Divorce

A viral screenshot recently sparked debate after someone received a text message offering support during a divorce. The message, “I’m so sorry to hear you’re going through such a tough time. It’s very normal to feel what you’re feeling for a while. Love is a hard come down,” struck the recipient as oddly impersonal and “canned.” Suspicion grew when a friend pointed out the straight apostrophes-a hallmark of AI-generated text, such as those produced by ChatGPT.

Since ChatGPT’s 2022 launch, people have increasingly turned to AI for help with emotionally difficult messages-breakups, condolences, even wedding vows. Public reaction is often negative, with critics lamenting the loss of genuine human connection and the rise of awkward, robotic phrasing. The phrase “Love is a hard come down” became emblematic of this disconnect: a human in pain seeking comfort, and receiving what felt like a digital ghostwriter’s response instead.

Why do people turn to AI? Because expressing support during someone’s crisis is notoriously hard. Many struggle to find the right words, sometimes choosing silence (ghosting) over risking an awkward reply. In this context, using ChatGPT at least ensures a response is sent-even if it lacks warmth.

This dilemma is not new. For centuries, people have grappled with what to say in the face of grief or hardship. Google searches like “What to say to someone…with cancer…who is dying” reveal an endless need for guidance. Sitting shiva (sitting with someone in mourning) is not something you can really do in the metaverse. Are you supposed to mute yourself during a Zoom funeral?

Ultimately, the most important rule remains unchanged: Show up. Bring some bagels.

The idea that we have the perfect soulmate has proved popular among young adults in the U.S. A 2011 poll found that 73% of Americans believed in a soulmate, the idea that “two people … are destined to be together,” with fully 80% of those under 30 taking this view.

For those seeking a soulmate, what matters is emotional skills and the ability to spark romantic or sexual chemistry. These qualities are supposed to put men and women on the path to what they see as the primary goods of marriage: intimacy, self-expression, and self-fulfillment.

The problem, of course, is that very few couples can maintain this romantic high. Men and women who buy into the soulmate model appear more likely to end up divorced. This was apparent in a survey which asked 918 husbands and wives aged 18 to 50 to describe their approach to marriage and family life. They had to pick whether they saw marriage through the soulmate lens—as “mostly about an intense, emotional/romantic connection”—or through the lens of family—viewing marriage as “about romance but also about kids, money, [and] raising a family together.”

The survey found that husbands and wives who took the soulmate view were markedly more likely to report doubts about the future of their marriage, compared to those who took a family-first view, even after controlling for factors like education, race, gender, and the presence of children.

Likewise, a poll of 2,000 husbands and wives across the U.S., found that those who followed the soulmate model were about twice as likely to report that they were divorcing or were likely to divorce soon, compared to those following the family-first model.

A dramatic change from the trend seen in previous years was marked by the unexpected increase in marriages that the COVID-19 lockdowns brought about. Marital records from 2022 show a significant increase, with the marriage rate reaching 6.2 per capita and over two million marriages in a year.

Marissa Nelson, a registered marriage and family therapist, believes that lockdowns forced couples to face difficulties head-on, resulting in increased intentionality in relationships. She writes, “Being in lockdown together gave many couples a unique hurdle to overcome,” resulting in a better knowledge of critical factors such as finances, compromise, and autonomy.

Divorce rates continued their downward trend from the previous years, even though they had been expected to increase in 2022. While the rate was slightly higher than the previous year at 2.4 per 1,000 individuals, it is still dramatically declining from the 2000 figure of 4 per 1,000.

The hurdles created by lockdowns forced couples to confront underlying concerns, potentially laying the groundwork for stronger relationships. Nelson highlights that being confined together forced couples to tackle relationship issues, which boosted resilience and stability for the future.

Ian Kerner, a registered marriage and family therapist, has noticed a movement in marital paradigms, from “romantic” to “companionate” relationships. Individuals are increasingly prioritizing attributes similar to those seen in best friends, preferring long-term stability and fulfillment to brief excitement.

After the pandemic, marital dynamic changes reflect ideas on commitment, stability, and partnership. While issues remain, trends indicate a greater emphasis on deliberate relationships and long-term compatibility.

