R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 215

Wednesday, Aug 8, 2018

A society that argues some have the right to demand their death will eventually argue that all have the right to demand that very death, even the youngestWashington Post (Charles Lane) — Children are being euthanized in Belgium

Separating the real from the ideal: How a corruption of human beauty becomes a huge problemWashington Post (Allyson Chiu) — Patients are desperate to resemble their doctored selfies. Plastic surgeons alarmed by ‘Snapchat dysmorphia.’JAMA (Susruthi Rajanala, BA; Mayra B. C. Maymone, MD, DSc; Neelam A. Vashi, MD) — Selfies—Living in the Era of Filtered Photographs1843 (Amy Odell) — Read my lips: the rise and rise of photo-editing

One of the bloodiest weekends in the history of Chicago represents a challenge to all Christians in all placesChicago Tribune (Editors) — Chicago's great shame, Chicago's crisis: Blood on the streets

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Tuesday, Aug 7, 2018

Frustrated by the slow pace of secularization, researchers turn to artificial intelligence for answersThe Atlantic (Sigal Samuel) — Artificial Intelligence Shows Why Atheism Is Unpopular

How satisfying can individually-designed secular rituals actually be?The Atlantic (Sigal Samuel) — A Design Lab Is Making Rituals for Secular People

When you change the language about God, you are redefining God and worshipping a different deityWashington Post (Julie Zauzmer) — The Episcopal Church will revise its beloved prayer book but doesn’t know when

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Monday, Aug 6, 2018

The self as the center of the universe: How the language of addiction has replaced the language of theology in our modern secular societyUSA Today (Caroline Simon) — Sex addictions are deeply misunderstood. A new classification could change that.

Experts remain unconvinced as World Health Organization identifies new internet gaming disorderNew York Times (Benedict Carey) — Endless Gaming May Be a Bad Habit. That Doesn’t Make It a Mental Illness.

A sign of the times: Videogame parents open their wallets, hire coaches in pursuit of competitive edgeWall Street Journal (Sarah E. Needleman) — Ready, Aim, Hire a ‘Fortnite’ Coach: Parents Enlist Videogame Tutors for Their Children

In new Pew study, many see belief as merely an attitude with no expectation of religious behaviorPew Research Center — Why Americans Go (and Don’t Go) to Religious Services

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Friday, Aug 3, 2018

Vatican changes church teaching, says the death penalty is unacceptable in all circumstancesWashington Post (Chico Harlan) — Pope Francis changes Catholic Church teaching to say death penalty is ‘inadmissible’

Does doctrine change? Understanding the fundamental divide between Catholics and Protestants when it comes to the development of doctrineCatholic News Service (Francis X. Rocca) — Pope Francis calls for abolishing death penalty and life imprisonmentAmerican Conservative (Rod Dreher) — Pope Bans Death Penalty

After cave rescue, theology is in the headlines as Thai boys become temporary monks, apologize to parentsNew York Times (Ben C. Solomon and Austin Ramzy) — Boys Freed From Thai Cave Enter Monkhood to Honor Fallen Rescuer

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Torn Between Two Cultures? Revoice, LGBT Identity, and Biblical Christianity

The chaos and confusion which are the inevitable products of the Sexual Revolution continue to expand and the challenges constantly proliferate. The LGBTQ+ revolution has long been the leading edge of the expanding chaos, and by now the genuinely revolutionary nature of the movement is fully apparent. The normalization of the behaviors and relationships and identities included (for now) in the LGBTQ+ spectrum will require nothing less than turning the world upside down.

This revolution requires a total redefinition of morality, cultural authority, personal identity, and more. The revolution requires a new vocabulary and a radically revised dictionary. Ultimately, the moral revolutionaries seek to redefine reality itself. And this revolution has no stopping point. The plus sign at the end of LGBTQ+ is a signal of more challenges sure to come.

Just a few days ago, a conference was held in St. Louis. The “Revoice” conference was advertised as “supporting, encouraging, and empowering gay, lesbian, same-sex attracted, and other LGBT Christians so they can flourish while observing the historic, Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality.”

The name was no accident, as the organizers called for a “revoicing” of the evangelical message on issues of sexuality, sexual identity, and beyond.

The organizers stated plainly that they  “envision a future Christianity where LGBT people can be open and transparent in their faith communities about their orientation and/or experience of gender dysphoria without feeling inferior to their straight, cisgender brothers and sisters; where churches not only utilize but also celebrate the unique opportunities that life-long celibate LGBT people have to serve others; where Christian leaders boast about the faith of LGBT people who are living a sacrificial obedience for the sake of the Kingdom; and where LGBT people are welcomed into families so they, too, can experience the joys, challenges, and benefits of kinship.”

They also stated emphatically: “We believe that the Bible restricts sexual activity to the context of a marriage covenant, which is defined in the Bible as the emotional, spiritual, and physical union of a man and a woman that is ordered toward procreation.” And, “At the same time, we also believe that the Bible honors those who live out an extended commitment to celibacy, and that unmarried people should play a uniquely valuable role in the lives of local faith communities.”

They acknowledged that these convictions “constitute the ‘traditional sexual ethic’, because it represents the worldview that the Bible consistently teaches across both the Old and New Testaments and that Christians have historically believed for millennia.”

In other contexts, organizers have identified themselves with “great tradition Christianity,” a recognition of a constant pattern of Christian teaching faithful to Scripture. That theological tradition is the source of the “traditional sexual ethic” acknowledged by the organizers.

The language is important, as language always is. The mission statement and website of the conference refer over and over again to “LGBT people” and uses the language of “sexual minorities” and even “queer Christians.”

The principal organizer of the conference, Nate Collins, told Christianity Today: “We all believe that the Bible teaches a traditional, historic understanding of sexuality in marriage, and so we are not attempting in any way to redefine any of those doctrines. We’re trying to live within the bounds of historic Christian teaching about sexuality and gender. But we find difficulty doing that for a lot of reasons.”

Actually, the signals sent by many involved in the conference are a bit confusing, to say the least. In recent years, some in the evangelical world have urged references to “Side A” and “Side B” Christians who identify as LGBTQ. Side A refers to those who have abandoned the historic Christian teaching about sexuality and marriage and now affirm same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage. The Side A advocates are more associated with liberal Protestant denominations that have long ago abandoned biblical orthodoxy and now preach the sexual revolution.

Side B refers to those who identify as both LGBTQ and Christian, and who affirm the traditional Christian ethic on sexuality and marriage. Revoice seems clearly to identify as Side B, but some of the main organizers and speakers gladly join in common efforts with Side A advocates. LGBTQ identity binds Side A and Side B advocates together.

We should also note that Revoice did not have much of a voice on transgender questions. It is not at all clear, for example, what in the leaders’ minds celibacy or a commitment to “the historic Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality” is supposed to mean for the “T” in LGBT. Even the use of “LGBT” in this context is impossible to square with “historic Christian teaching about sexuality and gender.”

Gregory Coles, author of Single, Gay, Christian, was worship leader for Revoice. In the book, Coles raises the scenario of two women who identify as Christians, one a lesbian married to a woman and the other a “straight” Christian who says she believes in the biblical ethic restricting sex to marriage between a man and a woman, but who is promiscuous in a series of heterosexual relationships. Coles then writes, “Theologically, I am more in agreement with the second friend. But whose life is most honoring to God? Who really loves Jesus more? Who am I more likely to see in heaven? I don’t know.”

