Pastor Ray Johnston has a new book out that talks about how the church has become like the culture. He illustrates this by describing the “seven decades that have changed everything.” We talked about these remarkable changes recently on my radio program.

The 1950s were a time when America lost its innocence. Rock music was born. Teenagers were liberated from the parents by cars. Every home got a television set.

The 1960s were a time when America lost authority. America was on the eve of destruction with protests about civil rights and the Vietnam War. It was a decade of drug use, Woodstock, and the assasinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr, and Robert Kennedy. The 1970s were a time when Americans lost love. It became the “me decade” after the disillusionment that took place in the 1960s.

In the 1980s, Americans lost values. As people got preoccupied with glamour, fashion, wealth, and media. The movie Wall Street may have summarized the decade with the phrase: “greed is good.” Then in the 1990s, Americans lost faith with the jarring images that occurred during that time.

The 2000s were a time when Americans lost security. It began with a concern over Y2K but moved from a scare to real fear when terrorists struck on September 11, 2001. And the 2010s seem to be a time when Americans lost hope. They weathered the Great Recession but did not believe that the future would be better than the past.

Of course, Christian faith has the answers to these challenges. We can find innocence in the forgiveness of God, love in the love of God, values in the Word of God, faith in the promises of God, and hope in God Himself.

The real question is whether we in the church will bring this message. That is why Ray Johnston titled his book, “Jesus Called: He Wants His Church Back.”

April 15 is usually considered Tax Day, but this year the tax deadline is on April 18. It was moved because Emancipation Day will be celebrated this year on April 15. That is why Tax Day was pushed back to April 18.

While we are talking about Tax Day, let also talk about Tax Freedom Day. That is the day when your tax burden is lifted. It is calculated by dividing the official government tally of all taxes collected in each year by the official government tally of all income earned in each year. Put another way, it is when you are no longer working for the government but are now working for yourself and your family.

This year Tax Freedom Day will arrive next week. That is something new. Back in 2009 when I started doing commentaries on Tax Day, the Tax Freedom Day was on April 13. Now it is more than a week after Tax Day.

But before you declare freedom from government, I need to tell you about another day. It is called Cost of Government Day. This is the date on which the average American has paid his share of the financial burden imposed by the spending and regulation that occurs on the federal, state, and local levels. This year the Cost of Government Day will be somewhere in early July. In other words, you work more than half a year for the government before you begin to work for you and your family.

These dates help us realize what is happening around us. There is a cost, but often we don’t see it. Our taxes are withheld from each paycheck, so we often don’t think about what we are paying. And since the cost of most regulations is hidden, we don’t see those costs either. But imagine if we had to pay all our taxes today in one lump sum. You can bet there would be an outcry.

In a speech at Hillsdale College, Andrew McCarthy told the story of leading the prosecution in 1993 of the terrorist cell that bombed the World Trade Center. At the time, other government officials told him that he “should read nothing into the fact that all the men in this terrorist cell were Muslims.” These officials explained that the terrorist actions weren’t representative of Islam, because it is religion that encourages peace.

The government also portrayed the leader of the terrorist cell (Omar Abdel Rahman) as a wanton killer and an unbalanced lunatic. Andrew McCarthy discovered he was anything but. He was a globally renowned scholar with a doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence from a major university in Egypt.

That presented a problem. Andrew McCarthy needed to know enough about Islamic interpretation to press the case. He hoped to find inconsistencies between what the Qur’an teaches and what the leader of the terrorist cell taught. What he found was alarming. Every time Omar Abdel Rahman quoted the Qur’an or other Islamic sources, he quoted them accurately.

“When he said the scriptures command Muslims to strike terror into the hearts of Islam’s enemies, the scriptures backed him up. When he said Allah enjoined all Muslims to wage war until Islamic law was established throughout the world, the scriptures backed him up.”

Andrew McCarthy discovered the flaw in the oft-repeated argument that Muslim terrorists are perverting the religion of Islam. They are accurately quotes verses from the Qur’an. That doesn’t mean that all Muslims will be terrorists. Many do not know of these passages or have been able to contextualize them. But it does illustrate why we cannot continually argue that radical Muslims who are calling for jihad are teaching something that is contrary to Islam.

College costs so much more than it did a few decades ago. When baby boomers went to college, they often paid for college with money they earned from summer jobs. Today, the millennial generation graduates with crushing amounts of student loan debt.

So why is college so expensive now? The typical answer you get is that public funding for higher education was slashed and so the universities had to raise tuition year after year. It makes for a good story, but Professor Paul Campos says it is a fairy tale of the worst kind.

In a recent commentary, he points out that public investment in higher education in America is much larger today (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than it was during the golden age of the 1960s. Spending on higher education has increased at a faster rate than government spending in general.

The rise in tuition isn’t due to funding cuts but actually due to huge increases in public subsidies for higher education. He explains that if “car prices had gone up as fast as tuition, the average new car would cost more than $80,000.”
As you might expect, a number of educators have criticized his commentary for being too simplistic. To his credit Professor Campos does concede that some of the increased spending is no doubt due to the sharp rise in the percentage of Americans who go to college. For that reason, state legislative appropriations for higher education have risen faster than inflation.

He also answers the argument that even though public spending has increased, it should be called a “cut” because of that way funds are allocated. Finally, Professor Campos explains where much of the money goes. Administrative positions on universities have grown 10 times faster than the growth of tenured faculty positions.

Why are college costs so high? It isn’t because public funding was cut. The reality is that it was just the opposite.

