R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 303

The Heresy of Racial Superiority — Confronting the Past, and Confronting the Truth

Among Christians, the word  heresy must be used with care and precision. Not every doctrinal error is a heresy, though all doctrinal error is to be avoided. A heresy is the denial or corruption of a Christian doctrine that is central to the faith and essential to the gospel. The late theologian Harold O. J. Brown defined heresy as a doctrinal error “so important that those who believe it, who the church calls heretics, must be considered to have abandoned the faith.”

That sets the issue clearly. Premillennialists consider postmillennialists to be in error, but they do not consider postmillennialists to be heretics. Those who deny the Trinity, on the other hand, are heretics, and the believing church must consider non-trinitarians to have departed the faith. The same must be said of those who deny the full deity and humanity of Jesus Christ. Far more can be said about heresy, but the word must be used with care and accuracy.

Protestants, rightly standing with the Reformers, have insisted that justification by faith alone is also central to the gospel of Christ and essential to any proclamation of that gospel. Martin Luther, for example, considered justification to be articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae — the article by which the church stands or falls, and so it is.

Today, we just recognize and condemn another heresy that has reared its ugly head in recent days, and murderously so. The killing of nine worshippers gathered at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina is a hideous demonstration of the deadly power of this heresy. The young white man charged with the killings has not, as yet, claimed a theological rationale for his acts. Nevertheless, he has been exposed as a young man whose worldview was savagely warped by the ideology of racial superiority — white superiority — and the grotesque and wretched ideology that drove him is now inseparable from the murders he is charged with committing.

If the reach of that ideology could be limited to a few fringe figures, we could allow ourselves to be less concerned. But the ideology that was represented in Dylann Roof’s reported words as he killed and in the photographs and evidence found on his Internet postings is not limited to a small fringe. You do not have to hang a flag representing the apartheid governments of Rhodesia or South Africa to be a racist.

The ideology of racial superiority is one of the saddest and most sordid evidences of the Fall and its horrifying effects. Throughout history, racial ideologies have been driving forces of war, of social cohesion, of demagoguery, and of dictatorships. Race theory was central to the Nazi regime and was used by both sides in the Pacific theater of World War II. In that theater of the war, both the Japanese and the Americans claimed that the other was an inferior race that must be defeated by force. The Japanese claimed racial superiority as central to their subjugation of other Asian peoples.

At the same time, many white Americans claimed and assumed the superiority of caucasian skin to black and brown skin — or any other color of skin. The main “color line,” as Frederick Douglass called it in 1881, has always been black and white in America. While this is a national problem, and theories of racial superiority have been popular in both the North and the South, it was the states of the old Confederacy that gave those ideologies their most fertile soil. White superiority was claimed as a belief by both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, but it was the Confederacy that made racial superiority a central purpose.

More humbling still is the fact that many churches, churchmen, and theologians gave sanction to that ideology of racial superiority. While this was true throughout the southern churches, Southern Baptists bear a particular responsibility and burden of history. The Southern Baptist Convention was not only founded by slaveholders; it was founded by men who held to an ideology of racial superiority and who bathed that ideology in scandalous theological argument. At times, white superiority was defended by a putrid exegesis of the Bible that claimed a “curse of Ham” as the explanation of dark skin — an argument that reflects such ignorance of Scripture and such shameful exegesis that it could only be believed by those who were looking for an argument to satisfy their prejudices.

We bear the burden of that history to this day. Racial superiority is a sin as old as Genesis and as contemporary as the killings in Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. The ideology of racial superiority is not only sinful, it is deadly.

I gladly stand with the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in their courageous affirmation of biblical orthodoxy, Baptist beliefs, and missionary zeal. There would be no Southern Baptist Convention and there would be no Southern Seminary without them. James P. Boyce and Basil Manly, Jr. and John A. Broadus were titans of the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

But there is more to the story. Boyce and Broadus were chaplains in the Confederate army. The founders of the SBC and of Southern Seminary were racist defenders of slavery. Just a few months ago I was reading a history of Greenville, South Carolina when I came across a racist statement made by James P. Boyce, my ultimate predecessor as president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. It was so striking that I had to find a chair. This, too, is our story.

By every reckoning, Boyce and Broadus were consummate Christian gentlemen, given the culture of their day. They would have been horrified, I am certain, by any act of violence against any person. But any strain of racial superiority, and especially any strain bathed in the language of Christian theology, is deadly dangerous all the same.

In 1995, on the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention, the denomination publicly repented of its roots in the defense of slavery. In 2015, far more is required of us. It is not enough to repent of slavery. We must repent and seek to confront and remove every strain of racial superiority that remains and seek with all our strength to be the kind of churches of which Jesus would be proud — the kind of churches that will look like the marriage supper of the Lamb.

I am certain that I do not know all that this will require of us. I intend to keep those names on our buildings and to stand without apology with the founders and their affirmation of Baptist orthodoxy. But those names on our buildings and college and professorial chairs and endowed scholarships do not represent unmixed pride. They also represent the burden of history and the urgency of repentance. We the living cannot repent on behalf of those who are dead, but we can repent for the legacy that we would otherwise perpetuate and extend by silence.

I will not remove those names from the buildings, but I bear the burden of telling the whole story and acknowledging the totality of the legacy. I bear responsibility to set things right in so far as I have the opportunity to set them right. I am so thankful that the racist ideologies of the past would rightly horrify the faculty and students of the present. Are we yet horrified enough?

I will not remove those names from the buildings, but I could never fly the flag that represented their cause in battle. I know full well that today’s defenders of that flag — by far most of them — do not intend to send a racial message nor to defy civil rights. But some do, and there is no way to escape the symbolism that so wounds our neighbors — and our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Today, most who defend that flag do so to claim a patrimony and to express love for a region. But that is not the whole story, and we know it.

And now the hardest part. Were the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary heretics?

They defended all the doctrines they believed were central and essential to the Christian faith as revealed in the Bible and as affirmed throughout the history of the church. They sought to defend Baptist orthodoxy in an age already tiring of orthodoxy. They would never have imagined themselves as heretics, and in one sense they certainly were not. Nor, we should add, was Martin Luther a heretic, even as he expressed a horrifying antisemitism.

But I would argue that racial superiority in any form, and white superiority as the central issue of our concern, is a heresy. The separation of human beings into ranks of superiority and inferiority differentiated by skin color is a direct assault upon the doctrine of Creation and an insult to the imago Dei — the image of God in which every human being is made. Racial superiority is also directly subversive of the gospel of Christ, effectively reducing the power of his substitutionary atonement and undermining the faithful preaching of the gospel to all persons and to all nations.

To put the matter plainly, one cannot simultaneously hold to an ideology of racial superiority and rightly present the gospel of Jesus Christ. One cannot hold to racial superiority and simultaneously defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints. So far as I can tell, no one ever confronted the founders of the Southern Baptist Convention and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary with the brutal reality of what they were doing, believing, and teaching in this regard. The same seems to be true in the case of Martin Luther and his antisemitism. For that matter, how recently were these sins recognized as sins and repented of? The problem is not limited to the names of the founders on our buildings.

I do believe that racial superiority is a heresy. That means that those who hold it unrepentantly and refuse correction by Scripture and the gospel of Christ must, as Harold O. J. Brown rightly said, “be considered to have abandoned the faith.”

We cannot change the past, but we must learn from it. There is no way to confront the dead with their heresies, but there is no way to avoid the reckoning that we must make, and the repentance that must be our own.

By God’s grace, this is the best I know to say. By God’s grace, may I not die with heresies unknown to me, but all too known to my children, and to my children’s children.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler.

Image of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Charleston, South Carolina, Sunday, June 21, 2015, used by permission, AP News Photo.

I was asked by Religion News Service for a comment on the Confederate Battle Flag issue yesterday. This was my statement in full:

“Symbols matter, and sometimes they matter in different ways to different people. For most people in the South, the Confederate Battle Flag does not now represent racism or any reference to rebellion against the Union. Nevertheless, every symbol has a historical context and associations. For this specific flag, the most immediate context is the civil rights movement and resistance to its central goals. As Christians, we are called to love God and to love our neighbors. Some of our neighbors–and some of our own brothers and sisters in Christ–are deeply wounded by this flag. They see it as a denial of their essential humanity and as a statement of racial superiority. For that sufficient reason, gospel-minded Christians should support taking down the flag. Love of neighbor outweighs even love of region, and it certainly requires that we disassociate ourselves from any hint of racism, now or in the past.”

News articles drawing from that statement have now appeared in The Washington Post and other major media, but that is the full statement.

Transcript: The Briefing 06-22-15

The Briefing

June 22, 2015

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

 

It’s Monday, June 22, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) National shocked by forgiveness given by families of Charleston shoot victims to shooter

A chastened grieving and humbled nation has appropriately focused over the last several days on Charleston, South Carolina. As we now know, on Wednesday night nine people attending a church service at the Mother Emanuel Church as it is known, the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church there in Charleston, South Carolina, nine people were murdered in cold blood after a young man had sat with them for about an hour in a prayer meeting and Bible study and then opened fire, killing the pastor of the church and eight others in the church meeting. This is one of those violent crimes that simply focuses our imagination because the moral importance of this is impossible to deny and as our cultural conversation has gone in so many different directions in the grief and the shock in the aftermath of these killings, even in just these days it has become clear that virtually every thoughtful American knows that this is a very important moment. Something very important is now on the forefront of our national conversation and Christians have a unique responsibility to think this issue through on biblical and gospel terms and to be able to speak to our neighbors about even as the cultural conversation is largely consumed of this issue. It needs to be.

