On a recent trip to visit family in eastern Pennsylvania, we spent a quiet afternoon by the lake. It was the kind of American town where religion is soft-spoken and comfortably tucked away. After ice cream, my daughter sat down on a towel and began to daven – to pray – for the soldiers in Israel. Later, my son got into a conversation with a kid his age about what it means to be kadosh, holy.
I didn’t prompt it. I didn’t plan it. But I noticed it. Even far from home, my kids were still speaking in the language of faith, still grounded in something larger than themselves. It was a small reminder of something true: when a life is shaped by the Bible, it doesn’t shift just because the setting does.
This wasn’t about parenting. It was about foundations.
You can support Israel. You can believe in God. You can call yourself a person of faith. But without the Bible, studied, lived, practiced, those things float. What grounds a person is a life built around the Word of God. Not just informed by it. Formed by it.
That’s what Moses meant when he told the people: “It is your life”
The Bible isn’t a symbol of who we were. It’s a blueprint for who we are. Not just a text to quote, but a structure to live within. And when it’s not present, something else takes its place.
Most people don’t reject the Bible out of hostility. They just forget it’s supposed to matter. That’s the real danger today. Not loud atheism. Quiet drift.
The modern world doesn’t attack holiness, it just replaces it with noise. The only way to resist that is with discipline. Structure. Practice. A Bible that interrupts your day. That forces hard choices. That reorders your time, your speech, your priorities. That’s the only kind of faith that lasts.
Living in Israel makes this easier in some ways. The calendar, the language, the landscape, it all reinforces the Bible’s relevance. But wherever you live, the principle holds. If the Bible isn’t setting the terms, the culture will.
And let’s be honest: culture today does not lead people toward holiness. It redefines freedom as the absence of limits. It replaces the fear of Heaven with the fear of standing out. It makes obedience seem naïve. In that kind of world, faith can’t survive as a feeling. It has to be a framework.
I don’t want to raise spiritual tourists. And I don’t want to become one either. A life built on the Bible doesn’t mean clinging to tradition for comfort. It means aligning your life with God’s Word, publicly, consistently, and without apology. Because the alternative isn’t some neutral middle ground. It’s drift.
And once you drift far enough, it’s very hard to find your way back.
