To the Remnant

Is Hostility toward American Christians Increasing?

Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, seems to have become almost a household name in the wake of his murder last week. I had heard of him before then but didn’t know much about him. I have since learned especially about his strong faith in Christ and of his debating and dialoguing with students on high school, college, and university campuses. I am so grateful to learn this about him, and I very much look forward to meeting him in heaven.

Much has already been written about the motives of the “alleged” shooter, Tyler Robinson. What’s obvious from the released transcript of his conversation with his lover is that he thought Kirk was hateful and that he hated him in return. That doesn’t surprise me, but what has surprised me is so much vitriol, and even celebration, from some people on the left. There used to be an unwritten rule not to speak evil of the dead, but in our day and age, that has been thrown out the window. MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd suggested that it was Kirk’s hateful rhetoric that led to his murder; to their credit, MSNBC fired him. CA state Sen. Scott Wiener wrote earlier this week that Kirk was a “vile bigot” and that he normalized “dehumanization.” Unfortunately, Wiener cannot be fired. There have been other employees of various companies that have also been fired because of hateful comments about Kirk. Thankfully, there have been other kinds of voices as well. One of those voices is country artist Gavin Adcock, who said, “If you live in the life of the Lord and believe in Jesus, you shouldn’t be scared to leave this world, and Charlie Kirk was a great example of that.”

Most of what I have seen in the wake of Kirk’s death is framed in political terms. However, I believe that there is something else, something much deeper, going on. For many years now, American Christians have been marginalized as unthinking, reactive bigots (among other things), but other words targeting Christians have entered the attacks as well, including “evil.” One of the people using that word is evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins; he skirts using it to describe Christians directly, but he has called Christianity “an evil religion.” Isaiah 5:20 comes to mind: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

If you live in the U.S. and are not in a Christian “bubble,” it’s not hard to see how the U.S. has become increasingly hostile toward Christians; that hostility can quickly morph into hate, and the ultimate expression of that is murder. In that regard, I decided to research mass shootings at churches and Christian schools in the U.S. Since 1980, there have been 11 at churches:

1980: 1

1999: 1

2000-2009: 2

2010-2019: 4

2020-present: 3

I have included shootings where multiple people were shot but “only” one person died. It should be obvious that the number of shootings at American churches has skyrocketed in comparative terms; this is even more obvious when you consider this: 9 of these mass shootings have been since 2007–and 7 of those 9 have been since 2015. This is approaching an exponential increase.

When I looked at Christian schools (K-12), I found “only” three mass shootings, but note this: one was in 2023, and two were in 2024. One clarification: the Annunciation shooting was at a school-wide Mass at the Church of the Annunciation being attended by students and faculty of the Annunciation Catholic School; I included this shooting as a church shooting.

Regardless of how mass shootings are defined (is it a minimum of three deaths or four?), there have been hundreds of them in the U.S. since 2000, perhaps even thousands. At schools (including colleges/universities) alone, there were 461 from 2000-2024. You could say that the number of mass shootings targeted at churches (11) and Christian K-12 schools (3) is very small, but again, when we look at the fact that 12 of those 14 have occurred in a single generation, and 10 of them since 2015, I believe that tells us something.

In John 15:18-19, Jesus tells His disciples, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.” When we who are Christians share our faith, we can expect resistance because the foundation of our message is that people are sinful and they need Christ. In our contemporary society, we can expect hostility, even hate. However, as one of my sisters in Christ and fellow bloggers (who goes by seekingdivineperspective) recently wrote, “There’s still time to speak. Even if they shoot.”

May we who are Christians be courageous, winsome, and loving as we speak and demonstrate the truth about the Truth Himself: Jesus Christ.

Future Shock and Life Change

When I was 12, my family moved from a very small town in northwest Washington to a less-small town in central Iowa. That was when I entered my first bookstore, and one book that I remember seeing that first time (as well as many times thereafter) was Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock, which had been published two years before. That fact alone gives you some idea of its staying power and influence. Although an avid reader, I had little interest at that time in non-fiction, but 53 years later (i.e. this year), I finally read it. Toffler’s basic thesis is that when there is too much of an accelerating rate of change in a society in a short period of time, it has negative psychological and societal effects.

