THE GATES OF HELL DO NOT FEAR OUR SPREADSHEETS

We learned to count everything–except what counts. 

The Bus and the Body Count: A Cautionary Tale

In the early 2000s, there was no hotter ticket in evangelicalism than Mars Hill Church in Seattle. In fact, Christianity Today chronicled the saga of this church in their podcast, “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill.” 

Mars Hill was the epitome of the "We Build" model—aggressive, culturally relevant, and exploding with numerical growth. At its helm was Mark Driscoll, a leader with a preacher’s gift and a CEO’s ruthlessness. The metrics were staggering: 15,000 weekly attendees, a global podcast audience, and a brand that seemed invincible.

But beneath the hood of this high-performance vehicle, the engine was running on a toxic fuel mix of narcissism and utility. Driscoll famously described the church not as a body or a family, but as a bus. He told his leaders that the bus had a destination, and if anyone got in the way, the bus would run them over. "There is a pile of bodies behind the bus," he once said, "and by God’s grace, it’ll be a mountain by the time we’re done."¹

He was building a movement. He was building a brand. He was building a legacy. But was he building the church?

In 2014, the wheels didn't just come off; the entire chassis disintegrated. The collapse of Mars Hill wasn't just a leadership failure; it was a structural inevitability. When the foundation is human personality ("Petros") rather than divine confession ("Petra"), the gates of hell don't even need to attack. They just have to wait for the mortar to crack. The church dissolved, the campuses fractured, and thousands of believers were left spiritually homeless, victims of a "We Build" project that mistook adrenaline for the Holy Spirit.

This story is not an anomaly. It is the logical conclusion of a theology that believes we are the ones doing the heavy lifting.

The Great Divergence: The Carpenter vs. The Contractor

In Matthew 16:18, Jesus makes a statement that serves as the exclusive franchise agreement for the Kingdom of God: "I will build my church."

Notice the pronoun. I. Not we. Not you. Not us.

Jesus is the Builder. He is the Architect. He is the Construction Supervisor.

Yet, walk into the average church growth conference or Christian leadership meeting this year, and you will hear a different gospel. You will hear the gospel of the Contractor. This is the subtle, pervasive belief that Jesus provided the raw materials—salvation, the Bible, the Holy Spirit—but He left the actual construction up to our ingenuity. We have become the General Contractors of the Kingdom, sub-contracting Jesus out for the "spiritual stuff" while we handle the marketing, the strategy, and the metrics. 

You may protest. But think for a moment. Maybe read the previous paragraph again before you read the next provocative statement.

The difference between a church built by the Carpenter and a church built by Contractors is not just semantics; it is the difference between a sanctuary and a shopping mall.

With that said, I want you to understand what I am not saying. I am not saying that outward growth does not matter. It does. The early church counted how many were saved in their first service, about three thousand souls in the Book of Acts, chapter 2. There are multiple references to the number of people at different gatherings in the New Testament.  Even in the Old Testament, there is a book by the name of Numbers! Numbers are important and so is outward growth. 

If we deny that outward growth matters, we end up sanctifying mediocrity and baptizing apathy. Faithfulness and fruitfulness are not enemies.

We need to organize. We need to plan. I am not saying we don’t. 

But here is the pivot: What you measure shapes what you value; what you value shapes what you become. If the most celebrated outcomes are the easiest to report, then leaders will naturally shape churches to favor these outcomes. Over time, a church can become an institution that excels at production while slowly starving formation. And the institution must be protected at all costs, even if it means sacrificing some of its members. 

To demonstrate my point, I present to you a working contrast of the two models. However, remember these are “characterizations.” I am not making a statement that every church is this way, but in my experience, many churches in our Southern Baptist Convention have a tendency toward the “contractor” model, and could use some reflection and correction. These are broad descriptions and sweeping claims, but valid nonetheless. 

Read the difference and weep. 

The Contractor’s Model: "Success"

In the "We Build" paradigm, the church is an enterprise. Its goal is market share. Its method is anxiety-inducing pragmatism.

• The Metric: The "Holy Trinity" of the Contractor is Bodies, Budgets, and Buildings. If these numbers are up, God is present. If they are down, we need a new strategy.

• The Leader: The pastor functions as a CEO or a brand manager. Charisma is valued over character because charisma fills seats.

• The People: They are "resources" to be deployed or "customers" to be retained.

The Carpenter’s Model: "Faithfulness"

In the "Jesus Builds" paradigm, the church is a body. Its goal is maturity. Its method is faithful obedience.

• The Metric: The Fruit of the Spirit. Are people becoming more patient, kind, and self-controlled? These are "lead measures" that predict future health, unlike attendance, which is a "lag measure" of past performance.

