Every Friday evening, our house goes offline. My wife and I close our laptops, silence our phones, and step away from the world for about 24 hours.

We don’t watch any movies, don’t listen to any music, don’t drive anywhere in the car, and don’t buy anything at the store. Our kids may not be as plugged in as my wife or I am, but they too retreat from the world outside our family.

I remember what actually matters. I feel less angry, less anxious, and less consumed by things beyond my control.

We do this every week because we observe the Jewish Sabbath, which begins just before sundown on Friday night and ends just after sunset on Saturday.

Pressing pause

The truth is not many people observe the Sabbath like we do. Of course, all traditionally inclined Jews observe in our same way, but there aren’t that many traditionally observant Jews in the world. In terms of world population, the number of people who take a 24-hour break from the internet every single week on the Sabbath is rather small.

That number should be larger. I say that not because I think more people should be religious in the same way we are; in my view, everyone has their own faith, and it’s not my place to tell people what to believe. But I do think people should observe some sort of Sabbath because it’s good for you.

I'm not the first to suggest that both gentiles and Jews could benefit from this ancient tradition. The late Charlie Kirk observed the Sabbath much like we do. At the time of his assassination, he was preparing to launch a book on the personal benefits of stepping away from the world every Friday evening.

Creative control

I can personally vouch for all the benefits the Sabbath brings. Getting away from the internet for a solid 24 hours every single week keeps me sane. Really, I’m not exaggerating. I would lose my mind without it. I don’t know how I would handle being plugged in 24/7 — 24/6 I can do, but no more than that.

To be honest, I feel myself starting to get sick of X, Instagram, news, and everything else searchable by Friday afternoon. I feel myself starting to get physically ill and more angry than I ought to be as the hours wind down before the weekend.

After six days of online living, I start to feel like a rubber band about to snap. Too many competing signals crowd my brain, making it impossible to think clearly. By the time the sun begins to set, I hate the internet so much that I just want to unplug from everything.

So that’s what I do.

And why not? Even God — the original Sabbath-keeper — needed a break after creating the world:

And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made (Genesis 2:2-3, NKJV).

And He didn't have social media.

Stranger danger

Never before in history have human beings had such constant access to the wider world. We can read news from every corner of the globe, peer into places our ancestors never knew existed, and absorb information about people we don’t know and never will. We can even enjoy the strange, modern pleasure of being insulted by random strangers online who, for reasons known only to them, have decided they hate us.

These are all recent developments — and they come with modern, often negative consequences.

Our ancestors never lived in a world like this. And it is, frankly, a wild one. It has a way of convincing us that trivial things matter more than they do, of distracting us from what truly matters. It pulls our attention away from our families and from God and pushes it instead toward a constant stream of strangers, gossip, and noise. It wears on you. It drives you a little crazy.

I think we’re seeing the effects of that now. A world permanently plugged into the internet is a world slowly losing its bearings. People become meaner, more confused, more absorbed in distant controversies and less attentive to the people right in front of them. They become less themselves and more like the mob — less human, in a subtle but troubling way. The always-online state has made us coarser, and we are worse for it.

Glenn Beck, Erika Kirk. Image source: Blaze Media

Keeping quiet

Every week when I unplug, I arrive at the same realizations. They usually come sometime around Saturday afternoon. I remember what actually matters. I feel less angry, less anxious, and less consumed by things beyond my control. I feel more like myself. My mind is clearer. My heart is gentler. I am, quite simply, more at peace.

I wish I could remember all of this without the Sabbath. But I can’t. I’m not perfect — far from it. And maybe, just maybe, God knew something about the people He created when He gave us a day of rest.

I step away from the internet and the world of work every Friday night. I don’t think you have to do it exactly the way I do — or even on the same day — for it to matter. Maybe for you it’s Saturday night to Sunday night. Maybe it’s all day Sunday until Monday morning. Whatever works for you is fine.

I only know what works for me: turning off my phone every Friday evening, watching my wife and daughter light the Shabbat candles, sharing a meal together, not checking the news, and spending 24 hours in a small, quiet cocoon — safe, for a time, from a chaotic world.

When human worth becomes conditional, caregiving becomes impossible

Most people can care for an ill or disabled loved one for a week on compassion alone. Some can do it for a month. A few can make it a year or two.

But when care stretches into decades, compassion stops carrying the load. Emotion fades. Circumstances grind. What remains isn’t how someone feels about a life. What remains is whether they believe that life still matters.

