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- Written by: Rex M. Rogers
Is America becoming a banana republic, one where political opponents take shots with bullets not just words?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #159 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
Saturday, July 13, at a Butler, PA campaign rally, a young man fired his rifle multiple times toward former President Donald J. Trump, injuring him and two others in the crowd, and sadly killing a firefighter attempting to shield his family.
It brought back memories of Mar 30. 1981, the last time a President was injured in an assassination attempt when President Ronald Reagan was shot at short range, rushed to a Washington, DC, hospital, and survived a bullet that had narrowly missed his heart.
Reagan looked at doctors in surgery and said, “I hope you all are Republicans.” Standing near the foot of the operating table was [chief of surgery] Joe Giordano, who happened to be a die-hard liberal. “Today, Mr. President,” Giordano said, “we are all Republicans.” Later, the President told his wife, “Honey, I forgot to duck.”
Trump’s in the moment, “Fight, Fight, Fight,” is reminiscent of this earlier time when a leader proved his mettle under duress. Some media coverage since have tried to make this comment, together with Trump’s raised fist, into some kind of fascist rallying cry. But “the crowd at the rally chanted ‘USA! USA! USA!’ in response, the sense of unity and determination was palpable. This intriguing reaction demonstrated the deep connection between Trump and his base, even in the face of violence and danger.”
While the first president, George Washington, was elected unanimously in 1789, American presidential political campaigns since have been rough and tumble affairs. These campaigns have sometimes been marked by vitriolic rhetoric and political violence:
- Election of 1800 (Thomas Jefferson vs. John Adams):
- Thomas Jefferson was labeled an atheist and accused of wanting to undermine the morality of America.
- Though not directly related to the campaign itself, the charged political atmosphere contributed to the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in 1804, resulting in Hamilton's death.
- Election of 1828 (Andrew Jackson vs. John Quincy Adams):
- Andrew Jackson was accused of being a "jackass" and a barbarian, with allegations regarding his inadvertently bigamous marriage to Rachel Donelson – Jackson and Rachel thought her former husband had secured a divorce when it turned out he had not. Rachel died just days after Jackson’s election, and she never served as First Lady. Jackson believed his political opposition’s cruel comments about his wife led to her early death and he never forgave them.
- Election of 1860 (Abraham Lincoln vs. multiple candidates):
- Abraham Lincoln was called a "black Republican" and was accused of being an abolitionist who would incite racial equality and violence.
- Lincoln was ultimately assassinated by John Wilkes Booth shortly after his re-election in 1864.
- Election of 1968 (Richard Nixon vs. Hubert Humphrey):
- The year was marked by significant political violence, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
- The Democratic National Convention in Chicago was marred by violentclashes between police and anti-war protesters.
- Election of 1972 (Richard Nixon vs. George McGovern):
- The campaign included the Watergate scandal, leading to political turmoil and Nixon's eventual resignation.
- On May 15, 1972, third party candidate George Wallace was shot while campaigning in Laurel, Maryland. One bullet lodged in his spinal column leaving him paralyzed from the waist down the rest of his life.
So American presidential politics has always been a raucous time, yet there is no question that the rhetoric and vitriol in the campaigns of the new millennium have gotten uglier.
Can we change this? I hope so, but as I said in a SAT-7 USA blog about the assassination attempt, I believe we’re dealing not so much with a political as a spiritual problem.
We live in a fallen world, and we know that since at least the 1960s, American culture has aggressively and rapidly secularized in many ways and paganized in others.
Both Christian and conservative observers have been noting threatening developments, among them:
- rejection of the Sovereign God of the Bible,
- embracing moral relativism,
- emphasis upon feelings,
- celebrating cultish values regarding race, sexuality,
- promotion of happiness or the self as the ultimate measure of wellbeing in life,
- trading a Christian for a utilitarian view of life, thus a baby may be discarded if not wanted,
These trends help to create a culture that is anxious, pessimistic, and looking for someone, i.e., others, to blame for our problems. Add to this a significant increase in end-of-the-world climate change alarmism, fear of global viruses, terrorism, and doomsday population projections, and one gets a culture that is confused, chaotic, backward, and characterized by an ill-defined rage.
Our political leaders reflect some of this. In an angry age, is it then any wonder that President Joe Biden and Former President Donald J. Trump can be rather nasty in their comments about their opponents? It’s not good, but it is predictable.
One interesting aftermath of the assassination attempt is the number of people, including Mr. Trump and members of his family, along with favorable media figures, who are saying the bullet missed because of the providence of God.
People are saying God is not through with Donald J. Trump, that he was spared by a direct act of God in order to help restore America to its former ideals and bounty.
Now I have no problem with people, least of all the candidate and those around him, acknowledging God’s presence, blessings, and providence, because I believe the Sovereign God of the Universe is indeed involved in our daily lives. God was there in Butler, PA, and he was not surprised by what occurred. Yes, I believe he has a will and a plan for Mr. Trump, for America, for all of us.
