R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 328

The Briefing 01-28-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Mormon church offers LGBT rights support in exchange for religious liberty protection

Mormon church announces support for legal protections for gay people, Washington Post (Michelle Boorstein and Abby Ohlheiser)

Mormon Church Wants Freedom to Discriminate, New York Times (Andrew Rosenthal)

Mormon Leaders Call for Measures Protecting Gay Rights, Associated Press (Brady McCombs and Rachel Zoll)

2) Gordon College fallout reveals shocking velocity of leftist history towards intolerance

The Persecution of Gordon College, National Review (David French)

3) Shifting Middle East political scene exposes harsh reality of leaders worse than dictators

Generation of Long-Lasting Mideast Rulers Produced Stability—and a Mess, Wall Street Journal (Gerald Seib)

4) Marcus Borg, Jesus Seminary scholar, dies as ‘progressive Christian’

Marcus Borg, Liberal Scholar on Historical Jesus, Dies at 72, New York Times (Laurie Goodstein)

Marcus Borg, leading liberal theologian and historical Jesus expert, dies at 72, Religion News Service (David Gibson)

Transcript: The Briefing 01-27-15

The Briefing

 

January 27, 2015

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

 

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

1) Winners of Greek election present danger to European project, lesson in danger of debt

A political and cultural earthquake took place in Greece in recent days as the government there was swept out and a new government brought in. And the new government is going to be led by a far leftist party and its young leader who is now going to be the Prime Minister. It’s one of those electoral results that points to the fact that something has been building for some time. Just as in terms of a geological earthquake, pressures under the surface of the earth build up and then suddenly seem to erupt; politically much of the same kind of syndrome takes place when political pressures build up and then suddenly burst onto the scene in headlines that announce a drastic political change.

From a Christian worldview perspective there are a couple of big lessons here. The first one has to do with the fact that the European project is really in danger. We’ve been talking in recent weeks, recent days, even recent months, about the weakening of the European project as a civilization. We’ve been watching that over the process of the last couple of centuries; indeed the 20th century was a century of horrors that seem to call into question the very existence of Europe – two massive cataclysmic world wars that spread beyond Europe to the rest of the world, but certainly began there.

What we’ve seen in terms of the recent secularization of the European continent and what we’ve seen in terms of a deep identity crisis in Europe. That brings immediately to mind the fact that Europe as an identity, European as an adjective, all of this is now hugely called into question. And as we have repeatedly observed, it’s because the basic worldview that once united Europe in terms of a Christian civilization – not in terms of everyone being a believing Christian, but of everyone having Christianity’s the main reference point and operating out of a basically Christian worldview, in terms especially of moral understanding and the understanding of what it means to be human – that has been largely swept away in terms of the secularization of the worldview and the horrible events of the 20th century.

And that affirms, once again, that worldview explains politics. Nothing else can. The only thing that can eventually explain political behavior is the thinking that falls behind the vote. And the vote in Greece points to the need for some very clear understanding of the thinking that is taking place. What we have seen here is a political earthquake, the pressures have been building; one out of four Greek citizens of working age is without a job. Even as the European governments around Greece forced upon Greece an inordinate economic austerity, and even as there are huge questions as to whether Greece is even capable of pulling off that kind of fiscal discipline, the reality is that the economy of Greece shrunk by 20% even with those austerity measures in place.

To put the matter bluntly, even in the worst years of what was called the Great Depression in the 20th century in the United States, neither of those statistics pertained. We’re looking here at an economic construction and a level of unemployment that is virtually unprecedented in modern European history. And that’s a sociological experiment that’s doomed to fail.

But that gets to the second issue of worldview importance here and that is fiscal reality and economic responsibility. Greece got itself into this crisis by reckless behavior, by unbelievably reckless behavior. You’re talking about a country that has over $350 billion in external loans. You’re looking at a country whose economy has not produced even the ability to pay the interest on those loans for many years now. You’re looking at an economy that is based upon outsized pension promises and unbelievable levels of public employment. And you’re also looking at a country that defines employment in a way that wouldn’t fit the American society nor the rest of their European neighbors. Because when they’re talking about employment increase they are talking often about holding a job without any obvious responsibility. That has becoming notorious issue in terms of the public sector in Greece.

You know the Bible is very clear about the fact that you have to pay your bills. The Bible’s very clear about the kind of fiscal responsibility that comes with honoring investment, honoring thrift, honoring the payment of bills, honoring the avoidance of debt. We’re making a country here that has put itself into a position of radical economic dependency and they had depended upon the fact that their European neighbors would eventually either discount their debt or pay their bills in order to keep the European project going – especially the European common currency known as the euro.

Alexis Tsipras, the young man who is going to become the new prime minister and the Syriza party – the party that he heads – are going to be a real threat, not only in terms of the Greek future, they are going to be a real threat to the entire project of Europe. And it’s going to be a fascinating thing to watch.

