To some in our modern society, the holiday celebrated on the third Sunday in June may seem archaic. Father’s Day may even invite calls to downplay or mock the role fathers play in our culture.

But the holiday provides important lessons in honor, respect, sacrifice, and long-term responsibility — lessons our 21st-century world badly needs to recover.

Father’s Day gives us an opportunity not only to recognize the imperfections of our earthly fathers, but also to honor and bless them in whatever small ways we can.

Consider the parable of the prodigal son, as Jesus recounts it in Luke’s Gospel. The younger son asks his father for his share of the inheritance, effectively seeking to end his relationship with the man who gave him life. Upon receiving his portion, he journeys to a foreign land and promptly squanders it in debauchery.

Our world provides far more opportunities for temptation than existed in the time of Christ, and many of them now sit in the palms of our hands. Social media, online gambling, pornography, and endless distraction are instantly available with a few clicks. Little wonder Western society seems more individualized and more alienated than ever.

Fathers, when they embrace their proper role, can stand against those prevailing currents. With God’s help, fathers can model upright living for their children and give them an example to follow.

As the head of a business founded by my parents half a century ago, I cannot thank my father enough for the lessons he gave my brothers and me. The Christmas I turned 13, he gave me a pocket-sized Bible. His note inside included these words: “The solutions to any problem are in this great book. Try to read a chapter each day of your life, and you will be happy.”

My father did not merely surrender his own life to Christ’s will. In his own way, he taught me to do the same — to pursue a personal relationship with God and try to align my life with God’s word. The way my father loved my mother and lived his faith helped shape me into the man, husband, father, and business leader I am today.

A culture that devalues fathers threatens to leave future generations without the broader perspective and discipline they need to flourish — inside the family home and in daily life with neighbors, friends, and co-workers.

In his letter to the early church in Ephesus, the apostle Paul reminds children to “honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land.” By their nature, honor, respect, and obedience require sacrifice, traits our popular culture rarely celebrates.

RELATED: Want to leave a legacy for your kids? Focus on living like this.

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But I would not have done as well in my roles as a husband, father, and business leader without the discipline and values my father helped instill in me. Those life lessons extended far beyond the four walls of our family’s home and business.

Father’s Day gives us an opportunity not only to recognize the imperfections of our earthly fathers, but also to honor and bless them in whatever small ways we can. And for those of us who are fathers and grandfathers, it offers a chance to pass on the values our fathers — earthly and heavenly — have given us.

That may be the greatest inheritance we leave our children.

​Father’s day, Fatherhood, Family, Honor, Faith, Christianity, Opinion & analysis 

BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey is celebrating a new chapter with the announcement that baby No. 4 is on the way — but alongside the exciting news, she has a message for Christian women who believe they need to live up to certain “myths” in order to fulfill their roles as women.

“One of the biggest myths in Christian womanhood,” she says is the “idea that one, biblical womanhood and so-called traditional womanhood or being a so-called tradwife are completely synonymous.”

The idea of a tradwife has been perpetuated endlessly on social media, where women portray themselves in long floral dresses and baking sourdough loaves.

“We’ve kind of conflated the trad-aesthetic — which is a social media trend for some people, I’m not saying it’s not genuine for many people — with being a biblical woman. And it’s not always the same thing,” Stuckey says.

Another myth of Christian womanhood is that your life does not begin as a woman until you get married and have children.

“My argument is not that those things cannot bring a level of fulfillment because they absolutely do. They’re good and wonderful blessings. The biggest earthly blessings I have in this life are my family, my husband, and my children,” she says.

“However, they are not the pinnacle of your fulfillment and satisfaction. Christ is, which means you can have that right now if you are a Christian, no matter what stage of life you’re in,” she says, pointing out that you can faithfully serve God from anywhere.

Another myth Stuckey sees infiltrating modern Christian women is what she calls “therapy culture,” which is essentially self-help language, self-affirmation messaging, inner-child therapy concepts, and therapeutic frameworks.

“Ultimately, I think all of these psychological ideas elevate the God of self rather than leading us to Christ and encouraging us towards self-denial,” she says.

While this modern therapy messaging encourages looking inward for happiness, Christianity says to look to Christ.

