Does it feel like you've woken up to yet another day fighting the cultural dumpster fire? You're not alone. Many faithful brothers and sisters are fighting alongside you. But it's not enough to keep monotonously throwing water on the fire—it's sometimes important to step back and study just how the fire’s progressing. Only then can you know where best to attack.

Several essential characteristics separate humans from other mammals. The most significant among them is our complex reasoning ability. We can solve problems throughout the full range of our current awareness. We have a powerful capability to observe, collect, and analyze facts. We can formulate theories and design meticulous studies to test them out. And we can debate the meaning of the findings of those studies.

f you haven’t noticed, immigration has been a much hotter topic in Illinois news recently. As waves of migrants are bused up to Illinois from the southern border and as they try to find living space in shelters, airports and even police stations, Chicago and other cities are seriously struggling to find room for them all.

A growing body of evidence proves that marijuana deeply harms individuals and society. Yet 37 states, including Illinois, have legalized it, and more states are working towards decriminalizing its use. Not surprisingly, heavily-funded Big Tobacco, Big Alcohol, and Big Pharma lobbyists in Washington, D.C. continue to work towards legalizing marijuana at the national level. We need your help to fight this national effort!

Given the moral and fiscal bankruptcy of our state and so much of our nation, we might ask, “Are we as conservative Christians in Illinois good for nothing?” It may feel that no matter what we do, our witness and work bear no fruit. But it does not need to be that way.

Alexi Giannoulias, Illinois Secretary of State, recently testified before a U.S. Senate Committee on the issue of how to determine what books belong in libraries and who determines what stays and what goes. Under questioning by Senator John Kennedy (R-LA), Giannoulias found himself at a loss for words after Kennedy read obscene passages from two controversial books, Gender Queer and All Boys Aren’t Blue, often found in public and school libraries.

The British destroyed our original Library of Congress and the 3,000 books it housed, in 1814 during the War of 1812... Today, the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world and holds 173 million items, 39 million of them are books. Every day 15,000 items are added to the collection by the library's 3,000 employees.

The massive wave of illegal immigration coming across the U.S.-Mexico border is hitting Illinois and Chicago particularly hard, with authorities considering a plan to erect giant “refugee” tent cities to handle the influx. More than 1,500 migrants are currently staying in police stations across Chicago and ten times that many are spread across 16 shelters operated by the city.

As Christians, we have the amazing freedom of coming before the throne of the Almighty, Holy, Omnipresent, All-Powerful Creator of the universe to petition Him in prayer – without being destroyed – because of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. It’s an incredible privilege, and what’s more, we’re told in James 5:16b that “the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” Prayer is powerful because we are talking to a powerful God. As we wrestle against “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12), prayer is one of the strongest weapons we have.

Two weeks ago, Governor Pritzker signed a bill, Public Act 103-0518, allowing any multiple-occupancy restroom to be identified as an all-gender multiple-occupancy restroom at the discretion of the building owner or leaseholder. Anyone of any “gender” could use it. Why was this law introduced, why did it pass?

In our recent discussion of fatalism contrasted with the biblical worldview, we saw that physical resources are only as good as the theology that wields them. That is, some otherwise wealthy cultures are shackled by fatalist worldviews positing that there is little point in trying to improve anyone’s lot in life—people are irrevocably bound by their social class or by their circumstances. Societies like these might be given the resources to help those in need, but if they fatalistically refuse to help the lowly or distressed, the suffering may very well go on suffering.

Did you know a lot of people on the left now deny wokeism exists? They are saying that it can’t be defined and just means whatever you want it to mean. Therefore, they say, wokeism is merely another conservative mantra for whatever policy one disagrees with. Politicians in Illinois have been saying that a lot these days in order to pass (you guessed it) woke legislation.

The problem of child sexual abuse in the United States is far greater than most people realize. Sixty million American adults are sexual abuse survivors. Twenty percent of us. Thirty-nine million of the victims were abused before turning twelve years old. Because most of them will never tell anyone about their experiences, the scope of the problem remains largely a hidden evil.

On May 2, the town of Danville, Illinois became what some have called a "sanctuary city for the unborn." After Planned Parenthood staff announced plans to open an abortion clinic in the town, the city council reacted by narrowly passing an ordinance (8-7), citing a section of federal law that forbids the mailing of abortion paraphernalia.

It doesn’t get any better (or worse) than this. Illinois State Senator Andrew Chesney (R-Freeport) forcefully addressed 58 elected adults in a chamber on an obvious fact that no one else would address: there are only two genders – male...