When a culture treats reality as optional, action becomes dangerous and courage looks reckless. Without shared moral ground, bravery itself becomes suspect.

Caregiving strips life down to essentials. It forces a question our culture prefers to keep abstract: Why does this life still have value when it costs so much to sustain it?

C.S. Lewis warned that a society cannot survive if it mocks virtue while demanding its fruits. In “The Abolition of Man,” he described “men without chests” — people trained to think and desire but not to stand. Without a formed moral center, courage collapses. Duty feels suspect. Endurance looks irrational.

Caregivers learn this in a harsh classroom.

You cannot sustain decades of care if human worth is negotiable. You cannot rise day after day to guard the vulnerable if life’s value depends on productivity, independence, improvement, or the absence of suffering. Long care requires stewardship — the conviction that a life has been entrusted to us, not evaluated by us.

I once met a man who told me he was dating a woman in a wheelchair. He spoke with genuine enthusiasm about how good it made him feel to do everything for her. He sounded animated, even proud. He talked at length about his experience, his emotions, the satisfaction he drew from being needed.

He said very little about her.

I asked how long they’d been dating.

“Two weeks,” he said, beaming.

I smiled wearily and told him, “Get back to me in two decades.”

Care that depends on how it makes us feel rarely survives once feeling fades. What endures over decades isn’t the satisfaction of being needed. It’s settled clarity about the worth of the person being cared for, independent of what the caregiver receives in return.

ImagineGolf via iStock/Getty Images

In that man’s excitement, everything centered on his emotions. What was missing was any recognition of her value apart from her condition — or apart from what caring for her did for him.

I didn’t hear, "I’m dating a woman," or "I’ve met someone extraordinary." I heard, again and again, "I’m dating a woman in a wheelchair." The chair became the headline, not the person. He might as well have celebrated the better parking.

She had become useful to him. That’s not the same thing as being valued.

This way of thinking doesn’t stay confined to personal relationships. It scales.

The public reckoning surrounding Daniel Penny exposed it. He acted to protect others he believed were in danger — not because it felt good but because action was required. That kind of clarity now unsettles a society more comfortable with sentiment than obligation.

We claim we want people to intervene, to protect others, to act decisively when danger appears. Then someone does, and we hesitate. We second-guess. We prosecute. We distance ourselves.

We want courage but not conviction.

Lewis wouldn’t be surprised. When a culture treats reality as optional, action becomes dangerous and courage looks reckless. Responsibility suddenly feels threatening. Without shared moral ground, bravery itself becomes suspect.

Francis Schaeffer traced the path forward from that confusion. Once a culture detaches human worth from anything objective, it stops honoring life and starts managing it. Value becomes conditional. And conditions always change.

That logic now shows itself in plain view. When Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) pushes to legalize medical aid in dying in New York, the same fracture appears. We punish those who act as though life must be defended, while elevating leaders who treat life as something to administer and conclude.

Those aren’t separate debates. They’re the same belief, applied differently.

If life holds value only when it functions well, caregiving becomes irrational. If worth depends on autonomy, dependence becomes disposable. If suffering disqualifies, endurance becomes foolish.

And yet caregivers endure.

MTStock Studio via iStock/Getty Images

That clarity came back to me during a conversation on my radio show. A man described a brief illness his wife had suffered. The house fell apart. Meals became takeout. Work got missed. Romance disappeared. He sounded exhausted just recalling it.

“What carried you through?” I asked.

He paused. “I guess ... love.”

“How long did this last?” I said.

“Five days.”

“I guess ... love” carried him through five days.

Uncertainty can survive a week. It cannot sustain 14,000 days.

He wasn’t wrong though. Love matters. But love that sustains five days must anchor itself in something deeper to sustain 40 years.

Caregivers may begin with compassion. They endure with conviction.

A life doesn’t become less valuable because it becomes harder to carry.

Caregiving isn’t a special category of moral life. It is a concentrated version of the human condition. What sustains caregivers over time is what sustains courage, faithfulness, and duty anywhere else.

Lewis reminded us that our feelings don’t create value. They respond to it. When we reverse that order, we don’t become more compassionate. We lose our bearings.

Treating human worth as conditional may flatter our emotions. It may even make us feel noble. But it trains us to prize how we feel over the people entrusted to our care.

Over time, that trade leaves us prosecuting men like Daniel Penny while electing leaders like Kathy Hochul.

It might soothe the heart for a moment.

It cannot sustain a society.

