Rex M Rogers - Discerning What Is Best

Discerning What Is Best
With Dr Rex Rogers

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Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 15 January 2024

Has the self-induced “immigration crisis” on the US southern border caused you concern? Is there no way out of this nightmare?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #128 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.

With the invasion taking place on the US southern border, I feel I must circle back and discuss immigration. I referenced immigration in a podcast last year, June 2023, in which I noted that 16.8 million illegal aliens reside in the U.S. The number is now over 18 million.

This is the direct result of President Joe Biden’s actions, literally since his first day in office, Jan 21, 2021, when he signed several proclamations and Executive Orders either rescinding Trump Administration immigration policies, for example, stopping the building of a border wall, or instituting new, wide open policies of his own. “There have been more than (10 million illegal entries since President Biden took office, a number larger than the individual populations of 41 of the 50 states). Each night Americans see video clips of thousands of foreign nationals crossing the border en massewith complete impunity—as if the entire corpus of federal immigration law has been dynamited.”

“The Federation for American Immigration Reform published a comprehensive report last year showing that federal, state, and local expenditures for illegal immigration are approaching $200 billion annually.” Who but our own progeny is going to pay the bill for Mr. Biden’s irresponsibility, and what will happen if they cannot pay the bill?

“Whatever the cause of this nihilism, (scholar Victor Davis Hanson lists) several ways an open border is insidiously destroying the United States”:

Immigration – “Does legal immigration even exist? Are we still requiring those who would enter the U.S. legally to provide required documents, undergo audits, and complete background checks? Is not the current policy de facto punishing those who follow the law by tying them up in bureaucratic red tape for years as we reward unlawful behavior by greenlighting amnesties for lawbreakers?”

Lawless US – “Does the utter lawlessness at the border contribute to the general coarseness and current mockery of the rule of law in general—an epidemic that plagues our cities with homelessness, smash-and-grabs, car-jackings, and random assaults?”

Dependency – “If the first thing a foreign national does is to violate the law by crossing the border without permission, and the second is to reside illegally in the US, and the third is to apply for some sort of food, housing, medical, legal, or educational subsidy, then is that really the type of new resident we desire?”

Hanson also lists a broken relationship with Mexico, danger from drug cartels, the destruction of the idea of citizenship, enormous budget cost implications, ending the idea of deterrence of wrongdoing, an increase in racism.

We really have no clue what this massive number of illegals will mean for our country and culture’s future. We do know what impact it is making right now.

“We do not have sufficient affordable housing for our own citizens. Veterans and the elderly have been forced out of housing to make way for illegal immigrants. Our own homeless population is exploding, many of whom need treatment for addiction and/or mental illness. In Chicago, migrants have been living in the O'Hare airport. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey has asked citizens to take migrants into their homes. Just this week, a New York City high school was closed, and its students were sent home for "remote" learning so that nearly 2,000 migrants could be housed at the school during a winter storm.”

“Illegal immigrants also distort congressional representation…their presence increases congressional representation for states with more of them. That reduces the voting power of citizens in states with lower populations.”

“Open borders facilitate human trafficking, including child sex trafficking.”

“Illegal immigration also burdens our criminal justice system. According to the 2023 Annual Report of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office, more than 170,000 illegal immigrants were arrested in this country last year. Nearly half already had criminal records; on average, four prior charges and convictions.”

Interestingly, many European articles now replace the word “immigrant” with the term “cultural enricher,” usually ironically or sarcastically. It refers to invasion or general violence caused by people of different cultures. The phrase has roots in Germany in WWI and was used by Hitler derogatorily to refer to Jews.

The so-called “cultural enrichers” have been admitted en masse to European countries under the false philosophy of multiculturalism, along with the equally ill-advised ideas captured in the DEI acronym, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. These cultural enrichers in Europe are now acting out violently, making economic and religious demands, daily disturbing public events, and harassing local citizenry.

Please understand. In making these observations or raising questions about immigration, I am notpreaching bigotry or prejudice. Nor am I against legal immigration. Actually, I have always been a proponent and can point to stellar examples of legal immigration that have brought wonderful, decent, hard-working, creative people to the American society.

