R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 320

Post-Protestantism’s Anxious Age: A Conversation with Joseph Bottum

The Briefing 02-23-15

1) Oscars reveal extent of Hollywood influence through control of stories world tells

An Oscar Moment Before the Selfie Age, Wall Street Journal (Bob Greene)

“50 Shades” of Confederate grey: Why the Christian right is losing power over Southern morality, Salon (Edward L. Rubin)

2) Journalist recognizes inability of secularists to diagnose authenticity of ISIS theology

Is ISIS Authentically Islamic? Ask Better Questions., New Republic (Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig)

3) Digital migration of social interaction results in difficulty in developing close friends

How to Find a Best Friend, Wall Street Journal (Sue Shellenbarger)

Genesis 11-22

Ask Anything: Weekend Edition 02-21-15

1) Why are there different types of church governments?

2) Did Jesus physically appear on earth before Bethlehem?

3) How should Christians think about the Book of Enoch quoted by Jude?

 

Transcript: The Briefing 02-20-15

The Briefing

 

February 20, 2015

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

 

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

1) Ruling against WA florist introduces distinction between religious opinion and conduct

The headlines out of Washington state on Wednesday tell us that a judge there has ruled that a florist who refused to sell flower arrangements for a gay couple’s wedding indeed violated state antidiscrimination laws. We’ve seen this case coming for some time and we’ve discussed it on The Briefing. It is similar to other cases in states like Arizona and Oregon in which there were professional charges brought against those who were cake bakers or photographers or florist for refusing to serve a gay wedding. And of course a similar case in Colorado led to a very similar verdict. But in that case not only was it a verdict against a baker, but also a requirement that he and his employees undergo special sensitivity training; which is one of the new enforcement mechanisms of the moral revolutionaries.

But one of the things we need to look at in any situation like this is the actual wording of the statements made by the judge in the case. In this respect, Sarah Kaplan’s article in this morning’s edition of the Washington Post is very interesting. As she writes,

“A Washington state florist who refused to provide flower arrangements for a gay wedding ‘because of [her] relationship with Jesus’ [that was the wording that she used in the case, that is the florist] violated the state’s anti-discrimination and consumer protection laws, a judge ruled Wednesday.”

The judge, Benton County Superior Court Judge Alexander C Ekstrom said in a 60 page opinion, it took 60 pages to answer this question,

“Religious motivation does not excuse compliance with the law,”

He went on to say,

“In trade and commerce, and more particularly when seeking to prevent discrimination in public accommodations, the courts have confirmed the power of the legislative branch to prohibit conduct it deems discriminatory, even where the motivation for that conduct is grounded in religious belief.”

One of the things we are noting is the narrowing of that ground of respect for religious belief. And in this case there’s a very important and troubling legal distinction that is made by the judge. It is a distinction between religious opinion and religious conduct. We might note that that is not a distinction that is found in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution; which instead speaks of the free exercise of religion, it doesn’t speak merely of the free opinion of religion but the free exercise of religion.

In ruling against the florist Baronelle Stutzman, Judge Ekstrom also wrote that while religious beliefs are protected, religiously motivated actions are not.

“Stutzman cannot comply with both the law and her faith if she continues to provide flowers for weddings as part of her duly licensed business,”

So the judge clearly ruled it is the religious opinions that have to give way. And in this case the distinction the judge made between religious opinion and religious conduct just demonstrates very clearly the narrowing of the ground of religious liberty in this country. Because if religious liberty doesn’t include the conduct that goes with the so-called opinion, than to what degree is the opinion actually free in and of itself? It would be the freedom to believe something but not the freedom to act upon that belief.

In this case Baronelle Stutzman said that she was not refusing to serve homosexual or gay customers but rather she was refusing to participate in a gay wedding. Now here’s a point at which Christians need to think very clearly. Those who have been at the forefront of so many of these cases have been primarily bakers who make wedding cakes, photographers who render their services for weddings, and florist. There are other professionals who will face similar issues but those three have been on the front lines precisely because the leading edge of the moral revolution is same-sex marriage and the formal ceremony of the same-sex marriage is a wedding.

And the reason why there is a distinctive argument on behalf of these Christian florists and bakers and photographers is that their particular professions require an expressive performance. The photographer has to be artistically engaged, so also does the cake maker – in terms of the decoration of the cake – have to express not only an act, but also a message. Similarly the florist is involved in an expressive profession, not only in terms of the flowers but the other things that go often with floral arrangements; including banners with wording and all the rest.

So what we’re looking at here is consistent. We’re now looking at a consistent narrowing of the ground of religious liberty. We are now looking at religious liberty in the case of this judge’s decision indicating a distinction between so-called religious opinion and religious conduct, and we’re seeing the kind of argument we are likely to be confronting elsewhere. This case is not only important in of itself, and important it is, it is also a signal of the kind of challenge that will be coming to Christians in any number professions, in virtually every conceivable community. There are going be any number of very difficult issues faced by Christians in the public square, even in the marketplace, in coming days. And as we see from this case, some already are.

But even as these issues right now are very urgent for photographers and florists and cake bakers, they’re likely to be increasingly urgent for nurses and public school teachers; increasingly urgent for insurance agents and any number of others. One of the things we’re going to have to face is the fact that we are now in a nearly completely changed moral terrain. This moral revolution will be re-shifting every area of the society, and right now one of those major areas is the law. And as the law changes, the law is making a new moral statement. And make no mistake about the new moral statement the law is now making, this moral statement says very clearly that the issue of sexual orientation is more important than the issue of religious conviction. And the separation of what is called religious opinion from religious conduct here is a sign of the kind of severing that’s going to become more and more routine we can fear in a society that is now pushing this new morality quite relentlessly.

One of the interesting comments made by some on the other side of this judgment in Washington state is that very little was at stake. Those who were suing the florist sued for only $7.91 and Baronelle Stutzman also faces, according to reports, a fine of up to $2,000. But even if the financial judgment at stake only amounts to something like $2,007, the reality is the states are far higher; in terms of religious liberty, infinitely higher.

2) Scientists present possibilities of world’s end, showing even secularists have an apocalypse

Earlier this week on The Briefing we covered that very important 30 page article by Graeme Wood that appears in an upcoming issue of the Atlantic monthly having to do with the inherently Islamic nature of the challenge we now face and the inherently theological nature of Islamic terrorism. But even as we discuss that, one of the major points that Graeme Wood made is that there is an apocalyptic vision that is driving the Islamic state and others. One of the points I made is that every single worldview has to explain how the world is likely to end; how history is likely to conclude.

