John Stonestreet – Page 4

Reinventing the Sabbath: Guest Column

Aug 26, 2026John StonestreetCultureChristianity, Culture, Sabbath

A recent article by science writer Elizabeth Svoboda at the Wall Street Journal argued that an occasional 24-hour break is good for mind and body. As she wrote:

These micro-retreats have proven so energizing that I now take a few each year—and science suggests such hiatuses, despite their brief duration, can renew enthusiasm and relieve mental exhaustion in potent ways. They’re a welcome temporary escape from a chaotic and overclocked world.

This is not about getting away from reality, she explained, but about getting into a better head space. Because modern work involves jumping from one task to another without time to properly focus, a regular break is a simple, constructive way to improve life.

Christians and Jews might think, “Congrats! You’ve invented the Sabbath!” Thousands of years ago, before anyone had done studies on rest and brain activity, Moses told God’s people to take off one day in every seven. In fact, secular takes on life practices and rituals often reflect truths the Bible has always proclaimed.

Svoboda learned to prize rest and time away as a mom with small kids. But everyone needs rest. This is especially difficult for Americans, who can have trouble taking vacation, at least compared to our European counterparts. We might blame our bosses, but even when given the chance, Americans aren’t good at rest.

As Jay Dixit wrote in an article a few years ago, “We’re Doing Downtime Wrong,” the habit of scrolling or streaming to “relax” still requires the brain to focus, even if on irrelevant things. By contrast, Dixit noted, studies suggest that the “imagination network” of the brain is as essential as the “task-positive” network.

That’s why Archimedes’ Eureka moment came to him when he was sitting in the bath, and why Newton formulated the law of gravity when he saw an apple fall in an orchard. The epiphanies that seem to bubble up from nowhere when your mind is wandering are actually products of the imagination network.

Though the average working American still works a roughly 40-hour work week, there is far less shut-off time. Our phones function more like our computers, keeping us tethered to work at all hours. In other words, the rhythm of constant activity in our culture—even while lying on the couch or sitting on a beach—is not the rest we read about in Scripture.

In his book 24/6: A Prescription for a Happier, Healthier Life, physician Matthew Sleeth noted that the only one of the Ten Commandments to begin with the word “remember” is the one about the Sabbath. As Sleeth put it, “It’s almost as if God knew we would forget.” If we do remember, we often think of the Sabbath as a burden instead of a gift. But as Jesus said, man was not made for the Sabbath; the Sabbath was made for man.

And that is because God is for us, not against us. Remember the Sabbath, not to follow a rule but to receive one of God’s gift to His creation. In doing so, we remember our frailty, and we can be refreshed by hearing His voice and better following His calling for our lives.

Existential Crisis and the Antidote: Guest Column

Aug 19, 2026John StonestreetChristianityChristianity

A 2026 study found that one-third of Americans are currently experiencing an existential crisis of meaning, including 39% of Millennials and an alarming 52% of Gen Z.

Today on Breakpoint, author and professor Dr. Thaddeus Williams has some thoughts on what’s causing the catastrophic loss of meaning today and how the person of Jesus Christ provides what the world needs most.

If we want to speak meaning into our cultural moment, with its epidemic levels of felt meaninglessness, let us run a short thought experiment.

Paul tells us in Colossians 1:16 that all things were created both by Jesus and for Jesus. In Romans 11:36 we see that from Christ and through Christ and to Christ are all things, to whom all glory is due. Theologian Colin Gunton notes that “It is not therefore something which holds things together, but someone,” and that Someone is Jesus.

In our thought experiment let us assume for a moment that the resurrected Person of Jesus is not the ultimate focal point of meaning, what then?

Dr. Loyal Rue, an avowed atheist, helps us run the experiment. In a famous lecture called “The Noble Lie” delivered to the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Rue offers us three possibilities for finding meaning. First, each individual can become the centerpoint of meaning for his own universe of personal fulfillment. Rue calls this “the madhouse option,” which abandons all hope for social cohesion. Second, the State can make itself the centerpoint of meaning in an otherwise meaningless cosmos. Rue calls this “the totalitarian option” where all individuality and freedom are lost. Third, we can say that the universe has meaning even though it doesn’t. Rue calls this “the Noble Lie,” which “deceives us, tricks us, compels us beyond self-interest.” In Rue’s bleak trilemma, either the Me destroys the We, the We destroys the Me, or the Lie saves them both, but only by destroying the Truth. (Rue himself defends option three, since “without such lies we cannot live.”) Atheist Alex Rosenberg offers a fourth possibility in the concluding line of his book, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: “Take Prozac or your favorite serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and keep taking them till they kick in.”

