R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 322
March 3, 2015
The Briefing 03-03-15
1) Decriminalization of adultery in South Korea reflects global trend of personal autonomy
Adultery Is No Longer an Affair of the State in South Korea, New York Times (Choe Sang-Hun)
South Korea Legalizes Adultery, Wall Street Journal (Jeyup S. Kwaak)
2) Chinese wedding industry growth obscures underlying tragedy of one-child policy
Wedding wows, The Economist
3) Failure to regard consequences of divorce in Ireland causes indifference towards gay marriage
Is it going to be hello marriage equality, bye bye Mammy?, The Independent (Carol Hunt)
4) Rise of psychic demand reveals Christianity never replaced by pure secularism
There’s a Lot of Spirit At School for Psychics, Wall Street Journal (Matthew Dalton)
March 2, 2015
Transcript: The Briefing 03-02-15
The Briefing
March 2, 2015
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Monday, March 2, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Perennial conflict between evolution and Christian faith acknowledged by journalist
From time to time we need to step back and look at some stories that time did not allow us to attend to in recent days. One of those is an article that appeared last Sunday at Forbes.com; the headline is: Science and Religion: Surveying The Field Of Battle. The columnist for Forbes is John Farrell, who covers science and technology for the magazine and the website. He cites Kelly James Clark, who wrote,
“As the scientific evidence has accumulated in favor of Darwinism, many Christians have defensively retreated into unscientific, untenable biblical literalism. Conflict is an apt metaphor for the ongoing battle between Darwinian evolution and biblical literalism.”
Now whenever you see the word literalism here one of the things we need to ask is what in the world does that word mean in this context, what does the one who uses it mean? There’s a sense in which the word ‘literal’ is usually not the best word. As an English professor I had back in college said, whenever you are literally tempted to use the word literally, do everything literally possible to avoid it. But as we read this article by Farrell, citing this work by Kelly James Clark, what we come to understand is that literal in this sense means that the Bible is conveying historical space-time truth in especially the text of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Farrell goes on to explain that Clark has a PhD in philosophy; he conducts research at the Kaufman Interfaith Institute at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. Christians may recognize his name because he formerly taught at Calvin College.
As Farrell writes, Clark has written several books on what’s described as the interface of science and religion. Farrell then writes,
“While an evangelical Christian, like some of his fellow authors Peter Enns and Karl Giberson, Clark is not satisfied with the way that evangelical theologians have dealt with the findings of modern science.”
Now in a very public sense, I have engaged both Peter Enns and Karl Giberson; one in person, the other merely in print and out there in the digital world. But nonetheless both have made very clear their own convictions on this issue, and I will grant to both of these men the intellectual honesty that they are doing their best, I think, to play out the inevitable intellectual results of their worldview.
Peter Enns and I have engaged one another in a recent book on inerrancy published by Zondervan and we also engaged one another in a massive session before the Evangelical Theological Society. And Peter Enns is very clear in rejecting inerrancy. He’s very clear on the consequences of what he believes the rejection of inerrancy must mean. And he is also very clear, especially in his recent writings and books, on how a non-inerrantist would approach Genesis 1 and Genesis 2.
Karl Giberson’s not writing as a biblical scholar, but as rather one who was a science educator. He’s been involved with the group known as BioLogos, promoting a union or a peace between evangelical Christianity and an evolutionary worldview. Giberson’s a co-author of a recent book published by Oxford University Press in which he suggests that Christians who reject the current Darwinian synthesis are bringing intellectual disrepute upon the Christian faith. Giberson also understands that a claim of biblical inerrancy is very problematic in terms of his worldview when we encounter Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 and when those biblical texts encounter the claims being made by the modern scientific consensus.
But leaving Enns and Giberson, let me go back to Kelly James Clark and let me go back to John Farrell’s article at Forbes in which he discusses Clark’s proposal. Farrell writes,
“Starting with opening chapters laying out the terms and the sides in the often contentious debate between science and religion, Clark discusses the history of science in Europe, the founding fathers of the scientific revolution, their religious presuppositions and beliefs, and moves from there to the achievements of modern science–evolution and cosmology and quantum mechanics–most of whose leading lights have discarded the faith that inspired their scientific forebears.”
So while John Farrell is calling upon evangelical Christians to make peace with the world of modern science, he’s also acknowledging right up front that most of what he describes as the leading lights of that modern science have discarded Christianity. But Farrell’s point is not really about those who’ve abandon their faith in the face of modern science, but rather those who are holding on to their faith and are rejecting the demands being made by the modern scientific worldview – especially a modern worldview in science that is almost exclusively naturalistic and materialistic, cutting out any role for God whatsoever.
Farrell writes,
“[I]t’s the resistance to science on the part of his co-religionists that concerns Clark more. To use an analogy, if one believes in a god who inspired the Book of Scripture, one can’t avoid the implications of what’s written by the same author in the Book of Nature.”
Now that’s a very important point and it’s a point that I would also affirm, but I would have to affirm it in a way that clearly understands the importance of Scripture, the central role of Scripture, the authority of Scripture. Because it is true that God has revealed himself in the book of nature, but a theological worldview reminds us in Romans 1 that human beings, with our vision so much affected by sin, our intellectual apparatus so corrupted by sin, we are unable to see the book of nature, as it’s called here, for what it truly is. The apostle Paul makes the categorical statement in Romans 1 that the creature corrupts the knowledge of the creator; even that knowledge, he makes very clear, that is embedded within creation itself. That’s not to say that biblical Christians understand that the secular world can know nothing of the world around us, to the contrary we should be thankful that much is known and even more is becoming known, but it does tell us that at the most basic level of presuppositions and worldview there is no way that the book of nature can lead us appropriately to truth.
But suggesting that the mode of thinking that needs to rule in evangelical Christianity is one that makes peace with the secular reading of the book of nature, Farrell goes on to write – and at this point he gets rather personal –
“Now, there is little evidence of this happening at institutions like, say, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, whose president remains mired in anti-intellectualism. And I wonder how Clark’s book is being received there.”
Well, I would simply say, he could’ve asked.
But the reason I raise this article today, and I go back to this issue so often, is because this is one of those perennial issues that’s pressing on us in this particular moment and time. In this intellectual climate, evangelical Christians will face fewer intellectual and theological challenges more pressing and more urgent than this. And what is being required of us is a basic surrender to the modern scientific consensus, and we need at least understand what is then at stake. In this case John Farrell writes that I remain,
“…mired in anti-intellectualism,”
Now there are certain things that can hurt my feelings, indeed if that were made by an evangelical Christian – by an evangelical Christian scholar – who is also committed to the inerrancy of Scripture and to the worldview I share, I would find that a very troublesome statement. But when it’s made from someone who is writing about what is now required of evangelical Christianity and our understanding of Scripture, and what it turns out is required is abandoning what I believe to be the clear teachings of Scripture, at that point I simply have to affirm what by now we should know. And that is, all of us are going to have to be ready to run the risk of being called anti-intellectual if the only way to be considered not anti-intellectual is to buy into the current demands of a naturalistic and materialistic worldview. But to be honest, we would also have to understand there are those who are arguing that some peace can be made between the modern Darwinian synthesis and an evangelical understanding of Scripture and the gospel. But that’s where we also have to be very clear about what the gospel is, what the authorities of scripture requires, and what the modern Darwinian synthesis is.