Christians have a particular responsibility to think clearly about these issues and to speak compassionately, especially in the aftermath of a tragedy of this magnitude. The moral issues simply present themselves in such a way that Christians have to speak to them. The national conversation in the aftermath of this horrifying event took a very interesting form as the nation went into the weekend. South Carolina law allows for those who are the victims of a crime and in this case this means, especially the parishioners at the Mother Emanuel Church and the loved ones of those who were killed in these murders, have an opportunity to confront the one who’s been arrested with a crime and to speak to him. And yet it’s very unusual even within this legal context that that kind of confrontation would take place during a bail hearing but that’s what took place in Charleston on Friday. Less than 48 hours after the killings, some of those most affected by the murders confronted the young man arrested for the crime, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, and they confronted him not only with their grief and anguish and anger but with something that took the nation largely by surprise, forgiveness.

The words of forgiveness uttered in that courtroom on Friday shocked the nation leading the headlines across the country in which media tried to come to terms with exactly how those who were so grieved by the intentional killing of their loved ones could speak of forgiveness to the one who had been arrested for that crime and furthermore, the background of the crime has been increasingly evident. It was deeply rooted in a sense of white supremacy and in the sin of racism. And as we take a closer look at the statements that were made in that courtroom, we come to even a new understanding of what is at stake from a biblical and a gospel perspective.

As Mark Berman of the Washington Post reported, Nadine Collier the daughter of 70-year-old Ethel Lance said at the hearing addressing herself to Dylann Roof,

“I forgive you.”

She went on to say,

“You took something very precious from me.”

And remember, that was her mother. She went on to say,

“I will never talk to her again. I will never, ever hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul.”

Felicia Sanders as the Washington Post says her voice trembling spoke of her son, Tywanza Sanders, a young man who was killed in the murders. She spoke to the young man arrested for the crime and said,

“We welcomed you Wednesday night in our Bible study with welcome arms. Tywanza Sanders was my son. But Tywanza Sanders was my hero. May God have mercy on you.”

The sister of another of the victims, DePayne Middleton-Doctor said,

“I acknowledge that I am very angry. But one thing that DePayne always enjoined in our family … is she taught me that we are the family that love built. We have no room for hating, so we have to forgive. I pray God on your soul.”

The New York Times shocked by the language used by these loved ones of the victims referred back to that policy in South Carolina law that allows the victims or the loved ones of the victims to confront the one who was arrested for the crimes and yet they wrote,

“But it is unusual for that right to be invoked in something as mundane as a bail hearing.”

But look closely at the next words,

“And the words spoken Friday by the survivors were rarer still.”

The national media reported only a small number of the words spoken by the relatives and loved ones of the victims of these crimes, but it is so interesting that the national media, the secular media focused on the theme of forgiveness. The question that we can only hope an amazed nation is asking is what would be the source of that forgiveness. Where would that forgiveness come from? How would it be expressed? How could those who lost so much speak to the one who has just been arrested for this horrifying crime and speak words of forgiveness? One of the things this should draw to our attention is the fact that the very idea of forgiveness in this sense is deeply shocking to the secular mind and we should understand why there is no reason in terms of secular logic why this kind of forgiveness should be extended. There is no ability of the secular worldview in and of itself, certainly now a secular worldview that is largely based in the fact that human beings are biological accidents in a great cosmic pattern, what we now see is that the secular media are amazed when this kind of statement is made.

Now the other thing we need to note from a Christian perspective is that the notion of forgiveness here, which is so deeply rooted in the Christian faith, was not explicitly Christian as reported by most of the secular media and yet that’s another very interesting point. I don’t know exactly what words were spoken by all of these relatives and loved ones of the victims. I don’t know all that they had to say I do know what was reported in the media and that tells us a great deal. But what’s missing here is also a vital importance. What’s missing in the reporting is the understanding that this kind of forgiveness is rooted essentially in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the fact that in Christ we who come to faith in him are forgiven our sins as we remember, Christ died as our substitutionary sacrifice on the cross. He was the sinless one who died in the place of sinners and forgiveness of sins and life everlasting come to those who come to Christ by faith. Forgiveness has been a very important issue in the moral conversation of our culture for some time. It entered into that conversation in a remarkable way in the generation that followed World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust.

One of the big questions, then and now is whether from the secular perspective forgiveness is even possible or whether it’s even admirable in one sense. There were those who argued after the Holocaust that it was immoral to forgive sins of that magnitude, the killing of millions of millions of persons, especially millions and millions of Jews. In the Jewish theological conversation in the aftermath of the Holocaust, there was a division of opinion as to whether or not forgiveness should be extended to the killers of their own loved ones and relatives. And we simply have to understand the scale of the issue here – we’re talking about the intentional murder of millions of persons. The question was asked, especially in the second half of the 20th century, how can forgiveness come in the aftermath of such a crime? And who would be able morally speaking, who would be qualified to extend that kind of forgiveness?

As I said there was a division of opinion in Judaism of the time and that is an ongoing conversation about whether or not forgiveness is the appropriate response to the Nazi perpetrators of the Holocaust. But what was very interesting, what was extremely clear in that courtroom in Charleston on Friday is that what struck the national consciousness, what shocked so many people is that in the immediate aftermath one of the most important instincts that came from those who were the loved ones of the victims in this case was to forgive and to express that forgiveness even as they addressed themselves directly to Dylann Roof. But there was actually more to this at least in some media reports, one of the loved ones of the victims actually called upon Dylann Roof to repent of his sin. That’s a very crucial issue. The gospel tells us that salvation comes to those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and repent of their sins. In terms of our human responsibility to forgive, about that Christ himself was emphatic; we have an absolute responsibility to forgive those who sin against us. But when it comes to understanding forgiveness it is the minor portion of the equation theologically speaking, in terms of how we or any human being for that matter would respond in forgiveness to one who has done wrong. The larger issue theologically speaking is whether or not we or any individual will know the forgiveness that can come from God and God alone.

It tells us a great deal that so many were shocked when words of forgiveness were used in that courtroom. And as Christians we have to admit that as accustomed as we are to that language, we too are sometimes shocked by the depth of the demonstration of the Christian understanding of forgiveness that can come even in the immediate aftermath of this kind of horrifying crime. We can only hope and pray that this provides an opening for an even more clear presentation to the culture of the gospel of Jesus Christ in all of its power. It is clear that so many in this increasingly secularized culture were deeply shocked by what took place in that courtroom on Friday. We can only hope and pray that that shock will be an opening into a deeper understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because as Christians understand and must always affirm that is the only message that tells us of how forgiveness can come to a sinner from a holy God. And that message takes us directly to a cross in an empty tomb. And it takes us directly to that imperative found in Scripture, repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

2) Heresy of racism forced upon society’s consciousness by Charleston shooting

Another aspect of our cultural conversation in recent days also demands our Christian attention and our very careful Christian response, a direct and emphatic Christian response. That is the issue of white supremacy. It has become increasingly clear that law enforcement authorities believe that the young man accused of these crimes now facing nine capital counts of murder was motivated by an ideology of white supremacy. We need to understand even as on Friday on The Briefing, we talked about the sin of racism that that is often rooted in what is precisely identified here; a profoundly unbiblical and ungodly notion that simply has to be identified for what it is the heresy of racial superiority.

The word heresy has to be used very carefully in the Christian life and in Christian theology. We do not refer to every doctrinal disagreement or even every doctrinal error as heresy. Heresy should be limited to a false teaching that directly subverts the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s why throughout the history of the church, most heresies have related to the question of who Christ is and what Christ achieved on the cross. That’s why throughout Christian history most heresies have related to the questions of who Christ is and what he accomplished for us in his death, burial and resurrection. But there are other issues that directly attach themselves to the gospel and one of those is the question, is every single human being of equal dignity? Is every single human being of equal dignity because every single human being is equally made in God’s image? That is a crucial question and it gets to the gospel because it is vital for us to understand that when Christ died, He died for sinful humanity. He did not die for one race, there is no biblical justification whatsoever for the attachment of any understanding of superiority or inferiority to any person regardless of racial or ethnic identity, regardless of skin color, in this case emphatically we have to say there is no superiority or inferiority tolerated in the biblical worldview and especially in the gospel of Jesus Christ for any claim of superiority or inferiority on skin color. We also have to acknowledge that in the history of Christianity some of these claims have been made disastrously and sinfully so. One of the most sinful forms of that argument has occurred in what’s historically been known as the argument about the Curse of Ham, which is a misunderstanding, a profound misunderstanding of the curse placed upon Canaan by his father Noah. That has nothing to do with skin color, nothing whatsoever.

Christians have to understand several things immediately and we need not only to understand these things, but to speak publicly to them. In the first place, there is no biblical justification for racism in any form. There is no biblical justification for any notion of racial superiority whatsoever.

Next, we have to understand that any assertion of racial superiority is an assault upon the Imago Dei, upon the image of God. And we have to understand that as God made every single one of us to his glory, he intended for us to display all of the diversity that is found in all of the physical features, including skin pigmentation that we find in humanity. This is to the glory of God. We have to also understand that this is so important to the gospel and even to how the gospel is portrayed in Scripture in terms of the picture. We are told to look forward to that day when before the throne of God there will be men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation. That is what the kingdom is going to look like, that is what the marriage supper of the Lamb is going to look like. So when the secular world rightly understands that racism is wrong, Christians have to come back and say, ‘you have no real idea how wrong it is.’ It is not only an assault upon humanity; it is by direct extension in the biblical worldview an assault upon the creator. There are so many things for Christians to discuss and to think through in this cultural moment. But we have to understand there is no issue more compelling right now then this.

