R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 313

Transcript: The Briefing 04-21-15

The Briefing

 

April 21, 2015

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

 

It’s Tuesday, April 21, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Mediterranean boat disaster reveals desperation that drives quest for freedom and security

We learn a great deal about human nature and about aspirations for freedom and security by looking at the disaster – the horrifying disaster – that took place on Sunday in the Mediterranean. There, according to the most credible press reports, between 700 and 950 persons are likely to have perished in an effort to migrate from northern Africa – specifically for Libya – to Europe; first probably to Italy and then onward to the northern countries where there might be the hope of employment and security.

What we’re looking at here is something that we have seen over and over again: the quest for freedom and security. You have people who crowded themselves onto a boat, reported to have been 66 feet long – a fishing vessel that was intended for just a few human beings and the task of fishing that became a platform for human trafficking. With people enticing those who were desperate for freedom and desperate for the security of themselves and their family to crowd onto a boat that eventually was so overloaded that it capsized in the Mediterranean about 150 miles off of the coast of Libya.

As Jim Yardley of the New York Times reports,

“Hundreds of people were feared dead on Sunday after a ship crowded with migrants capsized and sank in the Mediterranean, as the authorities described a grisly scene of bodies floating and submerging in the warm waters, with the majority of the dead apparently trapped in the ship at the bottom of the sea.”

Yardley went on to report,

“The fatal shipwreck may prove to be the Mediterranean’s deadliest migrant disaster ever and is only the latest tragedy in Europe’s migration crisis. Warmer spring weather has unleashed a torrent of smuggler boats, mostly from Libya, bearing migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa, often fleeing war and poverty for a foothold in Europe.”

Now in order to place this disaster in its moral context we need to consider the fact that we’re not just talking about Libyans fleeing Libya, we’re talking about people from all over the Middle East and North Africa who have gathered in the North African coast because it offers the easiest and most direct access to Europe. Why would so many people from these parts of the world want to get to another part of the world? Why are so many people, especially from the Middle East and Africa, trying to get to North Africa in order to get to Italy in order to get to the larger continent of Europe? The answer is actually simple: Europe offers a promise at least of security – the promise of some notion, the affirmation, of basic human rights, the opportunity to feed oneself and one’s family in a way that is fast disappearing in much of the world.

Now from a Christian worldview one of our responsibilities is to imagine ourselves in a situation of such desperation. That’s relatively difficult for middle-class Americans to do. It is hard for us to imagine a situation into which we would throw ourselves, much less our own families and children, putting them into a situation of imminent danger and trusting our lives to human traffickers simply because it is a yet better option than staying where we are. Much of the world is torn by war; much of the world is experiencing radical famine – often associated with that kind of war. In much of Africa there are tribal and ethnic conflicts such as those that have taken place in Somalia and elsewhere. There is almost no hope of feeding one’s family, no hope of an ongoing employment, no hope of the affirmation of human rights.

The sinking of the ship on Sunday came just after reports of increased activity of the Islamic state in Libya. No doubt increasing the desperation on the part of many there to flee before the imminent disaster that has now been broadcast in so many videos across the world. But from a Christian worldview perspective the other thing revealed in this horrifying disaster is the difficulty of knowing what is the right and moral thing to do. What is the right thing for the Italian government to do – or for any government?

One of the interesting things to watch in the immediate aftermath of this horrifying new story is how many people in politics and otherwise were immediately stating the morally obvious; that is that this is a horrible situation that must be stopped. But how exactly is it to be stopped? Italy had operated over the past months in something known as Mare Nostrum, a policy whereby they had tried to intercept and save as many people as possible who were fleeing North Africa on ships headed for Italy and the rest of Europe. The problem is that even as that was a widely praised program, it might actually have led to the fact that increased numbers of people began in desperation to risk their lives simply out of the hope, largely by that Italian government naval program, of being intercepted by Italy and thus saved.

And so it’s a terrifyingly difficult situation; it’s hard to know what is right. The intended and unintended consequences of action often are very difficult to foresee, and in this case the unintended action of trying to save many people over the last several months may actually have incentivized people to risk their lives to human traffickers out of hope that they similarly would be taken into custody by Italy and eventually brought to at least a safer situation with some opportunity of appeal there in Italy.

Furthermore we’re looking at another situation that we all need to think about. It is something that often doesn’t come to us. We think of our lives ordered by a context by a society that privileges law and order and where we understand that if difficulty arises we can call 911. We often don’t think about the fact that if you were to take a look at the globe, if you were to take a snapshot of the globe at any single moment, much of the territory on that globe, and especially the territory that is covered by water, would be outside any effective call to anyone – 911 or otherwise. There would be no police force in any range to be able to intervene in any way, there might be no Navy in any ability or any proximity to be able to respond in any way, there may be no legal authority at the end of the day to ensure any kind to safety or even to offer a court of justice.

We can only imagine the desperation that led between seven and 950 people to cram themselves on a boat described as being only 66 feet long – just imagine that. We can only imagine the horror that took place as that boat capsized and began to sink. We can only imagine the very difficult decisions now faced by governments, not only in Europe but elsewhere, trying to determine what is right to do in this situation. Obviously it’s right to save people in any circumstance, but there is the danger that announcing a certain policy will lead to even increased numbers of hundreds of people risking their lives under the hope of being similarly apprehended.

Europe faces enormous challenges and so does North America, but this much is clear: we need to be reminded with great thankfulness of the fact that we are not facing this kind of desperation, that what we now see taking place in so many parts of the world is not something that we experience – that’s not an accident and it’s not something to be taken lightly. As we remember prayerfully all those around the world who are marked by such desperation and are such easy victims of human trafficking and the kinds of hopes that human traffickers traffic in, we need to remember as we tuck our own children in at night how many blessings or hours by God’s hand and how many people would give almost anything and risk almost anything to note even a day of freedom as we know it.

2) ISIS video announcing specific targeting of Christians driven by theological motivations

Next, as we said about that story, the ship that led to such disaster had left the shores of Libya. It is no coincidence that in the same edition of the paper that reported that maritime disasters there’s also a report datelined from Cairo Egypt in which David D. Kirkpatrick of the New York Times tells us,

“The Islamic State released a video on Sunday that appears to show fighters from its branches in southern and eastern Libya executing dozens of Ethiopian Christians, some by beheading and others by shooting.”

We’ve been watching the rise of extremism and attempts to exterminate Christians in much of the Middle East and North Africa but this story represents a significant development beyond what we knew even a matter of just a few days ago. Kirkpatrick’s story tells us of that Islamic state, especially in Libya but also in other nations of the world, is now announcing a campaign to eradicate Christianity and Christians from its territory.

The background for the new story tells us that the Islamic state is claiming that according to Quranic law Christians either must convert or pay a very significant tax. But the national and international media are also reporting that that tax is often set where the Islamic state knows that Christians cannot pay it, effectively leaving only two options: either die or convert to Islam. The new information in this report coming from the attacks by the Islamic state indicates just how Christians in particular are being targeted. Again this comes in the New York Times, yesterday’s edition, David Kirkpatrick reports,

“The video released Sunday begins with about 25 minutes of scenes that appeared to have been filmed in Syria and Iraq. After reviewing the portrayal of Jesus in the Quran, a narrator briefly walks through the history of the emergence of Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism.”

Let me just interject here, this is an amazingly sophisticated description of Christianity and of the Muslim assessment of Christians. Kirkpatrick goes on to say,

“The video intersperses what appear to be scenes from a costume drama depicting rows of medieval Muslim soldiers marching with spears, fighting with bows and arrows, and assaulting a castle. Then it cuts briefly to images of the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, climbing the steps to the minbar, or pulpit, of the Mosul mosque where he proclaimed himself caliph.

“A narrator, identified as Sheikh Abu Malik Anas al-Nashwan, says in formal Arabic that the Islamic State requires Christians living under its dominion to convert to Islam or pay jizya — the tax levied on non-Muslims living under Muslim rule in the Middle Ages. He speaks against a backdrop of lush foliage that looks more like northern Syria than anywhere in Libya, and the video shows a building and van used by the Islamic State to handle such payments in a town in the Syrian province of Aleppo.”

The details that follow are similarly alarming,

“The narrator repeatedly uses a derogatory term for Christians that is something like calling them Nazarenes. Yet much of the video is devoted to testimonials from people speaking Arabic with Syrian or perhaps Iraqi accents who say they are Christians living happily under the Islamic State in Aleppo, Raqqa and elsewhere. All say that they live freely after paying the tax; it is impossible to know how much coercion they may have felt at the time.”

Let me just intersperses, that is certainly an incredible understatement. Kirkpatrick’s report then continues,

“At one point, the video includes a scene of what appear to be two Islamic State fighters lecturing a schoolroom full of adult Christians on the virtues of Islam. A rifle leans against the wall behind them.

“For those who refuse to convert or pay the tax, the narrator promises death and destruction, and scenes of Islamic State fighters desecrating the churches of Mosul illustrate the threat. ‘The Christians in Mosul have chosen their own destiny,’”

As the video ends, it ends with the threat that Christians either convert to Islam or pay this tax. And then the words:

“…we owed nothing except the edge of the sword,”

A similar report that came in yesterday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal says that poking a pistol toward the camera a fighter on the video says,

“To the nation of the cross, we are back again…telling you Muslim blood that was shed under the hands of your religion is not cheap.”

3) Legislative support for right to die exposes velocity of moral shift in America

Now historically a very interesting aspect of this is that the Islamic state by means of this video appears to be going back to argue that the Crusades of the medieval era are the adequate moral pretext for their extermination of Christians now. This goes back to the language about those who are fighting under the cross; it goes back to the identification of nations of the cross – that’s language that goes back to the Crusades. But what we’re also looking at here is the reality that under Muslim rule, according to the Quran, all the Muslims owe Christians is what is known as “dhimmitude,” said specifically this is what the Quran says that Muslims owe Christians and Jews – identified as people of the book. They owe of them only a subservient status under which, as the Islamic state has now threatened, Christians must either convert to Islam or pay a tax. And often that tax is set at a limit that it is well-known that Christians cannot pay, effectively meaning they have only one choice – either convert or die.

Now we have absolute evidence that the Islamic state is framing the extermination of Christians in explicitly theological terms. One of the most interesting developments in the report in the New York Times yesterday is that this video released by the Islamic state includes a recital of Christian history, the development of Catholicism and Eastern orthodoxy and Protestantism, and also deals with the understanding of Jesus that is claimed in the Quran.

