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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 18 July 2024

Is America becoming a banana republic, one where political opponents take shots with bullets not just words?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #159 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.

Saturday, July 13, at a Butler, PA campaign rally, a young man fired his rifle multiple times toward former President Donald J. Trump, injuring him and two others in the crowd, and sadly killing a firefighter attempting to shield his family.

It brought back memories of Mar 30. 1981, the last time a President was injured in an assassination attempt when President Ronald Reagan was shot at short range, rushed to a Washington, DC, hospital, and survived a bullet that had narrowly missed his heart.

Reagan looked at doctors in surgery and said, “I hope you all are Republicans.” Standing near the foot of the operating table was [chief of surgery] Joe Giordano, who happened to be a die-hard liberal. “Today, Mr. President,” Giordano said, “we are all Republicans.” Later, the President told his wife, “Honey, I forgot to duck.”

Trump’s in the moment, “Fight, Fight, Fight,” is reminiscent of this earlier time when a leader proved his mettle under duress. Some media coverage since have tried to make this comment, together with Trump’s raised fist, into some kind of fascist rallying cry. But “the crowd at the rally chanted ‘USA! USA! USA!’ in response, the sense of unity and determination was palpable. This intriguing reaction demonstrated the deep connection between Trump and his base, even in the face of violence and danger.”

While the first president, George Washington, was elected unanimously in 1789, American presidential political campaigns since have been rough and tumble affairs. These campaigns have sometimes been marked by vitriolic rhetoric and political violence:

1. Election of 1800 (Thomas Jefferson vs. John Adams):
   • Thomas Jefferson was labeled an atheist and accused of wanting to undermine the morality of America.
   • Though not directly related to the campaign itself, the charged political atmosphere contributed to the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in 1804, resulting in Hamilton's death.
2. Election of 1828 (Andrew Jackson vs. John Quincy Adams):
   • Andrew Jackson was accused of being a "jackass" and a barbarian, with allegations regarding his inadvertently bigamous marriage to Rachel Donelson – Jackson and Rachel thought her former husband had secured a divorce when it turned out he had not. Rachel died just days after Jackson’s election, and she never served as First Lady. Jackson believed his political opposition’s cruel comments about his wife led to her early death and he never forgave them.
3. Election of 1860 (Abraham Lincoln vs. multiple candidates):
   • Abraham Lincoln was called a "black Republican" and was accused of being an abolitionist who would incite racial equality and violence.
   • Lincoln was ultimately assassinated by John Wilkes Booth shortly after his re-election in 1864.
4. Election of 1968 (Richard Nixon vs. Hubert Humphrey):
   • The year was marked by significant political violence, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
   • The Democratic National Convention in Chicago was marred by violentclashes between police and anti-war protesters. 
5. Election of 1972 (Richard Nixon vs. George McGovern):
   • The campaign included the Watergate scandal, leading to political turmoil and Nixon's eventual resignation.
   • On May 15, 1972, third party candidate George Wallace was shot while campaigning in Laurel, Maryland. One bullet lodged in his spinal column leaving him paralyzed from the waist down the rest of his life.

So American presidential politics has always been a raucous time, yet there is no question that the rhetoric and vitriol in the campaigns of the new millennium have gotten uglier. 

Can we change this?  I hope so, but as I said in a SAT-7 USA blog about the assassination attempt, I believe we’re dealing not so much with a political as a spiritual problem.

We live in a fallen world, and we know that since at least the 1960s, American culture has aggressively and rapidly secularized in many ways and paganized in others. 

Both Christian and conservative observers have been noting threatening developments, among them:

• rejection of the Sovereign God of the Bible, 
• embracing moral relativism, 
• emphasis upon feelings,
• celebrating cultish values regarding race, sexuality,
• promotion of happiness or the self as the ultimate measure of wellbeing in life, 
• trading a Christian for a utilitarian view of life, thus a baby may be discarded if not wanted,

These trends help to create a culture that is anxious, pessimistic, and looking for someone, i.e., others, to blame for our problems. Add to this a significant increase in end-of-the-world climate change alarmism, fear of global viruses, terrorism, and doomsday population projections, and one gets a culture that is confused, chaotic, backward, and characterized by an ill-defined rage.

