July 17, 2026

Why Should the Death of Someone 2,000 Years Ago Matter to Me Today? (The Atonement, by Jeremy Treat. A Brief Review)

By Clarke Morledge

The question stopped me in my tracks….

Back when I was a college student, I worked as an usher at a movie theater over the summer break. It was a hot, muggy July night, as I recall. Business was slow.  A friend of mine walked in and we started chatting.

My friend had grown up in church, but he blurted out this question which has stuck with me all these years later:

“Clarke, why should the death of someone 2,000 years ago matter to me today?“

I had been an active follower of Christ for several years at that time, but I was stunned by the question. As Christians, we often take for granted the thought that “Jesus died for our sins” as being vitally important, and evidently self-explanatory. But as the conversation continued I realized that I really did not have a very good answer to give.

The death of a wandering Jewish preacher in the Middle East back in the first century seems so remote and unconnected from my life as an American nearly 2,000 years later. Those worlds appear to be so far apart, particularly in our day when Artificial Intelligence is transforming our world, persistent mental health issues plague so many people, families in the midst of crisis try to make ends meet, and media reports of never ending wars all over the globe numb us. What made it even more bothersome was that this friend of mine had grown up going to church all of his life, and he did not know a good answer either.

So, does the death of Jesus, many, many years ago, in a distant culture, really matter? If so, how?

Jeremy Treat’s The Atonement: An Introduction is a concise, accessible theological examination of what the death of Christ means, for the forgiveness of sins. A perfect book for anyone, lay person or scholar, who needs a good explanation for why the death of a Jewish carpenter some 2,000 years ago is relevant to you and me today.

 

At moments like these, I wish I had a book like Jeremy Treat’s The Atonement: An Introduction available to hand to someone. At first, Treat’s book might seem daunting, as it is part of Crossway’s “Short Studies in Systematic Theology.” But it really is not. The book is short and accessible, less than 200 pages. I read it as an audiobook in about 4 hours. It is perfect for college students, pastors, and other lay people alike.

The topic of Jeremy Treat’s book, The Atonement, is one that sparks a lot of conversation. The early church never came up with a formal statement as to the particular meaning of Christ’s death on the cross. The Nicene-Constantinople Creed, the great ecumenical creed of the early church, is pretty brief on the subject:

….For us humans and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and was incarnate… ….For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried….,

….I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins…

As far as exactly how those ideas like the crucifixion, heaven, and the forgiveness of sins are exactly connected together, nothing is explained. But the mystery has inspired many pages of theology to be written over the centuries, with competing theories articulated to try to figure this all out.

Over the next few months, here on Veracity, I hope to bring out some of this theological discussion, interacting with a number of Scriptural texts and a few books which have attempted to make sense of one of the most intriguing questions anyone could ever think about.

But for now, I would like to start with Jeremy Treat’s excellent introduction to the topic. How would you answer the question?

Why should the death of Jesus some 2,000 years ago matter to someone today?

Jeremy Treat is a pastor for preaching at a church in California, and an adjunct professor of theology at Biola University. I am sure Treat runs into questions like this all of the time with his students.

The answer Jeremy Treat gives is reasonably thorough without being overwhelming. It is not overly technical, but it is theologically rich. Here is Jeremy Treat’s main idea: the death of Christ is the central act of God’s work to accomplish salvation for all of humanity, part of what Christians call the doctrine of atonement.

William Tyndale, who interestingly published the first mechanically printed New Testament into English, exactly 500 years ago from this present year (2026), coined the English word “atonement” to translate a difficult Hebrew word from the Old Testament. Tyndale’s idea of “atonement” comes from piecing together a phrase “at-one-ment.” Essentially, Jesus’ death on the cross 2,000 years sought to reconcile humanity to God, making us “at-one” with God.

Christians all believe that “Jesus died for our sins,” but unpacking that simple statement is really not that simple. For Jeremy Treat, the death of Christ is God’s multi-dimensional work done by God, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, within the story of the Kingdom of God being revealed to the world.

The concept of substitution is at the heart of the cross, as substitution holds all of these various dimensions together, which theologians debate about. The cross is about forgiveness. The cross is also about victory over sin, death, and evil. The cross is also about renewal. The cross reconciles us not only to God but to each other as well. Substitution connects all of these themes together. As to substitution, this is all about Jesus dying in our place for our sins. As Treat puts it:

“Our society is aching for atonement. How can we deal with our guilt and shame? How can we be set free from our past? How can all that is wrong be made right? The assumption in these questions is that we can atone for our sins. But the message of Christianity is not about what we ought to do for God but what God has done for us. The good news is that God has sent his Son, empowered by the Spirit, to atone for our sins and make right all that our sin has made wrong. And the gospel goes far beyond merely “making amends” (which is how the word “atonement” is often used today). Through the sacrificial death of Christ, forgiveness, freedom, healing, and restoration are available not only for broken people but for all of creation. This is good news” (Treat, The Atonement, p. 14)

 

One of the most memorably moments in world history.  But what does it mean for people living in the 21st century?

 

Critics of Christianity might want us to think that atonement is some kind of antiquated and even barbaric notion, but everyday life and even the big issues of our day would suggest otherwise. Everytime I have mistakenly cut someone off in traffic while driving, raised my voice with my wife, or loaned something out to a friend and they never pay me back, I fall back on the language of atonement, and you probably do, too. When bombs are inadvertently dropped on schools filled with elementary aged children, when millions of pounds of discarded plastics in our garbage threaten sea life in our oceans, earthquakes shake shoddily built high-story apartment buildings to the ground, along with thousands with them, and mass shooters kill innocent bystanders, we process concepts of atonement in our minds, whether we are aware of it or not.

Jeremy Treat offers a theological framework for dealing with all of this stuff. Treat’s primary dialogue partners in thinking through atonement are the 4th century North African church father, Athanasius, the 19th century Dutch theologian, Herman Bavinck, and the 20th century British pastor-theologian, John R. W. Stott. Having cut my teeth in thinking about the atonement from John Stott’s masterful work, The Cross of Christ, I resonated with Treat throughout this excellent work of deep yet accessible theology. Even better, Treat takes the same framework Stott was known for and distills it down into a concise work that can be read over a couple of afternoons, making a rich theology accessible to a new generation.