By the way the new prime minister ran on the platform of calling upon Greeks debtors to forgive at least half of the, again, over $300 billion in debt that Greece has now amassed. Greece effectively put itself into a position of effective bankruptcy and then called upon its European neighbors for help and now it doesn’t want the terms of that help. And here’s the big lesson from a Christian worldview, debt is very dangerous; it’s dangerous not only for nations but it’s dangerous for individuals, it’s dangerous for families, it’s dangerous for institutions. You take on this kind of debt, a debt that you cannot pay, and eventually two horrifying things happen.

In the first place, you consign your own children – your own descendants – to paying off a debt that if you cannot pay, they almost surely cannot pay. And secondly, you put yourself in a position of dependence upon those to whom you owe money. You know I think most of us would like the deal that if we could just vote and say our debt has gone away, but voting doesn’t make the debt or the Greek crisis go away.

2) NYC mayor reneges on promise to allow churches to meet in schools

A sad development came from New York City over the weekend, but before I get to that development let me point to an article that appeared the week previous in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. That article is by Rob Moll, it is entitled Gathering the Faithful, No Church Required. He writes about an interesting statistic I hadn’t seen cited elsewhere. As he writes,

“Church construction in the U.S. has fallen 80% since 2002, now at its lowest level since record-keeping began in 1967, according to reporting in this newspaper. The $3.15 billion in spending on religious buildings is half the level of a decade ago. Several factors are contributing to the declines, including postrecession financial challenges—religious giving has never returned to its 2007 peak—and the waning of religious affiliation.”

Yet he says that might not be the big story because the big story just might be Christian churches that are not meeting in buildings they buy or buildings they build but rather in buildings they use, buildings they borrow, or buildings they rent. He writes about the phenomenon of church planting, especially among American evangelicals and points out that many of these church plants aren’t now in the church building business and they may never be in the building of church buildings business. They instead are looking at how to start churches in alternative kinds of facilities.

One of the clearest examples of this is one that he cites in his article. Rob Moll points to Manhattan’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church that is started, according to this report, over 300 churches in 45 cities over the past 12 years. Cooperating, he says, with 34 church planting networks on five continents. Well those are a lot of numbers but the bottom line, the importance is very clear. We’re looking at a church planting generation and we’re looking at a church planting movement that isn’t concerned primarily with building buildings. And furthermore when you’re looking at America’s largest metropolitan areas, and especially the urban cores of our largest cities, you’re actually looking areas in which it is impractical for evangelical congregations ever to build or to own property. The costs are simply too astronomical. That’s where the alarming news in New York City comes in – just from the weekend.

Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra reporting for Christianity Today on 23 January put out a story entitled, No Worship Services in Public Schools, New York Mayor Tells Supreme Court. The bottom line, Bill de Blasio, the Mayor of New York City, campaigned on the promise of letting churches rent school space; now, according to CT, he’s asking the Supreme Court to prohibit it. I want to make reference to an article by Emily Belz of World Magazine. It appeared back on September 30 of last year; the headline, NYC mayor reiterates promise to let churches keep meeting in schools. This was a big issue in the campaign that elected Bill de Blasio to office. As Emily Belz wrote,

“New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, as part of his campaign last year, received support from many pastors of largely minority churches in New York after he promised to undo the Bloomberg administration’s policy forbidding churches from using public school facilities for Sunday worship.  ”

You may be aware that it was his predecessor, now former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose administration ruled after there had been a court challenge that churches could not use New York City’s public school facilities for meeting places. You’ll also recall that that would mean that there will be hundreds of evangelical church plants that would have virtually nowhere to meet. Those congregations were given an immediate reprieve by a court order that said that the mayor’s decision would have to be put on hold until the issue could wind its way through the courts. And it is almost certainly headed eventually to the United States Supreme Court.

But the big story that came over the weekend from Christianity Today is that the mayor has reneged on his promise; he has effectively reversed his position and he did it without even the decency of any kind of warning. Just last April, according to CT, the mayor said,

“I stand by my belief that a faith organization playing by the same rules as any community non-profit deserves access,

But as they noted,

“…five months later, the policy was still in place, and the Bronx Household of Faith [that’s one of the congregations that was threatened with being displaced] petitioned the US Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court’s ruling that the city’s ban is constitutional.”

The press secretary to the mayor had told World Magazine at that time that,

“His position on this issue has not changed.”

Then Christianity reported over the weekend,

“This month, [the] de Blasio’s administration filed a legal brief in opposition to the Bronx Household of Faith’s petition, arguing in favor of the city’s policy. ‘[It] does not involve any government-imposed prohibition, restraint, or burden on religious exercise,’ the brief stated.”

Indeed the New York City Board of Education argued that prohibiting worship services is – amazingly enough – to use their term, “viewpoint neutral,” even though the main groups affected would be evangelical church plants; and even though those who brought the case challenging the constitutionality of churches using those facilities were explicitly arguing against the theological positions of those very churches.

So the big story is that the mayor of New York campaigned on the promise of protecting those churches and their rights to access these facilities and then, as it turned out, when the time came for the city to file its legal petitions with the court, it argued the opposite case. Effectively trying to oust those very churches it had asked for support.