“Of course, that is true,” Stuckey says.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Allie beth stuckey, Children, Christianity, Family, Husband, Marriage, Relatable, The bible, Tradwife, Relatable with allie beth stuckey 

In September 2025, Toyota officially opened Woven City at the foot of Mount Fuji: a development of streets and residents, robots and cameras, inventors and ordinary people arranged on land formerly occupied by a car factory. The company calls it a “living laboratory.” What Toyota has built is not quite a city and not quite an experiment. The city is a model, staged in domestic architecture, demonstrating that the most important question in technology right now is not whether artificial intelligence can write a poem or pass an examination, but whether it can carry a parcel, assist a frail body, and navigate a loading dock without killing anyone.

This arrangement is an example of what Japan has begun calling “physical AI.” The term has spread quickly. Two years ago, it appeared mainly in specialist papers. Today it is found in strategy documents, industrial policy, parliamentary testimony, and semiconductor planning. The government has formally pledged, through its Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management, to formulate a strategy for robots equipped with AI and advanced semiconductors. The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry illustrates the concept with a warehouse robot that maps its environment, chooses routes dynamically, avoids obstacles, and coordinates with other machines in real time. The Japan Science and Technology Agency’s research arm organizes the field around three directions: stronger task execution, better adaptability to diverse environments, and coexistence with humans.

Making machines more like bodies may be more consequential than making them more like minds.

There is a history to the choice of the word “coexistence.” Japan has been making robots for decades, and it has been making stories about robots for even longer. The mechanical dolls of the Edo period, the karakuri ningyo, were clockwork figures that concealed their mechanisms inside appealing social surfaces: a doll that served tea, another that fired an arrow. Japan has long cultivated a public culture in which mechanism and social performance are not antagonists. That inheritance runs through Astro Boy and Waseda University’s decades of humanoid research, through every official document that describes robots as a component of public welfare. When METI describes image sensors as the human eye of physical AI, it is drawing on a vocabulary assembled over centuries. Japan keeps remaking a robotics culture, and today’s discussion of physical AI is the latest round of creation.

The urgency, however, is contemporary and specific. Japan is aging at a rapid rate. Caregivers are scarce. Logistics workers are scarce. Regions outside the major cities are emptying. METI launched its RING Project in 2025 to eliminate regional labor shortages through robot deployment. A 2024 revision of government guidelines on long-term care technologies was framed around reducing caregiver burden and supporting elderly self-reliance. The delivery robots now permitted on public roads, under a 2023 legal change, are presented as a practical response to a known shortage.

The technical challenges are not simple. Robot foundation models cannot train on the open internet the way large language models do. Bodies encounter a world that resists transcription. NEDO, the government’s technology-development agency, notes that what is overwhelmingly lacking is data collected in the physical field. The AIROA consortium, established in December 2024, exists largely to build the data infrastructure for generative AI foundation models to work in robots at scale.

RELATED: Shadowy companies are selling access to your smart TV — and its data

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The stack that makes physical AI possible includes multimodal perception, state estimation, planning, control, feedback, safety, edge computing, and digital twins. Kajima and Preferred Networks’ navigation system for construction sites combines cameras, lidar, and inertial measurement to build maps of an environment that never stays the same from one shift to the next. Mujin’s architecture employs a digital twin running in continuous feedback with a physical warehouse, updating state, re-optimizing motion, and coordinating execution in something close to real time. Getting intelligence into bodies and those bodies into the world is a data-engineering problem of considerable difficulty.

Japan’s Moonshot Goal 3 sets a target of AI robots that allow more than 90% of people to feel comfortable with them by 2030. The target acknowledges that physical AI is, among other things, a social legitimacy problem. Waseda’s AIREC project, developing a care robot for household, welfare, and medical settings, is pointed at the hardest version of this problem: safe bodily interaction with vulnerable humans. The researchers describe tactile sensing, dressing assistance, attention mechanisms, and predictive learning for physical contact. Journalists who have visited the lab tend to describe the same scene: a robot trying to put a shirt on an elderly person without hurting him. That image is instructive; physical AI is most sensitive in close human interaction.

The rhetoric of Japan’s push rests on a claim of human augmentation rather than replacement, technology that reduces burden while preserving self-reliance. Nevertheless, the demographic crisis that makes robots attractive also makes the economics of replacement compelling. One-third of Japanese companies were already using or actively considering AI-powered robots by 2026, while researchers and trade journalists noted the intensifying competition from the United States and China in more autonomous, AI-enabled systems. Japan can use the language of augmentation for now. Whether it can continue to do so through demographic free fall and international competition is a different question.