But what we have today is neither legal nor immigrants per se. What we have is illegal invasion, fake refugees, cultural enrichers bent not on assimilating or becoming Americans but bent on demands, dissension, demonstrations, and destruction of America and its defining ideals.

Too many illegals are coming across our open borders, as they have in Europe, with entitlement mentalities or political disruption on their minds. Week after week, videos of cultural enrichers – not always just young men but also young women – attacking vulnerable people without provocation in the streets, harassing retail store clerks then stealing whatever they want, defying police, blocking traffic, praying in the middle of public thoroughfares even though there are many mosques available in their city, going door to door asking not for a job but for money, desecrating monuments or other public sculpture. The list is endless.

We could fix our problems in the U.S., of course. It is not rocket-science as they say. It’s politicians on the Left cynically opening America’s borders in order to intentionally change the political culture in a way they believe will reinforce their power. And it is politicians on the Right who do not seem to have the pollical will, to do anything about this.

What should be done? Well, that’s easy:

1 – Close the borders to all would-be immigrants until immigration policy and procedures can be reinvigorated for security, order, and fairness.

2 – Enforce legal immigration policy presently in place.

3 – Reform U.S. immigration policy, something this country has done periodically, under Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, for example, so that it reinforces legal due process.

4 – Vet would-be immigrants to identify who they are, who really does require and deserve asylum, who will bring new talents and skills, who wants to assimilate by learning English and contributing to the American culture and economy.

It was T.R. in 1907, who said, “In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag…We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language…And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”

There need be no animus in any of this. All these improvements in US legal immigration policy can be enacted with compassion for those who truly need asylum, and with preservation of the opportunity to immigrate for those who wish to assimilate and contribute to the American society.

Without this kind of concerted effort, I truly fear for the future of America.

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.

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

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 01 January 2024

Have you ever noticed the dramatic change that takes place the week following Christmas from “peace on earth” to “let’s let it all hang out”?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #126 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 my recollection, when I was a kid, most people enjoyed the Christmas season right on into the New Year’s. These days, I’m not so sure if most people still enjoy the season, though I assume it’s reasonable to say many people do.

But Christmas to New Year’s involves a big shift, at least I always thought it did and I still do. What I mean is there is a palpable transformation in tone from the few weeks leading up to and including Christmas on into the week following Christmas up to New Year’s Day.

Before Christmas, people catch the Christmas spirit. Gas station clerks wish you “Merry Christmas.” People at the airport, though harried by travel, for the most part are excited, happy, and pleasant. Retail stores brim with red and green, bright colorful lights, and various representations of Christmas, whether religious or secular.

Then Christmas is suddenly over and in one fell swoop, people’s moods change.

Gas station clerks return to their often seen-it-all surly selves. People at the airport are manic and driven. Retail stores still brim with color, but Christmas disappears fast, moved to the discount section, and customers take on a frenzied push to find the right foods for the planned blowout New Year’s Eve.

Media, especially television, really evidences this mood swing. Sure, there’s a few Christmas themes, commercials, and classic films still on air, along with football bowl games, but the big push is New Year’s Eve – ads about celebrities, singers and bands, and a lot parties. In fact, it’s a take a walk on the wild side atmosphere from here on out.

The focus is the upcoming last midnight of the old year and ringing in the new year.

Nothing wrong with this per se, but I’ve always felt the values being expressed were radically different from the week before Christmas. Earlier, it was silent night, love, home, family and friends, tranquility, peace on earth. With New Year’s, it is raucous rowdiness, sensuality, hit the clubs, noise, revelry-around-the-world, bacchanalia, the ball dropping in Times Square, and maybe most of all, drinking, a lot of drinking.

It’s probably the latter that makes me react. An endless evening of shallow celebrities expressing how ostensibly happy they are in their carousing status.

Maybe part of my pullback is that I have never been a drinker. I don’t think it is a sin, per se, to drink alcoholic beverages. Excess or drunkenness is the real problem.