• The Leader: The pastor is a shepherd, smelling of sheep, often inefficient with their time because they are busy with the slow work of soul care.

• The People: They are "living stones" (1 Peter 2:5) being fitted together by God, often through friction and conflict, into a holy temple.

When we try to do Jesus' job (building), we end up exhausted. When we neglect our job (abiding), we end up empty. As Dallas Willard famously quipped about the modern church's obsession with growth hacks, "We are not only saved by grace; we are paralyzed by it." We expect God to zap us with growth while we ignore the disciplines of the Master Builder. ²

The Difference at Ground Level

How does this theological shift play out in the real world? Glad you asked. I will tell you how. It changes the very atmosphere of the church. The result is not merely a different leadership style. It is often a different kind of church. One that Peter, Paul and Timothy would not recognize. 

This shift alters the Transcendentals—those timeless properties of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty that reflect God’s nature which I introduced in the previous blog. There I applied them to the general culture, here I apply them to the church we build - The Contractor’s Church and the church Christ builds - The Carpenter’s Church. 

Truth: From Revelation to Relevance

In the Contractor’s Church: Truth is often curated for Relevance. The Contractor asks, "Will this sermon series preach? Will it offend the target demographic?" Truth becomes a product feature, optimized for user experience. We see this in the rise of "hologram preaching" and content that mimics the pacing of TikTok—fast, episodic, and designed to hold attention rather than transform the heart.³ The goal is to lower the barrier to entry so low that we forget we are entering a holy space.

In the Carpenter’s Church: Truth is valued as Revelation. It is the "North Star" that guides us, regardless of the cultural weather. The Carpenter’s church isn't afraid to be "weird" or "untimely." As the famous dictum goes, a church that marries the spirit of the age will find itself a widow in the next. The "Jesus Builds" model trusts that the naked Word of God has the power to build "Men with Chests"—people of conviction who don't need a smoke machine to feel the Spirit.⁴ (For many churches with online services, I appreciate that a smoke machine adds depth and richness to the video presentation. I am just making a point that I hope you will appreciate none the less.)

Goodness: From Virtue to Utility

In the Contractor’s Church: Goodness is redefined as Utility. A person is "good" if they volunteer, tithe, and don't cause trouble. A leader is "good" if they produce results, even if they leave a trail of emotional debris behind them (the "bus" analogy again). This leads to "Vampire Christianity"—a term Dallas Willard used to describe people who want just enough of Jesus' blood to save them from hell, but none of His life to change how they treat their neighbor.⁵ It produces a culture of functional deism where we claim to trust God but operate entirely on human horsepower.

In the Carpenter’s Church: Goodness is understood as Virtue. It is the slow, often invisible formation of Christian character. Success is defined not by how many people attend, but by who those people are becoming. Are the husbands loving their wives? Are the business owners treating their employees with dignity? Are the singles living with purity and purpose? Have they really become salt and light? The Carpenter is building saints, not just consumers. He is interested in the "interior castle" of the soul, not just the curb appeal of the Sunday service.

Beauty: From Glitz to Glory

In the Contractor’s Church: Beauty is flattened into Glitz. The architecture mimics the shopping mall or the convention center—neutral, safe, and indistinguishable from the secular world.⁶ The "Green Room" culture separates the "talent" from the "audience," turning worship into a spectator sport where we watch professionals perform intimacy with God.⁷  It is the aesthetic of the "cool," which is always fleeting.

In the Carpenter’s Church: Beauty is valued as Glory. Roger Scruton, the philosopher of aesthetics, argued that true beauty is a "call to the divine"—it arrests us and forces us to look up.⁸ A church built by Jesus values the beauty of holiness. It might meet in a living room or a cathedral, but the aesthetic is one of reverence. It resists the "desecration" of modern utility. It refuses to turn the bride of Christ into a brand. As Scruton noted, "Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it does not matter." ⁹ The Carpenter’s church restores beauty by being a place where the broken are made beautiful, not just where the beautiful are celebrated.

What We Lose When We Build

The divergence between these two models hits the ledger and the calendar.

The Cost of Labor: In the "We Build" model, burnout is the standard operating procedure. Pastors are quitting in record numbers because the burden of being the "Chief Energy Officer" is crushing.¹⁰ You cannot sustain a supernatural movement with natural energy. When we try to manufacture the wind of the Spirit with industrial fans, we just blow everyone away.

In the "Jesus Builds" model, the yoke is easy and the burden is light (Matthew 11:30). This does not mean there is no work; it means the work is fueled by grace, not grind. It is the difference between a rowboat (human effort) and a sailboat (harnessing the wind).

