Did you have a mother that reminded you from time to time that, “Hey, be sure your sins will find you out?” I did.
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #181 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.
“Be sure your sins will find you out.” My Mother quoted this verse from time to time in my youth (Numbers 32:23).
A lot of Mothers have quoted this verse, and with good reason. They were trying to tell their teenagers that doing bad deeds rarely remain secret for long. Sooner or later, as they say in the halls of justice, “The truth will out.” So, our mothers’ point: we’d better take care to do right and do well if we wanted a good reputation and a bright future.
But we now live in the Cyber Age, which is to say, “of, relating to, or involving computers or computer networks (Internet).” We now have social media and the sources of Good and Evil are doing ongoing surveillance in our lives. And technology makes us more vulnerable than ever to our own foibles and bad judgment.
Nearly everyone is walking around with a smart phone. In a pocket, on his hip, in her purse is a mobile camera, audio recorder, and high-resolution video camera. And all these phones are linked to social media, so what’s captured can be posted in seconds for a worldwide audience.
In a nutshell, this means that what was once-private is private-no-more. Private has gone public at warp speed.
Celebrities are especially susceptible to missteps, which are almost instantaneously writ large for the world. They’re more susceptible not because they’re necessarily more inclined to stupidity or bad behavior (though this is debatable). No, they just spend their lives trying to be relevant and create photo ops, so they’re literally plugged in more than the average citizen.
-The leaking of several alleged DMs where he said he was "100% a cannibal," Armie Hammer was dropped by his publicist, dropped by his agent, and dropped out of multiple projects.
-Roseanne Barr lost her TV sit com job after several racist tweets surfaced.
-Mel Gibson’s self-destructive , drunk, racist rants hit the news not once but thrice, all recorded for posterity.
-Alec Baldwin infamously berated his then-11-year-old daughter on her cell phone voice mail.
-Baywatch star David Hasselhoff apparently asked his then-16-year-old daughter to video tape him if he got drunk, so he could later see for himself how bad his addiction had become. Her video of her half-naked, falling-down drunk father slobbering over a hamburger is difficult to watch. But watch it we may on the net.
Celebrity brushes with social media infamy are legion, many of them resulting from unexpected photos or videos of them with someone other than their spouse, thus resulting in later divorce.
But celebrities aren’t alone. Not a month goes by without some new story of a kid (immature by definition) going too far—naively or with malice aforethought—posting content online that, whoops, proves to be illegal, or just stupid.
One high school youth posted pictures of his teenage peers engaging in sexual encounters at a party. Dumb? Yes. Naïve? Probably, but also criminal because the photographed individuals were underage. Now this young man faces jail time, a record, and a damaged life.
Another college youth posted video online, this one featuring him singing sexually risqué lyrics seemingly in front of a group of elementary school children. Turns out, he’d edited his song into an earlier video of the children, so they hadn’t actually heard the song, yet were still pictured in the video. It was a joke, he said, but parents, school officials, and local authorities weren’t laughing. Now despite his apologies he faces criminal charges for posting pictures of minors in a “sexual situation.”
Teens, even “tweens,” are not just texting but “sexting,” meaning they’re sending suggestive words, pictures, and videos of themselves to others. Aside from the moral concerns raised by this practice, these youth are engaging in behavior that makes them vulnerable to sexual predators, stalkers, criminal indictments, or simply embarrassment and broken relationships.
And don’t forget, because the Internet won’t. Whatever is posted online lives in perpetuity in cyberspace. Even more so if it becomes popular, i.e., “goes viral.” The posted material can be accessed, reposted, hyperlinked, and downloaded indefinitely.
Or it may “go away” only to return a few years later when the content originators or participants are applying for college or graduate school, interviewing for employment, dating or getting married, or running for office.
Remember too, if police can track perpetrators’ online activities, other people can track yours. Emails are discoverable in lawsuits. Individuals have lost their jobs, some in ministry, when their online history was later for some reason revealed.
Country clubs and athletic clubs ban cell phone use in locker rooms because illicit photographs have been spirited from these “private” domains. Suspicious wives are using Google Street View webcams to catch husbands visiting paramours.
Scanners pick up local phone conversations.
