Written by R.C. Sproul |
Friday, February 18, 2022
The order of the process to destroy doubt is crucial. For example, the miracles of the Bible cannot and were never designed to prove the existence of God. The very possibility of a miracle requires that there first be a God who can empower it. In other words, it is not the Bible that proves the existence of God, it is God who through miracle attests that the Bible is His word. Thus proven, to believe the Bible implicitly is a virtue. To believe it gratuitously is not.

Spiritus sanctus non est skepticus—“The Holy Spirit is not a skeptic.” So Luther rebuked Erasmus of Rotterdam for his expressed disdain for making sure assertions. Luther roared, “The making of assertions is the very mark of the Christian. Take away assertions and you take away Christianity. Away now, with the skeptics!”
Doubt is the hallmark of the skeptic. The skeptic dares to doubt the indubitable. Even demonstrable proof fails to persuade him. The skeptic dwells on Mt. Olympus, far aloof from the struggles of mortals who care to pursue truth.
But doubt has other faces. It is the assailant of the faithful striking fear into the hearts of the hopeful. Like Edith Bunker, doubt nags the soul. It asks “Are you sure?” Then, “Are you sure you’re sure?”
Still doubt can appear as a servant of truth. Indeed it is the champion of truth when it wields its sword against what is properly dubious. It is a citadel against credulity. Authentic doubt has the power to sort out and clarify the difference between the certain and the uncertain, the genuine and the spurious.
Consider Descartes. In his search for certainty, for clear and distinct ideas, he employed the application of a rigorous and systematic doubt process. He endeavored to doubt everything he could possibly doubt. He doubted what he saw with his eyes and heard with his ears. He realized that our senses can and do often deceive us. He doubted authorities, both civil and ecclesiastical, knowing that recognized authorities can be wrong. He would submit to no fides implicitum claimed by any human being or institution. Biographies usually declare that Descartes was a Frenchman but his works reveal that he was surely born in Missouri.
Descartes doubted everything he could possibly doubt until he reached the point where he realized there was one thing he couldn’t doubt. He could not doubt that he was doubting. To doubt that he was doubting was to prove that he was doubting. No doubt about it.
From that premise of indubitable doubt, Descartes appealed to the formal certainty yielded by the laws of immediate inference. Using impeccable deduction he concluded that to be doubting required that he be thinking, since thought is a necessary condition for doubting. From there it was a short step to his famous axiom, cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am.”
At last Descartes arrived at certainty, the assurance of his own personal existence. This was, of course, before Hume attacked causality and Kant argued that the self belongs to the unknowable noumenal realm that requires a “transcendental apperception” (whatever that is) to affirm at all. One wonders how Descartes would have responded to Hume and Kant had he lived long enough to deal with them. I have no doubt that the man of doubt would have prevailed.
There were clearly unstated assumptions lurking beneath the surface of Descartes’ logic. Indeed there was logic itself. To conclude that to doubt doubt is to prove doubt is a conclusion born of logic.
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Dr. Prather elaborated: “In the family that chooses to give their children more freedom in how they’re educated, that parent is now free to protect and advocate for their child’s freedom to learn. If the family is Christian, the parent has the freedom to disciple that child in the faith. If that family is Afrocentric, that family has the freedom to make all of their lessons geared to the child learning their African heritage.”

