According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, citing statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suicide is the tenth-leading cause of death in the United States. In 2017, there were 47,126 suicides and nearly 1.4 million suicide attempts. The CDC estimates that self-inflicted deaths and injuries cost the US approximately $70 billion a year in direct medical and work-loss costs. Between 1999 and 2017, the age-adjusted rate for suicide in US increased 33%.

The controversy over sex education in the public schools is a major cultural issue in America. Since the federal government has gotten involved in funding such programs, it has become even more provocative and controversial.

Recently, the American Psychological Association (APA) released its new guidelines, which defined “traditional masculinity” as pathology. Psychoanalyst Erica Komisar argues that the APA guidelines “demonize masculinity rather than embracing its positive aspect. In a press release, the APA asserts flatly that ‘traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful.’”

For civilization to work, it needs a foundation, a set of moorings that provide an anchor for it to function reasonably, justly and fairly. American civilization gives every indication that it has no foundation, no underpinning. The selfish, self-centered, self-indulgent individual has replaced the community-minded, other-centered virtuous citizen—the glue that held American society together. Our politics, our universities and our economy are all driven by an ideology that stresses identity politics, grievance-focused protests and an economy with no ethical foundation.

Consider the amazing national trend of accommodating American culture to the legalization of marijuana. In 2014, the editorial page of the New York Times argued intensely (on the front page) for the legalization of marijuana and the removal of all penalties against the manufacturing and distribution of marijuana, let alone the possession of marijuana in its many forms. Ten states (soon to be joined by New York and New Jersey) have voted to legalize marijuana for recreational and medicinal use. Licensed shops in Colorado and Washington now sell it to anyone who wants it. Numerous states have recently legalized the drug for medicinal use, bringing the total to 23; this number will undoubtedly grow.

As with the issue of war, capital punishment is filled with intellectual and theological tension. In this Perspective, I am not defending how capital punishment is practiced in the United States or any other country. Instead, the focus is whether one can make a biblical defense for capital punishment as a responsibility of the state. If humans bear God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27), then ethically taking the life of an image-bearer in a premeditated act of murder demands just punishment, for killing a human being in such a manner is an attack on our Creator. It is a rejection of His sovereignty over human life (see Deuteronomy 32:39). But is it just to make the punishment capital?

My wife and I have two precious grandsons. They are a source of unsurpassed joy for us. But as grandparents, we frequently ask, with a degree of anxiety and apprehension: What does their future look like? What will become of them? Will they be men of character? Will they be successful? In the year 1809, parents and grandparents asked similar questions about these newborns: William Gladstone, Alfred Lloyd Tennyson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edward Allan Poe, Charles Darwin, and Abraham Lincoln. That year the world was focused on Napoleon as his armies raced across Europe. Today, other than Waterloo (1815), can we name one other battle or triumph associated with Napoleon? But in the nurseries across Europe and America in 1809, what seemed inconsequential was actually the dawn of a new era.

Globally speaking, the church is at a significant crossroads right now. The geographical epicenter of our faith is shifting from its centuries-old epicenter in the northern hemisphere (e.g., Western Europe, the United States, Canada) to the southern hemisphere (e.g., Latin America, Africa, South Asia), where it continues to grow at astonishing rates. In his book The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South, Phillip Jenkins argues that 60% of the world’s population of Christians right now live in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. By 2050, we’ll see these numbers shift even further; estimates indicated that there will be approximately 3 billion Christians in the world, 75% of whom will live in the Global South.

British historian, Fay Bound Alberti, co-founder of the Centre for the History of Emotions at Queen Mary University of London, writes that, “By the 21st century, loneliness has become ubiquitous. Commentators call it ‘an epidemic’, a condition akin to ‘leprosy’, and a ‘silent plague’ of civilization. In 2018, the United Kingdom went so far as to appoint a Minister for Loneliness. Yet loneliness is not a universal condition; nor is it a purely visceral, internal experience. It is less a single emotion and more a complex cluster of feelings, composed of anger, grief, fear, anxiety, sadness and shame. It also has social and political dimensions, shifting through time according to ideas about the self, God and the natural world.”

Jill Kay Melchior of the Wall Street Journal poignantly ask these questions: “If your teenage daughter suddenly declares herself transgender, should you assume she’s mature enough to make decisions that will affect her health, fertility and future? Or could she be influenced by societal and peer pressure?”