Culture News

Steady Sins, Steadfast Stewards

For 20 volumes, Answers magazine has covered culture news topics, giving insight into the spiritual battle for the minds and hearts of image bearers around the world. Our mission has always been the same: to help believers understand the times and to offer answers to difficult questions so believers might wisely and winsomely reach their communities with the truth of the gospel.

But through the years, we’ve repeatedly covered many topics—abortion, euthanasia, religious freedom, church compromise, LGBTQ+ issues, and so on. This repetition isn’t for lack of creativity or want of subject material. We continually address the same or similar topics because the same sins resurface time and time again.

It’s a grievous but not surprising fact. Until Christ returns, sin will recycle itself with every generation. We will find ourselves rejoicing when righteousness triumphs and lamenting when sin abounds, until Christ makes all things new.

We consider our culture news department an essential part of the magazine because sins are repetitious and news needs context. Without a biblical worldview to guide our understanding, we can easily fall prey to harmful ideologies, deceptive reports, and out-of-context headlines.

Loving our Neighbors with Dignity

Bodies of immigrants washing onto a Greek shore; thousands of refugees seeking asylum in the US and EU; over 3,000 killed in a Myanmar earthquake; over 14,000 wartime casualties in Ukraine—we often read such numbers in the news. But amid the tensions, injustice, and unrest, we must remember that these numbers represent individual image bearers of God.

With our 24-hour global newsfeeds, we can lose sight of people and focus on policies, political leaders, and broadscale evils of our day. Of course, every issue is complex, the solutions difficult. But as we hope and work for policies and protections for our nations, we must remember that policies affect people. May we remember our call to compassion and pray for policymakers and those whom they affect.

Good News on Government Gender Policies

In his 2025 inaugural address, President Donald Trump declared that the federal government would henceforth recognize only two genders. Following his lead, Speaker Mike Johnson referenced Genesis in his defense of passing a bill to block so-called trans women (biological men) from participating in women’s sports. “We know from Scripture and from nature that men are men and women are women and men cannot become women. . . . It goes back to the first book, Genesis.”

On April 16, the UK Supreme Court ruled that a “woman is someone born biologically female.” Susan Smith, co-director of For Women Scotland, declared, “Everyone knows what sex is and you can’t change it. It’s common sense . . . and hopefully this will now see us back to reality.”

Although some believers like Mike Johnson lead national decisions based on Scripture, rulings in the UK are pointing to science to highlight the lack of evidence supporting gender-affirming care. In fact, evidence is showing that puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and genital mutilation are harmful.

Since God is the author of the universe, it makes sense that any attempt to violate God’s created order would result in harm. Both Scripture and science affirm the immutable truth: “Male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Abortions, Stillbirths, and the Hypocrisy of Infant Deaths

A recent study from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health revealed that infant mortality is supposedly rising since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. These rising infant deaths result from congenital malformations that doctors are now restricted from “adequately treating” through abortion.

Sarah Corning, a staff attorney at the ACLU, said, “When the state invades our hospital rooms, people are forced to carry fetuses with fatal abnormalities—and either experience a stillbirth or watch their baby die shortly after birth.”

Their message is clear: Infant death is only acceptable if performed by a doctor with a mother’s consent. This is the logic of original sin: We want to be the gods of our own and others’ lives. But abortion is murder. It is never a doctor’s right to prevent a stillbirth or infant death by preemptively killing the baby. Death and life are in the hands of God.

It is right to grieve for mothers whose infants have little or no chance of surviving. But aborting a baby won’t spare a mother’s grief. It will double her weight of grief with shame. This study reveals abortionists’ hypocrisy. They claim to grieve infant deaths in one sense while supporting them in another.

Archaeological Dig Confirms the Gospel of John

Beneath the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, an archaeology team recently unearthed layers that date back to the Iron Age. Their findings included pottery, oil lamps, and burial sites. But perhaps most thrilling, results from their soil samples suggest the area transitioned from a quarry to a garden before becoming a burial site in the pre-Christian era.

That finding matches details from John 19:41–42: “Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.”

Photo by Sapienza University of Rome

According to early church historian Eusebius, Emperor Hadrian later built a temple to the goddess Venus on the site of the garden to bury the tomb of Jesus. He destroyed the city in response to the Bar Kokhba revolt (c. AD 132–135) and then rebuilt it as a pagan city named Aelia Capitolina. That temple was later demolished by Constantine and replaced with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (c. AD 336).

We aren’t surprised that this archaeological evidence confirms Scripture. The Gospel of John is a detailed, eyewitness account, but even more significant, it is God’s inspired Word. We are constantly finding ways that his Word remains faithful.