Ostensibly for marketing purposes, corporations now snoop legally into a wide array of once private but now online personal data. We leave electronic fingerprints online, this information is digitized, and it can be sold. Certain companies also conduct what’s called “data mining,” selling their research capabilities to anyone willing to pay.
Who you are is on the grid. Google your own name and see what comes up.
Since 2003, social media like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter or X, YouTube, and more have made telling our story ever easier.
Social media has put a culture that’s already predisposed to exaggerated self-expression on steroids. If anything, social media seems to encourage our human penchant for narcissism, for proclaiming “I am here,” “I am somebody.”
Beginning with Boomers, my generation, and especially the later generations, we seem to crave publicity in any form. We must be on stage, on camera, on air, online.
This is the genesis of “reality TV.” It’s a driving part of our psyche, our therapeutic need to express, confess, and profess.
Millennials and the younger Generations, Z and Alpha, are even more inclined to say or do anything for the camera, as long as they get their moment.
They don’t have to work at it. I’ve shared in this podcast before that nearly everywhere we go we are now on camera. Atlanta remains the most surveilled city in America. Virtually everywhere we go we’re now on one of a ubiquitous array of ground or satellite cameras. Nowhere is “safe” from the prying eyes of the technological grid. You’re on the grid whether you want to be or not.
Well, how you process all this is up to you. It is still, praise God, a free country.
But surely it would behoove us to remember how the wisest man Solomon summarized life:
He said,
“Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind.
For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).
What’s utterly amazing is not that Tiger Woods’s proclivities came out a few years ago, but that they took so relatively long to do so in this no-secrets era. But, still, his experience is a reminder of many a mother’s injunction, “Be sure your sins will find you out.”
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. Or check my YouTube channel //www.youtube.com/@DrRexRogers" style="color: #96607d; text-decoration: underline;">@DrRexRogers for more podcasts and video.
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 my YouTube channel //www.youtube.com/@DrRexRogers" style="color: #96607d; text-decoration: underline;">@DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://x.com/RexMRogers.
Let’s consider some ways we can participate in “thanks giving” during Thanksgiving.
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #180 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.
Thanksgiving is a rare precious tradition that combines Christian theology and the best of Americana.
God told us to “give thanks in all circumstances.” (1 Thess. 5:18).
He said, “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.” (1 Tim. 4:4-5)
And we’re commanded to “enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!” (Ps. 100:4)
The Pilgrims celebrated what’s considered the First Thanksgiving with Native American neighbors in Plymouth Colony in 1621.
October 3, 1789, President George Washington issued a Thanksgiving Proclamation, recommending the People of the new United States express their sincere and humble thanks to the Lord.
October 3, 1863, with the nation riven by Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation designating “the last Thursday of November, as a day of Thanksgiving.”
Certainly, other countries have their own versions of harvest festivals or days of giving thanks, although they may not be exactly the same as the American Thanksgiving. For example:
So, while the American version of Thanksgiving is distinctive in its historical and cultural context, the idea of giving thanks and celebrating the harvest is a theme that resonates in many parts of the world.
But the Pilgrim Thanksgiving at Plymouth Colony was special in several ways:
Sometimes, we hear that the holidays, Thanksgiving included, is a difficult time for some people, not a time of joy but of pain and sorrow. This is because holidays are generally considered times for family and friends and if you happen to be a person whose relationships have broken down for any number of reasons you may very well be alone. This is a way for the rest of us who are blessed to minister to those in need by inviting them to socialize with us, whether at the Thanksgiving dinner or otherwise. Being alone is not a plus in the human experience.
Then what about Thanksgiving Day traditions – other than giving thanks, eating, and football – what other fun and fellowship do families pursue on this special day?
Stores all across the country have some of their biggest sales the day after Thanksgiving. Now known as Black Friday, this day is almost a holiday in itself. While this shopping tradition has changed with the rise of e-commerce, people still stand in line for hours early in the morning to get great discounts and start their Christmas shopping.
Some people, especially those who supported the losing candidates during the 2024 U.S. presidential election, are now saying that family and friends with whom they disagree politically should not be invited to Thanksgiving festivities. In other words, if you are conservative or Republican, you distance yourself from family and friends who happen to be liberal, progressive, or Democrat, and vice versa. This point of view absolutizes politics, making political matters the end-all, be-all of life, and it perpetuates division and social disintegration.
