Category Archives: Ethics

JESUS AND ARMED CHURCH MEMBERS

Ethics January 27, 2020 1 Comment

By Gary DeMar (American Vision)

In September of 2019, Joe Biden criticized a new Texas law that permitted church members to be armed while attending church services.

It is irrational, with all due respect to the Governor of Texas, it’s irrational what they’re doing. … And we’re talking about loosening access to have guns? Being able to take them into places of worship, store them in schools, it’s just absolutely irrational.

Biden and other Leftists seem oblivious to the fact that evil people don’t obey laws. If they are hell-bent on killing people, what makes anyone think they are going to obey gun laws? Continue reading →

TRANSGENDER SURGERY ISN’T THE SOLUTION

Ethics, morality, sin March 15, 2019 Leave a comment

2019-022 by Paul McHugh (Wall Street Journal)

Gentry note: Dr. McHugh does not address the ultimate underlying problem in transgenderism: the spiritual issue. But his article is helpful for basic scientific and medical issues arising from transgenderism. A world confused about God is quite naturally confused about self, in that people are images of God. The world is suppressing some of the most basic truths (gender identity) in unrighteousness. Only the spread of the gospel can ultimately help these individuals.

The government and media alliance advancing the transgender cause has gone into overdrive in recent weeks. On May 30, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review board ruled that Medicare can pay for the “reassignment” surgery sought by the transgendered—those who say that they don’t identify with their biological sex. Earlier last month Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that he was “open” to lifting a ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. Time magazine, seeing the trend, ran a cover story for its June 9 issue called “The Transgender Tipping Point: America’s next civil rights frontier.” Continue reading →

SOCIAL JUSTICE AND REFORMED THEOLOGY?

Culture, Ethics, Theology February 22, 2019 Leave a comment

PMW 2019-016 by Jared Longshore (Founders Ministries) https://founders.org/

Gentry: We must pray for revival in our nation. More particularly, a Reformed revival wherein Christians not only commit themselves more fully to God, but more fully to studying and applying his word. American churches have become places of entertainment rather than worship and instruction, which has reduced Christianity’s influence in our culture. Social Justice is the latest fad to confuse and afflict us. This is a helpful, brief article that goes right to the hear to the matter.

We might understand how social justice with all of its attendant ideologies could work its way into the evangelical world. But the crowd stands befuddled at the sight of social justice’s presence in the reformed evangelical world. At its core social justice is a worldview of victimized egalitarianism resulting in state redistribution of wealth, privilege, rights, and opportunities. And how exactly does such a worldview harmonize with Calvinism? About like the granny trio on the day, they left their hearing aids at home. Continue reading →

THE INFANTICIDE DEBATE

Culture, Ethics, Law, morality February 19, 2019 Leave a comment

PMW 2019-015 by Samantha Gobba (World magazine)

Gentry note: Since the Obama Presidency, America has lurched leftward and become destructively fragmented. Our culture is now in the wholesale process of “integration downward into the void.” That is, as unbelief gets its cultural act together, its deadly consequences and ultimate despair become more integrated in society and obvious to even the simplest citizen. Long predicted, infanticide has now become a topic of discussion and even legalization. I am convinced that this horrific practice may be the “bridge too far” that ultimately explodes in secularism’s face. I suspect that this may begin retarding the downward collapse of our culture. Of course, this will require a revival of Christianity in America, which postmillennialism expects. This article shows the horror of unbelief in our culture.

A Virginia bill that would have flung wide open the door to late-term abortions in that state caused a nationwide backlash and accusations that supporters of the measure were promoting infanticide. The bill died in a House of Delegates subcommittee vote last Monday, but the controversy about it has since inspired a push in the U.S. Senate to protect newborn babies from abortionists. Continue reading →

ABORTION BY INFANTICIDE

Ethics, morality February 15, 2019 Leave a comment

PMW 2019-013 by Lita Cosner (Creation Ministries, Intl.)

Gentry note: This is an older article (2008), but one that anticipates what we are now experiencing in America: the legal slaughtering of near term and delivered babies. As postmillennialists committed to the spread of righteousness and truth, we stand against such a practice. And the first step in standing against it is to understand what is going on. This article ought to help.

Blurring the line between abortion and infanticide?

When the Roe v. Wade decision was delivered, the reality that a baby was being killed during abortion was less clear to many people—it was common to think that what was being removed was ‘a blob’ or ‘a clump of cells’. But most who would be in favor of abortion would at least draw the line at birth—once the baby is outside the womb, nearly everyone agrees that he or she is entitled to the full protection of the law, regardless of what route the baby took to get there. But some think that there is one time a fully-born baby does not have the right to life—when he or she was born as a result of a botched abortion. Continue reading →

EVOLUTION: A MESSAGE OF HOPE?

Creation, Ethics, morality, Pessimism, Worldview February 12, 2019 Leave a comment

PMW 2019-014 by Philip Bell (Creation Ministries, Intl.)

The hope of the Christian faith is inextricably linked with a belief in purpose. The Apostle Paul famously waxed lyrical with the words, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). By virtue of His incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection, the Universe’s Creator and Sustainer (John 1:1–3, Colossians 1:16–17) became the Saviour. Having a personal relationship with God—through repentance and faith (e.g. Mark 1:14–15)—guarantees us a place in heaven. We have a confident, certain hope of eternal glory. But can this message be sustained if, as a consistent belief in evolution requires, humankind’s special creation by God is overturned?

“We are the one creature to whom natural selection has bequeathed a brain complex enough to comprehend the laws that govern the universe. And we should be proud that we are the only species that has figured out how we came to be.”1 So concludes evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne in his book Why Evolution is True. Continue reading →

A NONSECTARIAN PRO-LIFE ARGUMENT

Ethics, morality February 1, 2019 Leave a comment

PMW 2019-010 by Douglas Groothius (Constructive Curmudgeon)

Abortion is the intentional killing of a human fetus by chemical and/or surgical means. It should not be confused with miscarriage (which involves no human intention) or contraception (which uses various technologies to prohibit sperm and egg from producing a fertilized ovum after sexual intercourse). Miscarriages are natural (if sad) occurrences, which raise no deep moral issues regarding human conduct-unless the woman was careless in her pregnancy. Contraception is officially opposed by Roman Catholics and some other Christians, but I take it to be in a moral category entirely separate from abortion (since it does not involve the killing of a fetus); therefore, it will not be addressed here.[1]

Rather than taking up the legal reasoning and history of abortion in America (especially concerning Roe vs. Wade), this essay makes a simple, straightforward moral argument against abortion. Sadly, real arguments (reasoned defenses of a thesis or claim) are too rarely made on this issue. Continue reading →