R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 307

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.

 

The Briefing 06-17-15

Podcast Transcript

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

Physician-Assisted Death Legislation Moves Forward In California, NPR

California Medical Association removes opposition to physician aid in dying bill, California Medical Association

America needs to talk about physician-assisted suicide, Columbus Dispatch (John M. Crisp)

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

Justices’ Words Are Combed for Clues as Major Decisions Loom at Court, New York Times (Adam Liptak)

The Same-Sex Marriage Decision: What’s at Stake for Couples, New York Times (Tara Siegel Bernard)

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

Bye, Bye, American History, Wall Street Journal (Daniel Henninger)

 

Transcript: The Briefing 06-16-15

The Briefing

June 16, 2015

 

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

 

It’s Tuesday, June 16, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Jeb Bush unsurprisingly announces candidacy, leaving both parties with question of dynasty

To no one’s surprise the 2016 presidential race in the United States grew more interesting yesterday. Again, it wasn’t a surprise – former Florida Governor Jeb Bush announced that he would be a candidate for the Republican nomination for the office of President of the United States. The former governor made his announcement at the Kendall campus of Miami-Dade College there in the area of Miami. He was not a surprise but it was a big day for the Bush campaign. Political analysts on both sides of the aisle generally credited the former Florida Governor with a rather unexpectedly good performance in the speech and in his campaign’s general release yesterday. In particular, there were two videos which caught a great deal of attention. In making his announcement yesterday, Mr. Bush made very clear he will be a serious candidate. He leads Republican candidates in terms of fundraising but to this point, his campaign has not caught fire the way some Republican analysts had expected.

There are some huge issues looming before all the candidates for the Republican nomination for the office of President, but when it comes to Jeb Bush one of the central questions is whether or not he will run taking advantage of his last name. As the former governor said yesterday he does not intend to be handed the Republican nomination. That’s a good thing by the way, he certainly will not be handed that nomination. He also spoke of the need to prove himself as a candidate. He also in recent days has made clear that he is not ashamed of his family name. But there is clearly an issue here that’s going to be difficult for him to deny. The very way that he became the governor of Florida, the same way his brother George W. Bush became the governor of Texas and later president was at least in part due to the fact that their father, George H.W. Bush had been President of the United States. And the way that George H.W. Bush got started in his political career was at least partly attributable to the fact that his father Prescott Bush had been a member of the United States Senate.

So we’re looking at the fact year that we are confronting political dynasties. On the Republican side the Bush dynasty, on the Democratic side the Clinton dynasty. And Americans are actually divided perhaps even within individual voters as to whether or not they want a Dynasty. Americans overwhelmingly say that they do not, but when they go to the voting booth they often vote in a way that is contrary to what they say. Just think of the name Kennedy when you’re thinking of family dynasty in the United States. We do not believe in a hereditary monarchy, but we do believe in the enduring political value of a name. The prominence of the names Bush and Clinton in the 2016 election cycle should remind us that the Bush or Clinton names in one way or another and in two years both have appeared in the election cycles of 1980, 1984, 1992, 1996 and 2008, now again in 2016. In one way or the other as candidates, someone with the name Kennedy was a part of the presidential election cycles of 1956 1960, 1968 and 1976, at least in terms of the primaries.

On the Democratic side, one of the key issues faced by Hillary Clinton is how or to what degree, she will or will not identify with the incumbent President of the United States, Barack Obama, on several issues most pointedly in recent days, trade policy. As Peter Nicholas of the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday,

“Hillary Clinton re-launched her presidential campaign over the weekend by saying she would be a “fighter” for families struggling to pay bills and save for retirement. But for weeks she avoided picking a side in the fight that has bitterly divided her party: the pending 12-nation, Pacific Rim trade deal.By Sunday, her reluctance had become untenable.

“In a speech in Iowa, Mrs. Clinton aligned herself with the party’s congressional liberals, saying their concerns about free trade were valid and that President Barack Obama, who is pushing for the trade pact, should work “to make sure we get the best, strongest deal possible.”

Now one thing to note is that that’s the politician’s way of appearing to say something while saying very little. After all, did anyone expect that she would say that the President should work to get something less than the best strongest deal possible? But what was politically significant about what Mrs. Clinton said on Sunday was that she very clearly did distance herself from the President of the United States and as the Wall Street Journal indicates she sided quite decidedly, even if the words don’t appear to mean so, with the congressional left, with the liberals in her own party in Congress.

2) Journalist argues marriage merely political reality preventing poor from success

Meanwhile, on the Republican side there are some other issues that are very, very interesting to watch. One of them is going to be how Republicans deal with social issues. Charles Blow writing in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times writes about what he calls, “Jeb Bush and single mothers.”

This article is actually a lot less interesting as it refers to Governor Bush and a lot more interesting as it makes very clear what’s at stake in terms of much of the conversation that will surround this election. Charles Blow is a very well-known liberal columnist for the New York Times, he writes about the fact that,

“Last week, Jeb Bush was asked to answer for a passage from his book from two decades ago, “Profiles in Character,” in a chapter titled “The Restoration of Shame,” in which he blamed the “irresponsible conduct” of births to unmarried women on a flagging sense of community ridicule and shaming.”

That again is the words of Jeb Bush as interpreted in this case by Charles Blow.

“Bush responded, according to MSNBC: “My views have evolved over time, but my views about the importance of dads being involved in the lives of children hasn’t changed at all. In fact, since 1995 … this book was a book about cultural indicators [and] the country has moved in the wrong direction. We have a 40-plus percent out-of-wedlock birth rate.”

[He continued:] “It’s a huge challenge for single moms to raise children in the world that we’re in today and it hurts the prospects, it limits the possibilities of young people being able to live lives of purpose and meaning.”

Charles Blow actually pushes back on that, saying that the problem with single motherhood really isn’t all that big a deal and saying that perhaps the worst thing imaginable would be to reinvigorate a moral discussion about the question of whether or not children are born to married parents or whether they have parents, including a mother and a father in the home.

The New York Times and other major media have been pushing far to the left on this kind of family and marriage redefinition for a long time. That’s why to so many on that side of the moral equation, the arrival of same-sex marriage just makes perfect sense, at least in theory, if not in practice. But Blow wants to make the point in his column that Jeb Bush is wrong to focus on the problem of out of wedlock births and the impact that has especially on children. This harkens back to the fact that a few decades ago in the late 1960s and early 1970s already the sociological evidence was piling up; indicating that single motherhood, children born outside of wedlock represented a very serious social and economic problem, not just a moral problem. But this gets to a major worldview divide in America. Does the sociology produce the morality or does the morality produce the sociology? In this kind of question, Christians need to think very carefully. For one thing we do not deny that sociological issues can play in the moral experience. But we must insist, armed with the biblical worldview, that morality always precedes sociology in terms of the importance of the question. That’s because we believe the morality produces the sociology and there’s no way around a sociological problem as a moral base without dealing with the moral problem itself.

