Any of these stories could be the focus of today’s Daily Article:

• The Winter Olympics concluded yesterday, with Norway winning forty-one medals and the US in second place with thirty-three. The US men’s hockey team won the gold medal in overtime, its first since the “Miracle on Ice” forty-six years earlier.
• A historic winter storm has placed fifty-nine million people in the Northeast under weather warnings today.
• At least fourteen people were killed yesterday, including seven National Guard troops, as violence erupted across Mexico after the army killed the country’s most-wanted drug lord.
• With US forces in place across the Middle East, President Trump is said to be considering his options for Iran.
• Authorities in Arizona are continuing their search for Nancy Guthrie more than three weeks after she disappeared.

But today, I’m focusing on Friday’s Supreme Court decision striking down President Trump’s global tariffs. I consider it an even more foundational story, though not for reasons you might think.

As you know, I lead a nonprofit ministry committed to neutrality with regard to partisan politics. It may therefore surprise you that I am writing this morning to claim that the Court’s decision is good news for every American.

The reason I can do so and remain missional is that my assertion has nothing to do with partisan politics or tariffs and everything to do with our national and cultural future.

 “If men were angels, no government would be necessary”

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, historian Gordon Wood writes that our revolution “did not just eliminate monarchy and create republics; it actually reconstituted what Americans meant by public or state power and brought about an entirely new kind of popular politics and a new kind of democratic officeholder.” As political scholar Yuval Levin has written, “The Constitution establishes a politics in which no one is in charge and, therefore, in some sense, everyone is in charge.”

We tend to focus on the Founders’ positive view of humanity that counters centuries of European monarchical thinking with “all men are created equal.” In such a worldview, anyone can be elected president, sit on the Supreme Court, or serve in Congress.

But the Founders also understood the negative side of humanity. In Federalist No. 51, James Madison wrote:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

Accordingly, Madison and the other framers of our Constitution created checks and balances to ensure no individual or group would possess unaccountable power. In our system, the Supreme Court can overturn the actions of the president, the president can veto laws made by Congress, and Congress can overturn court decisions through legislation (cf. the horrific Supreme Court Dred Scott decision of 1857 vs. the Civil Rights Act of 1965).

Laws can replace laws, as can constitutional amendments. Presidents and members of Congress can be replaced by voters, and they and justices can be impeached.

A foundational fact for our national future

This system is intended to prevail even in the face of partisan pressure.

For example, in his response to Friday’s ruling, President Trump said he was “absolutely ashamed” of some justices who ruled six-to-three against him. Vice President JD Vance similarly called the high court decision “lawlessness” in a post on X.

The Wall Street Journal headlined that the ruling “rips open Trump’s relationship with the Roberts Court.” The president especially singled out Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, whom he nominated in his first term, as a “disgrace to our nation.”

But he is abiding by the ruling and adopting other means of imposing tariffs. This outcome shows that our democratic republic continues to function 250 years after it was created. This is a foundational fact for which all Americans should be grateful.

I thought Christianity was a system of morality

However, a “government of laws, not of men,” as John Adams famously described our system, can only take us so far. Legality is a poor substitute for morality.

In our system, we can do whatever we want so long as we are not caught doing it. Much that is immoral and damaging to our lives and culture is nonetheless legal, from abortion and euthanasia to adultery, pornography, and same-sex marriage.

The only path to our best lives is one that changes not just what we do but the essence of who we are. This is an offer made by no legal system, worldview, or religion—except Christianity.

Only Jesus says we can be “born again” (John 3:3). Only he can make us a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Only he can change our hearts.

Our culture does not understand this. I didn’t know it for many years before I became a Christian.

And, to my point today, I overlooked it for many years after I did.

I thought Christianity was a system of morality by which I could please God and receive his blessing in return. Reading the Bible, praying, attending church, sharing my faith, and so on were the expected ways for Christians to behave. I believed the credo, “What you are is God’s gift to you; what you make of yourself is your gift to God.”

But what I could “make of myself” was not enough. Somehow in my soul I knew there was more than this. My “God-shaped emptiness” was not yet filled. To cite St. Augustine, my heart was still “restless” because it had not yet come to “rest in him.”

“Rejoicing for weariness and radiance for dreariness”

It was a spiritual formation course in seminary where I first became acquainted with the idea that God’s Spirit could make me like God’s Son, that if I would surrender my life to him every day, he would then transform me in ways I could neither imagine nor produce.

This is what famed missionary J. Hudson Taylor called the “exchanged life.” In They Found The Secret: 20 Transformed Lives That Reveal a Touch of Eternity, the late Wheaton College President V. Raymond Edman wrote:

It is new life for old. It is rejoicing for weariness and radiance for dreariness. It is strength for weakness and steadiness for uncertainty. It is triumph even through tears and tenderness of heart instead of touchiness. It is lowliness of spirit instead of self-exaltation and loveliness of life because of the presence of the altogether Lovely One.

Would you like to make such an exchange today?

Quote for the day:

“I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help him. I ended up by asking him to do his work through me.” —J. Hudson Taylor

Our latest website resources:

• A Christian response to the age of selective outrage
• The Focus: Why are the new voter ID laws so controversial?
• Is the American dream dead? Plus: James Van Der Beek, Robert Duvall, Jesse Jackson & Winter Olympics
• What does “I Can Only Imagine 2” teach us about faith and suffering?
• George Washington and the future of the “United” States

Denison Forum

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew of the English royal family, was arrested yesterday on his sixty-sixth birthday after the latest batch of Epstein files that were made public last month shed new light on his connections with Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. But while that connection has been known for years, the charges that landed Andrew in jail—at least for the time being—were not about the allegations of rape and assault that have trailed him for more than a decade. Rather, he was arrested for suspicion of misconduct in public office.