Included in Toffler’s book is the concept of life-change units, which I first learned about circa 1980. I know this will sound “nerdy” to some (most?!), but I found myself fascinated with the concept as much this year as I was back then! A pair of psychologists named Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe had developed a scale (in 1967) for measuring how much change a person has experienced over a period of time; the more change someone has experienced over the previous year, the more stress and accompanying health issues he or she is likely to have.

The scale (formally known as The Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory) has 43 “life events,” with a point value assigned to each. At the top of the list is “death of spouse,” which is 100 points; at the bottom is “minor violations of the law” (e.g. traffic tickets), which is 11 points. You can see the scale here: https://www.stress.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Holmes-Rahe-Stress-inventory.pdf One thing that is so ingenious about the scale is that it includes positive events (e.g. “marital reconciliation with mate” and “outstanding personal achievement”) as well as negative events. Others are more neutral, such as “changes in residence.” I found myself thinking back to a period of time from May 2020 to August 2021, spanning 16 months. There were at least five major life events during that time for me: retirement from work (45 points), death of a close family member (63 X 3), and major change in social activities (18, because of COVID lockdowns). The bottom of the scale notes that a score of 150-300 points over the previous year means that you have about a 50% chance of a major health breakdown in the next two years. My score over 16 months was 252; if I disregard the first 45 points, I still have a score of 207. Thankfully, I did not have a major health breakdown over the following two years, but I remember that after the death of my third sibling in about ten months, I was sometimes feeling overcome by grief. Thankfully, after the second death a large portion of my extended family was able to gather together for a memorial service as well as several days of just being together, including with the sibling who went to heaven about two months later; the value of that time together is impossible to quantify.

I think that if the COVID pandemic had happened during their lifetimes, Holmes and Rahe would have added another kind of life event, maybe something like “extended restriction of activities due to enforced lockdowns.” Because of the long-lasting and far-reaching effects of lockdowns on the social development of kids, family finances, and the changes in work and school for millions (to name just a few), maybe Holmes and Rahe would revise their scale upward so that the highest point value is more than 100. Although we’re all aware of at least some of the damage caused by the lockdowns, it will be decades before the effects on entire generations are better understood.

One limitation of Holmes and Rahe’s scale is that it was obviously developed for adults. Another, of course, is that society has changed a great deal since then, especially for kids. Other measurements of stress have been developed since then, including those specifically for kids, such as the Coddington’s Life Events Scale for Adolescents (CLES-A); it includes events such as “sibling was born,” “parents were divorced,” “parent remarried,” and “family moved to a new city.” You can see about half of the events if you click here and scroll down to page 4: https://cms.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Child_Trends-2010_10_05_RB_AssessingStress.pdf

Regardless of the limitations of the Holmes-Rahe life-change units scale, I think that its ingenuity and simplicity give it amazing explanatory power. If you’ve been feeling stressed out, taking a look at this scale may very well help you understand why. And understanding can bring ways to cope and ultimately help with healing.

Along those lines: Since this blog is focused on Biblical answers to questions and issues, I should add that becoming a Christian is a major life change; giving up sinful habits, for example, can be stressful! I think that’s one reason, among many others, that more people don’t come to faith in Jesus Christ. However, if you do not yet know Him, but you turn to Him in genuine, saving faith, you will find that He gives peace, which is the ultimate antidote to stress.

One final note: at the outset, I mentioned Alvin Toffler’s book Future Shock (1970), which continues to endure. One of the reasons for that is he includes a good number of predictions about the future; while some have not come to pass, others have. Perhaps in another post, I will include some of those predictions.

Some Things God Cannot Do

The young boy of close friends of ours recently asked my wife and me a classic question: “Can God make a rock so heavy that even He cannot lift it?” He didn’t ask it in a challenging way but because he had read it somewhere. This question dates back to at least the 10th century and has been answered in different ways. I think what makes the most sense is that the answer is “No” because it is logically impossible for God to create a rock so heavy that He cannot lift it; this is a kind of semantic–and only semantic–paradox, which is false.

This question caused me to think beyond semantics to this question: Are there things that God cannot do? I came up with three general things that God cannot do as well as ten specific things that He cannot do, based on the general. First, the three general:

1. God cannot do anything that is inconsistent with His character. We understand God’s character as revealed to us in the Bible.

2. God cannot break His promises. The Bible is very rich in God’s promises to His people.

3. God cannot sin. God is holy and righteous; therefore, He cannot sin.

Now let’s move on to ten specific things that God cannot do. Some of these I have seen or heard elsewhere; others, I haven’t.

