The paradoxical solution to our loneliness epidemic

The news of the week has been monumental, to say the least, from unprecedented political developments to weather-related disasters to the specter of an escalating war in the Middle East. So, for a day, let’s take a break from all of that to consider a whimsical headline that may be a sign of our times: “AI-Powered Necklace Will Be Your Friend for $99.”

“Friend” is a pendant about the size of an Apple AirTag. Avi Schiffman, the twenty-one-year-old Harvard dropout who invented it, told Wired that he created the device at a time when he had “never felt more lonely in my entire life.”

The onboard microphone listens to everything happening around you. Powered by AI, it will answer questions but also send unprompted messages to engage in conversation and offer encouragement.

In other words, it’s a technological companion to make up for the real thing.

It should not surprise us that Schiffman is in search of friends: his Gen Z cohort reports the poorest mental health of any generation in America as they struggle with alarming rates of loneliness, depression, and suicidal thoughts. They are also our nation’s least religious generation.

Perhaps there is correlation, if not causation, here?

By contrast, actively religious people are:

• More likely to describe themselves as “very happy.”
• Healthier, with greater longevity, better coping skills, and less anxiety, depression, and suicide.
• More psychologically resilient with a higher quality of life.
• Better able to handle economic uncertainty and downturns.

Why, then, aren’t more Americans more religious?

When I tried to defy the law of gravity

When I was a small boy, I wanted to fly more than anything. I used to lay in the grass, look up into the clouds, and imagine soaring among them like Superman. So, one day I took some bedsheets and used them to make myself wings. I then climbed up on the roof of our house and jumped off.

My childhood mind truly believed that I would be able to fly when I did so, that the reality of gravity would submit to the reality of my newfound ability. But I was wrong (and lucky I didn’t break a leg).

Now consider the One who truly can supersede the laws of the world he created: “God is the King of all the earth . . . God reigns over the nations; God sits on his holy throne” (Psalm 47:7–8). This is a present-tense fact, no matter what circumstances might seem to say.

Our problem is that we judge objective reality by our subjective experience rather than the other way around. As a result, we are “breaking bones” right and left.

According to recent Gallup polling:

• 54 percent of Americans consider abortion to be morally acceptable.
• 53 percent support doctor-assisted suicide, a higher number than those who agree with medical testing on animals, at 48 percent.
• 69 percent find sex between an unmarried man and woman to be morally acceptable.
• 64 percent support gay or lesbian relations.
• 23 percent support polygamy (up from 7 percent twenty years ago).

Are we surprised that only 5 percent of us are “very satisfied” with the moral climate of our nation?

“When your child swallows poison”

How does our weeklong focus on God’s transforming love relate to today’s conversation? In a way we might not expect.

In Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments, Joy Davidman (the wife of C. S. Lewis) asked: “Mustn’t the churches adapt Christianity to suit the ideas of our time?” Then she answered her question:

No, they must not. Our ideas are killing us spiritually. When your child swallows poison, you don’t sit around thinking of ways to adapt his constitution to a poisonous diet. You give him an emetic [medicine that induces vomiting].

God wants to do the same for us.

It is because our Father loves his children so fervently that he hates everything that is not best for us. When our oldest son and our youngest grandson were diagnosed with cancer, I hated the disease with a passion beyond words. This is how our Lord feels about the sins that tempt us.

Of course, our spiritual enemy feels just the opposite. According to Jesus, Satan “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). So the next time temptation arises, ask yourself:

• What will this steal?
• Whom will it kill?
• How will it destroy?

If the answers are not apparent, ask the Spirit to reveal them to you. And remember that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). If his word forbids something, it must be because it is harmful for you. If he commands something, it must be because it is best for you. His unchanging character requires it.

Now ask his Spirit to empower you to think, speak, and act biblically in response to your temptations and all through your day. When you do, you will experience the transforming love and abiding presence of your Lord in ways no technology (or human) could ever match.

How Michelangelo sculpted David

I will always remember seeing Michelangelo’s massive statue of David for the first time. Standing seventeen feet tall in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy, it towers over those who come to view it. It took the famed Renaissance artist nearly three years to complete it, chipping away at a large block of marble until the masterpiece was completed.

When the pope asked the sculptor the secret of his genius, Michelangelo responded: “It’s simple. I just removed everything that was not David.”

If you were to resemble Jesus, the “son of David” (Matthew 1:1), more fully than ever before, what would your divine sculptor change today?

NOTE: “Meditating on God’s wisdom can transform our nights and ultimately, our lives,” says Janet Denison, author of the new 365-evening devotional, Wisdom Matters. We want to send you this powerful new resource to thank you for your donation to support the Christ-centered, culture-changing content at Denison Forum. Get your copy of Wisdom Matters today.

