R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 317

Transcript: The Briefing 04-01-15

The Briefing

 

April 1, 2015

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The editors concluded their editorial,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“…talking about it openly and unapologetically.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 04-01-15

Podcast Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

The New Intolerance, Wall Street Journal (Editorial Board)

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

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

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

Transcript: The Briefing 03-31-15

The Briefing

 

March 31, 2015

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They also write,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“To the Editor:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 03-31-15

Podcast Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Campus ‘Safe Spaces’, New York Times

Genesis 28:1-22

Transcript: The Briefing 03-30-15

The Briefing

 

March 30, 2015

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The possible discriminatory effects are real,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bump then writes,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2) Nicholas Kristof reminds liberals not to caricature Christians

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 03-30-15

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

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence Says Controversial ‘Religious Freedom’ Law Won’t Change, ABC News (Stephanie Ebbs)

Indiana Law Denounced as Invitation to Discriminate Against Gays, New York Times (Michael Barbaro and Erik Eckholm)

Indiana Religious Freedom Law Sparks Fury, Wall Street Journal (Mark Peters and Jack Nicas)

Gov. Mike Pence signs ‘religious freedom’ bill in private, Indianapolis Star (Tony Cook)

Keeping them safe from gay marriage, Washington Post (Editorial Board)

Why the backlash against Indiana and not other states with similar laws? Timing., Washington Post (Philip Bump)

Controversial Indiana Law Puts Pressure on N.C.A.A. and Other Leagues, New York Times (Marc Tracy)

2) Nicholas Kristof reminds liberals Christian caricature shouldn’t be mocked

A Little Respect for Dr. Foster, New York Times (Nicholas Kristof)

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

Motherhood is tough and intense but it is not a job, Financial Times (Lucy Kellaway)

Transcript: The Briefing 03-27-15

The Briefing

 

March 27, 2015

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

It’s Friday, March 27, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Discovery Germanwings copilot crashed plane exposes inability to know the mind of others 

Yesterday the big news was the late breaking story on Wednesday night that authorities in both France and Germany had come to the reluctant conclusion that the Germanwings flight that crashed Tuesday in the French Alps had done so by deliberate human action. But as the story began to develop yesterday it became increasingly clear that it was the copilot on the plane who had actually crashed the plane deliberately into the mountain.

International media eventually identify the copilot as a 27-year-old Andreas Lubitz, and the explanation was that he had been the one who had locked himself into the cockpit and he had been the one who would reset the flight computer on the plane to go from its cruising altitude down to an altitude of less than 100 feet – running the plane effectively right into the French Alps. The plane disintegrated upon contact.

After the world began to settle on the notion that it was indeed a deliberate human act, there were immediate questions. Yesterday on The Briefing we discussed the fact that even those who operate out of a secular worldview had come to the immediate conclusion that there was a categorical difference between an air disaster and an act of murder – in this case, mass murder, 150 people were killed. But it’s also important for us to recognize that there was an inevitability to the second round of questions. As reporter Stephanie Kirchner and Anthony Faiola reported for the Washington Post last night, there is now evidence that there was an intentionality behind this that goes beyond our moral imagination. Or that’s at least what the international media are now saying, that it goes beyond our moral imagination.

Of course that’s not exactly true; this doesn’t go beyond our imagination. It just enters into the realm of moral horror. And it does raise obvious questions that have to be answered by every single worldview and that is this: how could a human being, trained as a pilot, a young man who even as a 14-year-old teenager had indicated an obsessive interest in flight, how could someone with this kind of training, this kind of background, the kind of testing that goes into the training of pilots, end up being someone who, without any notice whatsoever, without any signs of mental or emotional turmoil, could end up locking the pilot out of the cockpit and flying the jetliner into the mountains? As the Washington Post reported last night,

“…the tragedy turned from air disaster to criminal investigation as authorities in multiple nations scoured for clues to what could have compelled a man to hurl a packed commercial airliner into a mountain. Germanwings parent company Lufthansa on Thursday expressed stunned shock, describing Lubitz as ‘100 percent fit to fly.’”

