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Magazine, Past Issue

July/Aug 2025 issue

WHAT'S INSIDE: Screen-fast, sports betting, & environmental stewardship

Our 10-day screen-fast challenge that we presented in the last issue is getting traction. Marty VanDriel has a story that shares how the fast went for him and others who gave it a try.

But that was just the start. Some generous supporters have recognized how important this issue is, so they are offering up a little extra motivation for us all. They have pledged to donate $100 to two fantastic kingdom causes – Word & Deed and Reformed Perspective – for every person who commits to and completes a 10-day fast from their screens from July 21 to 30 (to a maximum of $20,000 split between both causes).

Screens aren’t evil, but as the cover illustrates so well, screens can keep us from seeing reality – from seeing God’s loving hand upholding creation, this world, and our lives. Here now is your opportunity to join with some family and friends and maybe your whole church community to put screens aside and see the rest of the world unfiltered. Check out page 19 for more details or click on the QR code above to sign up.

Since sports betting was legalized in 2021, it has taken Canada by storm. If you watch any hockey you’ve noticed a lot of betting ads, and they bring with them a growing temptation for Christians to make some money while enjoying their favurite teams. But as Jeff Dykstra explains, we have good reason to steer clear of sports gambling.

In this issue we also do a deep dive into the topic of environmental stewardship by sitting down with two Christian women who work for an environmental group in the middle of a logging community in northern BC.

If you are an adult who tends to skip over the Come & Explore kids’ section, we encourage you to give this one a read. It will be sure to make you smile.

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or click here to download the PDF (8 mb)

INDEX: Are you still able: A nation-wide challenge to experience life without screens / Creation stewards in a logging town / Who do you want to be? RP's 10-day screen-fast challenge / We took the no screens challenge... and now we're changing our habits / What can I do anyways? 35 screen-alternative ideas / Is TikTok the ultimate contraception? / How to stay sane in an overstimulated age / Defeated by distraction / How to use AI like a Christian boss / Who speeches were they? On AI, and others, writing for us / The Way / Who is Mark Carney? / What if we said what we mean? - the political party edition / Am I lazy or just relaxing? What does Proverbs say? / Get out of the game: Christians need to steer clear of sports gambling / Man up: ARPA leaderboards and the call to courageous action / Christians don't pray / Our forever home / Calvin as a comic / The best comics for kids / Fun is something you make: 11 times for family road trips / Come and Explore: Mr. Morose goes to the doctor / Rachel VanEgmond is exploring God's General Revelation / 642 Canadian babies were born alive and left to die / 90 pro-life MPs elected to parliament / Ontario shows why euthanasia "safeguards" can't work / RP's coming to a church near you



News

Saturday Selections – July 12, 2025

Josiah Queen's "A Garden in Manhattan"

On the crowded streets,
all the people that I see
Want them to know the Jesus that I know
If I'm the closest thing to a Bible that they read
Let the words they read be what You wrote
Father, help me to go

I'll be a garden in Manhattan,
be a river where it's dry
When my friends can't find the road,
I'll be a roadside welcome sign
Sunshine in Seattle,
be a cool breeze in July
Light in the darkness
I'll be a garden, a garden in Manhattan

Florida after dark,
I know it ain't quite Central Park
There's souls in my hometown You wanna reach
Oh, God, use me where You have me...

Climate hypocrisy tells us what the elites really believe

When global warming proponents like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos all jet off to an exotic locale to celebrate a wedding, you can know they aren't really worried about CO2 hurting the planet... or they wouldn't fly a hundred jets to a party. And as this article explains, EV cars are another hypocrisy gauge. They might make sense in some instances, but if they are being pushed whether they help lower CO2 emissions or not, then you know this is about show, not substance. As Bjorn Lomborg writes:

"In some parts of the world, like India, so much of the power comes from coal that electric cars end up emitting more CO₂ than gasoline cars...."

Now, to be fair, Lomborg himself is worried about global warming. But, as he highlights, the actions most governments take are not what would be needed to solve the issue if it did exist.

Parks Canada staff privately doubted Kamloops "graves" claim

“$12M spent by @GcIndigenous to find purported 215 children's graves at Indian Residential School was instead spent on publicists & consultants with no graves found to date...”

The legacy media is betraying Canada (10 min. read)

Soviet Union President Nikita Khrushchev is credited with saying, "The press is our chief ideological weapon." In contrast, US President George H.W. Bush is said to have said, "We need an independent media to hold people like me to account.” The dictator wanted to own the press so the government could use it to direct public opinion, while the US president touted the need for a press independent of government so it could hold those in power to account.