And a very important testimony to that appeared in the weekend edition of the Financial Times, dated February 15. The article is entitled A Dozen Ways the World Could End, science writer Clive Cookson reports for the Financial Times on “a report assessing the gravest risk we face.” It’s an important article, one that’s hard to take with a straight face at times but, as I said, it’s an important article. It demonstrates the fact that everyone, even those who operate out of the most supposedly secular worldview, have to have some explicit belief and where they believe history is headed and how they believe the entire project is going to end.

Cookson writes about a team from Oxford University’s Institute known as the Future of Humanity Institute and also about the group known as the Global Challenges Foundation, they have come up with what he describes as the first serious scientific assessment of the gravest risk we face. Now what might those risk be? Well as Cookson says, although civilization has ended many times in popular fiction, the issue has been almost entirely ignored by governments. Dennis Pamlin of the Global Challenges Foundation said,

“We were surprised to find that no one else had compiled a list of global risks with impacts that, for all practical purposes, can be called infinite. We don’t want to be accused of scaremongering but we want to get policy makers talking.”

Well, whether or not they want to be accused of fear mongering, just consider the kinds of risk they’re talking about, and their rather laughable effort to try to come up with a percentage risk for every one of these catastrophic possibilities. Now in this case we might point out that the scientist covered every base by offering as their first of 12 gravest risks – and folks I’m not making this up – I quote, “unknown consequences.” So the very first thing this group list in terms of saying they are going to list things that no government has been brave enough the list is something they call unknown consequences. And not only that, they write about this being:

“A catch-all category to cover the unknown unknowns — an amalgamation of all the risks that we have not thought of or that seem ridiculously unlikely in isolation”

And then they write in parentheses,

“(such as sending signals to extraterrestrial civilisations that attract deadly alien attention). Together they represent a significant apocalyptic threat.”

And remember, we’re not talking about some Post Office Box school here, we’re talking about Oxford University, one of the most ancient and respected universities on planet Earth, even though they’re not quite certain how long planet earth is going to survive. Here are the other 11 of the 12 risk they say we are likely to face in terms of how the world is likely to end: asteroid impact, artificial intelligence, super volcano, ecological collapse, bad global governance, global system collapse, extreme climate change, nuclear war, global pandemic, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology.

One of the interesting things Clive Cookson points out is this,

“Most emerge from human economic and technological development. Three (synthetic biology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence) result from dual-use technologies, which promise great benefits for society, including reducing other risks such as climate change and pandemics — but could go horribly wrong.”

Well the obvious response to that is a lot of things we have created, we have developed in terms of technology, already have gone horribly wrong. That is not an insane preoccupation. But even as these groups have garnered headlines in newspapers as illustrious and respected as the Financial Times of London, when it comes once again to listing what they claim are the 12 grave threats faced by humanity, the 12 most likely ways the world is going to end, and even as – again, I’m not making this up – the first one they offer is “unknown consequences,” they suggest that it would be responsible to offer some probability for every one of these. And yet when you look beside ecological collapse the probability is ‘no answer,’ it is not known. When it comes to a super volcano they explain it would be interruption ejecting thousands of cubic kilometers of material into the atmosphere far larger than anything experienced in human history, it could lead to a volcanic winter they say with effects similar to an asteroid impact or nuclear war; such events they say are known from the geological record to have caused mass extinctions. And with today’s technology, here’s the really scary thing they want us to see, there’s not much we can do to prevent its effects. What’s the probability? Now do the math; 0.00003%.

It is really interesting as Cookson notes that almost all of the major threats that they fear when it comes to the ones that are most likely, their tied to technologies that human beings have invented or are now inventing. So when it comes to the kind of naturalistic disasters of the grave ecological collapse or something like a super volcano, they rate those probabilities as either unknown or fairly remote. But when it comes to nanotechnology and synthetic biology, and when it comes artificial intelligence, they say the danger may be very high.

Here’s what’s really insane about all of this: first of all these are things that we have developed and conceivably these are things over which we would have control. But the acknowledgment of this article is when it comes many technologies, when we create them we lose control over them. But my main reason in bringing up the article is simply to point out that everybody has an apocalypse; everybody has an understanding of the end of history. For secular scientists and the larger secular world it seems to come down to either something included on this list of 12 or something that is even more remote, or more unbelievable. When it comes to a secular society in terms of the nonscientific worldview, it’s amazing how many people simply resort to some kind of literary story; something they’ve read about which brings an apocalypse, which is white movies such as the hunger games series seem to have so much interest. We hunger for knowledge of where history is headed.

But this is where Christians must situate ourselves and our worldview in the flow of the Bible, in the great narrative of the Bible; a narrative that goes from creation and fall to redemption and new creation, that points to a consummation of all things not according to some kind of naturalistic apocalypse but rather says there is a judgment day coming. And not only that, but for those who are in Christ is the promise of a new heaven and a new earth. The last book of the Bible is where most Christians know instinctively to go in order to get a grounding in history, not just in terms of the future but of the present, because we understand the present only in terms of both the past and the future; that’s a very important biblical theme. And as the chapel speaker yesterday morning at Southern Seminary made very clear, Tommy Nelson from Dallas, the reality is every Christian would do well to read the book of Revelation more often. This headline from the Financial Times helps us to understand just how important for Christians that will be.

3) Shortcomings of Chinese recruits and American college students reveal dangers of coddling parenting

Finally parents, a couple of stories for you. Here is a headline from Wednesday’s edition of the New York Times; Coddled Recruits are Hindering China’s Army. This is another one of those stories you just can’t make up. The reporter is Jane Perlez and she writes,

“Many armies have trouble molding capable soldiers from fresh-out-of-school 18-year-olds. China is no exception and, it turns out, has a particular problem with soft recruits.”

There is huge worldview significance in this article. Just listen to the continuation,

“Senior officers in the People’s Liberation Army recognize that many of their volunteers and conscripts have been raised as spoiled children and that as products of the one-child policy, many of them need toughening up, says a lengthy report by the RAND Corporation on the modernization of the army.”

Here is a direct quote,

“After 30 years of the one-child policy, kids come into the army who are used to being coddled and the apple of their parents’ eyes,”

Now the worldview significance of this has to do with many dimensions. One is the absolute evil of a government trying to establish how many children a family may have. This one-child only policy is something with which the American government was even at least partly complicit because of pressure placed upon China during the 1970s to adopt a population reduction policy. And this is a population reduction policy. And the second dimension is that it has led to infanticide, it has led to gender selection abortion, and it has led to widespread abortion including coerced abortion, now documented and even admitted by Chinese authorities. This one-child only policy, in terms of the 20th and 21st centuries, is one of the most evil things we can imagine. But one of the truths that Christian worldview affirms is that when you tamper with a moral structure you end up with unexpected moral results. And one of the unexpected results, for of all things the Chinese Communist Party’s army, the red Army, is that they’re ending up with 18-year-olds who have been – and by the way, with the one-child only policy an inordinate number of these children are boys because there is a far greater likelihood that a female baby is going to be aborted in the womb or killed even after birth with widespread infanticide – the prejudice for sons in Chinese society is such that there are now estimated to be hundreds of thousands of missing girls and young women. And so you have these young men, if you can call them young men at age 18, who are going into the People’s Liberation Army as it’s called and you’re going to love the next paragraph,

“Newspapers published by the People’s Liberation Army have carried reports about half the young men in a unit crying, and many wanting to wash out, he said. Some were reported to have violated discipline by sending texts to their girlfriends. ‘While this is a weakness, it is not clear how much of a weakness,’ he added.”

