Gov. Greg Abbott is directing Texas education officials to investigate whether pornography is available in the state’s public schools and to notify law enforcement if such material is found to be accessible. In a letter to Education Commissioner Mike Morath, he noted, “The presence of pornography in schools is not only inappropriate, but it is also against the law.”

In previous correspondence, the governor cited two books removed from libraries in the cities of Keller and Leander. According to the Dallas Morning News, “Keller removed Gender Queer: a Memoir by Maia Kobabe after complaints of the book’s drawings and Leander removed In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado, which describes sexual acts.”

Machado wrote a New York Times editorial defending her work. She describes her book as a memoir of “domestic violence or verbal, psychological, and emotional abuse in queer relationships.” In her mind, the book helps prepare students to “understand the world they’ll encounter, or even the lives they’re already living.” She dismisses allegations that her depiction of lesbian relationships is “grooming” students by normalizing such relationships.

However, normalizing unbiblical sexual activity has been an intentional and strategic initiative by LGBTQ advocates for decades. It gained early momentum through television shows such as Will & Grace and is now so ubiquitous as to be “normal” and thus successful.

For instance, 30 percent of American millennials now identify as LGBTQ, according to a recent study by George Barna. He notes that social and news media coverage makes it “safe and cool” for young Americans to identify in this way whether or not it represents their actual sexual orientation.

Elementary school takes students to a gay bar

I could fill the next twenty Daily Articles with examples of normalizing unbiblical morality, such as the elementary school that recently took students to a gay bar and Cecily Strong’s clown skit on Saturday Night Live advocating for abortion after describing hers.

However, my focus today is on how effective such normalization has been not just in the culture but also in the church.

For example, Barna’s survey found that just under 30 percent of Christian millennials also say they identify as LGBTQ. In addition, according to the Washington Post, 47 percent of younger evangelical Christians (born after 1964) now favor gay marriage. This is up from 16 percent in 2006 and compares with 26 percent of older evangelicals (born between 1928 and 1964), a figure which is up from 10 percent in 2006.

Such Christians are simply cohering with the norms of our day: 85 percent of unaffiliated Americans endorse same-sex marriage, as do 67 percent of Catholics, 68 percent of white mainline Protestants, and 44 percent of Black Protestants.

The two stages of judgment

We focused earlier this week on the biblical facts that a holy God must judge sin and that a loving Father must do all he can to lead his children from that which harms them to that which is best for them. Hosea 5 depicts the two ways our Lord judges sin for the sake of his character and our future.

The first stage is permissive. When his people persist in their sin but “go to seek the Lᴏʀᴅ,” he warns: “They will not find him; he has withdrawn from them” (v. 6). We find this stage at work in Romans 1, where God responded to those who “exchanged the truth about God for a lie” when he “gave them up to dishonorable passions” (vv. 25–26). The text adds: “Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (v. 28).

The second stage is active: “I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue” (Hosea 5:14). These warnings came to pass when Ephraim (Israel) was exiled by Assyria in 722 BC and Judah by Babylon in 586 BC.

God’s purpose in such punishment, however, was redemptive: “I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me” (v. 15).

Does the first stage describe America today? If we do not repent and seek our holy God, will the second?

Some uncomfortable questions

How should you and I respond?

As I noted yesterday, God’s people are to be watchmen on the wall, warning those inside the city of impending danger (Ezekiel 3:17–21). We are the body of Christ, the visible manifestation of his continuing ministry in our world (1 Corinthians 12:27).

However, a speaker cannot expect her audience to believe a message she does not model. An obese fitness instructor or a tone-deaf singing coach will struggle to find employment.

Has the normalization of sin found you? Let me ask you some uncomfortable questions that I must answer for myself as well:

• Do you wince when a movie makes extramarital sex an expected part of its plot or when adultery is a punch line on a TV show?
• Do you grieve for those who champion and even joke about abortion or march in Pride parades?
• If your children or grandchildren were watching the shows or movies you watch, would you still watch them?
• Are you truly burdened for the spiritual condition of your neighbors, colleagues, and unsaved family members?

“An arm that always fights for us”

Br. Luke Ditewig of the Society of St. John the Evangelist writes: “Kingdom life is one of participation. To not act is just as bad as to overtly do something wrong. What we do or don’t do matters. God gives gifts—we are to receive and use them” (my emphasis).

The good news is that as we work, God works. If we will pray for boldness to stand courageously and compassionately for biblical morality, our Lord will always answer our prayers (cf. Acts 4:29–31). If we will ask the Spirit to help us use our influence to lead others to truth and transformation in Christ, he will empower and employ us in ways we may not fully understand on this side of eternity (1 Corinthians 13:12).

Charles Spurgeon noted, “There beats a heart in heaven that always loves us, a tongue that always pleads for us, an arm that always fights for us.”

Scottish minister John Baillie prayed: “Lord, do not let me rest content with an ideal of humanity that is less than what was shown to us in Jesus. Give me the mind of Christ. May I not rest until I am like him in all his fullness.”

Is this your prayer today?

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Colin Morrison grew up playing hockey. His love for the sport defined a large part of his childhood, and he played every season until joining the Marines after high school. But after spending 9/11 at boot camp and two tours in Iraq, he was honorably discharged in 2005. 

He picked the sport back up three years ago, though, and found the Warrior Hockey program shortly thereafter. He now leads their team in Arizona. 

As Amalie Benjamin writes, Warrior Hockey works alongside USA Hockey to provide injured and disabled US military veterans with “a way for them to find the camaraderie and support they experienced in their military units and a therapeutic tool for their mental health.”