Possible Preaching Angle:

There are some good lessons here for couples in the church who are having marital issues and doubts. Don’t give up on your marriage. Investing the time to discuss your issues, perhaps with a counselor involved, can often bring hope and healing to a relationship.

In her book, The Toxic War on Masculinity, author Nancy Percy writes that research has found that evangelical protestant men who attend church regularly are the least likely of any group in America to commit domestic violence.

But nominal Christian family men do fit the negative stereotypes of bad husbands … shockingly so. They spend less time with their children. Their wives report significantly lower levels of happiness, and their marriages are less stable. Whereas active evangelical men are 35% less likely to divorce than secular men, nominal Christian men are 20% more likely to divorce than secular men.

Finally, the real stunner: whereas committed church-going couples report the lowest rate of violence of any group (2.8 percent), nominal husbands report the highest rate of any group (7.2 percent)—even higher than secular couples. Sociologist Brad Wilcox, one of the nation’s top experts on marriage, writes, “The most violent husbands in America are nominal, evangelical protestants who attend church infrequently or not at all.”

Percy summarizes: “It seems that many nominal men hang around the fringes of the Christian world just enough to hear the language of headship and submission, but not enough to learn the biblical meaning of those terms—like skimming the news headlines without reading the actual stories. They cherry pick verses from the Bible and read them through a grid of male superiority and entitlement.”

Life for a 19th-century sailor was hard: Months at sea were accompanied by constant danger and deprivation. To make matters worse, mariners saw the same few people all day, every day, in a radically confined space where they were expected to get along and look after one another. On a long voyage, one obnoxious person could make life utterly miserable for everyone.

So, sailors used a tried technique to deal with an offender: the silent treatment. They would ignore him completely for weeks on end. That might sound like an innocuous action to you, but in truth, it was far from it. According to author Otis Ferguson (1944), the silent treatment was “a process so effective in the monotony of ship’s life as to make strong men weep.”

Of course, the silent treatment is a technique used not only by sailors. It can be encountered anytime, anywhere, from home to work. You have almost certainly experienced some form of it. Long-married couples will go for days without speaking. A person will give their oldest friend the cold shoulder. A father who refused to speak with his daughter for 30 years.

Silent-treatment inflictors do it because, as the sailors discovered, it was devastatingly effective in imposing pain on the recipient. So much pain, in fact, that it can leave a person scarred and a relationship in ruins.

Given how destructive the silent treatment is, like physical abuse, it can wreck relationships. According to the Gottman Institute, which conducts research on the success and failure of marriages, the act of cutting off your partner by stonewalling can be a contributory factor to divorce.

Possible Preaching Angle:

You have probably inflicted the silent treatment on someone—two-thirds of us have done so. We use it for two main reasons: The most common one is to punish someone for something they said or did. The next most common is conflict avoidance; you might go silent to avoid a major blow-up. But this is not how God intends for his children to relate to others. God intends for us to humble ourselves, take the first step to reconciliation, and begin a conversation without defensiveness or blaming. “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger” (Eph. 4:26).

Nearly 70% of couples are living together before marriage. Fifty to Sixty-five percent of Americans believe that living together before marriage will improve their odds of relationship success. Younger Americans are especially likely to believe in the beneficial effects of cohabitation.

But new research joins a large pool of previous research to conclude that living together before marriage is associated with a higher risk for divorce.

The link between premarital cohabitation and divorce is often called the “cohabitation effect.” A new study uses a national sample of Americans who married for the first time in the years 2010 to 2019. The study concluded: “Consistent with prior research, couples who cohabited before marriage were more likely to see their marriages end than those who did not cohabit before marriage.”

Thrity-four percent of marriages ended among those who cohabited before being engaged, compared to 23% of marriages for those who lived together only after being either married or engaged to be married. In relative terms, the marriages of those who moved in together before being engaged were 48% more likely to end than the marriages of those who only cohabited after being engaged or already married.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Of course, as Christians living under the authority of God’s Word, marriage matters far more than just being engaged.

Are there wedding bells in your future? If you’re young and in love, the answer is—probably not! A new survey finds that two in five young adults think marriage is an outdated tradition.

