August 28, 2026

Today the church is asking whether it actually knows what worship, forgiveness, and formation are for — or whether it has quietly replaced all three with the pursuit of feeling better. Christianity Today ran a piece this week that names the problem directly: worship has become therapy. The goal has shifted from transformation to emotional relief, and most congregations haven't noticed. Desiring God is asking a related question — why Christians refuse free forgiveness — and the answer there is also psychological: shame feels safer than grace. The Aquila Report pushes back on the therapeutic drift from a different angle, arguing that holy fear is not dread but *delight*, a pleasure God demands. These three pieces are not saying the same thing, but they are circling the same deficiency: a church that has made its own emotional comfort the measure of spiritual reality. Earlier this week we were watching this same tension surface in questions about desire and formation. It hasn't resolved.

The Gospel Coalition says AI parenting advice can't replace God's wisdom — which is true, but the more uncomfortable claim underneath it is that parents are outsourcing formation because they don't trust themselves. TGC also has a piece on waiting as biblical obedience, not wasted time. That reframe matters in a week when Christianity Today is reporting on Christian leaders traveling into a war zone to pray in Kyiv — people for whom waiting is not an option. 9Marks published something quieter: a piece on pastors caring for aging parents, the hardest calling because it has no platform. First Things is running the demographic argument that longer lives are threatening democracy, which sits uncomfortably next to Tim Challies flagging that churches must walk with parents of LGBTQ+ kids or lose them entirely. Neither piece is comfortable. Mere Orthodoxy went long on 18th-century apologist Nathaniel Lardner, whose radical idea was that you could defeat skeptics without contempt. The church is still learning that one.