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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 13 October 2024

When you’ve marveled at the Ancient Egyptians, the Pyramids, the incredible architecture, still here thousands of years later—have you thought, if their civilization can disappear, what will become of my civilization?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #174 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.

Civilizations come and go. It’s a historically demonstrable fact.

“Possible causes of a societal collapse include natural catastrophe, war, pestilence, famine, economic collapse, population decline or overshoot, mass migration, incompetent leaders, and sabotage by rival civilizations. A collapsed society may revert to a more primitive state, be absorbed into a stronger society, or completely disappear. Virtually all civilizations have suffered such a fate, regardless of their size or complexity. Most never recovered, such as the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, the Maya civilization, and the Easter Island civilization. However, some of them later revived and transformed, such as China, Greece, and Egypt.”

It’s interesting that none of this list of dire reasons civilizations can collapse mentions religion or worldview or values, but this is the problem we now face.

“For many years now, prominent voices have claimed that Western civilization is foundering.” By Western Civilization, they mean Western Europe and North America where “commonly held beliefs such as individualism, democracy, and rationalism,” were embraced as the foundation stones of culture. While Western Civilization borrows from Ancient Greece and Rome, it also drew on the Renaissance, (14^th-17^th Century), and Enlightenment (17^th-19^th Century), which opened the doors to critical thinking. Much of its growth and vibrancy must also be attributed to the Reformation (16^th-17^th Century) and Christianity, which liberated the natural world from control of the church and empowered human reason, science, enterprise, and what became known as the Protestant Work Ethic.

For all it historical and current problems, Western Civilization built the most bountiful, free, economically successful, and future-oriented cultures in history. With all that going for it, why would it be declining?

Short answer, religion. Long answer, a gradual rejection of the Christian worldview that has undergirded Western culture, including belief in God to whom we are accountable, and belief in absolute truth and then also a parallel embrace of moral relativism, rejection of the biblical teaching that mankind is created in the image of God yet a sinner in need of grace, and a consequent loss of aspiration or belief in progress.

In his masterful, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, the late Francis A. Schaeffer said, “The flow of history is determined by the world-view people hold.”

Schaeffer noted that “in the south, the Reformation was giving an opposite answer in the north: man could not begin with himself, he must start with the Bible. There, man could find ‘true things about God’ and ‘many true things about nature.’ It is Schaeffer’s thesis that this base led to a broad Christian consensus which produced the finest fruits of western civilization: the art of Rembrandt and Bach, the political freedoms consequent to the English and American Revolutions, and the rise of modern science.”

“The breakdown of this Christian consensus has brought western culture to its present crisis.”

Beginning in the late 20^th Century, “all the signs, (Schaeffer) warns, are pointing in the direction of totalitarian rule, either by one man or an elite of savants.”

What in the 20^th Century scholars thought to be an inexorable march toward secularization in modernity became a period of worldwide resurgence of ideological religion, particularly Islam, mixed with postmodernity’s religious apathy in the West. This new mix has yielded polarization, hate, extremism, nihilism.

This nihilism, this belief that life is meaningless has produced cynicism, pessimism, distrust, alienation, social disintegration, anxiety, anger, hopelessness, and most recently, violence.

It has also produced what might be called a “culture of death.”

We see this in the celebration of abortion—killing one’s children and thus one’s future—as “reproductive health,” when ironically it is neither reproductive nor healthy.

We see this culture of death in sexual libertinism qua deviancy, the pursuit of personal significance in perverted sexuality, which yields disaffection, disease, destruction, and in more cases than may be realized, death.

We see a culture of death in the sexualization of children. Why by all that’s common sense, do Kindergarten children need to be given sex toys, read to by drag queens, encouraged to question their sex, and pushed toward made-up hybrid genders?

Why by all that’s common sense can’t our culture provide a definition of woman?