3) Gay marriage’s moment dependent on shift in culture’s moral judgement of homosexuality

Next, as we go into this week, one of those other issues looms so large before us. By Tuesday of next week, by June 30, the course of the Supreme Court for this term will be set. All of its major decisions will be handed down. There are several major decisions left, none more important than the decision in the case concerning the legalization of same-sex marriage. And everyone waking up this Monday morning understands that that decision could come today or in the course of this week or in the first two days of next week. It is coming soon. It is coming fast. Both sides in our great cultural conversation about this are paying very close attention to what will happen over the next several days. In Sunday’s edition of the New York Times, Frank Bruni a very well-known openly gay columnist that newspaper, writes about what he calls, “Gay Marriage’s Moment.”

It’s a very important article among other very important articles to emerge in recent days. He writes about the pace of cultural and moral change that has brought the gay-rights movement to this moment. He writes,

“Now we stand nervously and hopefully on the brink of a milestone. Before the end of June, a month associated with wedding bells and wedding cake, the Supreme Court will issue a major decision about the right of two men or two women to exchange vows in a manner honored by the government. It may well extend same-sex marriage to all 50 states, making it the law of the land.”

Now most informed observers of the court expect that one way or another the court is going to do that very thing. He then raises one of the issues that emerged in oral argument before the court on this case. Is this a very fast movement? Is this something that is taking place in the blink of an eye, historically speaking? He says no and he goes back to the beginnings of the movement to legalize same-sex marriage. He goes back to some of the earliest efforts to even begin a conversation about same-sex marriage. We need to note, most of those are taking place if at all in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. But even at that point as he acknowledges, same-sex marriage didn’t really seem to be a legal reality. Here first we have,

“Evan Wolfson, a chief architect of the political quest for same-sex marriage, wrote a thesis on the topic at Harvard Law School in 1983.”

Now 1983 was just 32 years ago. Once again, he is actually making the point he denies. In terms of history, this is the blink of an eye.

In his article Sunday he writes,

“Same-sex marriage isn’t some overnight cause, some progressive novelty, especially not when it’s put in its proper context, as part of a struggle for gay rights that has been plenty long, patient and painful.”

He goes on,

“Yes, the dominoes of marriage equality in individual states have tumbled with a surprising velocity. My first Op-Ed column, in June 2011, noted that New York had just become the sixth state in the country to legalize same-sex marriage. The count today is 37 states and Washington, D.C. I’m amazed at this still.”

So one of the things I want us to note is, he is actually making the point he denies. This is an extremely recent novelty. As Justice Samuel Alito said about two years ago in oral arguments in a different case, “same-sex marriage is younger than the smart phone.”

Considerably younger.

But Frank Bruni getting ready to celebrate what he expects will be a victory at the High Court writes about his amazement that as recently as two years ago, someone like Hillary Clinton, now running for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States and until fairly recently, the Secretary of State of the United States under President Barack Obama wasn’t for same-sex marriage, although she now is. As he looks at it Bruni writes,

“A Supreme Court judgment for marriage equality wouldn’t be a rash swerve into uncharted terrain. It would merely be a continuation of the journey of gay Americans — of all Americans — across familiar land, in the direction of justice. It would be a stride toward the top of the hill.”

His general argument is that Americans shifted in their view of the morality of homosexuality, of homosexual relations and homosexual behaviors, and that led rather automatically to an increased public support that produced a political opening for the legalization of same-sex marriage. In his essay he cites several things that added momentum to that moral revolution. In one paragraph he writes,

“Alfred Kinsey told Americans in the late 1940s just how common same-sex activity was.”

Now that’s a very crucial data point for him to cite because what we now know, it is now affirmed by virtually every credible study, is that Kinsey’s data were horribly flawed. What Bruni doesn’t acknowledge is that no research scientist now would point to Kinsey’s research and give it anything like academic credibility. Kinsey was trying to normalize many sexual behaviors that went far beyond homosexuality and that was his agenda. And when it came to how he conducted his research, he goes beyond what we can safely discuss on The Briefing.

But what’s most important and revealed in this essay by Frank Bruni on Sunday is that people on both sides, people on both sides of this issue understand exactly what is at stake. The decision expected by the Supreme Court is no small decision and looming even larger than that is the great moral revolution of which this decision is one way or another, a very important part. As we all await the announcement of the decision by the nation’s highest court, we should all recognize how much is at stake. We’re talking about marriage here. We’re talking about morality here. We’re talking about a sexual revolution that has unleashed many other revolutions and will not stop with this.

On this Monday morning we sense that the days before us are momentous and they are. And that means that Christians have a particular responsibility to think clearly and to speak clearly, to think biblically and to speak biblically. To understand that there is no way to avoid the importance of these issues and there is no way to avoid the conversations that will inevitably come. So as we prayerfully enter this week, let’s be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us and let’s be ready to speak of biblical truth and the Christian worldview to the issues that surround us. And let’s seek in all of these things to be faithful to scripture and to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to BoyceCollege.com.

 

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 06-22-15

Podcast Transcript

1) National shocked by forgiveness given by families of Charleston shoot victims to shooter

‘I forgive you.’ Relatives of Charleston church shooting victims address Dylann Roof, Washington Post (Mark Berman)

In Charleston, Raw Emotion at Hearing for Suspect in Church Shooting, New York Times (Nikita Stewart and Richard Pérez-Peña)

2) Heresy of racism forced upon society’s consciousness by Charleston shooting

Dylann Roof, Suspect in Charleston Shooting, Flew the Flags of White Power, New York Times (Frances Robles, Jason Horowitz and Shaila Dewan)

3) Gay marriage’s moment dependent on shift in culture’s moral judgement of homosexuality

Gay Marriage’s Moment, New York Times (Frank Bruni)

Genesis 37:5-28

Ask Anything: Weekend Edition 06-20-15

1) Is ‘redeeming the culture’ a biblical concept?

2) Is it normal to be intimidated by the idea of spending eternity in heaven?

3) Are the actions of ISIS comparable to the Old Testament actions of Israel?

 

 

Call with your questions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week: 1-877-505-2058

Transcript: The Briefing 06-19-15

The Briefing

June 19, 2015

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

 

It’s Friday, June 19, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Charleston church shooting horrifying picture of evil of racism

Once again a terrorist attack is in the headlines, but in this case it’s a case of domestic terrorism. And in this case it appears that Islam has absolutely nothing to do with the equation. Instead one of the most historic and symbolic churches of the African-American experience in America, the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, became the scene for an attack undertaken by a 21-year-old young American. In this case a white young American by the name of Dylann Roof and it now appears rather irrefutable that his motivation was reducible to the grotesque sin of racism, in this case a violent sin. What authorities now tell us is that on Wednesday night Roof entered the church building there, one of the most historic churches in the heart of Charleston South Carolina, one the nation’s most historic cities and sat among the worshipers there for a matter of about an hour. Then he opened fire deliberately and savagely wounding and eventually killing nine people by his gunfire.

Hamil Harris reporting for the Washington Post tells us that this particular church, the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church there in Charleston, is known as the national Cathedral Church of the entire AME denomination. As he explains,

“The AME Church was founded in 1794 by Richard Allen and other blacks in Philadelphia after they were pulled from their knees while praying in an all-white church. In 1816, black members of Charleston’s Methodist Episcopal Church withdrew from what was then the Free African Society because of a dispute over burial ground and they formed a separate congregation.

[We are then told that] “In 1821, Denmark Vesey, one of the Charleston church’s founders, organized a major slave uprising in Charleston. Denmark had purchased his own freedom for $1,500 with money from a winning lottery ticket.”

That’s back, we should recall, in 1821. Late yesterday, the New York Times reported that Dylann Roof, the young suspect in this case was arrested after a 14 hour manhunt. He was arrested in Shelby, North Carolina during a traffic stop and according to the Charleston police chief, Greg Mullen, he was arrested and is being flown back to Charleston to face charges. Reporter

Ishaan Tharoor for the Washington Post tells us that the young man declared,

“You are taking over our country,” before opening fire on Emanuel AME Church’s black congregants.”

He also tells us that,

“Roof’s apparent Facebook profile photo carries a possible indicator of his racist worldview. The picture shows Roof skulking in the woods, wearing a jacket with at least two conspicuous patches. The patches, as the Southern Poverty Law Center quickly noted, are the old flags of racist, white-minority regimes in southern Africa.”

Those flags point back to the fact that there were nations in South Africa, including the nation of South Africa itself along with Rhodesia that were controlled by minority white governments that held to an understanding of an absolute white supremacy. There was a racist ideology that declared that the whites should rule the blacks in Africa and of course that same ideology found its foundation also here in the United States in the expression of Jim Crow laws, and for segregation, not to mention the legacy of slavery. It was out of that very context of the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church had emerged in Charleston, South Carolina. What this tragic story tells us above everything else is that sin is ever more dangerous than we can even imagine. What can explain how a young man can enter into a church building, sit with black parishioners for virtually an hour and then open fire intentionally killing nine, obviously with the intent of going there to murder? We can only ask the question, how can any human heart be given over to this kind of evil?