Well here is at least one suggestion: if you’re conscripts into the People’s liberation Army, half of them according to this report, are breaking down in tears, there’s probably a problem. Furthermore the RAND report also points out, as the Time states,

“[China’s] Army has not fought a war since 1979, when it performed miserably against its neighbor Vietnam in a short, extremely bloody battle.”

Now the evidence comes from RAND that the People’s Liberation Army, as it calls itself, may be in even greater danger of similar humiliation. Not so much because they don’t have enough soldiers, numbers turn out not to be the problem, but because as it turns out, when you one-child only policy everyone those children turns out to be a ‘pampered little Emperor’ – that is the Chinese expression – and it turns out that pampered little Emperor’s don’t make good soldiers.

But before American parents let themselves off too easily, because we’re in a very different situation here, consider Frank Bruni’s column that appeared also in the New York Times on the same day on Wednesday entitled, College Poetry and Purpose. He writes about the fact that so many universities are dropping any kind of emphasis on the humanities and he cites a respected professor known as Anne Hall who writes about the fact that in the postmodern academy the humanities are taking a backseat to more political concerns. As she says, you can’t teach Chaucer anymore, you have to teach what she calls, “Chaucer and.” As she says,

“Chaucer and Women in the Middle Ages. Chaucer and Animals in the Middle Ages. Shakespeare has become Shakespeare and Film, which in my cranky opinion becomes Film, not Shakespeare.”

That’s a very important quote. But for parents here’s the more important quote, a lot of the pressure is not only coming from ideological sources, but from – well here again we have the issue of these 18-year-olds showing up on America’s college and University campuses, being trained by a consumer society that they are first of all consumers, and that in a consumer society the consumer is King. She says there are still young men and women who desperately want to learn but she says the problem is “the student became the customer who is always right.”

Well here we again return to the fact that our worldview is inescapably tied to how we parent and our worldview inevitably produces, at least in part, the worldview of the generation to come. And the worldview of the young recruits and conscripts in the People’s liberation Army is mirrored perhaps more than we would like to think; by those were showing up in college and University campuses today who are not just indictments of their own worldview, but indictments of the kind of coddled parenting that now marks far too many homes. It turns out you don’t have to have the evil one-child only policy to end up with little Emperor’s and empresses even in our own homes.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing.

Remember the release tomorrow of the next installment of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. We want to receive your questions also in your voice. Just call 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058.

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

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

 

The Briefing 02-20-15

1) Ruling against WA florist introduces distinction between religious opinion and conduct

‘Relationship with Jesus’ doesn’t justify florist’s refusal to serve gay couple, judge rules, Washington Post (Sarah Kaplan)

Washington state judge rules against florist who refused gay wedding, Reuters

2) Scientists present possibilities of world’s end, showing even secularists have an apocalypse

Twelve ways the world could end, Financial Times (Clive Cookson)

3) Shortcomings of Chinese recruits and American college students reveal dangers of coddling parenting

Soft Recruits Hinder China’s Military Modernization, New York Times (Jane Perlez)

College, Poetry and Purpose, New York Times (Frank Bruni)

Transcript: The Briefing 02-19-15

The Briefing

 

February 19, 2015

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

 

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

1) Trials for aged former Nazi guards reveal innate human hunger for justice

How long can justice wait? That is a huge question in a question looming over some headlines that have appeared in the last several days. Specifically, both of these headlines have to do with men who are now 93 years old. And both of these men, now in their 10th decade of life, are being arrested for complicity in murders that took place over a half-century ago, and those murders took place in the context of World War II and in what we now know as the genocide of the Holocaust against the Jews.

Just days ago CBS News reported that an accused Nazi guard, now age 93, has been charged as an accessory to murder and he’s been charged with the 173,000 counts of accessory to murder. That’s right, 173,000 counts; because under the new standard of international law anyone who served in the death camps as a part of the death machine is at least an accessory in every one of the murders of the Jews and others that took place in those camps during the time that they served there. This is an indication that this 93-year-old man is now being indicted and, it is announced soon, to be tried for his complicity in the death of 170,000 people as he was accused of being in service to the death squads at Auschwitz and Birkenau from a period from January 1942 to June 1944.

But the second headline came in a very important essay that appeared in the February 16 edition of the New Yorker. In that magazine Elizabeth Kolbert reports on the fact that another man, also age 93, is now being charged with 300,000 cases of being accessory to murder for the same kinds of crimes. In this case the man is Oskar Gröning, who is now known as the bookkeeper from Auschwitz. He was born on June 10, 1921 in Nienburg, a town about 30 miles south of Bremen. According to the report,

“Gröning graduated from high school in 1938 and went to work at a local savings bank. He became a member of the Nazi Party just as the war broke out, and then, not long afterward, volunteered for the Waffen S.S. He had seen pictures of S.S. men in magazines and he thought they looked dashing.”

Looking back over the decades Gröning then wrote,

“It was spontaneous enthusiasm, a sense of not wanting to be the last one in the game, when the whole thing was practically over,”

Here you have a man looking back over six decades – indeed even more than that – to a time when he was not yet even 20 years old, when as a teenager he joined the Waffen S.S., the deadliest part of Hitler’s Wehrmacht, in order to join the movement he was afraid he would miss because as he said, it appeared that the war might be over and he would miss the opportunity.

And make no mistake, in his own writings after the events of the war, he wrote that he did understand what was going on. As the New Yorker reports,

“Gröning knew that the prisoners had come to Auschwitz to die. This didn’t much bother him. Jews, he’d been taught since his days in the Stahlhelm youth league, were the enemy. They were conspiring against Germany and so had to be dealt with. As for the gas chambers, those were, as he once put it, just ‘a tool of waging war—a war with advanced methods.’ But certain things [according to the New Yorker] did upset him. One day, he was stationed on the Auschwitz ramp, where incoming prisoners were sorted into groups. When the process was over, the place, in his description, looked ‘just like a fairground. There was lots of rubbish left. And amongst this rubbish were people who were ill, who were unable to walk.’”

