Culture – Family Council

Why the HENRYs Aren’t Happy: Guest Column

Mar 6, 2025John StonestreetCultureChristianity, Culture

A recent Wall Street Journal article highlighted a group of people called “The HENRYs,” an acronym for “high earner, not rich yet.” The piece showcased earners with incomes well into the hundreds of thousands who still feel they are living paycheck to paycheck. According to author Callum Borchers, “The essence of being a HENRY is feeling a gap between what you have and what you think you need to be comfortable.”

Of course, it’s true that prices on many things, from housing to eggs to childcare, have never been higher. But some of the HENRY’s featured in the article have more than the economy to blame. For example, one mentioned her hefty student loan debt and Audi car payments as weighing down her list of expenses. Others seemed to find social status in living in very expensive cities while still trying to keep up with the Joneses. As Borchers noted, “What these high earners consider essentials might be termed luxuries (or nonsense) by the rest of us.”

What people believe to be truly essential perhaps, more than anything else, reflects their deepest loves and allegiances. “Where your treasure is,” Jesus said, “there your heart will be.” Today, with food supply relatively secure and basic necessities widely accessible, we are told to pursue happiness, which will come in the accumulation of things. But that is not the way happiness works. Studies show that once our most basic needs are met, there is no significant difference in levels of reported happiness in correlation with level of income. In other words, money can buy security, but it cannot buy happiness.

When Jesus told how difficult it is for the wealthy to come to Christ, He was probably referencing a level of security most of us have achieved. It’s less about the amount earned, and more about what we look to in order to secure our worship and devotion, and to fill the “God-shaped hole” each of us has. One must choose to serve either God or mammon, a term that refers to more than just money. But those who tie their contentment to the number of commas in their bank account will never truly find it.

The discontentment of the HENRYs is deeply connected to the larger, culture-wide crisis of what life is about and who we are. Simply put, we look for meaning and identity in all the wrong places. Comfort is not a big enough cause for which to live. Neither is luxury, especially the kind achieved through debt. (U.S. household debt is now over $18 trillion.)

In Romans, Paul lists generosity as a gift of grace, alongside service, teaching, acts of mercy, and other ways of living for others. As David Bahnsen described in his book Full-Time, a Christian vision understands our work as a calling, the way we steward what belongs to God and fulfills our creational calling. It is not merely a means to store up what is, in the end, perishable. Bahnsen’s book summarizes the inherent connection between work and the meaning of life, and what that means for how we should think about wealth.

This is why Christians have hope in all economic times. This hope is an incredible witness to the One who made us, but especially in times when we just lose sight of what life is about. We’ve been bought with a price, even greater than what eggs cost these days.

Request a copy of Full-Time: Work and the Meaning of Life with a gift of any amount to the Colson Center this month at colsoncenter.org/February.

Freeing Corporate America from its Far-Left Captors

May 29, 2024Jerry CoxCulture, VideoCurrent Events, Debanking, ESG, Video

It’s no secret that Corporate America is in the censorious grip of ESG activists.

Far-left groups like the Human Rights Campaign require companies to take deeply partisan stances on or against legislation and to provide targeted marketing and support for LGBTQ+ consumers. To put it simply, HRC is demanding that each company risk becoming the next Bud Light, which famously torpedoed its own brand by partnering with the highly controversial transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney.

Companies shouldn’t take fringe stances on contentious political issues. It alienates customers, pushes away talented workers, and betrays the trust of the shareholders who want the company to succeed.

That’s why Alliance Defending Freedom developed the Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index. The first comprehensive benchmark designed to measure corporate respect for free speech and religious freedom, the index provides a roadmap for corporations looking to de-politicize their products and services.

Working with a broad coalition of financial professionals, business leaders, shareholders, and state officials over the past couple of years, we’re already seeing some important victories from our efforts.

Check out this video to see how ADF is making significant progress in this key arena.

Find more videos like this at https://ADFLegal.org/Freedom-Matters.

Bluey, the Cultural Warrior: Guest Column

Feb 28, 2024John StonestreetCultureCulture, Culture War

The New York Times complains about fathers who might be too good in popular cartoon.

Recently in The New York Times, pop culture critic Amanda Hess argued that the immensely popular Australian children’s cartoon Bluey is problematic. According to Hess, the cartoon offers an over-idealistic portrayal of parenting, especially of fathers. Not only is Bluey’s puppy dad Bandit “a good father—he is a fantasy, one crafted to appeal to adults as much as to children.” Bandit seems “omnipresent” in the seven-minute episodes, Hess complains, too often playing with his daughters and doing housework. He “represents a parent freed of drudgery, one whose central responsibility is delighting his kids.”

The reason why a positive portrayal of dads is a bad thing has something to do with what former President George W. Bush once called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Hess is not really arguing that cartoon dads shouldn’t be good dads, but if they are too good, then real-life dads might feel guilty and real-life kids with absent or abusive dads might feel worse. In other words, if everyone does not meet a high bar, we should lower it.

In a strange sense, of course, Hess is making a case that dads matter. Craving a dad who is consistently present, attentive, and loving reflects something about who we are and what we need, whether we received it or not. We have that craving because it is built into the fabric of reality. We may wish and often repeat that men and women are interchangeable, and therefore, moms and dads are too. But our own hearts say otherwise.

In fact, social science data routinely confirms how important dads are for the health and well-being of children. Kids who grow up without a dad at home are three times more likely to engage in criminal activity, more likely to engage in sexual activity earlier, less likely to go to college, more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems, more likely to struggle academically, and are twice as likely to commit suicide. As author and Professor Nancy Pearcey recently wrote, the best predictor that a child will hold on to their Christian faith into adulthood is if their dad held on to his faith and nurtured a close bond with his kids.

None of this means, of course, that children who grow up with an absent or abusive dad are doomed to failure, or that children who grow up with faithful, attentive fathers are guaranteed success. However, if we do know instinctively and empirically how important dads are, shouldn’t we hope for more good fathers to be modeled in the media and elsewhere, rather than fewer?

In an episode of Bluey called “Hospital,” Bluey and her sister pretend to perform surgery on their dad. As is characteristic of the show, a few jokes are clearly aimed at the parents watching. At one point, Bandit asks pleadingly if there is another game they could play in which he could just lie on the couch and do nothing.

This endearing example isn’t one of perfect fathering that Hess is complaining about, but it is quite realistic and perhaps reveals the real “problem” with this particular cartoon dad: He doesn’t treat his children like objects or status symbols or constant irritants, as items on a bucket list, or as obstacles to freedom, prosperity, and autonomy. As my friend and kids’ rights advocate Katy Faust puts it, we think of kids as means to serve adult desires, rather than as ends in and of themselves, whose needs and wellbeing should be put first.

According to Hess, the problem with Bluey is that it never portrays the “drudgery” of parenthood, peddling instead some irrational idea that a parent should delight his kids. In Hess’s critique, it’s not possible for a dad to feel annoyed, bored, and pulled in too many directions but still choose to play goofy games like “hospital” because he knows, at some level, just how consequential his love, time, and attention is for his kids. In fact, it’s more than possible that the ratio of annoyance to life-long importance is outrageously lopsided. It’s not only possible, it’s essential because only a dad can be a dad.

For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.