Tomorrow (Saturday 27 August) we will do a livestream via Facebook Live (I don’t use Fb but my wife will have it on her Fb) on The Gospel: The Better Way, the Alternative to Chaos, Destruction, & Despair. Afterwards we’ll upload it to YouTube under my name as Pirtle Points, Episode 6. The previous episodes are here:

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf81X3tYP9I&t=16s
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2-7ZIUiWHk&t=64s
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV4SCCd_AYo&t=45s
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1SL59LdQ2s&t=25s
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j199pWgbGWw

Episode 6 will be on “Lessons from the School of Affliction.” Why such an ominous sounding title?

It’s because in my ministry over recent years, I have repeatedly heard similar laments, the same sorts of groanings and lamentations about the state of the world.

Some examples include the following expressions of frustration:

• Why do so many people seem to allow and condone evil?
• How did the wisdom of the ages suddenly become folly?
• How and why did almost everything become political?
• Why can’t one of the fittest men in the world (Novak Djokovic) come to America to compete in the U.S. Open (he’s not taking the coronavirus jabs) but America’s borders are wide open to illegals, and coronavirus doesn’t concern the government when it comes to them? One man (arguably the world’s G.O.A.T. male tennis athlete) is not okay but millions of illegals are okay? Inconsistent application of a standard, perhaps?
• Why is it that people love to quote Rev. MLK, Jr.’s speech about judging people by their character and not by the color of their skin, but these same people now demand we segregate people into identity groups? Inconsistency, perhaps?
• How long will it take before the world sobers up and admits that radical individualism is destroying this generation?
• How and why is that the Christian worldview, which abolished slavery, granted women’s rights, built hospitals, and gives overwhelmingly to charity is somehow to blame for all the world’s evils?
• How and why is it that a man marrying one woman, having chldren, raising them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, and providing for his own household is now supposedly a shameful thing, an indicator of speciesim and patriarchy? We’ve gone from Father Knows Best to Drag Queen Story Hour.

All of these lamentations, and countless others, I have heard for years now. And the love of many is growing cold. People are growing increasingly callous. Why?

My view is that all of these things are not at all unrelated. They have a common source and a common author.

In Pirtle Points, Episode 6, I’ll address them. My theological goal is twofold: to speak truthfully and to encourage.

Wisdom and common sense have been bludgeoned by the mobs of immaturity and imbecility.

And the way to address this reality is not to be like the immature or imbecilic, but to articulate truth, to live wisely and truly, to be salt and light.

And those, too, are goals of this weekend’s episode.

I hope you will tune in, like, subscribe, and share. See you Saturday.