Muslim Group Supports Lawsuit Against Dearborn, Mich. For Discriminating Against Christians And Jews
Christians and Jews and all people of conscience in Dearborn should not need a federal judge to be welcome in their own city.Christians and Jews and all people of conscience in Dearborn should not need a federal judge to be welcome in their own city.Andrew Cathy gave NBC the Chick-fil-A apology tour nobody asked for
Chick-fil-A is living a lie by being closed on Sunday.
And let me cut you nicer-than-God folks off at the pass if you have a problem with that, because CEO Andrew Cathy is the one begging for approval from the pagans at NBC News, not me.
The more I ponder this, the more certain I am that Andrew Cathy’s performance might be the most pathetic interview I have seen all year that doesn’t include Candace, Tucker, or Talarico.
Last year, Chick-fil-A rang up nearly $24 billion in U.S. sales, up 5.2% from 2024. So times are neither hard nor getting harder, and Cathy isn’t in the difficult position of having to eat a journalist’s trash sandwich to save people’s jobs. The breadlines aren’t filling up with former peddlers of delicious chicken sandwiches and waffle fries. The lights are staying on at Casa del Cathy.
So what gives? I thought I was watching a replay from 2012 when I saw Cathy getting cross-examined last week by NBC’s “Today" illuminati. Why would Chick-fil-A’s chief possibly care what those gaslighters think about him in the year of our Lord 2026? Was this a throwback to Mitt Romney’s “not part of my campaign” dodge during the original Chick-fil-A fight? It is election season, after all. Time to replay some classics.
But no. This was Andrew Cathy, apparently having learned nothing from the humiliation rituals his father, Dan, endured almost a decade and a half ago. Since then, much of the cultural right has rejected Romney’s awkward and fake moral preening in favor of Trump’s mean tweets and actual results. Yet Andrew still squealed. Even R. Lee Ermey’s drill instructor in “Full Metal Jacket” might be at a loss for words before such willful weakness.
How does Cathy not understand that we don’t have to do this any more? Unless he actually prefers the world’s feckless and flaccid approval to God’s. Whatever the case, can I get the name of Chick-fil-A’s PR firm so I can make sure nobody I know in the Christian conservative space ever hires it? Thanks.
Nobody asked for this. No crisis required it. Chick-fil-A voluntarily showed up on “Today” to be hazed by people who have hated the company for years.
A wise man once asked what good it does to gain the whole world but lose your soul. But if you aren’t living by what you hear at church on Sunday, you may as well open the chicken store for an extra day and sling some product! You aren’t going to embarrass yourself for free, are you?
I mean, you grew by only 5.2% last year. Maybe a robust 6% or 7% could have spared you the Soviet-style struggle session. But at a measly 5.2%, you’ve probably got to hedge your bets when you hear that “Did God really say?” whisper in your ear.
My goodness. The more I ponder this, the more certain I am that Andrew Cathy’s performance might be the most pathetic interview I have seen all year that doesn’t include Candace, Tucker, or Talarico. I’m offended by it. I’m angry at it. I’m saddened by it.
It is the stuff of existential loserdom: a very comfortable “Christian” “man” going to the spirit of the age for repentance and absolution. That is blasphemy. That is an abomination. And since the salvation Cathy seeks from his enemies will never be granted, it is also just plain stupid.
Times really are hard for some of Chick-fil-A’s regular customers, but not for Cathy. And yet he signed up for this emasculation anyway.
What a waste of a platform. What a waste of a testimony.
Pray for the country. Then do your part.
A friend from an Amish and Mennonite background who lives among those communities in Ohio told me she is frustrated by the reluctance of some people she knows to vote. When she asks why, she hears a familiar answer: “If it’s God’s will ...”
Meaning: God will determine the outcome. Apparently, that settles their part.
If we are tired of politics, let’s say so. But invoking God’s sovereignty to excuse our own passivity drags His name into a decision we made.
The reluctance she described reaches well beyond Amish and Mennonite communities. Too many Christians sit out elections while maintaining a vigorous schedule of complaining about the results.
But the “God will handle it” explanation puzzles me because we do not apply that reasoning to the rest of life. Gracie would have a few questions.
