The Men of Ephraim — 15 Years Later

Fifteen years ago, I wrote a post on Judges 12 called “Ephraim’s Evil and Our Wicked Ways.” I recently went back and read it again, which is always an interesting exercise. There were parts that made me smile because I could hear my younger voice so clearly, and there were other parts where I found myself wanting to interrupt and say, “Yes, but there is more going on here than that.”

I still believe much of what I wrote. I have now spent even more years working in churches, schools, teams, and organizations, and nothing in those additional years has convinced me that gossip, dissension, bitterness, and the recruiting of people into factions are minor problems. If anything, I probably take those things more seriously now. What has changed is that I am less certain that Judges 12 gives us the simple division I once saw between troublesome people and the strong leader willing to confront them.

The story comes immediately after Jephthah’s victory over the Ammonites. Rather than celebrating what God has done, the men of Ephraim confront Jephthah and demand to know why they were not called to participate in the battle. Their complaint quickly becomes a threat: “We will burn your house over you with fire.”

What makes the incident particularly interesting is that we have seen this before. Back in Judges 8, after Gideon’s victory over Midian, the men of Ephraim approached him with essentially the same complaint. Why did you go into battle without us? Why weren’t we called?

There does seem to be a pattern here, and that was what caught my attention fifteen years ago. God had given Israel a victory, but Ephraim seemed less interested in the victory than in the fact that the victory had occurred without them at the center of it. There is something very human in that response. We can be surprisingly capable of taking something good and immediately filtering it through the question of how it affects us. Someone succeeds and, rather than celebrating, we wonder why we weren’t included. A decision works out well, but we remain bothered because no one asked our opinion. Before long, the perceived slight becomes more important than the original issue.

I have seen enough over the years to know that grievance can become a kind of culture. People repeat complaints to one another, interpretations harden, motives are assigned, and eventually something that began as a legitimate concern can become a settled narrative. The story gets told often enough that nobody remembers exactly where the facts end and the assumptions begin.

Scripture takes that kind of behavior seriously. Proverbs lists the one who “sows discord among brothers” among the things the Lord hates, and Paul includes dissensions, divisions, rivalries, jealousy, and fits of anger among the works of the flesh in Galatians 5. Churches have sometimes been very good at identifying certain obvious sins while being much more tolerant of sins that slowly poison relationships. Gossip, factions, whisper campaigns, half-truths, anonymous accusations, and the constant questioning of motives can do enormous damage while the people participating in them remain convinced they are simply defending what is right.

I still believe all of that.

What I see differently fifteen years later is Jephthah.

When Ephraim confronted Gideon in Judges 8, Gideon found a way to lower the temperature. He appealed to their pride, gave them credit for what they had accomplished, and the confrontation ended. When I wrote the original post, I was somewhat dismissive of Gideon’s response. I saw it as appeasement, perhaps even as the kind of response that encourages difficult people to keep behaving badly because they learn that confrontation works.

Jephthah certainly did not appease them.

He defended himself and apparently had good reason to do so. He reminded Ephraim that he had called for their help and they had not come. The Ammonite threat could not simply be placed on hold while everyone worked through their feelings, so Jephthah acted, risked his life, and God gave him the victory.

The argument could have ended there, but it didn’t.

The disagreement became a battle, and the battle became a slaughter. Jephthah’s Gileadites defeated Ephraim and captured the fords of the Jordan. As the surviving Ephraimites tried to cross, they were required to pronounce the word “Shibboleth.” Their dialect betrayed them because they pronounced it “Sibboleth,” and that single word became enough to identify them for execution. By the time the episode ends, 42,000 Ephraimites are dead.

Fifteen years ago, I read that primarily as the eventual consequence of Ephraim’s rebellion. Today I find it much harder to read past the 42,000 bodies.

This does not look like a leadership success story. It looks like another stage in the tragedy of Judges.

Israelites are killing Israelites. The people who should have been united against the enemies surrounding them have turned their weapons against one another. A disagreement that began with wounded pride has escalated until brothers are standing at a river identifying other brothers by their accents so they can kill them.

That makes Judges 12 considerably more uncomfortable for me now, because it is no longer a passage that allows me simply to identify the difficult people in an organization and warn against becoming like them. It forces me to look at both sides of the river.

There is certainly an Ephraim problem worth examining. I have to ask whether I carry grievances longer than I should, whether another person’s success bothers me when I was not involved, or whether I have ever discussed a problem with several people before discussing it with the person who could actually address it. I have to consider how easily I can believe a negative interpretation of someone once I have become frustrated with that person, and how tempting it is to assign motives that I cannot possibly know.

But there is also a Jephthah problem, and I probably understand that one better now after fifteen more years of leadership.

Anyone who leads for very long will eventually be criticized unfairly. Decisions will be questioned by people who do not know everything that went into making them. Motives will be assigned. Partial stories will circulate. There will even be times when a leader can demonstrate that the criticism is factually wrong.

The danger comes when being right begins to justify everything that follows. You can be so right that you are dead right- you can kill people with the truth.....

There is a subtle progression in conflict where defending the truth can become defending ourselves, and defending ourselves can eventually become defeating the people who oppose us. That progression can be especially difficult to recognize because it often begins with a legitimate grievance. Jephthah really had called Ephraim. They really had failed to come. He really had risked his life, and God really had given him victory. None of that prevented the situation from eventually becoming a catastrophe.

Years of leadership can make this more dangerous rather than less. Experience teaches us to recognize patterns, and that can be a tremendous gift. After enough years, you have seen certain behaviors before. You recognize how gossip moves, how factions form, how a small complaint can become an organized grievance, and how quickly inaccurate information can become accepted truth.

But experience has another edge. Wisdom can slowly harden into cynicism. We can become so skilled at recognizing the men of Ephraim that eventually we begin seeing Ephraimites everywhere. A leader who has been wounded enough times can begin preparing for battle before anyone has actually declared war.

That is one reason the scene at the Jordan strikes me differently now.

The Jordan River carried enormous meaning in Israel’s history. Their fathers had crossed that river together when God brought them into the Promised Land. It had been a place associated with God’s faithfulness and Israel’s identity as one people. Yet here, at those same waters, Israelites are using a word to determine which Israelites belong to the wrong group.

There is something hauntingly contemporary about that.

We have our own Shibboleths. Sometimes they are political words, theological expressions, institutional loyalties, leadership philosophies, social-media positions, or opinions about whatever controversy happens to be consuming us at the moment. We learn the vocabulary of our group, and sometimes a surprisingly small difference in language is enough for us to decide whether someone belongs with “us” or “them.”

Sadly, I can write someone off just because they don't say the Jesus words correctly- and I know God sits up there sometimes and says- "Who is the real man of faith? One with the right words, or one with the right heart?"