We see this culture of death in population decline. Some have observed, “population collapse is the biggest threat to civilization.” “The U.S.’ fertility rate for 2022 sits well below the level needed for the current generation to replace itself. Birth rates have consistently fallen beneath that threshold, termed the replacement rate, since 2007, the CDC said, and have generally been below it since 1971…2.1. That’s the replacement rate, meaning each woman would, on average, need to have 2.1 children for a generation to exactly replace itself. In 2022, the U.S.’ fertility rate (the average number of children a woman would have during her lifetime) was around 1.7 children per woman.”

“Europe is the continent with the oldest population. This is creating problems for healthcare and pensions.”

Not having children is not simply a biological phenomenon. People are choosing not to have children. In other words, they are making value choices.

Why?

• they consider children a cost, not a benefit,
• they have decided to focus on their own lives without the perceived “burden” of children,
• and many decide not to have children because of their fear of climate change.

We also see civilizational decline in massive global debt, rejection of democracy and capitalism, and promotion of unsubstantiated climate alarmism by globalist, socialist, totalitarians like those at the annual World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland. This includes Americans like Bill Gates, John Kerry, Al Gore, Jane Fonda, Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, and many more.

These same people promote de-population of the earth in the name of climate alarmism. I am serious. Climate alarmists or global elitists like gorilla-lady Jane Goodall say the earth can best support maybe 1 billion people. According to them, this is the goal we should attain.

But wait, aren’t there 8 billion people in the world today? Yes? Then they are suggesting about 7 billion people need to be eradicated? Yes. Why? Well, to save the earth. For whom? People. So, we save the earth for people by killing off people?

And who and how are we going to accomplish this? Which of the climate change radicals will volunteer to be the first to get eliminated?

It’s an irrational culture of death, exactly what one would predict, Satan, the father of lies, to develop. People are willingly deluded. They celebrate lies – just like people in the streets and on university campuses who chant support for Hamas.

Even LGBTQ people do this? Really, do they not realize that Islam rejects homosexuality and related sexual perversion? Do they not realize that if they identified as queer in an Islamic society they would be killed? Are these people willingly deluded? Yes. They celebrate a culture of death.

We see civilizational decline in the irrational, hysterical promotion of “race absolutism,” identity politics, and mass immigration. Seeing the world through racial or gender or class lens is Marxism, and there is plenty of this on the Left today. They promote victimhood, chaos, and division because these conditions seem to beg for more government, which the Left worships.

Western Civilization still stands, but there are serious cracks in its foundation, particularly with respect to dismissing the Judeo-Christian moral consensus upon which it was founded and flourished. 

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 You Tube @DrRexRogers for more video and prodcasts.

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 rexmrogers.com or my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at linkedin.com/rexmrogers or x.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 11 March 2024

Have you noticed that as soon as one traditional moral boundary falls, then another moral standard is touted as a dreadful oppression upon humanity that must be banished in the name of free expression?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #138 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 entitled this podcast “Satan’s Next Frontier,” meaning that the Devil is continually working his plan to counter God and Creation, Christ and the Gospel, and a biblically Christian worldview in general. So, what might be his next frontier?

Not so long ago when same-sex marriage was not yet legal in the United States, that is nationally pre-2015 when the Supreme Court of the United States in Obergefell v Hodges, “ruled 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,” there were people who observed – and I was one of them – that as soon as same-sex marriage was legalized, transgenderism would be next.

The idea that trans people should be extended not only basic civil liberties as U.S. citizens but now, special civil rights, literally took off after the SCOTUS ruling on same-sex marriage, all in the name of freedom, tolerance, and inclusion. 

Gender identity, sex on birth certificates and medical documents or passports, gender as determined by children’s social inclinations, not biology or parents or doctors, transgender access to bathrooms and locker rooms and women’s sports, pronoun madness, gender identity in hiring as in Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the Supreme Court held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against discrimination because of sexuality or gender identity, gender non-binary military policy, a wholesale revolution qua propagandistic indoctrination in public school sex education and, actually, across all academic disciplines, sex change or what are now called gender-affirming hormone and surgical procedures, hijacking and changing the meaning of words, attacks on womanhood or femineity, arguing children are a threat to female self-actualization, attacks on manhood or masculinity, arguing men can menstruate, get pregnant, breastfeed. 

Do I need to go on?

