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Magazine, Past Issue

July/Aug 2025 issue

WHAT'S INSIDE: 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 / and more!

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News

Saturday Selections – June 28, 2025

The Franz Family and "Somewhere in glory"

If you liked the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, you'll love this but of bluegrass gospel...

Tim Challies with 4 good questions to ask your tech

  1. Why were you created?
  2. What is the problem to which you are the solution, and whose problem is it?
  3. What new problem will you bring?
  4. What are you doing to my heart?

Canada's Tax Freedom Day was June 21

June 21 was, according to the Fraser Institute, the day when – averaged across the country – Canadians stopped working for the government, and the money they earn for the rest of the year is the money they get to keep for their own households.

7 great questions to ask fellow believers

Want to get a deeper conversation started? Some of these could be great to pull out when you have a few couples over, or a group of friends.

How to get people to be friends with machines in 3 easy steps

The author of Digital Liturgies warns how AI "friendships" could be addictive in a way that's even beyond pornography.

Government-mandated small business destruction

With a stroke of a pen a government can destroy a business that the owner might have spent a lifetime building up. The destructive potential for government interference in the marketplace might have you thinking those in power would tread very lightly, using their fearsome powers only when they had to. But, as this latest incident highlights, that isn't always so.

A Quebec language law, if enforced, could cause all sorts of problems for board game stores in that province, since their niche games might not have any French on them at all, or not enough.


Today's Devotional

July 1 - Introduction to 1 John

This month we will be working through the epistle of First John.  The main theme of this book is the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the fellowship with God that comes through Him.  I am assuming that you are using this devotional because you are interested in deepening this fellowship.  Whether you are seeking truth in Jesus for the first time or whether you have walked with God >

Today's Manna Podcast

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

A Trustworthy Saying: Jesus Came to Save Sinners: Sermon on the Mount

Serving #890 of Manna, prepared by G.H. VanPopta, is called "A Trustworthy Saying: Jesus Came to Save Sinners" (Sermon on the Mount) and is based on 1 Timothy 1:15.











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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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News

Saturday Selections – May 10, 2025

Gray Havens' Ghost of a King A lyric video seems a good idea for this, one of their harder-to-understand songs. A little mystery then, accompanied by a wonderfully haunting melody... Jamie Soles on the Genevan tunes " highlight the male voice. Men can lift their voices and sing these songs. They cannot do this with almost any modern music. Even the folks who have rediscovered the gospel of grace, and who make songs about it, sing in a feminine voice. I have sat and listened to whole services in Reformed Baptist circles, in Charismatic circles, in modern Mennonite circles, in Bible Church circles, where men were never allowed to lift their voice above a G. Women’s voices dominate. Not so with the Genevans...." Defending Jesus' divinity on the back of a napkin If you're talking to Jehovah's Witnesses, or any Arians, you can sketch this argument out on a napkin. A dyslexia-friendly Bible edition? I did not know such a thing existed – might this be just the version for you, or someone you know? Tolkien's "take that!" to Shakespeare Did you know Tolkien wasn't the biggest Shakespeare fan? As Harma-Mae Smit explains, a couple scenes in Lord of the Rings are Tolkien's go at one-upping what he thought was something lame from the Bard's Macbeth. Penguins are cool but not cold (9 minutes) Penguins survive in the coldest temperatures on earth. How do they do it? They are built for it, from the ground up, and then operate together with their God-given instincts! ...