The Cost of Finance: The Contractor’s budget is heavy on "Presentation"—lights, stage, marketing, and the "Sunday Experience." The Carpenter’s budget is heavy on "People"—benevolence, mission, and discipleship. We see this in the shift of churches like The Village Church, which voluntarily slashed its budget by millions to move from a centralized "empire" model to a decentralized "multiplying" model.¹¹ Redeemer Church, founded by Tim Keller made a similar move beginning in 2016 and completed that in 2022.¹² They realized that reproduction (biological life) is cheaper and healthier than replication (franchise expansion).

The Cost of Fellowship: The "We Build" model offers "connections"—loose, low-commitment social networks. The "Jesus Builds" model offers "communion"—deep, covenantal relationships that can withstand offense. It is the difference between a "content-based" gathering and a "table-based" community. The emerging "Dinner Church" movement is a prime example of this return to the table, where the cost of entry is vulnerability, not just a ticket.¹³

Are You Building a Tower or a Temple?

This isn't just a critique of megachurch pastors. It is a mirror for every individual Christian. We all have an "Inner Contractor" that wants to build a life that looks impressive to the neighbors.

We measure our spiritual lives by lag metrics: How many chapters did I read? How much did I give? How many services did I attend? Jesus measures our spiritual lives by lead metrics: Am I growing in love? Is my anxiety decreasing as my trust increases? Am I becoming the kind of person who naturally does what Jesus would do if He were me?¹⁴

The Virtue of Temperance: To move from Contractor to Carpenter, we need the virtue of temperance—the ability to say "no" to growth that compromises our soul. We need to ruthlessly eliminate hurry, as Willard advised, “Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life.”¹⁵ We need to stop trying to be "original" and start being "faithful." As C.S. Lewis wrote, "No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it... and what men call originality will come unsought."¹⁶

Resigning as General Manager of the Universe

The promise of Matthew 16:18 is offensive to our pride but a balm to our anxiety. "I will build my church."

The gates of hell—death, despair, and decay of culture—will not prevail against the church Jesus builds. But they will prevail against the church we build. To coin a phrase–They eat our marketing plans for breakfast. They are not scared of our fog machines. (Here I go again with the fog machines!) They are not threatened by our vision statements. They do not fear our spreadsheets. 

But they tremble before a group of people who have resigned from the job of building the church and have taken up the job of being the church.

This year, 2026, let’s hand the hard hat back to the Carpenter. Let’s stop trying to build a tower to heaven to make a name for ourselves (Genesis 11) and start building a table on earth to welcome the stranger. Let’s stop measuring the height of our steeple and start measuring the depth of our roots.

Jesus is a better Builder than we are. And His warranty lasts forever.

---

End Notes

¹https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361446686_Spiritual_Tyranny_at_Mars_Hill_A_Rhetorical_Analysis_of_Mark_Driscoll's_Relational_Metaphors

²Willard, Dallas. The Great Omission. HarperOne. 2006. p.166.

³https://anglicancatholicliturgyandtheology.wordpress.com/2019/08/19/holy-hologram/

⁴Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. HarperOne, 2001, Ch. 1. 

⁵https://dwillard.org/resources/articles/why-bother-with-discipleship. This is also found in Willard’s book, The Great Omission. HarperOne. 2006. P.14.

⁶https://hyperallergic.com/house-of-worship-or-shopping-mall-the-drab-architecture-of-megachurches/

⁷https://www.alessifamilybusiness.com/exposing-the-green-room-effect-why-we-say-no-to-celebrity-church-culture/

⁸https://www.eighthdayinstitute.org/beauty-a-very-short-introduction

⁹https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/desecration-beauty/

¹⁰https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360826993_REIMAGINING_PASTORAL_EDUCATION_AND_TRAINING_DEFEATING_PASTORAL_BURNOUT_AND_DROPOUT_THROUGH_UNITING_THE_UNIVERSITY_MODEL_THE_APPRENTICESHIP_MODEL_AND_MULTI-MODEL_THEOLOGICAL_HIGHER_EDUCATION

¹¹https://www.christianpost.com/news/multisite-churches-now-autonomous-congregations.html

¹²https://www.redeemer.com/learn/about_us/redeemer_history 

¹³https://missioalliance.org/three-ways-declining-churches-become-thriving-churches-an-invitation-to-explore-fresh-expressions/

¹⁴Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. Harper, 1988. p. 283. 

¹⁵Comer, John Mark. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. Waterbrook, 2019. p. 19.

¹⁶Lewis, C. S. The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses. HarperOne, 2001. p. 175.