This is a very interesting development; on the one hand it is almost as if the Islamic state is declaring that it is intending to take the world back to the Middle Ages and to reenter the age of the Crusades, but it’s also true that by its brutality and by its specific targeting of Christians, the Islamic state is announcing its intention in terms of the expansion of its caliphate – that is the territory under its rule – that the options given the Christians will be either convert or pay the tax, and the tax may be set so that there is no opportunity, realistically, for anyone to pay it. Which means convert or lose your lives, and the video that was released on Sunday indicates that the Islamic state fully intends to fulfill that threat.

One final issue related to that story. It is unclear exactly what the theological convictions of those who were executed on this video might have been, but what’s most crucial from a Christian worldview is this: they were identified as those who were followers of Christ, they were identified as those who identified with the cross, and they were identified with the derogatory term of being Nazarenes; in other words followers of Jesus of Nazareth. One of the interesting developments in terms of this story is that the Islamic state is now specifically identifying the Christians it intends to target as Eastern Orthodox and Catholics and Protestants; all three under its threat.

The Islamic state may or may not be more theologically sophisticated than we knew when it comes to its understanding of Christianity, but this much is abundantly clear: it intends to target anyone who identifies with the cross of Christ, anyone who identifies with the name of Christ, anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus the Nazarene.

4) Oldest person in world dies, leaving only four people who’ve seen 19th Century

Shifting to the United States, on Sunday in USA Today moved a story; the headline is, Half of states plus DC [that is the District of Columbia] look at right-to-die legislation. Malak Monir is reporting for USA Today,

“More than a dozen states, plus the District of Columbia, are considering controversial medically assisted death legislation this year.

“The laws would allow mentally fit, terminally ill patients age 18 and older, whose doctors say they have six months or less to live, to request lethal drugs.”

Now the background to this is a massive moral shift taking place in Western cultures at large, but most particularly right now in the United States. One of things to watch in a great moral seismic shift like this is how quickly what was unimaginable becomes then thinkable, and after becoming thinkable it becomes plausible in terms of policy. When we’re looking at something like assisted suicide we need to recognize that it has not been on the American scene for very long, certainly with any momentum. It was the state of Oregon that was the first day to implement a so-called death with dignity act in 1997 and four other states (Montana, New Mexico, Vermont, and Washington) now allow for medically assisted suicide.

But you need to note that is a tiny minority of states. When it comes to assisted suicide and euthanasia in the United States there has been a massive cultural negativity to the very notion and those who have been pressing for it had not gained much momentum until the last several months. And again that tells us that when a moral shift happens there’s often a catalyst that becomes the signal that that moral shift is taking place. And once the moral shift is in movement the velocity is often much quicker than might be imagined.

You’ll recall that just a matter of a few months ago a young woman by the name of Brittany Maynard who was then 29 years old died in a very well-publicized case of assisted suicide after she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. She became, by her own intention, a symbol for a nationwide effort to legalize assisted suicide being done in the name of individual autonomy. As Monir reports for USA Today,

“As of April 10, at least another 25 states have considered death with dignity bills, according to Compassion & Choices, a Denver-based nonprofit organization that advocates for these laws.”

President Barbara Coombs Lee of that group said,

“The movement has reached a threshold where it is unstoppable,”

Well she might be right or she might be wrong, but there is no doubt that the movement has reached a certain critical velocity as it is moving forward.

Now what does that tell Christians? It tells Christians that the very deeply embedded Christian biblical belief in the sanctity of every single human life, and that deep beliefs implanted in the culture by Christianity that the creator and not the autonomous creature gets to determine the length and the understanding of life, that that has evaporated very, very quickly. Now it doesn’t evaporate in an instant, it doesn’t evaporate in all likelihood in a single generation, what this tells us is that the worldview of Americans on the issue of the very nature of human life has been in transition for some time.

And then we take a step backward and think, well it certainly must have been because as we go back to 1973 in the Roe V Wade decision and come to understand that Americans evidently, by the millions then and the American Supreme Court as indicative of the nation, were willing to allow for the legalization of abortion, of the intentional targeting of babies in the womb, and that tells us that the ship was already well underway.

What this also tells us is that when the sanctity of human life is compromised and redefined at one end of the spectrum, in the earliest stage here when it comes to the beginning of life, thus the issue of abortion, it is inevitably also compromised, subverted, and undermined at the other end of life spectrum now at the end of life. The very fact that we are looking at momentum for assisted suicide and euthanasia in America, the very fact that on Sunday USA Today declared this in a headline story, that tells us that something fundamental had shifted long ago. Even as it was imperceptible, it’s undeniable now and that starkly identifies one of the central challenges we will face in months and years ahead.

 

Finally, when it comes to the end stages of life I refer to an article that recently appeared on the front page of the Financial Times from London. The headline, World’s oldest person dies at 117. The next part of the headline is what’s perhaps most striking, “leaving only four witnesses to the 19th century.” The article in the Financial Times tells us that the oldest person then in the world, Misao Okawa, who died just a matter of days ago at the age of 117 leave four persons documented to be alive right now on planet earth that was alive in the 1800s.

Interviewed on her 116th birthday Ms. Okawa iin Japan said that the secret of her life was,

“…eat tasty food and sleep well,”

Speaking of her long life she had said then “it seems short to me” on her 116th birthday. Speaking of 116, according to the Financial Times, the world’s most senior citizen right now is Gertrude Weaver, who at age of 116 lives in Arkansas in the United States.

I don’t know about you but I find it striking that according to the Financial Times and its front-page news story there are still four people alive who were alive to welcome the dawn of the 20th century, born with the years ‘18’ in front of their birth.

The Bible tells us that man knows not his time. Whether the length of our lives is 117 years or something less, according to the Bible our times are in the hands of God.

 

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 more 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. Call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058.

 

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 04-21-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Mediterranean boat disaster reveals desperation that drives quest for freedom and security

Hundreds of Migrants Are Feared Dead as Ship Capsizes Off Libyan Coast, New York Times (Jim Yardley)

Europe grapples with deadly flow of migrants, USA Today (Jane Onyanga-Omara)

2) ISIS video announcing specific targeting of Christians driven by theological motivations

ISIS Video Appears to Show Executions of Ethiopian Christians in Libya, New York Times (David D. Kirkpatrick)

3) Legislative support for right to die exposes velocity of moral shift in America

Half the states look at right-to-die legislation, USA Today (Malak Monir)

4) Oldest person in world dies, leaving only four people who’ve seen 19th Century

World’s oldest person Misao Okawa dies aged 117 in Japan, Financial Times (Robin Harding)

Transcript: The Briefing 04-20-15

The Briefing

 

April 20, 2015

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

 

It’s Monday, April 20, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) 100th anniversary of Armenian Genocide reveals challenge of mists of history to human judgment

The German philosopher Georg Lessing, well over a hundred years ago, talked about what he called history’s ugly ditch. He said it was an ugly ditch, speaking of a metaphor, because he said we can’t pass from the present to the past and make actual judgments on what happened in reality in times past. Now Christians actually cannot affirm that reality of the ugly ditch, we do believe that we can have real knowledge of past events; most importantly we believe we can have real and certain knowledge of past events based upon divine revelation in Scripture. It is the claim of divine revelation that crosses that ugly ditch between the present and the past. But when it comes to the more recent past and when it comes to knowledge outside of Revelation, there is a great deal of controversy and that occurred over the weekend.

Several things very much in view, most importantly it was 100 years ago that the first genocide of the 20th Century took place and it was a genocide that took place by the Turks against the Armenians. And the very fact that I used the word genocide is itself quite controversial in terms of world history for the last century. This is because the Turks insist that the use the word genocide is illegitimate, meanwhile the Armenians insist that it was a genocide. And as the New York Times reported on Friday, the facts are absolutely incontrovertible in the fact that about 1.5 million Armenians died, mostly at the hands of the Turks.

The why’s and the wherefores are in much as a part of the early history of the 20th century. Specifically it has to do with what took place in the period that would include the fall of the Ottoman Empire – that is the great Muslim Empire that existed for centuries right up to the end of World War I – and the rise of what is now the modern secular state, or at least the presumably secular state when it comes to its government, of Turkey. One of the things that happened in the transition there in Anatolia, or what is now called Turkey, is that the Armenians were accused of siding with Russia.

Now you’ll also recall that just a matter of decades before World War I was the Crimean war in which Russia was involved, along with other great European powers. You’re talking about a part of the world that has seen warfare and contested battles over territory going back to the most ancient records of history. But as New York Times reporter Tim Arango reported as we went into the weekend and I quote,

“Worried that the Christian Armenian population was planning to align with Russia, a primary enemy of the Ottoman Turks, officials embarked on what historians have called the first genocide of the 20th century: Nearly 1.5 million Armenians were killed, some in massacres like the one [that took place in Cungus] here, others in forced marches to the Syrian desert that left them starved to death.”

The Times went on to report,

“The genocide was the greatest atrocity of the Great War. It also remains that conflict’s most bitterly contested legacy, having been met by the Turkish authorities with 100 years of silence and denial. For surviving Armenians and their descendants, the genocide became a central marker of their identity, the psychic wounds passed through generations.”

From a Christian or biblical worldview perspective the interesting thing is that we’re talking about it – the fact that the world’s talking about it, that almost every major newspaper in terms of the Western world was dealing with this controversy on the 100th anniversary of the facts that took place on the ground in the year 1915. That tells us something, it tells us that long-term history doesn’t settle a lot of issues the way we might hope that history would; the scholarly view of history and the politicized context of history, as it is known by different peoples.

The Armenians in the church remember these events very differently. The Turkish government says right down to the present that it is ethnic discrimination against the Turks to claim that the genocide took place or even to use that word. The Armenians say that it is immoral and it is a sin against history not to recognize that nearly 1.5 million Armenians died at the hands of the Turks.

Unraveling the knots of history is notoriously difficult, especially when you’re looking at the distance of 100 years. The facts on the ground about the deaths, they are very well attested. And the responsibility for those deaths, well it’s very well assigned in terms of history. But the details behind the events that took place a hundred years ago; they are shrouded in what was called the mists of history. It is difficult to go back and determine all the particulars. But we do know this: history cries out for moral verdict that often time’s history simply can’t deliver. That’s one of the lessons of the biblical worldview. If all we’re left with in terms of moral judgment is history, then we’re not left with enough. There is no restitution, there is no redemption, and there is no true justice here.

Once again we find ourselves waiting for that judgment which is yet to come. A judgment that will not depend upon reportage from the New York Times or any of the newspaper, a judgment that will not depend upon any human court or any human tribunal, a judgment will come from God in which the vocabulary will be his alone, and the justice will be perfectly righteous.

2) OKC bomber exposes pride of human assumption that we are masters of own fate

But closer to home we also need to remember that yesterday, that is Sunday, marks the 20th anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma – one of the first major incidents of homegrown terror in the United States over the course of the last several decades; a turning point in so many ways in American history. Those who are old enough to remember that event that took place 20 years ago yesterday, we probably remember where we were standing and with whom we were accompanied when we heard the news about this horrible terrorist attack.

