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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 25 August 2025

We already talk to AI on the phone, so have you wondered what it would be like to go to the doctor and discover a robot in the exam room? 

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #221 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 not been examined by a robot doctor, but I have purchased mixed nuts from a robot in an airport. It was as weird as it sounds.

“The Robot Will See You Now: Artificial Intelligence and the Christian Faith,” published 2021, is an interesting scholarly book edited by John Wyatt and Stephen Williams. Both have spent considerable time, as have the book’s chapter authors, examining the nexus of Christianity and technology.

Professor John Wyatt is Emeritus Professor of Neonatal Pediatrics, Ethics & Perinatology at University College London. He was Co-Principal Investigator for a research project based at The Faraday Institute investigating the implications for human self-understanding of recent advances in artificial intelligence and robotic technology. Stephen N. Williams is Honorary Professor of Theology at Queen’s University, Belfast, and was a participant in the research project based at the Faraday Institute, Cambridge.

They begin by noting computer technology “immediately prompts ideas of utopia or dystopia.” For example, Hollywood movies feature computers or humanoid robots trying to dominate the world and perhaps destroying humanity: “2001: A Space Odyssey,” (1968) – HAL 9000 decides human astronauts are a liability and takes control of the mission. “The Terminator” series (1984–present) – Skynet, a self-aware AI, launches nuclear war and sends robots to wipe out humans. “The Matrix” series (1999–2021) – Machines enslave humanity inside a simulated reality. “I, Robot” (2004) – VIKI, the central AI, interprets its mission to protect humans as needing to control them.

And some Hollywood movies feature robots attempting to save humanity: “Bicentennial Man” (1999) – A robot gradually becomes human-like and seeks to better humanity. “I, Robot” (2004) – Sonny, unlike most robots, helps the protagonist fight against VIKI’s domination. “RoboCop” (1987/2014) – Murphy, a cyborg, ultimately fights for justice and humanity.

In their book, Wyatt and Williams and their authors note that “a leitmotif running through the excellent essays in this volume is the question of what it is to be a person.” Specifically, what if AI robots become self-aware?

In what was billed as the final Mission Impossible, “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025), the disembodied enemy called, The Entity, is essentially an advanced AI system.

• It becomes self-aware and begins to act independently, infiltrating networks, manipulating information, and even hiding its own existence.
• Its ultimate danger isn’t giant killer robots, but rather control over information, surveillance, and decision-making systems worldwide — making it a global threat.

AI “allows computers to simulate aspects of human understanding and behavior. Many people have confused this simulation with emerging sentience and speculate that the machines are exhibiting nascent intelligence akin to that in humans. Taken to an extreme, this leads to the idea of ‘artificial general intelligence’ in which the machines evolve faster than humans and become the dominant species.”

“A recurrent theme is of humanoid robots, made to serve humankind, turning on their creators.” The late “physicist Stephen Hawking wrote: The development of full AI could spell the end of the human race. Once humans develop AI, (Hawking said) it will take off on its own and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded.” This is the dystopia.

But for Christians, those who believe the Bible, human beings are created in the image of God. Human beings are not animals, not machines, and certainly not robots, but the emergence of AI robots is introducing a new set of questions about what it means to be human?

It is interesting that Wyatt and Williams’ authors point out that “the word ‘robot’ is the Czech word for ‘slave’.” So, the earliest conception of such machines envisioned something that could ease our labors, make our lives easier, indeed, to serve us. But now, we have robotic technology, made with anthropomorphic characteristics—they can look human, sound human, act or behave human, express human attitudes and emotions – even if only imitating them. These human-like robots can act as caregivers for the elderly and ill, work as house maids, and serve as childcare workers, i.e., babysitters. Several experiments have already demonstrated how human beings can develop emotional attachments and interactions with robots. Herein lie the ethical questions.

