SpaceX will launch the largest public offering in history today, valuing the company at $1.77 trillion. The company’s founder, Elon Musk, owns roughly half of its stock, which would put his personal net worth at more than $1 trillion when combined with his stakes in Tesla, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and other ventures.

While Musk was already the richest man in the world, he is now set to become wealthier than the next four richest people combined. That kind of wealth is difficult to fathom, but these figures might help make the point:

• Since he co-founded the first of his US tech and engineering companies 31 years ago, Musk has amassed an average of roughly $59,492 per minute, totaling $3.6 million per hour and $602 million per week.
• His net worth exceeds that of 125 countries.
• His fortune is equal to 3 percent of the US GDP.
• He could buy every team in the NFL and the NBA with $500 billion left over.

And if you’re still having trouble appreciating just how large $1 trillion is, perhaps the best way to convey its magnitude is to think of it in terms of time. One million seconds is equal to roughly 11.5 days. By comparison, 1 billion seconds amounts to 31 years and 8 months, while 1 trillion seconds equals 31,688 years.

Continue reading Denison Forum – SpaceX to make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire →

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Michigan’s House of Representatives have all proclaimed June as “Fidelity Month.” This emphasis on faith, family, and country began as a grassroots movement started by Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University.

You might think Prof. George initiated Fidelity Month in response to Pride Month, but this is not so. Prof. George explained:

Back in the spring of 2023, I happened to read a report in the Wall Street Journal. It included polling data showing that the belief of Americans in certain core values—values that had traditionally been sources of unity and strength for Americans—had very considerably diminished over the past decade or decade and a half. I’m talking about values such as religion, family, and patriotism.

And these values have indeed been sources of our unity and strength in the United States of America because we are not a nation who can look to a common racial heritage or ethnic heritage, or even a common religious tradition or cultural heritage for our unity and strength. We Americans come from many, many different racial and ethnic backgrounds. We come from different traditions of faith. Our cultural histories are very different. So what do we have in common? What binds us together? Especially when times get tough—what are our sources of unity and strength?

According to Prof. George, “The polling showed that one value had increased in importance in the minds of Americans, and that was money. Religion went down, family went down, country went down, but the belief in the importance of money went up.”

In response, he announced on his Facebook and Twitter accounts, “By the power vested in me by absolutely no one, henceforth the month of June will be Fidelity Month.” The movement he launched has now grown across the nation.

“When you eat and are full”

I believe there is a simple reason our commitment to religion, family, and country has declined as the importance of money has risen. Think of the first three as one side of a seesaw and the fourth as the other. The higher our love for God, family, and country, the lower our love for money as a mere means to these ends. The reverse is true as well.

Why is this?

In Deuteronomy 6, Moses warned the Israelites as they prepared to enter their promised land:

When the Lᴏʀᴅ your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lᴏʀᴅ, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery (vv. 10–12).

But this makes no sense. If the people built nothing they are about to own and enjoy, if God provided it all, why would they “forget” him when they “eat and are full”?

For the same reason we do: Humans want to be our own god (Genesis 3:5). We want to be self-reliant so no one can take away what we rely upon. We want to own what we have as if we deserve it, lest it be taken from us and given to those who deserve it more.

The more religious among us are willing and sometimes even glad to give some of what we have to God and his projects. We will give time, money, and service to causes we deem worthy.

But make no mistake: it is our time, our money, and our service we are donating. We begin each day as the rightful owners of the next twenty-four hours and choose where and how to spend “our” time through “our” day.

Nothing I wrote in the last paragraph is true.

Born in Houston and not Pyongyang

Paul asked, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).

Did you have anything to do with your conception and birth? Can you manufacture the next minute of your life? Do you “own” anything in this world that God Almighty cannot take from you this moment?

I was born to loving parents, a privilege many do not experience. The abilities with which I work were given to me apart from any merit on my part. I have had opportunities that much of the world’s population has not, through no fault of their own.

I did nothing to be born in Houston, Texas, and not Pyongyang, North Korea.

The fact that I do not have pancreatic cancer (so far as I know) and Ben Sasse does is no merit on my part or demerit on his. In short, my life is a gift, as is yours.

