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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 30 April 2024

Why has American culture changed so dramatically in the past 25 years?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #147 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’ve been thinking about how much American culture has changed in just the last few years, and in my view, much of it for the negative or bad or worse.

At first, I chided myself, as in this is just “old guy” syndrome that occurs as one ages, thinking “Things just aren’t what they used to be.” It’s a common human sentiment.

But then I thought, no, we clearly and objectively have witnessed dramatic developments that I’m not sure people under 30 years of age even realize because they don’t remember how things used to be different.

Now I realize that “back in my day,” another common old guy sentiment, not everything was good or right or blessed. Certainly not. But then again, I also remember when political leaders, celebrities, and other notables with public platforms at least acknowledged, if not actually affirmed and lived out, what was good or right or blessed. 

So, the next thing I started considering is when did this change occur? When did we become a cruder, less patriotic, less supportive of our heritage and constitutional ideals, polarized, nastier, and in some segments more violent culture?

I wondered when the change occurred, if a time could be identified at all, or maybe what event acted as a “tipping point” for what we are now experiencing?

A tipping point is defined as “a critical moment in a complex situation in which a small influence or development produces a sudden large or irreversible change.” Or another definition: “the point at which a slow, reversible change becomes irreversible often with dramatic consequences.” Did we experience a cultural tipping point?

Was it the abortion decision, Roe v Wade? That was enormously consequential, but that was way back in 1973 when I was still in college. Roe v Wade contributed mightily to what we are experiencing now but other trigger events occurred later.

Was it 9-11 in year 2001? That attack on American soil was horrendous—a first-ever event, and a multi-faceted event that everyone old enough to understand will always remember. But I don’t think this was our tipping point.

Was it the rapid approval of medical or recreational cannabis use? This began in—where else—California, when in 1996, Proposition 215, also known as the Compassionate Use Act, was endorsed by voters. Notice the Orwellian title, “compassionate use”—amazing. Over the next twenty years, marijuana has been legalized in 38 of 50 states. We know using marijuana is not good for the mind and body, yet sales continue to increase rapidly and significantly. But smoking weed is a symptom, not a cause, not a tipping point.

Was it the Supreme Court of the United States landmark 2015 ruling in Obergefell vs Hodges when the Court said same-sex couples had a fundamental right to marry? Maybe. That ruling was tectonic, becoming something of a launchpad for later transgender activism promoting trans ideology that has taken American culture by storm in the decade since the Court’s immoral decision. 

How about year 2020 when we learned about COVID-19, when because of fear governments at all levels limited citizen behavior in ways that overstepped constitutional boundaries and did so regarding freedom of worship and mobility, and social media and major media began to restrict freedom of speech in the interest of quelling what they determined was “disinformation”? 

Or that same year, with the tragic death at the hands of police of George Floyd, and the follow-on Black Lives Matter coordinated riots and destruction in American cities? And with BLM and other organizations the rapid expansion of so-called “woke” social justice philosophiesarguing racism and white supremacy systematically characterized every aspect of American life? Were those tipping points, or simply more symptoms of the cause?

I admit it’s difficult, maybe impossible to cite just one social development responsible for igniting cultural brushfires that burn out of control, tearing down ideals, values, laws, traditions, all the building blocks that make a culture possible and sustainable in the first place.

According to the late great historian, Will Durant, “a great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. He attributes the decline of Rome to various internal factors, including its people, morals, class struggle, failing trade, bureaucratic despotism, stifling taxes, and consuming wars.” This is American culture’s challenge today.

What we are witnessing, what I just listed, are social products of decisions people have made earlier, back to the 1960s counterculture: a rejection of a Sovereign God, the idea of absolute objective truth, creation of human beings in the image of God and therefore responsible and accountable to him., as well as eternally valuable.

Once these core beliefs, ones that formed the foundation of Western Civilization, are set aside, there is nothing left to hold up the structure of the society and culture in which we live. What’s left, or what happens next, is crumbling, which is what we are witnessing.

In the language of the old KJV, “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he” Prov. 29:18.

What we are witnessing is Romans 1 come to life. “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futileand their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools” Rom 1:18-22.

“Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them” Rom 1:28-32.

Later in 2 Pet 3:5, the old KJV says people are “willingly ignorant,” or as other versions state it, people “deliberately forget.” In other words, they choose to be irrational.

I’ve tried to find an illustration of this. It’s like I point to a grey rock and say, “That’s an ice cream cone,” and you accept my statement as truth. Make no sense? Sure, but that’s what “suppress the truth by their wickedness” means. That’s what “willingly ignorant” means.

So today, American culture considers true, things we did not consider true when I was in college:

Babies in the womb are not human, just fetuses, so abortion is health care, not murder.

Men can become women and vice versa merely by identifying with the other gender.

Debt has no consequences, no future accountability.

Sex without commitment or fidelity is not consequential but fun and marriage is optional.

Crime and lawlessness are not wrong but justified reparations for historic discrimination.

Race is what defines human beings, not character.

American culture no longer has a moral North Star. We believe, and therefore we do, whatever seems right in our own eyes (Judges 17:6).

Is there no hope? I don’t believe that because I believe in “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” Heb 12:2.

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: 08 January 2024

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

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #127 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. 

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2024   

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://twitter.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 24 May 2023

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

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #88 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, what do we do?

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

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

Stand firm with the belt of truth.

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2023  

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.  

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 20 December 2022

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

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #59 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ideas have consequences.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ideas have consequences.

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

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

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. 

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2022   

*This podcast blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.