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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 24 May 2022

The ancient Greek philosophers famously said, “Know thyself,” even inscribed the phrase on the temple walls to their idol gods, and perhaps this is good advice as far as it goes. But in knowing ourselves, what do we learn, and can we really trust ourselves? 

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #25 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.

Many years ago, when we lived near New York City where I served as a Christian college administrator, we attended our daughter’s Eighth Grade graduation ceremony. It was a nice outdoor affair conducted with the usual academic pomp and circumstance, complete with commencement speaker and individual diplomas. It was a nice experience for our daughter and her friends.

While I know it is rare indeed to remember anything a commencement speaker says, I’ve never forgotten this speaker’s presentation. This was back in the day when self-esteem was the huge educational if not cultural fad of the moment. Everyone was into raising their self-esteem and books were pouring off the shelves, especially those aimed at women or children.

This speaker, no doubt with good intentions, used the words self, self-esteem, self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-care, even self-actualization at least twenty times in her mercifully brief speech. It was overwhelming. Basically, her message to the graduates was, you owe it to yourself to take care of yourself and the best way to do this is to look inside yourself and pursue whatever your authentic self wishes to do or be.

It all sounded like a wonderful experience of freedom and self-fulfillment. 

This exaltation of the self has not gone away in American or Western culture. The self-esteem movement ran hot for some time, eventually resulting in among other things, trophies for every player, effusive praise in the face of error or lack of learning, feel-good affirmations for any and all behavior, thus a generation of children growing up (but not maturing) with a sense of entitlement, little in the way of expectation, a limited work ethic, no vision for themselves, an inability to deal with loss they were never asked to experience, and a sense of meaninglessness. 

Some have blamed this movement for the so-called “snowflakes” entering higher education today, students so emotionally fragile that mere unpleasant words trigger their ability to function normally, hence, the arrival of “safe spaces” and politically correct lists of vocabulary allowed in the classroom. And sadly if ironically, for all this attention to the self, young people today are unhappy.

Add to this the ubiquitous Internet: Every day, online influencers essentially say the same thing in thousands of Instagram posts, TikTok videos, and websites promoting products that ostensibly improve the self. 

Celebrities model this message as they post daily logs of their lives built around their appearance—beauty and fashion—materialistic excess, jet set lifestyles, opulent homes, non-stop parties, sensuality, and promiscuity. 

Whatever they desire, they do, because, well, they are the beautiful people whose lives are a model for us all. No one says it, but the message is, hedonism is healthy. 

Self-actualization, indeed, self-aggrandizement, is the ultimate path to the good life, to utopia, to heaven on earth.

Now I understand that some individuals, perhaps because they have been badly mistreated by parents or others, suffer from a serious lack of personal confidence, i.e., self-esteem. I understand this condition, particularly when resulting from emotional or psychological damage, is a very difficult challenge to overcome. I am not minimizing those peoples’ pain or otherwise ignoring their hurt. We should care about them. There is a biblical understanding and a Christian way to encourage and help these people.

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.

What I am saying is that while personal confidence and self-esteem rightly understood are wonderful blessings, promoting a philosophy rooted in humanism – self-esteem or specifically the self, as the answer to all our life problems, does not work.

We hear bland statements like, “Just believe in yourself,” or “Practice self-love,” or “One of the deepest ways to increase confidence is to connect to your inner power.”

Or how about, “The more you believe in yourself, the more you could trust yourself. The more you trust yourself, the less you compare yourself to others.” 
― Roy T. Bennett.

“Spirituality is not adopting more beliefs and assumptions but uncovering the best in you.” ― Amit Ray, Beautify Your Breath – Beautify Your Life.

“No one knows your truth but you. If you're secure in yourself, no one and no(thing) can touch you.” ― Brittany Burgunder.

The problem with all these comments that in essence say, Trust yourself, is that yourself is inherently untrustworthy. That’s right, you the self, and me the self, are untrustworthy.