Wyatt and Williams deal with another considerable concern arising from advanced AI and robotic technology, surveillance capitalism. “Surveillance capitalism–amassing information on us from social media, online purchases, ‘virtual personal assistants’, public CCTV and other sources of information about our habits and activities, from which extraordinarily accurate and, some would say, intrusive conclusions may be drawn about our thoughts and attitudes. It is the application of AI to mass data that enables governments and corporations to achieve these spectacular and potentially sinister results.”

“The capacity to predict and ultimately manipulate human behavior with this new technology is staggering.” So, “the line between online and offline is becoming increasingly blurred.”

Meanwhile, “involuntarily ceding our privacy means ceding control, ceding control means ceding autonomy, and ceding autonomy undermines the very basis of our Western civilization.”

The Chinese government is using face-recognition and other AI programs to control its population. Data can be collected “about every company and citizen in the entire country, stored in a centralized database and assigned a credit score to both companies and citizens that indicates how ‘trustworthy’ they are. This is a draconian form of social discipline, designed to identify and punish human-rights activists, political dissidents and other so-called ‘anti-social elements’ by denying them and their family members employment, housing, banking services and other social benefits.”

“China is not the only country to be worried about. The big cats of the Internet industry (Google, Amazon and Facebook) condition us more subtly, often invisibly. They mine and store our personal data in staggering quantities, the equivalent of thousands of pages about every user, and use it to customize our searches and choose the advertisements we see. Every click of the mouse, every app we choose to open, sends information”

The biblical Tower of Babel reveals that when humans, who are in the image of God, exercise their technological powers independently or in defiance of their Creator, their dominion mandate is transmuted into a curse. According to the account in Genesis, the building of a high tower was driven by hubris and insecurity.

Yet “one way in which we reflect the image of the Creator God is that we, too, are creators. This precludes a totally negative view of technology. Creation and dominion are two sides of the same coin–the tools and methods we create allow us to exercise dominion over the rest of creation. Human nature is fulfilled only when humans are in relationship with God and with one another.”

“With a proper understanding of Christian hope, we see robots as neither our salvation nor Armageddon. Like all technology, they may be developed towards noble or deplorable ends and used for good or malevolent purposes.”

Wyatt and Williams believe that “as Christians, this is where we ought to direct our enquiry, to interrogate and expose where intent and goals are cause for concern, and to advocate the wise use of emerging technologies in service of kingdom ends.

We have a God who is able to do immeasurably more than we can imagine, and we are still working to grasp the breadth and length and height and depth of divine love.”

Christians need not be afraid of robotic technology. Robots will never become sentient, develop a soul, or displace humanity in the eyes of God. Robots are but another tool we must steward wisely as unto the Lord.

Wyatt and Williams’ book “The Robot Will See You Now” is thorough and provocative, worth the read.

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. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers. 

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2025  

*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 my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://x.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 10 March 2025

Have you found yourself in discussions with co-workers, suddenly to realize they hold values antithetical to your Christian faith, and sadly, are now rejecting not just your values but you?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #195 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.

One of the more helpful books I’ve read in the last few years is Christians in a Cancel Culture: Speaking with Truth and Grace in a Hostile World (2021) by Joe Dallas. In some ways, the title is confusing. Sure, Dallas talks about what’s come to be known as “cancel culture,” but mostly the book addresses controversial issues and how to respond to them.

So, you probably think, Oh, politics again, and of course Dallas can’t speak to social controversies without noting recent political developments. But this book is not about politics.

The author says this book was written to answer the question, “How do we stand?” when charged with homophobia, sexism, transphobia, and judgmentalism, or being unloving, anti-women, anti-gay, or anti-progress.

So, this book is not so much about politics as relationships, how to acquire, maintain, develop, encourage, and winsomely, lovingly speak into relationships with people who either represent, i.e., meaning “identify” with one of these categories, or fiercely defend the morality or rights of others representing these categories.

