I just read an op-ed from a feminist author, published by CNN, who I will leave unnamed (no need to give her career free publicity), attacking the concept of parental rights.

One of her biggest arguments for taking decision-making rights away from parents and giving them to minors was related to LGBTQ+ students and more specifically transgender students. Ironically, she argues that adults should not have the authority to make decisions for minors, but then she infers that some adults SHOULD have that authority (just not parents). She believes it is abusive and potentially harmful to a child’s mental health to prohibit them from making life-altering decisions about their sexuality and even their own bodies.

The irony is she believes schoolteachers, physicians and politicians SHOULD have the right to facilitate major life-changes for these impressionable young people. The idea is that anyone who wants to help them reassign their name, gender or even physiology is good, but those who would keep them from doing so is an abuser (in this case…parents).

This is the kind of propaganda coming from the media, government-school system, Hollywood, the music industry, social media, and most of popular culture. Parents are bad and children need to be protected from their parents’ desire to help guide and direct the upbringing of their own offspring.

Targeting Young People

In America, the younger you are, the more susceptible you are to being targeted and groomed by LGBTQ+ activists. According to the Williams Institute, young people aged 13-24 are almost twice as likely on average to identify as transgender as those who are in older age brackets. It seems there is a “full-court press” (to borrow a basketball term) to reach those who are still too young to know the psychological harm of denying your biological sex.

The number of young people identifying as transgender in the U.S. has almost doubled since 2017, according to a Centers for Disease Control & Prevention report.

One psychological agency published a press release last year stating:

“The Government yesterday announced that the proposed ban on conversion therapy will not cover trans conversion therapy. We are disappointed at this decision. At (name withheld) we believe that talking therapy that has the intention of changing either someone’s sexuality or their gender identity should not be allowed, and should be a criminal offence.”

In their view, parents should be prosecuted for even talking with their child who is aligning with the LGBTQ+ lifestyle. This is despite the fact that depression and suicide attempts among LGBTQ+ individuals are very high compared to that of the general populace! This is especially true of those who experience gender reassignment surgeries.

The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (USTS) found that 81.7 percent of transgender individuals seriously consider suicide during their lifetime and 40.4 percent actually attempt taking their lives. Activists on the social left insist this is simply because there is a lack of acceptance (which to them means “celebration”) of their decisions, but this argument ignores basic facts. It wasn’t long ago we rightly used the term “dysphoria” who denied their biological sex. Today, confusion about one of the most basic aspects of our humanity is being touted as essential to “tolerance and diversity.” When someone becomes detached from their most basic biological identity, everything else in their life becomes clouded and confused.

What Can Parents Do?

On one level, parents cannot completely protect their children against the designs of those who would seek to morally corrupt them. There are so many inroads today it is almost impossible to turn them all off. But I would suggest:

1. Removing your children from government schools.
2. Restricting smartphones and other devices until students are older teens.
3. Using internet filters and accountability software to know what your teens are doing online.
4. Drastically reducing screentime and access to movies, music and gaming that encourages sexual activity for youth.
5. Limiting social activities where your teens are spending a lot of time alone with other young people who do not share your religious values.
6. Seriously rethinking on-campus college experiences. I have heard several stories just in the last month of conservative families whose students came home from college and announced they were “out of the closet.” Indoctrination on college campuses is rampant.

Most importantly, have conversations with your children from a young age about their sexuality and God’s design for men and women. Parents are the first and most important go-to for information about sex and children will usually embrace their parents’ values, unless of course the parents abdicate their training to others who don’t share their values.

The world will not encourage your right to be a parent to your children, so you need to insist on it. Despite what the world tells you, be the parent and never apologize to anyone for being a wise, guiding light for your own child. God gave you the right to parent your child, so do it regardless of whether anyone else agrees with you.

Wise people use words carefully to ensure their real intention is understood. But these days many people throw the word “hate” around carelessly. One must wonder if they know what it means. Examine a dictionary and you will discover it associated with words like intense dislike, detest, and loath. In the Bible the word is sometimes used to refer to the results of foolish actions, such as stating that a parent who fails to discipline a child hates him, because an undisciplined child is at great risk. A spoiled child, who does not get something he wants from a parent, such as a toy, may complain that the parent “hates” him. Much like Leftists who claim that those who resist their immorality “hate” them! Like anarchists they demand the freedom to do whatever they wish.

I suppose my first encounter with an anarchist was in second or third grade. An older student would take our personalized pencils, (Christmas gifts from the teacher), cut our names off and claim them as his own. Or, if we left possessions unattended, he would break them. Needless to say, he would threaten us against reporting him. As I grew older, I witnessed the same behavior from troublemakers who harassed students who worked hard. They were of the same character as people I ran into years later who smashed mailboxes, or keyed nice cars, or became Leftist anarchists. In the “good-ole days” there were adults in the room who kept these troublemakers at bay.  Today, adults are conspicuously absent. Government, the primary purpose of which is to protect the good citizens of the state, is now siding with the anarchists against the law-abiding citizens.

As a child I could not understand these people’s delight in destroying things or callously hurting others without cause. As I studied God’s Word, however, I came to understand better the relationship between rebellion against God and anarchy. Such are the “scoffers” referred to in Proverbs 29:8:

“Scoffers set a city aflame, but wise men turn away wrath.”

It also notes that reasoning with such people is impossible as they have no interest in truth, Prov. 29:9,

“If a wise man contends with a foolish man, whether the fool rages or laughs, there is no peace.”

And I also came to see that anarchists target anyone who seeks to do right. The animosity exhibited by failing junior high students toward good students is the same as that we have seen in recent times by Leftists smashing police cars and burning down businesses. In their pride they resist all authority. They hate God who is THE Authority, and they hate those who represent Him.

“The bloodthirsty hate the blameless. . . .”  Prov. 29:10

“He who is upright in the way is an abomination to the wicked” Prov. 29:27b.

It is as Mark Twain noted, “Nothing is more irritating than a good example.” And we conservatives, especially Christians, as poorly as we represent Christ at times, are still VERY irritating to the Left.

It is important to counter the deceptive messaging of BLM, Antifa and the MSM. Yes, there are significant racial problems in America and yes there are individuals who harbor resentment against people of other races. However, Leftists use such issues cynically for their own political gain but have no desire to actually improve racial relations. Just as predators in the wild have many ways to disguise themselves, Leftists camouflage themselves as caring for the oppressed even as they plot the destruction of the country, which, by-the-way, would only exacerbate the situation of marginalized citizens. There has been nothing more detrimental to the young people of America’s inner cities than the Left’s attack on the nuclear family, the destruction of which has caused more deaths of teens and children than any other factor.  An intact family is a child’s best hope for health and success. Yet BLM publicly states its desire to eliminate the traditional family altogether! In what universe is that loving?

Two things are abundantly clear about anarchists: they hate what is morally right and those who represent it. Second, they understand that the object of their hatred is truly good and right. They are not confused about where the lines are. We are not dealing with good hearted but confused people. They understand that right is right, and wrong is wrong, and they hate what is right and love what is wrong. They demonstrate that they know the difference every time they accuse conservatives of the very things they themselves do. They declare that there is no “Truth,” and lie without any evidence of conscience, and yet cry “liar” at those who oppose them because they know that lying is wrong and that there is, in fact, Truth. Accusing someone of lying would be pointless if lying were not immoral.  In their foolishness they think the public is blind to their lying but will turn against those they accuse of lying. Their hypocrisy manifests in a host of ways.  If you examine their conduct, virtually every evil they accuse others of doing they practice themselves.

Case in point: if you disagree with them at all they immediately slur you as a hater. They know a lot about hate, for they are the worst of haters.  It characterizes everything they do, as their ideology is so destructive, but they are seldom called out for it.

One of the leaders of the group who violently took over several blocks of Seattle in 2020 published a note to followers after leaving the area calling them “comrades.”  Besides thus categorizing them as Leftists and Marxists, it notably did not refer to them as friends. Marxists and Leftists do not really have friends, for to have friends one must be willing to love and do what friends do. However, study the history of Marxism and you will find that loyalty is not a Leftist or Marxist value. Among other things, they are noted for bloody purges and those purges generally included “comrades.” So very friendly of them!  An irony discovered in the third chapter of Daniel corroborates the world’s willingness to destroy their own. King Nebuchadnezzar had three Israelite men thrown into a furnace because they refused to bow before his idol.  However, it was not the Jews who died in the fire at Nebuchadnezzar’s command, but his own soldiers. Which brings us back to God.

Marxism is atheistic. Rejection of God is foundational to the theory. But, where there is no God, there can be no love, for “God is love.” And without love there can be no true friendship. George Eliot noted that “friendship is that inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person having to neither weigh thoughts nor measure words.”

With a true friend you can say whatever you like without fear. In simple terms, a friend is someone who cares so much for you that it is virtually impossible to sever that relationship. He or she naturally gives you the benefit of the doubt, trusts you and lets nothing separate you. It is a founding principle of this Republic, is enshrined in our Constitution and is ultimately sourced in God and the Bible. “Innocent until proven guilty” is the legal manifestation of this principle, and it is how you naturally treat your friends. It is the heartbeat of a mother who needs overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing before admitting to one of her children’s errors. This accurate definition of true friendship exposes the vileness of the Left.  For despite their protestation of caring for others, they care for no one but themselves.

