Watching the reports out of Old Dominion University following the terrorist attack last month, the details came in the way they always do. Confusion. Fear. Families waiting for answers that arrive agonizingly slow.

There are no clever observations for moments like this. Only grief, a sober anger at what has been done, and a quiet respect for those who move toward danger despite the risks.

In the hours that followed, law enforcement stood before the microphones and said something familiar about the terrorist.

Past behavior predicts future performance.

The gospel does not offer a refined version of our past. It replaces it.

It was not delivered with edge or indignation. It sounded more like a sigh, the kind that comes from seeing the same pattern unfold one too many times.

We all understand what that means.

As Americans stood in grief, that phrase was repeated as the events were recounted. Members of the media, pundits, and political officials picked it up as well, and it echoed for days. And it lingered. You know how some phrases land hard and stay with you?

Past behavior predicts future performance.

I couldn’t shake it. It followed me for several weeks. As Easter approached, that phrase pressed further.

While the pattern is clearly seen in terrorists and career criminals, the harder question is whether that diagnosis is limited to them. Or does that diagnosis reach further — into the human condition itself?

The apostle Paul describes the same struggle with unsettling honesty, doing what he does not want to do and returning to what he knows he should leave behind. The issue is not merely what we do, but what we are by nature.

That uncomfortable truth points to something we recognize much closer to home — not in acts of terror or even criminal behavior, but in patterns we cannot seem to break. We see that uncomfortable truth in the anger that resurfaces, the grudges we carry, the actions we excuse and quietly return to.

Our actions are different in degree, certainly. They are not the same in consequence — but not unrelated.

Scripture does not blur those distinctions, but it does press deeper than behavior. And that is where the discomfort settles in.

RELATED: Scripture or slogans — you have to choose

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Because if this is not just “out there,” then we are not merely observers of the pattern. It’s one thing to recognize the pattern in others. It’s another to consider whether it touches us as well. And that raises a question most of us would rather not sit with for long.

Are we simply watching something broken in the world, or are we looking at something that runs through us as well?

Because if it is the latter, then the problem is not occasional, but continual.

It is not just in headlines, it is in our hearts. And that is a harder place to stay.

Because if the future depends on us, then the trajectory is not uncertain. It is already set.

Our culture often insists that we are basically good people.

If so, then why would we need a savior? If not, then what are the implications?

The men who framed this country wrestled with that thought. They did not build a system on the assumption that people would consistently do what is right or that they are basically good. They built a government filled with oversight that restrains what is wrong, because they knew what resides in the human heart eventually shows up in government.

Which raises a harder question than any press conference can answer.

What breaks the pattern?

Because history suggests we do not. We adjust, we regulate, we respond, and all of that has its place. But none of it reaches far enough to change what drives the pattern in the first place.

And this is precisely where Easter speaks.

RELATED: Where Easter really comes from

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It’s not that people try harder or gradually become better versions of themselves. Left to ourselves, we cannot change. We must be changed.

The gospel does not offer a refined version of our past. It replaces it. Not my record, but His. Not a cleaned-up life, but a different standing altogether.

What Scripture calls sin is not managed at the cross. It is judged. And what we could not produce is given.

That is why the Resurrection matters.

Because death has always been the final confirmation that the pattern holds. It is where every life, left to itself, arrives. But if death itself is overturned, then the pattern it confirms is no longer absolute.

Something has interrupted it.

The apostle Paul captured it in a single phrase:

“And such were some of you” (1 Corinthians 6:11).

Were.

Left to ourselves, the pattern holds. It always has. But Easter declares that we are not left to ourselves.

Past behavior may predict future performance. It often does. But it is no longer the final authority.

Because the One who stepped into history, took our past upon Himself, and walked out of the grave now defines the future of all who belong to Him.

Not a second chance or a fresh start, but a new standing.

Not my record, but His. And that changes everything.

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On April 1, NASA launched the Orion spacecraft from Kennedy Space Center in the first crewed lunar journey in over 50 years.

While some celebrated the news as a historic feat, others condemned it as a waste of resources and an overstepping of natural limits.

