Two New eBooks at Amazon Kindle!
- Details
- Written by Rex M. Rogers
The Left is a new religion in which right and wrong exist not based on objective moral truth but upon sociological definitions, the will of the moment.
This new religiously held worldview is not confined to a given political party or denomination.
Its tenets include pro-choice, sexual progressivism, identity politics, us vs them victim vs oppressor, multicultural relativism, “intersectionality” and a woke mentality ironically propagating racism as “anti-racism,” equality defined as equity or sameness of results, suppression of disagreement, i.e., free speech, to the point of cancelling opposition.
This new religion now empowers much of journalism, academia at all levels, Hollywood and Broadway, Big Tech, and increasingly, big corporations and government.
Sexual progressivism is the Left’s point of the spear vs traditional and certainly Christian morality, and increasingly vs freedom of religion. To be committed to biblical sexuality is now in the Left, Big Media, Big Social Media, the organization Black Lives Matter, Amazon, and Starbucks’ view to be ipso facto intolerant and unworthy of free speech or even a right to exist.
The Left cannot tolerate biblical Christianity, which acknowledges a real God who reveals himself and holds all accountable to the moral absolutes He wrote into the fabric of creation.
It’s going to get worse as the US rushes pell-mell to embrace “inclusion” as a sacred right.
- There are going to be more instances of religious liberty being challenged, or accused, or even denied based on Leftist arguments about “hate speech.”
- Women’s and girls’ sports are now facing a highly divisive and destructive time in which men or boys “identifying as” women or girls seek to compete in women’s and girls’ athletics. In the name of anti-discrimination and tolerance these sports are being destroyed by discrimination and intolerance toward women and girls.
- More organizations and individuals are going to be accused with today’s ultimate epithet, “racist,” in the Left’s woke mission to root out “privilege” and “white supremacy” not simply wherever it is found but finding it wherever any woke person wishes to say it exists.
The current Left may be a new religion, but it offers the same old story: rejection of God and truth as He revealed himself in the created order, an effort like ancient Babel to build a tower to utopia and significance of its own making (Gen. 11:1-9). But like Babel, the Left is doomed to failure because it starts with false presuppositions.
Biblical Christianity’s ethic of love your neighbor as yourself is still the most powerful expression of acceptance, tolerance, inclusion, and respect ever expressed. Pointing individuals and indeed American culture toward its historic Judeo-Christian moral consensus is the culture’s greatest hope.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*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
1–What will the Internet, originally envisioned as a place open to everyone for the free exchange of ideas, become in the months/years ahead?
2–Who will control the Internet?
3–Will tomorrow’s Internet block certain religions, like Christianity—what historically has been considered a matter of religious liberty and freedom of speech?
4–Will tomorrow’s Internet censor given religious beliefs deemed misinformation or out of sync with the “prevailing acceptable narrative,” e.g., biblical moral teachings about sexuality, gender, abortion, or maybe ideas about health or climate change, etc.?
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*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
For all the noise, politics cannot offer solutions to most of America’s problems, which are not political but spiritual/moral.
E.g., breakdown of the family, abortion, child neglect, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, trafficking, alcohol, opioid, and drug abuse, sexuality/gender issues, poverty, crime, racism, pornography, etc.
Solutions for these problems are matters of individual responsibility and accountability that come from our worldview, i.e., acknowledging God and truth, understanding right vs wrong, and making virtuous choices.
James Madison said, “If there be no virtue among us, no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is an illusion.”
It’s not government’s role to instill virtue. This belongs to citizens and the church.
We’re losing this battle in many homes and certainly most schools, and churches too. The worldview being taught claims one’s circumstances are the source of problems, something outside ourselves: environment, family, government, anything but our choices. And wrong if it’s called that at all is not sin, which has been replaced by “bad luck” or victimhood or the medicalization of problems, etc.
Calling something sin sounds harsh or condemning, but if persons own their sin, they then can take personal responsibility and in turn have hope of real change through forgiveness, redemption, and reconciliation. So, calling sin sin is actually a truthful way to offer hope. But if our bad experiences are always determined by something outside us we can’t control, we have no hope.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*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
Culture is generally defined as a “way of life.”
It involves language, religion, shared attitudes, values, beliefs, goals, social mores and habits, music and arts, laws, politics and institutions, education, technologies and tools, cuisine, clothing.
The word "culture” comes from the Latin "colere," meaning to tend the earth and grow, or cultivation and nurture.
