American Christians face a quiet crisis: anxiety, depression, and fear are rising, yet few realize the root cause might be a failing biblical worldview. Dr. George Barna highlights a stark reality: a weakening biblical worldview directly fuels mental health struggles today. Barna says his research “suggests the consequences of anti-biblical worldview are often misdiagnosed and treated as mental illness.”1
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Picture this: It’s 1783. You are an American who just fought in a war to break free from British rule. Your new nation celebrates independence. But every Sunday, you still pray for the King of England in church. Awkward, right?
This was the strange reality facing American Anglicans after the Revolution. They had a problem that went beyond politics. The Church of England wasn’t just their spiritual home. It was legally tied to the British crown. And the king wasn’t just a symbolic figurehead. He was literally the head of their church. Suddenly, this arrangement was no longer feasible.
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In November 2024, my wife and I stood inches from one of the most significant biblical archaeological discoveries ever made. The Tel Dan Inscription sat behind glass at Armstrong Auditorium in Edmond, Oklahoma, thousands of miles from its ancient home. We stared at broken basalt fragments covered in Aramaic script, and I felt the weight of what we were seeing. This wasn’t a replica or a photograph, this was the real thing.
This ancient stele contained two words that provided the first undisputed proof that King David was real, not legend. For decades, skeptics had dismissed David as a mythical figure like King Arthur. But, when archaeologists found these fragments at a dig site in Israel, everything changed.
When you hear the New Testament speak of “the flesh,” what comes to mind?
All of us also lived among them at one time, fulfilling the cravings of our flesh and indulging its desires and thoughts… (Eph. 2:3 BEREAN)2
For many Christians, we might conclude it refers to our physical bodies. We think Paul is warning us against physical desires and bodily appetites. We assume the path to holiness means suppressing our physical nature. As it turns out, that’s not what Paul means at all! Because of our assumptions about what the flesh is, many of us may be fighting the wrong enemy.
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Paul opens Ephesians 2 with a strong statement: “You were dead in your trespasses and sins.” Some readers jump straight to the idea of “spiritual death” (an unbiblical concept I explore in another article). Calvinists build an entire doctrine of total inability on this verse. By “total inability,” they mean that people are so corrupted by sin that they cannot believe in God, repent, or respond to the gospel unless God first gives them new spiritual life. So, they are totally unable to choose to follow God on their own; God must first give them the ability to turn to Him.
Yet Paul was not talking about spiritual zombies who cannot respond to God. He was doing something far more grounded in the language and imagery of his world. Let’s slow down and follow Paul’s flow of thought.
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