Once people become categories, it becomes easier to stop listening to them. Once they become opponents, it becomes easier to justify treating them in ways we would never treat a brother.

That does not mean disagreement is wrong, nor does it mean leaders should tolerate destructive behavior indefinitely. I still believe churches and organizations must confront gossip, persistent dissension, anonymous attacks, and efforts to undermine people through private campaigns. Matthew 18 remains a far healthier model than talking everywhere except to the person involved. Healthy organizations need honest disagreement, but healthy disagreement requires courage, specificity, charity, and accountability.

What I would add fifteen years later is that the person confronting discord must guard his heart every bit as carefully as the person creating it.

Ephraim needed repentance, but Jephthah needed restraint, and Israel needed something neither of them could ultimately provide. That is part of the larger tragedy of Judges. The book keeps showing us people doing what is right in their own eyes. Even its deliverers are deeply flawed. Victories are followed by failures, and eventually the external battles against Israel’s enemies give way to internal battles among Israelites themselves.

So if I were writing the old post again—and I suppose that is what I am doing—I would spend less time identifying “the Men of Ephraim” around me and more time asking what the passage exposes in me.

There are times when I have been Ephraim, too concerned with my place in the story, too willing to nurse a grievance or too quick to assume I understood another person’s motives. There are probably other times when I have been Jephthah, legitimately frustrated and perhaps even factually correct, but too ready to view the disagreement as a battle that needed to be won.

After fifteen more years, I am less interested in deciding which side of the Jordan I would have been standing on. I am more interested in why brothers were killing brothers at the river in the first place.

Perhaps that is the warning I missed the first time. The greatest danger in conflict is not always that we will lose. Sometimes the greater danger is that we will win, only to discover that somewhere along the way we began fighting the wrong people.

When I read these old posts, I am so tempted to hit delete- but that was who I was then... and that is OK. Maybe someone reading this will be encouraged to keep growing and allow time, Word, and Spirit to keep moving forward.....

Contributing to the Delinquency of a Culture

There is an old legal expression, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, that assigns responsibility beyond the person who actually commits the offense. The minor may have made the choice, but the law recognizes that choices do not always occur in isolation. Someone may have encouraged the behavior, provided the opportunity, supplied what was needed, or created an environment in which misconduct became easier and increasingly normal.

I have been thinking about that phrase lately, though in a somewhat different context.

Is it possible to contribute to the delinquency of a culture?

That question becomes more complicated the longer I consider it because culture is one of those things we routinely discuss as though it exists somewhere outside of us. We complain about what "the culture" celebrates, what social media has done to public conversation, how entertainment has changed, what technology is doing to children, how politics has become increasingly hostile, or how standards that once seemed reasonably settled can disappear within a generation.

There is certainly plenty worth examining in all of that. What bothers me, however, is how easily I can speak about culture as an observer when I am obviously one of its participants.

I live here too.

I consume the products, use the technology, follow the news, watch the games, listen to the music, carry the phone, scroll through the feeds, click the links, participate in the conversations and, on occasion, become irritated by strangers I have never met over subjects about which I probably know considerably less than I think I do. I can complain about our shortened attention spans and then reach for my phone during thirty seconds of inactivity. I can lament the superficiality of social media while paying attention to how many people viewed something I posted. I can criticize sensationalism while clicking on a headline precisely because it was sensational.

At some point it becomes difficult to maintain the fiction that culture is merely something happening around me.

I am contributing to it.

That realization creates an interesting problem for anyone attempting to take seriously the biblical instruction concerning our relationship with the world. John quotes Jesus rather plainly, "Do not love the world or the things in the world," and throughout Christian history believers have wrestled with what faithful obedience to that instruction should actually look like.

One solution has always been withdrawal. If the world is corrupting, create as much distance from it as possible. There is an understandable logic to that instinct, and there are certainly occasions when separation is both wise and necessary. Yet complete withdrawal creates its own theological problem because Jesus, in His prayer for His disciples in John 17, specifically says, "I do not ask that you take them out of the world." A few verses later He adds, "As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world."

Apparently, removal was never the assignment. Neither was assimilation.

The Christian is therefore placed in an uncomfortable position: sent deliberately into a world he is simultaneously warned not to love. We are expected to participate without being absorbed, to engage without surrendering discernment, and to influence an environment that is inevitably influencing us at the same time.

That has probably always been difficult, but our technological age has added another dimension to the problem. Most of us are no longer simply consumers of culture. We have become distributors of it.

For most of human history, relatively few people possessed the ability to broadcast an opinion to hundreds or thousands of others. Today we carry that capacity in our pockets. With almost no effort, we can promote an idea, circulate a rumor, celebrate an accomplishment, humiliate another person, recommend a book, spread misinformation, encourage a friend, share something beautiful, intensify an argument, or introduce hundreds of people to something they otherwise would never have encountered.

We are all, in some small way, publishers now. And publishing means contributing.

This is where I have begun thinking about the idea of adding to the noise. The phrase is usually used negatively, but perhaps the issue is not simply whether I am making noise. Participation is unavoidable, and silence itself can sometimes become a form of participation. There are moments when refusing to speak demonstrates wisdom, just as there are moments when refusing to speak demonstrates cowardice.

The more useful question may be what my participation is helping to amplify.

That question reaches farther than whether something is technically right or wrong. I can be correct about an issue and still contribute something unhealthy to the culture surrounding it. I can defend truth while behaving contemptuously toward people. I can criticize outrage while becoming outraged. I can oppose vulgarity using language and methods that gradually make me vulgar. I can become so preoccupied with defeating something that the thing I oppose begins determining the kind of person I am becoming.

Social media makes this particularly difficult because its machinery often rewards precisely what wisdom tells us to restrain. Anger travels quickly. Nuance rarely does. Certainty attracts more attention than humility, accusation more than careful inquiry, and controversy more than ordinary goodness. The temptation, therefore, is not simply to believe questionable things but to become the sort of person the system rewards.

Even our disapproval can become part of the machinery. We share the offensive video to demonstrate how offensive it is, repost the ridiculous statement so everyone can see how ridiculous people have become, and circulate the latest example of cultural decay while wondering why cultural decay receives so much attention.

We condemn the noise while helping increase its volume.

None of this means that Christians should retreat from public life, entertainment, technology, politics, education, business, athletics, art, or the countless other places where culture is made. If anything, the opposite seems closer to the biblical picture. Jesus sends His followers into the world, which suggests that presence is not an unfortunate consequence of being alive at the wrong time; it is part of the vocation.

The difficulty is learning how to be present without allowing the surrounding culture to establish all the terms of our presence.

Perhaps that requires changing some of the questions we ask.

