July 16, 2025

Hello, fellow wayfarers … Why almost everybody wants to know what’s in the Epstein files … How to have conflict when you don’t like conflict … What I learned from C. S. Lewis about what to say about the recently deceased … A Tar Heel State Desert Island Playlist … This is this week’s Moore to the Point.

Why We Want to See the Epstein Files

Sometime last winter, I was jarred by a picture on social media of a Christmas ornament: a figure of a smiling Jeffrey Epstein attached to the tree by a noose around his neck. The caption on the post read: “This ornament didn’t hang itself.”

The reference to the popular notion that the alleged sex trafficker’s suicide in prison was perhaps murder didn’t strike me as resonant with holiday cheer. I couldn’t have imagined that, come summer, Epstein would be the most inflammatory conversation topic in the country.

The controversy was ignited by Attorney General Pam Bondi’s refusal to release the files from the Epstein case, including the “client list” of those involved in Epstein’s ring of powerful friends alleged to have assaulted multiple minor-age women.

At first, the attorney general said the files were on her desk and she would release them later. Then she said there were no such files, just Epstein’s own videos of abuse. Then President Donald Trump implied that there were files but that they had been faked by some of his political opponents who somehow had access to the levers of justice long after they left office.

The president then told people to stop talking about Epstein. But people have not stopped talking about Epstein. Those enraged by all this include some of Trump’s most enthusiastic backers—Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, and, of course, Elon Musk, who suggested on his social media platform several weeks ago that the files are not released because Trump is named in them.

To see why this moment matters, we might look backward to another time. Before Richard Nixon went to China, he went to Disney World. There at the Orlando resort, in the fall of 1973, the president told newspaper journalists that he welcomed questions about the Watergate scandal because “people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook.” His next statement defined an era: “Well, I’m not a crook.”

If you made it through your high school American history class, you know that Nixon did not, in fact, welcome questions into Watergate. And you know that—whatever else one might think of Nixon—the “I’m not a crook” statement was answered on tape, in Nixon’s own words. The American people heard what came to be known as the “smoking gun” recording, in which the whole country heard Nixon ordering what he said he never did. Some felt betrayed. Some felt vindicated. The country decided to move on.

I’m not sure that “Stop talking about Epstein” will be taught to high schoolers in 2065 in the same way that “I’m not a crook” is. We are unlikely to ever see the files. We are also likely to be in the middle of another all-consuming national conversation in a matter of days, maybe even by the time you are reading this.

Even so, we should ask ourselves what this moment means. Why do we want to see the Epstein files?

The most obvious reason is that we want justice done. We want to believe that our institutions—even in the present crises of credibility that most are going through—are not wholly corrupt. Most people don’t want the kind of country in which a poor person is behind bars for drug possession while some of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world rape women on a Caribbean island with no penalty whatsoever.

This impulse is a good one. In fact, it is more than just a moral instinct. It is written on the heart. “You shall do no injustice in court,” God said through Moses. “You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor” (Lev. 19:15, ESV throughout). That principle is repeated in various ways throughout both the Old and New Testaments.

Behind this moral foundation, though, there might be something else more specific to this moment in American history. The Epstein files might be a parable, a stand-in for a definitive settling of what has ripped America apart: a way to see, in real time and without dispute, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

The pro-Trump media ecosystem spent years talking about the files and the fishy circumstances around Epstein’s death because it was part of a larger story: about how Trump was standing up to a “deep state” cabal that was, among other things, trafficking children. For these people, the Epstein files were meant to show that, like the Hunter Biden laptop, there really was a story there that the people they mistrust didn’t want to talk about.

Those of us who don’t support the president, on the other hand, are no less pulled toward the story of a conclusion to the moral divide of this time. The Epstein files suppressed by a president who was friends with the dead villain would finally cause our neighbors and friends to walk away from the kind of character that’s been celebrated over the last decade.

But that’s not going to happen—no matter what happens with the Epstein files. The revelation that Nixon had lied about Watergate wasn’t a shocking reversal of image to the degree that it would have been if, for instance, Mother Teresa had been discovered to have a private jet or if Gerald Ford had been seen coming out of a strip club. For years, Nixon had carried the nickname “Tricky Dick.” Still, many of his supporters were stunned when Nixon—as songwriter Merle Haggard put it—“lied to us all on TV.”

I’m not sure we are in an era where a shared morality would trump tribal identity. After all, we all heard the Access Hollywood recordings. We all saw January 6. None of these things ultimately mattered, if by “mattered” we mean resolved the political divide. But they will matter in history. Those who come after us will be horrified that our generation looked away from these matters of character—or they will approve of such things as good.

With the Epstein files, part of what we want is—at long last—unity, agreement that there is something on which we, as a matter of moral principle, can agree is wrong. We also want justice: the right prosecution of those who have ruined lives. I doubt we will get either, but it’s possible.

Behind all that, however, we want something even bigger. We cry out for wrongs to be righted and evil to be avenged in a more ultimate sense than any Department of Justice can grant. Regardless of what happens here, for that, we will have to wait.

We should pursue justice as far as we can while recognizing that even when it is not done, no one will get away with it. Jesus said, “So have no fear of them, for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known” (Matt. 10:26).

Whoever the victims are, they will be heard. Whoever those who harmed them are, they will be found out. The Epstein files may never be opened on earth, but do not be deceived; they are open in heaven.

