R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 315

Transcript: The Briefing 03-23-15

The Briefing

 

March 23, 2015

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

 

It’s Monday, March 23, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Death of Singapore founder reminder of value of political separation of powers

For as long as human beings have considered the relative merits of political systems there have been those who have suggested that perhaps the very best – the ideal – governing system would be that of government under a benevolent monarch, under someone who wouldn’t have to be elected and wouldn’t depend upon getting elected in order to gain power, but once in power would rule with a benevolence and with a competence. Of course the great problem with this is that those who are not elected tend neither to be benevolent nor competent, and that leads to disaster. The sad history of monarchy is the fact that many of the people who have become crowned heads of state have been incompetent, others have been non-benevolent – that is to say, they were downright evil. And just looking at the Old Testament it is clear when you look at the kings of Israel there were far more who did evil in the sight of the Lord then those who ruled righteously.

But there is something to be said about someone who holds a great deal of power, there is an efficiency in government, and when it comes to a monarch or a dictator they can get things done – of course that’s often the problem. This is one of the reasons that Christians have been heavily involved in the development of political theory in the West and why the conversation about the right role and the right structure government has always been deeply infused with theological themes.

That comes to mind with the death earlier today of Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of the state of Singapore and its first Prime Minister. He died earlier today, age 91. As The Economist of London reported early this morning,

“Few leaders have so embodied and dominated their countries: Fidel Castro, perhaps, and Kim Il Sung, in their day. But both of those signally failed to match Mr Lee’s achievement in propelling Singapore “From Third World to First” (as the second volume [of his autobiography claimed]…).”

As The Economist reflects, Lee Kuan Yew managed to build Singapore into a modern state against far worse odds faced than by either Fidel Castro or Kim Il Sung. As they describe,

“…no space, beyond a crowded little island; no natural resources; and, as an island of polyglot immigrants, not much shared history.”

But by the 1990s Singapore, though claiming ‘Asian values,’ had become the most Westernised place in all of Asia. Lee Kuan Yew was a very interesting figure on the world stage. He led Singapore into a confederation with Malaysia in 1963, but Malaysia kicked Singapore out in 1965 – likely one of the stupidest moves in the 20th century in terms of political decisions. He was himself Western-educated in both the London School of Economics and at Cambridge University. At Cambridge he and his wife both earned the coveted rank of first in law. For all of his early life, Lee Kuan Yew had worked for the merger of Malaysia and Singapore. But when Malaysia broke that merger he decided to turn Singapore, single-handedly, into a major world power. And against all odds, that’s exactly what he did.

There were many in the West who described Mr. Lee as a benevolent dictator, but that points to the problem. He may have been benevolent in terms of his general disposition, but he did not leave democracy in his wake. As a matter fact, during the time that he was Prime Minister he set the stage so that there can be no credible threat to his power or to his party. And when he eventually left office himself, he left it to his own son.

The Economist is right, Lee Kuan Yew turned Singapore into a hugely admired economic success story; as a matter fact it’s one of the biggest models of economic success in the 20th and 21st centuries. Under his government the economy produce about 7% average growth, a record that is virtually unmatched anywhere else in the world. He ran Singapore like a business and he saw himself as the CEO. Lee Kuan Yew always saw Singapore as a very endangered political experiment and an endangered city state, for that reason he argued for “some curtailment of its people’s democratic freedoms,” that in the words of The Economist. As they explain,

“In the early days this involved strong-arm methods—locking up suspected communists, for example. But it evolved into something more subtle: a combination of economic success, gerrymandering, stifling press controls and the legal hounding of opposition politicians and critics, including the foreign press.”

Lee Kuan Yew is quite known for his visits to the United States where many of his governing principles were greatly admired. But even as they were admired, they were admired from something of a distance. The nation of Singapore was a tightly controlled nation, down to the minute behavior of its citizens. Very famously in the United States, chewing gum was a criminal offense, punishable by public punishments that could include flogging. Under his leadership in Singapore voting was compulsory, but that didn’t mean there was any kind of real democracy. Mr. Lee himself said he was “not intellectually convinced that one man, one vote is the best.” When it came to running Singapore he believed in what he described as a meritocracy, and unsurprisingly he appointed the meritocratic bureaucrats. In his words, “…we decide what is right, never mind what the people think.” And he kept the people largely happy with that massive economic growth.

One of the most important political works in the history of Western civilization was The Prince by Machiavelli. And Machiavelli famously advised that a prince had to decide whether he was going to be loved or feared. When it came to Lee Kuan Yew, he was quite clear. He said,

“Between being loved and feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.”

From a Christian worldview perspective it’s very interesting to reflect upon the death of Lee Kuan Yew and recognize that what we’re facing here is the reality that when power is concentrated in one person or over time in one party, when there is no actual give-and-take in terms of how the laws are made and how political issues are debated, eventually the government may become very efficient but it is not going to be benevolent. If you look at the long view of history the reality is that almost every dictator has fallen prey to his own pride and arrogance. And even when you have an inherited monarchy, the reality is very few of those crowned heads turn out to be either benevolent or competent. Sometimes it’s hard to know which is worse, the incompetent or the unbenevolent.

The worst possible combination is readily available to us when we look on the world stage at a place like North Korea where you have a combination of neither benevolence nor competence. And this should serve to remind us that there is a deep Christian theological principle behind the separation of powers and the American constitutional system. All those headlines about how inefficient American democracy is served to remind us that our founders intended this government to be relatively inefficient, because when it comes to government the first thing government is often efficient about accomplishing is trampling upon liberties of its own citizens.

In many ways the office of President of the United States, as described in our Constitution, was defined around the person of George Washington, our first president, even before he became the first president because it was obvious that George Washington was the one man who was capable of leading his country. And you’ll recall that it was George Washington who, after serving two terms in office, left that office and retired and went back to Mount Vernon, leaving the American people to choose his successor. When it came to Lee Kuan Yew, he made sure his party remained in power under the leadership of his own son. Explaining this he said,

“Occasionally two grey horses produce a white horse, but very few. If you have two white horses, the chances are you breed white horses.”

But as George Washington would respond, there’s an even greater chance that those horses grey or white will trample upon freedoms.

2) Islamic State attack on Yemeni mosques exposes internal conflict of Islam

The Islamic State struck over the weekend again, but this time it was Friday in the nation of Yemen which is being torn apart by sectarian strife and warring armies. The American effort to establish some stability in the war on terror in the Middle East is falling apart, perhaps worse than anywhere else right now in Yemen. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday,

“Suicide bombings at two mosques in Yemen’s capital killed more than 100 people Friday, the deadliest terror attacks in the country’s history and a sign, just days after an attack in Tunisia, of the spreading jihadist threat across the Middle East.”

Something very interesting is going on here. We’ve been tracking in recent days how many Western intellectuals are finally catching on to the fact that there is a real threat when it comes the Islamic state, and that there is no way to separate Islam itself from that particular threat. That’s not to say that we’re at war with Islam, being at war with every single Muslim, it is to say that a sizable number of Muslims are at war with the West. But one of the things we need to understand, if we’re going to understand this issue clearly as we should, is that even as the Islamic state is at war with the West, it is first of all at war with fellow Muslims – in particular with the Shiite Muslims.

The Islamic state is an insurgent Sunni movement – that reflects the largest number of Muslims in the world. The Shia are a minority – commonly known as Shi’ites – within the West, and they are a beleaguered minority when it comes to confrontation with the Sunnis. But on the other hand, they are a resurgent force in nations such as Iran. They have also been a very powerful force in Lebanon and right now it is Shia insurgents who are in control in Yemen. That led to the attack upon the mosque on Friday.

One of the most important thing for us to recognize here is that Islam is itself right now torn asunder by the distinction between the Shia and the Sunni. And one of the things that many people are now watching is the question as to whether much of this battle is now becoming a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. That’s going to be truly interesting to watch. The Saudi’s are the great funders of Sunni Islam and the Iranians are the great funders and manipulators of Shi’ite movements around the world. At times Iran and Saudi Arabia have been linked by a common faith, that is Islam, but more often than not, going back centuries and centuries, they are divided by that great chasm that separates the Shiites from the Sunni.

Without going into great detail in the theological differences between the Shia and the Sunni, the one thing Christians need to recognize is that the basic distinction between the two is indeed theological. It goes back to the very year’s right after the death of the prophet Mohammed when there was a question about rightful authority within Islam and the question about its apocalyptic understanding of eschatology. The Shia are the most apocalyptic of all the Muslims, and once again what we’re looking at is a theological divide that the secularized West has made itself virtually unable to understand.

But the West does understand that the Islamic state, or ISIL, is committing mass murder and Friday’s edition of the New York Times had one of those very revealing headlines that reveals more about the West than about the Islamic state. Here’s the headline in Friday’s edition of the New York Times, United Nations Investigators Accuse ISIS of Genocide Over Attacks on Yazidis. We’ve discussed the fact behind Nick Cumming-Bruce’s report,

“United Nations human rights investigators on Thursday leveled accusations of genocide and war crimes at the Islamic State, citing evidence that the extremist group’s fighters had sought to wipe out the Yazidi minority in Iraq.”

Now, we’ve looked at this before but here’s the big issue: do we really believe this is going to have any impact on the Islamic state? Do we really think that a group that has been putting out beheading videos and is carrying out mass murder, killing people by the hundreds and eventually by the thousands, establishing a caliphate and overtaking so much territory in Iraq and elsewhere, do we really believe that a group that has recently declared that it will put up a Muslim flag over the Vatican after having eliminated the Christian influence in what it calls the Crusader state, do we really believe that this is a group that is going to look over its shoulder and change its behavior because it’s just been charged with genocide by the United Nations? Now there is a moral point of importance here of course, the United Nations is right. Genocide is exactly the right word to use in terms of what the Islamic state has been doing and is doing now to the Yazidis and other populations.

The word genocide is a fairly recent word; coined after, at least in terms of popular use, World War II to describe first and foremost the Holocaust against the Jews that was undertaken by the Nazi state. But ever since then it has been a hotly debated political issue. The hottest of all these debates has to do with the early 20th century and the question of whether or not the Turks carried out genocide against the Armenians in those decades. But what we’re looking at here is the reality that those who are committing genocide are not deterred by being told that that’s what they’re doing. And those who are committed to mass murder on this scale are certainly not living in the fear of what United Nations will do.