Transgender activism has worked a moral and social coup upon American culture.

More than other forms of sexual orientation symbolized by LGBQ, transgenderism is more divisive and more socially destructive, undermining the most basic of society’s mores, practices, and laws. 

And trans activists know their argument can only succeed via the wholesale rejection of Christian teaching that men and women are made in the image of God and are intrinsically different from one another with unique purposes in Creation, the family, and the Will of God.

Yet for all its irrationality, transgenderism is winning. So, if transgenderism, from Bruce “Call me Caitlyn” Jenner to the latest celebrity to come out as nonbinary, if then trans is largely accepted, what’s next? What is Satan’s next moral frontier?

I suggest there are three possibilities, not necessarily in this order:

• Euthanasia
• Polyamory
• Pedophilia

     I. Euthanasia

“Euthanasia refers to deliberately ending someone’s life, usually to relieve suffering. Doctors sometimes perform euthanasia when it’s requested by people who have a terminal illness and are in a lot of pain.”

“In the United States, Physicians Assisted Suicide is legal in: Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, Montana, Vermont, Washington, D.C., Hawaii.”

Different from euthanasia is “assisted suicide – alternately referred to as medical aid in dying (MAID) – means a procedure in which people take medications to end their own lives with the help of others, usually medical professionals.”

Euthanasia in its voluntary form, MAID, is widely practiced in Canada.

Euthanasia in one of its permutations is perhaps the most likely next frontier to be embraced, and soon, in the U.S. where it already has adherents, and some states have legalized forms of the practice. As “quality of life” continues to be redefined in terms of personal self-expression, and as people live longer into declining years, euthanasia will become more accepted.

    II. Polyamory

“Consensual polyamory – having more than one sexual or emotional relationship at once – has become increasingly common in many countries in recent years. According to statistics published in 2021, 4 to 5 percent of the American population practices polyamory.”

“Today, there are a number of television shows and video games that have included the lifestyle in their plots, while mainstream dating sites and apps, including OkCupid, Tinder, and Hinge, now allow users to specify this type of relationship in their profiles.”

“Fifty-one per cent of adults younger than thirty told Pew Research, in 2023, that open marriage was “acceptable,” and twenty per cent of all Americans report experimenting with some form of non-monogamy.”

Polyamory involves so-called consenting adults and is already widely practiced in various ways, if not as outright adultery, then as agreed upon open marriage arrangements or simply accepted, sexual promiscuity in a culture much laxer about sexual mores than it was in the 1950s. 

The likelihood polyamory will become more common is very high, as is the legalization of this form of marriage or family or social unit in local, state, and federal laws. Morality as defined in the Scripture, sexuality expressed in monogamous lifelong marriage will be dismissed as archaic and limiting.

    III. Pedophilia

Pedophilia is also being presented in a positive light. Really, sex with minors, with children? Yes, sad to say it is so.

“Nov. 8, 2022, Old Dominion University sociology and criminology professor Allyn Walker gave an interview in which he asserted the need to destigmatize pedophiles by redefining them as ‘minor-attracted persons, (MAPs).’”

“The Walker incident is not a standalone event. In fact, his advocacy for pedophiles highlights the crisis that critical theory poses for higher education, as it attempts to dismantle every social taboo and normalize every form of immoral conduct.”

“Walker advocates for the inclusion of MAPs as part of the larger LGBT community by approaching attraction to minors as an orientation and stating that ‘the fact of children’s inability to consent to sex is irrelevant to the application of the term ‘sexual orientation’ towards attractions to minors.’”

“Academia’s ideological consensus has already shifted toward acceptance of pedophilia. K-12 schools already allow for depictions of child sexuality under the guise of equity, despite a considerable resistance by parents.”

“The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) is a pedophilia and pederasty advocacy organization in the United States. It works to abolish age-of-consent laws criminalizing adult sexual involvement with minors and campaigns for the release of men who have been jailed for sexual contacts with minors that did not involve what it considers coercion.”

A Kentucky State Senator recently suggested child sex dolls should be given to pedophile prisoners as a means to help them and reduce child abuse.