There are quite a number of theories out there that try to make sense of the atoning work of Christ; such as, penal substitution, moral influence, and “Christus Victor”. Jeremy Treat does not go into any rigorous analysis of the virtues and vices of each theory as compared to the others. He prefers to think in terms of “dimensions” of atonement as opposed to “theories.” Treat is thankfully allergic to an over-simplified reductionism, while also rejecting a cafeteria approach whereby we can merely pick and choose from different dimensions which we may like or dislike. Instead, Treat sees value in the many dimensions of atonement, and how they effectively integrate together. He offers concise definitions of twenty of these various dimensions, including propitiation, healing, and adoption. I would consider Treat’s view of atonement as a kaleidoscope approach, whereby looking through the prism at different angles, you can see different dimensions which color a rich and practical theology, a most helpful way of thinking about the meaning of the cross of Christ.

For example, in his chapter on the “Coherence of Atonement,” Treat comments on Romans 3:23-25:

“Paul uses three different metaphors from three different realms of society to explain the meaning of Christ’s death. But again, he is not saying the same thing in three different ways. He is drawing from different conceptual worlds to explain different, yet mutually enriching dimensions of what Christ accomplished. ‘For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified (law-court), by his grace as a gift, through the redemption (marketplace) that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation (temple) by his blood to be received by faith’.“

Treat also considers unhelpful ways to think about atonement. For example, some preachers use the analogy of a train speeding down a train track, where a group of children are playing, and if not stopped the train will probably hit and kill the children. But there is a rail switch between the moving train and the children, which if triggered, can send the train down a different track and spare the lives of the children. A rail switch operator has the opportunity to flip the switch and save the day. However, standing on that other train track is the son of the rail switch operator, playing by himself. The father makes a split second decision, flipping the switch, whereby the train almost instantly kills his son, but spare the lives of the other children.

While the analogy does articulate the concept of substitution, whereby the son stands in the place of the other children, giving up his life to die in order to spare the life of the others, the analogy unhelpfully distorts the Christian view of atonement. For one thing, the fate of the son is not tied together with the fate of the father, whereas in a biblical view of the atonement, the Father and the Son, through the Holy Spirit, work in concert together to save humanity. Furthermore, the analogy stresses a kind of utilitarian solution to an ethical dilemma; that is, a sacrifice of the one for the many, and ignores God’s purpose to have a family by seeking reconciliation among a people divided against one another and alienated from their Creator.

Some Christians, when thinking about Isaiah 53, a key text for atonement theology, appear to have no problem thinking that it is somehow okay for God the Father to “crush” the Son, thereby putting God the Father and God the Son somehow in conflict with one another. Thankfully, Jeremy Treat is careful enough to say that while the Suffering Servant; that is, the Son, was indeed “crushed” in Isaiah 53:10, Treat does not say that it was “God” who “crushed” the Suffering Servant. It might appear at first glance that God did crush the Suffering Servant, but a closer look tells a far more compelling story (something to be explained further in a future blog post). Wrath is not a distinct attribute of God, but rather it is a consequence of God’s love and holiness, in response to human sin.

Some preachers make use of a famous ethical dilemma in moral philosophy, the so-called “Trolley Problem,” as a way of describing God’s reasoning for the atoning work of Christ on the cross. Jeremy Treat believes this to be a faulty illustration to use in trying to explain the meaning of Christ’s death.

 

Treat’s book on The Atonement is not meant to be exhaustive. It is but an introduction, after all. So, if you are looking for an exegetically rigorous text which sorts out all of the nuances of the debates about particular bible passages regarding atonement, then The Atonement: An Introduction is not the book you will want to read. Or, if you want to parse through all of the philosophical controversies surrounding atonement theology, you would be better looking off elsewhere. But if you want an easy to read, broad yet modestly brief look at the question as to why the death of someone 2,000 years ago might matter to you, then Jeremy Treat’s The Atonement: An Introduction is the perfect book. I came away from the book strengthened in my faith.

So, I return back to the starting question: Does the death of Jesus some 2,000 years ago matter to me today, and if so, how?

I left work that hot summer night, working through my mind as to how to answer my friend’s question. I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning, reading my Bible, still puzzled. If only I had a copy of Jeremy Treat’s The Atonement: An Introduction available to me back then, I probably would have slept better that night.

Over the next few months, stick around the Veracity blog if you want to explore with me more about this all important question.

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July 3, 2026

Jews vs. Rome: By Barry Strauss, A Review (Why the Middle East Conflict Never Seems to End)

By Clarke Morledge

Just a few weeks ago, President Trump announced a cessation of hostilities with Iran, however tenuous it appears, a conflict having an existential impact upon the modern nation state of Israel and threats upon other Middle Eastern nations as well. But the story goes back a long, long, way….

In 63 BCE, the Roman general Pompey (not to be confused with the city in Italy, Pompei, and its famous volcano) laid siege to the city of Jerusalem. Following the collapse of competing and aging Greek empires, the Ptolemaic in Egypt and the Seleucid in Syria, Rome took advantage of the power vacuum and took an interest in the ancient land of the Bible.

Pompey, a religious outsider to the Jews, after defeating some Jewish resistance, entered the Jewish Temple and even walked into the Holy of Holies, thus desecrating it. Interestingly, Pompey did not take anything. Instead, he ordered that the Temple rituals be continued, as he claimed victory over the city. A little over a century earlier, the Maccabean revolt had shaken off the shackles of their Greek overlords. but now that period of Jewish self-rule came to an end, with Pompey’s conquest of the holy city. Nevertheless, the Romans did not destroy the Jews as a people or their Temple. What then was Pompey’s objective in taking Jerusalem?

Neither the Old nor the New Testament tell us about this remarkable turn of events. Rarely do Christians hear about this in evangelical churches. But this story of Pompey sets up the narrative which stands at the center of controversy over Jesus of Nazareth, who would be born just a few decades later.

