John Stonestreet – Page 3

Guest Column: Spielberg Wants to “Mess With” Your Faith

Jun 24, 2026John StonestreetChristianityChristianity, Church Ambassador Network

Award winning film director Steven Spielberg said recently that his new film will likely “mess with” a lot of people’s theology. “Disclosure Day” is about what would happen if there were a sudden mass revelation about the existence of extraterrestrial life. According to Spielberg, it will force people, especially Christians, to rethink Who God is.

As he told CBS Sunday Morning,

What does this do to the fundamental beliefs that many of us have? … Is God our God only on this planet or is God a God for every system where there’s civilization, intelligent life, and even developing life?

It’s not unusual for celebrity artists to weigh in on things outside of their expertise, but this talented filmmaker is out of his depth. Even if there were a real life disclosure day, it would not alter anything about Christians’ fundamental beliefs. The God portrayed in the Bible created and oversees the entire universe. As the Psalmist said, “The Lord established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.” That could easily include other worlds and other life forms. But of course, there is no evidence of that anyway. This is a film. Spielberg must think that Christianity is barely hanging on from falling into the dustbin of history.

If so, he’s certainly not the first. Expectations of Christian extinction go back to the beginning. According to the Gospel of John, the High Priest Caiaphas thought that killing Jesus would erase His influence. When He failed to stay dead, the Jerusalem authorities thought that bribes and rumors would stamp out the new Faith. Those same authorities hoped that beating and scolding the apostles would keep them quiet.

The Romans spent centuries trying to stamp out Christianity, from Nero who infamously burned believers in his gardens to Marcus Aurelius who believed he could mock them out of their faith. By the 200s, the Church had grown so much that Emperor Decius decreed an empire-wide assault on Christians. By the beginning of the fourth century, Diocletian instigated the Great Persecution. In the end, persecution set the stage for toleration. Eventually, under Theodosius I, the Roman Empire was Christianized.

Later, when the Western Empire fell to Germanic tribes, the Church did not fall with it. Instead, Christianity not only endured but the pagans were converted. Islam tried to take down the Church a few centuries later. After subjugating Christianity in the Middle East, Muslim raiders seemed poised to conquer Western Europe. They were stopped in the middle of what is France. Almost 1,000 years later, armies of the Turkish Sultan advanced to Vienna, twice, before being pushed back. The smart money would have been that Christianity would fall, but it did not.

During the Enlightenment, confidence that the Church would fall was at an all-time high. In the 1700s, the influential French thinker Voltaire claimed that he was “living in the twilight of Christianity.” In 1822, Thomas Jefferson added that, “I trust there is not a young man now living in the U.S. who will not die a Unitarian.” Voltaire’s home later housed a Bible society, and Jefferson’s generation was followed by religious awakenings and an explosion of missionaries sent around the world.

In the twentieth century, the Communists predicted the end of what Marx called the “opiate of the masses.” Everywhere they went, revolutionary groups assaulted religion, especially Christianity. In Russia, China, Cuba, and elsewhere, the first targets of the Communists were churches, pastors, priests, and other religious groups. Often the persecution worsened out of frustration that the Faith simply would not die. In the end, Christianity stood over Communism’s grave, after contributing to its demise.

Whether from internal failings or external threats, Christians can be discouraged. But, to borrow a quip from Mark Twain, predictions of the church’s demise are greatly exaggerated. If emperors and empires and armies haven’t stamped it out, Steven Spielberg doesn’t have a chance.

Guest Column: Unlaughable Comedy

Jun 18, 2026John StonestreetCultureComedy, Culture

Over 13 million people watched the Netflix celebrity roast of comedian Kevin Hart. Irreverent insults are part of roasting, but the recent series of celebrity roasting has featured increasingly outrageous and often profane jokes, from mocking abortions to vilifying women. However, Hart’s roast has won the prize for the vilest yet.

The extremely inappropriate comments made at this roast about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, for example, demonstrate how debased mainstream comedy has become. Even worse, in a social media context, comedy is captive to likes and shares, so the desire to provoke and shock is ever escalating. So, what is the proper approach to comedy? Can the current state of comedy be redeemed?

Sociologist Philip Rieff coined a unique term for understanding many elements of modern culture, including debased comedy. Cultures produce artifacts. Cultures without a moral center produce what he called “deathworks,” or cultural artifacts that don’t build up but only tear down the sacred orders of a civilization. Roasts like the one for Hart are a deathwork, leveraging humor for no constructive noble or redeeming purpose. It’s just about degradation or, to borrow Carl Trueman’s term, desecration all the way down.

Humor is a unique, human characteristic that reflects the creativity and world-making for which humans were made. As such, it should rise above the mere profane and childish.

A Christian worldview offers the kind of moral framework humor needs, including the ability to discern between what one should laugh at and what one should not. If, on the other hand, nothing is sacred, then nothing is off-limits. Truly creative comedy operates within a worldview that identifies what is humorous while recognizing—and respecting—what is sacred. Put simply, if everything is funny, then nothing is sacred.