“I had a lot of people push back and say, ‘Glenn, space is a waste of money, and it’s our Tower of Babel trying to make ourselves look so great,”’ Glenn Beck says.

But he disagrees. “I don’t look at it that way. I look at it from the view of an explorer, and I believe God wants us to explore.”

On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn speaks with Christian astrophysicist Hugh Ross about the ethics of space travel from a biblical perspective and the conspiracy theory that the first moon landing was fake.

Ross agrees with Glenn that space exploration does not overstep godly boundaries.

“He made us curious. … I think God gave us a curiosity for a reason. He really does want us to explore, but I think He also wants us to do it in the most efficient and effective way possible,” he says.

Glenn then pivots to the conspiracy theorists who hold that the 1969 moon landing — when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were live-broadcasted walking on the moon — was a hoax.

“A lot of people say we never even went to the moon the first time. … Did we go to the moon, and does it matter?” he asks Ross.

“I actually got to watch the moon landing live on television when I was much younger,” Ross says, “and what really thrilled me was watching Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong putting up a laser reflector.”

“There’s now three laser reflectors on the moon. Physicists beam laser beams off them every single day, and it’s because of those laser reflectors that the Apollo astronauts put on the moon that we’re able to test theories of gravity to a degree we’ve never been able to do before,” he adds.

But these laser reflectors aren’t the only proof.

“The vehicles left behind by the astronauts are still there, and they’re being photographed on a regular basis,” he explains.

Glenn then likens moon landing deniers to the people who contend there’s no evidence that the Great Flood documented in Genesis actually happened.

But Ross has spent years gathering scientific and biblical evidence to argue the contrary. His new book, “Noah’s Flood Revisited,” is a deep dive into his theory that the flood indeed happened — just not the way many have traditionally interpreted it.

To hear Ross explain his fascinating theory, watch the video above.

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The late Christopher Hitchens had no shortage of objections to Christianity. But he reserved special contempt for hell — a doctrine he believed reduced faith to fear and the divine to a “celestial dictatorship.” A God willing to resort to such primitive extortion was hardly worthy of man’s admiration, let alone worship.

Hitchens also certainly knew that bringing up eternal damnation was a good way to unsettle his Christian sparring partners, who often seemed vaguely embarrassed by the punitive side of the faith.

‘I am no longer shocked by the realization that I may be judged,’ he wrote later. ‘It has ever after been obvious to me.’

Peter Hitchens had no such compunctions. Although he was every bit the cosmopolitan sophisticate his older brother was, it was precisely fear — base, desperate, and visceral — that led him back to the Anglicanism of his British childhood.

He was well aware of how unfashionable a motivation this was. “No doubt I should be ashamed to confess that fear played a part in my return to religion,” he later wrote in his 2010 memoir “The Rage Against God.”

The gift of fear

But it was the truth, and he was too rigorously honest to pretend otherwise. Besides, moments in his career as a globe-trotting journalist — crashing a motorcycle, dodging gunfire, confronting an angry mob — had taught him that fear could be a gift, a way of focusing the mind on what was essential to survive. Who was to say that it couldn’t produce the same clarity in matters of the soul?

The crucial moment happened not in some far-off danger zone, but on a vacation in Burgundy with his then-girlfriend.

There, seeking a break from fine food and wine, he dutifully made a brief cultural excursion. Standing before the famous Beaune Altarpiece, 15th-century painter Rogier van der Weyden’s massive polyptych depicting the Last Judgment, Hitchens initially expected very little.

Instead, he found himself rooted to the spot, mouth agape in terror.

The figures in the painting did not seem distant or medieval. “They were my own generation,” he wrote. Naked and therefore stripped of period detail, they seemed unnervingly modern — recognizable, immediate. “They were me and the people I knew.”

One detail stayed with him: a figure recoiling in terror, “vomiting with shock and fear at the sound of the Last Trump.”

Good and evil

The encounter forced him to confront something he had spent years dismissing — that the Christian account of judgment, of good and evil, might not be a relic of the past but a description of reality.

