I’m glad to be back after a six-month pause. During the break I finished and published my fourth novel, Nation On The Edge, which I hope you’ll read. And I released the audio version of On The Edge, read remarkably well by a computer! Old dog, new tricks.
Pause or not, the fabric of our nation continues to be torn apart by deep division on a broad range of issues, and I want to suggest a way to pick up a needle and start sewing at least some of us back together, one stitch at a time.
While this post is focused on secular issues, as a believer I want to base my stitches on God’s Word, thereby enlisting His power, as He has promised, to touch hearts and minds that I could never reach on my own. In my human weakness, His power is revealed; and when His Word goes out, it does not return to Him void.
So if I want to supercharge the impact of my argument, I want to stitch with His Truth as my thread. Jesus said, “…The reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” John 18:37.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting a strategy to win over a townhall full of people, or even to convert anyone to our faith. I just want to start stitching our nation back together, one conversation with one person at a time, and I think if I stick to Truth, the added benefit of God’s promise can have a real impact on the discussion.
What strikes me almost daily is how so many seemingly intelligent, well-informed people can apparently believe obvious lies. Red is green. One plus one is three.
Without starting down a philosophical rabbit hole, I’m going to define Truth as objective reality. What is. Facts.
By the way, for great insights into “Truth” vs “My truth”, see Alisa Childers two wonderful books, Another Gospel? and Live Your Truth and Other Lies.
If I hope to have any success with my conversations, I better start the discussions with generally recognizable reality, stick with truths, and know what I’m talking about.
I’ve made a short list of issues which many on the Left support—and may even somehow believe—which should appear to an unbiased observer to be obvious lies, i.e., non-objective untruths.
These issues should be productive places to shine the light of Truth, because they really aren’t very complicated.
And I’ve listed some resources under each issue as starting points for research, if you wish to become more of a subject-matter expert.
There are only two genders, male and female, each with their own characteristics. Because males as a group are physically stronger, with greater endurance, it is unfair to girls and women to require them to compete in athletics against 
boys and men. Or to share showers and locker rooms with them.
- The Assault on Sexual “Normativity” Is an Assault on the Basic Structure of Reality | Manhattan Institute
- Understanding the Sex Binary | City Journal (city-journal.org)
- NPR: ‘Limited Scientific Evidence’ Men Have ‘Physical Advantage’ over Women in Sports | National Review
- Biological Differences between Men and Women Matter in Sports | National Review
Parents have the final responsibility and say on how to raise, train and educate their children to become productive members of society.
- When the State Comes for Your Kids | City Journal (city-journal.org)
- Education as a Battleground – Imprimis (hillsdale.edu)
- Transgender Secrecy Policies at Public Schools | City Journal (city-journal.org)
- SEXUALITY | WOKEMINSTER
Transitioning to cleaner energy should require weighing all the costs and benefits involved, and should be done incrementally, without creating widespread hardships
that are worse than the problems.
- Thinking Smartly About Climate Change – Imprimis (hillsdale.edu)
- Comment: State’s climate act isn’t worth price we’re paying | HeraldNet.com
- Biden’s Environmental Tent Cannot Stand – The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
- Electric Vehicles for Everyone? The Impossible Dream | Manhattan Institute
- Biden’s Incoherent Energy Agenda | City Journal (city-journal.org
Our southern border is wide open/non-existent. Millions of unemployed immigrants are flooding our country without proper documentation, safeguards, or analysis of
the enormous cost to cities, school districts, healthcare and public safety. From Arizona to New York, and everywhere in between.
- Midtown’s chaotic refugee camp proves disorder is Democrats’ only migrant ‘plan’ (nypost.com)
- The Disaster at Our Southern Border – Imprimis (hillsdale.edu)
When I am ill, I want the best medical practitioners possible working on me. I don’t want a doctor/nurse who barely made it through Medical
School because she or he attended as a member of a special group, or trained in a program that spent time studying Diversity-Equity and Inclusion instead of Medicine.
- Isolated from the American College of Surgeons | City Journal (city-journal.org)
- Law, Betrayed | City Journal (city-journal.org)
- The Rise of Wokeness in the Military – Imprimis (hillsdale.edu)
The number of adults in the U.S. who identify as LGBTQ+ is estimated to be 5%, and the number who identify as transgender is 10% of that 5%. True gender dysphoria
affects about 0.1% of the population, mostly male. While people in these categories should never be stigmatized or punished in any way, all the rest of society should not be turned upside down by activists obsessing on these issues in education, corporate life, and the military. And especially in elementary schools, where explicit books and illustrations are pushed on children at a very young age.
- Gender Ideology Run Amok – Imprimis (hillsdale.edu)
- Transgender Health Care: Detransitioners Seek Justice in Court | National Review
- Maryland School District Touts Elementary School Gender and Sexuality Alliance Clubs | National Review
Abortion is killing another human being. Whether you call the victim a baby or a fetus, it does not have the same DNA as the mother. Therefore, the child is not “her body,” to do with as she pleases. The daughter or son is by definition another person, whom she is
killing.
- Abortion Involves Killing–and That’s OK! | The Nation
- Abortion Debate: Pro-Choice Activists Perpetuate Lies | National Review
My challenge to you and to me is to pick a couple of these subjects, do a little research, and then find a way to enter into a low-intensity discussion with a colleague, friend, or family member who appears to hold the opposite view. Then let common sense and the power of Truth go to work.
A potential problem for the Left, and a crack through which a productive discussion might begin, is that Progressive Ideology tends to be all or nothing. As Voddie Bacham points out, a well meaning Christian might mistakenly board the Progressive Train thinking that Critical Race Theory is a way to fight racism, but then find that he or she also has to support all the other cars on that train, from Men Competing in Women’s Sports to LGBTQ+ Sex Education for Kindergarteners. So it should be possible to peel off one or two of the most egregious lies as a starting point for transforming that person’s entire belief system.
If you’re interested, here are some earlier posts on several of these same policy areas, each with more resources listed:
The Truth Will Set You Free–Lies will Enslave You
Finally, what I’m suggesting is a foundational, long-term, organic strategy, like Progressives have used for five decades, not a formula for overnight national change. But we have to start somewhere, and the person next to us seems like a reasonable point of entry. Pick one or two obvious policy lies which offend/interest you the most, do a deep dive to learn all you can about them, and then hone your skills by starting some discussions.
Who knows what God might do with the truths we plant?
Well said Parker, your remarks are much appreciated. I will be forwarding this on to several in my network. My prayer is that God will use it as you have intended to spark interest, study, dialogue, and prayerful reflections about engaging others with fruitful conversation.
Parker: I appreciate very much the way you thoughtfully provoke thinking and discussion and, more importantly, creative and substantive action that approaches problems diametrically opposite the Left’s approach which is extremely regressive and destructive to society at large. As a wise old Rabbi once told me on the subject of Christian conversion and the Roman Catholic Church’s approach to it through coercion: “Salvation is the result of the exercise of free will. It must be a situation freely entered. Conversion by coercion is based on a false assumption and cannot be real.” Yet, that is the presumption on which the Roman Catholic Church persecuted Jews and Dissident Christians all through the Dark Ages until about 1950 in various parts of the world. Dissident Christians and Jews during the Dark Ages were treated the same as the Moors (Muslims) by the Roman Catholic Church. It reminds me so much of what we see nowadays from the extremists on the Left in the United States these days. In all of the points you discussed.