Of course, that is a strange and forced scenario. The biblical answer would be that both women are living in sinful violation of Scripture.

Earlier in the book, Coles spoke of being in a room that included some who identify as Side A and some who identify as Side B (as Coles does). But his description of the predicament is telling. When asked to identify as Side A or Side B, Coles writes: “I didn’t want to be reduced to a simple yes or no. I wanted a new side, something further along the alphabet, something full of asterisks and footnotes and caveats. I’ve never been fluent in the language of binaries.”

Several issues press for immediate attention. One is the identification of people as “LGBT Christians” or “gay Christians.” This language implies that Christians can be identified in an ongoing manner with a sexual identity that is contrary to Scripture. Behind the language is the modern conception of identity theory that is, in the end, fundamentally unbiblical. The use of the language of “sexual minorities” is a further extension of identity theory and modern critical theory and analysis. In this context, “sexual minority” simultaneously implies permanent identity and a demand for recognition as a minority. As Kevin DeYoung rightly noted, the use of this language implies a political status.

The larger problem is the idea that any believer can claim identity with a pattern of sexual attraction that is itself sinful. The Apostle Paul answers this question definitively when he explains in 1 Corinthians 6:11, such were some of you. But, writes Paul by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God.”

There have been Christian believers throughout the entire history of the church that have struggled with same-sex temptation and who have come to know that pattern of temptation as what we now understand as a sexual orientation. Whatever the language we choose to use, Christians do understand that some people come to know a pattern of temptation and sexual attraction that is directed toward others of the same sex. In his book, All But Invisible, Nate Collins argues that the most important element in same-sex orientation is its “givenness.” By that he means that it is an orientation or pattern of attraction that is not chosen but discovered.

But “givenness” in a fallen world does not mean that the orientation — the same-sex attraction itself — is not sinful. The Bible identifies internal temptation as sin. As Denny Burk and Heath Lambert argue, “same-sex attraction, not just homosexual behavior, is sinful.” We are called to repent both of sin and of any inner temptation to sin.

The issues here are bigger than sexuality. As Denny Burk and Rosaria Butterfield rightly explain, we confront here a basic evangelical disagreement with Roman Catholicism. Ever since the Council of Trent (1545-1563), the Roman Catholic Church has insisted that involuntary incentive to sin is not itself sin. In the most amazing sentence, the Council of Trent declared: “This concupiscence, which the apostle sometimes calls sin, the holy Synod declares that the Catholic Church has never understood it to be called sin.” Don’t miss the acknowledgement that the doctrine of Trent is contrary to the language of the apostle. Furthermore, remember that Catholic theology includes both infant baptism and baptismal regeneration — meaning that evangelicals and Catholics have fundamentally divergent understandings of both justification and sanctification.

John Calvin referred to concupiscence as “depraved” and “at variance with rectitude.” In this verdict, Calvin was joined by other Protestants — and the New Testament. Just think of the language of the historic Book of Common Prayer, praying in repentance for the “devices and desires of our own hearts.”

Surely, the mortification of sin required of Christians would demand that we put as much distance as possible between ourselves and any temptation to sin (Romans 8:12-13).

In the interview with Christianity Today just prior to the conference, Nate Collins attempted to respond to criticisms by insisting, as he does in his book, that sexual orientation and same-sex attraction are not always erotic, but can be celebrated as aesthetic and relational. He affirms that same-sex sexual attraction is sinful, but he argues that sexual orientation is actually not necessarily erotic, but centered in “the perception and admiration of personal beauty.” In his book he refers to this as an “aesthetic orientation,” a term he concedes is his own.

Wesley Hill, another speaker at Revoice, is a major proponent of “spiritual friendships” within LBGT identity. He has written: “Being gay is, for me, as much a sensibility as anything else: a heightened sensitivity to and passion for same-sex beauty . . . .”

Same-sex attraction is not limited to sexual attraction, but it strains all credibility to argue that this “aesthetic orientation” can be non-sexual. Considered more closely, the “aesthetic orientation” actually appears to be even more deeply rooted in a sinful impulse. Aesthetic attractions are as corrupted by sin as the sexual passions. To put the matter bluntly, are we to affirm that an “aesthetic orientation” towards the same sex is pure and blameless and non-sexual? This would be severe pastoral malpractice.

Speakers at Revoice pointed to Ruth and Naomi and David and Jonathan as biblical examples, but in both cases the relationship was clearly and definitively neither erotic or aesthetic and references to them in this light are deliberately misleading. The “spiritual friendship” model, related to LGBTQ identity, is just not compatible with an evangelical biblical theology, even if Catholics can eagerly affirm the idea.

In one of the more astounding moments of Revoice, Nate Collins read from Jeremiah 15 and then asked:

“Is it possible that gay people today are being sent by God, like Jeremiah, to find God’s words for the church, to eat them and make them our own? To shed light on contemporary false teachings and even idolatries, not just the false teaching of the progressive sexual ethic, but other more subtle forms of false teaching? Is it possible that gender and sexual minorities who have lived lives of costly obedience are themselves a prophetic call to the church to abandon idolatrous attitudes toward the nuclear family, toward sexual pleasure? If so, we are prophets.”

Idolatry of the nuclear family? Here we see the destabilizing power of the sexual revolution and modern critical theory at full force.

It is, of course, possible for human beings to idolize anything, but that is not what is really at stake in Collins’s comment. He really claims that gay people are called to a prophetic role to correct the church for believing in the normative nature of the nuclear family.

Before pressing further, we should note that the term “nuclear family,” referring to a father and mother and their children in one household is a fairly recent term, dating back only to the twentieth century. The family, of course, is as old as Genesis. The more accurate term for describing the family is not “nuclear” but “natural” or “conjugal.”

And right there is the issue. What the Bible reveals, from Genesis 1 onward, is the fact that God created human beings as male and female, both made in his image, and made for the conjugal relationship of marriage and procreation which is the very first divine command to humankind (Genesis 1:28). Marriage, the conjugal union of a man and a woman, is revealed as God’s creative purpose, from the beginning.

Even those men and women who do not marry are defined by the conjugal union that brought them into being and by the normative nature of the natural family (both “nuclear” and extended) that is honored throughout Holy Scripture. The subversion of marriage and the family has been one of the most devastating results of modernity, and this very subversion is central to the ambitions of the sexual revolutionaries.

In his book, Collins identifies “heteronormativity” as a central problem in both secular society and the church: “It’s one thing to say that the only kind of sexual expression permitted by Scripture is the heterosexual pattern. It’s another thing to say that heterosexual orientations as they are embedded in our fallen world are not sinful in themselves because they match the general creational pattern.”

That is simply wrong. Every human being past puberty is a sexual sinner of some form, but the attraction of a man to a woman, completed in the conjugal union of marriage, is precisely “the general creational pattern.” Furthermore, in Romans 1:26-27 the Apostle Paul refers to same-sex passion and activity as “contrary to nature” — thus the rejection of the “general creational pattern.”

