State of the DIS-Union Address

Reflections on our Current Situation as We Journey into the New Year

Image courtesy of Cotton Bro Studio on Pexels

As we enter 2024, I want to take the opportunity to assess the moment in time in which we find ourselves. To summarize in a sentence, “Welcome to the new era of deception.”

Our current predicament reminded me of the iconic scene from The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and her friends were cowering in front of the great and powerful Wizard of Oz until that fateful moment when Dorothy’s dog, Toto, exposes the Wizard as a fraud.

How does he respond? The fake wizard says, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

Or, in other words, don’t look at what’s right in front of your eyes. Ignore civilizations for the last millennia where men and women had distinct physical characteristics and only women could have babies. Of course, you can change the laws of nature. After all, it is 2024.

As a society, we’ve gone from idolizing male athletes, … to discriminating against men by redirecting their team’s funding to women’s sports, … to discriminating against women’s sports by directing their funding toward teams with men who think they are women.

We’ve gone from seeing ads of scantily dressed, painfully thin women, … to ads of scantily dressed, morbidly obese women, … to ads of scantily dressed men posing as women, … to ads of pregnant “men” posing with women.

We’ve gone from schools requiring permission from parents for field trips to the zoo, … to schools allowing male students into female bathrooms without parents’ permission, … to teachers taking students to drag queen shows and forbidding them to tell their parents.

What in the world is going on??

To go one step further, many of our young men and women who have grown up in remarkable privilege have decided unilaterally to side with Hamas terrorists who exploit children, abuse women, and brutalize the elderly. Oh, the irony of these college students who have never gone hungry a day in their lives or have been denied access to education deciding that THEY are now oppressed.

These students benefit immensely from every last privilege they work so diligently to destroy! These include uniquely American benefits such as free speech, freedom of religion, capitalism, and the right to defend oneself.

Tragically, they may soon learn what it truly means to be oppressed.

All this leads us to understand what President Ronald Reagan said in 1961,

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day, we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States, where men were free.”

Over the past few years, we have seen evil manifest in nearly every area of public life in America: attempts to groom our children, steal our elections, bankrupt our economy, and destroy our way of life.

Our freedoms are slowly eroding beneath our feet. So slowly that some don’t appear to notice. At no other time in history have we experienced overwhelming prosperity while, at the same time, looking over the brink of the abyss.

But the good news is that freedom—in the truest sense—does not depend on the governing authorities of this world. The same promise that Jesus gave to a group of uneducated, working-class men living in occupied territory ruled by brutal authoritarians is still given to us:

“… you will the know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

God’s promise to be set free by the truth transcends circumstances, personal limitations, and even governments. And yet, many in our culture have chosen to take a hard pass. They have opted, instead, to be free from the truth. Tragically, they choose to substitute narratives for facts and reason.

Being set free by the truth requires walking in the light. The light can be every bit as scary as the darkness because the light exposes everything. No more hiding behind agendas, no more hiding behind narratives, no more hiding. Period.

If we want to be free, we must allow the light to expose the deeds of darkness.

So the question posed to you today, in January of 2024: Will we be bold enough to speak the truth? Even when it cost us.

Will we be bold enough to say…

• NO. You can’t have our children. They belong to us.

• NO. Love isn’t always love. Sometimes it’s perversion.

• NO. Men cannot get pregnant and have babies.

• NO. Aborting a viable human life is not health care.

• NO. Transwomen are not women; they are men who have been chemically or physically castrated.

• Will And, NO, the sexual mutilation of children is not affirming his or her gender.

No, no, no, and no. Final answer.

Will YOU speak the truth? Our world, at this moment, desperately needs leaders. Will YOU lead in whatever sphere of influence you find yourself.

May God bless you. And may God bless America.