Instead of asking only whether I am permitted to watch something, I might consider what repeated exposure to it is cultivating in me. Instead of asking whether an article confirms what I already believe, I might wonder whether sharing it contributes truth or merely reinforces my tribe. Instead of asking whether my criticism is justified, I might ask whether the manner in which I express it reflects the character I claim to value.

The same questions apply positively. What deserves amplification? What is worthy of attention? What kinds of conversations make people more thoughtful rather than merely more agitated? What music, writing, humor, art, teaching, friendship and public discourse remind us of things that are true, excellent, beautiful or humane?

Culture, after all, is not produced only in Hollywood studios, corporate boardrooms, news organizations, universities or Washington. It is produced around dinner tables and in classrooms, locker rooms, churches, offices, text threads and social-media feeds. It develops through countless decisions about what receives our attention and what does not, what earns our praise and what earns our silence, what we tolerate long enough to normalize and what we care enough about to resist.

Which brings me back to that strange legal phrase.

Perhaps contributing to the delinquency of a culture rarely looks dramatic. Most of us will never possess enough influence to change society in any obvious way. Our contribution will be much smaller than that, consisting largely of ordinary decisions whose significance is almost impossible to measure individually.

But that is probably how culture has always been formed.

We inherit something from those who came before us, live inside it for a while, alter it through millions of choices we scarcely notice, and eventually hand some version of it to those who come after us.

The question, then, is not whether we will contribute.

We already are.

The question worth asking is what we are adding to the noise—and what kind of culture those contributions are quietly helping to create.

All of this hits home tomorrow when I will see jayopsis music go live on Spotify......

Before Anyone Knew the Ending

Note: Christopher Vizzina will start tonight vs LSU and Arch Manning will start for Texas today as well. I'm excited to watch CV and I know what kind of person he is and WHO he trusts in. This is a cool memory as we get set for football.

On June 5, 2021, I took Christopher Vizzina to Clemson for a summer football camp.

CV was a rising junior quarterback at Briarwood Christian, and we already knew he had ability. He had the size, arm talent, athleticism, and temperament you look for at the position, but at that stage of the process, potential is still mostly that—potential. Summer camps are where players begin turning projections into evaluations, often while competing alongside dozens of other quarterbacks trying to do exactly the same thing.

CV had a great morning workout.

Good enough, as it turned out, that he was one of only a handful of quarterbacks who threw in both the morning and afternoon sessions. That was significant by itself. More repetitions meant more opportunities to be evaluated, particularly with Clemson's coaches watching closely.

Then the afternoon took an unexpected turn.

Arch Manning showed up.

Even then, the Manning name carried its own gravitational pull. Arch was already becoming one of the most discussed recruits in the country, and when he walked into the Clemson facility, there wasn't much mystery about who had arrived.

Eventually the quarterbacks moved into one-on-one work against defensive backs. CV and Arch ended up throwing in the same rotation, with another quarterback between them.

And something interesting began to happen.

A crowd gathered.

The Clemson coaches gathered.

Dabo Swinney was watching.

And CV and Arch started putting on a show.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was creating a record of the afternoon because I was texting a group of friends back home as the drill unfolded. Reading those messages now is almost like finding an old play-by-play sheet.

“Both are 3 for 3 so far in last drill.”

A few minutes later:

“Both 4 for 4.”

A beautiful throw was dropped. Both moved to 4-for-5.

CV went to 6-for-7, then 6-for-8 with two drops, then 7-for-9.

One of my friends texted:

“Dabo watching all this part.”

He was.

So were the other Clemson coaches.

What had begun as another camp drill was becoming something different. There was energy around it now. Coaches were congratulating both quarterbacks after throws, and the crowd was responding to the competition.

At one point, Dabo called for a double move.

CV hit it for a touchdown.

My sophisticated scouting report to the group back home:

“Dabo just called a dbl move that CV hit for TD — everyone wooped lol.”

The numbers kept accumulating.

CV: 9-of-11.

Then 9-of-12 after his first bad throw.

Arch: 7-of-12.

CV hit a speed-out to go 10-of-13.

There was even a third quarterback caught between the two of them in the rotation. Since I didn't know his name and had noticed him wearing a distinctive wide-brimmed hat, my texts simply referred to him as “Brim Hat.” After he threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown, my entire report consisted of:

“BRIM HAT pick 6.”

We eventually discovered his name when he handed out a recruiting card: Aliam Appler from Dutch Fork High School.

But the real drama remained the two quarterbacks on either side of him.

Arch had a bad throw and went to 7-of-13.

Then came one of my favorite texts of the afternoon:

“CV hits pearl in perfect rhythm 11-14.”

Arch moved to 8-of-14.

CV missed badly: 11-of-15.

Arch answered with a deep touchdown: 9-of-15.

“ARCH bomb for TD.”

Arch completed another to move to 10-of-16.

CV finished his sequence 12-of-16.

Then the bell sounded.

My final text:

“And the Bell sounds — what a show!”

____________

Five years later, that afternoon looks very different to me.

Not because the throws have changed, or because my unofficial statistics suddenly carry some great historical importance. They don't.

What has changed is that now we know what happened next.

Arch Manning went on to become one of the most closely followed recruits in the country and eventually landed at Texas.

CV's recruitment took off as well. Clemson offered him, he committed, and eventually he returned to the very place where that memorable afternoon had unfolded.

But his story didn't immediately produce the glamorous ending we sometimes expect in recruiting.

He had to wait.

For three seasons, CV worked behind Cade Klubnik. In an era of college football when the transfer portal offers quarterbacks an increasingly easy escape from waiting, he stayed. He developed. He competed. He kept working.

And now, on Saturday night, September 5, 2026, Christopher Vizzina will walk into Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge as the starting quarterback for Clemson against LSU.

Arch Manning is now the starting quarterback at Texas.

Both made it.

And that is what makes those old text messages so fascinating to me.

There is an almost irresistible temptation, when looking backward, to impose the future upon the past. Once we know how something turned out, we begin remembering it as though the ending were somehow inevitable.

It wasn't.

On June 5, 2021, there were no guarantees.

There were no college depth charts. No starting jobs. No certainty about where either quarterback would eventually play. CV didn't even have a Clemson offer yet.

There were simply two very talented high-school quarterbacks standing a few yards apart at a summer camp, competing in front of a growing crowd.

One of them happened to carry the most recognizable last name in football.

The other was the kid I had driven up from Briarwood.

And he belonged.

That's probably what I remember most clearly.

CV didn't seem overwhelmed by the moment or distracted by the attention surrounding Arch. If anything, the competition appeared to sharpen him. He simply kept stepping into the rotation and throwing.

Completion. Next rep. Touchdown. Next rep. Bad throw. Forget it.

Next rep.