A notable exception to the current comedic trend is Nate Bargatze, a comedian who professes belief in Christ and stands out from virtually everyone else in his field. Bargatze’s humor is clean and avoids morally objectionable content. And yet, he has emerged as the top grossing comic in the world. His Saturday Night Live skit “Washington’s Dream” and its sequel, “Washington’s Dream 2,” became two of the most popular SNL skits in recent memory, with the first sketch now having amassed an amazing 30-plus million views on YouTube. In it, his comedic genius highlighted quirks of American culture that we hardly notice.

Or consider the Babylon Bee and its humorous satire on real-life events. Bee humor includes both inside jokes, that point out the foibles of the Christian community, and outside jokes, that expose dangerous ideas that need to be taken captive. A common experience after reading a Bee headline is to chuckle and then to think, “That sounds like it could be real.” That’s because they use satire to speak truth from the Christian worldview in a post-truth culture when others do not. As Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon said at our 2025 Great Lakes Symposium, humor is effective as a “vehicle for truth delivery,” and to “expose an absurdity for what it is.”

The gulf between comedy that acknowledges the sacred and comedy that denies the sacred reveals to us truth about reality. In the Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis described how modern attempts to remove man’s moral discernment has formed “men without chests.” As he put it:

In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings to be fruitful.

Notice Lewis’ words, “we laugh at honor.” In a morally castrated culture, nothing is truly sacred. In such a scenario, nothing is off limits from what is considered “funny.” When the counterbalance of a Christian worldview is removed, and the laughing gas is emitted, we laugh at anything—even the honorable.

Such a perspective brings to mind the less-than-morally upright comedian, Woody Allen, who sometimes closed his routines by saying, “I’m sorry I can’t leave you with something positive—would you accept two negatives?” At least Allen’s joke acknowledged the objective nature of mathematics. Still, since so much modern comedy is deathworks, there is opportunity for something better. Comedy that’s not only funny but, properly speaking, holy.

Guest Column: The Slippery Slope Keeps Slipping

Jun 8, 2026John StonestreetEuthanasia and Assisted SuicideAssisted Suicide, Church Ambassador Network, Euthanasia, Life, Pro-life, Sanctity of Human Life

If killing critically ill newborns isn’t the line, where is it for medically assisted suicide?

Back in April, a reckless assisted suicide bill looked like it was going to pass and be made British law. Instead, it was shut down by the House of Lords. Then, in May, the Irish parliament rejected an expanded abortion bill by a vote of 85-30. On this side of the Atlantic, things are headed in the opposite direction.

Like all such “mercy” killing laws, Canada’s MAiD was promised as an option only for those facing imminent death and who could consent. Things are long past that and will likely go even further. Recently, a Quebec physician suggested that the nation’s already draconian MAiD program be expanded to include babies. In response, Brandan Tran of Canada’s Campaign Life Coalition said:

Canadian law currently permits the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment for critically ill newborns. This medical practitioner’s proposal goes further. He calls for the calculated killing of an infant. These are patients, babies, who cannot speak, cannot consent, and cannot ask for help. If we cannot draw the line here, I am not sure where medical professionals imagine the line to be.

Physician-assisted suicide is always sold to the public as a “compassionate” measure, necessary to spare those with no reasonable chance of recovery fromunbearable pain and suffering during the last days of their lives. In every context in which it has been made legal, however, assisted suicide has never remained limited to the rare instances for which it was sold.

There are reasons this slope has proven so slippery everywhere it has been made legal. Once it’s decided that certain lives are not worth living, the list of people eligible for assisted suicide inevitably grows. It becomes easier to re-evaluate lives based on some criteria other than intrinsic value, such as convenience or financial costs. It’s a small step indeed from “eligible to die” to “expected to die.” 

That’s why, wherever physician-assisted suicide has been legalized, it happens by a series of bait-and-switch claims to the public. “Terminal” illness is often expanded to include “chronic” illnesses and permanent disabilities. In Belgium, the Netherlands, and Canada, even mental illness and depression are considered sufficient justification for suicide. Given this trajectory, it’s only a matter of time before the requirement of an actual illness is dispensed with.

For example, the original promise was that only those certifiably in their right minds could be euthanized. But that was always a lie. Anyone who goes into an American emergency department claiming they want to die would be diagnosed with “suicidal ideation,” admitted, and put on a psych hold. To not do so, in fact, would be medical malpractice. Suicidal ideation is rightly regarded as a symptom of an underlying mental disorder. People with untreated mental illnesses are not allowed to make life-and-death decisions.

Or at least they weren’t. In Oregon, for example, since physician-assisted suicide was legalized, over 96% of people given lethal drugs did not undergo a psychiatric evaluation. This is why, as a “What Would You Say” video on the topic so clearly explained, there’s nothing compassionate about physician-assisted suicide. In fact, it is the exact opposite of compassion, the abdication of a civilized society’s responsibility to offer care to those who need it most when they need it most.

In his book The Thanatos Syndrome, Walker Percy described how a society devolves to the point of thinking that killing patients instead of healing them is compassion. A psychiatrist, Percy wrote of well-trained and exquisitely credentialed doctors who “turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless people, unborn children, born malformed children, for the good of mankind.” What Percy wrote in 1987 has become reality. Some form of assisted suicide is now legal in 13 states and the District of Columbia.

Like abortion, the legal fight against assisted suicide is only part of the battle. It must become unthinkable to strip away the intrinsic and indelible dignity every human possesses, no matter their life condition. Otherwise, there is no way to stop from sliding down a slope so slippery.