God is loving, we are told, and thus accepts us as we are.  The idea that God will judge people for their sins is now so unpopular that few are willing to state it publicly, and many pastors have sadly bowed to the pressure to present a palatable God, a doting “Grandpa” who silently approves of His children regardless of their conduct.

If you have been caught up in this heresy, I warn you to retreat to truth.  God not only has a much higher standard of righteousness than we do, His standard is absolute perfection!

Many years ago, I spoke with a friend, a biblical counselor, regarding the problem of perfectionism.  We have all dealt with perfectionists.  They can be demanding at times!  Maybe you are one!  My friend noted sternly that only God has the right to be a perfectionist for He alone is perfect!

Most of us are not perfectionists, but therein lies a different problem.  Because we do not demand perfection from others (how could we as often as we fail?), we assume that God does not demand perfection from us.  But He does!  Matthew 5:48 reads, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (KJV). No, He does not expect perfection immediately, but do not confuse His patience with tolerance.   At some point, we will be brought individually to account for every time we fail to match His perfect righteousness and holiness.   That ought to be very troubling to us!

God’s perfection is related to, among other things, His holiness, righteousness, and justice.  In all of His eternal existence God has never varied from absolute perfection.  He has never erred in even the smallest way.  And being Creator and Steward of the universe, He takes responsibility for everything that happens within its boundaries, which means that we all must live by His rules.

Our failure to match God’s perfections has an important moral element.  It is not just that we are not as strong or intelligent as God is, we adamantly refuse to do His will!  Every human act is tainted by self-will rather than God service.  Scriptures declare that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” (Jer. 17:9, NKJV).  The sad tale of mankind’s history is sufficient proof of this!  Everything we do is unsatisfactory to God!

Some philosophers have reasoned that God is so great that He is indifferent to what we do.  We neither add to Him nor take away from Him and thus we need not concern ourselves with the issue of our sinfulness.  It does seem unreasonable (to us) that God would care about what insignificant beings like us do.  However, it is due to His infiniteness that these things do matter.  Acts large or small to us are identical in scale to Him.  His infiniteness extends both directions on the linear scale.

God is not just infinitely greater than we humans. As Creator and Sustainer of the universe, He has the moral responsibility to separate from and condemn all who fall short of His holy perfections.  He commands, “Be holy for I am holy!”  Lest I be misunderstood, God cannot wink at human moral failure, which Scripture labels as sin.  It is in His eternal constitution to repudiate everything that fails to conform to His holiness.  He cannot soften His wrath against it.

In the same way that a company is responsible for the conduct of its employees, God is ultimately responsible for what transpires on planet Earth.  Ironically, while He hates wickedness, and has gone to great lengths to expose and oppose it, He is often blamed for the evils that sinners perpetrate day-after-day contrary to His will and word!  Because of His grace He is willing to “take the blame” for the moment but understand that such an injustice must and will be corrected.  He is blameless!

As Creator He is owed love, allegiance, and submission, yet people have thumbed their noses at Him and rejected His authority and His call on their lives.  Mankind’s failure is not only a matter of quantity, it is a failure of quality.  It is not that He expects us to accomplish ABC and we are only able to do A and B.  Rather, we spurn His commands and do the opposite.  He created us to bring glory to Him, but we shame Him instead.

Even we, having created a work of art, literature, or some other accomplishment, expect to get the credit for it.  Millions of lawsuits attest to the fact that we do not accept others getting or taking credit for our work!  But in our relationship with God, we do worse!  We not only fail to give Him the credit (glory) due Him for who He is and what He does, we seek to take His glory to ourselves!  We stand in awe of a DaVinci painting, or listen in rapture to a Beethoven symphony, but curse Christ, the God who with a word created the beauty of a sunset, a daffodil, and the glorious galaxies and seek to take credit for talents and abilities He “loaned” to us!

Glorifying God is not just crediting Him for who He is and what He does.  It is matching His moral perfections.  He is personally flawless and demands the same from His creation for which He is responsible.  He can tolerate no flaws in His universe.  Our every sin is a blight on His name and reputation and must be corrected.  He will not forever take the blame for our conduct, nor will He allow others to claim credit for His gracious acts.  Ultimately, He will set the record straight.

If there were aliens from other galaxies (and there are not), but if there were and they visited planet Earth, they might well ask, “Who is responsible for this horrific mess?”  A casual observer may blame God, but that conclusion would not stand.  Every broken heart, every dark blot on creation derives from the failure of created beings, not the Creator.  You and I cannot escape our accountability.  We must come to terms with God.

If you love God, you are offended by that which offends God, and you want His good name cleared.  You look with great expectation to the day when He will set the record straight and the guilty parties will be punished.  If you do not love God, I warn you that the days of evading your responsibility will have an end.

Judgement day is coming!  You may believe you can avoid God forever, but the Bible states that there will be a day when “every knee shall bow. . . and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,” (Phil. 2:10-11, NKJV).  This includes every soul in Heaven, Earth, and Hell.  And the standard by which each will be measured will not be one of their own devising, but rather the perfections of Jesus Christ!