By referring to the modern Darwinian synthesis I’m using the term that modern science uses about the understanding of evolution that now rules in the scientific mainstream. End even if at this point I bristle a little at the fact that John Farrell describes our worldview here, and my worldview in particular, as being “mired in anti-intellectualism,” I simply have to take some comfort in what he says in the next paragraph because he gives me a gift by making the point I make over and over again. He writes, and I cite these very words,
“But even evangelical science organizations like BioLogos, which like to promote harmony between science and faith, often blanch at the real challenges genetics and anthropology pose for the interpretation of scripture.”
Now why is that a gift? Because it makes the point we need to make over and over again. Those who claim that we need to make peace with evolution need to be very honest about what making peace would require; and BioLogos is one of those organizations that has promoted some form of theistic evolution, And yet you have John Farrell, who just criticized me and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, then criticizing BioLogos, who after all is not only open to theistic evolution but very much pushing that agenda, he now accuses BioLogos of failing to come to full theological terms with what the modern Darwinian synthesis would require of them. As he says, to use his words,
“They often blanch at the real challenges genetics and anthropology pose for the interpretation of scripture.”
Those are challenges John Farrell understands that will go far beyond the question of historicity in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. These are questions that will go right to the heart of the very storyline of Scripture. Was there a historical Adam and a historical Eve? Are all human beings descended from Adam and Eve? Now, theologically, I just want to point out that that is essential to the biblical storyline. It’s essential to the biblical storyline not just in terms of the doctrine of creation and even our understanding of what it means to be human, but it is essential in our understanding of what it means for every one of us to have a common ancestor and thus to share a real brotherhood and sisterhood. And furthermore, the apostle Paul does not hesitate at all, stating explicitly, that our understanding of the work of Christ as our federal head is entirely dependent upon the reality that as a second Adam he has done what the first Adam could not do; he indeed has undone with the first Adam did. The apostle Paul point is very clear: if there is no first Adam, we don’t understand what it means for Christ to be the second Adam.
And then John Farrell, with whom I’ve had at least a written engagement in times past goes, comes back to give me, in effect, another gift when he writes,
“As another author of evangelical background, Peter Enns, has written, the issue is not whether science and religion in general can be reconciled. ‘The issue before us is more pressing: can evolution and a biblically rooted Christian faith coexist?’”
And then John Farrell writes, and I quote his words exactly,
“Perhaps in the end, they can’t,”
He goes on to say that Clark’s proposal is at least interesting. And he says it shows an engaging interest in the need to study the question further, not simply retreat, he says, behind the walls of denial and wishful thinking. But what a concession he makes in his words. Perhaps in the end they can’t; which is, if you take the article seriously, him saying, ‘perhaps in the end, Mohler is right.’ Now he doesn’t really mean in any sense that I might be right (that is impossible, I think, according to his worldview). But it does affirm the fact that it is not irrational to believe that in the end the only answer that can be given to the question that Peter Enns asks – and that is again the question before us as more pressing – he says, ‘can evolution and a biblically rooted Christian faith coexist?’- is no.
And the issue there is twofold. How are you going to define evolution? Now if I can define evolution so that it has no conflict with everything I believe that Scripture reveals, then I’ll be glad to embrace evolution. But there is no mainstream understanding of evolution that would allow that. As a matter fact, the current Darwinian mainstream position is not only that there wasn’t a historical Adam and Eve, but that there wasn’t the possibility of having any design from outside and any designer who had any role whatsoever in the shape of the cosmos in any way shape or form. On the other side, you’d have to define what it means to know a biblically rooted Christian faith. And at that point I’d have to say, it would have to be a faith that would be understandable as the faith that Jesus gave to the apostles, the faith that the apostles preached to the church, the faith that the reformers and others throughout the history the church have affirmed have confessed and have taught. It would have to be the faith, as Jude says, ‘once for all delivered to the saints.’ It would have to be a faith that is faithful to the storyline of Scripture. It would have to be a faith that finds it’s rooting, in terms of everything we know, everything we know about Christ and everything we know about the cosmos in terms of its biblical significance in the text of Scripture itself.
As I have often pointed out on The Briefing, we are told routinely that there are those such as the Roman Catholic Church who have made peace with evolution, but as I pointed out, if you look at the actual Papal statements, you’ll discover that the evolution that in mind here is not an evolution that bears any significance whatsoever to the modern version of evolution being taught in universities and colleges. So what we’re looking at here is the reality that there are those who want to put us on the intellectual defensive and there are those out there in the culture who are sure we must be on the intellectual defensive. But I for one don’t believe that’s true. And we are hardly the first generation of Christians to confront this challenge. But it is a challenge we cannot avoid now, and when the question is asked of us, we better at least understand what is at stake and be ready, as Scripture commands, to give an answer – no matter what someone may call us once they hear our response.
2) Return of German edition of Mein Kampf reveals endurace of even wicked ideas
Next, on Wednesday of last week the Washington Post ran on its front page below the fold the headline; ‘My Struggle’ Provokes a New One For Germany. This is one of those headlines that understates the story. In this case, “My Struggle” is a title and it is a title of one of most infamous works of human history, one of most infamous and evil works of literature ever written. Most of you will know this book if you know it in its German title, “Mein Kampf,” – My Struggle – by Adolf Hitler.
As Anthony Faiola report from Munich,
“Old copies of the offending tome are kept in a secure ‘poison cabinet,’ [that’s the term used by the government] a literary danger zone in the dark recesses of the vast Bavarian State Library. A team of experts vets every request to see one, keeping the toxic text away from the prying eyes of the idly curious or those who might seek to exalt it.”
Literary historian Florian Sapp said,
“This book is too dangerous for the general public,”
He was speaking as he carefully laid out a first edition of “Mein Kampf,” Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto of hate, as it is described, on a table in a restricted reading room there at the Bavarian State Library. Nevertheless writes Faiola,
“…the book that once served as a kind of Nazi bible, banned from domestic reprints since the end of World War II, will soon be returning to German bookstores from the Alps to the Baltic Sea.”
The prohibition on the reissue of the book was upheld for years by the state of Bavaria, by which the state owns the German copyright and legally blocked attempt to republish it is going to expire in December of 2015. And according to the Washington Post, the first new print run of “Mein Kampf” since Hitler’s death is due early next year.
The book is going to be released even as a new tide of anti-Semitism is sweeping throughout much of Europe. And there are new moral complexities even involved in the republication of this book. For one thing, the Bavarian government that had been banning the book is now going to profit by its sales because it effectively owns the only legal edition that is going to be issued, at least at first.
“…opponents are aghast, in part because the book is coming out at a time of rising anti-Semitism in Europe and as the English and other foreign-language versions of ‘Mein Kampf’ — unhindered by the German copyrights — are in the midst of a global renaissance.”
