French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte have filed a US defamation lawsuit against an influencer and podcaster who has said France’s first lady “is in fact a man.” The 218-page lawsuit, filed in Delaware yesterday, accuses Candace Owens of publishing “outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions,” among them the claim that Brigitte Macron was born male under the name Jean-Michel Trogneux.

According to the court filing, Owens has also said that the French president and his wife are blood relatives and that Emmanuel Macron is a product of a CIA human experiment or a “similar government mind control program.” People have viewed Owens’s series, Becoming Brigitte, more than 2.3 million times on YouTube.

I, however, am not one of them.

Prior to seeing this story, I had no idea about these allegations. Now, because of the Macrons’ lawsuit, I know about Owens and her assertions on a level I assume the Macrons would wish I did not.

If they remained silent, however, their decision not to defend themselves could be interpreted as a lack of defense. And choosing not to hold their accuser accountable could only embolden and escalate such accusations.

This is the conundrum of digital media. The good news is that this issue leads to news that is good in a new way today.

The “tragedy of modern man” may surprise you

I am old enough to remember when publishing any content required a publisher who would employ fact-checkers and editors before publication.

Years ago, for example, I wrote a book on the most challenging intellectual issues of our day. Included were four chapters on what happens to those who never hear the gospel. My editor insisted on reducing these four chapters into one. This was frustrating for me because this was my book, but she understood her publishers’ audience and correctly knew that I had written more than they would care to read on the subject.

That was then, this is now. I could write anything in this article that I wish, since our ministry owns this platform and can produce what we choose to produce. We don’t do this, of course—my editor is brilliant not only at copy proofing and fact-checking but also at noting any content she finds questionable. And our mission is to provide biblical responses to cultural issues rather than personal commentary or partisan opinion, a calling to which our board holds us accountable.

But my point is that anyone with internet access can now produce content that others can read, hear, or see, no matter how truthful or untruthful it might be.

Artificial intelligence is already making this situation even worse. Because it collates and summarizes online content in answering queries, it depends on the algorithms and analytics with which it has been programmed. And since the ideological positions of many media companies are clearly progressive, AI-generated content often follows suit.

None of this would be what it is if our culture had not decided long before the advent of the internet that truth is itself personal and subjective. Now we have jettisoned not only objective truth but the quest for objective meaning that depends upon it.

As Os Guinness observed, “The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.”

God will lead us “where we should want to go”

All of this makes the authority of Scripture and the interpretive power of the Holy Spirit wonderful news in new ways.

For much of Christian history, truth was understood to be the product of the Catholic Church’s doctrines as they interpreted the Bible, church tradition, and papal statements. The Reformation narrowed the focus of truth to sola Scriptura (“only the Scriptures”) as our supreme authority and embraced the “priesthood of all believers” as the Spirit leads us to biblical truth.

Now, however, we have shifted from “all truth is God’s truth” to “all truth is your truth.”

Nothing could be more disorienting for humans and for society at large. No wonder anxiety, depression, loneliness, and suicide rates are so high while trust in our core institutions is so low. We have a cultural case of vestibular dysfunction whereby the central nervous system of society fails to process correctly the information of our lives, leaving us dizzy and confused.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. As C. S. Lewis noted, God will lead us “where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted.”

We can access the omniscient wisdom of Almighty God any time we read and obey his word in the leading and empowering of his Spirit. We can be transformed into the character of Jesus so completely that we manifest his holiness in our broken world (Romans 8:29). We can live the abundant life of Christ so fully that in every circumstance “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (John 10:10; Romans 8:37).

All of this is what God wants for every one of us. Holistic holiness and victorious Christian living constitute what Watchman Nee called the “normal Christian life.”

“The one marvelous secret of a holy life”

My fear is that you and I will settle for vestibular dysfunction as our cultural norm. Like a person whose vision gradually fails until their world dims without their conscious knowledge, we can shrug our spiritual shoulders at the sexual sin and moral confusion that pervades popular media and contemporary society.