In moments of quietness, when you have found yourself examining your own heart, you know that God’s word is true: you stand guilty.  We all stand guilty, not of mere incompetence, but of rebellion!  This fact is born out not only in our consciences, but in the dark and bloody history of humanity.  Rejecting this truth would be understandable if there were no escape from the resultant condemnation.  Denial is a common coping mechanism for those who have no hope.

But there is hope!  Wonderful hope!  And it only requires our acknowledgement of the truth, turning from sin (confession) and an acceptance of God’s forgiveness purchased by Christ on the cross!  And His forgiveness does more than simply wash away our sin.  It changes us!  First Corinthians 15:51 says that “we shall be changed,” and texts like Psalm 17:15 and I John 3:2 declare what that change entails: “We shall be like Him!”  We will be rendered perfect just as He is perfect!

Which brings us to the other side to this coin.  Because God is perfect, He will and must keep His word!  He said he would judge sinners, so He will.  But He also, as early as Genesis 3:16, promised to provide a Savior, and He has done just that!  While His perfections doom all who fall short of them, His perfections also provide grace to all who come under the shadow of His wings!

How can you say no?

Elana Schor wrote an unhelpful article titled “Christianity on Display at the Capitol Riot Sparks New Debate” for the Associated Press (AP) on Thursday. It’s an insubstantial dollop of slumgullion ostensibly on “Christian Nationalism” that throws together equally unhelpful quotes from Christian leaders without once defining Christian Nationalism (or nationalism); or making distinctions between patriotism and “Christian Nationalism”; or between those who merely use Christian rhetoric and true Christ-followers; or between the rioters and the thousands of Americans—including many Christians—who were at the protest but had nothing to do with the riot.

Schor cites Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission:

[W]hen [Russell Moore] saw a “Jesus Saves” sign displayed near a gallows built by rioters, “I was enraged to a degree that I haven’t been enraged in memory. This is not only dangerous and unpatriotic but also blasphemous, presenting a picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ that isn’t the gospel and is instead its exact reverse.”

Moore is right, a sign saying “Jesus Saves” displayed near a gallows built by lawless rioters is dangerous and blasphemous. But why does this sign enrage him more than when former constitutional law professor and then-president of the United States Barack Obama cited Scripture as his justification for endorsing the legal recognition of homoerotic unions as marriages? Why does it enrage him more than when self-identifying Christians currently serving in Congress defend the legalized extermination of humans in the womb? Why does the lawless rioters’ signage enrage Moore more than what our elected leaders say and do?

Just calling oneself a Christian no more makes a person a Christian than does a man calling himself a woman make him one.  Scripture teaches that “A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.  Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.”

Moore and others claim that the image of Christianity is now marred in the view of leftists, many of whom already hate Christianity and seek its eradication from public life. But is that true? Or are leftists cynically exploiting the indefensible acts of those who falsely claim to be Christ-followers? Are leftists using the signage and rhetoric of anarchists who bear no resemblance to true Christ-followers to further cow cowardly Christians and to turn them against courageous Christians like Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton?

Who is doing more damage to the church (small “c”): the Capitol rioters or the heretical wolves in sheep’s clothing who have infiltrated every denomination and are corrupting doctrine and leading flocks astray, including the Southern Baptist Convention? Some will argue that both groups damage the cause of Christ, which is true, but which should enrage Christians more?

Perhaps leftists hate—not the rioters—but those genuine Christians whom they can now slander by associating them with the acts of anarchists. And perhaps there’s another reason leftists hate genuine Christians.

Jesus forewarned Christians about their fate, but American Christians blinded by the freedom we have long enjoyed, can’t see the hatred Christ foretold even as they are cursed and cancelled:

 If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.  If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

Schor bizarrely writes this in an article ostensibly about Christianity on display at the Capitol riots:

In the video shot by a New Yorker reporter during the siege, the fur-hatted Jacob Chansley—known as the “QAnon shaman” for his alignment with the conspiracy theory as well as his self-described spiritual leanings–delivered a prayer thanking God “for allowing the United States of America to be reborn.” While Chansley spoke, other rioters fell silent in apparent participation.

Jacob Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, was the tattooed, furry-chested, jammy-wearing, buffalo-horn accoutered anarchist who strutted into the Senate chambers with a cocky grin on his face. Why he is included in an article purportedly about Christianity is baffling. If crazy QAnon ideas have infiltrated churches as heretical views of sexuality have, they must be purged. In my experience, however, heretical views of sexuality are far more prevalent in churches than are QAnon ideas and far more dangerous.

Chansley is a “shaman” who follows his own syncretistic religion that includes elements of Eastern mysticism, chakras, auric/planetary frequencies, hallucinogenic drug use, and a weird movement called Ministry of Tomorrow (MOT).

Chansley was first introduced at age 11 to hallucinogenic drugs by his father, which raises an issue few are addressing: the importance of fathers. How many anarchists on the left and right grew up with good fathers in the home?

So, while Chansley may be a Trump-supporter, he is definitely not a typical hardworking conservative Trump supporter or a theologically orthodox Bible-believing Christian. He is, however, definitely a lunatic. The fact that some lunatics support Trump has as little to do with Trump as the fact that there surely are lunatics who support Biden. After all, lunatics and anarchists have to support somebody. Here’s more from Chansley/Angeli, but I don’t recommend wasting your time.

