Details

Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 08 January 2024

If you’ve been listening, you’ve probably sensed things aren’t right on campus, or for that matter in the American street, so what is this game of truth or consequences we seem to be playing?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #127 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 kid there was a long-running television game show called “Truth or Consequences.” This was in the days of black and white TV. Borrowed from an earlier run on radio, this program was the “first game show to air on broadcast television, airing as a one-time experiment on the first day of New York station WNBT’s commercial program schedule on July 1, 1941…(but) the series did not appear on TV again until 1950,” when the new boob tube caught on commercially. 

The program gimmick was that contestants would be ask goofy trivia questions and if they did not answer correctly, which they almost never did, then they had to pay some kind of consequence, usually being the object of a prank. The public loved this show, and it ran for years in the 1950s, then much longer in syndication.

I reference this illustration because it harks to a time, even in jest, when “truth” was considered a real and immutable thing, a time when truth, not “alternative facts,” not “truthiness,” not “true for you but not true for me” existed.

Today, we regularly witness the brazen rejection of scientifically demonstrable, biologically determinate, seen-with-your-own-eyes truth in favor of, well, untruth. 

And we think there are no consequences. Consider these examples:

1. Abortion– For thousands of years into the primordial past, families, clans, tribes, countries, empires, and civilizations acknowledged that the baby in its mother’s womb was indeed a human being, and thus to be protected. Then came our time, when officially since 1973 we’ve said, “Nope, it’s just a fetus.” Somehow, we know more about truth than all who’ve come before us. The moral, social, political confusion since are the consequences.

2. Immigration – Well, actually we could now call it “invasion” on the southern border, tens of thousands coming into the U.S. without being vetted, with no concern for vaccination status, yet more than 8,000 U.S. military personnel were dismissed for refusing a COVID vaccine, with no idea who these mostly military age males are, and with the glaring example of the non-assimilation problems now being experienced in Europe,yet each week current Administration personnel look into cameras and argue the southern border is secure. And media, if they report on this travesty at all, tell us there’s no consequences.

3. LGBTQ – The big news in Canada is that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the Parliament building restrooms would now provide free women’s hygiene products in the men’s restrooms. “Menstrual products must be in ‘all toilet rooms, regardless of their marked genders,’ according to Canada’s Employment and Social Development website.” So, just like that, Canadian taxpayers are being required to pay for transgender ideology.

But let’s think about this for a moment. If a woman wants to be a lesbian or a man wants to be gay, they can take this immoral step without fundamentally wrecking the social order. But a so-called transgender person, a man who thinks he is and must act like a woman, a woman who “identifies” as a man, in most cases demand to be treated according to their sexual proclivities. Consequently, these spiritually troubled individuals drive a deep rift into what has been since the Garden of Eden a biologically binary world, “male and female created he them.” The consequence of transgenderism, and Satan the Father of lies knows it, is division, among families, friends, churches, and governments.

4. Plagiarism– Since three ivy league university presidents testified before Congress Dec 5, 2023, regarding their university’s woeful campus inaction with respect to open antisemitism, fallout from their atrocious, arrogant, aloof responses has continued. 

The three privileged academy presidents cited free speech and so-called “context” as defenses of their university’s lack of response, apparently attempting to make the public believe, based upon principle, that they were powerless to intervene as student groups sometimes harassed and threatened local Jewish students or personnel, and then shouted for the genocide of Jewish people in Israel.

But Hey, we have a problem, Houston. “Such excuses were blatantly amoral and untrue. In truth, ivy-league campuses routinely sanction, punish, or remove staff, faculty, or students deemed culpable for speech or behavior deemed hurtful to protected minorities.”

Anyone who follows higher education knows that public universities, especially the Ivies, have all developed strict codes limiting free speech, requiring use of trans pronouns, pushing racist ideas in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and otherwise forcing out people, including faculty, who hold non-progressive or conservative views, which are considered unacceptable ideology.

Two of these presidents have now resigned, the first largely due to her clueless comments and her university’s inaction to protect Jewish students, and the pushback pressure this triggered among wealthy alumni, and the second, Claudine Gay of Harvard University, resigning only in small part due to pressure generated regarding her similarly callous testimony.