Charles Blow in this column on Jeb Bush takes the opportunity to criticize the former Florida governor for moralizing rather than dealing with this as a mere political or economic issue. But on this score, Governor Bush is absolutely right. This is a moral question before it is anything else. In his article, again it was published yesterday in the New York Times, Charles Blow writes,

“We spend quite a bit of energy blaming births to unmarried women for our woes, but that is only part of the picture. The other part is the way we as a society treat those women and the fathers of their children. Instead of endless efforts to sanctify marriage, the emphasis should be on finding ways to support children and encourage more parental engagement from both parents, regardless of marital status. This includes removing all barriers and penalties for people, especially the poor, to cohabitate.”

That is an explosive paragraph. It’s incredibly interesting. It is urgently important. What we have here is an argument for making marriage itself a nonissue, not only morally but in terms of national policy as well. We need to note something very significant; this is a huge jump for the left as represented here by Charles Blow. Because even those on the cultural left have insisted that marriage was vitally and is incredibly meaningful even when they sought to redefine it. Now he’s saying we should actually, let me just quote again, “Remove all barriers and penalties for people especially the poor to cohabitate.”

There is abundant sociological evidence available now that cohabitation is disastrous for children. For one thing, cohabitation in America no longer leads to marriage; it has become a substitute for marriage. And cohabitations are growing shorter and shorter in terms of duration. In other words, cohabitation is the problem not the answer to the problem. And yet we have Charles Blow writing here that we need to avoid what he calls “endless efforts to sanctify marriage” and instead emphasize “ways to support children and encourage more parental engagement from both parents.”

Well that’s an interesting concept – both parents. When you look at the revolution that’s taking place in the family there’s no necessity of even having the words, both parents. When it comes to so many of these children born outside of marriage, there really is no meaningful second parent in their lives at any point. Furthermore, why would such a parent, merely defined perhaps here by biology, take responsibility for greater involvement in the lives of his or her children? The answer is quite simple, marriage has been the legal, cultural and social institution that has upheld that responsibility and cultural expectation. You take marriage out of the picture, as Charles Blow here very straightforwardly suggests that we should, and what you’re left with is no binding moral argument whatsoever. You have nothing more than a call for government to remove barriers to cohabitation and to apparently come up with some way to convince people they ought to be engaged in the lives of their children to come up with something that will be a substitute for marriage. But that’s the real issue here.

The Christian worldview reminds us there is no substitute for marriage and what we have here is an argument that’s about to be joined. It’s interesting that the very day that Jeb Bush made his announcement that he will become, mark this – the 11th declared candidate for the Republican nomination, a major columnist in the New York Times says, well, then it’s time to talk about the family. Well of course it’s time to do so. It’s just incredibly telling that he chose this day and this candidate on this occasion to make that point.

3) Ohio legislature considers conversion therapy ban, viewing sexuality as unchangeable

Next, yesterday’s front page of The Columbus Dispatch included an article by Emma Ockerman entitled, “Conversion Therapy in the Crosshairs.”

It’s another very interesting article that appeared here in Columbus as the legislature here is considering bills in both the Ohio House and Senate to outlaw so-called conversion therapy, in particular for legal minors. As The Columbus Dispatch reports,

“Two bills, one introduced in the House and one in the Senate, would make it illegal for Ohio’s licensed medical professionals to practice what’s most often referred to as reparative, conversion or sexual-reorientation therapy on a minor.”

As The Columbus Dispatch indicates,

“Similar legislation already is on the books in New Jersey, California, Oregon and the District of Columbia.”

Several other states are considering it as well. The paper also accurately points out that

the psychotherapeutic professions have largely repudiated any kind of therapy that would even seek to change sexual orientation or to reorder sexual desire. This includes the American Psychological Association that passed such a resolution in 2009 and the American Psychiatric Association that did so 11 years earlier. It’s really interesting. Both of those organizations had until the early 1970s, 1973 is the key year, diagnosed homosexual orientation, homosexual desire and homosexual behaviors as psychological or psychiatric disorders. That was changed under what is now acknowledged to have been intense political pressure and now it’s cited as a scientific finding, although it wasn’t even really claimed to be scientific when the effort was undertaken to change the policies of the two organizations in 1973.

A really interesting paragraph in the article reads like this,

“Most professionals avoid trying to sway a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity anyway, Dr. Jim Broyles of Grove City Psychological Services said. It could be considered an ethical violation by state licensing boards, and Broyles said “research is saying that it’s very, very unlikely that a person’s sexual orientation is going to change.”

Well, that’s an interesting statement –  as I said a very interesting paragraph – in and of itself. For one thing, it makes clear that mental health professionals are now largely under this kind of political and social pressure unwilling even to address someone who might want to change his or her sexual orientation, in particular anything that might have to do with changing someone’s sexual pattern of orientation from homosexual or same-sex related to heterosexual or opposite gender related.

Note that’s very telling in itself, but it also points to the fact that in this politically correct revolution, it’s going to be very difficult to answer some very basic questions. What happens when someone shows up at a psychiatrist or psychologist or a therapist or even more chillingly, a minister’s office and says what should I think about my sexual feelings? Well this article tips its hand in using as its very first illustration someone who was operating out of the historic Christian understanding of sexual morality and telling someone that homosexuality is a sin. That is now held up as what must not happen. And of course the setting here is largely therapeutic or psychological or psychiatric but it’s very clear that the intended target goes beyond those professions and right into the kind of conversation that a parent might have with a child, a friend with a friend, and of course as I said even more chillingly, the kind of conversation that a pastor might have with a church member.

It’s anticipated in terms of local political analysis in Ohio that one of these bills will make a great deal of progress and will eventually pass and gain the Governor’s signature. That’s going to be a very interesting development here in Ohio, but it’s simply following the same kind of trajectory that has been seen elsewhere. And what we have here is a culture of political correctness that is committed to a moral revolution that hasn’t even thought out the consequences of what it’s doing here.

One of the questions we need to ask from a Christian perspective is simply this, what about someone who shows up saying, even in a secular context to a secular psychological or psychiatric authority, I don’t understand my sexual feelings. I don’t know how those feelings should be addressed. I don’t know how they should be directed. How in the world will any professional given this law be able to give any meaningful response? Any meaningful response that is, without fear of eventually losing one’s professional license.

4) Author presents evolutionary argument for dominance of human species, undermining its uniqueness 

Finally in terms of worldview, a really interesting column by opinion writer, Michael Gerson of The Washington Post. Gerson writes a piece that has been entitled, “Species succeeds because it can work toward big things.”

