I took a wrong turn.

I was headed to the gym after work, something I do once or twice a week when I can squeeze it in. It was Friday; my mind was burdened with work stress, party logistics for my daughter’s birthday over the weekend, and just a general heaviness from recent events in our country.

I suddenly realized I had exited the freeway to head home, instead of driving down a few more exits to get to the gym. In the past five years of commuting to and from my work, I had never made this mistake before.

I was slightly annoyed when I saw that it was going to add five minutes to my trip to go a different way, but it was faster than turning around, and I was determined to make it to my 3 pm class, so I pressed on.

As I was driving down Phoenix surface streets, a bright reflection caught my eye. I turned my head and noticed a lawn scattered with flowers, American flags, and other paraphernalia glittering in the afternoon sun. My mind quickly took it in… American flags, flowers, a memorial on the lawn in front of a mortuary, and a police car quietly sitting on the side of the building. Could it be I had just unknowingly stumbled upon the place they brought Charlie Kirk’s slain body to prepare him for burial?

A quick Google search when I pulled into the gym parking lot confirmed my hypothesis. Then I had a thought, “Maybe I should visit on my way home.” I have essays swirling in my head about the assassination, and I could take a few photos to share with my writing.

I drove by the mortuary on my way home and slowed. No one was there, except for the police SUV, which made me a bit uneasy. Was I allowed to get out and take photos? I decided it was probably fine, and I should be more courageous. I circled the block and came back to the building. By this time, a professional photographer had arrived and was taking pictures with a large camera. I parked and walked up to the sobering memorial, snapping photos on my iPhone. Within a couple of minutes, another group of men walked up, this time with a news camera. One of them approached me. He had a European accent and kind eyes. He asked me if I was local. Did I know Charlie personally? No, I replied, but we had some mutual friends, and I had heard him speak a couple of times.

Then he asked me if I would be willing to do an interview. He shared that he was from a Swiss news station.

My mind began whirling. Should I agree to be interviewed? Would my employer mind if my first and last names were shared? Was this correspondent going to drag me into some awful political conversation and make me explain what Charley meant by “black pilots” in front of the building where his body lay? Also, did I really want to be seen on TV while wearing gross, sweaty workout clothes?

To stall while I made up my mind, I asked him a few questions. Did he and his team fly all the way from Switzerland for the memorial? What was the sentiment toward Charlie in his native country?

His tone was sober and reverent. He told me that most of Europe is actually quite shaken by Charlie’s death. He hinted that he might be a believer. And as he spoke, I knew what I had to do. The Holy Spirit was prompting. I would respond to his questions, and instead of getting into politics, I would try to make every answer about Jesus.

I don’t remember every word of the interview, but I tried to capture his three main questions and paraphrase my answers after it happened. I share them here:

Why are people drawn to Charlie Kirk?

Because he was bold in his faith in every circumstance and brought the hope of Jesus into every conversation, whether he was visiting a college, speaking from a stage, or on a walk with a friend. Many Christians are scared to share the gospel, but Charlie never was.

Do I think Charlie was a martyr?

Absolutely. He died because he boldly professed what he believed. If we look at the martyrs throughout the history of Christendom, they were the people who were willing to speak up for what the Bible says is true, even if it meant opposing the king, other rulers, or the political spirit of the age.

What will Charlie’s legacy be?

Charlie’s legacy will be one of courage. He showed people of all ages, but particularly young people, how to be brave. He showed them that speaking about Jesus is worth any cost, even though, sadly, it cost him his life. Because of him, people are sharing the gospel, returning to church, and reading their Bibles, and I believe the next generation will be raised with boldness and conviction because of the example Charlie set for us.

I did my best to make every answer about Charlie’s faithfulness to Jesus. I walked away feeling joy.

It wasn’t until I got home and was recounting the event with my husband that I realized the way God ordained all of it.

If I hadn’t made my silly wrong turn, I never would have driven by the mortuary.