It took a month of obfuscating, distraction, and defense by the university Board and a group of 700+ faculty members who rallied around President Gay, before she finally resigned. This was after Harvard claimed to have investigated not Gay’s congressional testimony, not the university’s non-existent policies regarding antisemitism, but charges that had emerged alleging Gay plagiarized material used in her published scholarly work.

Plagiarism, it should be noted, is or has been one of the mortal sins of academia. Yet at Harvard, rather than dismissing Gay outright, powers that be looked for ways to dodge this bullet.

Harvard attempted to protect President Gay by inventing a wheezily phrase, “duplicative language,” which in everyday colloquialism means cheating, copying someone else’s content. There have now been more than 50 examples of plagiarism lodged against Gay—meaning not once but repetitively, including in her dissertation, she lifted entire paragraphs, copying and pasting another’s work, and then wrote and passed them off as her own, yet Harvard “cleared her of actionable plagiarism.”

“Harvard and its supporters further embarrassed themselves by alleging that if the victims of Gay's plagiarism didn't object, then why did her expropriation matter that much?”

Meanwhile, Dr. Carol M. Swain, and award-winning Black scholar has sent a letter to the Harvard Corporation asking them what remedies they intend to apply in recognition of the fact Gay plagiarized passages of Swain’s work for use in Gay’s 1997 dissertation.

“In the respective press releases from both Gay and the Harvard Corporation, racial animus was cited as a reason for her removal. Gay did not even refer to her failure to stop antisemitism on her campus or her own record of blatant plagiarism.”

In the past month, we’ve heard from other left-leaning pundits that plagiarism is not really a problem, just another example of white supremacy, that Gay’s plagiarism was just “technical attribution issues” or “sloppiness,” so now in an effort to protect their politics, scholars, journalists, university administrators and board members are willing to redefine plagiarism, which is to say, falsehood has no consequences.

This is little more than Orwellian doublethink, or what later was called doublespeak, the “use of euphemistic or ambiguous language in order to disguise what one is actually saying.” It’s like being pro-abortion is just prochoice, or choosing to be sexually immoral is choosing to be gay.

Cal Thomas noted that “(Claudine Gay) and many other university presidents are only a symptom of what's wrong with our system of education, from bottom to top.”

“American public schools have followed the path of these universities, incorporating subjects that have little to do with a proper education, and in too many instances indoctrinating young people with a secular progressive worldview.”

Ultimately, deeper, restorative changes must be made in education, as well as government and commercial America.

This involves rediscovering and reaffirming the reality of objective truth, the sacred value of morality and ethics, and the desire to do right and do well because we know God who is truth. The future of Western civilization is at stake.

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.

Details

Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 24 May 2023

Have you at times thought the world is simply gone off the deep end? Are things happening that make no sense, at least based upon how you’ve always understood the world?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #88 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.

Contemporary culture seems bent upon embracing ideas, attitudes, values, and practices earlier cultures considered lacking in common sense. I call this phenomenon a celebration of irrationality.

It goes right to worldview. What you believe about God, life, and truth determines how you evaluate and what ideas, attitudes, values, and practices you embrace.

The prime reason contemporary culture celebrates irrationality is that the current cultural zeitgeist, or spirit of the age jettisoned the idea of moral absolutes for moral relativism.

“There is no truth.” No God, but no truth. Or, we hear, “It may be true for you but not true for me.” 

Since we can know nothing for sure, we cannot believe anything for sure.

The result is an increase in moral depravity—overall cultural degradation, death of conscience—rage in the streets, mass shooters, loss of meaning of life—with a consequent uptick in nihilism, loss of definition of happiness and contentment—American society possesses more material abundance, is healthier, and lives longer than any society in history, yet we are the most unhappy, loss of common purpose, common cause, common sense.

The outcomes of this morally relativistic zeitgeist are many and all of them are negative:

1. Anxiety – uncertainty, fear, national mental health crisis, increasing youth suicides.
2. Abortion – icy indifference toward human life. If children are an inconvenience, just get rid of them. Kill off our future. It’s heartless, ruthless, senseless.
3. “Woke” ideology – In name of tolerance yields intolerance. It promotes racism, lawlessness, victimhood, cancel culture, suppression free speech, neurotic self-righteousness, totalitarian attitudes. Yet universities, entertainment, corporations, and now government are embracing it. It’s dangerous, because it kills everything it touches.