Essentially, Andrew stands accused of sharing confidential information with Epstein while the former prince served as an official trade envoy for England. The charges are a bit nebulous, as technically there’s no official statute that defines what they mean. Rather, they have evolved over time from Britain’s common law.

Even if the accusations are a bit underwhelming when compared with Andrew’s other alleged crimes—for which he’s never been convicted even if they are common knowledge—yesterday’s arrest still marks the first time that a member of the royal family has been taken into custody since King Charles I was tried and executed for treason back during the English Civil War in 1649. And it was apparently done without the family’s knowledge.

After Andrew’s arrest became public, King Charles III released a statement supporting the arrest and promising that police will “have our full and wholehearted support and cooperation. Let me state this clearly: the law must take its course.”

And it’s quite possible that Andrew’s arrest could change other lives as well as the law does just that.

A prince no longer

Last November, Andrew was urged to come speak before Congress regarding his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their business of trafficking young women and girls. Back then, he declined to appear. However, it’s possible that the FBI could question him while he is in police custody in Britain.

Now that he is potentially facing life in prison, he has less to lose than when he was a free man. Would he trade secrets for a reduced or annulled sentence?

When he was stripped of his titles late last year, there was a good bit of speculation that part of the reason the king made sure he landed on his feet was to keep him from having to sell information to maintain his lifestyle. While the royal family can likely take steps to ensure that their secrets are kept safe, Andrew was close enough with Epstein that his testimony could prove pivotal in bringing others to some measure of justice.

And, given that he has essentially been cut out of the royal family in recent years—the separation became more absolute in the wake of Queen Elizabeth’s passing—he is likely to need all the help he can get. So, whether it’s before a London court or the halls of Congress, Andrew’s affiliation with Epstein and Maxwell is likely to continue making headlines for quite a while.

But why is that? Why does anything involving Epstein make headlines today?

On the surface, it sounds like a silly question. But, if you stop to consider it, I think it points to an interesting conclusion, and one far too many take for granted in our culture today.

“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”

Last week, cultural philosopher Paul Anleitner noted in response to the latest outrage over Epstein:

Here’s an uncomfortable truth about the Epstein accusations: We only find them morally reprehensible because of Christianity. Before the spread of Christianity, “civilized” Greek and Roman elites openly flaunted underage s*x slaves. This was normal. Emperor Hadrian built an entire city in honor of his favorite boy. We’ve heard for decades that Christianity is a barrier to moral progress, but if you undercut the moral foundations of Christianity from the West, culture reverts back to pagan norms.

While the cultural and moral development of the West is not quite that straightforward, Anleitner is correct. The driving force behind the changes from the Greco-Roman ethics of the ancient world to the Judeo-Christian morality that stands at the foundation of so much of Western society today was Christianity.

As the Greek historian Thucydides noted four hundred years before Christ:

You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

While the sad reality is that we see that basic dichotomy at times in Christian history as well, many of the fundamental shifts in how people value individual human lives in our culture today owe a great deal to the gospel’s power to transform hearts and renew minds (Romans 12:2).

The question facing our society now is whether we can maintain the moral system built upon Christian ethics while rejecting the God who created it.

Jesus was pretty clear on the answer, and it’s not looking good.

One life at a time

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus wraps up his teaching by telling his followers:

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7:24–27)

In this passage, Jesus makes clear that it’s not enough to simply hear Christ’s commands or to have a vague understanding of what they mean. It’s only when we put those commands into action that we can find the kind of foundation necessary to weather the storms that will inevitably come our way.

Most people in America today have at least a passing awareness of who Jesus is and are even familiar with some of his teachings. But familiarity is not enough. Christ demands obedience, and nothing less will suffice.

We are blessed to live in a time when at least some elements of Christ’s commands for how we should live and how we should treat one another are already accepted as the morally right thing to do. That puts us head and shoulders above those first Christians, who lived in a world built on a view much closer to Thucydides than Jesus.

At the same time, though, the lost around us are unlikely to take that next step from awareness to obedience unless they see us do it first.

So, as we finish up for today, ask the Holy Spirit if there are any areas of your life where you’ve settled for less than full obedience? Are there cracks in your foundation, or rooms built on sand?

Most of us have some area we have tried to keep back as our own. But God’s promise is that they won’t hold up for long. And I fear the same will be true of our nation as well unless something changes.

And that’s where you and I come in.

God has given us the privilege of partnering with him in helping to bring our culture back to Jesus, one life at a time.

Where can you start today?

Quote of the day:

“There would be no sense in saying you trusted Jesus if you would not take his advice.” —C. S. Lewis

Our latest website resources:

• A Christian response to the age of selective outrage
• Is the American dream dead? Plus: James Van Der Beek, Robert Duvall, Jesse Jackson & Winter Olympics | Ep. 57
• What does “I Can Only Imagine 2” teach us about faith in suffering?
• Why are the new voter ID laws so controversial?
• Can caffeine and video games protect against dementia?

Denison Forum