After the Fall, all human beings are born sinners and fall short of both the glory of God and the clear testimony of creation (Romans 1:18-32), but the creational pattern itself is not sinful. The New Testament presents the church as the family of faith, made up of all those adopted by God through Christ. Thus, all believers are brothers and sisters in one household of faith. Furthermore, the New Testament explicitly honors celibacy (which by the way, only makes sense against the background of normative marriage and family life), but that celibacy is chaste in form and directed toward gospel deployment (1 Corinthians 7:1-8). Collins rightly calls on congregations to leave no member without inclusion in family life — a searing indictment of many congregations, to be sure. Similarly, Rosaria Butterfield has underlined the priority of gospel hospitality among Christians.

But denouncing “idolatrous attitudes toward the nuclear family” as a claimed prophetic role for those who identify as LGBTQ+ Christians reveals just how far the ideology of the sexual revisionists has reached even within American Christianity. The relativizing of the natural conjugal family represents what Malcolm Muggeridge called the “great liberal death wish.” It stands in direct contradiction to the mandate given by God in Genesis 1:28. The Great Commission expands that mandate; it does not reverse it.

Even before the conference began, notice was given of a session entitled, “Redeeming Queer Culture: An Adventure.” The description is itself astounding: “For the sexual minority seeking to submit his or her life fully to Christ and to the historic Christian sexual ethic, queer culture presents a bit of a dilemma; rather than combing through and analyzing which parts are to be rejected, or redeemed, or to be received with joy (Acts 17:16-34), Christians have often discarded the virtues of queer culture along with the vices, which leaves culturally connected Christian sexual minorities torn between two cultures, two histories, and two communities. So questions that have until now been largely unanswered remain: what does queer culture (and specifically, queer literature and theory) have to offer us who follow Christ? What queer treasure, honor, and glory will be brought into the New Jerusalem at the end of time (Revelation 21:24-26)?”

Putting the pieces together, it becomes clear that Revoice and its organizers would rewrite the meta-narrative of Scripture so that Creation before the Fall is not heterosexual in orientation and can even include same-sex “aesthetic orientation,” the Fall is limited in its extent related to our sin nature, redemption does not mean that the “new creature” in Christ will break from identity with sin, and the New Creation will include “treasure, honor, and glory” from queer culture.

There is another big issue embedded in that session description. Note the mention of “culturally connected Christian sexual minorities.” At first glance, that might seem to mean something like a connection to the culture at large. But in the language of the LGBTQ+ community, it means connection to “queer culture.” The “culturally connected Christian sexual minority” (watch every word carefully) is, as the statement emphasizes, “torn between two cultures, two histories, and two communities.” That means torn between queer culture and the church.

That, to state the matter clearly, is unstable, unfaithful, unworkable, unbiblical . . . impossible.

This returns us to the issue of sexual identity and Christian identity once again. A Christian who has been identified as LGBTQ+ will certainly pray for and be concerned for the conversion of friends in the LGBTQ+ community, and we can pray that personal friendships and Christian hospitality can lead to gospel advance among these friends and the LGBTQ+ community. But the identity of a Christian cannot be with any culture defined in its essence by the rejection of God’s design and command.

Though that language has received scant attention it is among the most important associated with Revoice.

And the issue of language arises again and again and again. In his main address to the conference, Nate Collins lamented: “I’m tired. I’m tired of people saying I’m using the wrong words. I’m tired of people saying I’m not using enough of the right words.”

In his interview with Christianity Today, Collins conceded that some of the language used on the website for the conference was seen as revealing a “slippery slope ethically,” but he defended even the language by saying: “Right now the conversation on LGBT issues and gender, sexuality, and evangelicalism is fragmented. There’s a lot of groups of people that use language in very specific ways that makes sense to them but doesn’t make sense to people outside of their tribe.”

Later, Collins said: “We’re just trying to make space for people for whom the language they use is meaningful, in terms of how they are trying to reconcile their gender and sexuality with their faith.”

At one very strange level, that is an open admission that the self-expressive language of many in the Revoice community reflects a movement in flux and in motion, even in language.

But references to “queer culture” are not accidental, and the language from the conference is clear enough. Revoice represents an attempt to build a half-way house between LGBTQ+ culture and evangelical Christianity. They want to define what they mean by “Side B,” when the LGBTQ+ culture is unambiguously “Side A.”

We should take the organizers of Revoice at their word and hear what they are saying. We should lament the brokenness and understand the many failings of the Christian church toward those who identify with the LGBTQ+ community. But we dare not add yet another failure to those failures. We cannot see Revoice as anything other than a house built upon the sand. Revoice is not the voice of faithful Christianity.

__________________________

Christianity Today (2018, July 28). Revoice Founder Answers the LGBT Conference’s Critics. Retrieved from https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/...

Denny Burk and Heath Lambert, Transforming Homosexuality: What the Bible Says about Sexual Orientation and Change (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2015)

Gregory Coles, Single, Gay, Christian: A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity (Downers Grove: Intervarsity, 2017)

Nate Collins, All But Invisible: Exploring Identity Questions at the Intersection of Faith, Gender, and Sexuality (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017)

Wesley Hill, Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2015)

 

 

 

 

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Thursday, Aug 2, 2018

A house built upon the sand: Revoice, LGBT identity, and biblical ChristianityAlbertMohler.com — Torn Between Two Cultures? Revoice, LGBT Identity, and Biblical Christianity

What a newly claimed prophetic role reveals about the ideology of sexual revisionists

Enforced secularism in the nation’s capital: Appeals court rules transit system can ban religious speech in adsWashington Post (Ann E. Marimow) — Metro can ban all religious ads on buses and trains, court rules

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Wednesday, Aug 1, 2018

As goes the Supreme Court, so goes the nation: Why the Kavanaugh nomination matters to both sides of the partisan divideNew York Times (Peter Baker) — A Conservative Court Push Decades in the Making, With Effects for Decades to Come

What does it mean for a judge to be a ‘strict constructionist’?

Even in a secular age, the conscience of Western civilization is still haunted and shaped by the BibleNew York Times (Idan Dershowitz) — The Secret History of LeviticusAlbertMohler.com — Leviticus in The New York Times: What’s the Real Story Here?

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Leviticus in The New York Times: What’s the Real Story Here?

Even in this secular age, the conscience of Western civilization continues to be haunted and shaped by the Bible. The inherited moral tradition of the West was explicitly formed by the Bible — both the Old and New Testaments — and the moral power of the Bible continues as the main source of the principles, intuitions, impulses, and vocabulary of modern times.

But if European and American cultures have been morally shaped by the Bible, these same cultures are now haunted by the Bible. The Bible haunts all the modern efforts to push a vast revolution in morality — specifically sexual morality. The main restraint on the sexual revolution has been the abiding power of Judeo-Christian moral instincts drawn from Scripture. The intellectual elites declare themselves liberated from the Bible, and express frustration at the millions of their fellow citizens who remain under the Bible’s explicit or implicit sway.

And yet, those same elites are not so distant from the Bible as they may insist. From time to time, they provide their own evidence of how the Bible haunts their supposedly secular worldview and conscience.

Consider this past Sunday’s edition of The New York Times. The most influential newspaper in the world, secular to its core and situated in the Gotham of secular New York, ran a opinion essay in its weekly “Review” section entitled “The Secret History of Leviticus.” Leviticus . . . in Sunday’s edition of The New York Times? Indeed.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, was absolutely right when he identified Leviticus, among all the Mosaic books, as “the one most out of step with contemporary culture.” Leviticus is that great book of law right at the center of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. As Rabbi Sacks noted, Leviticus is the “axis” on which the other books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) turn.

