The story of the Pilgrims is the story of the beginning of the holiday we know as Thanksgiving. But sometimes in America, we equate the Pilgrims with the Puritans, and assume they were identical groups. They were not. Pilgrims were also known as “Separatists,” meaning they chose to separate from the established Church of England, the Anglican Church. The Puritans remained in the Anglican Church and chose to attempt to “purify” it from within—hence the name “Puritan.” In 1608, a group of Separatists, who would become the Pilgrims, fled England and settled in Holland. They desired freedom of worship there.

Lance Morrow, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, made this poignant observation: “A decent conscience, uncontaminated by ideology, knows what it is looking at. The torments that Hamas ‘militants’ inflicted on Oct. 7—mass slaughter, rape, the beheading of babies—amounted to behavior that the high court of any uncorrupted intelligence in the world would describe as evil.” Indeed, President Biden courageously spoke of the Hamas raids as “pure, unadulterated evil.”

Saul’s downward spiral continues as his troops defy him and as he defiantly disobeys the Lord.

Psalm 1 is one of my favorite Psalms, for it makes clear that life is about choices and, in effect, there are only two paths to choose in life—the path of a walk with God or the path of rejecting, defying God. Each choice has profound, eternally significant consequences. I have returned to this Psalm many times over the years—but especially now in 2023 when things seem to be in such a mess. Even though the human race has amassed immense knowledge, now accessible via the Internet, we seem incapable of stopping the pain we inflict on ourselves and on one another. Wars, dysfunction, disorder and chaos describe our culture, our world—and even many of our families and communities. We cannot halt “the path of the wicked,” this repetitive path that leads to the “way of evil” and “deep darkness.”

Former President George W. Bush recently wrote this defense of PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief): “When I took office in 2001, the situation with HIV/AIDS on the African continent and elsewhere was dire. A group of advisers including Condi Rice, Josh Bolten and Mike Gerson encouraged me to act before an entire generation was lost.