Discerning What Is Best with Dr Rex M Rogers

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 int...

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...

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, an...

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....

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...

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...

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, pric...

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 sug...

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...

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. Profes...

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-...

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 U...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 th...

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 Scrip...

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....

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-sa...

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,...

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...

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 arg...

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...

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 n...