Look back to that article I cited from the Wall Street Journal just days earlier and you come to understand the depth of the problem. You’re looking at evangelical churches that may effectively be told ‘you can’t meet in the public school facilities of New York City.’ And of course that will be decision that would reverberate throughout the United States. We’re looking here at a situation in which other groups can use those school facilities. Other groups can use them for their own assemblies, for their own meetings, and as is the case with so many other issues, the Supreme Court had at least ruled in the past – as in its Mergens decision on equal access – that if the public schools offer a forum for one group they cannot deny a forum to another based upon the content of their presentation or their beliefs.

We’ll see if the Supreme Court is going to uphold that principal in terms of this case. One thing is abundantly clear, the mayor of New York not only did not uphold that principal but he actually reversed himself, effectively telling these churches they weren’t welcomed after he welcomed their votes.

3) Boy Scouts compromise on homosexuality pleases no one, California forbids judges’ participation

On the same front of religious liberty; another big development. This one comes as something not of a shock but as a great disappointment. And the graphic nature of the decision handed down by the California Supreme Court just as the weekend began is another indication of the challenge we are going to face. Just last week the California Supreme Court, which is constitutionally charged with developing a code of ethics for judges in the state, ruled that those judges cannot participate, in any way, with the Boy Scouts of America because they are a discriminatory organization when it comes to sexual orientation.

Remember that when we looked at the decision made now couple of years ago by the Boy Scouts to change their position, we noted that it wouldn’t gain them the kind of cultural traction they were hoping for; it wouldn’t neutralize the critics. They changed their long-standing policy, even after they had won a case at the United States Supreme Court. They change their policy to allow for openly gay scouts but not for openly gay scout leaders. And that is led to the claim, now, by the state of California that they are discriminatory, even as they allow openly gay scouts. And now in a very clear sign of the closing of the American mind when it comes to the issue of sexual orientation or when it comes to even the definition of discrimination, the judges of the state of California are being told they can’t participate in an organization as venerable and well-respected as the Boy Scouts of America because now that organization, despite its change of policy, is on – well you’ve hear this before –the wrong side of history.

One of the articles of greatest concern on this issue that has appeared since the development of this decision is something that appeared in the Bay Area Reporter; as was reported on the weekend,

“The only remaining exception to the general rule is membership in a religious organization,”

That was stated by Fourth District Court of Appeal Justice Richard Fybel, chair of the Supreme Court’s advisory committee on the code of judicial ethics.

“One other exception – belonging to a military organization – was eliminated as well, because the U.S. armed forces no longer restrict military service based on sexual orientation.”

So you put all this together and there had been, until this weekend, three exceptions to the rule that California judges couldn’t belong to a discriminatory organization. The exceptions were when it came to the United States military, when it came to nonprofit organizations – especially the Boy Scouts of America – and when it came to religious organizations. If you heard me read that direct quote clearly what you heard is that they head of the commission said only one of those exceptions remains; and then he said religious organizations.

Now just remember until this development there have been three exceptions. But the very use the word exception really tells you something. That implies that there is something that is undeserved but nonetheless granted as an exception to a general rule because of some reason such as political pressure or public pressure. But now when it comes to the issue the Boy Scouts of America, judges are told you can’t participate and continue as a judge. When it comes to the American military, they are told you can now participate but only because the military changed its policy to join the moral revolution. The only exception that remains of the judge is the exception of religious organizations.

One immediate question comes, ‘for how long? For how long will that exception last?’ And we’re talking here about religious organizations – how long will that mean not only something that might be a religious institution or something to find merely as organization, how long will that be before the organization is your local church? How long will it be before the judges of California are told you can’t be a member of the church that officially teaches that homosexuality is a sin? How long will it be before they’re told you can’t belong to a church that doesn’t celebrate or recognize same-sex unions? How long will it be before you can’t be the Fire Chief of the city of Atlanta and belong to such a church and be known for such beliefs? Well we know the answer to that question don’t we?

As for California the question is still out. But the very use of the language involved here and the fact that they have now said no judge can participate as a volunteer in the Boy Scouts of America tells us how the moral revolution in America’s not only happening but happening at such a lightning pace. And just remember the word that is used here, the word is ‘exception.’ How long will the exception survive? To put the matter bluntly, that’s an exceptionally important question.

4) 70th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation reminder of tragedies world has allowed

Finally, today marks a very important historical observance. It is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp known simply by one of the most ominous names of humanity: Auschwitz. It was 70 years ago today that forces of the Soviet Union were the first to reach the camp. The Nazi murderers had largely fled, abandoning their inmates. But when the Soviet army arrived it found what Western authorities had denied could even have existed: the death camps on the scale of Auschwitz.

The scale is still almost impossible to believe, but believe we must. Over 7 million people were killed, the vast majority of them Jews. When it came to the death camps it was an official part of Nazi policy. It was begun by Adolf Hitler himself and it was eventually bureaucratized and rationalized by the entire machinery of the Nazi regime. The first camp at Auschwitz began in May 1940; the extermination of prisoners began in September 1941. The second death camp was built later, connected to the neighboring village of Birkenau and together these two camps led to the death of over 1 million people.