Darwinism is a dead end — and biologists know it

For more than a century, Darwinism has enjoyed a peculiar privilege. It is not merely taught as a scientific theory; it is treated as a final authority. Question it, and you are not mistaken — you are suspect, a heathen guilty of fidelity to first principles.

And yet the deeper one looks, the less sense it makes.

Darwinism is not merely incomplete; it is internally inconsistent. It claims to explain life while excluding what life most plainly displays.

Dr. J. Scott Turner, an American physiologist with decades of serious biological research behind him, is not a Bible-thumping believer or a culture-war activist. He is a scientist who followed the evidence where it led — and discovered that modern Darwinism could not follow him there, a conclusion he shared with me in a recent interview.

'Marvelous contrivances'

The trouble, Turner explains, began with a quiet but decisive shift. Darwin’s original theory centered on organisms — living, striving creatures with what Darwin himself called “marvelous contrivances.” Modern Darwinism replaced them with something colder. Genes took center stage. Organisms were pushed aside.

Neo-Darwinism, Turner argues, became “a form of gene determinism embedded in a statistical framework that largely shoved organisms off the stage.” What disappeared with them were the qualities that make life recognizably alive: “intentionality, intelligence, and purposefulness.” What passed for progress was, in fact, reduction.

Christians have long sensed this loss, even without the language to name it. They were told that purpose was an illusion, design an accident, and meaning a projection — that life was nothing more than chemistry with better branding. Turner’s work shows what happens when that story is taken seriously.

Termite testimony

His research on termite colonies posed a problem Darwinism could not absorb. The termites were not merely adapting to their environment. They were building it — massive mounds precisely regulated for temperature and humidity, engineered for their own survival. The environment was not selecting them. They were shaping it.

“The old idea that organisms adapt to environments is only half the story,” Turner explains. “Organisms also adapt environments to themselves.” This is not unique to termites. Coral reefs, beaver dams, and human cities all tell the same story. Life has always been an active force, not a passive one.

Once organisms shape the conditions of their own survival, the Darwinian account begins to strain. Selection still operates, but it is no longer blind or passive. It is infused with preference — with direction, with desire.

Darwinism has no language for that.

Faced with obvious design — termite mounds, bird flight, the cantilevered structure of mammalian bones — modern Darwinism retreats into qualifiers. Design becomes “apparent” design. Purpose becomes “as if” purpose. Intelligence is reduced to coincidence wearing a lab coat.

Mongkolchon Akesin/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Darwin vs. design

Turner refuses the dodge. “I couldn’t support the notion of ‘apparent’ design or ‘apparent’ intentionality any more,” he says. “These weren’t illusions. They were fundamental properties of life.”

That refusal has consequences.

Darwinism is not merely incomplete; it is internally inconsistent. It claims to explain life while excluding what life most plainly displays. It demands silence precisely where the evidence speaks.

This is why Turner concludes — without theatrics or bitterness — that Darwinism cannot be true. Not because evolution is false, but because Darwinism lacks the conceptual tools to describe what evolution actually entails.

The hardest line Darwinism draws is at meaning.

Turner is blunt about this. Darwinism’s deepest limitation is not scientific but metaphysical. It operates within what he calls an “epistemic bubble” — a closed system that refuses to admit evidence challenging its assumptions.

That is not how science advances. It is how dogma survives.

An overdue truce

Christians are often told that faith and science are natural enemies. Turner’s work suggests something more unsettling: the conflict was never necessary. It was constructed.

Between militant Darwinism and intelligent-design polemics lies a broad, neglected middle ground — one Turner openly occupies, along with scientists and philosophers like Stuart Kauffman and Terrence Deacon, as well as researchers working on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis — who accept evolution while rejecting the dogma that purpose and agency are illusions.

Here, intelligence is neither smuggled in from theology nor erased by materialism. It is treated as a real feature of living systems.

This view has ancient roots. Turner describes himself as an Aristotelian — not an atomist, reducing life to particles and chance, nor a Platonist, locating purpose outside the world altogether. Aristotle began with what could be observed: living things striving toward ends. That vision sits comfortably alongside religious belief, which has always held that life is ordered, directed, and intelligible. Turner’s approach simply takes life as it appears — purposeful, directed, alive.

For Christians, this matters.

A world without purpose is corrosive. It erodes responsibility, dignity, and moral meaning. It tells us that desire is a delusion and intention an error — that life is busy, but empty.

Darwinism promised a grand explanation. What it delivered was a grand refusal. And yet faith remains — not as an intrusion, but as a witness to reality.

