TruthCurrents

The assassination of Charlie Kirk occurred almost a month ago, and interesting story lines continue to emerge related to that event. For example, on September 8th, two days before the assassination, Jezebel magazine published an article with the headline, “We paid some Etsy Witches to curse Charlie Kirk.” Let’s talk about the presence of evil in our generation.Graham Faulkner, “Etsy witches and the murder of Charlie Kirk,” September 18, 2025.James R. Wood, “Be neither terrorized nor radicalized,” September 16, 2025.

Well, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware that we are now in full-blown football mode. College football is underway and the NFL has kicked off with its new ’25-’26 season. Everything should be wonderful in the world of football fans. Except, one of the story lines in the NFL this year is the increasing prominence of male cheerleaders. Ray Hacke, “This is nothing to cheer about,” August 27, 2025.Denny Burk, “Jen Hatmaker and her appeal to deconstruct,” August 26, 2025.

On Saturday a week ago, thousands of Shiite Muslims marched together in a parade celebrating the Muslim holiday, Arbaeen. This holiday translates it’s title as “The Fortieth Day,” and it commemorates the martyrdom of a leader named Imam Hussein, who was the third Shiite Imam, or spiritual leader, the grandson of the founder of Islam, Muhammad. Let’s talk about that.A.S. Ibrahim, “CAIR, Mahmoud Khalil, and progressive naivety,” August 27, 2025.___________, “A revealing Muslim rally,” August 20, 2025.

It doesn’t take much real insight to recognize that things have changed around here. The America of 2025 is vastly different from the America of 30 or 40 years ago. And I often hear Christians use a verse from Psalm 11 to throw up their hands in despair. Psalm 11:3 says, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Let’s talk about what the righteous can do.Thaddeus Williams, “An anti-gospel take on greed,” August 11, 2025.Katy Faust, “The myth of ‘no difference’,” August 4, 2025._________, “The end of the rainbow?” June 30, 2025.Janie B. Cheaney, “Times of testing,” May 15, 2025.

I call it, “Bumper-sticker Theology.” That’s my label for the kind of theology that involves no deep, contemplative, pondering or meditation of the weighty issues of faith. But rather it’s like a drive-by approach to significant issues where we just wave at them as we go past and summarize our conclusions in pithy phrases that fit well on t-shirts or bumper stickers. We have a plague of bumper-sticker theology in our generation.Daniel Schreiner, “Engaging with ‘Practicing the Way’: Nine Thoughts on John Mark Comer’s Best Seller,” March 12, 2025.

Maybe you’ve heard of the website, Etsy. It’s an online marketplace where people buy quaint, homemade goods: jams, jelly's, quilt, all kinds of homemade items. But what you might not know about Etsy is it is now a place that has developed a full-blown cottage industry for selling magical spells to witches. What should we think about this biblically?Katie J. McCoy, “The witches of Etsy,” July 30, 2025.Mary Jackson, “Out of Darkness,” World Magazine, May 4, 2025.

A few weeks ago on May 25th, a man named Harrison Ruffin Tyler, died at the age of 96. You might recollect that the 10th president of the United States was John Tyler, Harrison’s grandfather. You heard that right, Harrison is his grandson. John Tyler was born in 1790 and died in 1862. He had 15 children late in life and the last one was Lyon Tyler who lived from 1853-1935. Lyon also saw a child born when he was 75 years old, Harrison Tyler. And so, with the death of Harrison this year, we see that the Tyler family has three generations that span 230 years. This is what historians call historical consciousness, that is, the awareness of how history unfolds and how the past in connected to the present. I want us to talk about that because America is a nation with a great past, but today very little historical awareness of that past.Carolina Lumetta, “Pastors ponder how best to exercise new freedom to politick,” July 10, 2025.Lauren Canterberry, “Churches may endorse candidates from pulpit, IRS says,” July 8, 2025.John D. Wilsey, “History’s enduring presence,” June 4, 2025.

Well, we’re halfway through the month of July and I realized the other day that I missed something. Apparently, I missed Pride Month. The month of June came and went and I heard almost nothing about it and so I decided to look into it. Where did Pride Month go? After years of being assaulted every June with an in-your-face publicity campaign, what happened in 2025? You need to know what I found out.Glenn T. Stanton, “A deception exposed,” July 8, 2025.Bekah McCallum, “The Pride Month that wasn’t,” June 30, 2025.Bethel McGrew, “Playing hardball,” June 27, 2025.

Religious liberty is a topic that is always worth the time to think about and talk about because the concept is a uniquely American contribution to the history of western civilization. Also, religious liberty is a uniquely Baptist contribution to the history of the American experiment. We know historically there is a give and take in the relationship between church and state and we are forever trying to assess in particular instances exactly how that relationship should play out. Right now, there are shifts being made by the United States Supreme Court and so, the proper understanding of government and organized religion is once again a topic worth examining. So, let’s talk about religious liberty.Andrew T. Walker, “The scandal of compromising evangelical elites,” June 9, 2025.Joseph Backholm, “The myth of secular neutrality,” June 3, 2025.Colin J. Smothers, “Fuller Seminary’s untenable ‘third way’,” May 30, 2025.Thaddeus Williams, “Tax money for some religions,” May 27, 2025.