That said, I do think drinking alcohol is like playing with fire. Clearly, many people cannot handle it and succumb to alcoholism. Even for those who don’t become substance abusers – like so many Hollywood and entertainment stars, a community that year-after-year lose a few to the all-too-predictable endgame of their addiction, for example, “Friends” star Matthew Perry, who at 54 years of age recently drowned in his hot tub. He was not drunk and in fact had apparently been sober for some time, but he struggled with years of alcohol abuse, surgeries, treatments, and prescribed drugs to assist his return to normalcy. However, his autopsy showed he died of acute effects of ketamine, a drug designed to treat anxiety and depression. He’d apparently taken too much, which resulted in unconsciousness, and he slipped below the water. In other words, one of the variables in his early death is traceable to his long abuse of alcohol.

In 2012, once-in-a-generation singing voice Whitney Houston died similarly at 48 years of age, drowning in the bathtub of a Beverly Hills hotel. Alcohol was a factor, while her “toxicology report found that ‘cocaine and metabolites’ contributed to her passing.” There is incredible sadness in this kind of early, avoidable demise. In 1991, to open Super Bowl XXV, Whitney Houston sang the “Star Spangled Banner.” Her presentation was so special, so goose-pimple-producing, it is yet regarded as one of the best renditions of the National Anthem ever sung and may be watched on YouTube. So, losing Whiney to alcohol and substance abuse is dreadfully sad.

But even among those who don’t abuse alcohol, there are the special occasions like New Year’s when there seems to be an expectation and an acceptable excuse. So people get drunk because, well, Hey, everybody’s partying, and some later die in vehicle accidents, some get pregnant, and some embarrass themselves physically or in what they say or do while drunk. Remember actor Mel Gibson’s horrid antisemitic comments he made while knockdown drunk, comments that yet stain his legacy in the film industry.

In my view, all this is celebrated in the party-hardy motif of New Year’s Eve. Lost in this are the “Silent Night, Holy Night” values of Christmas.

Now you could say, Rogers, you’re just a prude, or maybe, Rogers, you’re just getting old. Maybe. But my unease with the riotous living of New Year’s Eve doesn’t change the fact it all takes place worldwide.

This year, ringing in 2024 takes place under the shadow of threat assessments warning of potential terrorism. God forbid that any attacks happen, but the threat is viable. “Heightened security measures in the hours ahead of and after ringing in 2024” are in place for New York City’s Times Square. “The move comes after the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal agencies warned police departments across the country about potential threats to large crowds celebrating the holiday, including from lone actors motivated by the Israel-Hamas war.”

France is on very high alert. “German police are planning one of their largest security operations in Berlin. In light of the Middle East conflict, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said she was ‘concerned that New Year's Eve could once again be a day on which we experience blind rage and senseless violence.’”

Similar concerns focus on New Year’s Day parades and football bowl games featuring large, concentrated crowds. Unprecedented security efforts will take place during the Rose Parade and at the Rose Bowl.

Year 2024 is an unknown to all of us looking into the future. None of us are Nostradamus, who was not all that accurate a prognosticator himself. We hope to avoid pandemics and protests, wars, rumors of wars, and culture wars. But whatever 2024 entails, as believers we can rely upon the providence, the presence, the promises, and the peace of God.

We know God is Sovereign. He is the Creator, and he is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. We know there is no such thing as luck, fate, destiny, or “May the Force be with you.” Rather, in the vernacular, we know God the Heavenly Father is providentially in charge.

We know God is with us. His son, Jesus, and our Savior is called Immanuel, “God with us.” We know Jesus said, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt 28:20). We know Jesus also said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Heb 13:5). The Holy Spirit “himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom 8:16). We know we are never, no matter what we experience, outside of the presence of God.

We know God keeps his word and fulfills every promise. Scripture says, “You know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed of all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you. All have come to pass for you; not one of them has failed” (Josh 23:14). We know that “What is impossible with man is possible with God” (Lk 18:27). God is God, our God, today and tomorrow, and his promise stands even to be with us in the valley of the shadow of death. (Ps 23).

