Rex M Rogers - Discerning What Is Best

Discerning What Is Best
With Dr Rex Rogers

Two New eBooks at Amazon Kindle!

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

Social movements, inevitably, move beyond their founders, triggering events, and initial raison d'être. Don’t believe me? Read history—that is, if anyone cares anymore about history:

Multiple competing agendas develop
Without a charismatic leader who embodies the movement they become directionless
Without that genuine leader, pretenders turn on each other, destroying the movement
Celebrities get involved but with rare exception are shallow by definition, seeking 15 minutes of fame and no more
Meanings of words change, to the point people talk past one another
Original intent can be overwhelmed, hijacked, displaced, unrecognizably recrafted, forgotten
Violence can occur but rarely makes the impact anticipated
Sustainable social change takes place when goals resonate with an objective reality that aligns with human aspiration.

“Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time” (Ecc. 1:10).

*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: 29 June 2020

Every day, some terrible discouraging development assaults our senses. It can be overwhelming.

It helps us get a clue on what people in the Middle East and North Africa have faced for decades. Layered crises, one blending with another.

This brings to mind my Mother’s favorite Bible verse:

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:6-7).

Living in peace in the midst of turmoil is not sticking our ostrich head in the sand, it’s not whistling past the graveyard, nor is it being a clueless Pollyanna.

SAT-7 blesses Middle Eastern viewers with the peace and hope of the God of the Bible.

Living in peace during crises is a blessing of God.

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 29 June 2020

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) are the new frontier of cultural change in the United States.

And those in favor of advancing these ideas just got a rocket-boost from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).

With Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), SCOTUS ruled that same-sex couples were guaranteed the right to marry by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment of the US Constitution. This 5-4 decision legalized a controversial political, philosophic, and religious behavioral question, effectively overruling religious liberty on this matter.

Since this time, LGBTQ+ groups have continued to work, lobby, or promote an expansion of what they consider essential rights in every sector of society. On June 15, 2020, LGBTQ+ got a victory handed to them, actually in fact a launchpad, by SCOTUS.

In Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), SCOTUS held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. In other words, the Court read SOGI back into the meaning of “sex” as written in the 1964 laws and with that move undermined the rule of law.

Despite Justice Neil Gorsuch’s verbal gymnastics in the majority opinion, SCOTUS put religious liberty on a legal collision course with SOGI.

This ruling is a landmark of the wrong kind, making SOGI—subjective and unverifiable identities, not objective traits—what the law calls a “protected category.” This will have seismic impact upon American culture, including, but far beyond, discussions about who uses women’s bathrooms, who participates in women’s sports, what pronouns corporations are forced to use, etc.

While this ruling will undoubtedly affect schools and universities, businesses, camps, youth organizations, daycare, and other workplace conditions or sex-specific facilities, it will also affect churches and Christian nonprofit organizations.

The Heritage Foundation said, “SOGI laws threaten the freedom of citizens, individually and in associations, to affirm their religious or moral convictions—convictions such as that marriage is the union of one man and one woman or that maleness and femaleness are objective biological realities to be valued and affirmed, not rejected or altered. Under SOGI laws, acting on these beliefs in a commercial or educational context could be actionable discrimination.”

“Currently, Title VII, a section of the Civil Rights Act, allows religious exemptions for faith-based organizations to hire with an eye to religious qualifications. Some have used this to argue that religious organizations can refuse to hire and/or fire employees who are LGBTQ if it conflicts with their sincerely held religious beliefs. However, because LGBTQ persons are now included under the “sex” category of Title VII, it is unclear whether these exemptions are still understood to permit religious organizations to discriminate on the basis of LGBTQ status.”

In an analysis the day after the decision, the ECFA said, “In pending and future employment litigation involving LGBT discrimination claims, the Court's decision in this case puts ministry employers in a defensive posture. As the Court has now interpreted the law, Title VII presumptively prohibits LGBT discrimination. Accordingly, religious groups with theological views that do not align with that interpretation will need to show that they are entitled to an exception under existing laws, such as the ministerial exception defense. The scope of that defense will be addressed by the Court in a separate ruling expected to be released later this month.”

