In the months after 9/11, a well-known Christian apologist confidently announced that postmodernism was dead. After witnessing the evil of that day, no one, he suggested, would embrace a worldview that denied absolute truth or morality. He was wrong.
Executives at McDonald’s have lost their ability to blush. Hungry for more sales, the Golden Arches marketing team has partnered with the latest Explicit Rapper of the Month Club: Saweetie. Their decision is a few fries short of a happy meal.
Because of the awful realities of life after the Fall, Christian thinkers throughout the ages – from Augustine, to Aquinas, to Luther, to others today – have sought to contextualize acts of war within a Christian moral framework, so that believers could actively oppose grave injustice without becoming part of the injustice themselves. Some believers, who hold that this is impossible, have embraced various degrees of pacifism. However, the majority of the church settled on a set of criteria that, if met, justify acts of war.
To describe America’s exit strategy from Afghanistan as “negligence” is charitable. More accurately, it’s somewhere between folly and abandonment.
In a recent article, Harvard Law Today, a publication of Harvard Law School, highlighted 3 students and alumni who are fighting for the legalization of polyamory.
There is no such thing as “ethical porn use.” Porn is premised on the notion that human beings can be abstracted from their personhood and consumed as collections of body parts. Porn assumes and trains consumers to believe that people are products to be bought and sold, and then discarded with the click of a mouse or the flick of a finger.
We can regulate external behavior but only God can change human nature. We can act in godly ways to impress others and seek God’s blessing. But measure your heart—do you secretly still want to do what you know you should not do?
The king of the universe cannot honor rebellion against his reign lest he deny his holiness and permit that which harms his subjects. He calls us to seek his glory because to do less would be idolatry on his part and ours. Conversely, when we enthrone him in our hearts and serve him with fear and reverence, we experience his best in and through our lives.
The Constitution grants us freedom of religion because we need it. We need the God we are free to worship and trust. We need the biblical truth we are free to proclaim. We are so immoral that we need the morality taught by God’s word and empowered by his Spirit.
Amid widespread divisions in worldviews and morality, it is important to remember that honoring, respecting and loving those with whom we disagree is so important for any meaningful communication to take place. We must remember that even those we disagree with are made in the image of God.