As the story goes on, he saw a child on the ramp and then he saw the child brutally murdered by one of the guards. After the war, according to the report, Gröning took up his life more or less where he left off. He ended up getting married, he had two sons. Then in mid 1980s he saw a pamphlet known as “The Auschwitz Lie”, a pamphlet that was claiming that the Holocaust had not really taken place. Gröning responded by saying that the events that were documented in the Holocaust had indeed taken place, and he should know because he was there.

He wrote a response to that pamphlet, “The Auschwitz Lie,” and he eventually gave interviews in the media; as recently as 2013. Then the New Yorker reports,

“Gröning is now ninety-three. He is widowed and has trouble walking. A few months ago, he was charged with three hundred thousand counts of accessory to murder. His trial, to be held in the city of Lüneburg, is supposed to begin in April.”

From a biblical perspective these reports are really important because they document the innate human demand for justice. Understanding what took place in the Holocaust – we’re talking about the murder of upwards of 6 million people, most of them Jews – we come to understand that it’s an enormity that simply cries out for justice. But we also understand the same is true, though not in scale, with the death of any single human being in terms of murder. We understand that any kind of murder calls for justice, of course so does every sin, so does every crime. But we do understand that in the scales of justice there are certain crimes that simply have to be prosecuted. There are certain criminals that have to be documented. There are certain perpetrators that have to be tracked down and tried, even if they are age 93 – in the 10th decade of life, and even if their complicity with this evil is now over six decades ago.

Elizabeth Kolbert’s piece in the New Yorker is really important because it documents the failure of Germany after the war to prosecute these criminals who were not only evident, but were very publicly living in their midst. She defines the generations of those who responded to the Holocaust in Germany in terms of three different generations; one in which, in the earliest generation, Germany was so morally traumatized by the war and unwilling to take responsibility for the Holocaust that it basically let the Nazis become re-integrated into German society without much attention. Then came the second generation when there was an effort to track down many who had been actively involved in the Holocaust. This was largely due to the fact that you had people such as Simon Wiesenthal, a famous Jewish tracker of these World War II criminals, who brought the matter to international attention. And then also in the 1960s you had the worldwide publicity that came with the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the most famous architects of the death camps.

American Christians also have to understand that we are not without complicity in this ourselves; in the sense that after the second world war and after the surrender of Germany, the United States government strategically and specifically allowed some members of the Nazi party – including some military officers from the fallen Third Reich – to become a part of American society in order to fight the Russians in the Cold War, particularly with the development of rocket technology in the space race during. During the 1960s and 70s the United States began to deal with some of the Nazis who had arrived here, as well as calling for the prosecution of Nazis who were in Germany and elsewhere. As Kolbert writes,

“By the mid-nineteen-seventies, it had become clear that lots of seemingly innocent refugees who had been admitted to the United States were, in fact, anything but. In one particularly infamous case, Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan, a housewife living in Queens, was revealed to have been the Stomping Mare of the Majdanek concentration camp, a guard known for brutally kicking prisoners with her boots. (When Joseph Lelyveld, then a young reporter at the Times, showed up at Braunsteiner Ryan’s door, her reaction was ‘This is the end of everything for me.’)”

And so it should have been. The New Yorker goes into some detail, pointing out that there were people embedded in many American neighborhoods who had been admitted, not by any strategic action of the United States, but simply by the fact that they were not recognized as the criminals complicit in the Holocaust they were later revealed to be. Some years ago the novelist Stephen King wrote a novella about a young boy who discovers a German war criminal living in his neighborhood. It is a horrifying and haunting tale, but it’s true that in some American neighborhoods such as Queens they were embedded people like Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan who appear to be harmless elderly retirees, immigrants from the old world who were in fact those who were fleeing from justice. And fleeing from a justice that the human moral instinct says simply must be served.

In the third wave of the prosecutions, not only in Germany but elsewhere against these who had been Nazis complicit in the death camp, was an understanding as Der Spiegel, a major German magazine, documented that,

“The unspeakable required untold numbers of helpers,”

There were hundreds and thousands of people around the death camps who were complicit in the business that was going on there. That is a truly horrifying realization. But the announcement of these two 93-year-old men to face charges of complicity and murder – one, 170,000 counts, the other 300,000 counts – it does serve as a reminder that even as justice may be long-delayed, it is still important to press the claims of justice.

The New Yorker cites Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust scholar at Emory University, who called of these kinds of more recent indictments,

“…proof that the rule of law works, however slowly.”

One of the most interesting developments right now is that Germany has decided that even as almost everyone who could possibly have been involved in the Holocaust directly is now age 90 or at least in the late 80s or beyond, there is no excuse for not prosecuting these cases. Therefore, as the New Yorker says, Germany’s central office for investigating Nazi crimes has announced that it is looking to build cases against 50 former Auschwitz guards.

“In view of the monstrosity of these crimes, one owes it to the survivors and the victims not to simply say ‘a certain time has passed,’ ”

That according to Kurt Schrimm, the head of the prosecutorial office.

Here’s the really haunting thing from the New Yorker article: it may well be, as even the German government affirms, that there were tens of thousands, maybe even over hundred thousand, who should have been indicted but will never face a court of justice here on earth. And just in terms of a reminder of what it cost to delay justice, let me read you these words from the New Yorker,

“In September, 2013, the office announced that nine of the fifty guards on the roster had, in the intervening months, died. Others simply could not be located.”

So what we’re looking at here is list of 50, and out of that 50 you can then extrapolate there were two headlines about two men arrested at age 93 for their complicity in these crimes. In the end the most horrifying realization from this is that there were tens of thousands of people well over that, as a matter fact, who appear just to be normal Germans who became a part of the death machine of the Holocaust. As several of the prosecutors have noted, you simply can’t look at these people and tell who was involved in the murder and who wasn’t. We like to believe that we can simply look someone in the face and know if they’re capable of such horrifying crimes, but we can’t. We like to believe that humanity itself is not capable of such crimes, but clearly humanity is.

And as Christians we do understand that even as there will be not only tens of thousands or over a hundred thousand involved in the Holocaust who will escape the human bar of justice, we also realize there are millions who will never face the earthly justice that they deserved. But we also understand that is not the final verdict. That’s the most important distinction between the Christian worldview and the secular worldview of these articles. At the end of the day it simply will not be the case that those who perpetrated these crimes or any other crime will escape justice; not divine justice, because that Day of Judgment is coming and as the Scripture says, it will surely come.

