With the vast number of books, movies, and songs written commiserating the consequences of bad choices (which would include most every Country and Western song written), one would think that young Americans would not need to be told to think carefully about their choices in life.  A popular British band sang, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” not that long ago, but America’s youth apparently never got the memo!  They are being led down the primrose lane to danger and destruction as lambs to slaughter, being told they can live however they wish and suffer no ill consequences. It is, I suppose, another example of human nature’s “it’ll never happen to me” mentality!

The ignorance of the young regarding important life matters is tragic.  It is a fundamental of science that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”  This law is not confined to steel balls suspended in a Newton’s Cradle gadget.  It affects everything we do; from the food we eat to the words we use with each other.  And we are fools indeed if we believe that we can make major life decisions recklessly without suffering any consequences!  It is as certain as the sun rising every morning that the pain and suffering of America’s youth right now is largely the result of their being told they can do whatever they want and that they should not let anyone tell them what they can and cannot do.

Studying predators’ ability to camouflage themselves in their search for dinner is most instructive.  From tiny spiders blending in with their environment, to lions hiding in grass of the same color as their fur, to human hunters who create sophisticated ways to hide from their game, we all understand the purpose of camouflage.  It generally works to the detriment of the prey.  We may joke about the smooth salesman who talks you into buying a car you can’t afford, but the “sales job” being foisted upon America’s youth is not about their money.  It may well cost them their lives!  It has already cost the lives of millions of unborn babies; and those who are behind this sales pitch have no more regard for your 10-year-old than they do for the baby in your womb!

The words “con job” or ”scam” are too kind to be applied to what the Left is doing to America’s children and youth. If another country was destroying our children as the Left is, we would consider it an act of war; yet the prevailing message of cultural leaders and the Media is that the Left, and only the Left, really cares.  American children are plagued by depression, suicide, drug use, violence, and murder as never before in our history but are given no tools with which to deal with their suffering.  The Left has preached for 60 years that there is no God, no truth, no right or wrong, and that people can do as they want sexually without consequences.  So, young people do as one would expect them to do when given such a green light, only to find themselves overwhelmed with trouble and pain they cannot understand or resolve.  Then to add insult to injury the Left gets filthy rich off the misery they have created by legalizing more drugs and selling abortions to kill the babies the nation’s children have produced.

How has this deception been so successful?  How has the Left been able to become wealthy and powerful off the very lives they have been exploiting and destroying?  Tragically, they have employed tactics the Bible has been warning mankind about for thousands of years, and largely by disconnecting America’s youth from the Bible which, if known and followed, would have protected them from the tragedies they are now experiencing.

The Bible is Truth, and abundant research reveals that following its principles generally protects one from the dangers promulgated by the Left, similar to how a thorough knowledge of currency protects one against forgeries.  Christ said, “you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”  He is also personally called “Truth,” meaning that He is the source of all that is true and is in perfect harmony with truth.  To turn one’s back on truth leaves one with only lies to live by, and if the truth “sets you free,” what will lies do?  For starters, look at America’s youth and you will see.  They are slaves to destructive false narratives and addictive behaviors.  The fact that these lies are so hurtful and self-contradictory is lost on them as they have no standard by which to judge what is true, what is real, what is good or what is evil. They flounder along hoping that some new experience will make them happy, give them a reason to live, or fill the inexplicable void in their hearts.

They are told that there is no real meaning in life, and no purpose or consequences for their daily choices, yet they find they have pain, guilt, and confusion.  Told that their sexuality is nothing more than a “bodily function” to be experienced and experimented with for their own pleasure, they do not understand why they feel dirty, used, and disconnected.  Confusing young people by offering them freedom, but giving them license, Leftists place these naïve children, as it were, in the cockpit of a plane flying through dense clouds and tell them to fly like birds!  But, when they crash and burn, it is always  someone else’s fault.

Potentially sealing these young peoples’ doom is the fact that the ones who have abused them have convinced them that Leftism, alone, is virtuous, and through lies and deception have isolated them from the Truth that would bring them life and peace.  Christianity is rarely considered by young people today because Leftists and scorners have maligned Christ and believers and have created inaccurate and damaging caricatures of the faith thus transforming the public perception of Christianity into a parody.  The majority of what the public now sees as Christianity has virtually no relationship whatever to genuine Christianity; but due to most true Christians’ unwillingness to fight back, and the Left’s near monopoly on messaging, millions have been fooled.

Thus, the nation which was founded by “. . . the People, of the United States,” with a clear vision of self- sacrifice for the benefit of “(themselves and their) posterity,” has become a nation of vultures, quite literally sacrificing children for adults’ pleasures and prosperity.  On every hand innocent, vulnerable, and powerless children are victims of Leftist schemes.  Millions have died in the womb, and multitudes more are being groomed and exploited for adults’ deviant pleasures through explicitly sexualized school curricula, and prurient events such as “drag queen story hours.”  In the cases where state governments are awakening to the threats against women and children and institute protections, the predators lurk at the state borders, seeking to lure panicked women into their grasp with death-mobiles, specially equipped vans where young women facing a crisis pregnancy are offered the faux fix of a quick abortion.

It has been said that good people plant trees the shade of which they will not live long enough to enjoy. They simply live for others.  We now live in a day when the Left has managed to convince a large number of people, young and old, that selfishness and leeching off others is somehow virtuous!  The Bible warns, “Woe to those who call good, evil and evil, good.”  We all know better but many are intimidated by the Leftists who sit so powerfully, calling “good” those who yield to their corrupt demands and “evil” all who resist.

And so, we are in what some are calling a “cold” civil war!  We are not competing against well-meaning but misinformed people, but against powerful, well-connected, and formidable adversaries who see children and the weak as prey to be devoured and the population in general as sheep to be shorn.   They display a disgusting elitism that has no place in America.  In their arrogance they consider themselves our superiors, while we exist for their pleasure.  This phenomenon is new to most Americans, but it was very familiar to America’s Founders; and it is understood by those who have lived under Leftism across the globe.   We have no delusions about convincing the Leftists to abandon their wickedness, but we do hope, by God’s grace, to warn the vulnerable so that they might escape.

The great hope of the elites is that through subterfuge and deceit they can gain the power necessary to wield the same control over Americans that President Xi has over the Chinese people, and Putin has over the Russians.  When we consider the incalculable harm they have already done to Americans, especially children, one can only imagine the destruction they would unleash if they were to gain absolute power.  They are not benefactors of America’s youth, they are predators!

It is said that John Wycliffe wrote in his 1382 English translation of the Bible that the “Bible is for a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”  It is not an accident, then, that the first country in history to use biblical principles in formulating its constitution and laws, has provided the greatest individual liberties of any government ever created.   It is also not surprising that as the Bible has been gradually rejected over the last fifty years that the body politic has been flipped upside down.  Government officials now have the power and Individuals have become their prey.  What is evident is that the God of the Bible has a personal interest in individuals, and a critical view of mankind’s governments.  In fact, He promises to one day destroy all human governments to establish His own!  (Know this, generally speaking, any human who seeks to overthrow his government is violating God’s word (Rom. 13:1,2).  Genuine Christians will not be involved in destroying America’s government.  God alone has the authority to do such).

In Ezekiel 34, God address the “Shepherds,” the political and cultural leaders of Israel.   He says, “’Woe to the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves!  Should not the shepherds feed the flocks?  You eat the fat and cloth yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fatlings, but you do not feed the flock.  The weak you have not strengthened, nor have you healed those who were sick, nor bound up the broken, nor brought back what was driven away, nor sought what was lost; but with force and cruelty you have ruled them. . . .” (34:2-4 NKJV).   Thus, we see the heart of God for children, and we see that godless political leaders haven’t changed in three thousand years!  God declares Himself the Protector of the powerless, and He will avenge their abuse at the hands of the political and cultural elite.

Parents,  wake up and protect your children!  And you who abuse these young ones, understand this!  You will not escape the judgment of God!

According to Plato the two most important questions for society is who will teach the children and what is taught to them. That was true 2,500 years ago and it is still true today. Sadly, today there simply is no agreement on who teaches the children and nothing but confusion and wildly different positions on what should be taught.

Therein lies the greatest threat to children in our modern age.

Children are inundated from all sides with conflicting messages. Some say that America is the greatest country to ever exist, while others assert that America has never been great. The United States always rushes aid to areas anywhere in the world that suffers any kind of disaster. Yet we remain reviled by many for greed, corruption and overuse of natural resources. We fought a civil war to free the slaves, leaving hundreds of thousands dead and many more than that disabled. Yet there are a significant number of people who claim we remain a systemically racist nation. Some believe and teach that we should be sexually abstinent until marriage, while others encourage sexual experimentation whenever and with whomever you want, at any age.

