Each week, I recommend readings on the culture war from around the Internet for Christians living amid an increasingly hostile society.
My mission is to provide help and encouragement to live out our faith amidst the moral decline of our culture. Challenges to religious freedom, free speech, biblical morality, innocent and defenseless human life continue unabated.
But do not despair. Standing firmly on the Word of God, we can resist evil and shine as lights, offering hope to a darkened world.
The Culture War Comes Home
In this post, a Lutheran pastor considers the potential impact of local legislation supporting the LBGTQ agenda and threatening Christians who believe the biblical truth that God created two genders, male and female, and that same sex marriage is contrary to God’s plan for humanity.
Read carefully, as this will soon come to your own home town.
To put a point on it, the entire sex and gender regime of today is unimaginable apart from neo-liberalism, that union of large government and large business that seeks to institutionalize the world and isolate the human person. Indeed, many people quite literally cannot fully express their stated internal sense of self apart from the various apparatus of late capitalism: a state that is willing to reimagine marriage, corporations and medical establishments willing to finance gender reassignment surgeries or hormone treatments, and so on.
Judging Judge Jackson
What are Ketanji Brown Jackson’s qualifications to be a judge on the Supreme Court? For Joe Biden, it certainly has nothing to do with her scholarly writings on constitutional law. It has nothing to do with her experience beyond administrative law, criminal cases, or employment law. (i.e., her only experience.)
No, her qualifications, according to Biden, are:
- She is a woman.
- She is a black woman.
- She is pro-abortion.
Still, it is remarkable that Biden chose a nominee who, less than a year ago, said that she lacked the experience with constitutional law to answer questions about the interpretation of the Constitution — especially given that she has published nothing in the intervening year that would remedy that deficiency. It is also remarkable that a former Breyer clerk would, under oath, give this level of lip service to acknowledging the Constitution as having a “fixed meaning” and looking at its original meaning.
Woke Dysphoria at Concordia
This essay by the Rev. Gregory P. Schultz, Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University, Wisconsin, earned him a suspension from his teaching duties and may well cost him his job.
Concordia University is a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod school. For those who don’t know, the LCMS is a conservative Christian denomination in the Lutheran tradition. This is a disturbing example of the culture war coming to a Christian campus.
Full disclosure, I am a LCMS Lutheran.
That “Wokeism” has infected this university is a wake-up call to all of us who feel “safe” in our conservative churches.
We are under the influence of the Woke-ness in our nation and our Western culture, of course, but Wokeness appears to be developing into a pathology at my “institution of Lutheran higher education” as it says in our mission statement. Our institutional dysphoria at Concordia University Wisconsin (CUW) has come to light – and has been exacerbated by the search for a new university president and the manner in which our Board of Regents and, in particular, its Executive Board and its Search Committee who have been pushing for a president who will be, in their own words, “disruptive” and “transformational.”
8 Ways to Spot False Teachers
Jesus warned us to beware of false teachers. Here are some insights to help us recognize them before they can harm the church.
- False teaching preys on the spiritually immature.
- False teaching can be the product of distorted interpretations of Scripture by those not firmly established in the truth.
- False teaching grows out of ungodly ambition, ignorance, and conceit.
- False teaching sometimes stems from a desire for material gain.
- False teaching can result from and lead to inappropriate sensuality and sexual immorality.
- False teaching is sometimes attributed to demonic deception.
- False teachers seek to divide the body of Christ.
- False teaching can come from apostates and deviant teachers within the church.
Ukraine: “Wars and Rumors of Wars”: A Sign of the Times, or a Sign of All Times? A Christian Response Is the War in Ukraine a Sign of the End Times?
This question came up in the Bible class I taught this Sunday, and it is apparent that it is a concern for many Christians.
This article presents a balanced understanding of what we are to expect in the “end times.”
While “end times” speculation can be intriguing, we need to keep in mind that the “end times” began at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. How long they will last is not for any human being to know.
So here we go again. Prophetic pundits have seized the opportunity to grab the limelight. Instead of encouraging Christians to weep with those who weep (Rom 12:15) and to serve as peacemakers in the midst of conflict (Matt 5:9), these self-proclaimed prophesy “experts” want us to believe that the war in Ukraine serves as evidence that the end times are among us.