The species by the way, as Homo sapiens he’s talking about human beings. He writes,

“About 2 million years ago, a genetic mutation resulted in the human species — social, restless but consigned to the middle of the food chain, breaking open the bones of carrion for marrow after the lions left. As a species, we were pretty slow starters. For most of those 2 million years, we used the same stone tools, entirely unconscious of the need for iPhone upgrades. Individually, no doubt, we could be the life of the party. Collectively, we migrated across the Earth without leaving much art or history. Several species of humans — Homo erectus, Homo soloensis, Homo neanderthalensis and the rest — lived the relatively healthy, relatively happy hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

“Then, perhaps 150,000 years ago, came Homo sapiens.”

Just remember that introduction and then keep in mind that he is writing his column in response to a new book by Yuval Noah Harari entitled, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.

Gerson’s not buying the argument entirely. Harari’s writing from an entirely secularist perspective in which he’s arguing that what makes human beings, Homo sapiens, distinctive is our ability to create communal meaning. He writes,

“Much of history,” says Harari, “revolves around this question: How does one persuade millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations, or limited liability companies? Yet when it succeeds, it gives sapiens immense power, because it enables millions of strangers to cooperate and work toward common goals.”

He calls this so-called mythic glue. Now what’s he referring to here? He’s saying that what distinguishes human beings from other beings is the fact that we alone have the capacity to create harmonious cooperative human community and we do so he says, unlike other beings, unlike other animals in particular, because we are able to create narratives and stories that give us common identity in common meaning. They give meaning to life. But Harari doesn’t believe that any of those things are true.

As Michael Gerson writes,

“Harari consigns all those myths to the realm of fiction — not only religions but the whole enterprise of humanistic, rights-based liberalism: “There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.”

Gerson then responds,

“With a kind of courageous consistency, he argues that the life sciences reveal sapiens as nothing more than a bundle of neurons, blood and bile. And that, he concedes, destroys the whole basis for ethics, law and democracy.”

Well, of course, that’s a key insight. Michael Gerson is exactly right, that when Harari consigns all that meaning to nothing more than a humanly created set of myths, he undercuts again the whole basis for ethics, law and democracy. He undercuts the very basis for his ability even to make the claims that he makes. On the basis of what makes human beings special. In other words, Michael Gerson says, Harari maybe a genius but he’s eventually undermining his own argument. Well, that’s interesting, so far as it goes.

Let’s remember how Michael Gerson, a former senior speechwriter for President George W. Bush began the article. He began by articulating a very clear secular understanding of evolution that eventually we are to understand produced Homo sapiens as something of a mere mutation. Now Michael Gerson is exactly right. He is incredibly wise to recognize that Yuval Noah Harari has written a book that includes a self-defeating argument. You can’t argue for meaning and then suggest that meaning is nothing more than a mythic construction. But what Michael Gerson doesn’t understand is that embracing this very notion of evolution he has also embraced a self-defeating argument. He may criticize Harari for failing to see the self-defeating nature of his argument, but you have to wonder what does Michael Gerson think will be the lasting importance of humanity, the real eternal significance of humanity, the real meaning of humanity of human life, human dignity, human rights, if we’re nothing more than an accidental mutation, or for that matter if the mainline narrative of evolution is even close to being true in terms of how human beings came to be.

One of the most important things we can think through in terms of worldview is how arguments have to work. They can’t be self-defeating. That is one of the truest and most important tests of the Christian biblical worldview. It doesn’t contradict itself. It is a comprehensive and for that matter, a seamless understanding of the meaning of life, of the origin of human beings, of how the universe came to be, how morality works, all of these questions eventually come back to a question of why, that the Christian worldview makes clear- is actually a question of who or whom? The evolutionary worldview simply can’t carry the weight of human dignity. This article in its own way makes that point. Christians looking at an article like this have to recognize exactly what’s at stake. Either the story begins, in the beginning God or eventually, and at this point Michael Gerson is exactly right. There is really no meaning anywhere at all forever.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You 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 06-16-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Jeb Bush unsurprisingly announces candidacy, leaving both parties with question of dynasty

Jeb Bush announces presidential bid: ‘We will take command of our future once again’, Washington Post (Ed O’Keefe)

Full text of Jeb Bush’s presidential announcement, Politico (Staff)

Hillary Clinton’s Silence on Trade Proved to Be Untenable, Wall Street Journal (Peter Nicholas)

2) Journalist argues marriage merely political reality preventing poor from success

Jeb Bush and Single Mothers, New York Times (Charles M. Blow)

3) Ohio legislature considers conversion therapy ban, viewing sexuality as unchangeable

Some Ohio legislators want to ban conversion therapy for gay, transgender teens, Columbus Dispatch (Emily Ockerman)

4) Author presents evolutionary argument for dominance of human species, undermining its uniqueness 

Species succeeds because it can work toward big things, Washington Post (Michael Gerson)

Transcript: The Briefing 06-15-15

The Briefing

June 15, 2015

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

 

It’s Monday, June 15, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Number of Americans in prison presents moral quandary of needing secure and humane systems

Ross Douthat writing in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times calls it, “The Dannemora Dilemma.”

It’s the dilemma about prisons in the modern world. As he writes about Dannemora, it is north, so far north in New York that it’s actually barely inside the northern border of the Adirondack Park. It is very close to Canada. That’s why it’s called ‘little Siberia.’ It’s a symbol of the fact that especially the 19th century Americans wanted their prisons very, very far away because not only did they want to prisons in remote areas, they wanted their prisoners there as well.

Douthat is pointing to the fact that in United States we have to 2.2 million people behind bars. That’s an extraordinary number. That number swelled at least to some extent during the 1980s and 90s and especially over the last several years. In terms of an increase in criminal activity tied to the use of drugs. In many cases states passed so-called three strikes laws that meant that someone faced life in prison if they had a third felony conviction or even after a second conviction if they had a major criminal encounter. But what we’re looking at in terms of the current prison population is what now constitutes a bipartisan understanding and consensus. There are simply too many Americans behind bars. But as it turns out, it’s one thing to say that, it’s one thing for this to become something of a bipartisan consensus in the United States, but it’s another thing to figure out what to do with it. He writes,

“When Americans debate which feature of our contemporary life will look most morally scandalous in hindsight, the answers usually break down along left-right lines. But there’s increasing agreement across ideological lines — uniting conservative evangelicals and civil rights leaders, the Koch brothers and Eric Holder — that our prison system has become a particularly obvious moral stain.”

He goes on to say,

“This agreement has borne fruit: Amid a bipartisan, multistate push, the incarceration rate has fallen since 2007. And the crime rate has stayed low, at least till now, which has both helped the trend along (low crime rates mean fewer new prisoners) and sustained political space for pushing further.”

