It's a long way from a presidential palace to a prison cell -- and ousted Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro is finding that out in real time. The former El Señor Presidente, once known as much for his macho braggadocio as for devastating his country, was spirited from his opulent digs...

When a daring early morning raid successfully captured alleged narco-terrorist Nicolas Maduro Saturday, many wondered what was next for the Venezuelan strongman. It appears to be nothing good. But as Maduro was charged with a litany of serious charges, including narco-terrorism conspiracy and cocaine importation conspiracy, many others naturally began...

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When betrayal lingers and trust feels impossible, this prayer invites you to release the past, embrace healing, and rediscover the courage to trust again—anchored in God's unshakable faithfulness.

“There was a good 10 years where it felt like somebody had a boot on my chest.” This is how Justin Vernon—known as Bon Iver—describes the season before making his most recent album, SABLE, fABLE. After years of relentless touring and the weight of fame he never expected, he says it all “eats away at you”—the overwork, the anxiety, the crushing sense of being overrun by it all. He couldn’t keep going in the way he was going. He reflects, I’m finally . . . in this place where I’m like, I’m OK. Boohoo, I thought I’d have kids and a wife and that kind of love in my life. But what I’ve discovered is the most important thing is just to be where I’m at and to feel OK. You may have been through a similar season: near collapse, anxiety attacks, or a sense of dread of what life has become. Vernon’s arrival at “I’m OK” represents real resilience and a hard-won settledness. We might describe this feeling as “balance,” a sense of having the mental, emotional, or spiritual resources that make us feel buoyed in the face of life’s turbulence, pressures, and difficulties. Many of us long for that feeling. I was sitting with a young woman in pastoral care who was expressing doubts about her faith. She struggles with anxiety, but a Buddhist coworker she knows doesn’t. To her, his life seems so balanced and measured, so put together and unbothered by the stress the rest of her coworkers feel. She felt his spiritual resources were deeper. Don’t we all want to be more balanced? Well-Being Culture These desires to be balanced and measured—to feel OK—are part of an increasing, even marketable, trend. Since 2019, the wellness-app industry has generated over a billion dollars annually. Many young adults are demanding more flexibility at work, willing to take lower pay in exchange for better work-life balance. You might say we’ve entered a well-being culture. Our highest goal isn’t to feel only good but balanced. We’re anxious, attached to our phones, drinking too much, working too much, not healthy enough, not eating right. And now, many are eager to change these realities. The problem with well-being culture isn’t its diagnosis—mental, emotional, and physical health are real needs. The issue is that it lacks a coherent vision of what well-being is. We’re repeatedly told there’s a product or subscription for every need. If you need better mental health, go to therapy. Want to get in shape? Buy a gym membership, hire a trainer, download an app. Want better nutrition? Subscribe to a meal plan or pay for a coach. But none of these industries has an endpoint. There’s no destination—only ongoing maintenance and, if you work hard enough, optimization. The problem with well-being culture isn’t its diagnosis—mental, emotional, and physical health are real needs. The issue is that it lacks a coherent vision of what well-being is. In talking with the woman who wished she had the spiritual resources of her Buddhist friend, my temptation was to try to use the resources of our Christian faith to match her coworker’s balance. We can simply transfer the final goals of well-being culture to our spiritual formation: to feel OK and obtain balance. But balance is like a tightrope that invites constant self-monitoring. Goals of Spiritual Formation Years back, my emotional life took a deep dive into darkness. I struggled with depression and anxiety for about 18 months. I began to worry this was the new normal—my kids always experiencing me as sad, my energy always being cut too short to finish things the way I wanted to. Someone told me, “It won’t always be this way.” I didn’t believe him. The darkness felt definitive. Some of what happened was explainable—I was burned out, overworked, and grieving painful relational conflicts. Other parts seemed mysterious. God felt distant. My phone, of course, was always near. Mental health experts were a great help, and older Christians encouraged me to lean into spiritual formation practices more intentionally. Keeping a weekly Sabbath and practicing solitude were lifelines in getting hold of my interior life. Since then, these practices, among others, have helped me experience vitality and life. Maybe you have a similar story. Anxiety or burnout caused you to take spiritual formation more seriously. Your