We know, too, that only in the Lord there is peace. Jesus said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”(Jn 16:33).

Whatever the new year brings, trust in God’s providence, experience his presence, lean on his promises, and enjoy his peace. And celebrate the spirit of Christmas throughout 2024.

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

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 25 December 2023

Do you think it’s possible to experience peace of any kind in a world so bent upon envy, disruption, violence, and sin?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #125 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.

Christmas is a time we typically think good thoughts about family, friends, and oh yes, peace. But the world is anything but peaceful Christmas 2023.

The Ukraine struggles against Russian aggression, Sudan finds itself once again in a senseless, brutal civil war, and the Holy Land is immersed in war as Israel attempts, as they say, “to eradicate Hamas,” in response to Hamas’s barbaric unprovoked, surprise attack killing, maiming, raping, and kidnapping hundreds of Israelis, Oct 7, 2023.

Christmas, though, is about peace. Isaiah 9:6 announced, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given,and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Jesus’s peace, as we sometimes assume, is not necessarily physical safety and political harmony.

The babe in the manger who became the Savior because of Calvary and the Resurrection, said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid,” Jn 14:27.

The Hebrew word for peace is shalom, commonly used as Jewish greeting. Shalom in this verse means more than just the absence of war. It references all kinds of peace: wholeness, welfare, physical health, quietness, mental and emotional stability. It means “an appearance of calm and tranquility of individuals, groups, and nations”…and “the deeper, more foundational meaning of peace is “the spiritual harmony brought about by an individual’s restoration with God.”

This reminds me of the beloved Christmas carol, “Silent Night.” My SAT-7 colleague Dennis Wiens recently observed, “Josef Mohr, a Salzburg clergyman, wrote the lyrics in 1816, just after the Napoleonic Wars. (His) congregation in Mariapfarr (Austria) was reeling from the war, which had decimated the country's political and social infrastructure. The song's message of peace was sent into a time marked by war, hunger, disease, and natural disasters.”

Two years later, “Josef walked to a hill overlooking his town one evening. This quiet time, alone, allowed him to process and reflect as he and the town prepared for Christmas Eve 1818.

“Reveling in the majestic silence of a wintry night, Mohr looked over the Christmas card-like scene of his town. He reflected on a Christmas play he had just watched that triggered his memory of a poem he had written a couple of years before. That poem was about the night angels announced the birth of the long-awaited Messiah to shepherds on a hillside. Mohr decided those words might make a good carol for his congregation the following evening at their Christmas Eve service. The one problem was that he didn't have any music to which that poem could be sung.”

“So, the next day, Mohr went to see the church organist, Franz Xaver Gruber, “a local schoolteacher who the next year became the organist of Old Saint Nicholas Church. By that evening, Gruber had managed to compose a musical setting for the poem. That the church organ was inoperable no longer mattered to Mohr and Gruber. They now had a Christmas carol that could be sung without an organ.”

“The now-famous carol was first performed as "Stille Nacht Heilige Nacht," Josef Mohr, the young priest who wrote the lyrics, played the guitar and sang along with Franz Xaver Gruber, the choir director who had written the melody.” It was later first performed in the United States in New York City in 1839.

“The contrast between the carol's message of tranquility and hope and the violence during a time marked by war, hunger, disease, social upheaval, and natural disasters is obvious and compelling.”

“It was sung in churches, in town squares, and even on the battlefield during World War I, when soldiers sang carols from home during a temporary truce on Christmas Eve. It's considered the Christmas carol that paused a war!”

“Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace

Sleep in heavenly peace!”

The prophet Isaiah also reminded us, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord” (Is 55:8-9). So, he does not always immediately bring peace in the face of war, as he could, in part because he knows that people are drawn to him at such times and perhaps in part because he grants human beings the opportunity to choose to seek him and to do right versus wrong.

