Modern Social Issues
The man of project7 is going to be asked where he stands on these things. He should know where he stands. He should know why he stands there. He should be able to say it without rage and without retreat.
This page covers the contested terrain of contemporary moral and public life — abortion, sexuality, marriage, gender, race, citizenship, violence, technology, drugs, speech, the role of the church in the public square, and a handful more. The list grows as new fronts open. The work of this section is to walk the man through each issue honestly — with the actual evidence, the actual range of positions held by serious people, the actual Scripture that bears on the question, and the actual character the disciplined Christian forms in order to hold his ground without becoming the thing he opposes.
Most of the issues here are not edge cases. The Christian tradition has held recognizable positions on them for two thousand years. The cluster holds those positions. The cluster also recognizes that the man holding them in the present cultural moment is doing so under the most contested terms Western Christianity has faced in centuries, and that the failure modes on his own side are now as serious as the failure modes on the opposite side. The page proceeds in that double honesty.
The Posture
The reader will not find here the cable-news framing, the partisan compression, or the rage-bait pacing the algorithm rewards. He will also not find the soft accommodation that has hollowed out half the contemporary church. Both refusals are named at the door so the reader knows what kind of room he has walked into.
Three commitments anchor the work.
Truth. Every position is defended on the actual evidence — Scripture, history, observed reality, the strongest social-scientific record available, and the long Christian tradition's reading of the question. A conviction is held because the case actually closes — not because the tribe holds it, and not because holding it feels brave.
Love. Every position is held in love of the person on the other side. Not the abstraction. The person. The neighbor with the rainbow flag in his window. The cousin who had the abortion. The brother who slid into addiction. The classmate who joined the protest. Christianity holds positions because Christianity loves people, and the positions exist because love demands them. A position held without love is not the Christian position. A love that refuses to name what is hurting people is not Christian love.
The long view. The contemporary configuration is not the eternal one. The empire under which the question is being argued today is not the empire under which it will be argued in fifty years. The man holds his ground inside the long view the canon trains. He does not panic when the wind shifts. He also does not pretend the wind is not shifting.
These three are not a slogan. They are the discipline of the section.
Three Tests for Every Issue
Every contemporary social question that comes to the disciplined man runs through three discernment questions before he answers it. The Three Pillars of project7 carry the load.
Is this true? What is actually the case? What does the evidence say when it is read straight, not filtered through either the activist's framing or the reactionary's framing? What does Scripture say, plainly read, with the historic Christian tradition's witness behind it? A position that survives this first question has earned the right to be held.
Is this loving? Who suffers from the position, and who is helped by it? Does the position serve the actual person who will live under it, or only the abstract category the position references? Is the love being offered the kind of love that tells the truth, or the kind that flatters in order to be invited back? Real love sometimes inconveniences the person it serves. Counterfeit love always agrees with the person it flatters.
Is this right? Does this honor God's law and the moral order Scripture names? Does it honor the dignity of the image-bearer and the wisdom of the created order? Does it honor lawful authority and the structures of family, community, and church that the canon ordains?
A position that fails any of the three is not the Christian position. A position that passes all three is the cluster's position, and the cluster holds it.
What the Cluster Holds
The reader is entitled to know what the cluster holds before he goes any further. The cluster does not perform neutrality it does not possess.
The cluster holds that every human being from conception to natural death bears the image of God and is owed the protection of life on that ground alone (Genesis 1:27, Psalm 139:13-16, Jeremiah 1:5).
The cluster holds that God made humanity male and female, that the difference is structural and good rather than oppressive and constructed, and that marriage is the lifelong covenant of one man and one woman ordered toward the formation of family (Genesis 1:27, 2:24, Matthew 19:4-6, Ephesians 5:22-33).
The cluster holds that the human race is one race biologically (Acts 17:26 — of one blood) and that ethnic diversity is a feature of the created order intended for the worship of the Lamb in Revelation 7:9; that racial hierarchy and racial reductionism are both refused by the gospel; and that the church is the place where the dividing walls come down (Ephesians 2:14-16).
The cluster holds that the poor are owed real care by the household, the church, and the state in that order, and that the kind of care offered must be the kind that restores agency and dignity rather than the kind that manages dependency (Deuteronomy 15:7-11, Proverbs 31:8-9, James 1:27, 2 Thessalonians 3:10).
The cluster holds that the Christian engages the public square as a citizen of two kingdoms — the earthly one whose laws he honors under Romans 13, and the heavenly one whose King relativizes every earthly arrangement and whose return is the actual horizon. The cluster refuses both the privatized Christianity that retreats from public witness and the syncretic Christianity that confuses the cross with the flag.
The cluster holds that addictions, including the chemical and the behavioral kinds, are pastoral and medical realities that require sober engagement rather than either moralism or harm-reduction-as-permission, and that the gospel has resources here the secular framing has not yet caught up with.