Our Canadian government spends massive amounts of money funding the country's largest media outlets, and these outlets not only don't denounce the proposition, but take the money. That tells you a lot about which direction our media is heading.

While readers likely won't mind this article's anti-Liberal Party bias, some might be put off by just how loud it is. But read it anyways for the money trail.

The Scopes Monkey Trial is 100 years old!

In 1925, a Dayton, Tennessee high school teacher named John Scopes was put on trial for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution. The case made big news then – across both the US and into Canada – and made big news again in 1960 when a movie version called Inherit the Wind was made, which portrayed the town of Dayton as a bunch of creationist hicks who wanted to storm the jail to get Scopes. That film was then shown in classrooms across the US for generations, convincing many students that only idiots like those onscreen could ever believe Genesis is literal.

But the truth is, the whole town was in on it – they challenged the law to get some attention for their hometown, and recruited Scopes, who agreed to be charged, and in an ironic twist, he probably never even taught evolution in his classroom. In another ironic twist, as this article lays out, much of the scientific evidence marshaled for evolution during the trial has been overturned since (ex. vestigial organs, similar embryonic development). So, even if it had been a bunch of dumb hicks, dumb hicks siding with God are a lot smarter than a gaggle of reporters and scientists siding against Him.

Is Trump doing good or is he doing bad? Yes.

Jeffrey Epstein was a sex trafficker with ties to many of the most powerful people in the world. This, then, was a man who could name names, and topple empires... and then he died mysteriously in his jail cell – a purported suicide but one that happened when his cell's video cameras were broken. The country's reaction was telling. No one was buying the coincidence. This past week, Epstein's client list was supposed to be released and the news now is that there was no client list. As the video below details, this has a lot of conservatives, Christians among them, feeling crushed. They don't believe it, and want to know where the justice is.

Part of the disappointment comes from the tendency we have of making politicians our dividing lines. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were monsters... so we should love Trump? That doesn't follow. Canadian prime ministers Trudeau and Carney have a litany of sins, most recently trying to push murder as a treatment for mental illness. But does that mean we have to look past the shortcomings of Pierre Poilievre? Christians don't have to. Our dividing line is not a Trudeau or Trump, because our unswerving loyalty lies only with God (Josh. 5:13-14). So, yes, Trump continues to stand strong against gender nonsense, but the missing Epstein list has people wondering if the swamp can ever be drained, and as Mindy Belz (sister-in-law of WORLD magazine founder Joel Belz) highlights, his results-now approach has undercut processes that protect everyone from government overreach.


Today's Devotional

July 13 - Calling the Sabbath a delight

“If…you call the Sabbath a delight….Then you shall delight in the Lord.” - Isaiah 58:13,14

Scripture reading: Isaiah 58:1-14

Isaiah 58:13-14 is a wonderful passage to reflect on as we prepare to go to the house of the Lord for worship on this Sabbath day.  Notice clearly the if/then structure of these verses.  The Lord is telling us that if we call the Sabbath >

Today's Manna Podcast

Manna Podcast banner: Manna Daily Scripture Meditations and open Bible with jar logo

Redemption: In His Presence

Serving #902 of Manna, prepared by D. VandeBurgt, is called "Redemption" (In His Presence).











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Articles, Book Reviews, Popular but problematic