If it hadn’t been exactly 2:30 pm, and I hadn’t been driving on that side of the road, the reflections from the memorial never would have caught my eye. Much to my chagrin, I am not always the most observant person. I would have passed the same building on the way home, but since it was much later in the afternoon and the memorial was in the shadows by that point, I doubt I would have noticed it from the opposite side of the road.

Only because I circled the block once did I run into the newsmen. If I had just gone straight to the parking lot, I likely would have snapped my own photos quickly and missed them.

I was reminded of this truth...

What God ordains, God does.

So many times in life, God works out the seemingly insignificant details for his significant purposes. He is sovereign over wrong turns, malfunctioning alarm clocks, forgotten lunches, where you sit at the office brunch, or the unexpected hallway conversation.

Nothing is a coincidence under his control. Nothing is permitted beyond his providence. Nothing succeeds apart from his sovereignty.

What God ordains, God does.

May we embrace the journey with joy.

In a world of viral social media posts and sensational headlines, we often hear stories when someone is killed. These stories gain the most traction if there is an unequal power dynamic between the suspect and the victim, such as a police officer killing a citizen or a parent killing a child, or some other unique social relationship such as a teen killing another teen or someone of one skin color killing someone of another skin color.

In light of the recent death of Austin Metcalf, a white teen boy who was killed by a black teen boy at a track meet, I began to ponder the way our media handles these stories and how we have been conditioned to respond. I think we all know how we would be asked to respond if a white boy had killed a black boy at a track meet. Before the police could even start the investigation, a hashtag would be circulating, social media tributes would abound, and protests (and perhaps riots) would be breaking out in major cities.

But when a white boy dies, things stay relatively quiet. I saw the story pop up on a few conservative feeds. Now it’s been 12 days since the event, and the only major newspaper that seems to be covering the story as it unfolds is the New York Post. (In fact, a search for Austin Metcalf’s name currently reveals zero results on the New York Times website.) I asked ChatGPT to give me ten headlines from “major” US news sources about the story, and some of the sources it gave me were The Times of India and Wide Open Country, a country music news webpage. I wouldn’t say the story is going viral…

Ten years ago, I believed the race-bait headlines. I had read Just Mercy and heard Beth Moore Twitter-preach to me about injustice. It must be true that black men were being targeted in the streets due to centuries of discrimination in our country.

But then the Holy Spirit opened my eyes. I began to notice that when Christians would harp on social justice, their messages never included the gospel. The perfect work of Jesus Christ didn’t seem to be enough to atone for “implicit bias.” I began to ignore the headlines and look at real data about crime and race… and the numbers are not what the cable news companies and social justice activists would have you believe.

But we have little power to decide which killings are sensationalized in the news and which are ignored. Rather, Christians should develop a biblical response any time someone is killed by another human, whether the killing was justified or not. As I’ve pondered this topic for the past few years, I’ve come up with three Bible verses that guide my head and my heart when someone is killed.

God does not delight in death.

Ezekiel 18:32 says: “For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord GOD; so turn, and live.”

Anytime someone is killed, even if it is a just death as a result of war, execution, or self-defense, we should not delight in it. We don’t think of death in a light-hearted way, and we don’t jump to exploit it for personal or political gain. We also don’t dismiss it or ignore it callously. When an image-bearer of God dies, it is worthy of lament, even if it’s just a brief moment of somberness as you read a news article. This doesn’t mean we’ll be able to keep up with every killing in America, or that we’ll have the attention or capacity to follow every news story or attend every protest. It just means we don’t gloat over someone’s death or ignore it as if the person’s life didn’t matter.

Partiality is a sin.

Proverbs 23:20 says: “Unequal weights are an abomination to the Lord, and false scales are not good.”

