R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 319

The Briefing 03-20-15

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

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

2) Greater dependence on technology decreases likelihood of academic success

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript: The Briefing 03-19-15

The Briefing

 

March 19, 2015

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Winston reports,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

According to reporter Bob Allen of Baptist News Global,

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

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

“…more as a Creed than a confession,”

He went on to say,

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

Responding he said,

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

The Briefing 03-19-15

Podcast Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript: The Briefing 03-18-15

The Briefing

 

March 18, 2015

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

 

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

1) Close Israeli elections reminder of value of US Constitution 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Jennifer Steinhauer reports for the New York Times,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But then Megan Hustad writes this,

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

 

The Briefing 03-18-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Close Israeli elections reminder of value of US Constitution 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notable & Quotable: Environmental Religion, Washington Post

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

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

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

Transcript: The Briefing 03-17-15

The Briefing

 

March 17, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

According to Carter,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Domenico Dolce also said,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I called children of chemistry synthetic children,”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Remember the regular release of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2059. 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 on tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

 

 

Genesis 26:1-35

The Briefing 03-17-15

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

Gordon College Reaffirms Sexuality Policy, Launches Taskforce, The Gospel Coalition (Joe Carter)

Gordon College reaffirms its policy prohibiting homosexual behavior on campus, Boston Business Journal (Mary Moore)

Life & Conduct, Gordon College

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

Elton John is boycotting Dolce and Gabbana for calling children conveived with IVF ‘synthetic’, Washington Post (Soraya Nadia McDonald)

Elton John’s Dolce and Gabbana boycott is not as simple as good versus evil, The Telegraph (Graeme Archer)

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

More Networks Jumping on the Biblical Bandwagon, New York Times (Neil Genzlinger)

Transcript: The Briefing 03-16-15

The Briefing

 

March 16, 2015

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

 

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

1) Failure of human trafficking bill over abortion issue reminder of deep division in nation

Sometimes a progression of headlines itself tells the story. For instance, on last Wednesday’s edition of the New York Times the headline on page A-17, Trafficking Bill Hits a Snag in the Senate. Then the same newspaper on Friday, headline on page A-17 once again, Senators Remain at Impasse Over Bill’s Abortion Provision. And then the headline that came over the weekend at Politico, How abortion politics scuttled a human-trafficking bill.

If we go back to the story that appeared on Wednesday, Emmarie Huetteman, writing for the New York Times, tells us that:

“A bipartisan effort to fight human trafficking hit an unexpected obstacle on Tuesday [that’s Tuesday of last week] as Senate Democrats objected to an abortion provision Republicans had attached to the bill.”

Then ensues one of those soap operas that can only take place in Washington, DC – but this is a soap opera with a very big moral lesson. As Huetteman reports, this was a bill that was entitled The Domestic Trafficking Victims Fund. It had wide bipartisan support and as of Tuesday of last week virtually everyone expected that the Senate would pass it in a massive bipartisan way. But then on Wednesday everything fell apart and it fell apart because some Democratic staffer – that is a staffer for a Democratic Sen. – finally read the bill and noticed that embedded in the bill, especially as it was sponsored by Texas Republicans Sen. John Cornyn, was a provision that would not allow the funds confiscated from sex traffickers and used to help those who had been trafficked, to be used for the payment of abortion.

Now if you go back in legislative history you’ll be reminded that for several decades now there’s been a bill on the books known as the Hyde Amendment. It is an amendment that makes very clear that no federal funds are to be used to pay for abortion. So you might think that the Hyde Amendment would cover this legislation, after all this is a matter of federal legislation – it is now a bill before the Senate. But as this controversy makes clear, among the Democrats there is a majority of members who are so ardently pro-abortion in the Senate that they will not now support a bill intended to help the victims of sex trafficking if that bill will explicitly not pay for abortion.

That’s right; the issue is whether or not the bill would allow these funds to be used to pay for abortion. There is no legal restriction on the women getting an abortion, only the fact that the funds that would’ve been confiscated by federal action through this bill and used to help those who had been trafficked couldn’t be used to pay for abortion. The reason the provision is necessary is because some will claim that since this money has been confiscated from sex traffickers, it isn’t actually federal tax money and the Hyde Amendment wouldn’t apply. That’s why those who sponsored the bill very carefully wrote it into the bill. As of the middle of last week at least some Democratic senators were saying that they had been ambushed, that the provision wasn’t originally in the bill. But they later had to admit it actually was there.

That situation is well described by Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim of Politico, who wrote,

“It’s a cause any politician would have a hard time opposing: cracking down on human trafficking. Instead, in a breakdown sensational even by Senate standards, a bill to address the issue is set to go down in a partisan firefight. The cause of the row? [This is the explicit language of the Politico report] Democrats didn’t read the 68-page bill to discover its provisions dealing with abortion, and Republicans didn’t disclose the abortion language when Democratic staffers asked them for a summary of the legislation.”