The survey comes as a recent Pew Research study finds that one in four 40-year-olds in the United States have never walked down the aisle. The U.S. Census Bureau adds that 34% of people 15 years and older have never been married as of 2022. In 1950, that number was only 23%. So, what’s up? Why aren’t young people putting a ring on their serious relationships anymore? The following are the top four reasons:

Unnecessary: A staggering 85% don’t think you need to get married to have a fulfilling and committed relationship.

The Cost: The survey finds that one of the biggest reasons is still the sheer cost of getting married. Nearly 75% of Millennials and Gen Zers say it’s just too expensive to tie the knot in today’s economy.

No Interest: 72% say they just “aren’t interested” in marriage at this time. However, 83% hope they will eventually marry someone “someday.”

Divorce: Perhaps one of the biggest reasons young adults are skipping out on ring shopping is the fear that the marriage won’t last. Almost half of respondents are afraid of getting a divorce.

Nearly two in five young adults (38%) say they feel judged for not being married, with a whopping 69% of women saying their mother judges them the most for staying unmarried. Only 27% of young men say their mom judges them for staying single or not marrying their sweetheart.

Almost 690,000 couples reported getting divorced in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s about half the number of couples who reported getting married. Most couples file for what is called a no-fault divorce, which means you can dissolve your marriage without showing that either party has committed any wrongdoing.

There are a handful of commonly cited factors that couples feel put a strain on their marriage, according to a Forbes Advisor survey. These conflicts include (in ascending order):

#6 – Finances

#5 – Relationships with Friends

#4 – Relationships with Family

#3 – Division of Household Labor

#2 – Parenting differences

The biggest conflict divorced couples encountered, with 46% naming it:

#1 – Career choices

Only 5% of divorcees say there was no way their marriage could have been saved, the survey says. A whopping 63% said that having a better understanding of commitment prior to marrying could have helped them avoid divorce. And 54% said that if they had a better understanding of their spouse’s morals and values prior to getting married, they might still be together.

Editor’s Note: The Forbes Advisor survey is well worth looking at for its wide-ranging statistics on the state of marriage and divorce in 2023. You can access the results of this survey here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It is important to keep in mind that this survey was taken of society as a whole. With proper guidance through premarital counseling and personal growth toward spiritual maturity, a believing couple would be much more likely to establish a solid marriage for life.

A total of 689,308 divorces occurred in 2021. That’s about half the number of couples who reported getting married, with subsequent marriages failing at higher rates. Understanding why marriages fail can help you to make your own union stronger if you are married. It can also guide you in making choices about entering into a marriage and it can help you support the married couples in your life.

Forbes Advisor commissioned a survey of 1,000 Americans who are divorced or who are in the process of divorcing to discover why marriages fail. Based on this data, here are some of the most likely reasons marriages come to an end.

• 43% - Lack of family support
• 34% - Infidelity
• 31% - Lack of intimacy
• 31% - Too much conflict/arguing
• 24% - Financial stress
• 20% - Parenting differences
• 10% - Marrying too young

Key Facts About Divorce

• The majority of divorces are initiated by only one party, with only 27% of respondents indicating the decision to end the marriage was mutual.
• Just 4% of couples divorce after 10 years of marriage.
• 63% of divorcees believe a better understanding of the commitments of marriage could have helped them to avoid divorce
• Only 5% of divorcees say there was no way their marriage could have been saved, the survey says.

You can access all the results of this survey here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It is important to keep in mind that this survey was taken of society as a whole. With proper guidance in premarital counseling and personal growth toward spiritual maturity a believing couple would be much more likely to establish a solid marriage for life. Remember, 63% said a better understanding of commitment prior to marrying could have stopped their union from collapsing.

Research professor Scott Stanley at the University of Denver writes:

A substantial number of practicing Christians believe that living together before marriage is a good idea—at least 41%, by one estimate. Although far more nonreligious people believe the same thing (88%), 41% is not a small group, and it’s likely growing over time.

A recent report from the Institute for Family Studies surveyed people who married for the first time in the years 2010 to 2019. We found conclusions similar to those of past studies: Patterns of cohabitation before marriage remain associated with higher odds of divorce.

What people often miss is the inertia that comes with moving in together. In essence, cohabiting couples are making it harder to break up before nailing down their commitments. Many of them get stuck in a relationship they might otherwise have moved on from.