I do have a problem, though, with some memes – images developed for sharing online – I’ve seen that, to me, cross over into what scholars call civil religion. These memes feature Mr. Trump in various god-like scenarios, perhaps being uplifted by angels or kneeling while wrapped in the US flag as divine light from above shines down on him. Some memes portray Mr. Trump as a savior, and sometimes seem to worship him. These memes look like and remind me of icons of saints that I’ve seen in churches.
So, God providentially protected Mr. Trump. OK, I then wonder what people would be saying if Mr. Trump had been slain. Would they then be talking about God’s providence?
We know this in our own lives when we or a loved one is very ill. We pray for their healing, and sometimes God answers that prayer affirmatively. But sometimes God answers that prayer negatively and we or our loved one advances in the illness, at times even unto death. Did God love and protect us when he healed but not love and protect us when he did not heal?
Again, I am not against acknowledging God’s engagement in American culture and politics. Nor am I knocking, much less making fun of, those who praise God for his providence in sparing Mr. Trump’s life. During his recovery, Mr. Reagan made similar observations about God’s will, and Mr. Reagan’s life and purpose. If anything, we should obey more of the Lord’s Word and seek his engagement. I am simply cautioning us not to baptize any political figure as other than the man or woman that they are.
Like us, American presidents are not perfect. We are commanded to pray for our leaders: “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Tim 2:1-2).
But Scripture also reminds us who really is in charge of our future, saying, “Put not your trust in princes,in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish” (Ps. 146:3-4).
May God grant the USA and its political leaders providence, protection, peace, and prosperity.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2024
*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://twitter.com/RexMRogers.
Biology Is Divine Design II
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- Written by: Rex M. Rogers
Is sex Satan’s best playing field, or have the forces of evil already won the morality culture wars and now Satan is moving on to other issues, like the rejection of truth, racism, or even climate change?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #158 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
As I’ve noted before, gender fluidity, the idea sex is changeable, or what’s now called transgenderism, is the current cultural soup du jour. It’s everywhere and seems to have become an outright unstoppable juggernaut.
We hear that people finding their “real sex” as opposed to their born-this-way biological sex is some kind of great brave new world. But sadly, it is not.
We hear this controversy is about sex, but it’s not really about sex; certainly not just sex. It’s about identity, who we are.
Trans ideology is not about lust or licentiousness. It’s about declaring that human beings can create “their truth,” be their own gods. It’s about idolatry. If male and female are simply arbitrary categories, then anything goes. Morality, modesty, masculine and feminine don’t really exist. We’re all just some hybrid social construct.
It’s true that for a variety of reasons, men or women have dressed or “passed” as the other sex for centuries. It is only in our lifetime that the idea a man or woman can actually become the other sex, and in so doing embrace their real sex, has seemingly been made possible via hormone therapy and the surgical technology to remove or reconstruct sexual organs.
But even these so-called “treatments” are secondary to the heart and mind proclaiming “Me, I decide who I am.”
While “the first documented male-to-female sex reassignment surgery took place in 1930, “the word transgender…which came into wider use in the 1990s after public health officials adopted it, is often used as an umbrella term for all rejections of the norm, from cross-dressers who are generally happy in their assigned gender to transsexuals.”
Since the 1990s, in an astonishingly rapid fashion, the American populace has adopted a “normalized” view of LGBTQ, and more recently, argued transgenderism is a civil rights matter.
Until 2013, gender dysphoria—confusion about one’s sexuality—was categorized as a disorder, not a dysphoria, by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The World Health Organization, W.H.O., did not move gender incongruence from mental disorders to sexual health issues until 2019.
In 2014, Time issued a cover entitled “The Transgender Tipping Point: America’s Next Civil Rights Frontier.”
Two developments in 2015 acted like critical mass for transgender momentum: the Supreme Court of the United States case Obergefell v Hodges giving same-sex couples the right to marry and Olympic Gold Medalist Bruce “Call Me Caitlyn” Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover.
Then in 2016, the Obama Administration Department of Education redefined “sex” in Title IX to include “gender identity,” making it a civil rights issue. The Departments of Education and Justice required all sex-segregated facilities to be based on gender identity not biological sex.
The Biden Administration, with the President saying to LGBTQ people “I’ve got your back,” consistently advocates for legal changes giving trans individuals – a person born male identifying as female or born female identifying as male – access to sex-segregated events, services, facilities, sports competitions.
Transgenderism has become a cultural juggernaut.
American taxpayers now must pay for gender reassignment surgery for active military personnel or veterans who opt for it.
Disney is adding…queer characters in children’s programming, and is changing its long-standing greeting, “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” from its Magic Kingdom fireworks show, to “Good evening, dreamers of all ages!” to promote what it calls “inclusivity.”
