Ben Sasse, who is dying of pancreatic cancer, recently wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal on AI and character development. He concluded with this reflection: “Character, whether of an individual or of a nation, is molded by habits and by time. This republic requires men and women to do long-form deliberation, serious thinking, honest humility and daily striving. What good is it to gain the whole world if we forfeit the souls that we’re supposed to form? We can’t expect to remain free without being virtuous, we can’t be bold without being rooted, we can’t be great without aiming first to be good. To stave off [Aldous] Huxley’s dystopia [in Brave New World], we must deliberately shape our children’s souls so that they can be creators, doers and thinkers embracing the next frontier.”

The Pharisees, Herodians and Sadducess all challenge Jesus and HIs Messianic authority.

Christian columnist and attorney David French makes this astonishing observation: “A remarkable thing has happened on the world’s battlefields. Ukraine—a nation that was supposed to dissolve within days of a Russian invasion—has fought Russia to a stalemate, revolutionizing land warfare in the process. It has become an indispensable security partner in the Western alliance, including in the war against Iran. Now, Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is taking the next step, one that would have been unthinkable even as recently as 2024. By word and deed, he’s showing Europe and the world how the post-American free world can preserve its liberty and independence.”

Jesus teaches on servant leadership and then presents Himself to Israel as their Messiah via the Triumphal Entry.

Ben Sasse is the former US Senator from Nebraska and most recently former president of the University of Florida. Earlier in his life, he had earned a PhD in history from Yale. Sasse is best known as a senator, but before his election in 2014, he was the executive director for the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (which produced the Cambridge Declaration), served in multiple roles in the George W. Bush administration, and was an assistant professor at the University of Texas. He now has stage four pancreatic cancer, which had metastasized to his liver, lungs, lymph nodes, and vascular system. He was originally given three to four months to live.

Jesus teaches on the sanctity of marriage, celibacy and faithfulness.

Sports gambling involves wagering on sports outcomes, transformed by the 2018 Supreme Court ruling into a legal, universally accessible, and rapidly growing industry in over 35 US states. Popular platforms like DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM offer extensive mobile betting on leagues like the NBA, NFL, and soccer. However, this boom has sparked concerns regarding high-risk bets, such as parlays, and rising financial issues like credit delinquency among bettors. The danger of sports gambling especially concerns young men.

Jesus gives instructions on the methodology of church discipline and on the importance of forgiveness.

What is the presidential pardon power and what are its limits? Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution vests the president with a broad but limited power “to grant Reprieves and Pardons.” According to the Supreme Court, the pardon power is intended as a tool for justice and mercy (an “act of grace”) and to further “the public welfare.” As one federal court has held: “The President, who exercises that power as the elected representative of all the People, must always exercise it in the public interest.”

Jesus teaches on kingdom values, including humility and our obligations to fellow kingdom citizens.