When we treat the killing of a black person as more sad or more unjust than the killing of a white person, especially when we don’t know the facts of the incident, we are responding with partiality. We have been conditioned by our media to lament black death (but only when a black person is killed by a white person, never mind the black on black violence that takes place all over our country daily), while we ignore or excuse the death of white people at the hands of black people. Part of this is because the media amplifies stories such as the killing of George Floyd, while it obscures stories such as the Austin Metcalf murder. But this also happens because our sinful hearts long for the approval of man. If we can join in the cries of the masses and get a virtual pat on the back for using viral hashtags… #justiceforahmaud, #justiceforbreonna #blackouttuesday… we will gladly participate in this collective partiality. The Bible is clear in its condemnation of these practices. Heed the words of James: "But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors,” or the law in Leviticus: “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.” If we establish our measure of justice based on skin color, affluence, poverty, or gender, we are in sin, regardless of the crimes being committed by anyone else.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor (even on social media).

Exodus 20:16 states: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

This is the ninth of the Ten Commandments. Many people summarize this command as “Don’t lie,” but it means more than that. We shall not pass on false (or unproven) narratives about our neighbors, even when stories are circulating on social media. When someone kills someone else, we rarely know the facts right away, much less the motive. So if you jumped on the bandwagon to insinuate that Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd as an act of white supremacy before you had any details about the incident and knew nothing about what prompted the confrontation, then you were in sin to perpetuate speculation and accusations about your neighbors. Most people have still never read the facts about the George Floyd incident, despite the black squares that linger on their Instagram profiles from the year 2020.

This doesn’t mean that some crimes aren’t racially motivated. Or that police officers always behave ethically. Or that the courts get every conviction right. But as Christians, we must do our part not to advance falsehoods and not to jump to conclusions. We are not to bear false witness; it’s so important to God that he included it in the Ten Commandments.

So what do we do when a killing goes viral? Or when it doesn’t?

We should pray for the family and friends who have lost a loved one. We should pray for justice if it turns out to be a wrongful death. We should pray for due process and impartiality in our courts. We should speak the facts as they are revealed, especially if others are perpetuating lies.

We should not scoff at death. We should not weigh with dishonest scales. We should not peddle gossip and rumors.

We rejoice in life. We desire blind justice. We seek the truth because we follow Jesus, the author of all truth.

Over the past few months, many people have asked me what I think (or what they should think) about the Department of Education possibly shutting down.

Most people don’t know that I currently oversee a federal grant from the Department of Education. If the department shuts down, it will tangibly affect my job and even, perhaps, my salary, and yet I have not lost a single wink of sleep at night because I know that shutting down the Department of Education would be a very good thing for our country, even if I am personally affected in the short term. (Our country was founded by men and women who were willing to endure personal risk and hardship for the greater good of the country… I try to live up to their example.)

I have already read several excellent commentaries by conservative writers about how and why the Department of Education should cease to exist, but if you are new to the conversation or want my distinct view, I will offer a few more arguments to consider.

1. The Department of Education is relatively new. As with many political issues, it’s often the millennial and Gen X women who harp the loudest about conservative policies or any policy that is even loosely related to Donald Trump. If you only read liberal social media on the topic, you would think that ending the Department of Education would instantly result in racially segregated schools, starving children, and the elimination of all services for special needs students. Remember, the Department of Education was created in 1980. For many parents reading this, the department has only been around for your lifetime. It didn’t exist before 1980, and people were educated before that time, some would argue, better than they are now. If the Department of Education ceases to exist after 2025, people will continue to be educated. We can survive without the Department of Education, just as our nation did for 200 years.

2. Local is better. If you are a true conservative, one of your principal beliefs should be that all government should be as small, limited, and local as possible. We want to see federal power return to the states, state power return to the city or county, and so on. We also think that if the government doesn’t need to be involved, it shouldn’t be. There is no reason that Washington DC - a liberal, bureaucratic machine - needs to be meddling in the education of my children (or your children) 2000 miles away. If government is local, it’s easier for citizens to be involved and have a voice. I can attend a city council meeting or a school board meeting easily. I cannot conveniently show up to the Department of Education to state the needs of my family or my local community.

