Rex M Rogers - Discerning What Is Best

Discerning What Is Best
with Dr. Rex M. Rogers

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 03 August 2020

While the Year 2020 has been and continues to be an annus horrilibus, a “horrible year,” Christians should be ready to give an answer of their hope.

We are living in chaotic times. Layered crises, one on the other,

the pandemic,
government-initiated economic lockdowns,
social unrest.

America’s ideals: life, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the historic Judeo-Christian values that formed the basis of American morality, law, education, and economic opportunity – all are under attack.

It brings to mind for me the first time, as a university sophomore, I spoke in a church.

My text was 1 Peter 3:15:

“But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

We live in times when people need to hear the reason for our hope.

So you and I need to be prepared to give an answer – with gentleness and respect.

This means we must understand the issues, the questions, and we must confidently apply our Christian worldview in answering.

God is not disconcerted by breaking news. Neither should we be.

We have reason for hope.

*This 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.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 31 July 2020

1-If you question the science of climate change, you’re a “climate change denier,” a new category of unbeliever considered ignorant, even dangerous.

2-If you wonder about biased coronavirus data and the now extensive number of medical scientists who reject mask mandates, economic lockdowns, school shuttering, i.e. America Full Stop, you don’t care about people dying, you’re selfish, you’re the enemy.

3-If you point out that rioters, looters, arsonists, anarchists (who are mostly white) are using race to advance their goals to destroy (including minority-owned) property, capitalism, and the American system that provides more freedom than any country in the history of the world, you don’t care about George Floyd and you support “stormtroopers” and Gestapo tactics.

4-If you support the Second Amendment or question the wisdom of gun control, you’re a militia freako.

5-If you say athletes should be able to stand for the National Anthem, i.e. his/her freedom of speech (a while ago we debated one guy kneeling; now we’re debating one standing), you’re insensitive and white privileged like Drew Brees and just don’t get it.

6-If you want to review factual police shooting data, look at real numbers rather than a narrative, or examine Black on Black killings in Chicago, you don’t care about police brutality.

7-If you point to the whole of human history as to why you think “Defund the Police” is the most irrational idea ever to gain traction, you are anti-Black.

8-If you express a Judeo-Christian moral perspective, thus rejecting the idea boys-who-identify-as-female being allowed to participate in girls’ high school sports competition (see Connecticut), you are a hater and a bigot.

9-If you question the legitimacy of public funds being used to paint “Black Lives Matter” on public streets, or really any political message, you are a victim of white fragility and a racist by definition because “everyone is racist.”

10-If you just aren’t the politically emotive type, don’t like social-political discussions, and want to live your life focused on your interests, your “Silence is violence,” which is to say you don’t care about racial injustice.

There is now no unbiased science, no free inquiry, no way for the best ideas to rise to the top based on their merits. Everything is now “trumped,” no pun intended, by politics.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 30 July 2020

What do you believe?

Deep down, what really do you believe?

And what are you willing to stand by, come what may?

Turbulent times, serious adversity, put us in figurative if not actual foxholes where fake doesn’t cut it.

Trying times are coming.

But Christians in the Middle East have lived this for centuries. We can learn from them.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 28 July 2020

American professional sports are morphing into just another segment from cable news.

If you’re like most people I know, you watch sports for the love of the game, the excitement of competition, the entertainment, and the escape from everyday pressures. Given the increasing politicization of American professional sports, that last one about escaping everyday news is not going to happen, at least not in 2020.

Consider these recent developments so far:

“The NFL pledged to spend $250 million over the next decade to combat systemic racism and fight injustices against African-Americans.”
“NFL is planning to play"Lift Every Voice and Sing," also known as the Black national anthem, before is expected to be performed live or played before every Week 1 NFL game,
NFL is considering social justice patches on uniforms, helmets.
NFL will stencil “End Racism” in end zones as part of its social justice effort for 2020 home openers.
“WNBA revealed the "Black Lives Matter" decals it placed on its court prior to the start of the 2020 season.”
Sports leagues will place “Black Lives Matter” messaging on attire.
MLB will donate over $1M to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and several other social justice charities.
Many MLB players, but not all, will kneel during the National Anthem.
WNBA warm-up jerseys will feature social justice messages.
NBA will paint “Black Lives Matter” murals on the courts at Walt Disney World in Orlando, and players will be permitted to wear personal messages on their jerseys.
The Premier Lacrosse League will permit players to wear message patches on shooting shirts or leg sleeves or arm bands.
New Jersey Devils install “Black Lives Matter” on their ice as part of their commitment to racial equality.
The Washington Redskins changing their name to an interim Washington Football Team.