desire for balance led you to take a Sabbath; an anxious heart led you to practice solitude. As far as I can tell, there are no bad reasons to take up spiritual practices. But what brings you to spiritual formation may not be what ought to keep you there. Spiritual formation’s final goal isn’t balance and well-being. What’s happening in our prayers, our Sabbath-keeping, our meditating and reading of Scripture, or our solitude isn’t meant to lead us to balance. We’re “being transformed into [the Lord’s image] from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18). Later in 2 Corinthians, Paul tells the discouraged and timid, the crushed and the despairing, “We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day” (4:16). Paul isn’t saying our emotional lives get stronger while our bodies fall apart. Instead, God is preparing us, our whole selves, for glory while this tent—our bodies and minds—falls apart. In my season of longing for balance, I wanted to feel normal. At other times, I wanted life similar to those I envied. But Paul calls me to “look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen [felt, measured, comparable] are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (v. 18). Christ wants glory, not just balance, for us—likeness to him rather than comparable lives to others. Look to the things that are unseen. Christ wants glory, not just balance, for us—likeness to him rather than comparable lives to others. Where are we looking? We “[fix] our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Heb. 12:2, NIV). Jesus is our pioneer, meaning he’s already walked through our life and into the future that’s ours: resurrected glory and infinite inheritance. His future is our future. What’s true of Christ is true of us; what belongs to Christ belongs to us. We’re filled with the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead (Rom. 8:11). Spiritual formation is learning to live from the status and supply you have in Christ. If balance and emotional health are the end of our spiritual formation, then all we’re doing is looking for techniques toward self-sufficiency—the flesh rather than Christ—for our healing and wholeness. Sabbath, solitude, meditation, and prayer are balms for the anxious and addicted heart. But Christ intends to heal more than just our hearts. Spiritual Formation Leads to a Cross “Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’” (Matt. 16:24). Jesus’s clear instruction to his followers includes this cross-patterned life. While Paul’s language shifts away from the imagery of discipleship or Jesus-as-mentor toward the concept of union with Christ, the calling is the same. “Our old self was crucified with him” (Rom. 6:6). “I have been crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20). “Those who belong to Jesus Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions” (5:24). “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ” (Col. 3:3). If balance and a sense of well-being are spiritual formation’s main goals, a life patterned after Christ’s life and death will be intolerable. And it will be exhausting. Rather than being formed into the image of Christ, we’ll be endlessly consumed with trying to shape our lives into the vague and often shifting worldly standard of balance. Frankly, the cross is destabilizing. Repentance is disruptive. The mortification of our flesh can cause mental anguish. But without it, there’s no renewal. And spiritual formation without renewal is something entirely foreign to the New Testament. If balance and a sense of well-being are spiritual formation’s main goals, a life patterned after Christ’s life and death will be intolerable. I remember sitting with a friend who was struggling with panic attacks. She felt confused and guilty that she was experiencing fear when the Bible tells her not to be afraid. Even talking about it caused feelings of panic. So I listened, and then we prayed together. We opened to the story of Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. I don’t think we can clearly assume Jesus is having a panic attack. But the Gospels describe him as feeling overwhelmed and sorrowing to the point of death, being troubled and distressed, sweating like great drops of blood, and falling to the ground (Matt. 26:38; Mark 14:35; Luke 22:44). This corresponded with her experience. Jesus felt what it means when a human mind and body are near the limits of what they can bear. As we read this passage, she was learning how to have a panic attack with Jesus, who understands what she’s going through and intercedes as the One who knows her frame. Yes, my friend was listening to and engaging with competent mental health professionals and following their prescriptions—which is important. But she was also pressing into something deeper than mental health. She was learning to live with the resources she has in Christ and in the life that’s being renewed day by day, even as she was experiencing her outer self (even her mind) diminish in ways she couldn’t control. She was learning that balance, though desirable, isn’t sufficient. She was experiencing what only the Spirit who resurrected Christ could provide.

