Human slavery, and the trafficking that makes it possible across international borders, is not an ancient problem but now greater than ever. Traffickers trick young women, children, sometimes men too, into traveling internationally to get a job, only to discover when they arrive that they are enslaved, coerced into prostitution, forced labor, and held sometimes for years against their will. Virtually any real moral code recognizes the evil in this, yet it continues because there is money to be h...
Apr 14, 2025•10 min•Season 4Ep. 201
Music is part of life and for some two thousand years of the history of the Christian Church, music has been both blessed and controversial, the latter because churchgoers and leaders debated and struggled to identify "The one and only holy" music or instrumentation. Interestingly, all the while, in his Word the Bible, God never said any given type of music is "The" Christian or church music. He created us in his image with reason and imagination, then commanded us to build culture, to vest ours...
Apr 09, 2025•10 min•Season 4Ep. 200
Debates over music in the church did not begin in the late 20th Century. In fact, music has been a part of church or Christian history, but the styles, modes, instrumentation, and presentation have varied considerably and often controversially throughout the history of the church. Churchgoers have always struggled with what kind of music should be incorporated in church worship, what honors God, and what does not, how music can be "presented" and not "performed," how it can be ecclesiastical and...
Apr 07, 2025•10 min•Season 4Ep. 199
Anyone who has attended church for a few years will recognize this scenario: You're part of a small group and the leader says, "How about two or three of you pray as you feel led, then I'll close." Then no one prays, and still no one prays, and the longer this goes on, the more the tension grows and the more awkward the experience. It happens regularly. Something like 77% of Americans say they are afraid to speak in public, and public prayer is one example of this. But why should we pray in publ...
Mar 31, 2025•10 min•Season 4Ep. 198
What are we to think of AI and its many uses in this brave new world? Well, one thing is sure, AI is incredibly complex, changing by the minute, meaning increasing the number of options, and we need to consider the applications on a case-by-case basis. Well, that's not one thing; it's three things, which points to the mixed bag of prizes and tricks that an AI world is presenting us. Bottom line, some AI is productive and will bless the rat race, and some AI is not productive, not helpful, ultima...
Mar 24, 2025•10 min•Season 4Ep. 197
The U.S. National Debt is at this writing, over $36.6 Trillion, and climbing so fast you cannot keep up with the digital read-out at usdebtclock.org. That's over $107K per citizen. Yet most in the national leadership, Congress and the President, have for decades blithely continued to add to this debt with oft-times outrageous spending bills - witness what occurred during the. Biden Administration - for which there is no identified funding. The U.S. debt is ignored and new programs are "funded" b...
Mar 17, 2025•10 min•Season 4Ep. 196
Joe Dallas is a counselor, an expert on human sexuality from a Christian perspective. He's written several books on this topic, but I consider the book reviewed here to be one of the most practical and helpful books I've read in the last few years. It covers topics like cancel culture, homosexuality, racism, gender identity, abortion, so you might think this is a book about politics. But it is not. This is a book about how to live in a cancel culture and interact with people whose values might b...
Mar 10, 2025•9 min•Season 4Ep. 195
The parable of the prodigal son is found in the New Testament book of Luke, chapter 15. It is "glorious" because it clearly conveys a Christian message of redemption, second chances, and hope. God is there, always, waiting and wanting us to return to him for restoration, blessedness in this life, and eternal life with him. If he or she is still living, no one, no matter their descent into debauchery, is beyond hope. For more Christian commentary, check my website at www.rexmrogers.com or my YouT...
Mar 03, 2025•10 min•Season 4Ep. 194
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution Bill of Rights, though ratified in 1791, codify our most essential foundational ideals: freedom of religion and freedom of speech. These ideals define what this nation is about. What has been disconcerting is the increasing number of incidents in which these ideals have been stressed, attacked, even rejected. Yet they are important not only for a nation that claims to be the model of the free world but also as a means of reinforcing human dignity. For...
Feb 24, 2025•10 min•Season 4Ep. 193
Here I remember my days in public schools at a time when my fellow students and I were blessed with good teachers who taught and parents who supported them. Now we're in a much different situation, one reason President Donald J. Trump is considering closing down the U.S. Department of Education. I spent 35 years teaching and as an administrator if private schools, 7th Grade to grad school, and I loved every minute of it. Today, though education, public and private, is challenged by a host of iss...
