Thirteenth episode in a once-a-quarter short short fiction series. For other stories in this series, visit wng.org/shortstories.

George Caesar had a lot to be thankful for. The friendships he made as an Aggie Yell Leader at A&M helped him get started in a high-tech business. He dated Heather, the prettiest cheerleader. With her urging he joined a church. Everything fell in line.

Jeff Myers is president of Summit Ministries, which trains Christian students to think and act Biblically. Here are edited excerpts of our discussion in front of Patrick Henry College students last March.

Two decades ago you told me four disruptive questions to ask if someone is ranting in a debate: “What do you mean by that? Where do you get your information? How do you know you’re right? What happens if you’re wrong?” I’ve added two more: “How did you arrive at that conclusion? Do you think that’s the whole story?”

Several readers recently asked when more installments in my autobiographical series would come, since it’s two years and seven months since the last one. Episode 16 took us to 2011, when I left The King’s College, New York City. Episodes 17–19, instead of carrying the tale forward, told stories about my ancestors and baseball. Have I run out of steam?

Reactions to last weekend’s Revoice conference hosted by Memorial Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church in America) in St. Louis range from praise to condemnation. The 400 attendees heard from speakers who self-identify as both Christian and gay, lesbian, or same-sex attracted. The topics discussed included the loneliness of lifelong celibacy, the nature of “mixed-orientation marriages,” and church ministry with and for lesbians and gays.

John S. Dickerson’s Hope of Nations (Zondervan, 2018) sees persecution of Christians growing and wants us not to lose hope. He notes that Christians “cannot control what children are being taught by American society at large … cannot control the direction of cultural change in the U.S.

Two court dramas in the last half of July and 6,000 miles apart showed the need for two new hyphenated words: hyper-sexualist and hyper-Islamist.

Definitions of the words’ cores run like this: Stressing sex as a central concern of life. Believing that Islam should be a central concern of not only individual living but political and societal structuring.

Thirty years have gone by since Ronald Reagan in 1988 spoke to students at Moscow State University. At a time when the Soviet Communist Party still claimed to be the vanguard of wisdom, Reagan said, “Freedom is the recognition that no single governmental authority has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious.”