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Documentary, Movie Reviews

March of the Penguins

Documentary 80 min / 2005 RATING: 7/10 Penguins are cute but tough as nails too, and March of the Penguins gives us the insider's look at both the grit and the comedy. These waddling, wacky creatures mate and reproduce in a clearing that, while miles and miles from most predators, is also miles and miles away from any source of food. So God has equipped the parents to be able to go for months without food as they wait for their egg to hatch. To give us the inside scoop the filmmakers spent a whole year in the harshest of environments, with temperatures as low as -60°C (-76°F), to bring us right into the penguin huddle. Cautions Somewhere in this film there is a line about "millions of years" but it seems almost beyond belief that a person could watch this film about the trials and triumphs of penguin life and not see it as a testament to the wonder of God's creative hand. More important for parents considering whether to watch this with the family, not all the penguins survive the journey, including a couple of instances where we see a dead chick. There's a scene where predator birds attack a group of chicks, eventually carrying off one. So I wouldn't recommend this for younger, more sensitive viewers. Conclusion While I loved this film, the pace was sometimes a slow waddle. My dad owned a DVD player that sped films up to 1.25 times while keeping the sound at its normal timbre – this would be a prime candidate for such a device, and if you stream it online, that's sometimes an option. That said, there is a reason it won an Oscar for best documentary. The filmmakers took us somewhere we've never before been, right into the middle of that penguin huddle. And that is a remarkable place to be! If you like March of the Penguins, there are a couple of other documentaries you may like too. Winged Migration tells the story of dozens of different bird species as they travel thousands of miles from North to South and back again. And if you found the ice and isolation of the Antarctic captivating you'll likely enjoy Imax: Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure. ...





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Family, Movie Reviews

My friend Flicka

Family 1943 / 89 minutes Rating: 7/10 All Ken wants is a colt of his own, and seeing as his dad raises horses, that doesn't seem an unreasonable ambition. But all Ken's father wants is for his son to start using his head, and he's not sure when or if that's ever going to happen. The boy's fifth-grade report card is impressive in the worst possible way – Ken managed to get a zero in English. He daydreamed his way right through the hour-long test and never even got started. So it's against his better judgment that stern poppa does indeed give his underachieving son his choice of a colt. But dad is left shaking his head once again when his son picks Flicka, a colt from the most "loco" mare on the ranch – Ken has picked a colt that may not even be tameable! And shortly after getting picked, Flicka proves just as wild as the father feared, running straight into a barbed wire fence. There is a silver lining – the injured colt needs attention, and Ken shows himself both willing and able. Might this daydreaming boy be on the way to becoming a young man? Cautions Parents will want to know that one of the horses, a wild mare named Rocket (Flicka's mom), dies suddenly midway through the film. I was surprised – I figured the horse was just stunned, and even reassured our kids it would recover. But nope. This was shot in World War II so I think the times may have resulted in kids then that were made of a little sterner stuff, so one horse getting killed might have been no big deal to them. But it might be a bit of something to some of our sensitive ten-and-under kids, who have grown up on children's fare where the peril never results in anything permanent. Rocket's death makes Flicka's own brush with death – at one point dad gives the order to put him down – much scarier than it otherwise would have been. Shucks, it seems like there's no guarantees in this movie about who is going to make it to the end. But parents can reassure their kidlings that Flicka will indeed make it. Language concerns are limited to a few "doggone it" and "gee whiz"s. Conclusion One modern-day reviewer celebrated this as a "great movie for kids with no... sex, drugs or cursing." It is that. But it is also an older film that doesn't have the frenetic pacing of most of today's kids' stuff. That means it might test some children's attention spans, but that could be a very good thing. I'd suggest it for 10 and over, but I'm not quite sure whether its hundreds of horses might make this a great one for horse-crazy girls, or whether the death of Rocket might mean they'd be the worst possible audience. I'll also note that in our family of five, three quite liked it, one fell asleep, and one was quite distraught over poor Rocket. So, if you're looking for a sure-fire bet for family movie night, this might not be it. But if you want something from a more decent time, this could fit the bill. It's full of characters with character, whether that's a stern but loving dad, a compassionate capable mom, respectful ranch hands, or even the son, a kid who isn't measuring up but wants to. Check out a brief clip below. ...

