How to Survive a Cultural Crisis

Public opinion appears to be changing about same-sex marriage, as are the nation's laws. Of course this change is just one in a larger constellation. America's views on family, love, sexuality generally, tolerance, God, and so much more seems to be pushing in directions that put Bible-believing Christians on the defensive.

It's easy to feel like we've become the new "moral outlaws," to use Al Mohler's phrase. Standing up for historic Christian principles will increasingly get you in trouble socially and maybe economically, perhaps one day also criminally. It's ironic that Christians are told not to impose their views on others, even as the threat of job loss or other penalties loom over Christians for not toeing the new party line.

In all this, Christians are tempted to become panicked or to speak as alarmists. But to the extent we do, to that same extent we show we've embraced an unbiblical and nominal Christianity.

Here, then, are seven principles for surviving the very real cultural shifts we're presently enduring.

1. Remember that churches exist to work for supernatural change.

 

The whole Christian faith is based on the idea that God takes people who are spiritually dead and gives them new life. Whenever we evangelize, we are evangelizing the cemetery.

There's never been a time or a culture when it was natural to repent of your sins. That culture doesn't exist, it hasn't existed, it never will exist. Christians, churches, and pastors especially must know deep in their bones that we've always been about a work that's supernatural.     Continue at Mark Dever

Moral Collapse at Ms. Magazine — Sex-Selection Abortion as a ‘Problem’

For almost forty years, Ms. magazine has been the most famous voice of the feminist movement in print. Co-founded by Gloria Steinem in 1972, the magazine is stalwartly feminist, retaining the language and spirit of the feminism of the 1970s. In other words, Ms. is the voice of feminist ideological orthodoxy. And the demand for unrestricted abortion rights is at the center of that ideology.

That’s what makes the Winter 2011 edition of the magazine so interesting — and so disturbing. The issue features an article by Madeline Wheeler entitled “Saving the Girl Child,” which offers a report on “India’s epidemic of female infanticide and sex-selection abortion.”

The appearance of that article does come as something of a surprise. After all, Ms., and the feminist movement it represents, insist that a woman must have the right to abort a pregnancy for any reason or for no reason. This claim, they have long insisted, is central to the very idea of reproductive freedom. So, what about sex-selection abortions — when it is female babies who are most commonly aborted? Continue Reading>>>