3) Ineffectiveness of UN reveals divide between nations will only end under Prince of Peace

That points to a very important article that appears in this week’s edition of the New Republic. The article is by Jonathan Katz and it’s a profile on Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary-General of the United Nations. In the article Katz writes,

“It can be easy to forget what an achievement the United Nations’ creation was 70 years ago. The organization was forged during World War II, a time of firebombings, starvation, and genocide. Even the previous World War hadn’t been enough to create a durable international institution.”

He goes on to say, after the end of World War II,

“The U.N. Charter was signed by 50 countries in San Francisco on June 26, 1945. It pledged nothing less than to ‘save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.’”

Now just to state the obvious, it has done no such thing. But of course that’s not to say there hasn’t been any impact. It is to say that the United Nations, insofar as those two words mean anything, is an oxymoron – especially when you look at how the United Nations actually operates, or doesn’t operate. As Katz states and I quote,

“The not-so-secret truth about the United Nations is that it is almost entirely passive when it comes to the most pressing matters of global security.”

He also notes that weakness was built into its structure. So when you look at the P5, that is the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, every one of those nations has a veto and those nations include both the United States and Russia. And that means that when it comes to the United Nations acting, there’s very little acting.

From a Christian worldview perspective one of the things this underlines and underlines clearly is the fact that there is no possibility, no real possibility, of anything like a global government. There may be international agencies and global organizations but when it comes to the actual task of governing it turns out that the globe is simply too big to be a governable whole; for that matter, even the former Soviet Union was too large to be a governable whole. And when it comes to the modern understanding of politics, we’re right back where we started. All politics is, as the late former speaker the house Tip O’Neill said, local.

This too is on the one hand evidence of human sinfulness and it is also part of the metanarrative of the great story of Scripture; which tells us that when it comes to an understanding of global government, that’s a promise that points to human pride going all the way back to the Tower of Babel. The breaking down of national and ethnic divides, and the achievement of a lasting peace, will come only when the Prince of peace comes; and when he comes, it will not be as Secretary-General of the United Nations.

4) Ongoing Senate stalemate over sex trafficking bill shows Democrats beholden to abortion lobby

Speaking about the inefficiencies of the American government, sometimes they can be deeply revealing and embarrassingly. We’ve been watching in recent days the development of a stalemate in the United States Senate over a bill that was intended to assist the victims of sex trafficking and was expected to pass with wide bipartisan support, only to break down over Democratic objections to the fact that the Republican initiated law will not fund abortions out of the funds confiscated from sex traffickers. Very interesting language is included in an article that appeared over the weekend by Michael Crittenden of the Wall Street Journal as he writes,

“…Democrats are trying to appease pro-choice groups by opposing abortion language that is in line with what lawmakers typically attach to all spending bills. Democratic lawmakers have said they either didn’t know about the language or were made aware of it only in the last two weeks. The end result: Lawmakers on both sides are frustrated.”

But that’s an understatement, what’s actually happening is that assistance to the victims of sex trafficking is being held up by Democrats who are fearful of deviating in the slightest degree from the orthodoxy of the pro-abortion movement. And in a very interesting development the editors of the Washington Post on Friday issued an editorial in which they declared, Democrats are the New Party of No. But what’s really interesting is the editors of the Washington Post – that’s one of most liberal newspapers in America – is calling out those who are beholden to the abortion lobby for now refusing to help the victims of sex trafficking.

As the editors wrote on Friday,

“Democrats who have been filibustering the Senate’s consideration of legislation to combat human trafficking cited concerns with language they claimed would greatly expand the reach of Hyde Amendment restrictions on abortion. But when John Cornyn (R-Tex.), chief sponsor of the trafficking bill and Senate majority whip, offered a compromise that would seem to answer their stated objections, it was rejected out of hand.”

Then the editors wrote this very important language,

“Perhaps Democrats thought they could score political points, or maybe they didn’t want to anger their traditional allies in the abortion rights lobby. Either way, it became depressingly clear that what they weren’t thinking about was the needs of vulnerable people, mostly young women and girls, who are the victims of sex trafficking.”

Now my point here is not inherently partisan, my point is the fact that what we’re looking at on the moral divide over abortion is a divide that’s getting wider, not narrower. And we’ve discussed that in recent days. But it’s really significant that when it comes to this particular bill, and this particular controversy, and the obstruction that is now being presented to the Senate by those who were so beholden to the abortion-rights lobby that even – and I intentional use the word even – the editorial board of the Washington Post says this is simply too much.

The Democratic Party’s official party platform for the year 2014 put that party solidly in support of a right to abortion under almost any circumstance. And not only that, it called for government funding of abortion. Just how seriously did Democrats mean for that be taken? The obstruction of this sex trafficking bill makes that point abundantly clear. They are now ready to scuttle a bill that a third of the Senate signed onto as cosponsors simply because they are intent upon abortion being funded – one way or the other. Perhaps this, more than anything else, shows us just what we’re up against in terms of the battle for human dignity and for the sanctity of human life. If a significant numbers of United States senators will block a bill that would restrict sex trafficking because they are so intent on funding abortion, that tells us where we stand. And it also tells us where the unborn stand. At least in this case I’m thankful and somewhat surprised where the editorial board of the Washington Post stands.

 

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 questions in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058.

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 03-23-15

1) Death of Singapore founder reminder of value of political separation of powers

Lee Kuan Yew, The Economist

2) Islamic State attack on Yemeni mosques exposes internal conflict of Islam

Yemen Division of Islamic State Claims Suicide Bomb Attacks That Killed Scores, Wall Street Journal (Hakim Almasmari and Asa Fitch)

United Nations Investigators Accuse ISIS of Genocide Over Attacks on Yazidis, New York Times (Nick Cumming-Bruce)

3) Ineffectiveness of UN reveals divide between nations will only end under Prince of Peace

The Secretary General in His Labyrinth, New Republic (Jonathan M. Katz)

4) Ongoing Senate stalemate over sex trafficking bill shows Democrats beholden to abortion lobby

Fight Over Abortion Grinds Senate to Halt, Wall Street Journal (Michael Crittenden)

Democrats are the new party of no, Washington Post (Editorial Board)

Ask Anything: Weekend Edition 03-21-2015

1) What worldview will come after post-modernism?

2) What aspects of the early church should be part of our church worship?

3) Should a Christian accept a contract to build a Buddhist temple?

 

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

 

Transcript: The Briefing 03-20-15

The Briefing

 

March 20, 2015

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

 

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

1) Common Core false dichotomy between fact and opinion subversive to moral truth

As we go into the weekend several important news stories have appeared recently and they all have a common theme; that is the moral development of children and teenagers, how education happens or doesn’t happen, what kind of parenting even the secular world now understand to be problematic, and just how narcissists become narcissists – some very important stories for us all to think about.

The most important of them is a column that appeared at the New York Times; it’s in the opinionator column by Justin P McBrayer. McBrayer is an associate professor of philosophy at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. He works in the area of ethics and the philosophy of religion and the title of his article gets to one of most important issues we face today. Here’s the title, Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts. The article, now again remembered it appeared in the New York Times, is really, really important. McBrayer writes,

“What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?

“I was. As a philosopher, I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts. While there are no national surveys quantifying this phenomenon, philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.”

Now if we stopped at just that point there will be plenty for us to think about, because here you have a professor in a secular college telling us that philosophy professors are reporting that an overwhelming majority – that’s the very term he uses – of college students believe that all moral claims are mere opinions, or are true – if indeed they are true at all – only in a sense that is relative to a culture.

Now this is a pattern that can be traced all the way back to the 1980s when professor Alan Bloom wrote a blockbuster book entitled “The Closing of the American Mind,” and he wrote in the very first chapter of that book that the one thing that you can count on every student in the university now believing to be true is that all truth is relative. And now you have this kind of report coming some 20 years later, if not 30 years later, telling us the philosophy professors say that the overwhelming majority of college students now believe all moral claims to be merely opinions – not facts.

But the really interesting part of the article by Justin McBrayer is not about college students at all, it’s about second graders. He writes,

“What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from. Given the presence of moral relativism in some academic circles, some people might naturally assume that philosophers themselves are to blame. But they aren’t.”

He then ask the question,

“So where is the view coming from?”

Now comes his blockbuster analysis,

“A few weeks ago, I learned that students are exposed to this sort of thinking well before crossing the threshold of higher education. When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read:

“Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

“Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.”

He then writes,

“Hoping that this set of definitions was a one-off mistake, I went home and Googled ‘fact vs. opinion.’ The definitions I found online were substantially the same as the one in my son’s classroom. As it turns out, the Common Core standards used by a majority of K-12 programs in the country require that students be able to ‘distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.’ And the Common Core institute provides a helpful page full of links to definitions, lesson plans and quizzes to ensure that students can tell the difference between facts and opinions.”

He then asked the question,

“So what’s wrong with this distinction and how does it undermine the view that there are objective moral facts?”

First he says –  and this is really important,

“…the definition of a fact waffles between truth and proof — two obviously different features. Things can be true even if no one can prove them. For example, it could be true that there is life elsewhere in the universe even though no one can prove it.”

He then says,

“…second, and worse, students are taught that claims are either facts or opinions. They are given quizzes in which they must sort claims into one camp or the other but not both. But if a fact is something that is true and an opinion is something that is believed, then many claims will obviously be both. For example, I asked my son about this distinction after his open house.”

Now remember his son is in the second grade,

“He [that is the son] confidently explained that facts were things that were true whereas opinions are things that are believed.”

And then he said they had the following father-son conversation:

Father: “I believe that George Washington was the first president. Is that a fact or an opinion?”

Son: “It’s a fact.”

Father: “But I believe it, and you said that what someone believes is an opinion.”

Son: “Yeah, but it’s true.”

Father: “So it’s both a fact and an opinion?”

The father then writes,

“The blank stare on his face said it all.”

As if this report isn’t scary enough he tells us about some of the assignments he found online and in his own son’s homework. He says,

“Kids [now remember, second graders] are asked to sort facts from opinions and, without fail, every value claim is labeled as an opinion. Here’s a little test devised from questions available on fact vs. opinion worksheets online: are the following facts or opinions?