From time to time on The Briefing we have to come back to the essential biblical truth that human beings in our fallenness can give ourselves over to evil, to an evil that is virtually impossible for most of us to contemplate, but an evil that is all too real as made evident in these headlines. Just imagine being in that church building, just imagine feeling the weight of history, just imagine being gathered together for a prayer meeting, just imagine being African-Americans gathered together in this historic African-American denomination and its church. Just imagine a white young man entering in and appearing to sit down and join in prayer. Then imagine that young man declaring you are taking over the country and then opening fire killing nine of your fellow church members, including your pastor. It’s virtually impossible to imagine what it would have been like to have sat in that congregation. But morally speaking, it’s even more difficult to imagine how a young man can give themselves over to this kind of evil. How could it make any kind of sense, how can it enter into any kind of rationality that a young man would enter into this cold-blooded and diabolical calculation with such clear and sinister intent to murder, and do so even in the face of having sat with the people, the very people he was intending to murder for almost an hour?

It’s hard for us to imagine the depth of depravity demonstrated in the fact that this young man did not even murder in a cold-blooded distance. He sat among the people he intended to murder for almost an hour. It’s virtually impossible for us to come to moral terms with this and that’s where we have to remember that as Christians we don’t have to come to terms with this. In a very real sense, we can’t come to terms with this. We can’t enter into the mind of this young man, nor should we seek to because even to try to enter into that mind is to give ourselves over to some extent to that same kind of hatred. What we have to do in contrast, is understand that in spite of all of the evil of this world, despite all the depravity and demonstrations of violence in this world, Jesus Christ identified with us so as to enter human flesh and to be among us, eventually bearing the violence of the cross not merely as a symbol of divine love but as our substitutionary sacrifice. When we look to those events in Charleston, we have to understand a basic biblical principle which is the irrationality of sin, the fact that sin in its essence really can’t be understood because it isn’t rational, it’s irrational. It isn’t sensical, it’s nonsensical. There are certainly lessons here for law enforcement and for churches looking at the escalation of this kind of attack taking place in the very midst of religious observances in particular in Christian church services. But we also need to look at the fact that law enforcement is never going to be able to read every single human heart and be able to head off a Dylann Roof before he undertakes this kind of horribly violent act.

But right now one of our main responsibilities is to grieve with those who grieve. To understand the deep inexpressible grief that is taking place in one church family, perhaps very far from us, or perhaps rather close, and to understand in a very special way that we need to grieve with our African-American brothers and sisters. For whom this church in this congregation and this attack, well all of that is powerfully symbolic of an entire weight of history. And we need to understand and we need to say honestly to each other to remind ourselves that racism is not dead. And as this tragedy in Charleston reminds us in all too graphic form, not only is racism not dead, it is very, very deadly.

2) Pope’s environmental encyclical clear on responsibility, unclear in implementation

Next shifting to another very important headline from yesterday, the Vatican released Laudato Si, that is the much anticipated encyclical from Pope Francis having to do with the earth, with ecology, with the stewardship of creation and with climate change. As it turns out, it has to do with a great deal more as well. This was as I’ve said a much-anticipated document, the Vatican had been putting out a great deal of anticipation about this new encyclical, and for that matter, a leaked version had emerged earlier this week. I did not discuss that leaked version of the encyclical because after all, we could not be certain that it was the official text. Now we are.

Yesterday the Vatican released Laudato Si or blessed be and it is indeed a very interesting statement. Before looking to the text itself I want to look at the press coverage about the Pope statement because that in itself is very interesting, revealing a great deal of how this statement is being understood. Jim Yardley and Laurie Goodstein reporting for the New York Times tell us,

“Pope Francis on Thursday called for a radical transformation of politics, economics and individual lifestyles to confront environmental degradation and climate change, blending a biting critique of consumerism and irresponsible development with a plea for swift and unified global action.”

The New York Times then tells us that the vision that the Pope outlined in a 184 page encyclical is sweeping in ambition and scope. He described they say,

“A relentless exploitation and destruction of the environment and says apathy, the reckless pursuit of profits, excessive faith in technology and political shortsightedness are to blame.

“The most vulnerable victims, he declares, are the world’s poorest people, who are being dislocated and disregarded.”

Now that was the New York Times. On the other hand, The Economist, one of the most influential magazines in the world had a headline that appeared treading lightly in many directions. The Economist took a very different approach to the Pope statement than did the New York Times. The New York Times leads with it being radical. Meanwhile, The Economist tells us

that even though the Vatican released this statement as a major declaration on many controversial issues, the Pope really didn’t get very specific when it comes to exactly what he would have world governments and other organizations or for that matter individual citizens of the world to do. It’s a very interesting reminder that when you’re looking at a 184 page document. There’s a great deal of interpretation about just what the document represents and even what it says.

After reviewing the statement I was asked to give my own statement to the press I said,

“Laudato Si is a very interesting document, by any measure. Pope Francis is absolutely right to identify our care for creation as a theological issue. As stewards of creation, we are called by the Creator to take care of the world he has made. At the same time, several of the Pope’s central claims about climate change have more to do with the current scientific consensus than with theology. Furthermore, some of his specific proposals are likely to harm those he seeks to help — the poor. While fossil fuels are surely contributing to an increase in carbon emissions, it is hardly helpful to tell the poorest nations among us that they must forego immediate needs for refrigeration, modern medicine, and the advances of the modern age that have so extended and preserved life. At this point, there is no alternative to dependency on fossil fuels, and this is as true for the Vatican as for the United States and other advanced economies. The Pope definitely takes sides on several questions, though it is not clear that the Catholic church is willing to accept all the implications of the arguments asserted in this document. Pope Francis has also tied the credibility of his papacy to scientific arguments that may well change over time, perhaps radically.

It is interesting that fairly little of the encyclical actually references climate change, though this is what the international media have found most interesting. The Pope also rejects contraception and population control and affirms the Catholic Church’s traditional understanding of gender. My guess is that the secular press will make much of the Pope’s statements on climate change and very little of his affirmation of historic Catholic teachings that run contrary to the modern secular worldview.

Evangelical Christians reject the very idea of the papacy and the concept of the Vatican as a political state. We do not issue encyclicals nor do we claim to represent a sovereign state with a foreign policy. The Pope’s encyclical will be much discussed, but time will tell if there is any major policy impact from his arguments. On the day of its release, it looks as if there are sections that will please and displease all sides in our ongoing discussion about climate change and the care of creation.”

It is very interesting and will be of concern to many Catholics even that the Pope has attached his personal credibility to certain scientific claims about climate change and all it would take would be a change in the understanding of the scientific community to leave him stranded on an island of his own making here. It’s also interesting as The Economist pointed out and I’ll simply quote,

“Much of the writing might have come from a secular environmental NGO writing a briefing paper ahead of the summit in Paris at the end of this year which will mark a new attempt to strike a global bargain to restrain carbon emissions.”

I think it’s extremely telling that here you have a secular newspaper saying that much of this encyclical reads like it could’ve been written by a secular NGO. That is to say much of its argument (especially as it relates to the questions about climate change) really aren’t tied to explicit theological arguments or theological data at all. Now to be sure, the Pope is stating many things with which evangelicals would enthusiastically agree. We are responsible as stewards for our care of creation. The biblical notion of stewardship is tied to the biblical assignment of dominion. Dominion is something that seems to make this Pope very, very uncomfortable. That’s rather unusual when you consider the claims of the papacy itself, but ironic as that may be when it comes to the issue of the dominion of the earth on the part of human creatures, he appears to think that this is likely or perhaps likely to lead to a sense of domination over the creation that will be very dangerous and will lead to environmental degradation.

Before leaving that argument we need to recognize it has happened in just that way. People have claimed the biblical assignment of dominion to human creatures and they have misused that assignment but nonetheless it is right there. Look at Genesis 1:28, there is a very clear assignment of dominion which is to say human beings made in God’s image have a divine assignment that we are to undertake the responsible use of the creation God has given us. Even as we are put in a garden we are to till the garden, we are to tend the garden, we are to plow the soil, we are to plant seeds, we are to build houses, we are to use the goods of the world, whether it be timber or minerals or the other things God has given us for the enrichment of human life and for the extension of human flourishing. But at the same time that is balanced with a biblical understanding of stewardship, a theme about which the Scripture is also emphatically clear. It was Jesus himself who repeatedly taught about stewardship, making very clear that even as we are given these gifts we will give an answer to the one who has given us these gifts. Even as we are tending this garden we might say, we will one day give an answer to the owner of the garden that is not only for how we have used what he has given us for its intended purpose, but also how we have cared for what he has given us as an act of love because after all, we did not create this world he did and he gave it to us as our habitation as a gift.

As I said, reading this as an evangelical there are many frustrations. One of the frustrations is that the Pope, who I genuinely believe thinks himself to be helping the poor, is by his very argument consigning some of the poorest nations on earth to being forever without the goods the modern age brings whether that might be considered modern medicine or modern transportation, modern telecommunications or for that matter refrigeration, refrigeration to preserve life and food. As I pointed out in the statement I made yesterday, the Vatican is no less dependent upon fossil fuels than any other government or for that matter any other major institution. It isn’t on an island somewhere with an alternative form of energy. The Pope disseminating this document disseminated by the means that the modern world has provided in terms of technology, but the Pope condemns much of that technology. This does not appear to be a statement that will last very well over time but that’s simply points to an even more fundamental issue for evangelical Christians. We don’t believe in the papacy, and we do not believe in papal encyclicals, we don’t believe that evangelicals should have a foreign-policy. We do believe that we should come to our best understanding of the policy issues at stake in this or any other cultural conversation. But we also come to understand that we are to confess the faith together and we are to affirm everything that Scripture reveals together, but on some of these issues there just isn’t a dogmatic statement for the church to undertake. This is an official papal document and encyclical, it is intended to be a teaching text for the Roman Catholic Church and it will be up to Roman Catholics to decide what to do with this text as the Vatican itself acknowledged it will be up to local bishops in the Roman Catholic Church to decide how they’re going to apply it.