Meanwhile, the Left, as usual promoting and protecting the worst forms of human attitudes and behaviors, is now accusing anyone who raises concerns about pedophilia to be nothing more than a “new Red scare,” a new conspiracy among conservatives.

Pedophilia is yet, we hope, a less likely moral change on the horizon than euthanasia or polyamory, but pedophilia is already practiced in rampant kiddie pornography, child sex trafficking and abuse in the U.S., also now in avant-garde sexual liberation circles, and it is being promoted as somehow not psychologically damaging to children and in some weird way, good for them. 

If abortion can be embraced as a human right, and if sexual identity is now considered the highest level of human expression, then is it too much to believe that normalization of pedophilia is far behind?

The problem with each of these trends is that none of them – euthanasia, polyamory, pedophilia – align with the values of biblical Christianity – which one could suggest is exactly why they may be Satan’s next frontier of moral change. God forbid. 

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.

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 19 February 2024

Ever wonder why, in the face of evil, pain, and suffering that God does not return now?  Why does he seemingly delay the Rapture and Resurrection, and hence his later Second Coming?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #133 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 recently wrote a blog for the ministry with which I serve, SAT-7 USA, called “Living in the Worst of Times.” The title is borrowed from Charles Dickens’s introduction to his 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, in which he famously wrote:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”  

Dickens tells us about a time of chaos, conflicts, and despair, as well as some happiness and progress, but mostly contrast and futility, two steps forward, three steps back.

If you were to think about our current time you could draw your own conclusion. Is this the best of times, or is it the worst of times? 

I confess that several social developments have occurred in the past few years that I never expected, and not only that, which surprised, maybe shocked, even discouraged me.

It does not take rocket-science intellect to note things like US government overreach in response to the pandemic, i.e., the willingness of political leaders and bureaucrats to take unconstitutional actions, and the willingness of much of the public to accept it.

In 2020, following the tragic death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis, a summer of lawlessness broke out in cities across the country. Then came the nonsensical “defund the police” movement.

Maybe this was predictable, but what discouraged me was the “soft on crime” approach of governors, mayors, and district attorneys, because supposedly the looters deserved to steal and destroy because they were poor or minorities or because discrimination exists.

This refusal to enforce the law continues in California, Portland, Chicago, New York, and many other cities, even as police are at times told to stand down.

More recently we’ve witnessed the President of the US intentionally refuse to enforce the law and therefore has allowed millions of illegal migrants to flow across the southern border, unvetted and unknown. Yes, some are indeed actual asylum-seeking families. But many others are not refugees, but like in Europe, fake refugees, mostly younger men of military age seeking handouts – which again amazingly, so-called sanctuary cities are providing, supported by American taxpayers:  cell phones, cash, food vouchers, free rooms, free healthcare. 

More mind bending is the President recently saying he’s done everything he can do to stem the tide, forgive me, an outright lie that any attorney can demonstrate. It’s willful dereliction of duty and degradation of American society in the interest of perceived political power.

Last example, and this one really did shock me: Even though I spent my early years in higher education, and even though I have followed the philosophic and moral freefall in public universities and the neo-Marxist ideology promoted in those universities, I still was caught off-guard by the widespread antisemitism, pro-Hamas rallies, and blatant hatred of Jews expressed by American university students in the streets and on campuses – and they had the audacity to yell their antisemitic attitudes not just at a people group half a world away but at fellow students, professors, and others who are Americans, but also Jewish. It’s still happening.

One additional amazing thing is how many of these students or others in the street have no idea what they are protesting or why. Some do, of course, but many are clueless, simply following the maddening crowd.

This made me think of two Scripture passages that detail city riots protesting the Apostle Paul’s ministry:

In Acts 19, “the assembly was in confusion: Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there” Acts 19:32.

Then again in Acts 21, “Some in the crowd shouted one thing and some another, and since the commander could not get at the truth because of the uproar, he ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks” Acts 21:34.

Nearly 3,000 years ago, King Solomon summarized this human issue in a principle, saying, “What has been, will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” Ecc. 1:9.