How to Have Conflict When You Hate Conflict

You all know that I’ve had plenty of criticism for the way algorithms are blunting attention spans, fueling extremism, and tearing people apart. But sometimes, algorithms can result in something good.

That was the case for me when I discovered the Instagram videos of Jefferson Fisher, a Texas lawyer who answers people’s questions about what to say in difficult or awkward moments. He’s the author of a new book on the subject, The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More, which I really liked and wanted to ask him more about.

I had him on the show this week, and we talked about all kinds of practical tips for people who don’t like conflict but have to have it. I asked him what I should have done when the prophecy-chart lady at the church where I was preaching came up after the service to say, “Don’t you think that Pokémon is a sign of the occultic workings of the Beast of Revelation 13?”

We talk about how to know when to ignore something and when to respond. We talk about what to say to a sarcastic remark and about what to do when nobody wants to talk about the political disagreement in the family except that one uncle who wants to go there.

And we talked specifically about what we can learn from Jesus. It’s easy for us to say that we ought to be Christlike in our conflict, and that’s true. But when it comes to conflict, what was Christ like?

In the Gospels, we see him as one who sometimes directly responded to conflict (Matt. 19:3–9), sometimes redirected the conversation (Luke 20:20–38), sometimes refused to engage (Mark 11:27–33), and sometimes withdrew altogether (John 6:15). How do we know which is the right response?

If you’ve ever found yourself in a situation where you don’t know how or whether to defuse the conflict, how or whether to name the awkwardness, this conversation is for you.

You can listen to it here.

How to Talk About Someone Who Has Just Died

Every time someone prominent but controversial (and who is prominent without being controversial, other than maybe Bob Ross or Tom Hanks?) dies, there’s a conversation that breaks out all over social media about what to say—if one thinks the person’s legacy was more bad than good.

It is puzzling to see people given to slandering and libeling the quick and the dead suddenly, with great conviction, talk about not speaking ill of the dead. There is a way to talk or write about someone’s legacy—including the ill effects of it—in a way that’s not gratuitous or cruel to the grieving family or friends left behind.

Those moments, though, are abstract. And even when they evoke strong feelings in us, they don’t hit with the force of someone who wasn’t a well-known celebrity, maybe a family member or a church member. What if that person wasn’t a good person but also not a clear villain? I’m not referring to the serial killer in your neighborhood or to the abusive husband you know was hurting your friend. What about when it’s much smaller and the person is much more complicated?

What do you do when an uncle or an aunt or a church member dies, and you cannot eulogize that person as good or kind? Do you lie? Do you let loose at the funeral about how Cousin Norbert was a mean old drunk or how Aunt Flossie was more hateful every year she lived? None of those are the right thing to do. But what is?

Well, I came across an example this week from a 1945 letter from C. S. Lewis to his friend Arthur Greeves about the death of Lewis’s uncle Augustus Hamilton. Lewis wrote that “Uncle Gussie” was a “difficult man,” and wrote there was no way to avoid the conclusion that he was “a very selfish man who yet succeeded in avoiding all the usual consequences of selfishness: that is, he was not at all a bore, had no self-pity, was not jealous, and seemed to be as happy as the day was long.”

If at a Mississippi funeral I heard someone say “Well, she was not boring …” I would know all that is needed about the deceased. Still, Lewis went on to say that his uncle, though rarely caring about other people, did love things outside himself: “His mind was not occupied with himself but with science, music, yachting et cetera.”

Again, if at a Mississippi funeral, the deceased was eulogized by the fact that he “loved yachting,” I definitely would know the words “You kids get off of my lawn!” had come out of that guy’s mouth many times.

Still, Lewis was making a broader point. “That was the good element and it was (as I think all good elements are) richly rewarded in this life,” Lewis wrote. “Let’s hope and pray that it will carry him through where he is now. It may be the little spark of innocence and disinterestedness from which the whole man can be reconstructed.”

This made me smile, not only in terms of how tactfully Lewis found something to say that was if not praiseworthy, then at least not condemnatory, but also because, to some degree, it fits everyone.

Someone not long ago was talking to me about his late father and said, “He was mean and often cruel, but I could see these moments, especially with his grandchildren, when he was loving.” Maybe you have someone like that in your life who is now gone.

You don’t have to pretend the awful stuff isn’t there. Paying attention to some of those flashes of common grace, on the other hand, isn’t necessarily denial. It could be a prayer that God has taken that spark and fueled it into something that, when you see this person again, will be identifiably them and yet very, very different.

Maybe that person will be, as we hope for all of us, like Eustace Scrubb with his dragon skin clawed off.

Desert island Playlist

Every other week, I share a playlist of songs one of you says you’d want to have on hand if you were stranded on a desert island. This week’s submission comes from reader Currie Dail of Stanfield, North Carolina:

“Sunday Morning Coming Down” by Johnny Cash: The voice of Cash with the lyrics of Kristofferson.
“Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” by Willie Nelson: My dad’s favorite.
“On a Corner in Memphis” by Todd Agnew: Classic blues that bemoans the lack of true worship in our churches. The intro is amazing.
“Colors” by Joy Whitlock: The most vulnerable song I’ve ever heard. “I don’t want to disappoint you, but everything has changed. I’m not the girl I should be, and who I am won’t go away. I never knew my colors would fade.” And later, “So fight for me, break my stride. The best of me has lost, the rest of me hides. Let your mercy find me while I’m still alive.”
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