1. Copying homework assignments is wrong.

2. Cursing in school is inappropriate behavior.

3. All men are created equal.

4. It is worth sacrificing some personal liberties to protect our country from terrorism.

5. It is wrong for people under the age of 21 to drink alcohol.

6. Vegetarians are healthier than people who eat meat.

7. Drug dealers belong in prison.”

He then sought in this homework exercise to find out what the answer was to be, again, are the following facts or opinions? He then writes, and this is truly chilling,

“In each case, the worksheets categorize these claims as opinions. The explanation on offer is that each of these claims is a value claim and value claims are not facts. This is repeated ad nauseum…”

Then (and remember, this is published at the New York Times) this professor, in a public college says,

“In summary, our public schools teach students that all claims are either facts or opinions and that all value and moral claims fall into the latter camp. The punchline: there are no moral facts. And if there are no moral facts, then there are no moral truths.”

Professor McBrayer points out that there is inconsistency that it is obvious in all of this. For one thing, at the beginning of the school year his second grader brought home a set of rules and expectations that the school treats as moral facts – not merely as opinions. But they insist nonetheless that when it comes to moral knowledge there are no moral truths, there are no objective moral truths – everything is simply a matter of moral relativism and mere human opinion.

He points to the problem beyond grade school, but he points out that even in grade school this simply won’t work. He says, they’re told to do their school work with academic integrity, but at the same time the curriculum sets up our children for doublethink.

“They are told that there are no moral facts in one breath even as the next tells them how they ought to behave.”

Well that’s a problem in the second grade. Its writ large, not only in the American college and university but also in what’s increasingly coming to us from Hollywood, from public officials, from the society at large. This is one of most important essays I’ve seen in a very, very long time because what we’re looking at here is the subversion of truth itself, which makes morality absolutely impossible. And without a basic moral structure, civilization, society, is simply impossible. Not only that, you can’t possibly raise kids in any consistent way by telling them there are no moral facts, but you better behave. That is an absolute impossibility.

Furthermore, there is nothing that is more subversive of human dignity and of human rights then the idea that there is no objective moral value. If there is no objective moral value, if there are no moral facts, than thou shalt not murder is nothing more than a statement of moral opinion. Once again, the most amazing dimension of this article isn’t the fact that it was written, it’s not that it was written by a concerned parent of a second grader, it’s that it was written by a secular college professor and published at the New York Times.

Now if the New York Times is concerned about moral relativism, then that really out of tell us something. If the New York Times is at least publishing this article that says break glass in case of this emergency, just imagine how much faster Christian parents should have been breaking the glass. Of course this also means that Christian parents better understand that educating our children in a biblical Christian worldview means making very clear why we believe that there are moral facts. And who we believe is the author of those facts.

2) Greater dependence on technology decreases likelihood of academic success

Another article appeared just a few days ago in the Los Angeles Times, it’s by Larry Gordon and it is entitled Students Focus Improves Offline. This is one of those articles that tell us of research that we shouldn’t actually need, but nonetheless can be helpful. Gordon’s writing about research on how college students learn, or you might say how they fail to learn, and here’s one of the most important insights – and there’s been similar research we reported on before – it turns out that greater access to and dependence on high-technology is inversely related to knowledge and wisdom and even to academic performance. As Gordon writes,

“USC [That is University of Southern California] professor Geoffrey Cowan is a scholar of free speech and communication. But Cowan, the former dean of the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, insists that students sometimes should be cut off from the social media and websites that are so prevalent in their lives.”

This professor, according to Los Angeles Times, bans the use of laptops, cell phones, and wireless devices during his freshman introductory classes. And according to Gordon, like a growing number of professors nationwide, this professor says that electronic equipment, even just for note taking, causes students to mentally disconnect from lectures and distracts them from class discussions.

Now there are several things addressed in the research reported on in this article. For one thing there’s really clear research that students who go to social media sites and are browsing the web during class lectures don’t learn much – as if we actually needed research to tell us that. But the more important issue here is that one of the things that is now becoming evident is that students who take their notes on technological devices often do not learn as much as students who take down notes by hand. Now there are a couple of things going on here; for one thing, reading directly from the article,

“Other research published last year in the Psychological Science journal suggested that students learn concepts better if they take notes in longhand than if they type them on a laptop.”

Now here’s something that I’ve also noted as a professor: when students are taking notes on a laptop they tend to take notes in terms of verbatim statements; they are just writing down what the professor states. On the other hand, if students are writing in longhand they are far more likely to write down their thoughts about what the professor is saying. They are writing down what the professor is teaching and what they are thinking about as the professor is teaching as they are putting it in their own words.

Now previous research also mentioned on The Briefing has indicated that if this is true for all students in general, it’s probably truer even for the male students in the classroom. And this goes down to boys in high school and even in middle school, because as it turns out, as tactile learners boys actually learn more because the movement of the hand on the paper in a way that is tied to the brain in terms of writing down those objects we know as words. It turns out that has an effect in terms of how boys think, how their brains develop, and what they actually retain. Now that’s interesting research, but it also points out the fact that often times the technologies that are sold to us as the promise of the future when it comes to something like education, turnout – though they do have certain advantages and can bring tremendous gifts – to become a significant cost.

One of the things that Christians need to think about is the fact that every technology comes with a moral set of challenges. And not only that, but we learn a great deal about what it means as fallen human creatures to engage technology when we discover that we want to be rescued by technology. And this is yet another reminder that there is no rescue in technology; there is no magic pill and there is no magic machine when it comes to learning. And it also turns out that this research is pointing to something we actually should know, and that is that there is nothing like a teacher and a student in the classroom and there is nothing like pen and paper and books. There is nothing like the old technology of words and sentences and thoughts. Oh, with reference to just the last thing mentioned in this article citing so much research is the fact that professors are also concerned about the fact that when you add all these technologies in the classroom you make cheating a lot easier – a lot more difficult to trace, a lot more difficult to detect and a lot easier. And the last thing we need is to make cheating easier.

3) Study reveals tremendous influence on parenting on narcissism in children

Next, a very interesting question: where do narcissists come from? As it turns out, they tend to come from other narcissists. But more importantly, they tend to come from parents who keep telling them how special they are. This again is an article that appeared in a secular newspaper, this also originated in Los Angeles Times by Deborah Netburn. She writes,

“If you don’t want to raise a narcissistic brat, consider taking a hard look at your parenting style.”

She goes on to write,

“A new study found that parents who believe their kids are better, more special and deserve more than other kids can pass that point of view on to their children, creating young narcissists who feel superior to others, and entitled to privileges.”

Brad Bushman is a communication and psychology professor at Ohio State University, he says,

“Loving your child is healthy [well we know that already]…. but thinking your child is better than other children can lead to narcissism, and there is nothing healthy about narcissism,”

Over a generation ago a prominent thinker pointed out that we are becoming a nation of narcissism. We are making narcissism central to the American experience. And as it turns out, at least many believe that can be traced to patterns of parenting. You may recall the radio personality Garrison Keillor who writes about his fictional hometown Lake Wobegon where, as he says, all the children are above average. And we chuckle at that because it’s mathematically impossible for all the children to be above average, but every single parent seems to believe that his or her children is above average. And we can understand that in part, but there is danger in this, especially when parents tell their children they are above average when, as is it turns out, one of the most interesting insights in this article is how many parents said they would be disappointed if their children turn out to be normal; if they didn’t turn out to be spectacular.

Now from a Christian worldview perspective here’s the big thing we should think about: every child is spectacular, every child is above average when it comes to understanding what it means to be made in the image of God is a priceless gift and what it means for every child to have an individual personality with individual gifts and also individual challenges. But when it comes to telling children that their above average as compared to their peers, when children are told that they are simply excellent in all things and superior in many, what turns out is that we produce narcissists. And when people begin to ask the question “where do narcissists come from?” it turns out that they come from parents who tell researchers they wouldn’t be satisfied or pleased if their child turn out to be of normal aptitude.

So it turns out there’s a huge difference between telling our children they are special to us and special to God, and telling them they’re more special than the other kids they know. That turns out to be the big problem. And one of the things we as Christians need to think about is that that original sin of pride that took place in the Garden of Eden was, to use another word for it, narcissism. So narcissism isn’t new to the human experience, but perhaps it is new that so many parents seem to be so content with producing narcissists.

And from a Christian biblical worldview perspective something else is revealed here. What we think about our children in this case is probably an undisguised reflection of what we actually want to think about ourselves. Maybe, from a narcissistic perspective, there’s something even missed in this article here. Maybe a secular authority looking at this doesn’t know to ask the question, is the narcissism really about our children or is it really about us? That may be the harder question to measure by scientific research, but from a biblical perspective it is probably the easier question to answer from the Bible.

4) Chores found to foster important qualities needed for success in life

Finally, as we go into the weekend another very interesting article on a similar theme appeared – this one in recent days in the Wall Street Journal. Here’s the headline, The Chore Filled Path to Success. Once again, it comes from a secular newspaper. Reporter Jennifer Breheny Wallace writes,

“Today’s demands for measurable childhood success—from the Common Core to college placement—have chased household chores from the to-do lists of many young people. In a survey of 1,001 U.S. adults released last fall by Braun Research, 82% reported having regular chores growing up, but only 28% said that they require their own children to do them. With students under pressure to learn Mandarin, run the chess club or get a varsity letter, chores have fallen victim to the imperatives of resume-building—though it is hardly clear that such activities are a better use of their time.”

She quotes Richard Rende, a developmental psychologist in Paradise Valley, Arizona who says,

“Parents today want their kids spending time on things that can bring them success, but ironically, we’ve stopped doing one thing that’s actually been a proven predictor of success—and that’s household chores,”

Now remember we’re not talking about advice being given in church or advice written from a Christian worldview being given to Christian parents, we’re talking about something that shows up in one of the nation’s most influential secular newspapers because even the secular world understands ‘Houston, we’ve got a problem.’ As Wallace writes,

“Giving children household chores at an early age helps to build a lasting sense of mastery, responsibility and self-reliance,”

Now in this case Wallace cites a lot of research having to do with the fact that children who are required to do chores at home tend to do far better later in life than those were engaged in other kinds of activities. And one of the most interesting aspects of this article is the fact that putting down chores in terms of a college application isn’t likely to be the kind of resume building that many people think you’d simply have to do if your kids going to get into a good college or university. But the point made by this article is that the habits of life, the habits of thinking, the habits of self-discipline, the habits of self-mastery that come with the accomplishment of doing chores and being expected to do chores actually leads to children who do have the kind of lifelong success that their parents seem to be so concerned about.