Raised in the Church of England, Hitchens discovered atheism as a teenager. As the 1960s gave way to the ’70s, this adolescent rebellion gave way to an enthusiastic embrace of revolutionary politics with confidence. Reason and progress, Hitchens believed, could create a far more durable moral order than religion ever had. Like many of his generation, he assumed that once Christianity faded, nothing essential would be lost.

Experience had already chipped away at this faith in humanity. His reporting had taken him to societies where ideological systems had already tried to replace older moral frameworks. What he found — especially in the Soviet sphere—was not liberation but repression. Systems that promised a new moral order instead revealed how fragile moral claims become when they rest on nothing beyond power.

Then came that worn yet still vivid tableau, before which the 30-something Hitchens “trembled for the things of which my conscience was afraid.”

RELATED: Chuck Norris: Martial arts legend who submitted to a mother’s prayers

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Inevitable judgment

“I am no longer shocked by the realization that I may be judged,” he wrote later. “It has ever after been obvious to me.”

That recognition did not produce instant conversion. But it changed him. A year later, faced with a private moral decision, he found himself held back — by the same fear of doing wrong. “Without Rogier van der Weyden,” he wrote, “I might have done that thing.”

Hitchens did not return to Christianity for comfort. His account of faith is unsentimental, grounded in the belief that moral reality is not something we create and certainly not something we can escape.

The latter fact can chafe, leading to a rejection of God that is nowhere near as rational as its proponents would like to think. Instead, argues Hitchens, it amounts to a wishful thinking no less deranging than any “pie in the sky” sentimentality.

The most urgent question

That conviction has shaped his public life ever since.

Today, Hitchens defends Christianity not as a private belief or cultural artifact, but as the foundation for any coherent understanding of justice, responsibility, and human worth. Remove it, he argues, and what remains is not freedom but confusion — and, eventually, coercion.

The two brothers — one a leading “New Atheist” and author of “God Is Not Great”; the other the most outspoken defender of Britain’s disappearing Christian heritage — may not seem to to have had much in common.

But what they did share is a willingness to challenge a sacred assumption of modern life: that faith is optional, interchangeable, and purely subjective.

To both Peter and Christopher Hitchens, the question could not be more urgent. To ignore it leads to hell — either here on Earth on in eternity. Wherever we think we’re headed, the beginning of wisdom is to undertake the journey with our eyes open.

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For many people across the U.S., Easter Sunday means pastel-colored clothes, jelly beans, Cadbury eggs, or marshmallow Peeps. But Easter is far more than a cultural tradition or seasonal celebration. It is a declaration that should actually shape the way we live and has the power to transform lives: He is risen!

That truth, echoed by believers all around the world every Easter Sunday, is the foundation of a faith that calls us not to a life of comfort, but to a life of commitment.

To follow Christ is not only to receive the hope of eternal life, but to carry that hope into the world around us.

Too often, we treat Christianity as a system designed to make life easier, provide emotional reassurance, or help us get something from God. Scripture makes it clear, and believers throughout history have experienced, that true Christianity costs us something. It calls for surrender, obedience, and a willingness to follow Christ even when the path is difficult.

It’s natural to gravitate toward a version of Christianity that prioritizes comfort over sacrificial living. But in truth, persecution and hardships are not only possible but an expected outcome for a life of wholehearted devotion to following Christ.

Jesus Christ, our example, willingly left the comfort of heaven’s glory to enter a broken world and dwell among us. He lived among the very people He created, walking dusty roads, experiencing hunger and fatigue, facing rejection and temptation, enduring suffering — all ultimately to make the Father known.

Throughout His ministry, He healed the sick, fed the hungry, and performed miracles — yet He never wanted people to follow Him merely for those “simple” benefits.

During Jesus’ ministry on earth, massive crowds followed Him simply for the possibility of free bread. They wanted miracles and meals. But He wanted them to look past all of that and see that the true gift was Himself. “I am the bread of life,” He told them. “Believe in me!”

Only a few individuals would see past their own desires and take the step to say, “I believe, and I will follow you no matter what.” As a result, they would be forever changed and go on to change the world.

