Viewpoints with Kerby Anderson

Kerby Anderson
Yesterday, I talked about robots and wanted to follow up with some perspective on how artificial intelligence represents independent thinking and autonomous actions. There are reasons to believe that AI and robots will be learning and thinking in ways we might not predict. Let me illustrate this with the game Go.
Go is an ancient East Asian game played on a nineteen-by-nineteen grid with black and white stones. The goal is to surround your opponent’s stones with yours. Once you do that, you take them off the board. It is more complex than chess. After a few moves, there are 200 quadrillion (2 x 1015) possible configurations.
When computers beat chess masters, they used a brute force method (where they merely crunch through all sorts of possible moves). That is not possible with Go. Therefore, engineers produced AlphaGo to learn by watching 150,000 games played by human experts. Then it played against copies of itself.
The engineers then organized a tournament in South Korea against the world champion of Go. AlphaGo won the first game, but it was the second game that had everyone talking. The machine made a series of moves that made no sense. Commentators explained to the people watching that it was “a strange move” and that AlphaGo had made “a mistake.”
But the world champion knew something wasn’t right. He took a very long time before he took his next move. Before long, it was obvious that AlphaGo had won again and Go strategy had been rewritten right before everyone’s eyes.
Later versions essentially dispensed with human knowledge and developed their own strategies and thinking. This illustrates the power and the peril of artificial intelligence.

Kerby Anderson
If you mention the term “killer robots,” people are likely to think of the Terminator movies. But these are real and will change the nature of warfare.
Mustafa Suleyman devotes a section to “robots with guns” in his book, The Coming Wave. He tells the story of an attack on a heavily guarded Iranian convoy that came from a nearby empty pickup truck outfitted with a gun. It was fired by a “high-tech, computerized sharpshooter kitted out with artificial intelligence and multiple-camera-eyes, operated via satellite.” Although a human authorized the strike, it was the AI that fired the weapon and automatically adjusted the gun’s aim.
In the future, imagine robots equipped with facial recognition and automatic weapons. That may seem like science fiction, but military drones firing missiles at the enemy is fact. Soon they will become autonomous drones that don’t even need human interaction.
Paul Wood proclaims that “The Killer Robots Are Coming.” He is concerned that the “dangerous marriage between AI and robotics is already happening, creating autonomous killing machines that can work with little or no human oversight.”
He describes a Ukrainian drone company that claimed it had deployed a fully autonomous weapon that used AI to decide on its own when to shoot and whom to kill. In South Korea, guard robots on its border have the capability to detect, track and fire on intruders without humans giving commands.
Of even greater concern is the possibility that a nuclear weapon could be deployed by artificial intelligence. He suspects that Russia and China may already have automation where early-warning systems trigger a reflex to launch missiles in return.
Killer robots are no longer merely the stuff of science fiction.

Kerby Anderson
The Wall Street Journal editorial board begins with this observation: “The laws of economics continue to exist even when politicians ignore them.” What they are talking about is the decision in California to increase the fast-food minimum wage to $20 an hour. When the editors predicted the inevitable outcome, the governor’s office claimed they were “pushing a false narrative.” Now reality has set in, and the predictions have come true.
Over the years, I have written commentaries about progressive attempts in cities like Seattle and Portland to raise the minimum wage significant amounts. The results are always the same. Some benefit, but most others do not. Owners cut back the number of workers and the number of hours for those who remain. And prices go up. California is no different.
“An Associated Press dispatch last week reported that California fast-food franchises have been cutting worker hours after the wage mandate took effect…. A Del Taco manager slashed the number of workers for each shift by half. A Jersey Mike’s franchise owner reduced morning and evening shifts, reduced his staff by 20 workers, and raised prices.”
The greatest harm is to those who lose their jobs. Research done by Beacon Economics recently found that California’s minimum wage law, “does particular harm to teenagers. In the past two years, unemployment among 16-to-19-year-olds nearly doubled.” As the editors noted, “Instead of flipping burgers, more California teens will be flipping through TikTok videos.”
Think of your first few jobs. Like me, your only job skills were a strong back and a good work ethic. We probably weren’t worth $20 an hour, but we did learn from skills that have made us successful today. Many young people won’t get that opportunity because of this law.