The time in which we live is often called Postmodernity, and the dominant philosophy of our day is called Postmodernism. “Postmodernism views human beings as autonomous, self-determining agents…Gone is any notion of a transcendent, objective moral law, or even the natural laws of modernity. Reality is now subjective, the product of human minds.”

“Because postmodernism sees all reality as subjective, we no longer have a basis for human rights. Life and liberty have been replaced by a new overarching human right: ‘The right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.’” But this autonomous self, little gods, leads to social chaos. (Scott David Allen. Why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice.)

On the other hand, a Judeo-Christian worldview sees our times and our place in it differently, which is to say, accurately. While we as human beings are made in the image of God and as such are blessed with eternal value, significance, and meaning, while made in the image of God we are blessed with a right and righteous sense that God loves each and every one of us. We as individual selves are somebody. We can and should, therefore, possess a humble self-esteem based upon this knowledge.

But because of the Fall, because of sin, each human being is born in sin and possesses a sinful, depraved heart. 

Jer. 17:9 reminds us, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”

Rom. 3:10 says, “As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one.”

Rom. 3:23 states, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

And there is a remedy,

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

In the book of Ephesians, the Apostle Paul speaks directly to the issue:

“You were taught with regard to the former way of life to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds, and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:22-24).

The Word of God describes humanity as we are – created in God’s image and uniquely, ultimately valuable, that is, We all matter. But we are also members of a sinful, fallen human race, capable of great evil and in need of redemption provided through Christ.

The point is, if we simply look inside ourselves, we find a sinful heart. We find someone untrustworthy. We find attitudes and values that do not conform to what God wants for us, which is to say what is best for us.

So, if we really want to improve ourselves, to change the self, we need to look not inside but outside ourselves to gain perspective, to know who we are, and to discover what may be done to bless our lives.

The self cannot fix or save itself. Let me say that again, the self cannot fix or save itself.

Pursuing the self’s natural desires leads us into hopeless hedonism, a toxic brew of shiny objects that only leads us on the broad path of destruction.

Meanwhile, God has not left us adrift. So, don’t trust yourself. 

Rather,

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart

And lean not on your own understanding;

In all your ways acknowledge him,

And he will make your paths straight” (Prov. 3:5-6).

Well, we’ll see you again soon. For more Christian commentary, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, Discerning What Is Best, or 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, 2022   

*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.  

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 17 May 2022

Remember that old chorus, “This world is not my home I’m just a-passing through”? I sang that many times as a kid in Daily Vacation Bible School and church camp.

The lyrics seem to suggest believers have no real role or duties on earth and the sooner we can get out of here the better, but is that really sound biblical theology?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #24 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 young professor, I developed a college course entitled “Christian Social and Political Responsibility.” We examined what the Scripture said about a Christian’s place in the world, beginning with the Cultural Mandate in Gen. 1:26-28 wherein human beings are charged by God to care for the world and develop it. 

And we considered Jesus’s prayer in John 17, in which Jesus noted we are to be “not of the world” even though we remain “in the world,” and then not to be forgotten, he said, we are to go “into the world.” And in the Great Commission of Matt 28:19-20 we learned that we are to go into the world and make disciples, teaching them to follow Christ.

As a kid I was much blessed to have parents who took me to church where I learned not just Bible stories but theology, values, principles, and propositions in the Word of God. But it was in college that I first confronted the phrase “Christian theistic world and life view,” a mouthful that meant Christian philosophy of life, what later we shortened to Christian worldview.

A fully developed Christian worldview begins of course with salvation in Christ, but we don’t stop there, nor are we immediately raptured away to eternity. No, we live out our lives, for the time God gives us, and we are supposed to proclaim the Lordship of Christ in all of life. 

I have always believed Christians could fulfill these divine commands in a variety of ways, that we are called into all walks of life, some into politics, some not. 

This point of view goes back to what the great reformer Martin Luther said about vocation, that the farmer is as important and valued as the clergy.

So, according to Scripture we’re to witness to the truth of Christ, sharing with others the message of reconciliation. We’re to carry the message even as we care for the world, meaning build culture, make possible human flourishing to the glory of God.