Consistent with our theory of inertia, we find that couples who moved in together before engagement were 48% more likely to end their marriages than those who cohabited only after getting wed or at least engaged. We also show that moving in together for “relationship testing” or financial convenience is associated with higher risks for divorce.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In light of this research, Christians contemplating marriage may wonder what they can do to improve their odds of staying married. Scott Stanley suggests four principles: 1. Don’t believe the hype that living together is good for your relationship. 2. Slow down. Two people need time to learn more about each other 3. Don’t move in together to test the relationship. 4. Participate in premarital training or counseling.

New York Times columnist David Brooks writes:

When I’m around young adults I like to ask them how they are thinking about the big commitments in their lives: what career to go into, where to live, whom to marry. Most of them have thought a lot about their career plans. But my impression is that many have not thought a lot about how marriage will fit into their lives.

The common operating assumption seems to be that professional life is at the core of life and that marriage would be something nice to add on top sometime down the road. It’s not that people are against marriage. Today, as in the past, a vast majority of Americans would like to tie the knot someday. It’s just that it’s not exactly top of mind.

Partly as a result of these attitudes, there is less marriage in America today. The marriage rate is close to the lowest level in American history. For example, in 1980, only 6% of 40-year-olds had never been married. As of 2021, 25% of 40-year-olds have never been married.

As Brad Wilcox writes in his vitally important book, Get Married:

Marital quality is, far and away, the top predictor I have run across of life satisfaction in America. Specifically, the odds that men and women say they are “very happy” with their lives are a staggering 545% higher for those who are very happily married, compared to peers who are not married or who are less than very happy in their marriages.

When it comes to predicting overall happiness, a good marriage is far more important than how much education you get, how much money you make, how often you have sex, and, yes, even how satisfied you are with your work.

In her 2023 book, Adam and Eve After the Pill, Revisited, author Mary Eberstadt explores the aftereffects of the sexual revolution on men, women, and children. Today there is considerably less family commitment and nurturing relationships than in the past. She writes:

Children today are considerably less likely to have siblings — and by extension, cousins, aunts, and uncles — than they were sixty years ago. Almost 30 percent of all households consist of just one person. Some 40 percent of all children lack a biological father in the home. Such momentous, ubiquitous changes to kinship have had and continue to have momentous and ubiquitous consequences. How could they not? A world of fewer and weaker family ties is one in which deprived people are furious about things they do not have or no longer know.

The National Review summarizes her main points:

To put it more starkly, in the name of human freedom, we have perhaps unwittingly created a society in which children on the whole experience less love and commitment in their lives than ever before. There are literally fewer people in their lives who are bonded to them by familial ties. This means fewer role models. Fewer chances to connect with the one odd cousin, aunt, or in-law who shares a peculiar passion or trait. It means less practice at socialization. It means fewer chances to practice sharing joy, and grief, with people whose bonds are natural and durable.

Eberstadt discloses the undeniably shocking consequences:

The vast majority of incarcerated juveniles have grown up in fatherless homes. ... Absent fathers predict higher rates of truancy, psychiatric problems, criminality, promiscuity, drug use, rape, domestic violence, and other tragic outcomes.

In an issue of Christianity Today, Glenn Pearson shares the story of his journey to faith:

You’re probably familiar with the popular arcade game called Whac-A-Mole, where mechanical moles randomly pop out of their holes while you try whacking them with a mallet before they retreat. I grew up in a “reverse Whac-A-Mole” world, feeling like the only mole in a family of mallets.

All the men in my family had significant issues. When I was 12, my dad left our family. He withheld both financial and emotional support, and he rejected or mocked conventional displays of affection. In Matthew 7:9, Jesus asks, “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone?” Well, I have someone I can nominate.

But my dad wasn’t the only disaster in our family. When my grandfather was in his 60s, he decided he had cancer, so one day he jumped in front of a speeding train at a railroad crossing. His was not our family’s sole suicide. My brother suffered from schizophrenia and manic depression. After spending most of the last 20 years of his life in and out of mental hospitals, he hanged himself. My mother’s side didn’t escape dysfunction either. Her father had an emotional breakdown and spent several months in a hospital for indigents. There wasn’t a healthy man anywhere in sight.

Religion played almost no role in my family. But deep down I knew that something was wrong in my life, which led me to dabble in occult practices like astrology, séances, and white magic.