This is not a Christian view, because it elevates temporal political ideas and angst above biblical values like love, forgiveness, tolerance, and the rest of the fruit of the Spirit. There is no reason Christian believers need separate themselves from those with whom they disagree politically, and if this means not discussing tense disagreements for a time, so be it. No matter one’s political views, what matters is the Lord, His Word, Christian teaching, and how we live out our Christian faith in family and community. Thanksgiving should be a time of gratitude, and there is much to be grateful about, whatever our politics.
In recent years, there’s been a kind of cultural backlash among some Americans against religious holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas – so much so we’ve been told to avoid celebrating Thanksgiving because Americans decimated Indians and it’s hypocritical to perpetuate a myth of good feelings, or we’ve been told not to say, “Merry Christmas” because this pushes Christianity on others. Has this trend changed? Is it changing?
I think it may be changing. There seems to be a growing awareness that our country, though strong, is also in some ways weak, for example, a declining commitment to truth and thus right and wrong, lack of respect for law and order and thus increasing crime, promotion of sexual libertinism and thus emotional damage, disease, broken families, unwanted and unloved and thus traumatized children.
Hopefully many in our country are recognizing a need to return to time-tested, values, values that reinforce families and hold a nation together. If we don’t think and act right, we won’t thrive or maybe even survive. But if we embrace a Christian moral ethic, we can flourish.
Back to gratitude.
It is not possible to thank God “too much.” Think about a loved one, perhaps your spouse. Do you get tired of hearing that he or she loves you? Is it possible to tell your children too often that you love them?
In the Psalms, the shepherd-King David repeatedly praises and thanks the Lord for every conceivable circumstance and blessing in David’s life. This is our model. Thanks be to God the author of every good and perfect gift.
I hope your personal experience with Thanksgiving has been endearing and uplifting. Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to thank God from whom all blessings flow, to enjoy family and friends, to acknowledge God’s redemptive message of hope.
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks” (1 Thess. 5:16-18).
Happy Thanksgiving.
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. Or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers for more podcasts and video.
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 my YouTube Channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://x.com/RexMRogers.
American patriotism has taken a lot of hits in recent years. Should Americans be patriotic? Is there anything really to be patriotic about?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #179 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.
America has been called a Christian nation, though this description has been hotly debated.
America has been called “the first new nation” by eminent sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset.
America has been called “The Great Experiment” by no less than George Washington.
America has been said to be great because it is good, and that it would cease to be great if it ceased to be good.
This observation has been variously attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville and others, but whoever said it the phrase captures America’s sense of itself as the land of opportunity, the land of the free and the home of the brave, ideas rooted in the Judeo-Christian moral consensus that gave meaning and destiny to the American people their first two hundred years.
America’s experience with Christianity is an historic and storied one, not always consistent with biblical theology but one of depth, influence, and impact.
Several lines of scholarly consideration developed from America’s unique experience with religious liberty and the impact of Christianity:
These expressions of Christianity and culture in American history offer upsides and downsides. The upside of American exceptionalism, for example, is that it gave America a purpose, a moral destiny. The downside is that it worked itself out at times in movements like 19th Century Manifest Destiny, which in its best suit gave Americans a proactive, optimistic, forward-looking attitude, “Go West young man, Go West.” People strongly believed in the virtue and the right of the American political culture and system and that their progress was inevitable and justifiable. But in its worst suit Manifest Destiny destroyed the beaver, the buffalo, the rich prairie eventually resulting in the Dust Bowl, and the Native American population.
Historically, many indigenous, aboriginal, or other people-groups, including Native Americans, thought of themselves simply as “The People.” The Ancient Chinese referred to themselves, for example, as “the People of the Middle Kingdom,” meaning they considered themselves the center of civilization and all those around them and beyond were barbarians.
The point is, whether American exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, American imperialism, Christian nationalism, or civil religion, it is fairly easy to demonstrate that Americans have, like other civilizations, tended to think of themselves as remarkable.