And from a Christian biblical perspective we should understand why that is so. God made us as creatures with an inherent dignity, but one of the ways we demonstrate that dignity is by our work, our labor. We are assigned the task as God’s human creatures of doing work. One of the interesting things about the transformation of childhood is how children are now expected not only not to work – we would see that as moral progress, that we aren’t sending children into the mines as industrial workers – but there also not expect to contribute to life increasingly in the home. One of the interesting things that come out of this research is that language even matters. I read to you directly from the article,

“In a study of… 3-to-6-year-olds in the journal Child Development last year, researchers found that thanking young children for ‘being a helper,’ as opposed to ‘helping,’ significantly increased their desire to pitch in. They were motivated by the idea of creating a positive identity—being known as someone who helps.”

Now once again, there’s a biblical dimension to this. It turns out that children respond better when they are told that they are to be helpers, in concrete and assigned ways rather than simply being told they are helping. Being a helper turns out to be linguistically different than helping. And when we think about it there’s a linguistic difference that is a basic moral difference there as well. It’s the Christian worldview that points to the fact that who we are is prior to what we do. When you put all this together and it turns out the parenting is in irreducibly moral act, and we as Christians we should be the first to know that. And as that most important article of today by Justin McBrayer in the New York Times makes clear, it is indeed not just a moral thought that it is our responsibility to raise our children in a moral way that is – according to Scripture – a moral fact. And that’s a moral fact that begins with us even before we get to our children.

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.

 

Theological education is so important to Gospel ministry, and where you receive your theological education is really important. As you consider God’s call on your life, I want to give you the opportunity to experience Southern Seminary at Preview Day on April 24. For just $25 we’ll cover your two nights of lodging as well as all your meals on Preview Day. For more information go to www.sbts.edu/preview

 

Remember we’re taking questions for Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your questions in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058.

 

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

 

The Briefing 03-20-15

1) Common Core false dichotomy between fact and opinion subversive to moral truth

Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts, New York Times (Justin P McBrayer)

2) Greater dependence on technology decreases likelihood of academic success

Classes that go off the grid help students focus, Los Angeles Times (Larry Gordon)

3) Study reveals tremendous influence on parenting on narcissism in children

Narcissistic kid? Blame the parents, study says, Los Angeles Times (Deborah Netburn)

4) Chores found to foster important qualities needed for success in life

Why Children Need Chores, Wall Street Journal (Jennifer Breheny Wallace)

Transcript: The Briefing 03-19-15

The Briefing

 

March 19, 2015

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

 

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

1) PC(USA) redefines marriage under growing demand for theological compromise

On Tuesday the nation’s largest Presbyterian denomination – the Presbyterian Church USA – reached the critical point for constitutional change; to redefine marriage. For that denomination and its churches no longer as the union of a man and a woman but instead, constitutionally, to “two people, traditionally a man and a woman.” The magic number was 87 as of Tuesday night – that is 87 presbyteries out of the 171 regional bodies within the PC(USA) – that had voted to approve the constitutional change. This past June the denomination had already voted to allow its clergy to perform same-sex marriages. But as observers inside and outside that denomination noted, the change in constitutional language is far more important because it is far harder to reverse.

Now when we’re looking at the United States of America it’s important to understand there are multiple Presbyterian denominations. The Presbyterian Church USA is the mainline Protestant liberal denomination that still counts the largest number of Presbyterian churches. But it has been hemorrhaging members over the last several years; losing 37% of its membership since the mid-1990s. According to the New York Times, the presbytery that eventually established the critical number for the majority was the Presbytery of the Palisades meeting in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. As Laurie Goodstein reports,

“[That Presbytery] put the ratification count over the top on Tuesday on a voice vote. With many presbyteries still left to vote, the tally late Tuesday stood at 87 presbyteries in favor, 41 against and one tied.”

Looking at the landscape of American Presbyterianism, the conservative Presbyterians are mostly represented by denominations led by, first of all, the Presbyterian Church in America – commonly known as the PCA. More conservative denominations also include the Orthodox Presbyterian Church with whom the famed theologian J. Gresham Machen was identified. Also we have the evangelical Presbyterian Church known as the EPC, which, while allowing for women to serve as elders in some of its jurisdictions, still holds the definition of marriage as the union exclusively of a man and a woman. It’s very important to understand that even as the PC(USA) has taken this vote the denomination known as the PCA, or the Presbyterian Church in America, remain stalwartly committed to the inerrancy of Scripture and to the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

But the Presbyterian Church USA was the merger of the more liberal bodies of both Northern and Southern Presbyterians in the mid-1980s. And as I’ve said, according to the New York Times, the denomination has been hemorrhaging members; 37% loss just since the mid-1990s. And the reason for that is abundantly clear because the denomination paid for a massive study in order to determine why they were losing so many members. That study produced a book entitled “Vanishing Boundaries” written by three religious sociologists hired by the denomination to look at the reason for its loss of members. And the title of their book “Vanishing Boundaries” indicated the reason why the denomination was losing so many members. It had blurred the distinctions between the church and the secular world. The name for that is theological liberalism; the effort to try to accommodate Christian doctrine to the secularizing trends of the society. By now the PC(USA) has found room for almost every theological variant imaginable and once a denomination or a church has abandoned the inerrancy of Scripture and the binding nature of a confession of faith that is tied to the inerrancy of Scripture, then it is only matter of time until the denomination finds compromise on other fronts.

And that’s true not only for denomination but for an individual congregation. The rules is the same, once you abandon the inerrancy of Scripture it’s just a matter of time until you abandon those doctrines that could not be abandoned if the Bible is nothing less than the inerrant and fallible word of God. If the Bible is not the word of God written form, if every word of it is not true, then virtually every individual or congregation or denomination will find some way to get around the plain teachings of Scripture.

The Presbyterian Church USA currently counts about 1.8 million members but Laurie Goodstein reporting for the New York Times, even as she describes it as the largest of the nation’s Presbyterian denominations, she goes on to say,

“…it has been losing congregations and individual members as it has moved to the left theologically over the past several years.”

Now, that’s a very interesting statement coming from a secular newspaper trying to explain for a secular audience why the denomination has been losing churches and members. She goes on to explain that there was a wave of departures in and after 2011 when the presbyteries ratified a decision to ordain gays and lesbians as pastors, elders and deacons, and she says that made have cleared the way for Tuesday’s vote. She then writes an extremely important paragraph, and I quote,

“With many conservative Presbyterians who were active in the church now gone, as well as the larger cultural shift toward acceptance of same-sex marriage, the decisive vote moved quickly toward approval, according to those on both sides of the divide.”

So that single sentence paragraph really helps to encapsulate something we really need to understand and that is that once a process of movement in the leftward direction towards theological liberalism takes place in a church or a denomination, that process tends to accelerate. And the reason for that is pretty easy to understand. Once a church begins to buy into the logic that Christian doctrine has to be redefined in a new age, certainly in the face of secular pressure, it’s just a matter of time before the velocity has to increase because a secular society is not easily satisfied. The demands for theological revision do not grow less insistent, they grow more insistent.

That report “Vanishing Boundaries” that’s now over a decade old points out that the crucial issue in many ways for the Presbyterian Church USA was the issue of the exclusivity of the gospel. The question, ‘is it actually necessary for a sinner to come to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved?’ As the researchers in that report pointed out, once a church no longer answers that question – by affirming the exclusivity of the gospel – there is no reason to have any evangelistic or mission’s urgency. There is no reason to have any urgency about the preaching or the declaration of the gospel. Eventually, there’s no reason to go to church. Another interesting question immediately comes about and that is, will there be more congregations that will leave the PC(USA) at this point? Interestingly, just about both sides on the debate say it’s likely that there will be additional losses to the denomination in terms of churches seeking to leave. Some very high profile churches had negotiated their way out for the PC(USA) even in recent months; sometimes costing as much as $9 million in the case of one California church to retain its property.

But looking at this news and at that question concerning the PC(USA), another important issue comes to mind. Once a church has stayed in this long, what exactly would it take to get them to leave? This is a denomination that is already, in terms of previous years, voted to affirm the ordination of openly gay lesbian clergy. This is a denomination that has been allowing same-sex marriage to take place within its congregations for a matter of years. This is a denomination that as of Tuesday officially changed its position to reflect what it was already doing. No doubt there will be some congregations that will all the sudden see the light, but the question is going to have to be very urgent. What would it take now for churches to leave?

2) San Francisco church drops celibacy for gay members, neglects Scripture’s view of harm

Hitting a bit closer to home Kimberly Winston reported over the weekend at Religion News Service,

“A prominent evangelical Christian church in San Francisco has announced it will no longer ask members who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender to remain celibate.”

Fred Harrell Sr. and six board members of City Church in San Francisco, one of the largest congregations within the Reformed Church in America, wrote to members a letter that was emailed last Friday. And in it they said, and I quote,

“We will no longer discriminate based on sexual orientation and demand lifelong celibacy as a precondition for joining,”

As Winston reports,

“The church, which claims about 1,000 attendees and meets at two San Francisco locations, has long welcomed LGBT persons to attend, but has required lifelong celibacy of those LGBT persons seeking membership.”

The letter that was released by the pastor and other elders said,

“Imagine feeling this from your family or religious community. If you stay, you must accept celibacy with no hope that you too might one day enjoy the fullness of intellectual, spiritual, emotional, psychological and physical companionship. If you pursue a lifelong partnership, you are rejected.’ This is simply not working and people are being hurt. We must listen and respond.”

Well that’s going to be an argument we’re going to see over and over again. And it gets to the question: how would we recognize harm? One of the things the biblical worldview would at every turn is that it is sin that causes harm. And the right policy, the right doctrine, the right teaching, would not cause harm.

One of the basic moral debates we now face in our society when it comes to matters of law is whether or not the only morality that should be legislated is a morality that would prevent an immediate recognizable harm. Many of the laws we have on the book right now are very clearly attempts to prevent that kind of harm; that’s why we have laws against assault, we have laws against child abuse, we have laws against murder – those are all because we can recognize the harm that is done. We have laws against drunk driving. Those are laws in which we can very clearly draw a line from A to B. We can understand the harm that is sought to be avoided and prevented by means of the law.