But that gets to another issue. There is no doubt that in making this statement when he made it and as he made it, Pope Francis intends to play a role politically on the world stage on these issues. After all, you have The Economist mentioning the summit coming up in Paris. You also have the Pope’s own state visit to the United States that will include an address to a joint session of Congress this coming September. That’s a huge problem from a theological perspective. Here you have an entity that claims to be a church and a state with a foreign-policy and with a head of state. That is a huge problem as the reformers well understood and as we had better understand today. There is going to be a lot more conversation about Laudato Si to see in coming days. If the Pope intended to start a conversation at the very least we can say he succeeded in that.

3) Unanimous Supreme Court church sign ruling major win for religious liberty

Finally, another profound statement came from a very different source when yesterday the Supreme Court of the United States in a rather unusual 9-0 decision struck down a law in Gilbert, Arizona that had discriminated in terms of content on signage; in particular political signs were allowed to stay up for months and to be quite large. When church signs that offer directions to church services were very small and they were allowed to be up for only 13 hours. That basically made it impossible for any church to put up any sign telling people where to find the church and its services. Now it’s very important to recognize this is a major gain for religious liberty. It’s very important that the Supreme Court of United States all nine justices said that it was ridiculous that a municipality in the United States would dare to discriminate on the basis of the content of the signs. It’s just untenable that they could allow political content but not religious content related to church services.

Back when the oral arguments for the case were held when the attorney for the city tried to explain the policy, Justice Elena Kagan said,

“Gilbert’s law did not pass even “the laugh test” because it lacked reasons for its signage distinctions.”

Now here’s where a close look at what the court did is also important. It’s a civics lesson of sorts. The decision was 9 to 0, striking down the wall. But the new understanding that the court put in place was not a 9-0 decision, it was 6-3. Writing for the majority, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that it was absolutely unfair and unconstitutional for the city to discriminate in this way. And Justice Thomas went on to say that a government organization would have to present what is constitutionally known as a compelling interest in coming up with any discrimination or limitation on signs in terms of the free expression of ideas.

Three other Justices in this case from the court left-wing, Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented in terms of the rationale, stating that they did not believe that the government would have to prove a compelling interest but rather a lesser standard. If that sounds like a bunch of legal minutia, it’s not. It’s not just a technical argument. It’s very important to know what a government must prove in terms of its interest in a law to be able to discriminate against free expression. The law in terms of the majority opinion by the way doesn’t say the government can’t restrict signs it says governments just can’t pick and choose in terms of the signage. They can’t allow a political sign but not a religious sign. That’s very, very important. It is important to recognize that in striking down the law this decision was unanimous. But it’s concerning to know that when it comes to how we move forward in what cities or state governments are allowed to do. There’s a split decision, but it’s still a very clear decision, a 6-3 majority decision for religious liberty. That’s good news and good news for which we should be very thankful.

4) WHO issues regulations against naming diseases after animals or places, leaving few options

At the very end I simply want to say that sometimes we learn a great deal about the fallibilities and foibles of the human race. When we see what others are doing and that simply shows our own capacity for being at times foolish. The Week reports from Geneva,

“The World Health Organization issued new guidelines forbidding the use of place and animal namesakes when naming new diseases under the guidelines monikers like “Lyme Disease” (taken from a Connecticut town), “Ebola” (taken from the Congo River), “mad cow” and “monkeypox” would be discouraged. The World Health Organization said such names can lead to the pointless slaughter of animals, lost tourism and discrimination. Swine flu, for example, isn’t transmitted by pigs and according to the World Health Organization, it’s a slander to pigs to name the disease after them. Middle East, respiratory syndrome has hurt tourism they say to the entire region. Infectious disease specialist by the way are quite skeptical.”

It’s hard enough to come up with names for things. Just look at the roads in your community. How in the world are you going to avoid all places and all animals when it comes to naming diseases? Stating the obvious, John Oxford, a scientist who is a specialist in so-called bird flu said,

“This document is laudable in its intent.”

But then he said,

“But slightly daft.”

That’s a rather British way of saying, albeit condescendingly, that’s nuts.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albert Mohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boycecollege.com.

I’m speaking to you from Dallas, Texas and I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 06-19-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Charleston church shooting horrifying picture of evil of racism

How black church leaders are responding to the shooting in Charleston, Washington Post (Hamil R.  Harris)

In Facebook photo, suspected Charleston shooter wears flags of racist regimes in Africa, Washington Post (Ishaan Tharoor)

2) Pope’s environmental encyclical clear on responsibility, unclear in implementation

Pope Francis, in Sweeping Encyclical, Calls for Swift Action on Climate Change, New York Times (Jim Yardley and Laurie Goodstein)

Treading lightly, in many directions, The Economist

Mohler responds to Pope Francis’ ‘Laudato Si’, Southern News (R. Albert Mohler, Jr)

3) Unanimous Supreme Court church sign ruling major win for religious liberty

Tiny Arizona church wins Supreme Court case on signs, USA Today (Richard Wolf and Brad Heath)

Supreme Court rules for church in case against Arizona town’s sign law, Washington Post (Robert Barnes)

4) WHO issues regulations against naming diseases after animals or places, leaving few options

World Health Organization Best Practices for the Naming of New Human Infectious Diseases, WHO

 

Transcript: The Briefing 06-18-15

The Briefing

June 18, 2015

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

 

It’s Thursday, June 18, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Culture no longer asks ‘whether’ but ‘when’ gender reassignment should occur

As Christians we are accountable not only for how we think but also for how we feel. One of our responsibilities is to discipline our feelings to train our emotions in ways that are consistent with Scripture and the gospel. We need to keep this in mind when we consider the front page of yesterday’s edition of the New York Times, several stories of importance there but one of them is particularly important. The headline is this, “The New Girl in School: Transgender Surgery at 18.”

Anemona Hartocollis is writing about a young person who is identified in the article as Katherine Boone. The article begins with her recovering in April from an operation,

“That had changed her, in the most intimate part of her body, from a biological male into a female.”

Now recall the fact that we’re talking here about a young person who was 18 years old. The process of this so-called gender transformation took place beginning at age 16 ½ medically speaking. As I speak about training our emotions, I want to make clear that those who are operating out of a Christian worldview seeing this headline and the story and the way the story is presented will respond and should respond with a sense of moral dismay but there is more to it than that and we know it. We also need to respond with a sense of genuine heartbreak, with a sense of heartbreak that any human individual, whatever age, whatever situation would feel the kind of anguish that is reflected in this article. There’s more to it but there’s certainly not less to it than that.

Explaining the story Hartocollis writes,

“It is a transgender moment. President Obama was hailed just for saying the word “transgender” in his State of the Union address this year, in a list of people who should not be discriminated against. They are characters in popular television shows. Bruce Jenner’s transition from male sex symbol to a comely female named Caitlyn has elevated her back to her public profile as a gold-medal decathlete at the 1976 Summer Olympics.”

I read that paragraph exactly as it was written or exactly as it appeared in the newspaper. Because the way that paragraph is constructed tells us a great deal in terms of the names and the pronouns of how the new sexual revolution taking place around us will present itself and will make its vocabulary demands. But the main point of this article is about this sex reassignment surgery that has been undertaken on a very young person, in this case an 18-year-old just getting ready to graduate from high school. But as you look at the story, it’s about even younger children and it’s about this society trying to come to grips with the logic of the transgender revolution. And it’s about even the New York Times in a front-page story finding it difficult to know how and where to draw appropriate lines. Here’s a crucial paragraph in the front page article,

“With growing tolerance, the question is no longer whether gender reassignment is an option but rather how young should it begin.”

Well that’s a rather ominous and frightening question. How young should it begin? It begins with a cultural consensus according to this reporter and she’s onto something here, that in the larger society the logic has now switched from whether or not this kind of gender reassignment surgery is legitimate or for that matter, obligatory when it comes to medical coverage, but at what age it should become so. That’s the clear question that’s addressed in this article. And as we note, it is a morally distressing question, but even more so it’s a heartbreaking question.

The article is actually quite graphic in terms of its language. It’s dealing here with some pretty graphic material biologically and medically speaking, but one of the major points that is made by the article should interest us from a worldview perspective. Here we are told that it is more complicated to conduct or to complete, that’s the word used here, a gender reassignment process if it begins later in life. Speaking of those who have transitioned according to this language from male to female, Irene Sills, an endocrinologist said,

“Some of these women are passing, but barely, when they transition at 40 or 50. At 16 or 17, you are going to have such an easier life with this.”

Now that’s an astounding statement in itself, but here you see the logic of the transgender revolution working its way out, it’s working its way younger, that’s a very clear point. We shouldn’t really be surprised by this. After all, when you’re dealing with younger and younger people you’re dealing with people who have less and less settled understandings of many these issues. The reporter said,

“Given that there are no proven biological markers for what is known as gender dysphoria, however, there is no consensus in the medical community on the central question: whether teenagers, habitually trying on new identities and not known for foresight, should be granted an irreversible physical fix for what is still considered a psychological condition.”