In many of our schools it is the dark view of America that is being taught to students. Since 2003 the percentage of Americans who report they are extremely proud of our country fell from 70% to 38% today. For those 18 to 34 years old it’s fallen to 25%. Increasingly, our schools are indoctrinating children with negative messages about our history, about our form of government, about the state of our environment, about racial and sexual injustices. Children are simultaneously becoming hooked on a host of social media platforms which have been designed, intentionally, to be addictive. Much of what we learn about current events is learned through ideologically skewed and biased social media.

Entertainment—television, movies, music, video games—likewise has become a vehicle for promoting a progressive ideology. Even formerly family friendly Disney has become fully woke, promoting race and sex-based agendas. The left leaning tilt of corporate entertainment is now being mimicked by the rest of the corporate world under the guise of ESG (environmental, social, governance).

Government at all levels has adopted one of two polar opposite approaches, progressive vs. populist. The progressives aim for more centralized government control, more socialist policies. The populists favor smaller government, more personal control and more free market polices.

Children do not understand these differences. Not even high school students have brains that are developed sufficiently to effectively sort through the key factors necessary even to understand the differences. The brain continues to grow until about age 25, when the frontal lobe, the center of reason, becomes fully developed. Until then, children tend to be governed by their feelings and are highly vulnerable to suggestion and to manipulation by adults.

Parents today largely are disengaged from their children’s education, involvement with their children’s friends, even with their extra-curricular school activities—other than acting as cab drivers. This leaves the education and influence of their children mostly in the hands of other people. Many parents do not even know what their children are learning in school, other than in very general terms. They may pay no attention to what they are watching on television, what movies they go to, who their friends are or anything about their friends or their friends’ families. Nor do they often have any idea how their children are using the smart phone they gave them or the computers and laptops they use. On average, those between 8 and 28 spend 44.5 hours a week on their digital devices, according to the Center for Parenting Education.

Remember, all during these 44.8 hours per week, as well as in school, or hanging our with their friends, children are being bathed in conflicting information. Conflicting information they are mentally incapable of resolving other than by relying on those who are most influential in their lives. Too often the most influential are peers or teachers whose values and perspectives may not align with those of the parents. Frequently, children remain confused, depressed and anxious as a result of the conflict and chaos that reigns in most elements of our culture.

It is unhealthy for children to live in this state of confusion. Children need clarity, certainty, stability. Our society is increasingly becoming hostile to childhood. In 2020, 12% of children 3 to 17 years old “had reported as having ever experienced anxiety or depression, up from 9% in 2016.” It’s no wonder. Children increasingly are being taught that it’s not even certain they are boys or girls. Instead, the educational trend now is to teach children that doctors guess what sex they are based on how they look at birth. It is up to the child, they say, to determine as they grow older what sex they really are.

One of the lesser-known experiments by Ivan Pavlov involved dogs distinguishing between a circle and an oval. The dog would be rewarded if it pointed to a circle, but punished if it pointed at an oval. The experiment involved gradually changing the oval to look more and more like a circle to see how the dogs reacted. At some point the dogs became confused. Some dogs refused to choose, but others became agitated and anxious, spinning around in circles, barking and yelping. This is what we are doing to our children.

Parents need to retake control of what their children are being taught. We can no longer depend on proxies to do our job.

The most important job of a parent is to provide a stable, safe and secure home. A big part of that is for parents to be actively engaged in what their children are being taught at school, involved in their children’s activities, fully knowledgeable about their children’s friends and their families, and actively involved in supervising their children’s online life. If parents do these things, many of the dangers children face in our culture become somewhat insignificant.

It is especially important to help their children differentiate between right and wrong, between true and false, between good touch and bad touch, between safe people and unsafe people. They need to know the difference between good guys and bad guys. And don’t neglect describing what the wolves look like.

Children need to be raised with clearly understood values, preferably Christian values. If parents do not have a clear understanding of a biblical worldview (less than 10% of Christians do) then they need to educate themselves to pass it along to their children. The Bible identifies three kinds of people: the wise person, the foolish person and the evil person. There are no other kinds. Learn how to identify them, and teach your children to do so as well.

Predators, whether sexual predators or other kinds of predators, tend to target lonely children whose parents are not engaged or whose parents are easily fooled. They capitalize on the confusion of children in order to emotionally manipulate and exploit them. Children whose parents have not provided emotional stability or are uninvolved in the child’s life, are prime targets.

Don’t let your child become one.

We’ve already given Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) a word or two over their confused categories of “ableist language” and “racist language” but the horse we’re beating is not quite dead yet. It’s one thing to stigmatize normal phrases because their connotation or origin supposedly evoke offensive topics, as the Stanford harmful language list did with those two categories. It’s another thing to stigmatize normal phrases because their grammatical structure evokes insensitivity. But believe it or not, academia at the highest level has managed to do just that with the advent of “person-first language.” Grab onto the seat in front of you as we plummet to new depths of ridiculosity.

• “Convict” is politically incorrect. One ought to say “person who was incarcerated.”

• “Immigrant” is harmful language. One ought to say “person who has immigrated” or “non-citizen.”

• “Disabled person” is best left unsaid. One ought to say “person with a disability.”

• “Homeless person” is a no-no. One ought to say “person without housing.”

But why, you ask, are we no longer allowed to use these basic nouns and adjectives in their organic form? Stanford explains that person-first language “helps to not define people by just one of their characteristics.” Apparently, using the noun “convict” defines the convict according to his criminal record, while using the relative clause “person who was incarcerated” emphasizes that there is more to the convict than his criminal record—he is merely a person who has done jail time. Similarly for “immigrant,” etc. Get the picture? In case you didn’t, the EHLI even meticulously spells it out when it addresses “disabled person:” the phrase “implies that the disability defines a person, whereas ‘Person with a disability’ gives the ownership of the disability to the person.”

Sigh. As I said in my earlier analysis of ableist language, I hope you sense the confusion of an average English-speaker striving to justify the way language has worked for, well, forever. Let’s address this assumption that using nouns to refer to people is equivalent to defining them.

The way the world is structured, it is full of categories and subsets. The category of “father” refers to any male who has a child, and if I have a child, I now am a subset of the category “father.” The category of “manager” refers to anyone who supervises employees, so if I run the local grocery store, I am now a subset of the category “manager.” The category “comedian” refers to anyone who is repeatedly making people laugh, and if I am that kind of person, I now am a subset of the category “comedian.”

Now, there may be many other managers in the world besides me. So, if you were asked to pick me out of a crowd—and all you knew was that I was a manager—you wouldn’t be able to single me out without more information. “Manager” is not a definition of me, because there are many other managers besides me and a definition is neither too broad or too narrow for what it’s defining. Furthermore, “manager” isn’t even a defining characteristic of me; I could easily change my occupation status and remain the same kind of person I was before. Rather, when you say that I am a manager, you are saying that I am a particular member of the larger category of “those who supervise employees.”

This is true for many more such words. Saying that someone is an “immigrant” is not “defining” them by their immigration status; it’s just observing that such a person is a member of the larger category of “all people who have changed their country of residence.” Etc., etc. People can belong to zillions of categories without being defined by any of them!

There is no moral difficulty with using our current terms. But now let’s look at what Stanford’s list has revealed with all its politically-correct mumbo-jumbo: person-first language is just bad writing. If I am a firefighter, the “person-first” way to describe me would be as “a person who fights fires.” If I am a thief, my “person-first” designation would be “a person who steals things.” And beware if you are ever a person who patrons a bank, talking to the person who performs the teller’s duties, when a person who likes to steal comes in, demanding cash from all the people who have money. Yikes.

If this reminds you of your seventh-grade English class, it should. We were all coached to not use more words than we need to. Filling your prose with relative clauses—when simple nouns will do just fine—clogs up your writing. So, we all learned, refuse to continue to be the kind of person who does not allow himself to diminish the number of words that he types as he draws up a draft of the assignment that his teacher told him to come up with! In other words, just write concisely.

Let academia continue to obfuscate.

It is simple: good people don’t commit murder. Murderers do!  Multiple mass shootings over the last few years, and especially recently, have caused a great sense of frustration among citizens, yet the only message coming from some politicians is about reducing the number of guns in society. They never address the fundamental issue which is that guns in the hands of good people never cause a problem, and in fact often save lives. Yet law abiding citizens are always the target of Leftists’ gun control laws.

Americans have always had an abundance of firearms. Guns are not the problem. People willing to commit violent crimes is! The problem of mass shootings in America will not be corrected with changes in the laws, but rather with changes in hearts.