This, in itself, is not remarkable. It is only an issue if this sense of our own identity, as remarkable, morphs into a philosophy that we are somehow better, or above, or special, or entitled, by which we, “the people,” begin to judge and treat others as less than.
Or, this sense that Americans are remarkable becomes an issue when many in the current political environment of the 21st Century think America is anything-but-remarkable, in fact these Americans reject their heritage and identity by attacking the values, the political system, and the spirit of what it has meant to be an American. This is remarkable.
In America’s past, Christianity was cited to justify slavery in the ante-bellum South and decimate the American Indian in the 1870s-90s, yet Christianity was also applied righteously in the abolition movement and the Civil War in the 1860s and eventually the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. The record is mixed because American Christians are, like all human beings, finite and sinful creatures. We see through a glass darkly.
However, to the good, Christianity influenced the development of American law, education, politics, economics, culture, and progress toward liberty and justice for all. The impact of scriptural values can be seen in cultural mores regarding sexuality, marriage, family and child-rearing, work ethic, property, free enterprise, public morality, social cohesion, and politics.
E Pluribus Unum, Out of Many One, served as a de facto national motto from 1782 until “In God We Trust” was officially adopted in 1956. E Pluribus Unum is a Latin phrase rooted in a Christian conception of society. Significantly, it is not E Pluribus Tantum, Only Many. The “diversity” being marketed today, often absolutized as a value with little or no concern for unity, is a recipe for social disaster.
I love my country, and I am blessed with many international friends who love their country, but it must be said, being “Christian” and being American or Lebanese or English or French or Chinese or Egyptian or any of the other 195 nations in the world is not the same thing.
This does not mean God does not care about nations. In fact, the Scripture is chock-full of references to the Lord’s work in the midst of, despite, and through nation states.
But God’s will and the Word of God are not the same, in fact are entirely distinct from, the presence, politics, and/or policies of nation states. God accomplishes his purposes in every age, no matter the political configurations of the time.
What then does all this have to do with the ease with which some equate their religious faith, ideology, partisanship, or demography with a morally superior, righteous, and unassailable position?
It is this: if American “Christians” carry an attitude of superiority into their ideological, partisan, or personal identity they not only sacrifice the power of the faith to change the world, they also easily fall prey to a self-appointed moral righteousness.
In other words, one’s viewpoint is no longer just one perspective to be evaluated and debated along with many others in the marketplace of ideas. No, one’s viewpoint is non-debatable, non-negotiable, unimpeachable, inviolable. One’s viewpoint can brook no challenge, give no quarter, take no prisoners. One’s viewpoint is sacrosanct. The other viewpoints are therefore by definition not worthy, not worth hearing, and possibly so dangerous they must be silenced.
While this assumption of ideological superiority is exactly what the Left and left-leaning liberalism does, no Christian who attempts to adhere to Scripture can justify such lack of humility and outright arrogance.
This assumption of unbreachable moral righteousness is also something that political conservatives must avoid. Winning is fun, and MAGA supporters earned a substantial victory in the November 2024 election, so yes, to the victor belong the spoils, and in the months ahead the conservative MAGA movement should enact its policies as supported by the American people. But they must also avoid the human desire to dance on their opposition’s logo, to vindicate themselves by quashing others needlessly, to seeking to silence other points of view. Freedom of speech means freedom to speak viewpoints others consider objectionable, Christian or conservative or liberal or left.
Scripture says, “Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,”
Col. 3:12.
The USA, God be praised, is still a land where religious liberty is honored, and with it freedom of speech. It is a place where all people, including Christians, can learn to discern how their faith can contribute to lives and culture. May this struggle, this Great Experiment, continue.
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. Or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers for more podcasts and video.
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 my YouTube Channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://x.com/RexMRogers.
Have you experienced adversity, trials, or tribulations in your life? Have you ever hit the wall?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #178 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.
Everyone experiences adversity. It’s a part of life no one escapes. In fact, if you haven’t experienced adversity, you haven’t lived long enough.
Something unpleasant happens, often unexpected, and we suffer. Sometimes it's a mild inconvenience like a flat tire, a toothache, a stubbed toe. Sometimes adversity is more severe like an illness or the death of a loved one. Or the car engine coughs rather than purrs, the furnace breaks down in January, we lose a job, Fido goes to his reward. Things don't work out the way we hoped or planned—instead, we experience trials and tribulations.
