Discerning What Is Best with Dr Rex Rogers

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 professed religion made any perceived difference in their presidencies. For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com. 

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 person?All of this is rooted, of course, in people's rejection of the idea God created human beings and determined their immutable biological sex. It becomes more than a philosophic or theological debate when corporations or schools demand employees use new names or preferred pronouns in the name of inclusiveness and creating safe workspaces for transgender or nonbinary employees. For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com. 

"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. 

"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, check my website at rexmrogers.com. 

"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 Cultural Mandate of Gen 1: 27-28. Whether they do this wisely, with concern for accuracy re the Scripture, and with proper motives is for the viewer to evaluate."The Chosen," as the creators note, is not the Bible nor a substitute for the Bible. For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com.

Easter is the defining celebration of Christianity, focusing upon Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross, death and burial, then resurrection for the salvation of those who put their faith in him. There is no other religious holiday like it. He is risen. He is risen indeed. For more Christian commentary, see my website at rexmrogers.com.

Civil liberties are the "unalienable rights" of the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty, and in Thomas Jefferson's words, pursuit of happiness. Civil liberties are human or natural rights, our human birthright from God as designated in nature. Civil liberties list what government cannot take away. Civil rights are additional, expanded protections or rights granted by government to preserve and enhance our experience with our civil liberties. Right to vote, for example, is a civil right. Today, narcissistic culture makes new and continuous demands, pushing for government to give them what they desire and arguing it is their right - right to fair rent, right not to experience pain, right to not be hungry, right to equity, and much more. Problem is, what makes a desire a demand a "right," and why should such things necessarily be granted or guaranteed by government, thus involving Big Government ever more in our lives?For more Christian commenatary, check my website at rexmrogers.com. 

Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it,” is a principle that until recently I thought applied solely to the development of good Christian attitudes and behavior. Then it occurred to me that this principle works whether one is teaching a child worthy or unworthy values and ways of moving through their lives. In a sense, it is a promise and a warning. Look what American culture is experiencing now, with students demonstrating in the streets and on campuses, shouting antisemitic slogans and other violence toward Jews. Where did they learn these values? What moral education did they receive at home and in public schools? Have we lost an entire generation, maybe more, to non-Christian thinking? For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com. 

It seems that each time a moral standard is displaced, the social process refocuses upon another traditional moral standard that the Left argues is somehow a great restriction and oppression upon personal liberty. Gambling, a longtime social evil, fell in the 90s and early 2010s, same-sex marriage was legally embraced in 2015, then transgenderism took its turn. Trans ideology has now conquered American academia, entertainment, athletics, and Big Media, if not also much of religion. So what's next on Satan's list? For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com. 

SAT-7 is a Christian satellite and online broadcaster based in Cyprus and broadcasting 24/7 in Arabic, Farsi, and Turkish throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) - now also reaching into Afghanistan, Tajikistan. The technology of satellites is virtually un-censorable, and the internet is far-reaching. Truly SAT-7 is able to use technology, to communicate theology, in a timely fashion. SAT-7 bases its doctrinal understanding upon the Bible, and as summarized in the Nicene Creed and the Lausanne Covenant. Because of this ministry, supported financially and via prayer by people around the world, people in the MENA are coming to Christ every day. I have served with SAT-7 as the SAT-7 USA President since 2009. For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com. 

Population decline is now a serious consideration in Western Europe, the US and North America, Japan, China, and several more countries. In fact, the only countries where the population replacement rate is functioning at a needed, typical level, are several Sub-Saharan countries in Africa, Egypt, and a few countries in the Far East. Why is this happening? Why are people rejecting the idea of more children and families? And why does it matter that population decreases in countries over time, i.e., fewer children, fewer young adults, even as people live longer into advanced years? It's not biological but philosophical or religious, but why? What are the religious worldview underpinnings of this decline and is it biblical? For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com. 

Christian Nationalism has become a kind of grab bag label for several religious or specifically Christian approaches to engagement in US national politics. Some of these approaches are, frankly, unbiblical. While some may not call themselves by this term, yet they believe the USA was founded upon Judeo-Christian values, and that this public moral consensus, now fracturing, is still sorely needed today to reinforce social cohesion and preserve e Pluribus Unum.  Others use this label as a slanderous criticism, like "extremist" or "racist," for anyone who cites Christian values as a basis for their oposition to abortion or same-sex marriage or transgenderism. No doubt this term will be used during the run up to the 2024 US Presidential election, so it behooves us to understand it and know whereof we think. For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com. 

Climate Change is no longer simply about concern for the environment. Now among climate change alarmists, particularly globalist elites, climate change is a means to an end, a scare tactic to institute government controls, insure the power of leftist socialists, increase the size of government, promote population decline via abortion and other means, and otherwise put in place a laundry list of restrictions on personal liberty, economic activity, and freedom of mobility and choice. For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com.

