The Free Press published an article about prenups that is linked right here for you to read. I’ll link it at the bottom too. Below are several quotes from the article so you can the gist of it but you should read it and notice what you feel/think as you read it.

A study was published recently about what Gen-Z wants out of life. It was a Top 10 priorities. The top few for ladies had everything to do with career and money. The last priority was marriage. Raising children came prior to marriage for the ladies which should spark concern. For men, the top four were almost the exact same, marriage came in around number 7 or 8.

The intentional life style choice of many Gen Z and late millennials called DINKS (dual income, no kids) has also become a normal way young people think about marriage. In their worldview, life is about making money, eating snacks, and traveling - that is according to them, not me, as can be seen in their numerous online videos about their wonderful continued adolesce…

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I cried as I read the texts that said Charlie Kirk was dead. I cried again as I listened to the tribute to him put on by the Daily Wire. When I heard he had two children, I slammed my fist three times against my steering wheel.

What I didn’t understand was why I was having such a strong reaction to his murder.

Quite honestly and sadly, violence has become regular enough to numb some of the shock but today was different.

I wasn’t a strong follower of Charlie Kirk I watched his reels as they came through my feed but that was about it.

I hopped on X for the first time in a long while to see what others were saying. Over and over again, people were sharing the same reaction I had in my car and not understanding why their reaction was so strong.

I read many theories about why someone would take such horrific action. He was a threat to the system, he was a Trump ally, he spoke truth when people didn’t want to hear it, he had too much power for the leftists to handle, there was political rhe…

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A civilization is not built on ideas alone. Ideas inspire men to great works of art and illustrious architecture. Art and architecture are physical manifestations of the prominent ideas of every civilization. They are sermons on canvas and stone. The art and architecture display for all to see the gravitational center of any given civilization.

What good is a grand civilization built upon ideas, art, and architecture if it’s not connected? Rome was grandiose in ide…

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“America culture sucks and the American church is weak”

I shot back with some statistics about the good of Christians in the USA and said American culture is in a rough spot but our culture remains exceptional compared to anyone else.

He shot back, “it absolutely isn’t” and then listed off all the cultural problems of the day including porn, wokeism, abortion, sexual deviance, and even “everyone is fat”.

These are problems but I pushed back again. We have an abortion problem but we aren’t in the top 10 worldwide - not even close, because Christian’s have fought hard for life. Since the overturning of Roe, 64,000 babies have been saved. Porn is a problem, but is turning downward thanks to, again, Christians, working hard to destroy it. As for sexual deviance - companies who continue to push this stuff are losing market share at a rapid rate.

On we went.

He still stuck to his guns, admitted my points but still s…

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A: Plumbers.

As of 2009, the leading cause of death worldwide was not heart disease, cancer, or diabetes (which are the leading causes of death in America) but it was water based disease.

According to the World Health Organization, 3.4 MILLION people die every year because of dirty water. Quote:

Yes, raw sewage - that is what you think it is. The leading cause of death in the world is poop infested waters. Prior to the invention of plumbing, humans had to come up with ways to dispose of their feces. Digging holes in the ground is impractical and how can a million people (or more) dig wholes every day, to get rid of their waste? It works while camping but is impossible in a city. The only thing to do was dispose of everyone’s feces in water where it could be washed away - until it returned for someone to drink.

The movie Slumdog Millionaire has a scene where a young boy in India falls through an outhouse floor into a swamp of human…

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Two laws were passed in Ohio. One which enshrined abortion in the state constitution, and the other law legalized marijuana. We will briefly look at what led to this and what it means by examining in through the lens of C.S. Lewis’ book, the Abolition of Man.

If you have not read this book, add it to you list and read it asap. In fact, read it once and then read it again immediately. It is 75 pages long and made the list of top 100 books in the 20th century - it shows the brilliancy of C.S. Lewis. In 75 pages, he shows the natural consequences of education that removes traditional values, in what he calls the Tao.

The beginning of the second chapter starts with this phrase:

The pract…

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I recently finish reading the Gulag Archipelago (Abridged). The content is brutal. The stories of suffering are difficult to reconcile with my comfortable American mind. Human cruelty is exposed on every page. My heart was grieved at the wickedness of man. Two chapters was all I was able to handle on my first attempt. On my second attempt, I endured. The Gulag has a transforming effect if you endure the book.

The quote above is taken from a chapter called The Ascent. The chapter is about punishment, suffering, and the cost of survival at any cost. It is also about the ascent of the soul. Solzhenitsyn is wrestling through the realities of the camp. Many camp prisoners take on a mentality of “surviving at any cost”. Solzhenitsyn calls this an atrocity. It made people selfish, traitors, and in some cases, murderers. F…

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The dishonest excuse of the day is, “that’s just my personality.” We say things such as:

• I have an addictive personality

• I’m a type 8 on the enneagram

• My Meyers-Briggs is ESTJ

Or, what has become popular with younger generations… “that is my slight autism.”

