Free Republic

Conviction and condemnation can feel similar for a Christian. Conviction is from God and is necessary for joy. It should be cultivated. Condemnation is from Satan. It is a lie and should be resisted and thrown off. How do we tell the difference in our own lives? How do we help students discern the distinction in their hearts as well? An Example The night Christ was arrested, Peter and Judas both committed big sins. (This example isn’t perfect because Judas wasn’t a true Christian, but he was a professing believer and a member of Christ’s discipleship group. There’s much we...

This Lent, I decided to do something different. I decided it was time to start working on loving my enemies: both past and present. I was inspired by the words of Cardinal Robert Sarah in his book The Power of Silence: “The devil invites mankind to rebellion and disorder…he sows discord and incites us to pour out our hatred upon each other…(but God) teaches us to pray for our enemies. He constantly murmurs, ‘The disciples of my beloved Son have no enemies. Your heart must not have enemies either.'” Cardinal Sarah The words, “Your heart must not have enemies either”...

Proposal uses ‘hardship’ as the rubric for granting student loan forgiveness. Joe Biden’s Department of Education has proposed a student loan forgiveness plan to take effect after President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January. While the Department of Education puts the estimated cost at $112 billion, one analyst called it a “gross underestimate” and suggested the cost could be five times larger. An economist and public policy analyst who spoke to The College Fix also criticized the regulation as “worrisome.” The department opened comments on Oct. 31, just days before the election. The comment period for the proposed regulation just...

Biden repeatedly acts like he is above the law. So who’s the threat to Democracy?Biden Tries to Overrule Courts a Third TimeThe Wall Street Journal reports Biden Snubs the Courts Again on Student Loan Forgiveness‘That didn’t stop me,” President Biden declared after the Supreme Court blocked his $430 billion student loan write-off in 2023. It sure didn’t. After striking out in court with three debt forgiveness schemes, the Administration on Friday unveiled another. Take that, judges.The Education Department says its proposed rule would authorize forgiveness for some eight million borrowers experiencing “hardship.” Under the rule, the department can discharge debt...

If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, you Father will not forgive your sins. Matthew 6:14-15 Joseph was the pride and joy of his father. Though Jacob had ten other sons, he favored Joseph, the one born to him in his old age. Jacob never bothered to hide his special feelings—not even from his other sons. In fact, he expressed his favoritism blatantly and visibly by having an expensive coat made especially for Joseph. This did not go unnoticed by the older brothers, and they began...

When Dylann Roof shot and killed nine people attending a Wednesday night Bible study in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, there were two causes for shock. Roof’s heinous act was the obvious one. The other was forgiveness. Within days of the murders, Nadine Collier looked into the face of her mother’s killer at Roof’s bond hearing and said through tears, You took something very precious away from me. I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul. Collier’s words, along with those...

A federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily blocked a key Biden administration student loan forgiveness and repayment plan. The order could have significant ramifications for millions of borrowers.. Joe Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education plan is a new income-driven repayment program designed to provide affordable payments and multiple pathways to loan forgiveness. The Education Department unveiled the SAVE plan last year, and began implementing the program in phases. But several groups of Republican-led states filed two separate legal challenges this spring, arguing that the Biden administration exceeded the authority Congress provided. Thursday’s appeals court ruling is just the latest...

Republican Gov. Chris Sununu is predicting that President Joe Biden's $167 billion student loan forgiveness plan is actually going to come back and bite him. Just this week, Biden cancelled another $7.7 billion for 160,000 Americans, in a push that critics view as an attempt to 'buy votes' ahead of the 2024 election. But Sununu tells DailyMail.com in an exclusive sit-down interview this week that no debt is actually being wiped out. 'We've just transferred it to somebody else. Somebody still carries that debt...and it's still to be paid by all of America.' 'The political benefit that Biden thinks he's...

The Biden administration announced that it would forgive more than $6.1 billion in student debt for 317,000 former students of The Art Institutes, the once-giant chain of for-profit schools. The U.S. Department of Education concluded that the schools and its parent company, the Education Management Corp., or EDMC, made “pervasive and substantial” misrepresentations to prospective students about post-graduation employment rates, salaries and career services. Eligible borrowers will get the forgiveness automatically, whether or not they went through the formal process for loan relief for defrauded borrowers.

For Joe Biden, it's got to be maddening.Day after day, he cooks up another legally questionable student loan forgiveness program, announces it to much fanfare to a fawning media, and all he gets for it is young people moving to vote for President Trump.According to Politico:Polls show former President Donald Trump is ascendant with the youngest bloc of the electorate, even leading President Joe Biden in some surveys, as less-engaged young voters spurn Biden. Meanwhile, Biden is stronger with seniors than he was four years ago, even as his personal image is significantly diminished since he was elected last time.That...