But there’s something else we now have to face in the United States and that is that even as the crime rate has gone down, it went down largely because the rate of incarceration went up, rates of criminal convictions went up and rather severe sentencing guidelines meant that people who committed felonious acts tend to stay in prison longer. Douthat points to the fact that while it is true that the prisons became very populated with people who might be considered to have been convicted of relatively minor drug offenses, the reality is that the rate of incarceration of murderers has gone way up. As he writes,

“And while evil geniuses are pretty rare in our prisons, murderers are not. Indeed, one of the key reasons the prison population rose so quickly prior to 2007 is that prosecutors were convicting more people for homicide, and putting them away for longer. The average time served for drug crimes rose very little from 1980 to 2010; the average time served for rape and robbery rose modestly. But the average time served for murder was just six years in the early 1980s; today it’s around 17 years.”

From the Christian worldview perspective, we do have to see the prison situation in the United States as scandalous. If we’re going to put people behind bars we need to maintain adequate controls and protections inside those prisons or at least we need to make a very good faith effort. Douthat points to the fact that that seems to be hardly the case. One of the things that has come to mind and to light in terms of the Dannemora prison situation is that it is now conceded that prison authorities there gave an extraordinary amount of liberty and autonomy to some of those hardened prisoners in the New York State system. That allowed the prisoners, not only in this case, the two to devise a way to break out of the prison; it also has allowed rampant gang activity in the prison and violent crime even by one prisoner upon another. When that takes place in a prison that is governed by the people that becomes our responsibility.

The other thing that Douthat helps us to understand is that we are dealing in so many cases with genuinely evil people who have given themselves to evil; they have committed genuinely evil acts. While it is true that every single human being is a sinner, and while it is true that evil lurks at the door, that’s a very biblical understanding for every single one of us. We do have to recognize that there are some among us who give themselves over to evil, and they commit acts that are so horrifying that moral sense simply requires that they be separated from humanity.

Here Douthat also calls us to a bit of very serious moral consideration. What actually are we to do with some of the most hardened criminals? How can we put them into places where they will not be a threat to society? We do find ourselves facing a genuine moral quandary. We want our prison systems to be humane, that’s actually also our responsibility, but we want them genuinely to be secure. The situation in the breakout Dannemora reminds us that prisons are actually not so secure as we might like to think. The parable of Dannemora as it is becoming in our contemporary moment reminds us that in that small upstate New York village there are only 4000 people in the entire population and 3000 of them in that village are behind bars. That is a 3 to 1 ratio in that very small village in New York. That demonstrates the fact that going back to the 1840s, New York was trying to put those criminals as far away from any urban area as they could imagine. But that did not mean they had created adequate distance between hardened criminals and civilization.

Another thing we need to keep in mind is that during the 18th and 19th century prison reformers were trying to change the very idea of the prison into a penitentiary, into a place that would produce penance and moral transformation, not merely a place of incarceration. That experiment didn’t go so well. Even as Americans use the word penitentiary now to identify some prisons, there really isn’t a great deal of confidence that those prisons are going to produce remorse, repentance and the kind of penitence that the reformers had hoped for. One of the reasons for this is simply that we’re dealing with some people who would give themselves over to evil and when they are put into such close proximity with many others who have also given themselves over to evil, a great deal of evil can be the result.

A key insight into this is offered by David Von Drehle writing in the current issue of Time magazine. He writes about prisoners in these prisons saying,

“A prisoner serving a life sentence has all the time in the world and almost nothing to do with it but think. The mental clutter of modern life–gone. No grocery lists. No car pools. The doctor, the dentist, the barber all make house calls. What’s for dinner? Whatever arrives through the tray slot. Oceans of time. More than enough to plot an elaborate escape from a seemingly impenetrable fortress.”

We now know by the way that a worker inside the prison, Joyce Mitchell, has been arrested and charged with complicity in helping the two prisoners to escape. It is believed that she gave them tools, including hacksaw blades. But David Von Drehle asked the larger question, not only the who, but the how?

“Who mapped the unseen spaces of the prison for them? The inmates’ way out took them through holes cut in the steel walls of their cells, along an internal catwalk, down some 50 ft. (15 m) of railings and pipework, through a 24-in. (61 cm) brick wall, to an idle steam pipe with entry and exit holes cut through the heavy iron. This led to the manhole, sealed shut with a heavy chain. Not a self-evident path, in other words.”

And then he concludes, when all is known the lesson from Dannemora will not be that prison is no match for a determined and ingenious criminal. The lesson is that prisons are only as strong as the people who work in them. Well looking at his article and his argument, I would suggest that both of those points are actually true. It is true; this is proving to us that prison is no match for a determined and ingenious criminal, there are truly diabolical and ingenious criminal minds out there. But the second point is probably even more emphatically true. Prisons are only as strong as the people who work in them and administer them. It turns out that it really doesn’t matter how high a wall is if someone inside helps those inside to get out.

Once again from the Christian worldview perspective there is a parable here of humanity. We can’t solve the problem when we are the problem. And when we compound the problem, because we basically have no choice, by concentrating those who give themselves to evil in one location no matter how far we may believe we can place it beyond civilization, the problem can often erupt right before our eyes as it has right now in the parable of Dannemora.

2) Concerns over religious liberty justified by gay activists’ transparency over end-goals

Next, Jonathan Last has written a very, very important article in this week’s edition of The Weekly Standard. The title of his article,“You Will Be Assimilated.” The subtitle,“The same-sex marriage bait-and-switch.”

Last is talking about something we have been documenting for years now. Those who have been calling for the legalization of same-sex marriage by and large, if not almost exclusively have argued that the adoption or the legalization of same-sex marriage wouldn’t bring about a fundamental change in civilization or society, it would simply be extending the so-called rights of marriage to a new class who simply want to be married along with the rest of us. Again, writing this week in The Weekly Standard, Jonathan Last points out that is not what is taking place and now he confronts a remarkable candor on the part of those who are pushing for same-sex marriage in the fact that it was just as he says, a bait and switch.

For one thing, take the issue of monogamy. Monogamy has been central to the moral expectation of marriage. That’s what has made marriage, marriage. The monogamous union of a man and a woman for a lifetime. But now Last cites Jay Michaelson, a gay activist writing in The Daily Beast last year who said,

“Moderates and liberals have argued that same-sex marriage is No Big Deal—it’s the Same Love, after all, and gays just want the same lives as everyone else. But further right and further left, things get a lot more interesting. What if gay marriage really will change the institution of marriage, shifting conceptions around monogamy and intimacy? . . .

“[T]here is some truth to the conservative claim that gay marriage is changing, not just expanding, marriage. According to a 2013 study, about half of gay marriages surveyed (admittedly, the study was conducted in San Francisco) were not strictly monogamous.

“This fact is well-known in the gay community—indeed, we assume it’s more like three-quarters. But it’s been fascinating to see how my straight friends react to it. Some feel they’ve been duped: They were fighting for marriage equality, not marriage redefinition. Others feel downright envious, as if gays are getting a better deal, one that wouldn’t work for straight couples.”

