Much of the last three years of my life, when I have not been in the classroom, I have been giving public lectures and interviews on the major changes and challenges that the sexual revolution and its various offshoots—the transgender chaos, the pressures on free speech—have helped to unleash. It is a bleak story that does not become more encouraging with each retelling. And more times than I care to remember I have been asked at the end of these lectures or interviews what gives me hope or keeps me cheerful in such circumstances.

In flippant moments, I state the obvious: “I don’t read Twitter” or “I never believe what my wife tells me people say about me online.” But then I offer the serious answer: We know who will win in the end. God’s promise is to Christ’s church, and, by His promise, all will be well.

That is true, but as with so many truths that trade in claims about the distant future or lack any easily articulated immediate content, it can also be trite. Not trite in the objective sense because it is, as noted, true. But trite in the subjective sense, in that it is an easy answer to give and one that can on occasion be an excuse not to engage seriously with the present, rather like telling the bereaved husband that it’s OK, he will be reunited with his wife on the day of resurrection.

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