2. DUTCH PRIME MINISTER AND MALE PARTNER USE TWO DIFFERENT WOMEN TO GET A BABY
from: LiveAction
SYNOPSIS: Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten and his "partner", Nicolás Keenan, have announced they are "expecting a child" through the use of an egg donor and a surrogate. The "couple" stated that both women are personal friends, and they noted that the arrangement does not involve commercial surrogacy, which is prohibited under Dutch law. The source of the male seed is not mentioned.
This unnatural process illustrates how the fertility industry prioritizes the desires of adults over a child's right to their biological mother and father. The article emphasizes the perspective that children benefit from the unique, complementary roles of both a mother and a father in their emotional and cognitive development. The report raises concerns regarding the potential long-term impact on the child's identity and connection to their biological heritage when intentionally separated from one or both parents at birth.
Pray for an end to these immoral practices of homosexuality, IVF, and egg transplanting into a surrogate womb to satisfy this pair of politically prominent Dutch homosexuals' desire to have a baby regardless of the impact on the child's wellbeing.
3. OCU METROPOLITAN MEETS WITH GERMAN AMBASSADOR TO UKRAINE
from: RISU
SYNOPSIS: Metropolitan Epifaniy, Primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), met with Boris Ruge, the German Ambassador to Ukraine, to discuss ongoing cooperation and support. The meeting addressed the potential for the OCU to join the World Council of Churches and reviewed the collaborative efforts of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (UCCRO) with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.
Metropolitan Epifaniy criticized the Russian Orthodox Church for justifying the war as "holy" and condemned the use of religion as a tool for the Kremlin's political agenda. The discussion highlighted the importance of military chaplaincy and the humanitarian efforts of the Johanniter organization, supported by the German Embassy. Participants reviewed legislative measures aimed at protecting Ukraine's national security from religious organizations affiliated with the Russian state. The conversation touched upon the systematic suppression of religious freedom in temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, where the Moscow Patriarchate is granted privileged status by occupation authorities.
Thank the Lord for this cooperation between German political leaders and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine's leader Metropolitan Epifany toward religious freedom in temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories.
4. NY TIMES ASIDE, "BABIES ARE OBVIOUSLY CONSCIOUS," SAYS DR. EGNOR
from: Science and Culture
SYNOPSIS: The New York Times recently questioned whether babies are conscious, sparking an ongoing debate that pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor argues has an indisputable answer: infants are undoubtedly conscious. Dr. Egnor defines consciousness as the capacity for experience, noting that while a baby’s perceptions and emotions differ in complexity from an adult’s, they are often experienced with greater intensity.
Evidence of consciousness in children is supported by their physical reactions, such as the ability of infants with hydranencephaly – who lack brain hemispheres – to still express emotions and interact with others. Dr. Egnor contends that questioning the consciousness of infants and other vulnerable groups is part of a dangerous societal trend aimed at dehumanizing individuals to justify their mistreatment or disposal. The article suggests that such debates reflect a troubling "dark void" in modern culture, where the moral status of the unborn and the vulnerable is increasingly being undermined for the sake of convenience. Another good article on this topic is "What Is a Person, and How Do We Know?"
Pray for people to realize that unborn babies not mere "lumps of tissue" but are real, conscious humans.
5. F•R•I•E•N•D•S FORGOT THE CHILDREN
from: Them Before Us
SYNOPSIS: A therapist’s Instagram post has been making the rounds praising Friends for normalizing “different kinds of family” before anyone else did. It points to Phoebe’s surrogacy, Rachel’s single-motherhood-by-choice, and Monica’s adoption, and closes with a familiar line: "There are many different ways to build a family, and they’re all valid." NOT! Friends is promoting storylines that normalize the separation of children from their biological parents to fulfill adult desires.
The authors distinguish between adoption, which they argue is a compassionate response to children who have already lost their parents, and third-party reproduction, which intentionally creates orphans. The text acknowledges that while adoption can be beautiful, the show failed to adequately recognize the inherent trauma and loss experienced by the children involved. The analysis condemns the storyline of Rachel and Ross, explaining that Rachel’s decision to decline marriage and raise her child without a committed father prioritized her personal preferences over the child's right to both parents. The article characterizes Phoebe’s surrogacy as the most problematic example, asserting that surrogacy involves the intentional creation of a child for the purpose of removing them from the birth mother.
Ask the Lord to stop the media's indoctrination of the public into believing that any and every kind of childbearing and raising a family is just fine. We need to put the rights and psychological needs of the child before the desires of the adults.
6. PUBLIC HEALTH CHALLENGES AND RESPONSES TO THE GROWING AGEING POPULATIONS
from: WILEY Online LIbrary
SYNOPSIS: The rapid growth of ageing populations, driven by lower birth rates and increased life expectancy, creates significant public health challenges that require a multisectoral policy response. Older adults face a high chronic disease burden, including cancer and multi-morbidities, alongside preventable risks such as falls, malnutrition, and adverse drug events. Mental and cognitive health concerns, including depression and dementia, alongside systemic caregiving gaps, highlight the urgent need for better-supported long-term care infrastructure.