Human beings want peace; we want the world on our terms. The Beatle’s John Lennon wrote at least two songs about peace, one in 1969 called “Give Peace a Chance,” an anti-war statement that reads like he must have been high when he wrote it. The gibberish lyrics make no sense, but still, the phrase “Give Peace a Chance” caught on for a time. The problem is, Lennon offered no basis for accomplishing his dream, no acknowledgement of sin and evil, no way of redemption, no spiritual means of achieving peace, and certainly not achieving it on our own.

The other Lennon song about peace became his anthem and legacy. “Imagine” was released in 1971, becoming the best-selling song of his career and has now been covered by more than 200 artists.

Why is “Imagine” so popular? Aside from its catchy tune, it’s an idealistic secularist view of the world. Anyone can embrace the song’s longings. It imagines a world without disturbance, in other words, peace. Lennon says,

“Imagine there's no heaven

It's easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no countries

It isn't hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people living life in peace”

Certainly, we can relate to John Lennon’s desire to live a life of peace, but sadly, the utopian dreams he recommends for achieving peace aren’t real. Lennon’s aspirations are spiritual dead ends.

“John Lennon’s song Imagine is frequently used as a call for peace and unity. It’s an especially common selection in response to acts of violence.”

“Critics often note that what Lennon depicts is end-stage communism: the pursuit of which has been the cause of millions of deaths throughout history.”

Actually, “history disproves Lennon’s optimism. A denial of heaven and hell does not result in world peace—quite the opposite, in fact. The worst human atrocities—counter to the rest of Lennon’s vision, ironically—have been driven by an atheistic rejection of the afterlife and the removal of religion from society. When leaders assume there is nothing “above” man, the result is usually genocide: witness Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and others who saw themselves as the highest authority.”

Hamas says they serve the Islamic conception of God, Allah. But their way of serving is anger, fear, destruction, brutality, and killing. And there is no peace.

Back to Lennon: there is a heaven, and there is a hell, and there is religion, and if properly understood in biblical terms, God has given us the prescription we need to seek peace and through his Son the Lord Jesus Christ, to experience it.

The Prince of Peace, Immanuel “God with us,” born as the incarnated God-Man in a manger about two thousand years ago is God’s answer to mankind’s “relational dilemma,” that is, our broken relationship with God, others, and creation. Scripture says, “therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” (Rom 5:1).

Jesus Christ is the only reason we can truly live peacefully with God and in peace with others and creation.

The Prince of Peace is the reason for the season.

Jesus did not stay a baby in a manger but became the Savior whose sacrificial death, burial, and resurrection made our redemption possible, and makes peace possible.

“Jesus Christ is called the Prince of Peace because He restores every broken relationship, provides for a well-ordered and balanced life, and offers the assurance of eternal life” to all who call upon him.

Peace be with you this Christmas.

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

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 20 December 2023

Have you ever felt like the world is upside down, or have you ever witnessed something so egregious you never thought you’d see it in your lifetime?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #124 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 early days of the pandemic in April 2020, I wrote a blog in entitled “Things I Never Thought Could Happen in America.” I noted things like governors issuing “orders” requiring citizens stay home, or governors determining a) there’s such a thing as essential and non-essential businesses, b) actually assigning businesses to these categories, or the absurdity of pet, marijuana, liquor stores, and abortion clinics considered essential while churches were considered non-essential, or mayors threatening churchgoers with fines and directing police to record the vehicle licenses of anyone attending a drive-in church service, or county officials mandating churches exclude singing from live stream programs, or police empowered to break up groups of more than three people.

Looking back, these developments still strike me as examples of government overreach and a threat to individual freedom.

And now, it’s happening the way many of us predicted it would, scholars are gradually demonstrating that much of the masking frenzy, forced shutdown of schools, and other fear-based control, did not prevent the spread of COVID.

Clearly, the pandemic accelerated big government trends that were already underway in the US. That was December 2010 to pick a date for end of the pandemic – Pres Biden declared the pandemic over Sept 18, 2022, then multiple sources tried to walk it back.

Then came the post-George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, coupled with the rise of the organization Black Lives Matter, which spurred the rapid embrace of woke philosophies that literally took over education, corporations, government, even the military, leading to politically correct demands, victimhood, and the idolatry of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This, too, demonstrated and contributed to cultural moral breakdown and social upheaval.