There is something wonderfully honest about competition before anyone knows the ending. Reputation matters less once the ball is snapped. Recruiting rankings can't complete a deep out. A famous last name can't read the coverage for you. Eventually somebody blows the whistle, a defensive back lines up across from a receiver, and the quarterback has to take the snap and make the throw.

That afternoon, both of them did.

Five years later, they are doing it on a much larger stage.

Saturday night, when CV takes his first snap as Clemson's starting quarterback in Death Valley, Louisiana, I suspect my mind will drift for just a moment to another summer afternoon in another Clemson facility.

Turns out, it was just beginning.

POST SCRIPT (9/7/26)

Postscript — The Process Continues

Five years after that Clemson camp, CV finally got the moment he had worked and waited for: walking into Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge as Clemson's starting quarterback.

It didn't go the way any of us hoped.

LSU was very good, Clemson struggled across the board, and Death Valley provided exactly the kind of hostile environment its reputation promises. After a nearly two-hour weather delay, more than 100,000 people were there to watch LSU take control early and eventually win 51-10. LSU finished with 644 yards of offense in a game that became difficult for Clemson in virtually every phase.

CV finished 10-of-16 for 83 yards, completing 62.5 percent of his passes. He didn't throw a touchdown and had one interception—the costly first-quarter pick-six that helped LSU turn an early 10-3 lead into 17-3. Clemson eventually played freshman Tait Reynolds as well before CV returned later in the game.

It wasn't the debut we had imagined. But perhaps this is where that old story from 2021 becomes even more relevant.

I've watched CV long enough to know that his story has never really been about one afternoon, one recruiting ranking, one depth chart—or now, one difficult Saturday night. It has been about the process.

Before the game, CV had talked about wanting his composure and poise to be characteristics people saw in him. He also spoke openly about his journey at Clemson: “It's all in the Lord's plan, and I've been trusting that.” and I thought some of the best evidence of that composure came after the LSU game.

There was no hiding from what happened. On the interception, CV simply acknowledged that he never saw the defender and called it a throw he wanted back. That's what quarterbacks have to do. Own the mistake. Learn from it. Go back to work.

And I was proud of him. Not because he played a perfect game. He didn't. Not because Clemson won. They didn't.

I'm proud because there is something revealing about watching a young man handle a night when the dream doesn't unfold the way he pictured it. Success tells us something about a player; disappointment often tells us considerably more.

CV waited three years for this opportunity. Now he's experienced the other side of getting it—the hard part. The film won't be pleasant in places. There will be corrections to make, criticism to absorb and another week of competition ahead. Dabo Swinney said Sunday that Clemson will evaluate both quarterbacks and “reset, and go get better.” That's football and life

The process doesn't stop simply because you finally get the opportunity you've been waiting for. Sometimes getting the opportunity simply begins another part of the process.

Keep working, CV. We'll keep watching the process.

Belongs In the Ring

Idols to Ashes- Isaiah 44

Isaiah 44 contains one of Scripture’s most penetrating examinations of idolatry, partly because Isaiah does not approach the subject merely by prohibiting it. Instead, he studies it. He follows the process by which an idol comes into existence, examines the assumptions required to believe in it, and then exposes the remarkable contradiction at the center of the entire enterprise. The result is a passage that is theological, satirical, and surprisingly psychological.

The larger context matters. Isaiah 40–48 repeatedly contrasts Yahweh with the gods of the nations, particularly in anticipation of Israel’s deliverance from Babylon. The question is not simply whether Israel will avoid religious statues; the larger issue concerns the identity and sovereignty of God. Who governs history? Who announces what is to come? Who creates? Who saves? Who has the authority to call Israel His own?

Isaiah 44 answers those questions emphatically. The Lord identifies Himself as Israel’s King and Redeemer, “the first” and “the last,” declaring, “besides me there is no god” (44:6). What follows is therefore not an isolated lesson about pagan craftsmanship. Isaiah places two radically different claims to deity beside one another: the God who creates, speaks, knows, governs, and redeems, and the god who must first be manufactured before anyone can worship him.

That contrast is what makes Isaiah’s description of the idol-maker so devastating.

Beginning around verse 9, Isaiah slows the narrative down and allows us to watch idolatry being constructed.

A craftsman selects his material. Another man works with tools. Measurements are taken. Lines are drawn. Human features are incorporated into the design. The finished product is intentionally made “like the beauty of a man” so that it can occupy a house.

The irony is deliberate. Everything about the idol demonstrates dependence.

Someone must choose its material. Someone must design it. Someone must shape it. Someone must determine what it looks like. Someone must decide where it will stand.

Yet when the process is complete, the relationship is mysteriously reversed: the maker becomes the worshiper, and the object he has fashioned becomes his supposed deliverer.

Isaiah then pushes the absurdity further by tracing the material back to its source. The man cuts down a tree—or plants one and waits for the rain to nourish it—and eventually divides the wood according to its usefulness. Part becomes fuel. He burns it, warms himself, and prepares food over it.

The remainder becomes his god.

The point is sharper than simply saying that wooden idols are powerless. Isaiah wants us to notice that there is no ontological difference between the wood in the fireplace and the wood on the altar. The distinction exists entirely in the mind of the worshiper.

One portion produces heat because it burns.

The other supposedly produces salvation because the man has decided that it is sacred.

That is why his eventual prayer is so tragic:

“Deliver me, for you are my god!”

The craftsman has assigned ultimate significance to an object whose entire history he knows. He remembers the tree. He held the axe. He produced the shavings. He watched part of it burn. Nevertheless, he now petitions the remainder for deliverance.

Isaiah is diagnosing more than ignorance.

He is diagnosing self-deception.

Verse 20 may contain the key to the entire section:

“He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray.”

That description moves Isaiah's argument from the workshop into the human heart.

The idolater's fundamental problem is not a shortage of information. He possesses enough evidence to recognize the contradiction. What he lacks is the capacity—or perhaps the willingness—to follow that evidence to its conclusion.

Isaiah says that he cannot bring himself to ask:

“Is there not a lie in my right hand?”

This is an extraordinarily perceptive description of human behavior. We often imagine deception as something imposed upon us from outside, but Scripture recognizes a more complicated phenomenon: human beings can participate in maintaining their own illusions, particularly when those illusions protect something they deeply desire.

The idol is attractive precisely because it is manageable. It does not arrive with an independent will. It makes no demands except those its creator assigns to it. Its boundaries are predictable because the worshiper established them. In that sense, idolatry offers the appearance of transcendence without requiring surrender to anyone genuinely transcendent.

The idolater wants a god, but preferably one who remains under human management.

This helps explain why Isaiah 44 remains relevant even where carved images have largely disappeared.

