opinion

Long gone are the days when believers automatically joined the church down the street. Even denominational loyalties, theological convictions, and worship styles are not as important as they used to be. More and more often church shoppers are prioritizing political and social convictions.

It should not come as a surprise that social media companies like Facebook have an outsized influence on the way their users see the world. But the degree to which that’s the case—and the extent of the issues it’s now causing—are starting to become more widely known.

As government agencies work around the clock and refugee care organizations rapidly retool in order to help Afghan refuees, many American Christians may be asking “What in the world?!” and “How can we help?”

America’s pandemic of despair shows up most obviously in the mounting number of suicide and suicide attempts. According to the Centers for Disease Control, suicide rates are higher today than at any other time since the Great Depression.

This week, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came under fire after she attended the MET Gala wearing a dress dawning the message "Tax the Rich."

Margaret Mead observed that a central question any society has to answer is how to make a proper place for men. Missing in our current cultural equation for men is purpose. Low expectations, combined with a dearth of purpose, make for a dangerous concoction.

You and I were made to need intimacy with our Maker. In our anti-Christian culture, we need the power of God to embrace and defend the truth of God. As Charlie Chaplin wisely observed, “You’ll never find a rainbow if you’re looking down.”

Without God, there is no meaning, not in language, or art, or in reality itself. Christians, because our worldview begins not only with God but with a God who communicates, are far more in the prescriptivist camp when it comes to words. While words obviously change over time, as custom and culture ebb and flow, words point beyond other words and random interpretations to true realities. The basis of the world itself is words… God’s words, to be precise.

For hundreds of years, theologians have asserted that pride is a great and destructive sin.

Two wills cannot successfully live in the same body—our self-will and God’s will. We can’t defeat what we feed. God’s Word states, “For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world” (1 John 2:16).