Chinese Ban on Unauthorized Online Religious Activity Comes into Effect
The Chinese government, a.k.a. the Chinese Communist Party, is relentless in its desire to eradicate Christianity from their country. The persecution continues.
These measures taken by the Chinese government represent a direct assault on so much of China’s informal and unregulated religious activity. Many house churches in China operate outside of the sanctioned religious organizations commissioned by the Chinese government’s SARA – for Christians, this is either the Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) or the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA). Christian churches who operate outside of these organizations have faced severe harassment from Chinese authorities.
The Woke Army
From a concerned pastor, insights into the attack of Wokeism, a key weapon in the culture war.
What we face in the woke culture of the West is nothing less than an assault on every truth except their truth and every fact that does not support their truth. Does it sound like I am making a radical statement? Well, I am. It is a radical wake up call to a people who are lazy and complacent — and here I am speaking to Christians who think that this is not the state of things or else the craziness of the moment will blow away and things will go back to normal. There soon will be no normal except that which the woke culture defines. While this is in part due to the retrospective view of history that is even now undergoing a transformation, it is also due to the fact that our woke culture and willing society will allow nothing but their point of view to be expressed.
Don’t Let Bad Christian Theology Off the Hook
Christians need to know how to identify bad theology and false teaching. Unfortunately, many believers never progress beyond their Confirmation years in their understanding of our faith.
All Christians must know what they believe and why they believe it. This is the only way to know when you are being fed (big theological term coming up) garbage! This knowledge is part of our armor in the culture war.
. . . all we can do is call out harmful theology when we see it. How do we know if it’s harmful? It brings harm to people’s lives. It brings the opposite of what Paul called the fruit of the Spirit. Instead of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, it brings hate, fear, war, shame, and death.
Update on the Trial of Christians in Finland
Here is an update on the religious freedom trial in Finland, the results of which will affect all Christians.
The stakes, though, are high, with the potential of reaching far beyond Finland. Whatever the court decides, the case is likely to be appealed. We Americans often take for granted just how free we are, even compared to other democracies. Our legal system forbids “double jeopardy”; that is to say, someone acquitted of a crime cannot be tried again for the same crime. A “not guilty” verdict is final. Prosecutors cannot appeal the verdict, though a defendant can appeal a “guilty” verdict. In the words of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution “nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.”
But in Finland, if a court finds a defendant “not guilty,” the prosecutors can appeal. So whether Dr. Räsänen and Bishop Pohjola are found innocent or guilty, their case will likely be appealed to the Finnish Supreme Court, and then, if they lose, to the European Court of Human Rights. Pullman points out that a decision there could set a precedent for all European nations, most of which have similar laws to Finland, determining whether religious freedom must be curtailed in the name of LGBT affirmation.
When Evil Is Called Good
The battle over the LBGTQ agenda is at the center of the culture war and continues to heat up with the Biden administration is fanning the flames.
Last week, three news stories threw into sharp relief the ambitions of the sexual revolutionaries who govern the United States. First, there was the predictable outrage from the usual elites concerning Florida’s Parental Right in Education Bill, which would significantly restrict the teaching of LGBTQ+ ideology to schoolchildren. Second, it emerged that Washington State has a policy preventing teachers from revealing a child’s gender transition to parents. And third, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki condemned a directive from Texas governor Greg Abbott that calls on state agencies to protect Texas minors by investigating cases of children receiving “abusive gender-transitioning procedures.”
Additional Culture War Related Reading
How ‘Social Justice’ Is Killing the Military
What Is “Progressive” Christianity?
Push for ‘Equity’ Is Destroying Equality
Those Who Make Peaceful Revolution Impossible Will Make Violent Revolution Inevitable
Are You Too Spiritual – So Heavenly Minded, You’re No Earthly Good?
Turning Down the Climate-Change Heat
Nation Writer Labels the Constitution ‘Trash’
How Public Schools Went Woke — And What to Do About It
May you have a blessed, productive, and peaceful week.
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