Sometimes when you look at material like this and you read it from the lens of the Christian worldview, you come to understand that there is a moral clarity here, even if it is a very troubling moral clarity. We’re looking here at an advocate for the legalization of same-sex marriage who says look, the conservatives have a point. If indeed gay marriage becomes a reality, as we now see it looming before us. It will change the institution of marriage and you’ll notice the first point at which this change is documented on the question of monogamy.

Now, we simply have to look back several years ago, indeed, over a decade ago to when Michelangelo Signorile, a major gay activist, wrote a now infamous article entitled “I Do, I Do, I Do”, in which he suggested that gay activists should push for the legalization of same-sex marriage, not because they wanted to gain entry into what heterosexuals knew as marriage, but rather because they wanted to destabilize marriage as a moral project and the way to do that, Signorile argued was to make same-sex marriage a reality and thus basically to redefine marriage. And when I say basically there, I mean in its truest sense to redefine it at its base. But even as those same arguments were being made before the Supreme Court just a matter of weeks ago, arguing that this wouldn’t fundamentally change marriage, even before the Supreme Court rules, now expected in a matter of days, you have gay-rights activists now acknowledging in the open, oh yes it will change marriage. It was as Johnathan Last writes “a bait and switch.”

He cites Jonathan Rauch, one of the more well-known gay authors, who writing about the legalization of same-sex marriage actually has called for what he considers to be an extension of some kind of toleration to those who for religious reasons can’t endorse same-sex marriage. By the way, Rauch is also at least honest enough to recognize what a fundamental change same-sex marriage would be. He writes,

“Virtually all human societies, including our own until practically the day before yesterday, took as a given that combining the two sexes was part of the essence of marriage. Indeed, the very idea of a same-sex marriage seemed to most people a contradiction in terms.”

Well as I said, there’s some moral clarity. He then writes,

“By contrast, marriage has not always been racist. Quite the contrary. People have married across racial (and ethnic, tribal, and religious) lines for eons, often quite deliberately to cement familial or political alliances. Assuredly, racist norms have been imposed upon marriage in many times and places, but as an extraneous limitation. Everyone understood that people of different races could intermarry, in principle.”

Again, I simply have to interject that in that kind of statement Jonathan Rauch shows a great deal of moral clarity. There’s some real honesty in his admission that marriage has in all times in all places throughout millennia of human history meant the combining of a man and a woman. He’s very clear when he says that the very idea of same-sex marriage would’ve been understood as a contradiction in terms. But then when he gets around to the issue of religious liberty and he does, he writes with opposition to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, all of which he says see marriage as intrinsically heterosexual. He says,

“Believe me; no one regrets this more than I do. Religious-based homophobia is every bit as harmful as the secular varieties, and often worse. .  .  . But gay-rights advocates cannot wish away the deep and abiding religious roots of anti-gay ideology.”

Well here as a Christian theologian I simply have to say that it is very unfair to refer to the moral consensus of Judaism and Christianity and Islam as being reducible to something that can be called homophobia. But I do understand the rhetorical strategy that is at work here and I think you do too. But moving on to the issue of religious freedom very specifically, Jonathan Rauch writes,

“The First Amendment carves out special protections for religious belief and expression. That does not mean, of course, that Christian homophobes can discriminate as much as they want provided they quote the Bible. It does mean, at least for a while, courts and legislatures will strike compromises balancing gay rights and religious liberty, something they did not have to do with black civil rights.”

Now that’s really interesting. Because here, Jonathan Rauch puts in some very troubling words, He says,

“The courts and legislatures will strike compromises balancing gay rights and religious liberty,”

But you’ll notice before that, he says,

“At least for a while.”

So here we have a very clear admission that so far as many gay-rights activists are concerned, and on this sense Jonathan Rauch is very much on the side of what he considers toleration, whatever compromises they have to reach right now when it comes to so-called balancing gay rights and religious liberty have to be tolerated, at least for a while, which means only for a while. Once again we have a very clear bait and switch here but this is being announced upfront. We’re being told that these compromises will be tolerated only for a while.

So when we talk about the fact that religious liberty is very much in jeopardy, when we see the fact that the handwriting is already on the wall in that sense, when we have the Solicitor General of the United States responding to the Chief Justice of the United States by acknowledging that religious liberty will be an issue, we have a very clear and present warning of exactly what we’re going to be facing. And we’re not talking about the indefinite future here. We’re talking about tomorrow. We’re talking about the situation today in at least some parts of the country. We’re talking about the fact that some Christian ministries in the state of Massachusetts have had to simply go out of business simply because they could not bend the knee to the government’s declaration there that they would have to extend the definition of marriage to those who are not the union of a man and a woman, but rather those of the same gender. And what we’re looking at is a very clear warning that even the so-called compromises that might be achieved in the present aren’t going to be tolerated for long.

When we look at what’s happening in the culture we see the velocity of this change when we see the courts and the court of public opinion being used to coerce moral judgment like this. Well we can understand that religious liberty is something that is not only under threat, it’s something that at least many people are now openly willing to say is simply going to have to go by the way. Religious liberty is simply going to have to bow to the higher goal of achieving this moral revolution. Now again, that article by Jonathan Last, very important it is, appears in this week’s edition of The Weekly Standard.

Appearing in yesterday’s edition of many newspapers was a story by Rick Callahan covered by the Associated Press. It has to do with Indianapolis. You’ll recall that Indiana was in the headlines just a few months ago because the legislature there passed and the Governor signed a Religious Freedom Restoration Act. You can rightly define that as one of those compromises about which Jonathan Rauch was writing. Remember that Rauch said they have to be tolerated at least for a while. Well, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in Indiana wasn’t tolerated, even the corporate community, simply because of pressure from the gay community. It reached out and demanded that the legislature and the governor change the legislation. And now you have the report from Rick Callahan about the gay pride march that took place in Indianapolis just over the weekend, it took place specifically on Saturday, in which the Mayor of Indianapolis served as grand marshal of the Cadillac Barbie IN Pride Parade. And it goes on to tell us that the Republican Mayor was invited to serve as grand marshal after he spoke against Indiana’s religious objections law, which critics labeled discriminatory against the LGBT community. Well again, here you see the logic – a defense of liberty is redefined as a form of discrimination and this is an argument that’s winning in the larger culture. Not so much necessarily amongst the man and woman on the street, but it’s winning in terms of the courts and the larger court of elite public opinion.

Mitch Smith, writing for the New York Times about the same gay pride week, it was actually nine days in Indianapolis, says that,

“On Wednesday, a standing-room-only crowd snacked on rainbow-colored fruit skewers at a forum on transgender issues. On Thursday, men donned blond wigs and high heels at a drag show to raise money for charity. And on Saturday, gay men and women were expected to turn out by the thousands for the annual pride parade and festival. It was all part of a nine-day pride celebration of Indiana’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population.”