Well that statement flies in the face of the now accepted reality even by Lufthansa. This was not a pilot who is actually 100% fit to fly, what they did mean is that given their operational corporate airline criteria he appeared to be 100% within the expectations of one who will be fit to fly. But as we now know, we couldn’t read the mind of the man who got behind the cockpit and crashed the plane. No one else could. No pilot would’ve gotten on that flight and taken off with the copilot he had any suspicion would follow this course of action. The passengers wouldn’t have gotten on the plane, even as they passed the cockpit going to their seats and would’ve had a view in all likelihood into the cockpit with the two pilots. No one saw what was coming, that’s the truly frightening aspect of all of this.

The secular worldview looks at the reality that the pilot appeared to be 100% fit and ask the question, ‘what was missed?’ but we now know that it is perhaps true that nothing was actually missed because we understand, as the Bible teaches us, that it is impossible for any individual, no matter the expertise, nor any group for that matter, to be able to completely read the mind and the emotional state of another human being. And as the Bible also makes clear, we’re actually not able even to know our own emotional state and our own pattern of thinking, we can’t read our own hearts as we might urgently wish so to do.

The Washington Post report last night included these words:

Those who knew him, [speaking of the copilot], could not reconcile the reserved young pilot and avid runner who lived with his parents with the accounts of French prosecutor Brice Robin, who said Thursday that Lubitz’s actions appeared to be a deliberate attempt ‘to destroy the plane.’”

They went on to write,

“The dramatic revelations from the black-box recordings, meanwhile, seemed to challenge a fundamental faith of flying — the sanity of the people at the controls. In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, cockpit doors have been re­designed for strength to keep people out, but leaving planes vulnerable to a danger that instead lies within.”

The report went on to quote German Chancellor Angela Merkel who said,

“It goes beyond the imagination.”

We know what she means, but it’s unlikely she actually means precisely what she said. The truly horrifying reality is that now we cannot not imagine it, it’s something we now cannot get out of our minds; the problem is we can imagine it.

An insight from a pilot’s perspective was published as an op-ed in the New York Times by Andrew B. McGee, who worked for over a decade as a commercial airline pilot. He writes about getting inside a pilot’s mind and one of the points he makes, indeed it is the most important of the point he makes, is that it is actually impossible to do what he is talking about – to get adequately into a pilot’s mind. He calls for increased psychiatric and psychological testing for pilots, but even as he writes that proposal it’s evident that he doesn’t actually believe that would entirely solve the problem. He writes,

“I worked as a pilot for about 10 years before going back to school to become an architect. There are a few oddballs I can remember flying with, but mostly we’re just talking quirks and eccentricities. Never did I fear a colleague intended to kill himself, or everyone onboard.”

He writes about some of the pilots he flew with; he writes about their quirks and eccentricities. But one of the most important issues we can draw from the article is the fact that that German pilot almost assuredly got on that Germanwings airliner, he went into the cockpit and willingly took off with this copilot. He left the cockpit in all likelihood having no idea that the pilot with which he had been flying the plane wasn’t indeed simply marked by quirks and eccentricities – but by a murderous intent. Here’s what we can count on in coming days: we can count on the fact that authorities and the general public are going to be struggling to try to understand the why. Why would anyone do this? How could it have become imaginable? How in the world did it actually happen? And one of the things you can count on is that there will be an effort to come up with some plausible reason.

Last night the Telegraph of London broke the story that German police said they had made what was called a significant discovery in his home. This came after an extensive search for what might be considered evidence in what is now a criminal case. But one of the things we need to keep in mind is this: even if some evidence is found, if there is some significant discovery that indicates what might have been this copilot’s motivation, it still will not be enough to explain the why. It still will not explain why a copilot committed such a murderous act – mass murder by aviation.

And one of the things we need to note right up front is that there is, morally speaking, certainly from a Christian worldview, no plausible reason. Any reason that may be found may go part way towards explaining the motivation of this copilot, but in terms of reading his heart, that is simply beyond our real ability. It’s beyond our pay scale so to speak, it’s beyond what we can understand, it is not beyond the creator who knows our hearts far better – infinitely better – than we know ourselves.

2) Triumph of erotic liberty over religious liberty evident in outcry over Indiana religious freedom bill

In the United States one the most important news stories had to do with the state of Indiana where Gov. Mike Pence yesterday signed into law a state version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. And in so doing he set the stage for an incredible controversy that is now reverberating not only through the legal and political worlds, but through at least some denominations as well. There are huge lessons in this conversation and we need to look at them quite closely. More than anything else what this controversy demonstrates is just how far America has changed – morally and culturally speaking – in the span of less than a generation.