Biden's faith attacks backfire: Support for religious liberties soars to record high under Trump, new report shows

Against a backdrop of mounting attacks on churches, the Biden administration worked ardently to curb religious liberties wherever they came into conflict with the left's radical agenda.

For example:

the Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission implemented a rule requiring employers — including Christian organizations — to accommodate workers' efforts to abort their unborn children;
the EEOC attempted to force Christians to pay for employees' sex-rejection mutilations;
the Biden Department of Health and Human Services attempted to bar Christian providers who hold biblical and scientifically grounded views about sex and marriage from the foster-care system; and
under Biden, a Catholic, the FBI characterized conservative Catholics as potential domestic terrorists and proposed to infiltrate Catholic churches as "threat mitigation."

It's clear from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty's latest Religious Freedom Index that unlike the administration voted out of power in 2024, the American people overwhelmingly — and increasingly — support religious liberties.

'Our nation still believes that our first freedom belongs at the heart of our culture; not as a source of conflict, but as a foundation for overcoming it.'

Over the past six years, Becket has tracked public opinion on religious freedom. The legal group's index for 2025 published on Friday registered the highest cumulative score for public support of religious freedom to-date — 71 on a scale from 0 to 100 where 0 indicates complete opposition to religious liberty and 100 indicates robust support.

This amounts to a dramatic shift, especially when compared to 2020, when the composite score was 66.

Whereas in 2020, 52% of respondents agreed that religious freedom is inherently public and that Americans should be able to share their faith in public spaces, that number jumped to 57% in the latest RFI.

There was an even bigger shift when it came to support for parents' ability to opt out of public school curricula they believe to be inappropriate — a jump from 63% in 2021 to 73% in 2025.

Photo by ANOEK DE GROOT/AFP via Getty Images

When asked specifically about the Supreme Court's June 2025 ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor, 62% of respondents signaled support for the high court's decision to side with the Maryland parents who wanted to protect their children from LGBT propaganda in Montgomery County Public Schools.

On the question of whether public funding for education should be available to all families, including those who choose religious schools, 77% of respondents said they were mostly or completely in favor.

The report noted that "although this year's Index found that Americans have cooled on the benefits of religion to society and are skeptical of institutions, they unify around the simple principles of religious freedom for all, even in difficult cases that invite scrutiny or controversy."

A clear majority, 58%, of Americans said they support the right of a Christian baker to decline to make cakes that conflict with her sincere religious views.

Sixty-one percent of respondents said that the First Amendment's guarantee of the free exercise of religion should protect Catholic priests from having to break the seal of confession as would have been required by Washington state Democrats' now-enjoined Senate Bill 5375.

There was markedly less support for the Christian counselor in the case Chiles v. Salazar who challenged Colorado's prohibition on so-called "conversion therapy" for non-straight youth. Only 47% expressed support for her ability to provide talk therapy to children to help them overcome their gender dysphoria.

"Year after year, the Index has made clear that religious liberty remains one of our most cherished values," Mark Rienzi, president and CEO of Becket, said in a statement obtained by Blaze News.

"Even amid deep divisions, our nation still believes that our first freedom belongs at the heart of our culture; not as a source of conflict, but as a foundation for overcoming it," continued Rienzi. "The work before us is to see that freedom protected for our children and theirs in the years to come."

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Orthodox saint meets Chicago gang life in gritty crime flick 'Moses the Black'

50 Cent is going from sin to sanctity.

Hot on the heels of his recent Netflix documentary on the debauched downfall of hip-hop mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs, the rapper turned producer is set to release an urban crime drama inspired by the life of fourth-century Ethiopian monk Moses the Black.

Even in our compromised state, saints remain scandalous and alluring precisely because they cut against our deepest desires and despair.

Fans of Fox Nation’s "Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints" will remember the violent bandit turned desert-dwelling ascetic as one of the series' most fascinating subjects. Officially recognized by Pope Leo XIII in 1887, the former slave has long been venerated as the patron saint of nonviolence and is widely praised as a symbol of the power of peace and repentance.

Out for blood

"Moses the Black," a loose retelling of that story set against the backdrop of modern-day Chicago, follows Malik (Omar Epps), a gang leader fresh out of prison and seeking to avenge his murdered friend.

Complicating his quest his is grandmother, an Orthodox Christian who gives him an icon of St. Moses, whom she describes as a "saint who was also a gang member." Haunted by frustration, loss, and a lifetime of sins, Malik starts having visions of the saint, who warns him that the bloody path he has embarked upon is one he will regret.