Our political leaders reflect some of this. In an angry age, is it then any wonder that President Joe Biden and Former President Donald J. Trump can be rather nasty in their comments about their opponents? It’s not good, but it is predictable.

One interesting aftermath of the assassination attempt is the number of people, including Mr. Trump and members of his family, along with favorable media figures, who are saying the bullet missed because of the providence of God. 

People are saying God is not through with Donald J. Trump, that he was spared by a direct act of God in order to help restore America to its former ideals and bounty.

Now I have no problem with people, least of all the candidate and those around him, acknowledging God’s presence, blessings, and providence, because I believe the Sovereign God of the Universe is indeed involved in our daily lives. God was there in Butler, PA, and he was not surprised by what occurred. Yes, I believe he has a will and a plan for Mr. Trump, for America, for all of us.

I do have a problem, though, with some memes – images developed for sharing online – I’ve seen that, to me, cross over into what scholars call civil religion. These memes feature Mr. Trump in various god-like scenarios, perhaps being uplifted by angels or kneeling while wrapped in the US flag as divine light from above shines down on him. Some memes portray Mr. Trump as a savior, and sometimes seem to worship him. These memes look like and remind me of icons of saints that I’ve seen in churches.

So, God providentially protected Mr. Trump. OK, I then wonder what people would be saying if Mr. Trump had been slain. Would they then be talking about God’s providence? 

We know this in our own lives when we or a loved one is very ill. We pray for their healing, and sometimes God answers that prayer affirmatively. But sometimes God answers that prayer negatively and we or our loved one advances in the illness, at times even unto death. Did God love and protect us when he healed but not love and protect us when he did not heal?

Again, I am not against acknowledging God’s engagement in American culture and politics. Nor am I knocking, much less making fun of, those who praise God for his providence in sparing Mr. Trump’s life. During his recovery, Mr. Reagan made similar observations about God’s will, and Mr. Reagan’s life and purpose. If anything, we should obey more of the Lord’s Word and seek his engagement. I am simply cautioning us not to baptize any political figure as other than the man or woman that they are.

Like us, American presidents are not perfect. We are commanded to pray for our leaders: “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Tim 2:1-2).

But Scripture also reminds us who really is in charge of our future, saying, “Put not your trust in princes,in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish” (Ps. 146:3-4).

May God grant the USA and its political leaders providence, protection, peace, and prosperity.

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: 15 July 2024

Is sex Satan’s best playing field, or have the forces of evil already won the morality culture wars and now Satan is moving on to other issues, like the rejection of truth, racism, or even climate change?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #158 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.

As I’ve noted before, gender fluidity, the idea sex is changeable, or what’s now called transgenderism, is the current cultural soup du jour. It’s everywhere and seems to have become an outright unstoppable juggernaut.

We hear that people finding their “real sex” as opposed to their born-this-way biological sex is some kind of great brave new world. But sadly, it is not.

We hear this controversy is about sex, but it’s not really about sex; certainly not just sex. It’s about identity, who we are.

Trans ideology is not about lust or licentiousness. It’s about declaring that human beings can create “their truth,” be their own gods. It’s about idolatry. If male and female are simply arbitrary categories, then anything goes. Morality, modesty, masculine and feminine don’t really exist. We’re all just some hybrid social construct.

It’s true that for a variety of reasons, men or women have dressed or “passed” as the other sex for centuries. It is only in our lifetime that the idea a man or woman can actually become the other sex, and in so doing embrace their real sex, has seemingly been made possible via hormone therapy and the surgical technology to remove or reconstruct sexual organs.

