[This is the 125th article I have written over the past 125 weeks. I feel it is time for a short sabbatical. This article will be the last for about eight weeks and serve as an introduction for a series of articles beginning in September on the plight of the American church. Given the significant moral decline of America over the last half decade, it is necessary to examine the symptoms and root causes that have been present for well over a century. In this series of articles we shall briefly survey the history of the church since its inception two thousand years ago. Understanding the central themes of its history is important and will give insight and perspective to the issues faced by today’s Christian church. More importantly, we shall extensively examine the afflictions and failings of the modern American church that have led to its demise as a moral force necessary to stem the decline of American culture.]
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The modern American church is in great distress and suffering attack from within and without. The forces of attack include secular humanism and false religions. But the greatest threat to the church comes […] Continue Reading…
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler became the democratically elected chancellor of Germany. Almost immediately Herman Goring began reordering society along National Socialists (Nazi) lines. By fall of that year the Jewish community would understand the full scope of what Goring called “merely an administrative change.” Jewish businesses were boycotted. Jews could not hold civil service jobs or be patent lawyers, and doctors, dentists, and dental technicians were not allowed to practice in hospitals or offices connected with state-run insurance. Anti-Jewish laws were expanded to include university professors and lecturers. By October Jews were banned from journalism and all entertainment and cultural activities including literature, the arts, theater, and film.[1]
Given hindsight, Tulsa World associate editor Mike Jones (“War talk”)[2] would probably consider these actions a war on Judaism. However, Jones insists there is not a war on Christianity in spite of a vast amount of media coverage reporting similar restrictions on Christians throughout America because their beliefs and practices of their faith.
Christian-owned business are being boycotted, fined, and/or driven out of business because of their owners’ faith. Because of their Christian beliefs, university students […] Continue Reading…
This series of articles describes helicopter parenting and helicopter governing, the pathologies associated with each, and the impact on American culture. A helicopter government is one that exhibits characteristics similar to those of helicopter parenting which are expressed in four types of behavior: overprotection, overpraising, overindulging, and overprogramming. In Part III we shall examine the consequences of a culture of overpraising encouraged by the indirect but pervasive influence of our helicopter government and the American educational system. The obsessive, destructive, and faulty efforts of the educational establishment to build child self-esteem at any cost has enabled a culture of overpraising resulting in pathologies and consequences harmful to children, adults, and the culture at large.
Overpraising
To understand the emphasis on self-esteem we must look at the development of a new view of self in America following World War II. Alan Petigny summarized the seismic change in the view of self as, “…a rejection of the belief in the innate depravity of mankind, the celebration of spontaneity, and a pronounced turn toward self-awareness…[This] gave rise—on an unprecedented scale—to a more secularized notion of the individual.” From this humanistic view of self came a belief in the basic […] Continue Reading…