This kind of mass hysteria has been evident in cities across the globe. Some say they are protesting for human rights, some because the US or Israel are supposedly “colonialist” or “settler” states – and these people, in particular, don’t know their history. 

It’s not unlike the “person in the street” interviews you’ve seen wherein young adults cannot name the country the US fought to win its independence, or whether the North or South won the Civil War, or who is the current Vice President, or even that Hamas radicals butchered innocent Israelis of all ages, and perpetrated even worse, graphic and gross crimes against humanity that I’ll spare you from listing here.

Despite the fact that some Hamas terrorists wore GoPro cameras filming their atrocities, video now released to the public, some protesters deny 10/7 ever happened.

These protesters try to stop traffic on major highways, attempt to shut down LAX, or block vehicle tunnels, risking their lives perhaps in some instances, and certainly not engaging in legal peaceful assembly, yet many don’t know why they are there.

Is this mass hysteria as I mentioned? Maybe. Is this the product of indoctrination, i.e., certainly not critical thinking and not liberal learning, but more like the misled Muslim men we see chanting in the streets not only in Tehran but now in Berlin or London or Paris?

During Jesus’ earthly ministry, he witnessed something like this. In Matthew 9, it says, “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. 

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” Matt. 9:35-36.

Americans, or if you wish Westerners in general, despite the vast religious, educational, and political blessings of Western civilization, are today harassed and helpless. We’ve created our own “worst of times.”

Our culture is looking for answers everywhere except in the old, over-sized Bible that nearly every American family maintained during the 1800s and much of the 1900s.

Our culture has been on a 60-year bender rejecting or redefining the religious and philosophic roots that made it possible for Western civilization and specifically the United States to flourish in the first place.

“In God We Trust”?  No.  God is dead, or at least inconsequential until it’s time to hope “the man upstairs” decides we’ve done enough good things to get into heaven.

Sin is medicalized, redefined as disease, or maybe described in media as “He struggled with his demons,” but either way, set aside is any need to own our moral choices, to take responsibility, and then to seek help outside ourselves in the person of God himself. No, we are told to “trust your heart” and “seek your own truth.”

We’re told to blame the environment, our upbringing, our race or ethnicity or our biological sex – these are the source of our problems, not us and not our heart. The solution is psychology and therapist, not theology and pastor, much less the love and accountability of a nuclear family.

In our contempt for truth, we embrace mendacity, not moral right and wrong. 

Crime has decreased only because we now define certain formerly illegal acts as acceptable. Police are turned into social workers. As my friend says, “We’re told to follow the science, political science that is.”

It is not a stretch, not an exaggeration, to describe our culture as “harassed and helpless,” and it will remain hopeless if we continue to jettison Judeo-Christian values, the Church, and most importantly the Gospel of Christ.

So, with all that, why doesn’t Jesus return now?

2 Peter gives us the answer:

“But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” 2 Peter 3:8-9.

God created freedom of religion, freedom of choice. God waits, allowing more helpless and harassed to hear the Word of Truth and come to Christ. 

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.

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 20 November 2023

Ever wonder or maybe observe how the occurrence of bad things, even wicked, debased things, can cause people to ask moral questions they’d never before asked?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #119 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 remember when then President Bill Clinton got involved with a Whitehouse intern during the mid-1990s. Suddenly in our secularizing, morally relativistic culture, national news anchors like Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Ted Koppel, started using terms like “adultery,” “morality,” “lying,” and “marital fidelity.”

Then, Sept 17, 2001, just days after the horrible 9/11 death and destruction that was visited upon New York City, Washington, DC, and a field in Pennsylvania, 

I remember watching Dan Rather and David Letterman discussing this terrorist attack on Letterman’s late-night show. What struck me at the time was that these two celebrities, one known for his toughness, who’d been in war zones all over the world, and the other known for his irreverent take on life, were genuinely scared.

I’m not making this up. They admitted it on air and spoke in tones not typical of their demeanor. Dan Rather became overcome with emotion on air because this thing had gotten their attention like few other circumstances could have. 9/11 literally rocked their world.