It was back in 1993 that the federal government adopted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It was supported by an incredibly broad coalition of religious groups, including both religious liberals and conservatives; it was in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision that had constricted religious liberty. And as a remedial active legislation the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was adopted by Congress, it passed without any opposition whatsoever in the House of Representatives. It was passed by the Senate by a vote of 97 to 3 and it was signed into law in 1993 by Pres. William Jefferson Clinton. Now, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, being adopted by several states, is a matter of intense controversy. And not only controversy, intense opposition, and that’s incredibly revealing.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act we should note did not unleash any long series of challenges to laws or for that matter even any major social discussion. There was no evidence, there is no evidence, that the federal government’s passage of the RFRA, or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, went on to cause any form of discrimination against anyone that became, in any way, a matter of public consequence. But as TIME magazine reported last night and I quote,

“Indiana Gov. Mike Pence vigorously defended the state religious objections bill that he signed into law Thursday as businesses and organizations including the NCAA pressed concerns that it could open the door to legalizing discrimination against gay people.”

One of the most interesting things we should note about that lead paragraph is that the legislation, at the state level, here is simply described as “the state religious objections bill.” That’s very strange language, but it tells you that the secular media assumes that what’s really at stake here are religious objections – not religious liberties, not religious freedom. When the legislature of Arizona passed similar legislation the Gov. of Arizona, bending to political and economic pressure, did not sign the law. But yesterday Gov. Pence did, and the Gov. of Arkansas has indicated that he is poised to do the same.

The really interesting issue is that back in 1993, we’re just talking about 22 years ago, the nation as a whole represented by the unanimous vote in the House of Representatives and the overwhelming vote – again it was 97 to 3 in the United States Senate – believed that the law was not only right, but righteous and necessary. So did Pres. Bill Clinton, who very proudly and publicly signed the bill. But now we’re talking about a very different set of moral and political conditions, and the big changes is the moral revolution and the central issue as homosexuality and the legalization of same-sex marriage.

 

The next thing we need to note is the public backlash, we need to note who is complaining about the bill and the kind of language and argument they are using. We also need to look at the kinds of institutions and organizations that are now bringing very intense pressure. First you have politicians even within the states, such as the Mayor of Indianapolis, saying that this bill simply isn’t good for business – we’ll look at that claim more closely in just a moment – but you also have other organizations, not only gay-rights organizations, you also have organizations like the NCAA as that lead paragraph in the TIME article last night made very clear. Here’s another paragraph the makes the situation even more graphic. I quote,

“The Indianapolis-based NCAA, which is holding its men’s basketball Final Four in the city next weekend, said in a statement it was concerned about the legislation and was examining how it might affect future events and its workforce. ‘We will work diligently to assure student-athletes competing in, and visitors attending, next week’s Men’s Final Four in Indianapolis are not impacted negatively by this bill,’ [that was said by] NCAA President Mark Emmert said in the statement. [He also said,] ‘Moving forward, we intend to closely examine the implications of this bill and how it might affect future events as well as our workforce.’”

One of the things to watch very carefully is not just how this impacts the state of Indiana or the city of Indianapolis, but how this impacts the member schools of the NCAA. One of the key questions is this: how close is the NCAA to making an issue of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual activity when it comes to same-sex behaviors and same-sex marriage, or even the issue of gender, an issue of its requirement for member schools? That’s a huge question. Pressure is also coming from at least one mainline Protestant denomination; in this case the Disciples of Christ.

As Religion News Service reported yesterday and I quote,

“Though the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has made Indianapolis its headquarters for nearly a century, the denomination is considering pulling its next biennial convention out of Indiana over a new state law that allows businesses to turn away gay customers.”

Well one of things we need to note is that it is not at all clear that this would allow businesses to turn away gay couples. The issue behind this of course is the very publicized controversy about certain cake bakers and photographers and florists and others who are being asked not just to serve gay customers, but to be actively involved and artistically expressively involved in same-sex marriages, same-sex weddings –that is a hugely different issue. But as Laura Markoe of Religion News Service goes on to report,

“Gov. Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act on Thursday (March 26), the day after receiving a letter from church leaders pleading with him to veto it and threatening to move their 2017 General Assembly outside the state.”