RELATED: Where Easter really comes from

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This is the truth of the Christian life: Following Christ requires us to embrace discomfort, sacrifice, and even suffering. The Bible does not hide this reality, but Easter reframes that suffering in light of something greater.

The cross is not the end of the story.

On that first Easter morning, everything changed. Jesus’ resurrection was not only a victory over death, but a promise that suffering does not have the final word. Sin, brokenness, and the grave were defeated. Because of this, even while withstanding hardship, believers can live with an unshakable hope rooted in the promise of eternity.

As we read in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen.”

And this hope is not meant to be kept to ourselves.

Years ago, a friend of mine who was overseas asked a shop owner, “Excuse me, sir, do you know Jesus Christ?” The man turned around and said, “We’ve got Pepsi, we’ve got Coke, but we don’t have Jesus Christ.” He had never heard the name of Jesus, so he thought Jesus Christ was a new soft drink.

As someone who grew up in different cultures, I’ve seen firsthand the harsh truth that many people around the world still haven’t heard the gospel.

Here in Texas where I live now — in the heart of the Bible Belt — it can seem like there is a church on every corner. On the other hand, I have gone more than 300 miles in some countries without passing a single church. As ambassadors for Christ, we still have so much work to do.

After all, even in places like Texas, we have neighbors, co-workers, and friends who may recognize the name of Jesus but do not really understand what His death and resurrection are all about.

For many, Easter remains a holiday without meaning, a tradition without truth.

This is where the calling of every believer becomes both a responsibility and a privilege.

RELATED: Easter changes everything: What the empty tomb means for you today

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To follow Christ is not only to receive the hope of eternal life, but to carry that hope into the world around us. It is to reflect His love and choose to live so that others are drawn to the reality of who He is.

That calling may be uncomfortable, to require us to step outside our routines, and even to risk rejection, but it is also one of the greatest privileges we are given: to bring light into a suffering world.

Easter is a time to remember Christ’s sacrifice and His victory over sin, Satan, and death. He poured out His life so that we might partake of Him and be made like Him. That process requires obedience, faithfulness, and self-denial.

But for all who trust Him and choose to live for Him as an act of worship, He will fill them with His presence. He will refresh, replenish, and empower us to bring His healing presence into the world around us.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearReligion and made available via RealClearWire.

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Scripture has many warnings about anger. Ephesians 4:31 tells us to put away “all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor.” Psalm 37:8 warns against anger and wrath. James 1:20 says “the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”

And yet, anger is an emotion we all experience. Even Jesus himself expressed it at times.

So how do we know when our anger is righteous and when it leads us into rebellion against God?

On a recent episode of “Unashamed,” Al and Jase addressed this very question, drawing on the longstanding wisdom of their father, Phil Robertson — the late beloved patriarch of the family.

The key, they explain, is examining what the anger is rooted in. Righteous anger, when boiled down, is ultimately an overflow of love rather than hate.

Al shares a personal example.

“My dad … became angry at me when the lifestyle that I was living was against the covenant of our family,” he reflects.

“I took that as I was being forsaken and shunned by him, … but I was 180 degrees wrong. The only reason he had that conversation is because he did love me.”

When Al finally turned from his prodigal ways, his father’s anger immediately gave way, revealing the deep love that had fueled it all along.

“When I came back, guess who was right there waiting — not with hate, not with forsakenness, not with separation, but, ‘Welcome home, son’? The same dad,” he says. “Why? Because his love for me never stopped.”

“A lot of times people think anger is a sin, but it’s not a sin. Anger can lead you to sin,” Al continues, noting that the Bible mentions anger “over 600 times,” but “85% of the 600 times, God is the one who’s angry.”

To hear the Robertsons dive deeper into the powerful tension between God’s love and wrath — especially how they beautifully intersect at the cross — watch the episode above.

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Just because something sounds Christian doesn’t mean that it is. Nobody knows this better than BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey, who frequently exposes lies wrapped in Christian-sounding language

On this episode of “Relatable,” Allie unravels three common “Christian mythical mottos” and shines a light on the deception underneath.