Now you have language coming from this church, and again it was identified as the largest evangelical church in San Francisco, stating that an expectation of persons who are LBGT, that they must remain celibate throughout their lifetimes, and now that they are abandoning that policy the church’s leadership said and I quote,

“This is simply not working and people are being hurt. We must listen and respond.”

Well here’s something we need to have in our mind very clearly. If indeed the church’s historical biblical understanding was causing hurt then that would be a problem. But we need to step back and ask the question, how would we know? This is a very important issue from a biblical worldview because the reality is if we’re looking at it from humanistic worldview we might come up with all kinds of ways that we would measure whether or not something is causing harm. No doubt there would be LGBT persons who are telling us that they are experiencing harm by being prevented from getting married, by being dissuaded by means of moral conviction and biblical teaching from engaging in same-sex sexual acts and relationships. No doubt there are persons who think that harm would be alleviated if they were enabled to marry and to establish lifelong and emotionally fulfilling relationships with someone of the same gender. No doubt there are persons who are telling us that they are being harmed by the church’s deep biblical conviction concerning the reality of human gender as one of God’s most precious gifts and creation. And the fact that that gender, that biological sex, is given to us as a gift that is revealed even at the time of our birth.

But this is where the Christian worldview, based upon Scripture, comes back to tell us we are actually incompetent at figuring out exactly what causes us harm. We can demand things that we would say would prevent us harm now, only to understand that what we thought would lead to human flourishing instead leads in the very opposite direction – not towards human flourishing and the alleviation of harm, but towards the cause of harm.

Christians understanding why that we would support legislation that would define marriage as a man and a woman, and exclusively as a man and a woman, understand that we are doing so because we believe there will be harm; there will be harm towards individuals, there will be harm toward society as a whole, there will be harm towards the basic institution of marriage – which is so central to human flourishing. If we did not believe that then we would not understand the goodness of marriage in terms of a very clear affirmation of Scripture. But that gets back to a different issue. It is Scripture itself that is God’s gift to us to tell us what leads to human flourishing. Because left to our own devices, as scripture says, we will each go in our own way. And as scripture also says, that a way that leads to destruction not to human health and human happiness; not certainly, in an internal frame of reference, toward eternal life. What we’re looking at is the fact that it takes Scripture to tell us what is actually harming us. It takes Scripture to tell us what actually leads to human flourishing. And here we have a church that, to put the matter straightforwardly, has lost confidence that the scriptural teaching actually is what leads to human flourishing. And so in the name of alleviating or preventing what they declared to be harm, they are saying about the biblical position they are now rejecting “this is simply not working and people are being hurt. We must listen and respond.”

No doubt we must listen and respond. That’s an important Christian responsibility that too often we have neglected. But in listening and responding we cannot violate the clear teachings of Scripture. We cannot abandon the high ground of scriptural authority and the very fact that that Scripture is given to us as gift, as a gift to tell us not only the way to the true knowledge of God and the way of salvation through Christ, but the way of understanding what genuinely makes for human happiness – individually and in terms of the family and in terms of marriage and in terms of society as a whole.

There’s much to look at in terms of this announcement coming out of city church in San Francisco but it serves as a real warning to us and it’s a warning that points to the fact that the issue of same-sex marriage and LBGT persons, in terms of inclusion in the church, is never the issue that suddenly requires a theological change within the congregation. The trajectory of this very congregation shows that there’s been a process of theological transition that has been taking place over a number of years. And even as we noted in the PC(USA) and its own timetable, it’s just been moving towards this eventual major doctrinal change by a previous set of doctrinal changes that did not make headline news across the nation secular newspapers. But they were there and they were to be seen.

To put the matter bluntly, one of the issues here that is affirmed by this change is one that we’ve noted over and over again, and it is one that is also noted by the other side of the argument. For instance Matthew Vines in his book “God and the Gay Christian.” Once you have decided to redefine the teachings of Scripture to allow for women to serve as those in teaching authority, you have already adopted a pattern of responding to Scripture that will make it far more difficult not eventually to change the issue of the Bible’s teaching on sexuality as well.

3) Value of confession evidenced as Alabama Baptist church disfellowshipped over gay marriage

But before leaving this issue and this pattern of conversation I do need to leave the Presbyterians and the reformed to go to the Baptist world where the news on Tuesday night came out of Huntsville, Alabama, where the Madison Baptist Association voted to dis-fellowship a church that had, by its pastor teaching and by the fact that one of its staff ministers had performed a same-sex marriage, violated the Baptist Faith and Message – the confession of faith of that association and of the Southern Baptist Convention – and had effectively removed itself from the fellowship of the Association. The vote came on Tuesday night and the church, that is the Weatherly Heights Baptist Church in Huntsville, Alabama, was removed as the Association of 85 churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, after an investigation, determined that the church was no longer in friendly cooperation and of like faith with the other churches in the Association.

The Baptist Faith and Message, that is the confession of faith of the Southern Baptist Convention, has, since the year 2000, defined marriage as:

“The uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime”

The keywords here of course are one man and one woman. Now note very carefully that those were the words that were basically used by the PC(USA) until the language “a man and a woman” was changed to “two people, traditionally a man and a woman.” Traditionally means that’s the way it used to be, not necessarily so now.

According to reporter Bob Allen of Baptist News Global,

“Discussions revealed that the church’s pastor, David Freeman, also does not believe the Bible necessarily prohibits ‘adult, loving, monogamous, same-sex relationships’ at the center of the marriage debate, and that he is open to officiating a same-sex marriage.”

Again that is a quote within a quote from Bob Allen at Baptist News Global. In an open letter to the Association published before the vote on Tuesday night, a pastor identified as the Rev. Dr. Robbie White, senior pastor of the Locust Grove Baptist Church and also professor of Ethics and Religion at Athens State University there in Alabama, had said that the Association was acting in a non-Baptist Manor by even considering the removal of the church – that is Weatherly Heights Baptist Church – from its fellowship. In his letter this pastor accused Southern Baptist leaders of using the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message. he says,

“…more as a Creed than a confession,”

He went on to say,

“This has become a litmus test of what it means to be a Southern Baptist.”

Responding he said,

“I believe in historic Baptist principles — the Lordship of Christ, authority of Scripture, autonomy of the local church, priesthood of the believer and separation of church and state. This is what has defined Baptists historically across the years. If Southern Baptists want to abandon those beliefs, then it is time for them to call themselves something other than Baptist.”

Well that’s the kind of argument that was writ large and debated in Southern Baptist life, especially in the 1980s and the 1990s during the years of what was called the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention when conservatives gained control in the denomination and brought about a change in the direction of its institutions and indeed it was a recovery about its confessionalism. But when the accusation is made here that Southern Baptist leaders use the Baptist Faith and Message (or in the case of Southern Seminary, the Abstract of Principles) as a creed, we simply have to point out that that is the way they were intended to operate. To take the Abstract of Principles, faculty members of this institution since 1859 have been required to sign to teach in accordance with, and not contrary to, all that is contained within the confession of faith – continuing in the language of our founder –

“…without hesitation or mental reservation or a private arrangement with the one who invest the professor in office,”

Now that’s a binding confessionalism, that’s a binding confessionalism that some may want to call creedal, but even into the 1920s are confession of faith was published in the catalog as the seminary creed.

But there you have the controversy in the SBC writ large, but you also have something else. Remember what I said earlier in today’s edition of The Briefing, once you begin to abandon the fact that words mean words, they mean what they say, either in Scripture or in the confession of faith, then you’re on your way eventually to a doctrinal transformation. You’re on your way towards some form of theological liberalism. And you’re also on your way to a quickening velocity of that theological change.

These developments on the issue of human sexuality and same-sex marriage serve to remind us that there are always deeper issues at stake. And the deeper issue that’s most apparent here is the issue of confessional integrity and the authority of Scripture; it simply implausible to claim the authority of Scripture as a way of invalidating the authority of Scripture when it comes to defining human sexuality. But it also points to the pressing issue of knowing what the gospel is. If we don’t know what sin is and why Jesus came to die for our sins, then we don’t understand why we need a Savior and we really don’t understand why the gospel is such good news. And finally, we have to go back to that book that was done about a decade ago in the PC(USA), remember those words in the title “Vanishing Boundaries,” once the church simply starts to define issues the way the world does, you don’t need the church anymore. Pretty soon vanishing boundaries mean no boundaries at all.

 

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 the release of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your questions in your voice to 877-505-2058. We want your questions in your voice. 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 on tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

 

 

The Briefing 03-19-15

Podcast Transcript

1) PC(USA) redefines marriage under growing demand for theological compromise

Largest Presbyterian Denomination Gives Final Approval for Same-Sex Marriage, New York Times (Laurie Goodstein)

2) San Francisco church drops celibacy for gay members, neglects Scripture’s view of harm

Prominent San Francisco evangelical church drops celibacy requirement for LGBT members, Religion News Service (Kimberly Winston)

A Letter from the Elder Board – March 13, 2015, City Church San Francisco

3) Value of confession evidenced as Alabama Baptist church disfellowshipped over gay marriage

Alabama Baptist church dis-fellowshipped over pastor’s gay friendly views, Baptist News Global (Bob Allen)

Transcript: The Briefing 03-18-15

The Briefing

 

March 18, 2015

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

 

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

1) Close Israeli elections reminder of value of US Constitution 

There are huge election decisions looming before us in the United States – we have a presidential election coming in the year 2016, but that means the primary season is already well underway. And when it comes to those who are right now either running or thinking about running or teasing us about running, those candidates are already highly politically involved. Meanwhile in coming months there will come an election in Great Britain which will be highly determinative of that country’s future.

But right now the big news is an election in Israel. It was held on Tuesday and as of early this morning it is not at all clear that the election results have yet produced a government. But even if we have the election results in Israel that doesn’t mean that we will yet know the shape of the government. And that’s an important civics lesson for us all.

As the New York Times reported late yesterday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who heads the Likud party, and his chief challenger Isaac Herzog of the center-left Zionist union, appeared as the polls closed in Israel to have earned about the same number of seats in parliament – neither one of them enough to form a government. Now one of the things Americans often don’t think about is the fact that we have a constitutional system whereby our head of government and our head of state are a singular person. That is rather unusual across the world stage. In most nations, including most democracies, the head of government and the head of state are two different individuals. In Great Britain for example the head of state is still the Queen of England; the head of government is the British Prime Minister.