Most historians believe that at least 1.1 million prisoners died at Auschwitz, about 90% of them were Jewish and one of six Jews killed in the Holocaust died in the death camp of Auschwitz. Major international media pointed to the fact that even as some of the survivors will be gathering their numbers are almost surely going to be much smaller than they were 10 years ago; raising the question of how many can possibly attend 10 years from now. One of the things we have to face is that those who were alive to understand the Holocaust as it happened, those who are the survivors, they are dying as a generation and soon we will face the reality that this great moral horror of the 20 century will be a matter of memory but not for those who are able to remember it personally.

Andrzej Kacorzyk, who deputy director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, told the New York Times,

“This will be the last decade anniversary with a very visible presence of survivors,”

At the 60th anniversary 10 years ago there were 1,500 survivors, this year there are about 300 that are expected. As the New York Times reports,

“Most of them are in their 90s, and some are older than 100.”

The Holocaust of the millions, in particular the Holocaust against the Jews, raises the specter of the 20th century and the awful crime of anti-Semitism, and the awful reality, the most unspeakable reality, of the mass murder of millions of people by the Nazi regime. There were other genocides and other mass murders in the 20th century and there were other murderous regimes; most importantly we would note Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China. But when it comes to the death camps of the Nazi regime they remain a singular memory in terms of human civilization, they remain a singular crime in terms of our moral history, they remain a singular symbol of the inhumanity of man and of the potential for deep murderous darkness that resides in a civilization that had claimed to be the most advanced and well educated civilization; the civilization of the highest culture on the earth at that time.

Even a secular society cannot fail to ponder the meaning of these things. That led to a very interesting article that appeared in the front page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Here is the headline, Grandson of Auschwitz Boss Is Trying to Remake Family Name. It’s an article about a very awkward attempt being made by Rainer Hoess, now age 49, to try to separate himself and his family name from the fact that it was his grandfather who was the head of the death camp at Auschwitz. His grandfather was the infamous Rudolf Hoess of the S.S. who was executed on those grounds for crimes against humanity in 1947.

The article about Rainer has points to his difficulty and the difficulty of other children and grandchildren of the Nazi leaders in Germany to distance themselves from the horrifying crimes of their fathers. And we are reminded of the biblical warnings from the Old Testament that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children and down to successive generations. There are some names that have become so infamous, it is virtually impossible to carry that name in a civilized society. At the top of the list of the 20 century is certainly the surname Hitler, but that’s not the only surname that has become almost unbearable. That includes surnames like Goebbels and surnames like Hoess; Hoess in particular as it is tied to Rudolf Hoess.

The articles is about the rather awkward attempt being made by this 49-year-old man to overcome a name he inherited from a grandfather known to be a criminal against the very idea of humanity, and the murderer not just of many but of over 1 million. Furthermore the event being held today at Auschwitz-Birkenau points to the fact that the world let this happen. And it also points to recent headlines indicating that the virus of anti-Semitism that many people in Western society thought had been extinguished at the end of World War II was anything but.

In terms of the observance taking place at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, there’s a very important issue, a very important truth for Christians to keep in mind as well. There are those who were gathered there believe that the most important issue is the verdict of history. All history does have a verdict and we should be thankful that it does. But the bigger issue of course, from a Christian biblical concern, is not the verdict of history but the verdict of God. And even those who escaped earthly justice and may think they have escaped the verdict of history will not escape that judgment, nor shall we.

 

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

The Briefing 01-27-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Winners of Greek election present danger to European project, lesson in danger of debt

Syriza Win in Greek Election Sets Up New Europe Clash, Wall Street Journal (Charles Forrelle, Nektaria Stamouli and Alkman Granitsas)

2) NYC mayor reneges on promise to allow churches to meet in schools

Gathering the Faithful, No Church Required, Wall Street Journal (Rob Moll)

No Worship Services in Public Schools, New York Mayor Tells Supreme Court, Christianity Today (Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra)

NYC mayor reiterates promise to let churches keep meeting in schools, World Magazine (Emily Belz)

3) Boy Scouts compromise on homosexuality pleases no one, California forbids judges’ participation

CA judges cut ties with the Boy Scouts of America due to LGBT issues, Bay Area Reporter

State high court’s vote affecting Scout affiliation stirs debate anew, Los Angeles Times (Thomas Curwen)

4) 70th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation reminder of tragedies world has allowed

For Auschwitz Museum, a Time of Great Change, New York Times (Rick Lyman)

, Wall Street Journal (Naftali Bendavid and Harriet Torry)

Transcript: The Briefing 01-26-15

The Briefing

 

January 26, 2015

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

 

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

1) Death of Saudi King Abdullah reveals vast worldview differences between nations

As the week came to an end, the Saudi Arabian nation went into a new monarchial generation. The news coming out of Saudi Arabia on Friday was this: King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud, who maintain stability in Saudi Arabia in the face of regional pressure from Islamist and democratic movements, died at about age 91. That came from an official court statement from Saudi Arabia, as was reported on the front page of Friday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal. What makes that really interesting, of course, is the fact, well not only did you have a monarchial change in Saudi Arabia, but the dead king was identified as being about age 91.