Later in the article Smith writes,

“For many of the gay and lesbian Indiana residents gathered here for pride week, the rapid revising of the law marked a turning point, suggesting perhaps a budding tolerance for their community — as well as their growing political clout in this politically conservative state.”

What the article actually very clearly demonstrates is the fact that what Jonathan Rauch called as an essential, perhaps temporary compromise, is turning out to be very temporary indeed. In the state of Indiana it was just a matter of days.

3) 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta reminder of the responsibility to maintain liberties

But speaking of liberties we need to recognize that today marks the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta. Just about every citizen who knows anything about history knows that the Magna Carta is a very important statement. In fact, this Magna Carta was forced upon the infamous King John by barons and other British nobles, even though the document was actually written by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was written in such a way that it limited for the first time, the divine right of kings as it was called and the king as autocrat. The statement actually didn’t last for very long in terms of its actual wording, it just didn’t. Neither side kept his promises. But it was a very important historic document, because for the first time a King had to sit down and sign a document limiting his powers. In one sense, that’s 800 years ago today, an experiment in constitutional liberty was born. The Magna Carta was signed and even if the specific text of the Magna Carta didn’t last very long in terms of its operation, it does point to the fact that a major turning point in human history had taken place, especially in the West and especially in the English-speaking world.

Those of us who are now in the United States of America should understand that our Constitution, our written Constitution, harkens back 800 years to the signing of the Magna Carta. But unlike the Magna Carta, our Constitution has now lasted so long as to be the longest serving written Constitution in human history. It’s a remarkable document, but the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, as humbling as that historical moment is, reminds us that as Benjamin Franklin famously said, we have a constitutional Republic if we can keep it. It is up to us to keep it. And when we look at religious liberty and when we look at every other liberty, respected and enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, those liberties are secure only so far and only for so long as the American people make certain that they are secured. And when it comes to the U.S. Constitution, we need to be reminded that the framers of the Constitution do not believe they were inventing new rights, they were merely respecting rights that had been given to every American citizen by God.

Now when you look back 800 years to the Magna Carta, one of the things we need to recognize is that ordinary citizens aren’t there. It’s an agreement between the king, the church and barons. Ordinary people in Britain didn’t even have a voice in this. One day they would be included and the ultimate inclusion comes in the American Constitution. That Constitution was born in the Christian worldview and shaped by Christian understandings of what it means to be human, and what it means to be free. Can we keep it in an increasingly secular age? That is increasingly a question.

 

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 06-15-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Number of Americans in prison presents moral quandary of needing secure and humane systems

The Dannemora Dilemma, New York Times (Ross Douthat)

A Jailbreak Shows Prisons Are Only as Strong as the People Who Staff Them, TIME (David Von Drehle)

2) Concerns over religious liberty justified by gay activists’ transparency over end-goals

You Will Be Assimilated, Weekly Standard (Jonathan Last)

Thousands converge on Indianapolis for annual LGBT parade, Associated Press (Rick Callahan)

Indianapolis Rallies Around Its Gay Citizens After a Law Sets Off a Flood of Support, New York Times (Mitch Smith)

3) 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta reminder of the responsibility to maintain liberties

 

Ask Anything: Weekend Edition 06-13-15

1) Should Christians disengage from the public sphere and take the Benedict option?

2) Do the Gospels contradict the teaching that Jesus rose after 3 days?

3) Should a Christian use medical means of prolonging life with a terminal illness?

 

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

Transcript: The Briefing 06-12-15

The Briefing

June 12, 2015

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

And it’s Friday, June 12, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Shared understanding of value of marriage does not equal shared understanding of marriage 

One of the most important issues we can face, confront in terms of the contemporary cultural scene is that there is, and this is good news, an increased attention to the importance of marriage. This is something that is relatively new and it’s something that is especially noteworthy for the fact that so many people across political, social and moral divides are becoming rather agreed on the fact that marriage is important. They’re not agreeing on why it’s important and how the issue is to be addressed, but they are understanding that marriage is being marginalized and that it is coming with some very deleterious effects in terms, not only of the culture writ large, but especially of young people, children and teenagers.

For instance, a recent article in the Associated Press by David Crary suggests that people on both sides of the political divide are beginning to agree on the marriage issue. And when it comes to the reason why, well he gets to some of the data,

“Among college-educated relatively affluent couples marriage is doing pretty well where education and income levels are lower it’s often a different story, higher divorce rates, far more children being born out of wedlock, including many to single mothers.”

Crary cites an article in which some people at least across a spectrum of the American political divide indicated their agreement on the fact that marriage is a very important issue that needs to be addressed. They said in this statement,

“Marriage as culture war in America can now be replaced by marriage as common cause.”

And yet, because a look at that article indicates just how difficult this is going to be because we don’t have a shared understanding of the why or the what of marriage and when it comes to that statement several of the signatories are very much in favor of same-sex marriage as it’s called. There’s not even an agreement upon what marriage is. But this article by David Crary in the Associated Press also uses some language that would’ve been, by any measure considered odd, perhaps even offensive just a generation ago, no, just even 10 years ago.

David Crary speaks of his alarm and the alarm of many people around the culture at the number of children being born outside of wedlock, the radical increase now about 41% of all babies born in America and a majority of those born to women in their 20s. He also speaks with lament and concern about the marginalization of marriage and the fact that fewer Americans are actually getting married. Now that’s moral language, that’s the kind of moral language that people on the secular left have largely tried to do their very best to avoid in terms of the last decade or 20 years or so. But now the irrefutable evidence of the damage that comes to culture and in the lives of individuals with the marginalization and subversion of marriage, well it’s becoming so clear that people on all sides of America’s political and moral divide are in agreement or at least in increasing agreement that the weakening of marriage is a problem.

It’s also very interesting that the article by David Crary is unable to point to any assured policy way of addressing the situation and that’s because even though there might be a shared understanding that there is a marital crisis, there is not a shared understanding of what it means or what to do about it. Similar evidence came in an article published in recent days at USA Today, it’s by Trish Regan and the headline of this article is,

“Marriage is going out of style, and that could hurt.”

Well that’s interesting, but listen to the subhead,

“Matrimonial malaise can damage economy.”

So here you have an article about marriage, registering a concern that really isn’t moral, it’s about money. As a matter fact it’s on the front page of USA Today’s money section and that again should tell us something. It tells us that even those whose primary concern is financial and economic understand just how central marriage is well to the economy and that’s exactly what Trish Regan’s writing about. She writes,

“This decline in marriage is the last thing a fragile economy needs. Historically, a rising household formation rate has contributed to America’s financial success. People meet, they marry, they buy a home, they have children and they buy more things. One new household adds an estimated $145,000 to the U.S. economy thanks to the ripple effect of construction spending, home improvements and repairs.” She says, “That ripple effect is disappearing as Millennials increasingly chose to live at home.”