Thursday news to know:

• Israel’s bomb shelters are last line of defense as Iran strike looms
• How Kamala Harris trusted her gut and picked Tim Walz
• Taylor Swift Austria concerts canceled after terror plot arrests
• Tropical storm Debby flood threat to spread from Carolinas to Northeast, including New England
• On this day in 1974: Nixon resigns

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“Be killing sin or it will be killing you.” —John Owen

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Amid unprecedented challenges, a transforming antidote to fear

Karl Rove is a political consultant and former White House Deputy Chief of Staff. In a recent Wall Street Journal commentary, he writes: “No presidential election has been remotely like this one.”

Let’s list some ways he’s right:

• Kamala Harris formally secured the Democratic presidential nomination on Monday, becoming the first woman of color to lead a major party ticket.
• She selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate yesterday, introducing him at a rally in Philadelphia. If elected, he would be the first practicing Lutheran to serve as vice president. (Hubert Humphrey was raised Lutheran but attended a Methodist church.)
• This after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race closer to the election than any incumbent seeking reelection in US history.
• The Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, if successful, would be only the second president to be elected, defeated for reelection, and then reelected. (Grover Cleveland was the first.)
• His running mate, J. D. Vance, is the first millennial on a major party ticket.

And the list goes on.

While the candidates are unprecedented in many ways, many of the challenges the winners will face are unprecedented as well.

Are there terrorists among us?

Israel has not faced an existential threat like the present conflict since its founding in 1948. Iran, considered by Congress to be the “largest terrorist network in the world today,” is threatening to attack Israel directly and is using its proxies in the region to mount a sustained, multi-pronged offensive against the Jewish state.

US military assets focused on China are now being reassigned to support Israel. Underscoring the threat to American forces in the region, seven US personnel were wounded Monday in a rocket attack by Iran-backed militias on a base in Iraq.

This at a time when the future of war looks very little like the past. For example, drones operated by AI systems are already being deployed by Ukraine against Russia and in conflicts across Africa. A Foreign Affairs analysis warns that the US is unprepared for this new world: our jets, ships, and tanks are not equipped to defend against an onslaught of drones, nor has our military fully embraced artificial intelligence.

In related news: Russia announced recently that it will train its troops to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Our mainland remains highly vulnerable to Chinese and Russian hybrid attacks utilizing long-range conventional-strike capabilities along with cyber espionage, disruptive cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, and disinformation campaigns. And we are vulnerable to attacks from within: the House Judiciary Committee issued a report this week stating that at least ninety-nine illegal aliens on the terrorist watchlist have been released into the country since January 2021.

It’s enough to make our week-long question especially urgent: How does the transformative love of Christ relate to a chaotic and fearful time like this?

“Honest but reluctant taxpayers”

The Anglican Book of Common Prayer includes this eloquent entreaty (my emphasis):

O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal.

In his sermon titled “A Slip of the Tongue,” C. S. Lewis confesses that he had been praying these words recently and found that he had misspoken: “I had meant to pray that I might so pass through things temporal that I finally lost not the things eternal; I found I had prayed so to pass through things eternal that I finally lost not the things temporal.”

Upon reflection, Lewis realizes that “what I had inadvertently said very nearly expressed something I had really wished.” He explains his wish: to be religious enough to curry God’s favor without requiring inconvenient concessions on his part.

This wish is ours as well. In one of his most famous analogies, Lewis observes that in our response to the lordship of Christ,

We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers. We approve of an income tax in principle. We make our returns truthfully. But we dread a rise in the tax. We are very careful to pay no more than is necessary. And we hope—we very ardently hope—that after we have paid it there will still be enough left to live on.

Here’s the problem: God can only lead those who will follow and can only give what we will receive. Our spiritual compartmentalization into sacred and secular, religion and the “real world,” keeps us from experiencing his omnipotent, omniscient best. We reduce the King of the universe to a genie we consult when necessary.

And this he will not honor. As Lewis states, “It is not so much of our time and so much of our attention that God demands; it is not even all our time and all our attention; it is ourselves.”

“There’s no bargaining with him”

Here’s how this fact relates to the conflicts we’ve described today: When we respond to the transforming love of Christ by making him our master and ourselves his subject, the consequences in our lives are then his responsibility. When we are our own master, the consequences are ours.

Which approach is the better antidote to fear of the future and anxiety in the present?

In his sermon, Lewis declares:

“He claims all, because he is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless he has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, he claims all. There’s no bargaining with him.”

How fully would your Father say he “has” you today?