The multiple shootings of young people which have occurred over the last few years are worse than tragic. But sadly, they are the logical consequence of a society in denial regarding mankind’s sinfulness and in rejection of God’s authority. From the first murder recorded in Genesis 4 to the recent rampage on the campus of Michigan State University, every one of these killings is a direct assault upon God the Creator and a rejection of His command not to commit murder.

It is irrational to think that we can pick and choose which of God’s commandments we obey and which we flout.  Why would we expect young people to selectively obey God’s 6th commandment when we collectively scorn them all?  Why should young people listen to anything our leaders say when those leaders lie, cheat, steal, and advocate for the killing of the unborn and euthanasia for the elderly? The left has ridiculed America’s founders, the Bible, God, and everyone who promotes historic Judeo-Christian virtues. They then wring their hands in faux dismay when people violate those same virtues. C.S. Lewis got it right when he wrote, “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

We could expand on his point: We deny truth exists yet get angry when people lie. We mock integrity and are overwhelmed by crime. We say “follow your heart” but are then appalled by people’s selfishness. We scorn God and are surprised by the violence and chaos of a godless society.

Do the Leftists who promote expanded drug use, defunding the police, removing God and the Bible from culture, who trash America’s history and replace science with woke nonsense, not understand what they are doing? Are they well-intentioned but mistaken? Sadly, no!  They know exactly what they are doing and why! Their goal is not a better culture with healthier, happier citizens but rather a godless society that becomes so chaotic the citizens plead with them to take control and bring order even if it means totalitarianism.

But we know better because we know God, we love the truth, and we understand how it all ends! Psalm 2 addresses leaders and citizens who think they can free themselves from God’s principles and cast off his sovereign lordship, “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: The Lord shall have them in derision. . . .” And ultimately, He will “dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

We who love God do not fight this battle with the weapons of men, but with truth. While battles rage on, the ultimate victory has already been won. Jesus Christ won it over 2000 years ago with his death on the cross, and His resurrection!

It would be quite humorous, if it weren’t so ironic, to witness Leftists, who hold such power in American culture, pose as martyrs claiming to “speak truth to power!”  No, at the moment it is Christians, who are the butt of comedians’ late-night jokes, who are mocked and scorned on every hand, who are sued for living their convictions, who are speaking “truth to power.”  Every forum of public discourse and power is dominated by the left.  Government, education, the Media, Arts, Hollywood, Big Tech, business associations and more are firmly controlled by Leftists.  It is a testimony to the power of truth that these Leftist powerbrokers are doing everything they can to silence the few dissenting voices that remain, even as those voices have virtually no cultural power!  It may also be evidence that these Leftists know, in spite of their protestations otherwise, that truth is not on their side!

What are we who love and proclaim truth to do?  We must not yield an inch.  We must make no apology for the truth.  We must shun the methods of the Left.  We must live and act with grace. Scriptures are not merely poetic when they proclaim, “the righteous are bold as a lion,” but “the wicked flee when no one pursues,” (Prov. 28:1).

Jesus Christ told His disciples that they are “the salt of the earth.”  Salt has many beneficial uses, one of which is to inhibit decay.  No one can deny that America is in the state of moral decay pushed by the Left.  However, because of our resistance to this decay, we are hated.  Our presence, words, and actions are irritants and even obstacles to the decadence being promoted by influential God-hating Americans.  In contrast to the “men without chests” being created by the Left, Christians reflect the eternal principles and authority of the God who has redeemed us.  So, if we are to inhibit the decay of our culture, in practical terms, how are we to do that?  We cannot change people’s hearts.  God, alone, does that work.  But we can and must proclaim the message of the Gospel and live so as to represent Christ well.  The Apostle Paul told his young protégé, Timothy, to “. . .reprove, rebuke and exhort. . . .” all who would hear him.  These things do not make a person popular, but they do make him faithful and most effective in confronting the decay that is the ongoing result of Adam’s sin.

If you are a born-again Christian, you, too are “the salt of the earth” and have the grave responsibility to oppose the direction of our culture.  You cannot shrug it off as belonging to someone else.  The immorality, violence, and victimization of children we are witnessing is not an accident but the intentional repudiation of God, the Bible, and righteousness, and God has called no one to be spectators of the conflict!  We all have a high calling on our life!  You can’t afford to sit this out.

The confused and addicted all around us do not need “support” or agreement from us to be happy. They will only be happy when they come to agreement with God, repent of their sin, and trust His grace and forgiveness.

This is truly the message of hope every person on earth needs!

If anything G. K. Chesterton wrote is worth quoting once, it’s worth quoting twice. In our recent discussion about the theological and political significance of words, I quoted Chesterton as saying thus:

“If you’re not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you
going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies
always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.”

And as we’ve seen in the world of academia, the Left has recognized that words are the battleground of the mind and advanced into the fray with weapons swinging. Journalism is not far behind.

The Associated Press Stylebook, a preeminent reference guide for English grammar and journalistic principles and style—used by both educators and journalists—has chosen some eyebrow-raising guidelines for how reporters ought to address the topic of abortion in their reports. These guidelines show us, on a much more subtle level, how fiddling with words is fiddling with minds. Let’s look at one specific example in detail: the difference between “unborn baby” and “fetus.” (While this article won’t be using direct quotes from the AP Stylebook, the full text of the abortion topical guide can be accessed here.)

When referring to a baby before he is born, reporters are warned that terms such as “fetus” or “unborn baby” have been politicized by both sides of the issue (pro-life advocates argue that “fetus” devalues a human life, and pro-abortion-access advocates argue that “unborn child” equates abortion with murder). Therefore, the AP counsels us, we are to write with appropriate clarity and sensitivity. But the AP then provides a little more detail about what “appropriate” means.

“Fetus” is preferred in many instances (especially in scientific and medical contexts) when we are discussing a baby after 10 weeks of the mother’s pregnancy. “Embryo” is the appropriate term for a baby up to 10 weeks of the mother’s pregnancy. So when are we allowed to use “unborn baby?” Ahh, that’s a term that we to be used when “fetus” would seem too clinical for the context. E.g., “Sarah loved her unborn fetus more than anyone else in the world” sounds quite weird. So while the AP doesn’t explicitly say so, the examples they provide us seem to indicate what they think is “appropriate:” use the more clinical terms “fetus” and “embryo” in most cases, except for when they sound too clinical for the context, such as a mother loving her unborn baby. Saying “fetus” in such contexts doesn’t evoke the proper emotional reaction.

Yet that’s the whole point! The reason pro-life advocates insist on using the term “murder of an unborn baby” is precisely because saying “demise of a fetus” sounds too clinical! It doesn’t evoke the proper emotional reaction. Think of the difference between saying “the underdeveloped hominoid life form was severed with a sharp dividing instrument” and saying “the little girl was beheaded with an axe.” The more clinical our language, the less we feel natural emotional responses, which is why the abortion industry insists on “terminating pregnancies” instead of “dismembering unborn babies.”

The AP is onto the right principle: we ought to use “unborn baby” when omitting to do so wouldn’t evoke the right emotional response. However, the AP isn’t applying this principle evenly—they recognize the beauty of maternal affection but not the horror of abortion. By writing a topical guide that suggests we use “embryo” and “fetus” as our default terms when writing about abortion, they are suggesting we “clinicalize” a topic that is anything but clinical.

The AP also presents a few other eyebrow-raising guidelines, such as:

• Use “anti-abortion” instead of “pro-life,”
• Use “abortion-rights” instead of “pro-choice,” and
• Use “anti-abortion counseling center” instead of “crisis pregnancy center.”

Yet again, we have stumbled onto the vocabular battlefield and found pairs of competing words fighting over the same subject. And yet again, the difference lies not in the subject we are referring to (we’re talking about the same clinics and procedures either way); the difference lies in the connotations we pin onto it. We might be tempted to give way and just use the politically correct vocabulary, consoling ourselves in our heart of hearts that “we’re referring to the same thing either way,” but we’re not using the same connotations either way. And thus, in the end, we really aren’t meaning the same thing either way.

“Happy holidays” technically refers to the same time of year as does “Merry Christmas”—but removes Christ from the picture. “Transgender” technically refers to the same condition as the phrase “someone who is confused about their sex”—but acquiesces to the lie that sex is mutable. And “termination of a fetus” technically refers to the same procedure as “murder of an unborn baby”—but implies nothing more than a clinical separation of cells, rather than the horrific death by dismemberment or poisoning it really is. Just like “happy holidays” allows us to talk about Christmas without mentioning Christ, this connotation swap allows us to talk about murder without mentioning its horror. It further cements the idea that abortion is benign, first into our vocabularies, and then into our minds. When a whole generation can grow up talking about Christmas without thinking about Christ, or talking about abortion without thinking about murder, the vocabular battle will finally have been won.