Now, we’re experiencing more moral confusion in the aftermath of the Hamas Massacre in Israel, Oct. 7, 2023, which opened floodgates to the animosity grounding left-leaning philosophies, most especially antisemitism on campuses, in the streets, and in the halls of Congress.

These trends are all discouraging and threatening, and with the latest open hostility, even calling for genocide of Jews, it feels like we’ve crossed a critical Rubicon in our culture’s moral collapse.

And we don’t seem to have learned much from our earlier experiences, because things continue to occur in America that I never thought I’d see.

Some are utter silliness, much are irrational, and some are disruptive to the future of the body politic. Consider these developments:

Billionaire Bill Gates calling for developing new breeds of cows who do not burp as much methane so that we can save ourselves from climate change. With a straight face, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates told CNN's Fareed Zakaria that bovine flatulence is a large contributor to global warming.
A Los Angeles freeway blockedby protestors demanding a cease-fire in Gaza. Progressive Jewish organization IfNotNow, a pro-Palestinian group which supports ending U.S. support for Israel, said it organized protests timed for Hanukkah.
Hundreds of people participating in a “Queers for Palestine” protest blocking the Manhattan Bridge in New York City. The protesters waved Pride flags while chanting slogans such as “queer, trans, no peace on stolen land.”

Pro-Hamas protesters threatening to kill Jewish attendees as they leave the Israeli Embassy's Hanukkah ceremony in Washington, DC. A woman screamed, "We will kill you all, occupiers."
A Seattle high schooler marked incorrect on a quiz for saying only women can get pregnant.
Concern about plagiarism is now declared illegitimate because such concern is part of the “white supremacist agenda.”
US soccer player Megan Rapinoe, a sexually out, in-your-face, perennial malcontent, hurt her leg and said it was “proof” there is no God. She later said that playing for United States Soccer was “the worst job in the world,” this after she became famous and made a very good living because of soccer yet played poorly in her final games.
A Senate staff member was arrested for filming a gay porno of himself having gay sex in a Senate Hearing Roomof the Capitol Building in Washington, DC. Need I say more?

Here’s one you couldn’t imagine just a few years ago under any President, Republican or Democrat:

9. As of June 2023, approximately 16.8 million illegal aliens reside in the U.S. Since the beginning of the Biden Administration in Jan 2021, illegal immigrants coming across the nation’s open southern border with Mexico now stands at more than 3.8 million, including more than 1.7 million “gotaways” who crossed undetected,“the greatest number in historyand of any administration. Illegal aliens increased 16% during just two years of the Biden presidency such that the total is now more than the individual populations of 41 states.” The annual net cost of illegal migration was approximately $116 billion. This is not only astounding for the numbers involved, but also shocking when you consider this has happened because a given Administration simply chose to ignore the law, suspend policies, and in general thumb its nose at the safety and security of the American people.

Now, about 49.5 million people in the U.S. are foreign born, the largest in history.

I have long been in favor of legal immigration, and I still am. But this willful grab for political power perceived to lodge in these immigrants is illusory and dangerous.

1) We don’t know who these people are because they have not been vetted, 2) Many are military age males entering alone,

2) the fentanyl drug cartels are using this surge to bilk Americans,

3) children are being trafficked in the midst of this,

4) and while some of immigrants may truly wish for a better life, others are coming for nefarious reasons with no intention to assimilate – just look at what’s happening in Europe.

Many European articles now replace the word “immigrant” with the term “cultural enricher,”usually ironically or sarcastically. It refers to invasion or general violence caused by people of different cultures. The phrase has roots in Germany in WWI and was used by Hitler to refer to Jews.

The people who have been admitted en masse to European countries under the false philosophy of multiculturalism, in the hopes they’d provide a new workforce to make up for the low birthrate in these countries,

are not for the most part integrating. They are now acting out violently, making economic and religious demands, and otherwise have become a major problem across the continent. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the effort to bring foreign workers to a happy multi-cultural society, “has failed, utterly failed.” The U.S. should have long since taken note, but it may now be too late.