Robinson Crusoe learned the hard way about adversity. Remember him? At age 18 he foolishly ignored his father's advice, pursued a prodigal drunken sailor's life, aimlessly bounced around the world for a few years, and eventually was shipwrecked alone on a deserted island for what turned out to be 28 years.
Crusoe blamed God—cursed him, actually—for his predicament and lived in bitterness and despondency. Much later he began reading one of the Bibles he’d rescued earlier from the derelict ship. In time, his spiritual eyes were opened, and he accepted Christ. Eventually, he evangelized "Man Friday," the native friend he’d rescued from cannibals. When Robinson Crusoe was finally delivered at age 53, he exuberantly praised God for putting him on the island.
To say the least this is an amazing change of heart. Crusoe goes from cursing God to worshipping God for the same predicament. It took years, new insight into God’s character, and a realistic assessment of his own attitudes, but in the end, Crusoe realized God’s seemingly cruel intervention in his life was actually a providential act of divine love and mercy. Crusoe knew that, left to his own vices, he likely would’ve died young, alone, and un-mourned in a bar fight in some far-off port. In the words of Scripture, he would have “squandered his wealth [and wasted his life] in wild living” (Lk. 15:13).
But God had protected Robinson Crusoe from himself. What he considered affliction or adversity, God considered protection and blessing.
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) is a classic of English literature that upon publication immediately became what today we’d call a bestseller, and it’s never been out of print since. The book helped earn Defoe the honorary sobriquet “Father of the English Novel.”
But Defoe was about more than fame and fortune. Defoe developed the fictional Crusoe character to help illustrate the sovereignty of God. Sovereignty, or ultimate knowledge, authority, and power, is the belief God holds everything in His hands.
In the Old Testament, Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery with evil intent. Yet God used these misguided brothers to accomplish his purposes. He placed Joseph in high Egyptian office so Joseph could later save those very brothers from famine—“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Gen. 50:20). Joseph’s adversity demonstrates that not all of our trials are due to personal sin (Jm. 1).
Job, too, experienced overwhelming adversity, none of it due to his disobedience. While it's possible to bring adversity upon ourselves by ignoring God's commands, it's also possible that many of the problems we face in our lives come upon us because we live in a fallen sinful world (Rom. 1).
With all that happens in this capricious fallen world God is never surprised. He's never taken off-guard. He's never the victim of circumstances. “Accident” and “mistake” are not words in God’s vocabulary. Indeed, the phrase “divine mistake” is an oxymoron. As the sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal God of the universe it is impossible for God to make a mistake. In point of fact, the reality of the Sovereign God and the concepts of “accident” or “error” are mutually exclusive ideas. So, for God there are no “oops.”
The doctrine of the sovereignty of God—this “No-Oops” God—is one of the most comforting teachings of Scripture. God is in control not only of creation but also of his creatures, and he never takes a misstep.
The world is a confusing mix of good and evil, beauty and ugliness. Acts of human courage and nobility coexist with unbelievable human cruelty and debauchery. It's what the Bible calls the "wheat and the weeds" (Matt. 13:24-30). In the face of this moral mixture, Christians sometimes wonder, "Is God on our side?"
Abraham Lincoln struggled with this question in his Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865. He said, "Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained...Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other...The prayers of both could not be answered--that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes...Shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? So shall it be said 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"
God works His purposes with both the wheat and the weeds. Christians will not always "win" or be blessed. Businesses owned by Christians will not always succeed. Life will not always seem "fair." Yet God will work all things, including adversities, together for good (Rom. 8:28).
Not only acts of good but acts of evil are within God’s universal and permissive will—his sovereignty. God does not cause evil. He is not the source of evil. Satan is the source, along with the evil heart of humankind. But even evil men or women committing evil acts do not catch God off-guard and do not unsettle Him in any way. Sovereignty isn’t a part-time attribute.
Consider this passage from the Psalms: “God reigns over the nations: God is seated on his holy throne. The nobles of the nations assemble, as the people of the God of Abraham. For the kings of the earth belong to God. He is greatly exalted” (47:8-9).