4. LGBTQ+ – gender fluidity, which does not actually exist, yet we embrace it. Utter pronoun nuttiness. The LGBTQ+ “movement” decries Creator God, denies science and biology, and destroys humanity.
5. Substance Abuse – now a fentanyl epidemic, with narcotics becoming more toxic every year, and yet we keep wanting more to fill the emptiness within. It does not work, and it is irrational, but we keep hammering ourselves with hard drugs.
6. Debt – In the late 1980s, we legalized commercial gambling, and now, worse by far, we’ve decriminalized and are now promoting sports gambling, the worst kind of gambling.

And in Washington, DC, we run up the National Debt to (at this moment) over $31.8T. We spend beyond our means and we spend beyond other peoples’ means (our children and grandchildren).

There’s no piper to be paid, no reckoning, or so we choose to believe. It’s irrational.

Our culture cannot sustain itself indefinitely with this kind of pell-mell rush to celebrate irrationality, to bury ourselves.

So, what do we do?

Scripture says, “Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth” (Eph. 6:13-14).

In the face of untruth, Christians share truth and the Truth. In the face of irrationality, Christians share the rationality of biblical teaching.

Stand firm with the belt of truth.

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, 2023  

*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.  

Details

Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 20 December 2022

Do our values determine how we think and behave, and even so, does it matter? 

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #59 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.

There’s an aphorism in political philosophy: “ideas have consequences.”  Many attribute this to University of Chicago conservative political philosopher Richard Weaver’s book by that title in 1948. But the concept probably goes back to the Greeks.

Theologian John Piper noted how Victor Frankl, a Jewish professor of neurology and psychiatry, who was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau during World War II, and later became world renowned for his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, in which he shared the essence of his philosophy that came to be called Logotherapy—that the most fundamental human motive is to find meaning in life. He observed in the horrors of the concentration camps that human beings can endure almost any “how” of life, if they have a “why.” 

Later in life in his 90s, Frankl said, “I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in the lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers.”

What he was saying is that ideas have consequences, for good or for evil.

The Nazis demonstrated this, crafting a comprehensive empire in just a couple of decades, one that ended in destruction and death, the logical consequences of their false ideas and ideology.

God created human beings in his image as reasoning, thinking, moral agents, people who can evaluate and make choices, whether motivated by nobility or ignobility. What people believe matters.

During the World Cup, word began circulating from Iran that an Iranian professional footballer had been arrested, accused of “waging war against God,” and sentenced to death. 

Whether this tragedy occurs, he is by far not the only one scheduled for execution. People who are not famous, unknown to the world, are giving their lives for liberty. They will be killed because religious authorities hold to immoral ideas, which have consequences.

John Piper pointed to the Bible’s observation, “Whatever was written in former days was written…[that] we might have hope,” (Rom 15:4). The ideas presented in the Scriptures produce the practical consequence of hope.”

Ideas in Scripture – that is to say, revealed truth, principles – are there for our benefit so that we may know how to order our lives in a fallen world to serve God and others, to be free and productive, and to flourish.

Regimes like the one in Iran embrace ideas arranged in ideologies that lead to tyranny, destruction, and death.

In the U.S., we’re awash with ideas producing negative consequences. 

--Identity politics leads to oversensitivity, cancel culture, seeing racism in everything, and more.

--An assumption that all human beings are basically good, generally the victim of their circumstances and environment, and a sense that all cultures are equal or relative, leads to consequences like the belief police are bad, secure borders are unnecessary, and crime is just the poor getting what they deserve.

--If we embrace the idea sex is just a physical act and nothing more, among the consequences is a celebration of the sexual revolution in all its perverse forms including now the sexualization of children, along with the ongoing hedonism and promiscuity promoted every day by celebrities and online influencers, something that only ends in degradation of lives and families.

--If we don’t think the idea of sin is valid, the consequence is we look for psychological sources to blame for problems, wrong choices, and evil. It becomes easier to call people’s bad behavior “mental illness.”  Take Kanye West, now called “Ye,” for example. 

I’m not arguing there is no such thing as genuine mental illness or that we should not care about or care for people struggling with mental illness. 

I’m simply observing that “mental illness” is now a media “go to” whenever some celebrity behaves badly. It’s a convenient “Get out of jail free” card.

Kanye West has a history of abominable statements, including recently making antisemitic comments. He seems to get a pass from a lot media anchors who say, well, he’s sick, he’s mentally ill, and that’s it. Few people say, Kanye is making wrong choices based upon wrong values and he needs to repent before the Lord.

