How to Conquer the World

To conquer the world in Christ doesn’t mean we get everything we desire. It does mean the world has no power to master us in the daily struggles and persistent challenges we face.

“Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”
—1 John 5:5

“He came from nothing. He conquered everything.” That’s the tagline for Ridley Scott’s film, Napoleon, released in the fall of 2023. Movie reviewers have remarked on Joaquin Phoenix’s understated performance of the French general who terrorized Europe in the early part of the 19th century, after literally crowning himself emperor of the French.

Napoleon really did come from nothing, or close to it. Born on the remote Mediterranean island of Corsica, he faced discrimination as a young army officer. He had an Italian name: Buonaparte (he later changed it to the French-sounding Bonaparte). Because he’d spent the early part of his career on the fringes of respectability, he found himself one of the few military officers still standing after the carnage of the French Revolution.

Napoleon never saw a power vacuum he didn’t want...