A good many Americans probably wondered why a change in terms of the monarch in Saudi Arabia would have such interest in the United States. But for any number of reasons, most importantly history and secondarily oil, the fates of the United States and Saudi Arabia have been linked going back to the 1930s. And we have to go back to the 1930s for the beginning of this nation. The modern state of Saudi Arabia was born in the year 1932 between the two world wars and it was founded by the father of the deceased King – who is also the father of the new King. That would be Abdulaziz al Saud, born in 1902 died in 1953. He took the name ibn Saud when he established Saudi Arabia in terms of a struggle for the Arabian Peninsula against other warring tribes in the year 1932. He is one of those figures right out of a movie like Lawrence of Arabia. And he’s also a figure that had a massive influence, not only in his region of the world, but in ours as well – unbeknownst to many living Americans.

The reason ibn Saud and his sons have played such an outsized role on the world stage is because in 1937 American surveyors discovered the largest deposit of oil on the planet – at least as is known until today – in the sands of Saudi Arabia; changing the entire picture of the world when it came to its economic engine and changing the fate of the house of Saud, as the royal house is known. Unlike other dynasties in the same region, the house of Saud was immediately flush with cash and it has been ever since the 1930s when oil was discovered. Unlike the Hashemite rulers of Jordan, unlike rulers in terms of other nations in the area, it is the house of Saud that has ruled supreme when it comes, first of all, to economic influence, but secondly when it comes to the role of the nation in the religion of Islam.

The King of Saudi Arabia also has the title of the Custodian of the Two Mosques. And when it comes to the most important cities in the history of Islam and in the religion of Islam, both of them are under the direct custody – indeed under the dynastic rule – of the house of Saud. One of the reasons I want to give attention to this dynastic shift on The Briefing today is to remind all of us as Christians that we live in a world that is operating by very different worldviews, and one of the most graphic displays of a contrast in worldview is that between the governmental structure of Saudi Arabia and that of the United States – or for that matter, that of the Western world as a whole.

You probably remember enough from your history or civics classes to remember that Europe itself was once populated by warring tribes. At some point over a long period of centuries it was unified under monarchial autocrats, dictatorial and monarchial rulers, who claimed a dynastic role, who claim the divine right of kings and who claimed a family hereditary line in terms of their dynasty. The dynastic rule was passed from King to Prince and immediately upon the death of the king the Prince became King, thus the custom in the United Kingdom of the expression “The King is dead, long live the King.” Of course there have been Queens, as is now the case in terms of the monarch of the United Kingdom. But Queen Elizabeth II bears almost no political resemblance in terms of power and authority, or culture shaping power, to that of her namesake, Elizabeth I.

But when it comes to dynasties it is hard to come close to the dynasty of the house of Saud. Abdulaziz al Saud, again later known as Ibn Saud, had 22 wives. It is thought he had at least 45 sons, 36 of his sons lived to adulthood in order to have children of their own. The new King of Saudi Arabia, King Salman, is the next to the last of his sons. There is only one more and he has become the crown Prince. And these are not exactly young rulers. The new King, King Salman, is 79 years old. The new crown Prince, Prince Muqrin is 10 years younger, but that means he’s the sprightly age of 69. Now what makes that really interesting is that we’re looking at one of the most powerful nations on earth in terms of economic power, we’re looking at one of most influential and strategic places on earth, and we’re looking at one man and his many sons who have ruled from 1932 to the present. In other words, we are now looking at a crown Prince who is still the half-brother of the current and new King.

Well one of the things that should come immediately to mind is that it takes a certain worldview to uphold such a monarchy, it takes a certain worldview built into a population of millions to accept this kind of dynastic rule and simply to accept that it makes sense – that the son of a man who died in 1953 would still be king and that his half-brother would necessarily become the next king and be granted autocratic power. And when we’re talking about autocratic power we mean real autocratic power.

Writing about the story for the Los Angeles Times reporter Alexandra Zavis gets right to the point when she makes clear that the houses of Saud is held together not only by this dynastic control, but by the fusion of the dynasty and a very radical vision of Islam. In order to make this point she goes back not to 1932, she goes back to the year 1774, two years before the American Revolution when the House of Saud was first established and the first kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She writes,

“The anointment of the House of Saud more than three centuries ago came with a pledge to rule in tandem with the austere clerics of Wahhabi Islam whose puritanical theology has provided some of the underpinnings for extremist groups throughout the Middle East.”

This leads to a great quandary, a great puzzle in terms of the current world scene. The United States hardly has a closer ally than Saudi Arabia when it comes to matters military and strategic in the Middle East. And yet in terms of worldview it is hard to imagine two cultures that are more radically unlike one another than the culture of the United States and that of Saudi Arabia. And even as we are tied together by strategic interest and oil – not the oil itself is not a strategic interest – we are also divided by a worldview clash that is simply monumental. For most Americans if they came to understand the worldview of the nation of Saudi Arabia they would quickly understand that it would take centuries of historical rewind, in terms of Western culture, to come anywhere close. For that matter, even when you’re looking at the Western nation of absolute rule when it comes to Kings, there really is no absolute rule in the Western tradition quite like the absolute rule that is quite current in terms of the House of Saud. Perhaps the closest thing you could come outside the nation of Saudi Arabia in terms of something at least more Western will be the role of the Russian czars.