Keeper of the Lost Cities takes a turn

For most of its run, Keeper of the Lost Cities has been a lightweight but generally "safe" book series – there's no language, minimal violence, no sex (though quite a lot of flirting), and, up until the latest book, no agenda. But, on that last point, things changed with book 9.5, Unravelled. Author Shannon Messenger has decided that her readers need to know that homosexuality is "really cool." I've read about 9 of the, to this point, 11 Keeper of the Lost Cities (KOTLC) books, including this latest one, but have to admit to not being the biggest fan. I've been reading them because my girls were reading them. "Candy" books are one thing, "candy" series another I don't like KOTLC because I'm not wild about the premise: a lonely girl with no friends discovers she is super special. She's an elf, hidden in the human world because she's actually the most powerful, most important person (human or elf) in the world. She gets rescued by an astonishingly handsome guy, taken to a world of incredible wealth where she's famous, and three handsome guys are competing for her attention. That is not the best message for young girls, all of whom will go through teenage struggles with popularity and loneliness. This updated version of the "Prince Charming" message – that something or someone will arrive to put you on the pedestal you've always deserved to be on – is unhelpful. Still, silly isn't all that big a deal in small doses – some kinds of silly can be absolutely wonderful in measured doses – so my main problem with these books is just how many of them there are and how much time will be spent in this fantasy. They average over 700 pages each, with 11 books in the series so far. A silly picture book or a less-than-fantastic standalone novel is like eating some candy. Having a chocolate bar now and again is no biggie... but if your main meal for days and even weeks is just candy? That's something else. What we have here is more than 7,000 pages of silliness (so far), so that deserves some care and attention. To mitigate things, I made a deal with my girls to "supplement their diet." They had to read a book or two of my choosing – something that would be a bit meatier (though still enjoyable) – before they could move on to the next in the KOTLC series. Oh, and they had to give me a verbal book report for the latest KOTLC they'd just read. We all know how much kids love giving book reviews, but I wasn't trying to make this punitive. I'd been reading the books, too, and I wanted to see if they were astute enough to see through the silliness. Why'd I even let them read it? I'd have preferred they skip the series altogether, but I also wanted to teach them how to treat books appropriately. I didn't want to make too big of something that wasn't big. This series was candy, not poison. Subtle and delayed But then came book 9.5. KOTLC has a confusing system of numbering, with 9 "main" novels, and then an 8.5 and a 9.5 that offer new perspectives on the story that's already been told to this point. In 9.5 we get to see things from the perspective of a handsome rogue of an elf, Keefe, who is hiding in the human world, which is where he runs into homosexuality. It's only a few pages in another tome. On pages 137-141, a helpful jogger shares a trick he uses to stay mentally focused. And he also shares with Keefe that he has a "husband." Then, on pages 259-262, Keefe converses with a spunky waitress who makes mention of her "wife." Each time, it's just the one mention, and it might even slip past some readers unnoticed. But while Messenger seems to be trying to be subtle about it, she didn't want to be too subtle. So, on page 265, Keefe and his fellow elf Alvar talk about how humans have a variety of couples, including waitresses who have wives and men who have husbands. Alvar thinks, "It's really cool," and Keefe agrees, "it is." That's it. Just a half dozen pages. But in a kids' series. And we also don't know – and we have no reason to trust – where the author is going to take our kids in the series' last, yet to have been published, title. We live in a world in which increasing numbers of people "identify" with these sins, so parents shouldn't be surprised when gay and trans characters pop up in today's books. On my desktop, I have a booklet from Scholastic, purportedly the world's largest publisher of children's books for K-12, called Read with Pride. It featured a 100+ "LGBTQIA+" book list of titles they are promoting to schools, librarians, and teachers. They've been pushing this booklist since at least 2017, and I've noticed a real increase in LGBT content in anything published since 2020. It's like there is a box that needs to be checked. And everyone is checking it. So this agenda is everywhere. But it wasn't in KOTLC for the first ten books. This is another bait and switch like happened with the Wings of Fire series. The author pulled readers and parents in with an agenda-free opener, but once kids were hooked, Messenger could introduce her LGBT plug. If it'd started that way, conservative kids and parents would have steered clear, but with it happening so late in the series, even Christian kids will want to keep reading to find out how it all ends. Godless as a given? There's one more concern with Shannon Messenger's books, and with any secular series that'll have our kids living in it for days and weeks at a time. That'd include Harry Potter and The Mysterious Benedict Society's thousands of pages, and even something like the original 60+ title Hardy Boys series. R.C. Sproul once said of the public education system: “To teach children about life and the world in which they live without reference to God is to make a statement about God. It screams a statement. The message is either that there is no God or that God is irrelevant. Either way, the message is the same.” His point is every bit as true for stories. If all our kids are reading are secular books, a statement is being made. Whether they recognize it or not, they are being taught "either that there is no God or that God is irrelevant." While we don't know yet whether Messenger is going to finish her series by upping the LGBT content, or by backing off it, we do know already that she's spent 7,000+ pages teaching our kids that God isn't. So, what's a good supplement to all this candy? Some solid Christian fiction and biographies. This was published under the title "7,000 pages in, and now this? Another popular tween series, Keeper of the Lost Cities, takes a turn" in the May/June 2025 issue....









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Politics

Reforming Canada's electoral system?