But even these so-called “treatments” are secondary to the heart and mind proclaiming “Me, I decide who I am.”

While “the first documented male-to-female sex reassignment surgery took place in 1930, “the word transgender…which came into wider use in the 1990s after public health officials adopted it, is often used as an umbrella term for all rejections of the norm, from cross-dressers who are generally happy in their assigned gender to transsexuals.”

Since the 1990s, in an astonishingly rapid fashion, the American populace has adopted a “normalized” view of LGBTQ, and more recently, argued transgenderism is a civil rights matter.

Until 2013, gender dysphoria—confusion about one’s sexuality—was categorized as a disorder, not a dysphoria, by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The World Health Organization, W.H.O., did not move gender incongruence from mental disorders to sexual health issues until 2019. 

In 2014, Time issued a cover entitled “The Transgender Tipping Point: America’s Next Civil Rights Frontier.”

Two developments in 2015 acted like critical mass for transgender momentum: the Supreme Court of the United States case Obergefell v Hodges giving same-sex couples the right to marry and Olympic Gold Medalist Bruce “Call Me Caitlyn” Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover.

Then in 2016, the Obama Administration Department of Education redefined “sex” in Title IX to include “gender identity,” making it a civil rights issue. The Departments of Education and Justice required all sex-segregated facilities to be based on gender identity not biological sex.

The Biden Administration, with the President saying to LGBTQ people “I’ve got your back,” consistently advocates for legal changes giving trans individuals – a person born male identifying as female or born female identifying as male – access to sex-segregated events, services, facilities, sports competitions.

Transgenderism has become a cultural juggernaut.

American taxpayers now must pay for gender reassignment surgery for active military personnel or veterans who opt for it.

Disney is adding…queer characters in children’s programming, and is changing its long-standing greeting, “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,” from its Magic Kingdom fireworks show, to “Good evening, dreamers of all ages!” to promote what it calls “inclusivity.”

The Cartoon Network is normalizing gender pronouns: It’s comic strip states, “‘We can’t tell someone’s gender just by looking at them, and we shouldn’t assume we know. There are many gender identities beyond ‘girl’ or ‘boy’: some people don’t identify as any gender!’” This is considered children’s programming.

California inmates may now request prisons aligned with their gender choices, no matter their biological sex, and once there, are eligible for costly taxpayer supported gender reassignment surgery. California bans state employee travel to several states considered discriminatory toward LGBTQ individuals.

University athletics personnel are pressuring the NCAA to withdraw or not schedule collegiate athletic events in states that have passed bills requiring athletes to compete in sports befitting their biological sex. More than 25 states are considering or have passed bills labeled by the press as “anti-trans athlete” legislation.

The NFL issued a video saying, “Football is gay…Football is transgender.” Of course, it’s easy to virtue signal corporate activism-a la-profit-motive with a rainbow-colored NFL logo because transgender athletes aren’t going head-to-head in competition like they are beginning to do in other sports.

Serious concerns are being expressed by LGB athletes that allowing transgender athletes into women’s competitions will destroy women’s sports. Some fear Title IX will be eviscerated. “Several prominent female athletes have spoken out against relaxing the traditional standards, arguing the ramifications will be drastic for women’s sports.”

Connecticut is one of 17 states that allow transgender high school athletes to compete without restrictions.

We’re told the idea that men are stronger athletes than women or that sex is binary is due to misogyny and white supremacy. 

But it’s gender madness. Some are trying to address the madness by calling for separate transgender competitions.

LGBTQ demands are on a collision course with religious liberty.

Transgenderism politics aggressively attacks the authority of Scripture, often indirectly by repositioning words like accepting, love, inclusive, or tolerance. They call disagreement, hate or bigotry, and they’ve been amazingly successful at pushing this Devil’s delusion into mainstream American culture.

