For the first time in the event’s history, the Pro Bowl in Las Vegas will be a flag football game — a nod to players who have grown increasingly unwilling to subject their bodies to injury in an otherwise meaningless contest.

The game will actually be the culminating event of a series of skill competitions held throughout the weekend.

The origin of both “touch” and “flag” football date back to the early and mid 1900s, respectively, and both versions came out of a desire to make an undeniably physical game safer.

Tackle football was almost banned in America in the early 1900s after its brutality on the college gridiron resulted in numerous deaths. In 1897 alone, at least eight collegians died and hundreds more were seriously injured. Calls increased to cancel the sport altogether, but President Teddy Roosevelt objected.

“I believe in rough games and in rough, manly sports,” he told an audience at the White House. “I do not feel any particular sympathy for the person who gets battered about a good deal so long as it is not fatal.”

Rather than do away with the game, President Roosevelt suggested it be reformed. Convening representatives from top colleges at the White House, he urged coaches to make the sport less violent. It proved to be a difficult negotiation, but they all eventually agreed.

1. Loss of Objectivity of Male and Female

The most fundamental natural truth of family is that it exists and is generated at the intersection of male and female. But the objective meaning of male and female is being gutted in mainstream culture and the minds of young people today.

This is not a fringe development. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson refusing to answer the basic question of what a woman is in her confirmation hearings is THE touchstone of this dramatic loss.

If we cannot define male and female, we cannot define the family. Thus, the loss of the objectivity of male and female is the greatest foundational threat to the truth and integrity of family … and it is happening on our watch.

Those who’ve deliberately orchestrated this loss understand the full implications for their work. Christians must as well.

2. Anti-Natalism as Global Responsibility

It is common knowledge that birth rates are falling in the U.S. and globally. Most people do not appreciate how dramatic this decline is though. Nor do they appreciate how dreadfully fearful young people around the world are to have children due to “climate anxiety.”

At least a dozen states are moving to protect parental rights after numerous instances of secretive and damaging school policies that have kept parents in the dark about the wellbeing of their children.

According to the organization SAVE — Stop Abusive and Violent Environments — 12 states have introduced bills in just the past month to strengthen parental rights.

The legislation comes as a recent report in The New York Times of all places recounted several stories of parents being kept in the dark by schools over their children’s decision to “transition.”

The Times reported on a recent story out of Southern California. Jessica Bradshaw found out that her 15-year-old identified as transgender after she viewed his homework assignment bearing a different name.

After inquiring to their school, a counselor told Jessica that the school did not need to inform her of her daughter’s “transition,” nor did the school need her permission to treat her daughter as a son “because the student did not want [her] parents to know.” At that point, Jessica’s daughter had been identifying as the opposite sex for six months.

“District and state policies instruct the school to respect [her] wishes,” the Times notes.

“There was never any word from anyone to let us know that on paper, and in the classroom, our daughter was our son,” Mrs. Bradshaw said.