Evangelicals & The Generation That Sacrificed Versus the Generation That Redefines

The late esteemed Pastor and Theologian, Dr. John McArthur has left an indelible mark upon my thinking and I am sure amongst many, many others and I am sure many will also agree the Church has been forever blessed by John's faithful years of service to the kingdom.

The one chief Johnism, if you will, that sears my conscience was John's insistence that the earnest and maturing Christ-follower seek to develop and crave a more profound sense of living with a Sense of Eternity always in view. His good friend and brother, Dr. R.C Sproul, would express the same sentiment when he would say that Christ-followers are to live Coram Deo, in the face of God. Granted, such lofty pursuits become much, much easier when one can look into the mirror and see more and more strands of gray invading their hair follicles, not to mention how much more different it is, arising from bed each morning, and a simple task as walking down stairs you once mastered with no sense of dread.

I have all of that and much more. I received my first Social Security monthly allotment this week, so per the government, I have officially reached a significant milestone: I AM OLD!

Conversely, I think about my impending departure from Planet Earth more and more every day. I have pledged I will cry out, "Come, Lord Jesus, and come quickly," more frequently. Not because I am an overtly negative, pessimistic person, BUT because I am sensitive and, hopefully, spiritually attuned to what is happening in this present generation. With that as sort of a backdrop, I want to talk about now versus before. I concede we all can be guilty of being Slaves of the Moment. Each generation loves to create the narrative that the subsequent generation had it so much easier than they did. I can still vividly remember both of my parents constantly telling us how they had to work the fields and walk long distances to church, work, and school.

I seek to argue in this blog post that what I want to talk about is profoundly different, deeper, and touches eternity more graphically. Let's see if I can make my case.

The Generation That Answered the Call

Young Americans were called upon to sacrifice comfort, security, and sometimes their lives in defense of freedom.

There was a generation of young Americans who boarded troop ships, crossed oceans, and entered wars knowing there was a very real possibility they would never return home. Some volunteered, others were drafted, but together they became part of what history would later call the Greatest Generation. They left farms, factories, colleges, churches, neighborhoods, wives, parents, and children because they believed there were evils in the world that could not simply be negotiated with or ignored.

During World War II, American servicemen fought Fascism in Europe and imperial aggression in the Pacific. In the years that followed, another generation would confront Communist expansion in Korea and throughout the Cold War. These men were often barely out of high school when they found themselves storming beaches, flying combat missions, crossing frozen battlefields, and watching friends die beside them. Their courage did not make them morally perfect, nor did it mean the nation they defended was free from profound injustice, but it did reveal something about the moral instincts of that generation. They generally believed that some things were objectively right, some things were objectively wrong, and that defending what was right could require personal sacrifice.

That mindset stands in stark contrast to much of the culture we inhabit today. The issue is not simply that Americans have become less patriotic or less willing to serve. The deeper concern is that many of the moral categories that earlier generations assumed to be fixed are now treated as negotiable, subjective, or even oppressive. The contrast between those two Americas is therefore not merely nostalgic. It raises a much more serious question about whether our culture still possesses a coherent understanding of truth, human dignity, and moral obligation.

America Was Never Without Sin

Any serious comparison between generations must begin with an admission that America has never been morally spotless. To pretend otherwise would weaken the very argument that needs to be made.

Native Americans suffered dispossession, broken treaties, forced removal, and grievous injustice. African Americans endured slavery, segregation, disenfranchisement, racial violence, and discrimination that persisted long after emancipation. These were not minor blemishes in an otherwise perfect national story; they represented real moral failures that caused enormous suffering and left consequences that extended across generations.

Yet there is an important distinction between those historical injustices and much of what we are witnessing today. The mistreatment of African Americans and Native Americans stood in direct opposition to the ideals America claimed to uphold. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that human beings possess unalienable rights, among them “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Slavery contradicted those words,  and those guilty will stand before the Divine Tribunal and give an account.

Jim Crow contradicted those words, and those guilty will stand before the Divine Tribunal and give an account.

Racial discrimination contradicted those words, and let no one ever seek to whitewash America's sordid past.

America has never perfectly lived up to its ideals, but its greatest reformers appealed to those ideals to expose the nation’s failures.

That contradiction is precisely why reformers such as Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. could appeal to America’s stated principles while condemning America’s behavior. They did not have to argue that equality, liberty, or human dignity were false concepts. They argued that America was guilty of failing to live according to those concepts. The moral standard remained intact even when the nation violated it.

Our present crisis is different because increasingly the debate is not over whether we are living consistently with an accepted moral standard. The debate is over whether the standard itself should continue to exist.

From Moral Failure to Moral Redefinition

Modern America has not merely continued to struggle with sin. It has increasingly embraced the idea that long-standing moral categories concerning life, marriage, sex, and human identity should be redefined according to personal autonomy.

Abortion is now defended by many not simply as a tragic necessity in exceptional circumstances, but as an essential expression of individual freedom.

Same-sex marriage, which would have been culturally unthinkable for most of American history, is now widely accepted and treated by many as morally indistinguishable from the historic union of male and female.