Wednesday news to know:

• Tropical Storm Debby unleashes widespread flooding across Southeast
• US to invest $2.2 billion to overhaul national power grid
• Market volatility raises questions about the staying power of the US economy
• Nobel laureate tapped to lead interim government in Bangladesh
• On this day in 1782: George Washington creates the Purple Heart

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“A day must come in our lives, as definite as the day of our conversion, when we give up all right to ourselves and submit to the absolute lordship of Jesus Christ.” —Watchman Nee

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Why the threat is even worse than it appears

Tropical Storm Debby is posing what Axios calls a “nightmare scenario” for flooding across Georgia and South Carolina this week. Some seven thousand miles to our east, another nightmare scenario is unfolding for Israel. According to the Israeli news outlet Haaretz, Western diplomats expect Iran’s attack response to the Israeli-attributed assassination of Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh to come within the next day or so. In related news:

• Iran sent a notice alerting pilots about GPS jamming in its airspace, similar to the warning it issued before its April 13 attack on Israel.
• Lufthansa canceled all flights to Israel until August 12.
• President Biden convened a national security meeting yesterday to discuss these developments. He also spoke with Jordan’s King Abdullah.
• Several countries have urged their nationals to leave Lebanon amid fears of a wider conflict in the region.
• Many Israelis displaced by Hezbollah bombing in the north are pressuring their government to make that part of the country safe, even if this means a full-blown war.

However, things are even worse for Israel than they appear.

“The ground is changing beneath our feet”

Writing in Foreign Affairs, international relations expert Dalia Dassa Kaye reports that, on a recent trip to Israel, she found a fundamental change in the “spirit” of the Middle East: many Israelis now believe that their adversaries think destroying their country is actually a realistic goal.

The October 7 invasion shattered Israeli assumptions that their military and technological superiority could deter their enemies and that they could live securely behind walls and fortified borders. Now analysts express a sense of existential dread they describe as different from any they have felt since their country’s independence in 1948.

Israel is hemorrhaging international support because of the enormous death toll and destruction in Gaza. In legal forums in The Hague, Israel faces heightened scrutiny for their West Bank occupation and their conduct of the war.

In addition, Iran’s April attack on Israel alarms authorities who worry that the next assault may not be so easily repelled. This while conflicts with Hezbollah to the north, Hamas to the west, jihadists to the east, and Houthis to the south continue with no end in sight. As the nation faces multi-pronged aggression unprecedented in its history, its reservists are exhausted, constraining Israel’s ability to sustain—much less heighten—its war effort.

As one former government official told Kaye, “The ground is changing beneath our feet.”

“The terrorism warning lights are blinking red again”

To respond to the crisis in the Middle East most effectively, we must engage with it most empathetically. But this is hard for many Americans.

We are deeply worried about yesterday’s further drops in the stock market and focused on a presidential election that is truly unprecedented. Our expansive oceans and vast military superiority have led us to feel protected from wars abroad.

But this sense of complacency is ill-founded.

Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu arrived in Tehran on Monday for talks with Iran’s leadership. Given Iran’s recent military and economic partnership with Russia and China, we are left to wonder what role Russia might play in any escalation between Iran and Israel. And what role the US might have to play in response.

Meanwhile, ISIS-K is escalating into a terror threat against our homeland. Analysts warn that “the terrorism warning lights are blinking red again,” echoing the run-up to 9/11. Undersea cables that conduct 99 percent of the world’s internet traffic are especially susceptible to sabotage. And AI-made bioweapons can be easily smuggled across borders and deployed with devastating consequences.

I report all of that to ask this: If the threats against Israel were threats against the US, how empathetically would you respond?

“When you know how much God is in love with you”

The biblical command to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6) has not been this urgent since the modern state of Israel was founded in 1948. “Peace,” in Hebrew, translates shalom, meaning a deep sense of well-being with God, others, and ourselves. For Israel to have such shalom, it must be at peace with God and at peace with its neighbors.

Accordingly, let us pray fervently for peace to come to all peoples in this war-torn region. And let us pray for Jews and Muslims alike to turn to the one Messiah who can bring such peace to their nations and to their hearts.

Let us pray for them as empathetically as if they were our family because, in God’s eyes, they are. Jesus loves each of them as much as he loves each of us. He died for them just as fully as he died for us. Now it’s our turn to pay forward his compassion with ours.

Mother Teresa was right:

“When you know how much God is in love with you, then you can only live your life radiating that love.”

To this end, let’s close by making Henri Nouwen’s prayer ours today:

Dear God,

As you draw me ever deeper into your heart, I discover that my companions on the journey are women and men loved by you as fully and as intimately as I am. In your compassionate heart, there is a place for all of them. No one is excluded.

Give me a share in your compassion, dear God, so that your unlimited love may become visible in the way I love my brothers and sisters.

Amen.

Tuesday news to know:

• Kamala Harris is now Democratic presidential nominee, will face off against Donald Trump this fall
• Stocks bounce back in whiplash reversal
• Google loses antitrust case over search dominance
• Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasini resigns and flees country
• On this day in 1965: President Johnson signs Voting Rights Act

*Denison Forum does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in these stories.

Quote for the day:

“God carries your picture in his wallet.” —Tony Campolo

Denison Forum