Alexandra Zavis writes,

“Wahhabi doctrine is so deeply entrenched in the desert kingdom that few believe that King Salman — an elderly brother of the late King Abdullah who took the throne this week — is likely to make many reforms.”

She goes on to report, and this is very important,

“The grand bargain forged in 1774 between Mohammed ibn al Saud, then a minor clan leader, and the cleric Mohammed Abdul Wahhab, provided the ideological justification for uniting the fractious tribes scattered across the Arabian Peninsula under the rule of the House of Saud.”

She goes on to write,

“As their empire expanded, so did the influence of the Wahhabi clerical establishment, which seeks to convert Muslims to their ‘purer’ form of Islam,”

“…billions of dollars from the country’s rich oil earnings have been spent on spreading Wahhabism around the world.”

Then we go back to the great quandary I mentioned earlier; how can a nation so strategically tied to the United States, politically and economically in many senses, be also a nation that is governed by a worldview that is so radically distinct? And how is it that this very same nation claims as the legitimacy of its own dynastic rule the very form of Islam that has been feeding Islamic terrorism that this kingdom has been fighting even for its own survival for the better part of the last five decades? That is indeed one of the great question marks of the modern era.

But at this point American Christians need to understand the quandaries only grow more complicated, the issues more developed and difficult. For instance, even as the king died on Friday – that is King Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz al Saud – the American government ordered the lowering of the American flag to half-mast in American installations. That’s really something; the death of the Saudi King responded to by the American White House with an order that the American flag be lowered to half-mast.

Even as Alexandra Zavis did a fantastic job in the Los Angeles Times pointing out the fusion of the House of Saud with Wahhabi Islam, similarly and unsurprisingly, Ross Douthat writing in Sunday’s edition of the New York Times got right to the issue when he spoke of Americans as “prisoners of the Saudi’s.” He writes with great moral insight and I quote,

“The Western response to the death of Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia and custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, followed two paths. Along one, various officials and luminaries offered the gestures … [you would] expect,”

But he says in terms of the other response,

“Anyone outside Western officialdom was free to tell the fuller truth: that Abdullah presided over one of the world’s most wicked nonpariah states, whose domestic policies are almost cartoonishly repressive and whose international influence has been strikingly malign. His dynasty is founded on gangsterish control over a precious natural resource, sustained by an unholy alliance with a most cruel interpretation of Islam and protected by the United States and its allies out of fear of worse alternatives if it fell.”

Here again we as Christians face the reality of trying to operate in a fallen world – a world that operates by so many worldviews and many of those worldviews in outright conflict. The conflict between the worldview of Wahhabi Islam and that of the modern secular West is almost impossible to calculate. The closer you look at the Saudi regime with its public beheadings, public floggings, and the fact that women can be arrested for even trying to drive, is hard to square that with the modern age – not to mention to square with American moral foreign-policy. But we are living in a dangerous world. We’re living in a world in which just as Ross Douthat said, America has been linked with the Saudi Arabian regime precisely because – he got exactly right – we’re far more afraid of what might come as the alternative.

We’re living in a strange world. And of course time and again we have to come back and say we are living in a fallen world. And one of the very difficult challenges we face not only as individuals, not only as corporations, not only as institutions, not only as churches and congregations, but more fundamentally, in this sense, as nations trying to survive in a world of other nations; trying to survive to uphold a worldview in a world of other worldviews, trying to uphold a democratic experiment when much of the world has never even attempted it and – as is symbolized by Saudi Arabia – has rejected the idea outright.

I go back to the fact that it takes a certain worldview to uphold this kind of dynastic claim. A worldview that really believes that somehow a family has been appointed as the natural leaders to be granted autocratic rule. You really do have to go a long way back in Western history to find that. But as we bring this to an end, at least in terms of this issue, let’s remember that our form of government also requires a worldview and that worldview also require some explanation and understanding of human rights, an understanding of human dignity, an understanding of the importance of the individual, and furthermore an understanding of the importance that the only government that has legitimacy is one that in some sense has received the consent of the governed.

So consider the worldview of Saudi Arabia and consider how the worldview of Wahhabi Islam is spreading – spreading quite quickly – into other parts of the world. And then look at the United States where we felt that our worldview was the net export in terms of worldview after our victory in the Second World War and the end of the Cold War – which we also counted as a victory. When it comes to these two worldviews, which will actually dominate for the rest of the 21st century? Well, time will tell.

2) France aims to reinforce secular values through education in effort to win worldview clash

Next, just because the timing is perfect I go to an article by Maïa de la Baume that appeared in the New York Times over the weekend. Here’s the headline, Paris Announces Plan to Promote Secular Values. It’s almost as if they weren’t reading the headlines about the worldview clash that we described. It’s almost as if they haven’t been reading the recent headlines, tragically enough, from their own country. De la Baume writes,

“Officials in France announced new measures on Thursday aimed at reinforcing secular values at French schools, after the terrorist attacks in and around Paris exposed serious cultural rifts between children in heavily immigrant communities and others in classrooms throughout the country.”

