The U.S. Supreme Court is seen on February 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that Trump had exceeded his authority when he imposed tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Sipa USA) (Sipa via AP Images)
Any of these stories could be the focus of today’s Daily Article:
- The Winter Olympics concluded yesterday, with Norway winning forty-one medals and the US in second place with thirty-three. The US men’s hockey team won the gold medal in overtime, its first since the “Miracle on Ice” forty-six years earlier.
- A historic winter storm has placed fifty-nine million people in the Northeast under weather warnings today.
- At least fourteen people were killed yesterday, including seven National Guard troops, as violence erupted across Mexico after the army killed the country’s most-wanted drug lord.
- With US forces in place across the Middle East, President Trump is said to be considering his options for Iran.
- Authorities in Arizona are continuing their search for Nancy Guthrie more than three weeks after she disappeared.
But today, I’m focusing on Friday’s Supreme Court decision striking down President Trump’s global tariffs. I consider it an even more foundational story, though not for reasons you might think.
As you know, I lead a nonprofit ministry committed to neutrality with regard to partisan politics. It may therefore surprise you that I am writing this morning to claim that the Court’s decision is good news for every American.
The reason I can do so and remain missional is that my assertion has nothing to do with partisan politics or tariffs and everything to do with our national and cultural future.
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary”
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, historian Gordon Wood writes that our revolution “did not just eliminate monarchy and create republics; it actually reconstituted what Americans meant by public or state power and brought about an entirely new kind of popular politics and a new kind of democratic officeholder.” As political scholar Yuval Levin has written, “The Constitution establishes a politics in which no one is in charge and, therefore, in some sense, everyone is in charge.”
We tend to focus on the Founders’ positive view of humanity that counters centuries of European monarchical thinking with “all men are created equal.” In such a worldview, anyone can be elected president, sit on the Supreme Court, or serve in Congress.
But the Founders also understood the negative side of humanity. In Federalist No. 51, James Madison wrote:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
Accordingly, Madison and the other framers of our Constitution created checks and balances to ensure no individual or group would possess unaccountable power. In our system, the Supreme Court can overturn the actions of the president, the president can veto laws made by Congress, and Congress can overturn court decisions through legislation (cf. the horrific Supreme Court Dred Scott decision of 1857 vs. the Civil Rights Act of 1965).
Laws can replace laws, as can constitutional amendments. Presidents and members of Congress can be replaced by voters, and they and justices can be impeached.
A foundational fact for our national future
This system is intended to prevail even in the face of partisan pressure.
For example, in his response to Friday’s ruling, President Trump said he was “absolutely ashamed” of some justices who ruled six-to-three against him. Vice President JD Vance similarly called the high court decision “lawlessness” in a post on X.
The Wall Street Journal headlined that the ruling “rips open Trump’s relationship with the Roberts Court.” The president especially singled out Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, whom he nominated in his first term, as a “disgrace to our nation.”
But he is abiding by the ruling and adopting other means of imposing tariffs. This outcome shows that our democratic republic continues to function 250 years after it was created. This is a foundational fact for which all Americans should be grateful.
I thought Christianity was a system of morality
However, a “government of laws, not of men,” as John Adams famously described our system, can only take us so far. Legality is a poor substitute for morality.
In our system, we can do whatever we want so long as we are not caught doing it. Much that is immoral and damaging to our lives and culture is nonetheless legal, from abortion and euthanasia to adultery, pornography, and same-sex marriage.
The only path to our best lives is one that changes not just what we do but the essence of who we are. This is an offer made by no legal system, worldview, or religion—except Christianity.
Only Jesus says we can be “born again” (John 3:3). Only he can make us a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Only he can change our hearts.
Our culture does not understand this. I didn’t know it for many years before I became a Christian.
And, to my point today, I overlooked it for many years after I did.
I thought Christianity was a system of morality by which I could please God and receive his blessing in return. Reading the Bible, praying, attending church, sharing my faith, and so on were the expected ways for Christians to behave. I believed the credo, “What you are is God’s gift to you; what you make of yourself is your gift to God.”
But what I could “make of myself” was not enough. Somehow in my soul I knew there was more than this. My “God-shaped emptiness” was not yet filled. To cite St. Augustine, my heart was still “restless” because it had not yet come to “rest in him.”
“Rejoicing for weariness and radiance for dreariness”
It was a spiritual formation course in seminary where I first became acquainted with the idea that God’s Spirit could make me like God’s Son, that if I would surrender my life to him every day, he would then transform me in ways I could neither imagine nor produce.
This is what famed missionary J. Hudson Taylor called the “exchanged life.” In They Found The Secret: 20 Transformed Lives That Reveal a Touch of Eternity, the late Wheaton College President V. Raymond Edman wrote:
It is new life for old. It is rejoicing for weariness and radiance for dreariness. It is strength for weakness and steadiness for uncertainty. It is triumph even through tears and tenderness of heart instead of touchiness. It is lowliness of spirit instead of self-exaltation and loveliness of life because of the presence of the altogether Lovely One.
Would you like to make such an exchange today?
Quote for the day:
“I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help him. I ended up by asking him to do his work through me.” —J. Hudson Taylor
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