I pray for Gracie before every operation. I still drive her to the hospital. After 40 years of caregiving, I have had plenty of occasions to trust God with things I could not control. I have also filled prescriptions, asked uncomfortable questions, and challenged decisions. In all of Gracie’s 98 operations, not one surgeon has said, “You prayed for God’s will? Good. I won’t need to scrub in.”
We understand responsibility quite well when something matters to us. Why does it become so mysterious when the subject is voting?
If you have a biblical conviction against casting a particular vote, that deserves a hearing. But “God will determine the outcome” explains why we can trust Him. It does not explain why we can excuse ourselves.
Jesus told us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Those neighbors live under the officials we choose. Sheriffs, school boards, county commissioners, and legislators make decisions that reach into their homes and wallets. A widow reporting fraud needs officials who take her seriously. A family caring for a disabled child needs more than a sympathetic nod.
We can argue about which candidates will serve them best. But God’s sovereignty does not explain why loving our neighbor requires nothing from us.
Jeremiah 29:7 gives us an even less comfortable instruction. God told His people to seek the welfare of the city where He had sent them into exile and to pray for it.
The city was Babylon.
They had been carried away from home. If anyone had grounds to say, “This government is somebody else’s problem,” they did. God still assigned them work where they lived: Pray for the city. Seek its welfare.
We live here. Our children are growing up here. And unlike the exiles in Babylon, we have a voice in choosing our leaders. What exactly is our excuse?
Galatians 6:10 tells us, “as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone.” Voting gives us an opportunity to influence who exercises power over our neighbors. That makes a ballot something to use thoughtfully, not something to dismiss with a religious phrase.
Scripture does not contain instructions for an American polling place. It does contain instructions for people who have neighbors and opportunities.
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No candidate is going to usher in the kingdom of God. I would settle for one who understands the job, tells the truth, and remembers whose money he is spending. Expecting perfection is another convenient way to avoid making a choice.
Think about our brothers and sisters in countries where free elections are restricted or denied. Then imagine explaining to them that we leave our ballots unused because we trust God.
Passive citizens are ripe to become captive citizens.
Officials do not lose their authority because we lose interest. They continue making decisions, spending money, and exercising power. Our absence simply leaves the choosing to somebody else.
We are free to stay home. We should at least be honest about why. If we are indifferent, let’s call it indifference. If we are tired of politics, let’s say so. But invoking God’s sovereignty to excuse our own passivity drags His name into a decision we made.
I pray for Gracie. I still drive her to the hospital.
Pray for your country. Then do your part.
You can medicate despair. You can’t manufacture meaning.
What happens when a society teaches people that they have no lasting purpose, then wonders why they feel hopeless?
I am spending time volunteering with Stranraer Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland. On Thursday, October 15, the church is hosting a free public talk on depression at 7 p.m. at the Millennium Centre. Depression deserves our attention because its effects reach beyond individuals into families, communities, and the life of nations.
The Christian still wrestles with sin and sorrow. Yet Christ is working in us. Our hope rests on His faithfulness, not on our ability to manufacture a cheerful mood.
I am also a professor at Arizona State University, where I see the importance of this question among students. The 2024-2025 Healthy Minds Study, based on responses from more than 84,000 students at 135 colleges and universities, found that 37% reported moderate to severe depressive symptoms, and 33% reported moderate to severe anxiety. Both measures had improved since 2022, but the burden remains enormous.
In Great Britain, the picture is troubling too. NHS England found a common mental health condition in 22.6% of adults ages 16-64 in 2023-2024, up from 18.9% in 2014. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, the figure was 25.8%. In Scotland, 2023-2024 data show that 10% of adults reported at least two symptoms of depression and 16% at least two symptoms of anxiety.
Some people seek relief through alcohol or drugs, but self-medication can become another prison. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism notes that alcohol may temporarily relieve anxiety even as heavy drinking and repeated withdrawal worsen it. The damage can spread outward: The United Kingdom recorded 9,809 alcohol-specific deaths in 2024, and victims in England and Wales believed offenders were under alcohol's influence in 39% of violent incidents in 2023-2024.
Clinical depression is not simply unbelief. Faithful Christians suffer it, and medical treatment can help. My concern here is spiritual hopelessness: What account of life can sustain someone when pleasure fades and suffering remains?