You can bank on it that proponents will use this precedent to argue for approval of The Equality Act and likely make it an issue in the 2020 presidential election. One problem with this act is that it defines gender identity about as broadly, and ambiguously, as it can be defined, requiring only a subjective feeling or decision on the part of transgender individuals, and no legal name change, no surgery or hormone treatment, just a person’s self-assessment. The act recognizes no religious belief or conduct. The Equality Act specifically cites the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, indicating it cannot be used as a defense if people are charged with discrimination under this act.

SCOTUS’s Bostock ruling also will create enormous problems for sports, and specifically also for women’s rights. Since the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s the US has attempted to improve women’s access to social activities, most especially athletics. Now, how will women maintain their status if a man saying he is a woman can participate in women’s sports?

I’m waiting for more feminists and women athletes, like Martina Navratilova has already done, to point out that this trend is harming/destroying women’s sports, i.e. it’s hurting women unfairly, which was the essence of feminism. If this irrationality is about equity and non-discrimination, what about women and girls?

It is impossible to protect sex as a category, i.e. women, and also advance gender identity as a protected category. Same for women’s research in universities. If “binary” sexuality is no longer valid, then women’s studies is essentially defunct.

If biological sexuality is just a preference, just some social construct, isn’t the same true for the 58 Facebook sexuality categories now available? What makes one subject to change and the other inviolable?

American culture is confused, celebrating irrationality, and doing what’s right in its own eyes. Since politics is downstream of culture, SCOTUS did not lead but followed.

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

Is it possible to feel safe in an unsafe world?

Years ago, political activist Ralph Nader wrote a bestseller about the auto industry called Unsafe At Any Speed. The book put Nader on the map and was the subject of controversy for years.

Most of us care about safety. We want our family to enjoy life but be safe in the process. Yet we live in what the Scripture calls a “fallen world.”

Sin affects everything in God’s beautiful creation. Criminal behavior, disease, conflict and wars, not to mention bad weather, all confront us.

So how do we stay safe in an unsafe world?

In Psalm 142, King David is hiding from his enemies in a cave. He says, “I cry aloud.” “I pour out my complaint.” “No one is concerned for me.” “I am in desperate need.”

Then he refocuses on what he knows to be true: “O Lord, you are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living.”

When the seas of life seem ready to overwhelm us, the surest way to steady the ship is to trust in our heavenly Father.

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

Is it possible to know “Why” God allows certain developments in the world?

Human beings are inquisitive people. We want to know why things happen, what they mean, what might happen next. It’s human nature.

And to some extent we can discover answers to our questions because God made us in his image, with the ability to reason and learn. We can think, but we are not omniscient.

When bad or destructive things happen, like tornadoes or weather events the insurance industry calls “Acts of God,” we want to know why. When tragedy occurs, like an accidental death, we want to know why. When serious illness strikes, we want to know why.

Sometimes we might be able to discern why, but usually this is long into the future when we benefit from hindsight. But often, we will not know.

Scripture reminds us,

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9).

When we do not know, yet we know God’s character and promises, so we put our trust in him.

Details: Written by Rex M. Rogers; Published: 25 June 2020

I’ve written that America has lost its moral center, and that America is celebrating irrationality. Here are a few results.

Questions for our moment:

1) Why have politicians on both sides of the aisle, who just a couple of months ago willingly dictated behavior restrictions (some unconstitutional) to preserve public health, suddenly become so feckless in the face of lawless rioters?

2) How, despite Justice Neil Gorsuch’s verbal gymnastics in the US Supreme Court’s recent majority opinion for Bostock v Clayton County, reading sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) back into the 1964 Civil Rights laws, can anyone believe that SOGI and religious liberty are not on a collision course?

3) How can people, rightly believing “Black lives matter,” jump on the bandwagon of the radical organization Black Lives Matter, which lists its views, antithetical to Christianity, on its website?

4) Why have America’s opinion elites: journalists, academics, celebrities, corporate executives, become so afraid of being “politically incorrect” that they rush to virtue signal their bona fides by kowtowing to the latest mob insanity du jour? –Cancel or silence people for their views? Sure. –Topple statues of great achievers? Sure. –Force board resignations or cancel church leases for leaders’ “Likes” of unacceptable politicians' Tweets? Sure.

5) Do the national personalities who regard abortion-on-demand—infanticide by another name—as a sacred, inviolable norm really believe a baby is only a baby if it’s wanted, that a mother’s “rights” supersede the child’s right to life?

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Two New eBooks at Amazon Kindle!

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