Sadly, war is a fact of life in a fallen world. It is horrible, "hell" General William T Sherman called it. So how do we pray in times of war? Do we pray for an immediate ceasefire? Do we pray for "our side" but not the enemy? Do we pray for everyone affected or just our friends? What does the Bible say about prayer and war or violent conflict? Well, the Word of God has much to offer on this subject, though interestingly does not forbid us from going to war. Nor does he forbid weapons. We may re...
Sep 30, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 171
Current culture and pop theology repeatedly tell us, "You're perfect just the way you are." But are we? Are we happier, less anxious, or medicated? Why is it that mental health problems are being described in crisis terms, yet we have more therapy available than ever before? Why if we have more things, more toys, more financial wherewithal, we're living longer, yet we're now less happy and more anxious than any developed country? And if we're perfect the way we are, what is the source of our pro...
Sep 23, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 170
Guns are a major current controversy that repeats with every mass shooting or shooting at a notable person like the former president, Donald J. Trump. As Christians, we are called upon to apply God's Word, will, and moral instruction to our lives and the world in which we live. So what does the Bible say about Guns? Is it immoral to purchase or own a gun? Is the only purpose of guns to kill human beings? Should governments institute forms of gun control, gun buy back progrrams, or outright gun c...
Sep 16, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 169
Year 2023 saw several unplanned, unsponsored revivals or religious awakenings take place on American public university and private college campuses. Beginning year 2024 academic term a similar experience has occurred at Ohio State University. Is this the precursor to more such events during this academic year? Is God working as a counter to the spiritual wasteland many higher education environments have become, some the site of aggressive, destructive, and often antisemitic demonstrations? For m...
Sep 09, 2024•9 min•Season 3Ep. 168
Scripture commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves, but does this include immigrants? Does it include illegal or unauthorized immigrants? Immigration can be considered on many levels, but here we examine the idea of "Love your neighbor" on both a personal or individual level and a political or national level. Certainly, no matter how immigrants arrived, they are here and they are human beings who we are to love by building bridges of friendship and ministry in Christ. But on a political or...
Sep 02, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 167
Megan Basham's book published 2024, asks the question: “Why have so many well-known evangelical institutions and leaders in recent years started promoting causes that no plain reading of Scripture would demand, like lobbying for fossil fuel regulations or dismantling white privilege, while issues that unequivocally call for Christian charity find them silent and stymied?” She wonders aloud, are Christian pastors letting culture, rather than Scripture, dictate the content of their preaching? Her ...
Aug 26, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 166
Truth is disappearing in Western culture; in America too. If we do not believe in truth, real, objective, facts-whether-we-like-them-or-believe-them truth, then the edifice of our civilization crumbles. Our culture crumbles, then our nation inevitably will crumble. This sounds melodramatic and hyperbolic, but it is historically demonstrable. No truth, then no right or wrong, no fact or fiction, no beauty, no better or best, no certainty; When this happens, immoral actions increase, and sooner or...
Aug 19, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 165
Golden Wedding Anniversaries, 50 years, are not for the faint of heart. You get married, you make a commitment, you go off with your spouse, and there is no return policy. Fifty Years is a long but short time. With a thousand other voices, I can say it's amazing how fast time flies. God is good, and this is captured in Sarah's and my family verse, selected when we had our first child, a "Bicentennial Baby" in January 1976. In the old KJV language, the verse is Ps. 126:3: "The Lord hath done grea...
Aug 12, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 164
With Vice President Kamala Harris's entrance into the 2024 American Presidential election as the presumptive nominee of the Democrat Party, and with former president Donald J. Trump's comments about her heritage, race is now an issue in the campaign. It's a good time to think about race and racism from a specifically Christian point of view. What does our Christian worldview tell us about race, and racism? How should we approach this divisive issue in American society? For more Christian comment...
Aug 05, 2024•9 min•Season 3Ep. 163
Since the 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony July 26 social media has been on fire with people expressing their disgust or their support for what appeared to be a representation of Leonardo da Vinci's painting, The Last Supper, featuring drag queens, a large woman as Jesus, and a young child. This got worldwide reaction from many different religious leaders. While the Opening Ceremony sort of apologized, it really did not, only saying they were sorry someone was offended. This piece reviews wh...
