What Do the 3 Lost Parables Reveal about the Heart of Jesus?

3 Reasons Why We Need Women in Church Leadership Roles

Most pro-lifers are familiar with significant abortion-related legal cases, such as Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. But few have ever heard about Louisiana v. FDA. And yet, 20 years from now, we may look back and conclude that this little-noticed ruling—and whatever the Supreme Court does with it next—mattered more for the future of unborn life in America than any of the better-known headline cases. The case is about whether abortion pills can be mailed directly into states where abortion is illegal—and in the span of 72 hours, two federal courts gave opposite answers. In a unanimous opinion issued on May 1, the Fifth Circuit panel reinstated the FDA’s pre-2023 in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone, the first drug in the two-drug medication abortion regimen. Until last week, the FDA’s 2023 rule allowed mifepristone to be prescribed via telemedicine and mailed directly to a patient’s home—no clinic visit, no pharmacist, no in-person evaluation needed. Then, on May 4, the Supreme Court issued an administrative stay allowing the practice to continue nationwide while the underlying litigation proceeds. The case is about whether abortion pills can be mailed directly into states where abortion is illegal—and in the span of 72 hours, two federal courts gave opposite answers. The numbers behind this rule explain why the stakes are so high. By the first half of 2025, more than one in four U.S. abortions were obtained via telemedicine. Medication abortion (using mifepristone) accounted for the majority of abortions in 2023 in nearly all U.S. states without a total ban, ranging from 44 percent in Washington, D.C. and 46 percent in Ohio to 84 percent in Montana and 95 percent in Wyoming. And in the most recent year for which we have full data, an estimated 91,000 abortions were provided by telehealth in states with total bans. Many of us pro-lifers haven’t fully reckoned with the fact that, while Dobbs returned the question of abortion to the states, the FDA quietly took it back. It’s hard to fight for life when abortions are invisible. If mifepristone can be prescribed by a doctor in California and shipped to a teenager in Baton Rouge, then the laws in Baton Rouge are, in practical effect, unenforceable in the earliest state of pregnancy. The result is that the Dobbs decision becomes toothless and every mailbox becomes a potential abortion clinic. Why It’ll Be Hard to Undo The Fifth Circuit’s ruling is a genuine victory worth celebrating. But pro-lifers should also recognize that even if the Supreme Court ultimately upholds it, three deeper currents make the medication-abortion era difficult to roll back. First, there’s no political will to restrict abortion in the first few weeks of conception. This is the hardest truth for pro-lifers to absorb. The 2024 Republican platform—the less pro-abortion of the two major parties—dropped its long-standing support for a national 20-week limit, declined to mention the Comstock Act (which prohibits mailing abortion drugs), and committed only to opposing “late term abortion” while affirming support for IVF. The platform leaves abortion regulation entirely to the states. If even the GOP is unwilling to defend the unborn earlier than the third trimester, the political ceiling for restoring real protections is lower than many activists realize or concede. Second, America has adopted a “don’t ask, don’t tell” posture toward private vice. From 1994 to 2011, the U.S. military operated under a policy in which gay and lesbian service members wouldn’t be asked about their sexual orientation and wouldn’t be expelled for it, but were also not permitted to disclose it. While the compromise pleased almost no one, it survived for nearly two decades because it allowed the government to avoid moral confrontation by keeping behavior private. That same compromise has spread throughout American culture. Pornography is socially condemned in the abstract and consumed by tens of millions in private. Casual drug use, gambling, and marital infidelity are often publicly regretted while being quietly tolerated. As long as a behavior is conducted behind a closed door, our cultural instinct is to look away and “mind our own business.” Mifepristone fits this pattern, since a pill that arrives in a plain envelope and is taken in a bathroom is the most “don’t ask, don’t tell” form of abortion ever devised. It lets a culture believe abortion has receded simply because abortion moved from clinics to our homes. Third, America’s moral imagination still doesn’t extend to the embryo. The pro-life movement has always relied, whether it wanted to or not, on visual moral disgust. The horror of a 20-week abortion is something even many of our pro-choice neighbors feel in their stomachs. But an embryo at six or ten weeks—the gestational range in which most medication abortions occur—is morally invisible for most of our neighbors. It doesn’t look like a baby. It looks, to the uninstructed eye, like nothing at all. An embryo at six or ten weeks is morally invisible for most of our neighbors. It doesn’t look like a baby. It looks, to the uninstructed eye, like nothing at all. This is why evangelicals and other Christians—people who would march against late-term abortion—often celebrate IVF without flinching, despite the fact that the standard practice involves the routine destruction of human embryos. It’s why almost one-third of evangelicals supported embryonic stem-cell research in the early 2000s when proponents framed it as harvesting “clumps of cells” rather than killing the youngest humans. We haven’t catechized our own people, let alone our culture, into recognizing the truth that a human embryo is a human being. Until we do, a