The first thought of course was that it was some kind of external attack, even years before what would eventuate in terms of the September 11, 2001 attacks, even back in 1995 there was the assumption that some foreign power, some foreign influence, some foreign threat, must be behind this. Only later did we discover it was a homegrown threat. That the entire conspiracy and the bombing of this federal building and eventually the killing of 168 people and the wounding many others was undertaken by a homegrown threat by Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice, his co-conspirator Terry Nichols.

Based upon information they were able to assemble from public sources, they were able to create and then to detonate a 4,800 pounds fertilizer bomb outside the federal building there in Oklahoma City. Included in the carnage was a large federally subsidized preschool program, mostly for the children of those who were working in the facility. And now when you go to Oklahoma City you can see the stones that mark every single individual life lost on that day – April 19, 1995. Again, looking back across the record of history it is hard for us to come to a moral accounting of certain individuals and their moral thought process – or the lack of the moral thought process.

McVeigh, who was executed in the year 2001 for the crime, never showed even one second of remorse, even when he was granted multiple opportunities. McVeigh had intended to kill as many people as possible and his only regret seem to be that he did not kill even more than he accomplished in 168 deaths just 20 years ago yesterday.

Kevin Johnson, a reporter for USA Today remembered the opportunity he had to interview Timothy McVeigh and as he writes,

“His self-absorption, against the backdrop of such enormous loss, was particularly striking. It remained a constant theme throughout the session.”

McVeigh said,

“…that authorities placed him at undue risk on the evening he was formally charged with the attack. It was the moment the world got its first glimpse of the accused bomber, being led in shackles from a small courthouse in Perry, Okla., as some in an angry crowd yelled, ‘Baby killer!’’”

McVeigh told Johnson,

“‘I was a perfect target,’ he said, adding that without a bulletproof vest he was vulnerable to an attack,”

Now remember this was a man who claimed credit for having just days before killed 168 people, including children, then he had the audacity in his immense self-centeredness to claim that it had been his life was put at risk by the law enforcement authorities when they arrested him. He had the audacity to complain that he wasn’t giving a bulletproof vest when there was no attack was made against him even as he had admitted and even bragged about killing 168 people. Johnson then writes,

“The unvarnished selfishness would shadow my future encounters with him, from his subsequent 1997 appearances in a Denver federal courtroom where I saw him convicted, to his 2001 execution where I was one of 10 reporters to witness his lethal injection.”

Johnson reports at the end of his article and I quote,

“Offered the chance to speak final words, he said nothing.”

“Instead, he provided the warden a copy of the poem Invictus, copied in his own slanted handwriting:

‘My head is bloody, but unbowed. … I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.’”

As Johnson said, he was selfish to the end. I would simply add that selfish is hardly the right word here. There is not really a word in terms of our moral vocabulary that adequately describes the situation of Timothy McVeigh. No word, no moral vocabulary, is adequate to this and that’s one of the most important points we can understand.

But it is interesting that the statement that he left behind was the quotation from that famous poem Invectives, which is one of the most classic literary expressions of unvarnished self-assertion and idolatrous pagan self-assertion. And it’s almost, in every case, whether one reads it in middle school or reads it in the pages of USA Today in this context, it almost obviously makes fun of itself even in terms of its words.

Remember that when it comes to Timothy McVeigh, he died strapped to a gurney executed by the federal government for the callous killing of 168 people including many children and his only regret was that he could not kill more. And he dares to leave a statement saying “I am the master of my fate I am the captain of my soul.” Not even close. But as easy as that is to see when we look at Timothy McVeigh in his final moments, we need to recognize the same is true for every one of us. Not one of us is the master of our fate, not one of us is the captain of our own soul. We can say those words but those words judge us by the very fact that we can’t deliver on them for even a moment. Timothy McVeigh couldn’t deliver on them on the day of his execution and not one of us will deliver on those words on the date of our judgment.

3) Canadian Supreme Court rules for neutrality’s sake town council cannot open with prayer 

Next, shifting to Canada, our northern neighbor, a very important court decision was handed down last week that did not get adequate attention. As Religion News Service reports,

“Canada’s Supreme Court has ruled that a small town in Quebec may not open its council meetings with prayer.”

That’s the opening sentence, and that should immediately bring to our mind the fact that in the last Supreme Court session, the court handed down a decision in a case known as the town of Greece. And in that case, the Supreme Court by a rather narrow majority ruled that city commission meetings and similar kinds of governmental sessions can begin with prayer. And that pastors, rabbis, imams, and others may show up along with ordinary citizens to pray according to their own convictions. That is a very crucial affirmation of American religious liberty. It is a very crucial affirmation of the fact that if one is involved in something like prayer before even a city assembly, there is no responsibility to try to pray some kind of nonsectarian prayer, as if that were even possible. From a biblical worldview, it isn’t impossible. There is no biblical possibility of anything like a generic prayer. Just look at 1 Kings 18 if you need any textual affirmation of that.

But this decision handed down last week by the Canadian Supreme Court demonstrates just how much cultural and legal distance there is when you compare the American constitutional system to the legal system and culture just across our northern border in Canada. As Religion News Service reported, in a unanimous ruling that was handed down last Wednesday,

“Canada’s highest court ruled that the town of Saguenay can no longer publicly recite a Catholic prayer because it infringes on freedom of conscience and religion.”

According to RNS the case goes back to 2007, when a resident of that town – a very small town in Québec – complained about public prayer at City Hall. RNS goes on to say that the Canadian High Court ruled that the country’s social mores have,

“given rise to a concept of neutrality according to which the state must not interfere in religion and beliefs. The state must instead remain neutral in this regard. This neutrality requires that the state neither favor nor hinder any particular belief, and the same holds true for non belief.”

But notice what’s actually happening here. Because in stating that the state must be neutral (in this case the state is the Québec government, or the government of this little town, or the Canadian government writ large) is stating that the Canadian Constitution and Canadian law requires that the state be absolutely neutral. Here’s the point we need to make; no state as well as no individual is actually neutral. Neutrality is actually an impossible condition in this sense to achieve. It’s impossible because now you’ll note the bottom line is there can be no prayer when it comes the opening of the city session in this little town, nor in Québec writ large, as we shall come to understand nor in Canada writ large. Why? Because the state claims neutrality. But this neutrality means now that there is no prayer.

Neutrality means on its face now that there can be constitutionally no prayer. Who can actually call that neutrality? It means that citizens in Canada are now no longer free to pray in public at the opening of the city council meeting, even in a town that is overwhelmingly representative of their own convictions. Even when others of a different conviction would be also allowed and invited to pray. And even, as the Canadian Supreme Court has ruled, if the prayer were to be even by its definition non-sectarian. Why? Because the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that any prayer effectively implies a deity, which infringes upon the religious liberty of people who believe in no deity at all.

As RNS reports,

“The court said a nondenominational prayer is still religious in nature and would exclude nonbelievers.”

So there is the modern ideal of neutrality. It really isn’t neutrality at all. And it’s not the fault of this court that it was unable to achieve neutrality. No court can. No government can. A government that allows any prayer, according to this Canadian court is actually siding with a religion over against nonbelief. But now the court sides with nonbelief in order not to infringe upon the religious liberty of nonbelievers. But now the people who are disenfranchised when it comes to prayer before civic occasions there in Canada (at least in terms of government meetings), the people disenfranchised are believers.

The great lesson from all of this were Christian worldview is that there actually is no possible condition of neutrality when it comes to religion. There can be fairness. There can be accommodation. There can be openness. There can be an invitation to any and to all to pray, but the elimination of prayer altogether is a hardly a position of neutrality. And it tells us something that right across our northern border this decision was handed down by a unanimous court.

4) Conservative Anglicans gather to consider schism from Canterbury for sake of gospel

Last week, we discussed the article that appeared in the Guardian by Andrew Brown in which he pointed out that the Church of England was disappearing even faster than the rest of British culture which – as he said – is also disappearing. He pointed to the distinction between cultural and countercultural religion, as you may remember, explaining that in order to take the countercultural stance, deeper conviction is required. So when you find what he called ‘countercultural religion,’ you find a religious faith that is undergirded by specific doctrines and deep theological content. Cultural religion requires no such content, and generally, the closer one gets to the heart of cultural Christianity or cultural religion in any form – what you find is a minimal theology disappearing or evaporating in almost no theology at all. Now you’ll remember that Andrew Brown was specifically talking about the Church of England, which gets to a major story that moved over the weekend when it comes the Church of England. The headline in the Independent was this; “Evangelical critics of gay marriage and women bishops meet in London to plot schism.” And as Jamie Merrill and Emily Dugan of the Independent reported, the Church of England is now

“…at risk of an unprecedented schism as conservative Anglican leaders gather to discuss forming a “parallel” church in protest against women bishops and gay marriage.”

They go on to report,

“Evangelical leaders from the US and across Africa are meeting in London this week to consider a revolutionary plan to turn their backs on the Archbishop of Canterbury. The meeting [according to the group known as GAFCON – that is the global Anglican futures conference] will “chart the future of global Anglicanism” and could back the creation of a new evangelical church opposed to the liberal direction of the Church of England, which would cater [not only for the global church, but also] for conservative Anglicans in Britain.”

Now the threat of a breakup of the Anglican Communion is hardly new. We’ve been tracing these development all the way back to changes that took place, most importantly, in the church of England and the Episcopal Church US – both of those churches moved in a very liberal direction, especially when it comes to controversial issues of sexuality. And at the center of that of course is homosexuality; the question of homosexual clergy and the question of same-sex marriage. Behind that is also the issue of gender, especially when it comes to the ordination of women not only as priest but now also in terms of the Episcopal Church and the Church of England, of bishops as well. And it also points to much more fundamental differences when it comes to biblical authority and theological integrity and doctrinal continuity.

Now one thing should be made clear, within the Church of England and within the Episcopal Church there are still evangelicals. But what also must be made clear is that they are vastly outnumber, especially in terms of the Episcopal leadership of those denominations by those who are headed in a very different direction and have been so for a very long time.

The development of GAFCON, or the Global Anglican Futures Conference, several years ago was brought about in order to bring together evangelical conservatives within the Anglican communion – that’s the worldwide communion of Christians that is tied to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to historic origins in the Church of England – GAFCON was established in order to bring together representatives of these conservative churches in the so-called global South; particularly in South America, South East Asia, and also perhaps most importantly in sub-Saharan Africa.