2) Execution of Coptic Christians by ISIS raise important issues of martyrdom for Christians

The headlines also continue as they should, to deal with the fact that ISIS or the Islamic state executed 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians earlier this week simply for the crime of being Coptic Christians. This has alerted many Christians once again to the reality of martyrdom. And the reality of martyrdom is not something that should surprise the church, Jesus himself told his own disciples – including those he later sent out as apostles – that some, if not most of them, would be martyred; that their lives would end simply because they were disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, in the history of the church there has been a waxing and waning of periods of persecution and of martyrdom, and one of things the early church had to deal with was the understanding of martyrdom itself. And remember that the Greek word from which we draw the word martyr is the very word ‘witness’, and there is no more powerful witness than those who give their witness with their blood.

One of the interesting questions being raised by some evangelical Christians is how we should understand martyrdom when we understand those who were martyred as those who would hold to a very different understanding of Christianity and perhaps even a very different gospel than we hold to be both biblical and true. Before we think about this just in terms of the Coptic Christians who were executed by the Islamic state, we need to remember that some of those same questions pertain when we look to some from the early centuries of the Christian church. In some cases, especially in the third and four centuries, we’re not actually sure what some of these people believed. We do know this: they died because of their allegiance to Christ and they died in his name, they died because they would not deny him.

It is certainly possible in this kind of situation for evangelical Christians to say too much, to say that we know exactly what these people believed and that what they believe is the same gospel in which we believe. That will be saying too much, not only about these Coptic Christians, it’ll be saying too much about any number of those who have been martyred in the name of Christ throughout the 20 centuries of church history behind us. But we do know this: there have been those who have been martyred through the ages simply because they would not deny the name of Christ. And by any estimation, they died solely because they were targeted as those who were known to be followers of Christ; they were Christians in some sense in terms of their identification.

We do not believe as evangelical Christians in the doctrine of justification by martyrdom alone, but we do know this, every single authentic follower of the Lord Jesus Christ is called to be faithful even if that faithfulness means we’re faithful unto death. And it shows absolutely no disrespect to the gospel when we respect those who have given their lives for the sake of following the name of Jesus.

3) Secularists eagerly import ‘mindfulness’ – promoting Eastern religious practices

Next, an interesting article that appeared in yesterday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, the headline is A Mindful Child May be a Focused One, the article is by Emily Holland. She writes,

“‘Mindfulness’ has gotten a lot of buzz recently, with everyone from tech executives to professional athletes to lawmakers saying they use it to combat stress, stay balanced and perform better on the job. Now some educators and psychologists think schoolchildren could benefit from the practice, too.”

Listen carefully to how she defines ‘mindfulness’ as the subject of her article. She writes,

“Mindfulness is a form of meditation rooted in spiritual teaching in which people focus their full attention on the present moment. They acknowledge what they are feeling and experiencing—and accept it without judgment or criticism. The idea is to quiet the mind and heighten awareness.”

Now remember that is her definition of what she’s talking about in this article. She then writes,

“The movement is making its way into public schools across the U.S., propelled by advocates who say teaching children how to use techniques such as meditation and controlled breathing to clear their minds can help sharpen students’ focus, reduce their stress and anxiety, and boost academic performance.”

She goes on to cite authorities who say all these things can help children immensely, even young children: preschoolers and especially elementary school aged children. She mentions one program called “MindUp” that is sponsored by the actress Goldie Hawn. She says that approximately 13,500 teachers and more than 400,000 students in the United States have already been exposed to mind up training since 2011. She summarizes,

“Proponents say there is other evidence that mindfulness programs for children work.”

But later in her article she writes this,

“That said, not everyone likes the idea of meditation being taught in schools.”

She quotes Candy Gunther Brown, a professor of religious studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, who charged that promoters of mindfulness are essentially taking

“…Buddhist practices and changing the vocabulary,”

Now about a year ago I did a Thinking in Public program with none other than Candy Guenther Brown of Indiana University and in that conversation, as in this one, she makes clear that these mindfulness programs are inherently theological, they are inherently religious, and they are being put forward as something like a neurologically-based program. But I want you to remember exactly how this article began. Emily Holland writes, and again I just remind you of these words,

“Mindfulness is a form of meditation rooted in spiritual teaching in which people focus their full attention on the present moment.”

Now how in the world can something be “rooted in spiritual teaching” and there be any question that in some sense it is religious? The very claim itself falls apart when you read the second paragraph of her report. But quite honestly, she writes the article as if those who have concerns about the religious dimension of what’s basically an eastern meditation practice being foisted upon children, are themselves alarmists or those who simply don’t understand what we’re talking about here. It is interesting that when she cites Candy Guenther Brown, again that professor at Indiana University, Professor Brown points out that it is her business to teach about these things. But as she says,

“I teach about meditation, I do not have my students [and these are college students – she says,] I don’t have them meditate. I instead talk to them about what these meditation practices represent as part of a larger religious system.”

Well that’s a crucial distinction, and remember she’s talking about college students. And even this college professor understands there’s a crucial distinction between teaching about meditation, teaching about different religious systems that may include meditation, and having her students meditate. I also want you to remember something else that came from that very second paragraph in the article. Again Emily Holland writes about mindfulness being rooted in spiritual teaching, but then she writes about those who do it saying,

“They acknowledge what they are feeling and experiencing—and accept it without judgment or criticism. The idea is to quiet the mind and heighten awareness.”

One thing I want to note very clearly is that that is essentially a practice of Eastern religion. That has nothing to do with Christianity. In no mode of thinking, in no mode of discipleship, in no theological model, does Christianity ever suggest – on the basis of any biblical teaching – that our responsibility is to simply accept whatever is in our minds without judgment or, as she says here, without criticism. Indeed we are instead to measure everything by Scripture; we are to seek to have not our own mind but the mind of Christ. We are not to meditate going inward, but rather we are to look externally to the God who created us and spoke to us in Jesus Christ and in Scripture. We are to learn from the Scripture, we are to learn from the Scripture, we are to meditate in his word according to the Scripture day and night. We are not to meditate on our own thoughts and marinate in our own ideas.

In her article Emily Holland quotes Joel McNenny, identifies as a school counselor in the Plain Local School District in Canton, Ohio – that’s a school district that pioneered a mindfulness program in 2011 –

“…incorporating techniques such as ‘belly breaths’ to improve students’ focus and emotional control. He says the results were so good that the district incorporated it into five other schools. In 2013, however, parents and other community members raised concerns regarding the religious aspects of the practice and the program was stopped.”

Then Mr. McNenny says, and I quote,

“The biggest misconception was that we were somehow teaching religion,”

And then Emily Holland says,

“While mindfulness does have roots in Eastern religion, he insists the type of meditation used in the schools was secular and nonreligious.”