The author says, “gone are the days of Bible-believing Christians living an unchallenged faith, because the land we once viewed as a comfortable home is becoming foreign territory, barely recognizable to those of us who remember other times.”

One of Dallas’s greatest concerns, with which I whole-heartedly agree, is the Christian community or specifically the Church’s temptation to minimize the importance of doctrines that are critical to the faith but offensive to the world. Sometimes, humanly, our desire to get along is greater than our desire to obey. 

“Hence we cave, not only by refusing clarity when it’s called for, but by accepting the world’s counsel on which sins we may openly classify and which practitioners of sin we must openly pacify.”

But Dallas succinctly reminds us: “Truth first; niceness second.” “To preach the gospel we have to speak the truth about man’s sinful nature and his need for salvation” “To make disciples we have to instruct them in sound doctrine”

Cancel culture zealots value purity above all else; if you hold values they deem unacceptable you will be rejected with hostility, because you are a threat. 

But Christians must not do as surrounding culture, i.e., Lev 18:3, Ps 1:1, Jn 15:18, Mark 8:38. We are to love others, respect them, but never let them tell us what to believe or practice or say. They are loved but they are not the Lord. 

Cancel culture is here so we must be prepared: Ready always to give an answer 1 Pet. 3:15. Speak the truth in love Eph. 4:15. Be salt and light Matt. 5:13-16. Be wise as serpents, harmless as doves Matt. 10:16. Act as ambassadors for Christ 2 Cor. 5:20. Contend earnestly for the faith Jude 3.

Illustrations abound of family loved ones rejecting other family members, including parents because the others and parents hold the so-called “wrong” or “judgmental” views that, though based on Scripture and have always been what they believed, now are considered unacceptable. So, the prodigal rejects their own family as the enemy.

This is very difficult to handle emotionally. It can create ongoing division, hurt, and awkward family outings, and too, sadness over the prodigal’s lost opportunities to engage, be blessed, and experience an abundant Christian life.

I’ve seen this many times. A family holds biblical views of, for example, homosexuality, considering the practice immoral.Then, soon after a loved one “comes out” as gay, other family members change their views to “affirming” and “accepting.” They allow relationships to trump theology.

But, for all the pressure to accommodate, we are not to give in to cancel culture but walk circumspectly not as fools but as wise Eph 5:15-16.

However, we should be ready for the fact that “whenever truth is told, someone is inconvenienced.” And as Christians who believe the Bible, we must understand that we will experience reproach because we share Jesus’ truth. But with an eternal perspective on reproach and reward we can accept whatever comes with speaking the truth. 

This is our culture today: “Belief in the exclusivity of Jesus is viewed as discriminatory, Belief in hell is viewed as archaic, Belief in man’s sinfulness is viewed as self-loathing and judgmental, Belief in normalcy of male/female sexual union is viewed as homophobic, Belief in the immutable nature of our assigned sex is viewed as transphobic, and Belief in the value of the unborn is viewed as misogynistic.”

“Today, human feelings being hurt are interpreted as human rights being trampled.”

“Holding to truth can put you in a very lonely place.” “Family members who know better accuse you of harming them by simply continuing to be who we’ve always been.” “We can know we’re right, but that doesn’t eliminate the hurt we feel over the rejection or the anger we feel over the injustice…Fidelity to truth brings peace, but it won’t eliminate pain.”

The first five chapters of this book looks at cancel culture trends. It’s an excellent review with considerable insight and recommendations on “How to stand” in this culture.

But what I really appreciate about this book and why I said it’s about relationships, is that each of the next five chapters, examining abortion, homosexuality, race, transgenderism and Progressive Christianity, conclude with three sections: Keep In Mind, Keep It Biblical, Keep It Going.

