Culture – Page 3 – Family Council

Looking for God at Disney: Guest Column

Jun 1, 2026John StonestreetCultureChristianity, Culture

Disney Adults are an example of the new festivals, games, and liturgies invented to give life meaning without God.

In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche famously proclaimed “God is dead” in The Parable of the Madman. In it, Nietzsche warned that the modern zeal to rid the world of the divine would not turn out the way that the skeptics and utopianists hoped. In fact, the deed of killing God, Nietszche wrote, was far beyond what they imagined.

. . . how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?

Then, Nietzsche asked:

How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?

As far-seeing as he was, it is unlikely Nietzsche could have guessed all the ways this prediction would play out. John Calvin called the human heart a “factory of idols,” and our creativity in inventing “festivals of atonement” and “sacred games” knows no limits.

For example, a recent essay in The New Yorker described the rise of “Disney Adults,” who take multiple trips to the various parks each year, even taking on serious debt to do so. One young woman who was described in the article spent over $15,000 on six park visits in two years. That’s why, author Amelia Tate wrote,

So-called Disney adults have become a subject of online fascination, with many people now questioning how much it costs to be one. … It’s a genre of content that has become more popular, recently, with critics seizing on it as evidence that the Disney-obsessed are not only culturally but financially bankrupt.

Of course, Americans spend a lot of money on vacation, with many wanting to visit the same place over and over each year. But that is not what drives Disney adults. According to a pop-culture historian quoted in a New York Post article about Disney adults, the parks are “very appealing to childless adults who’re looking for a way to recapture or keep alive that feeling of delight and comfort.” One woman told The New Yorker, “It’s the nostalgic feeling of what brought you joy when you were little and you didn’t have the stressors of adult life.”

Anyone who has visited a Disney park can attest to remarkable attention to detail in creating an alternative world. The safety, cleanliness, rides, and even the smells are perfectly calibrated to produce an experience that is unmatched. One can walk through the gates and step back into childhood, and that’s nice sometimes.

And Disney is not even close to being the only way people seek meaning and fulfillment. From youth sports to fast cars to carefully built social media platforms to politics, humans can turn virtually anything into a focus of worship. What we live for become our gods. The practices we build to honor these things become our religion. And, as the Psalmist said, we will see ourselves in the image of whatever it is we worship.

The yearning of Disney adults is just one example of the new festivals, games, and liturgies invented to give life meaning without God. But in the end, even the good things of this world are only vanity, if not built on what is ultimately true and good.

Like all human beings with eternity in their hearts, Disney adults are creatures of longing. They may not know it, but nostalgia will not fill the God-shaped hole in their hearts. Neither will a scholarship or a Lexus or a million new followers. C.S. Lewis once wrote, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” Indeed, but Disney parks, though fun places to visit (at least on days that are not too hot or crowded), is not the world for which we were made.

Even the most committed and indebted Disney adults aren’t necessarily crazy. But they are looking for God in the wrong place. Better instead to listen to St. Augustine, who, after many different attempts to fill his own longing, concluded: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

Guest Column: From ‘Liberalism’ to ‘Progressivism’

May 27, 2026John StonestreetCurrent EventsCultural Commentaries, Culture, Current Events, Liberalism, Progressivism

In March, with an 8-1 majority vote, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “counseling conversations are speech and that states cannot silence viewpoints in the counseling room.” The majority included all but Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who claimed in dissent that states should be able to use “police powers to establish and enforce the standards of care that bind medical professionals,” including what she called “professional medical speech.” Apparently, for Justice Jackson, that power also includes the ability to determine what should count as “scientific consensus,” given the collapse of consensus on the issue of “gender-affirming care.”

In a concurring opinion, liberal Justices Kagan and Sotomayor noted that the Colorado law in question, which banned conversion therapy for minors, was not “viewpoint-neutral.” Had it been, they said, it would raise a different and more difficult question.” In another instance last summer, Justice Sotomayor did not agree with a Trump administration policy but also believed it was not the place of the Court to decide. Justice Jackson, on the other hand, described her appointment to the Supreme Court as an opportunity “to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues.”

This is an example of an ongoing fissure between liberals and progressives on the political and ideological Left in America. As Colson Center Senior Fellow Dr. Glenn Sunshine has previously described, part of this difference is that standpoint epistemology, the liberal idea that each has our own truth from our own perspective, has devolved into expressive individualism, the idea that “our truth” should be imposed on everyone else as a matter of human dignity.

The implications of this shift from “liberalism” to “progressivism” are significant, especially for rights of speech and conscience. On April 22, Lois McLatchie Miller posted a clip of a British police officer informing a street preacher that he could not share the Gospel in places or ways that “may” cause offense or dissuade people from seeking abortions.

Back in March, Päivi Räsänen, a lawmaker in Finland, was found guilty of “inciting hatred” for calling homosexuality a “disorder” in 2004. No riots or hatred were actually incited in the over twenty years since. She was guilty of believing and expressing the wrong things. Also in March, the Chicago Bulls waived guard Jaden Ivey “due to conduct detrimental to the team.” Given the conduct regularly tolerated by sports franchises, it is notable that Mr. Ivey’s “offense” was posting a video of himself critiquing the NBA’s promotion of “Pride Month.”

Many progressives left Twitter when it was purchased by Elon Musk, not because their ideas would be suppressed but because contrary ideas would not be. But the move to alternate social media platform Bluesky has turned out to be a mess. The progressive drive for ideological purity has stunted any real conversation. As biologist Colin Wright noted: 

I’m blocked by thousands of accounts on Bluesky I’ve never even interacted with, since I almost never post. People over there block on first contact with any ideological friction. That results in a bunch of small isolated communities. Not ideal for a social media app. 

This kind of intolerance is a feature of progressivism, not a bug. Though people often use “liberal” and “progressive” interchangeably, they are not the same thing. Like the new “dissident Right,” which devolved out of classic conservatism and rejected core tenets of it, progressivism and liberalism are not the same either. 

Liberalism calls for tolerance. Progressivism silences dissent and calls it tolerance. Progressivism claims to be about moving forward, but “forward” is just a rejection of anything old, traditional, and settled. To modern progressives, progress is transgression. They sense the world is not as it should be but are threatened by the idea that there is a way it should be.

Divorced from reality and reason, compliance with this vision cannot be argued. Rather, it must be enforced. Thus, the shift from “encouraging all viewpoints” to punishing all dissent.

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.