Editor’s note: This article first appeared at The American Spectator.
Parents are taking their children’s education into their own hands in record numbers after a disastrously tumultuous school year.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s experimental Household Pulse Survey, which is an online survey recording social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrates a dramatic shift towards homeschooling within the past year and a half. The survey included roughly 22–23 million American households spanning from the spring of 2020 to the fall of 2021.
During Phase 1 (April 23 to May 5, 2020) of the survey, about 5.4 percent of households with school-aged children said they were homeschooling. By the fall (September 30 to October 12, 2020), 11.1 percent of households with school-aged children reported homeschooling. The number increased to a staggering 19.5 percent by May of 2021. Fall 2021 statistics on homeschooling have not yet been published.
This embrace of home education is diverse. The survey respondents indicated that homeschooling in black households increased from 3.3 percent in the spring of 2020 to 16.1 percent in the fall of 2020.
The possible reasons for such a monumental and unprecedented switch to homeschooling are numerous, and include pandemic shutdowns, strict masking, and critical race theory.
The profound failure of school shutdowns during the pandemic was evidenced by the drop-off in student test scores in reading and math and soaring rates of students attempting suicide.
Unscientific mask mandates for school-aged children also received outcry from concerned parents. Even though many young students have reported headaches, dizziness, and brain fog from masking for 8-hour or more school days, some school boards and states still require them. From Broward County to Loudoun County, parents have protested nationwide against mask mandates.
The immense, national backlash to critical race theory in schools may have also catalyzed the turn towards homeschooling. Parents across the country have protested against CRT at school board meetings, claiming the instructional tool promotes racism and hatred. Some states, including Oklahoma, Idaho, and Florida have even banned CRT from schools.
Dr. Anika Prather, a professor of Classics at Howard University and founder of the Living Water School, is an advocate for diverse classical education and a supporter of school choice. Prather told The American Spectator that personalization is a benefit of homeschooling, as parents maintain direct agency over their children’s education.
Dr. Prather elaborated: “In the family that chooses to give their children more freedom in how they’re educated, that parent is now free to protect and advocate for their child’s freedom to learn. If the family is Christian, the parent has the freedom to disciple that child in the faith. If that family is Afrocentric, that family has the freedom to make all of their lessons geared to the child learning their African heritage.”
Similarly, radical gender theory and progressive sex education have infiltrated schools, and have even reached preschools. Schools across the country have adopted LGBTQ+ curriculums, taught “porn literacy” courses, and embraced sexually explicit books accompanied by the use of “sex apps.”
Jeremy Tate, CEO of the Classical Learning Test, an alternative standardized test to the SAT or ACT with a classical approach, is an advocate for classical education. He told The American Spectator that parents are becoming aware of what their children are actually being taught. He said, “Parents are waking up to the reality that mainstream education has gone completely off the rails. It is now radically disconnected from the kind of education that gave birth to America.”
Parents may be flocking to homeschooling because what our Founding Fathers believed about education is now fundamentally lost, Tate said. He also echoed Dr. Prather’s insights on minority families and homeschooling, saying that “We have witnessed the largest exodus of black families from public schooling in American history. The founder of National Black Home Educators, Joyce Burgess, reports a three times growth in homeschooling among blacks. They are voting with their feet.”
Prather summarized this shift in education: “Homeschooling is powerful because it gives the parent complete authority in how their child is educated . . . There is a joy in being able to design the educational experience you want for your child. Our founders knew that this freedom was important, and the Constitution protects our rights as parents to choose the education we prefer for our children. That is something to be celebrated.”
Emily Burke is a Student Fellow for the Institute for Faith & Freedom. Studying English, Philosophy, and Pre-Law at Grove City College, Emily also serves as an Editorial Intern for The American Spectator through the Young Writers Program. Heavily involved in political writing, editing, and research, Emily aims to apply those skills in the fields of journalism and public policy concerning issues of constitutional government and the future state of education. You can follow her on Twitter @emilyfburke. This article used with permission.

Written by M. D. Perkins |
Monday, August 22, 2022
The book Dangerous Affirmation is intended to serve as an introduction, rebuttal, and warning. It was written to help the average person in the pew to understand what is being argued by major “gay Christian” thinkers and to respond to it biblically. Although the Bible is the primary focus, I did not shy away from discussing controversial topics like homophobia, LGBT suicide rates, conversion therapy laws, and the rise of “gay celibate Christianity.” Truth demands proper application to every aspect of our life and society.

Let’s see if you’ve heard any of these statements before:

God made people gay and therefore being gay should be celebrated and affirmed.
Jesus never mentioned homosexuality even once.
The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about inhospitality and greed, not homosexuality.
If the Bible were written today, it would be gay-affirming.
The Bible doesn’t say anything about sexual orientation.
Christians hate gay people and need to change their theology to be more loving.