1. God cannot flood the world again. After the flood recorded in Genesis that wiped out all land life except for Noah and his family (eight people) along with the animals on the ark, God said in the second part of Genesis 8:21: “And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.”

2. Jesus cannot die again. Hebrews 7:27 tells us, “Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself.” Jesus (the Son of God) lived a perfect life and as a result, He was able to offer Himself on the cross to save all those who believe in Him.

3. God cannot overlook sin. As stated earlier, God cannot sin because He is holy and righteous. Therefore, He cannot overlook our sin; He must punish it. That’s why Jesus died for us! He took the punishment we deserved so that we can be saved.

4. God cannot forgive people who never repent. God is quick to forgive when people repent, but He cannot forgive those who never repent. In the Bible, repentance and forgiveness are always linked. For example, on the day of Pentecost, Peter said in Acts 2:38: “Peter replied, ‘Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.’”

5. God cannot despise a broken, contrite heart. This one is closely linked with #4. In his great Psalm of repentance, King David says in Psalm 51:17, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” When a person repents, God forgives–although he or she may still have to experience devastating consequences of sin, as King David discovered.

6. God cannot forsake His children. For three horrible hours, God forsook Jesus on the cross; we know this because Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) However, God has promised His children in Hebrews 13:5, “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.'” How wonderful is that?!

7. God cannot send any of His children to hell. When the young boy I mentioned at the outset of this post asked whether there were things that God cannot do, I asked him, “Can God send any of His children to hell?” Revelation 3:5 says, “He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels.”

8. God cannot lie. 1 Samuel 15:29 says, “He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind.” We’ll get to the second part of the verse in a moment, but the first part says that God does not lie, meaning that He cannot. There are several other verses which affirm this as well, including Titus 1:2. Thus, we can always trust God to keep His promises. Contrast God with Satan, who is the father of lies (John 8:44).

9. God cannot change. This is one I have researched quite a bit, but I have come to believe this is true; in theology, it is called God’s immutability. I just quoted 1 Samuel 15:29 in relation to God not changing His mind. Another verse that states more generally that God cannot change is Malachi 3:6, which says, “I the Lord do not change. So you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.” Another verse that tells us this is James 1:17, which says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” There are times in the Bible where it appears that God has changed His mind, but the theological giant R.C. Sproul (now in heaven) has convinced me that is not the case. Sproul says, for example, that in Jonah 3:10, God removed the threat of judgment (Jonah 3:4) on the Ninevites when they repented, which is not the same as changing His mind. When people repent, God forgives!

10. God cannot save demons. Salvation is only for human beings. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that demons can repent. They certainly believe in God’s existence–and experienced His glory in heaven!–but chose to rebel. James 2:19 says, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that–and shudder.” Believing in God is not enough, and that applies to people as well. Demons will spend eternity in hell, along with people who never trusted in Jesus and demonstrated their love with lives of obedience, albeit imperfectly. Angels, on the other hand, don’t need to be saved, but they will spend eternity in heaven with all of God’s people.

One thing I should add is that most of these things God cannot do could be phrased as things God will not do. However, that doesn’t change the meaning. When the Bible says that God will not do something, it means He cannot because if He did, He would break a promise. Similarly, I suppose someone might quibble over “do not” versus “cannot.” For example, “I the Lord do not change” means that He will not change, which means He cannot change.

I’m sure that there are other things God cannot do. If you come up with any, I would love to read them!

Speaking Out on Behalf of K-12 Teachers

“You don’t know how to do Tik Tok. My mom says old people like you should retire.” These words were spoken by a first-grader to his teacher in Ohio; her name is Mrs. Carter, and to make matters even worse, it was at the beginning of her last day as a teacher. She writes (on a FB post), “There was no party. No speech. Just a firm handshake from the new principal, who called me ‘Ma’am’ and looked at his phone halfway through our goodbye.”

Mrs. Carter also writes how she had been screamed at in front of her class–not by students, but by parents. She goes on to share that what kept her going were moments like these: “A child who whispered, ‘You’re like my grandma. I wish I could live with you.’ Another who left a note on my desk: ‘I feel safe here.’ Or the quiet boy who finally looked me in the eye and said, ‘I read it all by myself.'”