When California Governor Jerry Brown announced his plan to be the first state to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, lots of people had an opinion. Dr. Merrill Matthews (a frequent guest on Point of View) summarized his thoughts this way. “As a Texan, let me say, ‘Thank you, Governor Brown!”

He pointed out that Texas has benefited from the Golden State’s determination to send its best employers and jobs to the Lone Star State. He believes that this announcement will assure that the relocation efforts will continue for years to come.

In case you are wondering, the number of Californians moving to Texas has hit its highest level in nearly a decade, according to the IRS. It compiles migration data by looking at the address changes in the tax forms. Many of these people may be leaving for better job opportunities or fewer regulations. But increasing the minimum wage in California will also hasten the flight from the state.

Talk show host Dan Celia predicted that there would be lots of bankruptcies throughout California by 2022. He couldn’t believe that politicians in California wanted to do this in light of previous experiences elsewhere. Perhaps, he speculated, that politicians thought “what happened in the state of Washington was just some sort of weird anomaly that is not going to happen anywhere else in the world.” He reminds us that fast-food chains had to lay off people and start pushing for more automation systems. He is sure that there will be fewer people working as a result of the $15 an hour wage.

Of course, some workers will benefit because they will see their wages jump from $10 an hour to $15 hour. Others will be laid off, but it won’t stop there. People working for $12 an hour who have seniority won’t be happy making $15 an hour, the same wage as someone new to the job. So they will demand a higher wage. In the end, wages might go up, but job opportunities will go down.

You have probably been hearing about the phenomenon of grade inflation for many years. It’s much worse than you might imagine. A recent report tells is all: “Everyone gets an A? College grade inflation spiking.”

To make the point, I posted the graph of college grade distributions nationwide on my Facebook page and on Pinterest. The comments from people who saw the graph are very interesting. From the 1960s, you notice that the percentage of A grades increase while the percentages of B and C grades decrease.

The first rise in an A grade takes place in the 1960s and 1970s. Grade inflation began then during the “Vietnam era.” Professors gave out higher than deserved grades back then to young men so they would be able to keep their student deferment and not be drafted to serve in the Vietnam War.

By the end of the 1970s, the A grade inflation dropped for a short period of time. Since then it has steadily increased to the current level today. More than 45 percent of all grades given to college students are an A grade. By comparison, only 15 percent received an A grade back in the 1960s.

The assumption is that with college education becoming more expensive, schools may now feel the need to reward the investment with an A grade. It may not be deserved, but it is expected. This is what many have started to call the “student as consumer era.” Many of these professors go along with the fiction that students are working hard by participating in class and writing impressive papers.

There are many problems with the mindset of “everyone gets a trophy.” Students are rewarded for substandard work with an A grade. And professors no longer are making any distinctions between outstanding students and mediocre students. In the end, college grades are having less and less significance.

Many may not realize it but more illegal immigrants have been deported during President Obama’s presidency than ever before. An estimated 2.5 million people have been removed from America since he took office. Some have even referred to him as the “deporter-in-chief.”

The two leading Republican presidential candidates want to continue and even expand what is currently happening. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz want to deport millions more, even though many polls show that Americans oppose mass deportations of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

If these two candidates are serious about mass deportation, then we should count the cost. Doug Holtz-Eakin is the former director of the Congressional Budget Office. Last year he calculated that deporting all of these illegal immigrants would take 20 years and cost the federal government at least $400 billion in extra spending.

Jeff Jacoby, in a recent column, quotes a new study that also calculates the cost in terms of government personnel. Evicting immigrants is a four-step process. They must be apprehended, detained, prosecuted, and transported. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would need more than 90,000 enforcement agents.

There’s more. The government would have to build and maintain additional detention facilities and have to triple the number of immigration courts to adjudicate the removal cases. Instead of the current 1,400 chartered flights, we would need 17,000 flights. The current 2,500 bus trips would explode to 30,000.

Finally, we would lose millions currently in our work force that would result in reduced economic output. Is America ready to pay this price for mass deportation? It is question that needs a good answer in this election cycle.

Legislatures and city councils have had a debate for some time about so-called “bathroom bills.” Apparently many gay activists are convinced that the next barrier to discrimination concerns transsexuals who desire to use a public bathroom of their preference rather than their biology. That is why some legislative bodies want to pass bills that would protect woman from predators.

A recent column by Frank Turek provides some insight into the debate in North Carolina’s “bathroom bill” (HB2) that could be useful to others who want to pass similar legislation. He delineates six reasons why North Carolina got it right.
First, all good laws discriminate against behaviors not people. Second, people are equal, but their behaviors are not. Good laws treat all people equally, but do not treat their behaviors equally. The very reason laws exist is because not all behaviors are equal and can have a detrimental impact on individuals and society.

Third, your identity is not your feelings but your biology. Frank Turek laments that he has to say the obvious: the reason we have separate bathrooms is because there are biological differences. Does the NBA, the NFL, or Apple allow men in women’s bathrooms? Why, he asks, do “they think North Carolina is wrongly discriminating when they are doing exactly the same thing in their businesses?”

Fourth, the danger is real from sexual predators in women’s restrooms. If you don’t think so, just watch one of the videos making the rounds that warn us what can happen and what has happened when dangerous men enter women’s restrooms.

Fifth, race and homosexual behavior are not the same. Gay activists equate the two and want to force people to participate in same-sex marriage ceremonies and allow men in women’s bathrooms. Sixth, opposition to harmful behavior is not bigotry. It is wise, and that is why North Carolina got it right.