We are eager to explain away our bad behaviors with the excuses of personality and simultaneously desperate to explain who we are to others in hopes that they will affirm us and our existence (and maybe even have compass…

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St. Athanasius lived during one of the most tumultuous times in Christianity.  The Church was divided over the Arian heresy. The Arian heresy denied the co-eternality of Jesus which paved the way for the doctrine of the trinity to be destroyed. I made an episode that gives all the details, you can listen here:

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His book, “A History of the American People” covers American history from the beginning attempting to answer the question, “was America a city shining on a hill?” Paul Winthrop famously told the puritans heading to America that the country would become a “city shining on a hill” because of the Christian society they would set up. Whether or not that happened has been debated by historians, including Paul Johnson as he examines American history from that perspective.

The book was published in 1997 and holds a special place in my heart because of the long quote below. I have long wondered about the state of American Christianity because of the decline of denominations, pride flags waving on mainline churches, and the rise of independent churches. I am constantly wondering, “what does this do to Christianity as a whole” and “what does this do to our society?”

Maybe we all might be wondering the same thing.

This long quote below will be the basis for an exploration into American Christianity and its future. The quote may shock and depress you. I have been thinking about this a lot for well over two years and wondering what we men can do about it. Read the quote and say a prayer for Christians in our country.

“The development of hostility in American culture affected the mainline American Protestant churches. By name, the mainline churches are: American Baptists Churches of the USA, the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ), the Episcopal Church, The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United CHurch of Christ, and the United Methodist Church.

In order to exist in a hostile culture, the churches liberalized and to some extent secularized themselves. That in turn led them to alienate rank and file members. It is hardly possible to state how prominent these churches were in American history, with most Americans practicing Christianity in one of these churches, especially Methodist and Episcopalian. The governmental representation from these churches were strong. Every single president, except Kennedy, came from a mainline denomination. But even with all the power and wealth at the top, these churches were in rapid decline due to their liberalization and secularization.

They had been in decline throughout the 20th century, but a sharp turn downward happened in the 1960’s. One study, for instance, calculated that the Methodists had been using 1,000 members per week for thirty years. These seven mainline denominations as a whole lost between a fifth and a third of their members in the years 1960-1990, chiefly because they forfeited their distinguishing features, or indeed any features.

After the Episcopal Church’s General Convention of 1994, marked the bitter dispute over the right of practicing homosexuals to become or remain clergy, one official observer commented: ‘The Episcopal Church is in institutional free fall. We have nothing to hold onto, no shared belief, no common assumptions, no bottom line, no accepted definition of what an Episcopalian is or believes.’

Remember, these seven mainline churches were the bedrock of American Christianity.

By 1994, the mainline denominations were listed as having membership as follows:

American Baptists Churches: 1.5 million.

Disciples of Christ: 606,996

Episcopal Church: 1.6 million

Lutheran Church: 3.8 million

Presbyterian Church: 2.7 million

United Church of Christ: 1.5 million

United Methodists*: 8.5 million

*(The decline continues to happen in what remains of the mainline churches. United Methodists have lost an additional 2.78 million members in the last 30 years, which is approximately 93,000 people per year, for 30 years. That is 1,800 people per week.)

By contrast, the Roman Catholics, who had been America’s biggest single denomination since 1890 numbered over 60 million in 1994. The Southern Baptists numbered 16.6 million, and even mormons were at 10 million. These churches were still clear about their identities and distinguishing features. They taught specific doctrine, and maintained, though not without difficulty, especially among Catholics, their coherence and morale. The difficulty for Catholics was Vatican II.

It was during this time that the “moral majority” began to rise, approximately 50 million Protestant Christians from various backgrounds and off-shoots of the declining mainline churches. Together with Catholics, this ecumenical group of 110 million became the assertive face of Christianity and worked together to maintain some sense of stability in American Christianity in a country that was becoming increasingly hostile.

The decline of the mainline churches was still demoralizing to American Christians as they lost their way. The theologian Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School summed in up in 1993: ‘God is killing mainline protestantism in America and we goddam deserve it.’

The decline of the churches led to the decisive single development in America during the second half of the 20th century that would stain and plague American culture for generations to come: the decline of the family, family life, and the growth of illegitimacy, that is, children born out of wedlock and outside a strong family.”

That section of his book shocked me. It also helped me understand why so many churches, especially up here in the North East, have pride flags on their doors and 31 people in their pews. It sent me on a journey to understand Christianity more as a whole but especially in 20th century America.

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