When I first read the story as it appeared in last Wednesday’s edition of the New York Times, I was fairly certain that some kind of resolution would come out of the confusion of that day’s report. There will be some kind of sanity among those even who were pro-choice to understand that this was simply a bill to help the victims of sex trafficking and that they should support it even if it didn’t pay for abortions – after all remember what we’re talking about is paying for abortions.

The great moral divide on the issue of the sanctity of human life is made very clear in that Wednesday report in a comment from Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington, who said,

“The Republicans are trying to pull a fast one here on human trafficking bill but it is absolutely wrong and honestly it’s shameful,”

Well on the other side of the divide, what’s shameful – even shocking – is that there are Democratic senators who simply will not support a bill they had previously and enthusiastically supported in order to assist the victims of sex trafficking simply because the bill will not pay for abortions. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said,

“You can blame it on staff, blame it on whoever you want to blame it on, but we didn’t know it was in the bill.”

The big point is, regardless of whether or not they knew it was in the bill or when they found out that it was in the bill – or as Politico says, when they bothered to read the bill – the fact is that the issue is simply, once again, the fact that the provision will not allow for the funds confiscated to be used to pay for abortion. And that shows the real depth of the moral divide in this country, even over an issue as fundamental as the sanctity of human life. This is not a new realization; this is just a very new illustration. And as Politico made clear, this one is sensational even by the standards of the United States Senate.

It’s is because rarely do you have a situation like this in which you had legislation that was supported by the vast majority members of both parties and all the sudden falls apart. And it falls apart in this case not because there’s any effort to restrict abortion in the United States or in any state, not because there is any provision that would not allow the women who’ve been sex trafficked to eventually get an abortion if they are determined to do so, but simply will not allow the funds confiscated to be used to pay for those abortions.

By the weekend Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, was speaking of the bill: this specific provision is,

“…a very restrictive measure that is antithetical to the goals of the bill.”

Now wait just a minute, antithetical to the goals of the bill? The goal was to help the victims of sex trafficking and to further shutdown sex trafficking in America. Why is paying for abortion necessarily something that was central to the bill in the first place? Obviously, to put the matter simply, it wasn’t.

There are several things to note in this controversy. Observation number one: the deep moral divide in America over the sanctity of human life is not growing more shallow, it is going deeper; that chasm is not growing narrower, it’s growing wider. I can’t think of anything in recent American political history that draws attention to that point so clearly as the breakdown of the Domestic Trafficking Victims Fund. Observation number two: the moral divide on this issue is increasingly a partisan divide. The very possibility of bipartisan cooperation on this bill broke down over the question of abortion. Observation number three: both of these parties are being pulled on the issue of abortion by very powerful political forces. On the Republican side is pro-life forces that are very watchful of any slippage on the issue the sanctity of human life on the part of Republican senators or for that matter, Republican members of the House of Representatives.

But when it comes to the Democratic Party, that party is being pulled further to the left; further toward the extreme of the pro-abortion movement. That’s seen in the fact that these Democratic senators are running as fast as they can from a bill that was originally designed to restrict human trafficking and help the victims of that trafficking – a bill that they had previously overwhelmingly supported – just because that bill will not pay for abortion.

Often times when it comes to the issue of the sanctity of human life we are told that there are not two polarizing groups in America, but there’s some kind of possible middle group or possible middle ground. The controversy over this bill shows that there is no such middle group or middle ground in the United States Senate and that should tell us something, because when you actually have to get down to policy there really is no middle ground. Not only in the case of this legislation, but also in the 2014 platforms of the Democratic and the Republican parties you see this divide. You see one party saying that abortion is itself the killing of an innocent human life and is immoral and you see the other party saying not only is it something society should support, it is something that government must pay for. If you’re wondering how worldview issues get translated into everyday headlines just look at the sequence of headlines. The headlines themselves tell the story.

2) Evolution of term ‘evolution’ reveals importance of letting yes be yes

When it comes to matters of worldview, matters of truth and matters of morality, words always matter. That’s why I really appreciate an article that appeared yesterday in the Sunday magazine of the New York Times; an article by Mark Leibovich entitled Better Beings. He writes, you and I change our minds all the time, but not so our politicians. To avoid being branded as flip flopper’s they ‘evolve.’ There’s that word, we’ve talked about it many times. But it’s one thing for it to be discussed among Christians attempting to think through these issues from a Christian worldview. How exactly would someone from a secular worldview consider these same issues? The importance of the issue is demonstrated in the fact that this showed up as a major article in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times magazine.