During the 2015 federal election, the Liberals campaigned on bringing in electoral reform. While they didn't deliver on that promise, they weren't the first to propose fundamentally changing the way Canadians vote, and they likely won't be the last. So what prompted their promise? Why did they think voters wanted a new electoral system? What exactly needs fixing with our current system? And what are the advantages and disadvantages of the alternatives? THE CASE AGAINST FPTP The common complaint with our current First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system is that it doesn’t seem to reflect voters’ wishes. Under it a candidate doesn’t need a majority of the vote to get elected; he only needs one vote more than the second-place finisher. So, for example, in the 2015 Federal election that meant one candidate – the NDP’s Brigette Sansoucy – was able to win a seat in the House of Commons even though she received only 28.7 percent of the vote. In her riding almost three-quarters of voters picked someone else, and yet she is still their elected representative. In 2015 the FPTP system also allowed the Liberals to win a decided majority of the seats (54.4 percent) even though they had a decided minority of the votes (only 39.5 percent). Situations like this are why our representative democracy can be criticized for not being all that representative. THE RANKED BALLOT: FOR So what sort of electoral reforms have been proposed? The Liberals' plans never got all that specific, but back in 2014, in an appearance at Ontario’s Western University, Justin Trudeau told students, “I like the idea of a ranked ballot.” There’s a clear reason why the Liberals would. Under a ranked ballot (or preferential) system voters would rank the candidates from first to last (see the picture). If no one got 50 per cent of the vote, then the candidate with the least 1st place votes would be dropped off, and his ballots would be redistributed according to who those voters had marked as their second choice. The advantage of this system is that the eventual winner can claim the legitimacy of having more than 50% of voters picking him. He may not have been their first pick, but he was at least someone they voted for. THE RANKED BALLOT: AGAINST The problem with the ranked ballot is that it gives an advantage to whatever parties are present in the "middle" of the political spectrum. Why? Because when voters on the right or left rank their second choices they aren’t going to pick the parties on the other side of the spectrum. Instead they are going to default to the candidate who is the closest to them. In Canada that means an NDP voter will likely rank the Liberals second (or third behind the Greens), and rank the Conservative last. Likewise, a Conservative voter is more likely to rank the Liberals second than he is to pick the NDP or Greens. So Liberals can count on getting far more of the second-pick votes than any of their political rivals. There is a systemic bias in their favor. CBC’s Eric Grenier estimated that under a ranked ballot the Liberals would have picked up an additional 40 seats last election (mostly at the expense of the Conservatives). No wonder then that the Prime Minister prefers ranked ballots. PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION: FOR Another alternative often proposed is proportional representation (PR). While there are many forms of PR, the basic premise is that all involve parties getting seats in proportion to their total vote total. Under this arrangement, if we use the 2015 election as our example again, since the Liberals took 39.5% of the popular vote they would have ended up with just 39.5% of the seats in Parliament. That means that, as Eric Grenier noted, under the most basic form of PR, in the 2015 election the Liberals would have lost 50 seats, while the Conservatives would have gained 10, the Green Party 11, and the NDP 23 more. Interestingly, it is under the PR system that the Christian Heritage Party (CHP) is most likely to prosper. While the CHP’s 15,284 votes in the 2015 election wouldn’t have been enough to garner them an MP, under a PR system, Christians who had previously wanted to vote for them but thought it a wasted ballot could now cast that vote knowing it would help elect at least an MP or two. PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION: AGAINST But PR also opens up possibilities for other smaller parties too. The CHP would finally be in the House of Commons but there would also be a representative or from the Marijuana Party. We’d likely see a Communist too, and maybe even a Rhinoceros Party MP (yes, there really is a federal Rhinoceros Party of Canada). In addition, it would become harder for any one party to win an outright majority. As the Fraser Institute reports in their booklet Electoral Rules and Fiscal Outcomes, from 2000-1015  In countries with PR election systems...83 percent of elections resulted in coalition governments. That might not sound like much of a problem – so what if some parties have to work together? Why wouldn’t that be a good thing? The reason its a problem is because when a coalition government is built, each participant does so on the condition that they get something out of it. And that “something” usually requires the outlay of money. In the same booklet, the Fraser Institute noted that PR governments spend an average of 29% of their country’s GDP, whereas other governments elected via means such as ranked ballots or the FPTP spend only 23% of the GDP. So a downside to any PR type of system is that taxes will likely go up. Coalition governments are costly! Another downside? It increases party leaders' power. Proportional Representation most often involves voting for a party, not a candidate. A party puts out a list of their candidates, in an order of their choosing, and if they get enough votes for, say, three MPs, then the three people at the top of their list will get in. Canadian party leaders already have dictatorial powers over their MPs, and the PR system would only increase that power – refuse to pick up your party leader's drycleaning and he'll bump you down your party's list, or take you off it entirely. The last thing we need is to strengthen party leaders' stranglehold over their party's MPs. CONCLUSION Some countries have adopted a mixture of these different systems, which means there are a limitless number of possibilities. But these three are the core sorts. So what system should we, as Christians, push for? Each has its own strengths and weaknesses and there isn't an electoral system free of flaws. Ranked ballots give the centrist Liberals an advantage over the other parties that they don’t deserve, while proportional representation seems likely to expand the size of government and strengthen party leaders' power. None of these are attractive alternatives. Meanwhile, even as FPTP frequently gives minorities a majority of seats, that bias isn't specific to one particular party. So I will say of our present system what Winston Churchill once said about democracy: First-Past-The-Post is the worst form of electoral system…except for all others. A version of this article first appeared in the September 2016 issue under the title "Canada's electoral reform."...