Fidelity to God’s purpose during Fidelity Month and all year long is therefore an appropriate expression of gratitude for his grace.

Wouldn’t you agree?

Quote for the day:

“God desires from us more fidelity to the little things that he places in our power than ardor for great things that do not depend upon us.” — St. Francis de Sales

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Graham Platner, a candidate for the US Senate in Maine, has generated national headlines for weeks. Among the controversies he has faced, his wife stated that he sent sexually explicit messages to several women while married.

Nonetheless, Democrats in his state elected him last night as their nominee.

Ken Paxton, a candidate for the US Senate in Texas, has similarly been accused by his wife of adultery. Nonetheless, Republicans in his state elected him recently as their nominee.

My purpose is not to endorse either candidate, their parties, or their opponents. It is rather to respond to the remarkable dichotomy in our culture between our politics and our personal morals.

According to Pew Research Center, 90 percent of US adults consider adultery to be “morally wrong”; only 2 percent called it “morally acceptable,” while the rest said it is “not a moral issue.” And yet political figures from Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson to Bill Clinton and Donald Trump have been accused of it. A Wikipedia “List of federal political sex scandals in the United States” contains ninety-four entries. Some faced political consequences as a result, but many (if not most) did not.

Why is this?

And why is the question relevant to us all, even (and especially) those who are not in politics and who have been faithful to our spouses?

“That is about the best we can do”

In a recent New York Times column, Ross Douthat writes that “early-21^st-century Americans are profoundly divided about what being moral means.” He explains:

We have enough of a consensus to keep society together, which is why there aren’t a lot of people out there arguing, say, that it’s actually good that a politician cheated on his wife. But once you get beyond the theft-murder-adultery basics, we’re in a world of factional moralities and profound metaphysical divides (his italics).

In such a world, he suggests, moral failings can actually be a political advantage if they assure voters that a candidate is not going to force their moralisms on others. Candidates who espouse and exhibit exemplary ethics, by contrast, might seek to impose a stringent morality that’s alien to the rest of us.

To illustrate: The New York Times reports that when medical aid-in-dying laws are enacted in Illinois and the District of Columbia this fall, nearly a third of Americans will live in states where euthanasia is legal. The article notes, “Despite widespread support in polls, the number of people who actually go through with the practice remains very small.” The rest would not choose euthanasia for themselves, but they apparently believe that they have no right to make such a choice for others.

In a tolerance-centered, post-truth society, the last thing we want is others telling us what to do.

Movie critic and writer Roger Ebert gave voice to what many Americans think about life and happiness: “I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do.”

Ebert says he does not fear death because “I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear.” Accordingly, he wrote, “All I require of a religion is that it not insist I believe in it.”

“The small gets big and the big gets small”

Writing today’s article has made me deeply sad. Sad for a country whose moral standards have become so personalized as to be virtually nonexistent. Sad for those who tolerate behavior that is profoundly harmful to those who choose it. Sad for those who believe that their beliefs about the afterlife somehow determine its reality, akin to claiming that my denial of the sunset will prevent the sun from setting.

But if all I do with this article is shrug my shoulders and go about my day, I will miss the profound opportunity to admit the ways I am no different.

I sometimes succumb to temptations that personalize morality while denying biblical truth. I sometimes do not share the gospel with people in danger of spending eternity in hell, which is obviously the most harmful outcome of all. And I sometimes ignore the reality that in the afterlife “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10).

Does any of this resonate with you?

If so, this is the necessary first step to experiencing what John Donne called a “holy discontent.” Such restlessness is vital for our souls, since we must be discontented with where we are before we will follow God to where he wants us to be.

The author Jennie Allen urges us to believe that God has a “great story” for each of us. When he “prompts our hearts and motivates us to participate in his unfolding story,” she says, we experience “deep joy and satisfaction in realizing that our insignificant moments often contribute to matters of eternal significance.”

As a result, she assures us, “The small gets big and the big gets small, and together we get to be part of giving people God.”

Will you pray for “holy discontent” for your heart and for your nation today?

Quote for the day:

“Great people do not do great things; God does great things through surrendered people.” —Jennie Allen

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