3. The functions of the Department of Education will not go away. While there is undoubtedly waste and bureaucratic bloat in the Department of Education that we need to eliminate, many federal education laws cannot be revoked except by an act of Congress. Civil rights laws (such as Title IX), disabilities laws (such as 504, ADA, and IDEA), and Title I funding for low-income schools are not suddenly going to disappear. They are federal laws and will move to different federal agencies and/or be handed back to individual states to carry out if the Department of Education closes. The IDEA Act, which ensures customized services for children with disabilities, became law in 1965, long before the Department of Education was created. The free and reduced lunch program in the US goes back to the National School Lunch Act of 1946. We don’t need a giant federal agency to carry out these laws that have been around for decades longer than the Department of Education itself.

4. Spending has not improved outcomes. One of the prevailing arguments against the Department of Education is that we now spend $268 billion per year on a department that has not statistically improved education at all in its 45-year existence. Research shows that math and reading scores have not improved in the US since 1980. The cost of college has soared (and college curricula have been dumbed down.) The average Department of Education employee makes $112,000 per year, while the average teacher salary across the nation is $70,000. The bottom line is that the US spends more on education than any other country on earth, but our outcomes are declining. Someday in the future, I will write a tell-all about the bloat, overspending, and mismanagement I have seen in my brief tenure working adjacent to the Department of Education, but the moral of the story is that we spend a lot of federal money on education and have not received anything in return. Note: The is also a correlating factor to the poor educational outcomes in our country that most people don’t think about, or if they do, they are uncomfortable talking about it. Rampant mass immigration has also hurt our country's educational performance. This is not necessarily the fault of the Department of Education, though their policies have exacerbated it because we have allowed and even lauded immigration without assimilation in our schools. When we opened up immigration to Mexico, the Middle East, and Asia in the 1960s and let people flood into our country without requiring that they truly assimilate and embrace our language and our American values, we damaged our national educational performance and diminished school for our own children. Depending on where you live in the US, you probably know an overwhelmed, well-meaning, English-speaking teacher who is completely bewildered trying to educate a class where 90% of her students speak Spanish, Chinese, or Hindi as their first language, and then (surprise!) math and reading scores are low. Also, 47% of immigrant adults in the US have “limited English proficiency,” which means it’s nearly impossible for teachers to actively engage immigrant parents in their child’s education. This is not to degrade other ethnicities or languages, but simply to point out how mass immigration has made it difficult to maintain high-quality education in our schools, and it’s harmed native-born children in the process.

5. The Department of Education has increased, not decreased, the cost of college. One of the Department’s initial goals was to increase college access, but, ironically, the price of college increased most drastically in the 1980s right after the agency was created. ​In the decade of the 80s​, tuition at public universities doubled, increasing by 213%, and private universities increased by 137% in the same time frame. Because when you inject subsidies (taxpayer money) into a system, costs will skyrocket. Back in the 60s and 70s, people could afford to pay for college out-of-pocket for a few hundred dollars per year, but now that idea is laughable. Here is one example: The cost to attend Arizona State University in the fall of 2025 will be $12,000 for in-state tuition. The oldest records I could find state that ASU tuition was $1,528 per year in 1992. Adjusted for inflation from 1992 until 2025, tuition should be $3,326 today, but it’s not. Again, it’s now $12,000! Research shows that today’s college students (and their parents), more than ever before, expect college to be free. And with so much state and federal funding available, it often is. But “free” isn’t free, of course. The Pell Grants, work-study, federal and state funding, and fake loans that are "forgiven" fall on the shoulders of the taxpayers. If ASU were to cost a reasonable $3,326 in 2025, many families would be able to save and pay cash for college, or students could feasibly work their way through college like the good ol’ days. But thanks, in part, to the Department of Education, everyone has been told they “must” go to college, and no one can afford it. Now American citizens are taxed to death so that everyone can get their free ride to college.