The Biden administration will soon roll out a sweeping new student loan forgiveness proposal that could impact millions of Americans. Despite its smaller scope than President Joe Biden’s first education debt relief plan that the Supreme Court ultimately blocked, this new aid package could still forgive the debt for as many as 10 million Americans, according to one rough estimate by higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. Biden is planning to provide details of his new debt forgiveness plan during a speech Monday in Madison, Wisconsin, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. The president likely wants to start forgiving debt...

Many people, including Christians, view the Resurrection only as a great historical event. They pause once a year to reverently remember the death and resurrection of Christ. However, the resurrection is also a force, a power that belongs only to God. The death and resurrection of Jesus was much more than just something that happened one time. It was an historic demonstration of God’s attitude and power. When we come to a place where we die to our own dreams and preferences and possessions and agendas – when we let it all fall into the ground and just pass...

(Read three articles free every month if you register) At the turn of the twentieth century, Saturday Evening Post editor and Yale dropout George Lorimer bitingly summed up academia when he said “colleges don’t make fools, they only develop them.” On the heels of yet another multibillion-dollar Biden administration college bailout, it seems we haven’t learned the lesson: colleges might not make fools, but they’re certainly trying to make fools of us. The bailout projects come from a Biden campaign promise: “I will eliminate your student debt.” Half-slogan, half-bribe, this resonated with millions burdened by the unpayable debt brought on...

President Joe Biden Wednesday said he would never stop fighting for hardworking Americans as he put the spotlight on his debt cancellation efforts and ramps up his reelection campaign. He slammed MAGA Republicans and said even the Supreme Court could not stop him for helping hundreds of thousands of people saddled with years of debt. And he said he was not worried about further court challenges to his massive forgiveness program.

The Biden administration released its proposal for which struggling borrowers should qualify for its new student loan forgiveness plan. It said that receiving a Pell Grant, a disability and age could be factors signaling hardship.

President Joe Biden announced on Friday that his administration was canceling nearly $5 billion in student loans impacting nearly 74,000 borrowers. Most of the forgiveness goes to 44,000 borrowers who have spent more than 10 years in public service working as teachers, nurses, firefighters and other positions, while the remaining 30,000 are borrowers who have been in repayment for at least 20 years without receiving relief, the White House said.

In this episode of Joe Biden's World...As the mountain of evidence continues to grow that Joe Biden has likely been an international shake-down artist for decades, word now comes that White House Counsel Stuart Delery, whom the embattled president calls a "trusted adviser," is leaving the administration, as the GOP investigations continue to heat up.In a Thursday statement from the White House, Biden called Delery a "trusted adviser and a constant source of innovative legal thinking since Day One of my Administration.""Innovative legal thinking." We'll get back to that.Biden (his handlers, no doubt) also said:From his work during those early...

The NAACP is “disappointed’ that the Biden Administration is ending the pause on student loan repayments. Isn’t that just too bad?“The resolution of the debt ceiling crisis is one we wholeheartedly welcomed and we appreciate all that went into debt ceiling negotiations. However, we are disappointed that the needs of Black communities have suffered from the negotiated agreement that will erode economic progress for Black Americans,” Wisdom Cole, the NAACP’s national director of youth and college, and Derrick Johnson, the group’s president, say in the letter.“It is disappointing that narrowing the racial wealth gap was not given a higher priority,”...

The Senate voted to overturn President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program Thursday in a symbolic rebuke of the plan that would partially forgive debts of an approximately 40 million borrowers—but despite picking up a few Democratic supporters, the GOP-backed legislation is doomed to fail as Biden has vowed to veto it. The Senate voted 52-46, with Democratic Sens. John Tester (Mont.) and Joe Manchin (W.Va.), along with independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), joining Republicans. The vote came less than a week after the GOP-controlled House passed the same measure 218-203, with moderate Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Marie Gluesenkamp...

The New Testament is the story of stories, and it starts off all wrong. Most adventure stories begin with the wondrous “Once upon a time”, but Matthew starts his book with a genealogy. Why in the world would he do that? The greatest story ever told starts like a phone book with a long list of unpronounceable names. This is important, though. What makes this list amazing is that some names belong to people who had sketchy pasts. One of these names is Rahab from the Old Testament book of Joshua whose act of saving Hebrew spies got her inducted...