As if that’s not scary enough. The book is going to come out in an academically annotated form that will have notes and historical comments made by those who do not share the worldview of the book but are rather commenting on it. But as the Post says,
“Regardless of the academic context provided by the new volume, critics say the new German edition will ultimately allow Hitler’s voice to rise from beyond the grave.”
One man quote was Levi Salomon, spokesman for the Berlin-based Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism who said,
“I am absolutely against the publication of ‘Mein Kampf,’ even with annotations. Can you annotate the Devil? This book is outside of human logic.”
That is a brilliantly stated position and a brilliantly stated question. Can you annotate the devil? The answer that is, morally speaking, no, there is no academic response to this kind of hatred that is in anyway morally adequate. And yet this raises the question, once a book like “Mein Kampf” is written, can it possibly be truly eradicated, band and controlled? The answer to that is no. Even as this news article in the Washington Post made clear, if it was banned in Germany, it wasn’t banned elsewhere. It’s being used by Hindu nationalists in India, it has been used by racist and hatemongers in the United States, it has never been unavailable worldwide in numerous languages ever since Adolf Hitler wrote it and ever since Adolf Hitler died at his own hand at the end of World War II.
From a Christian worldview perspective, the most important thing for us to think about here is the endurance of ideas, including deadly evil ideas. The Christian worldview understands that ideas have consequences and horrifying ideas have horrifying consequences. This is one of the things we need to note very carefully, there is no question that the Christian moral verdict on Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” must be one of unrestrained condemnation. It must be one of the horrified responses in the actual horrors of what Adolf Hitler has called for in this book – he called for the elimination of the Jewish people.
One of the scariest aspects of “Mein Kampf” is that we can now understand that the German people had no right not to know what Adolf Hitler would do if he gained power because he stated exactly what he would do if he gained power in this book that was written long before he came close in any sense to gaining power in Germany. But gain power he did, leading to one of the most horrifying events in human history, the most horrifying event that dominates the history the 20th century.
This front-page article in the Washington Post affirms what we must know at all times and that is that we are in a battle of ideas, a battle of good ideas versus horrible ideas; a battle of good against evil. While you can’t reduce every single issue and certainly you can’t reduce every debate or controversy to a simple matter of good versus evil, one of most interesting things to note in recent years is that the relativism that was put forth by the postmodern worldview has had to be in retreat in recent years simply because the headlines coming in terms of the horrifying events such as the executions by the Islamic state or any number of other evil event that simply can’t be called anything other than evil that have erupted into our consciousness in recent years, even in recent days and weeks.
But we can’t leave this without recognizing that one of most chastening realizations that comes to us is that sometimes the most horrible and evil ideas seem to have the longest life in traction. They seem to have attraction, they seem to have attractiveness, and they seem to have a tenacity that goes beyond what our moral imagination can comprehend. The republication of “My Struggle” – that is “Mein Kampf” – by Adolf Hitler in Germany, in a German edition, is evidence aplenty that we are in a struggle for ideas and that is a struggle we simply cannot avoid.
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 information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boyecollege.com.
Remember we are collection questions for Ask Anything: Weekend Edition. Just call with your question in your voice to 877-505-2058. That’s 877-505-2058.
I’m in California this week for a very important conference, a summit on biblical inerrancy which is the Shepherd Conference this year held by Grace Community Church in Sun Valley and led by Dr. John MacArthur, the church’s pastor. It’s going to be a very important conference, a lot will be happening. I’d encourage you to watch my twitter feed – especially this week – and you’ll want to be following everything you can from this very important, that I believe is, historic conference.
Last week I was pleased to be interviewed by Marvin Olasky, veteran journalist, in his program known as Newsmakers. We’ll put up a link to that video interview at albertmohler.com , along with today’s edition of The Briefing.
I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.
The Briefing 03-02-15
1) Perennial conflict between evolution and Christian faith acknowledged by journalist
Science And Religion: Surveying The Field Of Battle, Forbes (John Farrell)
2) Return of German edition of Mein Kampf reveals endurace of even wicked ideas
‘Mein Kampf’: A historical tool, or Hitler’s voice from beyond the grave?, Washington Post (Anthony Faiola)
February 27, 2015
The Table of the Nations, the Tower of Babel, and the Marriage Supper of the Lamb: Part 2
In part 1 of this series I set out an exposition of Genesis 10-11. In part 2, we will look at the question of ethnic and racial diversity through the lens of biblical theology.
Now let’s consider how the rest of Scripture develops the table of nations. The apostle Paul clearly indicates that the dispersion of the nations was God’s plan all along. “And he made from one man, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place” (Acts 17:26).
God’ sovereign plan from the beginning was to fill the earth with human creatures — image bearers who would obey him by multiplying and filling the earth and by following the creation mandate in order to reflect the creator’s glory. Even after the fall, his purpose was that human creatures spread all over the globe and glorify his name — but of course now that would have to come through the redemption provided by Christ, the one who fulfills God’s promise to Abraham that he would be a blessing to all the nations (Genesis 12:3).
This is made plain in Matthew 28:18–20, “Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.” Go into all the nations. Scripture is abundantly clear on this:
Mark 16:15, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”
Luke 24:46, “Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning in Jerusalem.”
Acts 1:8, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in all Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
So this great story of Scripture — the story the Bible tells that no one else is going to — tells us that God’s plan from the beginning was the dispersion of peoples. His judgment sowed confusion among those peoples because of their sin. And yet, Christ’s response was to say to his own, you are to go to all the nations. Repentance and the forgiveness of sins are to be declared in his name to all the nations. That task is complexified by the confusion of languages. But in the gospel, while we may not have the same language or the same ethnic heritage but we will have the same Christ. This is the glory of the gospel. God dispersed the nations into confusion. But Christ dispersed his disciples to save the nations. Out of these many nations God is making one new humanity. The real issue is not how people look but what people believe or more appropriate, in who they believe. The Table and the Tower ultimately point us to the necessity of thecross and the power of the gospel.
But the Bible does not even end there. In Revelation 5 we find yet another Table of the Nations.
“Then I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?’ And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. And one of the elders said to me, ‘Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.’ And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.’” (Revelation 5:1-10).
Again in Revelation 21 the nations appear:
“And I saw no temple in the city for its temple was the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. And its gates will never be shut by day and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and honor of the nations.”
Thus, we have two tables and a tower. That second table — the marriage supper of the Lamb — tells us the end of the story and the glory of the story. The narrative of the gospel upends and refutes the stories offered by the world. Diversity is not an accident; it is a divine purpose. Diversity is not a problem; it is a divine gift. It does not reflect evolutionary development and social evolution; it reflects the imago Dei and the Genesis mandate to fill the earth.
Sin explains confusion and difficulty in communication. Sin explains hatred and animosity, racism and ethnocentricity. Seen in the light of the gospel, racial and ethnic differences are not accidental. They reflect the perfect plan of a perfect God. And they are not overcome by the gospel — they are glorified by the gospel. The community of the New Covenant looks like this people preparing for this second table, the table of the Lamb. The New Covenant community lives not by avoiding diversity of ethnicities, but by embracing and celebrating it. The New Covenant community lives looking forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb when men and women from every tongue, tribe, people, and nation will gather around the table of the king.