If you’ve heard one or more of these statements before—whether on social media, in conversation with a family member, or even promoted by a supposedly Christian pastor—you have just encountered one of the many influences of “gay Christianity.”
Throughout two thousand years of church history, Christians have understood—and Christian churches have taught—that homosexuality is a sin. It is “against nature” (Romans 1:26–27). It is an “abomination” (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13). It can be described as “vile affections” or “dishonorable passions” (Romans 1:26). It is not God’s design for marriage or family (Genesis 2:18–25). It is something that God does not bless, nor can He because it is defiantly against His revealed will (1 Corinthians 6:9–10). And because it is against God’s will and design, to embrace and celebrate homosexuality is to evoke God’s judgment—as an individual, church, or nation (Genesis 19:1–29). Since Christianity took root in the West, the Bible’s teaching against homosexuality has defined public policy and social attitudes in Europe and America.
But a strange thing has happened in the years surrounding the sexual revolution. The Bible that had once been so clear on sexuality suddenly became pretty fuzzy. Morals and ethics were subject to redefinition. Study committees needed to meet in order to discuss what the Bible was now saying. Churches found reasons to defy their former standards and force others to change with them. And Christians became more and more confused about what was true. The influence of “gay Christianity” can be seen in many ways across the church and society today.
Fundamentally, gay Christianity is the attempt to reconcile the Christian faith with homosexuality. I use “gay Christianity” as a label for this general movement, although I recognize that there are differing streams of thinking within it. Sometimes these differing streams have competing goals and conflicting theological claims and are not nearly as unified as the general term may imply. However, it is important to see the points of similarity and difference while also observing the common thrust of the movement as a whole. That is why I wrote the book Dangerous Affirmation: The Threat of “Gay Christianity,” now available from American Family Association.
What do I mean by saying “gay Christianity” is the attempt to reconcile the Christian faith with homosexuality? The Christian faith is the body of beliefs, practices, and values—rooted in the Bible—that have defined the teaching, worship, and ministry of the Christian church throughout her existence. As briefly mentioned above, the Christian faith recognized homosexuality as sinful and unnatural—a view universally agreed upon until the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.
Homosexuality is likewise a broad term—including notions of desire, attraction, sexual behavior, relationships, identity, language, community, and culture. One aspect of the gay debate within the church is the ever-broadening definition of homosexuality within Western culture. As homosexuality is lived out by people and embraced by society, the particular meanings that may be ascribed to the concept of homosexuality change. Even the words used to describe homosexuality change over time—such as the emergence of the word gay as the preferred term for identifying as a homosexual.
The last element of this definition of “gay Christianity” is the word reconcile. Reconcile means to bring into harmony, to settle a conflict, or to make two things consistent that were at one time inconsistent. If the Christian faith and homosexuality are seen as being at odds, then “gay Christianity” is the attempt to find some level of compatibility between them. It assumes that these two ideas are not fundamentally opposed but have points of common agreement. For instance, this is what “gay Christians” are arguing when they say that “gay Christian” is not a contradiction in terms or that God blesses same-sex marriage.
The book Dangerous Affirmation is intended to serve as an introduction, rebuttal, and warning. It was written to help the average person in the pew to understand what is being argued by major “gay Christian” thinkers and to respond to it biblically. Although the Bible is the primary focus, I did not shy away from discussing controversial topics like homophobia, LGBT suicide rates, conversion therapy laws, and the rise of “gay celibate Christianity.” Truth demands proper application to every aspect of our life and society.
There are five central ways in which “gay Christianity” is impacting the Christian church:

The rethinking of theology (chapter 1).
The rethinking of the Bible (chapter 2).
The re- thinking of the church (chapter 3).
The rethinking of identity (chapter 4).
The rise of LGBT activists within the church (chapter 5).

Each chapter includes a careful explanation of some facet of that problem, illustrations of how these things have been seen, and guidance for understanding these issues in light of Scripture. A list of recommended resources that may help further inquiry is included at the end as well as extensive indexes to help find subjects or scriptures referenced in the book.
For those concerned about honoring God with your lives, I hope and pray that Dangerous Affirmation stirs you to think about the threat “gay Christianity” poses to the church and the world. I hope it renews your thinking because it presents the Word of God clearly and applies the truth accurately. That was my goal.
(Editor’s Note: Click HERE to watch a trailer about this informative new book.)
M.D. Perkins is Research Fellow of Church And Culture at the American Family Association.

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