President Biden announced on Wednesday that the Federal government will be forgiving $10,000 in student loans for borrowers earning less than $125,000 annually – or for couples making up to $250,000. The plan will also continue the pause on repaying student loan debt through December 31, 2022, for “one final time.”

The administration also announced that the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) would provide up to $20,000 in debt cancellation to Pell Grant recipients.

The White House asserted on Wednesday that under the plan, “No high-income individual or high-income household – in the top 5% of incomes – will benefit from this action,” which is defined as a household bringing in $250,000 annually.

Announcing the student loan cancellation in a speech from the White House, President Biden said that 43 million people will benefit from the debt cancellation.

The plan comes after elected officials on Capitol Hill have been debating for months over whether the executive branch has the authority to unilaterally cancel student loan debt.

Commentators and elected officials, including from the president’s own party, are questioning the constitutionality of the move.

Parents of school-age children are right to be concerned about the Department of Education’s (DOE) proposed Title IX rule. Among other problems, the rule redefines “sex” to include “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” and “pregnancy or pregnancy-related conditions.”

“Sex” in all federal education policies and regulations would no longer refer to the biological reality of being male or female. The DOE is attempting to redefine – and erase – God’s design of humans as male and female, with individuals either male or female.

“Sexual orientation” is a social construct that discounts human biology and reduces people to sexual behavior or attractions. “Gender identity” is a subjective term where male and female no longer matter, but anyone can become any so-called “gender” they think or feel at the moment.

This terrible proposal is something all Christians should be profoundly concerned about – even if our children have graduated from high school or we don’t have children.

Why? Because we care about all children and the objective reality of what it means to be human as male and female. We care about our neighbors and their families, and this rule would affect the 50 million K-12 students in our nation’s public schools.

Even if you home-school your children or send them to private or religious schools, your children will still be affected.

Perhaps the strongest antidote for optimism or for misplaced faith in our fellow man is watching the news. Of course, much of the media we consume is voyeuristic, so in a sort of supply-and-demand scenario, bad news makes headlines more than good news. At the same time, this is more than a problem of clickbait filling our newsfeeds. A series of events in recent years suggests that our cultural center cannot hold much longer.

Not decades but just a few days ago, prominent novelist Salman Rushdie was stabbed, not in some “shady” part of the world, but in public at a lecture in upstate New York. Also, dogs in San Francisco are becoming hooked on meth. Apparently, human excrement is so common in public areas, pets have learned where to go for a quick high from the residue of addicted residents. Radical ideologies continue to dominate headlines, which few outside of ivory towers had heard of until a few years ago. They are now compulsory at some schools. And, those who challenge the new orthodoxy are often ostracized from what is an increasingly impolite society. Healthcare now involves practices that, until yesterday, would’ve rightly been considered abuse, including children having otherwise healthy organs turned inside out.

Clearly, the state of our world is largely rotten. For some Christians, this indicates that the end is nigh. Particularly in the last century or so, many books and sermons have declared that we are living in the last days, so the best we can hope for is to go down fighting this increasingly fallen world.