Discerning What Is Best with Dr Rex M Rogers

The Grammy Awards are the music industry’s annual recognition of outstanding achievements in the music arts - and with increasing regularity, utterly prurient, immoral presentations. This happened most recently in the 2023 and 2021 awards shows. It's not that these "artists" should have their First Amendment freedoms curtailed. It is, though, worth considering what is appropriate fo...

Crises, tragedies, happen almost weekly throughout our lives in a fallen world. When they do, especially the most severe, human beings ask existential questions: does God exist? Does he care? Theodicy is one way of understanding such times, for this is a study of God's justice in allowing evil, suffering, or trials and tribulations to exist. Theology brings us back to the person, character, w...

Have you ever been afraid? I have. It's especially discomforting when it involves a loved one facing an illness or if it is prolonged. But the Lord said he will never leave us nor forsake us. And the Psalmist David reminded us that when we are afraid we can trust in God. There is much in the Psalms about facing life's fears. The key is to tell God about our anxieties but not stay immerse...

For several decades, Christian scholars have warned that Christianity is being jettisoned from American culture, at least in terms of influence similar to what it exercised for the first two hundred years of the USA. This displacement of Judeo-Christian values directly affects what values people embrace, how they choose to live their lives, and thus what kind of culture America is becoming. What w...

During WWII, there were those who thought Adolf Hitler was the Antichrist and that he and the Nazis were bringing an end to the world as we knew it. Then there was the Cold War of the 1950s-1960s, when we thought thermonuclear war would end the world. We carried our fear and concern re nukes into the late 1970s and early 1980s when I was in graduate school and we often discussed Mutually Assured D...

Woke philosophy, sometimes marketed under the terms Social Justice Ideology or Critical Race theory, is the new, legalistic pseudoreligion of American culture. Its adherents operate with a cultish worldview, hold to a code they consider sacrosanct, expect all others to bow to this code, and then reject all who do not agree, including much about America's past and culture. This pseudo religion...

Transgenderism, or trans ideology, has moved across American culture like an avalanche, brooking no resistance and demanding acceptance by all lest one be considered a hater. This incredible and overwhelming ideological steamroller has, for the most part, been accomplished since 2015 when the Supreme Court of the United States recognized the legality of same-sex marriage. After that, it has litera...

Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean just 103 miles from Florida, has been dominated and destroyed by a socialist government and economy since 1959. With 3,500 miles of pristine white sand beaches and an average temperature in the 70s and 80s, Cuba could have been an island paradise like Hawaii. But socialism decimated the economy, the people, and the nation's prospects and it is a sad c...

Many people make New Year's resolutions. Probably more than who actually keep or fulfill their resolutions. Often dieting is part of this, but so can choices that reinforce a healthy lifestyle and glorify God, or resolutions that recognize the need to be faithful and true in this chaotic zeitgeist in which we now live. For more Christian commentary, check the website, rexmrogers.com. 

The tone or tenor of messaging on major media seems to shift dramatically in the week following Christmas. On the run-up to Christmas, it's all season's greetings, good will, peace, hope, blessing, and immediately following Christmas on the run-up to New Year's Day, it's mostly loud, riotous, partying, drinking, excess, me-me-me, and pleasure in the here and now. It's a dr...

Ideas have consequences. In other words, what we think and believe, matters, because our ideas work themselves out in our attitudes and behaviors. If we embrace bad or immoral or evil ideas, our actions are likely to follow suit. If we embrace good or moral or wholesome, biblical ideas, our actions will show accordingly. That's why the Apostle Paul said in Phil. 4:8, "whatever is true, w...

Same-sex marriage, legalized in Obergefell v Hodges (2015) is now being reinforced by the Respect for Marriage Act soon to be signed into law. Now that same-sex marriage is here to stay, it is not rocket science to think that other sexual boundaries will soon be pushed - in fact they already are. The next focus of the Sexual Revolution that began in the 1960s is now sexualized childhood. This is a...