Leibovich writes,

“As a general rule, it is difficult for people in public life to change their minds. There is an immediate rush to portray politicians as ‘flip-floppers’ when they shift position on anything, even if they do so following a careful consideration of an issue rather than a meeting with a pollster. The hecklers will reliably accuse them of lacking the ‘courage of their convictions,’ of being ‘typical politicians,’ even though the typical politician actually tries to change his mind as rarely as possible, to avoid the hecklers.”

Now, what Leibovich is looking at is the fact that when those politicians do change their minds on an issue of basic concern, especially moral concern, they very rarely admit that they’ve changed their minds. Instead they claim the language of evolution; they claim they have evolved. And on this point Leibovich has some priceless insights. He says and I quote,

“Whereas ‘changing my mind’ invites an immediate question of motive and suspicion of opportunism, ‘evolving’ carries the tone of a solemn and thoughtful seeker, of someone striving for a better self.”

Well there you have the attempt to gain the moral high ground by using the language of evolve rather than ‘I changed my mind.’ He says,

“More than any other issue, same-sex marriage has occasioned the most dramatic evolution of the word “evolution.””

Leibovich quotes Pres. Obama, who as he said famously said in October 2010, “attitudes evil including mine.” But as Leibovich makes very clear, President Obama said that in 2010. That’s when he was against same-sex marriage before he changed his mind and was for it in 2012. But that was after he’d been for it already in 1996.

Looking at that statement made in October 2010, “Attitudes evolve including mine,” Leibovich says that he had said that to group of liberal bloggers to clarify his position on the issue of same-sex marriage. He then says this wasn’t the first time Obama said he didn’t support same-sex marriage, “though a 1996 questionnaire he reportedly completed during his campaign for the State Senate suggested he once did support it.”

The most important sentence then follows,

“But Obama’s use of the word “evolve” became a rhetorical benchmark for how public figures talk about changing their public positions on the topic. John Kerry, Bill Clinton, the Republican senators Rob Portman and Lisa Murkowski, among others, have all spoken of their evolutions toward support of the practice. (A spokesman for Hillary Clinton declared the issue to be “in a state of [you guessed it] evolution” as far back as 2003, though Clinton herself did not achieve that state for another decade.),”

he notes. It’s really helpful that Leibovich has traced the evolution of especially President Obama on this not so much as a critique of President Obama but as an illustration of how the word “evolve”has evolved in this particular worldview issue. He says,

“Obama and his surrogates often accompanied references to his “evolving” position with reassurance that he was “wrestling with” the subject, as if to portray his as a vigorous journey. But embedded in the word “evolving” is more than a hint of self-congratulation. “Evolve” derives from the Latin evolvere, which means unroll or unfold. It implies that you are headed somewhere better.”

But coming from a secular perspective there’s a really keen insight here, because he goes back to the etymology – the origin of the word – demonstrating the when modern people say they are evolving on an issue they’re not using the word ‘evolve’ merely to mean ‘change,’ they’re supposedly meaning change that is understood to be in a better direction. There is progress that is implied here.

Again looking at President Obama’s evolution on the issue of same-sex marriage, Leibovich writes,

“As the two-year reality show that was Barack Obama’s evolution on same-sex marriage unrolled to its logical conclusion, watching the process, with its various updates and teases, became akin to following the birth of a baby panda. The arrival was inevitable; it was just a question of when.”

This is an exceedingly well-written and insightful article.

President Obama said in October 2011, “I’m still working on it,” when ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked for an update. “By that point,” Leibovich writes, “the outcome was so obvious that Obama was even becoming meta in his responses.”

He said to George Stephanopoulos then (that’s 2011), “I probably won’t make news right now.” In other words, Leibovich says, “I have news to make, and I’m just choosing to make it some other time.”

Leibovich makes reference to something I had not seen before, and that is that in 2011 when gay journalist Dan Savage went to a White House reception he wore a button addressed to the President that said ‘Evolve already.’

Language always matters. That’s why I thoguht it was important to look this article coming from a secular authority published in one of the most important secular media outlets, to make very clear that were not the only people the noticing the evolution of the word evolve when it comes to a change of position on same-sex marriage. And, as he notes, it can be applied to other issues as well. But there is no question that Leibovich is precisely right that nothing has prompted so much evolution and so many political references to evolving as has the question of same-sex marriage. And as his article certainly implies, we are nowhere near the end of the evolution of politicians on that issue.

But when it comes to language Christians understand that one of the most important things we can do is call things by their right name. To name things for what they really are. One of the hallmarks of Scripture is that it never euphemizes sin. It never calls sin by some kind of delicate name that is intended to blur the moral distinction. It calls things what they are. And as Christians we are to let our yea be yea, and our nay be nay. We are also to speak with specificity without the attempt to blur anything by language when we speak of matters not only of right and wrong, but true or false. We are when speaking in general, to call things by their proper name.