In Leviticus, Israel’s priesthood is given its roles, responsibilities, and regulations that set the nation and its priests apart from all other nations. Israel is to be God’s personal possession [Exodus 19:6], set apart as a holy nation: “You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine” [Leviticus 20:26]. As God’s holy nation, a nation of priests, Israel is to have a priestly role among the nations, revealing holiness in a world of sin.

Just about every verse of Leviticus is offensive to the modern secular mind. Leviticus reveals a God who is both omnipotent and holy, a God who chooses Israel as his particular and personal covenant people, a God who drives out other nations in order to fulfill his promises to Israel, and a God who lays down commands about every dimension of human life, including human sexuality. Especially human sexuality.

As you might expect, sexuality was the issue at stake in the essay on Leviticus that appeared in Sunday’s edition of the Times.

Idan Dershowitz, identified as “a biblical scholar and junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows,” began by stating: “No text has had a greater influence on attitudes toward gay people than the biblical book of Leviticus, which prohibits sex between men.”

Indeed, Leviticus 18:22 is about as clear a prohibition of male homosexuality as can be imagined: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

An abomination is an object or act that God detests. It is the strongest word of divine judgment found in the Bible.

The prohibition of sex between men is found in a series of commands related to sexuality and marriage given by God to Israel. The list of prohibitions includes various forms of incest, bestiality, and other sexual acts that God said were common to Egypt and among the Canaanites:

“I am the Lord your God. You shall not do as they do in Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes.” [Leviticus 20:3]

But Idan Dershowitz now argues–in The New York Times, no less–that the prohibition of men having sex with men is all based on the fact that a later editor (or redactor) changed the text of the Bible here. By the time Dershowitz has finished his argument, Leviticus 18:22 is explained away as being a deliberate effort by a redactor to change what had been permission for sex between men into a prohibition.

All this, he assures the Times’ readers, is possible “with a little detective work.”

What Dershowitz means by “a little detective work” is just the next step in liberal biblical scholarship. By the nineteenth century, liberal scholars, first in Germany, began to take apart the Old Testament. Partly, this was due to the European embarrassment of the character of God and divine laws revealed in the Old Testament in general. At the center of the liberal offense was the Pentateuch, the Torah, the five Books of Moses.

Liberal scholars began to argue that the Bible is merely a human book, written and edited and edited again, its various documents edited by the human beings (“redactors”) with clear theological agendas. The divine inspiration and Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch were simply set aside as supernatural claims beneath the dignity of modern scholarship.

By 1878, Julius Wellhausen of The University of Greifswald in Germany would publish his Prolegomena to the History of Israel, in which he would argue that the five Books of Moses were actually authored by at least four different sources (he identified them as J,E,P, and D), with much of the material written centuries after Moses was dead. The effect in the scholarly world was massive. The Bible could now be treated as mere “ancient Near-Eastern literature.” Wellhausen, by the way, would resign his teaching position in theology within five years, admitting that he was only interested in “the scientific treatment of the Bible,” and not in theology or teaching future pastors. He later became a professor of philology.

Idan Dershowitz just picks up on the story. He told readers of the Times: “Like many ancient texts, Leviticus was created gradually over a long period and includes the words of more than one writer. Many scholars believe that the section in which Leviticus 18 appears was added by a comparatively late editor, perhaps one that worked more than a century after the oldest material in the book was composed. And earlier version of Leviticus, then, may have been silent on the matter of sex between men.”

But Dershowitz is far from finished. He pushes the argument further:

“But I think a stronger claim is warranted. As I argue in an article published in the latest issue of the journal Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel, there is good evidence that an earlier version of the laws in Leviticus 18 permitted sex between men. In addition to having the prohibition against same-sex relations added to it, the earlier text, I believe, was revised in an attempt to obscure any implication that same-sex relations had once been permissible.”

Don’t miss what he is claiming here. He argues that, in his view, the original text of Leviticus, written long after the death of Moses, was revised even later by yet another editor in order to turn what had been permission for males having sex with males into a prohibition.

All this, he says, by “a little detective work.” What kind of detective work?

In the academic article he mentions, Dershowitz lays out his case in far greater detail, but with an interesting twist. In the academic version, he argues that the older version of Leviticus 18 “reflected acceptance” of males having sex with males as was typical of some ancient cultures.

It is interesting that the website for the Harvard Society of Fellows states simply that Dershowitz is “currently researching redactional errors in the Bible.” In another academic essay, Dershowitz argues that Noah was never originally associated with the account of the flood, and that the original tragedy of divine judgment was drought and famine, later associated with Noah and changed into a flood. Get the pattern?

An Associated Press article from 2011 reported that Idan Dershowitz, then at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was at work with a team that included his father, Nachum Dershowitz of Tel Aviv University, that was trying to apply artificial intelligence to reveal hidden patterns of authorship and editing in the biblical text.

The use of this new technology known as “authorship attribution” was, as the AP reported, “giving intriguing new hints about what researchers believe to be the multiple hands that wrote the Bible.”

In the academic article behind the Times essay, Dershowitz argues that the later redactor (‘H”) was likely influenced by the Videvdad, “a collection of diverse Zoroastrian material,” and that his insertion of a prohibition of males having sex with males in Leviticus 18:22 turned the text into “the principle prooftext for homophobia and its antecedents.”

The conclusion of his essay in the Times is even more revealing: “One can only imagine how different the history of civilization might have been had the earlier version of Leviticus 18’s laws entered the biblical canon.”

Indeed, one can only imagine. Of course, Dershowitz’s entire argument is imagination disguised as scholarship.

As New Testament scholar Robert Gagnon said of similar efforts: “Only in our day, removed as we are from ancient Near Eastern conventions, are these kinds of specious connections made by people desperate to find the slightest shred of support for homosexual practice in the Bible.”

Every single text in the Bible that speaks of same-sex sexual desire and same-sex sexual behaviors condemns them. In Leviticus 18:22, the condemnation extends to the use of the word abomination. Dershowitz argues that Leviticus 18:22 is “the principal prooftext” against homosexuality, and that is true for the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Paul takes the argument far beyond Leviticus. Trained as a rabbi and a teacher of the Scriptures, in Romans 1:18-32 Paul goes beyond a condemnation of males having sex with males. He also condemns women who have sex with women, exchanging “natural relations for those that are contrary to nature,” even as in male homosexuality the natural use of the woman is exchanged for “shameless acts with men.” Paul also makes clear that same-sex passion and desire is also sinful, contrary to both nature and divine command. For Christians, the most significant realization is that the crucial moral teachings of the Old Testament Holiness Code that are binding upon us are repeated, and often amplified, in the New Testament. Christians may eat shrimp without sin, for example, but are fully bound by laws against any sexual activity outside of marriage, the covenant union of one man and one woman.

There is no real question about what the Bible teaches about human sexuality and gender. There is also no question about the influence of the Bible on Western civilization. Even now, the Bible exerts a powerful hold on the modern conscience, even when it is not acknowledged. That is extremely frustrating to the moral revolutionaries.

It is interesting to remember that the older Protestant liberals wanted to deny the inspiration and authority of the Bible and yet, at the same time, retain a Christian morality. But their project of undermining the Bible also undermined Christian morality. The theological grandchildren of the early Protestant liberals are as embarrassed by the moral teachings of their grandparents as their grandparents were embarrassed by the moral teachings of the Old Testament.