Not long after this, Sept 23, 2001, Oprah Winfrey and other celebrities helped organize a huge service in Yankee Stadium called “Prayer for America.”

This was a multi-faith program in which leaders from many different religious denominations prayed or spoke. Then country singer Lee Greenwood performed "God Bless the USA."

After 9/11, in some ways like the response to the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, media elites suddenly talked non-stop—understandably—about betrayal, treachery, religion, and other moral categories.

The point is, both these very different national crises caused people to ask deep, existential questions that prior to these experiences, people pretty much ignored.

Since Oct 7, 2023, we are living in a post-Hamas-massacre world. Suddenly, with regularity I am seeing these phrases in articles or hear them intoned on air: moral clarity, moral equivalency, moral litmus test, moral pretzel logic, moral bankruptcy, moral hypocrisy, moral collapse, moral cowardice, moral reckoning, moral imperative.

Now, is it odd that these kinds of phrases are used? Depends on how you look at it.

If you think about the evil incarnate that rained down on innocent Israelis Oct 7, then no, these phrases are not odd or unexpected.

If you think about the dilemmas faced by the Israeli response, the commitment and the need to bring Hamas to justice and to eradicate forever their capacity to support terrorism, yet with a desire to minimize civilian noncombatant injury and death, then no, these phrases are not odd or unexpected.

If you think about the 242 innocent hostages from at least 27 countries, then no, these phrases are not odd or unexpected.

But if you think about American culture’s pell-mell rush into nihilism, its rejection of God in favor of Do-It-Yourself religion, its rejection of truth and moral absolutes by embracing moral relativism – with, ironically, an absolutist zeal – its celebration of all thing’s material, hedonistic, and vain at the expense of time-tested verities, its unfettered embrace of unfettered sexual dissolution, it’s utter disdain for any discussion of right and wrong, i.e., morality, then yes, these phrases incorporating moral considerations are indeed odd and unexpected.

People ask, why would God allow something like the Israel-Hamas war? I don’t know, for I am not God. But I do know something about God’s character and will, as he reveals them in the Bible.

God is not the source of evil, but he allows human beings to choose, and he knows our evil choices result in emotional and physical trauma that causes men and women to seek solace and to think about moral categories.

For example, one result of the evil work of ISIS in which Muslims killed muslims, in fact killed more Muslims than Christians, is that this suffering caused Muslims to ask questions like, what is this, Muslims killing Muslims in the name of our common god? This question, getting to the heart of their indoctrinated faith, allowed them to think new thoughts, to wonder about other faiths, and for some, to ask, to seek, and to find Christ in the Gospel.

This could be one providential result of the horrors of the Israel-Hamas war—severe adversity, then agonizing ethical considerations causing people to seek answers, including in the Christian faith.

Our current circumstances bring the ethical naivete of street protesters into bold relief. For example, I have trouble considering protesters calling for peace credible who harass uninvolved citizens, vandalize property, or destroy flags, threaten police, and turn violent. This happened Nov 15 in front of the Democrat National Headquarters in Washington, DC.

I have trouble with protesters who accuse Israel of holding Palestinians to a “collective responsibility,” i.e., collective punishment of the many for the wrongdoing of the few, who then turn around and harass, even physically and verbally accost American Jewish students heading to the dining hall, or a Jewish professor in his classroom, or a Jewish person walking the street, as if these American citizens who happen to be Jewish have anything whatsoever to do with the Israeli leadership and the IDF. Who’s assigning collective responsibility now? In racial overtones no less.

I have trouble with protesters who chant antisemitic slurs against Jews, and those who express hate of Palestinians, in American or in Europe, as if either the one or the other of these people are responsible for what’s happening in the Holy Land.

And what happened to the hostages? It’s as if they’ve been written off, out of sight, out of mind. I'd like to see a Pro-Hostages demonstration.

This did finally happen. Nov. 14, some 290,000 marched on the Washington, DC, Mall for Israel, for the hostages, and for peace, making this “one of the largest gatherings of Jews in U.S. history at a time when an ongoing war in Gaza has sharply divided public opinion around the world. An additional 250,000 people watched the event through a live stream.”

