Advent is a time to recall God’s utter and unstoppable faithfulness to His people. Though Israel failed to keep its covenant with God, made at Sinai and renewed on several occasions afterward, He always intended to keep His covenant with Abraham, that “through your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed."
When Christians use the term "free will," it often refers to the debate over whether we choose God or God chooses us. On the other hand, when the term "free will" is used by evolutionary biologists, the debate is over whether choice itself is real, whether it is an illusion produced by our brains.
On November 3, Oregon became the first U. S. state to legalize “magic mushrooms” for therapeutic use, following the lead of a few cities like Denver, Oakland, and Ann Arbor. Almost immediately afterward, articles appeared advising investors on how to “take full advantage of this $100 billion (USD) market potential.” Our increasingly materialist culture rejects any God Who is authoritative and transcendent (i.e. who exists outside of the material world). Thus, the divine must be found “within.” Many think psychedelics can assist their search by making it that much easier to escape the constraints of reality, authority, and limitations.
In Belgium, the residents of nursing and rest homes were, according to a new report, “abandoned” by government authorities as the coronavirus epidemic raged. Out of fear of overwhelming Belgian hospitals, only about half of COVID patients in nursing homes that needed to be hospitalized, were. What happened in Belgium is outrageous.
Throughout history, Christians have faced demands to be silent. Throughout history, they refused. In Live Not By Lies: a Manual for Christian Dissidents, blogger and author Rod Dreher thinks Christians in the West are entering a season where we will not only have to decide whether we will be silent; we will have to decide whether we will allow ourselves to be forced into going along with what is not true, with lies.
Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims. Disconnecting sex from childbearing gave us abortion and abandonment. Disconnecting childbearing from marriage gave us a generation of fatherless children.
A free market works not because wealth is valued, but because labor is. Jesus said we can’t serve both God and money and that it’s more difficult for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus never said accumulating wealth itself is sinful. Exploitation of the poor is sinful. Looking to wealth for salvation and meaning is sinful. Failing to steward what we’ve been given and failing to care for those in need are sinful. When these potential downfalls are mitigated or avoided, a free market inspires people to give more.
One of the most helpful frameworks I know of in wrestling with moral issues comes from T.S. Eliot. Before we can know what to do with something, we must know what that something is for.
With medical decisions becoming increasingly financially charged and the popularity of euthanasia continuing to rise, Christians everywhere should be thinking about medical ethics, joining hospital ethics boards, running for office, and becoming health care workers. And every Christian should embrace our God-given and culturally-escalated task, in this crisis and beyond, of bearing witness to certain eternal truths: that every human being has inherent dignity and value, and no one should ever be sacrificed on the altar of "efficiency."
A recent Christian Post article described how women, 69 percent of the time, are immediately offered an abortion when their child is diagnosed with Down Syndrome in utero. If they decline, they are asked again. And often, again. One woman reported being asked fifteen times! Government policies in countries like Iceland and Denmark have resulted in only a handful of children with Down Syndrome born each year. In fact, about 90 percent of children diagnosed with Down Syndrome in Europe are aborted. In the U.S., the best estimates are about 65 percent.