Leonard Sax, a practicing physician and psychologist, wrote this in an article on aasa.org after visiting a high school in an affluent neighborhood:

The English teacher was trying to create a more courteous and orderly atmosphere in the classroom. She explained that she would no longer tolerate students interrupting one another or interrupting her.

As she was talking, a boy in the back of the classroom belched loudly, then said, “Oh just SHUT UP.”

“You see, that’s exactly what I’m talking about,” the teacher said. “That was an uncalled-for interruption. That is rude.”

“Oh I’m sorry,” the boy said. “Please shut up.” Other students, girls and boys, giggled.

Such profound disrespect is almost unbelievable to me. Sax goes on to say what many others have said, which is that the popular culture in which kids live today is very different from 60-70 years ago. TV shows like “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Leave It to Beaver” for the most part promoted respect for parents and teachers. There was a strong “alliance,” as Sax says, between teachers and parents. On a personal note: I certainly remember being read the riot act by my father more than once when he got a phone call from my elementary school because of my bad behavior. Sax says that from his perspective, this alliance continued into at least the early 1990s. As I reflect on that decade, I concur that when my kids were in elementary school, starting in 1995 and on into the early 2000s, there was a strong culture of respect at my kids’ school. My wife and I both observed this close up because we volunteered in our kids’ classrooms for a few hours a week. The culture now, as Sax and many others have noted, is very different, especially because of social media; respect for parents and teachers as well as for one another is not something which is encouraged, to put it mildly.

Rebecca Kellum was a freshman majoring in elementary education at the time she wrote an article in 2011 for The Reflector, a student newspaper, about her previous summer’s experience:

“As an intern of children’s ministry at a large church in my hometown, I was in charge of developing lesson plans and teaching several classes of large groups of children, usually those of elementary age, from various daycares. At first, I expected some trouble because of my age and appearance. I did not necessarily look old enough to be a teacher, so I was fully prepared for the children to take my authority less seriously; however, some of my fellow instructors were much older than me, elderly even, and most of the children still showed a significant lack of respect for anything we had to say or ask them to do. Only a handful replied to questions in respectful tones and followed instruction the first time.”

Kellum also wrote that she had recently changed from a chemical engineering major to elementary education and that “I know I’ll be doing something I love and will be instilling values and educating future generations.” I hope she is still doing that.

While I was doing research for this post, I could not find an article that documented the decline in respect by kids for teachers. Admittedly, respect is an intangible, somewhat abstract concept. However, a friend I was talking to said that no one wants to research and write something like that because they don’t want to lose their job. I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that!

I want to return to the second part of the opening quote by the first-grader in Mrs. Carter’s class: “My mom says old people like you should retire.” Notice the first two words: “my mom.” I think that this speaks volumes to the primary problem: kids are not born knowing how to show respect; they have to be taught it, and that begins in the home. This mother clearly had no respect for her son’s teacher; I wonder if her son has any respect for her, the mother.

Leonard Sax, who I quoted earlier, suggests a few simple strategies for parents: “No screens at the dinner table. No earbuds in the car. Make eye contact with the person to whom you’re speaking. Acknowledge requests. Say ‘hello’ when you enter a room, ‘goodbye’ when you leave it, ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’”

Sax’s common-sense suggestions are good. However, on a fundamental level: when my wife and I were young parents, we were in several parenting classes over the years at our church. One concept that really jumped out at us was first-time obedience. (Rebecca Kellum also referred to this; see above.) Simply put, it means making your kids obey the first time you tell them to do something. We implemented that in our parenting, however imperfectly, and were pleased with the results. We also wanted our kids to obey other authority figures, most definitely including their teachers–and at the most fundamental level, the Lord God Himself!

I recall seeing a bumper sticker as a teen (in the 1970s) that said, “Question Authority.” While there is certainly a place for that in our society, I don’t believe it’s something that we want to promote in our elementary-school-age kids, especially; that will not promote respect for teachers–and not for us as parents, either!

If you are raising kids, I hope that you teach them to respect authority, including their teachers. Beyond that, as Mrs. Carter added, “If you see a teacher–past or present–thank them. Not with a mug or an apple. With your voice. Your eyes. Your respect.” Mrs. Carter, I don’t know you, so it’s highly doubtful that you’re reading this, but if you stumble across it, I want to say, “Thank you for your loving faithfulness to all of those kids over the years.” And thank you also to any other past or present K-12 teachers who are reading this. I am a retired college professor of ESL; with very few exceptions, I had plenty of respect from my students. I could not have done what you did or are doing!