"Moses" — which also features hip-hop notables Wiz Khalifa and Quavo — makes for an interesting companion piece to director Yelena Popovic’s previous outing, 2021 St. Nektarios biopic "Man of God." Where that film depicts sanctity as something preserved through obedience and suffering, "Moses" imagines it reclaimed from disorder.

Mean streets

Malik navigates an inner city filled with dealers and enforcers locked into violent criminal lives, casually killing rivals or shooting up funerals over petty grudges. These sequences are among the film’s darkest and do not soften their portrayal of brutality or drug use.

"Moses" is clearly a personal project for the platinum-selling artist born Curtis Jackson, whose own background mirrors Malik's. Raised by a single mother in Jamaica, Queens — herself a drug dealer who was murdered when he was 8 — Jackson entered the drug trade at a young age. After barely surviving an attack by a rival in 2000, Jackson released his debut "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" in 2003.

Although that album cemented Jackson's association with the violence and materialism of gangsta rap, its cover found him wearing a jewel-encrusted cross necklace. The tension between survival and transformation is one Jackson understands firsthand.

As he has said:

I believe in God. I didn't survive being shot nine times for nothing. I didn't claw my way out of the 'hood just 'cause it was something to do. I know I've got a purpose, a reason for being on this planet. I don't think I've done everything I'm supposed to do yet. But I do know this: I ain't going nowhere 'til I've done it all.

Redemption song

There is something unsettling and compelling about the lives of saints. Even in our compromised state, they remain scandalous and alluring precisely because they cut against our deepest desires and despair. The film’s greatest strength is its depiction of how Catholics and Orthodox Christians turn to saints during moments of trial, seeking models of repentance and change — models Malik strains toward but does not easily inhabit.

Steven Ferdman/GC Images/Getty Images

The film’s ambitions, however, exceed its budget. Extensive handheld camerawork — whether a stylistic or budgetary choice — sits uneasily beside green-screen flashbacks and CGI-heavy desert scenes. The rough Chicago footage clashes with these elements, and the film might have benefited from a tighter focus on Malik’s interior struggle. Exaggerated performances from the supporting cast further push many scenes into melodrama.

Despite its "faith-based" trappings, "Moses the Black" is emphatically not a family film. It includes graphic violence, coarse language, and crude sexual innuendo, narrowing its audience to those inclined to receive its warning. Still, its central claim — that mercy extends even to the gravest sinners — lands with force in a culture starved for hope.

"Moses the Black" will be released through Fathom Entertainment on January 30.

When ‘live, laugh, love’ means 'pour me another'

There is a particular aesthetic that holds sway in vast territories of modern motherhood: the throw pillow stitched with Live Laugh Love, the stemless wine glass reading Mommy’s Sippy Cup, the Instagram reel joking that bedtime is encroaching on wine time.

We’re meant to laugh and recognize ourselves in it. It’s harmless humor, we’re told. A coping mechanism. A wink at how hard motherhood can be and why we deserve a mental “break.”

Alcohol allows us to take the edge off without ever naming what’s wrong, smoothing the dissonance between what we feel and what we think we should feel.

But what if the joke isn’t harmless? What if this cultural script, especially the version adapted and shared among Christian women, teaches mothers that it’s better to cope than to heal? What if the cost isn’t just personal, but burdensome for their children in ways that may not appear for years to come?

Jokingly giving women permission to booze it up guilt-free has helped wine sales skyrocket. Along the way, we’ve seen the rates of women dying from alcohol-related illnesses increase by 35%.

These numbers aren’t a coincidence. Overdrinking has become an acceptable way of life, and it is destructive in ways women don’t realize when they first pick up a glass.

Trading hope for cope

Motherhood is exhausting, in both good and hard ways. We’re raising children in an era of constant stimulation, economic pressure, social isolation, and relentless comparison. Many are doing this with less community support than ever before. Their fatigue is real, and feeling overwhelmed is justified.

But reaching for wine doesn't fix the problem. It just makes it worse.

Instead of offering meaningful support or naming the loneliness created by distance from extended family and lives increasingly lived through screens, our culture handed women a temporary salve for wounds that require real presence and care.

Never mind that alcohol worsens anxiety, disrupts sleep, and wreaks havoc with emotional regulation.

This “wine-mom” culture didn’t emerge accidentally. It was marketed by alcohol companies that realized mothers were an untapped demographic. They rebranded drinking as self-care, reward, and relief.

Christians didn’t stand apart from this trend. We joined it because it felt respectable and far removed from the caricature of addiction we were taught to fear. We weren’t legalists, after all.