The Japan Science and Technology Agency has noted that physical AI may address limits inherent in purely software-based intelligence. The assumption is that intelligence without a body is a specific and limited kind of intelligence. Once a system has to carry something, or navigate a construction site, or change an elderly person’s clothing, the problem of being in the world arises. Perception becomes active. Error has weight. Meaning is inseparable from situation. The Japanese know this. What is new is that the country is now wagering its industrial future on the proposition that making machines more like bodies may be more consequential than making them more like minds. At the foot of Mount Fuji, a living laboratory works to settle the bet.

​Tech 

Just because something sounds Christian doesn’t mean it necessarily is. Sometimes demonic forces masquerade as light and lurk unnoticed among believers.

On this episode of “Strange Encounters,” Rick Burgess warns Christians against a “spiritual counterfeit” that has already taken root in many modern churches: the Passion Translation.

The Passion Translation is a modern English paraphrase of the Bible created by former missionary Brian Simmons starting around 2012, with completion plans set for 2029. It aims to convey the “fiery passion” and emotional heart of God through dynamic, readable, heart-level language.

Rick argues that it is a dangerous pitfall.

“The more we researched this labor of love by Brian Simmons, the more my spirit was grieved and the more concern I began to have,” he says. “Here on ‘Strange Encounters,’ we absolutely believe with zero hesitation that the Passion Translation of the Bible is not of God. You need to get it out of your house if it’s in your house.”

His first qualm is that the Passion Translation calls itself a translation when it’s really a paraphrase. “It’s already being deceitful,” he warns.

His second issue is that “Brian Simmons has an egalitarian view of men and women in ministry and marriage,” meaning “he believes that men and women are interchangeable in the church and in marriage.”

Further, the Passion Translation, he argues, uses “hyper-charismatic” language that has “never been in Scripture.”

It was also not written by teams of scholars who can “check each other.” “Brian seems to be the sole translator here. He tries to act like there may be other people, but he never tells us who they are,” Rick says.

He accuses Simmons of being “deceitful” by using a later Syriac Bible version from 500 years after the Greek New Testament and falsely calling it the “original Aramaic,” making the Passion Translation “pure speculation” rather than a real translation.

But Rick’s number one issue with the Passion Translation is that it was supposedly inspired by a divine encounter. In 2009, Simmons claims that Jesus appeared to him and personally commissioned him to create the Passion Translation, promising to help him unlock secrets of the Hebrew language and give him supernatural downloads of revelation for the project, which supposedly included visits from an angel.

“We’re to believe that all those who translated the Bible into English correctly — none of them got it right? And some guy named Brian Simmons was deemed so valuable by God that Jesus went to visit him, touched his forehead, enlarged his brain so he could translate the Bible correctly for us?” Rick asks skeptically.

“He might have been visited by a supernatural being, but it wasn’t Jesus and it wasn’t an angel, and I have zero problem saying that and saying that boldly,” he declares.

What Simmons has done, Rick argues, is create a faulty version of Scripture that is appealing because it “makes people feel good.” But this is “incredibly dangerous” because “the Scriptures itself tells us never trust your feelings,” he says.

“This is why it’s so dangerous.”

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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​Strange encounters, Rick burgess, Spiritual warfare, Christianity 

Citing “alarming violence,” a New Jersey community has decided to cancel its Fourth of July celebration ahead of America’s 250th anniversary, KYW-TV reported.

The township of Mount Holly and its police department released a joint announcement earlier this week about the cancellation, the station said.

‘We understand the disappointment this decision may cause.’

“We regret to announce the cancellation of the 2026 Mount Holly Township Independence Day Celebration,” the announcement said, according to KYW. “This decision was not made lightly — over the past few months, we have been meticulously monitoring local and regional events throughout New Jersey, assessing which events have been canceled due to alarming violence, as well as those communities that have continued their events with significantly increased security measures and protocol put into place.”

Mount Holly is about 45 minutes east of Philadelphia.

KYW said the announcement indicated the township couldn’t create an “actionable solution in such a short period of time to alleviate our security concerns without incurring additional, significant costs to the township and our residents.”

“We understand the disappointment this decision may cause and extend our heartfelt thanks and gratitude to all who have supported this event over the years,” the announcement also said, according to the station.