According to the report, teachers are to receive new training, students will be exposed more deeply to civics and morals lessons, and classroom activities would include the singing of the French national anthem. What brought about these new civics lessons and the spending of millions of dollars now approved by the French government for these civics lessons for secular values? It wasn’t so much the Charlie Hebdo attacks that took place, murderously so, just a matter of a couple weeks ago, it was the fact that in the aftermath of that massacre, any number of children in the French schools refused to observe the moment of silence the government had called; indicating that they sided with the terrorists, not with the victims.

I really do think this is a big story. As de la Baume as reports,

“French schools already have a secular code of conduct, but about 1,000 teachers and staff members would be trained on questions of ‘laïcité,’ [that is] France’s secular identity, codified under a century-old law on the separation of church and state.”

So now you have the French government, spending millions of dollars, to educate 1,000 teachers about how to make students more secular by singing the French national anthem and other civics activities in terms of the public schools in France; trying to persuade them of the superiority of a secular worldview as they look to the future and their own adulthood.

Now I have pointed to this issue before but this new story is just too graphic to be ignored; especially in light of the previous report about the passing of the Saudi King and the continuation of the House of Saud, and most especially the fusion of the government of Saudi Arabia and Wahhabi Islam. Now we have the French government, in the aftermath of this horrifying event, just two weeks ago announcing that in response to the fact that thousands of schoolchildren in its schools – presumably, according to this report, Muslim schoolchildren – refused to observe the moment of silence for the victims. The response is not a robust understanding of human dignity as grounded in anything like the biblical worldview, it’s not a counter narrative that holds to a deeper and more profound understanding of the grounding of human dignity, it is instead a reassertion of the French values of secularism.

One of the real issues the French government now confronts is that it doesn’t have a narrative that’s compelling. At least it doesn’t have a narrative that is, in any way, as compelling as that of radical Islam. Issues of principle aside, just by a pragmatic consideration, it is very hard to believe that spending millions of dollars to educate 1,000 teachers to make those children more secular has any chance of working. But it also is a reflection of something else. Once a society is committed itself to this kind of official secularism, it really has nowhere to go; nowhere to go but spending more money to try to teach more teachers how to convert more people who aren’t secular into being secular. It’s just hard to imagine that anything like this has any chance of working, not because they’re not spending enough money, but because they simply don’t have a more powerful story to tell.

3) South Korean soap operas threaten to subvert North Korean regime

Speaking of stories, the human being is a narrative creature. We live by stories, we live on a story – for that matter we are living out a story – and we love the stories of others. Whether good stories or bad stories, moral stories or immoral stories, stories have the power to capture the human imagination and just about everyone knows it, including the makers of soap operas, including the makers of soap operas in South Korea; and especially, as it turns out, including the totalitarian ruler of North Korea. There’s a big story here, it made the front page of Sunday’s edition of the New York Times. The headline, North Korea’s Forbidden Love? Smuggled, Illegal Soap Operas, it may not sound like an important story but I promise you, it is.

Choe Sang-Hun writes,

“As a math professor in North Korea, Jang Se-yul was among the nation’s relatively privileged classes; he got to sit in special seats in restaurants and on crowded trains, and more important in a country where many go hungry, was given priority for government food rations. Then he risked it all — for a soap opera from South Korea.

The temptation in this case was ‘Scent of a Man,’ an 18-episode drama about the forbidden love between an ex-convict and his stepsister. A graduate student [according to the report] had offered him the bundle of banned CDs smuggled into the North and, too curious to resist, Mr. Jang and five other professors huddled in one of their homes binge watching until dawn. They were careful to pull the curtains to escape the prying eyes of neighbors taught to turn in their fellow citizens for seditious activities. But they were caught anyway and demoted to manual labor at a power plant.”

For watching “Scent of a Man,” an 18 episode South Korean soap opera.  Choe Sang-Hun is writing about the fact that the North Korean dictator is living in fear of very bad South Korean soap operas. As the article states,

“The decidedly lowbrow dramas — with names like ‘Bad Housewife’ and ‘Red Bean Bread’ — have, in fact, become something of a cultural Trojan horse, sneaking visions of the bustling South into the tightly controlled, impoverished North alongside the usual sudsy fare of betrayals, bouts of ill-timed amnesia and, at least once, a love affair with an alien.”

But this is where this ridiculous story gets really serious. As the New York Times reports – remember this is the New York Times and this is the front page of yesterday’s paper – as the report indicates, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un has issued increasingly pointed warnings to his subjects about what he calls “the poisonous elements of capitalism” crossing China’s border with the North tempting even his communist elite, as the New York Times says,

“Defectors say there has been a severe crackdown on smugglers, and in the fall, South Korean intelligence reported hearing that Mr. Kim was so shaken by the spread of the soaps that he ordered the execution of 10 Workers’ Party officials accused of succumbing to the shows’ allure, according to lawmakers who had been briefed on the matter at a parliamentary hearing.”

Well now we end where we began; with the question what kind of worldview upholds a regime like this? What kind of worldview drives the most evil regime imaginable? And that’s really saying something in terms of the 21st century – perhaps we ought to say, so far.