The secular state can fund treatment and other necessary services, but it cannot supply redemption. No program can answer the question that comes before policy: Why should I have hope? If human beings are only material organisms, here briefly and then gone, what lasting meaning does suffering possess?
That does not mean every government intervention fails. It means government has limits. A list of recommended behaviors may help people manage a problem, but it cannot give them a reason to live or reconcile them to God. Our trouble reaches deeper than ignorance of the rules.
A culture that reduces human beings to appetite, chemistry, and consumption should not be surprised by a crisis of purpose. Physical pleasure and distraction cannot bear the weight of the human soul. An evening's escape still leaves tomorrow's question waiting.
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Christianity begins somewhere else. Human beings are made in the image of God, and Christ redeems His people by His blood. Our lives therefore have meaning now, not merely after death.
Sometimes Christianity itself gets reduced to “when you die, you go to heaven and avoid hell,” as though everything before death were unimportant. That misses our present calling. Alienation from God has consequences now. Clinical depression is no verdict on anyone's salvation, but spiritual despair can foreshadow the hopelessness of separation from God. Communion with Christ brings hope into the present.
First, our feelings do not define us. We cannot always explain why darkness settles over us, but we can bring God's Word to bear on it. The psalmist asks his own troubled soul, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” (Psalm 42:5). Then he directs it: “Hope in God.” His sorrow is real, but it does not have the final word.
Second, Christianity offers grace rather than a ladder we climb to earn acceptance. Rules can identify wrongdoing, but they cannot free sinners from sin's power. Islam's five pillars, for example, prescribe religious duties, but Islam does not offer the Reformed Christian doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone. The distinction is not academic: Christian hope rests on what Christ has done, not on whether we can accumulate enough religious merit.
I find no comparable assurance in religions built around reincarnation. A cycle of death and rebirth governed by karma is not the Christian promise of reconciliation with God and resurrection. Christianity offers a destination, not an endless series of attempts to repair ourselves.
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The Christian still wrestles with sin and sorrow. Yet Christ is working in us. Our hope rests on His faithfulness, not on our ability to manufacture a cheerful mood.
That hope also takes practical form in the church. We visit the lonely, listen to the grieving, pray with the discouraged, and help families bear burdens they cannot carry alone. The sufferer needs patient fellowship, not an accusation that sadness proves spiritual failure. The gospel gives us both a message to proclaim and neighbors to love.
Finally, Christian hope reaches beyond the individual. The Great Commission sends the church into the world because the nations belong within the scope of Christ's saving purpose. History need not follow a straight upward line; setbacks do not cancel God's promises. I believe Scripture points toward a day when “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord” as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9).
That gives parents, students, and churches reason to labor faithfully even when today's headlines seem to announce defeat.
Christians have hope to offer a hopeless world. We should bring it into the darkness. If you happen to be in the Stranraer area, join us October 15 at 7 p.m. And for a further resource on spiritual depression, listen to Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ series.
Our enemies burn Israel’s flag. Our friends plant it.
Sometimes a symbol becomes more than a symbol.
A flag is a simple piece of fabric. But what it represents — a country, a people, a history — can inspire us deeply. And when that flag is planted by someone who has chosen to stand beside you in your darkest hour, it becomes something more: a message that you are not alone.
A flag planted by someone who has chosen to stand beside you in your darkest hour becomes a message: You are not alone.
That is what I think about when I see an Israeli flag planted by a church in America.
In 2024, we began Flags of Fellowship with a simple idea. Christians across America would plant Israeli flags at their churches and in their communities in memory of the innocent lives taken on October 7, 2023.
We could not have known how far that simple act of friendship would travel.
This year, more than 4,375 churches, synagogues, universities, and organizations around the world are participating in Flags of Fellowship. Together, they will plant more than 5.2 million Israeli flags. The movement now reaches 12 countries, with more than 1,775 participating churches and organizations outside the United States and Canada.
Every one of those flags tells a story.
It tells an Israeli family that we remember. It tells the Jewish community that someone sees what happened to us. And it tells the world that October 7 did not destroy the friendship between Christians and Jews. If anything, that friendship has grown stronger.
