Jesus’ giving sight on the Sabbath to a man blind from birth raises questions among His disciples, cause division among the Pharisees, and leads to the former blind man confessing Him as the Son of Man.
Ideas have consequences! Human beings are physical, spiritual, social, emotional and intellectual creatures. Humans respond to stimuli and react to that which both pleases and threatens. The complexity of humanity is reflected in the social sciences (e.g., psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc.), each of which attempts to explain why humans behave the way they do.
Several weeks ago in the weekly edition of Issues, I wrote a critique of the Bostock Supreme Court decision, which extended Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include sexual orientation and transgender status as worthy of federal protection against discrimination. I still regard this important decision as a potential threat to religious liberty in America. However, in early July, in two 7-2 decisions, the Supreme Court upheld “conscience protections for nuns and parochial schools,” producing a level of encouragement that the Court, as now structured, seeks to protect religious liberty.
Sociologists often organize populations according to the generational differences they observe and then create categories with labels and timeline distinctives.
As Jesus teaches in the Temple, using figures of speech to move people from the temporal and physical to the eternal and spiritual, some believe, some reject Him and some wait to see what happens.
Arguably, Abraham Lincoln was the greatest president in American History. He led the nation through its greatest test—the Civil War (1861-1865). As early as 1838, Lincoln argued that the Republic would not collapse from an outside invasion; rather, it would collapse from within. He also believed that popular governments, which rest their sovereignty in the
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Jesus’ teaching divides the people of Galilee—some believe, some reject Him, while others seek more evidence; so, He goes to Jerusalem in obedience to His Father’s “time.”
In June the Supreme Court handed down its major 2020 decision on LGBTQ rights in the workplace. Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia involved a man named Gerald Bostock—by all accounts an exemplary worker with a decade on the job—who was fired for conduct “unbecoming” a government employee shortly after he had started participating in a gay softball league.
Jesus’ strategy is to move people from dwelling on the physical and temporal to understanding their spiritual and eternal need; therefore, He is the” bread of life”.
In 1976, Newsweek magazine proclaimed “the year of the evangelical,” with a cover story on being “born again.” It charted the expanding influence of evangelical churches, which were theologically and politically diverse, and, the article argued, were positioned to have a major impact of the nation’s public morality. After all, evangelicals were strategically important in the election of Jimmy Carter, a self-professed evangelical who talked of being born again. Today, few would portray the evangelical movement with such positive qualities.