From a Christian worldview perspective we simply have to respond, ‘if only.’ If only it were possible to have some form of mindfulness or some form of spirituality or meditation that had no content. But every model of meditation has some content. Every idea has some focus. And in every legitimate sense this entire system of thought is based in Eastern religion. It is so interesting that a secular culture so adamantly determined to separate what they call church and state, and to keep religion out of the public square and the public schools, is now ready to import it –along with the support of Hollywood and others – so long as it comes in the form of meditation. Which is they say, is rooted in spiritual practice. And as they say, it’s based in Eastern religions. But as they say, it has nothing to do with those things now. And if you believe that, I would simply invite you to meditate on that thought a little more clearly.

 

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 weekly release of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boyecollege.com.

 

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 02-19-15

1) Trials for aged former Nazi guards reveal innate human hunger for justice

Germany: Accused Nazi guard, 93, charged with accessory to murder, CBS News (AP)

The Last Trial, New Yorker (Elizabeth Kolbert)

2) Execution of Coptic Christians by ISIS raise important issues of martyrdom for Christians

3) Secularists eagerly import ‘mindfulness’ – promoting Eastern religious practices

Can ‘Mindfulness’ Help Students Do Better in School?, Wall Street Journal (Emily Holland)

Are We All Syncretists Now? – A Conversation About Evangelical Christianity and Alternative Medicine with Historian Candy Gunther Brown, AlbertMohler.com

Transcript: The Briefing 02-18-15

The Briefing

 

February 18, 2015

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

 

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

1) Atrocities of past week and year seem to lead to significant shift in Western view of ISIS

One of the most basic issues that every biblical Christian must keep always in mind is that not only we, but every single human being operates out of the basis of a worldview. We operate on the basis of certain intellectual principles, certain fundamental truths, without which the world would not make sense. One of realities we face in the modern age is that there are so many secularized people in Western countries who believe that their worldview is non-theological, sometimes even anti-theological. But of course one of the things we always have to come back is even the most supposedly anti-theological worldview is theological in its own way.

But the fact remains that the increasingly secularized society of the modern West has produced a situation in which there are many, certainly amongst the cognitive elites, who live in such apparently secularized world’s and operate out of what they believe are secularized worldviews, that they have basically succumbed to a certain voluntary disarmament when it comes to understanding theological issues and, more urgently, the people who operate out of those theological worldviews.

We’ve had to come back to this fact time and again, especially given the situation of Islam in the modern world and the rise of modern terrorism driven in large part by those who at least believe themselves to be adherents of Islam and of Islamic theology. The point I’ve tried to make so repeatedly in recent months is that the West is denying what is fundamentally true. And when I speak of the West I speak especially of the intellectual and political elites, most importantly person such as the President of the United States, Barack Obama; who steadfastly seems to believe that the way to win this argument is to deny that the argument is in any sense theological. But of course it is, and we’ve been making that point over and over again. As a matter fact, one of the point that I believe simply must be made is the point of respect. You simply are not respecting people who tell you they’re operating on the basis of a worldview when you tell them that they’re not – that they can’t be, that that worldview is not operational, and that it doesn’t represent even themselves.

But in terms of this conversation we may look back at the opening weeks, the very troubled opening weeks of the year 2015, as a significant turning point in this discussion. As a matter fact, we may look back to the past week, the past 7 to 10 days or so, as a crucial hinge in that conversation. One central piece of evidence in terms of that assessment comes in the form an article published at CNN by Daniel Burke, he’s CNN’s religion editor. It was published yesterday; it’s entitled, Religion’s week from hell and in it he describes the past seven days as being seven days of hellish violence. He goes to cities around the world and with one singular exception – and that was the murder of three Muslims in North Carolina, apparently by an atheist – with that singular exception, every other incident that is documented – horrifyingly documented – in his article has to do with Islamic terrorism, either against fellow Muslims or against others.

Another very important piece of evidence in terms of this turning may well be an article that appeared as an op-ed piece in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times. Written by columnist Roger Cohen, no conservative, the title of the column is Islam and the West at War. Cohen begins his article,

“After a Danish movie director at a seminar on ‘Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression’ and a Danish Jew guarding a synagogue were shot dead in Copenhagen, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the prime minister of Denmark, uttered a familiar trope:”

This is what the Prime Minister said,

“We are not in the middle of a battle between Islam and the West. It’s not a battle between Muslims and non-Muslims. It’s a battle between values based on the freedom of the individual and a dark ideology.”

Cohen then writes,

“This statement — with its echoes of President Obama’s vague references to ‘violent extremists’ uncoupled from the fundamentalist Islam to which said throat-cutting extremists pledge allegiance — scarcely stands up to scrutiny. It is empty talk.”

He then goes on to say,

“Across a wide swath of territory, in Iraq, in Syria, in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Yemen, the West has been or is at war, or near-war, with the Muslim world, in a failed bid to eradicate a metastasizing Islamist movement of murderous hatred toward Western civilization.”

That single sentence paragraph is one of the most important to have arrived in terms of a major American newspaper in recent months. And it arrived yesterday on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, and not by an outside writer, but from a columnist for the Times itself. This is a signal movement, a very significant change.

With tremendous moral clarity Roger Cohen writes,

“To call this movement, whose most potent recent manifestation is the Islamic State, a ‘dark ideology’ is like calling Nazism a reaction to German humiliation in World War I: true but wholly inadequate. There is little point in Western politicians rehearsing lines about there being no battle between Islam and the West, when in all the above-mentioned countries tens of millions of Muslims, with much carnage as evidence, believe the contrary.”

Now, in that paragraph Roger Cohen is directly refuting the President of the United States who just about two weeks ago told a television interviewer that 99.9% of Muslims around the world are not at war with the West. Now the President would surely have been on stable ground if he said the vast majority of Muslims throughout the world are not at war with the West, but 99.9%? That’s a claim that his own national security officials absolutely denied with their own statistics that say instead, that there are millions of Muslims – not a majority, but millions of Muslims, especially across a certain portion of the world – who are ready to not only engage in this kind of terrorism, but are also committed exporting that terrorism to the United States and to Europe, to Australia and beyond.

Cohen’s article is extremely important – so important that it can be eclipsed only by one other article to have appeared in recent times; this one, this week, in the pages of the Atlantic. But before turning to that article, I simply want to note that Roger Cohen traces the problem, in terms of Islamic terrorism, asking the question ‘Is the rise of this form of Islam due to the failures of the West or the failures of Arab nations and Arab leaders?’ In the end he says, more responsibility falls on the Arab world than on the West. The West has made horrifying mistakes, but the Arab world in the end has to take responsibility for itself and for its own future and for its own people and for the confrontation of the Islamic state and other forms of Islamic terrorism, because in the end the Arab nations and the Arab peoples will decide what kind of world the Arab world will be.