THE UNHINGED AGE

The Fog and the Iron

It was the iron that betrayed them.

When the RMS Tayleur launched in 1854, she was a miracle of the modern world.¹ Her hull was a fortress of riveted iron plates, designed to shrug off the Atlantic waves that turned wooden ships to matchsticks. She was faster, bigger, and stronger than anything that had come before. She was the Titanic of her day, six decades before that name would become a synonym for hubris.

But as she sailed down the Irish Sea, carrying her cargo of hopeful emigrants and gold-seekers, a silent catastrophe was unfolding on the bridge. The compass needle, that ancient and faithful guide, had been seduced. The massive iron body of the ship was exerting a magnetic pull, dragging the needle away from the true north. The captain, standing on the deck of his technological marvel, believed he was sailing south into open water. In reality, he was sailing west, into the dark.

The Tayleur smashed into Lambay Island not because she was weak, but because she was disoriented. She possessed power without perception. She had speed without direction. And when the rocks tore through her iron skin, she sank with a terrifying swiftness, taking nearly four hundred souls down with her.

We are all sailors on the Tayleur now.

We live in an age of miracles. We carry the sum of human knowledge in rectangles of glass and silicon in our pockets. We have conquered diseases that once decimated empires. We have built a civilization of iron-clad certainty, a "Machine" of unprecedented efficiency. Yet, look around. Do you feel safe? Do you feel oriented?

Or do you feel the wobble?

Pew Research Center reports large majorities of Americans saying political debate has become less respectful and less fact-based over the last several years.² Gallup reports historically low confidence levels in major institutions, with Americans’ average confidence in the set of institutions it tracks remaining near record lows.³ Whatever you think the causes are, the effect is hard to deny: people are increasingly unsure whom to trust—and increasingly tempted to trust whatever confirms their existing fears.

That’s what unhinged means. . . and we are living in the Unhinged Age. It is not merely that we are divided; it is that the compass itself has broken. We have lost the ability to agree on which way is North. We possess more data than any generation in history (and “data centers” are going up all over the place). And yet we suffer, as my favorite philosopher Dallas Willard diagnosed, from a "disappearance of moral knowledge."⁴ We can tell you the chemical composition of a tear, but we cannot tell you why it is tragic. We can map the neurons of the brain, but we cannot find the location of the soul.

The door has slipped its hinge. The frame is warped. And when the frame breaks, the door doesn't just stick; it slams.

The Men Without Chests

As you scroll through the digital public square known as social media, you will see the casualties of this disorientation. You will see, as in the previous blog, what C.S. Lewis called "Men without Chests."⁵ It is as contagious as the flu in winter. 

Lewis warned us decades ago that if we debunked the "Tao"—the objective moral law that spans human history—we would not produce a race of liberated supermen.⁶ We would produce spiritual amputees. We would create a society of people with big Heads (intellects sharp enough to rationalize anything) and big Bellies (appetites demanding to be fed everything), but with no Chests—no trained affections, no stable character to mediate between the thought and the urge.

Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist wrote, 

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”⁷ 

Frankl is telling us, and rightly so, that to not be at the mercy of our impulses, we must focus on increasing our “space.” We lose that space if we do not internalize the “Tao” in our “Chests.” The alternative to filling it with the Good, the True and the Beautiful is it being filled with a confusing and empty fog. 

The modern "Empty Self," as J.P. Moreland diagnosed it; is the fulfillment of Lewis’ prediction.⁸ We are Infantile; demanding that the universe swaddle us in comfort and shield us from the "suffering" of disagreement. We are Narcissistic; treating God like a cosmic vending machine and our neighbors like background characters in the movie of our lives. We are Passive; outsourcing our conscience to Silicon Valley, catching the latest moral outrage like a common cold—not because we truly care, but because we are too bored and lazy to form an immune system of our own. (Apologies for another "disease" analogy!)

We are Hurried; running from silence because in the silence we might hear echoes of the hollowness of our lives. We are terrified of the dark, not because of monsters, but because without the "likes" and the "shares" and the constant reflection of the screen, we are not sure that we matter, or more frightening, that we exist at all.

The Transcendentals

This is where the transcendentals come in. 

Most Christian people have never heard the word “transcendentals,” and that is fine. We don’t need the word to need the reality.

The basic idea is simple:

• Truth is what corresponds to reality as God made it.

• Goodness is what aligns with God’s moral order and purposes.

• Beauty is Truth and Goodness with the lights turned on. It isn't just a decoration; it is an undeniable signal that catches the eye, captures the heart, and forces the soul to look up.

