Dr. Richard Land, BA (magna cum laude), Princeton; D.Phil. Oxford; and Th.M., New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, was president of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) and has served since 2013 as president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, NC. Dr. Land has been teaching, writing, and speaking on moral and ethical issues for the last half century in addition to pastoring several churches.
These ongoing shootings are violent eruptions symbolizing the extreme social malfunctions, seething and boiling just below the surface in America, and “gun control” is far too simple an answer. Such a simplistic answer is equivalent to putting a Band-Aid on a severed artery and expecting the bleeding to stop.
What all of these reporters have refused to see in their single-minded obsession with ethnicity, is that this young man was in the grips of a far more prevalent evil in our society – pornography.
The idea that a tax-supported public school system would, or could, be used to unleash this vicious cultural and spiritual poison into our young people’s consciousness is both extremely offensive and quite possibly illegal.
I am not surprised that Mrs. King said that “if there’s one book that Martin . . . has written that people consistently tell me has changed their lives, it is Strength to Love.” She explained that this book embodied the foundational force behind Dr. King and his ministry — “the transcendent moral ethic of love.”
The fact that in the year of our Lord 2021 various public officials in varied local school districts have taken it upon themselves to rip President Washington’s and President Lincoln’s names off of public schools because they don’t meet some amorphous standard of “wokeness” is the equivalent of civil blasphemy.
It would seem to me that the lesson we should learn from the unintended consequences of these recent progressive policies is that we must look with a hard eye at what are the human consequences of “progressive policies".
The continued mass slaughter of our unborn citizens, approximately 25 to 30% of babies conceived each year in America, now for almost half a century, has devalued all human life, born and unborn, in America. It has brutalized us and made every human life less sacred.
Of the 12 nations ahead of America on the list, 11 of the nations are former or current communist regimes, which tells you something about the life-denying philosophies of these atheistic systems. By the way, the least abortive country in the world per capita is Mexico with an abortion rate of .1 per thousand women aged 15-44.
When the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issues a statement representing 75 million American Catholics (23% of the total U.S. population) concerning the first Catholic president since JFK’s inauguration six decades ago, it is an important event.
Be advised that the 1776 Commission shreds the 1619 Project for the dangerous historical fantasy that it is. It is dangerous because it undermines our unity as Americans of differing ethnicities and perpetuates racial and ethnic division in perpetuity.
And, make no mistake, we accept you as our president. You will not hear from us the dangerous nonsense, “He will never be our president.”
Many people have blamed President Trump for this increasing level of incivility, but he was more a symptom and a product of the dissatisfaction and unrest of many citizens, rather than its progenitor.
Americans must always reject the resort to violence in pursuit of political goals. It is literally “un-American” to engage in, or resort to, violent disregard of the law.
When, in spite of our best intentions, our New Year’s resolutions most often falter and fail, I believe we should heed the advice of the pastor of the church in which I grew up in Houston: “When the Devil reminds you of your past failures (and he will), remind him of his future!”
So then Christian, I want to ask you this question, “What does Jesus want for Christmas?”
I don’t think I’ve ever thought as long or prayed more earnestly over an Ask Dr. Land column than I have this one.
If our younger citizens had been required to study Civics, I am certain more of them would understand that we in the United States live in what was designed as a “Constitutional Republic,” not a democracy. And what is the critically important difference in these two forms of government?
If that proves to be the case, President Trump’s original intent, strict constructionist nominees will be having a positive influence on religious liberty and freedom in America long after President Trump has departed this world. And I certainly hope and pray that that is the case.
As a Christian, I encourage all of you as fellow Christians to undertake a spiritual exercise this Thanksgiving which I have found to be a tremendous blessing.
One of the most interesting things about the Piper-Grudem debate is that both men’s theology tells them that God “decreed” or “ordained” who was going to win next Tuesday’s presidential election before the foundation of the world.