Considering the rampant cases of PTSD and the high rate of suicide among veterans when compared to the larger population, such tools can be invaluable to helping those who sacrificed for our country find peace within its borders. 

As Mike Vaccaro, a participant in Warrior Hockey and one of its representatives to USA Hockey, described, most of the people who play have “invisible wounds” and are disabled as a result of their service. He also notes that the program is about “veterans helping veterans get through their emotions. . . . hopefully when those guys feel bad, they go on the ice and they can get through to their next day or their next week, whatever it takes.”

Colin Morrison added that, when they’re on the ice, “everybody’s out there, smiles ear to ear, laughing and having a good time. So regardless of what’s going on in our lives, that hour that we’re on the ice, that’s all gone. We all have our stresses or what life is, and most of these veterans have the additional stresses of dealing with their disabilities.”

The program has proved so effective that the Navy Federal Credit Union recently announced that they were donating $30,000 to the group on behalf of NHL Veterans Appreciation Night. That money will ensure the team can afford to continue meeting every week for the better part of two more years while providing a level of consistency and reliability that is especially needed given the challenges so many of the veterans face.

Helping those with hidden wounds

One of the most difficult parts of knowing how to consistently show appreciation for the men and women that have served and sacrificed on behalf of our country is that many of them return with wounds we can’t see. Their scars can fade from our memory long before they actually heal. 

That’s why some of the most effective ministries to veterans come from other veterans. 

There’s something about a shared trauma or similar experience that enables people to help in ways they otherwise could not. It’s a key part of God’s redemptive work and one of the reasons he places so much emphasis throughout Scripture on seeing our past trials as opportunities for ministry. 

As Paul writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Corinthians 1:3–4).

Colin Morrison and the others at Warrior Hockey exemplify this truth well. 

But all of us have some experience or trauma in our past that God can use to help others who are still struggling with something similar today. So ask God to help you recognize those scars in others, and be open to his guidance on how to bring some good from that pain by helping someone else.  

If you’re in the midst of that suffering now, ask God to bring someone into your life who can provide that kind of help to you. And be vulnerable enough to accept it when he or she comes. 

Pain and suffering are inescapable elements of this fallen life. But that doesn’t mean we have to endure them alone. In fact, we aren’t meant to. 

How might God use that truth in your life today?

Denison Forum

If you’re not familiar with the term the nones, you should get acquainted with it. 

One of the best ways to do that is by reading Ryan P. Burge’s book, The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going.

The nones represent both the demographic group in this country most likely to be reached with the gospel and the group most resistant to its appeal.

The reason behind that apparent contradiction lies in a quirk in the way that social scientists describe religious affiliation in this country, generally placing Americans in one of seven categories:

• Evangelical Protestant
• Mainline Protestant
• Black Protestant
• Catholic
• Jewish
• Observant of other faith traditions
• Nonaffiliated

The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going by Ryan P. Burge

These nonaffiliated Americans, the “nones,” are lumped together even though their situations differ. As a whole, they represent the fastest-growing category, and Burge is one of the leading experts on their rise. A pastor in the American Baptist Church, he is also a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University.

When raw data from the 2018 General Social Survey (GSS) came out, he began to crunch the numbers. “It had finally happened: the nones were now the same size as both Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants,” Burge wrote. “That meant that the religiously unaffiliated were statistically the same size as the largest religious groups in the United States.”

Burge put together a graph showing the trend, tweeted it, and, when he checked his phone later, found it had been retweeted almost one hundred times.

“What followed was one of the busiest periods of my life,” he wrote.

Reporters lined up to interview him. Most major news outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN, carried the story. C-SPAN interviewed Burge on Easter Sunday.

“Journalists, podcasters, and pastors were all asking me the same questions: How did this happen? And what does this mean for the future of American religion?” Burge wrote.

The Nones provides some of the answers, but there is still much to learn, including the number of nones. Estimates vary by as much as twenty million people.

Burge described the GSS as “the gold standard in measuring religious change in America,” largely because it has been asking questions about religious affiliation in basically the same way since the survey was created in 1972.

But it does not ask people who describe themselves as unaffiliated if they are atheist or agnostic. The Pew Research Center, on the other hand, offers three options for the religiously unaffiliated: atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular.”

In 1972, just one in twenty Americans said they had no religion. In 2018, the GSS indicated that group had grown to one in four. As the group has grown, it has become more diverse and now represents every segment of our society.

Mainline Protestants have declined from 30 percent of the population to 10 percent in about four decades, but Burge said it would be too simplistic to give this as the sole reason for the rise of the nones. Many factors seem to be at work, including secularization, politics, and the internet.

However, he wrote, “In essence, moderate Protestants are going extinct, while conservative Christianity is holding the line.”

Instead of people growing up in a religious tradition, drifting away from it in their teens and twenties, and then returning to it as they age, Burge wrote, “More people are entering adulthood without a religious affiliation, and they become more likely to stay a none as they age.”

He continued: “It’s clear that every successive generation starts out less religious than the one prior, but that’s only a part of the puzzle. As these young people [have] become more outspoken about their move away from religious affiliation, that gave permission to older people who had been sliding to disaffiliation to finally declare their true religious attachments. If this is truly the case, then many more nominal Christians are going to check the ‘no religion’ box going forward, and that’s not necessarily true just among the youngest Americans.”

Atheists and agnostics are much more likely to be openly hostile to religion than Americans who would check the “nothing in particular” box. And that’s of more than academic interest.

Burge put it this way: “If one wants to identify the harvest for new religious converts, it can be found in the one in five Americans who say that they are nothing in particular.”

Denison Forum