The Cartoon Network is normalizing gender pronouns: It’s comic strip states, “‘We can’t tell someone’s gender just by looking at them, and we shouldn’t assume we know. There are many gender identities beyond ‘girl’ or ‘boy’: some people don’t identify as any gender!’” This is considered children’s programming.
California inmates may now request prisons aligned with their gender choices, no matter their biological sex, and once there, are eligible for costly taxpayer supported gender reassignment surgery. California bans state employee travel to several states considered discriminatory toward LGBTQ individuals.
University athletics personnel are pressuring the NCAA to withdraw or not schedule collegiate athletic events in states that have passed bills requiring athletes to compete in sports befitting their biological sex. More than 25 states are considering or have passed bills labeled by the press as “anti-trans athlete” legislation.
The NFL issued a video saying, “Football is gay…Football is transgender.” Of course, it’s easy to virtue signal corporate activism-a la-profit-motive with a rainbow-colored NFL logo because transgender athletes aren’t going head-to-head in competition like they are beginning to do in other sports.
Serious concerns are being expressed by LGB athletes that allowing transgender athletes into women’s competitions will destroy women’s sports. Some fear Title IX will be eviscerated. “Several prominent female athletes have spoken out against relaxing the traditional standards, arguing the ramifications will be drastic for women’s sports.”
We’re told the idea that men are stronger athletes than women or that sex is binary is due to misogyny and white supremacy.
But it’s gender madness. Some are trying to address the madness by calling for separate transgender competitions.
LGBTQ demands are on a collision course with religious liberty.
Transgenderism politics aggressively attacks the authority of Scripture, often indirectly by repositioning words like accepting, love, inclusive, or tolerance. They call disagreement, hate or bigotry, and they’ve been amazingly successful at pushing this Devil’s delusion into mainstream American culture.
In American culture, as touted by LGBTQ+ activists and others in the “woke” universe, Christianity is increasingly seen as optional, hateful, bigoted, discriminatory, repressive, malevolent, irrelevant, or unnecessary.
LGBTQ+ cannot accomplish activists’ ideological or worldview goals until religion, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, is marginalized or legally banished from cultural influence. Gender ideology and biblical Christianity can only co-exist in a First Amendment society, something activists have not so far demonstrated they can accept.
Christians who sleep-walk through this movement will do transgender people, the Church, and the country a grave disservice.
The rapid success transgenderism has achieved in just a handful of years puts “America…farther down this road than any other country in the Western world. In other words, at this moment of crisis for Western Civilization, or for what we used to call Christendom, the leading country of the free world is pulling the wrong way.”
While religious liberty is at stake in this “all-out cultural war to eradicate all influence of biblical values in our culture,” Christians tend to look upon transgenderism as just a matter of morality. It is that but much more.
We are in a cultural moment in which gender ideology is directly challenging the legitimacy of the Judeo-Christian heritage of the American system.
Gender ideology is not simply questioning the Bible or the Church or religion but the foundational American ideals that helped “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
The Democrat and Republican Parties are not standing in the gap. But “values matter because they translate into behavior. If (parties) become a big tent of moral relativism, who will fight for transmission of the values that sustain life and freedom?”
Not to resist, not to speak the truth in love, not to reason, not to stand in the gap defending life, dignity, freedom, and hope is to give in to irrationality, idolatry, division, destruction, and death.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2024
*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://twitter.com/RexMRogers.
Biology Is Divine Design
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- Written by: Rex M. Rogers
What sort of philosophy leads a seemingly intelligent person to conclude that a boy can be a girl, a girl can be a boy, men and women can identify as whatever gender appeals to them?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #157 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
I don’t remember much about my 0-6 years of life, nor do I remember that I understood the difference in a boy or a girl, in part because I’d just learned I was a boy and what this meant. In grade school, I remember beginning to understand the difference in a boy and a girl, then not liking girls much because, well, they were different. You know, the “ooh” factor; girls had cooties.
Later in junior high school, I recollect beginning to understand that girls are not only different but different in certain interesting ways. I did not know much about this, but Dad gave me a “Birds and the Bees” talk a couple of times.
Dad was a part time barber, so whenever he concluded I’d benefit from a life lesson, he decided I needed a haircut. When you’re in a barber chair you can’t get away. Trapped in a barber chair in an otherwise empty barber shop is a perfect place to hear about the “Birds and the Bees.”
Of course, in the natural process of things, in high school, I decided those ways in which girls were different from boys were downright attractive and a source of endless fascination. God knew this. He planted these inclinations in me and every other human being because he created us male and female, and he did this so that we would be blessed with male/female companionship—remember, “It’s not good that man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18)—so that we would find enjoyment in male/female marriage relationship, and eventually so that we would in the words of the Old Testament book of Genesis, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,” (1:28), i.e., we’d perpetuate the human race.
Now if you are normal, typical, balanced, healthy, you resonate with what I’m saying. You get it. You likely remember similar maturing thoughts, emotions, and bodies in your youth. Best of all, you too understand the difference in a boy and a girl.