When it came to the pressure exerted on the state of Arizona, some of that pressure even came from the NFL – threatening that the city of Phoenix just might not be an appropriate setting for the Super Bowl in the future. There are other big issues that are clearly at stake here, and that’s the influence of corporate America. Indianapolis is a major American city, and there are several businesses that are headquartered there and some of them – especially those with massive national profiles – are putting pressure on the states because, in their view, the moral revolution when it comes to LGBT issues is simply over and the rest of America (including Christian America) should simply deal with it. Religious freedom is just not a major issue in their view and that should be extremely troubling.

That point was made very clear in a March 5 report that comes from Reuters published in Fortune magazine. According to the headline, many of America’s largest companies have signed on even to briefs in support of the legalization of same-sex marriage in the upcoming case before the United States Supreme Court. As Reuters reported,

“Many of America’s largest companies rallied behind the gay marriage cause on Thursday as the U.S. Supreme Court scheduled oral arguments for April 28 on the contentious social issue that promises to yield one of the justices’ most important rulings of 2015.”

Listen to the next paragraph,

“A total of 379 businesses and groups representing employers across various sectors, including Google Inc , Apple, General Electric, American Airlines Group Inc , Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Johnson & Johnson, have signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief in support of gay marriage”

Again, remember that’s 379 major American companies. That’s the kind of leverage now being brought not only against the Gov. of Indiana and the state of Indiana for that matter, but also other states that are considering similar legislation – including Arkansas and most crucially right now the state of Georgia.

Another very important signal was sent yesterday by the editorial board of the Washington Post in an editorial entitled, Keeping Them Safe From Gay Marriage. The editors wrote and I quote,

“Alarmed at the prospect that the Supreme Court will sanction same-sex marriage in every state, conservative state lawmakers are intensifying efforts to provide legal cover for evangelical Christians and others who regard homosexual unions as an affront.”

They then write the following paragraph,

“There can be legitimate debate on the balance between religious liberty and laws intended to prohibit discrimination.”

I can simply say we can hope there can be that legitimate debate, but thus far that legitimate debate has not taken place. The editors then, remarkably enough, write the following words, and again I quote:

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

Now we just a minute, wouldn’t the editors of the Washington Post believe that any state, including the state of Georgia, should avoid infringing upon any citizens religious liberty unless – and again these are there words – “unless the state can demonstrate a compelling interest in doing so.” Do the editors of the Washington Post really mean that a state should be able to trample upon the religious liberties of its citizens without a compelling interest in doing so? That doesn’t even get to the issue of how that compelling interest might be defined. The editors are clearly saying that they are opposed to a bill, now publicly opposed, that would (in their own words):

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

If the state of Georgia, or any state, doesn’t have to have a compelling reason to infringe upon an individual citizens religious liberty, then mark these words: religious liberty is effectively dead.

Note also the obvious political fact that it was Pres. Bill Clinton who signed this bill and celebrated it in 1993. Now at least one potential candidate for the Democratic nomination, at this point the only real Democratic candidate anticipated for the Democratic nomination, his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, has said that she opposes this kind of legislation. That’s just how much the world has turned, how much the moral revolution has moved in terms of less than a generation in the span of 22 years. We’re talking about a moral revolution of unprecedented scale, and as we have so often noted, unprecedented velocity.  Here’s evidence that should be of concern to every Christian, and for that matter to every citizen who prizes liberty.

Once again, as we had been tracing, erotic liberty trumps religious liberty. There is always, in any society at any time, a conflict of liberties, a contest for which liberty is most basic. According to the new cultural elites, according to those corporations putting pressure on the state of Indiana, according to all those who are pressing back against the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of the state level – when just 22 years ago they celebrated it at the federal level – what we’re looking at is the fact that right now, in almost every case, a liberty that isn’t even mentioned in the Constitution to say the least – that is erotic liberty – is triumphing over religious liberty and that is one of the saddest development we can contemplate.

