Shortly before Kobe Bryant passed away in a helicopter crash on a California hillside in January of 2020, a tragedy that also claimed the life of his daughter and seven others, the Basketball Hall of Famer recalled a conversation with fellow basketball player Michael Jordan.

At the time, Bryant’s daughter was taking an interest in basketball, and the retired Los Angeles Laker was asking Jordan about where the young girl should be age and talent wise. He was skeptical of the complexity of the program she was in.

“Kids nowadays try to do too much,” he recalled.

“You know, from the skill standpoint. They try to do all this fancy stuff instead of the basic stuff. So, I teach my kids the most basic stuff and we just do it again and again.”

Looking for some affirmation, Bryant asked Jordan where he was at by twelve, his daughter’s age.

“Dude,” replied Jordan. “I was playing baseball.”

The insinuation, of course, was that intense specialization at an early age isn’t necessary.

Michael Jordan often talks about being cut from his high school basketball team.

It makes for a good story, even though it’s not entirely true. As a sophomore, Jordan was assigned to the junior varsity team. Not quite a castoff, but still a devastating blow for a kid who always strived to be the best and play at the highest available level.

Truth can feel especially difficult to identify in today’s age of information overload because the media we consume shapes our perceptions of reality. Social media and the internet bombard Christians with cultural messages designed to erode our understanding of God’s creation and commandments.

“Babies in the womb aren’t really alive,” TikTok tells us.

“Men and women aren’t biologically different,” the internet assures.

Though the world feels like it’s entering new echelons of delusion, the inability to identify or hold on to objective truth — or confusion — isn’t unique to our technology-saturated era. Consider this brief exchange between Pontius Pilate and Jesus, moments before the Roman governor found Him innocent of the Sanhedrin’s charges.

“Then Pilate said to Him, ‘So you are a king?’

“Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world — to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.’

“Pilate said to him, ‘What is truth?’ (John 18:37-38, ESV).”

Pilate’s parting question reflects Roman society’s broader confusion about the existence of moral and natural truth, though it never experienced the reality-altering effects of curated, electronic media.

“‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” — Ephesians 5:31-32 ESV

With these illuminating, but curious words, the Apostle Paul tells us that marriage has an extremely intimate place in God’s heart and divine plan.

As esteem for marriage declines in our culture, it is important that all citizens fully appreciate just how large and powerful marriage is. Christians must also appreciate how profound marriage is in God’s own story. In fact, Paul is telling us that marriage is central to the Gospel itself.

Some might consider this an overstatement. It is not.

In this immensely powerful verse, Paul is quoting Genesis 2:24 where God declares His divine intention for humanity and marriage. The first thing God does with the first two humans, described both in Genesis 1:27-28 and Genesis 2:23-24, is create them male and female as a complement and completion of each other.

He then joins them together as husband and wife.

Get that. The first thing Adam and Eve are in God’s story is they both uniquely bear God’s image and likeness as human male and female. The second thing is that after their creation, before they become anything else, they are made husband and wife.

McKenna Breinholt never knew her birth family. But that all changed during her audition on ABC’s American Idol.

The 25-year-old Arizona native recently tried out for the television show’s 22nd season.

During her audition, Breinholt shared with judges Luke Bryan, Katy Perry and Lionel Richie that she was adopted right after her birth.

After Breinholt turned 21, she sat down with her family and asked them to share what they knew about her birth family.

They told McKenna that her mom’s name was Amy Ross Lopez — a musician who had performed locally in Bisbee, Arizona — and that she had passed away.

“I instantly knew where I got my ear from and where I got my voice from. It just all clicked,” Breinholt shared.

She told the judges that she had recently come into contact with her birth family — and unsurprisingly, they all sing well. Though Breinholt had talked with her family via FaceTime, they had never met in person.

“My birth family was looking for me for the last eight years,” Breinholt said. “Knowing I have another family out there’s who is equally excited to know and love me was amazing.”

Unbeknownst to her, Breinholt’s birth family — her aunts, an uncle and her grandma — had come to hear her try out for Idol.