Some of you, like me, were privileged to be present in the room at the birth of your own child, either as the mother delivering the newborn or as the bamboozled new father. You saw for yourself that boys and girls are born with their distinguishing biological differences, and while we couldn’t see them, also born with distinguishing emotional, psychological, and maybe other divinely appointed differences.
Given all this, why are there people walking around today who claim they cannot define the difference in a boy or a girl or a man or a woman? Remember US Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson who during her confirmation hearings was asked by Senator Marsha Blackburn, “Can you define ‘woman’?” Jackson said, “I’m not a biologist. I’m a judge.” She was still confirmed as a Justice.
People say they cannot recognize the difference in the sexes and argue neither can medical professionals. In this view, only the newborn babe can later “say what or who they are.”
So, we are now treated to the insanity of sex education in kindergarten and elementary school, not just the differences in boys and girls, but age-inappropriate teaching, blatantly encouraging children to question their own sex, or what is now called gender.
Obviously, there are moral and scientific implications to this, but there are also practical, educational implications. Time spent on gender nonsense is time not spent on reading, writing, and arithmetic, history, science, and certainly not character or civics education. We trade essential instruction that would benefit students’ futures for elective, unseemly instruction that is not only nonessential but harmful.
Gender fluidity is the cultural soup du jour.
It’s the latest craze that’s morphed beyond political correctness to indisputable orthodoxy. Dissent is not permitted. If you ask questions, based upon common sense, biology, a few thousand years of human history, or even religious conviction, you’re a bigot, a hater.
Proponents (especially activists) of gender fluidity believe biology is not destiny. In their view, biological sex is mutable, something “assigned” at birth. One’s “real sex” is determined by one’s feelings about gender, conveniently presented as an ever-lengthening spectrum of choices (some social media are offering 112 gender choices).
This gender transition, we are told, liberates and makes the person whole. Except it does not. Neither do any of the other hybrid gender identities ostensibly resulting from the newly declared fact of gender fluidity.
We know that people who experience gender dysphoria often endure genuine painful depression, detachment, fear, anxiety, and distress. Nothing in this podcast suggests gender dysphoria is not real, consequential, or concerning. Certainly, no perspective here suggests people struggling with gender dysphoria are crazy, weird, perverted, or otherwise undeserving of caring and kindness.
Think about this. Gender dysphoria is not sinful. It’s a feeling, some say rooted in mental disorder, some in emotional and psychological confusion, but gender dysphoria is just feelings, a subjective confusion, and only that unless acted upon.
People with discordant thoughts about sex and gender need compassion not condemnation. They need love, help, caring, and hope.
This podcast is about gender fluidity and the ideology that has grown up supporting it. That ideology is fast becoming a kind of orthodoxy activists are marketing with religious zeal. Corporations, academia and athletics, health and medicine, the military, and governments have climbed on the bandwagon, all in the name of inclusiveness and non-discrimination.
But let’s think biologically. Approximately 37.2 trillion cells comprise the adult human body. That’s T for trillion, another incredible testimony of the omniscience and omnipotence of our Creator God.
“Each cell of the body contains a full set of chromosomes.”
“Humans have 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs. We inherit 23 chromosomes from our mother and 23 chromosomes from our father. The chromosomes in the first 22 pairs are identical in a normal cell and they are the same in both genders. The 23rd pair is the sex chromosome and therefore determines the sex of the individual. This chromosome is either XX for female or XY for male.”
“Whatever set of chromosomes a person has when they are born cannot be changed. This is because chromosomes are in all the cells that make up our bodies. To change a person’s chromosomes would mean changing trillion of cells! There’s no technology…that can change a chromosome in all of a person’s cells.”
“While the condition of gender dysphoria…is real and deserves sympathy, it does not erase the fact of biological sex. Human beings are male or female down to the level of their DNA, and males and females have different biochemistry even before they are born.”
Consequently, sex is not “assigned” at birth. It begins with conception and can be determined on ultrasounds prior to birth. Sex is literally hard-wired in the human design via the trillions of cells in the human body.
So, one’s sexuality is deeper than anatomy, appearance, feelings, or expression. Our sex is part and parcel of who we are, and it cannot be changed no matter what drugs or hormones we might take and no matter what surgical procedures, including extensive gender reassignment surgery, we might choose to endure.
Remarkable intellect Thomas Sowell once observed, “Reality does not go away when it is ignored.” No amount of Pride parades including transgender people, no number of President Biden’s appointment of trans bureaucrats is ever going to change reality.
Scripture says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). This is truth for God is truth. Transgenderism is an attack on the truth of divine design.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2024
*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://twitter.com/RexMRogers.