The word therefore fits well with what’s called the Cultural Mandate, Gen 1:26-28, in which God gave humanity responsibility for caring for and developing the earth’s resources. Theologians understand this command to include not only agriculture but all forms of cultural expression, i.e., that human beings are charged by God to develop and build culture. We are to be stewards of all that God has given us.
Most definitions of culture include religion as simply one item in a list of ingredients, as if religion happens to be just another expression of human behavior not unlike wearing pants or kilts.
But the late theologian Henry Van Til defined culture as “religion externalized.” Religion is not just part of culture; it generates and determines culture.
“Culture is simply a worldview made evident. It is basic beliefs worked out into habits of life. It is theology translated into sociology. Culture is a very practical expression of the common faith of a community or a people or a nation. “
“What is true for one person is equally true for a whole community of persons. In 1905, Max Weber, the renowned political economist and “founding father” of modern sociology, affirmed this fundamental truth for modern social scientists in his classic work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. He argued that the remarkable prosperity of the West was directly attributable to the cultural, personal, and ethical prevalence of the Christian tradition. In contrast to so many other cultures around the globe, where freedoms and opportunities were severely limited and where poverty and suffering abounded, Weber found that faith brought men and nations both liberty and prosperity.”
So, culture is a living color picture of our values, just as Scripture said, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7 KJV).
What we’re seeing today in the fragmentation and hyper-polarization of the American culture is not simply partisan or ideological tribalism, though this exists. It’s not simply the Haves and Have Nots, a division as old as time. It’s not for sure just a matter of oppressors and victims, White supremacy and racism, or some increasingly complex intersectionality being propagated.
What we’re seeing today in the hyper-polarization and increasingly hateful, borderline violent and at times actually violent culture wars is a clash of worldviews.
One (religious) worldview acknowledges, even if sometimes vaguely and inarticulately, God, the existence of objective truth, and the reality of revealed moral absolutes that at one time formed a consensus upon which American culture was built.
The other (religious) worldview(s) rejects the idea of God and truth, even if still holding on to these words that have long since been hollowed out and lost their meaning. This other worldview(s) does not believe in any absolute other than there are no absolutes, thus everyone can do “whatever is right in his own eyes” (Deut. 12:8).
Political disagreements no longer center on differing levels or what kind of taxes should be levied or how government should encourage more job creation, etc.
Now political disagreements involve fundamentally moral considerations:
- Prolife or prochoice.
- Support, legalize, advance LGBTQ+ rights even where the convictions of some religious citizens disagree.
- Legalized not simply marijuana but other narcotics.
- Disallow capital punishment for the most heinous crimes.
- Breakdown the nuclear family in the interests of those claiming the family reinforces white supremacy.
- Embrace new “antiracism” policies that do not honor and extend the legal gains of the Civil Rights Movement but rather create new racial categories in every corner of modern life, and call anyone who disagrees, racist.
- Breakdown law and order in the name of antiracism, including not prosecuting lawbreakers.
- Refusing to reform legal immigration processes, making orderly, peaceful, and lawful immigration and naturalization possible, while opening to illegal aliens access to rights of citizens like voting, and much more.
This is an illustrative not an exhaustive list.
There is little chance of agreement or even consensus when the issues debated are looked are moral issues and those debating disagree at the level of the moral presuppositions of their worldviews.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*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
Walking in a cemetery might seem morbid or creepy. Not for me.
To amble through the graveyard in one’s hometown is to invite a flood of memories, for the names on the stones are familiar. My twelve years of public school classrooms were filled with kids with those last names.
I knew some of the people resting here. Teachers, shop owners, farmers for whom I put up hay, women who scolded me to behave or they’d tell my Mother (with whom they had gone to school), that guy-the-unbelievable-gardener, veterans of every war, and of course Grandpa and Grandma, Uncles, Aunts, cousins, and Dad, who forever marked my life.
There are a few bad apples resting on that hillside, but by far most were decent, honest, hard-working, religious, patriotic, working/middle class Americans, some of long vintage, some whose parents arrived at the turn of the last century.
Roots. It’s good to hail from a small town.
A walk through a cemetery offers perspective re country, culture, life itself.
In a graveyard, everyone is alike.
Sex can be inferred from feminine or masculine names but not sexuality, as argued these days.
No visible differences are discernible in race, ethnicity, nationality, education, wealth or poverty.
Beauty and appearance, eloquence, intellect, achievement, fame, power, even personality mean nothing.