Kerby Anderson
One of my recent in-studio guests had a rags-to-riches story that was one more example of achieving the American dream, like the one we heard recently for J.D. Vance. My guest attributed his success to education and is a strong proponent of the American educational system. But he also acknowledged that education in America faces many challenges.
Earlier this year, I wrote a commentary about the 1983 assessment of American education from the National Commission on Excellence in Education. The panel lamented: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might have viewed it as an act of war.”
Forty years later, the state of education in America seems worse even though we spend more on education per capita than just about any other country in the world. Not so long ago, the US was producing the best and brightest students in the world. Now, they are about average in science and reading and below average in math.
As a nation, we don’t even know our history or basic political facts. A study done by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation discovered that only one in three (36%) Americans could pass the U.S. citizenship test.
During the recent Republican National Convention, we heard many speakers suggest school choice might be a solution. At a previous Republican Convention, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice observed that, “when I can look at your zip code and I can tell whether you’re going to get a good education, we’ve got a real problem.” It is unlikely that school choice will be mentioned positively in the upcoming Democratic National Convention.
An important issue in this election is how we can meet the education challenges before us.

Kerby Anderson
Over a week ago, I talked about the dangers of alcohol. We know so much more about its dangers than we did just a few decades ago. This is also true of cannabis.
A few months ago, I quoted from a psychobiology professor at Harvard Medical School who put together a detailed review of cannabis and its medical uses for the World Health Organization. There are several US government organizations and experts who also document the dangers of cannabis.
The National Safety Council warns that marijuana has a negative impact on job safety. It is a leading indicator of workplace accidents. It affects depth perception, reaction time, coordination, and other motor skills. It creates sensory distortion. For someone operating machinery, these effects can be deadly.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, employees who tested positive for marijuana had 55 percent more industrial accidents, 85 percent more injuries, and 75 percent greater absenteeism compared to those who tested negative.
The National Institutes of Health have reported, “Young men with cannabis (marijuana) use disorder have an increased risk of developing schizophrenia.” This conclusion came from the detailed study of “health records data spanning 5 decades and representing more than 6 million people.”
I remember when many years ago, I had an author on my radio program who documented the link between cannabis and schizophrenia. I received complaints from some in the audience about his statement. We now have solid evidence of that potential danger.
Cannabis is not as harmless as promoters of drug legalization would have us believe. This is another case of “the more we learn, the more we learn of its dangers.”

Penna Dexter
Normal Americans are repulsed by the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. This was a bridge too far even for people who buy in to careless “threat to democracy” rhetoric from Trump’s opposition. Their recoil reminds us that we must take care to preserve our constitutional republic.
Our system of government is meant to help our nation avoid political violence. Under constitutionalism, we have systems that allow differences of opinion on government policy to be handled by negotiation and at the voting booth.
A prominent constitutional scholar says the escalation of political violence in the last 15 years has tested the bounds of constitutionalism “pretty aggressively.”
Yuval Levin (Yoo-vuhl Leh-vn) is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and  Editor at National Affairs and The New Atlantis. In an essay for The Free Press, Dr. Levin says the nearly-successful attempt to take out “a once and perhaps future president“ is far from a natural next step from the violence and threats of violence against public officials we’ve been seeing in recent years. He says “this moment feels like a sharp break” that “gave us a terrible glimpse of what it would be like to live beyond the bounds of our constitutional republic.”
Within a constitutional republic our differences may be stark, but there are institutions in which those disputes can be settled “through competition and negotiation.” Dr. Levin points out that, in a constitutional republic, there’s a prevailing assumption that our political victories and defeats are temporary and that the people on the other side of our political disputes “aren’t going away.”
Step outside of constitutionalism and you have “a realm of violence and pain” where “there is no expectation that the people we disagree with today will be here tomorrow and have to be accommodated somehow.”
As Dr. Levin points out, Our constitutional system exists to help us “disagree well.” We must put a stop to its degradation.