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Family, Movie Reviews

The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit

Family / Romance 113 minutes / 1968 Rating: 7/10 Horses, humor, and a little romance will make this one a favorite among the preteen girls in your family. Frederick Bolton is a single dad (no mention is made of mom, and it's probably most logical to assume she died some years back) and an advertising executive, and trying to do his best to juggle his responsibilities. So when his daughter Helen asks him for a horse so she can stand a better chance in the horse jumping competitions, and his client wants an inventive way to promote their product, he hits on quite the creative solution. His daughter will get her horse, and they'll name it Aspercel, after his client's product, a remedy for upset stomachs. There is one hitch, though: to make the client happy, Aspercel will have to make regular appearances in the winner's circle, so as to get the publicity they're after. That's the crisis the movie pivots around. Helen is quite talented, and with a little help from her riding instructor, she's got just what it takes to win. But when she finds out that her dad's job depends on her winning, she can't handle that pressure. And, fortunately, her dad doesn't want her to have to deal with it either, even if it does cost him his job. This could have been a dumb movie if dear old dad hadn't stepped up... because it did take him a bit of time to do so. But a loving, if occasionally clueless, father he is indeed. But how is everything going to turn out all right in the end? Well, I won't give it all away, but I will share that the riding instructor, Miss Suzie Clemens, is both willing and able to ride to the rescue! Cautions One odd moment in the film occurs near the end, when Suzie gratefully plants a big kiss on one man, right before she becomes engaged to another. We're not the only ones confused, but the confusion lasts only for a few moments, and perhaps we have to write it off as different cultural habits? Conclusion If you're wondering about the odd title, it doesn't come from anything in the film itself. The horse never wears a gray suit or anything else gray either (though I guess he's kind of a speckled gray himself). The title is borrowed from a movie of 12 years earlier, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. Why they borrowed it, I don't know, as the two films are completely unrelated, and intended for different target audiences too. Some critics faulted The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit for predictability, and it is guilty as charged. But for a family film, that's not such a bad thing – the kids will know where it's going and enjoy the ride. There is also fodder here for parents to discuss how competitive is too competitive, and how sports can't be allowed to take over our lives. So, overall, a nice night's entertainment. While the DVD is readily available (maybe at your local public library) there doesn't seem to be a trailer available online....

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Family, Movie Reviews

Misty

Family / Drama 1961 / 91 minutes RATING: 7/10 If you have girls in your home there's a good chance you've already heard of Marguerite Henry and her most famous book Misty of Chincoteague. It's the story of two orphans who, after coming to live with their grandparents, fix their minds on buying a pony named Phantom. But it's not going to be easy. First, Phantom is a wild pony, running loose on the neighboring island of Assateague, and to this point no one has been able to catch her. If she is caught, it'll cost the two children $100 to buy her and they don't have any money. And last but not least, Phantom is three years old already, and their grandfather says that no one can gentle a pony that's been wild that long. These two have their work cut out for them! This is a faithful adaptation of the book, and quite the sweet film. The grandparents are loving and kind, but no pushovers. The kids are energetic, a little mischievous, but respectful. It's just good old-fashioned family entertainment. CAUTIONS Language concerns are limited to a few instances of "gee." At one point bets are placed on a horse race between the nearby islands' fastest ponies. The grandfather gets caught up in this and seems to even travel to another island to find more people to bet with. Overall this is a minor element in the film, amounting mostly to an opportunity for jokes. But children need to be told that we should never seek to become wealthy at another's expense – that's what's wrong with gambling. CONCLUSION The moral of this story is an old-fashioned one, and while powerful, it is gently presented: "love is not possessive; love seeks the best for the other." I'm not going to spoil things by telling you how that moral is learned, but if you have a sensitive daughter or two, there might be a little crying at the end of this one...though it certainly ends on a happy note. Sweetest quote: When the town mistakenly concludes the grandfather has fallen on hard times, he hugs his grandchildren and exclaims: "They think I'm poor? I'm the richest man on this whole island!" This is reprinted with permission from ReelConservative.com....