Christians in nearly any context will have to biblically object to these culturally expected policies and practices.  No matter the situation, we must start with the authority of Scripture, explain why we cannot acquiesce from what is clearly taught in Scripture, lay out how we will disobey the policy only enough to avoid sinning while maintaining respect for all, and then accepting the consequences and trusting God to sustain us through them and bring ultimate justice in the end. 

As our culture becomes less and less “Christian”, we will increasingly face situations in which we are pressured to participate in or approve of activities that are sinful.  As I write, the Supreme Court is considering just such a case, in which a Christian web designer is suing Colorado over a policy that would essentially force her to design websites for same-sex weddings.  Christians in wedding-related professions have faced this situation for several years, but it is spreading far beyond that industry.  Christians in all walks of life are threatened with similar scenarios.  A Christian family may be invited to the same-sex wedding of a friend or family member.  A Christian supervisor may be directed by superiors or company policy to participate in Pride Month events .  Christian parents may face situations in which their children are forced by school policy to participate in Pride Month events or be exposed to overly descriptive or graphic curriculum on sexuality.  And these are just scenarios dealing with homosexuality.  There may be mandatory work social events in which excessive drinking is essentially required, work or school policies that require active support of causes that directly contradict Scripture and lead to the degradation of society, or the expectation of working in a dishonest way to increase profits.  Possibly the most likely scenario for any Christian involves transgenderism and the use of pronouns clearly inconsistent with biology, which I cannot cover briefly here, so I will cover it in the next post.  And there is a myriad of other such situations that any Christian may encounter.
Approaching the Situation
Clearly, all Christians need to be prepared to respond biblically to any of these scenarios.  While such a prospect is new for American Christians, it has been the norm throughout the history of the Church, as Peter makes clear:

“Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.”
-1 Peter 3:13-17, ESV

In this passage, Peter basically outlines how Christians should approach these situations.  This begins with approaching the situation with the right perspective.  Peter points out that no matter what happens, blessing will come to those who obey Christ.  Whether no harm comes to you because you are doing good (which Peter says is generally the case) or you suffer for the sake of righteousness, you will be blessed, whether in this life or the next.  Therefore, we should approach the situation without fear, trusting in the sovereignty and goodness of God over and above what any human can do.  We must fear God rather than man, which is the point of Isaiah 8:12-13, which Peter is directly referencing in verses 14 and 15.  Next, we must start with the objective of honoring Christ as of first importance.  We must honor and obey Christ in whatever we do, so however we decide to act in the situation, it must honor and obey Christ.  Then, we must always be prepared to give an answer as to why we decided to act in that way.  This means we need to have a well-thought-out reason from Scripture and be able to explain it.  But we must do this with gentleness and respect, honoring our opponents as people made in the image of God.  So any conscientious objection must be both logically robust from Scripture and lovingly applied with the ultimate objective of glorifying Christ.
Knowing Your Opponent
With that in mind, we must prepare for battle. Arguably the most famous line from Sun Tzu’s Art of War is: “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril”.  He wrote this around the fifth century B.C. about military battles but it applies equally to spiritual battles.  Make no mistake, when we face these situations we are at war and must therefore take on a wartime mentality, following his advice to know both ourselves and our opponents.  First, we must recognize that the people who make and support these policies are not the enemy, neither are the people who want to coerce us to support their sinful lifestyle.  Instead, the true enemy is the devil who has blinded and enslaved them.  Therefore, we must always approach our opponents not as the true enemy but as those held captive by the true enemy, whom God can free from that captivity.  He may even choose to use the humble and winsome demeanor with which we approach them as part of their salvation.  Paul says as much when telling Timothy how elders are to approach such conflicts:

“And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.”
-2 Timothy 2:24-26, ESV

Just as it would be foolish to treat an enemy harshly who is about to defect to your side, it would be foolish to alienate someone whom God may save (and therefore make your brother or sister).  The Gospel that says that all people are dead in sin and cannot do anything to be right with God is inherently offensive, so we have no need (or Scriptural warrant) to offend people any further.  In everything, we must avoid offending God altogether and endeavor to offend people as little as possible.
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Written by Lawrence M. Krauss |
Tuesday, November 9, 2021
Only by speaking out…can we try and dismantle the current strangle-hold that DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] bureaucracies have on researchers and students alike and restore academic freedom and excellence as the hallmarks of science and education.