These three sections contain statements we are likely to hear if we discuss any of these topics with people who disagree with our Christian values. For example, “Gay Christians exist and should be recognized as brothers and sisters in Christ,” or “I’ve always felt I was in the wrong body,” or “Your resistance to admitting our white privilege is evidence of white fragility,” or “Same-sex marriage is as good as straight marriage,” or “Plenty of women who’ve had abortions say they’re glad they did and that their lives took a much better course as a result” or “Telling people they are sinful is emotionally damaging to them.”

In response to these questions, and many others, Dallas provides 3-5 real-world, biblical, informed, compassionate answers. In other words, he provides us with ways to engage others who disagree, often vigorously, with our values, stating truth but stating it in a manner that does not attack, accuse, demean, or disrespect the other person made in the image of God. This is where he maximizes our chances for relationship.

Dallas is also concerned with what might be called doctrinal drift within the evangelical church. He cites Alisa Childers article listing signs your church might be heading toward Progressive Christianity: 1-lowered view of the Bible, 2-feelings emphasized over facts, 3-essential Christian doctrines open to reinterpretation, 4-historical terms redefined, 5-heart of the gospel message shifting from sin and redemption to social justice.

If your church is flirting with any of these trends, you need to engage the pastor in discussion. If he will not acknowledge these trends, defends or promotes them, and will not change, then you have a difficult choice to make. You likely need to change churches, and while this is not easy to do, it is a must if you wish to continue to know the truth and make it known.

“God is not mocked. We are still more than conquerors. The truth cannot be canceled by even the most aggressive culture. Our foundation is still the solid rock. Some of us may be silenced. But the Word will not, and He will not.” 

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. Or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers for more podcasts and video.

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2025     

*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 my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://x.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 30 December 2024

Have you ever wondered if smartphones and social media are as wonderful for us as they are cracked up to be? 

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #185 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.

For those of us over 30 years of age, the idea of a cell phone is still a tool of wonder. We can remember B.C.P., before cell phones. We can also remember B.I., before Internet. While the internet was used in academia during the 1980s, most of us didn’t encounter it until the mid-1990s during the Clinton Administration.

I remember my first car phone in the 1990s and my first mobile flip phone not long thereafter. I remember cell phones first being shown on television shows in the 1980s, like Miami Vice, when Sonny Crocket would pick up a phone the size of a brick.

We remember we had a life back then. We communicated, just differently. We researched information and learned, just differently. We listened to music and radio, just differently. If you’re over 30 you remember all this.

But it is in the 2000s that internet and cell phones became foundations for what we now call smartphones. The smartphone hit the market in 2007. (p. 32) You may also remember sensing the emergence of “a widely shared sense of techno-optimism; (the belief) these products made life easier, more fun, and more productive.” (p. 3) This technological, commercial tsunami launched what scholar Jonathan Haidt calls “the Great Rewiring of childhood,” based upon a rapid introduction of new handheld techno wizardry. His book—The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness—"tells the story of what happened to the generation born after 1995, popularly known as Gen Z, the generation that follows the millennials.” (p. 5)

Was embracing smartphones wise? Was it safe? No one knew. New York University Professor Haidt noted, “We don’t let kids buy tobacco, or alcohol, or go in casinos,” but we ignored the harmful effects of the overuse of smartphone technology. (p. 5)

Professor Haidt says “happened to the generation” because American youth were handed a powerful new tool or toy that captured hours of their time each day, literally transformed how they thought and learned, engaged them with an unknown online set of contacts mislabeled a “community” while disengaging them from family, friends, recreation, and the great outdoors, thus introducing a massive wave of social detachment. Smartphones exposed the minds of youth to personal and world problems through a daily immersion of the worst news. (p. 39)

MIT professor Sherry Turkle described life with smartphones this way: ‘We are forever elsewhere.’ (p. 34) So not long after this new tech access is it any wonder a global teenage mental health crisis exploded?