Myth #1: “Christianity is a relationship. It’s not a religion.”

Allie acknowledges that this phrase is usually employed with good intentions — typically when Christians are evangelizing specifically to people who have “come out of legalism” or are brand-new to Christianity and are “confused about some of the rules and the standards.”

In these cases, the evangelizer is most often trying to push someone “into daily conversation with and pursuit of Jesus.”

“And there is part of that that is really true and really good,” says Allie.

“Christianity says that you can have a relationship with God right now, no matter what you’ve done or who you are, by grace through faith in Jesus. Okay? So yes, Christianity is a relationship,” she concedes.

But that doesn’t change the fact that it is “also a religion.”

“If you look at the roots of the word ‘religion,’ you can go all the way back to the ancient use of the Latin word, which is relegere,” meaning “to go through again — especially in thought or in word,” Allie explains.

“I love this connection because it implies a routine, a habit, a discipline of repetition that turns an isolated belief into a pattern of thought that dictates a person’s life.”

Another closely related Latin word — religāre — means to “bind again or to tie back.”

“You’ll notice the shared prefix in these words, which is re-. It’s the prefix that we see in repeat, rehearse, rebound, redo. Re- … means to do it again, to repeat,” says Allie.

“Christian religion is the practice of rebinding ourselves to the things of God … rebinding ourselves through grace-filled effort — Holy Spirit-inspired effort — to His wisdom, His ways, the good things of the Christian life.”

Citing the book of James, which explicitly refers to Christianity as a “religion,” Allie concludes, “Scripture does not preach that our Christian faith is not a religion; rather, it’s the one true religion. Religion and relationship in Christianity are not pitted against each other.”

Myth #2: “God answers all of our prayers; the answer might just be no.”

“It is true that God says no; it is not true that God answers every prayer,” Allie says frankly.

The Bible, she explains, explicitly outlines several “kinds of people” whose prayers God may ignore: “those who have personal and selfish motives” (James 4:3); “those who remain in sin and will not heed God’s law” (John 9:31; Proverbs 28:9); “those who offer unworthy service to God” (Malachi 1:8-9); “those who reject God’s call or have no faith” (James 1:6-7); “those who are violent” (Isaiah 1:15); “those who are self-righteous” (Luke 18:11-14); and “those who mistreat God’s people (Micah 3: 2, 4).

“There are several other passages that we could go through that indicate that God sometimes does not hear or does not respond at all to certain prayers due to a person’s heart condition, motives, or relationship with Him,” says Allie.

For Christians, however, who the Bible says are free to approach God’s throne with confidence (Hebrews 4:16), she says it’s difficult to determine whether or not God answers all their prayers.

“I simply don’t know for sure that the answer is always that God is responding to every single prayer that a Christian has … but we do know for sure that for the nonbeliever, it is not true that God hears and answers every prayer,” Allie says.

Myth #3: “Share the gospel; when necessary, use words.”

This maxim expresses the idea that “we preach the gospel by just how we treat people” and that “preaching at people and trying to push religion down their throats is not something that’s going to be convincing,” says Allie.

“It is true that your life serves as an inspiration. It is true that what we do absolutely matters and how we live our life is a testimony to what we believe — 100%.”

But this doesn’t excuse us from the biblical mandate to take the gospel to all nations.

“We are called to preach the gospel with our words. If anyone could have preached the gospel only using deeds, it would have been Jesus, because Jesus perfectly lived out the gospel in his actions. And yet he didn’t just do the deeds. … He constantly preached the gospel using his words,” says Allie.

Between Jesus’ example and the many verses that call believers to speak the gospel (Romans 10:14, 17; 2 Timothy 4:1-2), there is no escaping the reality that Christianity is “a word-based faith.”

“The Bible obviously strongly affirms that our actions, our love, our holy living must back up our message and that hypocrisy undermines it, and it also repeatedly emphasizes the gospel itself must be verbally proclaimed,” Allie concludes.

To hear more, watch the episode above.

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