And as she makes also clear, increasingly choose not to get married. Now even though this assuredly is not her point, one of the points we should gain from this article importantly from the Christian worldview is that here we have evidence of the centrality of marriage. We talk so often about the fact that God gave humanity marriage as his gift for human flourishing. And here you have affirmation of that in an article that says if marriage is marginalized the economy suffers. The entire economic system is weakened if people don’t get married and do the things that married people do. If they don’t achieve the kind of financial stability that marriage uniquely brings about. She does point to that stability when she writes,

“Marriage and family also provides a sense of stability that encourages prosperity — especially for men.”

She cites an American Enterprise Institute study that indicates that,

“young married men, ages 28-30 make, on average, $15,900 more than their single peers, while married men ages 33-46 make $18,800 more than unmarried men.”

Again that’s a really important testimony to the centrality of marriage as God’s gift for human flourishing to his human creatures.

2) Consequences of single-parent family inescapably apparent in children’s lives

But we also note that marriage was in the news yesterday in this case, in the New York Times and other major media. David Leonhardt, writing for the New York Times writes about what he calls the north-south divide on two-parent families. He writes,

“When it comes to family arrangements, the United States has a North-South divide. Children growing up across much of the northern part of the country are much more likely to grow up with two parents than children across the South.”

He goes on to say,

“It’s not just a red-blue political divide, either. There is a kind of two-parent arc that starts in the West in Utah, runs up through the Dakotas and Minnesota and then down into New England and New Jersey. It encompasses both the conservative Mountain West and the liberal Northeast.”

He then says,

“Single-parent families, by contrast, are most common in a Southern arc beginning in Nevada, and extending through New Mexico, Oklahoma and the Deep South before coming up through Appalachia into West Virginia.”

Now all of that is important, but the first sentence of the next paragraph is far more important when he writes,

“These patterns — which come from a new analysis of census data — are important because evidence suggests that children usually benefit from growing up with two parents.”

That’s a stunning statement. Again, that appears in the New York Times. Once again we have a statement in a secular news authority that makes very clear that the breakdown of the two-parent family, the fact that children are now more likely to grow up without both the father and the mother in the home is coming with dangerous consequences. Leonhardt citing a study by W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia, who along with Nicholas Zill produced the article entitled,

“Red State Families: Better Than We Knew.”

That was also released yesterday in this case by the Institute for Family Studies. It’s a major research study that’s going to get a lot of attention and deservedly so. Looking at the research Leonhardt in the New York Times points out that divorce is no longer the main reason that children do not grow up with both of their parents. Now we’ve known that for some time. It’s interesting for the New York Times to document it in this way. If divorce is not the main reason for the fact that so many children are in single-parent homes, then what would be the reason? The reason why most of those children who are growing up in a single-parent home are doing so is not because of divorce, but rather because of the absence of marriage in the first place. This same article in yesterday’s New York Times also states,

“Boys who grow up with two parents seem to end up substantially stronger economically, according to a survey of the research by David Autor, an M.I.T. economist. Girls appear less likely to become pregnant as teenagers, according to another study. Among the reasons: Households with two parents tend to have more money and some less tangible benefits, including less stress, more involvement from grandparents and less unexpected change.”

Now you’ll notice how there is a steadfast attempt in this article and in that paragraph to do everything possible to avoid moral language and try to describe it merely in terms of sociology and even in terms of economics. But it is interesting to note that there are other parallel studies that don’t just talk about the two-parent family and they don’t just talk about the economic advantages of the two-parent family. Again, as Christians we would understand why that would actually be so. But rather there are studies indicating that it is specifically the absence of fathers in the two-parent home and the absence of fathers in terms of the life of children that is leading to so many of these effects, or to put it another way, when you have a father present in the home the risk of a teenage girl getting pregnant goes down demonstrably and if you have a father in the home the chances are that the boy growing up in that home is going to thrive not only economically but in other ways. The chances that thriving goes way up with a father in the home and way down without the father in the home.

It is really interesting that David Leonhardt says that this is a north-south divide, not so much a red blue divide, but the actual study that was published yesterday in the Institute for Family Studies has the headline,

“Red State Families: Better Than We Knew.”

You can actually look at the north-south divide, you can look at the red blue divide, but one of the main issues that was addressed by Bradford Wilcox and Nicholas Zill has to do with the fact that it turns out, according to their research that there is a blue state model for family success, and there is a red state model for family success and they’re two different models. In the blue state model, people tend to get married after they have an education, they tend to get married and stay married, and they tend to have children only after they are married. Then there’s the red state model which is based more in a moral argument where you have the authority of the Christian tradition very clear on what constitutes marriage and sexual morality and for that reason you also have the red state model where people are more likely to get married and stay married. But in the red state model it’s not so traceable to economic issues as it is to moral issues. Either way you look at it this is a really important study but the most important aspect of the study is actually the cultural conversation about it.

The article in the New York Times was as interesting to me as the study itself. Several times on The Briefing I pointed out that when you have the blue state model you have people who need to preach what they practice. Here you have so many suburban and urban liberals who are actually living very conventional family lives. They are staying married to each other and not divorcing. But they refuse to make a moral argument about the fact that it ought to be so. And that’s why you see it trying to be reduced here to matters of economics, rather than morality. But on the flipside we have far too many conservatives, and this is the red state problem by and large, where the problem is not so much that they need to preach what they practice, but rather they need to practice what they preach. You have far too many people who would identify themselves with a very conservative understanding of what marriage ought to be, but they don’t hold themselves to that very clear moral understanding of marriage when it comes to their own behavior and their own lifespan. But from the biblical worldview perspective, the one absolutely central issue is this. God has given us marriage and the family for our good. They are the context given to us for human flourishing. Where there is a weakening of marriage, where there is a weakening of family, human flourishing is going to be diminished and human lives are going to be hurt.

We are now so far into this sexual revolution, one of the major causes of the subversion of marriage, that it’s becoming virtually impossible to deny the pathologies, to deny even the sociological evidence. It’s also clear there are some major economic issues that are here at stake. There are some economic patterns that also play into this entire picture of marriage and the family. But Christians looking at this understand that the morality always precedes the money. It’s an achievement of sorts that people recognize that the marginalization of marriage is an economic problem, but they’re not going to do much about it until they realize it’s a moral problem as well.

3) Impact of modernized economies, societies on men economic and moral

Next, we need to turn to the cover story in The Economist. It’s a very important magazine, one of the most influential in the world. The cover story is,

“The Weaker Sex.”

