Christianity – Family Council

Watch: Truth Rising Documentary

Sep 16, 2025Jerry CoxVideoChristianity, Video

Our friends at Focus on the Family and the Colson Center for Christian Worldview have collaborated on a new documentary project: Truth Rising.

Focus on the Family writes:

Truth Rising is a powerful new Christian documentary that reminds us of a timeless truth: only God’s Word can anchor our faith and bring lasting hope to a broken world. This film boldly addresses today’s cultural confusion, identity crisis, and moral drift with biblical truth, historical wisdom, and Christ-centered clarity.

Viewers are invited to go deeper with with Truth Rising: The Study—a discipleship resource for families, small groups, and churches—at https://www.truthrising.com/the-study/

You can watch the documentary below.

Guest Column: That Bible Verse Is Not About Immigration (and Other Ways How Not to Read the Bible)

Aug 7, 2025John StonestreetChristianityBible, Christianity, Religious Freedom, Religious Liberty

Recently on X, the Department of Homeland Security posted a video that featured immigration enforcement officers riding in Black Hawk helicopters and toting rifles to a cover of Johnny Cash’s song “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.” A narrator quoted Isaiah 6:8: “Here am I, send me.”

Democratic Congressman Hakeem Jeffries utilized a similar hermeneutic a few days later. Quoting from the Gospel of Matthew during a record-breaking speech to delay the passing of President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” he said,

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.

According to Jeffries, this passage applies to government assistance programs. “It’s not just in [U.S.] law, it’s right here in Matthew,” he said.

As Christian statistician Ryan Burge pointed out in a post on X, “there’s been empirical work” demonstrating how both the Right and the Left “emphasize Bible verses that [reinforce] their own political perspectives,” while conveniently ignoring the context of those verses.

Selective proof-texting points to how widespread and deep biblical illiteracy is. In addition to an ignorance of the actual content of the Bible, there is ignorance about what the Bible even is, and how Christians throughout the ages have used it. It’s bad when this ignorance shows up in politics. It’s sad when it shows up in our churches and Christian subcultures.

Who hasn’t seen a “verse of the day” calendar that overlays a singular motivational Bible quote on a field of flowers or a sunset? Before the DHS misused Isaiah 6:8, thousands of church conferences and short-term mission trips have, with “Here am I, send me” printed on banners and t-shirts. Often missing is Isaiah’s near-death experience and repentance beforehand, not to mention what God actually sent Isaiah to do (basically, fail as a prophet until he was eventually sawn in half).

Christian publishing, much of Christian music, and maybe the majority of Bible studies are afflicted with this same bad habit. Christian bookstores are full of “Bible promise” titles filled with de-contextualized verses meant to directly apply to the reader. But how many books of Bible curses are there, though the Bible includes those, too? How many Americans, in the habit of “verse plucking,” gladly claim Deuteronomy 28’s national blessings, but don’t read on about the national curses for disobedience that directly follow? How many Bible studies ask the question, “What does this verse mean to you” before truly wrestling with, “What does this verse mean?”

For years, I led a session for Christian school leaders entitled “How (Not) to Read the Bible.” But of course, the point isn’t to take the Bible out of anyone’s hands. Rather, it is to help us know and understand this essential way that God has made Himself known. Rather than treat Scripture as a fortune cookie, we have what Peter called, “the prophetic word more fully confirmed.” More confirmed than what? Astonishingly, Peter wrote that the Word of God is more sure than his own experience with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration.

A simple, effective way to understand Scripture is to ask where the verse in question fits, within the chapter, the book, the testament, and redemptive history as a whole. Who was speaking, and why? For example, best not to quote an observation about God or life out of the middle of Job, when his friends give “darken[ing] counsel by words without knowledge.” Answering these questions always requires reading more than a single verse.

Also, we should always ask where a passage fits within the four-act drama of the whole Story of Scripture. Seeing the Bible’s larger movements from Creation to Fall to Redemption to Restoration de-centers ourselves and our stories from the text and re-centers God and His story. This will also require reading the Bible not in isolation from other Christians or from Christian history. God’s Word, like the Christian faith it reveals, is personal, but as Peter goes on to say, it is not private. The Bible tells the story of God and His creation, so we must ask, “Where do I fit into it?” rather than “Where does it fit into my life?”

None of this means the Bible ought not be personally applied or, for that matter, brought into policy discussions. Rightly understood, the Bible speaks to all of life. We must be careful to bring the Word of God to our discussions, rather than our opinions masqueraded as a Bible verse. After all, unlike our political class and inspirational calendars, God has not revealed Himself in soundbites.

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.