Living in a Post-Truth Culture
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- Written by: Rex M. Rogers
Have you wondered if there is an explanation for the upheaval we’re witnessing in American culture these past few months?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #156 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
When I was a teenager and young man, there was a fellow who appeared on television every night – Walter Cronkite. By virtue of his professional endeavors and earned reputation he was known for years as “the most trusted man in America.” For nineteen years, he was the anchor for the CBS Evening News and each evening in his deep baritone he’d sign-off with his famous, “And that’s the way it is.” And we believed him. We believed he gave us the truth because we believed in truth, and we trusted his presentation as truth.
Now, there are no Walter Cronkites and we’re swamped with “misinformation” and “disinformation,” politically biased information programs we still call “news,” the wall-to-wall angst of social media, “cheap fakes” videos, and A.I. or artificial intelligence making possible “deep fake” videos wherein people are featured saying outlandish things they never said. Now, we no longer believe there such a thing as truth.
In the New Testament, Jesus is put on trial in front of Roman governor Pontius Pilate who eventually asks the question, “What is truth?” (Jn 18:37-38). It is an existential question all human beings ask. But as English scholar Francis Bacon noted in a year 1625 essay entitled, “On Truth,” Pilate does not hang around to get an answer.
Fast forward to the period called Modernity, stretching from the Enlightenment to post-WWII, people asked the question because they believed in truth. They believed truth could be researched and discovered, and they believed we could do this using human reason, and later science and technology. The 1960s television program, “Star Trek,” perfectly presented this worldview with each episode’s problem eventually resolved by a combination of Captain Kirk’s plucky leadership and Mr. Spock’s logic. Maybe Captain Kirk would sometimes take a risk by “going with his gut,” but for the most part, emotion played a secondary role, even comic relief, coming from Dr. “Bones” McCoy’s needling of Mr. Spock’s rational mind.
Just a decade later, the movie “Star Wars” hit the big screen and in this film series we’re presented with an enormous shift in worldview. While the characters had science and technology, what they relied upon to win their good vs evil morality play was feelings. Now, truth is suspect. Obi-wan Kenobi, the sort of Christ-figure who eventually sacrifices himself for the characters and later returns in the spirit to help them, shared with Luke Skywalker what he called “Truth, from a certain point of view.” He advises Luke, a fledgling Jedi, to “search your feelings” and to “trust the Force,” an energy field that is in all things, including human beings, and a means by which the Jedi can gain power. Truth is not really knowable.
Now what matters is subjective mind control via the Force, a pantheistic idea borrowed from eastern philosophy and religion. Not reason, not science, not Modernity’s search for truth, just feelings. This is postmodernity.
When Oprah Winfrey spoke at the 2018 Golden Globe Awards she said, “Speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.” This is postmodernity. This is the “post-Truth” culture in which we now live.
In this view, as in “Star Wars,” truth is whatever we say it is. Lies then become a way of life.
Lies often have a religious-sounding language, like “Believe in yourself” when Jesus said, “Believe in me.” Like “Follow your heart,” when Scripture says the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked (Jer. 17:9), and Jesus said, “Follow me.” Like “Live your truth,” when Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Like “I am free to be me,” when Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
For Christians who believe in truth, who believe God is truth, our challenge is greater than ever. Where once, during the Modern period, one could speak to another non-Christian about our belief in truth, and whether they accepted or affirmed or believed as we did, they would at least recognize and generally acknowledge that truth exists.
Now, in the Postmodern, “post-Truth” era of moral relativism wherein it is believed nothing can be known for sure and the best one can do is, like Oprah, speak “your truth” or “my truth,” now our challenge is to interact with people who likely do not even acknowledge that anything can be known, that truth is even possible. They are left only with their subjective feelings, uncertainty, and often, anxiety.
And it gets more complicated because by now at least two generations of American youth have attended public schools wherein God, truth, morality, purpose, accountability, and hope have all been undermined, deconstructed, rejected, or destroyed. Gen Z and maybe also many Millennials no longer are certain about anything, least of all truth.
Live your truth versus live the truth. It’s a big difference. No God, they say? Then no truth. No truth? Then there is no morality, science, education, law or order or justice or mercy, aesthetics=beauty or art, trust, purpose or vision or aspiration or meaning or achievement, respect for life or individual dignity, civility, freedom. There is only division, confusion, lawlessness, chaos, insecurity.Post-Truth culture – possibly a new Dark Age. This is America 2024.
America is experiencing Romans 1 come to life via “ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools” Rom. 1:18, 21-22.
Our culture’s view of freedom is somewhat similar. Now it is believed “freedom is the ability to do whatever I want, whenever I want, with whomever I want!” Each individual becomes his own God, master and decider of good and evil. But what the culture promotes as freedom is really addiction and indulgence. It is as Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin” John 8:34. Consequently, there is less freedom and for many, no freedom.
God warned us about how easy it is to get trapped by an Ism, a set of beliefs, values, and choices that lead us onto the broad road to destruction. God said, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ” Col 2:8.
Jesus warned us about the Devil, the Father of lies. The Word of God warned us about false prophets and teachers, and about the sinful inclinations of our own hearts.