At the end of the day, despite the whining of your liberal friends, there are two main points to remember:

First, President Trump cannot end the Department of Education without a vote from Congress. The Department of Education is a cabinet-level federal agency established by law under the Department of Education Organization Act of 1979. Its existence and core functions are protected by federal statutes, meaning any attempt to dismantle it would require Congressional approval. Trump can minimize the department, eliminate some of its programs, or transfer some of its powers to the state level, but he cannot get rid of it completely unless Congress votes for it. Sadly, he will probably not be able to entirely eradicate the agency in the next four years.

Second, this entire debate about the Department of Education begs an entirely different question that few people are talking about…

Is it the job of the federal government to educate children?

Christians and conservatives should answer with a resounding NO.

Some random federal agent in Washington DC does not and should not have any authority over my children and what I choose to teach them. Education falls within the realm of the family, and it's up to parents to educate their children either at home or by vetting and hiring teachers within the local community (more akin to the one-room schoolhouse model).

We live in a big government, postmodern era, and we have come to accept state-mandated, compulsory, secular education as a way of life. Keep in mind that mandatory public schooling has only been around for the past 100 years. Before that, education stemmed from the home under the authority of the parents.

Both the Bible and the American Founders agree with me on this.

Parents are commanded by God to raise up and train their children in the ways of the Lord (Prov. 22:6, Deut. 6;7). The role of the government is to oversee justice and punish wrongdoers (Romans 13:4). It has zero authority to educate children.

The American Founders concurred, which is why the Constitution does not once mention education. The federal government was never expected or required to be involved in education. The idea that we need a Department of Education is a figment of the postmodern, humanist, secular imagination, and the sooner we rip education out of Washington DC’s grasp, the better we will all be.

For more information about Christian colleges in particular, consider purchasing The College Guide.

Last year, we started a “happy hour” tradition with friends in our neighborhood. We do this one Sunday evening each month, and we take turns hosting. Everyone brings a dish to share and we hang out from about 4-6 pm while kids play in the yard. It’s a “more the merrier” event, and we use it as an opportunity to get to know new people around the neighborhood.

After Christmas, one of my friends sent out a text because we hadn’t yet lined up our spring dates and houses. We usually plan out the next 3-4 months at a time and people volunteer to host. One of my friends said she could do February and another claimed March. No one volunteered for January, so I said we would be happy to take the first one.

The host for the month sends out a message to the group a week in advance reminding them when and where happy hour will be. Then people respond with what food they’ll bring. This is our loose organizational method and it always turns out great.

I share this with you so that you can copy our ​happy hour model​ (it’s truly been a great way to get to know more neighbors), but also to tell you how it went wrong this past month and what it taught me…

Micah and I love to host people at our house and, particularly, in our yard. When we moved back to Arizona (from California) four years ago, we were blessed to buy a property with a huge backyard that’s perfect for hosting all sorts of social gatherings, from weddings to birthdays to soccer team parties to Young Life Club for our local high school. We see our yard as a gift that we want to share with others.

We live with a “happy to host” mentality, always ready to offer our house to overnight guests or our yard for groups to gather. So when nobody signed up to host January’s happy hour, which was mere days away, I chimed in as I always do, “Happy to take January. I’ll make baked potato soup. Bring the fixings and dessert.”

When Friday of that weekend rolled around, I mentioned to my husband, “Oh, by the way, we are hosting happy hour this Sunday.”

Usually, this kind of announcement is not a big deal, but he looked at me wide-eyed. “We can’t do that. The sprinkler system is all torn up. We can’t have little kids running all over our yard.”

Before Christmas, Micah trenched up a huge section of our backyard to fix an irrigation leak, but he had to pause the project while we traveled for two weeks over the holidays. I had forgotten that the backyard was in disarray when I offered to host happy hour.