2) Islamic eschatology central to understanding challenge of the Islamic State

But as I said, as important as that article is in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times, it actually is eclipsed by an article that appeared just in recent days in the Atlantic monthly dated March 2015 and the articles is by Graeme Wood; the title, What ISIS Really Wants. The subtitle in the magazine is this, “The Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths. It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse. Here’s what that means for its strategy—and for how to stop it.” What that subhead of the article announces is that Graeme Wood is going to be arguing that theology really does matter. And that you cannot understand the headlines, even the most horrifying headlines of recent days, recent months and years, without understanding the inherently theological nature of the challenge that now confronts us.

He begins by citing comments made by an American military leader in the Middle East. That military leader is Major General Michael K. Nagata, he’s the special operations commander for the United States in the Middle East.  He admitted, says the Atlantic, he had hardly begun figuring out the Islamic State’s appeal. The direct quote from the general is this,

We have not defeated the idea, we do not even understand the idea.”

Now I would simply point out that most, in terms of the opinion makers and the cultural elites, the intellectual leadership you find in the West, that statement is true nearly of them all; they have not even begun to understand the idea. One of the problems is they have rejected the very nature of the idea before they come to understand it. Graeme Wood explains that this willful blindness on the part of the West to the theological challenge we face explains why President Obama just a matter of something like a year and a half ago, would refer to the Islamic state as not Islamic – that’s the  President’s own words – and as a JV team, using an athletic metaphor. And now the Islamic state has appear to be anything but the JV team, it has eclipsed Al Qaeda and other groups and is the major terroristic force we now face in the world today. It is growing, not receding, and it is inherently theological – abundantly so – and that’s the point Graeme Wood is now seeking to make.

It’s important we note that he’s making this argument in the Atlantic, one of the most important secular magazines of public discussion in the United States. The Atlantic is known for its longform journalism – that is, massively long articles – and this is a massively long article. It’s about 30 pages in its print form.

Concerning our ignorance of the Islamic state, Wood writes,

“Our ignorance of the Islamic State is in some ways understandable: It is a hermit kingdom; few have gone there and returned. Baghdadi [That is Abu Bakr al-Bahdadi, the leader of the Islamic State since 2010] has spoken on camera only once. But his address, and the Islamic State’s countless other propaganda videos and encyclicals, are online, and the caliphate’s supporters have toiled mightily to make their project knowable. We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.”

In that singular paragraph, Graeme Wood decisively defeats the secular understanding that says the Islamic state isn’t Islamic, and the challenge isn’t theological. Graeme Wood comes back to say, for those who are in it, on the side of the Islamic state, it is inherently theological. And he specifies the theology, pointing out that it’s a theology that will not accept peace as a matter of policy. It is a theology that understands world conquest, at least in terms of the dominance of Islam, to be absolutely necessary. It is a worldview, a theological worldview, that make it, says Wood,

“…constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival;”

And most hauntingly, remember those words,

“…it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.”

By the way, in terms of numbers Graeme Wood, in this article, stipulates that the Islamic state now can include within its influence, if not its direct order, something like 8 million people. Now that’s not in terms of warriors, that’s in terms of 8 million people who are in the Muslim world, ready for some form of jihad and involved in forms of Islam that feed that kind of jihadist theology.

Now again, this doesn’t mean there are 8 million people under the control the Islamic state in terms of an army, it doesn’t mean there are 8 million people actively involved in jihad. It does mean that according to this analysis, there are at least 8 million people who subscribe to a theology that would see the jihad as the answer to the question. Graeme Wood goes through a pretty important review of major developments in terms of Islamic terrorism, pointing out some very important things that many people miss.

For instance, Al Qaeda has been eclipsed by the Islamic state, no question about that. In the driver seat of terrorism in terms of the Muslim world, Al Qaeda has now been displaced by the Islamic state. And one of the other things that Graeme Wood points out is that Al Qaeda was directed mostly outside the Muslim world in terms of a projection of terror in the Western world, whereas the Islamic state is about the conquest of territory and the establishment of a caliphate – that is in Islamic rule under a Khalif, a supreme Muslim leader and teacher and so what we’re looking at here are two different groups with two different ideas of what a jihad would look like, and what an Islamic reality should look like. And yet, as Graeme Wood makes clear, one of the reasons why the Islamic State is winning the argument is because they have a more ancient and enduring tradition in Islam to claim as their own and as their justification, at the expense – not to mention of the West, not to mention of more mainstream leaders in the Arab world – but even at the expense of al Qaeda.

Getting to the inherently theological nature of what we’re facing Graeme Wood writes,

“The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

“Virtually every major decision and law promulgated by the Islamic State adheres to what it calls, in its press and pronouncements, and on its billboards, license plates, stationery, and coins, “the Prophetic methodology,” which means following the prophecy and example of Muhammad, in punctilious detail. Muslims can reject the Islamic State; nearly all do. But pretending that it isn’t actually a religious, millenarian group, with theology that must be understood to be combatted, has already led the United States to underestimate it and back foolish schemes to counter it.”

Says Graeme Wood,

“We’ll need to get acquainted with the Islamic State’s intellectual genealogy if we are to react in a way that will not strengthen it, but instead help it self-immolate in its own excessive zeal.”

Graeme Wood cites the takfiri doctrine of the Islamic State – again drawn from historic Islam – a doctrine that leads the Islamic State to be, according to Wood,

“committed to purifying the world by killing vast numbers of people. [He goes on to write] The lack of objective reporting from its territory makes the true extent of the slaughter unknowable, but social-media posts from the region suggest that individual executions happen more or less continually, and mass executions every few weeks. Muslim “apostates” are the most common victims.”

When there’s a turning point in this kind of analysis – one that we should welcome in the West – the reason for is often something that happened some time back, and in this case it turns out that some of this should be rootedin the increasing influence of a professor and scholar at Princeton University; professor Bernard Haykel. He’s identified by would as the leading expert on the Islamic States theology.

He told Graeme Wood that Muslims who call the Islamic State on Islamic art typically – these are his own words – embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.”

And then, in a very telling sentence, Bernard Haykel told Graeme Wood “Many of these denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature are rooted in a” – and here are his words –  “interfaith Christian nonsense tradition.”

Well in this case, I just have to affirm that this Princeton scholar knows exactly what he’s talking about, because the people most likely to be involved in so many these interfaith discussions are the people who don’t actually represent the faiths in any historic or theological sense. The very fact that they’re engaged in many these discussions means that they probably actually don’t represent the people they claim to be representing. The point implicitly being made by Princeton professor Bernard Haykel is that when Western liberal elites talk to the Muslims who to talk to them they’re talking to the Muslims will talk to them. They’re not talking to the Muslims who are behind or involved in the kind of jihad we now face as such an undeniable challenge.

Graeme Wood writes that every academic he asked about the Islamic State’s ideology sent him to Professor Haykel.