Today there are issues of justice and systemic wrong. This is why the church has often been wrong on these issues. The gospel needs to be preached to the church even before the church preaches the gospel to the world. We are the stewards of the only story that saves, the only story that leads to the healing of the nations and the gathering of a new humanity in Christ. The gospel is the only story that offers real hope and the only story that celebrates what the world fears. Principalities and powers offer many plans but no real hope. The gospel offers a hope that celebrates the breaking down of ethnic barriers and celebrates the sound of the gospel in different languages and tongues.
We look forward to that day when the table of the Lord will be set and all the nations will live in light of the father and of the Lamb. We have come from a table of nations and a tower of Babel to a covenant with Abraham and a new covenant in blood to a table set in honor of a Lamb. Diversity is not an accident or a problem — it’s a sign of God’s providence and promise. If the church gets this wrong, it’s not just getting race and ethnic difference wrong. It’s getting the gospel wrong. We cannot obey the Great Commission without celebrating the glory of the new humanity that only Christ can create — a new humanity that takes us from the table of the nations to the table of the Lamb.
This is Part 2 of a two-part series based upon my Spring Convocation address at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, “The Table of Nations, the Tower of Babel, and the Marriage Supper of the Lamb: Ethnic Diversity and the Radical Vision of the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” delivered Tuesday, February 3, 2015. http://www.albertmohler.com/2015/02/0...
I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler.
For more information on Southern Seminary, visit SBTS.edu and for more information on Boyce College, visit BoyceCollege.com.
Illustration of The Tower of Babel from Bedford Hours c. 1430
Transcript: The Briefing 02-27-15
The Briefing
February 27, 2015
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Friday, February 27, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Progression behind legalization of pot result of moral ‘progression’
Well, in one sense, yesterday I was where history happened when in Washington, DC marijuana became legal. As the Washington Post reported,
“Washington will not be Amsterdam, or even Denver. There will be no pot shops, no open-air smoking, but at least for the moment, the District — for once in its decades-long struggle for the right to govern itself — has gotten its way, and a green rush is on.”
And that green rush is the rush of marijuana. As the Post recounts, in November of last year 70% of voters in the District of Columbia voted to approve what was known as initiative 71 to legalize marijuana. Ever since that vote, there have been efforts in Congress to try to prevent the district from going forward with the proposal. But even as the Republican-led House of Representatives passed legislation they thought would prevent the district from moving ahead, a technicality in the way that legislation was written prevented the law from having much apparent effect; and yesterday, marijuana became legal in the District of Columbia. Which is another way of saying, yesterday marijuana became legal in the nation’s capital.
Now there are some really interesting dynamics to this, as in other places where marijuana has been declared legal (particularly in four states); we have the realization that it is still against federal law, and since the District of Columbia includes so much territory under federal control, if you’re going to smoke marijuana in the District of Columbia, the district may say it’s legal, but the federal government may say it clearly is not. And when it comes to the actual way that marijuana became legalized in the District of Columbia, from a Christian worldview perspective, there are a number of lessons here.
The really interesting moral point in the article that made the front page of yesterday’s paper – the article was written by Marc Fisher, Aaron Davis, and Perry Stein – the really interesting point was that legalization didn’t come out of the blue. There was a legal progression that indicates a moral progression on this issue. First marijuana was illegal, then it was – note this word very carefully – decriminalized, then it was legalized.
Many Americans don’t pay much attention to the distinction between those last two words. The first was the decriminalization and the second was legalization. As we have noted before in passing, those are not the same thing – those two words do not refer to the same act. Decriminalization doesn’t mean that an act is legal; it merely means that the society no longer has the will to declare the act to be criminal and to take any kind of prosecutorial action against it. The next word, legalization, is quite different. That means that at least in some way that may be regulated, in some at least limited sense, the act is now defined as being legal under the protection of the law. So what we’re looking at here is a moral progression, it’s a legal progression. But note it very carefully, something that was criminalized is then decriminalized, after being decriminalized it is legalized. There you have a rather complete moral shift. In all likelihood you wouldn’t have had that 70% of voters voting for the legalization of marijuana had there not been a progressive effort to try to destigmatize marijuana use. If there hadn’t been the kind of argument that is now being found coast-to-coast in which it is argued that the efforts to criminalize marijuana have actually lead to more serious ill effects in society than to any kind of benefit.
Now, one of the things we should note is that there are arguments on both sides of this issue and even when you look at something like the Republican Party it’s clear, at least in terms of the kind of will to confront the issue, there is no unified front. But before we draw the generational line too hastily, we need to note the support for the legalization and the normalization of marijuana is not confined to younger Americans. As a matter fact the great moral shift on the issue of marijuana emerged with the baby boomers who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s. They were far in advance of today’s younger Americans in pushing for the normalization of marijuana. In one sense, they’ve been biding their time looking for the political opportunity.
What we have here is the combination of two generations. In particular, those who are now in their 50s 60s and 70s, and those who are in their teens and 20s and 30s. And you have those two generations who have come together in something of a moral perfect storm for the normalization of marijuana. But I want to underline again that the kind of moral change we’re looking at here doesn’t come out of the blue, it comes in a process that is now quite traceable and detectable. We’ve noted that that kind of moral change often shows up in vocabulary, where there’s a shift in terminology or nomenclature. There is a change in the word from a word that had been recognized as implying a very negative moral judgment to a euphemism, and that euphemism was just a stepping stone in the moral revolution towards legitimization and normalization.
But when it comes to the issue of marijuana we also have this legal pattern that should be of great interest to us. Christians understand that the law, among its purposes, has the purpose of instructing us, instructing us in what will lead to greater human flourishing. And when the law is changed, there is a moral change the inevitable results, and when the law is changed, even in a shift from criminalization to decriminalization, what you have is a society saying ‘we are no longer certain this act is wrong, we are no longer certainly we want to bring any strong moral judgment, much less prosecutorial action, against this act.’
And then we should note that rarely is there a position in which decriminalization last for very long. It is a stage toward something else, and the something else happened in Washington, DC yesterday with the legalization of marijuana. Those three reporters for the Washington Post understood it exactly when they wrote,
“On the streets of the city, the big change actually took place in July, when the District decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana, meaning that someone caught with a joint or two faced a ticket rather than an arrest, handcuffs and a trip to court.”
That’s a massively important paragraph; because what the reporters are telling us is that if you’re looking at this moral change, don’t look at yesterday. Look back at July, look at the decriminalization of marijuana, when something that had been a criminal act that would get you handcuffed booked and taken to jail, now gets you a traffic ticket. And of course as of yesterday, not even a traffic ticket.