The Romans and Jews were at odds with one another. To the Jews, the Romans were idolaters, worshipping many gods. To the Romans, the Jews were peculiar in their religious practices. Yet the Romans wanted to maintain some control over Judea, as Rome detected a growing threat rising in the East. The Parthian empire, whose power was centered in modern-day Iran, challenged that of Rome.

As the Romans grew to prominence, they kept bumping into their Parthian neighbors in the East, and the two did not get along well. The relatively small Jewish nation had become sandwiched between these two great empires. Though Rome now had control of Judea, it was not without some difficulty. For there were still Jews living in the East in Parthian territory, remnants of those who stayed mostly east of the Euphrates, and did not return back to the area of Jerusalem following the decline of Babylon.

Rome needed Judea as a buffer against the Parthians. But they did not want to alienate the native Jewish population of Judea such that it would raise sympathies with those Jews still living in Parthian lands. For those eastern Jews might enlist with the Parthians to push back against Rome.

 

Barry Strauss’ Jews Vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellions Against the World’s Mightiest Empire, tells the story of the ancient conflict between the Jews and the Roman Empire.  Not only does Strauss’ book give us essential background material for understanding the Bible, it helps us understand the complexity of current events in the Middle East.

 

Historian Barry Strauss outlines this background material in his Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World’s Mightiest Empire, which tells the tale of tensions between these two peoples, between Pompey’s arrival in Jerusalem in 63 BCE, and the ultimate destruction of Jewish nation in the land of Judea, through Emperor Hadrian’s crushing of the Bar Kokhba revolt, in the 130’s CE. The first century of the Christian movement is smack dab in the middle of it all, and yet you hardly hear much about this in many evangelical churches.

In our New Testament, Christians read about a bunch of people all named “Herod.” When first reading the New Testament, it is easy to think there was this one person named Herod who kept popping up all of the time throughout the stories of the Gospels. It can be difficult to track with the “Who’s Who” of the Herods. The New Testament itself barely tells us much about who these people really were, and how they got to be the Herods of the New Testament.

The Romans were in a quandary about what to do with Judea following Pompey’s victory. The Romans were hesitant to bring in a pagan Roman to rule a people with such strange religious habits and beliefs, such as male circumcision, eating a restricted food diet, and worshipping only one God. But within a few years, the first Herod, Herod the Great, emerged as the client ruler of choice for the Romans. Through Herod, an Idumean and not really a full Jew (though he tried to position himself as one), the Romans found someone who could look after Rome’s interests in Judea without provoking intervention from the Parthians off to the east.

In some ways, Barry Strauss likens Herod the Great to having a particular “Donald Trump” transactional quality, that of celebrating the art of the “deal.” Herod believed that he could make a deal between Rome and the Jews, where both sides could get something that they wanted, though not everything, and still both Romans and Jews can somehow live in peace together, even if it was a fragile peace.

Herod was a builder, who constructed a deep-water port in Caesarea, along the Mediterranean, as well as greatly enhancing the architecture and grandeur of the Jerusalem Temple. These marvels were attempts to show Rome and the Jews that he was on both of “their” sides. Herod was also extremely paranoid and ruthless. The Gospel of Matthew lets New Testament readers know of this reputation through the Massacre of the Innocents in Bethlehem.

After Herod’s death, around the time of Christ’s birth, Herod’s realm was divided into three pieces, one piece given to three of his sons. The New Testament tells us about Herod Antipas ruling up in Galilee, who stayed in power for a number of years. But then there was Herod’s other son, Herod Archelaus, who ruled over Judea, after he traveled to petition Rome for the right to rule in Jerusalem, following his father’s death. Mathew 2:22 gives the reader a sense that this Herod was just as ruthless as his father.

Unfortunately for Herod Archelaus, while he had his father’s ruthlessness, he did not have enough tactfulness to know when too much was too much. By 6 A.D. (CE), he was recalled by Rome, as complaints by the Jews were made against Archelaus. This led the Romans to finally bring in leadership from the outside, bringing the land of Judea under direct Roman control. The most famous of these leaders was Pontius Pilate.

Pilate had his run-ins with the Jews, but it was nothing compared to the crisis precipitated by Gessius Florus, the Roman governor appointed by the infamous Emperor Nero to rule in Judea during the years 64-66 CE. When Gessius raided the Jerusalem Temple for cash, this instigated an uprising among the Jews. Josephus, the Jewish military leader who turned traitor during the Great Jewish Revolt, blamed Gessius for the start of the conflict, which eventually led to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE by the Romans.

Josephus remains our best source for this period, though Strauss is careful enough to acknowledge that Josephus would at times fudge the facts to make himself look better. But the record that Josephus leaves provides a detailed tale of how the Jews, in seeking to defend against the Romans, were in many ways more at war with one another. Much of the conflict among the Jews were between those who believed that Rome should be resisted at all costs, whereas other more moderate Jews believed that Jewish resistance to Rome was futile.

Ultimately, the latter group proved to be right, as the Romans led by the future emperor Titus destroyed Jerusalem and left the Temple in ruins. This was followed up by the dramatic siege by the Romans of the mountain fortress by the Dead Sea, Masada, of the last of the Jewish rebels. However, though Josephus leaves us the most detail regarding the tragedy of the Great Jewish Revolt, the outcomes of two later revolts caused more death and destruction across a much wider area.

Arch of Titus

Temple plunder depicted on the Arch of Titus, Rome, a must-see artifact at the entrance to the Roman Forum, which my wife and I visited in 2018.  Titus brought back thousands of defeated Jews as slaves to Rome, after he defeated Jerusalem and destroyed its Temple in 70 A.D.

 

The Jewish Diaspora revolt, sometimes known as Second Jewish-Roman War, or the Kitos War, from about 116-118 CE, mainly involved the Jews in and around Alexandria, Egypt, the area which supplied a vast majority of food for Rome. Tensions between these Alexandrian Jews and the Romans in Egypt erupted, soon after Rome went to war against the Parthians. Thousands of both Jews and Romans died in the conflict, with Rome eventually gaining the upper hand.