Ideas have consequences.

Jesus said, “What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them,” Matt 15:11. “But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person,” Matt 15:18-20.

In another passage of Scripture, Jesus said, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. 

People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of,” Luke 6:43-45.

What is in our heart is what matters, which is to say, our ideas, whatever the source, what we believe has consequences. These consequences emerge in how we think, behave, and the ways we approach living in this world.

In the Old Testament, we were enjoined to “Buy the truth and do not sell it—wisdom, instruction and insight as well,” (Prov. 23:23).

The late Christian philosopher Francis A. Schaeffer observed something similar. “Most people,” he said, “catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society, the way that a child catches the measles.

But people with understanding realize that their presuppositions should be *chosen* after a careful consideration of which worldview is true.” 

If indeed ideas have consequences, and clearly, they do, then as Schaeffer reminded us, we should take care to choose carefully our presuppositions, which are our basic ideas or assumptions about life. We need to do what Solomon said in Proverbs, “Buy the truth and do not sell it.”

In the early 21^st Century, a time saturated by information and online influencers promoting every evil known to humanity, and at a time when culture has rejected the idea of moral or even scientific absolutes, it is imperative individuals, especially Christians, stay moored to truth. For our own sanity and for the well-being of society, we must critique all ideas, recognize their consequences, and stand for truth.

Ideas have consequences.

Believe and act on false ideas and you will sadly, even if enjoyably for a season, drift with the masses along the broad road to destruction.

Believe and act on truthful ideas, and you will be a beacon of light in a dark world, a testimony that there is – still – love, beauty, blessing, and hope.

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, 2022   

*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.  

Details

Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 01 November 2022

Have you ever found yourself in a conversation, using words you learned in the media but words with which you disagree?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #52 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.

For a while now I have been thinking that conservatives or Christians specifically are losing ground in the culture wars in part because the words we’re using are developed and defined by those with whom we disagree.

The abortion debate ran into this a long time ago. People who support abortion as a legal option for ending a pregnancy, never talk like this. They talk about “reproductive health” or “reproductive freedom.” They refer to themselves not as pro-abortion but as pro-choice, and they now refer to those who oppose abortion as “anti-women.” 

If you talk about transgenderism and you say something like “trans affirming” or “transphobic,” you just referenced the topic at hand using vocabulary developed by those who promote trans ideology. If you say you do not believe trans men should be permitted to participate in girls and women’s sports, then media will not describe you as protecting women or pro-girls but as “anti-trans.” If you are a parent that does not support your child’s desire to live a trans lifestyle and possibly to medically transition, then you are described by school districts as a threat, the bigoted enemy. In some states, parents can be prosecuted for not unquestioningly supporting their child’s pursuit of transgenderism. Author J.K. Rowling, who has expressed a preference for calling herself and other female persons, “women,” as opposed to womyn or some other twist on female status vs trans women, has been attacked as “trans exclusionary.”

If you talk about pregnancy and you say “pregnant people” rather than pregnant women, you just bought into the ideology promoting the anti-scientific, anti-biblical idea that men can have babies.

If you say, “sexual orientation” or “gender fluidity,” words now so common they have their own acronym, SOGI, you just acknowledged if not affirmed that sexuality is somehow a choice, an orientation, and that gender, a socially constructed concept to begin with, not only exists separate from biological sex but it can change, that “being binary” as is now said is not the only option.

The new fad concern for pronouns, as in when you meet someone you say, “My name is Rex and I use the pronouns he/him/his. Are there any names or pronouns I can use to best respect you?” is now a commonplace in media, education, and corporate life. In other words, to be in sync with the “prevailing acceptable narrative,” one must use the right pronouns, so a boy or girl who declare he or she is some version of non-binary, now demands that everyone refer to him or her as “they” or “ze” or “Xe” or one of an indefinite and always changing set of neopronouns used by the gender non-conforming, which is to say, those who reject their divinely determined biological sex. So, we’re considered disrespectful if we do not use these ostensibly gender-neutral pronouns and we’re expected to declare our own—on emails and other publications—even if we do not agree or otherwise participate in this gender confusion.

