When you scroll through your smartphone feeds on any given day—perhaps especially in an election year—two things become immediately clear. First, people no longer seem to value logical coherence and aren’t phased by obvious inconsistencies. Earlier this year in a piece I wrote on metamodernism, I observed this as a concerning symptom of our cultural moment: “Many metamoderns don’t flinch when their illogical views are pointed out. They aren’t bothered by the internal incoherence of their contradictory stances.” Life online is rampant with cognitive dissonance—but we don’t experience it as dissonance anymore. We’ve made peace with incoherence. It’s how we live in the internet age. Second, something new has emerged as the most salient feature of scrolling life; it has the most power to grab our attention or lead us to take an action (click, view, listen, purchase). What is it? Vibes. Vibes are the currency of our time, given and received a million times a minute on screens everywhere. The vibe world is Memes over messages. Aesthetics over arguments. Relatability over rightness. Feelings over facts. Mood over meaning. Vibes are fluid, subjective, and immune to criticism or definition. You can’t articulate, replicate, or invalidate a vibe. The vibe world: Memes over messages. Aesthetics over arguments. Relatability over rightness. Feelings over facts. Mood over meaning. On the giving side, vibes are only partially within our control. You can do your best to “give off” vibes that will appeal to those you seek to reach, but the vibe’s appeal is in its authenticity, and it can’t be micromanaged into existence. Vibe shifts can be observed, but they cannot be manufactured. Thus, to attempt to conjure the right “vibe” via some alchemy of A/B testing, focus groups, and market research is self-defeating. Vibes are only good when they happen organically, authentically, and serendipitously. To self-consciously build a campaign around “good vibes” is a questionable strategy. If you have to draw attention to the fact that you have a good vibe (much like calling yourself “relevant”), your vibe isn’t good. On the receiving end, vibes are the engine of agency for consumers: the subjective senses, intuitions, and gut reactions that lead us to give or withhold our attention, follow or unfollow, accept or reject. In an algorithmic world of consumer surveillance, with an ever more dialed-in sense of who we are and what we want, our “vibe radar” is a powerful weapon of resistance. We may have lost the ability to fact check. But we can vibe check. The triumph of vibes isn’t generally a good development. But it’s where we are. Christian wisdom in a vibe-driven world starts with awareness of how the very structure of the internet got us here. Internet Wired for Incoherence Initially framed as a net gain for humanity, the internet’s open-source, democratized nature has ended up leading not to enlightenment but rather to a “post-truth” world of informational chaos. The sheer glut of information, coming at us from all directions at all times, is mostly unvetted and contains no clear distinctions between expert and nonexpert, fact or opinion, and (increasingly) human or AI. We naturally grow suspicious of almost everything we see on screens. Information overload renders all information suspect. The “everything, everywhere, all at once” structure of internet life also explains why we’ve grown accustomed to incoherence. We’re constantly confronted with disconnected fragments, contradictory ideas, dueling opinions, and the whiplash of narratives that drastically change in real time (e.g., 2019’s Jussie Smollett hoax or this year’s KateGate). Byung-Chul Han is correct to point to this “deluge of information” as the cause of our “narrative crisis.” It’s no surprise that, detached from bigger pictures and swimming in a sea of fragments, we’re losing our ability to be bothered by or even notice inconsistencies. When incoherence is all our mind encounters, it doesn’t register as an aberration. When incoherence is all our mind encounters, it doesn’t register as an aberration. Digital media “does not reward the presentation of a coherent, contextual whole,” argues Antón Barba-Kay, such that “the gotcha accusation of inconsistency matters less.” This is why politicians aren’t as harmed today by accusations of “flip-flopping” contradictions as much as they were, say, in John Kerry’s 2004 candidacy. Barba-Kay notes that Donald Trump’s political savvy involves his recognition that “logical consistency is of little importance within our online media environment.” It may in fact work to politicians’ advantage to have a wild, scattershot array of ever-changing views. This approach works because it mimics the internet, where users know they can find whatever they want to find and conveniently ignore whatever they don’t like. If I care about issue X and can find evidence a certain candidate somewhere, at some point, said he shared my view on issue X, I can permit myself to support that candidate (even if elsewhere he said he doesn’t support issue X, or said he supports issue Y that contradicts issue X). Incoherence is an electoral asset in the internet age. What matters more than coherent views is a compelling vibe. Politicians know this. They have little incentive to bother communicating policy positions. This has become abundantly clear in modern televised presidential debates. If a debate moves the needle for any voters, it won’t be because of policy substance; it’ll be because certain vibes resonated with—or repulsed—them. It’s All About ‘Impressions’ Now The rise of vibes is