Then finally, there was the Bar Kokhba revolt of 135 CE, sometimes called the Third Jewish-Roman war, led by the messianic leader Simon Bar Kokhba against the pagan Emperor Hadrian, who decisively defeated the Jews. Hadrian had renamed Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, placing a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount, and even renamed Judea as Palestine, which even today is taken by some Jews as a slur. The cost was certainly heavy for the Romans, but the greatest loss was for the Jews, who were effectively exiled again from much of their homeland, by the end of 135 CE.

Nevertheless, as Strauss paints it, it was the Jews who survived in the long run, while Rome ultimately failed. The Jews lost their Temple, the core element of their faith, but in the wake of the Temple’s destruction, and finally with the defeat of Bar Kokhba, the surviving Jews basically found a way to reinvent Judaism, retaining an embrace of the Law of Moses, without a Temple at its center. Furthermore, the Jews were able to do so, living as a minority in a culture dominated by those who were not like them in their beliefs and practices.

Strauss’ Jews vs. Rome weaves a fascinating story of those three great Jewish revolts, and the consequences which followed. Having this story in mind sheds a lot of light on the background for the New Testament, and the world in which figures like Jesus, Paul, and the other early disciples of Jesus lived.

One particular story stands out to me regarding the time of Jesus in Galilee. Roughly about the time that Jesus was born, there was a city, Sepphoris, just a few miles from Jesus’ boyhood home of Nazareth, which had undergone a revolt against Herodian rule. But the Romans came in and destroyed the city, taking the inhabitants off to become enslaved. A new population, more friendly to the Romans, occupied the remains of the city, which was rebuilt during the early years of Jesus. Unfortunately, the New Testament never mentions Sepphoris, despite its proximity and walking distance from Nazareth. Some historians speculate that Jesus may have accompanied his carpenter father to help rebuild that city.

Strauss’ work also helps us understand what is going on in Israel today, particularly in view of the crisis of the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas, and Israel’s aggressive response in Gaza for over two years, including military conflicts in southern Lebanon and with Iran. In a 2025 YouTube short video of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister comments about his reading of Barry Strauss’ book, and why he desired to read the book. Netanyahu responded with, “Well we lost that one, and we have to win the next one.” The video pops every now and then on YouTube, but at times the video has been taken down. The last version I know about is linked here.

Veracity blogger, on-site, at the Roman Forum, in 2018, where the “pagan” culture of Rome reigned supreme, until the story of the Crucified and Resurrected One superseded it. On the opposite side of the Roman Forum, at the entrance, stands the Arch of Titus, which depicts the defeat of Jerusalem, in 70 A.D., which among the Jewish people was pretty much the equivalent to the “9-11” attack in the United States, for Americans.

 

What is so eerie about reading Jews vs. Rome is how relevant Strauss’ book is to current events. Not too long after reading Strauss’ book, the United States and Israel made pre-emptive strikes against the Iranian Shiite regime, in late February, 2026. While the war has been greatly debated in the United States, as to its legitimacy, it would appear that for the Israelis, there is less controversy (though clearly not everyone in Israel agrees with Netanyahu). One can read from Netanyahu’s comments about Jews vs. Rome, that Netanyahu believes that Israel today can not afford to make the same mistakes made some 2,000 years ago. Israel’s foreign policy understands that the Shiite regime in Iran is the rough equivalent to first century Rome. I will leave it to the news commentators and political analysts, who know better than I do, as to what Netanyahu has been thinking, and if he has been right or not.

My primary takeaway from Jews vs. Rome is historical, in how the story of this ancient conflict can help us to better comprehend the historical context of the Bible. Understanding the conflict between Rome and Jews helps Christians to better understand why so many of Jesus’ followers were hoping him to be a military and political Messiah, who would rise up against Rome, and remove the Romans from the land. The period of the Jews versus Rome conflict represents the zenith of apocalyptic writings and thinking among the Jews. The Jews were expecting a messianic figure to come, bring an end to the current world order, and start something new, with the liberation of Israel as the focal point. However, in the case of the early Christian movement, that did not turn out exactly the way many Jews were anticipating. The announcement of the coming Kingdom of God by Jesus of Nazareth took on a completely different dimension, one that would forever change the trajectory of human history.

Many thanks go to Barry Strauss for giving the reader an enthralling account of the conflict, which became the fertile ground from which the Christian faith took hold in the world, some twenty centuries ago. The fact that the situation regarding the fate of ancient Israel stills holds immense narrative power should tell us why the conflict in the Middle East seems like it is never ending.

Want more details about the book? Listen to historian Victor Davis Hanson’s interview with Barry Strauss.

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June 19, 2026

Counteract, by Greg Harris. A Brief Review. A Message of Hope for Those Who Are Strangers

By Clarke Morledge

Greg Harris is a friend of mine. My wife and I were in a small group Bible study with Greg and his wife Kim for a couple of years in our church. Greg is pretty soft spoken, so you would never know that he is the executive director of Counteract International, a ministry to incarcerated youth in Central America, unless you pressed him to talk about his story.

In his recent book, Counteract: Walking Alongside Incarcerated Youth in Central America from Prison to Purpose, author Greg Harris tells stories of how Counteract staff in countries like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras go to Central American detention centers to offer vocational training, counseling, and above all, Christian hope, to a population of young people who have been largely abandoned due to poverty and neglect.

 

 

Hopelessness Among Central American Youth

The explosive growth of gangs in Central America is a notorious social problem, which seems distant to most North Americans.  But we do see the fallout in our society, as many young people and families fleeing violence over the past few decades have made their way as immigrants into the United States, either legally or illegally. Extreme poverty has forced countless young people to experience alienation in their homes, neglect and even abuse by their parents, part of a spiraling breakdown of families which repeats generation after generation.

Even in my own relatively quiet town of Williamsburg, Virginia, where Greg and Kim Harris also live, gang violence is not that far away. A few months ago a teenage boy was shot and killed in a neighborhood across town from where I live, resulting from gang violence.