Jul 31, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 162
Losing a friend is never easy or pleasant. While God told us we need not fear death, he did not say we had to like it. Indeed, God called death the enemy. It is a separation, but we know from Scripture that for those who are "saints" = those who trust the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, when they die, they are absent from the body, present with the Lord. They are not "gone," but merely "absent," now more alive than ever in heaven, rejoicing in peace. This podcast seeks to honor my lifelong friend B...
Jul 29, 2024•9 min•Season 3Ep. 161
In the past decade, Western European nations and more recently during the Biden Administration in the U.S., the West has opened its borders to a literal flood of aliens or immigrants or migrants or refugees, or in the case of the US illegals, or undocumented or "newcomers," whatever the politically correct phrase. The logic used by political elites who endorsed and made possible this illogical behavior goes to multiculturalism, fear of population decline and tanking economies, and moral relativi...
Jul 22, 2024•9 min•Season 3Ep. 160
Since former President Donald J. Trump was shot and injured Saturday, July 13, many people have observed two things: 1) there must be a "dialing back" of the vitriolic rhetoric that has come to characterize this campaign, and 2) the providence of God spared Mr. Trump's life because God is not finished with him and he is slated to help lead America back to its founding ideals. This podcast remembers earlier presidential campaign rhetoric and political violence and considers the idea that God is d...
Jul 18, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 159
The transgender juggernaut taking American culture by storm is not just about sex but about identity. It is about choosing to be God so one can determine one's own sex. It is idolatry. Transgender activists know this philosophy cannot coexist with biblical Christianity, so it is on collision course with traditional Judeo-Christian values. Such diametrically opposed views could exist in a First Amendment society, but so far, activists don't seem able to accept this. For them, it is all or none. R...
Jul 15, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 158
Since Bruce Jenner said, "Call me, Caitlyn," transgenderism has taken American culture by storm. No part of society has remained untouched, and the same can be said for almost all extended families. But gender dysphoria is one thing, people struggling with emotional and mental issues, while transgender ideology and activism are another, the latter demanding absolute acquiescence, acceptance, and affirmation by one and all. The price for not sharing these views? Rejection, cancelling, being label...
Jul 08, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 157
Modernity is now overlapped by Postmodernity. Where once people believed in objective truth and reason, now they believe in subjectivism and feelings. Many, especially the young, no longer believe truth is possible. They speak of "My truth" and "Your truth" as if reality plays favorites or facts are optional. This fundamental shift has produced a Post-Truth Culture, one in which uncertainty, anxiety, and nihilism are daily evident in the streets as people, again especially youth, cast about in c...
Jul 02, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 156
Using different versions of the Bible throughout your life is probably a common occurrence for anyone who seeks to live an active Christian life. For me, it was the KJV - isn't that true of everyone over, say, 50? Then on to the NIV for about 30 years, and recently a shift to ESV. What matters is that the version you choose is accurate and faithful to the original autographs and what matters is you actually read your Bible, whatever its version. Churches have experienced this journey, too, as ha...
Jun 24, 2024•9 min•Season 3Ep. 155
Fatherless homes have increased significantly since 1960, so much so that the experience of children growing up in the average American household today is dramatically different from the one experienced by people born before 1970. Does this matter? Yes, it does. Turns out God knew what he was doing when he designed the family unit as mother and father and children. Now we also can point to sad statistics demonstrating the negative social pathologies children experience when they grow up in fathe...
Jun 17, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 154
Americans, as citizens in nearly all Western countries, are losing individual and personal freedoms to over-reaching governments populated by elected officials and bureaucrats who are more interested in expanding their power than doing what is best for the citizenry longterm. Mostly this inclination comes from the Left or so-called "progressives," but can be heard in the initiatives of the Right as well. This trend toward loss of freedom has been moving most of my lifetime, dating to the 1960s, ...
Jun 10, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 153
American institutions are in a self-generated decline, largely due to officials' buy-in to values that are contradictory to and undermining of the traditional ideals that made the American experiment possible and flourishing in the first place. They reject equality before the law in favor of something called equity, reject meritocracy in favor of DEI, reject right and wrong morality in favor of immorality, reject truth in favor of something they call "your truth," reject colorblindness in favor ...