Somewhere on the list of stories rarely included in children’s Bible storybooks is Samuel hacking Agag, the Amalekite king, “to pieces before the LORD in Gilgal” (1 Sam. 15:33). For many, God’s command to kill all the Amalekites and their livestock raises questions about the morality of Scripture. When Saul only partially obeys and Samuel has to finish the job, anyone could be forgiven for wondering whether that violence was necessary. Yet a story from centuries later, in the book of Esther, reveals why Saul’s partial obedience was so dangerous. Haman, who nearly succeeds in exterminating the Jews in Persia, is “the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews” (Est. 3:10). It seems that Saul spared more than the king. As a result, the blood feud that had started generations earlier, during Israel’s escape from Egypt (Ex. 17:8–16), threatens God’s covenant. When we connect multiple Old Testament passages, the basis for God’s command becomes clearer. This is exactly the sort of challenge Matthew Swale, assistant professor of Bible and church ministry at Warner University, wants to equip his readers to address in Scripture’s Use of Scripture in the Old Testament: Three Instincts for Identifying Allusions. He sets out to provide a “workable method for determining when the Old Testament alludes to another Old Testament text,” to help us understand the Bible better (xv). The result is an approach that can help pastors and teachers explain Scripture more effectively. Identify Allusions When connections between texts are properly identified, they can bring clarity to difficult passages. When readers make improper connections, confusion can result. There should be clear and compelling evidence to classify allusions within Scripture. Swale outlines three instincts that Bible teachers should develop to help identify and explain allusions between Old Testament texts. He uses the term “instinct” to avoid a mechanical understanding of the process for recognizing allusions; readers can’t “expect that inserting lexical data will spit out a vacuum-sealed conclusion on an Old Testament text’s use of Scripture” (26). It’s only through close reading of the biblical text and careful study that we can develop sound instincts. There should be clear and compelling evidence to classify allusions within Scripture. The first instinct is to look for shared terms between passages. If the source text and the alluding text use the same Hebrew words, a link is possible but not certain. For example, the connection between Samuel hacking up Agag and the story of Esther comes from the repetition of names. Mordecai is described as a “son of Kish, a Benjamite” (Est. 2:5). Saul is described as the son of Kish and a Benjamite (1 Sam. 9:1–2). It was Saul’s assignment to destroy Agag and his people (15:1–9). Therefore, when it’s “Haman the Agagite” who comes up with a plot to wipe out the Jews, it seems likely there’s more than philological coincidence at play (Est. 3:1, 6). The second instinct for recognizing allusions is to consider whether the passages share common themes. When two texts share themes like war, worship, marriage, harlotry, nature imagery, or a particular attribute of God, the connection is more likely. The more shared themes, the more probable the connection. Mordecai’s confrontation with Haman echoes some themes of the earlier Saul-Agag encounter. In both cases, Israel’s future is threatened by a vicious enemy. Both stories highlight the conflict’s historical pedigree that amplifies the tension in the text. A third instinct is to recognize possible intent by looking for evidence that the biblical author seems motivated to change the audience’s beliefs, behavior, or both. Allusions don’t exist merely to create a complicated web of connections between passages. Allusions are a form of intracanonical citation, where the earlier text undergirds the intended point of the alluding text. For example, Saul’s failure reinforces the principle that partial obedience is disobedience. Swale observes that the author of Esther intentionally alludes to 1 Samuel 15 to show how “King Saul’s unfinished business left room for a blood feud that threatened his kin centuries later” (19). It also explains why Haman hated the Jews, which otherwise seems entirely irrational. The author of Esther is warning against Saul-like partial obedience in his own day, because the consequences could last for generations. Biblical interpretation is both a science and an art. Swale doesn’t offer a simplistic checklist that will make every allusion obvious. Rather, he outlines the sort of attitude within a pastor or Bible scholar that can be cultivated over time to help deepen the delight found in Scripture. Delight in Scripture The purpose of good Bible study and teaching isn’t just the transfer of information; it’s the cultivation of love for God. A critical step toward that end is learning to delight in the study of God’s Word. In Scripture’s Use of Scripture in the Old Testament, Swale encourages delight in Scripture by equipping his readers to recognize the Bible’s richness. Swale’s book is an academic volume, but it’s accessible for pastors and educated laity. As a pastor, I’ve already put Swale’s advice to work while preparing a new sermon series on the book of Numbers. It helped me identify an allusion between Psalm 68:1 and Numbers 10:35, where David’s psalm builds on Moses’s prayer. Finding that connection enriched my understanding of the text. I expect it to deepen my congregation’s appreciation for Scripture too. Biblical interpretation is both a science and an art. Additionally, Swale shows that scholarship needn’t be stuffy. He artfully and playfully weaves in pop culture references to help make abstract content concrete. References to The Princess Bride and Dead Poets Society serve as helpful illustrations. And once he admitted his legal thinking was shaped by reading Michael Connelly novels, I couldn’t get the image of Matthew McConaughey sitting on the hood of a Lincoln out of my head. Yet there’s still plenty of academic meat to geek out about. The footnotes show thorough engagement with scholarship in a relatively underdeveloped field (i.e., the Old Testament use of the Old Testament). Protestants have consistently argued that Scripture should be interpreted in light of Scripture. That helps explain why Christians have spent a great deal of energy investigating the New Testament use of the Old Testament. Yet, as Paul House states in his foreword, we’re seeing a “new wave of scholarship” that can help us “read the Bible as its authors did” by connecting the Old Testament to the Old Testament (xi). Scripture’s Use of Scripture in the Old Testament will help pastors and well-informed Bible teachers understand and explain the Old Testament’s contents better, as they lead others to love God more.