Gangs function as alternatives to biological family and Christian community. Where biological and even church families fail to provide a structured, supportive, and safe environment for kids to flourish, they will turn to gangs who offer a promise of protection and sense of importance and value. Unfortunately, the promises that gangs offer are only a counterfeit, however appealing they might appear in times of crisis.

The effects of gang violence in Central America are staggering. Several countries in Central America have had some of the largest murder rates in the world. Honduras, for example, had 37.6 homicides per 100,000 people as of 2021. The number of homicides per person  in Latin America is roughly five times higher than in North America.

However, there is some good news recently as some trends appear to be reversing, but problems still persist, just in different ways.  El Salvador was known for having the worst murder rate in the world, roughly 106 per 100,000 in 2015,  roughly one murder per hour. Nearly ten years later, after the government started to aggressively crack down on gangs, that rate has dropped dramatically to 1.3 per 100,000 in 2025, making El Salvador one of the safest countries in the world. But the shift has come at a cost, with El Salvador having one of highest incarceration rates, about 1.6% of the population. What does one do with all of those young people in prison?

Counteract, originally named as “Orphan Helpers,” was started by a Virginia realtor, Greg Garrett, back in 2000. As a Christian businessman, Garrett wanted to know how he could help “the least of these,” quoting the words of Jesus in the New Testament. Over time, some Central American governments began to close orphanages, and so Counteract began to shift their mission purpose to meet the greatest, growing need. Since then, Counteract has focused its mission on training and sending staff into the prisons and detention centers in order to walk alongside troubled youth who experience very little hope, who tend to distrust the larger society around them.

Greg Harris, and his co-author Francisco “Pancho” Molina, tell the story ably well in Counteract: Walking Alongside Incarcerated Youth in Central America from Prison to Purpose. One of the most moving stories Greg and Pancho tell in the book comes from the COVID lockdown, when the detention centers decided to lockdown their facilities in certain areas for 21 days, where no one, including guards and other administrative personnel, could leave their respective centers for that entire time period.

Counteract staff had been told that this policy would apply to them as well: No more visits during the day, and then returning home for the night. Once you entered the detention facility, you were pretty much in there with everyone else. It was a difficult decision, as Counteract staff typically have families of their own outside of the detention center walls to take care of. Yet sacrificially, all of the Counteract staff decided to commit to the 21 day isolation policy, and stay with their incarcerated kids. These Counteract staff knew that over 90% of their job was simply to show up and be there for these kids, who had no hope otherwise.

Counteract’s Mission to “Love Thy Stranger”

Greg’s book had been out for a few months, so I finally got around to reading it this spring. I am glad I did.

About the time I read Greg’s book, I heard of another book written and released by atheist and skeptic bible scholar, Bart Ehrman, Love Thy Stranger. Ehrman grew up as a Christian, but has since walked away from the faith, while retaining his interest in the scholarly study of early Christianity. As an historian, the remarkable theme which Ehrman chronicles is that the Christian movement brought something unique into the history of humanity which was not present before the time of Christ.

Whereas most cultures have believed that one should take care of friends and family in need, caring for strangers was not part of that social ethic. Yet the New Testament stood that kind of cloistered social ethic on its head by expanding the concept of “love thy neighbor,” a phrase many know from the Hebrew Bible. In Christianity, particularly through the Gospels and the writings of the Apostle Paul, the idea of “neighbor” includes not just family and friends, but also strangers in need. For example, Ehrman observes that the entire history of “hospitals” grew out of the Christian tradition. Therefore, it should not be a surprise to find Christians in El Salvador making their way as counselors into prisons to befriend mistrusted, isolated youth.

Today, when many distrust Christianity as being something not so good for the world, it is encouraging to hear a non-believing historian acknowledge that the Christian faith introduced to human history the idea of caring for people who are strangers to you. Christianity changed the moral conscience of the West.

Ehrman’s conclusion is ironic as an atheist: “thank God for Christianity.” For atheists who have no divine transcendent metanarrative to appeal to, the best they can do is to borrow from the ethical dimension of Christianity to guide them.

What Greg Harris writes about in Counteract is the perfect expression of “love thy stranger.” While young people who get mixed up in gangs are often treated as strangers who are to be forgotten, ignored, or else marginalized from society, Counteract International offers a positive witness to the gospel message that gives hope to those who otherwise have no hope.

Greg’s book is a short read, less than 200 pages. It will stimulate you to engage in a ministry where Christians can truly become the hands and feet of Christ, offering hope to the hopeless. Through Counteract International, followers of Jesus are finding ways to connect with young people in the prison system in Central America, making friends out of strangers. I generally do not tear up when reading a book, but I teared up when reading this one.

If you want to invest in a Christian ministry doing high-quality work to care for those “strangers” hidden away in prisons, investing in the ministry of Counteract International, which Greg Harris writes about in his book, will extend that message of hope to those who feel hopeless. That message of hope actually works to change lives, which should encourage us in a day when so many negative aspects about our world can bring us down. I highly recommend Counteract: Walking Alongside Incarcerated Youth in Central America from Prison to Purpose for everyone.

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June 5, 2026

A Last Look at Zurich: A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, by John Kerr. A Review.

By Clarke Morledge

From the Christianity along the Rhine blog series… probably the last installment…

Back in October, 2025, my wife and I took a Viking longboat cruise ship down the Rhine River, starting in Basel, Switzerland, an experience that easily scratched my church history itch. But before we arrived in Basel, we stayed for two nights in Zurich, Switzerland, which is the setting for this story, where the legacy of Carl Jung began to permeate the modern world. I thought I would end this travelogue series with one more look back at Zurich….

While in Zurich, we took a boat trip around Lake Zurich. There we saw the home of Carl Jung on the shore of the lake, the main subject of this story, and a central character in a book I read prior to arriving in Zurich….

The combined influence of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung has shaped the modern world in many ways.