in part a response to the overwhelming cognitive demands placed on us in the information flood. Even if we weren’t so skeptical of the integrity of information, the sheer amount is too much for our brains to handle. Going on the vibe (like tribal herding) is a coping mechanism for our mental exhaustion. We have neither the time nor the capacity to research each claim or sort through all the contradictions. Whether we’re “feeling something” or not is easier to know than whether we fully understand or agree with something. As T. S. Eliot observed over a century ago, “When we do not know, or when we do not know enough, we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts.” Advertisers and politicians know we’re mentally exhausted, our attention is increasingly hard to gain, and we’re probably too tired to read (or watch) the entirety of anything. So they focus on quick impressions that have affective rather than cerebral appeal: photos that will stand out in our feeds and cause us to linger a second longer, emotive headlines that communicate all they want us to know, lurid words or imagery that can’t help but stop us in our tracks. “Clickbait” is an outdated term because now advertisers are satisfied if we mentally register an impression, knowing that enough impressions over time might lead prospects to take a consumer action. “Reach” and “clicks” used to be the chief metrics of advertising success online. Now it’s impressions. And you don’t make an impression with substance or arguments. You make an impression with vibes. Consider how this all plays out in online dating. This is a world decidedly driven by impressions and vibes. Single men and women swipe through options of potential future mates as quickly as they scroll through TikTok or X. Naturally, the difference between swiping left or swiping right boils down to the quick, superficial impression a profile makes. Singles don’t wade through the dating pool by carefully investigating the values and convictions of potential suitors. They go on vibes. Does his or her profile make you blush or does it give you “the ick”? The rise of “the ick” as new slang is evidence of the vibes era. What exactly constitutes “the ick” response in dating isn’t articulable; it’s just a feeling one gets, a visceral impulse to cut and run. There’s probably a corollary to “the ick” that exists beyond the dating world. It’s a response of repulsion when someone we normally like does or says something on social media that we dislike (e.g., a friend surprises us by “liking” a political post on Instagram that we find abhorrent). Our “ick” response can be enough to unfollow or mute. The rise of ‘the ick’ as new slang is evidence of the vibes era. Examples abound. Consider a recent clip of a college student, Naima, debating Charlie Kirk on abortion. At one point, Kirk asks Naima to define “fetus,” which leaves her somewhat flustered. Instead of answering, she immediately pivots to a vibe-oriented comment by saying Kirk’s smile is “creepy,” which gets applause from the audience. It’s a brief but instructive moment that reveals the rhetorical power of “the ick.” When our arguments don’t hold sway, we appeal to the good vibe or bad vibe given off by our interlocutor: appearance, tone, intelligence, age (“OK boomer”). It’s an argument-averting move that increasingly works in a vibe-driven world. Wisdom in a World of Vibes How do we live wisely as Christians in a world of vibes? One key must be an awareness of how deceiving “vibes” and quick impressions can be. We must analyze our own impressions and ask if our passing perceptions are rightly ordered. It’s the old “don’t judge a book by its cover” advice: don’t fall into the foolishness of being deceived by appearances (see 1 Sam. 16:7, Prov. 31:30). We need to slow down to audit our impressions. Before you click on something, pause to ask yourself why you’re clicking. Add an iota of friction between an impression and your actions. This can be the difference between being foolishly duped or being wisely discerning. In our overstimulated, cognitively overwhelming age, wisdom enables us to make “click or no click” judgments on the scrolling fly. Consider how Proverbs 26 advises us to respond to fools (which are everywhere in our daily feeds). At first glance, the advice seems contradictory. Verse 4 says, “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.” This is immediately followed in verse 5 with “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” So which is it? When someone says or does something obviously foolish on social media, do we speak up or not? Add an iota of friction between an impression and your actions. This can be the difference between being foolishly duped or being wisely discerning. Rather than being contradictory, Proverbs 26:4–5 is getting at wisdom’s nuanced, situational nature. Wisdom assesses the moment and responds in the right way. It’s nimble and adaptive rather than formulaic and prescribed. Wisdom is a reservoir of whole-person congruence with God’s truth that finds expression in our words (what we say and don’t say), our actions, and—importantly in a world of vibes—our intuitions. So how can you position yourself to be faithful and truthful in a world of vibes? Feed your soul in such a way that nourishes your wisdom. Surround yourself with people who care about integrity and who reinforce your habits of wisdom. We’ll likely need more specific tactics in the years ahead as we undertake discipleship and navigate spiritual challenges in a vibes-dominant world. But we’ll never need less than biblical wisdom. So start there.