The cluster holds that technology is a created good capable of being used for the glory of God and the service of neighbor, and that the contemporary forms — algorithmic media, generative AI, surveillance infrastructure — require a discernment the man has not yet been trained to bring and that this section helps train.
The cluster holds that violence is real, that the second commandment to love neighbor includes the obligation to protect neighbor, and that the prudential debates over gun policy, just war, capital punishment, and lawful self-defense are conducted under that obligation rather than against it.
These are the cluster's positions. They are biblical, they are recognizable to the historic Christian tradition, and they are unfashionable. The cluster holds them in the next century the same way it would hold them in any century, because the ground on which they stand has not moved.
The Two Failure Modes
The cluster refuses two postures the contemporary moment offers the Christian man. Both are tempting. Both produce broken witness.
The culture warrior. The man whose Christianity has been hollowed out into a political identity. His conviction is loud; his love is hard to find. He shares the rage-bait. He gloats when the opposing tribe is humiliated. He treats the person on the other side of the issue as the enemy rather than as the person Christ died to save. He confuses being right with being righteous. The culture warrior often holds positions the cluster also holds — but he holds them in a way the cluster refuses. He has the truth without the love. The truth without the love is not the gospel; it is a club. James 1:20 says it directly: the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.
The accommodator. The mirror failure. The man whose love has been hollowed out into approval. He cannot tell the difference between loving the person and ratifying the harm. He affirms what he should grieve, encourages what he should mourn, and calls the affirmation grace. He believes he is being kind. He is being cowardly. He has the love without the truth. The love without the truth is not the gospel either; it is a flatterer. Proverbs 27:6 says it directly: faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. The man who will not tell his friend the truth is not his friend.
The disciplined position is neither. Truth and love at the same time, in the same posture, toward the same person, in the same conversation. That posture is what Jesus held with the woman at the well in John 4 and with the woman caught in adultery in John 8 — neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more. Both halves are the gospel. Either half on its own is a counterfeit.
The man forming himself in this section is forming himself to hold both halves. It is harder than picking one.
How the Issues Sort
The contemporary issues this section engages sort into rough families. Each child article carries its own depth. The parent names the territory.
Bodily and sexual ethics. Abortion. Gay Marriage. LGBTQ+. Feminism. The historic Christian sexual ethic is at the contested center of the present cultural moment. The cluster holds the historic position. The cluster also recognizes that the men and women asking these questions in 2026 have been catechized by a generation of cultural messaging that did not prepare them to recognize the historic position even existed. The work in this family is patient — answering the question the questioner is actually asking, with the dignity Scripture gives to the questioner, without trimming the answer to spare anyone discomfort. The wounded woman who has had an abortion is not the enemy. The young man wrestling with same-sex attraction is not the enemy. The daughter who has absorbed the feminist frame is not the enemy. The cluster speaks to them as the daughter, sister, son, neighbor, and image-bearer each of them is — and tells them the truth that the cultural messaging has worked to make unsayable.
Identity and community. Christian Nationalism & Modern Patriotism. Racial Politics. Immigration. Male Loneliness Epidemic. The questions of who belongs, who is owed what, and where the Christian's loyalty sits between the heavenly city and the earthly one. The cluster refuses both the ethnic-nationalist confusion that fuses Christianity with a particular country or ancestry and the progressive racialization that has reduced the human person to demographic category. The biblical anthropology is the one in Acts 17:26 and Galatians 3:28 — one human race, image-bearers all, every tongue and tribe and nation gathered at the throne, no ethnic group's pathologies excused and no ethnic group's wounds dismissed.
Order and violence. Gun Violence (2A). Cartels & Narcoculture. Drug Policy. The questions of force, addiction, and the structures that prey on the vulnerable. The cluster engages these without sentimentality and without bravado. The actual harm being done to actual families by the cartels, the addictions, and the gun violence is the foreground. The prudential policy debates run under the moral foreground rather than over it.
Economy and class. Poverty. The Christian tradition's deep commitment to the poor and the long debate over which structures actually serve the poor rather than perform service to them. The cluster names the work of the household, the church, and the state without confusing their orders.
Technology and speech. A.I. Ethics. Social Media. Free Speech & Censorship. Causes & Movements. The questions of the present technological moment and the contested terrain of public conversation. The cluster reads these with the same Three Pillars test it brings to every other issue — what is true, what serves the actual person, what honors the order Scripture names. The Pop Culture sibling cluster runs alongside this family.
The list is not closed. New fronts open. The framework is what travels.
The Man You Are Forming
What the man learns in this section is more than positions. He is forming a character he will carry into rooms where the cost of holding the position is real.
He is forming the humility that reads the opposing case in its strongest form before holding the conviction. The straw-man habit produces brittle convictions that break the first time the man meets a real interlocutor instead of the caricature in his head.
He is forming the courage to say what he actually believes when saying it costs him something — a friendship, a promotion, a Thanksgiving dinner, a platform. The cost of saying it is the indication that it still matters. The conviction that never costs anything is not actually held; it is only worn.