During my sophomore year of college, I stumbled into a campus Christian meeting and heard the gospel for the first time. As the presenter spoke, the Holy Spirit burned two realizations into my heart: that this “new thing” was 100 percent true, and that I would be a part of it. That night, even though I knew almost nothing about the theology of salvation, I brushed aside my intellectual skepticism and eagerly made a commitment to Jesus.

Over the next few months, I became increasingly involved with a couple of campus Christian groups. I was impressed by how “together” the members seemed and by the quality of their relationships. I also began applying my intellectual curiosity to questions surrounding the Bible’s reliability. I discovered far more support for the intellectual integrity of the Christian faith than I had ever supposed.

Years ago, I visited a counselor hoping to piece together the complexities of my background. After hearing parts of my story, he commented, “There is no explanation for you. In my professional opinion, someone with your background should be unemployable, divorced three times, abusive, an alcoholic, or some other kind of addict. The fact that you’re none of these things is a testimony to God’s incredible grace.”

In recent years, I’ve established one-on-one mentoring relationships with about two dozen younger men. I just try to understand their circumstances, communicate that I’m on their side, and point them to practical insights rooted in Scripture and tempered by real-life experience. Essentially, I’m offering these men something I never had. It’s just one way God continually uses what could have been a curse on my life to bring blessing to others

Editor’s Note: Glenn E. Pearson spent 19 years as executive vice president of the Georgia Hospital Association. He and his wife currently live outside Los Angeles.

Two Harvard health professors (one an epidemiologist) note that declining church attendance is a public health crisis.

Of course, the point of the gospel is not to lower your blood pressure, but to know and love God. ... But there are many public health benefits of church attendance. Consider how it appears to affect health care professionals. Some of my (Tyler’s) research examined their behaviors over the course of more than a decade and a half using data from the Nurses’ Health Study, which followed more than 70,000 participants.

Medical workers who said they attended religious services frequently (given America’s religious composition, these were largely in Christian churches) were 29 percent less likely to become depressed, about 50 percent less likely to divorce, and five times less likely to commit suicide than those who never attended.

And, in perhaps the most striking finding of all, health care professionals who attended services weekly were 33 percent less likely to die during a 16-year follow-up period than people who never attended. These effects are of a big enough magnitude to make a practical difference and not just a statistical difference.

Our findings aren’t unique. A number of large, well-designed research studies have found that religious service attendance is associated with greater longevity, less depression, less suicide, less smoking, less substance abuse, better cancer and cardiovascular- disease survival, less divorce, greater social support, greater meaning in life, greater life satisfaction, more volunteering, and greater civic engagement.

The findings are extensive and growing.

A high-level NFL star (it’s Tom Brady if you want to use his name) recently expressed the essence of works-righteousness that lurks in all our hearts apart from Christ. After what he called an “amicable divorce,” he said, “All you can do is the best you can do, and that's what I'll just continue to do as long as I'm working, as long as I'm being a dad."

Then he defined what it means to be a “professional” athlete:

So I think the interesting thing for, you know, a football player, an athlete in general is, you're out there--I always say we're not actors, even though we're on TV--that is our real self out there and we're trying to do our best … We all have our unique challenges in life and we're all humans and we do the best we can do.

He concluded:

I want to … always try to do things the right way as well. And to deal with things that are in your life, that have challenges--you want to deal with them in the best possible way. So, I want to always be able to hold my head high on and off the field, and I'm going to try to continue to do that for as long as I'm here.

Possible Preaching Angles:

This illustration is not meant to criticize this athlete. It shows our need for a Savior because no matter how much we try to do our best it will never give the new life Jesus promises. This athlete shows the futility of works righteousness for all of us.

Outside magazine featured Kurt Steiner, currently the world’s greatest stone skipper. Over 22 years, he has won 17 tournaments. In 2013, he threw a rock that skipped so many times it defied science.

Steiner has dedicated his entire life to stone skipping. It helps him deal with his depression, and he even claims it can help us achieve “inner balance.” But his quest (like every idol we worship) has cost him dearly. In part, his dedication (or worship) left him broke, divorced, and, since the death of his greatest rival, adrift from his stone-skipping peers. Now, in middle age, with a growing list of aches and pains, he contemplates the reality that he throws rocks not simply because he wants to, but because he has no choice.

