake as well as for their families and communities. The Gospels further portray Jesus ascribing value to children by welcoming them and inviting them to come near to Him even over the objections of His disciples (Matt 19:13–15; Mark 10:13–16; Luke 18:15–17). Jesus also identifies qualities in children that He wants His disciples to emulate. For example, He uses the humility of a child as a leadership model for His disciples (Matt 18:1–5; Mark 9:35–37; Luke 9:46–48). In Mark 10, Jesus states, “Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” The Lexham Bible Dictionary.
As sin increases, we know that the warnings from Paul to Timothy are true: “But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, 4treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…” The last days have been since Jesus ascended, but with sin, it always gets worse. As time goes on, our sin-soaked world will eventually reach the state where it’s Genesis 6:5 again, “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of mankind was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.”
Child abuse, molestation, neglect etc. are heinous crimes against little ones who are defenseless and rely upon their adults to nurture and protect them. I will be glad for the day when there is no more sin, no more predation, and no more evil against our precious little ones.
In the desert, cacti and thorn bushes mean business. Often, there are impenetrable thickets of rough bushes with spiky thorns that hurt even if you catch a glancing blow. Some cacti don’t even wait for a glancing blow but eject their little hairs to hurl at you as the wind of your passage awakens them. Desert thorns means business.
It wasn’t always that way. When the earth was created and the Garden of Eden planted nothing inside the Garden would hurt man as he passed. Which was good, because he was naked and not ashamed. Soft plants, beauteous flowers, stately trees, and mild animals dotted the landscape.
Then sin entered the world through one man, Adam, and because he listened to the voice of his wife, the ground became cursed. In some places today, the landscape even hurts to look at it.
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After the Fall, thorns sprung up everywhere. Thorns hurt, thorns are negative, thorns are because of sin.
And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; (Genesis 3:17-18)
Anytime there was a curse thereafter, thorns are frequently mentioned as part of the curse. (Nu 33:55; Jos 23:12-13; Isa 5:5-6; 7:23-25; 55:8-13; Jer 12:13; Hos 9:6). Jesus used the symbols of “thorns” in his teaching in a negative sense (Matt. 7:16; Mark 4:7, 18; Heb. 6:8).
Thorns came in with sin, and were part of the curse that was the product of sin, Gen. 3:18. Therefore Christ, being made a curse for us, and dying to remove the curse from us, felt the pain and smart of those thorns, nay, and binds them as a crown to him (Job 31:36); for his sufferings for us were his glory. Matthew Henry’s commentary on the whole Bible: complete and unabridged in one volume.
In Matthew 27:29 we read that the soldiers who were crucifying Christ had some mocking fun with Him and placed a crown of thorns over His head.
In the crown of thorns placed upon His head, it was not only a mocking activity performed by pagans, but symbolic of the Lamb caught in the thorn thicket when Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac. It is symbolic of the curse of sin that Jesus took upon Himself, so that we may escape it through Him.
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When you see that crown of thorns, and you think about the mockery and pain Jesus endured on our behalf, think about Him the spotless Lamb taking upon Himself the sins you and I do daily.
The Roman soldiers unknowingly took an object of the curse and fashioned it into a crown for the one who would deliver us from that curse. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree’” (Galatians 3:13). (source)
What a tremendous, loving, wonderful Savior we have in Jesus Christ.
Can you imagine the Wal-Mart floral department offering a bouquet of thorns? Does the Garden Center ever advertise Acacia thorn bushes? Do carpenters choose two-by-fours made of thorn wood? Except for our botanist friends, few people find thorns captivating. They are not beautiful. And they don’t seem very useful, though they do burn extremely well. The negative associations of thorns are what make their appearance in the Bible so intriguing, for God weaves these very thorns into the revelation of His grace. He gives them a star role in the unfolding drama of His judgment and unbelievable mercy.
In the original Eden you didn’t have to have cultivated planned crops, and you didn’t have any weeds. You had the natural flourishing of the earth producing all manner of food without crops, as we know them, that now produce flour and from that we make bread and there was no siach, no weeds which grow profusely now. And it also mentions in chapter 2 verse 5 that the rain contributes to that as we well know. Take a vacant piece of dirt, do nothing to it, just wait and let it rain and you will have a flourishing field full of weeds.
After Jesus’ sham trials and subsequent flogging, and before He was crucified, the Roman soldiers “twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on His head. They put a staff in His right hand and knelt in front of Him and mocked Him. ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’ they said” (Matthew 27:29; see also John 19:2-5). While a crown of thorns would be exceedingly painful, the crown of thorns was more about mockery than it was about pain.
the-end-time.org 