In my book "Freely Sober: Rethinking Alcohol Through the Lens of Faith," I argue that Christian women have been lured into the same trap — and need a pathway out.

Intervarsity Press

Women's work-around

Christian women are often taught, explicitly or implicitly, to be grateful, content, and joyful no matter their circumstances. Complaining feels sinful, and naming dissatisfaction feels unspiritual.

Alcohol becomes a work-around. It allows us to take the edge off without ever naming what’s wrong, smoothing the dissonance between what we feel and what we think we should feel. It offers temporary relief without asking hard questions.

And because wine is so normalized — at times celebrated — no one intervenes. In fact, friends often encourage it. Churches rarely question it, and the jokes keep coming, even from those who are well-meaning. Overconsumption becomes a socially acceptable sin, and then we feel ashamed when it is hard to quit or cut back.

Numbing out

Most mothers who participate in wine culture are not falling-down drunk. I was a Christian mom, and to the rest of the world, I appeared to be thriving. Like many women, I was functional — which made the problem easy to ignore.

But our families don’t just get the part of us that keeps it together at the office or always makes it to the gym. They get us in every hard and holy moment. And a mother who is emotionally dulled night after night is less present, even if she’s physically there.

A mother who relies on alcohol to cope is often quicker to irritability and slower to patience. She’s less attuned to her children’s needs, less engaged in conversations, and less available for the simple moments where connection is built. Alcohol dulls perception, and children often communicate distress in the quietest ways — ways that are easy to miss. I know I did.

Children notice more than we think. They learn how adults handle stress, observe what celebration looks like, and internalize the message that hard feelings are something to escape, not endure. The damage of wine-mom culture is rarely dramatic, and that’s where the danger is. It erodes slowly, normalizing emotional absence and teaching that numbing out is fine.

Live, laugh, lie

The slogan itself is revealing when you look at it this way:

Live — avoid suffering.
Laugh — drown discomfort in humor.
Love — indulge yourself first.

It is a shallow creed for a culture allergic to pain. Christianity offers a radically different vision. It does not promise escape from suffering, but promises meaning within it. It does not offer numbing, but transformation. Alcohol promises rest, but Christ actually gives it.

Wine is a counterfeit, temporary relief that ultimately does more harm than good when taken in excess. The gospel does not call women to white-knuckle their pain, but neither does it tell them to anesthetize it. True rest comes from truth-telling, community, repentance, and renewal, not a drug-based substitute.

The hardest easy

For years, I believed the joke, or pretended to. I wasn’t reckless or spiraling and told myself I was just doing what everyone else was doing. Drinking to unwind, to cope, to feel “normal” again.

But slowly, I realized that alcohol promised something it could never deliver. It made hard days easier (for a few hours), but meaningful growth harder (for years). I justified my drinking based on cultural encouragement, running from the idea that sobriety might be a better choice for me.

When I finally quit drinking five years ago, sobriety didn’t magically fix my life, but it forced me to face it honestly — and that is the beginning of freedom. I want other women to know they too can feel that freedom.

Bettman/Getty Images

Choosing clarity

In modern America, mothers are often told they are victims — of systems, expectations, and circumstances beyond their control.

What we really need is permission to tell the truth — to admit hardship, even when it forces us to confront the ways we have chosen to cope with it. We need communities and opportunities that acknowledge this season of life without offering numbing as the solution. We need churches willing to name alcohol honestly, not as a forbidden fruit, but as a false savior. We need friendships built on presence, not punch lines or escape rooms.

Most of all, we need to hear that our motherhood struggles aren’t a failure. The desire to overcome the hard moments is totally normal, and it is understandable that we would look for an easy way to do so. But there are better, healthier ways to walk through these times. One of the most countercultural things a mother can do today is stay awake to her own life.

Choosing clarity, and the courage to seek better ways to live, changes a woman, her relationship with God, her family, and the mark she leaves on the world.

Chuck Colson: Nixon loyalist who found hope in true obedience

Long before he turned his life over to God, Chuck Colson burned with faith.

While working as an assistant to Massachusetts Senator Leverett Saltonstall (R), he met Richard Nixon — then vice president — and, by his own later admission, instantly became “a Nixon fanatic.” That loyalty, unwavering and severe, would become the defining feature of his life. It was also what made him so effective — and so dangerous.

For the first time in his adult life, Colson was forced to confront who he was without title, access, or leverage.