Kurt split from his wife in 2017. He said:

I like to solve puzzles. My marriage was the biggest puzzle of all … Everything good was there, for a couple of [messed]-up people. But she ultimately couldn’t cope with my particularities of being [messed]-up—and it was mutual. I couldn’t be that somebody who was deserving of some kind of normalcy and love, I couldn’t be that. I tried. But I couldn’t get it the way she needed without damaging myself further.

The article concluded with Kurt’s longing for the real source of his quest:

I’ve had to accept that there are things about myself I’m never gonna get right … I don’t want to say I am never happy, or that I don’t know what that is. Stone skipping does reward me, in the way it makes me forget, in the way it gives me hope … Skipping stones makes me happy, because there are hints of happiness writ large. That happiness is not dead.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It’s easy to judge Kurt for the obsession which hasn’t healed his brokenness. But we should ask ourselves: What are the idols of my heart that prevent me from worshiping the true God?

Tucked away in the church grounds of Biertan, a quiet village in Romania, there is a small cottage known as the “matrimonial prison.” It was here that couples whose marriages were on the rocks were once sent, to sort out their problems while being locked away for up to two weeks. The method was said to be so effective that records show that there has only been one divorce in the area for the past 300 years.

In Biertan, the most important structure was the church and within the grounds is a small building with a room inside barely larger than a pantry. Couples who approached the local bishop to seek a divorce were sent to this matrimonial prison for a maximum of two weeks—six weeks according to some—to iron out their issues. The room was sparsely furnished with a table and chair, a storage chest, and a traditional Saxon bed. The couple attempting to repair their marriages had to share everything inside this tiny dwelling, from a single pillow and blanket to a single plate and spoon.

According to Lutheranism, the religion of the area, divorce was allowed under certain circumstances, such as adultery. But it was preferred that couples attempt to save their union.

Ulf Ziegler, Biertan’s current priest said, “The reason to remain together was probably not love. The reason was to work and to survive. If a couple was locked inside for six weeks, it was very hard for them to (grow) enough food the following year, so there was pressure to get out and to continue to work together.”

The small, dark room is currently a museum, yet Ziegler reveals that even today he receives requests from couples who look forward to using the prison to repair their own struggling marriages.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Divorce is far too easy in our culture. Although we cannot recommend this method, the idea of a couple being “encouraged” to seriously talk through their issues before simply rushing into divorce is sound.

Something about the communal religious experience seems to matter. Something powerful takes place there that enhances health and well-being; and it is very different than what comes from solitary spirituality.

Recent research has shown a reduced health risk for regular church attenders versus never-attenders:

29% reduced risk of depression

33% reduced risk of death

33% reduced risk of adolescent illegal drug use

50% reduced risk of divorce

84% reduced risk of suicide

This research should challenge the growing number of Americans who self-identify as “spiritual but not religious,” to consider whether their own spiritual journeys might be better undertaken in a community of like-minded seekers and under the discipline of a tried and tested tradition of belief and practice.

Research suggests that those who neglect to meet together (Heb. 10:25) likely miss something of the religious experience that is powerful, both for health and for much else as well. The data is clear: Going to church remains central to true human flourishing.

In a recent Cosmopolitan article, Pauline Jayne Isaac lists the 36 greatest on-screen love stories of all time. She begins:

The most famous movie couples have the ability to turn cynics into believers, critics into fans, and can even warm the iciest of hearts. Whether it's a romantic comedy or a drama—the outcome is the same. Love stories make you believe in love.

But the title reveals a problem; "Sorry, But I Just Have to Say It: These Iconic Movie Couples Gave Me Unrealistic Expectations About Love.” Unrealistic expectations are, of course, a key issue in marriages.

Over the years, of course, countless love stories have been told at the box office. Isaac limited her list by selecting stories that met three criteria: "the couples have to be aspirational, the chemistry palpable, and most importantly, the love has to be intense."

Perhaps Hollywood love stories create unrealistic expectations because they are not love stories. An authentic love story is not built on the glamour of aspiration, the feel of chemistry, and thrill of intensity, experiences that come and go while real love remains.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God’s work of grace in Jesus Christ is a “legit love story." It has "the ability to turn cynics into believers, critics into fans, and can even warm the iciest of hearts.”