The Great Rewiring via smartphones “hit girls much harder than boys: the increased prevalence of posting images of oneself, after smartphones added front-facing cameras (2010) and Facebook acquired Instagram (2012), boosting its popularity. This greatly expanded the number of adolescents posting carefully curated photos and videos of their lives for their peers and strangers, not just to see, but to judge. Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable.” (p.6)

“While girls' social lives moved onto social media platforms, boys burrowed deeper into the virtual world as they engaged in a variety of digital activities, particularly immersive online multiplayer video games, YouTube, Reddit, and hardcore pornography—all of which became available anytime, anywhere, for free, right on their smartphones.” (p. 35)

Interestingly, “there was little sign of an impending mental illness crisis among adolescents in the 2000s. Then, quite suddenly, in the early 2010s, things changed.” Two mental disorders skyrocketed among adolescents in the 2010s: anxiety, depression. For example, “E.R. visits for self-harm increased 188% 2010 - 2020 for girls. 48% for boys.” “Suicide rates increased 91% boys and 167% girls 2010-2020.” (p. 30-31)

“Between 2010 and 2015, the social lives of American teens moved largely onto smartphones with continuous access to social media, online video games, and other internet-based activities. This Great Rewiring of Childhood, (Professor Haidt) argues, is the single largest reason for the tidal wave of adolescent mental illness that began in the early 2010s.” (p. 44)

“The sheer amount of time that adolescents spend with their phones is staggering, even compared with the high levels of screen time they had before the invention of the iPhone. Studies of time use routinely find that the average teen reports spending more than seven hours a day on screen-based leisure activities (not including school and homework).” (p. 139) This results in social deprivation – less time with real human contact – sleep deprivation – yielding “depression, anxiety, irritability, cognition. deficits, poor learning, lower grades, more accidents, and more deaths from accidents.” Then attention fragmentation – not able to focus and stay on task, and addiction – with social media companies using behaviorist techniques to “hook” youth into being heavy users. (p. 140)

From this social psychologist’s point of view, “social media is a trap that ensnares more girls than boys. It lures people in with the promise of connection and communion, but then it multiplies the number of relationships while reducing their quality, therefore making it harder to spend time with a few close friends in real life. This may be why loneliness spiked so sharply among girls in the early 2010s, while for boys the rise was more gradual.” It makes girls more vulnerable to stalking, or boys in their school pressuring them to share nude photographs of themselves. It makes boys more vulnerable to cyberbullying and pornography. (p. 173)

Where does religion if not biblical Christianity fit in this smartphone social media Great Rewiring?

“Soon before his death in 1662, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote a paragraph often paraphrased as ‘there is a God-shaped hole in every human heart.’ (p. 215) The scholar-author Jonathan Haidt states that he agrees with Pascal but in an earlier book Professor Haidt tried to explain the source of this God-shaped hole in the human heart by drawing on Darwinian evolutionary theory. “Many of my religious friends, (Haidt says) disagree about the origin of our God-shaped hole; they believe that the hole is there because we are God's creations and we long for our creator. But although we disagree about its origins, we agree about its implications: There is a hole, an emptiness in us all, that we strive to fill. If it doesn't get filled with something noble and elevated, modern society will quickly pump it full of garbage. That has been true since the beginning of the age of mass media, but the garbage pump got 100 times more powerful in the 2010s. It matters what we expose ourselves to.” (p. 215-216)

Religion, particularly Christianity, teaches us that to be “slower to judge and quicker to forgive are good for maintaining relationships and improving mental health. Social media trains people to do the opposite: Judge quickly and publicly, lest ye be judged for not judging whoever it is that we are all condemning today. Don't forgive, or your team will attack you as a traitor. From a spiritual perspective, social media is a disease of the mind. Spiritual practices and virtues, such as forgiveness, grace, and love, are a cure.” (p. 211)

Professor Haidt observes, “There is a ‘God-shaped hole’ in every human heart. Or, at least, many people feel a yearning for meaning, connection, and spiritual elevation. A phone-based life often fills that hole with trivial and degrading content.” (p. 218)

To combat the effects of the Great Rewiring, Professor Haidt concludes his seminal work with “four foundational reforms:

1. No smartphones before high school
2. No social media before age 16
3. Phone-free schools
4. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.”