Hopelessly devoted

Colson’s devotion was not opportunistic. It was total. He believed loyalty was a virtue, even when it demanded cruelty. Years later, he would boast that he would “walk over my own grandmother” to re-elect Nixon. The line was meant to shock, but it also clarified something essential: Colson understood obedience as a moral good, independent of mercy or restraint. Colson was not a cynic pretending to believe. He was a believer who believed too much.

In Washington, that made him useful. He became the administration’s enforcer — a man willing to apply pressure, intimidate enemies, and blur lines. Politics, as Colson practiced it, was not persuasion. It was war. And war required soldiers willing to do what polite men would not.

Hatchet man

When Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, the government moved to prosecute him under the Espionage Act of 1917. For Colson, however, the embarrassment Ellsberg caused his mentor merited more than official retribution — it called for something more underhanded.

Colson’s instinct was not rebuttal but destruction: He supported efforts to smear Ellsberg as unstable and dangerous, a campaign that helped create the climate in which Nixon operatives burglarized Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office.

When Watergate collapsed the Nixon presidency, Colson collapsed with it. As legal consequences closed in, a friend pressed a copy of "Mere Christianity" into his hands and forced him to confront what power had allowed him to evade.

He pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and became the first Nixon aide to get jail time. By then, the obedience he had given so freely had nowhere left to land.

Accustomed to command

Colson entered federal prison as a man accustomed to command. Early on, he braced himself for contempt from guards who knew who he was. Instead, one offered something worse: indifference — the unmistakable message that he was not special here and should act accordingly.

It was a small moment, but a decisive one. For the first time in his adult life, Colson was forced to confront who he was without title, access, or leverage. He was not feared or in control. He wasn't even useful.

And so he began to learn a fundamental lesson of Christianity, one that power obscures: We are not self-sustaining. The first step toward obedience, Colson would later say, is realizing who you are when everything else is stripped away — and how dependent you are on grace you did not earn.

Scott Adams in 2002. Phil Velasquez/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Surprised by truth

After his release, Colson avoided the obvious paths. He did not rehabilitate his reputation through commentary. He did not return to politics as a chastened insider. Instead, he committed the remainder of his life to prisoners — men for whom dependence was not temporary.

“Christianity is not about becoming respectable,” Colson later said. “It is about becoming obedient.” Colson's instinct for loyalty made him a quick study. But his newfound faith didn't soften his nature as much as it reordered it toward something worthier.

To the end, Colson remained intense, structured, demanding, and — as those who doggedly proclaim the truth tend to be — dangerous.

Pope Leo calls out 'inclusive' language as a painful, 'Orwellian' movement in the West

Pope Leo XIV says Western nations need to guarantee the freedom of expression.

The pope gave his "State of the World" speech from the Vatican in Vatican City on Friday and delivered remarks that may agitate some of his more liberal followers.

'A new Orwellian-style language is developing which, in an attempt to be increasingly inclusive, ends up excluding.'

Real name Robert Prevost, the noted Chicago White Sox fan championed free speech when he explained that words need to once again be used to "express distinct and clear realities."

This is paramount in order to engage in "authentic dialogue," the Catholic leader continued, noting that truth-telling is necessary for "preventing conflicts."

This led Pope Leo into pointing out a "paradox" in modern self-expression in the West, which only strengthens his belief in the idea that freedom of speech and expression should be guaranteed.

"It is painful to see how, especially in the West, the space for genuine freedom of expression is rapidly shrinking," the pope said. "At the same time, a new Orwellian-style language is developing which, in an attempt to be increasingly inclusive, ends up excluding those who do not conform to the ideologies that are fueling it."

The 70-year-old explained that the inclusivity paradox leads to other consequences, such as the restriction of human rights, including "freedom of conscience."

Those were not the only remarks the pope gave that were seemingly controversial. Rather, he also spoke strongly against the act of surrogacy.

Leo XIV said that surrogacy amounts to transforming gestation into a "negotiable service" that violates the dignity of both the child and the mother. Surrogacy reduces the baby to a "product," the pope said, and causes a mother to exploit her body and the generative process, which distorts "the original relational calling of the family."

Photo by Simone Risoluti - Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images

Observers of the speech, reportedly including 184 ambassadors from states that have diplomatic relations with the Vatican, also heard the pope condemn assisted suicide as a form of "deceptive" compassion.

The leader said that the elderly and isolated — "who at times struggle to find a reason to continue living" — should be offered solutions to their suffering, such as "palliative care ... rather than encouraging deceptive forms of compassion such as euthanasia."

