May 25, 2026

Today the church is asking whether human beings are still capable of thinking clearly — and whether Christians have something to say about why they aren't. J. Budziszewski at First Things is direct: the West isn't just confused, it's in the grip of something that looks like a collective flight from reason itself. He traces it theologically, not just culturally. That framing matters. O. Alan Noble is pushing in a related direction — his piece argues Christians have surrendered more agency than they realize, treating themselves as passive recipients of forces too large to resist. Both pieces are diagnosing the same patient. They disagree on where the lesion is. Budziszewski thinks the problem is philosophical — a civilization that stopped believing truth was available. Noble thinks it's more personal, more habitual, more recoverable. Earlier this week we were watching this same tension play out around desire and formation — whether our minds are even capable of wanting the right things. Today it sharpens.

Suffering is back in the conversation too, and the Aquila Report is holding two things together that the church often splits apart. One piece works through why suffering doesn't signal failed faith — not as comfort but as theology, rooted in what Paul calls the fellowship of suffering. The other makes the case that Jesus himself got angry, and that this changes the emotional register Christians are permitted to bring to pain. The BBC's report on Afghan girls whose schooling has been permanently cancelled by the Taliban sits underneath all of this without being named by any of these writers. The Gospel Coalition runs a quieter story — a man whose faith was imperfect, whose witness was halting, and who still changed someone. Not a triumphalist account. Tim Challies is asking why sermons aren't changing lives and why Christians are holding onto houses larger than they need. Both questions are really one question: what does actual formation look like, lived out, in a body, in a neighborhood, in a week?