Drew Brees, long-time star quarterback for the New Orleans Saints and reputed all around nice guy, said in an interview that he “will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country,” then after enormous criticism from other players, Black and White, he apologized profusely for his “insensitive” remarks, as did his wife, repeatedly.

My point here is not that Brees said what he did, which a majority of Americans agree with, or that some people didn’t like it. My point is that he got ostracized for expressing the “wrong view,” i.e. he made what at one time was considered a patriotic statement and then was blasted for not aligning with the social justice views of multiple other players. Beyond that, he was not accorded his own freedom of speech and he chose to retract his statements, likely so he can play another year in the league.

Who now, in the NFL or any league, assuming they disagree with the direction the leagues are going, is going to speak up?

Perhaps it is U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler, part owner of the Atlanta Dream WNBA team, who penned a letter to WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert decrying the league's association with the "BLM" movement and suggested wearing American flag jerseys instead. Loeffler later appeared on Fox News to say "Black Lives Matter " is "based on Marxist principles" that could "destroy" the country.

She told ESPN. "I think we all agree the life of every African American is important. There's no room for racism in this country, and we have to root it out where it exists. But there's a political organization called Black Lives Matter that I think is very important to make the distinction between their aim and where we are as a country at this moment. The Black Lives Matter political organization advocates things like defunding and abolishing the police, abolishing our military, emptying our prisons, destroying the nuclear family. It promotes violence and antisemitism. To me, this is not what our league stands for."

Some people question whether Loeffler, who has seemingly evidenced support for progressive causes in the past, may be using this recent sports controversy to prop up her senatorial campaign.

Since this time, several players and others associated with the league or the team have tried to get Loeffler ousted from ownership. Why? For expressing “the wrong views.”

In October 2019, Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted on his personal account, "Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong. The NBA wants the China market, so when the Chinese government reacted negatively to the tweet a firestorm broke out resulting in Morey apologizing, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver offering a weak recognition of Morey’s free speech rights while all the while condemning the incident, Houston Rocket’s star James Harden apologizing to China, and NBA king LeBron James coming off looking like he endorsed China more than American values.

Why was this incident such an issue? It was the first national level story featuring personal social media privileges/rights vs corporate interests and accountability, and it involved freedom of speech, international politics, and money. Free speech lost the game. Follow the money.

“In the end, it will be money that dictates the future of political expression in professional sports.”

These are but a few illustrations. The rush-to-political-correctness boulder is rolling down the mountain faster than anyone could have imagined. Major corporations, not least the sports leagues and teams, are turning into pretzels trying to assuage the woke-culture-bully.

They say this is about racial justice and police brutality, and undoubtedly for some athletes and executives it is just that. They hold sincere concerns, they work in a league comprised of majority Black athletes, they care, and I give them kudos for this.

I also salute and defend any athletes’ right to his or her freedom of speech, to say whatever and to use their sports fame to advance ideas they believe in. Back when, I wrote in support of Colin Kaepernick’s right to his views, even though I thought is method of conveying them by kneeling during the National Anthem was a mistake, and I did not like the imagery. I recognized that for him, this was not about the military or veterans or even the flag per se, yet for millions of others it was and still is, and he and subsequent players know this. Now he is being touted as a hero, yet Drew Brees, a far and away more talented and more important player in the league, is being tossed aside.

What I don’t think is wise, even if legal and within the leagues’ or teams’ rights to freedom of speech, is:

a wholesale embrace of the organization Black Lives Matter, which is about many things other than Black lives, nearly all of them dangerous to the social fabric, including promoting abortion, “queer affirming” lifestyles, destruction of the family structure, dismantling of the current political system, even attacking Christianity.

The danger for the leagues is viewers who disagree with this ideology may choose to skip television coverage, much less paying exorbitant ticket prices, to see professional sports.

the sudden not-thoroughly-considered groveling to the new woke doctrine that brooks no disagreement, then pushing it on their viewers. There is racism, and there are incidents of police brutality, but the level of purge this movement has attracted is not warranted by reality. Check the evidence.

Plus, the primary leadership of the movement can in no way be compared to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. That movement sought to achieve liberty and justice for all including Black people. Many within the Black Lives Matter movement today are working to destroy the system, the country, the values that make America and made America a land of opportunity, including for all races and ethnicities.