“According to Haykel [he writes] the ranks of the Islamic State are deeply infused with religious vigor. Koranic quotations are ubiquitous. “Even the foot soldiers spout this stuff constantly,” Haykel said. “They mug for their cameras and repeat their basic doctrines in formulaic fashion, and they do it all the time.” He regards the claim that the Islamic State has distorted the texts of Islam as preposterous, sustainable only through willful ignorance. “People want to absolve Islam,” he said. “It’s this ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ mantra. As if there is such a thing as ‘Islam’! It’s what Muslims do, and how they interpret their texts.” Those texts are shared by all Sunni Muslims, not just the Islamic State.”

And here is Professor Haykel again; “And these guys have just as much legitimacy as anyone else.”

Now at this point I simply have to say that in terms of the article we’re only nine pages in of an almost 30 page article. That tells you just how important this long-form journalism really is. And just how historically important I believe this article will turn out to be.

Yesterday discussing the issue of evolution in the news I mentioned the fact that every single worldview has to come up with at least an attempt at a coherent explanation of why the world exists, and why we as individuals exist. Why human beings as human beings exist. The various answers to those questions will determine the total shape of the worldview. But if that’s true at the beginning of the worldview it’s also true at the end, because every worldview also has to offer some coherent explanation to the question ‘where is history headed?’ ‘how will all of this end?’ The worldview of modern secular materialism says that the world going to end in some kind of blackhole implosion, or it’s going to end in some kind of second law of entropy, running out of energy. It’s going to be a naturalistic accidental end to a naturalistic accidental existence.

The Christian worldview has a very developed eschatology which is essential to our understanding of Scripture itself. Essential, we should point out, not just at the end of the story but at every point of the story. We live our lives, we believe our faith, we are followers of Jesus Christ precisely because we believe what the Scripture reveals -  that he will establish in fullness his kingdom on the day described in Scripture as the day of visitation. And that there will be a new heaven and a new earth, that there will be a New Jerusalem, and that all of this will happen in accordance with all that is revealed in Scripture. History has a purpose of end. Every moment finds its existence meaningful simply because we believe this is not an accidental happening. This is not history just as Henry Ford once said, ‘one thing after another.’ This is the unfolding of the story under God’s sovereign control and toward the end of the kingdom that is here but not yet here the kingdom that is here and yet coming.

But Islam has an eschatology as well and their eschatology is just as central to their worldview – not in terms of the reading of the future but of the present – as is hours. And Graeme Wood makes them very important insight the you can’t understand the Islamic State without understanding that it sees not only the end of history very near but it sees itself as bringing about that history it understands – not drawing this and thin air but from the Quran and other ancient Muslim sources – that what it now plays a role in history is bringing about the great battle of the end. A great battle that will take place against what is identified as “Rome.” Which may be, as Graeme Wood says, as close to the Islamic State as the Republic of Turkey. On the other hand it may be the United States or Western civilization or your or some combination of all.

One of the official spokesman for the Islamic State explaining why they would be resuming the practice of slavery went back to say,

“We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women. If we do not reach that time,[said Adnanni] then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.”

Graeme Wood says the reason why we should take it seriously is because they believe it seriously. That’s why they’re saying, and they’re saying over and over again. And only willful ignorance will deny and close ears to the fact that is exactly what they’re saying and this is exactly what they’re believing.

Wood goes on to explain that the theology explains why the Islamic State in declaring a caliphate is taking territory. It believes that that is its responsibility. It believes that those Arab nations that now hold territory are not truly Muslim and it believes that Muslim movements that do not hold territory are also not truly Muslim. One of the achievements of Graeme Wood in this article is to look at the actual statements, publications, and writings of the Islamic State and point out the inherent theological content. And also the point out the significance of such things as the Syrian city of Dabiq, near Aleppo. As he writes,

It named its propaganda magazine after the town, and celebrated madly when (at great cost) it conquered Dabiq’s strategically unimportant plains. It is here, [here’s the reason why] the Prophet reportedly said, that the armies of Rome will set up their camp. The armies of Islam will meet them, and Dabiq will be Rome’s Waterloo [says Graeme Wood] or its Antietam.”

In the second half of his article Graeme Wood goes into great detail explaining why the Islamic State should be understood as acting rationally, that is acting according to the reason of its own worldview, its own inherent rationality. These are not people who are violating their own intellectual rules and principles. Instead they are seeking to live out their theology, and live it out it appears they are determined to do, even to the death.

Graeme Wood says you can’t understand this if you don’t understand that they’re trying to establish a caliphate, that they see the West as the great enemy that not only must be defeated but will be defeated, that they understand dying and killing as something that is necessary to the expansion of their faith and to their own faithfulness, and that they understand ,as he says very clearly that in so doing they’re bringing about the very Apocalypse they believe they will be players in. They believe they’re going to be bringing about the end when they will face down the West and bring about the Muslim theological vision of the Apocalypse.

To state the matter plainly Wood writes,

“The United States and its allies have reacted to the Islamic State belatedly and in an apparent daze.”

He also writes a this is inexcusable, since the group’s been telling us what they believe in the very beginning and is basically posted all of its beliefs – at least enough to understand their coherent plan – in every available form.

Interestingly evidence of that point comes in a front-page article in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times where we read,

“With the Islamic State and its supporters producing as many as 90,000 tweets and other social media responses every day, American officials acknowledge they have a tough job ahead to blunt the group’s digital momentum.”

Now there you have an acknowledgment that we’re not suffering from having too little information about the Islamic State, its beliefs and its aims, but if anything too much.

I simply have to bring this to an end, which is a tremendous challenge given the importance of this article and the importance of its many arguments and documentations. But I’ll simply say that what this now tells us is that we might be facing at last a coming out of the daze –  the kind of willful blindness and intellectual denial that Graeme Wood indict so clearly in his article. The turning point may well be seen in his article itself published in the Atlantic this week.

For Christians is a great deal here for us to ponder in think about the we certainly have to think about all over again just how important a worldview is, and just how inherently theological virtually every worldview is, even when that worldview claims to be non-theological. But it also reminds me of a statement that I heard a long time ago; ‘you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.’

So finally we might now be seeing the knowledge that the you can’t bring a secular argument to a theological challenge. We might be – but time will tell.

 

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. Remember the weekly release of Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058 .

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

 

I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

The Briefing 02-18-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Atrocities of past week and year seem to lead to significant shift in Western view of ISIS

Religion’s week from hell, CNN (Daniel Burke)

Islam and the West at War, New York Times (Roger Cohen)

2) Islamic eschatology central to understanding challenge of the Islamic State

What ISIS Really Wants, The Atlantic (Graeme Wood)

U.S. Intensifies Effort to Blunt ISIS’ Message, New York Times (Eric Schmitt)