Typically, no flags wave proclaiming any allegiance other than the American flag, visible on veterans’ resting places but usually also somewhere in large form on the property, signifying a key principle of Americana, patriotic e pluribus unum.
Political party is not in evidence. Nor is ideology Right or Left. No Trump or Biden signs. Posturing and pretense are gone. It’s a peaceful landscape.
Religion is not for sure identifiable, even if headstone architecture features religious symbols, for these may say more about those left behind than the deceased.
Either way, as someone said, “He was but now is, and his is is greater than his was.”
So, we’re more alike than some of us care to admit.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*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
A movement seeking to “erase” Donald J. Trump has emerged since he left the presidency.
The on ramp for this initiative is Trump’s perceived responsibility for the January 6 Capitol Building riot.
Today’s wave of purging the public space of sculptures and statues of people now deemed unacceptable is a new form of social repression.
Cancel culture extends this beyond statues to a person’s reputation, job or potential for being hired, possibility of publishing, doing business of any kind, seeking to silence voices through social media. Do not hire lists of previous Trump administration staff are being created, which Karl Rove said was way too far and compared the blacklists to public shaming.
One MSNBC analyst tweeted: “No book deals, no fellowships, no sinecures, no board seats for any of the henchmen and collaborators. No pundit gigs, no lecture circuit, no congressional runs, no professorships.”
Yet, “for over a century, publishers have played a leading role in defending free speech. In the 1920s, they challenged efforts to ban novels that became American classics. Random House defied obscenity laws to publish Ulysses. During the Cold War, publishers and librarians pushed back against efforts to censor “subversive” books and magazines by issuing the Freedom to Read Statement. In 1988, Viking Penguin published Satanic Verses and defended it from the Ayatollah’s fatwa and a worldwide campaign of terror.” Now, publishers are eagerly joining the cancel culture.
What many are now trying to do to people who worked in the Trump Administration is not unlike Amish shunning, an ultimate form of social avoidance for perceived crimes, or in this political instance for holding views not considered aligned with the prevailing acceptable narrative, or for daring to associate with someone now declared persona non grata by media and cultural elites.
Damnatio Memoriae
Then there’s the attempt to erase leaders from the pages of history, something ancient regimes did to the condemned.
“Near the end of Pharaoh Thutmose III’s reign, between about 1479 and 1425 B.C., members of his regime attempted to erase the memory of Hatshepsut, his predecessor, co-regent and mother. Statues of Hatshepsut were smashed, her obelisks covered, and her cartouches removed from temple walls. As Egyptologist Joyce Tyldesley told the BBC in 2011, Thutmose III could thereby “incorporate her reign into his own” and claim her accomplishment as his own. He could rewrite history.”
Obliterating the condemned in ancient Rome was called "damnatio memoriae," condemnation of memory, to be forgotten in official records, “to remove every trace of the person from life, as if they had never existed.”
Stalin removed the statues of other Communist leaders as he solidified his position in the Soviet Union. Ukraine dismantled 1,320 statues of Lenin after its independence, and renamed roads and structures named under Soviet authority.
Guy Beiner argued that iconoclastic vandalism entails subtle expressions of ambiguous remembrance and that, rather than effacing memory, such acts of decommemorating actually served to preserve memory. In other words, it backfires; erasing history doesn’t work.
The Scarlet Letter
Seeking to brand anyone who worked for or was associated with the Trump Administration is a modern form of the biblical mark of Cain or the Scarlet Letter.
Whatever one thinks of Mr. Trump or whatever one considers his culpability or responsibility for the Capitol riot, this new effort to erase him has more to do with seeking to banish certain ideas and values than it does about January 6.
Proof of this is the Lincoln Project’s blacklist, pursuing all known associates who were doing their jobs on behalf of the American people, so they will be “held accountable & not allowed to pretend they were not involved.”
This blog is Not about defending Donald Trump; he can take care of himself. This piece is about the well-being of a free, open, and pluralistic society. If groups can “erase” Trump or anyone who worked for or was associated with him, then they can do this to you.
And the point is, why should this be done at all? Cancel culture is based upon fear not freedom, power not persuasion. Trust the people, the free marketplace of ideas. If people don’t want more of Trump, they can act accordingly in the market. If they don’t want to buy a Trump staff person’s book, then they don’t have to buy the book. But others should not block its publication preventing those who want to buy the book from acquiring it. And so it goes.
Freedom is always the best option.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2021
*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.