It is also interesting to note that the moral revolutionaries, horrified as they are by Leviticus, still insist that they want to retain some of the prohibitions of Leviticus 18 — prohibitions against incest and bestiality, for example. But, for how long? The modern secular reduction of moral concern to “consent” would indicate that these prohibitions cannot last for long.

For Christians, all of this just points back to the question of the inspiration and authority of the Bible. As B. B. Warfield rightly insisted, the “Church Doctrine of Scripture” comes down to the formula, when the Scripture speaks, God speaks.

Leviticus 18 has indeed exerted a massive influence on Western society. We can only imagine, as Idan Dershowitz argues, “how different the history of civilization might have been” without it.

The really stunning thing is that The New York Times ran this article on Leviticus 18 — Leviticus — in the year 2018!

Perhaps that makes you think of Isaiah 40:8. “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”

____________________

 

For more information, see my book, We Cannot Be Silent: Speaking Truth to a Culture Redefining Sex, Marriage, and the Very Meaning of Right and Wrong (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2015. See especially chapter 8, “What Does the Bible Really Have to Say About Sex?”

Idan Dershowitz, “The Secret History of Leviticus,” The New York Times, Sunday July 22, 2018. http://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/21/opi...

Idan Dershowitz, “Revealing Nakedness and Concealing Homosexual Intercourse: Legal and Lexical Evolution in Leviticus 18,” Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel, 6:510-527 (2017).

Idan Dershowitz, “Man of the Land: Unearthing the Original Noah,” Zeitschrift fur die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (September 2016).

Jonathan Sacks, Leviticus: The Book of Holiness, “Covenant and Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible,” (Jerusalem: Maggid Books, 2015).

Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001). Quote from pages 248-249. This book remains the most important single source for understanding debates over the crucial biblical texts.

The post Leviticus in The New York Times: What’s the Real Story Here? appeared first on AlbertMohler.com.

Before the Lease Runs Out: Summer Reading List for 2018

The days of summer may seem wonderfully long, but the season itself is frustratingly brief. Shakespeare put it this way: “And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.” Talk that way at the picnic table and friends may assume you have been in the heat for too long, but we get the point. For readers, summer is the opportunity to read books simply for the pleasure of reading them. No good book comes without bringing more than mere pleasure, but reading for fun is reading for sufficient reason. I read steadily throughout the year, across the range of literature. But my annual recommended summer reading list is always tilted (to say the least) to non-fiction. This year is no exception. I heartily recommend these ten books that combine great interest and a worthy story well told. The added benefit to each of these is a greater understanding of the world. Just consider that deeper understanding to be an added bonus.

 

1. Robert Kurson, Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (Random House).

2018 is the year of so many 50th anniversaries, most of them tragic. One of those anniversaries is heroic. Fifty years ago, fresh from tragedy with Apollo 1, NASA made the seemingly mad decision to send Apollo 8 to the moon and back. The move was daring, and perhaps irresponsible. The Soviets were threatening to reach the moon first, and the Americans were determined to beat them. But the Saturn V rocket — still the most powerful machine human beings have ever developed — had never carried human beings into space. The mission could have ended in a tragedy over Christmas in 1968, with the astronauts slowly dying in an unrecoverable trajectory in space. Instead, it became one of the greatest moments in the human exploration of space, and an incredible story. The mission provided the residents of Earth the first unforgettable sight of an “Earthrise,” which inevitably raised deeper theological questions.

In this excerpt, Robert Kurson tells of the three American astronauts, Frank Borman (commander), James Lovell, and Bill Anders, deciding to read from Genesis 1-10 on Christmas Day 1968, during the live television broadcast from lunar orbit. Each astronaut read part of the passage:

“We are now approaching lunar sunrise,” Anders said, “and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.” No one at Mission Control, or anyone else, had any idea what the men were about to say. The astronauts’ wives and children leaned forward. While the Moon continued to move across television screens, Anders began: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” [Anders read, then Lovell, and finally Borman] “Borman continued, “And God said, ‘Let the waters under the Heaven be gathered together in one place. And let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. And God called the dry land Earth. And the gathering of the waters He called seas. And God saw that it was good.” Borman paused: “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you–all of you on the good Earth.” A moment later, television screens around the world went dark. Inside Misson Control, no one moved. Then, one after another, those scientists and engineers in Houston began to cry.

 

2. Jim DeFelice, West Like Lightning: The Brief, Legendary Ride of the Pony Express (William Morrow).

Most Americans know something about the Pony Express. Most of what they know is probably wrong. The riders of the Pony Express are part of American history and national lore, but the lore tends to come at the expense of history. The Pony Express was, for a brief time, a vital communications link across the vast expanse of the American West. It’s most important moment was the news of the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States in 1860. Within months, the Pony Express was gone. The rise of the telegraph and the train (the transcontinental railroad) were part of the story, but so were business competition and the Civil War. But for a brief time, the Pony Express was one of the most powerful representations of America, with a network of very young men hired to ride like lightning across virtually half the nation. DeFelice tells the story well, separating fact from fiction over a century and a half after the last rider finished his ride.

Excerpt:

The raw ingredients of the Pony story–young men, horses, hardships, and danger–are potent bits for any narrative, whether in a rodeo ring or the big screen. But there’s more to the Pony Express’s staying power than galloping horses and reckless young men. As important as Bill Cody and his shows were in keeping the memory of the service alive, I think it’s likely we’d remember it even without the great showman. The Pony is the perfect transport vehicle for the things we still value in America, and for the realities we as a nation continue to face: speed, courage, individualism . . . distance, time, and, yes, money. If the Pony riders were the brave archetypes of the American spirit racing across the American heartland, Russell and his partners were surely nineteenth-century venture capitalists. The fact that they failed so spectacularly is itself thoroughly American. If you’re going to fail, fail big.

 

3. Lewis E. Lehrman, Lincoln & Churchill: Statesmen at War (Stackpole Books).

Just a year after the release of his Churchill, Roosevelt & Company: Studies in Character and Statecraft, Lewis Lehrman is back with Lincoln & Churchill: Statesmen at War. An accomplished historian and biographer, Lehrman has written a book that looks at Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill through a new lens, considering these two towering historical figures as leaders at war. The book reveals both men in a new light, considering how each understood the world, conceived of statesmanship, and lead massive war efforts. The two men faced very different historical moments, but both were fueled by a clear understanding of their goals and obsessions. Both demonstrated leadership beyond all expectation, and both learned to lead by the force of both words and example. One was born into poverty on the American frontier while the other was born in the splendor of a duke’s palace. Both made their way into the annals of history, and the words and deeds of both men continue to shape the world today. My favorite part of the book is Lehrman’s consideration of the particular approach each man took to the English language, with both often using single-syllable Anglo-Saxon words in their speeches. Considering Lincoln and Churchill together was a stroke of genius.