One of the critical marks of Christianity is the willingness of God’s people to cooperate together in Kingdom endeavors. My church is a part of the Southern Baptist Convention. The SBC is defined by cooperation more than organizational structure or any of the things that bind other denominations together. The SBC is a convention of churches who have voluntarily associated with each other because we know that together we can accomplish more than we can apart. Last week was the annual SBC meeting held in Dallas, TX. I want to share with you the state of Southern Baptists: the good, the bad, and the embarrassing. Mark Wingfield, “Why won’t the SBC be more financially transparent?” June 12, 2025.Lauren Canterberry, “SBC urges Supreme Court overturn of gay marriage ruling,” June 11, 2025.Nathan A. Finn, “Confessional fidelity and denominational faithfulness,” June 10, 2025.

I had breakfast this morning with nearly 100 men who gathered together for fellowship and spiritual warfare. I pastor a church where men are enthusiastically involved in disciple-making and pursuing Christ-likeness. I hear from other pastors all the time, “How do you get men involved at church because we are not being successful at it?” And I tell them that muscular Christianity is the key to living out the call of the gospel for men.

Artificial Intelligence is changing our world in unexpected ways and oddly enough, AI is the biggest thing that Christians are not talking about. We need to consider the way that humanity and human society will be altered over the course of the next generation by Artificial Intelligence. C.R. Wiley, “AI Jesus and other heresies from Silicon Valley,” January 6, 2025.Anne Kennedy, “In the care of AI,” March 3, 2025.Flynn Evans, “Dating alone,” March 18, 2025.Liz Lykins, “Should elementary students use AI tools?” March 19, 2025.

Are charter schools state schools or private schools? And can they be religious schools. There’s an Oklahoma court case which has made it all the way to the Supreme Court and we should have answers to these questions in the next few weeks. Lael Weinberger, “Funding for the faithful?” May 1, 2025.Kristen Waggoner, “Making religious school choice a reality,” April 30, 2025.Steve West, “Church school, state school, or both?” April 30, 2025.

Does your church have a pastor? Because if you do, you might want to hold on to him. Because if he leaves you might not be able to get another one. U.S. Pastors are calling it quits across the nation. Elizabeth Russell, “Facebook removes churches’ SermonAudio links,” May 5, 2025.U.S. Rep. Mark Harris, “Free speech for pastors, too,” April 15, 2025.Steven Wedgeworth, “A shortage of shepherds,” April 8, 2025.

The United Kingdom’s top court recently issued a radical ruling. They said that a woman can be defined as someone who is born biologically female. In other words, men are men, women are women, and that can be defined in objective, biological ways. The highest court in Great Britain has now come down on the side of what every toddler has known for the last 5,000 years. Will America follow suit and once again be able to define what a woman is?Erin Hawley, “An odd way to celebrate women,” April 9, 2025.Jamie Bryan Hall and Ryan T. Anderson, “The Abortion Pill Harms Women,” April 28, 2025.

Today is Good Friday. It’s the day that we celebrate and remember the cross of Jesus Christ, the sacrifice for our sins that culminates in the glorious news of the resurrection on Easter Sunday morning. These observances are ingrained in the history of Western civilization. Or are they?Nasser Hussain, “Canceling Easter,” April 9, 2025.Denny Burk, “What a difference a year makes,” April 16, 2025.

The wicked witch of progressivism is dead, right? And Christians finally have the opportunity that we said for generations that we wanted: the opportunity to engage culture and win. Well, we might not be as ready for that as we think.Andrew T. Walker, “All grace, no nature,” March 25, 2025.R. Albert Mohler, Jr. “They are going to call us Christian nationalists,” March 14, 2025.

Throughout human history, cultures have died and civilizations have vanished. Why? It’s because, eventually, nations or people groups lose the foundational principles, the core values that allowed them to thrive and have success. When a nation allows poisonous enemies to begin to assault their core identity from within a nation has started the process of self-extinction. Craig Carter, “Mark Carney is a man with a plan,” March 12, 2025.Nathan A. Finn, “The great migration,” March 11, 2025.A.S. Ibrahim, “How cultures die,” March 7, 2025.

A few weeks ago, in February of this year, a Representative by the name of Laurel Libby, who serves in the House of Representative for the state of Maine, was censured by that body for what they termed, a reprehensible social media post. As it turns out, Libby had posted about a young, high school, male athlete who won first place in pole vaulting in the women’s category of competition in the state of Maine. We need to talk about where we are right now in America on the topic of transgender athletes, as well as the topic of censorship of those who wade into the public square and dare to speak their minds.Liz Lykins, “Maine madness: Lawmaker still banned from House floor over social media post,” March 18, 2025.Nathanael Blake, “Sex and the post-Christian right,” March 11, 2025.R. Albert Mohler, Jr. “So boys shouldn’t play on girls teams?” March 7, 2025.Lauren Canterberry, “Newsom deviates from progressives on women’s sports issue,” March 7, 2025.

Is a one-world, global government even a real possibility in our generation? As it turns out, political leaders, almost since the dawn of human history have always pursued an impulse to take global control of mankind.Larry Schweikart, “Return to Babel: The temptation of globalism persists despite historic failures,” World Magazine, pp.45-51, January 27, 2024.