Kerby Anderson

We can see some cycles in history. Yesterday, I talked about a political/cultural cycle. Today I want to talk about a technological cycle and a financial cycle.
There appears to be about a fifty-year technological cycle, in which we see important technological revolutions. In the 18th century, we saw the beginnings of what today we refer to as the industrial revolution. Fifty years later was the age of steam and railways that changed the world significantly. Up until that time, we had manpower and horsepower. Now people could move faster and carry heavier loads.
Fifty years after that we had steel and electricity. Fifty years after that we had oil, automobiles, and a revolution in mass production. By the 1970s, we came into the age of information and telecommunications. Today, we find ourselves in a world of fast computers and artificial intelligence.
Some of the financial cycles parallel the technological revolutions. America moved from an agricultural society to an industrial economy to an information society. If you look at the wealth cycles of nations, you notice something interesting. The financial superpower changes over time, with an average of about 100 years. Perhaps you have seen a chart that shows those changes from Portugal to Spain to the Netherlands to France to Britain to the US.
As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, this country (along with other countries around the world) are experiencing a debt crisis. But this is happening as all three cycles (the political, technological, and financial) are converging.
What is on the horizon? I think we are likely headed for a massive change in the future. We should all be in prayer for our leaders and prepare ourselves for possible turmoil ahead.

Kerby Anderson

Are there cycles in history? Yes, even though there is a linear trajectory in history, there are generational cycles we can observe. No doubt you have heard the phrase: “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times.” Or you may have heard: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” And you may have heard the phrase “the fourth turning” that predicts a crisis at the end of a four-fold cycle.
Today and tomorrow, I will talk about three often quoted cycles: a political/cultural cycle, a technological cycle, and a financial cycle. And I might mention that all three seem to be converging today.
There appears to be about an eighty-year political/cultural cycle (which averages out to about 84 years). Go back to 1848 and you have Karl Marx publishing the Communist Manifesto and other works. The political and social impact of his Marxist perspective swept through Europe, changed the political structure of many countries, and is still an influence today.
Another important political change happened 84 years later in the 1930s. In Europe, you have the rise of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In this country, you had the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt who signed into law a significant number of New Deal programs that vastly expanded the scope of government and are influential in our lives today.
If you add another 84 years, you come to 2016. In Europe, you have the political battle known as Brexit and the beginning of some populist uprisings. In this country, you also had the rise of populism as illustrated by the election of Donald Trump.
Tomorrow I will show how this cycle coincides with the technological and financial cycles.

Kerby Anderson
Wilfred Reilly has written a book about how American history is taught today. It has the provocative title, Lies My Liberal Teacher Told Me. In some ways, it can be seen as a response to the book by James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me. You can read his opinion column that provides a summary of his book.
What is his concern? “We often, bizarrely, hear the claim that American history is taught mostly from the political right — and that it presents our nation as bucolic. But, in fact, many of the best-selling social-science books of the past few decades focus on the idea that the ‘real’ history of the United States was a virtually unending bloodbath.”
Two of those books are Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and the New York Times best seller The 1619 Project. He adds that “the contemporary US national media and professors lean roughly 93 percent to the left, and this has been the case for some time. Within the secondary schools, two popular curricula currently in use come from the 1619 Project and Dr. Zinn himself.”
As I have said before, there are many dark chapters in American history. Those need to be taught, but not to the exclusion of the many positive aspects of our history. Students are often left with the impression that the US was the only country that had slavery. They don’t learn about how nations in Europe and North America set out to end the institution of slavery. They may learn about European colonialism, but not about Ottoman, Mongol, or Arab Muslim colonialism.
Wilfred Reilly’s book reminds us that if there is a bias in the nation’s textbooks, it is a leftwing bias against America.