When it comes to Israel there is a President, but the President has very little political power – political power that is actually exercised only in the case of a national emergency. In the meantime the head of government is the Prime Minister. But that means the Prime Minister is simply the official who can claim the greatest number of votes counted by the support of seats in terms of coalition in the government.

Now if there were to be a party that gained over 60 seats on its own it could form of government on its own – but that hasn’t happened in a long time in Israel. And that’s why the biggest question is not really who got the most votes when it comes to seats in the Israeli Knesset, it’s who will be able to assemble the most seats in order to become Prime Minister. In this case the New York Times is exactly right, the prime candidates to be Prime Minister are the current Prime Minister who is running for effectively his fourth term – that’s Benjamin Netanyahu – and then his challenger Isaac Herzog of the center-left Zionist union.

But it’s unlikely that either Netanyahu or Herzog will decide who the next government will be. Instead it’s likely that Moshe Kahlon, who is a former Likud minister who broke away from Mr. Netanyahu and formed his own party known as Kulana. It is likely that he will eventually determine which man will become Prime Minister because he has just enough seats to be the deciding factor in forming or failing to form a coalition.

Now when you look at the United States constitutional system I believe there is deep wisdom in combining the head of state and the head of government. That’s one of the early issues faced by the framers of the United States Constitution. And as they understood, democracy itself deserves a majesty; that’s a very important issue. The framers of the U.S. Constitution believe that the head of government should be the head of state because as the elected head of the government the majesty should be seen as held by the people themselves and invested for only a short period of time in the elected leader who would head the government.

When it comes to the American constitutional order, when a president is elected he – and heretofore they’ve all been he – immediately becomes the head of the government, immediately begins to form an administration. There is no need to put together a coalition; if there were, the American system of democracy would likely be at an even greater stalemate than it has been at many points in terms of our history; it might be effectively impossible to find a way to govern the United States of America. For that reason we should be thankful for the wisdom of those who framed the U.S. Constitution, putting in a separation of powers that is due to their understanding of human sinfulness and the necessity of avoiding any concentration of power in one branch of government. But they didn’t believe in separating the state from the government in this sense, and I think there’s great wisdom in that.

If you look at what’s likely to be days, if not months, of political chaos in Israel, you’ll see the evidence for the American constitutional wisdom. And yet next, even as we understand the wisdom behind the American constitutional order – a wisdom that is deeply rooted in the Christian worldview and its tradition – we also come to understand that there are limits even to how American democracy can work.

2) Limits of democracy evidenced in failure of Senate to pass human trafficking bill

And yesterday is one of those days that demonstrates how even the most efficient democracy can fail.

As we discussed earlier this week, a bill that we thought was going to pass by overwhelming bipartisan support as of last week has been bogged down over the issue of abortion. It is a bill that is intended to put further restrictions and pressure on sex trafficking especially in the United States of America. It would confiscate wealth from those who are convicted of sex trafficking and establish a fund to be used for its victims. And yet the issue that came down to such controversy after there was wide bipartisan support for the bill in both the house and the Senate, was the fact that the Republican sponsor of the bill, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, had put in a statement that simply made clear the fact that none of the funds confiscated in terms of sex trafficking could be used to pay for abortion.

Now, as I pointed out earlier, we’re talking about the fact that the United States government had had in place, by congressional support, what is known as the Hyde Amendment which prevents any federal tax money from going to fund abortions. Sen. Cornyn simply wrote in that same logic and that same restriction on this bill that would deploy funds that were confiscated from sex traffickers. And yet a bill that had wide and very understandable bipartisan support, because it is one of those rare bills that could actually do something about limiting human trafficking and helping the victims of human sex trafficking, it fell apart over the issue of abortion. And that shows you how wide the worldview divide is in the United States. And yesterday that bill failed to gain enough votes to go forward in the Senate.

As Jennifer Steinhauer reports for the New York Times,

“On Tuesday, a measure that would create a victims’ fund, using fines collected from perpetrators of sex trafficking, failed to clear a procedural hurdle, leaving a bill that once had majority support in Congress in limbo.”

Both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate operate under rules that are adopted by the chamber itself. When it comes to the rules of the house they go all the way back to Thomas Jefferson. When it comes to the rules of the Senate they are also very venerable and the rules of the Senate call for 60 votes as necessary to achieve what is known as cloture. That is 60 votes necessary to get a bill actually on the floor of the Senate for open discussion and for eventual action. If a bill comes short of 60 votes, which is defined as a supermajority, it can’t make its way for an eventual vote. That means that if you’re looking at a bill passed by the United States Senate it will pass in almost every case – not every case, but almost every case – because at least 60 senators voted to let the bill reach the floor.

Then you ask the question, ‘how could a bill come down through a vote like 49-51 if it takes 60 votes to get the bill to the floor?’ That’s because, at least in terms of the tradition of the United States Senate, there have been those who have voted for cloture who did not eventually vote for the bill. They considered it their responsibility to allow the bill to get to the floor just because democracy would be advanced by having the bill get to the floor for eventual debate. But when it comes to the issue of this fund to be established by confiscating funds from sex traffickers in order to help their victims, even though there was wide bipartisan support for the idea and for the bill, it all fell apart over the issue of abortion.

Now just consider what’s really at stake here. You have a bill that would undoubtedly put a restriction and pressure upon sex traffickers in America, you have a bill that would confiscate their funds and deploy those funds in order to help the victims of sex trafficking. And you have people who did not allow that bill even to reach the floor of the Senate simply because it wouldn’t pay for abortion. So if you have occasion to wonder just how deep the moral divide is in America, just look to the United States Senate just yesterday and see it with your own eyes.

3) Aaron Schock’s resignation example of how sin will always find you out

Next, in the category of ‘be sure your sin will find you out’ yesterday Illinois Republican Congressman Aaron Schock resigned less than 12 hours after a media report appeared that raise questions about tens of thousands of dollars in mileage reimbursements he received for his personal vehicle; that according to Jake Sherman, Anna Palmer and John Bresnahan for Politico, who broke the story – a story that led to the Congressman’s resignation. But controversy has surrounded Congressman Aaron Schock for some time.

He was reelected in his district in Illinois by something like a 70% vote even after basic ethical questions had been raised. He had been buffeted in recent months by accusations that he had used federal funds in order to decorate his congressional office according to a theme that was modeled after “Downton Abbey,” the Masterpiece Theatre program. But it turns out that what brought the Congressman down wasn’t his office – a rather bizarre decorating experience for a United States Congressman – but rather the odometer on a car that he had sold.

As Politico reported, the Congressman billed the federal government and his campaign for logging nearly 170,000 miles on a car he sold with only 80,000 miles on its odometer. Given the open records act, all of these things can eventually come to light if anyone begins to look. And once there was the controversy over the Congressman misusing funds for travel and his office decoration, eventually someone decided to look at the odometer records on a car that he had sold, on a vehicle – in this case an SUV – that he had claimed about 170,000 miles for reimbursement. Now again, you can do the math. That’s a difference of about 90,000 miles. He actually claimed more miles that didn’t exist than were actually on the car when it did exist and was sold and when he signed the affidavit that the odometer was correct.

The Bible does clearly say that we should be certain our sin will find us out and in this case Congressman Schock discovered that his sin was found out by the record of his odometer when he sold the car. But in his resignation that came about 12 hours after the new story broke, he said yesterday,

“The constant questions over the last six weeks have proven a great distraction that has made it too difficult for me to serve the people of the 18th District with the high standards that they deserve and which I have set for myself. I’ve always thought to do what’s best for my constituents and I thank them for the opportunity to serve,”

Well that’s political speak. It’s a moral invasion, it’s a bipartisan pattern; in this case, it’s a Republican Congressman. And when he resigned just 12 hours after the odometer story broke you’ll look at the language he used and he said that the issue wasn’t that he had done something wrong but rather the constant questions had become a great distraction.

He also didn’t say anything about breaking the law – much less congressional ethics rules – instead he said that the questions had made it “too difficult for me to serve the people of the 18th district with a high standards that they deserve,” so good so far, and then he said, “which I have set for myself,” Well which standards does he mean? Does he mean the standards of the principles he cited yesterday or the standard reflected in that affidavit about his odometer when he turned it in? Or all those expense accounts when he signed them and turned them in.

Corruption in political circles is something that is so routine now it’s hard to be shocked but when it comes to creativity it appears that Congressman Schock did have a bit of creativity in terms of his record-keeping and his expense accounting. It also turns out, says Politico, that separately on a campaign finance document Schock labeled the cost of a November flight on a private plane as a “software purchase.” That reminds us of the moral parable of the 20th century mobster Al Capone who went to jail not because of his murders, not because of his robberies, not because of his terrorism, not because of his gangsterism, but because of his cheating on his income tax. Sometimes you just see the morality in the math, in this case it’s clear you can’t claim 170,000 miles reimbursement on a vehicle you sell listing only 80,000 miles.

4) Religious shape of TED talks, environmentalism reveal inherent religiosity of humanity

In recent days we discussed an article by a philosopher from Israel who suggested that the most interesting new religions in the world were appearing in the Silicon Valley. He described the Silicon Valley as something of an incubator for new religious movements. And as I credited even the secular thinker for recognizing, it does indicate that what’s coming out of Silicon Valley is as much religious as anything else.

Also a few weeks ago I cited an article by Joseph Bottum that appeared as a cover story in the Weekly Standard entitled, The Spiritual Shape of Political Ideas. In that article Joseph Bottum point out that even the most ardent secularists, especially on the political left, end up using arguments that are disguised forms of theology. As Bottum argued, many of the political causes and political ideas now driving the political left take the shape of overtly theological form – especially in terms of the architecture of the ideas. He points out that they have some version of the origin of all things, they have some version of what’s gone wrong with the world, some version of something like Original Sin; they have some plan of salvation (whether it’s economic or environmental) and they have some kind of goal to which they believe history is headed. They have some kind of eschatology whether they admit it or not.

He even points out that these secular worldviews, environmentalism in particular, have their own version of Armageddon –that great horrible event we are to believe is threatened, if not in evitable, if humanity does not clean up its act, or for that matter reduce global warming.

But just in the last couple of days there have also been two articles pointing to the very same reality. One of them appeared in yesterday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal and it’s actually going back to a speech by the late novelist Michael Crichton given to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco in 2003. So we’re talking about a speech that Michael Crichton gave over 10 years ago and essentially he’s making the same argument as Joseph Bottum. Crichton’s speech is indeed worth citing because he talks about the religion of modern environmentalism. He writes and I quote,

“Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.”

