We welcome letters to the editor. Letters appear two issues after the article to which they are responding. Letters under three hundred words are preferred, and they may be edited for length and clarity.
Letters responding to articles published in this issue should be received by February 2 for publication in the April issue. Send them to submissions@firstthings.com.
Sneer-Free History
As a forty-eight-year-old who graduated from high school in 1995, Trevin Wax’s “We Were Jesus Freaks” (December 2025) was pure nostalgia. Reading the article, I was struck with the impression that Wax and I grew up in the exact same evangelical subculture. What I appreciated most was Wax’s evident affection and gratitude for his 1990s evangelical upbringing.
Further, it was refreshing to read an article about the culture and era that wasn’t full of sneers—we live in a world of C. S. Lewis’s chronological snobbery. We struggle to look at the past with gratitude. Criticism is the currency of our discussions of the past. I was waiting for the cynical, sneering ball to drop in the article, and it never did. As a recent convert to the Roman Catholic Church, I am deeply concerned about my own attitude toward my evangelical upbringing. I want my little Baptist church—where I was first exposed to CCM, mission trips in vans, and heavy doses of purity talk—to know how deeply grateful I am. It was that little church that showed me Christ.
One note, I am not abandoning my evangelical upbringing. In fact, it was my evangelical upbringing that brought me to a fuller understanding of Jesus. As Wax put it: “that world shaped a resilient faith among young believers in a secular age, and many of us have benefited greatly.” Indeed.
Joe Gerber
meridian, idaho
Rationalizing Suicide
Thank you for publishing J. Mark Mutz’s probing inquiry (“The Death of Daniel Kahneman,” December 2025) of one man’s choice for assisted suicide in the face of the “pain and indignities of old age.” His analysis exposed the unreasonableness of such a decision, which is sometimes sought on the grounds that we want to leave for our posterity an image of us as happy and hale, “free from the deterioration associated with aging.”
I would like to offer an experience that may help encourage us to withstand those pains and indignities. My grandmother was born in the early 1920s and taught me history from her many first-hand impressions. But she also taught me, from her deathbed in the mid-2010s, a philosophical truth that haunted me and shaped my attitude as a young man. On my last visit, soon before her death, she could no longer speak but could look knowingly at whoever was with her. She could not respond to what we told her, but she clearly received what we had to say and had a silent appreciation. In her quiet suffering, she bore witness to the fact that the quality of one’s interior life is one’s only sure property. I doubt I am unique in having such an experience, but my point is that the image we leave behind and the things we teach others are often beyond our conscious control. This fact is both humbling and relieving. Those in the last moments of life are still in God’s hands and can unconsciously teach us many valuable lessons. I share this experience because I think that in the face of normalizing euthanasia, more Americans will have to be vocally grateful about the great lessons those with little control over their image have taught them.
Michael DeFelice
stamford, connecticut
J. Mark Mutz wonders how Daniel Kahneman, who committed suicide, could have reasonably stated that his life was complete: “This is a perplexing statement. Can a life be judged complete before it is over? . . . This judgment is especially perplexing given that [Kahneman] purported to believe that his life was meaningless. . . . If Kahneman’s life was meaningless, how could it be complete? Completion assumes a whole: a story with a beginning, middle, and end . . . Yet Kahneman believed his life was somehow both meaningless and complete.”
Let’s assume that meaningfulness is multidimensional insofar as it is concerned with the following three questions: What, if anything, makes life worth living? For what, if any, purpose am I created? How, if at all, does my life ultimately make sense?
Given these three questions, Kahneman might have reasoned as follows before committing suicide: Within the finite temporal framework of this life, my life is complete and meaningful because it has contained sufficient happiness from my life’s work, marriage, and friends that made it worth living. Nevertheless, because there is no God and unending afterlife, my life is incomplete and meaningless because it lacks the purposeful and sense-making created framework that is required for the fulfillment of my desire for everlasting happiness. In short, Kahneman could have reasoned that it was the impossibility of continuing (and perfecting) the happiness that made his life in this world complete that ultimately made his life incomplete and meaningless.
Stewart Goetz
st. peter’s college
oxford, united kingdom
J. Mark Mutz’s sympathetic analysis of Daniel Kahneman’s suicide misses a crucial issue: Kahneman’s decision to kill himself, motivated by a desire to avoid the suffering that comes with old age, sets a terrible example for those who admired him and rely on his moral thinking to determine how to respond to challenges in their own lives. Human suffering is not restricted to the elderly but is part of the human condition itself. By offing himself, Kahneman set a nihilistic and hopeless example that others will be tempted to follow in the face of their own suffering, regardless of its source.
Kahneman’s suicide was a public act regardless of his intentions, which is why Mutz’s corrective—secreted away in the last paragraph—was necessary. Mutz expressed the hope that his readers “will have the courage to withstand the pain and indignities of aging.” Life itself brings with it pains and indignities of all sorts that we must endure with courage for the sake of others who come after us.
Dexter Van Zile
boston, massachusetts
Living Evangelistically
I was thrilled to read Peco and Ruth Gaskovski’s review of my book, The Tech Exit (“Become A Low-Tech Family,” December 2025). I’m encouraged every time I hear of a family who has lived out a Tech Exit lifestyle themselves, testifying to the fact that it is realistic and possible.
They are right to point out that if anything is unrealistic, it is the conventions of contemporary parenting. It’s true that I don’t get into addressing these deeper cultural shifts in parenting, which certainly impact how parents approach technology for their kids. And while I understand that a low-tech lifestyle will resonate more with parents who are more traditional or authoritative, as the Gaskovskis suggest, I didn’t want to let “gentle parents” off the hook either. All parents, regardless of parenting style, have non-negotiables, and the book aims to persuade every kind of parent that cutting out interactive screens and smartphones should be added to their list of non-negotiables.