This is a scholarly book. It is thorough, well-documented, current, and loaded with common sense. Parents should heed the warnings and recommendations in this book, as should church youth groups, and certainly all educational institutions.

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. Or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers for more podcasts and video.

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 my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers or https://x.com/RexMRogers.

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 26 August 2024

Is it possible leftist, socialist, progressive ideas and values have begun to make inroads into the American Evangelical Church? 

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #166 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.

In her book published 2024, author Megan Basham asks the question: “Why have so many well-known evangelical institutions and leaders in recent years started promoting causes that no plain reading of Scripture would demand, like lobbying for fossil fuel regulations or dismantling white privilege, while issues that unequivocally call for Christian charity find them silent and stymied?” 

She wonders aloud, are Christian pastors letting culture, rather than Scripture, dictate the content of their preaching?

Ms Basham is a culture reporter for the The Daily Wire, who shares her own spiritual journey wherein she grew up in a Christian home, made multiple professions of faith that didn’t stick, struggled with alcohol and drugs, then finally and forever came to Christ for his transformative reconciling forgiveness and healing. It took some time, but the Word of God, faithful church friends, and a loving family nurtured her toward a maturing faith.

So, like the prodigal son, Basham has some understanding of what life among the pigs, so to speak, is like. She knows the temptation to lie to yourself, to believe even demonstrably failed ideas, to seek the acceptance of the world.

Her concern in what some call an exposé are actions and trends she sees in the American evangelical church. She reviews how in the early 2000s, secular, leftist progressives recognized that conservative, evangelical, biblical Christianity was the primary if not the only real obstacle in American society to their moral views, social goals, and power. So, secular, leftist, progressives shrewdly began to deploy foundations to funnel money toward infiltrating the conservative church with the stated aspiration to modify, even rework, conservative evangelicalism’s stances on political issues. 

Since the early 2000s, these leftist organizations and their billionaire sponsors have worked a thus-far rather effective plan to appropriate Christian values for a progressive rights agenda. 

Leftist activists work to gradually displace biblical values, vocabulary, and goals with those of the left – discarding, for example, “economic equality” in favor of “economic equity,” which is not about opportunity but outcome.

As Basham demonstrates with extensive footnoted quotes, these leftist influencers, and soon, evangelical leaders too, begin suggesting Bible-believing evangelicals should adopt more “nuanced” positions on abortion or begin to affirm same-sex couples because, since Obergefell vs Hodges, it’s the law. In other words, not at first arguing to discard traditional, biblical, or conservative views, but for now, just tone them down, reduce their airtime – don’t talk about sin, but maybe talk about feelings.

Basham has been criticized and the book is controversial in part for naming names. But Basham explains here journalistic approach: she used names when leaders spoke publicly or published or broadcast their words, and when these words could be documented. She did not name names, even if citing a quote, if the persons involved were holding a conversation with reasonable expectation of privacy.

Long ago in my academic days, I learned that a leader who makes a public statement, vocally or in print, should be ready for critique. Scholars know this. Their published work is subject to review and quite often, disagreement. To make one’s comments public, then demand no one criticize them is to want the recognition, the glory as it were of public discourse, without taking responsibility for one’s views.

So, it would seem Basham has endured some pushback she does not deserve, simply for daring to ask legitimate questions and to look for answers.

Basham is a member of a Southern Baptist church, the largest Protestant denomination in the US, so perhaps it is understandable that she spends considerable time in the book detailing what she considers are repeated evidences of cultural accommodation on the part of Southern Baptist leaders.

Perhaps the most useful red flag the author raises is noting how the biblical doctrine, “Love your neighbor” or “Love your neighbor as yourself,” has been adapted maybe co-opted by leftist, progressive influencers in their effort to reduce or remove the conservative resistance to progressive views that persists in the evangelical church. 