 

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’m speaking to you from Ashville, North Carolina and I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 03-27-15

1) Discovery Germanwings copilot crashed plane exposes inability to know the mind of others 

French prosecutor: Co-pilot took doomed flight on deliberate dive, Washington Post (Stephanie Kirchner and Anthony Faiola)

Inside a Pilot’s Mind, New York Times (Andrew B. McGee)

Police find ‘clue’ at home of Germanwings’ co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, The Telegraph (Josie Ensor)

2) Triumph of erotic liberty over religious liberty evident in outcry over Indiana religious freedom bill

Indiana Governor Defends Signing of Religious-Objections Bill, TIME (Tom Davies)

Disciples look to pull convention from Indiana over religious freedom bill, Religion News Service (Lauren Markoe)

Hundreds of companies urge the Supreme Court to back gay marriage, Fortune (Reuters)

Keeping them safe from gay marriage, Washington Post (Editorial Board)

Transcript: The Briefing 03-26-15

The Briefing

 

March 26, 2015

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

 

It’s Thursday, March 26, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Suspicious circumstances surrounding Germanwings crash radically alters its significance

The crash on Tuesday of a Germanwings Airbus airliner with 150 on board was already horrifying enough. We’re talking about a modern jetliner strewn across the French Alps with 150 people dead; 150 people who boarded that flight expecting to have a fairly short trip from Barcelona, Spain to Düsseldorf, Germany. But the flight didn’t end in Düsseldorf, it ended on a French Alpine mountainside, a mountainside so remote that it is only accessible by helicopter.

But the story, tragic as it already was, took an even more ominous turn late on Wednesday when authorities in France revealed that there is evidence that there could well have been a deliberate act behind the crash. While authorities are scrambling to say that they do not yet know what happened, the fact that the cockpit voice recorder was recovered and that an initial investigation has already begun has already revealed that there was a pilot that was locked out of the cockpit in the final moments of the fated flight.

The most authoritative news source on the flight thus far is the New York Times in an article published late yesterday that virtually all other international media are citing. The reporters were Nicola Clark and Dan Bilefsky and they reported,

“As officials struggled Wednesday to explain why a jet with 150 people on board crashed amid a relatively clear sky, an investigator said evidence from a cockpit voice recorder indicated one pilot left the cockpit before the plane’s descent and was unable to get back in.”

The New York Times quotes a senior military official that is involved in the investigation who described,

“‘very smooth, very cool’ conversation between the pilots during the early part of the flight… [but] the audio indicated that one of the pilots left the cockpit and could not re-enter.”

According to the official,

“The guy outside is knocking lightly on the door, and there is no answer. And then he hits the door stronger, and no answer.”

Then the official said this,

“There is never an answer. You can hear he is trying to smash the door down.”

As the reporters for the New York Times indicated, there is no rationale yet offered for why one of the pilots left the flight so early in terms of the early minutes of the flight itself and why he could not gain reentry into the cockpit. There is absolutely no voice recorded inside the cockpit during these final minutes, at least according to the French official that was cited. Then the reporters write this,

“The data from the voice recorder seems only to deepen the mystery surrounding the crash and provides no indication of the condition or activity of the pilot who remained in the cockpit.”

This story of course brings up the fact that we had just recently noted the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of a Malaysian airliner including a larger number of passengers over what is now believed to have been the South Indian Ocean. And as that story unfolded over the last several months it became increasingly clear that the only rational explanation that could be adduced from the evidence was that there was some kind of deliberate act on the part of one or both of the pilots that led to the crash of the Malaysian airliner. At this point we actually have to say the disappearance of the airliner because there is no direct evidence of the crash. But when it comes to the Germanwings crash there is plenty of evidence and it is horrifying.

We’re talking about a crash that took the lives of 150 people, including a large number of teenagers from Germany who had been in an intensive language study in Barcelona, Spain – the 10th graders were lost along with two of their teachers. It is clear that the New York Times had privileged access to either one or two of the French officials involved in the investigation. Later in the article the Times reports a French official who said,

“I don’t like it. To me, it seems very weird: this very long descent at normal speed without any communications, though the weather was absolutely clear.”

And then, even more troubling words,

“So far, we don’t have any evidence that points clearly to a technical explanation, so we have to consider the possibility of deliberate human responsibility.”

Last night media throughout the world were captivated by the story, and it is clear that an international audience was desperately seeking for answers – most urgently, of course, those who lost loved ones on the plane. But virtually everyone is now asking the same set of questions: how is it that a second modern airliner had disappeared, or in this case crash, when there is at least at this point evidence that it might have been a deliberate human act? Why, just minutes into the flight, was one of the pilots already outside the cockpit? Why could he not regain entry? And why was there no conversation going on at all, no words whatsoever, from inside the cockpit? And then you have a French official involved in the investigation who said on the record, though unwilling to be identified, that it appears at this point that human deliberate action may well be central to the story.