The fact that Chansley “delivered a prayer thanking God” during which “other rioters fell silent” does not mean Chansley is a Christian. Surely Schor knows that Muslims pray, Hindus pray, shamans pray, and Christian heretics pray, and they all think they’re praying to God.

Theologian John Piper offers a helpful explanation of the relationship between the diverse loves of Christians. The first love for Christ-followers must always be for Christ and his kingdom:

[N]ever feel more attached to your fatherland or your tribe or your family or your ethnicity than you do to the people of Christ. Everyone who is in Christ is more closely and permanently united to others in Christ, no matter the other associations, than we are to our nearest fellow citizen or party member or brother or sister or spouse.

But, Piper explains, many of our lesser loves have value too:

God means for us to be enmeshed in this world. We’re “not of the world,” Jesus says, but we are in the world, and we are supposed to be in it. … We may be in a city, a state, a country, and if I ask, “What is patriotism in this enmeshment?” my answer is that patriotism is a kind of love for fatherland — and I mean fatherland in a very general sense. It could be a city (Minneapolis), or a state (Minnesota), or a country (US, Brazil, China, Nigeria), or a tribe (Ojibwe, Navajo, Fulani, Kachin). And that love for these enmeshments, these belongings, is different from the general love that Christians have for everybody or for the whole earth. …

So, it seems to me that this is good, and that the goodness is implied in the Bible, and God created us to be in skin, in languages, in families, in cultures. He doesn’t mean for us to despise our skin or our language or our culture, but rather to be at home in them, and to feel good about them — of course, we have to add — up to a point. They’re all sinful, and so we never give them absolute allegiance. We never cease to be exiles and sojourners, even in our families and tribes and ethnicities — indeed, in our own bodies. …

In the end, Christ has relativized all human allegiances, all human loves. Keeping Christ supreme in our affections makes all our lesser loves better, not worse. Under his flag, it is right to be thankful to God that we have a fatherland, a tribe, a family, an old pair of slippers that just fit right.

The challenge for Christians in this time of turmoil and growing persecution is to hold fast to the whole counsel of God, rooting out heresy of all kinds; to proclaim the whole counsel of God even when the world hates us; and to come alongside those who speak truth in the public square and are mocked for doing so. We have no biblical warrant for speaking truth only when we’re guaranteed doing so will be cost-free.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/audio_Were-the-Capitol-Rioters-Christians.mp3

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This is how it’s going down, my friends—the eradication of speech rights for conservatives, that is. The stage was set years ago when “hate speech” laws were passed.

The Left argues that any rhetoric that is or may be in any distant way at any time related to acts of violence should be banned. So, if I say that volitional homosexual acts and relationships are abhorrent to God as Scripture teaches, and a lone, crazed, alienated, Godless sociopath or a few hundred alienated fatherless, Godless anarchists—people who may or may not have read my words—commit acts of heinous violence against homosexuals—my words should be banned. Of course, the banning of my words necessarily requires the banning of God’s Word as well as the words of any theologically orthodox Christian since the inception of the church.

If I say that humans born with healthy, normally functioning penises are male and can never be female, and some man deceived into having sex with a man who pretends to be a woman kills the deceiver, my expression of a moral proposition must be banned.

When Lila Rose, founder of the pro-life organization Live Action, tweeted, “Abortion is violence,” abortionist Dr. Leah Torres tweeted back this:

This is violent rhetoric. It is objectively false and meant to incite others to commit crimes against clinics, patients, and health care providers. This is what domestic terrorism looks like.

Note the three arguable claims Torres makes: 1. She says Rose’s claim is false, 2. She says Rose’s claim is meant to incite others to commit violent crimes, 3. She says Rose’s tweet constitutes domestic terrorism. How convenient that those claims are precisely the type of claims leftists now say are not protected by the First Amendment. See how that works?

Torres is also the author of this since-deleted tweet:

You know fetuses can’t scream, right? I transect the cord [first] so there’s really no opportunity, if they’re even far enough along to have a larynx.

She later claimed the “cord” was not referring to babies’ vocal cords but, rather, to their umbilical cords. So much better. So much less violent.

Those with eyes to see recognize that leftists are using their special skill in manipulating language—also known as sophistry—to turn good into evil and protected speech into violence requiring censorship.

Leftists argue that saying the election was “stolen” should be banned because some far-right anarchists who hold similar views engaged in violence. Therefore, a few words about the phrase “stolen election”—the newest bugbear used by dishonest leftists to crush the civil rights of conservatives—are in order.

The claim that “an election was stolen”—you know, like Hillary Clinton has claimed for four years—means that an election lacked integrity. Some may claim it was stolen via, for example, Russian interference, or algorithmic manipulation, or ballot-harvesting, or voting irregularities regarding signatures, or unconstitutional changes in election requirements, or the counting of late ballots, or Big Tech’s censorship of the Biden crime family’s corruption that likely affected votes, or dead people voting, or a combination of shady acts by shady actors. Someone needs to tell the liars and paranoiacs in the Democrat Party that the term “stolen election” is not a code word for “attack the Capitol.”

