The truth is often plain as day, if you have the ears to hear it.
Matt Van Swoll is a former nuclear scientist for the U.S. Department of Energy who pivoted into a career in landscape photography. He went viral in 2024 for sharing videos of the devastation in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene unleashed on Appalachia.
Since then, he's regularly popped up in my feeds, expressing frustration as a regular Joe who just wants to live his life but has started noticing that everything is rotten in Denmark (as Shakespeare might say).
In May, Matt said he'd begun attending church again with his wife and kids.
One of his primary motivations, Matt said, was seeing how Samaritan's Purse and other Christians mobilized to help with storm relief after Helene and other recent disasters.
To my knowledge, Matt isn't versed in systematic theology. He isn't a proficianado of church history. He probably couldn't tell me the difference between the the Council of Jerusalem or the Council of Nicaea or the Council of Dort, nor recite the finer points of the T.U.L.I.P. acronym that so many people still love to argue about 400 years later.
If I approached him wearing a Five Solas or Tenebras Lux shirt, it likely would mean nothing to him (and some of your eyes have glazed over reading all this nerdy stuff 😂).
And yet the great thing about Christ is that there is no barrier to entry. There's no requisite test or secret class one must pass.
'Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.' - Matthew 11:28-30
Christ paid the penalty for our sins by dying the death we deserved to die (2 Corinthians 5:21, 1 Peter 2:24, Isaiah 53:4-6, 1 Peter 3:18, Exodus 12:23, Genesis 22:1-19).
We do not earn God's favor, as the world's other religions teach, by doing good deeds and praying they outweigh the bad. Instead we put on the goodness that God has done for us (Galatians 3:27). It is a free gift (Ephesians 2:8-9), offered not only to the righteous, but the very worst of people.
Or have you not heard that Christ came for the degenerates and the wicked?
'I didn't come to call the righteous, but sinners.' - Mark 2:17
Theology is important, not only because we need to understand who God says He is instead of inventing the little gods we chase after in our own imagination, but because the Bible teaches that there are spiritual evils that twist good intentions - even biblical teachings - into monstrosities that lure many people astray.
But at the end of the day, Christianity, or Christendom, has little to do with the PhD in seminary who has translated his own copy of the Bible out of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
It has everything to do with average guys like Matt Van Swoll; average guys who are starting to figure out deep philosophical and political realities like toddlers learning to walk. That's not an insult, but an observation: Regular men and women are realizing that they live in a country that is deeply entrenched with a cult that rules over them with an iron fist.
Where we go from here is not the point of this article. That's a battle that's being waged minute-by-minute in the chaos of the crumbling liberal order.
But few would disagree that what's happening around us is indeed chaos.
The liberal order would say we need more pluralism and tolerance to ensure one faction doesn't win out over another. If we all slap a few more "Coexist" stickers on our car, we can have the perfect society where everyone gets to worship their own gods in private and keep their religion out of people's faces ... unless, you know, it's naked gay men on bikes at a Pride parade or something of the like.
That experiment has been played out over the last two centuries of Western civilization. We have slowly banned Christ from the public square, believing ourselves modern and progressive, and have thus walked into abject chaos and disorder that will swallow us whole unless our course is quickly corrected.
What is playing out across the Western world is not political left versus political right, but a philosophical clash between religions that worship opposing gods.
When Matt Van Swol says the world is absolutely terrifying without Christ, he's participating in a simple thought experiment using basic moral math.
If there is no god(s), our lives are a cosmic accident, justice and morality mean absolutely nothing, and everything we do is pointless against the entropy of a fading universe.
If there is a god(s), the world can be equally terrifying. Every other religion gives us a laundry list of do's and don't's that we must do to please our creator(s), but our duty, purpose, and destiny is vague.
Will you submit to the unbending will of Allah, who demands our blood instead of offering his own, and changes the rules as he pleases?
Will you sacrifice your identity to the cosmic energy of the gods of the East, where ghosts linger or are doomed to be born in a cycle of reincarnation to suffer again and again and again?
Will you believe in some vague spirituality based on superstitions, ghosts, and zodiac signs that has no assurance of hope in this life or the next?
Will you pay homage to the American gods of money, pleasure, sport, and war - all shadows of their Greco-Roman selves - that give amusement but no hope for eternity? Does the endless twilight of Hades appeal to you?
What about wokeism, that desperate attempt to forge religion out of our narcissistic secular experiment? Can you reach enlightenment by deconstructing yourself and "doing the work" before death inevitably takes you?
There is no way to escape it.
The world is terrifying without Christ.
King David, who looked forward to the promise of Christ, had faith in the promises of God (Hebrews 11), but did not know what we know about the specific way God would make by being born as a human and dying for our sins.
'Turn, Lord! Rescue me; save me because of your faithful love. For there is no remembrance of you in death; who can thank you in Sheol?' - Psalm 6:4-5
Hundreds of years later, Christ's disciples saw an executed man return from the dead and finally understood what David could only grasp at - the hope of resurrection and freedom from the curse of sin.
You may believe that is insane. Foolishness and a stumbling block in your mind, even.
And yet you have an advantage that neither King David nor Christ's disciples had. You have 2,000 years of proof to see how that experiment in hope has worked out.
Has the insane belief that a man rose from the dead led to more chaos and suffering, or less? Compared to all the world's civilizations, did the civilization(s) that adopted that insane idea create more or less order?
If philosophical generalities are not enough evidence for you:
Which civilization was able to contain human corruption enough to invent, say, the lightbulb, air conditioning, rockets, antibiotics, airplanes, disease-resistant wheat, and more?
Which civilization went to great and personal lengths to eradicate slavery, infant mortality, starvation, inequality, human sacrifice, and other savagery?
Which civilization effectively has policed itself to constrain its bad elements that would use its technological and educational superiority to wickedly oppress, invade, and destroy?
The American Founders saw the states as the incubators of ideas and philosophies. Likewise, Western civilization is a model of what happens when you adopt the insane idea that God put on flesh, died for us, and rose again so that we can have life after death.
This Christ-yeast was baked into the cake for 2,000 years, throughout invasions and wars and disasters, and endured. It endures still, even as our civilization abandons the Christ that made it possible.
Likewise, our experimentation in that rejection has had at least a century of results.
Since the late 19th century when Western intellectuals began pushing God out of the public square, have things gotten more ordered and beautiful, or more chaotic? A century is such a short time, but in the most liberal and secular of places, what do things look like?
Have they reached utopia, or are they chaos personified?
Two data points from today:
In the Bible, God orders the "tehom," or the chaotic abyss, with His "shalom," or peace. We participate in it as beings made in His image (this is why you like gardening or organizing your tools).
'...the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.' - Genesis 1:2
The iconic scene of Christ walking on water strikes to the heart of His claim to deity.
'Jesus came toward them walking on the sea very early in the morning. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified. "It's a ghost!" they said, and they cried out in fear.
Immediately Jesus spoke to them. "Have courage! It is I. Don't be afraid."' - Matthew 14:35-27
There are only two options (feel free to yell at me in the comments if you find a third 😏).
In Christ, you matter. You have a purpose. You have a family. The darkness of the world? That is but a passing thing. God cares about you - enough to die for you! - and He is in control of all things, which He works for the good of those who love Him.
Ladies and gentlemen, could there be anything more encouraging than that?
P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.