If you live long enough, you will face trials, trauma, difficulties, maybe even anguish-producing developments in your life. It's part of living in a fallen world. We generally respond to these developments with a number of negative, if quite human, emotions, like anxiety, worry, fear, despair or desperation, discouragement, fear, and more. Americans in particular seem to be attempting to dea...

My Grandpa Lewis "Bones" Davis was the spiritual patriarch of our family. Not a man of formal education, position, means, or vast accomplishments, he was nevertheless an exemplary spiritual and life counselor sought by people from many counties around. His influence was extensive and continues long past his home going to heaven  even unto this day. His Christian faith was deep and his te...

Thanksgiving Day is a uniquely American holiday dating back 400 years to the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. It's a time for remembrance, hopefully family and faith, and gratitude. I am grateful for a country where religious liberty is yet part of our experience. I am thankful, too, for my identity as a child of God, not an ephemeral identity rooted in sex, race, ethnicity, position, talent, class...

The debate is an old one that has come to various generations in different forms. Should we meet only people's spiritual needs, the Gospel, or meet their humanitarian needs, the Social Gospel? Is the latter essential, necessary, a good thing, or can it be a displacement of the former.  Certainly we're commanded in Scripture to care for other human beings' needs, physical, emotional,...

Marijuana, once considered a gateway drug, has now gone mainstream, both medically and recreationally. But why, and is this a good and wise choice? Medical marijuana may offer some benefits for those suffering various pains, but research is not at all complete, nor is "the science settled." Plus, there may be safer alternatives. The choice to use medical marijuana should be made carefull...

It strikes me that most of public discussion--certainly in news and social media--dealing with controversial social and moral issues is based upon words, i.e., vocabulary, that is defined by the Left. So if you disagree with certain social and moral changes, you have already lost half the battle because you've accepted the use of the terms provided by those with whom you disagree. The abortio...

Oct 25, 2022 is my 70th birthday, so I thought I'd offer some personal reflections on living in a rapidly changing world. It seems like our country and culture are upside down and that there are more negative changes than positive or good ones. How do we live in this kind of intentionally de-Christianizing culture? The psalmists gave more than a few clues. For more Christian commentary, check...

Iran is experiencing an uprising unprecedented in the number of women in the streets. The uprising started with the tragic passing in September 2022 of Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after serious beatings. Allegedly she was arrested for "unsuitable attire," meaning some of her hair showed under her hijab. Women are now removing their hijabs and waving them as a flag of resistan...

Abusive behavior and violence are on a serious upswing not only worldwide where we've come to expect it at football (soccer) matches, but now also the past few years in the US at sports venues at every level, little kids to the pros.  Not just fans or players but parents are out of control, and referees and umpires, especially for youth sports, are quitting in droves, as are youth players. Th...

America is fast de-Christianizing. In fact, Gen Z has been called the first post-Christian generation. So what does it mean for us that declining faith in culture is a reality of life, our moment? It means people are living in the midst of anxiety, depression, and despair, they are looking for what's real. So our task, as always, is to discern truth from error, speak the truth in love, and be...

Stand Firm, the Scripture says, but what does this mean in the midst of the descent into madness American culture is experiencing? How do we stand firm?  Certainly there is much about which to be concerned as American elites and increasingly the general population embrace values fundamentally contrary to the Judeo-Christian values upon which this country and culture were founded and flourished for...

In the past few years, certainly during the 21st Century, American culture has dramatically shifted in whether truth even exists, and if so, what is considered truth. In the place of truth about God, the definition and meaning of life, the nature of sexuality, the practice of religion, where one lie after another has been promoted, embraced, and now forced upon those who resist. This podcast is a...

The world in which we live today is characterized by what might be called "layered crises," one on top of the other. Global pandemic, wars, rampant inflation, natural disasters on an international level, and sudden illness or disease, financial duress, anxiety or depression, broken families, and much more on the personal level.  Jesus said in his prayer of John 17 we are to live "in...