Why Do People Swear?

I recently came across an article suggesting a link between higher-than-average intelligence and swearing. Since this contradicts what is called in linguistics the poverty of vocabulary (POV) hypothesis, I decided to investigate this further.

The POV hypothesis says that if a person is lacking in vocabulary, he or she is likely to fill in the conversational gaps with curse words. Based on my experience with a wide variety of people throughout my life, this always made sense to me. Regarding the research suggesting a link between high intelligence and swearing, it is based on a research study showing a correlation between high general-vocabulary scores and high taboo-word scores. Timothy Jay, professor emeritus of psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, says, “People that are good at language are good at generating a swearing vocabulary.” To his credit, he adds, “Having the strategies to know where and when it’s appropriate to swear and when it’s not is a social cognitive skill.” In other words, he’s speaking of social intelligence, which includes knowing your “audience.” I would say this is qualitatively different from people who indiscriminately pepper their conversation with swear words, especially F-bombs; those who do that give strong confirmation of the POV hypothesis. However, I’m not suggesting that we selectively swear in order to show how intelligent we are!

There are at least five suggested benefits of swearing in an article by Sandee LaMotte:

1. A possible link between swearing and intelligence. See above.

2. A possible link between swearing and honesty. Some researchers have found that people who curse more also lie less on an interpersonal level. While I understand the desire for honesty, I would not recommend swearing to emphasize it; do we really need to swear in order to make people more likely to believe us? Won’t that make them less likely to believe us when we don’t swear?

3. Profanity improves pain tolerance. For example, “People on bikes who swore while pedaling against resistance had more power and strength than people who used ‘neutral’ words.” Similarly, if you pinch your finger in a door, you “may well feel less pain” if you shout an obscenity than a “neutral” word. These situations may make us want to swear, and I admit I have done so in situations similar to pinching a finger in a door, but I’m not proud of it.

4. Swearing is a sign of creativity. This is somewhat similar to the supposed link between swearing and intelligence; it is largely based on research with people who have had strokes and/or who have dementia, but I find the link to creativity very tenuous, at best. I would add that two of my brothers prayed before they developed dementia (very strong in my family history) that they would not dishonor God if they developed it; they both did develop dementia, but I never heard either of them swear during it. I have already prayed the same for myself.

5. Throwing expletives rather than punches. In other words, verbally assaulting rather than physically assaulting someone. While I would say there may be limited value in this, verbal assaults can quickly escalate into physical ones.

The aforementioned article is focused, frankly, on excusing profanity. I came across another article (by John-Erik Jordan), however, that treats the phenomenon of swearing in a different manner by asking why people swear. Here’s the link: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/why-do-we-swear

1. Catharsis. In other words, swearing provides an emotional release.

2. Insult, abuse, and exclusion. Unlike LaMotte (in the first article), Jordan does not try to excuse “throwing expletives” at people. Instead, he says that curse words “crank up the mean factor.” And it bears repeating: verbal assaults (and non-verbal ones, like giving someone the finger) can quickly escalate into physical ones.

3. Group solidarity. I have noticed this repeatedly throughout my life: swearing can be a form of bonding. It reminds me of when my son and three of his best friends in high school used to greet each other by saying, “Hey, stupid.” No, “stupid” is not a swear word, but it is akin to what Jordan mentions.

4. Style and emphasis. As Jordan puts it, “Swear words add emotion and urgency to otherwise neutral sentences.” Another way to put this is what I would call “shock value.”

Jordan’s article is insightful because rather than trying to excuse swearing, he gives underlying reasons why people do it. On a fundamental level, I think that most people understand that swearing can be offensive to others; at a minimum, understanding your “audience,” which I mentioned earlier, should be a high priority when choosing whether to swear or not.

Here are a couple of Bible verses related to this issue. Ephesians 5:4 says, “Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.” Colossians 3:8 tells us: “But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.” I have written more about this topic here: https://keithpetersenblog.com/2022/09/08/watch-your-language/

As Christians, let’s not use taboo words–and I certainly include myself in this. There are plenty of other words which we can use to express ourselves instead. Even though we will offend other people at times regardless of our intentions, at least we won’t offend them unnecessarily with careless profanity.