Recently Bill Gates declared that Steven Pinker?s Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress is ?My new favorite book of all time.? Steven Pinker is a Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University and is a passionate defender of the Enlightenment. His recent book is intended to counter the doom and gloom pessimism of the 21st century, which is inundated with terrorism, barbaric civil wars (e.g., Syria) and the paralyzing fear of nuclear war. One could summarize his thesis as, ?If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.?

It is difficult in 2018 to know whom to trust, what is accurate and where one should go to obtain reliable information and perspective on the state of things. In an era of Facebook, Instagram and ?Google-knowledge,? the worlds of politics and Pop culture are inextricably linked, it seems. As columnist Daniel Henninger observes, ?The culture of social media?a tireless preoccupation with fleeting surface effects?has changed all media.? Years ago, cultural critic and observer Marshall McLuhan predicted (at the dawn of the TV age) that mass media would engulf everything, for, he argued, ?the medium is the message.? Our social media culture has enhanced the confusion, the absurd and the tragic in our current culture.

The home-going of Billy Graham marks a watershed in American evangelicalism. He received a number of accolades during his life, but perhaps none is more endearing than ?America?s Pastor.? He had his critics, but, for the most part, Graham was universally admired as a man of integrity who preached a consistent, simple message of the Gospel?and that is the heart of his legacy. Why was he such an important figure in American evangelicalism? By the grace of God, why was he able to consistently maintain his reputation as a man of integrity?

Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision 45 years ago, the pro-life (or anti-abortion) side of the debate has focused on the ethical issue that the baby growing in its mother?s womb deserves to be protected as any other human being having rights under the US Constitution.  Increasingly sophisticated technology is changing the nature of the debate.  Indeed, Emma Green in a recent issue of The Atlantic has argued that ?science is giving the pro-life movement a boost.?  In addition, columnist Michael Gerson suggests that the way the Court framed its 1973 decision created a tension between autonomy and inclusion, producing a conflict that ?will only be managed, not settled.?  Let me explain both of these observations.

Late in year 2016, the Oxford Dictionaries selected ?post-truth? as the 2016 international word of the year. The dictionary defined ?post-truth? as ?relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.?

As we begin 2018, I believe it is appropriate to give focus to a critical cultural issue that is destroying men, marriages and contributing in no small way to the denigration of women and children in our society. Several years ago, a local church in Omaha, Nebraska, where I live, asked me to do a presentation on pornography. I called the presentation ?Pornography: Adultery of the Heart.? I believe that the pornography crisis in our country has much more to do with what it means to be a man than simply an issue of lust and gross immorality. It is a result of the disastrous lies that our culture promotes about manhood. Joe Ehrmann has summarized those three lies:

In this Postmodern, Post-Christian age where a secular skepticism reigns supreme, one often hears the question, where is God; if He exists, why doesn?t He show Himself? Or, where is God in the carnage of the civil wars in Syria and Yemen? Where is God in the devastation of the summer hurricanes that ravaged the Caribbean, Texas and Florida? Where is God in the death of a relative or a close friend? Where is God in that universal equalizer of all humanity?death? Where was God in that backwater town 2,000 years ago where a poor, pregnant woman was denied lodging, in the smell of hay and manure, in the pain of childbirth, in the escape to Egypt?

American civilization in 2017 is living with the results of the sexual revolution of the 20th century. Few would disagree with the conclusion that we live in a sex-saturated culture with few boundaries. Pornography abounds and is institutionalized on the Internet and in all forms of entertainment.

Gender Dysphoria is generally explained as distress caused by a mismatch between felt and perceived gender identity?between the sex on the birth certificate and how one feels. The Williams Institute, a Los Angeles think-tank, estimates that 1.4 million Americans (0.06% of those aged 16-65) are transgender. According to The Economist, ?young people say that gender matters less than it used to, which sits oddly with the spreading belief that gender dysphoria can be severe enough to justify the upheaval and risks of transitioning.? Furthermore, ?gender identity? in 2017 has come to mean how people feel or present themselves, as distinct from biological sex or sexual orientation.

On 2 November 1917, a letter was delivered to the Jewish community of Great Britain by the British government committing His Majesties Government to the creation of a ?national home? in Palestine for the Jewish people. This ?declaration? changed the course of history. For that reason, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel?s Prime Minister, attended a dinner in London on 2 November 2017 with Theresa May, Britain’s Prime Minister, to celebrate the issuing of this letter 100 years ago. Lord Balfour, a descendant of the man who sent the letter, now called the Balfour Declaration, also attended. The Palestinians regard this Declaration as a ?great betrayal? and Mahmoud Abbas has demanded that Great Britain apologize for this Declaration, not celebrate it.