But GAFCON originally came together with the possibility of a breakaway from the Church of England and from the Anglican Communion, but not with the intention. They had hoped for some kind of theological and biblical correction within the Church of England and the larger Anglican communion, but that suffice it to say has not happened. Indeed the Church of England and the Episcopal Church US have moved in even more liberal directions and when it comes in particular to the African churches they have apparently had enough.

And that means not only Africa, but bishops and archbishops from elsewhere in the global South as well – that includes GAFCON’s general secretary, the most Rev. Peter Jensen, the former Archbishop of Sydney in Australia. He said, and this well summarizes the development over the weekend, and I quote,

“I think we will have churches in place which will be regarded by most of the Anglican Communion as Anglican but not be Church of England Churches,”

Jensen, a very well identified evangelical in terms of the larger Anglican Communion and in GAFCON, he said very interestingly,

“Things have happened in the last decades which have been truly astonishing; we are looking at a totally new age from the point of view of the cultural milieu around us. Christians are having to work things out which worked out for millennia. This might be the beginning of something as big as Wesley.”

Well what remains to be seen is just how big this movement might be, just how large the schism might be within the Church of England and the Anglican communion, but this much is clear: it tells us a very great deal that in the year 2015, given all that is developed in these churches in the decades just behind us, the time has now comes says these leaders to start something new – something separate from the Church of England. And it’s timely that this comes just days after Andrew Brown declared that the Church of England was disappearing right before his eyes.

And we end with a reminder to pray for the faithful to keep the faith wherever they are found.

 

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. Remember we’re taking questions for Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boycecollege.com.

 

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 04-20-15

Podcast Transcript

1) 100th anniversary of Armenian Genocide reveals challenge of mists of history to human judgment

A Century After Armenian Genocide, Turkey’s Denial Only Deepens, New York Times (Tim Arango)

2) OKC bomber exposes pride of human assumption that we are masters of own fate

Meeting McVeigh, USA Today (Kevin Johnson)

3) Canadian Supreme Court rules for neutrality’s sake town council cannot open with prayer 

Canadian Supreme Court rules against prayer at city council meetings, Religion News Service (Ron Csillag)

4) Conservative Anglicans gather to consider schism from Canterbury for sake of gospel

Evangelical critics of gay marriage and women bishops meet in London to plot schism, The Independent (Jamie Merrill and Emily Dugan)

Transcript: The Briefing 04-01-15

The Briefing

 

April 1, 2015

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

 

It’s Wednesday, April 1, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Anniversary of Terri Schiavo’s death reminder of how much ground culture of death has gained

Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the death of Terri Schiavo. She catapulted to national prominence in the year 2003 – that was 13 years after she had experienced what is now believed to have been a heart attack and after that point she was described as being in a persistent vegetative state. She was 26 years old when she had the heart attack, and of course 13 years later she found herself the symbol of an entire set of controversies over the end of life.

In 2003 her husband sought to disconnect her feeding tube which would lead inevitably to her death. The argument was that an individual diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state was unable to make end-of-life decisions that could be made by others, including the removal of the feeding tube. And yet one of the things we have learned in the 10 years after the death of Terri Schiavo is that some persistent vegetative states are actually reversible. In a very well-known case one young man who would have been in a persistent vegetative state for some time later emerged from that diagnosis. Now there are two questions that come immediately to mind: was that individual actually in a persistent vegetative state? Is a persistent vegetative state ever reversible? The answer to that may not be known. It may be outside the reach of modern science, but one thing is clear, either some people diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state actually are not or there are persons who have been in a persistent vegetative state who have responded to medical treatment and eventually have come out of that state.

In any event, the biblical worldview reminds us that we do not determine that someone is no longer a human being deserving of the dignity and sanctity of human life when one enters even into a persistent vegetative state. Even many Christians who understand how the sanctity of human life applies to a question like abortion are unclear as to how it applies at the other end of the life stage or life development at the end of life. And yet consistent pro-life ethic understands that it is our responsibility to contend for the dignity and sanctity of human life in every set of conditions, at every stage of development, regardless of the state of consciousness.

That is a very important issue, and many Christians actually don’t think that through. That’s why when it came to the year 2003 when Terri Schiavo’s husband won a court ruling that he could have control over her destiny and ordered the withdrawal of her feeding tube, that’s why there were many Christians who were confused about where one should stand on the issue.

In 2004 the issue took yet another turn as was reported by Beth Reinhard in Monday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal. Ms. Schiavo was 26 years old in 1990 when a heart attack left her in what court appointed doctors called a persistent vegetative state. After her husband Michael won the right to remove her feeding tube in 2003 Mr. Bush – that is then Gov. Jeb Bush – fast-track a state law overriding the court ruling. The tube was quickly reinserted. But the Florida Supreme Court struck down Terri’s law in 2004, at that point Gov. Bush reached out to then President Bush and there was an effort at the national level to achieve a legislative intervention. But eventually the decision was decided by a non-decision of the US Supreme Court when the High Court refused to take the case. At that point all the legal and legislative appeals had thus far been exhausted and the feeding tube was removed. And it was 10 years ago yesterday that Terri Schiavo died.

One of the interesting things to watch in terms of contemporary developments is how very few people even wanted to go back and remember that anniversary of Terri Schiavo’s death. That tells you how fast some people in our society want to get past all of these issues. That tells you also why there is so much traction these days for euthanasia and assisted suicide in many circles. And it tells you why – looking back over the span about 10 years – we come to understand that far more ground than we might like to think has to be reclaimed for the sanctity of human life.

2) Indiana Gov. proposes revision to law, reception reveals collision of worldviews

Yesterday afternoon national media reported that Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is calling for the legislature of that state to revise the law – the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – that has led to so much national controversy. Richard Pérez-Peña reporting for the New York Times says the governor said,

“I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be helpful to move legislation this week that makes it clear that this law does not give businesses the right to discriminate against anyone,”

One of the things need to watch very carefully is how language is being used; not just in terms of the governor statement, but in the entire controversy across our culture. The statement is being made, it was made by Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple in the Washington Post, it’s been made by many editorialists around the country, it’s been made by many people just in casual conversation, the statement is: ‘we do not discriminate against anyone.’ That statement, on its face, is a lie. It is fundamentally false. Every sane person discriminates in some way. Employers don’t hire just anyone, the Secret Service doesn’t just allow anyone to be a Secret Service agent –  although that theory has been recently tested – Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and virtually any other university don’t allow just anyone entrance into its freshman class, and people discriminate on many grounds including grounds of sexual morality.

Just consider the fact that polygamy is still illegal in most jurisdictions, and there are other laws still in the books, still supported by the vast majority of American citizens, when it comes to sexual morality. Discrimination takes place all the time. We actually congratulate some people on their discriminating taste, and I think just about any sane parent to say the very least would discriminate when it comes to hiring a babysitter. But when it comes to someone saying ‘we don’t discriminate against anyone at any time’ what you can count on, that is really being meant, is ‘we’re not discriminating on the ground of the current cultural controversy.’ And when it comes to statement like that right now, it is generally a reference to the fact that we don’t discriminate on the basis of marital status, or when it comes to sexual issues related to LBGT issues, or to the related set of controversies. That’s what’s really being stated.

Let’s be honest, we all know that’s what the Gov. of Indiana means and we all know that he is responding to other people (including the CEO of Apple) who said we don’t discriminate against anyone for any reason. By the way, Apple discriminates against some apps for its phones – including apps that represent Christianity and a biblical worldview when it comes to human sexuality. Apple as it turns out, does discriminate. And let’s just point to the obvious, not just anyone can work for Apple.

But what we’re talking about right now is that given the piling on we’ve been noting in recent days on The Briefing on this issue, the state of Indiana is feeling the heat to the point that it’s Gov. says ‘we’re going to bow to corporate interest, we’re going to bow to the Republican mayor of Indianapolis calling for the change, we’re going to bow to all kinds of conventions that are now threatening not to come, and we’re going to bow to pressure from groups like the NCAA and say we will make the law clear, so that it is evident that no business will be allowed to discriminate against anyone.’ Let me just say the bottom, line the obvious fact is, whatever revision comes to this law it will not accomplish what the governor said. But that doesn’t mean it won’t accomplish what the governor meant. That’s one of the very coded issues in a cultural controversy like this.

But in terms of how a law like this can be understood or misunderstood, represented or misrepresented, just consider competing editorials in yesterday’s edition of two of the most important newspapers in the country – indeed in the world. On the one hand, the New York Times, on the other, the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times has an editorial yesterday entitled, Religion as a Cover for Bigotry and the editors write,

“It is true that the law does not, as some opponents claim, specifically permit businesses to refuse to serve gays and lesbians. Its drafters were too smart to make that explicit. Instead, the law allows individuals or corporations facing discrimination lawsuits to claim that serving gays and lesbians ‘substantially’ burdens their religious freedom.”

Well, intellectual honesty compels us to admit that businesses facing this kind of discrimination claim might be able to make that kind of argument, but there’s absolutely no evidence that that would be a winning argument in court. There is no evidence whatsoever that this law would actually have that effect. And let’s just point to the obvious, the laws in effect nationally, it hasn’t had that affect; the laws in effect in the District of Columbia, it hasn’t had that affect. The law is effective right now in the state of Connecticut whose governor said he wouldn’t send state employees to Indiana. And yet it hasn’t had that effect. But you wouldn’t know that from reading many reports in the national media and many editorials like this one. The editors of the New York Times went on to conclude,

“The freedom to exercise one’s religion is not under assault in Indiana, or anywhere else in the country.”

That’s an amazing statement given some of the things going on, but it perfectly reflects – I’m sure – the worldview and the analysis of the editorial board of the New York Times. They went on to say,

“Religious people — including Christians, who continue to make up the majority of Americans — may worship however they wish and say whatever they like.”

Well there you see the constriction of religious liberty, the redefinition of religious liberty. We noted that one opinion writer for the New York Times, Frank Bruni, had actually written – you might say he said right out loud – that religious liberty should be confined to our places of worship, to our homes, and to our hearts; in other words, no public consequence. That’s basically what the editors of the New York Times said again yesterday. They said Christians may continue to worship however they wish and say whatever they like. So we have freedom of worship, so they say, which is not the same thing as religious liberty, and we have freedom of speech they concede, but when it comes to actually acting on behalf of our faith and any number of policy issues, you’ll notice that religious liberty here simply disappears – it has been defined out.

The editors concluded their editorial,

“But religion should not be allowed to serve as a cover for discrimination in the public sphere. In the past, racial discrimination was also justified by religious beliefs, yet businesses may not refuse service to customers because of their race. Such behavior should be no more tolerable when it is based on sexual orientation.”

