Dr Paul Allen

Lie #1: Homosexuality is normal. Included in this lie is the belief that homosexual orientation is true and immutable—fixed and never-changing. Homosexual orientation, a nineteenth-century Freudian invention, is an unbiblical category of personhood and an antagonist to the creation ordinance because it redefines sinful desire as something that defines who you are rather than how you feel.  Lie #1 claims that the word of God doesn’t apply to homosexual orientation because homosexual orientation represents a person’s core truth. Some professing Christians believe that homosexual orientation is fixed, immutable (unchangeable), and part of God’s creational and eternal plan. Some people believe that homosexuality is embedded in a person’s identity. We must ponder why God’s attribute of immutability has been embraced by the LGBTQ+ movement as an attribute of homosexual orientation. God is immutable—God never changes. One theologian defines God’s immutability as “that perfection in God wh...

Andrew T Walker Given the state of our culture, what I’m about to say may sound incredibly counterintuitive—maybe even bordering on the absurd. Nonetheless, I am left with the conviction that at this present cultural moment, there has never been a better time to be a social conservative. Given the advanced state of moral debauchery in mainstream American institutions, how could I possibly say something like that? I can say that because truth finds a way to reassert itself when we learn what is false. And what is most patently false about the time we live is the belief that we can continue to sustain ourselves walking the same hollowed-out pathway that we’re currently continuing down. It’s impossible. When we look at the declining marriage rates, the rise of what we call the “loneliness epidemic,” the transgender madness transgressing the very limitations of reason and nature, the increase in suicidal ideation, and preborn human beings discarded as “medical waste,” we see the reality....

by Ted Peters Our church—evangelical, mainline, Catholic or Orthodox–seems like a sandcastle on an ocean beach. We can stand back and admire our craftsmanship. Then a wave washes up high, and a few grains of sand get eroded. Another wave erodes more of the castle. Wave after wave finally leaves the beach the way it had been before our architectural triumph. Wave after wave of cultural change is eroding our church under our very eyes. Silently and almost invisibly, the digital world is replacing the biblical world. The world of Bible study, hymn singing, praying in unison, and using God as the subject of sentences is becoming forgotten. What now absorbs our attention is a complex array of video gaming, net surfing, Instagramming, Zooming, texting, and sexting. The digital world is actually a disorganized composite of min-worlds. In only half an hour, any teenager can be introduced  to the worldviews of QAnon, Sufism, yoga, new age meditation, naturalism, spiritual-but-not-religious,...

What the local church needs to know about angels, Satan, and demons is an intriguing question. In my experience, I have heard very little from the pulpit or in adult Sunday school on the topic. The question is intriguing because popular culture (movies and TV, for example) teems with treatments, often fanciful, on these themes, especially around Halloween. There are many aspects of the doctrine of angels, Satan, and demons worth making the local church aware of and here are only some of them.[1] The Bigger Canvas B. Philips, a noted Bible translator of the last century, wrote a small book which has proved very influential and is still in print, Your God is Too Small. The title is so instructive. He maintained that too many have a shrunken view of God. With debts to Philips, one could argue that your worldview is too small if it leaves out angels, Satan and demons.  This lack can be a problem at two levels: espoused and operational. At the espoused level, the believer never thinks a...

I thought I understood culture until I moved abroad and went grocery shopping in Asia. I couldn’t read any labels, so I was painstakingly selecting each item, relying on pictures and translation apps. Suddenly, an elderly woman came over, pulled a bottle of dish soap out of my shopping cart, and spoke rapid Chinese as she wagged her finger at me. She returned my selected soap to the shelf, picked up a different brand, and put it in my cart. I was speechless and indignant. What in the world? How dare someone invades my privacy and replace an item in my shopping cart? Now that I’ve been in Asia for more than six years I better understand what was happening—not only with the elderly woman but also in my soul. Culture is like the proverbial iceberg. We may think we understand our culture, but much remains below the surface. We might not see it until someone crashes into our subconscious cultural beliefs. Sure, culture affects what we eat, where we live, and the clothing we wear. But cultur...

Tomorrow in Washington DC, a few miles away from the church I pastor, will be a rally called the “Trans Day of Vengeance.” The event will be led by the “Trans Radical Activist Network” and has been promoted by political leaders around the country. Supporters of the “Trans Day of Vengeance” say that the Trans Community is under attack, and their protection can only come through retribution. This week has exposed a seething, violent hatred towards those who won’t fly the rainbow flag over their homes, churches, and on their social media accounts. That the Day of Vengeance takes place the week of the Nashville shooting is no coincidence—or if it is, one of the leaders of the trans movement called it “a happy coincidence.” The media has also shown hatred for the church—with major outlets even strongly implying (if not outright declaring) that the church is responsible for the shooting at its own school. The White House expressed support for the calls for vengeance on those that oppose the ...

In a recent segment, Tucker Carlson, someone who needs no qualifying remarks, made some statements about the relationship between Transgenderism and Christianity. Carlson’s comments came in the aftermath of the shooting of six people, three adults and three 9-year old students, at a private Christian school in Nashville, TN. The shooter, someone called “Audrey Hale,” was a transgender person. As far as I have been able to discern from media coverage, Hale was a biological women who identified as a man. This would make the shooting an extreme rarity since less than 1% of mass shootings in American have been carried out by women. However, to the point about Carlson’s commentary on the incident (which the reader should watch prior to continuing), there are important insights to glean from the Fox host’s broadcast. Carlson makes some initial points of interest in the commentary that I believe are fairly accurate. These provide an appropriate cultural context to the story. It is a context w...

Mark 8:34 recounts Jesus’s most pointed teaching on the nature of discipleship. This instruction applies to all (i.e., not simply the twelve) who want to follow him and includes three elements:1denying oneself, taking up one’s cross, and following him. Mark narrates instances of each of the three elements, allowing us to see what they look like in practice.  The first is perhaps the most radical. One must deny not “things that the self wants, but the self itself.”2In 2 Timothy 2:13, Paul speaks about the impossibility of God denying himself, which would entail acting “contrary to his own nature, to cease to be God.”3 Calling his followers to do what is impossible for God, Jesus requires a “radical abandonment of one’s own identity and self-determination.” They are to join the “march to the place of execution.”4 The second element, to take up one’s cross, is Mark’s first reference to “cross” (stauros) and the only reference outside the passion narrative (Mark 15:21, 30, 32). It fore...

We are living in an age of profound cultural shift. Up until the early twenty-first century, Western history was dominated by a form of Christianity that was legally established and culturally honoured. While not everyone was a Christian, being a Christian was respectable, and Christianity was generally recognized as the dominant cultural and moral outlook in society. That has dramatically changed in the last ten years, signaling the end of that cultural establishment. Many Christians feel disoriented. What is this new world, and how should we relate to it? These are questions that we find ourselves rather ill-prepared to address because up until recently, we could assume things that can no longer be assumed regarding how people think and how they react to Christianity. Amid these changes, I have found considerable help in thinking through these issues in the life and work of Abraham Kuyper. Kuyper (1837–1920), a Dutchman, lived in a place and time when the issues we face today were al...