In the classical Christian tradition, thinkers often spoke of “the true” and “the good” as inseparable from being itself—deep features of reality, not mere preference.⁹ That matters because modern people are tempted to treat truth as a personal possession (my truth), goodness as a negotiated contract (what our tribe approves), and beauty as a marketing category (what performs well).

But when truth becomes personal and goodness becomes tribal, beauty becomes manipulative. It becomes propaganda with an annoying soundtrack.

The Bible refuses that collapse.

It tells us that truth has a name (“your word is truth,” John 17:17), and goodness has a source (“no one is good except God alone,” Mark 10:18), and beauty is not merely aesthetic but moral (“worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness,” Psalm 29:2). Even when Scripture doesn’t use the philosophical vocabulary, it insists on the reality.

And then the Apostle Paul does something that feels almost subversive in a distracted age: he tells Christians what to think about.

“Whatever is true… honorable… just… pure… lovely… commendable… if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8, ESV).

That verse is not a greeting card from Dollar Tree. It is a strategy for soul survival. It is a refusal to let the mind be discipled by ugliness.

The Fog of Tashlan

In the final days of Narnia, the end didn't come with a bang. It came with a fog.

A clever Ape named Shift told the Narnians that "Aslan"—the Christ-figure, the Lion of Judah—and "Tash"—the multi-armed demon god of Calormen—were the same person. "Tashlan," he called it.¹⁰

It was a masterstroke of the Unhinged Age. The Ape didn't ask the Narnians to become atheists. He just asked them to be "nuanced." He asked them to accept that truth was fluid, that good and evil were just different cultural expressions of the same divine reality. He blurred the lines until the Narnians were too exhausted to fight. They stopped looking for the True North because they had been convinced that all directions were valid.

This is the "Fog Test" of our time. We are surrounded by a culture that conflates the True with the Loud, the Good with the Popular, and the Beautiful with the Arousing. We are told that "Love" means affirming every impulse, and that "Freedom" means having no master. 

But true freedom is not the absence of a master; it is the choice of the right master. The compass needle is only free when it is enslaved to the magnetic pole. If it is "free" to point anywhere, it is useless.

Love the Lovely, Hate the Vile

We finally come to the big question on our minds: how do we fix the direction of the ship? How do we recalibrate the compass before we hit the rocks?

We must reject, as Willard did, the "Gospel of Sin Management"—the vampire Christianity that wants Jesus’s blood for forgiveness but not His life for renovation.¹¹ We must realize that the "fog" is a lie.

We must become Unshaken.

To be Unshaken is to have a "Chest." It is to be a person who has trained their heart to love what is lovely and hate what is vile. It is to practice the "VIM" of discipleship: a Vision of the Kingdom that is more beautiful than the world's machine; an Intention to obey that is stronger than the impulse to drift; and the Means of grace that anchor the soul in the deep waters of God.¹²

It means recovering the "Magic" of the Shire. In Tolkien’s epic, the world is saved not by the mighty, but by the small.¹³ It is saved by Hobbits—by people who love simple things, who keep their promises, who refuse the power of the Ring because they know that character is more important than control.

Appreciating Values

This is where “values” enter the conversation, not as a trendy buzzword, but as a diagnostic tool.

Philosophers use “value theory” (axiology) to ask what things are good and how goods should be ranked.¹⁴ You don’t need the academic term, but you do need the insight: every life ranks goods. Every person says, with their time and attention and money and stress, “This matters most.”

In an unhinged age, people often “rank” or “value” not only the wrong things, but also right things in the wrong order.

And then we wonder why character collapses.

Because character is values not only made visible, but also durable.

If you value comfort above holiness, you will not develop courage.

If you value approval above truth, you will not develop integrity.

If you value self above neighbor, you will not develop love.

This is why the next posts will keep returning to a simple principle: you cannot change your life long-term without addressing what you love. Long-term change is impossible unless it is rooted in something you love.

The Goal is Not Critique, but Formation

The purpose of this series is not to make you a better critic of culture. The purpose is to make you a better disciple of Christ.

It is possible to hate the world’s confusion and still be shaped by the world’s formation.

A Christian can be “against” the world and still operate with the world’s values: outrage as identity, consumption as comfort, suspicion as wisdom, cynicism as sophistication. As a pastor I’ve seen it in the church. As a denominational worker, I’ve seen it at all levels. 

A former mentor described it as, “Picking up the devil’s tools to do God’s work.” 

We are going to do something different.

We are going to rebuild the hinge.

We are going to recover truth, goodness, and beauty—not as museum pieces, but as discipleship essentials. We will talk about values because they are the compass. We will talk about virtues because they are the habits that train the compass to hold steady.