And it has the male symbol on the cover. Under the headline,

“No jobs, no family, no prospects.”

As is the custom of The Economist, there’s a major research analysis essay inside the magazine it is several pages long, several thousand words long. And then there’s a leader editorial in the beginning of the magazine that makes very clear the magazine’s position on the issue and why the magazine considers the issue to be so important. In the editorial entitled “The Weaker Sex” they say,

“Blue-collar men in rich countries are in trouble. They must learn to adapt.”

It’s a very interesting article and again, it’s looking at some very irrefutable evidence, evidence of the fact that many men are falling behind in the society, not only many men, but there are even more boys who are falling fast behind in the society. The statistics, once again, are impossible to ignore. They’re just exceedingly clear. The Economist, like so many others, we’ve just mentioned tries to avoid moralizing language. But even in the editorial they write,

“Boys who grow up without fathers are more likely to have trouble forming lasting relationships, creating a cycle of male dysfunction.”

That’s not a very clear moral statement but it does point to a very clear moral problem. The Economist is after all, primarily interested in matters economic and they’re looking at the massive changes in the economy in pointing to the fact that it’s more difficult than ever before for many young men, or for that matter, middle-aged and older men to find their way in this economy, especially those who do not have higher education. And then looking at boys, they point out that boys are actually ill-suited for the classroom experience in so many schools today and even whether or not ill-suited to the context, they often have very few male role models to encourage them in terms of making academic progress.

What makes The Economist story really important from the Christian worldview perspective is how it documents some of the other things that we’ve been concerned about. For instance looking at the breakdown of marriage and the family, very central to the story in terms of the effects on men, there’s a very interesting and ongoing section in his article about the impact of contraception, about the arrival the birth control pill. Acknowledging what many of us have been pointing out for a very long time and that is that the pill basically made possible the sexual revolution, which made inevitable the problems that both men and women are now facing in terms of the breakdown of the family and marriage and the problems that are being downloaded onto children, especially those children that do not have the benefit of the mother and father in the home.

Right now girls are far more likely to graduate from high school and then to go on to higher education. On the average undergraduate campus today, women far outnumber young men and that’s a radical change from the enrollment patterns of just 20 years ago. The main point of The Economist by the way, is that men and boys are simply going to have to learn how to adapt because those blue-collar jobs as they’re described that were once the backbone of the male economy. Well The Economist says, they’re just not coming back. And then the article says,

“Jobs that reward muscle alone are not coming back, so men will need to pump up their brains instead. Several countries are experimenting with ways to make school more stimulating for children in ways that boys will appreciate. The OECD suggests offering them books they might actually enjoy—about sports stars, perhaps, or dragons.”

Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank suggests,

“Giving boys gizmos to fiddle with and more breaks so they can run around outside and let off steam: all helpful, and all things that might be appreciated by girls, too. A greater appreciation of anti-boy bias among teachers would help, as well, as would more men teaching.”

Well it’s really interesting stuff and once again, the economist is doing its dead level best to avoid making any kind of direct moral point. But what’s really interesting is that, as this article, massive as it is comes to an end they can’t avoid making a moral point even if they make it weakly.

Here’s the last sentence in the article,

“There are many ways to be a man, but not all of them are equally honorable.”

Well that’s not exactly a strong moral statement, but it is a moral statement. And that’s an indication that perhaps all those defenses against making a moral argument or confronting moral truth are breaking down.

4) Ten-year old bullying online reminder online and real-world behavior equally moral

Finally as we go into the weekend, the New York Times had another interesting article in recent days that I’ve been holding for just the right time. And I think this is that time because it ties to so many of the other issues discussed today on The Briefing. Here’s the article, its headline is,

“Lord of the Screen.”

It’s the disruptions columns in the New York Times by Nick Bilton. Bilton writes about visiting recently his 10 year old nephew named Luca. He says he visited him and as he saw the boy, the boy spent the entire weekend checking his mother’s iPhone, then this sentence,

“But, sadly, he wasn’t having fun.”

Why? Bilton explains,

“Like millions of other boys, he is obsessed with Clash of Clans, a super popular game played on smartphones. For those of you (like me) who have never played Clash of Clans, it is an online multiplayer game made by Supercell, a company in Helsinki, Finland.

“Players band together to create a community, or clan, and then attack others to earn gold and elixirs. It has all the juicy stuff you’d imagine would pique the interest of 10-year-olds, including goblins, destruction and in-game chat.

“But what makes the game irresistible for some is its cliquish and exclusionary nature. The game creates a kind of social hierarchy, with different tiers for troops, kings, queens and other characters. Clan leaders are also given the power to exclude users, or to promote or demote other members within the clan.”

Now it turns out that the reason for his 10-year-old nephew’s sadness is that the 10-year-old had actually been mean to other players online and had demoted them or kicked them out of the clan. Then some of those friends created a new clan and wouldn’t let him in. He felt so ostracized that every few minutes, he had to go to his mother’s smart phone in order to find out if he had been let in and he wasn’t and he was devastated.

The story gets even more interesting when Bilton tells us that it was the father of one of the other boys who came to Luca’s mother and told her there’s a problem here, you need to check Luca’s use of the smart phone. Bilton then writes, if all this sounds terribly childish, let’s not forget we’re talking about 10-year-old boys, but it also illustrates why this is so important. He says he quotes Caroline Knorr, parenting editor of Common Sense Media who said,

“Social patterns in the real world are replicated in the online world.”

And just in case you missed her point, Nick Bilton gets right to it when he says everything you fear 10-year-old boys can do on the playground, they’re actually doing online. The difference is nobody is watching, nobody is seeing.

The story also cites another digital expert who in this case is even more relevant because he’s the father of a 14-year-old boy who got into similar trouble online. He told Bilton,

“You have to remind your children that just because you’re on a computer, the rules haven’t changed.”

Well that’s really an important point isn’t it? You know that article here is entitled “Lord of the Screens” and it’s because as Nick Bilton said these 10-year-old boys, and some of them were younger and some of them were older, had created a world that is actually hauntingly like the William Golding novel Lord of the Flies.

This article constitutes a wake-up call for us all. It’s also a reminder that these are issues that can be extended to any age group, but it’s a reminder; particularly to parents that what’s going on online is just as real, morally speaking, as what goes on in other parts of life that you can more easily observe. It’s interesting that Nick Bilton says, it’s the parent’s responsibility to monitor all this and make sure nothing bad happens. I think there are probably some other parents who would say the risk of something bad happening in this case is simply too great to let it run even with some form of supervision. But it’s important that all of us recognize whatever our age, that the main point of this article is very clear, all too quickly the Lord of the Flies can become the Lord of the screen.

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. Remember we’re taking questions for Ask Anything Weekend Edition; a new edition of the program will be released tomorrow morning. To call with your question, in your voice, call at 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058.

I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing.