Around the world, many of our brothers and sisters don’t have the option of living the kind of “quiet and peaceable” lives we take for granted. Let's pray for our brothers and sisters in Nigeria and around the world who have, in recent years, experienced extreme persecution.
During the first wave of the pandemic in Great Britain, various facilities that care for people with intellectual disabilities, what the Brits call “learning disabilities,” issued blanket “Do Not Resuscitate” orders. These orders came, according to one source, directly from doctors, without consulting the patients or their families.
Christians should be with God’s people and serve wherever we can. At the same time, Scripture is clear that everything done well to God’s glory is also worship.
Thirty years ago, the idea of socially and medically experimenting on children to advance a controversial and unproven ideology was unthinkable. Today, it’s considered by some to be unquestionable.
Celebrity-ism is as much a problem in the Church as out. We can be grateful for YouTube access to the teachings, articles, and sermons of our favorite pastors and for the inspiration from our favorite Christian authors or artists through Instagram. But are we idolizing? Are we angry if they say something we don’t like, commenting as if they’re not real people or as if their job is always to agree with us? Do we assume a level of intimacy that is not appropriate with someone we actually don’t know? Do we use them to replace local churches or to provide spiritual authority in our lives, when that is not their place nor role?
Harriet Tubman is set to replace former President Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill.
Late last week, Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives introduced the Equality Act, a grave threat to religious liberty and conscience rights that would, in effect, erase all legal distinctions between male and female in public life.
In recent months, Amazon began blocking the sale of books they deemed “dangerous” to LGBTQ people. Some of these books, to be frank, were hateful and demeaning. Others were deemed hateful for simply questioning the dominant narratives about homosexuality, gay marriage, or gender dysphoria. The most recent banned book, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, is among the most scholarly and thoroughly researched on the issue of transgenderism.
The spectrum of postmodern thought ran between an uncertainty of knowledge to a focus on power. Describing this way of thinking, Angela Franks recently wrote in First Things, “[W]e are not controlled by a puppet master. Rather, we live in a vast network of demands, commandments, inducements, sorting mechanisms, disciplines, and more. ‘Power’ has no center. It is the aggregate of multiple, shifting relationships.”
The biblical vision of male and female is beautiful. Men and women were made differently but point to the same dynamic God. When God created both Adam and Eve, He said they both were created in His Image and were “very good.” It’s notable that before the author of Genesis reveals Eve’s name, he reveals she also was made in the image of God.