While Mount Holly didn’t get into specifics regarding the “alarming violence” the announcement cites, KYW reported that numerous carnivals recently have been canceled. In May, the Roebling Carnival in Florence Township was canceled after the first night when crowds became unruly, the station said, adding that a police officer was injured amid numerous fights. Florence is about 20 minutes north of Mount Holly.

WTXF-TV noted that several recent area events have been “impacted by violence, including large fights involving teenagers.”

RELATED: Fights erupt, deputies hurt after more than 1,000 teens descend upon Florida amusement park in planned ‘takeover’

Indeed, a rash of “teen takeovers” have plagued various communities around the country over the last several months:

With one culprit claiming that “we was bored!” hundreds of teens rampaged a Bronx mall and even fought with police in a planned “takeover” on Presidents’ Day in February.A violent Florida teen takeover in May led to the arrests of 22 suspects as young as 12, officials said, adding that it resulted in “significant disruptions, fights, and other issues in the park.”A teen brawl in a Washington, D.C., Chipotle restaurant last month saw combatants using chairs as weapons — and occurred just one day after U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced she would prosecute parents of youths taking part in teen takeovers.In contrast, Chicago aldermen this week rejected a proposed ordinance that would have held parents of teen takeover participants financially accountable for their children’s actions.

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​America’s 250th anniversary, Canceled, Fourth of july celebration, Mount holly, New jersey, Security concerns, Violence, Teen takeovers, Crime 

In his new book “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” Vice President JD Vance unveils the story of his spiritual journey — straying from the Christianity of his youth, periods of atheism, and his eventual conversion to Catholicism in 2019.

In a recent interview with BlazeTV’s Allie Beth Stuckey, Vance opened up about his turbulent faith journey, the pain of losing his anchor in Christianity, and what ultimately led him back to God through Catholicism.

Raised primarily by his Baptist “Mamaw,” Vance’s childhood was defined by Scripture readings, televised Billy Graham revivals, and occasional church visits — an upbringing he describes as devout but “unchurched.”

When Mamaw passed away when Vance was 20 years old, the faith she had raised him with fizzled quickly.

“I was an atheist two years later … Christianity to me was Mamaw, and when that was gone … I just didn’t really have any anchor to Christianity anymore,” he says.

But there was another factor in his falling away from faith: the evangelical church’s heavy emphasis on culture wars, especially the Terri Schiavo case, which he felt distanced from in light of his impending Iraq deployment, loss of his grandmother, and his mother’s severe drug addiction.

“Why are we talking so much about [Terri Schiavo] when I saw so much that was going wrong in my own community that it felt like the church wasn’t speaking to,” he recounts, emphasizing the importance of Christians caring about both public policy and the individual issues impacting communities.

“There was this sense of almost betrayal that there was a total chaotic situation in my own life, and the faith didn’t speak to it in the same way. And again, was that totally fair? No, but it’s certainly part of the story of why I lost my faith,” he confesses.

As a born-and-raised Southern Baptist, Allie has a different perspective on evangelicalism.

“Something I really appreciate about evangelicals is not only, you know, doctrinal fidelity and being consistent on that, but the willingness to take that and take those doctrines into the culture and to say, ‘Look, if God is the creator and the authority of all things, then that has to dictate what we think about life … [and] all of these other other issues as well,” she explains, “and when Christians don’t do that, especially if evangelicals didn’t do that, we’d be in a really bad spot.”

Despite these strengths, Vance ultimately found his way back to faith through a different tradition.

After achieving much worldly success, he found himself feeling empty and uninspired despite being surrounded by fellow high achievers at Yale Law School.

“These Christians in my life, they’re actually the ones who seem to have it figured out. Like they’re much happier, they’re much healthier, they’re much more well-adjusted,” Vance recalls.

“So that got me on the pathway of like, well, if they’re right about virtue and they’re right about character and they’re right about the things that actually matter, maybe they’re right about Jesus. Maybe this actually comes from some inner truth that radiates outward.”

This intellectual and personal reckoning eventually led Vance to Catholicism in 2019.

To hear more about his spiritual journey — including what ultimately drew him to Catholicism rather than the evangelical faith of his youth — watch the full interview above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Relatable, Allie beth stuckey, Jd vance, Catholicism 

Father’s Day can be complicated.

