During the colonial period, men were defined by the quality of their community involvement and fatherhood. Marriage and fatherhood were seen as being among the highest aspirations in a man’s life. Today the highest aspirations of many men are career achievement and personal leisure and it is against these they seek to balance marriage and family.

The Christmas season is once again upon us and with it overwhelming encouragement from Madison Avenue to spend what we have not earned to buy what we cannot afford. The day after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday (indicating the point at which retailers are in the black—or at least hope to be), signaled the start of the “holiday shopping season.” That very phrase reveals the commercialized emphasis that has come to define Christmas for many Americans.

As we, once again, approach this national day of “thanksgiving” I thought it necessary to reflect upon our nation’s long history of acknowledging and giving thanks to the Almighty God. On October 3, 1789 George Washington issued the nation’s first presidential proclamation in which he called the nation to set aside a day for giving thanks to that “great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be….”

This is the question, of sorts, I recently posed to a local businessman. As I indicated in my last commentary, I have embarked on an enterprise that I believe offers a modern example of what Jesus meant when he told his disciples to “seek first the kingdom.”

For years now, I have been writing about the kingdom of God—in theory—trying to challenge, teach, and encourage Christians to recover and live out this essential dimension of the gospel. By God’s grace, I believe the church is beginning to awaken and more and more Christians are beginning to understand that the “gospel” is less about going to heaven and more about the redemptive rule and reign of God coming to earth.

This is the story of Western civilization—the world touched by the church in every area of life—where humanity has experienced unprecedented flourishing. Despite our checkered past, Christians have throughout history risen up against countless evils bringing real reform to a broken world defaced by sin.

According to Associated Press reports, “California has become the first state to enshrine certain rights for transgender K-12 students in state law, requiring public schools to allow those students access to whichever restroom and locker room they want.” Additionally, The new law gives students the right “to participate in sex-segregated programs, activities and facilities based on their self-perception and regardless of their birth gender”.

Recent bans in Russia on homosexual adoption, single-parent adoption, homosexual propaganda and such represent a growing realization within Russian society, namely: sexual anarchy has proven devastating to the future of their civilization. Following the collapse of communism, Russia’s fertility rate had fallen to a catastrophic low of 1.17 births to every woman of child-bearing age by 1999, far below the minimum replacement rate of 2.1 required to maintain population stability.

If Jesus commands us to “seek first the kingdom” then it is imperative that we know more precisely what this means. If the kingdom is as the Bible describes, the rule and reign of God come to earth through Jesus the King over all other kings then this reality carries enormous implications for how we are to live and act as faithful followers of Christ.

When I write “Christianity is losing in America,” of course I don’t mean that God or, by extension, his kingdom is failing. The kingdom of God comes in force unlike anything else in creation. It is the present form of Christianity—uniquely influenced by American culture—that is failing precisely because it has been enculturated with ideas foreign to the kingdom of God and the good news of the kingdom.