Kerby Anderson
There are many reasons why politicians talk about “draining the swamp.” The federal bureaucracy is bloated. Our taxes don’t even cover all the costs of the executive branch in the federal government.
Economist Stephen Moore argues that “The Case for Draining the Swamp Is Stronger Than Ever.” He reminds us that the latest official employment report finds once again that “the federal government and state-local hiring spree is still in full gear.” Government and health care are hiring many more people than the ones hired by the private sector.
Although there are more government workers than ever before, he says, “good luck finding them or getting them on the phone. This is because so few of them are actually physically on the job.” He has the statistics to back up that claim.
A recent Federal News Network survey of federal workers finds only six percent are working full time in the office. Even more surprising, it reports that thirty percent are full-time remote. No wonder so many of the offices in Washington, DC buildings are empty, especially on Fridays.
When we compare these percentages to the private sector, we discover that federal employees are three times more likely to be working remotely either some or all the time. The irony is that three years ago the federal government issued an order to federal employees to return to work post-COVID-19. Thousands ignored the order.
Stephen Moore has a solution: stop hiring new people. The government is losing almost $2 trillion a year. How about a hiring freeze until we get government spending under control? He adds that if government needs more revenue, it should start selling half-empty federal buildings.
This is one of many good reasons to drain the swamp.

Kerby Anderson
With political tensions throughout the world, we need someone to step forward and promote some important principles for America to provide global leadership. It isn’t too often that a speech by the Speaker of the House fulfills that need. But these are not ordinary times.
Earlier this month, Mike Johnson spoke at the Hudson Institute and laid down a marker for future leaders because he rejects American decline and retreat. He explained, “While democracy is not perfect, the burden of self-government is certainly far lighter than the yoke of tyranny.” But he laments that “absent American leadership, we’re looking at a future that could be” defined by “communism and tyranny, rather than liberty and opportunity and security.”
He warned about the three major dangers facing the world. Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to expand “his communist footholds.” Russian leader Vladimir Putin envisions a Russian empire that absorbs more of Europe, including the Baltics. The Muslim leaders in Iran plan to wipe Israel off the map.
The current administration does not seem to take any of these threats seriously. The Biden Administration, he explains, is “appeasing and apologizing and accommodating.” America is threatened “by Chinese Communists, by Russian oligarchs, and Islamic terrorists. We can choose to ignore them. We can try to appease them.” Instead, the Speaker offered that “we can choose another course.” He has a solution: “We can rearm, rebuild, reinvigorate, restore, and reinstate fear in our enemies.”
We will hear many speeches from candidates between now and November. This is one we should remember. The world needs global leadership from America’s leaders.

Penna Dexter
Nine years ago, the United States Supreme Court issued the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision that brought same sex marriage to every state. This — despite the fact that 31 states had specifically defined marriage in their laws and constitutions as being between one man and one woman.
Many Americans still hold to that definition of marriage, especially people of faith.
During oral arguments in Obergefell, Justice Antonin Scalia, asked, “Is it conceivable that a minister who is authorized by the state to conduct marriage can decline to marry two men if indeed this court holds that they have a constitutional right to marry?” Then he said, “I don’t see how.”
So far, the government has not forced churches and pastors to marry same sex couples. But public officials who perform marriages often experience opposition when they refuse to do so.
One such official is Dianne Hensley, a justice of the peace in McLennon County, Texas. She has refused to perform same sex weddings and thus received a reprimand from the State Commission on Judicial Conduct citing a violation of judicial impartiality. She now refers same sex couples to nearby officiants. Because of the public warning, she currently does not perform any weddings but, in order to serve her community, she would like to resume doing so.
In Obergefell, all nine justices affirmed that religious liberty should be protected. This was a slender reed to hang onto. Kelly Shackelford, President and CEO of First Liberty Institute, predicted that, post-Obergefell, religious liberty would come under attack.
Now the organization he leads is representing Judge Hensley in her quest to win the right for any justice of the peace in Texas to opt out of same sex weddings while still performing other weddings.
The TX Supreme Court recently ruled that Judge Hensley can challenge this warning in court, on the basis that her religious freedom is being violated. She’s fighting an important battle. 