But as Christians, truth-seekers, truth-believers, we know God is truth. We know truth is the unchanging, reliable, ultimate standard by which all things are measured. moral compass, guiding actions and attitudes Truth cannot be relative. It is not a matter of opinion or perspective. If perceived truth is relative, it is not truth. To say there is no truth for all people is to declare a truth. Truth is not subjective or relative, not an opinion or preference. Truth is inescapable because reality is inescapable.
How then do we live in a post-Truth culture?
- Anchor yourself in Truth. “The Gospel is the antidote to a post-truth, post-fact culture.” “Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist,” Eph 6:14. Christianity is based upon objective truth. Jesus died and was resurrected.
- Keep your politics in submission to your faith. Politics is important and can be influential based upon righteous values, but politics is not a panacea for our problems primarily because our problems are mainly spiritual not political.
- Still called to be salt and light.
- Speak the truth in love.
- Be prepared to suffer. In 1 Peter mentions the word suffering 16 times. Suffering = persecution, trials, temptations, insults, and evil acts intended to harm and destroy, 2 Tim 3:12. If we live as truth-tellers, then we can expect pushback. Jesus said, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you” John 15:18.
“Our hope comes from outside any system or person because it comes from Christ. Hope is the ultimate antidote to cynicism. In a world that’s growing more cynical by the minute, hope is one of the most radical things you can do.”
In Roman times, soldiers developed a phrase for conveying their highest commitment when they said “Goodbye” or went into battle. They said to one another, “Strength and Honor” and tapped their chests. Perhaps Christians should develop a phrase to that conveys our beliefs. We could say, “Truth and Freedom” and tap our chests.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2024
*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://twitter.com/RexMRogers.
Bible Version Journey
Expired- Details
- Written by: Rex M. Rogers
What Bible version are you using, have you changed to a different version recently, and does one version vs another matter to your Christian experience?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #155 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
I grew up with the KJV, the King James Version. Didn’t everyone back to 1611?
Early in my career when I began speaking more, churches started using the NIV (1978) and my wife gave me a parallel Bible, KJV one side, NIV the other. I joked I could now shoot from either barrel. I used this for a few years because it both helped me study, drawing on wording with which I was long familiar, and helped me speaking if I happened to walk into a church that used one of the other versions.
In 1992, a few months after I became President of Grand Rapids Baptist College & Seminary, eventually Cornerstone University and Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, then Zondervan President Jim Buick gave me a brown leather my-name-embossed NIV that his company produced. With that beautiful new Bible, I shifted to NIV, leaving the heavier parallel version at home.
Now, the ESV (2001) is becoming commonly used. Both the ministry with which I serve, SAT-7 USA, and our home church, First Baptist Church of Middleville, uses the ESV as its primary biblical resource. And I keep running into it in my travels.
I like the ESV. It’s a good version.
Finally, then, a couple of weeks ago I decided it was time to step out on my own take on "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." I measured my faithful old, falling apart NIV and then looked on Amazon for Bibles the same size.
What amazed me is that I not only found several choices, but most of them were also reasonably, if inexpensively priced, this for a product that can be $75 and up. The order was placed and about nine days later my new Bible arrived.
It's the same size, but then again it is not. The overall size of the book is nearly the same, but I intentionally ordered large print, so the font is bigger. This is a bow to advancing age and declining eyesight.
This happens to me in my work. I get a document written by a much younger colleague and it shows up in 9 or 10-point font, which I used “a long time ago in a galaxy far far away,” but not anymore. Now I go for 14-point font, so the Bible needed to be bigger print too, easier to use at my desk, better, or safer if you will, to use when I am speaking, meaning hopefully I don’t lose my place and can actually read when I need to do so.
Not long after I began this podcast, I wrote one called “Losing a Language of the Faith.” The idea was we’ve moved in my lifetime from a largely One-Bible-Version world to a Multi-Bible-Version world.
Many different available versions of the Bible are a blessing of contemporary times and economic abundance, in other words, freedom. But there is a cost, even if we’re careful to select only those versions that accurately present the wording of the original autographs, we end up with choice run amok. We can end up with people in each church using multiple versions. If we memorize Scripture, or even if we are simply taught Scripture, we’re learning or hearing different wording and we may not recognize a verse from another version when it is cited.
This is what I mean about losing a language of the faith. We no longer can quote Scripture together.
I cut my teeth on the what’s now called the “old” King James Version of the Bible, the 1611 version that influenced the course of Western Civilization. When I memorized Scripture, I learned the language of the KJV, including all the “Thees” and “Thous” and “Verily verilys,” just like generations learned these passages before me.
When we went to church, we heard the KJV. There were no “pew Bibles,”—not that there’s anything wrong with them. But the point is: everyone had their own, usually black, KJV and carried it to church.
Though anyone my age—still happens—might speak from NIV or another version, but when a memorized verse comes to mind out comes KJV because it was imprinted indelibly on the brain since youth.