Now that’s a blockbuster of a paragraph because here you have the New York Times acknowledging that this idea of gender dysphoria is still basically and essentially a psychological category. You also have the straightforward admission made in the first sentence of this paragraph, “that there are no proven biological markers for what is known as gender dysphoria.” I’ll give the New York Times credit for asking at least some of the most important questions,

“Is gender dysphoria governed by a miswiring of the brain or by genetic coding? How much does it stem from the pressure to fit into society’s boxes — pink and dolls for girls, blue and sports for boys? Has the Internet liberated teenagers like Kat from a narrow view of how they should live their life, or has it seduced them by offering them, for the first time, an answer to their self-searching, an answer they might later choose to reject?”

Importantly the reporter goes on,

“Some experts argue that the earlier the decision is made, the more treacherous, because it is impossible to predict which children will grow up to be transgender and which will not.”

Now at this point keep in mind an article we referenced in recent weeks. It appeared in the Wall Street Journal by Dr. Paul McHugh, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School and that hospital’s former psychiatrist in chief. Now you’ll recall that in that article in the Wall Street Journal, he pointed out that it was his hospital that was the first to perform this gender reassignment surgery. He also pointed out that most assuredly from his psychiatric and medical perspective, this kind of surgery is not the answer. He pointed to the fact as the New York Times acknowledges here that at least one major study and at this point the only study undertaken, indicates that individuals who have undergone this sex reassignment surgery have a 19 times more likely indication of being suicidal after the surgery. That’s a very alarming issue, Paul McHugh also pointed out that when it comes to younger people in particular, young adults and teenagers, the vast majority who indicate some interest in gender reassignment generally drop the interest before they enter actual adulthood. That also should be very informative here.

This article in the New York Times cites the fact that doctors have for some time been using so-called puberty blockers in the cases of some children to prevent them from entering puberty until they can decide whether they intend to be male or female. But puberty blocking drugs are one thing, now you have an open call in this article for discussion as to just how young individuals might be to request and receive gender reassignment surgery. As I said the article is quite physically graphic, I won’t go into to that detail but keep in mind that we’re talking here about a surgical effort actually to reassign and reconstruct sexuality and gender. It’s hard to exaggerate exactly what we’re dealing with here. And we have to keep in mind the fact that we’re talking here about very young people, we’re talking about teenagers but the logic of this article goes back even before the teen years. After all, when you’re talking about a puberty blocking mechanism, you’re actually talking about that which takes place before the teenage years. This is really dangerous territory, but it’s inevitable once the society embraces this idea of the transgender revolution. And if the transgender moment has arrived as Time magazine declared and now the New York Times as well, then the moments going to come with these kind of moral quandaries. And the most interesting aspect of that in looking at it from the perspective of this news story that arrived yesterday is that even those who embrace this revolution don’t know exactly what to do with it.

We pointed to the conflicting moral absolutes that put for instance, feminism over against the transgender ideology. They are people who want to join this revolution but they find themselves unable to adopt its logic and even if you do adopt this logic there are no logical answers to many of these questions. At least the New York Times representing that secular culture here recognizes that this is a huge moral issue. But once they have accepted the transgender ideology that moral issue is basically reduced to who has the right to demand this kind of surgery and then to demand that insurance companies pay for it – who has the right to do that at what age? Once you enter into that logic, you’re going to go back younger and younger and younger. There is simply no moral boundary to keep that from happening and once you accept this ideology it’s going to continue to unravel an entire structure of personal identity, of the understanding of what it means to be human, not to mention what it means to be male and female. Those very categories are simply going to dissolve because a society that accepts this logic can’t even use them with a straight face, or for that matter, with a straight list of editing rules.

But before leaving this article, I need to go back where I began; to heartbreak. Reading this article – even seeing the headline – there is a certain level of heartbreak about a society that has given itself to this kind of insanity which in terms of the Christian worldview is a form of moral rebellion against even God’s intention revealed in creation. But the heartbreak actually reaches far deeper than that. It’s extremely personal because we’re looking at what should be our heartbreak at the anguish that some of these people are undergoing in terms of their daily lives, in this news article some very, very young people. We’re looking at anguish that has come into the lives of individuals and families and in anguish that a secular society is trying to handle in the way that makes sense to it. That’s what’s perhaps most frightening about this article. All this makes sense according to the new wisdom of the new moral regime and what we’re looking at here is a heartbreak that needs to be acknowledged. We need to acknowledge with deep heartbreak of our own that there are people right among us, right around us who are undergoing this kind of anguish. Our response to them has to be based in the truth. The undiluted truth of God’s word, but it also has to be based in an understanding that this kind of anguish must be truly horrifying. This is where Christians have to understand and understand very clearly, there is no answer for this other than the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. For the one who died in our place knows us infinitely better than we know ourselves and loves us all the same. He loved us all the way to the cross.

2) Rachel Dolezal furor reveals race as far more fixed than gender in modern society

Another front page article in yesterday’s New York Times has a similar worldview implication and oddly enough, though it’s not acknowledged on the front page of the times, it is linked to the previous story. This one is by Kirk Johnson, Richard Pérez-Peña and John Eligon, it is datelined Spokane, Washington. It’s about a woman by the name of Rachel Dolezal and as America now knows she is no longer head of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP. What we don’t know is whether or not she is black. She now quite infamously claims to be. I say infamous because she’s become a very clear center of public attention but when it comes to her racial identity she still insists she’s black.

As the New York Times reminds us there is no hint of any black ancestry whatsoever in terms of her background, but she still claims and has claimed that she is black. She claimed to be black when she took a public role in the city of Spokane and when she became the head of the chapter of the NAACP there. But when she was a student at Howard University, an overwhelmingly African-American University, she didn’t identify as Black but as white. Confronted with evidence that she had no African-American ancestry she simply said,

“I identify as black.”

She appeared on NBC’s Today Show with host Matt Lauer and when he asked,

“When did you start deceiving people?”

She responded,

“I do take exception to that because it’s a little more complex than me identifying as black, or answering a question of, ‘Are you black or white?’ ” she said. Over the course of the day, she also described herself as “transracial” and said: “Well, I definitely am not white. Nothing about being white describes who I am.”

In an understatement, the New York Times article says,

“Her story has set off a national debate about the very meaning of racial identity, with some people applauding her message and goals and others deploring her methods and actions.”

Now how is this story tied to the previous story? Well the story on the transgender issue, especially as related to teenagers, reminds us that that logic tells us, insists as a matter of fact, that the gender or sex we are assigned at birth in terms of biology has no necessary bearing on the gender that we must now be recognized to have, because in our personal autonomy we claim the identity as male or female or virtually anything now in between. But when Rachel Dolezal tried to apply that to the issue of race, well, she found that the society is not yet ready to embrace that logic. So while we’re being told that sex in terms of gender is not a biologically lasting category, race or ethnic identity is, especially this case as related to skin color.

Now, the article is actually quite honest and indicating that this woman’s skin color darkened over time, it’s insinuated by some means of treatment. We see that the categories here seem to be far more fixed in this society’s thinking when it comes to race. Dorothy Webster identified as a longtime member the Spokane NAACP said,

“The issue for me has been the deception, the lie, portraying herself as someone she isn’t. I cannot rationalize it.”

Well I think the society really can’t rationalize the entire issue. And when it comes to issues of race, there are very deep sensitivities here. Writing also in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times, this opinion piece, Tamara Winfrey Harris, the author of the book “The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America,” says that Rachel Dolezal is morally wrong because she has appropriated someone else’s story and someone else’s identity.

As she wrote,

“Rachel A. Dolezal, who stepped down Monday as president of the Spokane, Wash., chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., could have been a powerful ally to African-Americans. The participation of white allies has always been important to anti-racism work. By most accounts, she is educated about black cultures and an advocate for black causes. But empathy evolved into impersonation. And Ms. Dolezal’s subterfuge, made easier by the legacy of racism in America, undermines the very people she claims to support.”

She cites Dolezal who said,

“I identify as black.”

And then Harris writes,

“But actual black people, like me, don’t have the option of choosing.”

Now at this point I need to acknowledge that I don’t believe I can adequately unpack and think through this issue, not on my own. With humility, I need to acknowledge that I need the help of African-American brothers and sisters in Christ to think this issue through and adequately to understand it. But from a Christian worldview perspective, this much is clear to me. Here you have two different articles that appear on the front page of the same day’s edition of the New York Times. Both are about personal identity and claims that biology alone can’t tell us who we are. Now there’s a sense in which there’s a link between these two articles, but one of them is following the logic that the individual has an absolutely unfettered right to say I’m a male or I’m a female, you must acknowledge me as such and even use my chosen pronoun of the day (that’s actually even cited in the article on the transgender issue and teenagers). But at the same time, the other article says on issues of race what you are born to be is who you are.

The point to me seems very clear here you have one article in which the clear ideological worldview is personal autonomy means you have to deal with me as I claim to be. Then you have another article in which on the issue of race we’re told that same logic does not pertain. It tells us a great deal that both of those articles appeared on the same day on the front page of the New York Times. The editors of that paper might not have recognized what links these two stories together but Christians reading the headline to the Christian worldview had better.