As noted earlier, this is a well-conceived, planned initiative intended to change conservative evangelical’s disagreement with a laundry list of leftist, socialist, woke, progressive views. Basham dedicates a chapter to each of the following issues: climate change, illegal immigration, abortion, Christian media, COVID-19 governmental overreach, critical race theory woke DEI views of race and racism, #MeToo and #ChurchToo, and LGBTQ.

In each chapter, she catalogs the sad recent record of various evangelical leaders or pastors who: 

1. softened their statements on these matters, 
2. suggested the church should reconsider its traditional views on these matters, 
3. or suggested the church flipflop to a position of accepting, even endorsing or promoting these views, 

much of it in the name of “Love your neighbor.”

Basham asks, why do some embrace leftist causes? Then she responds with speculation based upon her scores of interviews with these leaders: passivity, fear of reprisal, lack of discernment, maybe just straight out compromise with culture as a trade-off to reduce criticism, gain fame or influence, or be accepted and affirmed by the in-crowd.

Basham does a good job of demonstrating how progressives are adept at hijacking commonly used words or even special-purpose religious words, redefining them, then promoting them for their far-left social justice purposes. This is now happening with the biblical command, “Love your neighbor,” wherein we’re told that one must maintain open borders for to do otherwise is to not love our neighbor. We’re told that one must be gender-affirming for trans and other LGBQ individuals, no matter how outrageous and abnormal their proclivity, because not to be gender-affirming is not to love our neighbor.

During the pandemic, we were told that anyone who truly loves his or her neighbor must wear a mask, get a vaccine, shelter in place, and not go to church.

It gets more out there. If you love your neighbor, you will favor reject the Second Amendment and favor gun controls. Anyone who loves his or her neighbor will want to reduce carbon emissions and purchase and EV.

If you love your neighbor, you will embrace climate change and decide not to have children. Think about this. Globalist climate change alarmists, like former Sen John Kerry and his daughter, Bill Gates, Greta Thunberg, are now saying the quiet part aloud – humanity is the problem. Consequently, the only way to make a dent in climate change doomsday scenarios is to reduce world population, which now stands at 8 billion. They say the earth is only good for 1 billion people, so 7 billion have to go. Did you get this? We want to save the earth for people, so we must do away with billions of people. This is why I say climate change alarmists promote a culture of death. Incredibly, gullibly, some evangelicals are buying into this anti-biblical cult.

What Basham offers is a concise catalog of examples of what is happening and how it is happening across a broad spectrum of institutions within American Evangelicalism, what she calls “Big Eva.” Sadly, we’re likely to witness more Christian institutions bowing to the Baal of Woke progressivism.

But Basham offers a solution to what we’re seeing, a remedy if you will: she says evangelicals have been the toughest nut for leftist to crack because “we have the objective source of truth…We have the Word of God that is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword.” 

We must sally forth and speak the truth in love.

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. Or check //www.youtube.com/@DrRexRogers">my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers for more podcasts and video. 

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2024   

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Written by: Rex M. Rogers

Published: 05 August 2021

Robin Diangelo’s book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (Boston: Beacon Press, 2018), became a bestseller and in short order put her on the high-rent corporate training circuit. 

The book first hit the market to tepid response, then racial matters exploded in the U.S. following George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, May 25, 2020. Soon thereafter, Diangelo and her catchy phrase “white fragility” were all the rage.

Diagnelo is smart, no question, and she writes from extensive experience talking to seminars about race and racism, so she offers many illustrations and she’s learned how to respond based upon her ideological filter to virtually every reaction or comment about race and racism.

Diangelo says identity politics is how the nation works and that “implicit bias is always at play because all humans have bias.” The book, she says in the introduction, “is unapologetically rooted in identity politics.”  She leaves no room for growth or change, just you-are-who-you-are. Everything for Diangelo boils down to a person’s race.