I have several relatives or friends who’ve moved to a newer, easier to understand version, but having grown up on the KJV as I did, they want to stay close, so they use the New KJV.
Now, I have no problem with multiple Bible translations as such, as long as they maintain fidelity to ancient and original texts. I am decidedly not a KJV only guy and never have been. But I do think we’ve paid a price for the multiple versions of the Bible we now employ and enjoy. It’s a kind of embarrassment of riches.
Pastors and churches have addressed this fact of life in various ways. Some pastors work hard a encouraging people who regularly attend to purchase whatever version he and that church regularly use. Some used a selected pew Bible and ask people to turn in it, citing page numbers. More often, with the help of projection, screens, and PowerPoint, Pastors place the Scripture on the screen, then everyone can relate to the same wording no matter the version in their lap.
One result of multiple versions and churches addressing the issue variously is that fewer people bother to carry a Bible to church. Some just access the Scripture via an app.
I am not suggesting “doing away with” multiple versions of the Bible.
However, it still concerns me that we are losing a common Christian language within the Body of Christ,the Church, and what this might mean going forward for the Church. It concerns me even more that youth, already living in a highly chaotic pluralistic world, no longer learn or relate to the same biblical text. And if the Christian community is ever-less familiar with the Scripture – a form of biblical illiteracy – then certainly it is not much of a stretch to think the public will be even less familiar.
And if you pay attention to any of Christian researcher George Barna’s work, that is exactly what is happening: less understanding of biblical stories, less understanding of theology, little or no evidence of a developed Christian worldview.
Now I am not saying multiple Bible versions is the reason for declining cultural understanding of Christian teaching. It’s more complicated than that. But it seems logical this is one additional source of the waning influence of Christianity upon Western culture.
But no Bible version means much if the Word is not read, is not studied, is not understood, and is not applied in the real world. We should not wrap the Bible with the American flag, but we should, so to speak, wrap the flag and the content of city newspapers—insofar as they still exist, but you know what I mean—we should wrap the Bible around current events and issues, vigorously applying our biblical worldview.
We live now in a post-Truth culture, one of the negative spinoffs of postmodernity.
People, especially Gen Z that have been and are being taught this lie in public schools, do not believe truth exists or can be known, so it is going to be more challenging than ever to live out the Christian life. But this is what our declining culture needs. It needs living testimonials, ambassadors of reconciliation, who believe truth, live truth, refuse to subjectivize truth (an oxymoron really), will stand against degenerate lies we hear daily on air and online, and will speak the truth in love.
The Gospel still stands as the most powerful transformative power in the world. No one, not a Christian-killer like the ancient Saul who via salvation became the Apostle Paul, not a murderer on death row, not a seemingly hopeless drug addict or dealer – as long as he or she is still breathing, as long as there is life, there is the message and hope and conversion of new birth in Christ wherein all things become new.
This hope is what our hopeless culture needs. This message of life is what our culture of death and culture that is dying needs. This love, forgiveness, and restoration is what our degraded, dissipated, perverted, addicted, evil, dissolute, demoralized, tragic culture, which is to say individuals, need.
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and you can read this in any accurate version of the Scripture.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2024
*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://twitter.com/RexMRogers.
Fatherhood in America
Expired- Details
- Written by: Rex M. Rogers
Is America really ready for a world without good fathers?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #154 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
Fathers, or at least good fathers, are an endangered species in America.
In the book Fatherless America (1996), David Blakenhorn notes that from 1960 to the 1990s the percentage of children not living with their biological fathers increased from 17.5% to 36.3%. These figures have increased into the high 40% levels and indicate that our nation is replete with citizens raised quite differently than generations born prior to 1970, in which over 80% of children were raised by their biological fathers.
So, we could ask, are fathers still important? Much has changed in our culture in my lifetime. The radio program, 1949-1954, “Father Knows Best” became a popular television series when I was a kid, 1954-1960. The actors were the well-dress, well-spoken, upstanding at least on air Robert Young and Jane Wyatt.
I also remember “Leave It To Beaver” with Ward Cleaver and “Ossie and Harriet” in which the married couple were shown retiring for the night to twin beds.
Then something changed, big time, in the 1960s. “Research has shown that the “patriotic” and “heroic” images of working-class fathers — i.e., the men who rebuilt America after the Great Depression and World War II — have been replaced by images of immature buffoons and schemers who need constant rescuing from their competent wives.”
Now there is nothing wrong with assured, competent wives, but in contemporary terms, this usually means the husband is a bumbling father like Fred Flintstone, Archie Bunker, Al Bundy, or Homer Simpson. Indeed, gaining speed in 1970s sit coms, if a Dad was in the house, he’s an idiot, or a goofball, or superfluous. He gives bad advice or burns the house down.
In the 1980s we had “The Cosby Show,” which, despite Bill Cosby’s later moral crash and burn, featured an upper middle class urban Black family wherein the father’s, the parents’, and the grandparents’ carried weight.