That’s his language. He goes on to say,

“There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.”

Similarly in Sunday’s edition of the New York Times, Megan Hustad writes an op-ed piece entitled The Church of TED. TED talks are now famous in America. TED stands for Technology Entertainment and Design. It is a movement that goes back to 1984 when luminaries were invited to give a speech about technology entertainment and design but even the most famous were limited to 18 minutes. They had to say what they had to say in 18 minutes and they had to stop. The TED talk has now become something of a model for communication in modern America but the new TED conference is set to begin and is making Hustad write,

“Chances are you will not attend TED this year. Tickets to the gathering that begins Monday in Vancouver are sold out, this despite or rather because of the fact that gaining entry to the ideas conference entails more than pulling out your credit card. There’s a velvet rope of an application process, and questions to answer: ‘How would a friend describe your accomplishments?’ ‘What are you passionate about?’ Two references have to vouch for you.”

But then, you also have to shell out $8,500 for general attendance, even if you do pass through the gauntlet of their questions. Hustad then writes,

“The real action and measure of TED’s reach is online. In November 2012 TED announced its ‘billionth video view,’ which, assuming an average length of 15 minutes, means that collectively by then we had clicked on roughly 10 million days’ worth of TED talks. At our desks or on our phones, we stare as sympathetic experts tell us we should reform education, admit to personal failings more publicly or invest in the developing world. It sounds great. The ideas, which TED promises are ‘worth spreading,’ do indeed make the rounds.”

But then Megan Hustad writes this,

“I grew up among Christian evangelicals and I recognize the cadences of missionary zeal when I hear them. TED, with its airy promises, sounds a lot like a secular religion. And while it’s not exactly fair to say that the conference series and web video function like an organized church, understanding the parallel structures is useful for conversations about faith — and how susceptible we humans remain. The TED style, with its promise of progress, is as manipulative as the orthodoxies it is intended to upset.”

One Christian worldview affirmation we just need to make over and over again is the fact that all human beings are inherently religious – even those who think themselves the most secular. Those who are in the secular environmental movement often consider themselves the most secular of all, perhaps only topped by those who organize and go to predominantly the TED conference. They are proud to tell you just how secular they are but as both Michael Crichton and Megan Hustad point out, they’re not all that secular after all.

Michael Crichton was certainly onto something when he says environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. And Megan Hustad is also onto something when she says that TED conference seems to be the conference of choice for those who like the religion of Silicon Valley.

 

The next time someone brags about how secular they are and how secular their worldview might be, just listen to them talk and you’re likely to hear, as Megan Hustad says, something that actually sounds like it comes from a tent meeting. Eventually our words betray us because as human beings talk it turns out we just can’t help being theological. And that’s because, as the bible tells us very clearly, we can’t help the fact that we were made in the image 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.

 

 

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

 

 

 

The Briefing 03-18-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Close Israeli elections reminder of value of US Constitution 

 Netanyahu Shifts Tactics as His Likud Party Appears to Slip in Final Surveys, New York Times (Isabel Kershner)

2) Limits of democracy evidenced in failure of Senate to pass human trafficking bill

Sex Trafficking Bill, Ensnared by Politics, Is Left in Limbo by a Senate Vote, New York Times (Jennifer Steinhauer)

3) Aaron Schock’s resignation example of how sin will always find you out

Aaron Schock resigns after new questions about mileage expenses, Poliltico (Jake Sherman , Anna Palmer and John Bresnahan)

Rep. Aaron Schock announces resignation in wake of spending probe, Washington Post (Mike DeBonis, Robert Costa and Paul Kane)

4) Religious shape of TED talks, environmentalism reveal inherent religiosity of humanity

Notable & Quotable: Environmental Religion, Washington Post

The Church of TED, New York Times (Megan Hustad)

The Case for Old Ideas, New York Times (Ross Douthat)

The Spiritual Shape of Political Ideas, Weekly Standard (Joseph Bottum)

Transcript: The Briefing 03-17-15

The Briefing

 

March 17, 2015

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

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

1) Gordon College affirms biblical view of sexuality, still faces challenge of perseverance

For some months now Gordon College in suburban Boston, Massachusetts has been in the crosshairs of controversy over the issue of same-sex relationships and sexual orientation. As Joe Carter reports for The Gospel Coalition yesterday,

“Last fall, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) discussed whether Gordon College’s traditional inclusion of ‘homosexual practice’ as a forbidden activity in its Statement on Life and Conduct was contrary to the Commission’s standards for accreditation.”

According to Carter,

“Prior to the NEASC meeting, Gordon College President Michael Lindsay submitted information about Gordon, its mission as a Christian institution, its evangelical Christian identity, and its ‘history [and these are the words of the Gordon President,] of respectful self-critique and dialogue with individuals of diverse backgrounds.’”

Now the controversy emerged several months ago when Gordon’s President Michael Lindsay signed a letter that was signed by several other higher education Presidents from Christian institutions asking President Obama to be respectful of the rights of those institutions in establishing an ENDA policy by the executive branch of the government. ENDA is the Employment Nondiscrimination Act that has not been passed by Congress, but a similar form of policy was put into place last year by Pres. Obama by executive order related to those who are contractors for the federal government.

You can understand why Christian institutions would be particularly attuned to a problem here because even as some educational institutions will be considered by the government as “contractors” when it comes to delivering education, the question will be whether or not the federal government would respect the unique Christian identity of those institutions. Pres. Lindsay simply attached his name to that letter and yet when it went public, the Boston area erupted in immediate controversy. A controversy that led to the city of Salem nearby the institution denying the historic Christian school access to a city property that it had not only been using but had actually renovated and was protecting on behalf of the city. At least one local school system decided that Gordon students would not be allowed to serve internships and in-service appointments in that school system. Not because of Gordon’s new policy – it didn’t have a new policy –  but because the president of the institution had merely signed a letter asking the President of the United States to be respectful of religious institutions in the establishment of his policy.

But the controversy grew more urgent and more important last fall when the regional accrediting agency, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, demanded that Gordon College explain itself. And they demanded that Gordon College report back to the accrediting agency that it was not violating the accreditor’s standards when it came to nondiscrimination. As part of its response yesterday Gordon College released a statement. I read now directly from the statement, which includes these words:

“Gordon College announced last fall that it would engage in a period of reflection to analyze how the campus might improve its care for students around human sexuality. As part of the process the College’s leadership assembled a working group of school administrators, students, faculty, staff and trustees that provide ideas to the institutions governing board. The findings of the working group were presented to the College’s trustees in February and many of the recommendations were incorporated into the new initiatives.”

The following words are the most important words in the College’s statement released yesterday; and I quote,

“At that time the board also unanimously reaffirmed its support for the College’s traditional theological commitment on matters of human sexuality and standards for Christian living as they apply to members of the Gordon community as expressed in the college’s statement of life and conduct.”

Now that’s particularly important because here you have a college under fire declaring that it is going to stand by the Bible’s very clear affirmations and expectations concerning human sexuality. This is not a college that was taking a dispassionate academic look at these issues, it was under and is under sustained cultural pressure, sustained legal and accreditation pressure, and yet its Board of Trustees unanimously reaffirmed a very clear statement of biblical sexual morality. And the fact that they did so in March of 2015 is extremely significant. The statement that came yesterday comes at something of the midpoint of the colleges period of 12 -18 month period “of discernment” on the issue of same-sex behaviors, relationships, and sexual orientation. As the statement makes very clear, the College is owning the responsibility to serve it students and also to conduct a robust discussion of these issues. No Christian institution should fear that kind of discussion.

It is extremely encouraging that the college’s board unanimously reaffirmed the historic traditional biblical teachings and expectations of the school on matters of human sexuality and explicitly on issues of sex outside of marriage. Gordon College’s statement of life and conduct under the section marked Behavioral Standards includes this statement,

“Those words and actions which are expressly forbidden in Scripture, including but not limited to blasphemy, profanity, dishonesty, theft, drunkenness, sexual relations outside marriage, and homosexual practice, will not be tolerated in the lives of Gordon community members, either on or off campus.”

Once again, that’s a very clear statement. There’s nothing new about that statement, it is an absolutely clear statement and summary of the historic Christian understanding of what the Bible teaches on sexual morality. Pres. Lindsay declared that it is the college’s expectation that it will conduct “respectful self-critique and dialogue with individuals of diverse backgrounds,”  but when it comes to the institution’s statement of faith, it draws a very clear tie between biblical authority and the very expectations of the school – which identifies itself, unabashedly, as a Christian college. The statement of faith says,

“The 66 canonical books of the Bible as originally written were inspired of God, hence free from error. They constitute the only infallible guide in faith and practice. A careful translation, such as the New International Version, is sufficiently close to the original writings in text and meaning to be entitled to acceptance as the Word of God.”

So from a Christian worldview perspective, the most important development here is that an historically Christian college has made a very clear statement of affirming the historic Christian tradition when it comes to understanding what the Bible expects of Christians in the arena of human sexuality. And one of the most interesting things about the actual behavioral standards of the college is how clear the college is in demanding these expectations of every member of the community. That would include not only students, but also faculty and administrators, and with the explicit statement that the expectations extend to all behaviors on and off campus.

In an interesting statement made by the President of the institution, Michael Lindsay, in the statement released yesterday he says,

“We remain as committed as ever to historic Christian teaching on this topic…while recognizing that members of the Gordon community hold varying perspectives. I am confident that this process and these initiatives will enhance our ability to care for all Gordon students while we continue to foster spiritual and academic transformation, which is the hallmark of the Gordon experience.”

So here’s what to watch: there ought to be a bit of concern when the president of the institution indicates that on campus there are varying perspectives on these issues. Now in some sense, varying perspectives can mean a very narrow spectrum of opinion. But when it comes to media reports coming from both faculty and students at Gordon College, there are several who have indicated that they do not support the college’s policies. That in itself is quite problematic.