Psalm 52 is too long to quote. Just think about these phrases: “Why do you boast of evil, you mighty man…Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin” (52:1, 5).
No mass killer, no deranged gunman, no suicide bomber, no hijacker, no evildoer, no strongman, no terrorist, not even Satan himself can operate beyond the limits of God’s sovereignty.
While we are finite and cannot anticipate, much less eliminate, all risk, God is omnipotent and has us in the palm of his hands. While we may hear of random violence, nothing is ever random in the omniscient eyes of God. While we do not understand exactly how God exercises his disposition over evil in the world, knowing that he does is an immense solace. While we may at times be understandably fearful in a maniacal world, we need not live in fear. God knows when we rise up and when we lay down. We belong to the Lord, and so does history itself.
While we'll not always understand our adversity much less the soul-wrenching adversity of the complex world in which we live, we trust the Lord. He never leaves us nor forsakes us (Heb. 13:5).
Like Robinson Crusoe we must learn to understand all things, especially adversity, from the perspective of a Christian worldview.
God is near, and he's in control. God is sovereign. What a fantastic, liberating, comforting 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. Or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers for more podcasts and video.
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 my YouTube Channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://x.com/RexMRogers.
Ever wonder why we have nation states in the world, and are they legitimate?
Why do nations even bother to maintain borders?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #177 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 terms of the history of the world, what we know as nation-states have not really been around that long.
The U.S.A. was born in 1776, not 250 years old just yet, peanuts compared to the Ancient Egyptian empire’s more than 2,500 years.
But perhaps this is not an apples-to-apples comparison.
“Some scholars consider the establishment of the English Commonwealth in 1649 as the earliest instance of nation-state creation. Since the late 18th century, the nation-state has gradually become the dominant vehicle of rule over geographic territories.” This is where the U.S.A. is Exhibit A.
The English recognized popular sovereignty, the right of people to own their own territory and wherein the government is subject to the consent of the governed; national sovereignty, the right of people to govern themselves; and state sovereignty, right of states to govern their territories without external interference.
The impetus to create nation states involved several demographic and political components:
Before the recognition of self-determinism, or consent of the governed, that emerged after the Middle Ages, governments existed as monarchies, theocratic states, and both colonial and ancient empires.
Scripture repeatedly references nations. The English word is translated from Hebrew or Greek, meaning people groups who might speak the same language, follow the same religion, or live in the same area, a somewhat broader definition than we typically think today.
For example, along with Israel, the Bible mentions Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites as nations.
“Most manuscripts count 70 nations in Gen. 10. The Greek translation lists 72 nations.”
While Scripture says God will work through nations to accomplish his purposes and to bless humanity, he is not limited to nations or governments and is subject to none. That said, the Lord never condemns the idea of nation states, and is not opposed to them as such.
Nationhood involves citizenship, a type of community and sense of belonging. This does not mean, especially in the contemporary context, that everyone is the same ethnicity or race or original nationality, but for a nation to remain strong, the people must be united around common ideals, what historically in the United States we’ve called the American Dream or Americana or even e Pluribus Unum.
For the U.S.A., this means freedom of religion, freedom of speech, equality before the law, freedom of opportunity. It is these common ideals and aspirations which are most under attack these days by members of the political left, some who promote globalism, some who simply live to hate and tear down.
Nations or the people groups that comprise them can, of course, act in highly threatening, negative, even violent ways, including government sponsored racism. Nazi Germany is probably the best of the worst examples. But the point here is that leaders and perhaps their people can make immoral choices that lead to their nation acting in violent racist ways. They are acting out their worldview. It is not the nation-state as such that is ipso facto racist; it’s their worldview.
For a nation-state to exist is must recognize and maintain territorial boundaries that are recognized by other nation-states. No borders, no nation-state. No nation-state, no common purpose or accomplishments, and likely no security.
So, the oft-stated idea being marketed today by so-called globalists, the idea that nations – especially it seems the U.S.A. – should be borderless, or if it does have borders, then the nation is somehow racist, is a false, ahistorical idea. No, the nation is simply acting in an historically demonstrable common-sense self-preservation in the interest of its self-determination.
