America has become, to borrow words from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 speech at Harvard, a place with “little defense against the abyss of human decadence…such as the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, such as motion pictures full of pornography, crime, and horror.” Even stricter laws, Solzhenitsyn went on to say, would be powerless to defend a people against such moral corrosion.
Each year as Easter approaches, pseudo-scholars, newspapers, and cable networks make headlines claiming to offer the real story about Jesus. Their accounts assume that much of the Jesus story contained in the Gospels, especially anything miraculous is largely a myth created and propagated by, first, His followers, and then, Church leaders seeking to expand their power. Despite the skepticism, few suggest that Jesus never existed. Online, of course, that is a different story. So, what if you find yourself in a conversation with someone who says: “No one really knows whether Jesus existed or not.”
The legalization and growth of online gambling has coincided with the legalization of recreational marijuana. This is no coincidence. After all, laws are mostly downstream from the larger culture, and these laws do far more to expand personal license. Rather, they reflect and reinforce an unmistakable message, especially to young men, to aim low, to think short-term thoughts about life and the world, to pursue immediate gratification, and to not aspire to too much.
According to a recent poll published in Reason magazine, trust in American political parties is at a historic low. For the first time, more than 50 percent of the electorate now identifies as Independent, as opposed to Republican or Democrat.
In recent weeks, we’ve learned of abuse committed on a staggering scale, but it didn’t come from nowhere. It came from a long-term trajectory of compromises made possible by a perfect storm of failures – of accountability, of honesty, of tolerating, hiding, and abetting temptation. It is a gift of God that so few of us are in such a position to commit evil on this scale.
As Paul, in a city overrun with religious vanity, unapologetically ascended Mars Hill and graciously spoke the truth, can we face our own Mars Hills of unbelief and do likewise?
Today, 16 states ban the discrimination of people with intellectual disabilities, with similar measures pending in eight other states and in Congress. Still, these laws face an uphill battle, even if passed. As the head of the National Council on Disabilities admitted, the real goal of these laws is to inspire “a change of heart so people understand that they are discriminating.”
In nearly every sector of society—media, education, medicine, public policy, even sports—children are now subjects of social experimentation. As fundamental realities of life such as sex, marriage, and parenting are reimagined, we say to ourselves, “Oh, the kids will be fine.” Overwhelming evidence suggests they aren’t.
After Pope Francis recently visited Iraq, it became clear by some of the media coverage just how little the press “gets religion." Still, this visit was full of meetings that mattered, such as the Pope’s meeting with the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leader of the Shiites in Iraq. This meeting took place in Najaf in what is called the “Plain of Ur”. In a statement issued after the meeting, the Ayatollah affirmed “his concern that Christian citizens [of Iraq] should live like all Iraqis in peace and security, and with their full constitutional rights.”
For months, the Communist leadership tried everything from coercion to concessions, to squash the pro-Democracy protests in Hong Kong, but the protests only intensified. By late summer 2019, the movement, which had started over a law that allowed Hong Kong citizens to be prosecuted under the mainland’s jurisdiction, had become about much more than that. It was now about preserving a free Hong Kong. But when the headlines from changed from protesters to a virus and the world economy ground to a halt, other nations and their governments turned inward.