What we need in the USA is both a revival and an awakening. 

“The words revival and awakening are often used interchangeably, but there is a distinction. An awakening takes place when God sovereignly pours out his Spirit and it impacts a culture. That is what happened during the Jesus Revolution (in the late 1960s, early 1970s), and it’s what happened in multiple spiritual awakenings in the history of the United States, predating its establishment as a nation. A revival, on the other hand, is what the church must experience. It’s when the church comes back to life, when the church becomes what it was always meant to be. It’s a return to passion.”

“Revival is when God releases a special work of grace that reveals His power and presence amongst Christians. The word “revive” means to bring back to life. Hence, it cannot be talking about reaching the lost because they were never alive to begin with.

Renewal is when committed Christians are worn out from laboring in the Lord, and God sends a spirit of refreshment that restores them to vibrancy. Awakening is when a revival spills over and begins affecting the surrounding communities.”

“R.A. Torrey, a friend of Dwight L. Moody, was a great preacher and evangelist in his own right. He gave this prescription for revival during a February 1917 address at Moody Bible Institute. He said to “1) Get right with God, 2) get together with other Christians and pray for revival, and 3) make yourself available to God, especially in winning souls.”

“Revivals don’t last forever. They have a beginning, a middle and an end…Someone once asked the evangelist Billy Sunday whether his revivals lasted. He replied, “No, neither does a bath. But it’s good to have one occasionally.” The American Church needs revival.

A “spiritual awakening, that outpouring of the Spirit, is up to God. We can’t organize it, but we can agonize for it in prayer and call upon God to send it.” America needs an awakening.

Pray to God that he will pour out his blessings upon our nation. We need his grace. 

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.  

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 13 November 2023

The past few years have witnessed a landslide of negative cultural change, so what does this mean and how should we respond?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #118 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 new millennium, I have experienced social and political developments in the USA that I never thought I’d see in my country.

During COVID, 2020-2022, I wrote about these new developments, e.g., airy dismissal of First Amendment freedoms of speech and religion, specious unconstitutional government intrusion in education, enterprise, everyday life, a willingness of anxious citizens to trade personal freedom for government mandates promising illusory safety.

Predating and overlapping the pandemic, we have witnessed the aggressive emergence of a brook-no-argument promotion of sexual libertinism for all ages down to toddlers, and alongside this, radical woke politics – rooted in critical race theory and what’s called cultural Marxism reaching back to the 1960s. I have followed all this, written about it, and have become increasingly alarmed as citizens and elected officials demonstrated a willingness to ignore the rule of law, especially following the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis in 2020, the promotion and implementation in many locales and states of an inane “defund the police” movement, all this moving away from the ideal of “blind,” meaning impartial, neutral, fair, justice in favor of so-called “social justice,” weighted with racial or ethnic victimhood that are intrinsically unfair and inequitable, all this in the name of a new idolatry of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

More recently, October-November 2023, the face of the Holy Land crisis, I find it mind-blowing to watch American university students, later all ages, protesting not simply on behalf of an admirable concern for Palestinian lives, but chanting “Gas the Jews,” “Israel, Israel, you can’t hide, we want Jewish genocide,” “Death to Israel,” “Free Palestine, by any means,” “Divest from Zionist genocide now,” “F___ Israel,” “Glory to our martyrs.”

A Cornell University professor said of Hamas’s actions, “It was exhilarating. It was exhilarating, it was energizing. And if they weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, the shifting of the violence of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated.” He has since apologized, saying “did not reflect my values.” One wonders whose values his words represented if not his own?

Not in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would see and hear open antisemitism chanted in American streets and university campuses, except perhaps from fringe neo-Nazis or skinheads. 

What’s ironic is that these offensive, bigoted death-threat comments are coming largely from those on the left, progressive side of the political spectrum, the people and groups who have been preaching about hate speech and political correctness for the past decade. 

The COVID pandemic was not the reason for the negative cultural trends I see in my own country. These trends, including sexual liberation and woke politics, have been building steam for several decades.