And we will do all of it under one banner: becoming like Jesus in the heart, head, and hands.

Because Jesus does not merely win arguments. He forms people.

Caution

The Tayleur sank because her iron heart blinded her to the stars. We do not have to follow her down. The stars are still there. The True, the Good, and the Beautiful have not moved.

The King has not abdicated.

We just need to clear the iron from our souls, look up, and steer.

Endnotes

¹RMS Tayleur, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Tayleur, accessed January 14, 2026.

²Americans’ feelings about politics, polarization and the tone of political discourse, Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/americans-feelings-about-politics-polarization-and-the-tone-of-political-discourse/?utm.com. Accessed January 3, 2026.

³Democrats' Confidence in U.S. Institutions Sinks to New Low, Gallop, https://news.gallup.com/poll/692633/democrats-confidence-institutions-sinks-new-low.aspx?utm. Accessed, January 1, 2026.

⁴Willard, Dallas. The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge. Routledge, 2018. 

⁵Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education with Special Reference

   to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. HarperOne, 2001

⁶Ibid.

⁷Frankl, Victor. Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press, 2006.

⁸Moreland, J. P. Love God With All Your Mind. NavPress, Revised 2014. 

⁹Medieval Theories of Transcendentals. Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy.

https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2024/entries/transcendentals-medieval/?utm.com. Accessed January 10, 2026.

¹⁰Lewis, C.S. The Last Battle. Collier Books Edition, 1970.

¹¹Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy. Harper, 1998. (One of the most influential

   books I have read). 

¹²Willard, Dallas. Renovation of the Heart. NavPress, 2002. 

¹³Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. William Morrow, Illustrated Edition, 2021

¹⁴Value Theory. Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy.  

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/value-theory/?utm_.com. Accessed

   January 14, 2026.

¹⁵Seven Virtues. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/seven-virtues. Accessed

   January 14, 2026. 

AFTER THE ATTIC LIGHT: Why Reform Must Become Character

The attic light is on now. We can see the dust. We can name the junk. We can even haul it out in black trash bags and stack it neatly on the curb. But if the foundation is cracked, you can repaint every room and still wake up one morning with a door that won’t close.

That was the gift of The Light in the Attic series—God’s Word turning on the switch so we could finally see what had been hiding in the rafters of the house we inherited. We found the “blueprint” again. We remembered what the house was meant to be. We followed Josiah down that five-step pathway—Remind, Review, Refocus, Refine, Reform—because renewal isn’t a mood. It’s a movement. It’s the courage to “test and examine our ways, and return to the LORD.” (Lamentations 3:40, ESV)

And yet, if you’ve read the Scriptures with open eyes, you know the story does not end with a ribbon-cutting.

It ends with a sentence that lands like a gavel.

After Josiah does everything a reformer could do—after the idols are pulverized, the corrupt practices dismantled, the Passover restored—God’s Word gives us a line that feels like a cold wind through a newly cleaned room: 

“Still the LORD did not turn from the burning of his great wrath.” (2 Kings 23:26, ESV)

How can that be?

How can reform be real—visible, tangible, aggressive—and still not be deep enough to stop the judgment?

That question is not ancient trivia. It’s a mirror. It forces us to confront the terrifying distinction between a change of policy and a change of person. It brings us to the threshold of our new series: Wide Witness, Deep Roots. Because as we are about to discover, you can clean an attic while the foundation of the house crumbles.

The Rubber Band Effect

When the leader is gone, what remains? That is the ultimate test of any renewal movement.

Josiah’s reforms were not imaginary. They were sweeping. They were costly. They were courageous. They were public. They were measurable. You could drive from town to town and see altars torn down, “high places” defiled, idols crushed into dust. You could point to statutes, policies, ceremonies, and new rhythms. It was a wide witness.

But when Josiah died in battle, the national soul snapped back like a rubber band. The next king “did what was evil in the sight of the LORD,” and so did the next one, and the one after that. (2 Kings 23:32, 23:37) The reforms were wide—but they were not deep.

The speed of the reversal is nauseating. It reveals a brutal lesson for our own unhinged age: a culture can be pressured into better behavior for a season without ever learning to love what is good. And when the pressure lifts—when the leader leaves, when the consequences feel distant, when the crowd moves on—what you love resurfaces.

That is why “values” matter so much, even if we rarely talk about them in church.

Your values are not your social media posts. Your values are not your bumper sticker slogans. Your values are not what you say you believe when the room is watching.

Your values are what you protect when it costs you something. They are what you reach for when you are afraid. They are what you excuse when you are angry. They are what you secretly envy when you think nobody is looking.