Wanting to be the always-ready hostess, I stared back at him. He continued:

“Our sprinkler system is wide open. Kids could break it or they could fall in the trenches and get hurt. We really cannot have people over right now. You have to cancel.”

I hate canceling on people, but I knew he was right. You don't need to have the perfect house or every project completed to invite people over, but this was truly a huge liability and safety situation in our yard. Sometimes, we have 8-10 families join us at happy hour, and many of them have toddlers. There is no way to control the chaos.

Feeling horrible about the last-minute change of plans, I jumped on a group text with some of my girlfriends and we agreed to move our happy hour to the neighborhood park. We still had a good turnout. We didn’t do dinner, but I brought freshly baked chocolate chip cookies to make up for my flakiness. Happy hour will carry on as scheduled next month.

As our country swirls with talk of immigration and deportations, my hostessing flop reminded me of something important: It’s okay to pause your hospitality to get your own house in order.

I wanted to stick with our happy hour plan — I even considered if we could still host and use our front yard instead of the back. But Micah reminded me that our best efforts would not keep four-year-olds from running out to our trampoline, since they’ve always had free rein of our yard during other gatherings.

Letting people come over with huge trenches around our yard was dangerous to them (a tripping hazard) and a liability to us (someone getting injured or the potential of further damaging the system we were trying to repair).

Similarly, the U.S. needs to cancel the happy hour. No immigrants for a while. None at all. It’s not because we are unkind or inhospitable or “unwelcoming to the foreigner” (as many progressives say as they twist Scripture). It’s because we have a safety and liability problem for all people involved. Just like we don’t want toddlers breaking their legs on our irrigation pipes, we don’t migrant ​children being trafficked​ or women being ​raped at our border​. Just like we don’t want our new irrigation parts to get broken before they get reburied in the ground, we don’t want our ​citizens to be murdered​ or our economy to be ​exploited by non-citizens​.

This is not the first time we’ve had to pause after a wave of mass immigration. From the 1920s until the 1980s, the U.S. slowed immigration after the surge of Europeans who came here at the turn of the 20th century. Our politicians saw that the mass of European immigrants was affecting the U.S. job market. Once we slowed European immigration, U.S. workers filled about 50% of blue-collar jobs and probably would have taken more if the U.S. had also closed immigration from Canada and Mexico. They didn’t expect so many workers to come across our northern and southern borders and continue the same problems caused by European migrants. That was short-sighted. If they had closed immigration entirely, many economic problems would have been stabilized long-term.

Am I anti-immigrant? Well, no. Just as I’m not anti-happy-hour.

We will gladly host happy hour again in the future when our irrigation system is repaired.

And I am sure the U.S. will welcome immigrants again (at a slower and controlled rate) after we have repaired the chaos and damage of the past few decades (and particularly the past four years).

When people complain about the problems with our immigration system — how long it takes to get a green card, why DACA students can’t gain citizenship — do they think importing more foreigners is going to help the process?

Why don’t we pause immigration and deal with our current situation? Deport all illegal aliens with violent criminal history first. Then deport illegal aliens more broadly. Give them a chance to voluntarily return to their native land and provide the plane to do so. Award citizenship to existing DACA students with zero criminal history who have completed a college degree or served in the military. Get rid of more illegal aliens. Move toward citizenship for people who have worked in the U.S. for 10+ years legally with a sponsor. Deport more illegal aliens. Make families decide whether they are going to separate or return to their native country together. Breaking the law often means tough consequences.

This will take years, truly. But as soon as we get honest about what we need to do and make the hard choice not to host a party right now, we can get to work and get the job done. Then we can consider if and how many immigrants we can allow, and we can selectively choose those who will make America a better place — people who value our founding principles and will gladly assimilate with our culture because it's a good one. So good, in fact, that millions want to be here.