Over the last several decades, Americans, it has been argued, are more tribal in their behavior and social groupings than ever. We live in silos of our own choice, watch cable news channels or listen to podcasts that simply reinforce our tribal identities. We are not open to new ideas and are threatened by those who are not in our silos. In this cultural development, the individual is not as important. Our group identity defines us and we are not open to those outside our groupings. How did this develop within American civilization? What are its origins?

Theoretical cosmologist, Paul M. Sutter recently wrote, “I’m a cosmologist, the kind of scientist who studies the origin, history and evolution of the universe. I have spent my career researching one special part of the universe called cosmic voids: the vast expanses of nothing that stretch between the galaxies. Most of our universe is void—somewhere around 80 percent of the volume of the cosmos is made of nothing at all. By strict accounting of cosmic abundances, our planet and the life we find here amount to essentially zero.

Many times I have used this quote from G.K. Chesterton: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing; they then become capable of believing in anything.” From Chesterton’s quote I am choosing to use “men” here as gender-specific—males in American culture today. There is so much confusion within our culture about what it means to be a man. As David French reports, the very definition of “masculinity” betrays a crisis.

It is now conventional wisdom to argue that America is more polarized as a society in 2024 than it has been in its history, save the decade of the 1850s right before the Civil War. Why? There is no simple answer to this important question, but it is quite important as Christians that we seek to understand the nature of this polarization. The columnist and recent convert to Christianity, David Brooks, offers a most helpful analysis and overview of our polarized society.

Why have children? Why choose to become a parent? For much of human history, these two questions would probably have received significant pushback. Children were an obvious concomitant of marriage and, in many cases, of survival. But, today “only 26% of Americans say that having children is important for living a fulfilling life, whereas 71% consider ‘having a job or career they enjoy’ to be essential, and 61% say the same for ‘having close friends.’”

British historian, Fay Bound Alberti, co-founder of the Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary University of London, writes that, “By the 21st century, loneliness has become ubiquitous. Commentators call it ‘an epidemic’, a condition akin to ‘leprosy’, and a ‘silent plague’ of civilization. In 2018, the United Kingdom went so far as to appoint a Minister for Loneliness. Yet loneliness is not a universal condition; nor is it a purely visceral, internal experience. It is less a single emotion and more a complex cluster of feelings, composed of anger, grief, fear, anxiety, sadness and shame. It also has social and political dimensions, shifting through time according to ideas about the self, God and the natural world.”

If you believe that there is no God to which you are accountable or that there is no God who has provided redemption for you, you will live your life quite differently than one who affirms such propositions. Consider the famous British philosopher of the 20th century—Bertrand Russell, one of the founders of analytic philosophy. One of his most famous books was Why I Am Not a Christian. For Russell, there was no God.

As I have studied the Gospels over the years, I have been struck by how many times the text speaks of Jesus being “moved with compassion.” Jesus manifested compassion when He saw the crowds, responding with acts of healing (Matt. 14:14; 20:34; Mark 1:41), provision of food (Matt. 15:32), and teaching the word of God (Mark 6:34). Jesus not only modeled compassion; He also taught on the virtue of compassion, including the parable of the unforgiving servant (Matt. 18:23–35), the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29–37), and the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32).

In February 2024, John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, declared that Civil Rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, “was not a Christian at all.” Furthermore, he added, King was “a nonbeliever who misrepresented everything about Christ and the gospel.” MacArthur’s comments were made during a question-and-answer session at Grace Community Church.

Christian author, Ericka Andersen, has recently written of her struggles with infertility and her resolution of this struggle through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Her piece offers an important perspective on IVF and how to think about this controversial procedure as a Christian: “At 33, after experiencing infertility for several years, I reluctantly turned to in vitro fertilization (IVF). A fertility specialist advised my husband and me to pursue the usual course of IVF, which involves using drugs to stimulate the growth of multiple egg follicles.