From a Christian worldview perspective there is one central issue that looms larger than any other in the story at this point, and that is that the situation is categorically changed if we’re not talking about an accident, if instead we’re talking about some kind of deliberate human act, or at least deliberate human involvement. Given the urgency and importance of this story it’s likely that a great deal of new information will be coming even in upcoming hour, but at this point, from the Christian worldview perspective, the issue of moral responsibility simply looms larger than anything else. And that’s because we understand that one set of moral conditions would apply if this were understand to be an accident, if some kind of mechanical problem had caused the crash, or some kind of unexplained weather phenomena. But in this case it appears that there is no evidence of any kind of mechanical failure, at least of anything that would have caused the airliner to fall out of the sky.

But it didn’t exactly fall, and that leads to an even bigger problem. It appears to have had a straight line descent from its cruising altitude to the level of between six and 7000 feet that ran the airliner directly into the French Alps. But when we’re talking about human responsibility here everything has truly changed because the moral set of conditions, if there is a human deliberate act behind this, means that what we’re looking at is mass murder – the murder of 150 people and perhaps the murder of 149 with the suicide of one. But what we’re looking at here, even given the facts, just given what we know right now in terms of the international conversation, it tells us that we should note that the audience was immediately alert to the fact that this just might be a very different story that first appeared on Tuesday.

What did we know on Tuesday? We knew on Tuesday that there had been a plane crash, a plane crash that took 150 lives. Already between Tuesday and the report that broke on Wednesday evening we knew that in the passenger list were two opera singers, we found out that there were two Americans – perhaps three – on the flight, we found out that those from several different nations were involved though the largest number were from both Spain and Germany, we also knew that there was a group of these 10th-graders on the flight along with two of their teachers. We imagined ourselves knowing that either we or our loved ones could’ve been on a flight like this, simply getting onto a plane as we do quite casually these days and yet even as the plane reached cruising altitude, finding the plane only to descend without any apparent explanation, and then to crash into a French mountainside.

Everything’s changed if this is a deliberate moral act. One of the things we should understand now is that even people who do not operate out of a Christian worldview understand the clear distinction between an accident and an act of murder. That tells us something about the fact that God made us as moral creatures – the fact that there is an immediate change in the conversation, the fact that a chill went down all of our spines, and that we immediately saw the story as even more tragic than we knew on Tuesday, this points to the fact the God made us as moral creatures who simply can’t miss a moral point. And here we’re talking about a moral point of immense magnitude.

One Christian philosopher wrote a book some years ago in which he pointed out that that there are things that we cannot not know. That’s very important. It’s important to know that there are things, simply because we are made in God’s image, we can’t not know, there are truths that we simply cannot suppress or deny. One of those truths is that morality matters, one of those truths is that a deliberate taking of life is one of the most urgent and massive moral considerations of which humans are capable of imagining. And it also means that if this story does turn out to be a story of deliberate human action, it is an entirely different event. Yes, there are things we do not know about this flight, but when it comes to the fact that we are moral creatures who inherently know a moral issue when we see one – certainly of this magnitude – it tells us also that there are certain things we cannot not know.

In Romans 1 Paul speaks of this knowledge, both of the fact that we are made in God’s image and also that God has revealed his law in nature, and points out that these things we cannot not know are things that we can, in terms of our human fallen-ness, seek to suppress. But as the evidence of international attention and international anxiety showed last night, the things that we simply do know because we are made in God’s image have a way of working themselves into daily headlines, even headlines as horrifying as this; headlines that everyone watching the news or following the news by social media last night well understood, headlines that are inherently undeniably moral.

2) New York Times piece argues belief in God is itself immoral

And speaking of morality, what about the morality of belief in God? That issue was raised in the opinion pages of the New York Times by Michael Ruse, a professor of philosophy at Florida State University. The title of his article, Why God is a Moral Issue. He writes about the new atheists, accepting that they’re not a comfortable group of people (in his words):

“They have scornful contempt for those with whom they differ — that includes religious believers, agnostics and other atheists who don’t share their vehement brand of nonbelief. They are self-confident to a degree that seems designed to irritate. And they have an ignorance of anything beyond their fields to an extent remarkable even in modern academia. They also have a moral passion unknown outside the pages of the Old Testament. For that, we can forgive much.”