Jimmy Kimmel is merely one of many celebrities to have discovered that although he has gone out of his way for years to show he is a Leftist, supported Leftist causes, and hates all who are on the Right, it meant nothing when they discovered he had unwittingly stepped over the line a few years ago. Regardless of all he has done and his solidarity with their cause they instantly threw him under the bus for his sins. They were never his friends. They are not good people.

Karlyn Borysenko, a Democrat who attended a Trump rally and others like her, have discovered how hateful the “Loving Left” really is and how in a moment comradery turns to hate. Former Leftists have also commented on how they lived in constant fear of being “found out” for disagreeing with some point of Leftist dogma. It is clear that there is no love among Leftists, for as the Bible says, “Perfect love casts out fear.” I wonder if Jeff Bezos still drinks the Kool-Aid now that Robespierre has shown up at his door? (Go online to read about the guillotine set up at his house by Leftists!).

The “Cancel Culture” of BLM, Antifa and other Leftists is more ominous than many would have us believe. The idea that destroying those who disagree with you is acceptable is the rationale that has led to most every war in human history. Leftist tactics portend a totalitarian state under which all disagreement is squelched.  Today, a few radicals terrorize the majority into either compliance with their agenda or silence. While these Leftists, I expect, would declare that they wish no one dead, what else can one deduce from their efforts to destroy their opponents’ ability to provide for themselves by getting them fired? Such oppression is eerily reminiscent of the Anti-Christ of the Bible who will require everyone to accept his ”mark” in-order-to buy or sell. At this point Leftists’ power is focused primarily on shaming truth tellers into silence but imagine what suffering they will create if they gain the political power necessary to bring criminal penalties against their opponents!

Such is the nature of the Left.  With friends like that. . . . Well, you know the rest!

So much for the compassionate, caring Socialists. Do not be fooled. Despite their protestations, neither they nor their cause are good.

Good people, upon hearing something unsettling about a friend, before rendering a judgment will seek clarification, hoping that it was a mistake or a misunderstanding.  People with good hearts, if you have transgressed in some way against them, upon your confession and request for forgiveness will happily grant it. That is what GOOD people do. They also understand that good people can disagree about just about anything and still be good people and even be friends.

It is decidedly not the way of BLM, Antifa, or leaders of the political Left. Violate one of their norms and you are done. No investigation. No calls with regrets. No explanations. You are just unceremoniously cut off. They are finished with you forever. Whether you violated a long-held tenet of Leftism or one just discovered five minutes ago, or, they discover you participated in some conduct which was “normal” thirty years ago, but recently has been determined to be offensive to the wrong group.  Too bad. You’re evil!

This is no incidental oversight on their part. They are not merely caught in the “emotions of the moment.” It is at the core of who they are and what they seek to accomplish. Ask what their objective is, and you will not receive an explanation as to how Americans will get along better under their plan, or the process by which more Americans will be able to participate in the Nation’s opportunities. No, what you will hear is simply “Destroy it all!”  They cannot and will not tell you what they will replace “it” with because they are not builders. They are destroyers, just like the punk who slashes tires, breaks other’s toys, or smashes mailboxes.

It also goes without saying that good people do not hijack worthy causes for bad ends. Returning to an earlier point: of course, EVERY BLACK LIFE MATTERS! They especially matter to God before whom we will all give an account someday. The issue of racism and all that goes with it is worthy of serious consideration and action.

Evangelist Billy Graham noted that the racial divide was one of the most egregious problems Americans face. But BLM and Leftists care nothing about the minorities they so publicly profess to champion and are not improving racial relations. Leftists and Left leaning Democrats have run most major U.S. cities for decades yet the slaughter of young minorities in those inner cities continues unabated. Over a hundred people were shot and several children were murdered in Chicago in just one weekend last year yet not one of these Leftists said a word or lifted a finger to do anything that would bring real change.

But why would they? They truly do not care.  Their objective is power, not peace.

And so, as we consider “hate,” we see that it is the Leftists who truly practice it, either directly through physical confrontation and injury, or by limiting their opponents’ ability to make a living, yet at the same time complaining like children that those who will not give them what they want “hate them,”

If you find yourself sympathizing with those experiencing difficulty in America, especially children, understand that the most visible and vocal ones pontificating on these issues are not the ones who are actually bringing relief. Tragically, most of the faces highlighted by the MSM are divisive and self-serving. Regardless of what they say, and how the Media portray them, BLM, Antifa and the others like them are not helping and you don’t want to affiliate with them. Look rather to the multitude of good people who are daily, away from the cameras, changing lives for good.

If you want to make a difference, support them!

There’s a grand act of un-creation taking place all across this nation. Leftists are busy with this ugly business of un-creating decency, order, justice, compassion, and beauty, and children play a central role in this ugly business. To leftists, children are both objects of un-creation and tools for un-creating society. If we want to see with greater clarity the plans leftists have for the nation, there is no better place to examine than Illinois. Let’s hover above Illinois for a few minutes to get a bird’s eye view of this dark project.

Abuse in Chicago Public Schools

On Jan. 1, 2023—a Sunday—the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Chicago Board of Education released its annual report on “investigations into allegations of waste, fraud, financial mismanagement and employee misconduct” between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022. This year’s report cost taxpayers $6.54 million.

(As a noteworthy aside, the CPS spent $97 million of federal pandemic relief money on “academic recovery + social and emotional learning supports.” Further, CPS plans on spending $430 million more of federal money over the next two years for the same academic, social, and emotional learning problems caused by the refusal of Governor J.B. Pritzker to open schools and the refusal of teachers to teach during the pandemic.)

What is revealed in this report should shock all parents of CPS students and all Illinois taxpayers:

The OIG received 1,825 complaints alleging misconduct, waste, fraud, and financial mismanagement at Chicago Public Schools, including allegations of adult-on-student sexual misconduct.” Of those nearly 2,000 complaints, the OIG opened investigations into fewer than half (39.7%).

Of those 1,825 complaints, 470 were sexual allegations.

Because of a 2018 Chicago Tribune exposé of sexual abuse in Chicago public schools, the OIG “created a special Sexual Allegations Unit” which “has grown exponentially into a team of more than 30 … staff responsible for handling hundreds of sexual misconduct allegations per year.” The OIG report describes the number of cases as “extraordinarily high case volume.”

The complaints include allegations of sexual grooming, sexual intercourse, sexual assault, sexual touching, and graphic sexual texts.

Since many victims are afraid to report sexual abuse, Illinoisans can justifiably assume that the numbers of adult-on-student sexual misconduct cases are far higher than 470.

CPS scores

Apparently, faculty are too busy abusing children to teach them how to read, write, add, and subtract. In September 2022, Wirepoints reported on the abysmal academic performance of CPS:

Student achievement remains badly sub-par at CPS. About 70 percent of CPS students in grades 4, 8, and 11 – and 80 percent or more of its tested black students – aren’t proficient in reading and math. In some schools, reading proficiency is still in the low single digits.

Sex Education Law

Shameful, sub-proficient, and stagnating test scores suggest that Illinois lawmakers—a super-duper majority of whom are leftists—don’t care about educating Illinois children, so where do their interests lie? A recent bill from Illinois Senator Ram Villivalam (Democrat from Chicago of course), points to the educational priorities of Illinois’ leftist ideologues. He proposed a tyrannical amendment to Illinois’ already offensive sex education law.

In 2021, Villivalam sponsored a bill mandating that K-12 schools that offer “health and safety” classes must include indoctrination with leftist gender theories and leftist views of homosexuality. But this bill, which became law, allowed schools to opt out of such indoctrination, which 70 percent of schools did. Can’t have that, thought Big Brother Villivalam.

So, he proposed an amendment during this recent lame duck session to remove the school opt-out option. It didn’t pass during the lame duck session, but mark my words, Big Brother Villivalam will, like the Terminator, be back.

Teachers often defend their teaching about sex by claiming they are “experts,” and by claiming what they teach is “age-appropriate,” so let’s spend a minute discussing purported teacher “expertise” and “age-appropriateness.”

Illinois teachers—including teachers in high performing suburban districts—are rarely “experts” in even the disciplines for which they were hired to teach. Don’t believe me? Ask your children’s teachers if they have advanced degrees, and if they do, ask what field their advanced degrees are in. Relatively few teachers pursue advanced degrees in biology, chemistry, physics, English literature, or history. They don’t, because it’s easier to get an advanced degree—and, thereby, increase their salary—in educational policy as opposed to biology, chemistry, physics, English literature, or history.

If they’re not experts in the field for which they were hired to teach, how are they experts in sexuality? What criteria do they use to establish their sexuality expertise bona fides?

And what criteria do they use to determine the “age-appropriateness” of sex education content. Who established those criteria. So many questions taxpayers never ask.

“Trans” policy

Sex is definitely where the “educational” interests of leftists lie, particularly deviant sexuality. Look no further than the Pritzker family that scurries about the world throwing their money and ample weight behind the effort to promote cross-dressing and child mutilation.

Governor Pritzker’s first cousin, whose transonym is “Jennifer” Pritzker, is the cross-dressing man in woman-face who tried to extort the GOP by proclaiming that if the GOP didn’t toe the line as he toes it in his lady pumps, he would take his money and move to the dark side—which he did.

He and the Pritzker family also use their money to fund university and hospital programs around the world to indoctrinate students into the “trans” cult and to mutilate the healthy bodies of children.

On a local level, upon his first election, J. B. Pritzker created a “trans” cultic task force composed of all lefties to socially construct a plan for “transing” public schools.

Now that leftists control public education in Illinois, our shameless governor/chief propagandist hopes to further diminish the influence of parents on their own children. In Pritzker’s second inaugural speech, he announced his evil plans: “I propose we go all in for our children and make preschool available to every family throughout the state,” and “let’s focus on making [college] tuition free for every working-class family.”

Get ‘em while they’re young and keep ‘em.

Research has long established that college and university faculty and administrations skew wildly left. Further, research has demonstrated that of those students who self-censor out of fear of repercussions, well over half are conservative. And this is the “learning” environment where Pritzker seeks to send more students and at taxpayer expense. Pritzker wants to cram as much propaganda into the minds of as many young people as possible, and wants you, conservative friends, to pay for this indoctrination.

To mix bird metaphors, Illinois is both a canary in a coal mine and a buzzard in a killing field.

Conservative parents, get your kids out of government killing fields now before the buzzards devour them.

It’s old hat at this point to bemoan the deleterious effects of feminism and the sexual revolution. The internet is brimful of pornography, enticing young men before they even reach double digits in age; public schools appear to be hell-bent on convincing children (likewise before they reach double digits in age) that sexual expression is the essence of human expression; and casual sex is so casual that, for some, it might better be classified as a hobby than an intimate act.

We’ve all grown accustomed—even jaded—to our culture’s sexual decline. But whatever the solution is, it doesn’t appear to be coming from the evangelical church.

David Ayers, in his recent book After the Revolution: Sex and the Single Evangelical, analyzes a set of statistics from the Centers for Disease Control that in a more sane era would have provoked an outbreak of sackcloth and ashes. According to this CDC data, 55 percent of evangelical women and 45 percent of evangelical men are “LGBT-affirming.” Of this number, 6 percent of evangelical women and 4 percent of evangelical men say that they same-sex attracted. Most shocking of all, however, is that 17 percent of evangelical women surveyed reported having had sex with another woman. 

These statistics were not drawn from mainline denominations or denominations that have long since dispensed with the Bible’s benighted (or so they say) sexual ethic. No, the women surveyed are in evangelical denominations—denominations that uphold the authority of Scripture as the ultimate authority in all matters of faith and doctrine (or so they say). Obviously, these churches have not recognized the threats to the spiritual health of their members. So, what is the solution to this crisis?

The first and most obvious answer is, of course, repentance. Pastors must call individuals to repentance, and individuals must respond in faith. Beyond that, however, the American church as a whole must repent of its failure to preserve a culture that is in submission to God. To paraphrase Henry Van Til, culture is merely religion externalized, and insofar as the whole of our culture is apostate, the whole of the American church is culpable.

But just as faith without works is dead (James 2:26), so cultural repentance without cultural renewal is dead. That is to say, having repented in faith, the American church must dedicate herself wholly to the work of building a Christian culture. And herein lies the solution to the sexual crisis that beleaguers our churches.

Evangelical denominations have, on the whole, been faithful in standing against sexual perversions, at least on the level of their statements of faith and confessional documents. The passage of Overture 15 at last year’s Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) General Assembly was an encouraging victory. Yet, a denominational resolution or a statement of faith is not a counterculture in itself. What good is clarifying the language in a statement of faith so as to absolutely rule out homosexual sin if the church members are still primarily products of popular culture?

Even a Sunday school class or sermon series is not enough to solve this crisis. As they were members of evangelical denominations, many of the individuals in the above survey had doubtless heard affirmations of biblical sexual ethics from the pulpit or in the Sunday school classroom. Rather, the only solution to this crisis is a distinctly Christian culture.

As pastor and author Douglas Wilson puts it, you can’t fight a naval war without a navy, so why expect to be able to fight a culture war without a culture? “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world,” says the Apostle John (1 John 2:15). The church must turn from the things of the world that have caused her to abandon her first love (Revelations 2:4). This means no more sending Christian kids to government schools to be educated by people who hate God. This means no more happy-clappy church music, the style of which has been dictated to us by money-grubbers in Nashville. This means no more youth groups feebly attempting to raise children one night per week in the place of parents who have abdicated their responsibilities the other six days.

No more.

The church must redouble its commitment to Christian education. The Church must regain a love for the glory and beauty of good music, composed by our far-sighted forebears. The Church must commend the centrality of the family, equipping and exhorting fathers to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4).

When the church begins to do this—when she begins to fight the culture war with an alternative culture—then, by God’s grace, her members will remain faithful to the Word, unsullied and unattracted by the perversions of the world.

Leftists have redefined “hate.” To them hatred refers to ideas and moral beliefs that they think harm others. So, using that definition, how do leftists hate people? Let’s count the ways. Well, not all the ways. That would suck dry the wellsprings of hope from which we draw at the beginning of each New Year and which are granted to us by a gracious God who has jobs for us to do—with joy.

Let’s look at just one way leftists demonstrate their hatred of humans: legislation pursued in California and the California-Wannabe State: Illinois.

Scott Wiener is an infamous, middle-aged California state senator representing San Francisco and most notable for his erotic lust for men and for his abuse of position, power, and taxpayer money to promote sexual degeneracy. In other words, he is California’s Kelly Cassidy—Illinois’ lesbian State Representative from Chicago who routinely makes a mockery of decency, compassion, and justice.

Wiener’s latest assault on human rights and dignity is SB 107, which took effect on January 1, 2023, making California the first “trans”-sanctuary state in the country. The childless Wiener along with Equality California and Planned Parenthood—which now profits handsomely from cross-sex hormone-doping—conspired to lure sexually confused minors to California to be experimented on by profiteering quacks who masquerade as healthcare professions.

Gender-dysphoric minor children who live in states that prohibit dangerous, experimental chemical and surgical interventions to treat disordered feelings about their biological sex are now incentivized to hightail it to California where greedy doctors will eagerly harm their healthy bodies for money, money, money.

The law, deceitfully titled the “Gender-Affirming Healthcare Act,” allows minors to receive such “treatments” no matter who brings them across state lines. A minor brought across state lines by a parent about to lose custody can access such “treatments” in defiance of the wishes of a parent soon to be granted custody. A minor brought to California by a non-custodial, non-parent can access such “treatments.” A resourceful runaway can access such “treatments.”

Equally frightening, this law permits California courts to terminate parental rights granted in other states via “temporary emergency jurisdiction.”

Moreover, this blow to parental rights prohibits the state from sharing any medical information about minors with parents who oppose chemical and surgical procedures that disrupt the normal bodily processes and maim the bodies of their own children.

Don’t be surprised when an underground service a là the Jane Collective is created to ferry troubled children to California in search of transtopia where mutilated children cavort gaily in blood-red fields of discarded body parts. It will be called the Rachel Levine Collective.

Of the 13 co-authors of this bill, at least seven are homosexual and one is bisexual.

Unfortunately, Illinois too is plagued with Democrats who are as hell-bent on destroying the bodies, minds, and hearts of children as they are in destroying the nuclear family, publicly subsidized schools, and urban communities.

While Kelly Cassidy has a long history of using the government to normalize disordered eroticism, somehow another homosexual lawmaker got the jump on her with regard to a “trans”-sanctuary bill for Illinois. That lawmaker is State Senator Michael Simmons (D-Chicago) who was appointed to the office in February 2021 when another disastrous leftist lawmaker—Heather Steans—retired.

On November 29,2022 Simmons—who has no children—introduced SB 4245, the “Gender-Affirming Health Care Protection Act,” which prohibits the “State,” “law enforcement,” and the “Governor” from complying with statutes and subpoenas issued by other states regarding experimental and ghoulish medical “interventions” with which leftists like to maim minors’ bodies.

Simmons bill defines “gender-affirming care” as “medically necessary health care that respects the gender identity of the patient, as experienced and defined by the patient” (emphasis added). Simmons wants troubled, immature minor children, many of whom suffer from co-morbidities like depression, anxiety, and autism and who are vulnerable to social contagion, to be free to access risky chemical and surgical interventions without the knowledge or consent of their own parents. And he wants Big Brother to facilitate this whole nightmarish project.

While leftists like Simmons and Wiener want the government to help children align their healthy bodies with disordered feelings by mutilating them, they want government to prohibit helping children align their disordered feelings with their healthy bodies through counseling. Former Illinois State Representative Tom Morrison couldn’t even get a hearing for his “Youth Health Protection Act” proposed in Feb. 2019, the first bill in the nation that sought to protect minors from experimental “interventions.”

If passed, Simmon’s bill would protect the legal ability of children to access “interventions to align the patient’s appearance or physical body with the patient’s gender identity.” Some of the procedures cross-sex identifiers pursue to mask their biological sex include surgical removal of breasts, uteruses, ovaries, penises, and testicles.

Some lesser known “interventions” include the following for men who seek to masquerade as women: the construction of neovaginas that have to be regularly dilated mechanically to prevent closure, tracheal shaves, hairline “advancements” to create smaller foreheads, lips and cheekbones augmentation, lip lifts, neck liposuction, and jaw and chin “contouring.”

Some lesser known masculinizing “interventions” for women who seek to masquerade as men include the construction of non-functioning “neopenises” from skin grafts taken from forearms or thighs, forehead lengthening/augmentation, browbone implants, cheek implants or grafts, rhinoplasty, chin implants, jaw implants, and thyroid cartilage “enhancement” (i.e., Adam’s Apple implant).

Because lawmakers habitually lie, it’s important to ignore what a bill’s sponsors claim is the intent of their bill. Instead, proposed bills must be carefully read to understand how the language could be interpreted and applied.

California and Illinois seek to be meccas not only for human slaughter but also for sterile non-reproductive homoeroticism and the sterilization and mutilation of children. Leftists who sanctimoniously fume about animal-hunting hold brutally dim views of human life. Their policies expose their hatred of their fellow men, women, and children—a hatred fomented by the father of lies whose deceitful and deceived minions like Wiener and Simmons try to gussy up with sophistry about love, dignity, and rights.

There is a spiritual war roiling the world, causing incalculable human suffering:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 6:12)

These spiritual forces of evil are targeting children with an incomprehensible fervor. Christians must put on the whole armor of God and wage war against this evil with even greater fervor.

Warning: you are about to encounter an onslaught of politically incorrect words. The following five phrases have been labeled “potentially harmful” by academia at the highest level, so interact with them at your own peril. Ready?

         “Stand up meeting.”

         “Quadriplegic.”

         “Walk-in appointment.”

         “Basket case.”

         “Sanity check.”        

Whew! Did you survive? Good, so did I. But unfortunately, I am not making this up. According to a Stanford University website, it is considered “harmful language” to use the phrase “stand up meeting” to refer to your next brief get-together. Why? Because it is “ableist language that trivializes the experiences of people living with disabilities.”        

Just a couple weeks ago, Stanford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative released a 13-page list detailing dozens of politically incorrect words and phrases and including a column of substitutes for the forbidden locutions. The Initiative’s purpose is to “eliminate many forms of harmful language, including racist, violent and biased . . . language in Stanford websites and code.” We are told in the list’s preamble that the purpose is to “educate people about the possible impact of the words we use.” It purportedly was neither “attempting to assign levels of harm to the terms on this site” nor “attempting to address all informal uses of language, “but the implication is obvious: this index is a primer on what specific words should be tossed in the waste bin by the Stanford IT community.        

While the categories of racist and gender-based language were largely unsurprising, one category caught me off guard: “ableist” language, which is language offensive to or demeaning those suffering from disabilities. While I agree that no one should be mocked for their disabilities, that doesn’t seem to be exactly what Stanford has in mind. Let’s look at a couple examples.

Referring to a “blind study” is harmful because it “unintentionally perpetuates that disability is somehow abnormal or negative, furthering an ableist culture.” The preferred term is “masked study.”        

Wait, wait. Are we to care for the needy? Absolutely. Are we to demean their afflictions? Absolutely not. But I’ve never thought I’ve been demeaning blind people when I refer to a blind study, and I guarantee you none of my audience has thought I have been, either.

Stanford’s reply might be that I am not necessarily disparaging blind people, but I am instead implying that “disability is somehow abnormal or negative,” because the word “blind” often carries a negative connotation in many other contexts, such as this one. An ironic point to raise for this particular word—since blind studies are supposed to be a positive thing—but there’s a deeper point to raise.

Don’t misinterpret me, but isn’t disability kind of abnormal, and even somewhat negative, by definition? My grandmother needs a walker and/or wheelchair to move around, and I know she’d give a lot to be able to walk like she could when she was twenty. Disability is both abnormal and less-than-ideal, and making that statement is not in any way a disparagement of those who are suffering from it, any more than saying “cancer is horrible” would be a condemnation of those battling it.        

Another example: “committed suicide.” This is harmful because it is “ableist language that trivializes the experiences of people living with mental health conditions.” Instead, we are to say “died by suicide.”        

I’m not intending to be insensitive toward the awful circumstances of suicide – my own uncle committed suicide from PTSD, and I’ve personally felt the pain of knowing you’ll never see someone again because of a choice he himself made. But, honestly, what’s the difference between saying “committed suicide” and “died by suicide?” The first implies you did something to yourself, while the second implies that you fell victim to something . . . that you did to yourself. 

The slight connotative difference disintegrates when we realize that the core term – suicide – is inescapably a self-inflicted tragedy. In the previous paragraph, I wrote, “my own uncle committed suicide,” and I wasn’t trivializing his trauma – I was just telling the truth. And I’ve told many people about his story and have never thought I was trivializing his experience. In my humble opinion, constantly euphemizing the subject to a more benign “died by suicide” is a term that trivializes how horrible his PTSD actually was – a mental condition that led him to willingly inflict death upon himself.        

The list goes on and on. Here are Stanford’s explanations for our opening list of political incorrectness:        

• “Stand up meeting” and “walk in” are “ableist language that [trivialize] the experiences of people living with disabilities.” Preferred language would be “quick meeting” and “drop-in.”

• “Quadriplegic” is a “term that generalizes a population of people while also implying that people with disabilities are not capable.” Preferred language would be “person who is paralyzed.”       

• “Basket case . . . originally referred to one who has lost all four limbs and therefore needed to be carried around in a basket.” Preferred language would be “nervous.”        

• “Sanity check” is a term that “could be offensive to those dealing with mental health issues.” Preferred language would be “confidence check.”        

Honestly, have you ever thought any of those things when using any of those words? I hope you sense the confusion of an average English-speaker striving to justify the way language has worked for, well, forever.        

It seems to me that many of these “ableist” concerns are a symptom of a broader linguistic-cultural problem: we are afraid of using words to discuss the harsh facts of life openly or frankly. But recognizing that the world is harsh is the very reason we strive to make it better! If disability is not “abnormal or negative” in any way, why does the field of medicine even exist? Why do we develop medications, prosthetics, or therapy for those suffering from disabilities, if those advances are really seeking to eradicate a normal and positive circumstance?        

Now, don’t get me wrong in the least. Inspiring disabled men and women from Homer to Helen Keller to Andrea Bocelli have accomplished astounding things, often using their disabilities to touch the world in ways they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. But who of us, if we were blind but had the choice to receive our sight back, wouldn’t take it? Blindness, like all other sicknesses and maladies, is a result of the Fall, and neither the Fall nor blindness nor deafness nor lameness nor any other disability of the sort was ever “the way it was supposed to be.” 

Can God use disability for his glory? Absolutely – ask the Apostle Paul. Can you live an inspiring life as a disabled person? No doubt about it – ask Nick Vujicic. But does that mean we should pretend that disability is normal or that death is trivial? Absolutely not. To do so would be to deny the reality of the Curse and undermine efforts to deal with it. It’s hard to solve a problem while simultaneously attempting to dismiss it.        

As a closing thought: A society that edits its very language to avoid facing the harsh facts of physical disability isn’t very far from doing the same thing to avoid facing the harsh facts of spiritual death. Have you ever heard someone refer to sin as “we all make mistakes?” Or seen a “coexist” bumper sticker? Efforts to minimize the seriousness of sin or the stark necessity of Christ as the only way to God contradict the gospel message at a fundamental level. There’s a reason God spends 39 books telling us how horrible sin is before Christ comes on the scene in the New Testament. If we don’t understand the bad news, how will we understand the good news?

It is a common assumption that Leftist views are compassionate, while conservative, biblical views are not. The assumption is so ingrained in society that it rarely gets called into question. And yet, even a superficial examination of Leftist policies and programs reveals all sorts of lies, hypocrisy, and callousness.

One of the most well-known programs initiated and promoted by the Left is the welfare system. The national welfare system was established in 1935 in response to the devastating effects that the Great Depression had on families and communities. This system was established to provide a safety net in the event that another depression hit the country.

The original intent of the welfare system as a last-chance “safety net,” however, has been abused. Today it has become the source of permanent, long-term income for many. Philosopher, professor, and author Dr. Jay W. Richards notes in his book Money, Greed, and God, the following statistic about the overuse of the welfare system and its direct link to poverty:

An experiment comparing a control group with household recipients of welfare benefits revealed that welfare is a disincentive to work. Husbands reduced their hours worked by an average of 9%, and wives reduced hours worked by 20%. Young males reduced their hours worked by 33%; singles, by 43%.

As this study notes, the overuse of the welfare system is hurting poverty-stricken communities of America. What does Scripture have to say about those who refuse to work? The Apostle Paul, in 2 Thessalonians 3:10 (ESV) says,

“For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”

Paul again, in 1 Timothy 5:8, says,

“Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

These are just two instances when God shows his displeasure for those who refuse to work and provide for their families.