But the pandemic provided a platform on which to push initiatives and values that contradicted, undermined, and dismissed the traditional American Judeo-Christian consensus that had allowed the USA to flourish for over two hundred years.

The big government socialist tendencies of the pandemic politics, together with sexual libertinism and woke policies, became a toxic brew that’s poisoned American culture at every level.

Now, with the Israel-Hamas War, we’re seeing the dark underbelly of ideological animosity rooted in the evil heart of men and women. In the U.S., the issue is cultural centrifugal forces—and by “forces” I mean influences of our own doing and volition, not some fatalistic karma beyond our control. By our choices, we have become a culture unleashed from its Judeo-Christian moral moorings that, in turn, now creates a crisis of meaning with every new social political development.

“What is happening in America has happened to every other great nation/empire in history. They have a good run.  They get rich and powerful, and then want to enjoy that prosperity. So, they get fat and lazy, weak, degenerate, immoral, and pleasure-loving. Those characteristics never produce growth, success, and prosperity, they only result in decline, decay, and destruction. And America is smack in the middle of that right now. We have turned our back on God, and we are suffering the consequences of it. And no nation in human history has ever reversed things from such a decline. There might be the occasional blip on the screen, the Hezekiah or Josiah, but the general trend is downward. And that is the direction America is headed right now and has been for over a generation.

The only answer is a return to the positive spiritual values the country was founded upon and that made it a great nation. That doesn’t appear in the offing, and it never has happened before. The majority of Americans have succumbed to a degenerate evil and self-absorption—mimicking the country’s leadership…The answer, the cure, is in the human heart.

Nobody wants to look there. The Left certainly isn’t going to because they want nothing but power, and their power comes from evil.”

“It is inconceivable that the day would come that Jews in America would need to feel fearful. For all of its flaws, America has been a secure place of refuge for the downtrodden, including Jews, who have been historically oppressed in nation after nation.

This anti-Semitic wave is just one of many examples of the decline of our nation. Several months ago, the Wall Street Journal opined that if Western Civilization, of which the United States is a prime example, were to die, it would be through suicide. In that op-ed, Gerard Baker notes, ‘If we are losing, it is because we are losing our soul, our sense of purpose as a society, our identity as a civilization. 

We in the West are in the grip of an ideology that disowns our genius, denounces our success, disdains merit, elevates victimhood, embraces societal self-loathing and enforces it all in a web of exclusionary and authoritarian rules, large and small.’”

I’ve read articles and books that sound like the author is giving up hope. I understand the angst. Watching your country and culture implode is not fun, nor does it seem like there’s much we can do about it.

I’ve read pundits, who put their hopes for positive change into a grand scheme for the Republican Party. Somehow, if we could just get these people elected all would be well. But history, and even an honest look at the party and its politicians will pull the rug out from under that hope. The Republican Party does still acknowledge certain important values about life, liberty, human responsibility, but despite tons of promises, at the first sign of pressure the record demonstrates that most of these people fold or disappear.

Then there are those who put their faith in a political leader, particularly former President Donald Trump to do what? “Make America great again.” Now, does he offer some policy positions that are desperately needed in Washington, DC? Yes, he does. Are all his views, attitudes, and behaviors aligned with Christian values? No. What most motivates him? I’ll leave that to you to decide. My point is not to knock Donald Trump but to remind us that no leader is a failsafe guarantee to right the ship. Scripture says, “Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save” (Ps. 146:3).

But I refuse to become pessimistic, much less give up or throw in the towel. In fact, I believe Christians should be proactively optimistic. Why?

1. Because we know the end of the story, history or his-story, written in the Word of God.
2. Because God is there, and he is not silent.
3. Because 1 billion peoplein the world are still breathing, and as long as they are breathing they are still able to respond to the Gospel.
4. Because it may seem like the End Times, and maybe it is, but we don’t know but what things could get much worse because they have been worse at other times in human history, and Lord said in the concluding chapter of the Bible, “The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life” (Rev. 22:17).
5. Because Jesus said, “And surely I am with youalways, to the very end of the age” (Matt 28:20).

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.