a safer place

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth issued a letter of censure to Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) that initiates a review process of his retirement rank and pay, as a result of his role in the shameful “Seditious Six” video that sought to undermine troop morale and good order by instigating them to disobey unspecified “illegal orders” such as the ongoing boat strikes in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. Of the major evening broadcast network newscasts, ABC World News Tonight was the only one to omit this story. Watch CBS’s report in its entirety, as aired on the Dokou-pilled Evening News: CBSEN clocks in at 42 seconds on the letter of censure issued to Mark Kelly over the Seditious Six video. Nice recovery for Tony D after the initial fumble. pic.twitter.com/USorsLSQBD — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) January 6, 2026 CBS EVENING NEWS 1/5/26 6:44 PM TONY DOKOUPIL: All right. To other news. As you just heard from Jill- to other news now, to…Governor Walz. No. We’re going to do Mark Kelly. First day -- first day, big problems here. Are we going to Kelly here or are we going to go to Jonah Kaplan? We’re doing Mark Kelly. Possibly demoted from his retired rank of Captain in the Navy. Hegseth issued what’s known as a letter of censure for the Arizona Democrat over his participation in the video that called on service members to defy illegal orders without specifying which orders he had in mind. Hegseth called what the former combat pilot and astronaut did an act of sedition. Dokoupil recovered from his early flub and went on to deliver the most complete brief on the matter. Dokoupil notes that the “illegal orders” are never specified in the video, and that Hegseth considers the video to be an act of sedition.  The grade determination proceedings outlined in Hegseth’s statement consist of a board coming together, made up of admirals in this case, to determine the last grade in which Kelly served satisfactorily, without being subject to disciplinary action such as a letter of reprimand or censure entered into his personnel file. The officer is then allowed to retire at that last satisfactory grade below original retirement grade.  None of this is made clear to viewers. We don’t know if Dokoupil’s brief would have included any of this information were it not for time consumed by the flub. NBC, however, makes no such effort. Their Nightly News brief is tacked on to the back of the report on Tim Walz dropping out of his reelection bid as governor of Minnesota. The brief makes no such effort to include any context, settling instead on casting Kelly as a victim. 27 seconds on NBC Nightly News for Mark Kelly censure letter- no context and the frame is of Kelly as victim pic.twitter.com/AIdhjRgyz2 — Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) January 6, 2026 NBC NIGHTLY NEWS 1/5/25 6:45 PM TOM LLAMAS: Ryan Nobles joins us now live. And Ryan, I know you're also tracking another major headline, this time on Democratic Senator Mark Kelly?  RYAN NOBLES: Yeah, that's right, Tom. Secretary Pete Hegseth is censuring Sen. Kelly for a video where he warns active duty military not to follow illegal orders. The censure begins a process that could impact Kelly's retirement rank and pay. Kelly said that he would, quote: “fight this with everything I’ve got.” Tom.   LLAMAS: All right, Ryan. Our thanks to you. That’s it- no mention of Hegseth’s statement or of anything else. It’s really a miracle that nobody said “retribution” during these briefs, which speaks to the seriousness of the actions.  ABC, of course, failed to mention the letter of censure. This runs contrary to their endless hype of the video in furtherance of the “Don’t Give Up the Ship” op intended to sow dissension in the ranks. ABC did find time, though, to cover the ritual firing of NFL coaches at the conclusion of the regular season known as Black Monday.  We are reminded yet again that if a story isn’t easily frameable as Resistance slop, it isn’t likely to air on ABC News.  