Last month, we gathered in Israel at Banias Church in Nazareth for the first Flags of Fellowship event of this year. Church volunteers and community members planted 1,200 Israeli flags before Christian and Jewish leaders spoke and prayed together. The Armenian Christian Association’s children’s and youth choir sang the Lord’s Prayer.
Israel is home to Christians, Jews, Muslims, and people from many countries and backgrounds. We do not always agree. We do not always see the world in the same way. But there is profound beauty when people who are different choose to stand together.
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When a church plants an Israeli flag, it is not making a political statement. It is making a spiritual one: a declaration of friendship, remembrance, and faithfulness to those who are hurting.
That is what I hope people see when they look at Flags of Fellowship: not simply flags, but friendship; not simply remembrance, but solidarity.
The world has changed since October 7. So much attention is given to division, hatred, and the people who tear things down. But another story is being written.
It is being written in churches across America and around the world. It is being written by pastors who stand before their congregations and say that Israel is a friend. It is being written by families who plant an Israeli flag outside their homes, by Christians who pray for Israel, and by Jews who are discovering, sometimes for the first time, how deeply many Christians care about them.
It is written one flag at a time.
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I have had the privilege of watching this friendship grow for years. I have sat with Christian leaders who opened their churches to Israeli flags. I have heard from pastors whose congregations embraced this initiative with extraordinary enthusiasm. And I have spoken with Israelis who are deeply moved to learn that, thousands of miles away, people they have never met are standing with them.
As we mark another anniversary of October 7, I am reminded that remembrance is not only about looking backward. It is also about deciding what kind of future we want to build.
Choosing courage over fear. Friendship over division. Love over hatred.
There is a phrase we often use at the Fellowship: Our enemies burn the flag; our friends plant it.
That is the choice behind Flags of Fellowship. Millions of flags, planted by thousands of congregations and organizations, say the same thing to the Jewish people: You are not alone.
I am deeply grateful for every one of them.
When the Pentagon cries ‘UFO,’ Christians should look to the Bible, not the skies
The Pentagon wants you to watch the skies ... again.
Last month, the War Department published a sixth release of declassified and historical files related to UAPs, while the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office continues to publish military footage of UAPs. Some cases have explanations. Others remain unresolved because of insufficient data.
Most of the people getting excited about 'aliens' have spent their entire lives being taught that nonhuman spiritual beings don't exist at all.
"Unresolved" does not necessarily mean extraterrestrial. It does mean, however, that Christians should stop laughing at the question.
This wheel's on fire
The Bible never says humanity is alone. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture speaks of intelligent beings who are not human. Some serve God; others rebel against Him. Today, though some may call them "aliens," changing the label does not change what they are.
Job 38:7 says that at creation, "the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy." These heavenly beings existed before humanity and were not originally from Earth.
Western art often depicts angels as harmless babies or ordinary humans with bird wings, but biblical angels look very different. The original Hebrew mal'akh and Greek angelos mean "messenger" and are used to describe what these beings do, not everything they are.
Daniel described a heavenly being with a face like lightning, eyes like flaming torches, and limbs like burnished bronze. Ezekiel's cherubim came with wheels within wheels covered in eyes. And Isaiah's seraphim, the "burning ones," were adorned with six wings each. If someone who rejected Scripture saw such a spiritual being today, what would they call it? Likely an alien or a god.
As Paul says in Ephesians 6, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. The idea of the unseen realm is not a modern conspiracy theory. Rather, it has always been part of the biblical worldview.
Deities ... or demons?
Ancient archaeology provides another connection. Mesopotamian traditions from Eridu speak of the apkallu, sages associated with the age before the Flood. They were given the role of bringing knowledge to humanity. Centuries later, Assyrian palaces at Nimrud displayed human and eagle-headed winged figures connected with these sages. At Nimrud and Nineveh, enormous lamassu, which are human-headed winged bulls or lions, guarded royal thresholds. Ancient texts also speak of the Anunnaki, a group of powerful deities.
Now put these figures next to Ezekiel's description. He describes each cherub as having four faces at once: a human, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. The apkallu looked like a human body under an eagle's head and wings. The lamassu combined a human head with the winged body of a bull or lion. These same features keep showing up in Ezekiel's description of a similar being.