If, however, “stolen election” is a secret code word used to initiate violent lawlessness, then surely Hillary Clinton should be thrown in the slammer—a lot. Here are two of her many seditionist/insurrectionist statements:

You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you.

and,

[T]here was a widespread understanding that this election [in 2016] was not on the level. We still don’t know what really happened. … you don’t win by 3 million votes and have all this other shenanigans and stuff going on and not come away with an idea like, “Whoa, something’s not right here.

The fact that her alleged attempts to incite insurrection and/or sedition failed shouldn’t matter. The law prohibits even attempts to incite insurrection or sedition.

Trump and many other Americans said the election was “stolen” in the sense that myriad dubious acts took place that cast doubt on the fairness and integrity of the election. Some anarchists—angry about a boatload of corrosive leftist words and deeds, including election malfeasance—breached the Capitol. Therefore, leftists argue, anyone who attended the pro-Trump protest or voted for Trump must be banned from all social media, kicked out of elected office, lose their private sector jobs, or never be hired. Social media newbie Parler must lose all access to the Internet. Americans must lose their medical insurance and recording contracts.

Via a Royal Proclamation, Randall Lane, Forbes Magazine editor, has threatened to harm any company that hires Kayleigh McEnany, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyanne Conway, Stephanie Grisham, or Sean Spicer—Trump’s former press secretaries:

Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We’re going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.

He actually wrote, “Let it be known.” Can the left get any more arrogant and oppressive? Rhetorical question.

Trump (again, like Hillary before him) and many decent, law-abiding citizens claimed the election was “stolen.” Some far-right anarchists also believe the election was stolen. Those far-right anarchists stormed the Capitol. Ergo, in the mad, mad, mad, mad world of cynical leftists, Trump is responsible for the storming of the Capitol. Anyone who attended the protest is responsible for the violence—including even those grandmas who abhor violence and didn’t know the violence was happening. Anyone who has prepared food for Trump is responsible because they helped sustain the life of a man who caused a 90-minute seditious violent protest. Anyone who sold food to anyone who prepared food is responsible for the violence. And any of Trump’s kids’ college friends who may have met Trump and thought he was not Hitler is responsible for the violence—obviously.

So, why aren’t YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter being tossed off the Internet, since all were used to organize both the Capitol riots and the BLM riots of 2020?

Why isn’t Kamala Harris who didn’t condemn BLM violence until late August, three months after it began, being accused of fomenting violence?

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi waited until three months after the BLM riots began to condemn them, did she facilitate violence and property destruction through her silence?

What about Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the inaccurate, leftist 1619 Project, who said in the middle of the BLM riots that “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.” Was she guilty of inciting more property-destruction?

The goal of leftists isn’t really to prevent violence. Appeals to thwarting violence are merely stratagems for preventing the dissemination of ideas leftists hate. They must link ideas they hate to violence in order to undermine foundational American principles. How do I know? Because the linguistic ground is shifting. We are now hearing calls for banning or “reining in” “disinformation,” “misinformation,” and discourse that “harms,” because—the argument goes—such information may lead to violence.

AOC recently said,

We’re going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation.

So, who determines what constitutes “disinformation and misinformation”? Remember Dr. Leah Torres calling Lila Rose’s statement “false”—in other words, disinformation or misinformation? And remember when just before the election CNN asserted—without conducting any investigation—that the New York Post story about Hunter and Joe Biden was “disinformation,” and then conveniently, after the election, declared it a legitimate news story?

If leftist rhetoric about violence, disinformation, misinformation, harm, and hate leads eventually to imprisonment of dissidents—i.e., conservatives—no problem. All conservatives need to do to avoid the inconvenience of imprisonment or “enlightenment camps” is agree with Big Brother, take some Soma, burn some books, and shut up.

At least leftist rhetoric won’t lead to violence—will it?

The arc of the shady leftist universe is long, convoluted, and bends toward injustice, tyranny, and a senile old man who’s shuffling around looking for his moral compass and a milkshake.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/audio_Leftists-Exploit-Violence-to-Cancel-Conservatives-.mp3

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On July 10 at Walled Lake Western High School in Michigan, popular teacher Justin Kucera who taught AP World History and coached varsity baseball and basketball and who by all accounts never brought his politics into his teaching or coaching was fired for tweeting, “I’m done being silent. Donald Trump is our president.” Meanwhile,

Paulette Loe, a now-retired Walled Lake Western teacher, encouraged students to read an article from the Atlantic about “how to beat Trump” while still employed. Nicole Estes, a kindergarten teacher in the district, called Trump a “sociopath” and a “narcissist” on Facebook in 2016 and is still employed at Keith Elementary School [also in Walled Lake Consolidated school district].

It should be unbelievable that a teacher could be fired from a government school for expressing his support for a sitting president while indoctrinators are free to bring their politics into the classroom regularly with no fear of retribution. Sadly, this is now the new normal.

Twelve years ago when I was a member of the English Department at Deerfield High School on Chicago’s North Shore working full-time in the writing center, teachers Elliott Hurtig and Jeff Berger-White were teaching the repugnant play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and Hurtig was also teaching the historically inaccurate Laramie Project, both plays of which espoused politically “progressive,” morally regressive views of homosexuality.