Values are the deep currents. Behavior is the surface. And a surface can look calm right up until the tide turns.

Judah’s tragedy was not merely that they failed to execute reform. It’s that they did not become a different kind of people. They stopped the rituals (for a time), but they didn’t stop the longing.

The Fatal Flaw

In the last post of the series, we named the fatal flaw plainly: the reform was “wide—it covered the whole map—but it was not deep.” Josiah could change structures. He could break idols. He could restore ceremonies. But he could not reach into the human heart and reshape what the people loved.

That is not an insult to Josiah. That is the boundary line God drew around every merely human reformer.

And here is where our moment in history becomes uncomfortable.

We are living through an age of loud moral claims and thin moral roots.

We have phrases for everything and patience for almost nothing. We have hashtags for justice and a shrinking vocabulary for holiness. We can diagnose everybody else’s character defects in ten seconds—and then we cannot endure ten minutes of quiet self-examination without numbing ourselves on a screen. 

Yes, I’m on fire! And yes, I struggle too!

We are awash in opinions, but starving for wisdom. We are saturated with “takes,” but confused about truth. We are drenched in pleasure, but doubt what goodness is. We are surrounded by images, but uncertain how beauty should shape the soul.

That is not just “out there.” It creeps into the church. It is in the church.

We can build crowds without building character. We can build platforms without building saints. We can grow wide and still remain shallow. And the terrifying part is that we may not realize it until the Josiah-like leader is gone.

The Dragon Can Be Gone, But The Sickness Can Stay

We struggle to understand this because we tend to think of sin as a list of bad things we do, rather than a condition of the heart. We think if we remove the "bad thing," we are cured.

This is where the literary genius of J.R.R. Tolkien becomes a diagnostic tool for the soul. In The Hobbit, the physical dragon, Smaug, is the obvious enemy. He represents the external threat—violent, hoarding, fiery. Eventually, the dragon is shot down. The beast falls into the Long Lake. The external evil is removed.

But peace does not come. Instead, “dragon-sickness” descends upon the mountain.

Thorin Oakenshield, the leader of the dwarves, begins to act like the dragon. He hoards the gold. He refuses to share with the needy men of Lake-town. He becomes paranoid, suspicious, and cruel. He wanders the treasure room, obsessed with the Arkenstone, the “Heart of the Mountain.”

Tolkien is showing us a profound theological truth: The dragon can be gone, but the sickness can stay.

You can remove the idol (Smaug) and still keep the idol’s values (Greed). You can fire an abusive pastor (removing the dragon) but retain the culture of narcissism and power-worship that created him (dragon-sickness). You can stop a specific behavior—drinking, overspending, doom-scrolling—but retain the internal emptiness and desire for escape that drove the addiction.

This is the danger of the “Wide Witness” without the “Deep Roots.” We become people who have cleaned up our behavior but haven't cured our dragon-sickness. We have reform, but we don't have resemblance to Christ.

Men Without Chests

If Tolkien diagnoses the sickness, his friend, C.S. Lewis shows us the anatomy of the cure. In his prophetic work The Abolition of Man, Lewis argues that the modern world is producing a terrifying new species of human: “Men without Chests.”

Lewis described the human person in three parts:

1. The Head: The Intellect (Reason).

2. The Belly: The Appetites (Instincts, Desires, Urges).

3. The Chest: The Sentiments (Trained Affections, Virtue, Honor).

The ancient view was that the Head rules the Belly through the Chest. The Chest is the seat of value. It is the part of you that feels a proper sense of awe at a sunset, a proper sense of outrage at cruelty, and a proper sense of reverence for the holy. It is the stabilizer.

But, Lewis warned, we are creating an educational system and a culture that produces "Men without Chests." We are cultivating giant Heads (we have more information than any generation in history) and we are unleashing giant Bellies (we are consumer-driven, appetite-led creatures). But the middle element—the character, the virtue, the Chest—is wasting away.

Lewis writes with chilling accuracy:

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”¹

Does that not describe our “unhinged age”? We are trying to build a Kingdom with people who are merely clever and hungry. It won't work.

The Scouring Of The Shire

So, where do we go from here? If cleaning the attic isn't enough, what is?

We must move from renovation to reconstruction. We must go downstairs, into the load-bearing beams of the soul.

In The Lord of the Rings, there is a chapter often skipped by the movies but essential to the book: “The Scouring of the Shire.” After the Ring is destroyed and Sauron is defeated (the Big Reform), the hobbits return home only to find that the Shire has been corrupted. It hasn't been destroyed by a dark lord; it has been ruined by petty, bureaucratic evil. Trees are cut down, ugly brick mills are belching black smoke, and endless “Rules” are posted on the walls.

