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IO 80: Out of Left Field, a Perfect Storm

Left field is now center-stage. Leading Republicans recently ensured that gay marriage became state law in New York. The sexually abnormal is the new normal, and our children’s future defies description. A worldview tsunami, made of the wildest waves of human fantasy, is bearing down on Western culture, which, shorn of its biblical moorings, will be carried helpless into a nightmare destruction of biblical values.
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IO 79: Worldview Gridlock

At truthXchange we are sometimes accused of being reductionistic by limiting all worldview options to only two: One-ism or Two-ism. I admit that this approach could seem overly simple, but the Bible is finally very simple. There are not 365 different ways to relate to the world. According to the apostle Paul there are only two. He says with clarity and simplicity in Romans 1:25 that you either worship creation (One-ism) or you worship the Creator (Two-ism). Support for this approach comes from odd places.
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Evangelical Author: “Heterosexuality is an Abomination.”

Cover of "The End of Sexual Identity" by Jenell Williams ParisAccording to Messiah College professor, Jenell Williams Paris, “Heterosexuality…is an abomination.” As an “abomination” Paris means the false classification of persons as merely homosexual or heterosexual, a practice she feels gives a person identity only on the basis of sexual choices or desires, rather than on their status as creatures made in God's image and loved by God. This inflammatory statement is doubtless meant for maximum effect, since the Bible declares male on male sex as “an abomination” (Lev 20:13). One is led to ask how an evangelical Christian scholar, published by a Christian publishing house (IVP) justifies such a shocking formulation.

Review of Jenell Williams Paris, The End of Sexual Identity: Why Sex Is Too Important to Define Who We Are (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2011).

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IO 78: Pachamama Wants Your Children

Two years ago, President Evo Morales, of Incan/Aymaran descent, claimed the rights to all three branches of government, and his goons were eliminating opponents in the dead of night. At the time, I was teaching pastors in Cochabamba, Bolivia and so witnessed the rise of indigenous paganism as a political force. In January 2011, Morales introduced legislation that grants legal rights to the Earth and provides an ombudsman to hear nature's complaints as voiced by the all-knowing high priests of deep ecology, who claim to be spiritually in touch with Nature! The worship of Pachamama, the fertility Goddess of Nature, is now a fundamental element in the law code of Bolivia, and Morales (in his commitment to Pachamama and to the ancient Incan religion of Bolivia) is supported by a shadow cabinet of shamans…
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IO 77: One-ism and Two-ism Goes To Oxford

In March, One-ism and Two-ism made its way to Oxford in my suitcase. After the chaos of London traffic, I breathed in the beauty of Oxford in the Spring: Medieval and Elizabethan colleges, surrounded by twenty-foot-high walls; soaring chapels; stunning wood-paneled dining halls; perfectly mown grass quadrangles that produce a sense of scholarly solidity and peace; and, on High Street, high-fashion boutiques designed with exquisite modern taste. Some may consider “One-ism and Two-ism” to be simplistic, but they are only terms that reflect the same stark choice the apostle Paul describes: worship of the Creator or of the creation.
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Confronting Neopaganism in the Culture and the Church

Contrary to the expectations of sociologists, secularism has been in decline for forty years. What created this unexpected situation? Philosopher David Harvey believes he knows: "The moral crisis of our time is a crisis of Enlightenment thought." And the "assumptions of secular humanism” have been undermined by Postmodernism as it deconstructs every reasonable, objective grounds on which reason used to stand. Such deconstruction raises a serious question: where does Postmodernism lead our culture? Many now believe that grounds for existence can only be found in the irrational, in the age-old metanarrative of pantheistic One-ism. Christians initially treated the NEw Age as the latest, more or less harmless religious sect, which would go the way of the hula hoop. Instead, these changin' times have, in one generation, radically transformed how popular culture thinks about sexuality, the family, gender roles, marriage, abortion, pornography, American history, the dating of history, the names of national holidays, the use of the Constitution, free speech, globalism, education, environmentalism, psychology and religious unity. How did we get to this moment of One-ist triumph?
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