Setting aside the egregious obscenity in Angels in America, I discussed with a purportedly Catholic writing center colleague the ethical problem of teachers presenting resources from only one side of the debate on this most controversial cultural issue. I made the case that in an educational environment, teachers have an obligation to present resources from opposing voices as well. She responded that because she was absolutely sure opposing voices—that is, conservative voices—were wrong, they shouldn’t be allowed to be presented to students.

This is the kind of presumptuousness that has long poisoned education in America from elementary schools through colleges and universities, and has created a dissolute and destructive culture. Leftists demand absolute autonomy and arrogate to themselves the right to indoctrinate other people’s children because they have unilaterally concluded that their political and moral beliefs are objectively true, and opposing views are false. From kindergarten on up, leftists are indoctrinating other people’s children with their arguable leftist beliefs on homosexuality, opposite-sex impersonation, race, sex, American history, and presidential politics with no negative repercussions.

In his essay “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mills presciently warns about the very arrogance infecting today’s “educators” hell-bent on imposing their beliefs on vulnerable, ideologically malleable students:

The rules which obtain among themselves appear to them self-evident and self-justifying. … People are accustomed to believe, and have been encouraged in the belief …  that their feelings … are better than reasons, and render reasons unnecessary. The practical principle which guides them to their opinions on the regulation of human conduct, is the feeling in each person’s mind that everybody should be required to act as he, and those with whom he sympathises, would like them to act. No one, indeed, acknowledges to himself that his standard of judgment is his own liking; but an opinion on a point of conduct, not supported by reasons, can only count as one person’s preference; and if the reasons, when given, are a mere appeal to a similar preference felt by other people, it is still only many people’s liking instead of one. … his own preference … is not only a perfectly satisfactory reason, but the only one he generally has for any of his notions of morality, taste, or propriety.

In a recent appearance on Mark Levin’s program Life, Liberty & Levin, Dr. John Ellis, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of German Literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz, chairman of the California Association of Scholars, and author of Literature Lost: Social Agendas and the Corruption of the Humanities and The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, the Damage It Does, and What Can Be Done discussed the root cause of the cultural “shout downs” and riots:

The real problem is way behind the scenes in the classrooms, which the public never sees. … you’ve had a very long campaign of converting the universities into one party campuses. If you go back 50 years … there were 3 left-of-center professors to 2 right-of-center professors. … that’s consistent with a very healthy debate between the left and the right on campus. But by … 1999, a study shows 5 to 1. … By another five to six years later, it’s gone to 8 to 1, and the current studies … coming out now, it’s something like 13 to 1. There’s every reason to believe that that’s getting more extreme all the time because one of these studies looks to the junior ranks—assistant professors, associate professors—and found that the ratio there, left to right, is 48 to 1.  … The hiring being done now is at the rate of about 50 to 1. … So, you’re going to wind up with a complete monoculture within a short period of time. And a one-party campus is a campus that’s dysfunctional. …

The campus is so far left and so irrational now, and it’s leftism that is poisoning the culture. One profession after another is being essentially corrupted. … It’s totally poisoned journalism. It’s poisoned the teaching in the high schools because the high school teachers are all trained on college campuses

Ellis also suggests that parents who continue to send their children to colleges and universities that are in the business of poisoning culture are part of the problem:

Parents have a very fixed attitude, derived from the past, that sending their kids to college is a first rate way to launch them into a life and a career, and then there’s the fact that those great names of the institutions of higher learning of Harvard, Yale, Columbia … are very, very impressive. It casts a kind of spell over the public. They really cannot believe … that what was so glorious is now in fact no longer there.

Conservatives often ask what they can do to help restore health to our ailing culture. Here’s one thing they can do: Don’t send their children to colleges and universities that have “monocultures,” and through those monocultures, poison culture.

Stop being impressed by the worldly accolades poured on the polluted Ivies that now oppose their original mission statements, mottos, logos, and seals. Harvard long ago rejected its original mission statement:

Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.

The Princeton University shield once depicted an open Bible inscribed with “VET NOV TESTAMENTUM,” that signified the Old and New Testaments; a ribbon above the Bible that said, “VITAM MORTUIS REDDO,” which means, “I restore life to the dead”; and a ribbon below the shield with the words “DEI SUB NUMINE VIGET,” which mean, “Under God’s power she flourishes.” Such expressions today would be an embarrassment to the faculty and a trigger to most students.

Dartmouth College’s original motto was “VOX CLAMANTIS IN DESERTO,” which is translated as “A voice crying out in the wilderness,” an allusion to Scripture about preparing the world for Christ. Ironically, Dartmouth is now a cacophonous voice creating wilderness out of the semi-tamed culture Christianity created.

When teachers and college professors preach their leftist sermons in schools, not only do they indoctrinate, but they also leave dissenters at the mercy of social tyrants. In other words, government school preachers and college professors fuel bullying. In “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mills writes,

Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first … chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough: there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence: and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.”