Policies on crime are another way in which the Left exacerbates poverty. The SAFE-T Act, which was signed into law by Governor J.B. Pritzker on February 22, 2021, is a prime example. In this bill, the cash-bail system, which is a means by which criminals are detained until cash-bail is posted and a way to ensure that the defendant will return to court for trial, will be ending on January 1^st. Dan Proft, host of AM 560 Chicago’s Morning Answer, identified some of the dangers of the SAFE-T Act:

In point of fact, under the SAFE-T Act, non-detainable offenses would include – by non-detainable meaning you’re released – burglary, robbery, arson, kidnaping, second-degree murder, intimidation, aggravated battery, aggravated DUI, aggravated fleeing, eluding drug offenses, drug induced homicide and threatening a public official.

The Illinois General Assembly recently made some changes to this act to try to placate critics, but the changes were minor, only involving procedures and risk assessments.

As in Illinois, Leftists control government in California. They passed Proposition 47, which designates shoplifting items valued under $950 a misdemeanor instead of a felony. Not surprisingly, thefts have skyrocketed in the state.  Barnini Chakraborty, senior reporter at the Washington Examiner, wrote an article for Fox News exposing the effects of Proposition 47:

Since Proposition 47 was passed, there has been an increase in theft across the state. Cities like San Francisco have seen organized crime rings turn shoplifting into a well-organized racket involving desperate thieves and unscrupulous black-market resellers. Among the nation’s 20 largest cities, San Francisco now has the highest rate of property crime, which includes theft, shoplifting and vandalism.

God also has much to say about the sin of theft. The Eighth Commandment says, “You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:15). In Ephesians 4:28, the Apostle Paul declares,

“Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.”

As for the thief’s punishment, God commands in Exodus 22:7 that

“If a man gives to his neighbor money or goods to keep safe, and it is stolen from the man’s house, then, if the thief is found, he shall pay double.”

It’s not hard to see that the Left’s policies–the misuse of the welfare system, the SAFE-T Act, and Proposition 47–harm individuals and communities.

God is not impartial with regard to the poor or justice, and since God is not impartial, Christians shouldn’t be either. Christians have a duty to stand against policies that go against God’s Word and to replace the lies with the truth that comes from Scripture. In Zechariah 8:16, the Lord declares,

“These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace.”

Two recent conversations over two days with two different people were variations on the theme of cultural dis-integration—or, perhaps more aptly, anti-culture integration.

We are in the midst of a revolution propelled by the integration of the government—including government schools—big business, social media, the arts and entertainment industries, medical and mental health organizations, the legacy press, and even the military industrial complex in the service of creating a monolithic anti-culture, one in which truth is suppressed and human flourishing undermined.

In the first conversation, we expressed our shared incredulity that America is becoming in our lifetimes in plain sight a totalitarian state in which the government—also known as Big Brother—is moving quickly to oppress Christians.

Leftists, who have not eyes to see, mock such a claim as absurd and paranoid, but Christians—especially those who have fled Communist countries—can see the portents.

• Laws are being passed that ban Christian counselors from helping suffering people identify and heal from bodily, emotional, and intellectual harms and to construct identities that comport with sexual truth.

• Theologically orthodox Christians are being banned from fostering children.

• Christians are losing the legal right to prevent their own children, confused by a science-denying ideology, from being chemically and surgically mutilated.

• Christians are losing the ability to make a living if they refuse to speak lies about physical embodiment as male or female.

• Lawmakers seek to rob churches and colleges of their tax-exempt status if they refuse to perform unholy ceremonies that solemnize homoerotic, non-marital unions as marriages.

• Lawmakers seek to rob Christian colleges of their accreditation for their refusal to participate in the evil lie that men can be women or vice versa.

• Government schools are intentionally concealing critical information from Christian parents about their own children and encouraging children to view their own parents’ beliefs as hateful.

• Style manuals, dictionaries, and university speech code manuals are redefining and/or “discouraging the use of” (i.e., banning) words in the service of, at least in part, an anti-Christian ideology, which seeks to coerce submission through language manipulation. With regard to university and corporate speech codes, failure to comply carries a high risk of punishment. This is quintessential Orwellian Newspeak that shreds the First Amendment.

The second conversation was precipitated by a Facebook post in which I included the following excerpts from reviews of the movie Babylon—Hollywood’s special Christmas gift to Americans:

From the Houston Chronicle:

But why opt for subtlety and insight when you can have upchuck and defecation?

From Mashable:

Babylon is a ghastly, sticky, indulgent mess of a movie, slinging shock value in lieu of anything interesting to say.

From Time Magazine:

Babylon is a manic sprawl that only pretends to celebrate cinema. It’s really about prurience, dumb sensation, self-congratulation and willful ignorance of history.

From Slate Magazine:

Babylon Is a Defecating Elephant of a Movie. Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie star, but Damien Chazelle’s movie crawls up its own mammoth butt. Within the first 15 headache-inducing minutes of Damien Chazelle’s old-Hollywood epic Babylon, the camera has been on the receiving end of a flood of elephant sh*t and eavesdropped on a call girl hired to urinate on an obese and grotesquely self-indulgent movie star. This excretion-themed intro serves as a thesis statement for the 3-hour-and-9-minute-long movie to come.

And from Richard Roeper writing for the Chicago Sun-Times:

Self-indulgent, stomach-churning epic from director Damien Chazelle offers little insight on 1920s Hollywood. What a mess.

What a sprawling, grotesque, self-indulgent, wretched, occasionally mesmerizing but ultimately over-the-top mess we have in Damien Chazelle’s Hollywood epic “Babylon,” which one imagines was supposed to be a lurid and show-stopping and unvarnished celebration of the hedonistic madness that enveloped the movie business in the 1920s but comes across as a three-hour plus attack on our senses—a flashy, sometimes dazzling but curiously uninvolving and often nauseatingly gross spectacle.

Where do we start? How about the opening scene that affords us a closeup of an elephant’s rear as it defecates like a fire hose on an unfortunate immigrant, isn’t that hilarious and entertaining? Or what about the profoundly unfunny sequence in which an actress gorges herself on a lavish buffet before projectile vomiting as if she’s Regan from “The Exorcist” showing up in a Monty Python movie?

Wait, there’s more. So much more.

We’re also “treated” to scenes of a woman urinating on an obese party animal; a sad-sack moron getting his head stuck in a toilet; a muscle-bound and crazed giant of a man munching on a live rat, and various showbiz types getting coked up and liquored up and on and on it goes.

In response to this post about yet another manifestation of sexual deviance produced by denizens of America’s anti-culture, unmoored as it is from God—the source of goodness, beauty, and truth—a friend asked if we’ve “finally reached the bottom of the barrel.”

No, I answered, we definitely have not reached the slimy, rotten, fetid bottom of the barrel. The “love is love” crowd has barely scraped the surface of polyamory, pedophilia, incest, and “zoophilia” yet. And then there remains the arduous task of normalizing all the paraphilias the fertile imaginations of fallen man invent. Of course, the ground is softening, making the planting and tending this garden of poisonous weeds less arduous.

Who could have imagined a mere generation ago that we would see our government turn against Christians in such bold ways, abrogating their First Amendment rights and polluting the public square with body- and soul-destroying perversity?

But, tragically and unconscionably, many Christians have been accomplices. And for that they ought to confess and repent. Many have refused and remain committed to refusing to talk openly about God, Satan, and the cultural embrace of sexual degradation even as their neighbors—including children—suffer grievously.

Awash in unbiblical pride and worry, consumed by love of money, and so covetous of our reputations among men that many of us remain silent as the anti-culture uses our money to preach dark things to children that are abominations in the sight of God.

Here’s a New Year’s Resolution to ponder: Resolve to speak truth at every opportunity as an expression of obedience to God and love of our neighbors. In so doing, we will also stand a better chance of preserving the rights of our children and grandchildren to speak, worship, and raise their children freely.

The devil is a roaring lion seeking to devour (1 Peter 5:8). The Bible says to “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6).” Put two and two together, and it just makes sense that the devil will go after children. They’re impressionable – what you teach them will remain their whole lives – and they are less able to protect or defend themselves than adults. It’s why public schools try to keep secret the woke indoctrination they’re teaching children, or why Disney’s agenda is often found in movies aimed at young kids.

For a long time American Girl (owned by Mattel since the early 2000’s) has been a trusted brand for both girls and parents alike. Girls enjoyed high-quality (less so since Mattel’s ownership) dolls and accessories to play with and fun stories to read and learn from. Parents would get helpful tools and assurance that their daughters were playing with safe, educational, wholesome, fun toys. American Girl was a company that taught girls to enjoy being girls and to reach for the stars through their historical line (now called Beforever), their Girl of the Year line (also referred to as GOTY), and the various iterations of the Truly Me dolls.

But, as generally occurs with secular companies these days, American Girl has gone woke. And, as is also generally the case, this isn’t new. It’s just been publicly discovered. The recent outcry is over a book they released as part of their Smart Girls Guides about body image, entitled A Smart Girls Guide: Body Image. 

Parents are rightly upset that the book (aimed at girls 10+) teaches girls about transgenderism, that there’s a difference between how you show your gender and how you identify, that’s it’s okay to think you were born the wrong gender, what non-binary is, pronouns, the steps a doctor might take (such as puberty blockers),  resources for girls who “don’t have an adult [they] trust,” and more. See the included pictures to read the majority of the information they provide on transgenderism. The book is rather drenched in it, however, so it’s not just what is included in the photos.