For some, it is a day of gratitude. For others, it is a day of grief, anger, regret, or longing. Some remember fathers they dearly loved. Others struggle to remember a father at all.

The best fathers point toward a greater Voice. The worst fathers cannot eclipse it.

Thinking about Father’s Day recently, a friend sighed and said, “I guess I’ll have to figure out a way to honor my father.”

The hesitation said more than the sentence.

Years ago, a caller to my radio program spoke of caring for his aging father, an abusive alcoholic who at that point required assistance. The caller was 52 years old, yet he confessed that whenever he was around his father, he felt 11 again.

The years had passed. The wounds had not.

Another friend put it more bluntly: “My father was a pedophile.”

No explanation followed. No attempt softened it. Just the stark reality of a life marked by a father’s betrayal.

I once heard a well-known minister recount standing at his father’s grave at 16, feeling as though he were losing his mind. Looking at the headstone, he cried through his tears, “You can’t leave. You didn’t tell me what you think of me.”

He was not grieving the loss of money, advice, or even protection. He was grieving the loss of a verdict.

For all our confusion about identity, one truth remains stubborn: People know when something essential is missing. Despite endless debates about who we are, millions spend their lives searching for the same thing — a father.

Men sire children every day. Being a father is something else.

A father forms. He blesses. He corrects. He protects. He teaches. He commissions. With a word, he can instill courage or fear. He can strengthen a child for the journey ahead or leave wounds that linger for decades.

A father’s voice can penetrate places explanations never reach.

Forty-three years ago, my wife awoke from a three-week coma following a catastrophic automobile accident. Broken, disoriented, and in unimaginable pain, she did not know where she was. She did not understand what had happened. She could not comprehend what lay ahead.

The first words she heard were spoken by her father.

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Krishan Kariyawasam/NurPhoto/Getty Images

“Daddy’s here, Gracie. Daddy’s here.”

She did not know where “here” was. But she knew her father’s voice.

Years later, one of our sons fell on a playground and split his chin open. I rushed him to his pediatrician, where he needed stitches. As I held him while the doctor sewed him up, he looked at me with fear, confusion, and the unspoken question every hurting child eventually asks: Why are you letting this happen?

He knew nothing about infection, wound care, or why stitches mattered. No explanation I offered could bridge the gap between what he experienced and what I understood. So I kept repeating the only thing I knew to say.

“It’s OK. Daddy’s here.”

The explanation would have meant nothing to him. Presence meant everything.

There are fathers who leave too soon. Fathers who abandon. Fathers who wound. Fathers who spend a lifetime trying to repair the damage they have done. There are fathers whose voices still comfort decades later and fathers whose words still wound.

Many spend years trying to wipe their father’s face off God.

But Scripture does not ask us to measure God by our fathers. It asks us to measure our fathers by God.

Even when his only begotten Son cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” the Father had not surrendered his authority, abandoned his purpose, or ceased loving his Son. The darkness was real. The suffering was real. But the cross was not chaos. It was the predetermined plan of God for the redemption of his people.

Life eventually leads all of us into terrifying places we do not understand: hospital rooms, funeral homes, gravesides, cancer centers, long nights, and hard diagnoses. In those moments, we want explanations. Yet faith does not require complete understanding.

The older I get, the more I understand how my son felt lying on that examination table. He was too small to grasp what was happening to him. He could not understand why I allowed it. He only knew I was there.

Living in Montana, I am reminded daily of how small we all are. The mountains were here long before any of us arrived. The rivers carved their courses before our names were spoken. The wind that sweeps across this valley pays little attention to our plans, fears, or accomplishments.

We are smaller than we imagine.

RELATED: Want to leave a legacy for your kids? Focus on living like this.

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Yet older than the mountains, older than the rivers, older than the wind itself, is a Voice that has never fallen silent.

When Gracie’s father sat beside her hospital bed and whispered, “Daddy’s here,” he gave a frightened young woman waking to a world she could not understand a gift beyond explanation.

But even that voice was only an echo.

Every good father is.

The best fathers point toward a greater Voice. The worst fathers cannot eclipse it.

When explanations fail, that Voice still calls to his children.

Perhaps that is why those words still move me after all these years.

“Daddy’s here, Gracie. Daddy’s here.”

In a frightened world, they remind me of a greater promise.