But given humanity’s penchant for sin that began with the Fall from grace in the Garden of Eden, Romans 1 tells us sin affects every part of Creation. So, as we live out our lives we come in contact with spiritually bereft individuals who need saving grace, and we come into contact with a world full of what we now call social problems. 

Our task as Christians is to speak the truth in love, to be ready always to give an answer, and to bring peace, healing, and hope. This is the evangelism and social concerns tension. For which do we have greater responsibility and to which to we give more time?

In the early 1900s, Christians debated the relative importance of evangelism vs what was then called the social gospel. The Fundamentalist church movement emerged from this, rightly asserting the authority of Scripture—the fundamentals of the faith—over and against the social gospel proponents who too often strayed from Scripture. Unfortunately, many Fundamentalists eventually over-reacted by rejecting responsibility for or engagement in social issues.

By mid-century in the 1940s and thereafter, another segment of conservative Christendom emerged that became known as Evangelicals. Billy Graham, theologian Carl F.H. Henry to name two influential leaders helped propel this movement to great growth. Evangelicals attempted to maintain a commitment to the basic doctrines, the fundamentals of the faith, while giving renewed attention to social concerns.

Like most movements, in time, this one divided and it remains so today, along a spectrum, Right to Left. Some on the Right began to align with conservative politics and the Republican party. Some on the Left began to align with moderate to liberal politics and the Democrat party.

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.

Now in the early 21^st Century, Evangelicals seem to be even more divided and may fragment further. We face a new tension in the form of a set of values collectively known as social justice ideology, maybe better known as Woke philosophy.  

As I detailed in an earlier podcast, social justice ideology has infiltrated virtually every part of American culture and much of the Church, especially those who would call themselves Liberal or Progressive or the Left, but now also increasingly among those who, formerly at least, aligned on the Right.

Social justice ideology is a secular worldview. The way social justice advocates define and approach their ostensible public goals—racial justice, helping the marginalized, expanding access and tolerance, justice for those who do not consider themselves sexually binary, and more, is at bottom antithetical to biblical Christianity. 

Social justice ideology must be resisted and rejected. It must not be allowed to influence the Christian church…and yet today it is.

In our present day, it’s much like a century ago. We must resist social justice ideology, which is not biblical and not Christian social concern, while at the same time, not losing site of our responsibility to both carry the message—evangelism—and care for the world—social responsibility.

“All positive cultural change includes gospel proclamation and inward spiritual regeneration by the Holy Spirit. The antisocial justice mindset puts evangelism against social transformation. The biblical worldview, however, brings them together into a seamless whole. In the words of John Stott: ‘Evangelism is the major instrument of social change. For the gospel changes people, and changed people can change society.’”

We must not allow the Devil, as the chief of liars, to divide the Christian Church once again, those committed to evangelism on one side, those committed to social engagement on the other. The biblical approach to living in the world while not of the world while going into the world is built upon a Christian worldview that connects evangelism to social change. 

In fact, since most of the problems we face are spiritual at root, not social, the Good News of the Gospel stands as the most potent transformational message we can share. It changes people within, then they change what is without.

Well, we’ll see you again soon. For more Christian commentary, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, Discerning What Is Best, or 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, 2022   

*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.  

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 10 May 2022

It seems that everywhere we turn these days someone is talking about social justice. It seems like the right thing to do, but is it, and more importantly, how is social justice different from biblical justice?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #23 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.

Social justice has become a watchword for political discourse in the past few years. It sounds good, sounds like what every decent person should be concerned about. 

But what activists mean by “social justice” is considerably different from what the words used to mean in everyday parlance, and more importantly, it’s now become clear that social justice is not the same as biblical justice.

The best resource on this topic that I have seen is Scott David Allen’s book, Why Social Justice is not Biblical Justice. He defines the two phrases this way:

Biblical Justice is “Conformity to God’s moral standard as revealed in the Ten Commandments and the Royal Law: ‘love your neighbor as yourself.”’

Social Justice is “Deconstructing traditional systems and structures deemed to be oppressive, and redistributing power and resources from oppressors to their victims in the pursuit of equality of outcomes.”