Kerby Anderson
It’s time to have a meaningful conversation about tipping, for two reasons. First, there is a significant reaction to the expectation of tipping. Andy Kessler writes about “The Tyranny of Tipping.” Second, tipping may become a political issue. Donald Trump declared in Nevada: “When I get to office, we are going to not charges taxes on tips.”
Why do we tip? Historically, it goes back centuries. Andy Kessler talks about London taverns in the 17th century that suggested tipping “to insure promptitude.” Or to put it in modern terms, “to insure prompt service.” Frankly, many customers tip today because a percentage is already on the credit card screen. It is easier to add a tip than to zero it out and then feel guilty.
Most of us are glad to tip people who perform an important service. The frustration comes when we are asked to tip at a fast-food restaurant where we must pick up the food, take it to the table, refill our own drinks, and then throw away our garbage.
The social and economic consequences of tipping are significant. The IRS reported $38 billion in reported tips a few years ago. This would likely mean a loss of income in taxes. But what might this do to human behavior? Will employers pay less since they assume that workers are getting tax-free income? Will other professions start asking to be paid in tips?
Here’s another question. If we no longer tax tips, will they go up or down? According to the Fair Labor Standards Act, employers receive a tip credit between $2.13 per hour and the federal minimum wage. In a sense, your tips now pay part of a workers’ base salary. Will that increase or decrease?
America needs to get ready to have a serious conversation about tipping.

Kerby Anderson
If you spend any time viewing social media, you have probably seen a few clips from notable experts on the dangers of alcohol. We know so much more about its dangers than we did just a few decades ago.
Professor Jordan Peterson warns that “alcohol is an extraordinarily pernicious drug.” He understands why people would use it because of its anxiety reducing properties. But he argues that alcohol is a really bad drug. He says, “50 percent of murders take place in an alcohol-fueled environment, either the victim or the perpetrator or both are drunk. It’s almost the sole cause of domestic abuse. It’s almost the sole cause of so-called date rape.”
He also adds that “it’s the only drug we know that actually makes people more aggressive.  Alcohol can turn perfectly good people into impulsive and dim-witted monsters.”
Dr. Daniel Amen, MD explains that he started looking at the brain in 1991. He found that people who drink every day have a smaller brain and when it comes to the brain, size matters. He reports that “people who drink every day have more disrupted white matter in the brain. The white matter brain cells are the communication network. It’s the highways. People who drink, even a little bit, have more disrupted communication networks.”
He also points to the fact that “the American Cancer Society came out last year and said you shouldn’t drink because any alcohol is associated with an increased risk of seven different kinds of cancer.”
Six years ago, I did a commentary on alcohol consumption based on a study in the journal Lancet that concluded there was no safe level of alcohol consumption. Each year we seem to be learning even more about the dangers of alcohol.

Kerby Anderson

Warner Wallace has a new book out with the title, The Truth in True Crime: What Investigating Death Teaches Us About the Meaning of Life. Although he is known as a cold-case homicide detective, he is best known in Christian circles as an apologist.

