There Can Be No Neutrality in the Culture Wars

Friends, there is no such thing as neutrality in the culture wars. You either push against the tide or get swept away with it. It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, biblical scholar and cultural commentator, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice for moral sanity and spiritual clarity. Call 866-34-TRUTH to get on The Line of Fire. And now here's your host, Dr. Michael Brown. We're going to do what we do today.

One reason that you tune into the broadcast, we are going to be who we are and do what we always do, which is push back against the tide of the world with the truths of the Word of God so that we can stand strong together. I want to tell you today, friends, you are not crazy. You have not lost your mind. You are not the one that's gotten turned upside down.

It is the world around us that is upside down. And that's why we, as the light of the world, we as the salt of the earth must fulfill our function and serve as the conscience of the world and bring the truths of God to a dying world, to a dying culture, which has been our mission for 2,000 years. Michael Brown, welcome to the broadcast. Welcome to The Line of Fire. I'm here by God's grace to infuse you with faith and truth and courage. And my guarantee is if you tune in on a regular basis, you will get a dose of moral sanity and spiritual clarity. And I will not get your blood rising, your blood pressure rising unless we also get your faith building, your faith strengthened. So we can talk about the craziness of the world, but not in a way that will discourage you or beat you down in a way that will encourage you and give you hope.

Full lines are open. You can get to weigh in on today's topic. I didn't comment on it yesterday, but I'll comment briefly on Governor DeSantis dropping out and endorsing Donald Trump as this is the day of the New Hampshire primary and still Nikki Haley running against former President Trump.

I just have a couple of brief comments about that, but they will be more spiritual than political in nature. If you want to call, if you want to weigh in on today's subject or talk to you about anything else, we'll see what calls we can get to. 866-348-7884.

866-348-7884. It was actually an article by a Catholic author of the Ruth Institute, Jennifer Roback Morris, a devoted Catholic, that got me thinking about today's subject. So I'm going to do that in a moment, but first just some general truths from scripture. We are in the world but not of the world, meaning we live in this world on this planet and we can be thoroughly in it in terms of enjoying nature and having families and doing things like that, but the spirit of the age, the spirit of the world is not our spirit, is not our mentality because we know who God is.

We know who the Creator is. We know why we are here. You know, I was thinking about some setting where you're suddenly isolated from everyone that you know, right, and you are just living for survival in an isolated place or maybe you have a couple people around you and you're just living to survive. So that's your only purpose, to survive to make it another day, not to starve to death, not to be taken out by sickness or disease or a bomb or something like that, just to survive. And that's how animals live from day to day unless they're pets and they get to play around, but they just live to survive day by day. It's not like a worm is meditating on the purpose of his life or an owl is sitting there saying the meaning of life and the purpose of life and how can I best use it, utilize life, and obviously a pet does not think about that either.

They just get to enjoy life a little bit more. But for us as human beings created an image of God. There's a purpose. You're here for a purpose.

You're here for a reason. And I began to think again of the idea of life without God. I've never been able to fully wrap my mind around it and think as an atheist would think. I've tried. I've meditated on it.

I've thought about it. I've even shared with you that I've prayed the prayer, God, help me to think as an atheist would think as if you don't exist. I've prayed to God for that. And the closest I've ever gotten is when suddenly this thing, but then there's no purpose, then there's no destiny. You may have a life that has certain meaning to it, but there can be no sense of destiny and purpose and I'm here for such a time and such a purpose because there is no purpose.

It's all just random. And when you think of just living to survive, it's that same kind of thing that there's something missing. That's not why God put us here.

There's something more to it. There's a destiny. There's a dream that God put in our hearts.

Ecclesiastes 3 says eternity is in our hearts. So we don't live like the world lives. We live in this world. We work our jobs. We raise our families. We have vacations. We have fun together. We play sports and so on and so forth.

We have hobbies. But ultimately, we are not of the world. It's a different spirit. 1 John 2 says this. 1 John 2 beginning in verse 15, Don't love the world, neither the things that are in the world. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but of the world. And the world and its lusts are passing away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. 1 John 5 19 says that we are of God, little children, but the whole world lies under the power of the evil one. It doesn't mean that every human being is just doing evil and wicked things day and night. It means that ultimately there is a tide that is carrying them and they're going in a certain direction just innately.

That is what is happening. And if you are in that tide, if you are standing there and unless you consciously go against it, if you're just passive, if you just float, you're going to be carried away with it. But as a boy, during the summer, go to the beach every day. There was a few minutes away if we drove over the bridge into the neighboring town, the ocean was there, the Atlantic Ocean was there. But we did most of our time just walked a few minutes from the house.

We just had a bay by our town, Harbor Island Park on Long Island. And it didn't have the heavy waves and things like that. So we'd just go in the water and swim and play underwater games and different things like that. And sometimes it's just hot out and you just float, just laying there floating.

And every so often you do it and you didn't have your friends around or maybe they decided not to say anything. And next time, whoa, what happened? You kind of open your eyes and that you didn't even realize, but the tide carried you much further out than you were comfortable being.

You'd hurry, scurry and swim back. Some years ago, we were in Maryland, family vacation, and I was in a river with our grandson, Connor. And he was just doing different things. And so I was just kind of chilling and having fun while he was doing what he was doing. These are real outdoors guys, as his dad and family are. And I just remember standing there and the tide was strong. And just to hold my ground, to not move, I had to consciously dig my feet in and lean and push in the other direction. Otherwise.