There is one sense in which every Christian operating out of a biblical worldview should agree with the essence of that statement, but what’s really going on here is the one-to-one equivalents of racial discrimination and discrimination on the basis of sexual behavior. And what we need to note is that even those who write this editorial will continue, on some grounds, to discriminate on the basis of sexual behavior.

The other editorial appeared also yesterday in the pages of the Wall Street Journal; it was entitled The New Intolerance and the editors write,

“In the increasingly bitter battle between religious liberty and the liberal political agenda, religion is losing.”

So from the very first sentence, it’s evident that this editorial board is taking the opposite position and opposite understanding of the issue. The editors went on to say,

“Witness the media and political wrath raining down upon Indiana because the state dared to pass an allegedly anti-gay Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The question fair-minded Americans should ask before casting the first stone is who is really being intolerant.”

To the credit of the editors of the Wall Street Journal, they actually talk about the law. They write,

“The Indiana law is a version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that passed 97-3 in the Senate and that Bill Clinton signed in 1993. Both the federal and Indiana laws require courts to administer a balancing test when reviewing cases that implicate the free exercise of religion.

[That is] individuals must show that their religious liberty has been ‘substantially burdened,’ and the government must demonstrate its actions represent the least restrictive means to achieve a ‘compelling’ state interest.”

Now when you look at the Wall Street Journal editorial it ends, as you would expect, even as it began, taking the exact opposite position of the New York Times. That’s one clear evidence by the way, that Christians need to read more broadly than one media source because if you’re looking at just these two newspapers it’s not only the editorial pages, but inevitably other portions of the newspaper that will also reflects a very different worldview – and an informed Christian needs to be looking at more than one source of the news. But the editors of the Wall Street Journal also point to the very real factor that it was the Hobby Lobby case recently passed by the United States Supreme Court that has really, in large part, changed the way the left is responding to this law.

It is a perfect storm of the combination of the legalization of same-sex marriage, which comes with the ascendancy of those pushing that moral revolution, and the issue of the Hobby Lobby case in which the Religious Freedom Restoration Act at the federal level played such an important role. Those on the left in this country were absolutely appalled that the Supreme Court would rule in favor of Hobby Lobby, and yet that’s exactly what happened and it wouldn’t have happened without the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. And so what we’re looking at here is a head-on collision, not only between two editorial boards but two worldviews and that’s what’s really important in terms of our understanding.

Furthermore, opinion writer David Brooks of the New York Times, who himself supports the legalization of same-sex marriage, accuses those on the political left and those who are furthering the LGBT political agenda, of adopting a new and very dangerous intolerance when it comes to evangelical Christians Orthodox Jews. As he writes and I quote,

“…if there is no attempt to balance religious liberty and civil rights, the cause of gay rights will be associated with coercion, not liberation. Some people have lost their jobs for expressing opposition to gay marriage. There are too many stories like the Oregon bakery that may have to pay a $150,000 fine because it preferred not to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex ceremony. A movement that stands for tolerance does not want to be on the side of a government that compels a photographer who is an evangelical Christian to shoot a same-sex wedding that he would rather avoid.”

Well to state the obvious, evidently David Brooks is not looking at the same movement because this movement does, very decidedly, want to say to that the photographer does not have the right to act upon Christian conviction when it comes to a same-sex wedding.

3) Spa-like abortion clinic exposes lingering stigma against abortion in culture

Next, a very chilling article that appeared in Monday’s edition of the Washington Post by Sandhya Somashekhar. The articles headline is chilling enough; here it is and I quote, New Spa-like Abortion Clinic Is Part of a Trend to De-stigmatize the Procedure. Now recall that this is found in Monday’s edition of the Washington Post, the most influential newspaper in the nation’s capital. And the story is bylined there, it is reporting upon a set of medical clinics that appears in the Washington area; it’s known as Carafem. And as Somashekhar writes,

“With its natural wood floors and plush upholstery, Carafem aims to feel more like a spa than a medical clinic. But the slick ads set to go up in Metro stations across the Washington region leave nothing to doubt: ‘Abortion. Yeah, we do that.’”

Somashekhar explains: the clinic, opening this week in Tony Friendship Heights, specializes in the abortion pill and will be unique for its advertising. Its unabashed approach also reflects a new push to de-stigmatize the nation’s most controversial medical procedure by,

“…talking about it openly and unapologetically.”

This is a trend we’ve been watching; numerous interviews, videos, and books have been coming out with similar kinds of arguments. But as Somashekhar says,

“Plagued by political setbacks in recent years, abortion rights activists are seeking to normalize abortion, to put a human face on the women getting the procedure and, in some cases, even putting a positive spin on it.”

So just three paragraphs into the article this is what we know: we now have abortion clinics that are trying to advertise themselves with such frank language as this, “Abortion. Yeah, we do that.” They are also trying to style themselves as if they are spas and not medical clinics. And the unabashed approach, as the Washington Post makes clear, is an effort to de-stigmatize abortion. And even as Somashekhar says, to put a positive spin on what is described as the nation’s most controversial medical procedure.

Now let’s just notice something. You’ll notice whose absent from this article, the unborn baby; simply absent. The issue of abortion is reduced to a controversial – even if the most controversial – medical procedure commonly conducted in the United States. And when we’re talking about abortion, we here are confronting a public relations effort that comes along with a spa styled abortion clinic that is intended to remove the stigma of abortion.

Another interesting insight: from this article it is clear there is still a stigma attached to abortion. That’s something for which we should be very thankful and we should ponder why that stigma still attaches to abortion. There aren’t too many doctors who want to advertise that they are abortionists; indeed the effort is now underway in some states to require residents to have to do a rotation that would include abortion because so many of them, in some reports described as a vast majority of them, actually don’t even want training in abortion. They’re not going to medical school in order to become abortionists; they’re going to medical school in order to save lives and heal, not in order to terminate lives in the womb.

What we’re confronting in this article is an effort to de-stigmatize abortion because the stigma is still there. It is because even as the advocates of abortion understand Americans, though they may not by a majority support the repeal of the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, they still believe that there is something inherently wrong with an abortion. There is a stigma attached to it because even in our fallen state and in our confusion there is still in an innate understanding that the inhabitants of the womb are not simply an ‘it’ but a ‘thou.’ Not simply a biomass, but a forming human being; indeed a human being. And one of the things we are looking at is the fact that that knowledge simply refuses to go away.

Now this is a very chilling article because it tells us just how intent upon moral change, even on the issue the sanctity and dignity of human life, many in our culture are. There are few things I can imagine that are more macabre and frightening than an abortion clinic that is being styled like a spa. It certainly tells us something that the Carafem Pres. Christopher Purdy says to the Washington Post,

“We don’t want to talk in hushed tones, we use the A-word.”

Well, even calling it the “a-word” means that they don’t always use the “a-word.”

Melissa S. Grant, identify as vice president of health services for the clinic said,

“It was important for us to try to present an upgraded, almost spa-like feel,”

Just remember, that even by the definition of this firm that says it doesn’t decline to use the “a-word,” what they’re talking about is the intentional termination of an unborn human life. The President of the firm announced that he hopes, if successful, he’ll expand his model to other states. He then says,

“It’s fresh, it’s modern, it’s clean, it’s caring. That’s the brand we’re trying to create.”

Yes, and the Germans during the Holocaust claimed that they were achieving new levels of efficiency in killing. Just change the word efficiency to fresh, modern, clean, and caring. Let’s just point out that what we’re talking about here, again, is the killing of a human baby.

As I stated from time to time some articles appear that seem to be almost assuredly unreal, but this one is all too real, it appeared not in some satirical news site but rather in the pages of the Washington Post. The moral character of a nation, it’s basic worldview, is revealed in what becomes possible. Here’s the bad news: in America, it is now possible to read a story in the Washington Post that tells us, right out loud, of an abortion clinic made to look just like a spa.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. Remember the release of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler.  For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boycecollege.com.

 

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 04-01-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Anniversary of Terri Schiavo’s death reminder of how much ground culture of death has gained

On Schiavo Case, Bush Treads Lightly, Wall Street Journal (Beth Reinhard)

2) Indiana Gov. proposes revision to law, reception reveals collision of worldviews

Indiana Governor, Mike Pence, Asks for Changes in Religious Freedom Law, New York Times (Richard Pérez-Peña)

In Indiana, Using Religion as a Cover for Bigotry, New York Times (Editorial Board)

The New Intolerance, Wall Street Journal (Editorial Board)

Religious Liberty and Equality, New York Times (David Brooks)

3) Spa-like abortion clinic exposes lingering stigma against abortion in culture

New spa-like abortion clinic is part of a trend to de-stigmatize the procedure, Washington Post (Sandhya Somashekhar)

Transcript: The Briefing 03-31-15

The Briefing

 

March 31, 2015

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

 

It’s Tuesday, March 31, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Criticism of Indiana religious liberty law piles on, showing priority of sexual revolution

In terms of moral and cultural change one of the things to watch is how you have a momentum towards piling on an issue. And when it comes to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act adopted by the state of Indiana, piling on is, if anything, an understatement. We’ve been looking at the fact that it’s been almost an entirely deliberate effort by many to mislead people about what this bill is about. Yesterday we looked at the headline that appeared in the New York Times, basically saying this was a discrimination bill.

One of the things we need to note very clearly is that this bill, as we have said, has existed for over 20 years at the federal level, it has been adopted by 19 different states – now 20 – and by means of either court order or legislation, it is operable in 30 states. Just remember there are 50 states – that means three out of five; otherwise known as 60%, otherwise known as a majority.  And yet the piling on continues along with the misrepresentations.

For instance, yesterday the Gov. of Connecticut announced that he would be boycotting the state of Indiana. Now that’s really interesting; since when has one state boycotted another? But as NBC News report from Connecticut, Gov. Daniel Malloy will be signing an executive order to halt state-sponsored travel to Indiana after lawmakers there (that is in Indiana) passed controversial religious freedom legislation that has prompted widespread outcry. Friday morning of last week the Connecticut governor tweeted,

“When new laws turn back the clock on progress, we can’t sit idly by. We are sending a message that discrimination won’t be tolerated.”

Well, more on that in just a moment but let me ask a very real and present question for the Gov. of Connecticut. Will he go or will he allow representatives of the state government to go to the nation’s capital, the District of Columbia? Because if he does, then he will find that he will have the very same people under a law that was adopted in 1993, since the District of Columbia is under federal jurisdiction. So if the Gov. of Connecticut is going to be in anyway morally consistent he’s going to have to disallow the representatives of  his state government from going to a majority of the states and from the nation’s capital – which is to make a nearly impossible for the Gov. of Connecticut to have a functioning state government.