This week, my wife and I watched a detective series on television in which the protagonist sleeps with the neighborhood lifeguard whenever she gets depressed. It bothered me when I realized that this did not bother me.

The English philosopher John Stuart Mill observed, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing.” This is true not just of our society but of our souls.

So, let’s settle for nothing less than the holistic holiness of Jesus in the transforming power of the Spirit. Our Lord was adamant: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing” (John 6:63 NASB). When we yield to his sanctifying power, we experience what Oswald Chambers called “the one marvelous secret of a holy life,” which “lies not in imitating Jesus, but in letting the perfections of Jesus manifest themselves in my mortal flesh.”

If manifesting the “perfections of Jesus” in your life seems too high a goal, your goal is too low.

Quote for the day:

“Sanctification is not drawing from Jesus the power to be holy; it is drawing from Jesus the holiness that was manifested in him, and he manifests it in me. Sanctification is an impartation, not an imitation.” —Oswald Chambers

Our latest website resources:

• Colbert canceled, theology of Israel, Coldplay cam & a movie star game
• Following Christ in a sports-obsessed world
• In “Talking Back to Purity Culture,” Rachel Joy Welcher takes the purity movement to task for missing the point of biblical sexuality
• Epstein backlash, Christianity is growing, Chip and Joanna Gaines controversy & Scottie Scheffler’s introspection
• A tropical storm, the “Big One,” and a Cascadia tsunami: A paradoxical way to confront our fears in faith

Denison Forum

Ozzy Osbourne died yesterday at the age of seventy-six.

He was especially famous (or infamous) for biting the head off a dead bat during a concert in Des Moines. This is unsurprising; the Associated Press calls him “the gloomy, demon-invoking lead singer” of his band (tellingly titled “Black Sabbath”) and the “drug-and-alcohol ravaged id” of heavy metal. His band’s eponymously-titled first album was released in 1970 and sold nearly five million albums; Black Sabbath sold more than seventy-five million albums total.

Osbourne was known as the “Prince of Darkness,” a term employed in John Milton’s Paradise Lost to refer to Satan as the embodiment of evil. To understand the cultural insight Osbourne’s career illustrates, ask yourself whether his music celebrating themes of horror, doom, paranoia, drug abuse, and the occult would have been popular (or even possible) twenty years earlier.

What happens when we kill God

Now let’s turn to our second news item: Monday was the one-hundredth anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial conclusion.

At issue was Tennessee’s law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools. The high school teacher being prosecuted, John T. Scopes, was found guilty and fined $100, although the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned his conviction on a technicality while upholding the law against evolution as constitutional.

In many ways, the cultural conflict revealed by the trial has been exacerbated by the normalization of evolutionary theory that it produced for many.

From then until now, battles over abortion, sexual “liberation,” and LGBTQ ideology have been won resoundingly by their proponents. Even the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade did not lower the number of abortions in America.

This is tragically logical: If human life is the coincidental product of chaotic evolutionary forces, there are no external or objective authorities by which to value or protect it. Mothers are then free to abort their babies (“My body, my choice”); people are free to have sex with anyone who consents (“If it feels good, do it”); marriage is whatever we define it to be (“Love is love”).

Friedrich Nietzsche accused atheists of his day of having no idea of the significance of their atheism. As historian Carl Trueman notes, “Killing God, [Nietzsche] points out, requires that his assassins themselves rise to the challenge of being gods, of becoming those who create meaning and value.”

You don’t have to listen to the nihilism of a Black Sabbath song to know how this is working out for us.

“Did you have a good time?”

I fear that American religion has been partly to blame for the moral trajectory of American society, especially in recent years.

In Rome Before Rome: The Legends that Shaped the Romans, Oxford historian Philip Matyszak reports, “The Romans felt that their gods helped those who helped themselves.” Benjamin Franklin would popularize their sentiment; 82 percent of Americans would come to believe that “God helps those who help themselves” is in the Bible.

And why not? This assertion is the essence of American self-reliant religion.

Our Declaration of Independence asserts that we have the “inalienable” right to “the pursuit of happiness”; George Washington later identified “religion and morality” as “great pillars of human happiness.” Both statements are true, of course. But when “human happiness” becomes our purpose, religion becomes merely a means to this end.

Across American history, religious fervor has risen in times of need and fallen in times of prosperity. (This is known as the “existential insecurity theory.”) The Sunday after 9/11, the 2200-seat sanctuary of the church I pastored in Dallas was packed for both services. Two Sundays later, when it had become clear that the horrific attacks were not part of a sustained assault on our country, attendance returned to normal.

A longtime children’s Sunday school teacher told my wife that when she began teaching years ago, parents would pick up their children and ask, “What did you learn?” Now they ask, “Did you have a good time?”

Is God a divine egotist?

The Bible, by contrast, declares that God is not a means to our ends. To the contrary, he testifies that we are “created for [his] glory” (Isaiah 43:7) and warns, “My glory I will not give to another” (Isaiah 48:11). We are commanded, “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Does this make God a divine egotist? The opposite is true: he knows that seeking the glory of anything or anyone (especially ourselves) rather than his is idolatry. And he knows that no idol can do what his omnibenevolent omnipotence can do in our lives and world.

Listen to the prophet:

Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols, for his images are false, and there is no breath in them. They are worthless, a work of delusion; at the time of their punishment they shall perish. Not like these is he who is the portion of Jacob, for he is the one who formed all things (Jeremiah 10:14–16).

Consequently, “Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lᴏʀᴅ” (Psalm 32:10). A culture that would embrace Ozzy Osbourne’s occultic idolatry desperately needs such “steadfast love” today.

So know that, Darwin to the contrary, you are here on purpose for a purpose: God created you “to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). Here’s our role: “Beholding the glory of the Lord, [we] are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The more we seek to glorify Jesus, the more we become like Jesus. And the more we become like Jesus, the more the light of Jesus “shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

“Let go of riches and gather virtues”

St. Bridget, patron saint of Europe, died on this day in 1373. From the age of seven, she had mystical visions of the crucified Christ. These visions drove her to compassion for others mirroring the compassion of her Savior.

She once heard her Lord say,

You ought to be like a person who lets go and like one who gathers. You should let go of riches and gather virtues, let go of what will pass and gather eternal things, let go of visible things and gather invisible. . . .

In return for the possession of goods, I will give you myself, the giver and Creator of all things.

What will you “let go” to glorify Jesus today?

Quote for the day:

“The world would have peace if only men of politics would follow the Gospels.” —St. Bridget of Sweden

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• A tropical storm, the “Big One,” and a Cascadia tsunami: A paradoxical way to confront our fears in faith
• What do Cal Raleigh and Superman have in common?

Denison Forum

Last night, Stephen Colbert responded to CBS’s shocking announcement that The Late Show will end next May. In his monologue, he cursed President Trump, called himself a “martyr,” and asked rhetorically, “How could it be purely a financial decision if The Late Show is No. 1 in ratings?”

Many are asking the same thing.

“They’re trying to silence people”

CBS stated that it was retiring The Late Show franchise for financial reasons “not related in any way to the show’s performance, content, or other matters happening at Paramount,” the network’s parent company. Advertising revenue for the show has dropped 40 percent since 2018. Fifteen years ago, a popular late-night show could earn $100 million a year, but The Late Show has been losing $40 million a year.

However, the decision came just days after Colbert accused the network owner of bribing President Trump to approve a merger. Since Colbert has been such an outspoken critic of the president, the announcement sparked speculation that the network might have pulled the plug for political reasons.

• Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders responded, “Stephen Colbert, an extraordinary talent and the most popular late-night host, slams the deal. Days later, he’s fired. Do I think this is a coincidence? NO.”
• Actress Jamie Lee Curtis said, “They’re trying to silence people, but that won’t work. It won’t work. We will just get louder.”
• Vox theorized that Colbert’s political slant had become “too dangerous for late-night.”

For his part, President Trump responded on Truth Social, “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings.”

However, ESPN and MSNBC veteran Keith Olbermann, himself a vociferous Trump critic, noted that if the network was pulling Colbert’s show for political reasons, they would not be keeping him on air until May.

Another theory is that the cancellation is just one symptom of a broader decline in late-night TV. Several shows like Colbert’s have been pared down or canceled in recent years. However, Fox News’s Gutfeld! averages three million viewers, 50 percent more than Colbert’s 1.9 million total viewers. While other late-night talk shows are struggling, Gutfeld!’s audience grew 32 percent in the last year.

“Amusing ourselves to death”

I would think that many evangelicals, especially those who are strong supporters of President Trump, have read to this point with a visceral sense of satisfaction. “Liberals” are losing cultural influence and platforms while “conservatives” are gaining both, or so it would seem.

I’m not so sure.

Studies show that younger viewers are turning to streaming, video, and social media, while older viewers are staying with broadcast television. Younger viewers lean left while older viewers (Fox News’ largest audience) lean right. So the story could be more about demographics than cultural transformation.

Therein lies the larger point I want us to consider today.

In his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, author and educator Neil Postman warned that the television age has turned us from active citizens engaging complex social issues into passive consumers of entertaining sound bites. Digital technology exacerbates this trajectory even more today, since we can watch whatever we want for however long we want to watch it.

Since there is far too much content available for anyone to consume, we filter it by our preconceived biases. If we align ourselves with the “right” and hear that our audience is growing, we must be winning. And in a zero-sum partisan conflict, if we are winning, the other side is losing.

The media business is a business

Why is this a problem?

The media business is a business. Wherever those who make a living in this business come down on the political spectrum, they exist to sell advertising or otherwise make a profit. The more effectively they identify the audience they seek to reach and then appeal to that audience, the more profitable they become.

A platform or personality may align with our values, which is always encouraging. But we need to be aware that they are selling even so. They are entertaining and/or informing us as a means to the end of increasing their audience and revenues.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this, of course. In our day, media is a product like any other, intended for its audience’s consumption and its producers’ profit.

This scenario becomes problematic, however, when Christians confuse “winning” the culture wars with winning souls.

Malcolm-Jamal Warner drowns at age 54

There was a day when media, including late-night television, was politically neutral. I watched Johnny Carson interview political figures for decades with no real idea whether he was liberal or conservative in his personal politics. But today, when our partisan views are gaining in media advocates and audience, Christians can feel that the Christian “side” is winning.

I believe this to be a deception of the enemy.

He cannot have our souls, so he seeks to steal our witness. The last thing he wants is for us to share the gospel persuasively and passionately with our friends, neighbors, and colleagues. So he encourages us to substitute culture wars for the hard but joyful work of personal evangelism.

Our calling is to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). This faith alone, not any political party or partisan position, leads to salvation in Christ. For followers of Jesus, nothing should be more urgent than helping others know our Lord.

In fact, we have not a moment to lose.

We learned yesterday that Malcolm-Jamal Warner, best known for playing Theo on The Cosby Show, drowned while swimming on a family vacation in Costa Rica at the age of fifty-four. A military jet crashed into a college in Bangladesh yesterday as well; at least nineteen people were reportedly killed and over a hundred others were injured.

Every soul on our planet is one day closer to eternity than ever before. Including every person you will meet today.

To this end, I need to ask you a personal question: When last did you pray for the salvation of a lost person you know? When last did you share the gospel with them?

Why not today?

Quote for the day:

“God forbid that I should travel with anybody a quarter of an hour without speaking of Christ to them.” —George Whitefield

Our latest website resources:

• A cultural commentary on “Superman”: From modernism, to postmodernism, to metamodernism
• Epstein backlash, Christianity is growing, Chip and Joanna Gaines controversy & Scottie Scheffler’s introspection
• President Trump diagnosed with vein condition: The mystery and privilege of praying for our leaders
• A tropical storm, the “Big One,” and a Cascadia tsunami: A paradoxical way to confront our fears in faith
• What do Cal Raleigh and Superman have in common?

Denison Forum