He is forming the love that does not flinch from the person across the table even when the position requires him to say what they do not want to hear. The Christ who told the rich young ruler what he did not want to hear loved him in the telling (Mark 10:21 — Jesus, looking at him, loved him). The same Christ told the Pharisees the truth they especially did not want to hear, and the love and the rebuke were the same gesture.
He is forming the discernment to know which battles to fight, which to lose deliberately, which to walk away from. Not every person who disagrees with him is an interlocutor. Not every disagreement is an evangelistic opportunity. The man who fights every fight loses the ones that mattered. Proverbs 26:4-5 gives him both poles to navigate.
He is forming the rest that does not require winning every argument to be at peace. The man at peace with his King does not require the agreement of his neighbor to function. He can lose the room and walk home unhurried.
These are not soft skills. They are the actual character the gospel forms when the man brings his convictions into the world rather than retreating from it.
How to Hold the Position
A handful of practical rules the section trains.
Read the strongest opposing case first. Not the worst article. The best one. The thinker the other side actually respects. If you cannot articulate the opposing position so that someone on that side recognizes it as their own, you have not earned the right to refute it.
Distinguish the issue from the person. The issue is the issue. The person across the table is your neighbor. Conflating the two — treating disagreement as evidence of moral defect — is how every culture-war combatant on both sides has poisoned his own witness.
Name your own side's failures. The most credible witness against the culture-warrior posture comes from inside the conviction. The most credible witness against the accommodation posture comes from inside the love. The man who can only see the other side's failures has already been captured by his own.
Use Scripture as ground, not as a weapon. The Bible is the ground the cluster stands on. It is not a stone to throw at the unbeliever's head. The unbeliever did not consent to the Bible as the authority, and quoting verses at him as if he had does not move him; it confirms his prior. Bring Scripture into the conversation the way Paul did at Athens — as the architecture that makes sense of what the questioner already half-knows.
Be willing to lose the argument and keep the relationship. Most arguments are not the moment of decision. They are the seventh moment of seventy. The relationship lasts longer than the argument. The seed gets planted in the relationship, not in the win.
Pray for the person. Not as a closing line in a tweet. Actually. By name. Daily. The conviction held over a person you are praying for is held differently from the conviction held over a category you are arguing about. The former is gospel. The latter is performance.
A Word for the Wounded on Either Side
Two readers will arrive at this section carrying wounds the section needs to name.
To the man wounded by the progressive turn. You have watched the family dissolve. You have watched your sons told that being male is a problem. You have watched your daughters told that motherhood is oppression and the body is a prison and every traditional thing is hatred. You have lost friends to ideologies that did not care about the friends you lost. You have a right to grieve, and you have a right to name what is true. You do not have a right to become hard, or contemptuous, or to confuse Christ with the political team that promises to roll back the changes. The reactive identity is its own kind of capture. Hold the conviction. Refuse the hardness. The cluster sees you. The cluster also asks more of you.
To the man wounded by the reactive Christian culture-warrior register. You have heard the gospel preached as a tribal identity that despises everyone outside the tribe. You have watched men who claimed Christ act in ways that made Christ harder to recognize. You have considered leaving over what the loudest voices in the room sound like. You are right that the loudest voices are often the worst witnesses. You are wrong if you conclude the historic faith is what the loudest voices made it. The cluster sees you too. The historic faith is the one that loved the leper and went to the cross for the enemy. It still does.
Both wounded men belong here. The work this section trains is the work of being formed into the kind of Christian who would have spoken hard truth to the empire and lost his head for the poor at the same time.
The Task
Know where you stand. Know why you stand there. Read the strongest opposing case before holding the position. Hold the position with love and without rage. Refuse both the culture-warrior posture and the accommodation posture. Test every issue against the Three Pillars — true, loving, right. Speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). Be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks, with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15). Pray for those who oppose. Lose arguments. Keep relationships. Hold the long view.
The empire you were born under was confused about most of these questions. The empire you will die under will be confused about a different set. The Christ on whose name the cluster stands has been clear about the human heart from Eden forward.
The work is to be the kind of man whose witness still tells the truth in love when the cost of telling it is the cost the gospel always was.
Cross References
Pop Culture
Subcultures
Culture & Traditions
The Disney Religion
Algorithm Christianity
The Fall of Western Capitalist Ideology
Different Scales
Manufactured Movements
Sexual Revolution
The Expendable Man
Feminization of Public Institutions
Christianity
Theology
Apologetics & Activism
Politics
Geopolitics
Ideology
Government Operations
Gentle Parenting
Rules to Teach Your Son
Abortion
A.I. Ethics
Cartels & Narcoculture
Christian Nationalism & Modern Patriotism
Immigration Policy
Feminism - Feminists
Male Loneliness Epidemic
Gay Marriage