The relationship between Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychoanalysis, and the younger Carl Jung, who adapted Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, is the focus of John Kerr’s A Dangerous Method, which was later adapted into a 2011 film of the same name, by director David Cronenberg. Both Freud and Jung were born in the 19th century, as multiple disciplines of science were being established in the Western world. Freud, an Austrian Jew, and Jung, a Swiss son of a Protestant pastor, independently entered into the developing field of psychiatry, in an effort to find a scientific way to understand the human mind, in hopes of analyzing and curing mental illness.

Freud spent most of his career in Vienna, Austria, whereas Jung practiced his profession in Zurich, Switzerland. The two eventually met and became friends, whereby Freud began to view Jung as his intellectual son, who could carry the psychoanalytic movement forward….

 

 

A Most Dangerous Method: A Short Review of the Book

What makes Kerr’s history in A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein so intriguing is the introduction of a third character, a young Jewish Russian woman, Sabina Spielrien, who was a psychiatric patient of Jung’s in Zurich. Spielrein would eventually become one of the first female psychoanalysts herself, until she and her two daughters were murdered by the Nazis during World War II in Russia.

Yet as a young patient of Jung’s in his Zurich clinic, she began to have an infatuation with her Swiss psychiatrist, and the two had some kind of affair. Kerr is cautious in not definitively concluding that the affair was sexual, offering instead to say that Spielrein and Jung shared “poetry” together. The film version of the book is not so cautious, and openly portrays the affair as sexual. I could have done without that gratuitious aspect of modern filmmaking.

Either way, for Kerr the character of Spielrein brings into the relationship between Freud and Jung a special dynamic which also explains how these two intellectual giants of the early 20th century eventually parted ways and dissolved their friendship. Though culturally a Jew, Freud took his psychoanalytic theory in a more materialistic and atheistic direction, whereas Jung sought to combine psychoanalytic theory with his own understanding of Christianity.

According to Kerr, what eventually drove Freud and Jung apart was their efforts to psychoanalyze the other, as each man knew of a hidden flaw in the other, which made for a barrier which could not be breached.  Freud was having an affair with his wife’s sister, which Jung knew about, whereas Spielrein as an up-and-coming psychiatrist began to consult Freud after Jung severed the affair with Spielrein.

However, it was not the sexual insecurities and histories of both Freud and Jung which alone drove the two apart. It was also the religious backgrounds of each, Freud’s Jewish heritage and Jung’s Christian heritage. Thirdly, it included the very real intellectual differences between the two men, particularly in how each viewed the essential features of psychoanalytic theory and method. The combination of all three tensions: the sexual, the religious, and the intellectual, doomed their friendship and collaboration. In the discipline of psychology, both Freud and Jung were schismatic, both thinking of the other as a heretic. So much for the idea that psychoanalysis was a science that could rise above such differences.

The contribution of Spielrein to the development of psychoanalysis was rarely noticed by anyone until some of her papers were discovered in the 1970s.  But the influence of both Freud and Jung in the modern world can not be ignored. Freud pioneered the practice of using free association as a means of diagnosing mental health issues. Freud pursued efforts at dream interpretation in order to reveal repressed memories. He also developed a theory of the human pysche made up of the id, ego, and the super-ego, whereby the life drive, the libido, was in continual conflict with the death instinct.

Carl G. Jung’s last residence, on Lake Zurich in Switzerland. Jung’s home is now a museum. I did not get a chance to visit the museum, but on a boat trip around Lake Zurich, I I took this snapshot of Jung’s home, when my wife and I visited Zurich in October, 2025.

 

The Enduring Influence of Sigmund Freud, and Even More So, Carl Jung in Psychotherapy

Jung for his part popularized the concept of the archetype, the anima and the animus, and synchronicity. We also get the popular idea of personality types, the extrovert and the introvert, from Carl Jung.  Hardly a day or two goes by where someone I converse with does not use terms like “ego,” “introvert,” or “extrovert” to either describe themselves or someone else they know. We live in the shadow of a world created by Freud and Jung.

For Kerr, Spielrein played an essential role, prompting both Freud and Jung to consider new ideas in the development of each thinker’s particular approach to psychoanalysis. Spielrein is also noted for having psychoanalyzed the great child psychologist, Jean Piaget.

Yet despite the positive contributions that Freud, Jung, and now, apparently Spielrein, have made to psychiatric theory and practice, the sticking point for Christians today is how such ideas have been extended beyond psychology into the realm of how we think about God in an increasingly secularized world. Confidence in the Bible as God’s revelation has been superseded in the development of the psychoanalytic movement: God is less a real person to have a relationship with and more a concept in which to interpret the inner workings of the mind. Freud had an apparently antagonistic view of Christianity, whereas Jung sought to reconceptualize Christianity, or at best in trying to reinvigorate interest in Christianity, by laying aside questions of history and focusing on the concept of myth, looking at the stories of the Bible as a lens by which we can better understand the human psyche.

The Jordan Peterson Phenomenon:  Jungian Psychology for a 21st Century Audience

Here in the early 21st century, the influence of Freud has been eclipsed by the influence of Jung. We often hear people talk about things like “Freudian slips,” but Freud’s outlook on mental health today has been largely superseded by the insights of his Zurich younger counterpart. That influence has been felt even within the Christian church.

The most popular proponent of a Jungian interest in Christianity is none other than Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychiatrist, who is widely influential on YouTube and the DailyWire. Jordan Peterson considers himself not to be a “typical Christian;” that is, he is not committed to anything which might be defined as historically orthodox, but neither would he embrace atheism.

Peterson’s influence on YouTube is staggering, as his lectures on the Bible have been viewed by millions of people. Many have appealed to these lectures as encouraging them to reconsider Christianity again and go find a church (Sadly, Jordan Peterson has been beset with a series of health problems, with a set of issues that took him out of North America to find treatment in 2020, and most recently, another serious health decline since the latter half of 2025, due to being diagnosed with chronic inflammatory response syndrome).