3) Courage to call a war ‘war’ points to value of truthful descriptions of reality

That’s why want to draw attention to another article on a very different matter (also related to politics and the matter of language) that appeared in USA Today: an op-ed piece by Ross K Baker, who is a political science professor at Rutgers University. Baker writes,

“President Barack Obama recently asked Congress to support his efforts to defeat the brutal Islamic State. What he asked for was not a declaration of war but rather an “authorization for the use of military force” (AUMF, for short).”

Baker’s point is not really partisan at all. He’s not even writing about the merits of President Obama’s proposal. He’s writing about the merits of calling war something other than war. He writes,

“ Perhaps instead of using a euphemism — AUMF — he should have just called our fight against ISIL what it is.

“Is the use of the word “war” so terrifying to the public or so politically fraught that the unleashing of U.S. military power is reduced to a euphemism? Are those killed or maimed in carrying out an AUMF somehow lesser victims than those who fought in a war? And were our past leaders being more honest with us when they voted 11 times from 1812 through 1942 [That’s again, 11 times from 1812 to 1942 –  that’s 130 years] to declare war on foreign enemies?”

“The answer to the first question is unquestionably, “No.” The answer to the second is less clear-cut.”

He points to the fact that the American political class first found a refuge or an escape hatch when it came to a declaration of war when it came to what became known as the police action in Korea. That was June 25, 1950 when Congress authorized a use of military force in the Korean Peninsula. But not a declaration of war. But it was – as any veteran of that war can tell you – a war. That same pattern of euphemism – of calling something other than what it is was practiced again in 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that basically gave legal authorization for what we commonly and rightly call the Vietnam War. Even in 1967, three years later, Under Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach admitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was, “the functional equivalent of a declaration of war.”

Well, if it was the functional equivalent why wasn’t call the declaration of war? It’s because the people who adopted legislation didn’t have the courage to call it a war. Ross Baker acknowledges a very tangled political background to the adoption of this kind of language, but his point is not so much political as it is moral. If we are calling upon people to put their lives on the line for their country in an organized military effort against an enemy it is a war what we call it that or not.

In a situation like this language matters because lives matter. And if we’re putting lies on the line we at least ought to call what we’re doing by its proper name.

4) Controversy over Tokyo noise ban exposes worldview hostile to children

Finally we been experiencing some warmer weather here in Louisville, Kentucky, and is now not unusual to hear the voices of children playing outside. And it’s been sometime since those wonderful sounds have been heard. But that leads me to draw attention to an article that recently appeared in the Financial Times published from London. The headline is this; “Tokyo looks at allowing children to be seen and heard.” Robin Harding, reporting in Tokyo, says,

“By law they should be seen and not heard, but Tokyo children may soon find their voices as the city rethinks rules demanding a library-like hush in residential areas.”

This is one of those articles that reveals a worldview issue of great significance, but one in a very unexpected way. Harding writes,

“For years residential suburbs in Tokyo have at a strict 45 dB noise limit – roughly the level allowed in a library without any trouble. But despite a rapid decline in the number of children, there has been a surge in complaints about noise from parks and kindergartens forcing the city to consider a change in the law.”

He goes on to,

“Tokyo’s problem reflects an added difficulty of turning around a low birth rate and making it easier for Japanese women to work as the increasingly elderly population becomes hostile to facilities for children.”

Now let’s just point to the obvious; if you become hostile the children you are signing the death warrant of your entire civilization. Harding says that Tokyo city government is now receiving more and more complaints from elderly citizens the children “are too loud, please stop them.” The effort to change the law also the children can actually use their voices in play (or for that matter even in school) has met staunch opposition within Tokyo where at least one person said, “Children’s voices should certainly be covered by noise regulations.”

At present to operate a kindergarten in Tokyo requires extremely expensive soundproofing equipment. Now remember we’re not talking about safety equipment, we’re talking about soundproofing equipment, because as it turns out many citizens in Tokyo simply do not want to ever have to hear the voice of a child.

There are few issues that greater reveal the actual contours of a worldview then how one sees children, and how a society values children. One Tokyo citizen said “to play and cry and make a big noise is a child’s right.” Another one said, “I agree with the city’s plan. To treat children’s voices like the noise from a machine is outrageous.” But as commonsensical as though statements might be, they could well be drowned out by the opposition that says we don’t want to have to see children and we especially don’t want to have to hear them, ever.

Robin Harding is certainly onto something when the article concludes,

“Regardless of the noise rules the attitudes toward children revealed by the debate will be harder to change.”

Yes, Robin Harding, you’re right and the point’s well-made. But a further point also needs to be made. Even as attitudes towards children may be harder to change, the reality is attitudes toward children are eventually harder to hide. Worldviews always have a way of coming to light.

 

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.

 

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