And that world will be a scary place.

Is it in the best interest of the child to be raised by a mother who ingested so much alcohol or drugs that it affected the child’s fetal development?

If laboratory tests in a newborn show the presence of drugs in an infant’s blood, urine or other bodily fluids, or if the mother is intoxicated or has controlled substances in her blood prior to or immediately after delivery, forty-two states require that child protective services be notified. Illinois is one of the forty-two. In Illinois, controlled substances detected as present in the infant is considered, on its face, evidence of child neglect. Is this appropriate?

Illinois Representative LaShawn Ford (D-Chicago) does not think so. A bill he introduced for consideration this session of the General Assembly, HB 1468, would remove this provision in Illinois law.

Is Representative Ford right? Should a mother face criminal charges, or lose custody of her child, because she continued to drink alcohol or continued to consume heroin or other controlled substances knowing she was pregnant? Should the motivation of the mother be considered? If she was addicted as opposed to indifferent, should that factor in the decision?

Infants born with fetal alcohol syndrome or with heroin, fentanyl, meth, and many other controlled substances in their system, can face life-long severe problems. The Mayo Clinic lists the problems associated with fetal alcohol syndrome as follows:

“Physical Defects

“Physical defects may include:

• Distinctive facial features, including small eyes, an exceptionally thin upper lip, a short, upturned nose, and a smooth skin surface between the nose and upper lip
• Deformities of joints, limbs and fingers
• Slow physical growth before and after birth
• Vision difficulties or hearing problems
• Small head circumference and brain size
• Heart defects and problems with kidneys and bones

“Brain and Central Nervous Center

“Problems with the brain and central nervous system may include:

• Poor coordination or balance
• Intellectual disability, learning disorders and delayed development
• Poor memory
• Trouble with attention and with processing information
• Difficulty with reasoning and problem-solving
• Difficulty identifying consequences of choices
• Poor judgment skills
• Jitteriness or hyperactivity
• Rapidly changing moods

“Social and Behavioral Issues

“Problems in functioning, coping and interacting with others may include:

• • Difficulty in school
  • Trouble getting along with others
  • Poor social skills
  • Trouble adapting to change or switching from one task to another
  • Problems with behavior and impulse control
  • Poor concept of time
  • Problems staying on task
  • Difficulty planning or working toward a goal”

Many controlled substances reportedly have similar effects on the child. The key to the extent of the consequences to the child is how severe was the damage to the child’s neurological system. If the damage was minimal, the long term consequences to the child will depend on the environment in which he is raised.

Representative Ford partially addresses this. His bill requires the development of a family care plan and details what should be part of the care plan in the event a child is born to a mother who has abused alcohol or drugs. In addition the bill details how the care plan is to be implemented and monitored, what agencies are to be involved, and the collection and analysis of data about babies born affected by alcohol and drugs as well as the families of those children. Maybe this elaborate plan might, in theory, provide some benefit if the child has not suffered significant neurological damage. But what if the child has suffered damage? That remains unaddressed in Rep. Ford’s plan.

The thirty-four page bill goes into substantial detail on how these cases are to be handled. The Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act and The Juvenile Court Act of 1987 are also amended by the bill. In both Acts, Representative Ford proposes to remove the provision that defines as neglected “any newborn infant whose blood, urine, or meconium contains any amount of a controlled substance . . . or a metabolite of a controlled substance . . .”

No more prima facie cases of neglect which simplifies criminal charges and streamlines actions to remove a child from the parent’s custody, or even terminate parental rights.

Why? Who benefits from this? Does the child benefit by keeping a dysfunctional family together? If the child has suffered brain and nerve damage, will a drug addled mother be able to provide even minimal care? The family care plan, if written, implemented, carried out and monitored might allow for a long term improvement in the family. Those are big “ifs” and at what cost if the plan does not work out the way intended? Keeping a child under the care of someone struggling to overcome addiction doesn’t seem to be the best for the child.

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services already is overburdened by its caseload. How will the agency be able to carry out the extra demands this bill would impose?

Simply stated, it will not.

We do not need laws that are more complicated, that require more people and money. We need laws that simplify, that reduce costs. If a mother, knowing that alcohol or drugs can injure the child growing within her, she is either indifferent or addicted and incapable of self-control. In either case, she does not have the self-sacrificing quality it requires to be a parent. With personal discipline or outside intervention she may acquire that quality over time. But it takes time. The child cannot go into hibernation until the mother gets equipped.  Moreover, a child born of an addicted mother has complications far beyond that of a normal child.

The bottom line is the State can’t fix the mother. The State can provide a mechanism to ease the mother’s effort to get treatment, and it can facilitate a foster care system to protect the child while giving the mother a chance to get well. As a last resort, the State can initiate and streamline termination of parental rights. But the State cannot micromanage the lives of individuals.

The best interest of the child is central to the decisions of Child Protective Services, Family Courts, educational institutions, child serving organizations of all kinds. It should be central to the laws involving children that are developed by our legislators.  The child’s best interest is to be raised by a mother and father, in a loving home, preferably a home where Christ is at the center. House Bill 1468 does not advance the interest of any child. It ignores a serious health issue that must be addressed for the wellbeing of mother and child.

This bill, if passed, would put children at greater risk.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to ask your state lawmaker to oppose HB 1468. The many harms that addictions can cause to babies and their families are very real. These harms are serious and could lead to life-threatening illnesses. Urge your lawmaker to protect these babies and instead streamline the foster care and adoption process.

With the beginning of a new Illinois General Assembly, it is imperative that each of us reach out to our state lawmakers to let them know that we are paying attention to their votes and actions.

Illinois State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) has introduced HB 1591 in an attempt to make Illinois a destination for same-sex couples to get a government “marriage” certificate. She and her like-minded friends are fearful that the U.S. Supreme Court may overturn the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision which struck down state bans on same-sex “marriage.” In that case, many states could opt to ban same-sex “marriage” in their state.

HB 1591 will repeal three specific statutes in Illinois’ Marriage Law. These sections are the obstacles for same-sex couples residing in another state who want to marry and then go back to their state with a valid “marriage” license.

The reason Rep. Cassidy wants to repeal 750 ILCS 5/217 is because if a gay couple wants to get “married” here but live in another state that no longer recognizes same-sex “marriage,” their “marriage” would be null and void.

The reason Rep. Cassidy wants to repeal 750 ILCS 5/218 is because currently a judge or pastor has to ask the gay couple residing in another state to provide papers that their state does not ban same-sex marriage.

The reason Rep. Cassidy wants to repeal 750 ILCS 5/219 is because if a judge or pastor marries a same-sex couple knowing they are not supposed to be marrying them, liability for the judge or pastor exists. The repeal of Sec. 219 removes liability for a judge or pastor.

PROBLEM: Rep. Cassidy wants to make Illinois legal for ANY kind of marriage performed in Illinois as long as they live in another state. This bill would allow any and all marriage arrangements not specifically prohibited in our statute.

Secondly, an attorney might also argue that since these laws were repealed, then a brother and sister from Arkansas wanting to marry here would be able to do so even if it is specifically prohibited in Illinois. That is, the attorney would argue that this “brother-sister” Illinois prohibition only applies to Illinois citizens, not those from other states, because Sec 217, 218, and 219 were repealed.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to fill out witness slips online to oppose HB 1591. The Illinois House Judiciary-Civil Committee is set to vote on this bill on Wednesday during their meeting which begins at 9AM.

-Fill out your name, address, email and phone number. Leave everything else blank or put self.
-Highlight “Opponent” and “Record of Appearance Only.”
-Check Terms of Agreement and click Create Slip.

More ACTION:  Click HERE to email your state lawmakers today, urging them to uphold natural marriage and not to cave to the culturally destructive groups that are intent on altering society’s definition and understanding of marriage. Tell them you support God’s definition of marriage, which also happens to be the best for children, families and society. Let them know that with all of the problems we face as a state and nation, the General Assembly should not be harming the institution most essential to the social and economic well-being of society.

Tell them that it is unconscionable to be complicit in the destruction of marriage and family in Illinois. They must hear from us!

Please also pray that God would give wisdom to our state lawmakers. Pray that God would give courage to our lawmakers to do the right thing in the face of tremendous pressure to do otherwise.

The high incarceration rate in America has raised many questions over the years and is one reason used by the Left for demanding radical changes to or even a dismantling of the Nation. They sometimes try to blame America’s Judeo/Christian roots for the problem; however, only a superficial understanding of history allows for such a conclusion.