Jun 03, 2024•10 min
In the span of a month, both traditional and progressive Catholic views took a lead story position in social media and the news, the first from a professional football player's commencement address and the second from the Pope in an interview at the Vatican. The football player has been castigated across media for daring to say he appreciated his wife's choice to become a homemaker supporting his career. As a Catholic speaking at a Catholic college, he listed several conservative viewpoints abou...
May 27, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 151
Israel/Hamas have been involved in mortal combat since just after the surprise Hamas terrorist attack Oct 7, 2023 upon innocent Israelis across the border from Gaza. It's a tragic experience no matter how it is parsed, but it's been interesting to note how some Christian leaders lean heavily one way or another, which in itself is understandable and OK, but in doing so they often lack nuance, misuse, skip over, or twist facts, seem to make quick judgments based upon their demographic inclinations...
May 20, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 150
There are manifold ways to think about kinds of people in the world, but one way right out of Scripture is to think about "Sinners in Need of Grace" and "Sinners Saved by Grace." Either a person has asked Jesus Christ to forgive their sins and by grace through faith (Eph 2:8-9) become a Christian, i.e., a sinner saved by grace, or they have not and are still a sinner in need of this saving grace. We often, then, perhaps understandably, focus on the saved by grace part, as we should, celebrating ...
May 13, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 149
More than 80 American public universities have experienced not simply pro-Palestinian human rights protests--that's just the excuse--but what has morphed into pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, Jew-hatred, anti-America student (with the help of significant numbers of outside paid agitators) demonstrations. These generously labeled "protests" predictably evolved into commandeering and destroying property, harassment of local Jews and others in boldly chanted antisemitic, even genocidal chants, ridiculous hu...
May 06, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 148
Why has American culture changed so dramatically in the past 25 years? Was there a tipping point that triggered significant cultural change, and if not, what contributed to the shifts in values and behaviors we're now seeing in the streets, on campuses, even in the halls of Congress? In what way does American culture's view of truth, or the lack thereof, play into this? According to the great historian Will Durant, “a great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself...
Apr 29, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 147
Year 2024 is a presidential election year, so once again Americans are following the statements and antics of leading candidates from the Democrat - in this case the incumbent President Joe Biden - and from the Republican - former president Donald Trump. Christians often want to know more about their favorite candidate's religious persuasion, and this has been a staple of American politics from the beginning. It's interesting, though, to consider presidents historically and examine whether their...
Apr 22, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 146
MIsgendering, i.e., using a person's given name -- something called Deadnaming -- rather than the name they've chosen to match their perceived gender identity, or not using the person's Preferred Pronouns they say match their gender identity, is now a controversy in the U.S. Christians struggle with this challenge - do they refuse to use a transitioned person's new name or preferred pronouns in the interest of truth or do they use these new names and pronouns as a matter of respect for the other...
Apr 15, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 145
"The Chosen" is a multi-season television drama about the life of Jesus Christ and his disciples. For the characters, it offers creatively written backstories not found in the Scripture, but the drama attempts to portray the biblical story of Jesus in a manner faithful to the primary message of the biblical narrative. This is the third of three podcasts on "The Chosen." For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com.
Apr 11, 2024•9 min•Season 3Ep. 144
"The Chosen" is a multi-season television drama, just releasing Season 4 and scheduled for seven seasons, about the life of Jesus Christ and his disciples. An evangelical Christian, Dallas Jenkins, is the creator, producer. Some viewers have criticized the show in certain details and storylines, and at least one if not two controversies developed outside the show's content. This second of three podcasts on "The Chosen" considers those criticisms and controversies. For more Christian commentary, ...
Apr 08, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 143
"The Chosen" is a planned 7-season television drama on the life of Jesus Christ and his disciples. It tells the greatest story ever told with imaginative backstories and interpersonal conflicts. This is the first of three sequential podcasts on the series. "The Chosen" is cinematic art, not unlike the paintings of the Renaissance or Reformation, but a contemporary media in which human creators make judgments and vest themselves and their ideas in the work. In this they are able to fulfill the Cu...
Apr 04, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 142