In other words, the moral teaching of Scripture contrasts sharply with what is passing today as a means to a just society. 

Allen notes that a biblical worldview describes human beings as made in the image of God, whereas social justice ideology argues “we are children of society, fashioned by its social constructions and the power dynamics they maintain.”  

This is the critical difference. Biblical justice exalts and obeys God. Social justice ideology omits him entirely and introduces a surrogate—you, me, or society. And remember what Os Guinness said, either you worship God, or you worship an idol, even if that idol is you, me, or society.

Real justice, Allen notes, is truth conforming to a fixed point of reference, a higher law. “Without the higher law, justice is arbitrary and changeable based on whoever wields power.” God, not the self, not humanity, not government, “is the moral plumb line who determines what is good and right for all peoples, for all eras.”

Social justice ideology has made enormous inroads in virtually every corner of our culture. Promoting their ostensible ideology of fairness and equity, social justice activists have taken over education, Kindergarten to graduate school, media and entertainment, corporations, and politics as a speed that boggles the mind. 

Social justice ideology brings with it far more than a concern for diversity, equality, and inclusion, the oft-heard mantra. It brings a counterfeit theology, something the Apostle Paul warned us about in Col. 2:8, when he said, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.”

And what’s more, the social justice ideology blitzkrieg, while right there in front of us, still seems to have taken a lot of Christians, churches, church leaders, and even Christian universities unawares. And while I dislike thinking this, it appears that some Christians, churches, church or mission leaders, and faculty and staff members at Christian universities have knowingly embraced what is at bottom a worldview antithetical to biblical Christianity.

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Download an episode for your friends.

Disconnected from God and his moral will, social justice ideology affirms the following:

1—The human mind, not God, is source of ultimate reality.  

2—Objective truth, reason, logic, evidence are simply the tools of oppressors. One can therefore only know “truth” through victims’ “lived out experiences.”

3—Personal identity is wholly socially constructed via class, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., and individuals do not really matter. 

4—Promote division as path to power. 

• Oppressors vs morally innocent victims
• Class vs Capitalism, Property Owners
• Race-minorities vs White supremacy or “whiteness.”
• Females vs Males, i.e., patriarchy.
• Gender-LGBTQ+ vs Judeo-Christian morality and natural family.

5—Argue not for equality of opportunity, or even equality before the law, but for equity, a vague sense of fairness defined as “if someone has more, it’s unfair.”

6-Systematically redefine words based upon its values, then masquerades these words to the public in outright deception, terms like women’s rights, binary, inclusiveness, tolerance, empowerment, even male and female.

Depending upon the word or phrase, these words or phrases may not be “bad” as such but buttressed by redefinition in the interest of social justice, they become tools with which to deceive the public.

Social justice ideology is now a secular religion, embraced by many people on what is now called the Left, the so-called “progressive” wing of philosophy, religion, and politics. This secular worldview strives to attract converts to its false theology and false politics. To do this, the points of the spear are always one of two things:

• Race,now often promoted by a subset of social justice ideology called critical race theory,
• Sex, defined as LGBTQ+, and gender identity.

The Left unrelentingly propagates its views, even while its cancel culture inclination works to silence opposing points of view. The Left literally sells the public with deception:

• that all racial or ethnic minorities are ipso factovictims of society, and 
• that any person who defines his/her sexuality as one of the ever-expanding 112 gender options, is somehow a victim of society.

Victimhood can include anything, but certainly bullying, lack of access and equity, trauma, mental illness, and more. For a public in the past 30 years that assumes every person must have unfettered path to self-actualization, this has become an easy sell.

People think they are doing good by expanding heretofore unknown justice. They feel good about themselves and often virtue signal online.

Social justice ideology sees injustice as, well, a social problem, but this is a critical mistake, for injustice is a moral problem. According to the Word of God, what human beings need as a remedy for sin is heart transformation, which is to say spiritual regeneration, salvation in Christ.  

This is not a conspiracy theory. What I’ve said is not exaggeration. The social justice revolution is happening across American culture. 