The title of his book might be a bit deceiving. He uses the crime scenes he investigated over the years to point to life principles that lead to human flourishing. The fifteen chapters discuss wisdom, friendships, marriage, humility, contentment, purpose, justice, grace, guilt, and shame. It also includes a chapter on the importance of fathers. Each chapter documents an important principle from his experience and is validated by secular studies. He then ends by showing that each of these are what the Bible claims allow humans to thrive.
You can buy the book (published by Zondervan) in a bookstore. But everything else you might want (like a video series on the book) is free on his website. When he was on my radio program last week, he said he wanted to make sure that most of the material Christians might want to use did not cost anything. The book could certainly be used by an individual, but it would be much more effective as a group study. He has provided all you need to get started.
Each of the chapters looks at the evidence. He then provides pictures and diagrams that help clarify some of the life principles. Finally, he provides some concrete suggestions on how to alter your life course to incorporate these principles into your life.
He ends by noting that cultures that aim at human flourishing hit the bull’s-eye called Christianity every time. Once again, we see that the Bible offers wisdom from above.

Kerby Anderson
We need to find the “lost boys of America” and reach out to them. They are responsible for mass shootings. And they are also killing themselves (slowly with drugs or quickly through suicide). This needs to be a priority for every church in every community.
Many people have written about this. David French wrote an essay and quoted from two authors I have discussed in previous commentaries. Robert Putnam is best known for his book, Bowling Alone, that addressed the crisis of loneliness when few were aware of these dangers. He then went on to write the book, Our Kids, that explained how kids in crisis grow up in relative isolation from children in healthy families.
The other author is Malcolm Gladwell, who wrote about the need to see all the school shootings together rather than looking at each incident independently. As I have mentioned in previous commentaries, he says the school shootings (and later, mass shootings in general) represent a form of slow-motion riot. Each new shooter lowers the threshold for the next.
His conclusion is ominous. “The problem is not that there is an endless supply of deeply disturbed young men who are willing to contemplate horrific acts. It’s worse. It’s that young men no longer need to be deeply disturbed to contemplate horrific acts.”
They may commit those acts in a shooting or even turn the gun on themselves. We have heard the profile before. You can probably write the script. “Is the shooter an alienated young man? Yes. Did he meticulously plan the shooting? Yes. Did he repeatedly broadcast his deadly intent on social media? Yes.”
They are a danger to us, and they are a danger to themselves. We need to create programs to reach out to these lost boys. After all, the Bible makes it clear that we are our brother’s keeper.

Kerby Anderson
Batya Ungar-Sargon is the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek and is getting lots of attention for her recent book, Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women. In her book, she explains the plight of people who live and work on the opposite end of our social ladder.
She is unusual among the establishment media because she is willing to interview people in the working class and thus tell the story of class differences in America. Her book destroys the elitist idea that these hard-working people are angry, radical, and illiterate.
One of the most significant problems the working-class face is what can be called “excessive credentialism.” More and more jobs require a college degree when it is rarely necessary to perform well.  Working class people without a degree are thus unable to pursue a career that will give them social mobility and financial security.
She calls that the “diploma glass ceiling.” They deserve a chance at a job but are overlooked when a management position opens. To make matters worse, they sometimes find themselves training a college graduate with less aptitude and experience.
Their economic hardships are made worse by the sneering mindset of American elites who often paint them as racist and intolerant. Wokeness, she argues, is often an attack on the working class. It merely serves to demoralize people further down the social ladder while making those at the top feel virtuous and superior.
It’s worth noting that President Trump in 2020 signed an executive order to revise the qualifications for government jobs from a college degree to relevant experience. We need more reforms that will switch emphasis from degree-based hiring to merit-based hiring.