Excerpt:

The president and the prime minister would embrace their duty to educate, to persuade, to rally the public, by demonstrating steadfastness in crisis. President Lincoln concluded his special address to Congress of July 4, 1861: “And having thus chosen our course, without guile and with clear purpose, let us renew our trust in God, and go forward without fear, and with manly hearts.” Lincoln’s answers to questions were often simple and unselfconscious. A Union army officer reported the story of a “gentleman [who] was conversing with the President at a time during the war when things looked very dark. On taking leave, he asked the President what he should say to their friends in [slaveholding] Kentucky.” The officer recalled: “Tell my friends,” said Mr. Lincoln, drawing himself up to his full height, “there is a man in here!” In World War II, there lived a man without fear at 10 Downing Street. . . . The prime minister’s courage–proven as a young calvary subaltern in three imperial battles of the late 1890s–intensified as crises threatened. “Danger, the evocation of battle, invariably acted as a tonic and stimulant to Winston Churchill,” noted Major-General Edward Spears, who served as the prime minister’s personal representative in France as that nation collapsed before the German invasion. Of Prime Minister Churchill, Joseph Stalin said it best at the Yalta Conference: “There have bene few cases in history where the courage of one man has been so important to the history of the world.”

 

4. Donald Rumsfeld, When the Center Held: Gerald Ford and the Rescue of the American Presidency (Free Press).

The American political crisis of 1972-1974 is virtually unparalleled in the nation’s history–and for that we must be thankful. For most citizens today, the Watergate crisis and the fall of the Nixon presidency are distant memories, if remembered at all. One of the most neglected figures, unexpectedly central to this story, was Gerald Ford, the 38th President of the United States. Ford became Vice President of the United States in 1973 and President in 1974, without being elected to either office. Then, against all odds, he came close to being elected president in his own right in 1976. Rumsfeld, who was himself central to the story, gives us a front-row seat at one of the turning points in American history. More than anything else, Rumsfeld wants us to understand that Gerald Ford, who never wanted to be president until he unexpectedly was president, rescued the American presidency by his personal decency and calm. As a teenage political volunteer I worked for Ronald Reagan and against President Ford in the 1976 campaign for the Republican nomination. After Ford secured the nomination, I joined his campaign as a volunteer, mostly manning a phone bank. After the campaign of Reagan, fueled by ideas, the campaign of Gerald Ford was a let-down for me. But Donald Rumsfeld’s book reminds all of us of why we should be thankful that, when he had to choose the man who would shortly succeed him, Richard Nixon called Gerald Ford.

Excerpt:

He understood from the beginning that he had taken the reins during an emergency, a constitutional crisis unlike anything our country had faced before. He was President, but he did not have a mandate from voters who had endorsed him in an election. But he understood the American people and their desire and indeed need for stable, competent leadership,and that was to be Ford’s priority–not scoring partisan points. ‘I am acutely aware,” Ford told the American people after sworn in by Chief Justice Berger in the East Room of the White House, “that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your President with your prayers. . . .  I have not campaigned for either the presidency or the vice presidency,” Ford reminded the nation. “I have not subscribed to any partisan platform.” From the onset, Ford looked at his presidency not as a time to further a political agenda but a mission to bring trust and confidence back to the American government at a time when much of the public was convinced Washington had given up on both.

 

5. Kate Andersen Brower, First in Line: Presidents, Vice Presidents, and the Pursuit of Power (Harper).

The framers of the Constitution were not sure what to do with the vice presidency, so they did very little. Until the adoption of the 25th amendment in 1967, there was not even clear constitutional language about the succession of the vice president in the case of the death or removal of a president, nor any provision for the replacement of a vice president. The vice president was given almost no duties, other than serving as President of the Senate, and vice presidents have generally been bored and forgotten. Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s last vice president, said: “The vice president simply presides over the Senate and sits around hoping for a funeral.” George H. W. Bush, vice president to Ronald Reagan, attended so many state funerals (including funerals for three Soviet leaders) that he simply quipped, “You die, I fly.” But the story of the modern vice presidency is more interesting than most Americans imagine, and Kate Brower focuses on the relationships between modern presidents, beginning with John F. Kennedy, and their vice presidents. Political junkies will find the book impossible to set down. The only warning: Be aware that the Vice Presidents are allowed to speak through their own words, and some of those vice presidents liked 4-letter words.

Excerpt:

Fourteen vice presidents have become president, eight of them ascending to the highest office because of the death of the sitting president. The eight vice presidents who succeeded presidents who died in office are John Tyler (upon William Henry Harrison’s death in 1841), Millard Fillmore (upon Zachary Taylor’s death in 1850), Andrew Johnson (upon Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865), Chester A. Arthur (upon James Garfield’s assassination in 1881), Theodore Roosevelt (upon William McKinley’s assassination in 1901), Calvin Coolidge (upon Warren Harding’s death in 1923), Harry Truman (upon Franklin Roosevelt’s death in 1945), and Lyndon Johnson (upon John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963). In the post-World War II era, the vice presidency has become more and more consequential. “Vice presidents are generally an uninteresting lot,” Cheney admitted. “There are fascinating relationships now. I think the really consequential vice presidents are the ones who get to be president”–an ironic statement coming from the most powerful vice president in modern history. Beginning with Harry Truman in 1945 and up until George H. W. Bush, five out of nine presidents were former vice presidents: Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Bush–two by election, two by death, and one because of resignation.

 

6. Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic, Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in U.S. Naval History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man (Simon and Schuster).

It tells us a great deal about the power of popular culture that most Americans probably learned of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis from Bartholomew Marion Quint, the hardened shark hunter of the movie “Jaws.” In the midst of their own epic shark hunt, Quint told the crew from Amity about the sinking, when 900 men went into the waters, and only 316 survived. In his telling, most of the men in the water were eaten by sharks.

There is truth in that account, but the real story of  the Indianapolis and its fate is a bigger story that “Jaws” could tell. The Portland-class heavy cruiser, once flag ship for Admiral Raymond Spruance and ship of state for President Franklin Roosevelt, was one of the most beautiful large ships in the Navy. She had suffered a devastating kamikaze attack and had just been repaired when she was sent on a secret mission to deliver the first atomic bomb to Tinian Island. Returning to port, the Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine attack. Of the almost 1,200 sailors on the ship, about 300 went down with the vessel. The 900 others went into the Pacific. They were in the middle of the vast ocean and no one would miss them for days. Miraculously spotted by a Navy plane after days at sea, only 316 men survived. The sinking of the Indianapolis remains the greatest sea disaster ever experienced by the U.S. Navy. The sharks did attack and the story is like a horror movie, but the rescue of the 316 did not end the story. The ship’s commander, Captain Charles B. McVay, was convicted in a Navy court-martial of dereliction of duty, but the court-martial proceeding was controversial from the start, and even Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Ocean Areas, did not believe Captain McVay should be blamed. The burden for the convicted officer was too much to bear, and he committed suicide years later, with a toy sailor in his hand.

And yet, amazingly enough, the story does not end even there. Fast forward to 1999 and the school project undertaken by a determined 13-year-old boy named Hunter Scott. The boy in Florida had heard about the Indianapolis when he watched “Jaws” with his father. As a sixth-grader he started a school project on the Indianapolis and would write to the survivors of the sinking. Eventually he came to believe that Captain McVay had been wrongly blamed. He got finally got the attention of political leaders in Washington. Then, as an eighth-grader, he, along with others, would testify before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. Captain McVay would eventually be exonerated.

This new book by Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic, released only on July 10, is a good example of how a story can be set straight. In this case, and in this book, we confront a big story that badly needed setting straight.