One of the key questions for any Christian institution holding to a biblical standard on these issues is for how long. And we are certainly encouraged by the fact that Pres. Lindsay and the board at Gordon College has stated so emphatically that they stand as firmly as ever with the biblical standards of human sexuality. But there are certainly questions about how long that standard can be perpetuated into the future if varying perspectives on these issues begin to mark those who are in both the student body and the faculty of the institution. That raises the question of how long varying perspectives may mark the Board of Trustees as well. We can surely hope and pray that when it comes to Gordon College the kind of very brave and courageous stance they took yesterday will be perpetuated far into the future. And not only for Gordon College, but for every institutional that would claim the name of Christ and certainly would claim the very clear evangelical identity.

The statement released by Gordon yesterday indicates that there will be a succession of speakers – some of them have already spoken – representing varying perspectives on these issues who will speak to the Gordon community. One of the speakers identified as “upcoming” in terms of speaking to the Gordon community is David Gushee, who in recent months has very clearly become an advocate not for keeping but for revising the church’s historical and biblical understanding of human sexuality. Now the thing to watch here is not that there could be a debate about these matters on the campus, the thing to watch is whether the campus’s commitments are themselves up for debate.

2) Elton John boycott of Dolce & Gabbana affirms basic human dignity of IVF children

Next, in terms of a headline that could only have appeared in our very modern times, yesterday the Washington Post reported with a headline, Elton John is boycotting Dolce and Gabbana for calling children conveived with IVF ‘synthetic.’ Reporter Soraya Nadia McDonald reports,

“This year, Italian designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana unveiled a celebration of motherhood at Milan Fashion Week, sending models down the catwalk who were visibly pregnant or carrying little chubby-cheeked bundles of joy.”

But controversy ensued, not because of the designs from the fashion house but because of words that came from Dolce and Gabbana. As the Washington Post reports, the problem came when they opened their mouths. The designers Dolce and Gabbana, who are themselves openly gay men, gave an interview to an Italian magazine known as Panorama, as translated by the Telegraph, in the interview the couple stated,

“We oppose gay adoptions. The only family is the traditional one. … No chemical offsprings and rented uterus: Life has a natural flow, there are things that should not be changed.”

Domenico Dolce also said,

“You are born to a mother and a father,”

He went on in a statement I will not read explicitly to talk about rented wombs and purchased gametes. He then says quote,

“The family’s not a fad. In it there is a supernatural sense of belonging,”

But now rock star Elton John is leading a boycott of the high-level fashion house because he, along with a man identified as his husband David Furnish, they have two children that were conceived through in vitro fertilization. And as the Washington Post says, Elton John and David Furnish are furious:

“How dare you refer to my beautiful children as ‘synthetic,’”

Elton John wrote angrily, says the Washington Post, in an Instagram caption accompanying a photo of the two children.

“And shame on you for wagging your judgmental little fingers at IVF — a miracle that has allowed legions of loving people, both straight and gay, to fulfil their dream of having children. Your archaic thinking is out of step with the times, just like your fashions. I shall never wear Dolce and Gabbana ever again.”

Well there is a sense in which this is exactly the kind of story I would not talk about on The Briefing because at least in terms of the headline, it looks like something that belongs in the tabloid world. But there is a fundamental issue here of both importance and urgency in human dignity is at stake. This is an issue we simply must address. And that is the statement made by Domenico Dolce in which he says,

“I called children of chemistry synthetic children,”

But here’s the urgent, the very important issue that is at stake: it is human dignity. Because when you look at the comment made by Domenico Dolce you’ll notice that there’s a shift in the consideration of the morality, away from the technology of the assisted reproduction toward the child itself. That is a mistake we must never make. The Christian conscience should weigh very carefully the grave and great moral issues involved in in vitro fertilization. We should also face the fact that it is this reproductive technological revolution that has allowed for the breakup of the family in so many ways and for sex to be nearly totally severed from both marriage and procreation. There are huge problems of human dignity involved in these technologies. I’ve written about them, this is not the place to talk about them extensively. What must be addressed is the accusation that these children are somehow synthetic children.

Now at this point, surprisingly enough, it’s Elton John who is right about the kids. He’s not write about homosexuality, he’s not writing about homosexual marriage, he’s not right when he cavalierly celebrates all these new reproductive technologies – including things that should certainly weigh very heavily on the Christian conscience, most importantly surrogate mothering and the commercial sale gametes and the IVF technology – those have to be taken very seriously, but the children who are produced by these technological revolutions are not synthetic. Every single one of them is made in the image of God, every one of them bears the same dignity as everyone who has come out of the womb by a natural process of conception, born to heterosexual parents and coming out of the womb without any artificial reproductive technology involved at all. There is no difference whatsoever in the theological, biblical, and moral status of the child.

These two Italian designers no doubt have a very confused worldview. They’re right when they talk about the importance of the family, they’re actually right when they point out that children are to be born from a mother and a father, that’s simply something that is right and biblical. But they are wrong when they point to the child, regardless of the relationship that produced the child and regardless of the technology that may have assisted the bringing about of the birth of the child, they are wrong to shift the moral issue to the child. The child is a human being made in the image of God – every single child you or I will ever see.

And this is not the first generation to confuse this. It didn’t take advanced reproductive technologies for people to get confused on this issue. Throughout human civilization there has often been a moral taint placed upon children who were born outside of wedlock, and horrifying words and accusations were made against those children. But there was nothing deficient about those children whatsoever. They bore no responsibility whatsoever for the conditions into which they had been born or by which they were born. It is absolutely essential to the Christian worldview that we make clear that when we look at any child and when we look at every child we are seeing a child made in the image of God and a child that deserves our absolute respect; a child that holds infinite human dignity simply because of the image of God, a child that is being received as unmitigated gift, regardless of the circumstances of birth, a child that is to be seen, first of all, as one of us.

3) Rising number of Bible-based shows still fall short of power of actual biblical accounts

Next, an article that deserves our attention recently from the New York Times; the headline is More Networks Jumping on the Biblical Bandwagon. It’s written by Neil Genzlinger and he writes in the critic’s notebook column of the New York Times. He writes,

“Television is largely a godless place, some would say, but not this month. Programs with biblical or other religious themes are sprouting up, some in places where you might not expect them. If nothing else, costumers who traffic in robes and sandals are doing a booming business.”

Now Genzlinger is simply on to the obvious here. As we are leading up to the celebration of Easter – as the society calls – as we’re heading up to the major Christian celebration of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, there is an enormous interest in the media in trying to draw every connection they can possibly draw to the story of Jesus – even if they are not affirming the story, even if they are raising questions rather than telling the story itself.

One of the issues of our concern here is the question of how intelligent Christian should look at this kind of programming in the first place. Here you have been Genzlinger pointing out that virtually everybody’s trying to get in the Jesus business when it comes to television entertainment products that are intended for this season of the year. In my view I guess the most surprising of the programs he highlights is one that is known as “Top 10: Bible Weather,” found at the weather Channel. He says it is,

“…an awkward mix of biblical natural disasters and recent meteorological calamity”

We can only imagine it’s an awkward mix. Even that sentence it itself an awkward mix. He then goes on to say,

“Ten calamities from the Bible are paired with equivalent phenomena from our time, with re-enactments standing alongside news footage and such. Dust storms, darkness, lightning, floods — God used them back then, and they’re still around today.”

Well once again I can’t say it better than the columnist did when he described this as an awkward mix. Roma Downey and Mark Burnett are out with what they’re calling “A.D.: The Bible Continues,” this is a follow-up on their history Channel mini-series known as “The Bible.” As Genzlinger points out, that mini-series known as “The Bible,” caught the television world by surprise back in 2013. But then he writes this,

“‘A.D.,’ which is scheduled to begin on April 5 on NBC and concerns the time after the Crucifixion, will no doubt make a ratings splash, too, especially with believers who like their Christianity loud and full of suffering.”

At that point Genzlinger quotes Mark Burnett who said, and I’m not making this up,

“This is ‘Game of Thrones’ meets the Bible,”

So people who are looking for “The Game of Thrones” meets “The Bible,” have just been told that series is coming for you starting in just days. As for myself, I’ll take the Bible without “The Game of Thrones.”

Genzlinger also tells us that CNN is in the midst of a six part series called “Finding Jesus: faith, fact and forgery.” According to Genzlinger, earnest scholars describe biblical stories and related matters much as they would narrate a history of the civil rights movement or world war with studied urgency meant to convey credibility and importance. He goes on to say,

“The scenes are re-enacted by sweaty actors using their best facial expressions, often those signifying pain.”

The UP Network on March 22 is going to give it hand to what it calls “Noah’s Ark.” “Nova” on PBS is rebroadcasting in March; what’s known as “the Bible’s buried secrets.” Genzlinger simply says this is the “smartest of the program summarized here,” he says,

“It’s still full of somewhat cheesy re-enactments, but it has a scholarly heart, exploring the origins of the Bible itself and of the concept of a single God.”

On March 27 the Smithsonian Channel is offering “Siege of Masada” which is a narrative, it’s an account we need to note that isn’t found in the Bible itself. And then at the end of this month the National Geographic Channel is going to offer “Killing Jesus,” which is based upon the bestseller in 2013 written by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. Genzlinger simply ends his article with these words,

“We already know how broad the market is for “Bible”-like shows; in the next few weeks, we’ll learn how deep it is as well.”

No we won’t. We don’t have to wait. What we already have, even in these summaries, is an indication of the fact you can’t improve upon the way the Bible tells its own story. You simply can’t improve upon the Bible by trying to dramatize it. But the thing we as Christians, thinking intelligently about these matters and critically when it comes to the artifacts of the culture, we need to understand very carefully these are not being done with an evangelistic intent. They’re being done with a commercial intent. It isn’t an accident that these programs appear this time of year and it’s not an accident that several of them are highly sensational and none of them can actually adequately portray the biblical text.

I’m not saying that the story of the Bible can never be told in dramatic form, I’m certainly not saying that it can never be told in broadcast form, I’m not saying that this shouldn’t ever be done. I’m simply saying we shouldn’t ever confuse an artistic interpretation of the Scripture with the Scripture, and we should never count on Hollywood to tell the story that is our business to tell. When even the weather channels trying to join what the New York Times calls the “biblical bandwagon,” that’s telling us something. The fact that even the New York Times understands that it is a bandwagon, that tells us something even more important.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. Are you or someone you know considering college? I’d like to tell you more about Boyce College at our Preview Day on April 17. Come learn how we are preparing the next generation of Christian young men and women to serve the church and engage the culture. Learning more at www.boycecollege.com/preview.

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