In American culture, as touted by LGBTQ+ activists and others in the “woke” universe, Christianity is increasingly seen as optional, hateful, bigoted, discriminatory, repressive, malevolent, irrelevant, or unnecessary.

LGBTQ+ cannot accomplish activists’ ideological or worldview goals until religion, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, is marginalized or legally banished from cultural influence. Gender ideology and biblical Christianity can only co-exist in a First Amendment society, something activists have not so far demonstrated they can accept.

Christians who sleep-walk through this movement will do transgender people, the Church, and the country a grave disservice.

The rapid success transgenderism has achieved in just a handful of years puts “America…farther down this road than any other country in the Western world. In other words, at this moment of crisis for Western Civilization, or for what we used to call Christendom, the leading country of the free world is pulling the wrong way.”

While religious liberty is at stake in this “all-out cultural war to eradicate all influence of biblical values in our culture,” Christians tend to look upon transgenderism as just a matter of morality. It is that but much more.

We are in a cultural moment in which gender ideology is directly challenging the legitimacy of the Judeo-Christian heritage of the American system.

Gender ideology is not simply questioning the Bible or the Church or religion but the foundational American ideals that helped “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

The Democrat and Republican Parties are not standing in the gap. But “values matter because they translate into behavior. If (parties) become a big tent of moral relativism, who will fight for transmission of the values that sustain life and freedom?”

Not to resist, not to speak the truth in love, not to reason, not to stand in the gap defending life, dignity, freedom, and hope is to give in to irrationality, idolatry, division, destruction, and death.

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 July 2024

What sort of philosophy leads a seemingly intelligent person to conclude that a boy can be a girl, a girl can be a boy, men and women can identify as whatever gender appeals to them?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #157 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 don’t remember much about my 0-6 years of life, nor do I remember that I understood the difference in a boy or a girl, in part because I’d just learned I was a boy and what this meant. In grade school, I remember beginning to understand the difference in a boy and a girl, then not liking girls much because, well, they were different. You know, the “ooh” factor; girls had cooties.

Later in junior high school, I recollect beginning to understand that girls are not only different but different in certain interesting ways. I did not know much about this, but Dad gave me a “Birds and the Bees” talk a couple of times.

Dad was a part time barber, so whenever he concluded I’d benefit from a life lesson, he decided I needed a haircut. When you’re in a barber chair you can’t get away. Trapped in a barber chair in an otherwise empty barber shop is a perfect place to hear about the “Birds and the Bees.”

Of course, in the natural process of things, in high school, I decided those ways in which girls were different from boys were downright attractive and a source of endless fascination. God knew this. He planted these inclinations in me and every other human being because he created us male and female, and he did this so that we would be blessed with male/female companionship—remember, “It’s not good that man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18)—so that we would find enjoyment in male/female marriage relationship, and eventually so that we would in the words of the Old Testament book of Genesis, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,” (1:28), i.e., we’d perpetuate the human race.

Now if you are normal, typical, balanced, healthy, you resonate with what I’m saying. You get it. You likely remember similar maturing thoughts, emotions, and bodies in your youth. Best of all, you too understand the difference in a boy and a girl.

Some of you, like me, were privileged to be present in the room at the birth of your own child, either as the mother delivering the newborn or as the bamboozled new father. You saw for yourself that boys and girls are born with their distinguishing biological differences, and while we couldn’t see them, also born with distinguishing emotional, psychological, and maybe other divinely appointed differences.

Given all this, why are there people walking around today who claim they cannot define the difference in a boy or a girl or a man or a woman? Remember US Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson who during her confirmation hearings was asked by Senator Marsha Blackburn, “Can you define ‘woman’?” Jackson said, “I’m not a biologist. I’m a judge.” She was still confirmed as a Justice.

People say they cannot recognize the difference in the sexes and argue neither can medical professionals. In this view, only the newborn babe can later “say what or who they are.”

So, we are now treated to the insanity of sex education in kindergarten and elementary school, not just the differences in boys and girls, but age-inappropriate teaching, blatantly encouraging children to question their own sex, or what is now called gender.