10. Given my long background in higher education and love for campus life, the rapid decline of American higher education has been hard for me to watch. In the past few years, it’s been a slippery slope embracing moral relativism, the re-emergence of racial segregation in the name of inclusiveness, the destruction of standards in the name of equity, the utter absurdity of gender pronoun madness, the development of “free speech zones” because elsewhere on campus speech is restricted for a list of politically correct reasons – that is, until this past month when antisemitism has been permitted, endorsed, and encouraged at the nation’s’ elite universities.

But you say, surely not every university is like this, nor every professor. Maybe not, at least among individual professors, but numerous incidents can be listed wherein professors were harassed, silenced, or lost their jobs because the dominant woke mentality takes no prisoners.

11. Abortion has been legal since I was in college, but a list of things I thought I’d never see in my own country still must include this travesty. Who would have predicted we’d get to a point that pro-choice advocates would refer to laws protecting the innocent unborn as “government-mandated pregnancies”? Any culture that so blithely dismisses the vitality and rights of babies is capable of any moral outrage.

There is in fact no end of ridiculous, irrational, or dangerous offshoots of humanity’s desire to avoid living as God intended. The late Christian philosopher Rousas Rushdoony observed a long time ago that there is no end to error. More recently, political philosopher Dennis Prager made a similar observation, saying in effect that the Left, major media, and the contemporary university constantly focuses upon made up “fake problems” rather than considering the real moral issues of good and evil in a real world. This seems to be the state of our union.

But as a Christian believer, our commission in life remains the same, to love God, to be ready always to give an answer of the hope that is within us, and to “let those who love the Lord hate evil,” Ps. 97:10.

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

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 18 December 2023

Are we living today what philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre observed, “If there is no God, then everything is permitted”?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #123 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.

Sociologists of religion, and other scholars of civilization, used to talk about a “Judeo-Christian consensus.” The phrase referred to a shared, broadly agreed-upon set of values about morality and civic virtue, based upon the theological understandings of Judaism and Christianity.

The scholars believed this Judeo-Christian consensus helped form the foundation upon which Western Civilization, then the United States of America, were built. This foundation made E Pluribus Unum possible.

Many earlier and conservative scholars said America’s founding was unique, giving rise to a perspective called “American exceptionalism,” a concept addressed in the 1830s by French social critic Alexis de Tocqueville in his seminal work, Democracy in America. While no doubt some individuals took this view to an extreme of arrogance, triumphalism, or manifest destiny, most citizens simply viewed it as a recognition that America’s founding was different, coalescing around values and a political system creating opportunities for life, liberty, enterprise, and well-being like no other country in history.

The late political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset argued, “this ideology, which Lipset called Americanism…is based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, republicanism, democracy, and laissez-faire economics.

The idea of an exceptional society has a long history traced to the ideas espoused by the Founding Fathers of the United States during the American Revolution. This uniqueness or exceptionalism did not just happen. “America’s uniqueness is based in the Christian consensus of the Founding Fathers, who penned documents guaranteeing religious and personal freedom for all. This nation was not founded by atheists, secularizers, or monarchists who thought the elite educated class should rule over the common people.

America’s founding was based more on biblical principles than any other nation’s on Earth—and that’s the main reason this country has been more blessed by God than any other nation in history. No other nation has enjoyed freedom of religion, freedom of electoral choice, and freedom of vocational pursuits for a longer period of time than the United States.”

But things are changing, and indeed have been changing for some time.

Since at least the 1960s, what’s been happening, first gradually, now rapidly, is an intentional rejection of Judeo-Christian values of morality and society, followed by a replacement of these traditional values, first by secularism, then by radical so-called “progressive,” Marxist values based on irreligion if not atheism, along with an idolatry of race, sex, class, diversity, equity, and inclusion, victimhood, and statism.

This means that the culture and society in which many of us as older adults grew up, is no more. What we are experiencing now, the culture in which we live, is fundamentally different from the culture in which we came of age.

Judeo-Christian values once were enshrined in our cultural mores, defining criminal justice, meritocracy, education, commercial enterprise, and freedom.