A couple of weeks ago I published an article in the Wall Street Journal describing the tyranny that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies are imposing on universities and scientific institutions. This includes excluding talented scientists who are not effective enough in displaying their DEI allegiance, enforcing ideological adherence among faculty and students, and suppressing debate on the topics of merit, quotas, free speech, and a range of gender and race issues.
In that article, I gave a piece of partial evidence of the gulag-like environment currently existing in higher education. Numerous faculty responded to an earlier Wall Street Journal piece by me about ideological corruption in science, through emails in which they indicated they were writing under pseudonym accounts out of fear that colleagues or university officials might find out that they supported my concerns.
Happily, in response to my most recent piece, no respondents suggested they were shielding their identities, although a number indicated they were writing from their “non-university” email addresses—just in case—or felt comforted by now being retired and free to write. What they present, in summary, is a chilling perspective of the pervasive and divisive atmosphere that is continuing to develop in educational and scientific institutions. I felt it worth sharing a number of these perspectives, after having consulted the individuals involved. Unless otherwise directed, I have worked to ensure the anonymity of my correspondents.
Numerous correspondents wrote to me concerned about their specific areas of scholarship. Particularly worrying were emails from those in the medical and legal professions.
Here’s one from a professor at a very prominent US medical school:
Dear Dr Krauss,Your op-ed in WSJ barely touched the problem of DEI in American biomedical science and clinical practice. The societies (e.g., Amer Society of Cell Biology) and the journals (esp Elsevier) are rife with DEImania. This is affecting clinical medicine. It is the death spiral of American medicine, with unintended consequences for the very groups it is supposed to help.What can one do?
While this is concerned in more general terms with possible impacts on the field, a very poignant email from another professor in a biomedical field illustrates the personal impact that this environment of fear and suppression is taking on the psyche of scientific researchers:
I feel like the turtle in the picture with the neck out and about to get chopped … It is strange to me that this is happening because I am a Hispanic woman with Spanish, North African, Chinese, and Native American ancestry that speaks four languages and has lived everywhere in the world, so I should be the pinnacle of what DEI is aspiring for. Nevertheless, I am experiencing the tyranny of DEI because it is not about diversity of race or sex but more about a loyalty test. This will not last forever, but the question is how much damage this will do … This year has been an authoritarian year full of tyrannical mandates and intolerance. I have never experienced having moral (mandatory DEI trainings that forces me to affirm things that go against my conscience), medical, or religious tests in order to work before this year. Innovation and intellectual greatness come as a result of freedom. Suppression of speech and ideas will result in a reduction of greatness and innovation. Freedom of speech can only be real freedom if speech that we do not agree with is allowed. Let’s include diversity of thought and ideology in what you want to protect.
Beyond academia, I wrote about the growing inhibitory impact of DEI mandates in scientific institutions, including private ones like the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. In this regard, I received the following email from an HHMI employee that sent shivers down my spine:
Dr. Krauss, I am a HHMI employee and I am grateful to you for your WSJ piece. The lowest point for me was February 8th this year, when all employees were expected to read Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo. Ms. Oluo led a virtual talk that day for all HHMI employees. I trust that you know that the core motivation for HHMI’s DEI effort is to preempt any liability or negative press for two major discrimination lawsuits against HHMI by female Asian scientists. The journal Science covered these two lawsuits on 12/18/2019. Thank you again.
When it came to law schools and DEI, I received several emails from law school professors saying that the piece resonated with their own experience. I received two other legal-related responses that are of particular interest.
The first was from a student at a California law school. Several cases of law professors who have been caught up in unwarranted DEI adjudications of racism are well known and have been written about, including by me. However, the impact on their students is not so well known. Here is the email I received:
After reading your WSJ piece on “Diversity” as tyranny, I wanted to thank you for writing it. I know that took courage, especially in this political environment. Your discussion of “monomania” hit close to home. I’m a law student at [law school name omitted], and this week a brilliant torts professor has come under fire for baseless claims of racism. I wrote a letter to our DEI office defending him, though I doubt it will help.
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Written by R. Scott Clark |
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
How often do we all conduct our lives as if we lived in some sort of closed universe not actively upheld and sustained by the God who is, who spoke everything into being?

For a few months I have been thinking about a phrase I first encountered in 1995 when I was teaching an introductory course in theology at Wheaton. We were using Alister McGrath’s reader as the primary text for the class and he quoted Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–45) as saying that, in Modernity, we must learn to live “etsi Deus non daretur” (as if God is not a given).
Bonhoeffer was trying to figure out how to be a Modern person and affirm Christianity in some sense.
Contra at least one recent evangelical rendering of Bonhoeffer, which follows a trend that has existed for some time of treating him as though he were educated in Moody Bible College rather than in the Universities of Tübingen and Berlin, Bonhoeffer did not hold the historic Christian faith. He was a Modernist, i.e., he accepted as a given the Enlightenment critique of the historic Christian faith and understanding of the world. What does that mean? It means, as one of my undergraduate profs said in 1979: “In the 18th century God went to the corner for a beer and never came back.”
Bonhoeffer, like Karl Barth and others, was trying to figure out how to be a Modern (Enlightened) person and affirm Christianity in some sense. As I understand him, Bonhoeffer was a dialectical theologian. He was proposing a kind of “death of God” theology and affirming a kind of belief in God simultaneously. This is the sort of thing dialectical theologians do.
Are Christians living “Etsi Deus Non Daretur” (As if God is Not a Given)?
The phrase etsi Deus non daretur comes to us from Hugo Grotius (1583–1645). He was a great Dutch polymath. He made contributions in biblical studies, legal theory, theology, and politics. He was one of the major figures in Dutch cultural and political life in the 17th century. His treatise, On The Law of War and Peace is still a basic text in international relations. He was also a Remonstrant and suspected of being a Socinian, i.e., a rationalist who rejected the essential Christian doctrines of the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, and the substitutionary atonement. This was perhaps because a number of Remonstrants did become Socinians so that the line between the two movements was blurred. It is also true, however, that Grotius wrote a treatise on the satisfaction of Christ to which the Socinian Crell responded. As I understand it, Grotius used the phrase etsi Deus non daretur to say that natural law would be in effect even if God were not assumed. Bonhoeffer took the phrase, mediated to him by German scholars such as Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) and put it to use in a rather different context (WWII and the Holocaust) and to a rather different end.
What has been troubling me about this phrase is the way it seems to describe so much of Modern and Late Modern life. How often do we Christians go about life as if we were practical agnostics, as if God were not a given? A major impetus of Modernity, i.e., the Enlightenment movements that swept across Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, was to reject the historic Christian understanding of the world, to assert the autonomy of the human intellect and will, and to relegate God to an unnecessary hypothesis. Evangelicals have adapted to Modernity (and Late Modernity) by adopting a God-of-the-gaps approach: whatever cannot be explained naturally they explain with the God hypothesis: the supposition that God exists.
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