It is a drab, gray, technocratic evil—the kind that sucks the joy and beauty out of life. It is the evil of “gatherers and sharers,” of systems that control rather than cultivate.But here is the key: Gandalf does not save the Shire. He stands back. He tells the hobbits, “You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for.”²

The journey—the suffering, the discipline, the fellowship, the terror—had formed them. It gave them “Chests.” It gave them deep roots. Because they had been formed by their walk with the King, they were able to uproot the evil at home. They didn't just have a victory; they developed virtue.

Building A Palace, Not A Cottage

This brings us to the heart of this new series. We are moving from the "Light in the Attic" to "Deep Roots" because God is not interested in merely fixing your roof. He is interested in taking up residence in your soul.

In Mere Christianity, Lewis offers one more metaphor that will guide us. He asks us to imagine ourselves as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, you think He is just fixing the drains and stopping the leaks (the Josiah reforms). You’re happy with that.

But then, He starts remodeling the house in a way that hurts immensely. He’s throwing out a new wing here, adding an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage, but He is building a palace. “He intends to come and live in it Himself.”³

This is why character formation hurts. This is why it takes time. Deep roots require deep digging.

It Could Have Been Different

Scripture tells us plainly that Judah’s judgment was not random. It was moral, covenantal, and long-accumulated—provoked by generations of rebellion and bloodshed (2 Kings 23:26-27). And after Josiah’s death, the kings and the people did not merely drift; they returned to evil quickly (2 Kings 23:31–24:1)

So here is the connecting point between the series we just finished and the one we are about to begin:

If Judah had undergone deep character formation—if the people themselves had become “Josiah-like” in their loves, their values, their worship—then Josiah’s death would not have been the end of renewal.

A single leader can ignite reform. But only a formed people can sustain it.

This is why God’s promise in the prophets is not merely, “I will give you better rules.” It is, “I will give you a new heart ” (Ezekiel 36:26, ESV). And it is, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33, ESV).

That is not superficial religion. That is renovation at the level of desire.

That is character.

What Is Meant By “Christian Character”

When I say “character,” I do not mean personality type. I do not mean whether you are introverted or extroverted, wired like a deacon or wired like a worship leader.

I mean the kind of person you are becoming in Christ.

Character is the settled direction of your heart, displayed through your habits, under pressure.

Character is what remains when nobody is clapping.

Character is what your spouse experiences when the church crowd is gone.

Character is what shapes your words when you’re tired, your decisions when you’re afraid, your integrity when it would be easy to hide.

And here is the critical link: character is values made visible. Values are internal commitments; character is the embodied pattern they produce.

So if we want churches that are strong when cultural winds shift, we must stop treating virtue like a decorative accessory. We must return to it as discipleship’s core outcome: Christ formed in us. 

It is painful. It is hard. It was for Paul who was in anguish over this very thing with the believers in Galatia (Galatians 4:19). Many will not even try. There are many hearers of the Word, and not doers of the Word.

Why This Next Series

The Light in the Attic series gave us a needed pathway. It showed how God uses His Word to expose the junk and call His people to look honestly and turn decisively.

But the “wide but not deep” warning forces a new question:

What kind of disciples can outlive the reformer?

What kind of church can endure when the cultural scaffolding collapses?

What kind of people can love the true, the good, and the beautiful—not as abstract ideals, but as a way of life rooted in the character of God?

That is what this next series is about. 

I have been thinking about these things for years. I have written page after page of notes, trying my best to articulate it in a way that will resonate. I have delayed putting my thoughts and especially my solutions out there. But, now is the time. So in the next blog installments, and there will be many, we are going to talk about:

• The Transcendentals (truth, goodness, beauty) and why confusion about them produces moral chaos.

• Values—where they come from, how they form, why they harden, how they change, and how Christian values differ from worldly values.

• Virtues—not as Victorian politeness, but as Spirit-formed strength (the kind that can forgive, endure, repent, and remain faithful).

• The Life and Teachings of Jesus along with other New Testament Passages—because Christian character is not a generic “be nice” project; it is conformity to Christ in heart, head, and hands.

If the last series was about turning on the attic light and beginning the clean out, this one is about going downstairs—into the load-bearing beams of the soul—and letting the Lord do the deeper work that keeps the house standing.

Because the goal is not merely reform.

The goal is resemblance.

Not merely that we look like a church.

But that we become like Christ.

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End Notes

¹Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. HarperOne, 2001, p. 26.

²Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. William Morrow, Illustrated Edition, 2021, p. 996.

³Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. HarperOne, 2001, p. 205.