You know there’s a problem when a left-leaning site like the satirical website the Onion skewers the close-minded propaganda that leftists identify as “education” as it did in a post titled “College Encourages Lively Exchange of Idea”:

As an institution of higher learning, we recognize that it’s inevitable that certain contentious topics will come up from time to time, and when they do, we want to create an atmosphere where both students and faculty feel comfortable voicing a single homogeneous opinion. … Whether it’s a discussion of a national political issue or a concern here on campus, an open forum in which one argument is uniformly reinforced is crucial for maintaining the exceptional learning environment we have cultivated here.(emphasis added for fun).

Leftists are fond of saying that free speech does not guarantee freedom from consequences. They fail to acknowledge that if those consequences are loss of employment, First Amendment speech protections are, in effect, nullified. And we all know, leftists couldn’t care less.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Education-in-a-Pro-Propaganda-Culture_podcast_01.mp3

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I and others have been shouting from our virtual rooftops for over a decade that there is no greater threat to First Amendment protections than that posed by the subversive “LGBTQ” movement. Can conservatives not yet see the end of the short pier toward which GOP leaders have long been pushing them? Really?

(Im)moderate Republicans, Libertarian-leaning Republicans, Republicans with dollar signs rather than Scripture reflected in their myopic eyes have been pushing conservatives toward the end of the short pier, hoping that either spines will crumble or conservatives will tumble into the dark waters. Supremacist Court Justice/lawmaker Neil-the-Usurper-Gorsuch just gave conservatives a huge shove toward the watery abyss.

U.S. Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) is “fine” with Gorsuch’s Law—or as some euphemistically call it, a “Supreme Court decision.” U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he’s “not disappointed by Gorsuch’s decision:”

“It’s the law of the land. And it probably makes uniform what a lot of states have already done. And probably negates Congress’s necessity for acting.”

No siree, can’t have Congress legislating, especially on controversial issues. “Let unelected Supreme Court justices make law. They’re accountable to no one,” say our cowardly lawmakers.

Conservatives get all giddy with chills running up their legs when homosexuals like Guy Benson, Dave Rubin, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Brandon Straka express Republican-ish views. “Oh gosh, the cool kids like us, they really like us!”

Meanwhile, those smart, articulate, good-looking homosexuals seek to change the Republican Party from within—like a cancer or a Guinea worm (am I allowed to call it the Guinea worm any longer?). We welcome camels into the tent at our peril.

We shouldn’t forget U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) who supported the radical redefinition of marriage to include intrinsically non-marital homoerotic unions. Did Portman defend his betrayal of the Republican Party and biblical truth with rational arguments? Nope. He said because his son is homosexual, he now supports anti-marriage. If there’s a conflict between faith and sexual license, sexual license has got to win—says Portman. Let’s hope Portman doesn’t have any polyamorous kids.

And then there’s U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who, along with his father, pushed for and passed a Florida law that legalized adoption by homosexuals without even a piddly carve-out for faith-based adoption agencies. In other words, Gaetz does not recognize that children have an inherent right to be raised by a mother and a father. Either mothers or fathers are expendable in the foolish view of Gaetz.

When Gaetz was on The View, he defended cross-sex passers serving in the military: “We shouldn’t be banning anybody based on who they are or who they love. That’s not the kind of Republican I am.” That’s leftist rhetoric that serves leftist social, moral, and political ends.

The ways socially and morally ignorant Republicans seek to transform the party are ways that pertain to our most cherished and fundamental freedoms. The result will be government schools unfit for children, loss of parental rights, loss of religious freedom, loss of speech rights, loss of association rights, loss of private spaces, loss of Christian colleges’ accreditation status, and the destruction of women’s sports.

Here’s an idea: How about those with conservative fiscal, environmental, and foreign policy views but liberal views on social policy join the Democratic Party and try to change it from within on fiscal, environmental, and foreign policy rather than  remain in the Republican Party and seek to change its position on sexual matters.

Some “socially liberal” Republicans who don’t really respect Scripture abuse Scripture to shame conservatives, saying “Well, Jesus spent time with sinners.” True enough, he did, and we should emulate what he said when spending time with sinners (which, btw, means all humans).

When with sinners, Jesus called them to repent and follow him. He didn’t affirm their sin. I can’t recall a single Bible story in which Jesus said kudos to a sinner for his sin. I suppose it’s possible that God affirmed someone’s homoeroticism before he burned them up at Sodom and Gomorrah—nah.

To love others with Christ’s love is to model his interactions with the lost. He called them to repent and follow him. There is no evidence that he went around praising those who spread lies about sexuality and marriage as Benson and Portman do.

I hope people can hear the frustration in my virtual voice as I say, what the heck is wrong with Christians who have been rationalizing their cowardly silence and capitulation for decades? Those with eyes to see have been writing for decades that First Amendment protections for Christians are slowly eroding, and just now with Gorsuch’s intellectually and constitutionally indefensible act of lawmaking, Christians are fretting about their potential loss of rights.

When “sexual orientation” and then “gender identity” were added to anti-discrimination policies and laws; when public schools started attacking conservative beliefs as “homophobia” through “anti-bullying” programs; when public school teachers started presenting pro-homosexuality novels, articles, essays, and movies to other people’s children; when SCOTUS jettisoned sexual differentiation as a constituent feature of legal “marriage”; when schools sexually integrated bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports; when foster care and adoption agencies lost the right to place children with only heterosexual couples; when schools started firing Christians for refusing to refer to boys as girls or vice versa, Christians largely said nothing. Now courts are starting to remove children from homes if their parents don’t affirm “trans”-cultic practices. And today, when the word “sex” is essentially redefined in the Civil Rights Act by six hubristic SCOTUS justices, what will Christians do?