But of course you don’t have to worry; the Gov. is almost assuredly not going to be consistent. He is piling on; he is simply reflecting this giant cultural momentum, which is now so in favor of the new sexual revolution and the legalization of same-sex marriage that a law that doesn’t even reference either of those issues now become so toxic and controversial that people are piling on. And some are piling on in a way that we can only say is not only deliberately misrepresenting the reality, but is intellectually empty. It is simply an embarrassment that you have so many people describing the law as other than what the language of the law plainly expresses – and they know it.

Before leaving this issue, in terms of piling, one one classic example appeared in the Sunday edition of the Washington Post when the CEO of Apple announced that religious freedom laws, such as the one passed in Indiana, are dangerous – not only wrongheaded, not only unwise, but dangerous. He writes,

“There’s something very dangerous happening in states across the country.

A wave of legislation, introduced in more than two dozen states, would allow people to discriminate against their neighbors. Some, such as the bill enacted in Indiana last week that drew a national outcry and one passed in Arkansas, say individuals can cite their personal religious beliefs to refuse service to a customer or resist a state nondiscrimination law.”

Now let’s just note: the law actually doesn’t state that. It’s very easy to look at the law; it doesn’t reference even those issues. It does say that the state of Indiana, like our federal government, cannot infringe upon the religious liberty of a citizen without a compelling case for doing so. And it would seem that that is simply what every American who prizes liberty would expect.

But of course what we’re looking at here is a moral revolution that will leave nothing unchanged in its wake. And what we’re also looking at is that those who are largely in control of the messaging in our culture now believe that the sexual revolution is far more important in the issue of religious liberty. Amazingly enough – given what’s going on in the world, where even though the same people say they’re very concerned about religious liberty elsewhere – when it comes to the United States, when it comes specifically to the state of Indiana, they’re quite ready to say the religious liberty issues is going to have to take the back seat to the erotic liberty issue, to the sexuality issue, to the new moral revolution, and to the legalization of same-sex marriage.

2) New York churches may now be forbidden from using school facilities for worship

Next, a really interesting issue is unfolding, this time not in the state of Indiana, but in the city of New York. Bad news came for a congregation in New York City from the United States Supreme Court yesterday when the court announced that it would not accept a case on appeal from a church known as The Household of Faith. It meets in the borough of the Bronx and it has been involved in litigation for 20 years given the fact that there have been people there in the government who have been trying to evict to this church from meeting in a public school on Sunday when no one else is using the facility.

For years now many young church plants have been finding a place to worship in the auditoriums of public schools that are otherwise not used on Sundays. Interestingly enough if you go back to older established cities such as New York, many of the public schools actually have rather cavernous and a large auditoriums; which are as it turns out, a very good place for these young churches to meet. Furthermore, many of these young churches are meeting in cities in which it would otherwise be almost impossible to gain a meeting place given the cost of renting facilities in such a high-priced environment.

But what we’re looking at here is revealing in so many different ways. For instance, now you have the Supreme Court saying that it is not going to take a case from the US Circuit Court of Appeals; it’s going to let stand a ruling.

Once again we need to look at how the media is describing this. Several in the media are saying that the courts are saying that it is now unconstitutional for the city public schools to allow these churches to use their facilities. We need to note the court said no such thing. The court instead said that it is not unconstitutional for the city schools to forbid the church from using the facility – didn’t say they have to disallow the church, is said they may disallow the churches from using these facilities. That’s where an already interesting story becomes even more interesting because fairly recently elected New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio campaigned on allowing the churches to use these facilities. In an outreach to the votes, not only of evangelical Christians but Orthodox Jews and others, the new Mayor had promised that he would try to find ways to accommodate religious groups in terms of the policies of the city government. And to the mayor’s credit, it appears that he is going to stand by that promise.

There was an alarm that was raised by the fact that the Mayor’s own legal department entered the case on the wrong side when it came to the Supreme Court, but to the mayor’s credit his administration stated as recently as yesterday that the Mayor intends to stand by his promise. And he’s going to have to act because if this precedent now stands, this church – again it is known as The Household of Faith in the Bronx – won’t be able to meet even for Sunday services this coming Lord’s day; and that church will be alone.

According to current media reports approximately 60-80 churches are using these facilities. The most immediately affected would be The Household of Faith in the Bronx but eventually all the rest of those churches would be affected by the policy as well. We can simply hope that the Mayor of New York is going to follow through on his promise and he is going to find some way, even as he does have general political direction over the New York City public schools, to find a way to accommodate not only this church but these other churches as well.

We also need to note that the arguments being used against the right of these churches to have these facilities are some of the most odious secularist arguments that we’ve yet encountered. It is basically being said by some in these communities, and even by one author who wrote a book on the subject, that allowing the church’s to use the school facilities can actually send a signal about establishing religion even during the week when it’s merely advertised that the services may be held in a public school facility. There are at least some parents who are claiming that this will send a signal to their children that the government establishes a religion when they see a religious group is able to meet in the auditorium.

One important thing we need to note, as the dissenting judge in the Second Circuit panel had noted,

“In my view, the Board of Education’s policy that disallows ‘religious worship services’ after hours in public schools … violates the [constitution] because it plainly discriminates against religious belief and cannot be justified by a compelling government interest.”

Judge John M. Walker Jr. had argued that it makes no sense for the schools to claim that it sends no message to allow PETA to use the facility, but it does send a message – an unconstitutional message – to allow an evangelical church to use that same facility. The other thing we need to note is the language used by that federal appellate court judge. He said that the action of the public schools “plainly discriminates against religious belief and cannot be justified by a compelling government interest.” Now wait just a minute, there’s that language ‘compelling government interest.’ Evidently there are some people who believe that that should be an effective legal argument at the national level, but not at the state level. That makes no sense, that’s exactly what’s at stake in the Indiana legislation; the statement that the government should have to prove a compelling interest to infringe in any way the religious liberty of its citizens.

3) Secularist opposition to religious education exposes recognition of import of theology

But there is another aspect of the New York City situation that also demands our attention. We seem to have a very liberal Mayor in New York who wants to find a way to accommodate religious groups within the life of the city. It appears that in good faith he’s trying to follow through on his campaign pledge to allow these evangelical churches and others to have access to the public school facilities. In other ways the mayor is getting credit for also trying to accommodate religious groups. For instance, in a recent front-page article the New York Times the headline was: Mayor de Blasio emerges as an unexpected champion of religion. The reporters Michael M. Grynbaum and Sharon Otterman write,

“In finding novel ways to commingle church and state, Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, has carved himself a niche as a more inclusive kind of liberal, one who is willing to embrace religious groups rather than treat them as adversaries.”

They also write,

“His moves have put him at odds with some of his usual allies, like civil libertarians, who are increasingly uneasy with what they consider to be an aggressive redefining of the proper separation between the secular and the devout.”

The article cites Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union who said,

“This is the area that has been the source of greatest disappointment for us,”

It’s a very lengthy article. On the bottom line of it is that it appears that this very liberal Mayor is trying to find some way to accommodate religious groups and it is making secularist groups within his own city very uncomfortable.

But there’s another very interesting aspect of this that should have our attention from a Christian worldview; there’s a big lesson to be learned here. Its good news we would have to say that here we have the liberal Mayor of New York City trying to find a way to accommodate religious groups rather than to deny access; that’s a good thing. That is recognition of the public role of religion and in that article in the New York Times he gets words of appreciation not only from evangelical churches but also from Orthodox Jews and others.

But there’s another side to this issue and this argument and that becomes clear in other headlines telling us that the Mayor of New York City is trying to reach two of his personal goals. Goal number one: accommodate these religious groups. Goal number two: include more children in the government funded preschool programs. He’s a big advocate of that, that’s been one of his major issues. And so as the Associated Press reported from Brooklyn and I quote,

“New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s ambitious plan to expand public pre-kindergarten for all 4 year-olds depends in part on the participation of Jewish, Christian and Muslim schools, under a proposal that would permit religious instruction and prayers during midday breaks.”

The same basic news was reported by Laura Edgehill at World Magazine. The headline there: NYC mayor reaches out to religious schools to boost free pre-k access. Here’s what’s really interesting, Edgehill has a most important point to make in the lead of her article. She writes,

“New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is reaching out to the city’s religious schools in an attempt to create 17,000 additional state-funded spots for full-day pre-Kindergarteners this fall. His proposal would provide the schools with an average of $10,000 per student in state funding, making the pre-K classes tuition-free. But in order to be eligible for the funds, religious schools would be required to limit their religious instruction to a portion of the day, leaving the remaining 6 1/2 hours dedicated to ‘secular’ instruction.”

Well here you have a vast worldview collision. A collision on the one hand behind secularist who don’t want any accommodation what so ever for schools that would receive government money to allocate any time, even just over an hour during the middle the day, to religious instruction. Then you have religious groups who are saying, ‘you’re asking us to reduce religious instruction, instruction from our own theological worldview to just about an hour a day, leaving 6 ½ hours to so-called secular instruction?’

Here’s where the Christian worldview reminds us we don’t believe in the possibility of the separation between secular and religious instruction, we actually don’t. We don’t believe that there can be a worldview distinction which all the sudden a teacher could say, ‘okay I’m going to teach in a secular mode for 6 ½ hours and then I’m going to teach in a Jewish mode or the Christian mode for the other hour and a half.’ The fact is that we are just not made that way. We can’t separate ourselves into a secular and a Christian sphere. And if we’re actually teaching, in terms of the Christian worldview, that’s going to be something that will permeate every hour, every subject, every book, every essay, every conversation.

Here’s the lesson for Christians, and it’s very important from a biblical worldview. Don’t take government money, because as soon as Caesar begins to give you money, Caesar begins to tell you what he wants taught. And in this case I don’t doubt for a moment the basic good intention of the Mayor of New York City. He has two goals: he wants to accommodate religious groups and he wants to find more ways in which he can make pre-K education available to four-year-olds. He can’t do that with just the public schools. He’s going to have to find religious schools to take those students; otherwise they are not going to have access. And so here he comes with a deal and let’s just assume once again this is very well intentioned, many disastrous policies come out of good intentions. Here you have Christian schools, Jewish schools, and Muslim schools also included who are being told: if you can just separate out 6 ½ hours and teach there in a secular mode, we will give you $10,000 per child and will allow you about an hour – little over an hour – in which you can teach in a religious mode.

I’m just going to say I think it’s doubtful that any Muslim or Jewish school could actually pull that off and be fully Muslim or Jewish. But I’m going to state emphatically that no Christian school can do this and the education remain in any way remotely Christian. If we are teaching from a Christian worldview that means we teach every subject from a Christian worldview, if we are teaching from Christian truth that means we apply Christian truth in every arena of thought. But the deal being offered here reminds me of a poem my father used to tell me when I was very little boy: “Welcome to my parlor said the spider to the fly.” The parlor can look very attractive to the fly, but in this case, it’s a spider, even a well-intended spider, that says you take government money and all we require is 6 ½ hours of your daily time.