Obviously, there are moral and scientific implications to this, but there are also practical, educational implications. Time spent on gender nonsense is time not spent on reading, writing, and arithmetic, history, science, and certainly not character or civics education. We trade essential instruction that would benefit students’ futures for elective, unseemly instruction that is not only nonessential but harmful.

Gender fluidity is the cultural soup du jour. 

It’s the latest craze that’s morphed beyond political correctness to indisputable orthodoxy. Dissent is not permitted. If you ask questions, based upon common sense, biology, a few thousand years of human history, or even religious conviction, you’re a bigot, a hater.

Proponents (especially activists) of gender fluidity believe biology is not destiny. In their view, biological sex is mutable, something “assigned” at birth. One’s “real sex” is determined by one’s feelings about gender, conveniently presented as an ever-lengthening spectrum of choices (some social media are offering 112 gender choices).

This gender transition, we are told, liberates and makes the person whole. Except it does not. Neither do any of the other hybrid gender identities ostensibly resulting from the newly declared fact of gender fluidity.

We know that people who experience gender dysphoria often endure genuine painful depression, detachment, fear, anxiety, and distress. Nothing in this podcast suggests gender dysphoria is not real, consequential, or concerning. Certainly, no perspective here suggests people struggling with gender dysphoria are crazy, weird, perverted, or otherwise undeserving of caring and kindness. 

Think about this. Gender dysphoria is not sinful. It’s a feeling, some say rooted in mental disorder, some in emotional and psychological confusion, but gender dysphoria is just feelings, a subjective confusion, and only that unless acted upon.

People with discordant thoughts about sex and gender need compassion not condemnation. They need love, help, caring, and hope.

This podcast is about gender fluidity and the ideology that has grown up supporting it. That ideology is fast becoming a kind of orthodoxy activists are marketing with religious zeal. Corporations, academia and athletics, health and medicine, the military, and governments have climbed on the bandwagon, all in the name of inclusiveness and non-discrimination. 

But let’s think biologically. Approximately 37.2 trillion cells comprise the adult human body. That’s T for trillion, another incredible testimony of the omniscience and omnipotence of our Creator God.

“Each cell of the body contains a full set of chromosomes.”

“Humans have 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs. We inherit 23 chromosomes from our mother and 23 chromosomes from our father. The chromosomes in the first 22 pairs are identical in a normal cell and they are the same in both genders. The 23rd pair is the sex chromosome and therefore determines the sex of the individual.  This chromosome is either XX for female or XY for male.”

“Whatever set of chromosomes a person has when they are born cannot be changed. This is because chromosomes are in all the cells that make up our bodies. To change a person’s chromosomes would mean changing trillion of cells! There’s no technology…that can change a chromosome in all of a person’s cells.”

“While the condition of gender dysphoria…is real and deserves sympathy, it does not erase the fact of biological sex. Human beings are male or female down to the level of their DNA, and males and females have different biochemistry even before they are born.”

Consequently, sex is not “assigned” at birth. It begins with conception and can be determined on ultrasounds prior to birth. Sex is literally hard-wired in the human design via the trillions of cells in the human body.

So, one’s sexuality is deeper than anatomy, appearance, feelings, or expression.  Our sex is part and parcel of who we are, and it cannot be changed no matter what drugs or hormones we might take and no matter what surgical procedures, including extensive gender reassignment surgery, we might choose to endure. 

Remarkable intellect Thomas Sowell once observed, “Reality does not go away when it is ignored.” No amount of Pride parades including transgender people, no number of President Biden’s appointment of trans bureaucrats is ever going to change reality.

Scripture says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). This is truth for God is truth. Transgenderism is an attack on the truth of divine design.

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: 02 July 2024

Have you wondered if there is an explanation for the upheaval we’re witnessing in American culture these past few months? 

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #156 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.