Feb 17, 2025•10 min•Season 4Ep. 192
Birthright citizenship, and its troublesome by-product birth tourism (internationals are gaming the system fraudulently), emerges in discussions about immigration. President Trump has already issued an executive order seeking to suspend birthright citizenship, and this has produced reactions re what’s constitutional ala the 14th Amendment, what’s moral, what does it mean to be a citizen of the U.S.? Discussing birthright citizenship is not ipso fact o anti-immigration. All of our ancestors were ...
Feb 10, 2025•10 min•Season 4Ep. 191
DEI, "diversity, equity, and inclusion," has become something of a religion of the left in the last twenty years. Add to this that this approach to human resources has been accepted, adopted, promoted, demanded in a near tsunami in American education, corporations, and under Joe Biden, government. Problem is, this approach does not ultimately help and actually demeans the minorities and women it is intended to help, and it displaces a key American ideal, meritocracy, with inevitable mediocrity. ...
Feb 03, 2025•9 min•Season 4Ep. 190
Millions of immigrants have been allowed by the Biden Administration to come into the United States across the southern border, unvetted, illegal in numbers and lack of process, some even flown clandestinely in night flights to cities that did not ask for them. Now the Trump 2.0 Administration is closing the borders and initiating a process of mass deportation of illegal immigrants, beginning with those convicted of crimes. This has produced reaction, some 54% of Americans agreeing this step is ...
Jan 27, 2025•10 min•Season 4Ep. 189
Like many of us, I've been periodically watching reports on the Los Angeles area wildfires and thinking about them more often. Clearly these historic and horrific fires leave in their wake human tragedies too numerous to count. Peoples' lives are or will be forever changed. More than property, per se, I've been thinking about what insurance cannot replace, and these lost lives, priceless items, and more constitute the greater devastating impact for many. What is it in our lives that insurance ca...
Jan 20, 2025•10 min•Season 4Ep. 188
Memes have become a near universal experience of contemporary life, at least for anyone who spends any time at all on any social media platform. They are print visuals, usually containing some caption that makes a humorous, poignant, insightful, political, or maybe even snarky message. The memes then "go viral" as we say, being proliferated on the World Wide Web. Nothing in Scripture suggests Christian believers should not meme, but as part of life in a fallen world, memes, like everything else,...
Jan 14, 2025•10 min•Season 4Ep. 187
Some people make New Year's resolutions. While I don't make resolutions, I'm not against the practice. I do, though, have a number of hope(s), plural, for the new year, what I believe can, should, or even must happen for the USA to flourish. I'm not recommending something new as much as a rediscovery and recommitment to the ideals that made American culture strong in the first place. We've lost much, but with the right philosophy and work, much can be regained. For more Christian commentary, che...
Jan 06, 2025•10 min•Season 4Ep. 186
This podcast is a review of "The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness" by Jonathan Haidt. It is a scholarly book focused upon the emergence of smartphones in 2007, coupled with the Internet and social media, that the author argues is responsible for a skyrocketing increase in adolescent mental illness in Gen Z, 2010-2015. Professor Haidt (pronounced "height") is a social psychologist at NYU. The book presents data, is thorough, balanced...
Dec 30, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 185
Christmas is celebrated worldwide via thousands of traditions that have been developed over the past two thousand years since the first Nativity in Bethlehem. Scripture does not tell us how to practice or celebrate Christmas, but it gives us room to honor God in myriad ways that fit our culture. It's interesting to study the development of such traditions, remembering that only since the mid-19th Century that we have enjoyed photography and only since early to mid-20th Century have we enjoyed au...
Dec 23, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 184
The 2024 US Presidential election is in the books with Donald J. Trump the overwhelming winner. From the earliest days, I was not a Trump fan, but I gradually changed not because he's some kind of knight in shining armor but because the other side is so given to false and threatening values, so anti-American - not just patriotically but in their ideals - and so seemingly bent on leading the USA into greater socialism, authoritarianism, and decline. Trump is for sure not perfect, but neither am I...
Dec 16, 2024•9 min•Season 3Ep. 183
It's impossible to avoid seeing rainbows in the marketplace, not usually depictions of natural or real rainbows but symbols of the LGBTQ+ movement. While not everyone in this movement agree on all points, it is indeed a movement because so many agree on the foundational points, that is, sex or gender, sexuality, and sexual expression are all the province of individual choice, not biology, not religion, and certainly not God. This view is contrary to what is taught in the Bible and thus today bib...