A Smart Girls Guide: Body Image also contains CRT (critical race theory) and other things parents (Christian and otherwise) might not want their girls reading about.

Though I would call it the most explosive, the transgender push in A Smart Girls Guide: Body Image is not the first propaganda American Girl has done in the realm of wokeism. It’s certainly the most blatant, and one that even secular parents can see is harmful. The company has been going woke for a while, changing with the culture. When I was still in elementary/middle school, the spotlight in their magazine featured a girl with two dads (which wasn’t the focus of the article – it was about good work the girl was doing – but was definitely mentioned when the girl talked about her family), including a full-page picture of the girl with her family. Around 2020, they launched the ‘World by Us’ line, which included CRT, and in 2021, American Girl’s GOTY was Keira Bailey. She had gay aunts, and her story involved her going to live with them in Australia.

But what would you expect from a secular company who’s slogan is “Follow your inner star?” The Bible is incredibly clear that following your own heart and own understanding is a bad idea (Jeremiah 17:9, Proverbs 3:5-7, and Matthew 15:19). Our hearts are marred by sin, and it’s only through Christ that we are able to be made righteous. Keeping the woke stuff under the radar as much as possible (releasing it without a ton of fanfare or trying to present it as normal) allows companies to indoctrinate kids without parental knowledge.

“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:19-20)

The devil is after children (as evidenced by companies glorifying and pushing sin at children and families), and is painting unbiblical, broken, and dangerous lifestyles in a fun and attractive way by clothing them in children’s companies. They can’t just let kids be kids because they know that indoctrination works best when a person is young. “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8).”

Parents, be watchful. Bring this stuff to light. It’s your God-given duty to train your children in the way they should go. Christians, speak the truth in love. It’s needed now more than ever.

God ordered the world to work a certain way. He created us male and female (Genesis 1:27). He told us that marriage is between a man and a woman (Mark 10:6-7). People are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). We are to take dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:28),and worship the Creator over the creature (Romans 1:25). Operating the way God created the world to work results in a happy, healthy fruitful society.

Trying to redefine any of these things or force the world to work a different way results in brokenness, hurt, shame and guilt, and often makes those watching it feel gross, because, well, it’s unnatural. Trying to work under philosophies God didn’t design doesn’t work. The term ‘woke’ is often used to encapsulate that philosophy, and wokeness doesn’t work.

A great example of this is Disney. This entertainment giant started with family-friendly movies and videos. Walt Disney wanted a place the whole family could enjoy and experience together. It was genius. Disney became huge, and turned into multiple theme parks, hundreds of movies and T.V. shows, and billions of dollars worth of merchandise.  They catered to families, often families of young children, and people loved them. Almost every home in America has something Disney related, and the question, “Have you been to Disney?” is a frequent one.

But many Americans got a bit of shock this year, when they woke up to the realization that Disney has gone woke, and probably has been for a while (which is true, though there are debates on how long Disney has been on this path).  The alarm was sounded by Disney’s controversy over Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Law (which does a myriad of things, among them protecting children in the youngest grades from being taught sexual material). Disney kowtowed to pressure and fought pretty hard against it (which I talked about and you can watch here). Moreover, leaked videos from a company staff meeting showed that employees were actively working to push LGBTQIA+ material in as much of their entertainment as possible (one employee even bragging about how welcoming the company was to her “not so secret gay agenda”).

Parents were infuriated and showed Disney they didn’t want their children indoctrinated by canceling Disney plus and choosing to vacation somewhere else. But Disney didn’t listen. They included a lesbian kiss in their latest Toy Story movie (which didn’t do well), and a gay romance in their newest animated family movie (which has absolutely bombed at the box office, and has them on track to lose over $100 million).

Disney’s hard and fast left push has hurt them. Parents who have no desire for their children to be indoctrinated and people who just don’t want to watch that have boycotted Disney. Disney’s stock has fallen about 40 percent in the last year. More recently they company instituted job cuts, a hiring freeze, and in a startling move,  fired Bob Chapeck and rehired Bob Iger as CEO. Time will tell if he chooses to continue pushing the agenda (either openly or by moving it underground) or heeding the signs.

Wokeness doesn’t work. Deviating from God’s design for the world is costly in the most significant way – spreading sin. I’m going to close this article by quoting Romans 1 (verses 18 – 19, 20b, 22 – 27 and 32, though it’s beneficial to read the whole thing), because it  has a lot to say about this:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.… So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him…. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error….

…Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”

Since the unconstitutional Roe v. Wade was overturned in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, leftists have been roiling in rage at the thought that states are now free to enact the will of their voters with regard to killing humans in the womb. In his concurrence, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued that three other Supreme Court cases should be revisited in that they too lacked constitutional grounding—an argument made also by the esteemed Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork.

One of the decisions Thomas believes should be revisited is the Obergefell decision that imposed same-sex “marriage” on the entire country, robbing states—that is, the people—of their right to decide if intrinsically non-marital relationships should be legally recognized as marriages.

And so, leftists, livid at the prospect of states one day being free to enact marriage laws in accordance with the will of their voters, are trying to take that right away preemptively through federal legislation.

On July 19, 2022 the U.S. House of Representatives passed the absurdly named “Respect for Marriage Act” (H.R. 8404)—a bill that doesn’t merely disrespect marriage; it is hostile to marriage. The bill, which would overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), next goes to the U.S. Senate.

On September 15, seven weeks before the mid-term elections, the Senate announced plans to delay a vote on the controversial bill until after the elections. According to CBS news, “GOP negotiators” who are “involved in the talks over a bipartisan plan” believe this will help increase Republican support.

Who are these GOP Senators? They are RINO Susan Collins, Rob Portman who began supporting all things homosexual after his son announced his sexual attraction to men, and Thom Tillis, who the day after the House passed H.R. 8404 announced he would “probably” support it when it comes to the Senate for a vote. I think this “bipartisan collaboration” is bipartisan in name only.

DOMA, which was passed and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996, explicitly defines marriage:

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any
ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative
bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word ‘marriage’ means
only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife,
and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is
a husband or a wife. (emphasis added) 

Forty-seven Republicans voted for the dis-Respect for Marriage Act, including Adam Kinzinger, Rodney Davis, Liz Cheney, Tom Emmer (chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee), Darrell Issa, Elise Stefanik (U.S. House Republican Conference chair), Lee Zeldin (who was recently defeated in the New York race for U.S. Senate), and Florida Representatives Michael Waltz and Brian Mast.

Any Republican who doesn’t understand the essential role of the nuclear family—that is, mother, father, and children—to the health and future of any society doesn’t deserve to serve in government. The same applies to any Republican who votes for a bill that robs states of the right to pass laws regulating marriage.

DOMA, which all U.S. House Democrats and 47 “Republicans” oppose, defines marriage in federal law “as between a man and a woman and spouse as a person of the opposite sex.” In contrast, the dis-Respect for Marriage Act recognizes in federal law “any marriage that is valid under state law.”

Again, while DOMA has a provision requiring states to recognize marriages from other states, that provision specifically limits the type of marriages that must be recognized to those composed of two people. No such limit is placed on the federal government in the dis-Respect for Marriage Act.

This means that once Utah, California, Massachusetts, Illinois, or any other nutty state recognizes plural/poly unions as marriages, the federal government will be forced to recognize plural/poly unions as marriages. And once the federal government recognizes plural/poly unions as legal marriages, all states will be forced to recognize those marriages as well.

While some naïve or gullible voters view the absence of language defining marriage as the union of two people in the dis-Respect for Marriage Act as an oversight, others see it correctly as intentional—an interim step to the compulsory legal recognition of plural/poly unions from sea to darkening sea.

Take ACTION: H.R. 8404 may be taken up in the U.S. Senate soon. Please take a moment to urge our two U.S. Senators to vote to protect the Defense of Marriage Act by voting NO to H.R. 8404. Remind them, “The government has no interest in inherently non-reproductive types of relationships. The government has no more vested interest in recognizing and regulating inherently non-reproductive erotic relationships than it does in platonic friendships.”

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin
https://www.durbin.senate.gov/contact/email
Phone: (202) 224-2152

U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth
https://www.duckworth.senate.gov/connect/email-tammy
Phone: (202) 224-2854

Please send a message and then follow up with a phone call this week.

The family is a dangerous institution.

Which is why the forces of evil are aggressively targeting it. The family—consisting of one man and one woman in lifelong wedlock, and their children—is God’s ordained means of filling the earth (Genesis 1:28, 2:24, 4:1, 9:1). This poses a threat to those who worship nature, and thus want to reduce world population. Not only that, the family is also a reflection of Christ’s relationship to the church (Ephesians 5:22-33). This poses a threat to those who worship themselves, and thus reject the concepts of self-sacrifice and submission.

Further, the family is the nuclear institution for raising up the next generation in righteousness (Deuteronomy 6:7, Ephesians 6:4). This poses a threat to those who worship power, and thus want young minds to be left exclusively to themselves and their indoctrination. All in all, if you are looking to wreak maximum havoc on the earth, then one of the most dangerous institutions you will ever encounter is the family. And those who are looking to wreak havoc on the earth are doing their best to get rid of it.