Yes, America does have an embarrassingly high number of people in prison, but it is simplistic to demand a fundamental transformation of the nation to correct it. To do so ignores the tremendous good America has done for the world, its historic support for the nation of Israel, the creative genius of its people, and the hope it has provided for the down-trodden of all nations. There is only one reason millions of people want desperately to come here: America remains a great beacon of hope and opportunity. So, is America still good, or not? Will God bless us with a great future, or is the end near?

While the causes of America’s crime rate are numerous and too complex to analyze in detail here, I believe that it is safe to say that our liberties are, in fact, one significant factor. People who are free and have minimal outside supervision can, unfortunately, use that freedom for either good or evil! This is a dilemma and begs the questions: does the good America has done warrant patience with its failures, and is the moral and spiritual superstructure upon which the nation was built still strong enough to support a wholesome culture into the future? I, for one, say, “yes” to the first, but struggle with the second. It does, however, raise an important point: people who are free must be worthy of that trust.

America’s Constitution and laws “run” on Judeo/Christian principles and to think those principles can be discarded without bad consequences is foolhardy. Like filling your gas tank up with Kool-Aid! Free people must have both the wisdom to make good choices and the discipline to carry them out. Our second president, John Adams, wrote,

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. 
It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” 

James Madison, considered the “Father of the Constitution,” and the fourth President of the United States, noted that the Constitution requires

“sufficient virtue among men for self-government.”  

So, what is to be done when millions of Americans have become irreligious and immoral?

Does an honest appraisal of the current situation in America suggest that the moral character of the Nation may no longer be sufficiently strong to warrant trusting the Constitution as our governing document?  Do too many people lack the personal character necessary to govern themselves and thus we careen toward anarchy? This possibility is frightening!

There are only two real options to the growing chaos of the nation: The first is Marshall law, or more precisely, tyranny. The Left is doing everything in its power to push us there. While we do not yet know who the real power brokers are behind this movement, they have enlisted thousands of foot soldiers who are under the delusion that somehow good will come from tearing down law and order and putting substantial power in the hands of a small number of people, while breaking the will of anyone who might resist. Those who know history know that tyranny, whether under a king, emperor, general, or comrade is always bad for the people! Give the Leftists credit for dumbing down the public educational system to the point where they could accomplish such miseducation, and shame on America’s parents for allowing it to happen to their children!

The second option would be, in simplistic terms, to cultivate a “moral and religious” people again.

I pause for a moment for the reader to consider those options. I know of no other option available to address the current crisis. Allan Bloom, who was no evangelical Christian, was prescient when he wrote in “The Closing of the American Mind” (1987) that the breakdown of Christianity as America’s common ideology would lead to disaster.

Thus, the question is whether returning to a common, Christianity based ethic is a viable possibility for America, as it is I believe, and as the Founders noted, the only foundation for the liberties the U.S. Constitution provides. This question may send Christians into discussions of theology, eschatology, Calvinism, and a host of other related topics, but I am not sure there is time for much discussion. The enemies of liberty are not at the gate, they are inside the gate and at every level of government. They are, as someone has noted, “psychopaths hungry for power,” and they will not be easily deterred or dislodged. They have created a political landscape where a significant percentage of the electorate is dependent upon them for their daily bread, another portion is beholden to them for their jobs, and a third, rather naïve group, has been deceived into thinking they, the Leftists, are beneficent. With the Media, Hollywood, unions, the entertainment industry, Big Tech, and others supporting their deceptions, they will, in human terms, be difficult to defeat. They are the “Goliath” in the current cultural/political war, but we know whose side God is on!

It is my opinion that we have but one possible pathway to restored liberty:  Those who claim to trust in Jesus Christ alone must do just that: trust Him! And trusting Him requires that we humble ourselves, cease from conduct that is displeasing to Him, and intentionally obey His commands, understanding that He will do as He wills!  Preachers who proclaim week after week that God loves you and wants you happy, healthy, and wealthy need to stop the deception and call on everyone to bow the knee in repentance and submission.  God is our Sovereign, not our personal genie! And, as Scriptures note, He “. . . is not mocked. Whatever a man sows that he will also reap.” If America is to survive, if our liberties are to continue, if the nation is to continue to be a “city on the hillside” offering hope to the world, we will need to see a heartfelt repentance and turning from evil by millions of Americans and a fresh outpouring of God’s grace in revival!

God alone knows what lies ahead for America, once the greatest nation in human history.  But there are two famous quotes I would close with.  The first is,

“I know not what course others may take,
but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
(Patrick Henry)

The second is from Joshua, the successor to Moses.

“As for me and my house,
we will serve the Lord.”

May we stand with courage and may God yet have mercy on this Great Nation!

Have you noticed that contemporary America fights a lot about words? If you’re a teacher, you could get fired for using female pronouns to refer to a male student identifying as female. You’re addressing the same student either way; the problem is using the wrong word to address that student. If you’re in academia, you might publish lists of politically incorrect words, together with lodes of sanitized synonyms to be used instead, e.g. “denylist” instead of the “racial” “blacklist.” You’re communicating the same concept either way; the problem is using the wrong word to communicate that concept.

Why is the Left bound and determined to force us to use their vocabulary? Aren’t we all talking about the same things, whether we say “transgenderism” or “gender dysphoria,” “homosexual union” or “homosexual marriage,” “happy holidays” or “merry Christmas?” Let’s take a brief overview of the biblical theology of language, shall we? I think we’ll uncover the very important answer.

Throughout history, words have always been central to God’s interactions with humans. God spoke creation into existence with words (Genesis 1:3). God communicated His commands to man with words (Genesis 2:16–17). Because humans wanted to build a tower to glorify themselves,, God divided the human race into nations by dividing their languages (Genesis 11:6-9). God communicated His covenant and law through words (Exodus 20:1–17). God rebuked His people through the words of the prophets (Hosea 6:4–5). Then, in the fullness of time, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). And His word is powerful, effective, and sharper than a double-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12). And we know all this because God chose to communicate His truths to us through 31,102 verses of Scripture—all enshrined in words.

As creatures created in the image of God, God allowed us to share in His ability to communicate using words. Our capacity for language allows us to communicate with God and with each other, and is therefore one of the most fundamental prerequisites for one of the most fundamental human callings: relationship with God and each other (Genesis 3:8). Our ability to speak is also a necessary tool for fulfilling basic parts of the Christian life, such as singing praises to God (Psalm 150:1–6), preaching the Word (2 Timothy 4:1–2), or sharing the gospel (Mark 16:15). And our capability to use words is a powerful tool for shaping the lives of others, whether it be fathers teaching their children as they walk along the road (Deuteronomy 6:6–7), or preachers impacting the lives of the unsaved (Acts 2:37).

The ability to marshal the world-changing forces of language elevates us above the animals but also imposes on us a level of responsibility that animals do not have: the obligation to align our words with truth. (We don’t prosecute dogs for perjury.) The same God who gave us the ability to speak gave us instruction on how to speak. Our words must accurately describe reality (Leviticus 19:11). Our words must build each other up (1 Thessalonians 5:11). As a matter of fact, we must be slow to even use words in the first place (James 1:19).

But all these restrictions on language don’t demean its importance; they emphasize it. Since the tongue is so dangerous (James 3:6), we are ever more obligated to use it to honor the Lord (James 3:9–12). And Christians throughout the centuries have used the gift of language to fill the world with God’s truth as they translate His word into languages around the world, teach and encourage each other, and fight heresies and tyrannies. Wherever Christian language goes, lives are changed. Which is why the enemy hates it, and that is why he has declared war on words.

Words—those pesky things that we are commanded to use truthfully—are implicit truth claims, and the choice between one word and another, even to refer to the same person or thing, is often the difference between a truth and a lie. When we refer to someone as “she,” we make the implicit statement, “that person is female.” If that person is in reality male, then we have just lied, and we are acquiescing to those who are endeavoring to shape the world in accordance with lies. If we refer to homosexual unions as “homosexual marriages,” we are making a claim about marriage: it is a term that can appropriately be used to refer to other types of unions besides the one-man-one-woman-for-life union as which God defines it. We shouldn’t be calling marriage something that God doesn’t.

As G.K. Chesterton once observed,

“If you’re not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.”

The Left is now fighting every day for our lexicon. If only we, the people of the Word, would fight equally hard for it. Be bold: say “merry Christmas,” use biologically correct pronouns, and label gender and sexual confusion as the frauds they are. It is worth losing your popularity or even your job, because what our words bow to is what we bow to. This is why the martyrs refused to deny Christ or to stop preaching His gospel—doing so would be submitting their words to the intimidation of evil. As Peter and John said to the Pharisees who commanded them not to speak in the name of Jesus (Acts 4:19, NIV), “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God.”

This past Monday morning, I was teaching hundreds of ministry school students at Christ for the Nations in Dallas on the topic of demons and deliverance.