But the reporters tell us something else, they tell us that one of the moral signals that should’ve been noticed was that the police were arresting fewer people for marijuana use and possession even when it was still a criminal offense. There’s a lot more in this article in the Washington Post in yesterday’s edition. One of the most important issues in it is how it tells us that the companies that are ready to sell marijuana have been preparing to do so openly rather than covertly. They talk to shop owners who’ve been selling the paraphernalia for growing and using marijuana, who have been explaining that they had to call themselves shops about hydroponic plants and similar. Now, they say, if indeed the law remains in effect, they’ll be able to go open with the fact that they’ve really been about marijuana all along. Therein is another moral lesson.
But before I leave the issue of marijuana I need to turn to another very important article, this one appeared this past week at Bloomberg News, which is after all a business site. This article by Leonid Bershidsky for Bloomberg News is about big tobacco companies and about their rosy financial future, not so much because of tobacco but because of marijuana. Again this was published this week at Bloomberg News. He writes,
“The industry’s future seems especially bright. As marijuana gradually becomes a legal drug, Big Tobacco is poised to dominate the market.”
The big lesson here for Christians is the fact that where there is something like marijuana, there is a market for it; and where there is the opportunity to profit by that market, it’s not just going to be the little shops on the corner that will take advantage, eventually the big corporations – seeing the opportunity for big profits – will move in to dominate the market. And that’s another one of the lessons of this article in Bloomberg News, because one of the things that Bershidsky points out is the fact that even as right now the marijuana business is really represented by a lot of small businesses and small growers and there kept that way, at least partly right now, because of the laws and regulations in effect. But no one expects those laws and regulations to be lasting. There is every expectation that the opportunity for big marijuana is going to follow the legalization of the use and possession and eventually the sale of marijuana. And when that opportunity comes, big tobacco, we’re being told, is already ready. Have they been rushing to get ready for it over the past couple of years? Well here’s a really interesting thing. The answer to that question is, no. According to a 2014 paper entitled, “Waiting for the Opportune Moment: The Tobacco Industry and Marijuana Legalization”, political scientist Rachel Ann Barry and her colleagues, according to Bloomberg News, quoted internal documents from Phillip Morris expressing an interest in marijuana as a tobacco competitor.
Listen to the next sentence,
“These letters and memos date back to 1969,”
Yes, that’s right. Back in the year when Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on the moon, according to this report in Bloomberg News, based upon academic research published years ago, one big tobacco company was already planning to get into the marijuana business in a big way back when the Beatles were still a new thing. I’ll simply end this discussion of marijuana while looking at the issue of the great moral changes taking place around us by noting what the apostle Paul says about sin seizing the opportunity. Well evidently, as far back in 1969, at least one company was already ready to seize this opportunity.
2) Supreme Court voices support for religious liberty during Abercrombie case oral arguments
Next, oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court are almost always important. And even as their important, they’re almost always interesting. Such was the case this week with a major case on religious liberty before the justices in terms of oral arguments. And the oral arguments were very interesting in this case because according to almost every major press account there was a clear consensus amongst at least eight of the nine justices on one side of the case. And in this case, that’s good news for religious liberty.
I really appreciate the way Adam Liptak of the New York Times reported the story. he begins his article this way,
“Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on Wednesday warned that “this is going to sound like a joke,” and then posed an unusual question about four hypothetical job applicants. If a Sikh man wears a turban, a Hasidic man wears a hat, a Muslim woman wears a hijab and a Catholic nun wears a habit, must employers recognize that their garb connotes faith — or should they assume, Justice Alito asked, that it is “a fashion statement”?”
As Liptak wrote,
“The question arose in a vigorous Supreme Court argument that explored religious stereotypes, employment discrimination and the symbolism of the Muslim head scarf known as the hijab, all arising from a 2008 encounter at Woodland Hills Mall in Tulsa, Okla.”
That’s when Samantha Elauf, then a 17-year-old young woman, sought a job in a children’s clothing store that was owned by the firm Abercrombie & Fitch. When she applied for the job she wore a black headscarf but she didn’t say why. She didn’t get the job, and Samantha later found out that she didn’t get the job because she was wearing the black headscarf. And she didn’t get the job – she claimed – because of religious discrimination, even when the firm didn’t cite religion in terms of making their decision. And she didn’t cite religion as the reason she wore the black headscarf.
At least eight of the nine Justices seem very intent to point, out no one would’ve missed the point of wearing this black headscarf. No one in modern America would be unaware any more than any knowledgeable person would be unaware of the meaning of a yarmulke worn on a Jewish man’s head. Justice Alito understood that his question might sound like the setup for familiar joke, but this is no joke. This has to do with religious liberty.
But as Christians look at this news story and understand the oral arguments this week before the Supreme Court we need to affirm over and over again that we understand that religious liberty for us means religious liberty for all. And in this case religious liberty for this Muslim young woman.
Even though she is now gainfully employed in another company she brought this case against Abercrombie & Fitch because the company’s policy made no reasonable accommodation of her religious faith. And, as we’ve seen, as religious liberty is being eroded in so many areas by law and regulation, it really is important that at least in this case it appears that eight of the nine Justices understood that a religious accommodation certainly should have been made here.
There are other interesting aspects of a Christian worldview perspective here when it comes to the company Abercrombie & Fitch, because one of the defenses offered by the company was that the black headscarf violated what it calls – and I put this in quotation marks because the company did – ‘the look.’ This is a company that is been quite salacious and sexualized in its advertising toward teenagers and young Americans. It’s a company that has tried to brand itself according to ‘the look.’ A look that is certainly questionable in terms of racial and ethnic diversity. A look that from a Christian worldview perspective is understood to be entirely cosmetic, often sexualized, and in every way devoid of any moral context or character.
The company made headlines over a decade ago with a scandalous catalog that was basically pornography. And it clearly found itself on the legal defensive yesterday when in the oral arguments it appeared that only one of the justices openly sided in any way with the argument being made by the company’s attorneys. And that justice was Justice Antonin Scalia who said that at least in this case the company had an argument to make that the woman had never cited a religious concern, a religious reason for wearing a scarf.
But Justice Scalia seemed to be quite outnumbered in terms of oral arguments, and even as it is dangerous to listen to the oral arguments and believe that we can pre-count the court on a case such as this, there was every indication that from the right and from the left the Justices said there was no reasonable accommodation made here. And that’s a very important legal principle for all of us.
But even before the issue of this Muslim young woman and her headscarf appeared, Abercrombie & Fitch should already be understood as being morally suspect for what can only be described as a very sexualized and cosmeticized understanding of human beauty – something the Christian worldview cannot accommodate. For our understanding of human beauty is rooted in truth and in goodness, not merely in that which appears to meet the qualifications for ‘the look’ at Abercrombie & Fitch.
3) Parents concerned about children consuming pornography described as ‘overprotective’
Moving along, the New York Times yesterday had another very interesting article – not so much for what the headline conveys, not even the main point of the article, but something it’s embedded within it. The article is by Nick Bilton in the “Disruptions” column that has to do mostly with social trends in technology. He writes about Snapchat, the Internet app that now includes what he calls ‘undercover strippers.’ And he’s writing about the fact that Snapchat has now become a commercialized form of pornography, and that’s because Snapchat has allowed a mechanism whereby users can pay each other for photographs and services. And as the article points out that is just a recipe – as if anyone could be surprised – for pornography. And as the article makes clear in ways that I will not, that kind of photography is customized for the individual user. And it is almost invisible technologically because the use of pornography on Snapchat does not involve an Internet history. It doesn’t involve many of the things that have allowed previous forms of even digital pornography to be traceable and blockable and preventable.