Dec 10, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 182
Some of you, like me, may have had a mother that quoted that verse to you when you were a kid: "Be sure your sins will find you out." Either way, it is all the more relevant and certainly true in what now is a Cyber Age where we are under near constant surveillance and where we as a culture if not individually continuously post about ourselves in social media - for good and often for not so good. There is not longer private. There is only public. We are accountable, and it is easier than ever to...
Dec 02, 2024•9 min•Season 3Ep. 181
Thanksgiving is a rare precious tradition that combines Christian theology and the best of Americana. It's a special time when gratitude can be expressed for family, friends, a blessed nation, and a loving Lord. In a time when angst, anomie, division, deception, social disintegration, and political rancor seems to reign supreme, we need a time of rest, relaxation, reflection, and thanksgiving all the more. May your Thanksgiving be a time of grace and peace. For more Christian commentary, see my ...
Nov 25, 2024•9 min•Season 3Ep. 180
America has called the "First New Nation," a "Great Experiment," and a Christian nation. Each of these phrases have been the source of extensive historical research. Whatever your preference, clearly biblical Christianity made an enormous impact upon not onlly the United States but Western Civilization. The USA, God be praised, is still a land where religious liberty is honored, and with it freedom of speech. It is a place where all people, including Christians, can learn to discern how their fa...
Nov 18, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 179
Adversity is a fact of life. Everyone at every level of society experiences adversity, and indeed, if they have not, they just haven't lived long enough. The fictional Robinson Crusoe, a character and story developed by Daniel Defoe and published in 1719 tells his shipwrecked alone on a deserted island for many years and how Crusoe moved from cursing God to worshipping and praising God for the same circumstances. What Defoe is doing in this classic of English literature is teaching us about the ...
Nov 11, 2024•9 min•Season 3Ep. 178
Ever wonder why we have nation states in the world, and are they legitimate? Why do nations even bother to maintain borders? Scripture repeatedly references nations. The English word is translated from Hebrew or Greek, meaning people groups who might speak the same language, follow the same religion, or live in the same area, a somewhat broader definition than we typically think today. While Scripture says God will work through nations to accomplish his purposes and to bless humanity, he is not ...
Nov 04, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 177
The Scripture tells us to love and pray for our enemies. Needless to say, humanly speaking, this is difficult to do, particularly for believers involved in war like what's happening in the Middle East. But even without this kind of violence, most would admit that loving or praying for people we do not like and who we consider opposed to us in some way is, again, challenging to say the least. More likely, we tend to wish they'd get what we think is their just desserts. One thing is clear, though,...
Oct 28, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 176
Here I am revisiting a topic from two years ago--actually longer than that, for I did a podcast on this subject in 2022 , wrote about it back in 2016. It's still a threat to what's best and good about America. American culture has lost its ability to discuss, much less disagree or debate. I call it the death of discussion because social trends have led us into a conversational cul-de-sac with no way out. We’ve come to a point in a so-called post-truth or fake news culture in which polarization i...
Oct 21, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 175
Prominent scholars, among them the late Dr. Francis A. Schaeffer, have been saying for some time that Western Civilization is foundering. Its foundation is cracking and it may be in decline. An inexorable decline? Only God knows. But there is much evidence to suggest this thesis is coming to pass. Western Civilization has rejected its Judeo-Christian moral consensus, the sacred canopy as it were, under with it was founded, functioned, and flourished since at least the Renaissance and Reformation...
Oct 14, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 174
It's been one year since Hamas invaded Israel in a surprise attack resulting in about 1200 dead, 250 or more hostages, and a record of soulless brutality that ranks it among the worst incidents of man's inhumanity to man. War in the Middle East, particularly Gaza, West Bank, and Lebanon has been the result as Israel defends itself, all while coming under enormous global pressure to stand down, maintain a ceasefire, and protect noncombatants. This, of course, presupposes Hamas, Houthis, Hezbollah...
Oct 07, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 173
Pete Rose died this week at 83. By any measure, he was one of the greatest baseball players we've been privileged to watch. But he is not in the MLB Hall of Fame. Why, because he gambled on his own team's games and was declared permanently ineligible to participate in professional baseball, and later, to be considered for election to the Hall of Fame. It's a sad case with people arguing passionately he should be kept out and people arguing equally passionately he should be put in the Hall of Fam...
Oct 02, 2024•10 min•Season 3Ep. 172
