October 27, 2026

Today the church is asking whether it can still recognize what's real — real faith, real art, real formation, real marriage. Mere Orthodoxy ran a piece on generative AI and art that isn't really about AI. It's about what gets lost when you remove the struggle. The friction is the point. That argument travels well beyond aesthetics — First Things published something on marriage this week making a similar move, quietly dismantling the Five Love Languages framework on the grounds that you can't systematize your way into genuine knowledge of another person. Both pieces are saying the same uncomfortable thing: shortcuts don't just slow formation down. They replace it with something that looks like formation but isn't. Ligonier is making a version of that case too — the Five Solas aren't museum pieces, they're diagnostic tools, and the church keeps misplacing them precisely when it needs them most.

Mere Orthodoxy also surfaced a harder problem: evangelical subculture has become so thick that seekers drown in the water before they ever encounter what the water is supposed to point to. That's a recognition problem of a different kind. Christianity Today asked who gets counted as a full participant in the church's care — their review of a new book on autism pushes back on identity-first framing and insists disability language exists to mobilize help, not just affirmation. The Aquila Report offered a blunter word to fathers: spiritual leadership in the home isn't a personality option. And The Gospel Coalition raised the question parachurch ministries quietly live with — whether they're filling gaps the church should have never left open. That question hasn't gone away. Earlier this week we were watching the same tension surface around desire and discernment — whether our habits of perception are even intact enough to want the right things. Turns out the same doubt applies to institutions.