Penna Dexter
Every four years each political party sends seasoned activists to the table to write a platform for convention delegates to pass. Words are carefully chosen; positions painstakingly framed.  The document — though not binding on candidates — provides a blueprint for policies advocated by the party.  Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, no other plank in the platform of either major party has received more scrutiny.
The 2016 Republican platform language on abortion is strongly supportive of the protection of human life. It adamantly opposes the use of public funds for abortion. In 2020, President Trump and the RNC did not reopen the platform, instead sticking with the one from 2016.
This year brings the first revision of the platform since the Dobbs decision which struck down Roe v. Wade. In the run-up to the convention the Trump campaign signaled a desire to “streamline” the platform to make it shorter, clearer, and more concise, with policy commitments that are “easily digestible.”
Pro-family leaders, including Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, were concerned that the RNC platform negotiated this past week in Milwaukee might end up watering down strong protections for the unborn.
Tony Perkins represented the state of Louisiana on this year’s RNC platform committee. He points out that “The platform not only gives insight to voters, it gives direction to Republican elected officials.” He cites research showing that “the parties actually follow their platforms” about 80 percent of the time.
At the convention this week, delegates will vote on a final platform with a pro-life plank that may be concise but, hopefully remains strong and clear.
The Democrats’ platform is pro-abortion and abortion is a front and center campaign issue for many of the party’s candidates. Post-Dobbs, we’ve learned that Republicans don’t do themselves any favors by shying away from the issue. Protecting human life is a moral imperative. GOP candidates must boldly articulate a pro-life position. 

Kerby Anderson
The other day I came across a shocking statistic. Lee Burdette Williams says, “About three million first-time college students will soon be arriving on campus—most of them coming directly from high school. About one million of them won’t make it through their first year or return as sophomores.” She concludes that “this attrition is financially and emotionally devastating for families” and it is also “destabilizing for colleges.”
Why is this happening? Many of these departures are financial. Higher education costs so much and has been rising more than twice as fast as inflation. But another factor, often ignored, are the mental challenges these incoming college students face. Just consider these two facts.
First, nearly half (44%) of all college students report symptoms of depression and anxiety. Second, the rate of students taking psychiatric medication doubled in less than a decade and a half (2007 to 2019) and now includes one quarter (25%) of all students.
Lee Burdette Williams has served as dean of students at the University of Connecticut and later at Wheaton College. She suggests that the nine weeks between high school graduation and a student’s arrival on campus are not enough time for social and mental adjustment. They go from being under their parent’s authority and management to independent living. Although many of us made this transition in the past, today’s students seem less mentally equipped to do so.
That is why she suggests two alternatives. One is what she calls a “half-step year” where the student lives at home while attending a local college. The other is a full “gap year” which is becoming more popular and provides students with an opportunity to pursue study or experiences that may enhance their resume.
If you want to make sure your child or grandchild doesn’t drop out of college, you might explore some of her suggested alternatives.

Kerby Anderson
When I talk about the polarization in this country, I am often asked why is there so much hostility against Christians? We are often the greatest source of ministry and encouragement in the community.
In his book, Christians in a Cancel Culture, Joe Dallas devotes a chapter to this question about hostility toward Christians. You can summarize his excellent discussion with three words that begin with the letter “C.”
The first is convenience. Whenever truth is told, someone is inconvenienced. Former worshippers of the Goddess Diana were upset when the gospel was preached in Ephesus. The silversmith who made money selling shrines was negatively affected. Elijah’s words to Ahab were an inconvenience to the King.
The teachings of Jesus were certainly troubling to the religious leaders of His day. He rebuked their hypocrisy (Matthew 23) and presented Himself as Savior (John 3:16) and the way to salvation (John 14:6).
The second is conscience. Presenting biblical truth can prick the conscience of unbelievers and carnal Christians. One example, he cites, is the accusers of the adulterous woman who were convicted of their own sins (John 8), because that conviction can be found in both Christians and non-Christians (Romans 2:15).
The third is conviction. It would be a mistake to assume that hostility toward biblical truth springs only from an inconvenienced agenda or a pricked conscience. Saul of Tarsus had strong convictions. He “persecuted the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it” (Galatians 1:13). But after his conversion was able to later say that he “lived in all good conscience before God until this day” (Acts 23:1).
Should we expect hostility? Jesus faced hostility, so we will likely face hostility as well as we present biblical truth. We should speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15) and leave the rest to God.