The basic principle is this: if Christians want Christian education, they are going to have to pay for it with Christian money; they can’t expect government money to pay for Christian education. In this case we actually agree with at least part of what the secularists are arguing: theology matters. They believe it matters because they’re so allergic to it, they don’t want it being taught in the schools. It matters to us because we believe it’s a matter of life and death. In any event, the moment we allow someone else to pay our bills eventually they want to determine what we teach. That’s an important lesson for all of us, all the time.

4) College senior defends shutting down free expression of ideas for the sake of free expression of ideas

Next, last week we talked about Judith Shulevitz’s article that appear in the review section of the New York Times about those ‘safe spaces,’ which basically represent the fact that on many of America’s college and University campuses free speech is simply being tuned out; it’s being outright denied, it’s even being declared to be dangerous because it could affect the emotional lives of students. The robust kind of the free expression and free exchange of ideas that used to mark the American University campus is being replaced with a therapeutic culture of political correctness. We also talked about the fact that Jonathan Chait had written about this at the New Republic, writing from the left about how even the left is beginning to shut down traditionally liberal arguments because they might be emotionally damaging. And now we see evidence, in the letters section of the New York Times, that Judith Shulevitz new exactly what she’s talking about.

In terms of the letters that appeared in Sunday’s edition of the paper, in response to her essay, comes this article by one Andrew Meerwarth, identified as a senior at Stony Brook University. And as if his sole intention was to make Judith Shulevitz’s argument, here indeed is his letter:

“To the Editor:

Judith Shulevitz’s article about safe spaces on college campuses is a direct assault on my generation and what we find important. My generation has embraced the ideas of safe spaces and safe language. Without these, many victims of trauma or discrimination would be excluded from campus discussions that seek to cultivate and strengthen campus intellectual life.”

Now let me just interrupt and say, what’s really going on here is now that there are people being excluded from the discussion, the discussion itself is being shut down. But back to young Mr. Meerwarth’s article. He says,

“Truly open-minded intellectual growth desperately needs the participation of these groups.”

Well, we might say, so good so far. But then he writes,

Not all ideas are created equal. Some ought to be unreservedly condemned; consideration of such ideas is not at all helpful in bolstering campus intellectual life.”

Now that’s about as bold and clear of a statement as I have ever seen of someone saying, we are going to shut down the free expression of ideas in order to protect the free expression of ideas. He goes on to write,

“The current generation of college students has denied validity to the failed ideas of the past. We have embraced the knowledge and empathy of the present. We are shaping the wisdom of the future.”

And that’s the end of his article. Let me just say that I think virtually every young person and every new generation thinks this, they just generally have the politeness not to say this. But having said it, none other than in the pages of the New York Times, his words bear repeating:

“The current generation of college students has denied validity to the failed ideas of the past. We have embraced the knowledge and empathy of the present. We are shaping the wisdom of the future.”

Well we can only ask: how long will it be until his grandchildren tell him that they are rejecting the failed ideas of the past? They are embracing the new ideas and the empathy of the knowledge of the present and that they are shaping the wisdom of the future. Granddad, there is the door. They are saying it now, one day it might just be that their own grandchildren will say it to them and having said this out loud there is no one more deserving of hearing that message. But the point is this: this is an open declaration of the intention to shut down the free expression of ideas. And as I have said, when you look at the shutting down of the free expression of ideas you can count on the fact that biblical Christianity is going to be one of those ideas that is going to be marginalized and is going to be denied access to the public square. We’ve already seen that with the California State University system kicking out the University Christian Fellowship with University campuses such as Bowdoin college and Vanderbilt University doing the very same. In the name of intellectual freedom, they are shutting down intellectual freedom – rarely with such candor as we confront in this letter.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. Remember the release of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler.  For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boycecollege.com.

 

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 03-31-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Criticism of Indiana religious liberty law piles on, showing priority of sexual revolution

Malloy Bars State Travel to Indiana Amid “Religious Freedom” Law Backlash, NBC Connecticut

Tim Cook: Pro-discrimination ‘religious freedom’ laws are dangerous, Washington Post (Tim Cook)

2) New York churches may now be forbidden from using school facilities for worship

Supreme Court Leaves Intact New York’s Ban on Religious Services in Schools, New York Times (Marc Santora and Adam Liptak)

3) Secularist opposition to religious education exposes recognition of import of theology

Mayor de Blasio Emerges as an Unexpected Champion of Religion, New York Times (Michael M. Grynbaum and Sharon Otterman)

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan for prayer break in pre-K classes raises concerns, Syracuse Post-Standard (AP)

NYC mayor reaches out to religious schools to boost free pre-K access, World Magazine (Laura Edgehill)

4) College senior defends shutting down free expression of ideas for the sake of free expression of ideas

Campus ‘Safe Spaces’, New York Times

Genesis 28:1-22

Transcript: The Briefing 03-30-15

The Briefing

 

March 30, 2015

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

 

It’s Monday, March 30, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Media skews Indiana’s religious liberty law as anti-gay, showing extent of moral revolution

Indiana governor Mike Pence went on television yesterday to defend the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that was adopted by the state of Indiana last week, leading to no small amount of controversy. Indeed the controversy has become something of a firestorm and it was in response to that that governor Pence went on ABC’s “This Week” program and told host George Stephanopoulos that the media is reporting on the law in Indiana was reckless and shameless – saying that the state of Indiana had been hit with what he called an avalanche of intolerance.

Now in social media on Friday I expressed the very same concern. What we’re looking at here is what seems to be an almost deliberate misrepresentation of the law. There are some credible exceptions, but for the main part what we’ve been seeing in the national media conversation is irresponsible, shameless, and reckless – just as the Gov. of Indiana set. For example, Saturday’s edition of the New York Times included a headline that did not identify the bill as a Religious Freedom Bill but rather, Right to Deny Service to Gays Stirs Broad Uproar. Well just to set the record straight, this law, which has but on the federal books in that version for well over two decades, has never been found to have led to an act of discrimination against someone on the basis of sexual orientation. And the issue of sexual orientation isn’t even mentioned in the Indiana law, and yet the New York Times headline was that it was a bill to give a right to deny service to gays. That, it explained, was the reason for the “broad uproar.”

But even in the opening paragraph of the article the reporters, Michael Barbaro and Erik Eckholm, write in a different tone. As they wrote,

“An Indiana law that could make it easier for religious conservatives to refuse service to gay couples touched off storms of protest on Friday from the worlds of arts, business and college athletics and opened an emotional new debate in the emerging campaign for president.”

Well notice what happened between the headline of the article and the lead paragraph – the situation changed rather remarkably. Now one thing to note, reporters are not responsible for the headlines that end up in the print, or for that matter on the online edition, of most of their articles. They write the article and some editor supplies the headline. So you have an editorial issue when it comes to the headline, and one might think the headline would at least be accountable to the opening paragraph of the article. But in this case it is certainly not.

To the credit of Barbaro and Eckholm, the two New York Times reporters, they do give a good deal of attention to the fact that even as there has been an immediate national backlash against the law. As they write,

“Some legal experts say the potential reach of the Indiana law, and many like it, has been exaggerated by opponents.”

They cited Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Virginia, who said,

“The hysteria over this law is so unjustified. It’s not about discriminating against gays in general or across the board, it’s about not being involved in a ceremony that you believe is inherently religious.”

The article cited former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who said by social media on Thursday night:

“Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today,”

Well let’s just note as a matter of historical record that it was none other than her husband who celebrated his signing of the law at the national level back in 1993. But as is so often said in politics, evidently that was then and this is now. On the other hand the article cites Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, identified rightly as a gay-rights group who said,

“The possible discriminatory effects are real,”

Well let’s just notice something. You can’t actually use the word ‘possible’ and ‘real’ in one sentence in that way – either the dangers, according to her understanding, are possible or they are real. Discrimination in this sense can’t be both possible and real – it is one of the other. And at this point the law hasn’t even taken effect.

Again that’s the article that appeared on the front page of the New York Times on Saturday. You’ll recall the headline, Right To Deny Service To Gays Stirs Broad Uproar and the fact that in the opening paragraph the reporters said that the law,

“…could make it easier for religious conservatives to refuse service to gay couples,”

Again, remember the word “could” because the same word appears in an article on the same day in the Wall Street Journal by reporters Mark Peters and Jack Nicas. As they wrote,

“The national spotlight is shining on Indianapolis, but a week early.

Indiana’s largest city, which is preparing to host the NCAA Final Four, and the state as a whole face a growing backlash over a religious-freedom law that has drawn a hostile reaction from defenders of gay rights, who say it could result in discrimination based on sexual orientation.”

Again – and I give credit to these two reporters also – they cited Daniel O. Conkle, a professor of law at Indiana University Maurer School of Law who said,

“The reaction to this is startling in terms of its breadth—and to my mind—the extent to which the reaction is uninformed by the actual content of the law,”

But this article also cites the backlash, including the fact that the CEO of the group known as Salesforce Incorporated said on Twitter Thursday that the cloud computing firm was canceling all programs that would

“…require its customers and employees to travel to Indiana and ‘face discrimination.’”

And yet this point, there is no particular evidence of the fact that any discrimination will take place. But if you look at the headline in the New York Times and abundant other evidence in the mainstream media, it’s clear that what they’re trying to do is to argue that this is all about gay rights; and yet, it isn’t, at least not at this point. If it does become that that could lead to a different kind of conversation because what we’re looking at here is the fact that this law, which has been on the federal books for over two decades, has certainly not led to that effect. But it has put government at the national level on notice that it cannot infringe upon the religious liberty of American citizens without having a compelling and substantial reason for doing so.

But that brings up, once again, the editorial in the Washington Post that I cited in Friday’s edition of The Briefing; that’s where the editorial board of the major newspaper in the nation’s capital actually had a sentence that read,

“For instance, a bill the Georgia Senate approved this month bars the state government from infringing on an individual’s religious beliefs unless the state can demonstrate a compelling interest in doing so.”

The editors then go on to criticize the bill. Now let me state again, that means they’re criticizing a bill that, in their own words,

“…bars the state government from infringing on an individual’s religious beliefs unless the state can demonstrate a compelling interest in doing so.”