Gender identity is increasingly presented as something that can exist independently of biological sex, and children are taught that being male or female may not necessarily correspond to the bodies into which they were born.

We have even reached the point where prominent public figures hesitate when asked to define terms that humanity has understood for millennia. During her 2022 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, then-Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson declined to provide a definition of the word “woman,” explaining that she was not a biologist. Whatever one thinks about the politics surrounding that exchange, the cultural significance is difficult to miss. A question once regarded as elementary had become controversial.

That is not a small development. When a civilization loses confidence in its ability to define what a man or a woman is, confusion inevitably spreads into marriage, family, sexuality, education, law, and athletics. The debate is no longer simply about how men and women should be treated. It is increasingly about whether the categories themselves have any objective meaning.

The WNBA and the Battle Over Biological Reality

The modern dispute is increasingly not simply whether America lives according to its principles, but whether fundamental categories such as life, marriage, male, and female still possess objective meaning.

The controversy now unfolding within professional women’s basketball offers a revealing example of this broader cultural struggle.

Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham publicly argued that transgender women should not compete in female sports. Her position was straightforward: women’s athletics should remain reserved for biological females because biological differences between males and females matter in competition. In an earlier era, such a statement would hardly have been considered controversial because the existence of separate men’s and women’s leagues presupposed exactly that distinction.

Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham entered the national debate after arguing that transgender women should not compete in female sports

Yet Cunningham’s comments produced substantial criticism, while comparatively little visible support came from prominent voices within the WNBA. Several players and coaches have expressed support for transgender inclusion, and WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has emphasized inclusion, dialogue, and the league’s existing eligibility framework rather than endorsing Cunningham’s position.

Even Caitlin Clark, Cunningham’s high-profile teammate, declined to align herself directly with Cunningham’s argument, instead saying that governing bodies and leagues should determine eligibility policies.

The significance of this dispute reaches far beyond professional basketball. The WNBA exists precisely because biological differences between men and women are significant enough to warrant separate competition. If those differences were irrelevant, there would be no meaningful reason to maintain separate men’s and women’s professional leagues in the first place.

That is why the controversy is so revealing. We have reached a cultural moment in which a woman can argue that women’s sports should be reserved for biological women and find herself treated as though she has advanced a radical position. The institution itself was created on the basis of the distinction she is now being criticized for defending.

This is not simply a debate about athletics. It is another example of the growing tension between biological reality and a cultural ideology that increasingly places self-identification above objective categories.

Protecting Endangered Species While Abandoning Human Life

The inconsistency becomes even more striking when we consider how carefully modern society protects vulnerable forms of animal life.

We establish laws to protect endangered species. We restrict development to preserve habitats. We regulate hunting seasons, protect nesting grounds, and impose penalties for harming certain animals or destroying their eggs. Much of that stewardship is appropriate, and Christians should have no objection to responsible care for creation.

The contradiction appears when we compare that concern with the way unborn human life is treated.

Society can recognize that an eagle’s egg deserves protection because of the life developing within it, while simultaneously insisting that an unborn human being may be intentionally destroyed if another person decides that pregnancy should not continue.

We are capable of recognizing vulnerability in animals while increasingly refusing to acknowledge the inherent moral claim of the unborn child.

For Christians, this is not merely a political inconsistency. It strikes directly at the biblical understanding of human dignity. Genesis declares that humanity was created in the image of God and that God created humanity male and female. Human worth, therefore, is not conferred by government, medical professionals, courts, parents, or cultural consensus. It is rooted in the Creator.

Once human dignity becomes dependent upon whether another person wants, recognizes, or values a particular life, the very concept of an unalienable right to life becomes unstable.

Massachusetts and the Collapse of the Moral Boundary

Massachusetts lawmakers removed the state's previous statutory medical restrictions governing abortion after 24 weeks, placing greater discretion in the hands of physicians

The recent abortion law change in Massachusetts provides a sobering example of how far this moral transformation has progressed.

In 2026, Massachusetts changed its law governing abortion after 24 weeks by removing the previous statutory conditions that limited later abortions to specific medical circumstances and instead giving physicians broader discretion based on professional medical judgment.

Supporters of the law argue that the change is intended to protect physicians and women facing severe fetal diagnoses, dangerous medical complications, or pregnancies involving circumstances that cannot always be anticipated in statutory language. That argument should be represented fairly because serious medical situations do occur, and any responsible discussion should acknowledge them.

However, acknowledging those circumstances does not eliminate the deeper moral question raised by removing the previous statutory boundary.

At what point does unborn human life possess a claim upon our protection?

If human dignity is inherent, then it cannot logically depend entirely upon wantedness, viability, parental preference, medical judgment, or political consensus. If the unborn child is a human being, then the central question is not simply whether abortion is legally permitted, but whether government has any moral responsibility to protect that life.

This is where the contrast with America’s founding language becomes especially difficult to ignore. The nation whose Declaration placed “Life” first among its listed unalienable rights increasingly treats unborn human life as a matter to be balanced against autonomy rather than as a right that exists prior to government.