However, an all-out assault on the family structure would be a bit too obvious. People have a God-given desire for the joys of family built into their souls and trying to convince them that they shouldn’t start families might not gain very much traction. As is the case with many contemporary strains of leftist strategy, it’s a lot easier to just slip in “alternatives” to God-given structures and paint them as a liberating, fulfilling, alternate norm.

A recent Bloomberg report did just so, by exploring the lives of successful, single, childless women, showing how avoiding marriage and childbearing improved their careers and personal wealth. According to Bloomberg, a rising cohort of women is choosing to delay or skip motherhood.

“As a result, many are advancing further in their careers than prior generations and entering a new frontier of wealth.”

While single mothers only made a median wage of $7,000 in 2019, single women without kids made a median of $65,000. Bloomberg explains that one woman interviewed

“relishes all of the lifestyle and financial freedoms that come with being a single, child-free woman in a well-paying job. That includes an apartment in New York City, a new beach house on the Jersey Shore, and frequent travel for pleasure as well as work.”

Further,

“she has a message for women just like her: You can still have it all. . . . ‘I love my life and feel very fulfilled.’ ”

Another successful, single woman highlighted her freedom to travel at will without a family holding her back and boiled her thinking down to

“I’d rather regret not having kids than regret having them.“

Such anecdotes may seem to support the idea that a family-free life is more advantageous than—and can be just as fulfilling as—a married one. However, as a general rule, neither the claim to financial advantage nor the claim to life satisfaction turn out to be true. As Brad Wilcox (sociology professor at the University of Virginia) and Alysse ElHage (editor of Family Studies) Newsweek retort,

“There’s just one problem with this kind of anti-nuptial and anti-natalist reporting: It’s completely false. In fact, the Bloomberg story is based on data derived only from single Americans, meaning there is no basis for comparison with married women.”

While single childless women may indeed make significantly more than single mothers, neither comes close to married mothers’ mean household income—$133,000. As for life satisfaction, Wilcox and ElHage point to data from the 2022 American Family Survey:

“Thirty-three percent of married mothers ages 18-55 say they are ‘completely satisfied’ with their lives, compared to 15 percent of childless women 18-55 . . . What’s more, single, childless women are about 60 percent more likely to report feelings of loneliness compared to married mothers.”

While the mainstream narrative shouts that a career without an encumbering family is the secret to a happy life, the stats show the opposite.

Very few people will believe the outright lie, “the family is bad,” but many might believe the more subtle temptation, “the family is a waste of time; you could live a better life without one.” However, attacks on the family that paint singleness to be just as fulfilling and even more financially advantageous don’t stand up to serious scrutiny. As happens so often when man thinks he has found a better plan than God’s, man’s grand ideas splinter against the solid realities of God’s world.

The Institute for Family Studies sums it up well:

“Too many [liberals] have embraced the false narrative that the path to happiness runs counter to marriage and family life, not towards it. They think independence, freedom, and work will make them happy, which is why significant portions of the popular media are filled these days with stories celebrating divorce and singleness. . . . The secret to happiness, for most men and women, involves marriage and a life based around the family.“

Can you imagine what would go through the mind of a child upon being told by his parents that he would be unsupervised all day? He could do whatever he wanted! It would be heaven, but no loving parent would ever allow such a thing. The risk to the child would simple be too great. “Anything goes” is a bad idea for any age.  But that is where our culture is being driven by the Left.

Much can be learned about people in general from watching children. Sadly, we often do not learn much from age two to twenty! A two-year-old child is not capable of knowing or understanding the consequences of his choices; and if he is strong-willed, he resists any restrictions on his behavior. His desire is “anything goes!” But we are patient with him as he climbs a ladder or goes where he should not go. We intervene to protect him from his choices. We do not reason with him regarding the physics involved in a four-thousand-pound car striking a forty-pound child, we simply don’t allow him to run into the street. Our goal is to keep him safe until he understands such things for himself.

There are, however, some things that are not so obviously dangerous. And just as the two-year-old believes that he knows everything, unfortunately, if he has not been disabused of the notion, so does the average teen. There are choices that are becoming available to him, the consequences of which are mentally, spiritually, or emotionally, as well as physically harmful, but may not manifest themselves as such the moment a bad choice is made, unlike the immediate injury caused by walking in front of a moving car. How does a person learn such things so as to protect himself from bad choices? And of equal concern, how are we to deal with a culture that covers its collective ears so as not to hear the warnings and, indeed, calls those who sound a warning, “evil?”

The significant social unrest in recent times and the tragic rise in drug use, alcohol abuse, depression, and suicide, have not happened in a vacuum. Nothing occurs without a cause, and such alarming trends can only be traced to a culture that is increasingly rebellious against standards and, if you will, God. We are witnessing a culture collapsing upon itself and are told that it is not those who sell the poisons who are evil, but those of us who warn of the poisoning! In this upside-down world, “anything goes” is good, while God, order, and discipline are bad!

We must protest!

Little children are not wise enough to understand that a parent who is too lenient is undermining their ability to succeed in life. If one parent allows the children to eat whatever they want, run around the neighborhood until the early hours of the morning, and never do chores while the other parent tries to make them get up early, clean their rooms, do their homework, and help with tasks around the house, there will be major problems! An “anything goes, no rules” attitude by a parent, and by the same token community leaders, might make them popular with naïve young people, and politically garner many votes, but it is a mistake as catastrophic for the community as it is for the home. Every healthy organization and organism has and needs order and rules.  Nothing can long survive without them.

In the public arena, when a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court is unwilling to define what a woman is you know that something other than truth is controlling the narrative. Does Ketanji Brown Jackson, recently placed on the U.S. Supreme Court, really not know how to define a woman? Of course she does! But when people as high profile as a judicial nominee express opinions which are patently nonsensical, yet are placed on the Court regardless, the nation is in serious trouble.  Ketanji Jackson does not decline to define what a woman is because “woman” is open to various definitions, but because some powerful people have an insidious objective.

The confusion of language created by the Left is only a small part of the chaos they have created over the last few decades. They have worked tirelessly to sow discord between racial groups and conflict between men and women, young and old, rich and poor, as well as between the public and the police.  Their true nature was revealed when, in the summer of 2020, they did not seek to quell the violence, but rather encouraged it.  And just as their inability to define a woman is a fiction, so are their explanations for the division and chaos they have fomented.

America’s leaders know that the public will tolerate a societal breakdown for only so long before demanding order be restored. Thus, having created the anarchy in the first place, the Leftist elites will ride in as saviors to bring peace and calm, at the expense of liberty and personal rights.

Mrs. Jackson’s unwillingness to define something as obvious as what a woman is, is a manifestation of the Leftists’ assault on truth and against God, Himself. They are not creating conflict and confusion because they believe reality is malleable, but because their goal is to break down America’s cultural stability, incite violence, and create disorder and fear, leading the public to panic and give them, the Leftists, a lock on power from which we will not be able to escape.

As they convince millions of gullible young Americans that concrete realities directly before their eyes are not real and that they cannot trust their own perception of things, the nation experiences a collective vertigo, and the trust necessary for cultural and social cohesion evaporates. Panicked people are more easily led, more easily enslaved. This has only occurred, of course, with a simultaneous destruction of the traditional Christian philosophy and culture which have provided a foundation for the country for centuries. Until recently, Christianity has been the bulwark of truth, clarity, and common ground for Americans, making the nation extraordinarily resistant to irrationality, Marxism, and other errors.

Tragically, the Left’s assault on America, Christianity, and truth have been effective. A large segment of the population now irrationally hates Christ and Christianity not understanding the devastating consequences of discarding them. No culture or nation can long survive where the citizens do not have significant commonality and generally accepted standards of morality. The Left knows this and intends this.  America’s Founders, while differing in some interpretations of Christian theology, were still united in the broad, general tenets of the Faith giving America a strong, foundational, uniting philosophy. For the last sixty years and more the Left has maliciously undermined the nation’s orderly Judeo/Christian culture and has been replacing it with an “anything goes” culture.

As a Christian and a pastor, I understand the appeal of such. It feeds the fallen nature’s desire for autonomy and pleasure. Of course, the “anything goes” licentiousness isn’t new! Long before the Leftists began their assault on America the Bible warned of it. The pseudo liberty that Leftists temptingly hold before the public’s eyes has been around since the beginning of time. It began with the “Hath God said, “ of Genesis 3:1, and progressed to a modern outright denial of God’s existence and authority and offers a consequence-free life to all who heed its siren song.

Modern iterations are worded differently than the Serpent’s lies in the Garden, but the appeal is the same. Satan asked, “Hath God said?” and followed it with “you will not surely die.” Now the Leftists cry, “Don’t let anyone tell you what to do!” and “If it feels good, do it!” Same song, different words. But there is no such thing as consequence free living. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Newton’s Third Law of Motion expresses the principle well.

Imagine a ball game where “anything goes.” It would ruin the game, and probably injure players. Can you imagine a medical school teaching future doctors that “anything goes” or a math professor teaching future aerospace engineers that “anything goes?” In every area of life, even the seemingly inconsequential things like gardening or bike riding, no one with any sense would suggest that “anything goes.”

As an experiment I have taken groups of young people into the gym and told them that we were going to learn a new game, one for which there were no rules, none. They simply looked at me as if I had lost my mind! If it is impossible to play a game without rules, how much more impossible it is to live a good life without rules.

Only a truly evil person bent on destroying people would say that one can live however they like and suffer no consequences. If order and rules are essential for simple things like a ball game or a garden, how much more important are they for things as complex as human life and relationships? In every heart is an awareness that there must be rules to live well.  Many people today just don’t want to hear God’s rules and the Left is making it easy to ignore them!

Fishermen do not catch fish on empty hooks. They must use bait that is attractive to fish, but while being tasty to the fish, the bait leads to its demise. So it is with the bait the Leftists dangle before Americans. How appealing “do whatever you want” sounds, especially to young people who have neither a theological foundation nor life experience to protect them!

The reality is, of course, that a truly “anything goes” culture does not and cannot exist. Someone is deciding what does and what does not “go.” The “anything” they encourage for the moment refers to reckless and evil things such as drugs, immorality, and violence. Calling something wrong, on the other hand, does not go. But when immoral and destructive conduct is encouraged, conflict and suffering  become inevitable as reasonable and normal boundaries are broken down. The suffering and destruction are only magnified as those who see what is coming and try to warn others are denounced as haters and bigots. If the boycott against truth continues long enough, the destruction of the culture and of many lives is practically guaranteed. In an “anything goes” culture, the highest “good” is to do whatever one wants.

Consequences, good or bad, become irrelevant. It is not far from the moronic axiom uttered by someone in the 60s, “Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse!” Adults know that such thinking leads to catastrophe, but we seem to be short on adults these days. Tell a child that habitually eating packets of sugar may lead to diabetes and your words will fall on deaf ears. And so it is with a lawless culture. People’s hearing has dulled; and so, we witness many of our youths, some even into their thirties, displaying the logical skills of children, and tragically suffering and dying as a consequence!

Leftists, who for the moment dominate America’s ruling class, pander to the public’s baser inclinations just like those who through lies, promises, and manipulation entrap young women in lifestyles that may lead to their deaths, or the “coyotes” who make millions off promises to bring people to a better life in the U.S., only to leave many of them dead in the desert or kidnapped by human smugglers. There is no more accurate word for them than “evil.”

If an “anything goes” culture is tolerated too long a cataclysmic failure of the culture and nation will occur and those in power will cement their places, no longer as tolerant, beneficent friends, but as tyrants. The current wanton disregard for God and His morality is frighteningly reminiscent of the early chapters of Genesis which culminated in God’s declaration that, regarding mankind, “every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man. . . .”  (Gen. 6:5-6). At that point the Great Flood ensued!  Whether we soon suffer catastrophic judgment as well depends solely upon God’s grace, which should lead every American who has not repented and turned from their sin to do so now!

The confusion currently enveloping America’s culture did not develop organically, it has been artificially produced by wicked people to confuse, weaken, and overcome Americans. The “anything goes” philosophy is mere bait. Once ensnared, the prey, America’s citizens, will no longer have such liberties.

There is no more important social institution to society than marriage. It has a host of social benefits for adults and children. The breakdown of the family is directly linked to all sorts of societal problems including crime, poverty, public health, and educational challenges. This is a reality that has been well documented for decades by social science.

The decline of marriage is also a primary contributor to the growth of government. It is hard to think of a social program that has not grown dramatically because of the breakdown of the traditional family. From just 1965 to 1999 the federal government spent $7.9 trillion on poverty programs as out-of-wedlock births quadrupled.

I should first note that most single parents do heroic work to successfully raise children. This is not a personal knock against any parent or condemnation of any child’s chance to succeed. Yet, in the big social picture, data is important for public policy considerations.

Growing up in a single-parent home can have both short and long-lasting effects. For example, 37% of single-parent families lack self-sufficiency (and are officially poor) compared with only 7 percent of married-couple families. Children living in single-parent homes are 50% more likely to experience poverty as children and even later as adults when compared with children from intact married homes. Welfare dependency is 1,700% more likely for children born outside of marriage than children born to a married mother and father according to the Heritage Foundation.

Marriage numbers are declining in America and in many parts of the world. There is now a very noticeable divide in the likelihood of marriage among the young.  Increasingly in America, it is the devoutly religious who are the most likely to marry. This is largely due to shifts among the young in their views of marriage. (Many warned that one of the dangers of redefining marriage would be a devaluing of the institution.) While young people still desire marriage, the proportion of Millennials (those aged 22-40) who do marry has been declining as they prioritize other life goals such as education and career over marriage.

As for the religious divide, a 16-year recent longitudinal study found that 97% of highly religious men were likely to be married by their mid-40s, compared to only 65% of non-religious men.

This creates a social divide as reported by the Institute for Family Values.  They found that married Millennials:

• were more likely to report satisfying and stable relationships compared to Millennials in other types of committed relationships;

• were more likely to have better access to health care, retirement benefits, and insurance compared to unmarried Millennials;

• reported better health and more regular exercise than those who weren’t married;

• were significantly less likely to report depression than single Millennials.

You can read more about this here: Marriage is Increasingly an Institution of the Highly Religious: Why That Might Be a Problem

“We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” So declared the U.S. Supreme Court in Zorach v. Clauson (1952).

In an earlier decision, Rector of the Holy Trinity v. United States (1892), the U.S. Supreme Court said: “[Americans are] a religious people. This is historically true. From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation.”

The Trinity decision then went into great detail about the early colonial charters (mostly Christian). Finally, the Supreme Court concluded: “These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”

But fast forward to today. Recent assessments declare or imply that the church in America is dying. One headline (Citizen Free Press.com, 9/23/2022) described it this way: “Axios begins countdown to death of Christianity.”

Axios comments on the findings of the Pew Research Center: “Depending on whether this trend slows, stops or speeds up, Pew projects the number of Christians of all ages will shrink from 64% to between 54% and 35% of all Americans by 2070.”

These stories on the alleged death of the American church keep popping up. And I have often talked on the radio with Dr. Byron Johnson of Baylor University about them. He’s a professor of social sciences, and notes over and over that these stories give the wrong impression.

Johnson, who used to teach at Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, co-wrote an article about the “Nones.” The Nones simply refers to people who would be categorized by the pollsters as having no religious affiliation.

The Pew study mentioned above, for example, declares that, given the present trends, by 2070,”’Nones’ would rise from the current 30% to 34%-52% of the U.S.”

But what Johnson and his co-authors, including the late Dr. Rodney Stark, argue is that many of the “Nones” might not be as irreligious as they would seem.

Here’s what Johnson and Stark et al. noted: “[M]any individuals who report no religious affiliation or check ’none‘ on surveys (as well as atheists and agnostics) display a wide variety of religious and spiritual practices and beliefs. Many attend religious services, pray, meditate, believe in God or a higher power, have religious experiences, and believe in heaven, hell, and miracles.”

It seems almost as if the “Nones” should perhaps be called instead “the Sometimes.” And if from the Windy City, I suppose they could be called “the Chicago Sometimes.”

Johnson and company continue: “Even though a growing proportion of people in the U.S. appear to be reporting no religious affiliation on surveys, there are many measurement-related, conceptual, and methodological reasons to question the assumption that these people are not religious, and scholars need to look more closely at the actual practices and beliefs of so-called nones.”

Johnson and his coauthors also take other pollsters to task for being sloppy in their terminology: “[U]se of phrases like religious none, no religion, and not religious to describe this group of individuals is inappropriate, inaccurate, and misleading since they may simply be institutionally unaffiliated or indeed affiliated but not with any of the list of categories provided.”

They conclude that more research is needed before definitive statements are pronounced: “More focused research is needed before we will fully understand who the nones are, and whether religion is actually declining in the U.S., as well as around the world.”

As Glenn T. Stanton explains in his book, The Myth of the Dying Church (2019): “The apparent shrinking of Christianity is both true and false. True in that nominal and weak ‘Christian-in-name-only’ folks are identifying as Christians less and less. But there is no indication whatsoever that serious faith is shrinking any.”

Stanton adds, “So is Christianity shrinking? Not if you’re talking about the biblically faithful congregations that call their people to genuine Christian discipleship. Only…the mainline churches…are free falling as if they have a millstone tied to their necks.”

“So the real story is,” notes Stanton, “this is a sheep and goats being divided thing. A clarifying of faith, rather than shrinking of faith.”

In John Calvin’s Commentary on Isaiah 9:7, he provides an excellent reminder for Christians of all ages that we are truly on the winning side: “Though the kingdom of Christ is in such a condition that it appears as if it were about to perish at every moment, yet God not only protects and defends it, but also extends its boundaries far and wide, and then preserves and carries it forward in uninterrupted progression to eternity.”

Dr. Byron Johnson told me: “Here’s a bit of advice: the secular media will continue to push out the narrative that religion is dying…why not focus on the hundreds and thousands of peer-reviewed studies that show the power of faith to transform?” That sounds like a great topic for a future column.

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.