As I asked Friday, does that mean that the editors of the Washington Post actually believe that the state should be able to compromise a citizen’s religious freedom without a compelling reason for doing so? The question in this is why the controversy now? And the answer also helpfully comes from the Washington Post yesterday in an article by Philip Bump. He asked the question, why the backlash against Indiana and not the other states with similar laws? You might also expand his headline to say ‘why not a backlash against the federal government’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act? His one word answer to his question: timing. He writes this,

“Gov. Mike Pence can’t seem to figure out why his state has been the focus of condemnation and boycotts after having passed a version of ‘religious freedom’ legislation that already exists in 19 other states [we can also say, also the federal government]. Pointing out those states, Pence told a reporter from the Indianapolis Star, ‘I just can’t account for the hostility that’s been directed at our state.’”

Bump then writes,

“We can. Pence’s problem is that the 19 other laws were largely passed well before the recent and dramatic swing toward support for gay marriage — and after a similar bill was vetoed by the Republican governor of Arizona.”

I mentioned the Arizona development last Friday. The important issue is this: here you have a major secular analysts saying we do know what it’s going on here, its timing. We do know the difference between, we might say, Hillary Clinton’s stance on the issue and her husband’s stance on the issue: it is almost exactly 22 years. That’s the length of time between the passage of the national Religious Freedom Restoration Act and Indiana’s passage of the law last week. 22 years has meant a moral revolution; 22 years means that in 1993 no one was talking about same-sex marriage because even as a matter of the law, it simply didn’t exist.

But, once again we say, that was then and this is now. And now we’re on the other side of this vast moral revolution. And as we see, when a moral revolution takes place it’s a linguistic revolution, it’s a legal revolution, it’s a cultural and social revolution, it’s also a political revolution – that’s why you can almost invariably predict exactly how someone’s going to come down on this issue by where they stand on the political spectrum. But that’s a big change, because back in 1993 we remind ourselves this was passed by the United States Congress without a single dissenting vote and in the Senate by a vote of 97 to 3 – that was then and this is now. And what has changed, well Philip Bump has it exactly right in yesterday’s edition of the Washington Post, what has changed is the legalization of same-sex marriage. That, in effect, has changed everything. And those operating from a Christian worldview knew that inevitably it would.

I mentioned two groups in particular along with the corporate community on Friday, and both of them appear once again in terms of this new story. The first is the mainline Protestant denomination known as the Disciples of Christ – the Christian Church, which is headquartered there in Indianapolis. It has announced that it just might move its biennial meeting away from its host city simply because of the passage of this legislation. And of course one thing we need to note there is how the issue of same-sex marriage specifically, and the issue of LGBT issues more generally, has drawn attention to that deep chasm of divide, a basic biblical and theological divide between churches and denominations. In some churches it’s within the denomination, and in others it can even be within one congregation where there is biblical confusion.

But what we see here is that there is an increasing, not a decreasing, divide between the liberal denominations – including the Disciples of Christ and more conservative evangelical. And the distinction isn’t just over marriage. What this points to, once again, profoundly is the fact that it is the issue of biblical authority that always is found at the foundation.

The second organization we mentioned is the NCAA. And I have been raising for some time the question of just how different institutions organization schools and colleges will land when the NCAA makes it a matter of decision over these very issues. In Friday’s edition of the New York Times there was a headline in the sports section by Marc Tracy: New Indiana Law Creates Quandary for the NCAA. As Tracy writes,

“A new law in Indiana allowing businesses to refuse service to same-sex couples in the name of religious freedom…”

By the way, that isn’t yet demonstrated certainly that it means that one couldn’t serve same-sex couples. This is where Douglas Laycock’s point is very important; where law professor pointed out what is specifically at stake is participation in what a Christian could well consider a religious service – such as weddings. That’s a very different thing. But Tracy goes on to say this,

“…has put sports officials under pressure to evaluate whether to hold major events in Indianapolis.”

This is not only by the NCAA – that is basically headquartered there – this is also about a host of other organizations in sports including major league sports having to do with the city of Indianapolis – not just the state of Indiana. As Tracy writes,

“[Indianapolis] annually hosts the N.F.L. scouting combine and the Big Ten conference championship in football. It hosted Super Bowl XLVI in 2012 and the Final Four in 2010.”

And of course it is also doing the same this year.

“It is scheduled to host the women’s Final Four next year and the men’s Final Four again in 2021.”

We’ll see how these things hold. But in the meantime an announcement has been sent. The NCAA is going to take a stand on this issue – of that you can be absolutely clear. And as a voluntary association it can set the rules for its own membership. And when the NCAA does so it’s going be very revealing not only about something like the city of Indianapolis, but also about the true convictions of any number of colleges and universities and other organizations.

2) Nicholas Kristof reminds liberals not to caricature Christians

Next, from time to time I’ve given attention to opinion pieces that have appeared by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. He himself is no stranger to controversy, and yet everything he writes is worth reading; and in this case, the article that is written is impossible to ignore. He writes about Dr. Stephen Foster, identified as the son and grandson of Christian missionaries. He works in a rural hospital near Lubango, Angola, and by any moral measure he is doing very important and sacrificial work. He’s helping those who, without his medical expertise and ministry, might otherwise not have any medical treatment. And he has had to do so in the face not only of all kinds of diseases, not only with sometimes very rudimentary equipment, but he’s had to do so in the face of rebel armies – including gunfire – and he has had to do so sometimes in the face of something like a six-foot cobra.

Nicholas Kristof writes with admiration of Dr. Stephen Foster, but it’s the introductory paragraphs to his article the really demand our attention because they reveal something we really need to understand. What’s important here is not just what Nicholas Kristof has written, but it’s important to understand the audience to which he knows he’s writing: the readership of the New York Times. He writes and I quote,

“One sign of a landmark shift in public attitudes: A poll last year found that Americans approved more of gays and lesbians (53 percent) than of evangelical Christians (42 percent).”

Kristof then goes on to cite some controversial statements that have been made by some evangelicals. And quite frankly he draws attention to statements that we might wish had not been made as they were made. It is certainly something we should admit that sometimes evangelical leaders make statements that can cause us embarrassment, but that’s not the main issue here; as Kristof makes abundantly clear when he writes,

“Today, among urban Americans and Europeans, ‘evangelical Christian’ is sometimes a synonym for ‘rube.’ In liberal circles, evangelicals constitute one of the few groups that it’s safe to mock openly.”

Now again, I want you to hear his words exactly as I read them:

“In liberal circles, evangelicals constitute one of the few groups that it’s safe to mock openly.”

That’s an amazing statement of candor coming on the editorial pages of the New York Times. He then goes on to write,

“Yet the liberal caricature of evangelicals is incomplete and unfair. I have little in common, politically or theologically, with evangelicals or, while I’m at it, conservative Roman Catholics. But I’ve been truly awed by those I’ve seen in so many remote places, combating illiteracy and warlords, famine and disease, humbly struggling to do the Lord’s work as they see it, and it is offensive to see good people derided.”

Now let’s try to think about this carefully. Here you have a statement written by one of the most influential opinion writers in the United States, Nicholas Kristof, who is also a very prominent voice for human rights. And we should note that what we see here is in one sense a reflection of what we read about in 1 Peter 2, where we are told – Christians are told – that we are to behave before the secular world in such a way that even when they criticize us they end up praising God by looking at our good works. It was Jesus himself who told his disciples that we are to do good works in order that the world may see those works and give praise to our father who is in heaven. But what we note here is the amazing candor Nicholas Kristof when he writes about not just those evangelicals who have made controversial statements, but evangelical Christians in general when he writes, and again I simply cite his words quote,

“In liberal circles, evangelicals constitute one of the few groups that it’s safe to mock openly.”

That’s something that we’ve known of course has been true, but it’s rarely conceded or admitted in this kind of privileged real estate when it comes to the media. We’re looking here at a massively important, very revealing statement.

Now, shame on us if we make statements that should bring on our own embarrassment, but what we’re looking at here is just the fact that being an evangelical Christian, holding to biblical conviction on any number of issues, can simply get one mocked to liberal circles simply for being an evangelical Christian. Well the state the matter in terms of a moral bottom line from a biblical perspective, shame on us if we say something that causes us, or much less causes the gospel embarrassment. But shame on those who consider themselves so open-minded and tolerant until it comes to evangelical Christians, who according to Nicholas Kristof constitute one of the last groups it’s safe to mock openly. The New York Times likes to consider itself the newspaper of record, and in this case it has but that statement on the record.

3) Debate over motherhood as a job exposes shallow understanding of parenthood

Finally, I regularly cite the Financial Times of London, that’s one of the world’s most important newspapers and it has a great deal to do with the business culture of the international scene, particularly from the United Kingdom. And in the last several days it ran an article by Lucy Kellaway, and it’s on work column entitled Motherhood is tough and intense but it’s not a job. She enters into a controversy that is evidently very current there in Britain over whether or not motherhood should be considered a job.

Evidently this has come in something of cycles. Back in the 1970s it was moms who seem to insist that being a mother was a job. That was because even as there were many women entering the workforce, mothers wanted to say ‘our work, our job, is important too,’ But then there was a backlash against that, we are told by Kellaway, and now it is considered controversial to say that motherhood is a job; instead it’s a calling, it’s not a job she says because you can’t quit and you can’t be fired from it. Well what’s really interesting from a biblical perspective is what she reveals when she tells us that Saatchi & Saatchi, one of Britain’s most famous advertising and management firms, has decided to come up with a job description for a mom.

In terms of management theory, according to Kellaway, the firm concluded that mothers played eight different roles – especially emotional roles. They are: carer, fan, friend, hero, safe house, partner in crime, coach and rule breaker. I have no interest in trying to take that a part because fundamentally I think I’m incompetent to do so. I’ll let a mom do that, to put it another way, that’s a job for a mom. But what is interesting when you look at this article is that you have a controversy over motherhood that can only have happened in our modern or post-modern age. This is the kind of controversy that would’ve been inconceivable in virtually any other moment in human history.

And it also points to something else: if you’re actually trying to come up with a job description for mom, you’re probably missing the point. There is no way from a biblical perspective that being either a mother or a father can be reduced to a job description; as is now so common in the business world. That’s because from a biblical perspective the family is an organic whole that is centered in the covenant institution of marriage that begins with a man and a woman becoming husband-and-wife and hopefully becoming also father and mother. That organic whole is not something that can be reduced, either being a husband or a role, to something like a modern position description.

Now it’s described in Scripture –  the complementarian roles between the husband and the wife are described, as are the responsibilities of both mother and father, not as a job description but rather as a covenantal role. That’s a fundamentally different thing. No management theories ever going to get to it, nor will any controversy over whether or not motherhood is a job. Whatever motherhood is, as its valorized and respected in Scripture, it certainly is not less than a job, it’s more than a job. It is, as the Christian worldview makes very clear, a covenant role and a calling. That something I don’t expect Saatchi & Saatchi or the Financial Times quite to understand.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. Remember the release of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler.  For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boycecollege.com.

 

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.