Massachusetts is therefore more than an isolated policy dispute. It becomes a capstone example of the larger cultural shift from acknowledging a moral boundary and sometimes violating it to questioning whether the boundary should exist at all.

What Changed in America?

The contrast between the Greatest Generation and the current generation cannot be reduced to a simplistic story in which the past was virtuous, and the present is corrupt. Every generation has been sinful. Human nature has not changed, and Christians should resist the temptation to romanticize earlier periods of American history.

The important difference lies in how a culture understands moral truth.

Earlier Americans could defend segregation while professing equality. That was hypocrisy of the first order, and some courageous reformers rightly exposed the contradiction. The standard itself remained available as the basis for judgment. America could be told that it was failing to honor its own principles.

Today, many of our most divisive cultural debates concern whether the underlying principles themselves should be redefined.

Marriage is no longer universally understood as the union of male and female.

Biological sex is increasingly treated as subordinate to self-identified gender.

Abortion is framed as an expression of freedom even when it involves the intentional ending of developing human life.

The danger is not merely that Americans are sinning. Americans have always sinned. The greater danger is that we increasingly deny the existence of objective moral categories by which our actions can be judged.

That is why Isaiah’s warning remains so relevant: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness.”

A civilization can survive hypocrisy because hypocrisy at least acknowledges the standard it violates. A civilization faces a far deeper crisis when it begins to insist that the standard itself is the problem.

The Question Evangelicals Must Answer

The Greatest Generation should not be worshiped, and America’s past should not be sanitized. Nevertheless, their willingness to sacrifice forces us to confront an uncomfortable contrast with the culture we have created.

They were asked what they were willing to surrender for the sake of those who would come after them. Our generation increasingly asks what moral boundaries must be surrendered for personal autonomy to remain unrestricted.

They lived in an era when freedom was commonly understood to require duty, restraint, responsibility, and sacrifice. We increasingly define freedom as liberation from external limits, even when those limits arise from biology, family, tradition, or moral law.

That change should concern Evangelicals because Christianity does not teach that freedom consists of doing whatever we desire. Scripture teaches that human beings flourish when they live according to the truth revealed by God.

The central question, therefore, is not whether America can return to the 1940s. It cannot, nor should that be our objective. The real question is whether America can recover the conviction that truth exists independently of our preferences and that human freedom must remain accountable to moral reality.

The Church Cannot Remain Silent

Evangelicals cannot respond to these developments merely by complaining about cultural decline or reminiscing about an earlier America. The Church’s responsibility is not nostalgia; it is faithfulness.

Ephesians 5:11 commands believers to “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” That command requires Christians to speak clearly when human life is devalued, when marriage is redefined, when biological sex is treated as subjective, and when cultural compassion is separated from truth.

At the same time, Christians must remember that political victories alone cannot restore a nation’s moral foundations. Elections matter. Laws matter. Courts matter. Public policy matters. Yet none of those institutions can accomplish what only spiritual transformation can accomplish.

America’s deepest crisis is ultimately not political but spiritual, because a culture cannot indefinitely preserve a moral framework after rejecting the God who gives that framework meaning.

That is why the Church’s responsibility goes beyond defending particular policies. Evangelicals must proclaim that human life has value because it bears the image of God, that male and female are part of God’s created order, that marriage has a purpose that precedes government, and that genuine freedom is found not in endless self-definition but in reconciliation to Jesus Christ.

The Greatest Generation answered the question of what they were willing to sacrifice for the generations that followed. Our generation must answer a different but equally consequential question: what kind of moral inheritance are we preparing to leave to those who come after us?

If Evangelicals remain silent while the meaning of life, marriage, sex, and human identity is rewritten around us, we should not be surprised when future generations inherit a culture incapable of explaining why any moral boundary should remain.

The Church must therefore recover the courage to speak with conviction without abandoning compassion, to defend truth without surrendering humility, and to confront error without forgetting that our ultimate mission is not merely to win arguments but to point men and women to Jesus Christ.

America does not need another generation that simply learns to accommodate moral confusion. It needs Christians who understand the times, recognize what is being lost, and refuse to exchange biblical truth for cultural acceptance.

That is the challenge before us, and it is one Evangelicals cannot afford to ignore.

If this article challenged you, share it with someone who believes Christians must think seriously about the moral direction of our nation. I believe I understand God's call on my life in these waning days. With that humble acknowledgment, I blog, I video, I post, and I comment, all with an eye on eternity.

That does not mean I quit living and enjoying all of God's great bounty. But I do so like the Israelites did when they rebuilt the Wall. I do it with my weapon fastened to my hip (the Word of God) and my working utensil engaged in fruitful labor.

I challenge you to do the same. Until then, keep your hands to the plow and seek to serve for an Audience of One.

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I will lace 'em up and run my eighth Abbott World Major Marathon, Lord willing. So a person can walk and chew gum at the same time. Continue following Thinking Critically from an Evangelical Worldview, where we examine culture, politics, and the issues confronting America through the unchanging truth of Scripture.

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Ricky V. Kyles Sr., DEd.Min.Thinking Critically from an Evangelical Worldview