Perhaps no other word in the English language has shifted in meaning like “justice.” It has become one of the central cultural disagreements dividing families, churches, and communities. Just saying the word conjures into the mind everything from police brutality to LGBT+ issues to abortion to labor laws. In Right Thing, Right Now: Good Values. Good Character. Good Deeds, Ryan Holiday, best-selling author and media strategist, approaches justice as a form of common sense. He’s not entirely off base. Everyone in the modern world (religious or not) affirms the goodness of justice. However, as Alasdair MacIntyre shows in Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, agreement on what justice entails and how to achieve it may be unobtainable. As Holiday’s argument progresses from an emphasis on personal integrity to communal equity to personal spirituality rooted in the oneness of human beings, the diversity of conceptions of justice among worldviews emerges. It quickly becomes clear that Holiday’s Stoicism, though increasingly popular among young men, presents a false morality that’s unable to support the justice he hopes to encourage. False Objectivity The assumption that everyone knows what justice looks like is baked into Holiday’s worldview. He writes, “You know justice when you see it—or, on a more visceral level, you feel it, especially its absence and its opposite” (xxii). Justice is so obvious that to debate it is to delay it. Though justice is supposed to be internally obvious, we must align ourselves to an external authority: “This is what we are after, affixing justice as north on our compass, the North Star to our lives, letting it guide and direct us, through good times and bad” (xxiv). This “North Star” is outside the individual, but it isn’t objective. It’s chosen by each individual from various options. Holiday gives examples: “Loyalty. A love of the game. A desire to keep your hands clean. The confidence to compete fairly with the best. Integrity” (101). Those examples show that Holiday’s concept of justice has two main sources—human reason and human example. Holiday is correct that humanity has an innate sense of order in the universe (cf. Eccl. 3:11; Rom. 1:18–21), yet his Stoic justice trends toward a pragmatism that Christians should resist. His “justice” is whatever seems to result in a positive social outcome. In contrast, true justice isn’t found purely by human intuition or trusting in a chosen “North Star.” It proceeds from God’s character and is described in God’s Word (Deut. 32:4). True justice isn’t found purely by human intuition or trusting in a chosen ‘North Star.’ It proceeds from God’s character and is described in God’s Word. Contemporary versions of Stoicism are attractive because they encourage socially beneficial characteristics like integrity, generosity, and a willingness to forgive. Yet these are often built on utilitarian foundations such as desiring to be happy with ourselves, hoping for reciprocity, not breaking promises to ourselves, avoiding being attacked by our enemies, getting closer to heaven, eliciting help or avoiding harm, and being “great.” Holiday’s version of Stoicism fits well within our culture of expressive individualism, but it has no room for the chief end of humanity, which is to “glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” False Unity Holiday draws from ancient Stoics, particularly Marcus Aurelius, throughout the book, which is the third in a series on cardinal virtues. Yet there’s more classical liberalism or modern secularism in his understanding of justice than anything ancient philosophers would’ve recognized. These differences don’t matter much to Holiday, because he’s optimistic that everyone can get along, that we do share basic presuppositions, and that we can arrive at common conclusions through dialogue and human reason. Differences of opinion are, therefore, superficial.  