This is one of the ironies of the illogic of the globalist left. They argue for identity politics, for every ethnic or whatever demographic group to be able to exercise their self-determination as to where and how they want to live, but when a nation-state does this, even their own country – for example the U.S.A. securing its southern border, not allowing waves of individuals to enter illegally – the globalists call this racist.
They are anti-capitalism, pro-climate alarmism, anti-borders, pro-abortion and population decline, anti-freedom of speech and pro-government control of communications.
The socialist, globalist, left, Marxist people like John Kerry, Bill Gates, Al Gore, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and the so-called “Squad” in the U.S. Congress, George Soros, the U.N/’s Kofi Anan, and others who’ve drunk the Kool-Aid like King Charles, Oprah Winfrey, and certainly so-called “progressives” are all-in on big, worldwide government, i.e., few or no nation-states.
Now you’d be forgiven if you thought, hey, this sounds like what the Bible calls the End Times, and it may be. Only God knows. Either way, these anti-nation-state trends run along the same track as anti-freedom.
There are numerous Christian intellectuals, scholars, and writers thinking aloud about these trends. Some, like columnist Cal Thomas are writing about what elections mean in this environment. Some, like brilliant Christian apologist Os Guinness are writing books about what these tectonic shifts in our culture mean.
His latest book, Our Civilizational Moment: The Waning of the West and the War of the Worlds, focuses directly on the questions: “Is the civilization in living touch with the ideas, ideals, and inspiration that created it in the first place and that it needs to continue to flourish? Or, with its roots severed, is it destined to decline and die?” Guinness broadens his discussion beyond America to think about the West, but the U.S.A. is right in the middle of this.
The U.S.A. is not listed in the Bible. We do not know if this means the U.S.A. will not exist when the End Times come, whether it will play a role God chose not to reveal, or whether it will be weaker or in some different circumstance wherein it will not play a role.
But this is not for us to determine, or even to worry about. Our calling and task remain the same: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with (our) God” (Micah 6:8), to “not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Gal. 6:9).
At some future glorious day, the Scripture describes “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Rev. 7:9-10).
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. Or check //www.youtube.com/@DrRexRogers" style="color: #96607d; text-decoration: underline;">my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers for more podcasts and video.
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 my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://x.com/RexMRogers.
Are we happy when our enemies get what we consider their “just desserts”? How do we square this with the biblical command to love our enemies?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #176 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, I remember times when I came home from school and started telling my mother about some other kid who had annoyed, bothered, upset me, or otherwise got under my skin. Mom would listen to this for a while, then invariably would say, “Well, have you prayed for him?” Prayed for him? No, Mom. I was thinking more about punching him.
This is a simple illustration of the human inclination and experience to react against other humans, to dislike them, maybe to hold them in contempt. Adults may not talk to their mothers that often, but they still react to others like I did back when. It’s in our nature, our sin nature.
On a much larger, sensitive, and dangerous level, individuals, people groups, and countries get at odds, then think, speak, and act badly, often-times violently toward others. Such is happening today in the Middle East where rockets are flying, pagers are blowing up, military units are advancing on ground, and each of several antagonists is trying to kill their enemy.
It is in this context of real-life war and danger that my SAT-7 Lebanese colleagues at our studios in Beirut recently held their weekly devotions focused on the question, “Are we happy when our enemies die?”
The fact that they did this got my attention. They are living real-life, not a parlor game. They are concerned about their safety and even more the physical safety and emotional well-being of their children. They are Christian believers now living, literally, in the midst of a war zone that is none of their doing or choosing.
Hezbollah has been launching rockets into Israel almost daily since October 2023, and Israel is now responding, surgically targeting and killing Hezbollah leaders.
Rockets hit specific buildings within the city of Beirut, not very far from our studios or where our staff live, and these rockets have killed the Hezbollah leaders at which they were aimed, but also, they’ve killed nearby civilians, innocent noncombatants. These unintended victims, so-called “collateral damage,” could be anyone.
Our SAT-7 Christian staff wanted to apply their Christian faith to their fears, concerns, and attitudes, wanting to respond as Jesus told us to respond: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’” Matt. 5:43-44.
We are to love and pray for our enemies. This is not easy to do.