During the class, I stated that in the days ahead, I believed that satanic manifestations would become much more open and overt in our society. Rather than hiding himself in the culture, the devil will reveal himself more clearly.

After teaching, I got back to my room and began to read headlines and receive emails that confirmed the very thing I was saying.
(More on that in a moment.)

Of course, we’ve been seeing this trend for years now.

• One prominent example would be the rise of Drag Queens in our culture, some of them in overtly satanic attire, reading to toddlers in libraries and performing at churches.

• Another prominent example would be the “Shout Your Abortion” movement and the celebration of radical, pro-abortion legislation. This is in stark contrast to the old Bill Clinton adage that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.”

• Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a radical feminist group with the acronym WITCH, standing for the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell. (I kid you not.) They certainly got their message across!

But most groups are not that overt (even if tongue in cheek), and gay activists learned decades ago that the in your face, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” approach was not working. Instead, gay strategists adopted a policy of presenting themselves to be exactly the same as the couple next door, just like you in every way, except gay. (This was laid out in the watershed 1989 book After the Ball: How America Will Conquer It’s Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90’s.)

So, from a strategic viewpoint, most groups wanting to bring about radical change to society do so in more covert, incremental ways rather than announcing, “We’re a terrorist conspiracy from hell!”

In the same way, Satan doesn’t march around as a huge, horned dragon carrying a pitchfork.

As a senior demon counseled a younger demon in C. S. Lewis’s classic book The Screwtape Letters,

“The fact that ‘devils’ are predominately comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.” 

These days, however, it’s as if Satan is coming out in full force, red tights and all – if not literally, then metaphorically. What else can be said of the performance of “Unholy” at the Grammy Awards this past Sunday night?

As the Breitbart headline announced, “Non-Binary Pop Star Sam Smith Performs BDSM, Devil-Themed ‘Unholy’ at the Grammys.” How lovely!

But even that only told part of the story.

As explained in more detail by the American Family Association,

“During the annual Grammy Awards ceremony on Feb.5, originally designed to recognize outstanding artists in the music industry, Pfizer pharmaceutical company felt it fitting to sponsor performers Sam Smith, who claims to be non-binary, and Kim Petras, who claims to be transgender. These two gave the nation a Satan-themed performance of their song ‘Unholy,’ in which Petras performed inside a cage with drag queens dressed in devil costumes, while Smith gyrated in a costume with devil horns sticking out from a top hat.

“The entire ‘performance’ depicted a hellish scene with lots of darkness, blood red colors and flames.”

So, you have:

1. the name of the song, “Unholy”;
2. both lead performers denying their biological realities, one of them wearing devil’s horns;
3. drag queens in devil costumes;
4. BDSM-related themes; and
5. the fires of hell

I would say that is pretty clear!

No wonder podcaster Liz Wheeler tweeted, “Don’t fight the culture wars, they say. Meanwhile demons are teaching your kids to worship Satan. I could throw up.”

Compared to some other past hits (whose lyrics are virtually unrepeatable in moral circles), the lyrics to “Unholy” are relatively tame. It is the overall message of the Grammy performance that shouts out its depravity loudly and clearly.

Similar to this is the announcement from The Satanic Temple that it is raising funds to provide “free religious [meaning Satanic] Telehealth medication abortion care in New Mexico.”

But this could be good news for us as followers of Jesus.

The greater the darkness, the clearer our light is seen.

May it shine brightly in front of the whole world! And may we shine as lights without shame, without compromise, and without hypocrisy.

And don’t be surprised if, in the days ahead, in front of your very eyes, you witness scenes as if taken straight out of the Bible where, in broad daylight, visibly demonized people get set free in Jesus’ name – dramatically, gloriously, and in full public view.

Things are heating up.

This article was originally published at AsdDrBrown.org.

When Vice President Kamala Harris gave a speech on the 50^th anniversary of “Roe v. Wade” about a week ago, she infamously left out the Creator—when talking about our rights. One wag told me, “Hey, at least Kamala didn’t say, we ‘are created by … you know, the thing,’” as did her boss on the campaign trail.

She also left out the “right to life.” But does this oversight matter? I addressed her “right to life” omission in a previous piece, but what about leaving out the Creator? Who cares?

We all should. The essence of America is self-rule under God. Leave out either part, and we end up with tyranny. Without God as the secure source of our rights, from whence come those rights?

Thomas Jefferson said, and you can see this quote in the Jefferson Memorial: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?”

Why does God matter? The late Clay Christensen was a Harvard Business professor who hosted a 90-second video segment that brilliantly shows why He matters.

Christensen says that ultimately we must choose between internal versus external restraint. In explaining to a visiting student from China how religion benefits American society by bolstering morality, Christensen makes the point that we can’t hire enough police to make people good. But democracy has greatly benefited through the internal restraints that religion provides.

William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, would concur. He once noted, “If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.”

Within a few years of America’s revolt against British rule, the French had their revolution. Some like to compare the American with the French Revolution. They were totally different because of the God factor. The American Revolution was pro-God. The French Revolution was anti-God. That is the difference in a nutshell.

For the documentaries in my Foundation of American Liberty series for Providence Forum, I had the privilege to interview Dennis Prager, the founder of PragerU. At one point in the interview, he contrasted these two turbulent events.

He told me, “The American Revolution and French Revolution is the battle in the United States.  Which revolution will prevail? … They loathe the idea of God in the French Revolution; the secular republic was the ideal. In America, they believed in secular government, but in a God-based society, because rights come from God in America. And you can only have liberty if you have God.”

Prager pointed out that this was not a “faith statement” so much as a “logical” one: “People will either feel accountable for their behavior to God or the state. Those are your two choices. It is an absurdity to believe they’ll be good if they’re accountable only to themselves. If you’re only accountable to yourself, you will always justify what you do.”

And so he concludes, “God is the ultimate issue.”

Take the issue of the value of human life. When you remove God from the equation, life becomes cheap. Because we’re made in the image of God, human life has value.

Human beings are different than the animals, says the Bible. Recently I read portions of a great book, The Death of Humanity: And The Case For Life” by history professor Dr. Richard Weikart, who wrote the classic book, From Darwin to Hitler.

Dr. Weikart writes, “Western society is in deep trouble today. Once we identify some segments of humanity as ‘life unworthy of life’ or ‘sub-human,’ to use phrases commonly used before and during the Nazi period, we have jettisoned any basis for valuing humans as humans. We have effectively undermined all human rights, because now we can decide which humans have rights and which do not.”

In contrast, the founders of America said in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are the right to life.” The first right they listed is the right to life.

In the Declaration, the signers mention God four times, including their appeal “to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions,” referring to Jesus, whom God, the Bible says, has appointed to judge us all one day.

But if there’s no Creator, as some politicians seem to think, why should there be any human right? As retired Congressman Ron Paul once noted, “There is only one kind of freedom and that’s individual liberty. Our lives come from our creator and our liberty comes from our creator. It has nothing to do with government granting it.”

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

Illinois’s recent assault weapons ban has provoked more than a little consternation across the state—as it should. The ban, signed into law by Governor JB Pritzker on January 10th of this year, immediately banned the sale of “assault weapons” and magazines with a capacity greater than ten rounds. The ban also requires current firearm owners to register their now-illegal weapons with the Illinois State Police. There’s only one problem for Pritzker: The vast majority of Sheriffs in are not on board.

So far, 90 out of 102 Illinois counties’ sheriffs have stated that they will not be enforcing the ban and will not require residents to register their weapons and magazines. It’s certainly gratifying to see that Illinois might just have some Constitutional spirit left, but as Christians, we ought to consider the legitimacy of such resistance. May sheriffs (and citizens) disobey Pritzker’s assault weapons ban? The relevant passage of Scripture here is, of course, Romans 13:

Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil.  (Rom. 13:1-3)

The Apostle Paul’s reasoning is clear: the ruling authorities are divinely appointed by God; therefore, to resist the ruling authorities is to resist God.

It appears that Illinois sheriffs who are defying the assault weapons ban are disobeying Scripture, does it not? Not so fast. Who is really resisting the higher powers here, the sheriffs or J.B. Pritzker? The highest law of the land—the United States Constitution—states that the people’s right to keep and bear arms may not be infringed. Governor Pritzker, by signing the assault weapons ban into law, is himself in high-handed disobedience against the Constitution. In other words, Pritzker is the one who’s actually disobeying Paul’s injunction in Romans 13. Those sheriffs defying the governor’s mandate are, in fact, upholding the law; the sheriffs are the ones truly acting in subjection to the higher powers.