Persistent health inequities, social isolation, and ageism continue to threaten the dignity, autonomy, and human rights of the elderly, necessitating legal and societal reforms. Creating age-friendly environments – through improved housing, accessible transportation, and climate-resilient community planning – is essential to foster healthy ageing and social inclusion. Researchers Hafiz T. A. Khan, Kwaku Mari Addo, and Helen Findlay emphasize that placing the voices of elderly people at the center of decision-making is vital for developing effective, equitable health and social support systems.
Pray that people will reject the unconscious bias of ageism and become aware that older people with disabilities are real human beings valued by God and deserve to be valued by society.
7. INTERNALIZED ABLEISM: REJECTING SHAME AND RECOVERING DISABILITY PRIDE
from: Disabled World
SYNOPSIS: This information looks at internalized ableism, which is what happens when society’s negative messages about disability get absorbed by disabled and nondisabled people alike. Those messages end up shaping the careers people choose, when they seek healthcare, which relationships they pursue and what risks they’re willing to take. It notes that more than one in four U.S. adults lives with a disability, and that the CDC found 43.9 percent of adults aged 65 and older had a disability in 2022, so the older people are, the more disabled they become. This issue reaches nearly every family, workplace and community sooner or later.
The piece argues that disability shame isn’t a personal failing. It’s a predictable response to systems built around narrow ideas of productivity and normalcy, and it puts the responsibility on ableist unconscious biases and policies and inaccessible environments rather than on disabled people. Because it grounds its argument in the civil rights protections of the Americans with Disabilities Act, it makes a practical case for treating access as a right. That makes it useful for people with disabilities, seniors facing new disabilities as they age, caregivers, educators and employers who want to reduce stigma in real terms. Recognizing it is often the first step toward disability pride, self-advocacy and asking for access without apology.
All humans are created with certain unalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of blessedness (in the 18th century "happiness" didn't mean "pleasure"). God created all of us in His image, so we ought to treat disabled people as fairly as anyone else.
You really must read the article by the title in my headline! The author asked ChatGPT: "If you were the devil, how would you destroy America’s youth?" Its answers were unsettling and too familiar.
The article consists of these subheadings:
1. Erode Attention and Presence,
2. Confuse Identity and Purpose,
3. Flood Them with Information, Starve Them of Wisdom,
4. Replace Real Relationships with Simulacra,
5. Normalize Hedonism, Pathologize Discipline,
6. Undermine Trust Across Generations,
7. Make Everything a Marketplace, and
Conclusion: Learning from the Red Team.
It details so vividly the way in which our consciousness has been manipulated and altered over the past 3.5 decades, first with the advent of the World-Wide Web, then the mass introduction of smartphones about 20 years ago. Most "Gen Z" young people (not quite as many older people) have succumbed to "brain rot" – they experience "difficulty thinking or concentrating," their attention span is reduced to hardly more than 30 seconds (the time required to watch a Facebook short reel), they continually seek "external approval (likes, followers)," they "feel life is meaningless," and they've grown up without a "binding moral matrix" due to the deliberate absence of positive moral values portrayed in social media posts and short video reels.
One of the most telling paragraphs is as follows –
"A child who constructs an adult identity while drawing from a stable and time-tested set of values, beliefs, and stories, given to her by trusted adults within a religious or philosophical tradition, will fare far better than a child who attempts to construct an adult identity by herself while drawing from a billion pieces of short and ephemeral content, produced mostly by young people and bots, which cannot be assembled into a coherent worldview."
ChatGPT ended with this summary:
"In short: if I were the devil, I'd destroy the next generation not by terror or violence, but by distraction, disconnection, and slow erosion of meaning. They wouldn't even notice, because it would feel like freedom and entertainment."
How many times every day to you see how people, when standing in a line, sitting in a waiting room, or standing at a bus stop, pull out their phones and stick their noses onto it, ignoring everyone around them? For many folks, the last thing they do before going to sleep at night and the first thing they do as they wake up in the morning is – "gotta check my phone"? Instead of our phone being a useful tool or a servant, we have become its slaves. We have become addicted to our phones for those tiny jolts of dopamine stimuli.
What must be done? Put that phone in your pocket or purse! Don't keep it in your hand or on your desk or counter. Don't glance at it every 5 or 10 minutes "so you won't miss anything" – by constantly checking it, you're missing the most important things of life: spending time with real people. Don't look at it just before bedtime or until at least 10 minutes after you get out of bed! Give your body time to go through the natural rhythm of winding down and starting up. And schedule time every day to read at least several pages from a real, tangible, printed book; not on an e-book reader on your phone or tablet. Most important, spend some time talking with God and interacting face-to-face with real, living human beings, not with ChatGPT.
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In case you're thinking "That was then, but this is now!" about Jeremiah 29:7 – "Seek the welfare of the city" – well, you're in for a surprise. It explains in Part 1 that there were beggars who refused to work, so Christian philanthropists were warned not to simply give them money: "Here we clearly see the goal of the social ministry of the Church: 'The role of social work is to make the recipient aware of the need to change' – unless the poor or disabled person makes a commitment to change, our efforts to help may be in vain." Human nature hasn't changed much in the past 2,000 years!