This doesn't prove the carvings are exact portraits of cherubim, but the resemblance is too striking to ignore. These cultures may have been deceived by real spiritual beings, represented them in their images, and worshiped the creation rather than the Creator. These artifacts show that early people were already telling stories about nonhuman beings, sacred knowledge, and contact between heaven and earth.
The biblical writers didn't treat these pagan gods as harmless myths. Both Deuteronomy 32:17 and 1 Corinthians 10:20 say the sacrifices pagan societies offered were made to demons. That's a different claim than what most people assume today, where the old gods get filed away as folklore.
But swinging too far the other direction causes its own problems, and Christians shouldn't assume every strange light is a demon. A UAP could be a balloon, a drone, an aircraft, classified technology, a natural event, a hoax, or a simple misperception. Some encounters may still involve spiritual deception too. Christians should test the evidence and test the spirits.
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The coming darkness
This connection between the pre-Flood world, ancient cities, and rebellious spiritual powers is one reason we wrote our biblical fantasy novel "Lightborn: Dawn of Darkness." This world is not separate from what we see happening today. The novel explores where this spiritual rebellion began and imagines the ancient world behind the biblical account.
Archaeology shows that ancient civilizations believed in powerful nonhuman beings and worshipped them as gods. Scripture reveals the darker spiritual reality at play. These fallen spirits did not simply disappear along with the ancient world. They continued to influence people and nations, and that spiritual deception will play an important role in the end times.
Most of the people getting excited about "aliens" have spent their entire lives being taught that nonhuman spiritual beings don't exist at all, and that's the actual danger. Paul warned of this in 2 Thessalonians 2, describing a lawless figure who comes cloaked in false signs, wonders, and deception.
We believe the modern alien narrative could help prepare people to receive dark powers as teachers or saviors. Scripture does not say the Antichrist will arrive in a spacecraft. It does warn that supernatural appearances do not automatically come from God and that people may encounter angels without recognizing them.
If a shining being offers secret knowledge, a new religion, or a savior other than Jesus Christ, the church should not first ask which planet it came from. We should ask who it serves. Good angels refuse worship. Fallen ones seek it. Jesus Christ alone is the way, the truth, and the life. Whatever future disclosure may reveal, that truth will never change.
Where was God? Frank Turek asks the question after Charlie Kirk
Arizona State University’s Ratio Christi chapter hosted Christian apologist Frank Turek Monday night. The topic especially caught my attention as a philosophy professor: If God exists, why is there evil?
I call this the major objection to belief in God. Atheists may begin elsewhere, but once the other objections are answered, the problem of evil keeps returning. I have found that true whether I am talking with an atheist at a bar watching a ball game or an elite physicist at Cambridge.
What if the very problem of evil that you think disproves God actually points to God?
Turek made the question as pointed as possible. He told the audience that when he and Charlie Kirk were approaching Utah Valley University on September 10, 2025, Kirk asked him to pray. Turek prayed for the event to be effective and safe.
“God said no,” Turek told the audience. About 20 minutes later, Kirk was fatally shot. Turek has asked the same question publicly ever since: Where was God?
To some smug atheists, and a few conspiracy-minded people, the story invites a sneer: If Kirk was such a good Christian, why didn’t his God protect him? Why would anyone want to be a Christian if that is the outcome?
Turek answered with a challenge: What if the very problem of evil that seems to disprove God actually points toward him?
His argument came in two parts.
First, before we can say evil disproves God, we have to know what evil is. And to know what evil is, we need some account of the good. Invoking Augustine, Turek described evil as a corruption or privation of something good. Augustine’s formulation is simple: Evil depends on the good it damages.
Students are often confident that they can define the good until the examples get difficult. Happiness seems like an obvious candidate, but people can be happy about wicked things. Happiness alone therefore cannot tell us what is good.
That is where students often retreat into relativism: What is good for you is good for you, and what is good for me is good for me.
Turek’s answer was that human beings share a common human nature. If something is genuinely good for a human being as such, it cannot become bad merely because another person prefers something else.
