Matthew Loftus 🧻

I Was the Enemy Jesus Told You to Love - Christianity Today As an extremist Muslim, I beat a Christian boy and left him to die. His faithful prayers for me led to my salvation.

"When he was beneath our tree, we ambushed him, beating him mercilessly with our fists and rifle butts. In a frenzy, I stabbed him repeatedly with my bayonet.

'Allahu Akbar,' I muttered in pride as we walked away from his mangled body."
www.christianitytoday.com/2025/09/enem...

You're being rude. Put away your phone. New manners for a post-smartphone society

As one who is guilty here, @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social
is right: "The fact is that almost nobody can control themselves around the glowing little demon. [...] The way that we manage temptation as a society is through manners, expectations, and peer pressure."
www.theargumentmag.com/p/youre-bein...

they don't call it the everything app for nothing

Nothing like logging in here and seeing a totally normal, sensible opinion not even being argued against but being jeered as though anyone with decent morals and intelligence could never agree with such a thing.

The Return of the Family Doctor The direct primary care model aims to put relationships over profit.

Excellent essay by Brewer Eberly about how he (and others) are opting out of the medical-industrial complex to provide the care their patients need:
www.plough.com/en/topics/li...

Be Honest About Your Motives for Mission Trips - Christianity Today Short-term missions are complicated and often done poorly. But with wisdom and transparency, a medical missionary explains, they can be hugely helpful.

I wrote for @christianitytoday.bsky.social about the good, the better, and the Instagrammable of short-term missions trips: www.christianitytoday.com/2025/08/hone...

What It Takes to Prosecute a Child Rapist in Uganda - Christianity Today Assertive parents and a Christian ministry take on the country’s hamstrung criminal justice system.

Good reporting from @mepaynl.bsky.social
on what it takes to bring a pedophile to justice in Uganda:

www.christianitytoday.com/2025/08/chil...

Y'all know I try not to be promiscuous with "this is a pro-life issue" but this is absolutely a pro-life issue. Cutting Medicaid is going to hurt vulnerable, living children and encourage scared mothers to abort children they can't afford to care for.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/o...

What ‘Long Covid’ Means Long Covid is a real disease, but that doesn’t mean its sufferers are right about everything.

This is the best thing I think I've ever read about psychosomatic illnesses, and I'll be sharing it with my residents: "One way I explain functional neurological disorder to patients is that it’s a software problem that looks like a hardware problem."
www.theamericanconservative.com/what-long-co...

Dependence Is Normal Needing someone else, no matter the reason, is a reminder of our humanity.

Gilbert Meilaender once said that he wants to be a burden on his loved ones. I wrote for @thedispatchmedia.bsky.social
about the joy of dependence, even when that dependence is due to mental illness:

thedispatch.com/article/depe...

Just societies do not kill suffering people Matthew Loftus on arcs of life

What does the medical profession say to the false negatives, the kids who are screened but still come out with a defect?

"We would have killed you if we’d had the chance, but since you gave us the slip, here’s a onesie with the hospital logo."
www.thenewatlantis.com/publications...

The next step after this is simply killing the baby who never walks and the adult who will never be able to live independently. If a society is dedicating to preventing suffering, then often the last option is simply killing the sufferer.

The big A.I. companies’ business model

perhaps this is a causative factor becoming HCHA, but too many young HCHA people just don't get sufficient exposure to human beings making stupid decisions despite being told not to

I suspect there's a normal distribution for both conscientiousness and agency. If you've got an ideology, there's an incredible amount of competition for people at the high end of the spectrum for both simultaneously. Lots of places to invest your idealism!

A lot of activism (and online discourse in general, really) is about 95th percentile high-conscientiousness/high-agency people assuming that (a) most of the population is as HCHA as they are & (b) all those HCHA people will act as they do given the right information.

Will Democrats defend society?

"The distance between the winning Obama coalition and the campaign-by-meme Democrats we have now might well be the distance between Obama’s “I am my brother’s keeper” and Walz’s “mind your own damn business.”"

unherd.com/2025/07/will...

Slop Will Eat Itself Against the ugliness to come

"It is a sin as grave as Babel to turn that creative mandate inward, retreating, slimebound and snaillike, into manmade caverns of virtual reality porn and metaverse narcissism."
thearkofhistory.substack.com/p/slop-will-...

"Should pastors use Artificial Intelligence to help write their sermons?"- sounds urbane, philosophical, important

"Should pastors let a word guesser machine teach their flock?"- far more accurate, makes you sound stupid for even asking the question

Someone on here compared AI produced material as "digital asbestos " which in a few decades' time we will have to work out how to eradicate from the fabric of research.

Opinion | Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good

Strange that one of the best things that a privileged upbringing can buy you is... self-control. "Across the developed West, obesity has become strongly correlated with poverty. I fear that so, too, will be the tide of post-literacy."

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/o...

YouTube video by Arnesen Tom Lehrer - Poisoning Pigeons In The Park (live, 1998).

Stephen Sondheim introduced his childhood pal Tom Lehrer in 1998 for an exceedingly rare stage performance, part of a tribute to Cameron Mackintosh.

(This will always be my favorite Lehrer song. Interestingly, he here changes one word: "squirrel" becomes "sparrow.")
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf-e...

Some thoughts on the sorts of policies that produced this map: kenopalo.substack.com/p/a-historic...

Taking artificial dyes out of Froot Loops and using cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup in Coca-Cola is the land acknowledgements of public health & nutrition.

more evidence for “a bunch of AI cultists dismantled large parts of the federal government because they believed that their LLMs were intelligent and could do the work better” thesis

We Can’t Fix the Deficit by Taking Medicine from the Poorest of the Poor Over the past few decades, we have seen incredible progress in the fight against HIV, hunger, and other infectious diseases. We could choose to either accelerate that progress and demonstrate American...

Out today: a piece I wrote about how slashing foreign aid can't fix the deficit and other common objections about U.S. foreign aid spending.

www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2025/07/98438/

Opinion | This Is Who’s Really Driving the Decline in Interest in Liberal Arts Education

"for the liberal arts even when it attracts both students and major financial gifts. The tragedy of the contemporary academy is that even when traditional liberal learning clearly wins with students and donors, it loses with those in power." www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...

just wanted to let you know what you're missing over at the bad place

Great post. I think we have endure stuff like Rings of Power because someone (perhaps not in our lifetime) will eventually adapt the First Age tales and get them right.

Nobody Has A Personality Anymore We are products with labels

Therapy-speak is our generation's clockwork orange.

www.freyaindia.co.uk/p/nobody-has...