3) 200th anniversary of Waterloo reminder of the sin of hubris

Finally, today marks a very important historical anniversary; the Battle of Waterloo was fought 200 years ago today. It was one of most important battles in terms of Western history, or for that matter the history the world. It raises one of those very interesting questions, how would the history of the world be different if this battle had ended differently? The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, the 18th of June in the year 1815. The battle is name for Waterloo, which is now part of Belgium, and in it the Emperor Napoleon of the French and the French army were defeated by the armies of the so-called Seventh Coalition. This was a group that was led by England and with combined armies under the command of the Duke of Wellington. Also involved in the battle was the Prussian army, later a part of Germany, under the command of Gebhard von Blücher. You’ll recall that Napoleon who had established his Empire had been deposed and in exile. But then he came back for a 100 day reign that was eventually ended finally, at the Battle of Waterloo.

Actually when we ask the question, how would history be different, we do know this – Napoleon was assembling one of the most ravenous and ambitious empires in world history. And of course, he was asserting even though he was not ethically French, he was from Corsica, he was asserting French supremacy over all of Europe, and he was largely winning the argument by means of military strategy and his armies. He believed that his army was largely invincible, he believed in a sense of historical destiny that had brought him back to power and to glory and if anyone understood martial glory it was the Emperor Napoleon. But Napoleon met his end at Waterloo in terms of his military and imperial ambitions, and he did so by what historians will argue was an act of military hubris. He went into the battle believing he would win but he didn’t, instead the allies won under the control of the Duke of Wellington and his Prussian allies.

In one sense it was a victory for democracy over imperial monarchial rule. In another sense it was a victory for civilization over against the despotism that Napoleon actually represented. Napoleon is one of those complex figures in history. Most of us if we come to know of him are fascinated by him. In terms of his personal story, in terms of his ambition, in terms of his leadership style, of his military exploits, but Napoleon the man is also a reminder to us of the sin of hubris, of overweening ambition, of the sin of pride and of the false sense of individual destiny.

How important was this battle to history? Well the French novelist Victor Hugo said,

“It wasn’t really a battle. It was a change of direction in the universe.”

That may be a bit of French oversimplification, but if anything it does point to the fact that the nation most affected by the defeat of Napoleon was France itself. As many have indicated in recent days, the French government and the French people seem to show very little interest in memorializing the Battle of Waterloo. I guess that makes sense. But those of us who are looking at this anniversary have to recognize how we read history as Christians, through the lens of divine providence. We come to understand that even as the industrialist Henry Ford said, there are some people who believe that history is just one thing after another, but that’s not true. History is not just a sequence of days and events, instead it is an account and an understanding of what has happened in a moral framework. Moral because God created human creatures as moral creatures made in his image and moral because we see the basic laws and principles that God has implanted in the universe, in creation for his glory and for our good, working their way out quite inevitably in history. The history of Europe would most assuredly be very different if Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo. Perhaps he might have been defeated at some later point, who knows? We do know that what happened at Waterloo matters, not just because it’s an historical fact but because history has meaning.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce college just go to boycecollege.com.

I’m speaking to you from Columbus, Ohio and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 06-18-15

1) Culture no longer asks ‘whether’ but ‘when’ gender reassignment should occur

The New Girl in School: Transgender Surgery at 18, New York Times (Anemona Hartocollis)

Transgender Surgery Isn’t the Solution, Wall Street Journal (Paul McHugh)

2) Rachel Dolezal furor reveals race as far more fixed than gender in modern society

Rachel Dolezal, in Center of Storm, Is Defiant: ‘I Identify as Black’, New York Times (Kirk Johnson, Richard Pérez-Peña, and John Eligon)

Black Like Who? Rachel Dolezal’s Harmful Masquerade, New York Times (Tamara Winfrey Harris)

3) 200th anniversary of Waterloo reminder of the sin of hubris

Battle of Waterloo, Wikipedia

Transcript: The Briefing 06-17-15

The Briefing

June 17, 2015

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

 

It’s Wednesday, June 17, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) CA physician-assisted suicide bill passes after medical association drops opposition, redefining physicians’ role

Just last week the California Senate moved forward on a bill that would legalize physician assisted suicide as it is called. The passage of the bill is troubling enough but the reason why the bill moved through the Senate after having being stalled is even more troubling. One of the major issues that moved the legislation forward is that the California Medical Association dropped its opposition to the bill. This was indeed a very troubling development announced in late May by the California Association of Physicians. And the California Medical Association in dropping its opposition understood the political context that dropping of opposition was almost surely to lead to the eventual passage of the bill.

What we’re looking at here is a major moral shift and it’s one that bodes very ominously for the rest of the nation, even more than that for our very value of the sanctity of human life. The reason for that is straightforward, what we have here is a major medical association of physicians, a physician association that acknowledged the first line of the Hippocratic Oath being that the physician should first do no harm. The physicians association decided to drop opposition to the bill because as one of its spokesman very clearly identified, public opinion on the issue had shifted. The medical association insisted that it had not changed its position due to the change in public opinion, but it’s noteworthy that the spokesperson for the association made very clear by his own words that it was a shift in the public opinion that led to the occasion. He made those statements and comments to National Public Radio.

A couple of moral realities are very telling here. In the first place, we have the moral authority of physicians. You have senators there in California who felt morally and politically and able to support physician-assisted suicide only when the physicians themselves dropped moral opposition to the bill. We also need to note that when we look to the specific date, the press release from the California Medical Association is the 20th of May, you look to that specific day in the specific year 2015, and we have to ask the question – what happened in effect between May 19 and May 20th? What happened that would occasion a change in the moral perception of physicians in which on one day the majority of these physicians as represented by their professional association believe that is morally wrong for a physician to cooperate in assisted suicide. What changed to the next day when the medical association dropped its opposition?

We should note by the way that this moral change is something of a half measure. The California association dropped its opposition to physician-assisted suicide, but given the political context – this is not really a halfway step. This removed all opposition on the part of the largest representative body of doctors in California to the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. That’s huge. The other thing we need to note is just how significant this shift is in the medical profession. We have a profession that had been steadfastly and by this we don’t refer to decades, but rather to centuries, steadfastly against the role of any honorable physician in the active assisting suicide, to the position now at least undertaken by the CMA, that there is no basic moral opposition to the practice and thus the medical association would take no action against any physician who would be compliant with the law in California when assisted suicide is made legal.

So putting these two moral realities together, operating out of a Christian worldview we come with deep concern to the redefinition of the morality of the medical profession, in this instance when it comes to assisted suicide. And we also look to the fact, when we observe larger moral change in the culture, the role of specific professions becomes very outsized, it’s exaggerated. The moral authority of physicians on an issue like this is very, very important. And when you have the dropping of opposition on the part of a group like the CMA you effectively have a great deal of moral momentum added to the side which is now pushing for the legalization of assisted suicide.

An interesting and also troubling editorial appeared in yesterday’s edition of The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio. The commentary is by John M. Crisp identified as teaching in the English department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. Crisp writes in support of physician-assisted suicide and he celebrates the action taken by the California Senate. But from a worldview perspective, the most interesting aspect of Crisp’s editorial is how he ends it making what he believes is the case for assisted suicide. He writes about those who tell their stories of desperation at the end of life, those who are seeking for physician-assisted suicide and he says maybe these stories,

“Will also provoke us to begin a conversation about the quality of life as opposed to its length. We’re a nation that believes in personal freedom. But the ultimate freedom is exercising some control over when and how we die. That privilege could eliminate a great deal of unnecessary suffering and, perhaps, even alleviate some of our inherent fear of death.”

Now as I said that’s extremely revealing. The case that John Crisp is making for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide comes down to personal autonomy and personal freedom. In that paragraph I read you he makes the audacious claim,

“The ultimate freedom is exercising some control over when and how we die.”

We’ve remarked from time to time looking at issues ranging from sexuality and marriage to now physician-assisted suicide, any number of issues, noting that the fundamental worldview change is a change among so many in modern Western societies from a theistic worldview that had been grounded in Scripture and in the Christian truth claim to a secularized worldview. But the secularized worldview has as its driving dynamic the highest ideal of personal autonomy that is its greatest good. But personal autonomy, detached from any understanding of the Christian worldview leads to a personal autonomy that is ultimately idolatrous and dangerous. In this case, it’s clearly idolatrous because here human beings are demanding the right that belongs only to God, to God alone. That is the right to decide when we will be born and the right to decide when we will die. But it’s also dangerous because it seeks to invest in human beings, in each one of us, the decision as to when and how we will die or at least as John Crisp argues considerable control over both of those questions.

We should be extremely sympathetic with those who are facing very difficult issues at the end of life and there is no doubt that as the Bible explains death is our enemy, and death is not beautiful. That’s another lie of the modern secular age that somehow a death can be disguised as something that is beautiful. That is deeply rooted in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and that philosophy, of course, as Nietzsche acknowledged amounts to pure nihilism. There is no meaning in the universe, there is no God there is no truth, there is no good, there is no beauty, there is no meaning to life. Ultimately, when we claim or protect the claim of control over our lives to this extent, we attempt to take the place of God and we become idolaters, and not merely idolaters, we become very dangerous idolaters and dangerous not only to our own human dignity, but to the human dignity of every single human being on the planet.