pill like mifepristone that ends a life at seven weeks won’t feel like a technology being used to kill humans. Reasons for Sober Hope If I stopped there, this would be a counsel of despair, and despair is a posture Christians cannot adopt. As we often find in this life, the situation is serious but not hopeless. The first sign of sober hope is in the legal realm. A federal court was willing to restore a rule that had previously protected unborn life for more than two decades. Although President Trump said during his 2024 campaign that he’d take no federal action to limit the availability of abortion pills, his administration is unlikely to oppose the court’s ruling. The case is also now likely headed to the Supreme Court, which has already shown, in Dobbs, that it’s willing to take pro-life arguments seriously when they’re framed in the language of constitutional law. There’s a real chance of a permanent restoration of the requirement that the abortion pill not be delivered by mail. But even the best legal outcome would only buy us more time. The harder work is cultural. A society that hasn’t viewed the embryo as human life worthy of protection can still be taught to see the truth. The pro-life movement spent 50 years teaching America to see the late-term fetus as a “baby,” and it succeeded well enough to bring down Roe. The same patient labor of teaching, arguing, and preaching about and for the protection of the unborn can be extended to the earliest weeks of life. This work should begin in the church. Before we can convince our secular neighbors to see the embryo as a human being, we have to convince our fellow Christians to recognize that all human embryos—whether in the womb or in a petri dish—are people made in God’s image. Keep Faithful Witness Underneath all this is the deeper hope that no court ruling, no party platform, and no pharmaceutical technology can ever erase: God is sovereign over both wombs and consciences. He was sovereign in the dark years before Roe, sovereign through the long captivity of Roe, sovereign in the unexpected mercy of Dobbs—and he is sovereign now over a process that delivers death pills in plain packaging. Every child conceived, whether welcomed or aborted, is known, named, and loved by the One who knit him or her together. Every child conceived, whether welcomed or aborted, is known, named, and loved by the One who knit him or her together. Ultimately, the pro-life cause isn’t a political project that requires our optimism to survive. It’s a witness to a loving God who counts every sparrow and every embryo and who hasn’t, in any age, abandoned the smallest of his image-bearers. That’s the reason to keep working and praying, no matter how the Court rules in the days ahead. Three judges in New Orleans briefly opened a door that the Supreme Court has now temporarily closed again. Whether it stays closed is for the justices to decide. Yet the larger question—whether the embryo is finally welcomed as our neighbor—is still ours to answer.

In the final scene of Michael, we see the King of Pop (played in adulthood by Michael Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson) performing “Bad” at a 1988 stadium concert in London. Having spent 130 minutes positioning the controversial pop star as a victim, the noticeably evasive film ends with Michael singing, “Who’s bad?” followed by text that simply reads, “His story continues . . .” What does director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) mean by ending the film with moral evaluation (“Who’s bad?”) as an afterthought, with the cryptic comment that the long-dead singer’s “story continues”? Does he mean the “story” of Jackson’s persona gets much darker and more disturbing after 1988 (when the film ends) but that some other film will have to depict that chapter (perhaps the just-announced sequel)? Or does he mean the “story” (as in cultural narrative) of whether Jackson was—whether any of us is—a victim or villain is always evolving and being reevaluated over time? Whatever this vague coda is intended to mean, it does little to compensate for the film’s shirking of moral responsibility. The movie avoids any mention or hint that Jackson used his powerful position to groom and abuse children (a part of his story widely attested by many accusers over many years). Instead, the movie positions Michael as a generational talent and an innocent victim of a domineering father and manager (Joe Jackson, played with one blunt note by Colman Domingo) who used and abused Michael for financial gain. Keeping Darkness Hidden The film’s first act follows young Michael (Juliano Valdi) as he and his brothers gain stardom as The Jackson 5. From early on, Michael (rated PG-13) is clear on the villain: patriarch Joe, the Captain Hook to Michael’s Peter Pan (a heavy-handed allusion made explicit in one scene). Joe belt-whips young Michael and forces him into the family band whether he likes it or not. It’s a lonely life. Michael—a child superstar by age 11—has no friends “because they don’t treat [him] like a real person.” He instead confides in exotic pets like rats, llamas, and his iconic chimpanzee, “Bubbles.” If it weren’t so sad, the weirdness of the many “Michael talks to animals” scenes would be funny. But the film plays this for sympathy, as it does the scene of Michael getting his first nose job (because, he says, “I have to be perfect”). As Michael grows up, Joe continues trying to exploit and control his son’s blossoming solo career. But Michael wants to be his own person, to make his own business and artistic choices. The film positions him as a visionary whose creative genius (especially in a montage of the “Thriller” songwriting process) is seismic and game-changing. When his mom, Katherine (Nia Long), who raised Michael in her Jehovah’s Witness faith, tells him, “Jehovah says let your light