​Father’s day, Family, Trauma, Fatherhood, Scripture, Parents, Opinion & analysis 

Despite being raised in a Christian home, Haley Furst spent several of her young adult years identifying as a man. She even built a significant social media following around advocacy for transgenderism, abortion, and other left-wing issues.

But then Jesus found her in that darkness, pulled her out, and has been healing her ever since.

On this episode of “Relatable,” Haley shares her incredible testimony with Allie Beth Stuckey.

Although as a child Haley never questioned her gender, social media indoctrination sowed confusion in her young teenage years. In secret, she slowly began to question God’s design for marriage and gender.

Then at 16, she was sexually assaulted.

“It resulted in me becoming really uncomfortable with myself, with my body. And so, you know, I started to dress in a way that I felt protected me. … I cut my hair short. I started to wear what would be called men’s clothing,” she tells Allie.

Even though Haley was not planning to identify as a man despite her masculine look, her teachers began expressing support for her new appearance and inquired about what name and pronouns she wanted to use.

“These YouTubers, these creators that I would watch … they all had something in their past that was hard, and [transgenderism] seemed to work for them, and people are telling me, ‘Hey, this is what seems to be happening in your life.’ … I started to believe it for myself,” she recounts.

She then started identifying as nonbinary and using they/them pronouns.

“I was really, really welcomed in when I started to do that. I began to have more friends. I was a part of an LGBTQ club in my high school, and for the first time in my life, I started to feel like I had an identity that I could cling to that would open doors,” she tells Allie.

At 17, she told her parents she was transitioning into a man, leading to a tumultuous final year at home. When she turned 18, Haley moved in with a boyfriend and immediately began cross-sex hormone therapy. Roughly two years later, she had a hysterectomy.

All this time, Haley documented and built a large online community around her “transition.”

“I would make a lot of videos about my experience coming out and coming out to a Christian family, and a lot of people would identify with that, and we would have discussions … to encourage each other, to empower each other, and kind of fight against that ‘oppressive’ Christian belief,” she explains.

With her Christian foundation withering, Haley began to support and speak on more progressive issues, including abortion, Black Lives Matter, and even “anarchal communism.”

But when a bad breakup flipped her entire life upside down, Haley found herself in a deep depression working as a Starbucks barista. Even though she was surrounded by people in the LGBTQ+ community who were hostile to Christianity, she had a couple of co-workers who had recently become Christians.

“One evening when we were working together, [a coworker] started to read the Bible to me. … What he had actually read to me was Romans 8, and he had gotten to Romans 8:38, and something in my heart clicked where I had remembered that scripture from my youth,” Haley recounts.

“I became very sure that [Jesus] was what I was needing. … But I had told myself that there was no way I could ever be a Christian because I’m a leftist, because I’m transgender. … And so I can’t give my life to Jesus because Christians are conservative, straight people, and I am not that, and I will never be that.”

This tension created a deep anger in Haley, but after months of wrestling, she couldn’t shake her desire to follow Jesus.

“I prayed the prayer. I said, you know, like, ‘Christ, if you would still have me, I want you come make your home in my heart.’ And right in that moment, the presence of God fell so heavy in that room that I physically could not stand up. I kept trying to get up, and I would just fall on my knees, and I just began to weep,” she says.

“The feeling of Christ entering my heart and the experience of his love in that moment, just a touch of his love, made me mourn all the years I had spent apart from that, and I knew in that moment that I can never spend one day of my life apart from that ever again.”

But despite this newfound deep faith, Haley refused to de-transition. In fact, she went “further into [her] transition” in an effort to become so indistinguishable from a biological male that people in her new church couldn’t see her true identity.

This secretive life, however, consumed her. The anxiety became too much to bear, and one day Haley confessed to her pastor, who pledged to walk with her as she pursued Jesus. Other congregants did the same.

“I never had one person ever confront me about [being transgender],” Haley says.

But the Lord continued to press on her heart.

“I remember one evening thinking to myself, I don’t think I’m going to heaven as a man. … I don’t think I’m going to look at Jesus, and I don’t think he’s going to see a man. I think he’s going to see the girl that he made. … I think he’s going to welcome me by my name — not a name that I chose, but a name that was lovingly given to me by my parents,” she recalls.

That’s when Haley stopped taking testosterone, grew out her hair, and embraced femininity again.

“I thought, you know, I’ll never get married. I’ll never work in ministry. I’ll never get back what the enemy stole, and the way that the Lord has not only restored and redeemed, but given back a double portion in my life, I just stand in awe of what he’s done,” she beams.