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Politics

Dethroning the dictator

A simple electoral reform that might actually make our democracy more representative **** Canada’s democratic system has been likened to a four-year “elected dictatorship.” Why? The fault is often lain at the feet of our First-Past-The-Post electoral system which allows a political party with only a minority of the popular vote to form a majority government. We saw that happen again in 2015, when the federal Liberal Party won a majority government – 54% of the seats in Parliament – with only 39.5% of the votes cast. But does this make Canada a dictatorship? No, not this alone. The bigger issue is the control that party leaders have over who gets to run for their party. Anger your party leader, and he won’t sign your nomination papers. Then your only option is to run as an independent. However, independents don’t win; there have only been two elected independents over the last three elections. So if you want a seat in Parliament, you’d best not do anything to annoy your party leader. That means that, while the Liberals control Parliament, Justin Trudeau controls the Liberals. That allows him to sets the agenda for Parliament. He also chooses who will get Cabinet positions, selects individuals to the Senate, and picks Supreme Court Justices. Three hundred and thirty-eight Members of Parliament are elected, but all the power of Parliament is concentrated into the hands of this one man. Canada is an elected dictatorship. This is a problem This would be a problem even with the best and most noble of men leading our country – unfettered power is a potent temptation to anyone. As Lord Acton put it, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Our neighbor to the south recognized this corrupting effect, and it led the American Founding Fathers to design a system of government that split power between three separate branches of government: Congress would vie with the President and with the Supreme Court. The three would compete with and hold the others in check to ensure that power was never concentrated in any one branch. But what holds the prime minister’s power in check? Theoretically, it’s the other Members of Parliament (MPs). The prime minister has only one vote, so if his MPs don’t like what he is doing, they could vote against it and stop him. But that’s not how it works. As party leader he has both carrots ands sticks with which he can control his party. An MP who stays loyal may eventually get rewarded with a Cabinet position. An MP who makes trouble may get demoted or even kicked out of the party. The result? MPs dare not disagree with their leader. More parties in control So what can be done? One frequently mentioned proposal is to replace our First-Past-The-Post electoral system with some form of Proportional Representation (PR). Though there are a number of different versions of PR, under the simplest version parties would receive seats in proportion to their popular vote. So if the Liberals received 39% of the popular vote across Canada they would receive 39% of the seats in Parliament. This would result in many more minority governments, forcing the PM to share his power with the other party leaders. Instead of dictating to them he’d be forced to cooperate with them to get his bills passed. The problem with Proportional Representation is that it most often involves voting for a party, not a candidate. A party puts out some sort of list, often with an order of their choosing. If they get enough votes for, say, three MPs, then the three people at the top of their list will get in. This gives the party leader even more power over his party because anyone who isn't willing to pick up his dry cleaning will get put far down the list, or not make it at all. It's true, PR would move us from a dictatorship, but to an oligarchy; instead of rule by one party leader we would be ruled by a council made up of two or three party leaders. However, those party leaders would have an even firmer grip on their parties. So that’s not much of an improvement. Empowering MPs A better option is to change the way a party leader is chosen. Presently, party leaders are chosen by the party members. This method means that, come the next leadership election, a party will be able to sell a lot of memberships. But this is what’s behind the power imbalance: a party leader still has his carrot and stick, and the MPs have no way to constrain their party leader because he is hired and fired not by them, but by their party’s membership. What if the party leader was chosen by the MPs? That’s how it used to be done in the United Kingdom, up until the early 1980s. Under such a system a party leader would still be able to exert considerable control over his caucus, but he wouldn’t be able to run roughshod over them. If he annoyed too many, then out he’d go. There would be some balance. Individual MPs might then feel free to occasionally vote as they think best, or as their constituents think best, and not simply as their party leader thought best. This is a change that the party membership can bring about, starting at the riding level, and the pushing it on to the annual convention. It would take time to win support – this would be a multi-year process – but it can happen. And if a party's membership demands this change, then we might well end up with a more representative democracy, and without any of the radical electoral reforms that have been proposed. Of course, in a sin-stained world a democracy isn't always ideal either: just consider how giving the people their say won’t put an end to either abortion or euthanasia any time soon. But a democracy is a step up from our dictatorship of one....