Much as in the case of Big Tobacco trying to get into Big Marijuana looking for the opportunity, you can now look at this digital app deciding that there’s a big commercial opportunity in trying to act like it doesn’t know that it has now sold itself as a platform for pornography.
But as important as that is that’s not why I bring the article to our attention. Rather, I want you to hear this paragraph:
“Moreover, Snapchat doesn’t leave anything in your search history. There’s no trace of it to be found by a snooping significant other or an overprotective parent.”
What I want you to hear are those last two words; ‘overprotective parent.’ What’s being implied here is that a parent who would have any moral concern about this and try to do anything to prevent the young person within the parent’s own home from having access to this kind of customized pornography – that kind of parent is somehow overprotective – that tells us a great deal about the new moral age in which we’re living. An age in which a parent who would act in a way that we would think any parent at least ought to act, operating out of the concern we would believe almost any parent at least ought to have, that parent is now being described in this article dealing with modern society and technology as an ‘overprotective parent.’
Now at this point is simply want to understand that the New York Times can’t keep it story straight on this kind of moral issue. Because even that newspaper, representing in many ways the most elite secular opinion in a major newspaper in America, has been running articles in recent months indicating moral concerns about young people and pornography. But when it comes to this article – even though there is some moral concern expressed having any do with the opportunity for exploitation in terms of this new pornographic outlet – the moral concern of parents as being dismissed as indicative of being overprotective.
Sometimes when you read an article like this the most important issue isn’t the point being made by the reporter or the columnist. It’s not even what you find in the headline. It’s what’s embedded in the simple senates you find somewhere in the middle the story, when a parent who might have some concern about pornography – that even the newspaper article demonstrates is going beyond even previous forms of digital pornography – when that parents describe as overprotective.
That simple word indicates something of the massive moral shift we’ve experienced in modern times.
4) Eugenie Clark reminder of value of encouraging children to read through their interests
Finally I want to note the death of Eugenia Clark in order to make a point about children and reading. Eugenie Clark died in recent days at age 92. She was one of most famous ichthyologists and oceanologists of the 20th century. And I can guarantee you she had my attention when I was in junior high school, and she had it in a big way.
I was as a boy fascinated with sharks (also with snakes and basically anything that wanted to kill me). I was very interested in sharks to the extent that every time I had an opportunity to do a science project I tried my very best to do it on sharks, and the greatest living shark expert of the last half of the 20th century was none other than Eugenie Clark who died in recent days at age 92.
In 1949 she was already known as a scientist and the United States Navy sent her to the South Pacific to study poisonous fish (as if that’s not interesting enough), but she developed a lifelong interest in sharks that became something of a professional obsession, and anyone who knew just about anything about sharks in the last seven the 20 century had to deal with Eugenie Clark. I was introduced to her in the pages of National Geographic magazine, and I’ll never forget it. And when I was doing projects on sharks back in my junior high years, Eugenie Clark was the authority I cited so often.
Why do I bring this to our attention now? Not so much because of sharks, but because of reading. Because I just want to encourage parents, because when I was that junior high boys so interested in sharks I wanted to read everything I could get my hands on about sharks. And I just want to the word of tribute my parents who made sure I got to the library to check out every book on sharks I could get my hands on. And they let me read and read and read on sharks. And when I finished one but they let me turn it into get another book.
I’m often asked by parents how to help children learn to love reading. And the point I want to make is this; if they’re interested, they’ll read. If they have access to what really interests them, they will learn to read. And when it comes to something like this and a child expresses an interest in sharks to make sure that kid is the opportunity to read everything she or he can get hands on regarding sharks. Everything safe and proper and good and beautiful and true. Everything scary and wet and toothy, as befits something that tells a child more and more about sharks.
It may be snakes, and it may be sharks, it may be bears, it may be mountains, it may be just about anything – whatever it is, if it’s good and wholesome and true and that child expresses an interest, surround them with books. Books with pictures and words, and let them read because I believe they will.
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 information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boyecollege.com.
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The Briefing 02-27-15
1) Progression behind legalization of pot result of moral ‘progression’
With marijuana legalization, green rush is on in D.C., Washington Post (Marc Fisher, Aaron C. Davis, and Perry Stein)
Big Tobacco’s Future: Big Pot, Bloomberg BusinessWeek (Leonid Bershidsky)
2) Supreme Court voices support for religious liberty during Abercrombie case oral arguments
In a Case of Religious Dress, Justices Explore the Obligations of Employers, New York Times (Adam Liptak)
3) Parents concerned about children consuming pornography described as ‘overprotective’
Strippers Go Undercover on Snapchat, New York Times (Nick Bilton)
4) Eugenie Clark reminder of value of encouraging children to read through their interests
Eugenie Clark, Scholar of the Life Aquatic, Dies at 92, New York Times (Robert D. McFadden)
February 26, 2015
Transcript: The Briefing 02-26-15
The Briefing
February 26, 2015
This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
It’s Thursday, February 26, 2015. I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.
1) Netherlands’ booming euthanasia business shocking display of culture of death trajectory
The current cover story in Newsweek magazine declares Death Becomes Them. The text under the title reads like this: “The Dutch are choosing euthanasia if they’re tired of living, others may soon follow.” It’s a truly ominous article about one of the most lamentable development of the modern age. One of the things we should note is that for the better part of the last several decades both liberals and conservatives in the culture had generally shunned the very idea of euthanasia. Even as the issue of abortion has been deeply divisive, tragically so, the issue of euthanasia has failed (until quite recently) to gain much support on the left. But what we’re witnessing is that the idea of personal autonomy has now spread to its ultimate point – what we might call the Omega point of the argument.
The argument is now that human beings have such an absolute autonomy that they have the right to be the absolute determinators of when they will die and how they will die and under what circumstances they will die. This cover story in Newsweek magazine is plowing a lot of new ground and it’s all exceedingly tragic. But at least it’s honest. This is one of most important exposés of how the culture of death has been moving forward in the Netherlands. And as the cover declares, others may soon follow.
Winston Ross, reporting for Newsweek, writes,
“Last month, while traveling through Europe, I met a 65-year-old woman in Amsterdam determined never to wind up like my grandmother. Jannie Willemsen is in near-perfect health, but as we sat down at a small café, she showed me papers that laid out the circumstances under which she no longer wants to live: if she’s severely and permanently lame; if she can no longer leave the house on her own; if she’s dependent on others to eat, drink, shower and put on her clothes; if she goes blind or deaf or is suffering from dementia—most of what my grandmother experienced in her final months.”
Willemsen said,
“I’m an autonomous person. For me, it seems a disaster not to be able to go out and visit friends, to a concert, to the theater.”