What about citizens, then? Must owners of “assault weapons” and “high-capacity magazines” register their banned firearms anyway? The same logic applies: obey the Constitution. There is, however, an additional assurance—citizens are obeying their sheriffs. Local authorities who rightly defy Pritzker’s unlawful bill give the residents of their county an avenue to submit themselves to the higher powers (the sheriffs) so they don’t have to comply with unlawful injunctions from the state government. In other words, rejection of Pritzker’s unlawful legislation does not result in anarchy—citizens may (and should) still in good conscience obey their local authorities.

Historically, this was known as the doctrine of the lesser magistrate. When a ruler overreaches his divinely-appointed sphere of authority, lesser magistrates (like sheriffs and mayors) may interpose themselves between the citizen and the ruler, both protecting the citizens and giving them a lawful authority who may be obeyed. John Calvin puts it thus:

[P]opular magistrates have been appointed to curb the tyranny of kings . . . So far am I from forbidding these officially to check the undue license of kings, that if they connive at kings when they tyrannize and insult over the humbler of the people, I affirm that their dissimulation is not free from nefarious perfidy, because they fraudulently betray the liberty of the people, while knowing that, by the ordinance of God, they are its appointed guardians. (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bk. IV.31)

Illinois citizens and law enforcement officers ought to take comfort in this doctrine. Law enforcement officers are no less appointed by God than Gov. Pritzker and, as Calvin says, perform an important role as the appointed guardians of the liberty of the people. They must courageously defend that liberty, interposing themselves between the state government and Illinois citizens. Citizens likewise may rest assured that they are not agents of anarchy when they disobey the assault weapons ban. On the contrary, they are simply obeying their God-appointed lesser magistrates—law enforcement officers.

So, you want a divorce? You might just want to think that through a little bit first. Because of the importance of marriage to the individuals involved as well as society, someone has said, “We should make it hard to get married and harder to divorce.” Attitudes of most Americans and even Christians regarding marriage and family have changed radically over the last fifty years, but the consequences have been significant and detrimental. Because the family is the most important foundation stone of a stable and prosperous culture and nation, when the majority of the citizens take marriage lightly the very future of the nation is in doubt, to say nothing of the well-being of its children.

Now, before we move on, I am not going to address the situations of abuse or unfaithfulness.  Those topics require a separate discussion and much more time. I am writing to you who argue that you are just not happy, that the two of you are not compatible, that you argue too much, that marriage is restrictive, and so on.  In other words, marriage isn’t the “happily ever after” you had imagined it to be, and you want out.

Many who read this will respond with a host of reasons why divorce is a good choice for some, or at least a “necessary evil.”  I will be called naïve, “judgmental,” or legalistic.  But I believe that most of us know that the direction we are going as a nation is not wise, and if not altered will bring tragic results.  Christ Himself acknowledged the inevitability of divorce due to the hard hearts of mankind, but He also stated that “from the beginning it was not so,” (Matt. 19:8).

The first thing you need to know is that God is the one who marries people, not the state, the  church, or the pastor.  Thus, we must understand what it is He creates when He forms a new home by marriage.  First, and very important: Contrary to common perception, what He creates is PERMENANT!   Once you are married, you are married until one partner dies, period.  God creates a spiritual bond between individuals who marry that does not evaporate when the couple break up.  You may respond, “well, divorce ends it.”  Sorry, no.  You do not end a marriage by getting a divorce.  Divorce only allows married people who are no longer together to bring some order to the material aspects of life, the care of their children, and the provision for the needs of the spouse who will be personally taking care of the children, but they are still married in God’s eyes.  Millions of people get divorced, remarry or not, and the world keeps turning but every divorce has consequences, individually and culturally.

This is why the Bible states that if a man divorces his wife and marries another, he commits adultery. You see, HE IS STILL MARRIED! And of course, so is she.

This is why divorce is always messy. It is taking apart what God has put together. It is “breaking” the unbreakable.

This is why the parties often feel like they have lost part of themselves. They have! When God married Adam and Eve, He told them that they were “one flesh.” From this truth came the expression, “my better half” which many men use when referring to their wife.

So, what’s to be done when you find yourself where you never thought you’d be or wanted to be: Unhappily married and looking at the “greener grass on the other side of the fence.”

In the same way that once you are pregnant your options are limited, so also, once you are married. Your options are limited. But that situation can be, even when it seems quite dark and hopeless, a great opportunity for the God, who created marriage, to help you discover a primary reason WHY He created marriage!

You thought marriage was God’s gift to make you happy, right? Boy, does that seem like a “bait and switch!” You married a guy who swept you off your feet and who was going to bring you happiness and prosperity; and what you got was a selfish, seemingly disinterested child, (or some variation thereof) and the drudgery of figuring how to keep your head above water for one more day! Or you married a “sweet young thing” who sparkled and brightened your day, only to find that it seems you can’t please her no matter what you do!

Well, you are not the victim of a “bait and switch,” because God does not do that kind of thing. It maybe that you failed to read God’s “small print,” His “marriage manual”   in other words, the Bible.

It is impossible in an article as brief as this to fully explain God’s purposes in marriage, but there are a few important points we can make which may shed some light and hope into your situation.

An author I read many years ago recounted an experience he had as a boy when he happened upon a butterfly in the early stages of emerging from its chrysalis. As he watched the movement of the chrysalis, he felt sorry for the butterfly within struggling so hard to break out of its prison. He took out his pen knife and carefully slit the fabric of the chrysalis so that the butterfly could emerge, and it did, with its wings crumpled and unformed. What he did not know was that the difficulty the butterfly encountered as it sought to leave the chrysalis was essential for its wings to properly develop! The hardship was not a barrier to flight, but an essential enabler for it. Sadly, his butterfly never flew.

God created marriage for His own purposes, not just to make us happy. He intends that happiness be available to us, but He has a more important priority for us which must precede that happiness. Briefly, He created marriage to communicate attributes of Himself to us: His holiness, wisdom, grace, and love. Secondarily, He created marriage to help facilitate the best life for us and our children.

God’s first priority in all things is His own glory, and the first step in our progress to bring glory to Him, following our new birth,* is for us to be gradually conformed to His likeness. Therefore, marriage is designed to change us to be more like Christ. That is probably not the first thing you thought of when you decided to get married! You were expecting a rose strewn pathway of wedded bliss, and instead you found yourself knee-deep in a basic training obstacle course!

So, what do you do? Quit? Not an option! God knows what He is doing, and He wants you to trust Him for a good outcome. James, the half-brother of Christ wrote, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing,” (James 1:2-4 NKJV). Trials are not only not to be avoided, they are to be considered a source of joy in themselves!

While there are many books written, both good and bad, about strengthening one’s marriage, the best place to begin is with God’s word. A study of I Corinthians 13, Ephesians chapter five, Philippians 2:5-11, and Colossians 3:18-21, as well as reading thoughtful, conservative, commentaries on those texts will be of great help! The collapse of families and the American culture that began decades ago is the result of discarding God’s word and principles, so one would be wise to return to His word for wisdom.

Someone has said that nothing of value is easy; and something as complex and fraught with pitfalls as human relationships is going to require a determined will and self-discipline. Marriage, being the epitome of relationships, and sustaining such vicious attacks from the enemy, the world, and our own fallen natures, is certainly going to require our best efforts. But we must understand that the labor we invest in our marriage is not only for ourselves, but for the glory of God, the testimony of Jesus Christ, the well-being of our spouse, our children, and their children, and the stability of our community. When we consider it from that perspective, it makes the investment well worth the effort!

With time, and faith in the goodness of God and His word, you will discover that what appears to be an easy way out may well hinder your personal growth and even handicap you spiritually. God hates divorce for a number of reasons; one of which is that marriage’s difficulties and inescapability are effective tools for maturing us and shaping us into Christ’s likeness and bringing us to a place of greater joy and peace in Him.

Don’t be fooled by the messages of our culture! If you know Christ, He is available to help you overcome the difficulties of marriage and to bring you to your greatest fruitfulness as a Christian. If you do not know Christ as your Savior, it may be that the difficulties of marriage will help convince you of your need for Him, the Creator of marriage!  In either case, you win!

God is not nearly as interested in our having a nice day as He is in saving us and transforming us into His own likeness. He has made no promises of an easy time here, but is near and available in the inevitable trials we face, if we call on Him. In the same way that the athlete or soldier must endure hardship to be at their best, so each of us is strengthened and matured by the difficulties of married life. Troubles are not barriers to our joy but building blocks enabling it!

Quitting a marriage because it is hard is not an option! Trusting God and His word leads to the fulness of joy He alone can give!

*When we come to an understanding that our sin is an offense to God, but that He has provided a way that that sin may be washed away, forgiven, by the blood of Christ, shed on the cross, and we trust Him to forgive us and make us His children, the Bible calls it being “born again.” We are literally made “new creatures” in Christ!  A person can ask God to be granted this forgiveness and new life at any time and at any place.