A modern idol need not be an object of formal religious devotion. Biblically understood, idolatry occurs whenever something within creation is assigned a weight of meaning, security, identity, or hope that properly belongs to the Creator.

This is why perfectly legitimate things can acquire idolatrous functions.

Career, financial security, institutional success, reputation, political influence, family, athletic achievement, intellectual respectability, physical appearance, and even ministry are not intrinsically idolatrous. In fact, many are legitimate goods and may properly be received with gratitude.

The diagnostic question is not simply, Do I have this thing? or even, Do I enjoy this thing?

A better question is: What am I requiring this thing to provide?

If professional success must establish my worth, success has acquired a theological function.

If financial resources must guarantee that nothing beyond my control will threaten me, money has become more than stewardship; it has become a doctrine of providence.

If reputation must continually assure me that I am significant, public approval has begun functioning as justification.

If an institution's success determines whether I possess meaning or value, the institution has quietly become part of my identity in a way it was never designed to bear.

This is where Isaiah's image of the craftsman becomes remarkably contemporary. Human beings remain capable of constructing something, investing themselves in it, and eventually depending upon the very thing they constructed to tell them who they are.

We manufacture the object and then grant the object authority over us. The ancient craftsman did it with timber. Modern people generally use more sophisticated materials.

There may be another dimension to Isaiah's satire that deserves attention. The idol is not merely powerless; it is controllable.

The craftsman determines its dimensions, appearance, location, and ultimately its existence. This provides a revealing contrast with the God who speaks throughout Isaiah 44.

Yahweh cannot be constructed, domesticated, assigned or even summoned when we need it.

He does not derive His identity from Israel; Israel derives its identity from Him.

This explains the repeated language of creation in the chapter:

“Thus says the LORD, who made you, who formed you from the womb and will help you…”

The idol is something Israel forms. Israel is someone God formed.

Those two propositions represent fundamentally different religions.

One allows human beings to construct meaning and then sacralize their construction. The other requires them to receive their existence, identity, purpose, and redemption from outside themselves.

The biblical God is therefore more comforting than an idol, but He is also considerably more disruptive. An idol can be modified when our preferences change. The living God reserves the right to modify us.

If Isaiah 44 ended with the exposure of idolatry, it would be a brilliant critique of human foolishness. But the passage does not end there.

After describing the craftsman who cannot recognize the lie in his own hand, God addresses Israel again:

“Remember these things, O Jacob, and Israel, for you are my servant; I formed you; you are my servant; O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me.”

Then comes the remarkable statement of verse 22:

“I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you.”

This changes the character of the passage. God's exposure of idolatry is not merely prosecutorial; it is redemptive.

He exposes the lie because He intends to recover the worshiper.

“Return to me, for I have redeemed you.”

The imperative rests upon divine action.

Israel's hope does not lie in becoming sufficiently perceptive to escape idolatry, nor in demonstrating enough religious discipline to earn restoration. God grounds the summons to return in what He Himself has done.

That pattern anticipates a gospel logic that runs throughout Scripture: divine grace does not merely reward repentance; grace creates the context in which genuine repentance becomes possible.

Perhaps Isaiah's most useful diagnostic question remains the simplest one:

“Is there not a lie in my right hand?”

I have often been amused that my I-phone is strangely IDOL- shaped

That question deserves more reflection than we usually give it.

Song Link: Idols to Ashes

Notes from past blog posts on Idols

‘Sensory Organ Malfunction Imagery’ is the Biblical language for idolatry. We become callous and hardened toward God because we are worshiping other things. As a result, we grow less sensitive to our God and His ways. He is foreign to us and He begins to fade. We do not hear Him, we do not see Him, and we do not speak of Him. When we do think of Him, it is often as an expedient. We feel the need to tag Him as a superstitious ritual in solving a mess. But there is no sense of His Lordship and no heart desire to seek Him.

Sadly, culture has taught us how to live without God. In our media-model culture, God is seldom referred to as a part of everyday life.
In stark contrast to men and women of the Scriptures, we sense only weakly the presence of the Creator. The saints of old had a daily awareness, but we are so immersed into the media view of world that we compartmentalize Him and allow Him to speak only on Sundays or in a Bible Study. We live with little or no sensitivity to God working in our life.
I like watching the TV show “24”, but there has never been one reference of a spiritual nature in the many seasons of that show. Entire ‘days’ of death and drama take place with no perception of the afterlife, no foundation for morals, no prayer, no Bible, no real hope. Where is spirituality? It is becoming more unnatural to see an active God in the moment-by-moment details of life. We definitely don’t talk that way. It has been said that worldliness is what any culture does to make sin seem normal and righteousness seem strange. We go into life as blind as the idol makers of Isaiah’s day. The gods we serve are empty of power and we curse the heavens because God won’t show Himself. Who moved?

WHAT WE REVERE WE RESEMBLE EITHER TO RUIN OR RESTORATION
G.K. Beale

“At the core, idolatry is trying to control life and manage life by trying to make God controllable: if you can get God to do what you want by getting his attention or through some sacrificial service, then perhaps life will turn out the way you want it to. This is one of the root beliefs of pagan religion. It is telling to ask how much pagan religion is still in the confines of the church.” Bill Delvaux


GOD MADE US TO ENJOY HIM, ACKNOWLEDGE HIM AND WORSHIP HIM.
HE GETS GLORY AND WE GET JOY.

"We are more spiritual than we even know.”

“I ordinarily begin speaking about sin to a young, urban, non-Christian like this:
Sin isn’t only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than on God. Whatever we build our life on will drive us and enslave us. Sin is primarily idolatry.” Tim Keller

As we list modern day idols, simple state what are the ‘good things’
that we have made into ‘god things”?


Questions to Help Us Identify Idols:
Most afraid of? What are you afraid of losing?
Long for most passionately?
Where do you go for comfort?
What media-advertisements pull your heart strings?
What do you complain about the most?
What angers you the most?
What makes you happiest?
How do you explain yourself to other people?
What has made you be angry at God?
What do you brag about?
What do you want to have? What one thing?
What do you sacrifice the most for?
Whose approval matters?
What comfort do you treasure?

The Words That Found Me- Closing August

I didn't set out to spend August collecting strange words.

Apparently, I did anyway.

Over the past several weeks, certain words have stopped me in my tracks—some old, some obscure, some familiar but carrying histories I had never really considered.

Septennium. 7/31
Vicissitude. 8/3
Serein. 8/6
Invidious. 8/20
Pandemonium. 8/27
Ambivalence. 7/29

That is a strange little vocabulary list. In some ways bizarre that they grabbed me- it's not like I was reading a dictionary!

I have written about most of them separately, without much thought that they belonged together. One came from reading. Another surfaced while thinking about getting older. Another helped me describe something I had experienced in leadership but never quite had a word for. Pandemonium sent me back to Milton and then forward again into the way a magnificent literary word eventually became our ordinary description for chaos.