There you have, in the very beginning of Ross’s article, the declaration of where the culture of death inevitably leads. When you have a claim of absolute personal autonomy, even to the point of dictating the terms and the timing of one’s death, you have a statement such as made by the 65-year-old woman in Amsterdam; a 65-year-old woman Ross points out who is now in very good health. But she’s defining the terms of her death as what she want to take place not just if she is facing some kind of terminal illness, not just if some medical authority defines her to be an intractable suffering, but if she is unable to go to the theater, to go to a concert, to be (in her words) functionally autonomous.
Ross gets right to the point when he writes,
“What she wants, if the circumstances merit it, is doctor-assisted euthanasia, which is booming in the Netherlands. In 2013, according to the latest data, 4,829 people across the country chose to have a doctor end their lives. That’s one in every 28 deaths in the Netherlands, and triple the number of people who died this way in 2002. The Dutch don’t require proof of a terminal illness to allow doctors to ‘help’ patients die. Here, people can choose euthanasia if they can convince two physicians they endure ‘unbearable’ suffering, a definition that expands each year.”
Now we need to stop right there in terms of this report and recognize what Winston Ross is telling us. He’s telling us that even as assisted suicide or euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands for now well over a decade, the initial Dutch reluctance to go forward with the procedure is given way to the fact that there’s now, in his words, a booming business in assisted suicide. You’ll also note that he points out that the definition used by doctors legally in the Netherlands for what constitutes unbearable suffering is, as he acknowledges, expanding every single year.
Just to make sure we don’t miss is point, Ross writes,
“The Dutch can now choose death if they’re tired of living.”
He also points out that technically that’s still illegal in the Netherlands; in other words, it’s still illegal actually to say that you want to have assisted suicide simply because you’re tired of living. But as he points out, that is effectively what is available right now because even as the Dutch law says it’s illegal, no Dutch physician has been ever prosecuted for a wrongful assisted suicide even as – and this is one most chilling things in his article – at least five cases per year are judged by the Dutch government to have been improper. In other words, they’re never should’ve the permission for assisted suicide. But the doctors have yet never been prosecuted, so long as they promise never to do the same thing again.
Remember we’re talking about the termination, the ending of a human life. We’re not talking about some mistake that can be responded to with the word ‘oops,’ we’re talking about the termination of a human life, the intentional act of bringing about a human death. Later in the article Ross writes, and I quote,
“In the first few years after the Netherlands decriminalized euthanasia in 2002, the number of cases declined. Then, in 2007, the statistics began a steady climb, an average jump of 15 percent a year.”
One of the doctors involved in the legalization movement said,
“‘He didn’t see it [this growth] coming.’ The situation has put him and other doctors in the country in an ethical quandary. [The doctor said,] ‘It’s a feeling of not being quite certain about where you’re going,’”
Very importantly Ross also points out that even as the grounds for unbearable suffering have been expanding every single year, so are the persons who have been declared to be legally competent to demand assisted suicide. He writes,
“In 2005, lawmakers decriminalized another form of euthanasia—for babies. In recent years, the number of cases of newborn euthanasia has declined—because parents are acting sooner.”
Now what in the world is he talking about there? He’s telling us that even as the Dutch government made the euthanasia of infants legal it isn’t happening as much as people might have expected because, as he explains, the county has introduced a new system of prenatal screening that allows parents to terminate pregnancy if ultrasound results revealed severe congenital malformations within 20 weeks of conception. As he says, when it comes to killing these babies, the parents are not not acting, they’re just acting sooner; they’re terminating the pregnancy before the baby is born.
Note however that the euthanasia of babies is still legal in the Netherlands, and they didn’t stop there:
“The Dutch didn’t stop at babies. Minors in the Netherlands are now allowed to choose euthanasia, too. Children ages 12 to 15 may ask to die if they can get parents’ permission. After age 16, young people can make the decision with only ‘parental involvement.’”
In other words, no parental permission is absolutely necessary. He then cites pediatrician Eduard Verhagen, who helped establish the Dutch euthanasia guidelines for infants, he says – chillingly – that the law should go even further:
“If we say the cutoff line is age 12, there might be children of 11 years and nine months who are very well capable of determining their own fate and making their own decisions, but they’re not allowed to ask for euthanasia.”
There you have a physician saying that even the cutoff age of 12 is too high; that, as he says, there might be a child of 11 years and nine months who, to use his horrifying words, would be “very well capable of determining their own fate.” So in the Netherlands we have seen the demand for personal autonomy begin with the right of those with a terminal illness with intractable suffering defined by a physician to have the right to assisted suicide, then it was extended to the category of unbearable suffering and the category of unbearable suffering has been expanding every year. Then it was expanded to infants, then it was expanded the minors – where children between 12 and 16 can demand to die so long as they have a parental permission. Teenagers 16 and older don’t even need parental permission; all they need is to meet the standard of ‘parental involvement’ – that’s put in quotation marks. But then as Ross says, there are physicians in the Netherlands who aren’t even satisfied with the cutoff age of 12.
Ross then writes,
“It is hard to imagine an American pediatrician making that argument. But no one envisioned euthanasia in the Netherlands would expand the way it has in the past 13 years. Perhaps the U.S. isn’t far behind.”
There’s good reason to believe that he just may be right because not only is the so-called right of assisted suicide or euthanasia becoming legal in more and more states and jurisdictions in the United States, but the underlying worldview of personal autonomy has taken virtual hold of this culture. Already this week on The Briefing we’ve discussed how this ethic of absolute personal autonomy has led to the breakdown of the family not just in the United States, but worldwide. We saw Nicholas Eberstadt writing in the Wall Street Journal telling us that the breakdown of the family and the breakdown of marriage was largely due to the fact that adults were claiming the higher good of their own personal convenience and their personal autonomy to determine exactly what responsibilities and obligations they would be willing to accept.
Winston Ross’s article in Newsweek points out that the issue of personal autonomy is now being applied as the moral mandate when it comes to assisted suicide and euthanasia in the Netherlands. And this personal autonomy is not just extended to adults, but as we’ve just seen, even to children and teenagers. And that personal autonomy is now being asserted even for children under the age of 12. One of the doctors explaining the rise, this so-called booming business in assisted suicide in the Netherlands, told Ross that Dutch autonomy has the most to do with a steady increase in assisted suicide. In a very helpful way, Ross cites theologian Theo Boer of the Theological University in Kampen and in the Netherlands. He said,
“I like autonomy very much,”
But he went on to say,
“But it seems to have overruled other values, like solidarity, patience, making the best of things. The risk now is that people no longer search for a way to endure their suffering. Killing yourself is the end of autonomy.”
Now it would seem that almost any honest person would have to come to the conclusion that that last statement is not only true, but irrefutably true. Let me repeat those words: killing yourself is the end of autonomy. But that’s where this worldview of autonomy left unto itself inevitably must lead. It has to lead to the point that one is so autonomous that in the name of our own autonomy we can demand the autonomous right to end our own lives – at which, very clearly, autonomy comes to an end.