I am familiar with several Christian ministries already divided, weakened, and possibly lost to the Christian faith because staff members have either knowingly or unawares embraced this false worldview. 

Unless we resist and unless in the providence of God, he intervenes, the American Church is in trouble and the America we thought we knew is fast disappearing.

Well, we’ll see you again soon. For more Christian commentary, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, Discerning What Is Best, or 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, 2022   

*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.  

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 03 May 2022

Chicken Little was hit by a falling acorn one day and began yelling, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling,” thus working the entire farmyard into a turmoil. And now the Climate Change movement is telling us the world will soon end, but will it?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #22 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’ve loved the outdoors as long as I can remember. It’s one reason my favorite color is green. 

As a kid, I reveled in spending time in the woods and in the fields on my Grandpa Rogers’s farm and elsewhere. I read every issue of the monthly “Field and Stream,” “Outdoor Life,” and “Sports Afield” magazines that arrived at our house.

In 8^th Grade, a classmate David Hammond and I won an award for our entry in the Science Fair. Our project illustrated ways to reinforce conservation.

I remember Ohio’s Cuyahoga River catching on fire in 1969, sensationally making national news. When I was a freshman in college in 1970 President Nixon launched the Environmental Protection Agency. Then in 1979, there was a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. 

These early incidents stimulated the emerging environmental movement, eventually leading to global warming, then more recently, climate change. It’s a strange flipflop because in 1974, “Time” magazine’s cover proclaimed a “Coming Global Ice Age.” Not sure what happened to the Ice Age. Maybe it got melted away by global warming?

Now it seems as if we’re into an arms race to see how frightening climate alarmists can become: 

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says we’ve got 12 years to correct our climate sins before the world as we know it becomes unlivable. 

Former Vice President Al Gore speaks of an “inconvenient truth” at 10 years. Recently, the director of the film, “Don’t Look Up,” tweeted:

“We’ve got 6-8 years before the climate is so chaotic we [will] live in a permanent state of biblical catastrophe.”

Wow.

Consider this recent study:  

“Angry, terrified, and in despair. These three words capture how many people are feeling because of climate change according to a recent… report "Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Inequities, and Responses." A global study…found that nearly 6 in 10 people aged 16 to 25 were very or extremely worried about the fate of the planet, nearly half of them reported climate distress or anxiety affecting their daily lives, three-quarters agreed that "the future is frightening," and over half are convinced that "humanity is doomed." 

The author’s remedy for all this is that we should look for ways to “take positive action,” go biking or walking. She said, “The key is to balance hope and worry…we must remain ‘stubbornly optimistic.’

So, the answer to the end of the world due to climate change is to remain stubbornly optimistic? But based upon what? No wonder young adults are experiencing anxiety.

This kind of climate change hyperbole is an example of what some have called “climate fear porn,” an ever-ratcheting-up hysteria. 

Problem is, rather than people rallying to combat the epic effects of climate change, people are wearily succumbing to “Apocalypse fatigue.” And the screeching Greta Thunberg—who I think is being used by older adults—embarrassingly makes things worse.

But I don’t think climate change, and certainly not fear, are what God had in mind for us.

As I said, I love the Creation we learn about in Genesis. Scripture says, ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters,’ (Ps. 24:1-2; 1 Cor. 10:26).

I believe God gave humanity a magnificent environment in which to flourish, and in what’s called the “Cultural Mandate” of Gen. 1:26-28, God gave humanity dominion over the earth, meaning we are responsible for exercising wise stewardship, developing and caring for creation and everything in it.

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.

I also believe human beings have at times made bad choices that negatively affected God’s beautiful Creation. Because of the Fall (Gen. 3), even Creation is laboring under the weight of sin. God talks about this in several places in the Bible, e.g., “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time,” (Rom. 8:22; Ps. 102:25-27; Heb. 1:11-12).

You don’t have to review the whole of human history to recognize this. Just consider our American experience.

Think, for example, of the tens of millions of American Bison that were brought to near extinction in 1870-1890, or the Passenger Pigeon that numbered in the billions before being hunted without thought of conservation, the last pigeon dying in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. 