So take your pick: Would you rather live in Rosenberg’s Pharmacy of chemically-induced meaning, Rue’s Church of the Noble Lie, the totalitarian’s Prison of State-imposed meaning, or the relativist’s Madhouse of self-made meaning?

Thankfully, the thought experiment fails. Those are not our only options. Jesus is, in fact, the Telos, the Goal, the focal point where all lines converge and find enduring purpose.

In the era before the seventeenth century, before Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, a fixation on meaning questions often left our understanding of the material world dragging woefully behind. In the era following the Scientific Revolution, we have come to understand the mechanics of the universe far greater than ever before. Yet it appears more meaningless to us than ever. We know more and more about matter but less and less about why matter matters.

Such close-minded materialism has ushered us into a kind of teleological Dark Ages. We have become just as naïve about the meaning of the universe as the medieval alchemist was about the mechanics of the universe. But the meaning void left swirling at the center of a materialist’s cosmos will be filled with something. The human heart, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

To our family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers who are experiencing that existential crisis, we must show them a Grand Telos beyond Dr. Loyal Rue’s madhouse, totalitarian nightmares, and noble lies, a meaning infinitely more meaningful than Alex Rosenberg’s pharmaceutical illusions. We must point them not to an impersonal Something but to the Personal Someone by whom, through whom, and for whom they exist. Bold and clear evangelism—pointing to the resurrected Jesus as the only one big enough to save us from sin and satisfy our deepest existential longings—is precisely what our increasingly nihilistic age needs. Tell someone about Him today.

For more on how the Person of Christ speaks to the meaning crisis of this cultural moment, see the latest book by Dr. Thaddeus Williams, Reflecting the Son: How to Mirror Jesus.

Sports Gambling Is Still a Bad Bet: Guest Column

Aug 12, 2026John StonestreetGamblingGambling, Sports Betting

Where betting is legalized, lives are being destroyed.

A recently released report shows a clear correlation between legalized gambling and gambling addiction. While this should surprise absolutely no one, there is further evidence that the explosion of legalized sports gambling was a bad idea.

In 2018, a Supreme Court decision cleared the way for states to legalize sports betting. Since then, according to the study shared by Epic Research, gambling disorders have risen by 61% in states that allow it but is down 29% in states that have not.

That’s a big spread, pun intended. The time frame is also significant. Only Nevada allowed sports gambling prior to 2018. Today, it is legal in 39 states and DC, though app-based gambling has made it ubiquitous. The results of this experience speak for themselves:

Of the overall population, adults aged 30 to 49 had the highest overall quarterly rate of diagnosed gambling disorder throughout the study period. . .. The largest proportional increase was among adults aged 18 to 29, whose rate more than doubled. Rates rose in both sexes and in every age group, but the male-to-female gap was substantially larger in adults under 50.

The math speaks for itself. For example, sports betting companies make enough to pay out a fortune in constant commercials while still raking in incredible profits. As of last year, gambling businesses have taken in around $300 billion, which is as much as China spends on its military each year.

The cost to consumers, however, is not only in the bet. According to a 2025 article by Charles Fain Lehman in The Atlantic, for every dollar spent on betting, household investing fell by an average of two dollars. The years since 2018 have been marked by large increases in over-drafted bank accounts and maxed-out credit cards. Legalized sports gambling has increased “the risk that a household goes bankrupt by 25 to 30 percent” and has caused debt delinquency to surge.  

The financial strain, in turn, worsens social pathologies. According to research cited by Lehman, an upset loss for an NFL home team correlates to a 10% spike in male domestic abuse. Overall, states with legalized sports gambling have seen an estimated 9% increase in “intimate-partner violence.”

As it turns out, it is possible to legislate morality, or, in this case, to legislate an increase in immorality. The legalization of sports gambling, and the general betting industrial complex, is a scourge on society, as if a highly contagious illness had a multi-billion-dollar PR campaign behind it. This is a cause for both the Left and the Right to get behind. Progressives would be hard pressed to find a better example of the rich getting richer on the backs of the poor. Conservatives have a horribly perfect example of the effects of moral decay and the corruption of domestic life.

Moral decline isn’t inevitable. Too many are convinced that things always go from bad to worse, so why try to turn the tide? Fighting the new normal, especially one with so much money and political power behind it, is an uphill battle. But Christians are commanded to love our neighbors. Sometimes that means giving to a local charity. Sometimes that means pressing leaders to ban what is destroying lives.