Jordan Peterson is clearly a disciple of Carl Jung. He has used his insights gained from Jungian psychology to examine the problem of what makes a normal person commit horrific acts of evil, among a variety of other things. Peterson combines his interest in the work of Carl Jung with Russian authors, like Fyodor Dostoevsky, to reinvigorate an interest in Christian spirituality. The “Rise of Jordan Peterson,” a phenomenon which prompted the title to documentary about Peterson, stands in contrast with the pessimism towards Christianity promoted by the New Atheism movement of the early 21st century. In a world that seems to be growing in its skepticism of Christianity in general, it is a relief to know that Jordan Peterson’s friendly interest in Christianity is sparking fruitful conversations about the faith.

Nevertheless, there is quite a bit of skepticism among historically orthodox Christians that such psychoanalytic efforts to rethink Christian theology will ultimately amount to much, despite the best of intentions by the proponents who offer it. After myself having read books by those like John Sanford and Morton Kelsey, who have sought to integrate Jungian thought and Christianity, the project seems to lead to nowhere, despite the lure of tantalizing insights into the human psyche.

I know of Christians who have benefited from various psychological insights from Jung’s work.  But while I would not want to disparage such interests, some caution is in order. The famous Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, which divides the human psyche along four axes: Introvert versus Extrovert, Thinking versus Feeling, Intuitive versus Sensing, and Perceptive versus Judging, is built squarely on the psychoanalytic foundations set forth by Carl Jung (Frankly, in my view, the Myers-Briggs test is not that much different from the Enneagram, but that’s a topic for another blog post).

Nevertheless,  as Christian apologist Douglas Groothuis has argued, there is just too much openness to the occult in Jungian thought to lead to real, genuine spiritual healing for those tormented by questions of the soul. I have read enough of Jung’s thoughts on the interpretation of the Bible to know that he is not much of a careful exegete of the Bible. Rather, he interprets many passages of the Bible through his psychoanalytic framework. If you spent much time reading books by Jordan Peterson, or view his YouTube videos, you will get a lot of the same thing.

Like with Jung, Jordan Peterson’s influence on stirring interest in Christianity has been like a two-edged sword.  On the one hand, Peterson is great at generating interest in Christianity, and he does have many helpful insights to offer his readers/viewers, particularly for young men. Peterson’s famous book regarding his “12 Rules for Life” does have its spiritual rewards. Even Peterson’s wife, Tammy, returned to the Roman Catholic Church a few years ago. But if you really want to understand the Bible, there are more tried and true ways of interpreting Scripture the Bible without Peterson’s Jungian hermeneutical grid often getting in the way.

Carl Jung via Jordan Peterson as a Gateway to Historic Orthodox Christian Faith?

As the world’s most recognized disciple of Jung today, Jordan Peterson, acts as kind of like a “gateway drug” into Christianity. If that is what it takes to bring someone into the orbit of Christian faith, then that is great. But I find that Peterson’s brand of Jungian psychology only carries you but so far. For those Christians who are overly skeptical about Jordan Peterson’s influence, then you might want to consider the impact Peterson has had on her daughter Mikhaila, who from what I can see from this interview with Canadian Christian apologist, Wes Huff, has also become a Christian, showing a keen interest in knowing more about historic orthodox Christianity. Wes Huff might be the most well-known Christian apologist active on YouTube these days, and his interview with Mikhaila is spot-on in my view.

In preparation for our trip to Europe in 2025, where we visited Zurich, Switzerland, the city where Carl Jung spent most of his professional life, I wanted to learn more about the famed Swiss psychoanalyst, whose influence is still being felt now in the 21st century. John Kerr’s A Dangerous Method sounded like a good title in which to learn more. Unfortunately, I found reading A Dangerous Method to be a mixed bag at best.

While the historical background offered by John Kerr’s A Dangerous Method is of interest, the book itself was for me difficult to get through. It amazed me how well the letters of correspondence involving Freud, Jung, and Spielrein have been preserved to tell the story that Kerr meticulously narrates. However, Kerr assumes that the reader has familiarity with numerous psychoanalytic concepts. I listened to pages and pages of references to “dementia praecox” before I finally had to stop listening to the audiobook to look it up and discover that “dementia praecox” was an early diagnostic term to refer to schizophrenia. It would have been better if Kerr had explained his terminology, instead of assuming too much from his audience.

Stumbling blocks like these made progress through the book into a slog. A book like this will surely interest those who are already invested in the field, but as a psychological “layperson,” I could not wait to finish the book and move onto something else.

Just the other day, a colleague of mine came to my office and asked if I had ever heard of “Jordan Peterson,” as he had recently listened to a podcast where Peterson was speaking. This colleague of mine does not go to church, and he knows that I am a Christian, but there was just something about Peterson’s talk about the Bible that intrigued him. I doubt if my colleague has ever heard the name of Carl Jung before. But apparently he got a dose of Jung’s thought by listening to Jordan Peterson. I pray that having that kind of exposure to Jordan Peterson might yield some fruit and encourage him to consider a full-on look at Christianity itself, not simply as some ideological framework which has arranged the mental furniture of the Western world, but as a joyful, deep, and real encounter with Jesus Christ.

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May 25, 2026

Why AI Is Changing Everything

By Clarke Morledge

Happy Memorial Day.

I have been blogging now for a little over 13 years at Veracity.  My interests for Veracity have been (and basically remain) in Christian apologetics and church history. That will probably continue for some time to come. In fact, I have one more blog post coming up chronicling the trip my wife and I took to Europe last year, where I got to visit a lot of sites along (or not that far way from) the Rhine River.

But as we are heading into the summer of 2026, I wanted to write a fairly short blog post on a topic that is really important when it comes to the world of long-form blogging… and much, much more.  Much of what I write here on Veracity deals with book reviews, with some occasional diversions, like the “Christianity Along the Rhine” blog series.

What I have learned along the way is that social media has really disrupted the way people interact with one another. Thankfully, it has taken awhile, but it seems like within the past few years, people are finally starting to wisen up about the dangers of social media. Schools are starting to implement common sense controls of access to technological devices, particularly for young people, as we are learning the hard way about the fallout of introducing hi-tech devices to kids at too early an age, which has given us an unbelievably severe epidemic of anxiety and depression among children, and even young adults.