We nearly lost the American Bald Eagle and the Timber Wolf, but these species, along with the buffalo, are an example of what can be done when proper animal husbandry is employed. All three species are thriving again.

Plowed under indigenous grasses, together with over-farming of the Prairie in the late 19^th, early 20^thCentury, were precipitating factors that, together with severe drought, resulted in the 1930s Dust Bowl eroding millions of cubic tons of topsoil.

Clearcut logging in the West denuded mountainsides and contributed to later mudslides.

Earlier, I recorded a podcast on littering. Surely this is a global example of human irresponsibility. Some 9 billion tons of litter ends up in the ocean annually, and 50% of all littered items are cigarette butts.

So, human beings can exercise a damaging impact upon the environment.

But many in the climate change movement claim that human beings are solely responsible for all current degradation to the world, so much so, that if we do not immediately cease using fossil fuels, we’re goners in the near term.

The problem with climate change activists’ claims, however, are several:

• Conclusions are based on biased computer modeling, not evidence.
• Climate is always changing so their thesis is untestable and unproven.
• The fact that humans contribute to global warming is demonstrable, but the effect is minimal, and zero use of fossil fuels immediately does not appreciably change this condition in the next hundred years.
• Climate change is far more complex than simplistic bromides calling for shutting down oil, gas, coal and other fossil fuel consumption.
• Calls for dramatic transitions from fossil fuels to other forms of energy like wind or solar are enormously expensive – so claims of “climate justice” on behalf of the poor are not deliverable.
• Climate activists’ passion for alternative energy oddly does not include the clean, safe source of nuclear energy. 
• Embedded in the climate change movement are values that run counter to ether to a Christian worldview or to traditional American values, among them, 

1. Anti-humanity.
2. God is irrelevant, unless the earth is the deity. 
3. Anti-truth or genuine science.
4. Anti-free enterprise or anti-capitalism.
5. Look to government as the source salvation and utopia.

Climate change enthusiasts demonstrate that what is going on here is a worldview battle: for many, climate change has become a secular religion.

Politicians, environmentalists, and media create a triad constantly promoting climate catastrophe. They do this because fear sells. It scares people to the point they support the triad with money and power. 

Yes, climate change is happening. It’s always happening. Droughts, floods, hurricanes are not getting worse. Fires are decreasing. Even Antarctic Sea ice is not declining.

We know the earth is warming modestly, but climate change is not an existential threat.

We should remember what God told Noah after the Great Flood: “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease,” (Gen. 8:22).

Well, we’ll see you again soon. For more Christian commentary, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, Discerning What Is Best, or 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, 2022   

*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.  

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Written by Rex M. Rogers

Published: 26 April 2022

The United States fought one Civil War to end slavery, North vs South, brother against brother, a war that defined our character for decades to come. Is it possible that we’ve entered upon another civil war, this one a “cold” war that will also define our character?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #21 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.

America is at war with itself. The combatants are not Republican vs Democrat, not Liberal vs Conservative, not Black vs White, or men vs women, or rich vs poor.

The warfare in which we’re now fully engaged pits those, on the one hand, who believe the Bible is the authoritative, trustworthy Word of God, versus those, on the other hand, who reject the Word and absolute truth. Or if you want to think of it more broadly, those who affirm Judeo-Christian values vs those who reject Judeo-Christian values.

When the battle became Truth vs No truth, we entered upon a worldview civil war. 

It’s literally a war for the soul of American culture, for the continuing prospects of democracy and free government, for the future of the United States of America as it is presently known, and, of course, for the hearts of individuals who choose sides.

When I reread those lines, frankly, it sounds like over-the-top exaggeration, sort of sensationalistic, shock value hyperbole.

But sadly, I really don’t think so, and a lot of notable Christian and/or conservative thinkers today are worrying aloud about exactly, the same thing.

As Dennis Prager put it, the dividing line in the US between the Left and Right, is not belief in God per se, but in one’s view of Scripture, man-made or divinely inspired.