If you want to discuss race relations and begin with phrases like “white fragility” or “whiteness” or “white supremacy,” you just bought into a set of assumptions and cultural interpretations that bias the discussion in favor of leftist views of oppression, race, and justice. Even the phrase, “Black lives matter,” needs definition. If you mean the organization, then you are promoting a host of values unsupportable in a Christian worldview. If you mean simply that the lives of black persons matter, then absolutely the phrase rings true, as does “all lives matter” or “blue lives matter,” though again, the problem confronting us is that any and all words or phrasing—especially on social media—can quickly be turned on their axis to represent a stated or implied political posture in opposition to or even attacking another point of view.  

The word “equity” is now regularly used in place of “equality,” the former meaning sameness of outcome or result and the latter originally meaning sameness of opportunity. Equity assumes injustice and unfairness if any differences exist, whereas equality—this word, too, a victim of political revisionism—historically meant everyone is able to begin, to live, to pursue moral interests without opposition. Today, equity is the penultimate goal, equality is a means to achieve it.

If you say, “women’s rights,” a concept that would seem to be something Christians and conservatives should embrace, and indeed they do, you still need to define your term because in many usages today this phrase is a euphemism for abortion advocacy. Point being from the left, women’s rights are unattainable without full-on abortion-on-demand up and possibly after actual birth.

Same for the phrase “social justice,” a concept that is now so thoroughly immersed in Marxist, socialist, or secular progressive values as to have no alignment with what the Bible means when it talks about justice.

“Climate change” is another phrase that’s been defined, redefined, adulterated, and propagandized to the point it is almost unusable. And even if you use it, you still need to say what you mean, or better what you do not mean, by the phrase because undergirding much of the push for climate change policies is a secular, progressive, globalist big government, anti-capitalist intention. What that form of climate change is about is much more than Creation care, environmental stewardship, or conservation.

“The fact is, for the (climate cataclysm cabal) rants and demands aren’t about climate change. They’re about control. Control of our energy and economic future. Our jobs and living standards. The kinds of homes we can have, and how much we can heat and cool them. What kinds of cars we can have, and how far we can drive them. What we can hear, see, read, learn, think and say, under full-throttle Green Fascism.”

I’ve shared a few examples of the utter chaos that is now the English language, chaos that did not just happen but is rooted in a wholesale postmodern, post-Christian cultural rejection of Judeo-Christian values and the abundant Western Civilization those values made possible.

As I have said many times and will necessarily keep saying it, in a culture that has jettisoned the idea of absolute truth, including moral absolutes and often including God himself, there is nothing left to hold the culture together. There is no other so-called metanarrative comprehensive and true for all times countries and cultures that can define reality as God defined it at Creation. There is only the Tower of Babel, confusion. 

So, we live in a time when word salads are our daily experience.

The key for our Christian witness is to speak truth. This likely means we must work harder to understand how words are being defined, particularly if they are biased in the direction of a worldview or ideology with which we cannot agree, and then determine how we should define them in terms of our Christian faith.

Our task is to know our own convictions, to be informed, and to take courage in expressing our Christian worldview.

As Scripture reminds us, “Buy the truth and do not sell it—wisdom, instruction and insight as well,” (Prov. 23:23).

In a time of division and confusion, careful, truthful communication can be a light in the darkness.

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, 2022   

*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.  

Details

Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 19 September 2022

How did American culture get to a point where a distinguished nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States could be asked the question, “Can you define ‘woman’?” and respond with a straight face, “I’m not a biologist. I’m a judge”? 

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #46 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.

In the Garden of Eden, the Serpent lied when he said, “You will not certainly die. For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil,” (Gen. 3:5).

Later in Scripture, Jesus described the Serpent or Satan or the Devil as “a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44).

Having rejected the idea of truth and moral absolutes, American culture is now awash in lies, exactly what the father of lies wants—not lies that snuck up on us but ones our elites are promoting as the alternative facts by which we should order our lives. In a culture like this, wherein our youth are being taught outright falsehoods in the name of science, safety, diversity, inclusion, and equity, what do we expect of the future?

Thomas Sowell said, “Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children.”

Consider this short list of lies:

It is a lie to say God does not exist, or if he does, he’s not involved in human history.

It is a lie that human beings can live by their own truth.

It is a lie to argue human beings are essentially good, that no evil resides within them, and that evil only comes from one’s environment.

It is a lie to believe sin is illusory or imaginary, inconsequential, or irrelevant.