To hear Haley’s full story and where she’s at today, watch the episode above.

Want more from Allie Beth Stuckey?

To enjoy more of Allie’s upbeat and in-depth coverage of culture, news, and theology from a Christian, conservative perspective, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Relatable, Allie beth stuckey, De-transitioner, Transgenderism 

This Father’s Day, we celebrate the dads and father figures who have shaped our lives. But for me, the holiday has always carried a different meaning.

I didn’t have a close relationship with my father growing up. That distance was painful, but it taught me something I might not have learned otherwise: We rarely see what men quietly give until it is gone or not there.

There is an alternative perspective.

Father’s Day reminds us of something our culture all too often overlooks: Fathers matter, as do the countless ways men contribute to the well-being of those around them.

Earlier this year, the New York Times highlighted research confirming that father-child interaction has a profound impact on a child’s health and long-term well-being. Yet nearly one in four children in the United States live without a father in the home, and those children are four times more likely to grow up in poverty.

So despite this evidence, why is it that most messaging, whether in entertainment, education, or the workplace, ignores what men contribute and, even more dangerously, diminishes the risk that comes when a father’s positive influence is lacking?

In our era, men are often portrayed negatively: oblivious, selfish, incompetent; it’s a never-ending list. Popular culture frequently highlights their failures and belittles their successes. On a daily basis they are depicted as naive and ignorant at best, or misogynistic and demeaning at worst.

A 2023 Politico/Ipsos poll found that 36% of Americans believe entertainment and culture make it hard to feel proud to be a traditional man. That perception is not imagined but grounded in reality. Entertainment characterizes young men as narcissistic, self-consumed, and arrogant, and when these attributes are broadly assigned, they subconsciously become the norm we envision.

What happens when we adopt this mindset? The quiet efforts men make automatically become devalued. Their help is unwanted. Their character is irrelevant. Whatever they offer or become, it will never be enough — and the cost of this attitude is real: Roughly 6.8 million prime-age men are currently neither working nor seeking employment. This is a quiet withdrawal of men from a society that continues to tell them their contributions as a man no longer matter.

I want to be clear: This does not dismiss the very real and deep pain some women have experienced from men. Those situations are valid, they matter, and they should always be addressed. But as with any group, we must be careful not to let the worst examples define the whole. Most men do not fit the mold their critics assume.

There is an alternative perspective, one that reveals men motivated not by dominance but by devotion. Men who, when given the opportunity, would willingly and quietly carry responsibilities and make sacrifices in hopes of a better life for those they love. These qualities are far more common than they are given credit for.

As a young professional, a researcher, and a woman, I have been struck by how much you can discover when you simply observe. I am amazed by how many men have silently endured, pursued growth, and served others without recognition or expecting anything in return, not even a “thank you.” Their victories are private, and their sacrifices remain largely unseen.

I have known men who have wrestled with their shortcomings and chose the harder path of becoming responsible citizens, faithful leaders, and caring mentors. Men who valued their roles as friends, husbands, and fathers. Men who, even when they failed, were humble enough to admit their mistakes and strong enough to make them right.

There is often a reluctance to acknowledge this side of men, as though doing so somehow threatens women’s progress. However, the idea that either men or women must be diminished for the other to rise is not empowerment. It is an ideologically driven rivalry that prevents us from appreciating the unique strengths both bring. Only a mindset of complementarity, not competition, carries the power to set a higher mark for society as a whole.

On this Father’s Day, we celebrate the fathers and father figures who have encouraged us, sacrificed for us, and helped shape the people we have become. But may this also be a day to honor and recognize what men give daily. For the single dads striving to be present for their children; for the young men who hope to be fathers someday; for the lonely men who long for companionship; for the older men who continue to model character and integrity; and for the widowers who miss their wives every day yet choose resilience — your quiet sacrifices matter, your silent gifts are seen, and they are not forgotten.

Sometimes what men provide cannot be measured on a résumé or captured in a headline. Often the greatest gifts men give are the least celebrated: their willingness to carry burdens without complaint, the duty they feel to shoulder responsibilities without recognition, and their desire to provide a steady presence that quietly strengthens the lives of those around them. They go unnoticed by nearly everyone, except the people whose lives they quietly hold together.

​Lifestyle