shine,” Michael seems to take it to heart. He says he wants to “shine [his] light, to spread love and joy.” He desires to heal the world and make it a better place. The film shows him often in children’s hospitals bringing toys to sick kids. As we know, however, Michael also made the world a worse place for the children he groomed and abused. Though you can’t watch it anywhere anymore (the Jackson estate fought to remove it from streaming platforms), the 2019 Emmy Award–winning HBO documentary Leaving Neverland is a brutal chronicle of the childhood abuse suffered by James Safechuck and Wade Robson over many years. They’re two of many who have come forward. Just last month, the New York Times published a new account of child sex abuse from four siblings who were once considered Jackson’s “second family.” Michael’s ‘heal the world’ light came with a lot of darkness. Michael’s “heal the world” light came with a lot of darkness that was hidden for a long time. Michael opts to keep this darkness covered up—as if it had never been exposed. Instead, the film latches on to the trauma plot and “misunderstood villain” tropes, which are all the rage. Michael seems to suggest that even if Michael did become a predatory villain in the late ’80s and ’90s, it’s only because his traumatic childhood made him that way. Rather than a culpable sinner choosing evil, Michael is just broken, warped, scarred (literally from a burning incident), and cursed by circumstances. Like Cruella de Vil. Or the Joker. Or Elphaba. In one scene, Michael describes to producer Quincy Jones (Kendrick Sampson) that he wants “Thriller” to be “pure escapism.” That’s how Michael feels. Escapism from reality. A version of the Michael Jackson story we wish were true. Can We Separate Art and Artist? A more nuanced biopic might have honored the singer’s groundbreaking artistry even as it steered far away from hagiographic revisionism. A better film would have rendered the artist in more realistic, albeit sadder relief: Yes, he was a generous philanthropist who supported numerous charities and advocated for children; yes, his music brought (and brings) joy to scores of listeners. But also he was—according to his accusers—a serial child rapist. Of course, such a conflicted film wouldn’t have been the record-breaking box-office juggernaut Michael is. Such a film would, sadly, never have been released by a major Hollywood studio. Too much money can still be made from a sanitized Michael Jackson brand. As Leaving Neverland director Dan Reed told Variety, Jackson is an American myth, in addition to being an actual person, so he’s metastasized into something much bigger than who he actually was. When that happens, it doesn’t actually matter what the person was, because the person has been transfigured into something that is owned by the culture. He’s become part of the collective imagination, and the collective imagination can never include the fact that he’s a pedophile. It’s just not possible. . . . That’s not a narrative people can hold in their minds. Today’s “vibes, not arguments” culture struggles to hold seemingly contradictory truths in tension—for example, that artists often create impressive, even glorious works while being monstrous people. The tension has become more pronounced in the #MeToo era as the realities of abuse among creatives and celebrities have led to cancellations. But it’s complicated. Can we still enjoy films produced by Harvey Weinstein or starring Kevin Spacey? Should we never sing along to “Beat It” again or attempt to learn the “Thriller” dance? Is it wrong to attend the crowd-pleasing Michael Jackson ONE Cirque du Soleil show when visiting Las Vegas (a similarly hagiographic cash cow for the Jackson estate)? How do we engage the work of artists whose legacies have been rightly tarnished by bad behavior? Should an artist’s morality matter in whether or how we enjoy his or her art? These old questions are now further complicated by AI and the new question of whether it matters whether artworks (songs, let’s say) are even made by humans. Some might be tempted to see AI-made art as a way out of the messiness of these questions. Wouldn’t it be easier if we could enjoy “Thriller”-quality bangers without worrying that our enjoyment signals endorsement of the morally flawed human behind them? Robots can create catchy songs without the baggage of sordid scandal. These are all complex, troubling questions. Our cognitively exhausted, screen-overstimulated brains tend to avoid wrestling with them. It’s easier to ignore the reality that documentaries like Leaving Neverland exist. It’s easier to watch a movie that’s simply a fun, well-choreographed karaoke experience. Need for Unflinching Truth Unflinching truth is rarely as lucrative as a flashy, feel-good puff piece, which is what Michael is. Still, unflinching truth is what Christians should be after—as both movie audiences and movie creators. Should an artist’s morality matter in whether or how we enjoy his or her art? It’s jarring to hear Michael’s daughter, Paris, publicly distance herself from Michael. She says the film is full of inaccuracies and lies, that “the narrative is being controlled,” and that it “panders to a very specific section of [her] dad’s fandom that still lives in the fantasy.” Paris goes on to clarify that she doesn’t hate or resent her dad; she just “prefers honesty over sales and monetary gain.” Honesty over monetary gain. This is a hard but critical value all of us should aspire to more. If we take nothing else from Michael, maybe it’s this reminder. Truth over money. Truth over power. Truth over narratives we wish were different.

You might not be able to take away the hard things a mom in your life is walking through, but you can be the person who helps her find the joy that God is sowing in the middle of it through this prayer.