Social media cuts into attention spans, part of the reason why long-form blogging, for most part, has been in decline since blogging’s hey-day 10-15 years ago. The meme “TL;DR”, standing for “Too Long, Didn’t Read” has pretty much shown people that we have a culture which has made attention deficit disorder a pretty much normal thing now. Plus, the exposure to ideas, impersonal contact with supposed “friends” we “meet” on the Internet, make interaction with people on the Internet a fairly treacherous endeavor. Take the social media site NextDoor for example, where I am astounded by the number of posts saying “I am looking for a friend,” etc. The Internet is ripe with opportunities for scams and deceptions.

The late Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone to the world in 2007. The world has never been the same since. However, there is something emerging now which will probably eclipse the influence of the SmartPhone….. that is AI (Artificial Intelligence)

 

In some sense, things have not changed that much since 2019, when I wrote “Reflections on Seven Years on Internet Blogging.” We still get amazingly overwhelmed by Internet content.  The hardest part (still) comes in discernment, trying to sort the good from the bad. The most extreme voices seem to garner the most attention, whereas measured, thoughtful content gets buried underneath the digital overload.

I read mostly via listening to audiobooks, mainly on my commute too and from work, as an act of rebellion to the noise people mostly suffer with Facebook and Instagram. I still do not have a Facebook or Instagram account, so I wear that with a badge of honor.

Nevertheless,  I do consume a good amount of YouTube.  There is a lot of garbage on YouTube, but there is also a lot of good content. There is a wealth of knowledge to be learned about church history and apologetics, which is both good and bad. Again, the problem is in trying to figure out how to parse through everything you could ever listen to, or view, and sort out the beneficial from the stuff that leads you down the wrong path. For every few good YouTube channels which interview accomplished scholars, etc., there are many more popular Christian channels which are simply a waste of time.

The vast amount of content on YouTube, as well as the world of audio-only podcasts, has given our current generation access to really good Bible teaching…. better than most Christians have had since the beginning of the Christian movement…..if we know where to find it. This puts local church pastors/bible-teachers in a tough spot. As Christians can easily reach for an iPhone to listen to a good online sermon, that sermon/podcast presenter stands a good chance of being a better public speaker than your local pastor/elder. The main difference is that you can develop some kind of friendship, or even accountability relationship with your pastor/elders, which is essential to a healthy Christian community, which you simply can not get from someone miles away with a computer, a microphone, and an Internet connection.

However, I think things are shaking up in the Internet world,  a world I helped to create as an Information Technology specialist, working at a college…. and that game changer is AI (Artificial Intelligence).

AI is really the talk of the digital ecosystem. And there is a good reason for it.

When I first started to look into AI, it was kind of so-so. I even used ChatBot AI to help to create a blog post about two and half years ago. But I was not really impressed. AI made a LOT of mistakes.

Over the past few months, I have started to take AI more seriously. It really is a game changer.

AI gives us the ability to sort through the immense amount of information available on the Internet, making it reasonably digestible… and it does so…. fast. I mean…. AI is really fast….We still need good content out there, as any user of AI should know that indeed AI absolutely still makes mistakes.  “Garbage in, garbage out,” as they say.

The biggest need over the next few years will be people learning skills to help to debug AI. Even at the college I work at, AI is all the buzz. Everyday, someone is talking about AI. I mean, even just a few days ago, Google has changed its classic search box, a feature that has been around for 25 years….. and it was AI that inspired the change.

However, the situation for young people with AI has just become super-scary…. and I mean…. super-scary.  A recent survey indicates that 72% of American teenagers have already turned to AI for companionship.

Did you catch that? Most kids…. that means, if you are a parent…. probably your kid, if you give them an iPhone, is already doing this: 72% of American teenagers have already turned to AI for companionship.

If you thought social media was dangerous for kids, you have not seen anything yet.

But here is the thing: AI has come a long way in just the last few years. There is no way to fully predict how AI will ultimately evolve and change our world…. but one thing is for sure, it will change things. It is already changing things: Just ask the people who are threatened by these huge, monster data centers being built in their backyard. If something is digital, it is only a matter of time before AI takes it all over. But the amount of energy resources required to run AI are just overwhelming. We already have a crisis regarding the production of energy, and now AI want orders of magnitude more to power itself. Where are we going to get all of those resources to run AI????

If I was to encourage a young person in high school today, I would try to steer them to either pursue a classically-oriented liberal arts education; where the goal is character formation, whether that be through a college or some other similar method, but that also has practical skills in mind (there are many PhDs out there who know their stuff, but who are flipping burgers at McDonalds)….. OR to skip college altogether and get into some kind of apprentice program; as an electrician, plumber or a carpenter, and learn a valuable hands-on skill. It will take a while before robotics will eliminate a lot of those skills.

In the meantime, do not be surprised if the up-and-coming generation today is getting most of their knowledge about Christianity…. not through the Bible… and not even from Christians around them…. they are getting it through AI.

Try it yourself: Go on over to ChatGPT, or the Google AI search on your phone, and type or speak into your app: “How do know if Christianity is true?”

Does any of that get your attention???

And that is just the start of the AI revolution. Some even look at AI as an apocalyptic event.

I will still be doing long-form blogging for the foreseeable future. Why? Because that is how AI learns things. As I said earlier, “Garbage In, Garbage Out,” when it comes to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude AI, or just doing a Google search in AI mode. Do not get mad with AI when it tells you certain things about your Christian faith that you do not like, if you are not supporting efforts to get good evangelical scholarship out there that Christians can use everyday.

There is still a lot of ground-breaking scholarship happening that most Christians know little about, but which will help us to better appreciate both the history of Christianity as well as learning better apologetic tools to help us to better defend our faith, and share the Gospel with our neighbor. I still want to try to get that good content out there. Hopefully, AI will pick up some of it.

However, I do not know how AI will impact our day-to-day lives. But mark my word, it will.

Christians need to be prepared for AI, as it will present new spiritual challenges, along with providing helpful tools to enable Christians to be better and more informed witnesses for Jesus.

In the meantime, enjoy your summer.

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