Then he pushed the argument into explicitly Christian territory. If Christianity is true, what could be better than knowing God? He cited John 17:3, where eternal life is described as knowing God and Jesus Christ.
That brought him back to Kirk. Kirk’s murder was evil; Turek did not pretend otherwise. But he argued that God can bring good from evil. Turek says he still hears from people who encountered the gospel because of Kirk’s life and death. In his language, the ripple was not merely a ripple but a tsunami.
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That was Turek’s first point: The objection from evil assumes that some things are objectively wrong. His argument is that objective moral law requires a standard beyond individual preference and that the ultimate ground of that standard is God. The problem of evil therefore borrows the very moral categories it tries to use against him.
Turek then moved from philosopher to pastor.
In a philosophy class, people will debate the logical problem of evil. In the middle of intense suffering, nobody wants a philosopher to arrive with a chalkboard and draw syllogisms. They want to know why this happened: Why this child? Why this cancer? Why this death?
Turek answers with what he calls the ripple effect. We know very little of the past, only fragments of the present, and nothing of the future except what has been revealed to us. We cannot trace all the consequences flowing from a single event.
God, in the Christian account, is not only powerful and good but wise. He knows the whole of history and can order events toward ends we cannot see. Turek appealed to Romans 8:28: God works all things together for the good of those who love him.
That reminded me of an old pastoral illustration. A couple had grown cold in their faith. Their child died, and they asked their pastor why. He told them to imagine a shepherd trying to lead two stubborn sheep across a river from danger to safety. They refuse. So the shepherd picks up their lamb and carries it across. The sheep follow.
Was that for their good?
The point is not that suffering itself becomes good. It is that suffering can force us to confront questions comfort lets us avoid. It exposes our finitude and can make us consider our own sin. When we recognize how little we know and how much God would have to know, Paul’s question in Romans 9:20 becomes harder to brush aside: Who are we to correct God?
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With those two claims — objective goodness and divine wisdom — Turek took questions.
One student asked why God creates people who will be damned to hell. Turek answered that people who finally reject God receive what they insist upon: separation from Him. If that is what they choose, he asked, on what grounds do they complain about receiving it?
Another asked about animal suffering that no human being ever sees. How could that possibly help us?
Turek’s answer was essentially: How do you know it does not? Human knowledge is extraordinarily limited. The fact that we cannot identify a good purpose for some instance of suffering does not prove that no such purpose exists. He also noted that in the Christian account, the whole creation is affected by human sin.
So is Turek right? Does the problem of evil point toward God rather than away from him? Are atheists borrowing from an objective moral framework they cannot ultimately ground without God?
The audience was clearly intrigued. Skeptics had something substantial to push against, and Christians had to think more carefully about what they claim the Bible teaches concerning good, evil, suffering, and God’s wisdom.
As a philosophy professor deep in the heart of Sun Devil territory, I count that as a good thing.
It’s a big deal that the landmark new AI agreement is shockingly uneventful
Trump’s recent assembly of many of the very top people in AI must be counted among the most momentous political occasions in U.S. history — and perhaps human history. It comes at a time of extreme instability, uncertainty, and acceleration.
Even — or especially — those at the summit of tech and politics are unclear on what is going to happen and why. But they do know one thing: The nature of ultimate power on Earth is changing, and they are positioned to receive more of that power than almost anyone else.
Laws will not save us. Algorithms will not save us. Mere adherence to the letter of any code, however intelligently written, will not save us.
Power does not arrive alone. Rapidly acquiring unprecedented power brings anxiety, pressure, exhaustion, confusion, and the temptation to mistake possession for mastery.
The important thing about this is precisely that it is an experience. To deal with the consequences of a profound infusion of power is to plunge into the mysterious depths of being — the realm philosophers call ontology — in stark contrast to epistemology, the realm of knowing.
Power reminds us that knowledge arises from being, not the other way around.
For anyone operating at the highest levels of tech and politics, that reminder is crucial. Decades of bad modern philosophy and overzealous nerdery have encouraged the opposite idea: that being arises from knowledge.
That fake news is bad news. It feeds the fear that we have poured so much knowledge into machines that they are about to spring to life as an altogether new form of being — uncreated by God, no less — that will instantly dwarf and dominate us.