It is a lie that human beings can just “follow their heart” or “trust themselves” and all will be well.

It is a lie that we can do whatever is right in our own eyes, that this is freedom, and that this life bears no consequences.

It is a lie that good works get people into heaven.

It is a lie to say that men or boys can become women or girls, and women or girls can become men or boys.

It is a lie to suggest two same-sex persons can form a moral marriage.

It is a lie to believe that human beings are sexually non-binary and represent—last count over 100—hybrid varieties of sex that are personally or socially determined.

It is a lie to live as if promiscuous, premarital, or extramarital sex can be pursued without negative consequences to soul and body. 

It is a lie to argue that all that matters in sexual relationships is “consent,” and that any consenting sexual engagement is permissible and good.

It is a lie to argue that non-affirmation of LGBTQ+ lifestyle choices is intolerance, bigotry, or hate.

It is a lie to substitute the state, negating the essential character of the nuclear family.

It is a lie to say men can have babies.

It is a lie to argue pornography and prostitution are victimless crimes.

It is a lie to say patriotism is ipso facto imperialistic oppression

It is a lie to promote the idea socialism results in anything other than loss of freedom.

It is a lie to argue America began in 1619, the product of slavery and white supremacy.

It is a lie to contend that society is at bottom the history of class conflict and that only the state can bring about a utopian classless society.

It is a lie to argue that economics determines all things.

It is a lie to contend that unalienable human rights can originate in the nation-state or the United Nations, a ruler, or regime, or any source other than as described in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

It is a lie to argue race, one’s skin color, determines truth.

It is a lie to believe silencing ideas that are offensive is more important than freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

It is a lie to contend that religion, specifically Christianity, is historically the primary source of wars, violence, and oppression of women and minorities.

It is a lie to believe disagreement with ideas is an attack on the person or the person’s identity who is promulgating the ideas.

It is a lie to substitute children’s rights for parental rights in the name of sexual liberation.

It is a lie to say promotion and presentation of nudity is an affirmation of “body positivity.”

It is a lie to contend that if you believe in merit, individualism, capitalism, or democracy, you are a racist. 

It is a lie to promote woke philosophies of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the name of racial equity when what they produce is division, new racism, anti-freedom of religion or anti-freedom of speech, and destruction of academic standards of excellence.

It is a lie to claim that if you are a member of a perceived oppressed group, you cannot be racist.

It is a lie to deny sin in the human heart while relocating all sin or evil in systems or the environment or politics or oppressor classes.

It is a lie to say that all cultural practices are relative, that no judgment can be made about good or bad, right or wrong, even what constitutes beauty, and should judgment be offered, it is evidence of bigotry and intolerance.

It is a lie to claim that if you oppose Islam you are Islamophobic, if you oppose transgenderism you are transphobic, if you oppose same-sex marriage you are homophobic.

It is a lie to say that those who oppose abortion are extremists or that those who are prochoice are promoting women’s reproductive health or “reproductive justice.”

It is a lie to claim that calling sinners to repentance is bullying.

It is a lie to affirm lies in the name of love.

It is a lie to believe that digital activity is a substitute for parenting, that hours online are harmless, and that what kids learn online won’t hurt them.

It is a lie to believe that a borderless, globalist world without nations and citizenship is anything other than a path to loss of freedom.

It is a lie to believe that discussions simply synthesizing ideas without evaluation or judgment, leads to truth. For as Francis A. Schaeffer said, “Truth carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless.” Truth is not bought by synthesis but by antithesis wherein truth confronts falsehood.

Cultural critic Rod Dreher asks, “Why are people so willing to believe demonstrable lies?” Then he answers his own question: “The desperation alienated people have for a story that helps them make sense of their lives and tells them what to do explains it.” 

The American people no longer have a sound moral understanding, so they are adrift, increasingly anxious, willing to embrace falsehood if it gives them a feeling of security. This is enormously dangerous because it provides an opening for authoritarianism, or if you please, socialism, statism, loss of freedom.

Many American elites earn their living promoting lies. So, lies are everywhere perpetrated in American culture as the “prevailing acceptable narrative,” a viewpoint one stands against at one’s risk like never before in American history. 

Yet Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian intellectual, exhorted the Russian people to “live not by lies.”

Americans it must be said are increasingly living by lies. So, it is not untimely to ask, how long can a culture last built upon lies? 

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, 2022   

*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.