Boer’s statement is very interesting. Remember that first quote,
“I like autonomy very much,”
Theo Boer, according to Winston Ross’s article, was originally a proponent of assisted suicide. But the now booming business of assisted suicide in the Netherlands, the way it actually has ended up as a matter of policy and in reality, he understands that it was a very bad move. Morally speaking, it was disastrous. The culture of death took not only a step forward; it took a great leap forward in the Netherlands. And what Winston Ross is writing about in this cover story is far more ominous for the fact that what happens in the Netherlands won’t stay in the Netherlands. There is every reason to believe that where this worldview of personal autonomy leads, assisted suicide and euthanasia will inevitably follow.
And of course, there’s more to talk about here. We can talk about the shift from voluntary euthanasia to involuntary euthanasia; we can talk about the shift from a right to die to a responsibility to die. Already in the Netherlands the idea taking care of the elderly is now seen as something of an accessory – it’s optional, it shouldn’t be necessary. Because after all, assisted suicide is available so why should any elderly or infirm person, why should anyone who is seriously ill or in any way incapacitated become a burden to the family if they have the easy way out with doctor assisted suicide? That the logic that we can see playing out already. We can see it playing out in the abortion rate for babies who were diagnosed with down syndrome, we can see it playing out in the way that the elderly are already being treated – or should we say mistreated – when it comes to the end of life, with the extended family having disappeared and so many people now being under the care of institutions at the end-of-life?
We can see how the logic would spread, not only to additional categories of people, but nation by nation all the way across the Atlantic to the United States. And just remember this: just a matter of weeks ago the nation to our North, Canada, had its Supreme Court declare that there was a right to assisted suicide that was a part of that nation’s charter of rights. Writing in the February 23 edition of the Weekly Standard ethicist Wesley J Smith of the Discovery Institute points out that the Canadian Supreme Court has unleashed a moral disaster by saying that Canadians have a right to assisted suicide if they qualify as being marked by an irremediable condition. But as Wesley Smith writes,
“Even these broad words inadequately describe the truly radical social policy Canada’s Supreme Court has unleashed. For example, a treatable condition can qualify as ‘irremediable’ if the patient chooses not to pursue available remedies. So an ‘irremediable’ condition that permits life-termination may actually be wholly remediable, except that the patient would rather die than receive care.”
But Wesley Smith also tells us that many physicians are likely to be coerced into participating in assisted suicide. At the very least those who are unwilling on convictional and moral grounds to be actively involved in assisted suicide will have to refer patients to a doctor who will. Smith writes,
“That may leave doctors who embrace Hippocratic values [that is the values of the Hippocratic oath] twisting in the wind. Quebec, which legalized euthanasia last year, requires all doctors asked for death by a legally qualified patient to give the lethal jab or refer to a doctor who will. Professional medical societies in Canada also appear ready to quash physician conscience. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan, for example, recently published a draft ethics policy that would force doctors with a moral objection to providing ‘legally permissible and publicly-funded health services’—which now include euthanasia—to ‘make a timely referral to another health provider who is willing and able to . . . provide the service.’ If no other doctor can be found to do the deed, the original physician will be required to comply, ‘even in circumstances [this is the Quebec law] where the provision of health services conflicts with physicians’ deeply held and considered moral or religious beliefs.’”
That was written not far, far away – not across the Atlantic Ocean in the Netherlands, but right across our northern border in the province of Québec.
As I said, with the euthanasia movement with assisted suicide becoming legal in more and more nations and jurisdictions, the culture of death is not taking a step forward; it is taking a great leap forward. And in response to the secular worldview of personal autonomy comes the biblical worldview that reminds us that every single human being, made by an intentional act of the creator, is given by the creator the gift. We are given a certain realm of responsibility; we are given agency, the responsibility to choose and to make moral decisions. We are not given the gift of personal autonomy; we are not given the right to be either the author or the finishers of our own lives. We believe that our lives are divine gifts that are given to us by the creator within the confines of when he will decide we are born and when he will decide that we will die.
Between the moment of our birth and the moment of our natural death, there will be many dangers toils and snares as the hymn reminds us, there will be moments of joy and there will be moments of suffering, but those moments are suffering are to be understood within the context of biblical faith. And the Bible takes the issue of human suffering with tremendous seriousness and absolute honesty. But it’s put within a context of a biblical worldview, of life as a divine gift, and not within the worldview of personal autonomy. That worldview of personal autonomy finds its ultimate end in the end; in the demand to be the author of our own end. And in the stipulation that we are ready, if indeed we find life to be less than what we demand that it must be, we demand the right to have even someone assist us in ending our lives. And that maybe, as this 65-year-old woman in the Netherlands said, when she is no longer able to take care of herself or for that matter, when she is no longer able to go out to the theater.
2) Companies present employment as higher calling, revealing human aspiration for purpose
Finally I want to end on an article that appeared in the business section of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal; the headline, I don’t have a job. I have a higher calling. Rachel Feintzeig, writing for the Wall Street Journal, tells us about companies that are trying to tell their employees, especially younger employees, particularly the millennial, that what they’re offering is not just a job, certainly not just a career, it’s a calling. They’re not just going to be making something, they’re not going to just be conducting or performing a service, they’re going to be changing the world.
Well I’m sure we all would like to think we’re changing the world, but in this case the Journal cites global chairman John Veihmeyer of a corporation who said in a video,
“We can see ourselves as bricklayers or cathedral builders”
(I’m sure you’ve probably heard that before) the chairman was speaking in this video to the employees of his company. The company, says the Journal, held a contest for US employees to share stories and design digital posters touting the bigger impact of their jobs and it netted 42,000 submissions. They are out, according to the chairman, to change the world. What is their business? It’s a travel agency. As Feintzeig writes,
“Now, nearly every product or service from motorcycles to Big Macs seems capable of transforming humanity, at least according to some corporations. The words ‘mission,’ ‘higher purpose,’ ‘change the world’ or ‘changing the world’ were mentioned on earnings calls, in investor meetings and industry conferences 3,243 times in 2014, up from 2,318 five years ago, according to a Factiva search.”
That’s right; someone has evidently counted these things. I don’t raise this article in order to point fun of these companies, although even the Wall Street Journal seems to find it somewhat incongruous that selling hamburgers is somehow going to change. No, I raise this report because the Wall Street Journal doesn’t quite get it; and Christians really should. We’re the ones who should understand that even as every single human being is made in God’s image and even as every single one of us has been specifically individually given the divine gift of life, we also need to understand every single one of us has been made, knowing in our hearts that we were made for a purpose. We were created for some kind of purpose beyond ourselves.
There’s something very touching actually from a Christian worldview perspective about this article. It’s not wrong for people to find a world changing mission in selling hamburgers – it just points to something far beyond the hamburger, it points to something far beyond the travel agency. Whether or not the Journal recognizes it or not, whether or not it ever gets reflected or acknowledged in a corporate mission statement, what these quests, what the statement of aspiration really represent, is the knowledge that every single one of us is on this planet for a purpose. And we want that purpose to matter, not just for ourselves, but we really do hope that in some sense what we do can affect the world, can even change the world. But only the Christian worldview can sanctify that hope and aspiration into something that really will change the world.
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 information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boyecollege.com.
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