The late Francis A. Schaeffer called them, “borrowed Christian values.” These values were the glue that helped hold Western culture together.

Christian values helped define American vision, purpose, and meaning. Christian ideas about the future, about progress, and about social change helped Americans craft a forward-thinking, optimistic, can-do, confidence that encouraged innovation, risk-taking, investment, and work ethic. This is why America became one of the most productive engines of abundance the world has ever seen.

As these values have been lost—or I should say, tossed aside, openness to false ideas and values increased, because, like nature, the heart abhors a vacuum. Human hearts cannot exist without something to worship and give purpose.

In this vacuum, this moral collapse resulting from the dechristianization of postmodern society, individuals increasingly embraced a godless, Marxist ideology that appeals to the sinful nature.

As Judeo-Christian values were rejected, so was the idea of objective truth, the understanding that regardless of what any given person concludes, there is real truth, real facts, in a real world. Now, we hear about the oxymoron “alternative facts,” or “your truth and my truth,” which is to say no standard of truth at all.

We heard this recently when Harvard University President Claudine Gay apologized for her widely condemned congressional testimony on campus antisemitism, in which she said, "I failed to convey what is my truth."

“My truth”? This from the president of a university whose 387-year-old motto is Veritas, which is Latin for Truth. Harvard originally adopted the Latin phrase, “Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae,” as its motto in 1692, which means “Truth for Christ and the Church.” But this was reduced to just “Veritas” in 1836. Discovering truth these days is an exercise in, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?”

Judeo-Christian values are being replaced by a godless sense of no responsibility and no accountability, and Judeo-Christian values are being replaced by fear, distrust, dishonesty, lack of confidence, loss of patriotism, then the inevitable disillusionment, despair, alienation, anomie, hopelessness, and nihilism.

The practical outgrowth of this shift in values is extensive.

Education from kindergarten to grad school has become a vast wasteland where teaching and learning are dumbed down and activism is the new holy grail.

As parents have “parented” less, or as parents have rejected traditional values for their brave new world values, or as the family unit itself has come under attack as something unnecessary or limiting, and as children have increasingly come of age spending more than one third to one-half of their day on screens, mental illness and anxiety have soared among youth, as has sexual promiscuity.

Political leaders promote the killing of the nation’s progeny as a matter of women’s healthcare and a human right. Think of that, a human right to kill other humans. This is perversity.

Political leaders promote the physical mutilation of children in the name of sexual liberation. And oh, by the way, no need to inform their parents. This is not freedom but enslavement to debauchery and a lifetime of drugs and regret.

Educators, medical professionals, celebrities, journalists, and of course political sycophants, claim men can menstruate, breast feed, and have children. These are supposedly sophisticated individuals, but if so, it is sophisticated ignorance. This is “the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Rom. 1:18). It is the result of the rejection of timeless values, the rejection of virtue.

City streets and retail stores are now fair game to “smash and grab” gangs, thugs, and thieves who know they will not be prosecuted and who have such little fear, they no longer wear masks and look directly into security cameras.

America is no longer a “kinder, gentler nation” and is instead an everyone for themselves “do what’s right in your own eyes” nation.

In business, making an excellent product has been replaced with a decline in quality in almost every industry. And the old aphorism, “the business of America is business,” has been replaced by the business of America is advocacy.

Since the internet became functional, every form of evil has increased, led by pornography and gambling.

Historian Mark Lewis reminds us, what Edmund Burke said, “But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint...Men are qualified for liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.”

Further, James Madison said, “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical [fanciful] idea.”

“According to Madison (and all our Founders), virtue (goodness, self-control, godly morality, responsible behavior, unselfishness) is absolutely essential to true liberty.”

Today in America, people are denying the existence of virtue, in the name of freedom. But instead of freedom, we’re getting lawlessness, licentiousness, and chaos, none of which sound much like freedom.

Yes, there is a direct link between rejecting God, truth, morality, and virtue, and the breakdown of American culture. It’s not good out there, and it’s going to get worse.

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

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