Yet one prominent techno-utopian belief treats the same prospect as good news, almost literally a new gospel. In this telling, the machine is not merely a rival life form. It becomes the vehicle for a new man. Rather than dwarfing and dominating us, the alien intelligence will fuse with us, becoming in effect a new god and a new soul, transforming us into Adam 2.0.
People who recoil from that prospect, and fear it could become real, are scrambling to fight or slow it through new law. The impulse is understandable. But it carries the seeds of its own failure.
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Christians know there are sharp limits to what lawgiving can accomplish. St. Paul wrote that, having died to what bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit rather than the old way of the written code (Romans 7:6). He also wrote that God “has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant — not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Corinthians 3:6).
Paul’s point is spiritual, but it bears directly on our technological confusion. Treat lawgiving as the highest activity of man and God, and you begin to imagine that being arises from knowledge. If being arises from knowledge, then creating knowledge can create being — as if the Golem of Prague or Frankenstein’s monster could be brought to life by sufficient information.
That is not life. It is a parody of life: death pretending to be life and producing more death.
At the intersection of unprecedented technological and political power, we have to remember that epistemology is downstream, not upstream, of ontology.
That is why the new “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” signed by Trump and six of the industry’s most powerful executives, is so momentously uneventful. The companies say they “should implement” four basic layers of controls and audits: robust internal safety controls; an empowered internal team to make sure those controls work; an independent external auditor or evaluator; and an independent board committee to oversee the whole structure and make sure problems are fixed.
That’s it.
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The accord adds that the companies will meet regularly to establish standards and best practices. “Over time,” it concludes, “it may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations.” But for now, no. Basically, it is a plan to get better organized about not screwing up the whole AI thing.
That may sound a little scary, considering how fast things are moving and how deep the trust gap has become between many Americans and the tech titans.
But it would be scarier if the companies threw themselves at the feet of lawgiving and tried to fob off responsibility onto a new written code. Because if they did that, they would in effect force the rest of us to do the same.
That kind of thinking is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Laws will not save us. Algorithms will not save us. Mere adherence to the letter of any code, however intelligently written, will not save us. Christianity’s warning against pharisaical faith in the letter is not an invitation to lawlessness; it is a warning against confusing compliance with righteousness.
It is good that the accord is simple and unsensational. Strip away all the words, codes, boards, controls, and audits, and there are still people underneath — people who can run from responsibility but can never finally hide from it.
All told, the accord is being-first — human-being-first. That is exactly what it needs to be if we are to avoid the false faith that our identity is merely the slave of information.
Christian influencer couple arrested after teen girl alleges sexual and physical abuse, police say
A popular Christian influencer couple was arrested for allegedly abusing a 14-year-old girl, according to Texas police.
39-year-old Seth Michael Day is accused of sexually and physically assaulting the girl after a high school teacher noticed injuries to her face and head.
The girl said she had suffered numerous instances of abuse and reported some of them but that Heather Day had lied to officials in order to cover it up.
The teacher reported the injuries to the Keene police, who interviewed the girl. She claimed to have suffered ongoing abuse by Day and said he injured her with a cell phone.
After receiving treatment at the Cook Children's Medical Center, she also said that Day had sexually assaulted her.
In the last incident of abuse on Sept. 22, the girl said Day assaulted her while his wife, Heather Marie Day, was in the home.
Police said they found evidence of the physical and sexual assaults at the Days' home after obtaining a search warrant.
The girl said she had suffered numerous instances of abuse and reported some of them but that Heather Day had lied to officials in order to cover it up.
She allegedly told the victim that she had an autoimmune disease called hereditary angioedema, which causes swelling. Police noted that swelling would not explain the the injuries the victim had.
Records show the Days were both booked into the Johnson County jail but were released on bail of $100,000.
Heather Day hosts a Christian podcast, and the couple have authored several books, including one titled "I'll See You Tomorrow."
Seth Day is also a professor at Southwestern Adventist University, but he was placed on administrative leave after his arrest.
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"We are fully cooperating with law enforcement," the university said in a statement that indicated the allegations did not involve its students, staff, or other members of the faculty.
"The safety of our University community remains our first priority. We will share additional details as appropriate," the university added.
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