2) Expected Supreme Court approval of gay marriage will raise parenting questions of law

Next, there is a great deal of anticipation, of course, as the United States Supreme Court is set to rule on any number of major cases and central among them from a moral perspective is the case that will put the issue of same-sex marriage before the nation in a whole new way. The likelihood is that the case known formally as Obergefell versus Hodges, the likelihood is that it will lead to the legalization of same-sex marriage in all 50 states. And making that point yesterday was the New York Times. Adam Liptak, veteran observer of the court referred back first to something that took place three years ago when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had criticized the news media for trying to look ahead and determine by so-called reading the tea leaves on how the court is going to rule. She said, speaking of justices and those who surround them such as clerks,

“Those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know.”

Speaking of how the court will rule. However, as Liptak says, even Justice Ginsburg herself has given some pretty good indications in times past, and perhaps quite recently as to how the court is going to rule. As Liptak notes, back then Justice Ginsburg had spoken to a liberal legal group known as the American Constitution Society back then she said,

“This term has been more than usually taxing,” she said in that speech at the American Constitution Society, a liberal legal group. Two weeks later, the Supreme Court upheld the heart of the health care law on a surprising ground — as an exercise of Congress’s power to impose taxes.”

Well he reports Justice Ginsburg was back before the same liberal legal group last week, indeed on Saturday, speaking to the American Constitution Society and at this point she was if anything, very clear. When it comes to the issue of gay rights, she said that change is becoming very quickly,

“People looked around,” she said, “and it was my next-door neighbor, of whom I was very fond, my child’s best friend, even my child.

“They are people we know and we love and we respect, and they are part of us,” she added. “Discrimination began to break down very rapidly once they no longer hid in a corner or in a closet.”

 

“The climate of the era,” she said, is “part of the explanation of why the gay rights movement has advanced to where it is today.”

Speaking again of the climate of the era she means a climate of moral change. Now as Liptak says, Justice Ginsburg did not directly address the pending same-sex marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges, but Liptak then says,

“Hers were not the words of a woman whose court was about to deal the gay rights movement a devastating setback when it issues its decision in the coming weeks on whether there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.”

In other words, Liptak says it was pretty clear that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was signaling that the court is going to legalize same-sex marriage in all 50 states. He then went on,

 

“The court’s more conservative justices seem to be bracing for a loss. In a February dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, said the court’s failure to halt same-sex marriages in Alabama “may well be seen as a signal of the court’s intended resolution of that question.”

Now looking at the way the United States Supreme Court operates, these are rather unusual precedents, but what Adam Liptak didn’t actually acknowledge in this article is that when it comes to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and she’s not alone among the liberal justices in this regard, it’s not just what Justice Ginsburg has said it’s what she has done. She has performed more than one same-sex marriage ceremony. Actions as we are told as children speak louder than words. In this case her words are pretty interesting and revealing in themselves, her actions actually far more so.

The same-sex marriage decision is not the only major Supreme Court decision looming before us, although it’s the most important when it comes to moral issues this term. There’s another major decision pending on the ObamaCare legislation and there are huge other issues as well but when it comes to the signals about these future decisions, well the signals are especially clear on the issue of same-sex marriage, especially clear and especially concerning.

And speaking of this looming decision when the Supreme Court rules and it will rule by the end of this term, usually by the last day of June, when the court rules some issues are certainly going to be clarified. We expect that one thing to be clarified is the fact that the court will rule one way or the other. And how it rules is also important that same-sex marriage will be legal in all 50 states. But as the New York Times acknowledged in an article that ran in Monday’s edition of the paper, that won’t settle all the issues and in a very telling article reporter Tara Siegel Bernard says that one of the issues that will be less clarified is going to be the role and the rights of so-called same-sex parents. She begins by telling the story of one same-sex couple that has gone through significant legal turmoil with their four children and she writes about the fact that in one sense, the legalization of same-sex marriage may clarify to some extent, the right to same-sex parents. But as the reporter makes clear and her article verifies, this is not going to be as clarified as some people may think. The reason for that, however, is something that really isn’t acknowledged in this article at all. The reason for it is deeply theological. However, it’s addressed in this article as merely legal. Bernard writes,

“If same-sex marriage is legalized nationwide as part of the monumental case before the Supreme Court — a decision is expected this month — married couples living in states that do not acknowledge their unions will gain significant financial and legal benefits. But as sweeping as the changes will be, one aspect of marriage may not always be automatically guaranteed: parental rights.”

She cites Emily Hecht-McGowan, director of public policy at the Family Equality Council, who says,

“Marriage does not solve all. It provides innumerable protections, rights and responsibilities to married couples and parents raising children in a marriage. But it doesn’t come close to solving all of the legal and recognition issues that same-sex couples and their children face.”

Bernard goes into a rather lengthy consideration, in some cases citing specific states in which the legal complexities will continue. She then writes,

“National marriage status could also provide another way to create legal ties to children, although it may be more tenuous in some states. Traditionally, children born to a married woman are generally presumed to be the legal children of her husband.”

Now note that the word used there specifically is husband, not merely spouse or partner, and that’s because the expectation of the law deeply rooted not only in terms of a biblical picture but also just of human experience throughout millennia. The expectation is that we’re talking about a man and a woman in marriage, thus the word wife and husband, and that they are a pair involved in procreation. Thus the children have come from their biological bond. When you begin to break that, when you begin to come up with artificial ways by which children might be conceived and even implanted in the womb and then even born, when you come up with all the permutations that are involved in coming up with what can be called same-sex marriage and then same-sex parenting, the obvious fact is that same-sex couples are not a biological pair able to procreate. At that point, the question of to whom the children belong? That becomes a very urgent question. It’s not simple. It’s not simple legally; it’s not going to be resolved even by the Supreme Court ruling on the legalization of same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

Now there’s more to parenthood, of course, and in the world of marriage throughout the centuries there have been innovation such as adoption and other means, including assisted reproductive technologies for a couple to conceive and then also to gain a child, one way or the other. But these have been understood to have been meaningful within the context of marriage as the union of a man and woman as a conjugal union, a conjugal pair in which the promise of procreation is real, at least by the bonding of the man and the woman. But when you come to same-sex marriage, you have a complete abstraction from that moral context, or for that matter, from that biological context and upon that question there then follows the very urgent issue to whom does this child or these children belong?

You know it’s been noted for a very long time that that is one of the most urgent human questions. That’s the question we all ask, to whom do I belong? The advent of same-sex marriage in its legal form or what’s called same-sex marriage puts us in the position of confusing that question in a whole new way and ultimately in a devastating way. That’s one of the reasons why, but only one of the reasons why we point out that the Supreme Court decision, no matter how massive it is when it is handed down, won’t be the end of the story, for that matter not even close.

3) Conflict over revisionist AP history standards shows significance of worldview to interpretation of history

Finally, the Wall Street Journal has an important article that appeared over the weekend entitled,

“Bye, Bye, American History.”

The author is Daniel Henninger, it’s the Wonderland column of the Wall Street Journal. When he is saying goodbye to American history, he’s talking about the fact that history, especially as it is taught in colleges and universities and now even in high schools and elementary schools, history has become a very controversial subject and from a Christian worldview perspective we need to understand why. If you tell the story of the history you are defining terms and that’s exactly why history has always been so controversial, especially in the modern age, especially at the intersection of the secularized worldview and the traditional understanding of history.

The new issue is the AP curriculum. That’s advanced placement and that’s very important because the AP curriculum sets the standards that will be followed by many high schools in particular, and the AP standards also signal what’s expected in terms of historical knowledge, or in this case historical interpretation, by the mainstream of America’s academic historians operating at universities. As Henninger writes,

“Last week, 56 professors and historians published a petition on the website of the National Association of Scholars, urging opposition to the College Board’s framework.”

So as you look more closely at the situation, you have a group such as the National Association of Scholars that group includes a good many conservative historians amongst its numbers and then you have the very liberal American Historical Association. Now predictably, the two groups are in a face-off over these new AP standards and the new standards by any measure represent what’s called a revisionist understanding of American history. And that revisionist understanding we should note is driven by a very leftist ideological bias that also comes through in the materials for the new AP standards.

But from the Christian worldview perspective the important issue is to understand that history matters, if we understand what happened and we have the right understanding of how to tell the story we’ll know the truth. This is not to say that history is just a collection of facts. History always requires interpretation. But we need to note that interpretation will happen according to some ideological grid, according to some worldview. And the worldview that dignifies history the most is the Christian worldview because Christianity we should note is an historical faith, not just the fact that it’s a very old faith, it’s an historical faith in that its truth claims are deeply rooted in time and space and history. The same is true of biblical Judaism, but Christianity in particular makes very clear claims about events that took place in history. Events that are documented and revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures, events that are understood to have taken place and time and space and history, events that are for our knowledge and that knowledge for our salvation and for our maturity as Christians. And furthermore, we have to understand that if you deny that historical basis, you are undercutting the very central truth claims of Christianity.

The Christian worldview doesn’t insist that history is easy or simple to understand. Instead, it tells us that we are dependent upon divine Revelation to know not only the who, the what and the when, but also the why. The Bible’s unfolding story which we call the gospel and the metanarrative of Scripture, that story is central to Christianity itself. Take away or diminish in any way the historical claims and you have redefined Christianity, you have redefined the gospel. And if you redefine the gospel according to the New Testament itself, you lose it. It is interesting that secular historians understand that history is important. Of course what’s more important for us is to understand that for Christians, history is less important than it is for secular historians, it is far more important.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to BoyceCollege.com.

I’m speaking to you from Columbus, Ohio, and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.