We spend a lot of emotional and intellectual capital worrying about which political party is in power and what their leaders are going to do next. But truth be told, while politics matters, politics does not matter as much as we think, for it is downstream from our public moral consensus, if there is a consensus anymore.

And neither political party completely or effectively offers a solution. They can’t, because politics cannot resolve spiritual conflict. 

A few years ago before he went to heaven, Chuck Colson said it another way: “The death of moral truth has fractured America into two warring camps, with each side’s preferences hardening into an ideology.”

Christian philosopher and social commentator, Os Guinness, later agreed, observing, “the most important battle is the ideological one in America.”

Colson noted that since there is now no such thing as truth, all principles are merely personal preferences. Everything is “socially constructed” and rational arguments no longer work. 

We’re in the shape we’re in because of what G. K. Chesterton observed years back: when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe anything.

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Those who reject the authority of Scripture, embrace a set of ideas and ideals antithetical to Judeo-Christian values and, therefore, to much that America has stood for from its inception. To make matters worse, this anti-Christian, progressive, Leftist worldview, promotes views and actions that are themselves morally unsustainable. These progressive Leftist views don’t work. They do harm.

As Judeo-Christian values have been rapidly jettisoned during the pandemic years, these values have taken their place in the public’s moral universe.

But consider what progressives think, they:

1. Reject God and the idea of truth, with a consequence there is no real individual accountability, can be no science, and no standard for criminal justice.
2. Denigrate religion in general and specifically reject Judeo-Christian values, meaning there is no basis for human rights, individual freedom, freedom of speech.
3. Behavior, including sinful choices, is medicalized, or spiritual matters are transmuted into mental health issues.
4. Normalize sexual immorality – consider what’s happening recently with Disney.
5. Reject E Pluribus Unum and patriotism for in an idealization and idolization of race, and so-called multiculturalism. What matters is not oneness but division, for this is the progressive path to power.
6. Mock the traditional family, promote abortion, 
7. Promote rights without responsibility.
8. Favor equality – or rather now “equity,” (a vague sense of fairness that defines fair as no differences, especially income disparity, among human beings is allowed).
9. Embrace politics via big government, not individual effort, and not religious faith, as the way to transform the world.

Progressives have created their own “Ten Commandments,” a secular Top Five:

1. There is no God, no evil, no afterlife, reward or punishment.
2. Human beings are self-determined by their own feelings.
3. Unfettered sex is whatever you want it to be with whatever consenting person you wish whenever you wish. (By the way, the idea of “consent” is going to be the next thing to go out the window. It has to be jettisoned, because it stands in the way of the Left’s demand to do whatever is right in their own eyes.)
4. Race is ultimate, defining everyone, and White Supremacy is the root of all injustice.
5. Economic equity is the end all, be all of life.

Is America really at war with itself? I think it is. We battle every day on a worldview level, but most people probably don’t even recognize it, for they get caught up the practical if secondary matters of the moment.

But none of this should cause Christians undue anxiety and certainly no loss of faith. Now that we know more about what the opposition believes and stands for, we need to be sure we know what we as Christians believe and stand for:

I--We know that the Savior, Jesus, existed before the foundation of the world. And we know that “in him all things were created; Things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,” (Col 1:16). That “He is before all things and in him all things hold together” (Col 1.17).

II--We know the Scripture is true and trustworthy, that it is what it claims that it is, the inspired Word of God, written for all times, countries, and cultures.

III--We know that God is sovereign, that he is not surprised by anything taking place around us, that he will give us wisdom in knowing how to respond, and that he wants us to remain faithful, “in the world, but not of the world,” even as he commands us to go “into the world.”

IV--We know God will one day bring all things to account. 

My 90-year-old Mother believes we are living in the last days, the end times. More and more I think she is correct, though we cannot be sure.

But in this Second American Civil War our task is clear, to: “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” (2 Pet. 3:15). 

Well, we’ll see you again soon. For more Christian commentary, be sure to subscribe to this podcast, Discerning What Is Best, or 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, 2022   

*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.