Posted August 06, 2026
Iran says an agreement with Oman on a route for shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is “in the final stages.” Oil prices held steady this morning, however, as investors remained cautious over the outcome of the talks. The agreement would allow Iran to control ships entering the Persian Gulf through the strait, though such control is yet to be defined.
This deal could ease pressure on the global economy and perhaps help bring an end to the war. “A lot of progress has been made,” President Trump said recently. However, the current agreement represents just one factor with regard to one of the most complicated and conflicted waterways in the world. (For the website article I wrote yesterday explaining the history of the Strait of Hormuz, its global significance, attempts to close and reopen it, and biblical principles for negotiations, please go here.)
The Islamic Republic of Iran poses an ongoing threat to the Middle East and to Americans as well, but it is only one such threat in the news. For example, a new study warns that a major California earthquake could hit sooner rather than later, causing hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in damage. And, according to the Washington Post, a biological attack “could trigger a global pandemic, mass death, widespread insurrection, and ultimately societal breakdown.”
If you’d like your bad news to be a little less catastrophic, consider the toxic caterpillars currently spreading across Europe. As the New Yorker reports, oak processionary caterpillars are covered in “wiry white hairs that look like the whiskers on a witch’s warts.” When threatened, they emit not only these visible hairs but also eight hundred thousand microscopic hairs. Contact with them causes severe rashes, itching, and stinging.
Or perhaps, in light of the recently concluded Shark Week, you’re worried about going to the beach before summer ends. Your odds of being bitten by a shark while surfing are one in seventeen million, but what if you’re the one?
Shakespeare claimed, “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.” I believe the former to be correct, but if the latter is right, we are in trouble.
I took you through some bad news to lead you to the good news. According to a landmark new study, there is an enormous correlation between sustained religious participation and healthier coping and well-being. “The Handbook of Religion and Health,” a Duke and Harvard University collaboration, has been published in 1,100 pages. A multidisciplinary team from BYU and Duke University mined the massive report and issued a very encouraging summary.
Religiosity was measured with regard to depression and anxiety, finding a seven-to-one positive ratio. The ratio was eleven to one for suicide, twelve to one for coping with stress, twenty-six to one for positive emotion, and forty-three to one for substance abuse and addiction.
In other words, religious participation clearly and powerfully correlates to positive mental health. Hundreds of other studies also link religious involvement to better physical health, significantly longer lifespans, greater marital stability, higher marital quality and satisfaction, and stronger parent-child relationships.
But there’s a caveat.
The research indicates a “threshold effect”—the benefits of religion appear to be concentrated among those with sustained, high engagement. Only individuals with “significant commitment to their faith,” identified as at least weekly worship service attendance, attain the threshold “where measurable benefits are discernable and often substantive.”
High engagement religiosity does not always prevent bad things from happening. Geopolitical threats, earthquakes, and even toxic caterpillars are a reality in this fallen world. But genuine faith does resource us in powerful ways as we respond to the hard times of life.
Here we find another indication of the difference between biblical Christianity and cultural religion. On one hand, we have what sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton call “moralistic therapeutic deism,” a generic belief that (1) God created the world and wants people to be good, nice, and fair; (2) the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about ourselves; (3) God is not involved in our lives unless we need his help; and (4) good people go to heaven when they die.
On the other hand, we have an itinerant Galilean rabbi requiring anyone who wants to follow him to “take up his cross daily” (Luke 9:23) and to die to ourselves so we can live only for him (cf. Galatians 2:20; Romans 6:6; John 12:24).
The first seems far more attractive and, in fact, therapeutic. The second seems too hard to be realistic.
But, as C. S. Lewis noted, “Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead.” Jesus doesn’t want us to be better people, but new people. He wants us to be “born again” as children of our Father (John 3:7; 1:12). He seeks to mold us into his character as he lives in us and continues his ministry through us.
This is why individuals who make a “significant commitment to their faith” find their faith to be so sustaining and empowering. The power lies not in their faith, but in its object. Walking with the living Lord Jesus in worship, Bible study, prayer, and other spiritual disciplines positions us to experience God.
And those who truly experience God can never be the same. As Mother Teresa advised,
“Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in his love than in your weakness.”
How much do you believe in your Father’s love today?
“Oh, how greatly has the man advanced who has learned not to be his own, not to be governed by his own reason, but to surrender his mind to God!” —John Calvin
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