As Holiday opines, “All the philosophical and religious traditions—from Confucius to Christianity, Plato to Hobbes and Kant—revolve around some version of the golden rule” (xxii). Yet we can see how this perspective flattens religions and philosophies. This perception of commonality leads to a dizzying variety of exemplars of justice in the book, including Harry Truman, Malcolm X, Florence Nightingale, Harvey Milk, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Jesus Christ, and many more. It’s hard to imagine Gandhi, a pacifist, feeling proud that his name is in a list of particularly just human beings with Truman, who authorized the use of the atomic bomb. The stories Holiday shares are always engaging and often compelling, but they mute the substantial differences these figures have concerning justice. It also isn’t clear that Holiday’s interpretation of figures is consistent with their actual views. For example, he argues that Malcolm X “walked away from hatred and toward the light, toward love. He outgrew separatism and embraced the concepts of human rights and human unity” (315). I wonder whether Malcolm X would’ve affirmed this secular and pluralistic vision of the good life, even after he left the Nation of Islam. False Future One natural consequence of flattening these diverse worldviews is that it creates the illusion of a shared vision of progress. Holiday celebrates a diverse list of political efforts and workers as signs of increasing justice: “Animal rights. Environmental rights. Voting rights. Gay rights. Consumer rights. Reproductive rights. Antipoverty activists. Anticolonial activists. Peace activists. Prison reformers. Fighters of human trafficking. Free speech advocates” (128). According to Holiday, these are examples of “seeking a more perfect union, [and of] realizing the true promise of the social contract” (128). The stories Holiday shares are always engaging and often compelling, but they mute the substantial differences these figures have concerning justice. This shared vision of justice might have been believable and inspiring before the fracturing of the monoculture over the past couple of decades. But civil society’s fabric has been torn apart by the dramatic cultural shifts in my lifetime. A subjective vision of justice, even with majority consensus, isn’t enough to bring us back together. Holiday’s efforts present a false optimism about the future. Through common grace, Holiday is often correct in its conclusions about justice. He provides a point of contact for Christians to graciously debate the nature of justice. This common ground helps explain why some Christians find Stoicism attractive. Furthermore, Holiday’s writing is always interesting and sometimes compelling in its assertions. Yet a Stoic worldview lacks the bedrock on which notions of justice must stand. In the end, Right Thing, Right Now is a reminder that Stoicism as a moral system falls far short of the Christian ideal.

In his lecture on Genesis 39, Don Carson examines the literary structure of the text and highlights Joseph’s faithfulness in resisting temptation. Focusing on themes of faithfulness and divine blessing and the significance of biblical parallelism, Carson compares Joseph’s rise in Egypt with broader patterns of Hebrew poetry and Scripture interpretation. He teaches the following: How the structure of the text highlights faithfulness and blessing Parallelism in Hebrew poetry and its significance for understanding biblical texts The importance of understanding biblical literary genres How to apply wisdom literature in a pluralistic society How to interpret apocalyptic texts in light of their genre The subjective nature of biblical interpretation and its implications for objective truth Biblical interpretation and cultural humility

The Everyday Pastor is a new podcast from The Gospel Coalition on the nuts and bolts of ministry. Hosted by Ligon Duncan, with nearly 20 years of pastoral experience, and Matt Smethurst, who planted a church three years ago, it seeks to model how ministers of different generations, experience levels, and even denominations can apply God’s never-changing Word in a fast-changing world. It’s not an easy time to be a pastor, but it’s an exciting one—because the Lord is on his throne and his Word is enough to help us navigate the trenches of ministry with fortitude and joy. So join Matt and Lig (and special guests along the way) as they help you think wisely about nitty-gritty issues of everyday ministry.