Do Christians ever ask themselves what kind of culture and what kind of oppression their silence, their capitulation, their spinelessness over the past 10, 20, or 30 years is bequeathing to their children? What will it take for Christians to wake up and do something? When their children can’t send their kids even to private schools free of cross-dressers anymore, will they say something? When the state takes their own grandchildren away from their parents, will they say something? When their daughter or granddaughter has a double-mastectomy at age 13, will they say something? Please, tell me, what will it take for Christians to be part of the solution?

Oh wait, I know when they’ll start pulling their weight. They’ll start right after we get almighty tax policy just right.

Long before the Gorsuch decision, the erasure of public recognition of sex differences was made inevitable by the ignorant decisions made all over the country to add the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to “anti-discrimination” policies and laws. These inclusions in laws and policies—including in school policies—were aided and abetted by the silence of conservatives, and with those inclusions there now remains no way to maintain any sex-segregated spaces for anyone.

If, for example, a university allows a confused biological man called “Sue” to use the women’s locker room, there remains no rational or legal way to prohibit a normal biological man called “Bob” from using it as well. The university can’t say, “Bob may not use it, because he’s a biological man.” First, they’ve already allowed another biological man—i.e., “Sue”—to use it, and second, such a prohibition would constitute discrimination based on sex. And the university couldn’t say “Bob may not use the women’s locker room, because he’s not ‘transgender.'” Such a prohibition would constitute discrimination based on “gender identity.”

The intellectual and legal groundwork has been laid and fertilized for the eradication of all public recognition of sexual differentiation everywhere for everyone, which means no private spaces anywhere for anyone. And in those private spaces, children are likely to see biological men with gravity-defying breasts and the usual male apparatus (yes, they do that). Spend a moment ruminating on that disturbing image, for that is where conservative fear of being labeled “hater” has led us.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Self-Identifying-Republicans-Are-Destroying-Liberty.mp3

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Written by John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera

Forty years ago, a group of evangelical leaders and scholars took a clear and unapologetic stand on a fundamental tenet of the faith.

This month marks the fortieth anniversary of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, which was signed in October of 1978 by more than 200 evangelical leaders, including R.C. Sproul, J.I. Packer, and Francis Schaeffer.

The Chicago Statement was not only a landmark document in evangelical history, it played an important role in the work of the late Chuck Colson and our ongoing work at the Colson Center.

Here’s a bit of history to set the stage. If there was one phrase that summed up the ethos of the late 1960s and early 1970s, it was “Question Authority.” The phrase emerged out of opposition to the Vietnam War and Watergate, but then it spread well beyond the world of politics into various arenas of culture, even into the church.

We know, for example, the story of how liberal “mainline” churches doubted the Bible and its claims of supernatural miracles. But the culture-wide distrust of authority crept into Evangelicalism, as well, which has—given its diversity and independent congregations—kind of always struggled with ecclesial authority.

Phrases such as “Christianity isn’t a religion; it’s a relationship” entered the lexicon and became an excuse for some to radically privatize the faith, to reject historical teaching, and even embrace new ways of reading and interpreting the Bible.

For instance, a survey of students at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the mid-70s found that the longer a student attended the seminary, the less likely he was to agree with the statement “Jesus is the Divine Son of God and I have no doubts about it.”

In 1971, messengers at the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting passed a resolution that supported abortion, not only in cases of rape and incest, but also in cases where there is “clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

This was just two years before Roe v. Wade.

I don’t mean to pile on the SBC. First, by no means were they alone… this stuff was in the air. Second, the SBC has since experienced quite a renewal, which is at least partly due to the Chicago Statement.

The Statement was about more than a particular way of reading and interpreting the Bible: It was an unequivocal assertion of biblical authority over the lives of believers and the Church, in an age when all authority was being questioned.

It was an unequivocal assertion that Christianity, while it does involve a relationship with God, is also a “religion,” in the original sense of the Latin word “religio,” which means “bond,” “obligation,” and “reverence.” It’s a faith, in other words, with content, not just a warm fuzzy feeling.

Anyone who followed Chuck Colson can see how he was indebted to this effort. For him, Christianity was objectively true, and that truth could be communicated to others, both inside and outside the Church.

And the primary way God had revealed truth to His Church was the Scriptures. Not personal experience, and certainly not popular intellectual fads.

The need to reassert biblical authority may be more urgent today than it was forty years ago. When we hear things like “the Gospel is about radical inclusivity,” that just means the Gospel is being defined without Scripture. When we hear that “Jesus would’ve baked the cake,” that Jesus is not the Jesus of Scripture.  When we hear, “It’s a relationship, not a religion” still, that often means we are ignoring the significant portions of Scripture that describe the people God is calling out to restore and activate for His Kingdom.