Mark Zuckerberg, in a 2021 presentation that seemed less a business strategy than a fever dream, rebranded his company from Facebook to Meta. He was selling a future in which we would inhabit a digital utopia, a place where the friction of the physical world, the traffic, the decay, the awkward silences, would be smoothed over by the order of code. It was a grand vision, one that presumed that the right combination of capital and engineering can solve the human condition. However, Meta is now quietly retreating from its all-in bet, one of the most expensive experiments in business history.It was a $60 billion attempt to fix a reality we still prefer to the simulation.The premise was always seductive, in the way that the shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave were seductive: a world that promised to be more pleasurable, more malleable than reality. But the metaverse, as it began to take shape, was less a hyperreal paradise than a clumsy imposition. To enter this new world, one had to strap a computer to one’s face, a set of electronic “ski goggles” that isolated the wearer, blinded him to his surroundings, and demanded a total surrender of attention. The Quest traded the ease of the smartphone, which slides effortlessly into our pockets, for a device that induced sweat, fatigue, and the vague nausea of motion-to-photon delays.Horizon Worlds, Meta’s flagship social platform, was intended to be the bustling town square of the new digital age. Instead, it became a study in desolation. By the fall of 2022, the platform struggled to retain 200,000 monthly users, a number that seems almost tragic when weighed against the tens of billions of dollars poured into its creation. Those who did visit found a landscape populated by legless, floating torsos, cartoon avatars that managed to be both childish and uncanny. It was a ghost town, a place where the silence was amplified by the vast, empty digital architecture.This failure was not without precedent. In the 1990s, Nintendo’s Virtual Boy promised a similar revolution and delivered only headaches and monochrome red graphics, selling fewer than 800,000 units before vanishing into the landfill of bad ideas. In the early 2000s, Second Life was briefly the darling of pundits, who prophesied we would all soon be working and shopping in its pixelated aisles; by 2010, it had faded into a niche curiosity. The pattern is clear: The cultural imagination is enticed by the idea of VR, but the human animal balks at its practice.There is a stubborn materiality to our existence that the architects of the metaverse failed to overcome. We are embodied beings. We like the warmth of a hand, the smell of rain, the ability to glance at a screen and then look away. The metaverse demanded we leave the physical world behind, a proposition that felt increasingly dystopian. RELATED: Inside Zuckerberg's losing metaverse bet David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesMarshall McLuhan warned that a medium pushed to its extreme can “implode” into something else, and the metaverse seemed to hit that breaking point, an implosion in which the medium devoured its own appeal. The users did not want to be immersed in a corporate-controlled simulacrum; they wanted convenience. They wanted the blue bubble of a text message, not a virtual meeting in a boardroom rendered in low-polygon graphics.The retreat, when it came, was swift and brutal, in the way corporate corrections often are. By 2023, a metaverse winter had set in. Disney shuttered its division; Microsoft sunset its social VR platform. The world became captivated by a new technology: generative AI. Suddenly the conversation was not about new worlds but about automated intelligence that could write our emails and paint our pictures. Meta, reading the tea leaves and the plummeting engagement metrics, pivoted. The irrational exuberance for VR gave way to sober retrenchment.The financial markets, at times the coldest arbiters of value, cheered the death of the dream. When news broke in late 2025 that Meta would cut Reality Labs’ budget and lay off staff, its stock jumped, adding nearly $70 billion in value overnight. It was a signal that the experiment was over. The Great White Whale of tech had once again slipped away, leaving the innovators holding the harpoon, exhausted.John Carmack, the legendary game developer who tried to steer Meta’s VR ship before resigning in frustration, noted that the company had “a ridiculous amount of people and resources” but constantly “self-sabotaged.” The metaverse was not killed by a lack of technology; the Quest 3 is a marvel of engineering. It died from a lack of human necessity. It was a $60 billion attempt to fix a reality that, for all its flaws, we still prefer to the simulation.The retreat is less a defeat than a recalibration. Meta is now looking toward “smart glasses,” wearables that overlay the digital onto the real rather than replacing it. The form factor concedes the stubborn fact that we want to remain in the world. The dream of the metaverse, that hyperreal paradise where models replace the real, has been deferred. We have chosen to keep the goggles off, to live for now, in Baudrillard’s words, in the desert of the real.