NBC’s insistence on carrying water for the Regime very aptly demonstrates why trust in news media is at an all-time low. NBC insists on rehashing its much-derided earlier report that served no purpose except to further a particularly hypocritical Harris talking point. Here’s the report as aired on NBC Nightly News on Tuesday, October 16th, 2024 (click “expand” to view full transcript): LESTER HOLT: The Harris campaign this evening zeroing in on that unusual campaign event by former President Trump to try to cast doubt on his fitness to be president again. Hallie Jackson with more on this. HALLIE JACKSON: Vice President Harris looking to flip the script against former President Trump, putting his age and health front and center. Her campaign pointing to Mr. Trump's unusual soundtrack session overnight after that pause for medical help for audience members. Mr. Trump today calling the interlude “amazing”, and “a great evening!” TRUMP TOWN HALL ATTENDEE: It was awesome. I was dancing with him. I loved it. JACKSON: But the Harris campaign suggesting Mr. Trump appeared lost, confused and frozen as Democrats ramp up a push to cast doubt on Mr. Trump's mental fitness. TIM WALZ: He's confused. He's a nearly 80-year-old man. JACKSON: They're pointing to stumbles like this one. TRUMP: If everybody gets out and votes on January 5th… or before. JACKSON: The election, on November 5th. And highlighting his digressions. TRUMP: Have you heard of Hannibal Lecter? JACKSON: And run-ons, like one described by a former Republican congressman as “a heaping pile of hot mess.” TRUMP: …was asking her all these…They don't take like I do. Anybody wants to go. Go, what the hell difference does it make? They have- and how dishonest was ABC? JACKSON The former president has touted his rhetorical roundabouts… TRUMP: You know, I do the weave. JACKSON: …as intentional. TRUMP: I'll talk about like nine different things and they all come back brilliantly together, but the fake news, you know what they say? He rambled. JACKSON: And today, trying to turn the focus instead to Vice President Harris. TRUMP: I don't think she could pass a cognitive test. JACKSON:The Trump campaign says,“the former president has more energy and more stamina than anyone in politics and is the smartest leader this country has ever seen,” and they've highlighted some of Vice President Harris' unscripted moments including this Monday they called low energy word salad. KAMALA HARRIS: There is so much about what is at stake that is, frankly, the need for us to fight for the things that we hold dear, that we have always had to fight for, but must continue to fight for. JACKSON: But polls show far more others think she has the necessary and physical health to serve with a 20-point lead on the question, a stark reversal from Mr. Trump's nearly 30-point margin over President Biden.  And former President Trump remains under pressure from Democrats to release his medical records after saying he would  Lester? HOLT: All right, Hallie. Thanks. This report is Exhibit A in why Americans don’t trust the media. For the better part of the last five years, the Regime Media did everything in their power to conceal President Joe Biden’s glaringly obvious cognitive and physical decline. They looked the other way as Biden shook hands with air and glitched out behind podiums. They protected Biden until they could do so no more after the first presidential debate. Now, in furtherance of his successor’s election campaign, they brazenly misrepresent events and attempt to gaslight the public. Vice President Harris is not an innocent bystander to any of this, either. Harris was the first person to come out and defend Biden’s faculties after the debate.  In fact, NBC earlier noted that former President Trump called attention to Harris’s own word salads: (Jackson) only said Trump has “defended his verbal gymnastics...as rhetorical flourishes.” Missing? Any mention by Jackson of the many word salads Harris has tossed. Conveniently, our friends at the Free Beacon have documented 26 separate garbled messes in her vice presidency (as of this post). With audible laughs heard on the Today set, (Savannah) Guthrie conceded “the Trump campaign also likes to play clips of Kamala Harris saying she’s not making sense, it’s word salad” but quickly gave weight to Harris’s “concerted effort” to attack Trump’s “age and cognition.” A professional media would ask what Harris knew, and when did she know about Biden’s fading faculties. Alas, we don't have that kind of media.  If it weren’t for Regime Media, we’d have none at all.  

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Harris' Approach: Only Blacks Get Government Help