But now, as August comes to an end, I wonder if the words were having a conversation with each other before I realized I was listening.

Maybe they even tell a story.

Septennium is about time.

Seven years. A measurement that seems arbitrary until you begin dividing a life by it. Childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, marriage, children, career, middle age, grandchildren—life somehow becomes easier to see when we stop measuring it only in birthdays and start noticing its seasons.

But time never stands still.

That brings me to vicissitude.

Life turns.

The word comes from the idea of succession and changing circumstances—the rising and falling, gaining and losing, arriving and departing that constitute an ordinary human life. We spend an enormous amount of energy trying to establish permanence in a world that stubbornly refuses to provide it.

Jobs change. Bodies change. Families change. Friendships change. Institutions change. Dreams change.

And yet God does not.

Perhaps that is why His immutability has become more precious to me as I have grown older. When almost everything else is subject to vicissitude, there is profound comfort in knowing that the One holding the story is not.

Then there is ambivalence.

I used to think ambivalence meant that you couldn't make up your mind.

I don't anymore. Sometimes ambivalence is simply what happens when you have lived long enough to discover that two apparently contradictory things can both be true.

I can miss an earlier season of life without wanting to return to it. I can celebrate getting older and occasionally mourn being young.

Perhaps maturity is not finally resolving all those tensions. Perhaps it is learning to carry them faithfully.

Which brings me to invidious.

After years in leadership, I finally found a word for a particular kind of burden: those circumstances where no available choice leaves everyone satisfied. Sometimes every wire on the bomb looks important, but eventually somebody has to decide whether to clip the green one or the yellow one.

And if nothing explodes, most people will never know there was a bomb.

That is part of leadership, but it is also part of life.

I found out today- that particular post will be published in a CESA journal... look for ward to seeing it.

Wisdom does not always reveal the painless choice. Sometimes it simply gives us enough courage to make the necessary one and enough humility to live with its consequences.

Put enough of those decisions together, add deadlines, personalities, disappointments, responsibilities, surprises, failures, victories, traffic, bills, football games, family schedules, national news and whatever happened before breakfast—and eventually we arrive at another wonderful word:

Pandemonium.

Milton coined it as the capital of Hell in Paradise Lost—the place of all demons.

We turned it into a word for Tuesday morning.

There is something almost humorous about that linguistic journey, but perhaps something revealing as well. Human life can feel chaotic. Sometimes spectacularly so.

We would like the story to move neatly from Point A to Point B.

Instead, there are interruptions, reversals, detours and circumstances we never saw coming.

Septenniums filled with vicissitudes.

Vicissitudes producing ambivalence.

Ambivalence complicated by invidious choices.

All of it occasionally descending into pandemonium.

That would be a rather depressing vocabulary lesson if there weren't one word left.

Serein.

A gentle rain falling from what appears to be a clear evening sky.

Of all the words that found me this month, perhaps that is the one I want to keep closest.

Because grace often feels like serein. It arrives where circumstances don't seem capable of producing it.

And perhaps that is the connection I was looking for without knowing I was looking for one.

Life is not meant to be mastered.

We move through its septenniums and endure its vicissitudes. We learn to live honestly with ambivalence. We make invidious decisions when responsibility requires them. Occasionally we look around and wonder how everything became pandemonium.

But above all of it remains the God who does not change.

The same God who has been faithful in every season behind us is already present in every season ahead.

I don't know what words will find me next month.

I suspect there will be more turns. There will certainly be decisions. There may even be a little pandemonium.

But after sixty-two years, I am becoming less interested in demanding a clear sky.

I am learning instead to watch for the rain.

Sometimes grace falls like serein.

Note: all of this spilled over into my music as well

Check it out sometime: Jayopsis on SoundCloud

Pandemonium

Pandemonium 

We use the word casually now.

A school cafeteria gets too loud, an airport shuts down in bad weather, traffic snarls after an accident, or a crowd suddenly loses whatever fragile organization had been holding it together. We look at the confusion and say, “It was pandemonium.”

It is a wonderfully useful word. It sounds like what it means—noise, disorder, movement, competing voices, nobody quite in control. But that isn't what the word originally meant.

Before pandemonium became something that happens when a thousand people try to leave a stadium at once, Pandæmonium was a place.

On my kindle, I am re-reading sections Paradise Lost at 1:30 AM to help me sleep. It isn't working. But the poetry is amazing!

I once had a friend that said, "If you are having trouble sleeping, open your Bible and the devil will shut your eyes" .... all it does is get me stirring, I long for my brain to turn off at night but the older I get the less that happens.

Sometimes my spiritual insomnia is just a heart cry:

 "Arise, cry out in the night, as the watches of the night begin; pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your children, " Lamentations 2:19

But here I am, getting too much blue light late at night and reading Milton.

Paradise Lost, published in 1667, is his epic poem that explores the cosmic conflict between good and evil, the Fall of Man, and the consequences of disobedience. 

I once heard that Milton was upset that readers were drawn to his portrayal of Satan in the poem Paradise Lost. While this isn’t directly confirmed, it’s widely discussed because Satan is depicted as a complex and charismatic character, leading some to view him as the tragic hero of the story. Writers like William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley even suggested that Milton unintentionally sympathized with Satan due to how vividly he depicted him.

Though Milton, a devout Puritan, likely intended Satan to be the villain, his poetic skill made Satan an intriguing figure. This reaction might have troubled Milton, but it also shows how effectively he gave depth to even his most evil character. Ultimately, Satan’s temporary allure in the poem serves to underscore the destructive nature of sin and the triumph of God’s justice in the end.

PANDEMONIUM

Among its many vivid and memorable scenes is the description of Pandemonium, the capital of Hell. Milton not only creates a place of infernal grandeur but also coins a new term, "Pandemonium," which has since entered the English lexicon to describe chaos and disorder. The origin of this term reflects Milton’s genius for blending classical influences with Christian theology, inventing language that captures the epic scale of his narrative.

The word combines the Greek root "pan-" meaning "all" or "every," and "daemon," which means "demon" or "evil spirit." Thus, "Pandemonium" literally means "all demons" or "assembly of demons," and has come to signify any place or situation of wild disorder and confusion.

Pandemonium appears prominently in Book I of Paradise Lost. After Satan and his fellow fallen angels are cast into Hell, Satan rallies his troops and leads them to build a grand palace, which becomes the center of their new kingdom. Milton describes the construction of Pandemonium with a mix of awe and horror, emphasizing its vastness and the demonic energy that brings it into being. This palace is the infernal counterpart to Heaven’s courts, and Milton's depiction draws on architectural imagery reminiscent of classical epics and Renaissance art.