If any word could describe the current condition of American culture it might be confused, so much so that the words of Scripture comes to mind as Jesus looked upon Jerusalem he thought of them as harassed and helpless as sheep without a shepherd. That's what we have today, harassed and helpless people, living in confusion that is a produce to their own choices. With all that, because God is long-suffering, human beings are not hopeless. God is still there, he still loves those he created, he still offers a way of understanding truth, forgiveness, and salvation, and he still delays his return for his own so that even more might come to faith through the Gospel. For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com. 

Digital Identification is now a commonplace of postmodern life. In many ways, the capacity to store and share information online, including personally identifying information, is helpful, making commerce and communication run more smoothly. But it also makes our most private information, and what we own--our values, interests, activities, bank accounts, etc.--available to a growing complex of interconnected, government, including foreign, or corporate system of data access, coordination...and potentially, control. Add to this biometrics, mass surveillance via near ubiquitous CCTV, and other new identification technologies, and privacy, freedom, and democracy itself is now threatened. Is this simply part of the build up to the biblical End Times? Probably, but how and when the last days will unfold only God knows. For now, our concerns are what does the government know about us, why does it want to know it, and how will it use it? For more Christian commentary, check my website rexmrogers.com.

Digital Identification, or Digital ID, is an assemblage of online personally identifying information extracted from our digital footprint - all our activity and actions online - or specifically inputted to create our unique ID. It sounds good, and in many applications it is good, reducing paperwork, speeding health records or purchases, etc. But our Digital ID is also subject to governments, corporations, and bad actors who want access for purposes of control, manipulation, or crime. And our Digital ID is only part of the story, for we now live in a mass surveillance society wherein we are being recorded on CCTV cameras nearly every time we visit a public space. Add this to biometric technology like facial recognition, geo-location technology, and growing digital financial networks and we are easily now at risk of enormous threats to basic human rights and freedoms. It's happening in China as we write where the authoritarian government is adding thousands more cameras in Chinese cities and creating a "social credit system" that functions like merits/demerits in grade school, allowing government to track and trace then intervene or punish or limit at will. Digital Identification may be good, but hit comes with a host of caveats for those who use it in a free society. For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com. 

Age comes to us all, great and small, rich and poor, no matter our demographics. In fact, the only alternative is death. So aging doesn't seem so bad by comparison to most of us. Question is, can one or how does one age biblically? What can we learn from Scripture about what God says about aging. Seems logical to ask because God is the one who made us and the one who determines the number of our days. Aging, then, which often brings certain decline or struggles or even suffering with it, can nevertheless be considered a blessing and used both to glorify God and to allow those who are aging to experience the process with joy and peace. For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com. 

Back in 1995, Pope John Paul II attracted worldwide attention for calling growing support for abortion and euthanasia a “culture of death.”  Now we’re told by the President of the United States that climate change “is the challenge of our collective lifetimes. The existential threat to human existence as we know it.”America’s “climate czar” John Kerry recently tipped his hand, saying, “The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." Kerry is giving us a peak at the anti-family, anti-human culture of death now motivating climate elites. In sum, climate change activists believe they, not God, can control the weather and the future, they prefer big government and dictatorship over democracy, and they wish to reduce the human population while controlling fuel, farms, and food. This is all about politics, more government control of our lives, and the loss of individualfreedom. It’s not about Global Warming. It’s about Global Government.It’s not about life but a culture of death.For more Christian commentary, check my website, rexmrogers.com. 

The self-induced, unrecognized - at least by the current Administration - immigration crisis on the US southern border continues to worsen. It's difficult to comprehend, why the Biden Administration is neglecting its constitutional responsibilities, and why opponents don't do more the stop it. This piece is not about preaching bigotry or prejudice. It is not against immigration or immigrants per se. It is only pointing to the many deleterious effects of this unvetted invasion, including substantially increased insecurity. Fixing or reforming US immigration policy is not rocket-science. It only requires the political will do pursue it. For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com.

The downfall of the Harvard University President Claudine Gay for more than 50 alleged incidents of plagiarism in her scholarly work, including her dissertation, was something that was too long coming, but in a sense, should never have happened at all. Surely the Presidential Search Committee at Harvard is better than to have allowed this candidate to rise to the top among some 600+ candidates? But the experience pulled back the curtain re how politics, in particular leftist "woke" DEI politics, is now a religion that supersedes all other considerations, including it would seem truth, excellence, and intellectual honesty. Finally, maybe, the public has become aware of how extensive these leftist doctrines are in education, from kindergarten to graduate school. The problem, though, is not per se a given university president or a given university, even Harvard, but a much broader and deeper wholesale rejection in the academy of traditional Western values, Christian values, in favor of a race, sex perceived oppressor vs oppressed mindset. It's going to take far more than one or two presidents resigning  for any kind of hope of real change.