This excerpt is from the book’s account of the 2005 reunion of Indianapolis survivors and their families. In an amazing sign of healing, among the guests at the event was Atsuko Iida, granddaughter of Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto, who had commanded the Japanese submarine that sank the Indianapolis by torpedo attack. Hashimoto had written in defense of Captain McVay–an act probably without precedent in the annals of war. The reunion came after McVay’s exoneration by Congress:

At the banquet that night, a procession of speakers paid homage to the Indianapolis survivors, the families of the lost at sea, and also the rescuers, many of whom had come. To close out the evening, per long tradition, Glenn Morgan climbed onto the stage as he did each year to lead the crowd in singing a final song, “God Bless America.” Morgan stepped up to the microphone. “Now, we haven’t done this before,” he said, “but what I’d like to do is to have all the children come up here.” The banquet hall burst into applause as the children and grandchildren of survivors and lost-at-sea families began streaming toward the stage. School-age children weaved their way through banquet tables, while parents led their preschoolers by the had. ‘That’s right, come on ya’ll,” Morgan said from the stage, beckoning. From a table near the front where she sat with her husband and sons, Atsuko Iida watched the children wending their way forward. She glanced at her own two boys, unsure. Suddenly, the Indy families seated around her began motioning her toward the stage, encouraging her with smiles: “Yes, Atsuko! You, too! Go up there . . . go!” Nervously, Atsuko stood. Taking her sons by the hands, she began making her way toward Morgan and the large group of gathering children. In this hall, there was no more room for hatred.

 

7. Taylor Downing, 1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink (Da Capo).

More than once, the world has stood on the precipice of nuclear war. In the most famous of these incidents, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the world’s leaders were aware of the danger and the drama was lived out before a global population holding its breath. Not so in 1983, when the world stood yet again on the brink of nuclear war. In the crisis moments of 1983, over twenty years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the leaders of both the United States and the Soviet Union failed to understand how close nuclear annihilation had come. Arguably, it was as closer than any other moment in the Cold War. In the United States, President Ronald Reagan was rebuilding U.S. armed forces and, as Taylor Downing explains, Reagan really did see the Soviet Union as an “Evil Empire,” and he refused to recognize the Soviet regime as a permanent fact. The Cold War was, to Reagan, a battle of ideas and ideologies that he intended the U.S. to win. In the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov, the former KGB chief, had become General Secretary in 1982, upon the death of Leonid Brezhnev. Andropov was terminally ill and paranoid, as was his regime. Meanwhile, events escalated in 1983 as the Soviets shot down a wayward 747, Korean Airlines flight 007, and the U.S. and its allies began a massive nuclear war game known as Able Archer 83. The Soviet spy system was certain Able Archer was the start of a real nuclear war. As we now know, it was almost true . . . by accident.

Excerpt:

The situation had reached its most dangerous point. If the Soviets, straining at the leash that November day in 1983, had launched their nuclear weapons, Armageddon would have followed. Tens of millions would have been killed directly by the impact of the missiles across western Europe and the United States, from Verona to Vermont, from Newcastle to New York. This would have triggered the firing of the massive arsenal of U.S. nuclear missiles in retaliation, from the huge silos in the Midwest and from submarines situated across the oceans of the world. U.S. commanders had long talked of blasting the Soviet Union back into the Stone Age. Tens of millions of Soviet men, woman, and children would have perished. Hundreds of millions mare around the world would have lost their lives as a consequence of the nuclear radiation that would be scattered across continents, carried by winds and rain, and countless millions more as a result of the starvation and chaos that would follow in what was called the ‘nuclear winter.’ It would not only have been the end of human civilization but probably the end of most forms of life on Earth. Some people believed that only the cockroach and the scorpion would have survived.

 

8. Arthur Herman, 1917: Lenin, Wilson, and the Birth of the New World Disorder (Harper).

We can count only twenty centuries from the time of Christ until our own time. The cataclysmic Twentieth Century looms in our immediate memory, and the events that shook the world in 1917 continue to shake the world now. Arthur Herman takes us back to 1917 and to the story of how the United States entered and exited World War 1 and the story of how the Bolshevik Revolution transformed Russia into the Soviet Union. Those stories cannot be told without the characters of Vladimir Lenin and Woodrow Wilson–one a communist revolutionary and the other a stern moralist who was determined to remake the world in his own image, according to his own internationalist vision for the League of Nations. Herman is no relativist, and he presents Lenin and communism in candor and horrifying honesty. At the same time, he clearly (and rightly, in my view) understands Woodrow Wilson as a dangerous man, driven by his own personal moral vision and staking his presidency on his failed vision of the League of Nations. Both men, Herman argues, contributed to the birth of what he calls the “New World Disorder.” The book is timely and important.

Excerpt:

They [Lenin and Wilson] were also in their own ways both secular millennialists. They saw the world and mankind around them as fallen, but they believed there was a final, destined age of redemption coming–not through a Second Coming of Christ, as conventional Christian millennialists have believed, but through a Final Coming of History, a great convergence of global fire into a single, coherent whole. Their total commitment to these beliefs made them both self-righteous, usually infuriatingly so. Yet there were also important differences. Lenin’s background and experience made him a more brutal man than Wilson; he was capable of overseeing acts of violence that Wilson would have been horrified to contemplate, let alone commit. Lenin’s correspondence is full of references to machine guns, bombs, and shooting and killing opponents; Wilson’s is not. At the same time, both men dismissed those who opposed them as nor just wrong-headed or misguided but evil. They could be unbelievably vindictive toward those who they thought were thwarting or betraying them or blocking the path to their chosen paradise on earth. And both could be cunning and unscrupulous when they believed the ends justified the means, as when Lenin happily cooperated with the German government to get himself installed in Russia, and when Wilson was willing to compromise one after another of his Fourteen Points in order to get his League of Nations. Finally, both were revolutionaries, men who dedicated themselves to overthrowing an existing world system. in order to build a new, and in their minds, more perfect system. By and large, they succeeded in overthrowing those old systems, although what they created instead in their lifetimes turned out to be unqualified disasters.

 

9. Helen Rappaport, The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue the Russian Imperial Family (St. Martin’s Press).

Of all the tragic events of the 2oth century, the transformation of Russia into the Soviet Union is one of the most unspeakably tragic. The Bolshevik Revolution led to the deaths of tens of millions in Russia and within its communist orbit. But there was not just one Russian revolution in 1916-1918. Russia was descending into madness, and that madness was symbolized, most tragically, in the Romanov dynasty. That dynasty, infamously ruling for over 300 years, would come to a horrifying end, with the entire imperial family, the deposed Tsar, Nicholas II,  and his Tsaritsa, Alexandra Feodorovna, their four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, and the Tsarevich (and only son) Alexey Nikolaevich, only aged 14, shot to death in a basement in Yekaterinburg. Nicholas was inept and seemingly unable to respond to unfolding events, and his abdication only made the crisis worse. With Red and White armies at civil war within Russia, the Bolsheviks quickly came to the conclusion that they could not afford to allow the imperial family to live. But why were they not rescued by their powerful relatives — some of Europe’s most powerful monarchs? Helen Rappaport is the right person to tell that story, and the story remains important, even a century after the gruesome events that haunt Russia even now.