In the 1990s, we got “Home Improvement” with Tim Allen, Tim the Tool Man Taylor. This was an enjoyable family sit com that my boys, who were young then, and I watched regularly. But “The Cosby Show” of the 1980s and “Home Improvement” of the 1990s contrasted how American culture had changed in just ten years. In the Huxtable household on the show, misbehaving children always got a comeuppance from some family adult. In other words, lying had consequences. In the Taylor household on the “Home Improvement” show, misbehaving children sometimes resulted in parental discipline, but usually what the kids did was laughed off. No comeuppance. He lied, Ha Ha, and the lie was joked away.
In one later series episode, Tim was out one night at a bar, playing pool, and in walks a young woman wearing revealing clothing, who then makes a play for Tim. At first, this surprise flirtation appeals to and bolsters his male ego, but eventually he backs off. He never says or does anything overtly inappropriate toward the young woman signaling her interest. When he gets home, wife Jill asks him where he has been, and he lies to his wife about where he was and who he met. This lie is never corrected in the episode, just laughed off. Why? Why did a husband feel it appropriate to lie to his wife? This I don’t know, but I do know this is what American culture was becoming in the 1990s – lies are OK if they meet our needs of the moment. Dads no longer are paragons of virtue.
Think for a moment about world class gold medalist decathlete Bruce Jenner, once called “The World’s Greatest Athlete,” a “man’s man” and a “hunk” for sure, who went through marriages until he wed Kris Kardashian and became the father of two of the five Kardashian family sisters featured on “Keeping Up With The Kardashians,” 2007-2021. In the course of this programs run, Bruce was gradually portrayed for what he had become, an unnecessary and an emasculated pretend father. Infamously, in 2015, on the cover of “Vanity Fair” magazine he was portrayed in a woman’s hairstyle wearing a woman’s white swimsuit under the title “Call Me Caitlyn.” This was his coming out party as, he claims, a woman.
That same year, 2015, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges, “that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.”
This is just nine years ago, but since that time our culture has gone over a cliff.
A Father has now morphed into a woman, men can marry men, women can marry women, and soon thereafter, they began adopting children, ostensibly “fathering” these innocent children in the context of immoral relationships.
But we know fathers matter, not only because God said so but we now know from watching our own culture’s decline:
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2020:
- 7 million children (33%) in the United States live in fatherless homes.
- Children living in fatherless homes have increased by 25% since 1960.
- 6% of Black children lived with their mother only in 2021.
- 85% of children with absent fathers get involved in crime.
- 70% of children in fatherless homes have dropped out of high school.
- Children living in fatherless homes are 4 times more apt to live in poverty.
- Girls raised in fatherless homes are 8 times more apt to become a teenage mother.
- 85% of all children living without a father experience behavioral disorder.
- 63% of Suicides Among Children and Teens Are from Fatherless Homes.
- Teenagers with positive and nurturing fathers are 80% less apt to go to prison.
- Children with Involved Fathers Are 40% Less Apt to Repeat a Grade in School.
- 75% of Minor Children Who Are Patients in Chemical Abuse Centers Came from Fatherless Homes.
- 70% of Runaways, Child Murderers, and Juvenile Delinquents Come from Fatherless Homes.
Children who grow up in fatherless homes are more likely to experience a variety of challenges, including:
- Poverty
- Crime
- Educational problems
- Dropping out of school
- Teenage pregnancy
- Incarceration as an adult
So the presence of a good father, especially a Christian father, in the home when kids are young is a crucial, divinely-appointed contribution to the protection, stability, and potential of that family.
Not everyone, as we’ve noted here, was blessed with the experience of a good father. But if that is your experience, remember that if you are a believer, you have a good Heavenly Father, one who walks beside you, is always there, always ready to hear and engage with you, one who has spoken in his Word if we but listen.
I am one who was blessed with not only a good father but good, present, and engaged grandfathers on both sides of my family. My grandfathers were Christian men, they were upstanding, and therefore they were an outstanding model for me.
My father was a quiet personality, one who led more by example than by leadership up front, though he did some of this too when he was called upon.
One small remembrance. I do not know when this took place, but I was very young, and I witnessed my Dad, finding 2-3 abandoned kittens. Now I remember men who thought it was admirable to spout their dislike of cats. And they took it to the next level, regaling us kids with tales of what they did to these innocent animals. I do not remember those incidents with respect.
But back to Dad, I do remember him picking up those kittens, speaking gently to them, petting them carefully, and then taking steps to find them a safe home. Why I remember that I do not know, but I’m glad I do for it is a good example of Dad’s quality.
What did my father/grandfather give to me?
- Introduced me to faith in Christ and the Christian faith.
- Loved my Mother.
- Rock solid values.
- Faithful in church.
- Modeled incredible work ethic.
- Finished well.
They are all in heaven, and now the baton has passed. It’s my turn now.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2024
*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://twitter.com/RexMRogers.