As society decays and moves away from God, morality, and truth, more and more people — especially children — are being put on dangerous psychiatric drugs such as antidepressants. Meanwhile, a new study confirms once again that there is a strong correlation between school attendance and child suicide. What is going on?

A leading expert in the field who spoke with the Illinois Family Institute, Harvard-trained psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin, is sounding the alarm about these escalating crises and the enormous threat they represent. The world-renown author and critics also warned that leaving public schools was now the “only real hope” for families concerned about the horror.

The data from across the Western world paint a troubling picture no matter how you look at it. The numbers consistently show, for instance, that prescriptions for antidepressant drugs have surged in recent years. In fact, data shows more than one in six Americans now take psychiatric drugs, mostly antidepressants, with numbers continuing to rise.

According to data highlighted by the American Psychological Association, the number of Americans on antidepressants surged by almost two thirds in just fifteen years. The rate of suicides among American children is soaring, too. The phenomenon was almost unheard of prior to a few decades ago, and yet now it is a leading cause of death in American children and still surging.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Illinois Family Institute, Dr. Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist trained at Harvard who is also one of the world’s leading critics of the psychiatric industry, said Americans should be very concerned about what is happening. “I think it’s terrible in every way,” he said about the growing use of antidepressant drugs.

“Antidepressants cannot change a person’s attitude toward life or how they treat other people, it can’t change or improve their capacity to love or make them more concerned parents, or more well-disciplined children,” he explained. “Almost all psychoactive substances have one common effect: they blunt the emotional response of the individual.”

The problems that are being diagnosed psychiatrically, Dr. Breggin continued, “are never biochemical in origin,” something that runs counter to conventional wisdom. “The problems we call psychiatric are based on our human experiences — our suffering, our loves and hates. They are psychological, spiritual, political, and emotional issues: the stuff of life.”

Psychiatrists, continued Dr. Breggin, “are unfit to deal with these complex problems.” In fact, the prominent expert compared the field to a “biological, materialistic, humanistic religion — in the worst sense of humanistic.” This is why psychiatry and its tools “are so beloved by communists to control people, because they have the same godless materialistic religion,” he added.

Speaking of how the drugs work, Dr. Breggin, who served as an expert in multiple high-profile cases involving antidepressants, said they “cause multiple biochemical imbalances where there were none before.” Beyond that, these chemicals are basically classes of “neurotoxins” that cause long-term harm to the brain, he added.

Perhaps even more alarming, there is “no question” that the drugs “increase rates of violence and suicide, in every age group, not just children,” continued Dr. Breggin, who wrote the hugely influential book Talking Back To Prozac and led the push to end psychiatric lobotomies. He also served as medical expert in multiple cases involving antidepressants and murder, and “the cover up is just amazing.”

Asked why rates of antidepressant use were increasing so rapidly, he said it was not clear to what degree there was, in fact, a “mental health” crisis ripping through the U.S. population in recent decades. While he acknowledged that the actions of “predators” during COVID caused widespread disturbances, Dr. Breggin pointed to public schools and Big Pharma as potential sources of what is being observed.

Among other concerns, the psychiatrist suggested marketing and advertising by the pharmaceutical industry was a big part of the problem. “A lot of fear and turmoil is created by elites, and then those same elites turn around and make a lot of money selling drugs to deal with that,” he said, blasting Big Pharma and the industry’s “indifference” to the harm caused. The FDA serves as the industry’s “accomplice,” Breggin argued.

Interestingly, two separate studies in recent years have found a very strong link between attending school and suicide. The latest, from the National Bureau of Economic Research, noted that child suicides surge when children are back in school, and slow down by large margins when school is out for the summer. Covid lockdowns and re-opening confirmed the trends.

Dr. Breggin was blunt. “I do believe the only real hope is for families to get out of the public school system,” he said, noting that parents could do a far better job of providing or securing education with the money spent by the state on schools. “We’ve got to get people out of the public schools and into institutions that support God, their religious beliefs, the Constitution, and so on.”

But the problem goes far beyond just public schools. “Right now all institutions serve Mammon, the totalitarians, and Big Government,” he said, noting that he “did not talk like this before I started studying what was going on with COVID.” The institutions, he added, “are designed to serve the rich and powerful and make them more rich and powerful.”

Dr. Breggin, who forced authorities and the industry to investigate the link between antidepressants and suicide and violence, is hardly the only expert sounding the alarm. In fact, a report by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights citing dozens of examples and over 30 studies concluded that psychiatric drugs “create violence and suicide,” including school shootings.

The epidemic of mental and spiritual issues plaguing America went into overdrive in the 1960s, as Bible and prayer were expelled from school. Today, by throwing fuel on the fire in the form of dangerous “medications” to deal with the fire this created, a raging inferno threatens to consume even more lives and families.

A little while back, we addressed the topic of “ableist language.” Yes, “ableist” is now a word—enshrined in academia at the highest level. Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) considers it offensive to use the term “stand-up meeting” to refer to a brief rendezvous, because people in wheelchairs are unable to physically stand, and therefore the term demeans them. Instead, we ought to use the substitute, “quick meeting.”

I spent a decent amount of ink analyzing “ableism,” because the whole concept struck me as an oddly far-fetched grasp at solving a problem that wasn’t there. But it turns out that “ableism” was only the first of several taboos on the EHLI wanted list—if you keep reading, you’ll find another category that’s much more commonly discussed than ableism: racism. I’m sad to report, however, that the EHLI’s stance on what counts as race-based offense makes no more sense than their stance on ability-based offense.

Exhibit A: “Blackbox.” According to Stanford, the preferred phrases would be “hidden,” “mystery box,” “opaque box,” or “flight recorder,” because the word “blackbox . . . assigns negative connotations to the color black, racializing the term.”

The glaring assumption in this line of reasoning is that the color’s negative connotation is racial in character. I will agree with one thing: there are things in the world that are black and have negative connotations, such as nighttime, mold, or assassin clothing. However, I decidedly disagree that referring to a black thing as a bad thing automatically invokes race. Night-time is black, and many people are scared of the dark. Are they scared of the dark because it reminds them of African skin tones and they hate African people? No! They’re scared of the dark because dark is the absence of light, and the less you can see your surroundings, the more uncertain you are about whether you’re safe. Whether you’re a kid scared of the monster in his closet or a hunter scared of the cougar that might be trailing him, we all can relate to this phenomenon. Fear of “black night” has nothing to do with “hate for black people;” so just because we refer to any black thing as a bad thing does not mean we are referring to black people.

Given this, the Stanford explanation is actually one of the most counter-productive efforts at political correctness I have ever seen. Let’s look at that very last phrase in Stanford’s explanation: using the word “blackbox” is “racializing the term.” Just so we’re all clear, to “racialize” is to “make racial in tone or character.” For example, if you were telling me about the wisdom of the founding fathers, and I pointed out that they were all white and therefore their perspective couldn’t be trusted, I have just racialized the subject of America’s founders. Broadly speaking, the principle is thus: I am talking with you about Thing A, and in the context of our discussion, Thing A normally would have no racial association. However, I suddenly use race-based terminology to refer to Thing A, so that now, when you think about Thing A, you think about race. Now, I have just “racialized” Thing A.

However, when the EHL includes the term “blackbox” in its list of racist language, it is therefore using race-based categories to refer to it something that previously had no racial connotation! I have heard the word “blackbox” dozens of times in my life, and never once thought of it as connected to someone with darker skin. Stanford’s document was probably the first time I had ever encountered the idea. By dragging race into conversations about airplane equipment, Stanford is actually racializing the term “blackbox.” Stanford, no one was thinking about race until you mentioned it.

I have a dream that my children can grow up in a world where words can actually have multiple meanings. As our language dictators would have it, one use of the word “black” (to refer to the color of skin with a greater amount of melanin in it) now permeates many other uses of the word “black” which did not carry racial connotations in our minds until the “experts” told us they did. It seems to me that this kind of connotation-smearing is a symptom of a larger cultural problem: the fight against racism has become almost a religion. Our culture has become so obsessed with not offending anyone because of the color of their skin that any possible race-based meaning of a word is now the lens through which we view all other meanings of that word. That’s what any religion does—it permeates your thought, so that no matter where you look, that’s what you see. When Christianity is our lens, it is liberating. But when misguided social philosophy is our lens, it is crippling.

Does racism exist? Yes. Is it sin? Absolutely. All men and women came from the same two people and thus are all brothers and sisters no matter what they look like. But is scrubbing words like “blackbox” or “white paper” from our vocabulary the way to fight such evil? Absolutely not. We’ve slapped the wrong lens on our camera.