One of the most famous passages describing Pandemonium reads: "Anon out of the earth a fabric huge / Rose like an exhalation, with the sound / Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet, / Built like a temple, where pilasters round / Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid / With golden architrave; nor did there want / Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven." (Book I, lines 710-716)

Milton contrasts the beauty and harmony of Pandemonium’s architecture with the evil that it represents. The palace is both magnificent and grotesque, symbolizing the seductive allure of sin and rebellion. The grandeur of Pandemonium is undercut by the reality of its purpose: it is a place of darkness, deceit, and rebellion against God. 

Another notable passage comes when Satan surveys his kingdom and convenes his council: "A solemn council forthwith to be held / At Pandemonium, the high capital / Of Satan and his peers: their summons called / From every band and squared regiment / By place or choice the worthiest; they anon / With hundreds and with thousands trooping came / Attended: all access was thronged, the gates / And porches wide, but chief the spacious hall / (Though like a covered field, where champions bold / Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan’s chair / Defied the best of Paynim chivalry / To mortal combat or career with lance), / Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air, / Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings." (Book I, lines 752-765)

The chaotic energy of Hell’s inhabitants and the demonic grandeur of their new capital underscore the disorder and confusion that Pandemonium represents. The chaotic gathering of demons mirrors the turmoil of Hell itself, reinforcing Milton's larger theme of the destructiveness of rebellion against divine order.

The term "Pandemonium" has evolved far beyond its original context in Paradise Lost. 

Today, it is commonly used to describe situations of wild chaos, disorder, or uproar. This reflects the inherent meaning of the word as Milton intended it: a place of tumult and rebellion, a kingdom of chaos ruled by Satan and his demons. 

I think I first heard the term at a wrestling match in the old Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham in the 1970's- Tojo Yamamoto hit his opponent with a chair and "PANDEMONIUM" broke out according to the exuberant announcer!

The concept of Pandemonium can also be applied to political scenarios where disorder and confusion reign, often due to power struggles, rebellion, or corruption. 

It resonates in everyday life, describing anything from the chaotic atmosphere of a busy marketplace to the frantic rush of commuters during rush hour. Additionally, it can be used metaphorically to describe internal chaos—moments of intense mental or emotional turmoil. 

Anxiety (and insomnia) is ultimately a seat near the palace of Satan.

What part of Pandemonium is dominating me right now?

DARK LIGHT

Milton also uses the concept of "darkness visible" or "dark light" as a way to describe the unique and paradoxical nature of Hell. This imagery reflects the inversion of divine light and the corrupted, fallen state of Satan and his followers. "Dark light" serves as a metaphor for the perversion of heavenly truth and goodness, highlighting the spiritual and moral blindness of the demonic realm.

The phrase "darkness visible" appears in Book I when Milton describes Hell after Satan and his followers are cast out of Heaven:

"No light, but rather darkness visible / Served only to discover sights of woe, / Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace / And rest can never dwell, hope never comes / That comes to all; but torture without end." (Book I, lines 62-66)

Milton paints Hell as a place where darkness paradoxically reveals the horrors within, a realm where there is no true light, only an oppressive, shadowy presence that allows the damned to see the misery around them. This "dark light" is not the absence of light, but a twisted version of it—a light that only serves to illuminate suffering and despair.

I wrote about this in length in a previous post: 2018 Spiritual Light and Darkness

This concept reflects the broader theme in Paradise Lost of Satan’s inversion of everything good and holy.

 While divine light represents God’s truth, wisdom, and goodness, the light in Hell is a corrupted version, symbolizing the fall from grace and the perversion of divine order. Milton’s depiction of "dark light" emphasizes that Hell is not just a place of physical torment but a spiritual condition—a state of existence cut off from God’s presence, where light no longer signifies hope or life but instead magnifies the darkness of separation from divine grace.

In the broader context of the poem, this imagery contributes to the portrayal of Satan as a figure who once basked in the true light of Heaven but now exists in a perverse and distorted reality. The light of Hell, like Satan’s once-glorious nature, has become twisted and corrupted, serving as a constant reminder of the fallen angels’ loss of heavenly splendor.

Ultimately, Pandemonium is more than just a place; it is a state of being—a symbol of the consequences of rejecting divine order and truth. However, the Bible provides a contrast to the darkness and confusion that Pandemonium represents. 

In Colossians 1:13, it is written, “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.” Through Christ, believers are delivered from the chaos of sin and rebellion and brought into the Kingdom of Light, a place of order, peace, and redemption.

I just want to get some sleep......

other amazing lines in the poem:

When Satan first wakes up after being cast down: This passage captures Satan’s realization of his fall after he wakes up in Hell. He recognizes the shift from the glory of Heaven to the horrors of the infernal pit:

“Is this the region, this the soil, the clime, / Said then the lost Archangel, this the seat / That we must change for Heaven, this mournful gloom / For that celestial light? Be it so, since he / Who now is sovereign can dispose and bid / What shall be right: farthest from him is best, / Whom reason hath equaled, force hath made supreme / Above his equals. Farewell happy fields, / Where joy forever dwells: hail horrors, hail / Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell / Receive thy new possessor; one who brings / A mind not to be changed by place or time. / The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” (Book I, lines 242-255)

When Satan sees Man for the first time: This is from Book IV, when Satan first sees Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. His reaction is a mix of envy, bitterness, and inner torment as he witnesses their innocence and happiness:

“Aside the Devil turned / For envy, yet with jealous leer malign / Eyed them askance, and to himself thus plained: / ‘Sight hateful, sight tormenting! Thus these two / Imparadised in one another’s arms / The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill / Of bliss on bliss, while I to Hell am thrust, / Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire, / Amongst our other torments not the least, / Still unfulfilled with pain of longing pines.’” (Book IV, lines 502-511)

“Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear / Touched lightly; for no falsehood can endure / Touch of celestial temper, but returns / To its own likeness, and a heaven-born face / Unveils its true nature. As when the night / Has dimmed the sky and obscured the stars, / A sudden light breaks through the clouds, and the sun / Reveals a brighter day than that before, / So when the angel touched the spirit of man, / He felt its true nature. A kind of joy / From the sight of these innocent beings arose, / And he knew he was a lost and fallen soul.” (Book IV, lines 497-509)

In this passage, Satan’s initial reaction is one of awe and wonder at the beauty and perfection of humanity, which contrasts sharply with his own fallen state. However, his admiration quickly turns to envy and hatred as he reflects on his own suffering and loss:

“So much the more / His hate, and the more to hate the more / His hate. Envy and pride, those twin-born foes, / The new-born ones, the powerful hands of heaven, / Moved him to wrath; and wrath, revenge, and spite / The measureless excess of his revenge, / And unapproachable of hope, thus spake: / ‘O hated, yoke of heaven, eternal, born / Of one who sits above the Heavens’ height, / And more to be despised, more to be cursed / The false exultation of their bliss, / My eyes will never see again. In shame / They shall suffer, in anguish and in sorrow / Forevermore, and I shall evermore / Be grieved and furious at my own expense.’” (Book IV, lines 511-522)

Satan’s famous rally of the troops to rebel: After gathering the fallen angels, Satan gives a rousing speech to incite them to continue their rebellion against God, emphasizing their power and determination despite their fall:

“What though the field be lost? / All is not lost—the unconquerable will, / And study of revenge, immortal hate, / And courage never to submit or yield: / And what is else not to be overcome? / That Glory never shall his wrath or might / Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace / With suppliant knee, and deify his power, / Who from the terror of this arm so late / Doubted his empire—that were low indeed, / That were an ignominy and shame beneath / This downfall; since by fate the strength of gods, / And this empyreal substance, cannot fail; / Since through experience of this great event / In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced, / We may with more successful hope resolve / To wage by force or guile eternal war / Irreconcilable to our grand foe, / Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy / Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven.’” (Book I, lines 105-124)

And there is something deeply ironic about Pandemonium as well.

Satan has wanted freedom from God. He has rejected the hierarchy of Heaven and refused the place of a creature beneath his Creator. His famous determination is that it would be preferable to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

Milton's Hell isn't interesting merely because it is frightening. What makes it fascinating is that the fallen creatures build something there. Rebellion has architecture.

That thought stayed with me because sin is often imagined primarily as destruction. Certainly it destroys, but human beings rarely experience their own rebellion that way. We build things with it. We construct explanations, identities, philosophies, defenses, ambitions, and entire little kingdoms in which our own desires make perfect sense.

We don't usually announce, “I would like to destroy the proper order of things.”

We say, “I should get to decide.”

That sounds considerably more reasonable. Until everyone says it. Then we have pandemonium.

Perhaps that is why the modern meaning of the word seems strangely appropriate. Over the centuries, Milton's proper name escaped the pages of Paradise Lost. Pandæmonium became pandemonium, and eventually the capital of Hell became our ordinary word for uproar, confusion, and chaos.

We lost the devil but kept the sound.

That line became important to me while working on the song.

We no longer need to picture fallen angels gathered beneath Satan's throne when we hear the word. We picture traffic. Crowds. Shouting. Confusion. A room in which everybody is talking and nobody is listening.

Yet I wonder whether the distance between those two meanings is really as great as it appears.

There is a theological problem beneath the noise.

Christian theology has always understood sin as something deeper than breaking individual rules. At its root is a disordering of what ought to be rightly ordered. The creature places himself where the Creator belongs. My desires become authoritative because they are my desires. My judgment becomes final because it is my judgment.

The throne doesn't have to be large - It just has to be mine.

That makes Milton's Pandæmonium uncomfortable, because it is much easier to read Paradise Lost while keeping Satan safely at literary distance. There he is: magnificent, proud, ruined, defiant. We can study his rebellion almost clinically.

Sadly- I know that voice.

I will decide what is right for me.

My life belongs to me.

These aren't the screams of demons in some distant infernal palace. They are remarkably ordinary sentences.

And if every person becomes sovereign, we eventually arrive at the modern meaning of Milton's old word: competing wills, competing truths, competing kingdoms, competing thrones. 

Counterfeit light may describe rebellion better than darkness does. Sin rarely presents itself to us as obviously evil. Pride can look like strength. Selfishness can masquerade as self-preservation. Vengeance can call itself justice. Greed can become ambition. Autonomy can call itself freedom.

So the imagery behind the song gradually became a mixture of Milton's infernal city and our modern one—ancient architecture dissolving into skyscrapers, fiery roads becoming highways, the throne of the rebel king becoming a million smaller thrones.

There is, however, an important place where the Christian story parts company with Satan's story.

We are rebels, but we are rebels to whom mercy is offered.

The gospel does not merely tell us that our little kingdoms are badly managed and that Christ can help us improve them. It announces another King altogether. Repentance therefore involves something far more profound than cleaning up the disorder.

It means surrendering the throne. That is difficult because the throne is exactly what we wanted.

We wanted sovereignty and received isolation. We wanted autonomy and discovered disorder. We wanted the freedom to define good for ourselves and found ourselves endlessly negotiating between millions of other people demanding the same privilege.

We wanted our kingdoms.

And we got them! And it is ........

click on title to listen...

Pandemonium

Verse 1
Heaven shook and the rebels fell,
Still dreaming of a throne in Hell.
So out of fire they raised a hall,
A kingdom for the proud who'd fall.
A crown was set, a council called,
Beneath the light that wasn't light—
And Milton gave that palace walls,
And gave the place a name that night.

Pre-Chorus
Better to reign, the boast had run,
Than bow the knee to anyone.
But look what kingdoms become
When every servant wants the throne.

Chorus
Pandemonium—
Every voice becomes its own,
Every heart demands a throne,
Every will says, "Mine alone,"
Till nothing can be ruled.
Pandemonium—
Freedom with no higher claim,
Fire with no warmth in the flame,
Hell was more than just a place—
It was what rebellion made.
Pandemonium.

Verse 2
The centuries rolled, the word came down,
Lost the devil, kept the sound.
Now it's traffic, crowds and stadiums,
Sirens, shouting, things gone wrong.
We say it laughing, shake our heads,
For noise that rises, order gone—
Never thinking underneath
An older meaning lingers on.

Pre-Chorus
For chaos isn't always loud,
Sometimes it wears a quiet crown.
A million kingdoms, side by side,
Each one saying, "I decide."

Chorus
Pandemonium—
Every voice becomes its own,
Every heart demands a throne,
Every will says, "Mine alone,"
Till nothing can be ruled.
Pandemonium—
Freedom with no higher claim,
Fire with no warmth in the flame,
Hell was more than just a place—
It was what rebellion made.
Pandemonium.

Bridge
I read the poem like ancient war,
Angels falling, Heaven's door,
Satan seated on his throne—
A ruined king who'd have his own.
Then somewhere in those burning lines
I recognized a voice like mine:
No hand above me, no command,
My life, my throne, my promised land.
And suddenly that distant room
Was closer than I wanted to assume.

Chorus
Pandemonium—
Not just fire beneath the ground,
Not just chaos, smoke and sound,
It's the kingdom I have found
Whenever I would rule.
Pandemonium—
Every heart can build a throne,
Every rebel wants his own,
Till the King we would not serve
Is the only King who saves.
From Pandemonium.

Outro
Milton gave the place a name,
We kept the word and lost the flame.
But every heart that wants the throne
Still builds a kingdom of its own.