I speak often about a rapidly changing world, and we’re seeing it daily in the United States, most recently in what many of us consider a positive direction, but will this continue?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #233 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.
Some rather dramatic social and political changes have taken place in the past few months.
“Many Christians—myself included—shared a sense that in 2016 the barbarians were at the gates. Christianity was being pressured in the public square in new and alarming ways. Same-sex marriage became the law of the land in a blink, and bakers and florists who conscientiously objected to participating in those weddings went to court to guarantee that. So did nuns who didn’t want to buy birth control. The first bathroom laws and accompanying culture wars were just beginning.”
But now, there is a renewed hope.
WOKE anti-racism policies, seminars, and programs are being set aside by corporations that are now free to act with less fear of legal repercussions, free to discontinue woke initiatives that lost them money. Go woke; go broke, is not without basis in reality. Woke programs are also ending in the military.
DEI or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs are being jettisoned by colleges and universities, in no small measure due to pressure from the Department of Education in Washington, DC, but also because the public has begun to realize these programs are based on favored ethnic, racial, or gender status rather than meritocracy.
Transgender ideology or what some have understandably called “trans insanity” is finally backpedaling and on the way out as the public is finally being heard and schools, athletic organizations like the NCAA, communities, government, the military, and corporations return to nature’s binary common sense. “The Supreme Court of the United States ruled 6-3…that the Trump administration can require transgender people to display their biological birth sex on passports…Beginning in 2021, the Biden administration's State Department allowed applicants to self-select the sex marker that matched their gender identity of X, not their biological sex.”
Government climate change mandates are on their way out as the public realizes these initiatives were more about the power and ideological interests of globalist elites than about genuine concern for the environment. Even Bill Gates, one of the loudest voices for these bogus ideas, has seen the writing on the wall and announced populations are not actually in danger, human beings are not really the source of minimal climate changes, and calling for a shift from “doomsday” views of climate change to concern for human suffering.
Now even the insufferable Greta Thunberg is getting the message. “Having gone stratospheric at the age of 15 with a simple appeal to ‘listen to the science,’ Thunberg, now 19, is being driven by a different message: Listen to the most vulnerable — and help them build the fair future they demand.’ She is shifting her focus toward social advocacy.”
America’s porous southern border, which is to say open border under the Biden Administration, has been closed, is properly policed, and is secure. “Unlawful crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2025 plummeted to the lowest annual level since the early 1970s.” “Regardless of the true number of illegal immigrants, (who entered under the Biden Administration) it’s almost certainly higher than the 11–12 million number commonly cited, but not by as much as 20 million.”
“So far, ICE has successfully deported 400,000 illegal immigrations. Meanwhile, 1.6 million illegals have voluntary left the country.” For all the media flak aimed at the Trump Administration, “President Obama oversaw a total of approximately 5.3 million removals and returns during his eight years in office, with around 3.1 million being formal removals (deportations with legal consequences for reentry). His administration earned the nickname “Deporter-in-Chief” due to high deportation numbers.”
Let me say for clarity. The problem has not been legal immigration of those who truly wish to become American citizens pursuing the freedom and opportunity but mass illegal immigration of individuals who come for handouts or criminal purposes.
None of these changes, or hopefully trends, mean the issue in question has disappeared or that there are still not thousands, in some cases perhaps millions, of people who support the left-leaning social trends that had been in full force during the Biden Administration. Some schools and universities are still defiantly promoting forms of woke or DEI initiatives, in some places renaming the programs. Transgenderism still has its ideological advocates who may never change their views. Cities like Chicago or Los Angeles feature self-important mayors who order their law enforcement not to assist ICE in its lawful federal efforts to arrest and deport first the worst of illegal immigrants.
I admit that during COVID and through the end of the Biden Administration, I was more than a little concerned about the direction American culture was rapidly moving. I still wonder if some of these trends have reached a point of no return, in part because we may have lost an entire generation if not two to conscientiously taught left-leaning, anti-American values in public schools. These youth are now young adults. Their worldviews are not unchangeable but are largely formed.
“The Left's long march through our institutions has created a system where many accept progressive and socialist dogma as an inarguable fact, all because their professors told them it was so, and the media, who were indoctrinated by those same professors, keep saying the same things.”
“After (several) months of the good things…, there was hope that maybe, just maybe, some people were being converted, some hearts were being changed,
some Americans were starting to see the difference between the ‘right’ and the ‘left,’ between good and evil, starting to see cause and effect.” But the recent foolish election of Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York City, along with the election of an Attorney General in Virginia who’d earlier posted tweets wishing the death of his political opponent and harm to his children, well, this makes one pause and think, we haven’t changed much.
“The economics of Marxism, the cause and effect of immoral promiscuity, the hatred and violence of Leftism are clearly, and often, written in the pages of history. So, we have no excuse. ‘My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,’ God wrote through the prophet Hosea some 2700 years ago. History certainly does sometimes repeat itself, or at least, often contains interesting parallels. Laws—scientific or moral—cannot be violated without (eventual) devastating consequences.
As I mentioned a moment ago, about two generations ago, we turned the education system over to the Left. And we are witnessing the results today. We taught our children Darwinian naturalism instead of divine creation, and our children were smart enough to figure out the implications of that. If the Bible isn’t true, if there were no Adam and Eve, if there was no flood of Noah (even Jesus mentioned Noah as a true, historical person); if all of those Bible tales are just legends and not ‘history’ and ‘science,’ then that means the God of Judeo-Christianity is not the ‘God’ of the universe. ‘Science’ proves it. Jesus was a fake or a liar or a lunatic.
So young people fled churches in droves and began to look for something else to believe in and live for. And there is no agreement yet on what that should be, and there never will be, for why is one human’s opinion on the universe any better than any others? Why should I believe you? I’ll create my own ‘god,’ thank you very much. And that is basically what people have done. ‘Every man does that which is right in his own eyes.’ People have created their own ‘god,’ in their own image, who will allow them to do whatever they want to do. There isn’t one God in America anymore; there are almost 350 million.”
“That kind of division and confusion can only lead to the chaos we are seeing in the country now…No, there are not 350 million gods; there is still only One.
And He has established certain moral laws which are ‘causes’ that also have ‘effects.’ Violating those moral laws will eventually lead to catastrophic results.
America is finding that out now, and will continue to do so as long as so many of her people reject those moral laws for ones, they create themselves.”
Yet there is hope for more, continued positive social change, beginning for example with the spiritual revivals we are witnessing across the country in public universities and those that are taking place in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination. It’s a phenomenon that means something. We’re just not yet sure what it may mean in terms of lasting impact upon the culture.
Pray these movements of the Spirit will continue. Pray God will give American leaders wisdom and a desire to please God. Pray God will extend his mercy upon the United States, not because we are more special than any other country or people, but because in God’s eyes all human beings matter and freedom of the soul and body matter.
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. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2025
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