Leo concluded his speech by emphasizing the need for peaceful dialogue and living in truth. He added that a "peaceful world" is built by those who act from humble hearts.

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3 healthy habits to bring you closer to God in 2026

As Christians, when we consider New Year’s resolutions, we often think about reading the Bible more, praying more often, or maybe getting more involved in our church. Those are all wonderful things worthy of pursuing.

Rather than taking time to expound on those, however, I’d like to commend three other resolutions that may not make the usual lists.

Our bodies and souls are integrally connected, and each significantly influences the other.

These are practical — maybe even commonsensical — but given the times in which we live, they’re easy to neglect, with the result that we flourish less than we could.

1. Practice attention management

We hear a great deal about time management these days, but rarely about attention management. Americans spend multiple hours each day on their phones, with teens devoting more than nine hours(!) and adults more than four hours daily. We’re awash in a sea of texts, emails, videos, games, and alerts. If we’re not careful, these can become an endless series of distractions that divert our attention from more important things.

They can also subtly mold us in the shape of the secular culture that produces much of what we consume. As theologian Jason Thacker writes, “Following Jesus in a digital age requires ... having our eyes wide open and seeing how technology is subtly shaping us in ways often contrary to our faith. We need to learn how to ask the right questions about our relationship with technology, examining it with clear eyes grounded in the Word of God.”

It takes some intentionality to guard our hearts from the often counter-Christian messages coming through our screens, but we have to make it a priority because “everything [we] do flows from” our hearts (Proverbs 4:23). We can use technology in many beneficial ways, but we must also “examine everything” and “hold firmly to that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21) while avoiding obstacles to our spiritual growth.

2. Get more sleep

There’s an old saying among pastors that “sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is take a nap.” After all, we’re not just souls or minds, but also physical beings, by God’s design. Christians are sometimes tempted to view our physical nature in a negative light, but this reflects a Gnostic view that sees the spiritual as good and the material as bad or inferior. This is alien to Scripture, however, which tells us that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). As John W. Kleinig argues in his book "Wonderfully Made: A Protestant Theology of the Body":

The body matters much more than we usually imagine it does. It matters because it locates us in time and space here on earth. It matters because we live in it and with it. It matters because through it we interact with the world around us, the people who coexist with us, and the living God who keeps us physically alive in it.

Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). In order to keep them healthy and functioning properly, adults need between seven and nine hours of sleep each day. A lack of sufficient sleep can lead to heart disease, hormonal imbalances, reduced immune response, and a lack of mental focus, among other problems.

Since blue light from our phone and computer screens can make it harder to get deep, restful sleep, this is another good reason to limit screen time, especially close to bedtime.

Get enough sleep, and you’ll likely notice greater energy, optimism, and an increased capacity to exhibit the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). Our bodies and souls are integrally connected, and each significantly influences the other.

3. Cultivate friendships

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, half of U.S. adults reported feelings of loneliness, with 58% worrying that no one in their life knows them well. We live in a hyper-individualistic society that often views other people as obstacles to our personal agendas. Yet God designed us to live in close connection with other humans, especially fellow believers. The writer of Hebrews instructed his readers not to give up “meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another” (Hebrews 10:25). Like Christians in the early church, we should “[devote ourselves] to ... fellowship” (Acts 2:42).

Since we’ve been noting how some of these resolutions affect our physical health, it’s remarkable that chronic loneliness is more dangerous than smoking 15 cigarettes a day! Thus, author Justin Earley observes that “friendship will make or break your life.” We can see the wisdom of God’s statement in Genesis that “it is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

Heritage Images/Getty Images

The quality of our friendships also makes a big difference. We’ve all seen groups of people sitting together in some public place, not interacting with one another, but engrossed in their phones. “This is what community often looks like in the digital age,” writes pastor Jay Kim. “Lonely individuals falling prey, over and over again, to the great masquerade of digital technology” that lulls us “into a state of isolation via the illusion of digital connection.”

As Kim goes on to note, while we can communicate digitally, we can only commune in person. Communication is about the exchange of information, while communing involves the exchange of presence. Communing is the more difficult task because it “requires more of us: more of our attention, empathy, and compassion.”

So this year, I encourage you to practice attention management, get enough sleep, and intentionally look for opportunities to begin new friendships and deepen old ones. It will take some deliberate effort, and every relationship will have growing pains, but the greater depth of fellowship will be worth it. As a saying often attributed to 18th-century evangelist George Whitefield goes, “No man is the whole of himself. His friends are the rest of him.”

A version of this essay originally appeared in the Worldview Bulletin Substack.