As a Christian myself, I deeply respect and agree with how the Gaskovskis are looking to ground The Tech Exit in a worldview that gives primacy to the domains I am recommending, namely, real relationships and pursuits in the real world. And I wholeheartedly agree that the primary imperatives to love God and love others are what should motivate Christians to reject technological innovations that interfere with these imperatives. When I speak to religious audiences, I always conclude by saying, the “Tech Exit is not the end goal in itself. It is a means to pursuing true human flourishing, the end which is ultimately found in a relationship with God and with others. We were made to know and love God and to love others made in his image. This is our highest calling. Reclaiming true human flourishing is the far greater task ahead of us, of which the Tech Exit is just one critical step on this path to true joy and fulfillment.”
Why, then, did I not explicitly write that statement in the book? Because while the Tech Exit is an opportunity for Christian people to exhibit a different way of life evangelistically, we must also remember that people of other faiths are no less suspicious of this new technology. In one sense, the technology is against any faith in the transcendent. I wanted to speak to people of all faiths and even no faith, while at the same time hoping that Christians would be able to fill in for themselves how The Tech Exit helps them live out the primary imperatives of their faith. The Gaskovskis’ review models perfectly just what I was hoping Christians would conclude and apply from my book.
Clare Morell
washington, d.c.
México Superficial
As I read through Todd Hartch’s recount of the conflict between Mexico’s liberal and Catholic elements (“México Profundo,” December 2025), I was continually struck by the notion that the past is a foreign country. This was perhaps exacerbated by having spent almost my whole life in the Yucatán peninsula—perhaps the least Mexican part of Mexico—so in a way, even my country in the present feels foreign.
Back to Hartch. What triggered this notion of foreignness was the stark contrast in intensity between the history retold in the article and Mexico’s current condition. While the narrative that “good liberals beat bad Church” may be found in public textbooks to this day, and with more emphasized as of late, one can barely discern any true animosity from politicians or the secular public toward the Church. (A sorry sort of “white pill” for those who fear the liberal takeover of public schools is how bad those liberals are at teaching anything and having it stick.) At the same time, I have a hard time finding any kind of religious fervor in the Catholic population that compares to the past. There are always the old ladies that help handle church matters and organize prayers, and youth organizations seem to be booming, but you don’t have to scratch too deep to get past the religious veneer that covers the social dynamics really fueling the interest of the people involved.
A stark example of this lack of intensity came during the COVID shutdowns. Churches were lumped together with “non-essential” business as venues that had to shut down for months or have drastically reduced capacity. The government didn’t prepare for a religious blowback, there was no reason to expect one. I remember being sinfully relieved that I wouldn’t have to get up early on Sundays for a while, but at the same time I felt a profound sense of discouragement from watching the Church willingly comply with the mandates of liberal science and liberal public policy. It seems to me that, paradoxically, the history of the persecution of the Church by the Mexican state may have been a source of health and even growth for the former. However misguided the motivation, if I had known of a local church refusing to close its doors in direct confrontation with the state, I know I would have been there every Sunday.
Álvaro Molina
merida, mexico
Lost in Ideology
R. R. Reno, in his excellent essay “Rome and Immigration” (December 2025), points out that the Catholic Church, and specifically Pope Leo XIV—taking his lead from Pope Francis and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)—is lost in progressive ideology. The Catholic Church regularly fails to condemn the lawbreaking of illegal border crossings.
The Church’s milquetoast response to lawbreaking originated with Pope Francis’s statement, which was reiterated by Pope Leo, that “our response to the challenges posed by contemporary migration can be summed up in four verbs: welcome, protect, promote and integrate.” In other words, illegal aliens who broke the law, many of whom committed and were convicted of crimes in the countries from which they came, must be received and allowed to take the jobs of legal citizens and given the respect that is due most appropriately to the country’s current citizens.
Recently, the USCCB repeated similarly ideological statements that support illegal aliens over hardworking and law-abiding citizens. The USCCB tempered the Vatican’s ideology with a more informed approach, indicating that border security and human dignity are not mutually exclusive and can coexist. But why must the focus be on the country that is the target of migration of illegal aliens? Taking the USCCB’s approach allows addressing the symptoms, signs, and results of a problem without even mentioning the problem itself! Pope Leo and the USCCB need to get their heads out of the ideological ether and address the root causes of the migrant and illegal alien problem, rather than writing prescriptions on how to treat illegal aliens. The source of mass migration is from where the migrants come and not the country where they ultimately go.
John A. Budny
redding, california
Fear and Trembling
I appreciated R. R. Reno’s “While We’re At It” comments regarding fearing God (December 2025). One of the consequences of the modern age has been the tragic loss of this sacred fear. The word has been either lost in interpretation or neglected altogether, which is ironic given all the phobias that beleaguer us. We seem to be drowning in so many worldly fears that neither money, power, nor science can eternally remove. We can’t bring ourselves to fear God, the only power in all of creation that can save us with his mercy.
Fear of the Lord should shock us with trembling, not with a passive awe as it is so often interpreted. It has to wake us up and align our very being with our creator. Nor is it a relic of the Old Testament; as Mary exclaimed, “His mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation” (Luke 1:50).
Fear of the Lord is a gift of the Holy Spirit, like the other six: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, and piety. These gifts help us put God first in our lives, so we can love him with all our heart, soul and mind. What stronger gravitational force to this total love is there than the fear of the Lord?
Andrew Dymek
daniel island, south carolina