Well that sets the stage for what Michael Ruse will argue is a major case against the morality of believing in God, or perhaps you might say the immorality he would argue of believing in God. He cites with special reference Richard Dawkins, the British scientists and leader of the new atheism, who has gone so far as to argue that raising a child in terms of religious belief is a form of child abuse – it’s something that simply shouldn’t be tolerated. But in this article Michael Ruse is getting to the very heart of one of the most central issues of the Christian worldview, and that is the fact that knowledge is never without a moral context, and morality and knowledge are always tied together.

After all we should recall, in terms of the biblical storyline, it was from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree of knowledge that Adam and Eve ate and that was the knowledge that was forbidden. But now on the other side of that original sin, on the other side of Eden, we’re now looking at the reality that we do know things that we were not meant to know and as we know them, we are now responsible for that knowledge.

But Michael Ruse is arguing that in the modern age it is actually immoral to believe in God. He’s writing that when you look at the passion, the vehemence, of the new atheists it can be understood, he argues, when it is taken into account what belief in God actually morally means. At this point we’ve got a pay close attention to professor Ruse’s argument. In the first place he dismisses the idea that belief in God isn’t a moral question. He says it’s not like knowing that 2+2 = 4, instead he says,

“The trouble is that the God question is not so easily solved as the mathematical one — and this, as we’ll see, is what leads to moral issues.”

Now, interestingly Michael Ruse takes into account the argument from design. He says, ‘Yes it makes sense to so many people, we might say it appears the majority of people in the world, that the world itself, its very existence, can be explained only by an intelligent divine creator.’ He points to the fact that if you look at the intricacies of the world, if you look at the fact that it appears to be custom-made for human habitation, if you look at even the mystery he concedes of human consciousness it’s hard to believe that there wasn’t a divine intelligent designer behind it. But he says there’s another side to the question and this is where his argument gets even more interesting. He points to moral action, including righteous moral action such as those who stood up against Hitler and Nazi-ism, and he asked the question “can such a wonderful universe be entirely without point?” And yet, as we shall see, he argues that the argument for God actually has far less credibility – morally speaking – than the argument against Him.

In terms of the arguments against God, he raises the issue of evil and suffering. He says,

“According to many monotheistic religions, God is supposed to be both all loving and all powerful. If so, why does he/she allow human suffering?”

That is not an inconsequential question – that’s one of the major theological issues with which any intelligent Christian must struggle. And yet the Bible does answer that question, answering it in terms of the fact the God is both all-powerful and all loving, and that God has a purpose, a purpose for allowing, for ordaining, the reality of sin for allowing human beings to have the reality of moral responsibility. And even as his judgment against human sin is made clear in creation in what Paul in Romans 8 calls the groaning of creation in termites and mosquitoes and tumors and earthquakes, the reality is that God takes full responsibility for his creation. And the Christian biblical worldview points to the fact that there is no such thing as meaningless suffering.

The Bible takes human suffering with great and direct seriousness. With incredible honesty it doesn’t deny it in any respect, but it does put it in the larger context of the fact that even as we cannot trace all of God’s ways, we do know that he is both all-powerful and all loving. Michael Ruse then raises another question, and this is really interesting. He writes this:

“There are other modes of objection: If the Christian God is absolute how could such an astonishing variety of alternative beliefs flourish? Why does the Pope believe one thing and the Dalai Lama believe something completely different?”

That’s an interesting question, that’s actually something relatively new in terms of objections to belief in God. It’s rather clever on the one hand; he’s arguing that the fact of religious diversity, the reality that there are people who hold very different worldviews, points to the fact that God must not exist because if he did exist he would coerce us to believe all the same things, all the same truth about him. But that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of Christianity and that misunderstanding of Christianity, of the worldview of Christianity based upon the Bible, becomes very clear when Michael Ruse asked the question ‘why doesn’t the Dalai Lama believe in the God of the Bible?’

He goes on to answer,

“The Calvinist might answer that his sense is clouded by original sin. But does one really think that the Dalai Lama is befogged by original sin in a way that a televangelist in Florida is not? Surely no one could be quite this insensitive.”