This article originally posted at BreakPoint.org

Chicago Tribune columnist, lifestyle expert, and purveyor of deep thoughts, Heidi Stevens, is taking singer Kelly Clarkson to task  for Clarkson’s admission that she spanks her children. Stevens makes her argument by use of an analogy (“Progressives” really need to work on that skill). Stevens wrote the following:

“Here’s where we play swap-the-person-getting-hit. Let’s say you’re talking to a friend, relative, neighbor, acquaintance from church — any grown-up, really — and you get on the topic of marriage. Let’s say you’re exchanging anecdotes about the ups and downs, the frustrations, the disagreements that occur when you’re sharing a home and a life with a spouse. And let’s say the grown-up tells you, “I just slap my wife when she’s really upsetting me.” Or, “When I really want to teach my husband a lesson, I hit him.” I would find a lot wrong with that. I think most of us would. No amount of domestic violence is socially acceptable. We frown on all of it. Why on earth should we accept a lower bar for children?… I’m frankly astounded that it’s not outlawed in the United States.”

How about we now play swap-the-consequence-for-misbehavior.

Let’s say you’re talking to any grown-up and you get on the topic of marriage. And let’s say the grown-up tells you, “I just put my wife in time-out when she’s really upsetting me. She must sit on a stool facing the wall until I tell her time-out is over. If she gets up before time-out is over, I physically return her to the stool.” Or, “when I really want to teach my wife a lesson, I take away her television privileges or prohibit her from leaving the house for two weeks other than to go to the grocery store or take the kids to school.” Or, “if my wife says something rude, I require her to apologize and give me a hug.  Then I draw up a behavior contract that establishes that further disrespect will result in the loss of her cell phone.”

I would find a lot wrong with that. I think most of us would. No amount of domestic oppression is socially acceptable. Why on earth should we accept a lower bar for children? I’m frankly astounded that time-out, grounding, compulsory apologies, and behavioral contracts are not outlawed in the United States.

It should be obvious that it’s silly at best to compare methods of discipline of children to modes of conduct between husbands and wives.

With faith-filled fervor, Stevens cited glowingly a 2016 meta-analysis of spanking research and solicited quotes from lead author Elizabeth  T. Gershoff who says that the “evidence against spanking is one of the most consistent findings in the field of psychology.” Curiously, Stevens doesn’t cite any criticism of Gershoff’s meta-analysis, like one appearing in Scientific American in which Melinda Wenner Moyer wrote this:

[A]lthough the new analysis did attempt to separate the effects of spanking from those of physical tactics that are considered harsher, research has shown that many parents who spank also use other forms of punishment—so “you’re still not really isolating spanking from overall abusiveness,” explains Christopher Ferguson, a psychologist at Stetson University in Florida. In other words, the negative effects associated with spanking could still be driven in part by parents’ use of other tactics.

The new analysis also did not completely overcome the lumping problem: It considered slapping and hitting children anywhere on the body as synonymous with spanking but these actions might have distinct effects. Some research also suggests that the effects of spanking differ depending on the reasons parents spank, how frequently they do so and how old children are at the time—so the conclusion from the meta-analysis that spanking itself is dangerous may be overly simplistic. “I think it’s irresponsible to make exclusive statements one way or another,” Ferguson says.

Finally, the associations reported in the meta-analysis between spanking and negative outcomes did not control for the potential mediating effects of other variables, which raises the chicken-or-egg question: Are kids spanked because they act out or do they act out because they are spanked—or both? (Even longitudinal studies don’t completely resolve this problem, because behavioral problems may worsen over time regardless of spanking’s effects.) To rule out the possibility that spanking is only associated with bad outcomes because poorly behaved kids are the ones getting spanked, researchers can use statistical methods to control for the influence of temperament and preexisting behavioral characteristics—but these methods are difficult to employ in meta-analyses, and the new analysis did not attempt such a feat. Ferguson did try to control for the effects of preexisting child behavior in a 2013 meta-analysis he published of the longitudinal studies on this issue; when he did, “spanking’s effects became trivial,” he says. As a further demonstration of the importance of careful statistical controls, Robert Larzelere, a psychologist at Oklahoma State University, and his colleagues reported in a 2010 study that grounding and psychotherapy are linked just as strongly to bad behavior as spanking is but that all the associations disappear with the use of careful statistical controls. 

For those who have a tad more confidence in Scripture than in woefully unstable social science—which has become the ever-shifting bible of contemporary American culture—here are some words of wisdom from New Testament professor Walter Frederick Adeney who died at age 71 in 1920:

The primitive rigour of the Book of Proverbs is repudiated by modern manners…. people reject the old harsh methods, and endeavor to substitute milder means of correction. No doubt there was much that was more than rough, even brutal, in the discipline of our forefathers. The relation between father and child was too often lacking in sympathy through the undue exercise of parental authority, and society generally was hardened rather than purged by pitiless forms of punishment. But now the question is whether we are not erring towards the opposite extreme… and failing to let our children feel the need of some painful discipline. We idolize comfort, and we are in danger of thinking pain to be worse than sin. It may be well, therefore, to consider some of the disadvantages of neglecting the old-fashioned methods of chastisement. 

A properly administered spanking (e.g., a swat on the bum) is neither an act of violence nor a beating, and children are not adults.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Chicago-Tribune-Columnist-Wants-To-Outlaw-Spanking_01.mp3

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