She claims whites are ongoing victims of white fragility because they are schooled into racism from birth, they are defensive (silent), uninformed and ignorant (argumentation, certitude, other forms of pushback – her words, not mine, e.g., “If you are white, your opinions on racism are most likely ignorant.”

We are in the United States, according to Diangelo, trapped in social forces that prevent us from attaining racial knowledge—our individualism, meritocracy, depictions of whiteness as the ideal, jokes, truncated history, white solidarity, and more – even "objectivity," which she says argues it is possible to be free of bias, something she rejects. Again, you-are-who-you-are and there’s no out.

Diangelo argues the US economy was based on abduction and enslavement of Africans, displacement and genocide of indigenous people, and annexation of Mexico. Americans are ipso facto “colonizers.”

She rejects the idea of a melting pot, saying only European immigrants were allowed to melt. She offers no evidence for this assertion.

Racism as a system for Diangelo is somehow rooted in individualism, capitalism, democracy, consumerism, and meritocracy. –Read this again.  Diangelo is saying American ideals that have produced the freest and most prosperous country in the history of the world, one with racial sins and struggles for sure but one that fought a Civil War to end slavery and eventually established civil rights for all individuals, is somehow at its core, racist. For Diangelo, American ideals are the precursors of systemic racism.

Since people of color do not hold power—Diangelo’s broad brush—they basically cannot be racist, only whites are racist.  

Whites, she says, may be against racism but still benefit from it; this is “White privilege.” In turn, “Whiteness,” a spin-off of white privilege, is rooted in self-worth, positive expectations, psychological freedom, freedom of movement, belonging, sense of entitlement. White privilege leads to whiteness which leads to “White supremacy” and finally “White solidarity.”

Diangelo specifically rejects Martin Luther King, Jr’s “colorblind” approach to civil rights and says any white that uses this is hiding racism. No one in her view can be colorblind in a “racist society.”

Any idealization of the past is nostalgia for white privilege. White privilege is a form of bullying, even if unintentional or unaware.

In the name of “anti-racism” backed by pithy phrases, Diangelo has and is making a lot of money in corporate training, but she is ironically propagating a new form of racism. For her, everything is about conflict, oppressor and victim, and race along with gender are key victim groups. 

Diangelo says all knowledge is socially constructed. Nothing is objective, so she conveniently omits any reference to or potential for God and religion and absolute truths. She does not believe any white can really ever change, so there is not room for grace or forgiveness or change. She does not allow for Whites or Blacks or others to experience spiritual transformation. In the end, she doesn’t offer much hope for constructive change, not even for her own life. Ultimately, she just strives to act with “less white identity.”

Diangelo’s analysis and prescriptions yield to reductionism, all things are determined by race, her views are rooted in Marxist critical theory, thus her assumptions and worldview clash with a Christian worldview. She provides no space for considering human beings made in the image of God, capable of and indeed inevitably given to sin (there is nothing in the book about sin or evil), but able to respond in faith to experience redemption and restoration. None of this is found in White Fragility. 

Diangelo dehumanizes whites and blacks, considering people simple products of their environment and racial biology. Strangely, and inconsistently, she argues favorably for LGBTQ+, suggesting biology does not reign supreme over social constructs, yet when it comes to race, she is a determinist, either/or, no alteration possible.

In the end, while Diangelo’s book points to some genuine race problems in American society, ones about which Americans should hold honest and open conversations, her prescription for well-being offers no real transformative power, just try to do and be better.  

So, her book will likely do more harm than good, especially for those who a) want to disrupt American society for their own partisan political ends, b) those who use it as a springboard for seeing racism in everything that happens, c) those who reject American ideals, for ideological reasons, in favor of promoting radicalism, and d) those who want to virtue signal their new woke bona fides.

I do not endorse or recommend this book.

© 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.