The danger for the leagues is that viewers will vote with their feet and walk away from the political propaganda.

I hope the politicization of professional sports tops out, but I am not optimistic. Right now, every professional sports league is trying to outdo the other one in its we-are-more-woke-than-thou. So they aren’t selling competition. They’re selling their version of social justice. I can watch that on cable news.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 26 July 2020

“Supreme Court denies Nevada church's appeal of attendance restriction amid coronavirus pandemic”

You can add Nevada alongside California, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, to name a few, as another state discriminating against churches, which is to say religion, in the name of public health. And in this latest instance the Supreme Court of the United States backed Nevada’s constitutionally overreaching state officials.

I’ve been pointing to state government overreach in the name of public health vis-a-vis a percentage of the population at risk short term, i.e., people who contract the coronavirus and need to take precautions.

And I’ve noted a rapidly growing threat to the First Amendment – not just religion but also the suppression of freedom of speech.

This brief “Wall Street Journal” piece, including an excellent short video herein, addresses the onslaught on freedom of speech we’re now seeing nearly every day, often not just from “protesters” but from the lips of foolish opportunistic politicians.

While the virus is serious and deserves reasonable response—I am not contending otherwise. I just don’t think medical and health evidence indicates the coronavirus pandemic, though clearly a virulent illness, is ultimately any more threatening than the flu or pneumonia. Certainly, it does not justify lockdowns, shuttering businesses and torpedoing economies, creating rampant unemployment and collateral suffering, all while forcing healthy people to quarantine themselves or otherwise live in hysteria.

That said, the demonstrably evident and increasing willingness of state and local political leaders to take actions, i.e. “executive orders,” undermining the first freedoms, including religion, speech, assembly, is a much greater plague that affects not just a portion of the population but 100% of the population now and future.

This is not a peripheral issue. It is not alarmist. The First Amendment has never been more threatened than it now is. If we lose what the First Amendment protects tyranny wins.

The First Amendment, the foundational and distinctive American ideal for all citizens has never been at greater risk.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 23 July 2020

Civil liberties are not granted by government but are guarantees against government taking them away.

The terms civil liberties and civil rights are often used synonymously or interchangeably. Both words are used in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution. But they are different.

Civil liberties are identified in the Bill of the Rights, here called rights. They are similar to what is referred to as human rights or natural rights, those that adhere to human beings as gifts of God or designations of nature.

They are inviolable or in the words of the Declaration, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

Civil liberties “are freedoms guaranteed to us by the Constitution to protect us from tyranny (think: our freedom of speech), while civil rights are the legal rights that protect individuals from discrimination (think: employment discrimination).” Civil liberties “concern the actual basic freedoms; civil rights concern the treatment of an individual regarding certain rights.”

Civil liberties are protections against government action. Civil liberties restrain governments; they list what governments cannot do. The United States federal, state, or local governments did not give us our civil liberties. They are gifts of God, ours by birthright.

Civil liberties include life, liberty, the freedom of religion, freedom of speech (expanded to expression), freedom of the press, freedom of assembly or to petition the government for redress of grievances, the 14^th Amendment’s due process, the 6^th Amendment’s right to a fair trial, equal treatment under the law, right to own property.

Civil rights are actions governments may institute to extend additional protections to citizens. Civil rights list what governments must do and have been expanded over time through “positive actions” of government, for example the 13^th Amendment ending slavery in 1865, the 15^th Amendment granting male citizens the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” the 19^thAmendment of the US Constitution in 1920 giving women the right to vote, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948, attempts a comprehensive list.

Civil rights include the right to vote, right to public education, or right to use public facilities. More recently, a right to privacy and the legalization of same-sex marriage have been added to American rights.

Consequently, citizens’ civil liberties may never lawfully be abridged without due process of law, while citizens’ civil rights may change over time according to new legislation enacted into law as interpreted by the courts.

In liberal democracies, civil liberties or natural rights predate and are a priori to governments. It is enormously important to recognize and remember this, particularly in this time period when a number of “big government” philosophies are ascendent and people frequently call for government to alter basic liberties according to their proclivities. And it’s also a time in the 2020 pandemic panic in which state governments via overreaching governors have issued “orders” upon orders telling citizens what to do and in a number of cases limiting their civil liberties.

The U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights may not be perfect, but I challenge anyone to cite civil documents creating a governmental system that is more protective and more supportive of individual liberty. This is a precious heritage.

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