Well that’s a very interesting set of sentences, but it also reflects a deep misunderstanding of biblical Christianity. Biblical Christianity does indeed teach original sin, it teaches that the sin of Adam has so affected humanity that every single one of us is absolutely dependent not only upon the grace and mercy of God in Jesus Christ, but upon the fact that we can’t even know Christ without the gift of divine revelation. What he misses in this is that we do not believe that we have figured out the ways of God, the ways of the gospel, on our own in a way that the Dalai Lama has not.

To the contrary, biblical Christianity starts out exactly where the apostle Paul is, again back in Romans 1, if we did not have the gift of divine revelation we would all be equally in darkness and would be in equal confusion. That’s why in Romans 10 Paul will say very clearly, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. If we never hear divine revelation, if we never come into contact with it, if we never hear the gospel, then we can’t possibly believe in the truth about Christ and the truth about the gospel and the truth about God’s redemptive purpose accomplished in the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Michael Ruse asked a series of questions here in this article assuming that Christians really believe that we somehow are less affected by sin and thus we understand these things better because of the fact that original sin has not so clouded our vision. That’s a fundamental misunderstanding. The Bible teaches that all we like sheep have gone astray, the Bible teaches – Paul again in Romans 3 – that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. In Romans1 Paul makes very clear that the conspiracy to suppress the truth in unrighteousness isn’t something in which some human beings are involved, but all human beings and that means we ourselves.

God’s mercy, we believe, is shown in the fact that he has spoken to us, he has revealed himself to us, he has shown us what he has done for us in Christ through the means of the gospel –which isn’t something we figured out, but something that God accomplished in Christ and then reveals to us by revelation. And of course it is then our responsibility to share that revelation with others. We don’t believe that we are intellectually superior to the Dalai Lama – far be it. We do believe that we have received, by grace, a revelation that we are obligated now to share with others – others including the Dalai Lama.

Professor Ruse then writes these two paragraphs. He says,

“This is only a small sample of what is going on in the minds of atheists. Yes, there are good reasons to think that there is more than meets the eye. But no, the Christian and other theistic solutions are simply not adequate. So, if there are so many problems with theistic belief, why do people continue to take it seriously?”

He then writes this astounding paragraph,

“The truth is that many don’t. In parts of the world where people are allowed and encouraged to take these things seriously and to think them through, people increasingly find that they can do without the God factor. It is in places where one is being indoctrinated from childhood and bullied in adulthood that people continue with God belief.”

That’s an astounding paragraph. Let’s go back to where he began. He was trying to explain why the new atheists are so vehement in their opposition to belief in God in general and Christianity in particular. He points to the fact, and he concedes just how radical this must appear, that someone like Richard Dawkins thinks that it is morally wrong to indoctrinate one’s children in theism – particularly in Christianity. And yet what he seems to fail to understand is that when he describes these parts of the world where,

“…where people are allowed and encouraged to take these things seriously and to think them through,”

When he writes about the people who “increasingly find they can do without the God factor,” he’s writing about people who live in largely secularize cultures and who are raised by – no inference needed here – largely secularized parents. So this raises a very interesting issue: why are the new atheist concerned about the morality of Christian parents raising their children in terms of Christian truth, and he’s not concerned about the issue of agnostic or atheist parents raising their children in agnosticism or atheism? It is because Michael Ruse simply seems to believe that there is some knowledge that really doesn’t have any particular moral responsibility. And that’s one of the most interesting things we could conclude on here.

As we know, from a biblical worldview, all knowledge is inherently moral. Yes he’s actually right, he is profoundly right. The question of belief in God is inescapably and massively moral. But those who are Christians firmly come to understand that the morality of the question is this: how can one deny the reality of God when He has shown himself so gloriously, so abundantly, and so clearly around us? Once again we go back to the most profound passage in Scripture about the morality of knowledge, indeed about the morality of knowledge in God – that again is Romans 1 – where the apostle Paul points to the fact that God has revealed himself even in the natural world and his human creatures refuse to see what is there. And then Paul writes these words, “so they are without excuse.” What the apostle Paul is saying is exactly what Michael Ruse is saying: belief in God is a moral issue. But Michael Ruse says it is moral in this sense: it immoral to believe in God. But the apostle Paul comes back and says exactly the opposite. To refuse to believe in God is the most significant moral act a human creature can make and when it comes to that we are all, says the apostle Paul, without excuse. When it comes to the issue of the moral knowledge of God, no statement is more clarifying than that.

 

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’m speaking to you from Ashville, North Carolina and I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.