I have never been in combat, but I’ve spoken with several who have survived combat, including my late father-in-law, James B. Stone, who was a U.S. Marines in the second wave of troops to beach on Guadalcanal, engaged in some of the most difficult fighting. He suffered shrapnel wounds and damaged hearing that eventually caused him to go deaf, and he came home with a Silver Star. He was a war hero who later became a Christian.
Once or twice, he talked about how he and his fellows were taught to think of the Japanese during WWII, including insulting nicknames and ethnic slurs, forms of hate. Remember, the Japanese at that time were the quite capable and threatening enemy. Then he talked about how years later it was difficult to give over those deeply embedded feelings to the Lord, to not hate or not even think poorly of Japanese people, rather, to pray for them.
If we are to pray for our enemies, we first need to define what or who is an enemy. Then there are other considerations, like self-defense, war, what is a Just War, and the meaning of the Imprecatory prayers in the book of Psalms.
Our natural response to enemies is often to fight back, get even, put them in their place, work to assure they get their “just desserts,” or to demand justice. But when we obey Jesus and respond to our enemieswith love, prayer, forgiveness and blessing, we take ourselves out of Satan’s line of fire and make room for God to handle justice as only He can. We don’t have to worry about our enemies.
This includes those among the enemy people group who are loveable, like children, but also those who are by their attitudes and actions decidedly “unlovely,” like radicals, extremists, and terrorists. And certainly, this includes enemies who persecute others, like al-Qaeda, ISIS, Taliban, Hamas, Houthi, Hezbollah, and the Iran red guard.
In “Ezekiel 33:11, God said, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.’ God is not even happy even when an evil person dies. As Christians, we should reflect the mourning and love of our Lord, who grieves the loss of lives on both sides of the conflict.”
Ultimately, our “enemies” are just people, just wayward individuals trapped in an “ism.” Can we then model the Lord and pray for our enemies, whatever the nature of their evil ideologies?
This does not mean we surrender our responsibility to make judgments about right and wrong, or that we wink at wrong in some warped definition of love. No, with St. Augustine, we still “hate the sin and love the sinner.”
For me, it’s amazing to think: God cares about the “worst kind of sinner.” He can even draw people to himself who are involved in wicked aggression, for even this malevolence is not the unpardonable sin.
The most compelling example of praying for one’s enemy was the prayer of Jesus on the cross. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” Luke 23:34. This prayer draws together three acts of the heart involved in loving our enemies: prayer, forgiveness, and mercy.
What about the other considerations? It is true that the Bible leaves room for self-defense, condemns murder but does not say, never kill, never use weapons, never go to war. There is a place in this fallen world for legitimate use of coercive force as noted in Rom 13:1-7. God says of legitimate government authority, “For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.” This teaching is not in conflict with love your enemy.
Then there is Just War theory – the right to go to war, the right conduct within a war. For Christians, Just War theory dates to St. Augustine. Thinking about when a war is just and justifiable and when it is not is one way we can love our enemies.
In the Old Testament we find what’s called imprecatory prayers. To imprecate means “to invoke evil upon or curse” one’s enemies. King David, the psalmist most associated with imprecatory verses, often used phrases like, “may their path be dark and slippery, with the angel of the LORD pursuing them” (Psalm 35:6) and “O God, break the teeth in their mouths; tear out the fangs of the young lions, O LORD!” (Psalm 58:6).
But the Psalms that include imprecations are not filled with only imprecatory prayers. In fact, there is not a single Psalm that ONLY has imprecatory prayers.
Rather each Psalm is filled with multiple subjects that usually combine these imprecatory prayers with the hope that the psalmist has in the Lord. They do not conflict with the command to love our enemies.
How then should we pray for our enemies?
Loving and praying for our enemies, whether personal and social or international and political is a very “un-human” thing to do, meaning our human inclination is to not love but to promote ourselves against others. But this is the point: we cannot simply decide to love our enemies and thus make it so. Rather, we need God’s love in us. “We love because he first loved us” 1 Jn. 4:19.
Finally, “may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all” 1 Thess. 3:12.
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. Or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers for more podcasts and video.
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 my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at LinkedIn or X accounts.