Excerpt:

George’s [Britain’s King George V, first cousin to the deposed Tsar Nicholas II] scrupulous attention to the position of the constitutional monarch — or, moe accurately, parliamentary monarch — meant that he was obligated to respect the Coronation Oath that he had sworn in 1910 to put national interests first at all times. His government had been voted into power by the will of the people, and the will of the British people in 1917-18 was seemingly that the Romanovs were not welcome. And while it might be easy retrospectively to say that the threat to his throne was exaggerated and that a republican-style uprising on the streets of London was in fact highly unlikely, one has to view the King’s reaction in the context of 1917 and not that of 100 years later. In all his decision-making, King George V’s forceful and uncompromising wife Queen Mary supported him quietly but firmly behind the scenes. She, if anything, was even more determined to preserve the continuity and stability of the British throne, in much the same way that Tsaritsa Alexandra had vigorously defended it in Russia. Would Nicholas ever had capitulated and signed the abdication if Alexandra had been in the room at the time? No. Never.

 

10. Casey Sherman and Michael J. Tougias, Above and Beyond: John F. Kennedy and America’s Most Dangerous Cold War Mission (Public Affairs).

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 remains one of the most dangerous and important events of the 20th century, and the accounts of the crisis available since the 1990s and the fall of the Soviet Union are spellbinding — if terrifying. In this new book, Casey Sherman and Michael J. Tougias go back and combine two important stories into one great narrative. They combine the story of the U-2 aerial spy program and the Cuban Missile Crisis into a story better than anything a fiction writer could imagine. The truth is far more interesting–and important–than fiction. President John F. Kennedy is at the center of the account, and understandably so. But the authors tell the stories of others as well, from U-2 pilots to Soviet leaders. The Cuban Missile Crisis happened within my own lifetime, as did most of the Cold War. I was a toddler in Florida when the crisis unfolded in 1962. Had events gone otherwise–and they almost did–I might not be alive to tell of this book.

Excerpt:

It is chilling to think that just two men, Kennedy and Khrushchev, could decide the fates of so many. And even today, the fact that the nuclear ‘football’–a set of codes ensuring that the military knows and order to fire a nuclear missile is coming from the president rather than a maverick or an imposter–travels everywhere the president goes serves as a reminder of how much power rests in on person’s hands and how important it is that this individual retain composure no matter what pressure and advice he or she is receiving. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy found safeguards of this kind woefully lacking and insisted on a more foolproof way for the military to know it was dealing with the president. The safeguards he desired are in the mechanics of today’s nuclear football, but the ultimate authority over the decision still rests with one person, the commander in chief. . . . Kennedy and Khrushchev instinctively knew that the longer the crisis went on, the more shorter the odds that someone at a lower level would act without consulting them. Still, neither leader was going to walk away from his duty to safeguard his country and give the other side the upper hand militarily or in terms of world dominance and influence. They had a strike a deal in which both sides seemed to win.

Reading a book is a good book’s first pleasure, but telling other readers about a good book is also a privilege. Read some of these good books before summer’s lease runs out.

 

The post Before the Lease Runs Out: Summer Reading List for 2018 appeared first on AlbertMohler.com.

The Doubt-Slayer — Growing in Gratitude

This article is by Mary Mohler and is an excerpt from her wonderful new book, Growing in Gratitude: Rediscovering the Joy of a Thankful Heart .  

The Doubt-Slayer

Doubt and guilt are not strangers to most believers at some point in our journey. But these feelings can be another hindrance to gratitude, so we will look at biblical passages to encourage us and biblical characters to inspire us. And along the way, we will ask how these make a difference to our lives.

Paid in Full

Imagine the scene in the courtroom as a guilty criminal’s conviction is overturned. An innocent man has willingly, lovingly, and unconditionally accepted the penalty for the criminal’s crime. The guilty man is declared innocent and allowed to go free. How can this be? He did not earn or deserve this free gift, nor can he begin to understand it. Surely this pardoned criminal would spend the rest of his life filled with the most profound gratitude possible. Would he not wear himself out telling everyone about the one who took his place?

So we would be shocked to hear that instead of gratitude for his freedom, he dwells on the past-his life before the crime, the crime itself, his time in prison-and on his guilt for not serving his sentence. he even wakes up at night fearful that the man who took his place will change his mind and his sentence will be reinstated. He should be the most joyful man on the planet. What’s his problem?

We could ask ourselves the same question. As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have been pardoned and the penalty for our sins has been paid in full. We have assurance of our salvation (John 10:28) and there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). It seems that gratitude should overflow from our heats such that our life before we knew Christ would not be a hindrance to thanksgiving.

Yet some believers allow guilt over their past to hover like  a dark cloud.

Every Christian Has an Amazing Story to Tell

My story is one of those testimonies that some dare to call boring. Raised in a Christian home, I became a believer as a young child and the Lord has held me fast ever since. I have had no crisis of faith and was never tempted to go off the tracks. That is not to say that I am not a great sinner who serves a great Savior, to paraphrase the hymn-writer John Newton. And every day I realize my salvation is nothing short of miraculous. Only the Lord can work in our hearts and minds to turn us from his enemies into his daughters and sons (Colossians 1:21-22).

What’s your story? Is it like mine? The complete opposite? Or somewhere in between?

I have some friends who had rough lives full of shameful acts of sin before Jesus called them to himself and saved them forever. Their experiences were a long way from my childhood conversion. yet every one of us-whatever our story-is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).

But Satan tries to convince us that we should still carry some guilt. The scars from sin resulting from one’s life before Christ can get pushed to the forefront of the mind-sexual immorality, abortion, or maybe an outright rejection of God.

It’s not wrong to experience doubt-many of us do-but it is a mistake if we fail to challenge our doubts by speaking the gospel truth to those doubt. As believers, we stand forgiven by God the Father through faith in Jesus Christ. God the Father looks at each one of us through Christ’s death on the cross such that when he sees us, it is just as if we never sinned. And this doesn’t just apply to those sins we committed before coming to faith but also to any we commit as Christians. This is wonderfully true for every one of us who is a believer. What a marvelous truth to hold onto when we doubt. How kind and loving our Father God is!

Sometimes, doubts come because we worry we cannot consistently live the holy lives we are called to. We see our failings and fear they will dim God’s love for us. This is the time to grasp hold of gospel truth with both hands. we remind ourselves that we are right before God purely because of Christ. It is Christ’s life which the Lord sees when he looks at us. Our forgiveness is certain. Our relationship with God is save. So that’s what we remind ourselves of, again and again if needed, when doubt tries to slay us…

The Big Picture 

One great lesson we learn from the Bible over and over again is how God’s purpose is being worked out in the midst of seemingly hopeless circumstances. God is perfectly conforming every situation to his perfect will. And he is good all the time. We can trust him. His plan is better than anything we could imagine.

Our response to the overwhelming grace we have received should be nothing less than overwhelming gratitude. We are wise to put away all of the “would have, could have, should have” thoughts about how we might have avoided past situation. God was in every single detail that happened prior to our salvation. Guilt has got to go. Our doubt about our future is just as foolish as the prisoner’s worry that the one who took his place is going to change his mind. The priceless doxology of Jude cures paralyzing guilt. He writes,

“Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever. Amen.” -Jude 24-25

He who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it (Philippians 1:6). Period.

To read more, purchase your copy of Growing in Gratitude at Amazon, The Good Book Company, or ChristianBook.com.

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