And in the final analysis, what kind of regime is actually living in fear of soap operas coming from the South? We are defined, we might say, by what we fear. And if you fear your regime might fall because of soap operas, that really says it all. But it also reminds us as Christians that a story is never merely a story. There is always more than the storyline itself, and in this case, these soap operas have become cultural Trojan horses; bringing a vision of a very different life to the North when they see the life depicted in terms of the South. And furthermore, that reminds us of something that was really, really important in terms of the Cold War and continues to be important in the nations like China now. It’s not so much the American stories that are being told by our television exports that seem to have such a massive cultural influence, it is the fact, at least in China, that the stories can even be told.

The popularity of an American show like ‘House of Cards’ is not so much because they believe the stories but because they can hardly believe that an American government would allow such a story to be told and the fact that they are told is very revealing and perhaps more revealing than the stories themselves to the Chinese. It is also the case that when it came to the Soviet Union and to the nations under its control, it wasn’t just the American stories that got smuggled in that really began to crack that edifice, it was the advertisements. Because the advertisements themselves were telling stories, perhaps unintentionally, that caught the attention of those living in the repressive regimes behind the Iron Curtain. As one Soviet dissident put it, it said a great deal to people behind the Iron Curtain that American dogs appear to eat so well while so many millions on their side of the Iron Curtain were dying of hunger.

 

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

The Briefing 01-26-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Death of Saudi King Abdullah reveals vast worldview differences between nations

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Dies, Wall Street Journal (Ellen Knickmeyer and Ahemd Al Omran)

Blogger sentenced to 1,000 lashes: Saudi Arabia’s often-brutal pact with its clerics, Los Angeles (Alexandra Zavis)

Prisoners of the Saudis, New York Times (Ross Douthat)

2) France aims to reinforce secular values through education in effort to win worldview clash

Paris Announces Plan to Promote Secular Values, New York Times (Maïa de la Baume)

3) South Korean soap operas threaten to subvert North Korean regime

North Korea’s Forbidden Love? Smuggled, Illegal Soap Operas, New York Times (Choe Sang-Hun)

Transcript: The Briefing 01-23-15

The Briefing

 

January 23, 2015

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

 

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

1) Congress drops abortion bill, providing lesson in pervasive sinfulness of humanity

An important lesson in the political world came late on Wednesday afternoon when it was announced that the United States House of Representatives would drop consideration of a bill that would have outlawed abortion after 20 weeks of gestation. The important lesson here has to do with the fact that Republicans won an overwhelming majority of House seats back in the election of November 2014. They were elected on the promise of and with the expectation of the fact that they would support pro-life legislation – including this very bill. And then, of all things, on the very eve of the 42nd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, the Republican leadership announced that cold feet had prevailed and that the bill would not be going forward.

As Ed O’Keefe of the Washington Post reported,

“House Republican leaders abruptly dropped plans late Wednesday to vote on an anti-abortion bill amid a revolt by female GOP lawmakers concerned that the legislation’s restrictive language would once again spoil the party’s chances of broadening its appeal to women and younger voters.”

A couple of first considerations here; when it comes to winning the votes of women, Republicans are already winning the votes of women when it comes to married women. There is no doubt when you look at the statistics, indeed after the 2012 and 2014 elections the Republican candidates have done very well among married women. Republican candidates are doing not so well among unmarried women – especially those women who have never married.

It’s a very interesting phenomenon. The most significant data of which I’m aware has to do with the aftermath of the Virginia gubernatorial election in 2012. The immediate aftermath of that election said that Republicans lost the women’s vote and that Ken Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate, had gone down because he just didn’t get enough votes from women. But as it turned out, and later consideration of the data on both sides affirmed, it was not that Ken Cuccinelli didn’t get enough women’s votes, he didn’t get the votes of single women; married women voted overwhelmingly for him. One thing that indicates is the fact that one’s marital situation affects one’s worldview. You could turn that around; one’s worldview often affects one’s marital situation. They are however, just to use the words of statistics, highly correlated.

But getting back to what we learn from this political development, about the very nature of politics, is that the Republican Party elected on a pro-life platform, elected overwhelmingly in terms of the election this past November, is a party leadership that decided it wasn’t going to go forward with the most expected piece of pro-life legislation going back to the campaign itself. And of all things, once again, they made that decision even as thousands and thousands of pro-life Americans were gathering in Washington, DC for the annual March on Life and of course the commemoration of the infamous anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

But what makes this really interesting is not just the timing but what it tells us about politics. Politics is dirty business at is very best, it’s also necessary business. One of the things that biblical worldview helps us to understand is that in a fallen world every aspect is falling. That means our economic life is falling, that means every aspect of humanity in terms of education, commerce, culture, art, everything shows evidence of the fall. And that’s also true in politics. Perhaps it’s especially true in politics. Why? Because by its very nature the democratic political system – that is small ‘d’ – the republican system of government – that is small ‘r’ – if you’re in a republic that operates by a democratic process, there is inevitably a trade-off of goods; a trade-off of principles.

In a fallen world you certainly hope for the very best of those trade-offs; the very best of those compromises. But the evidence that came in on Wednesday afternoon is very sad. It’s sad indeed because it shows a lack of conviction on the part of the very people who promised conviction. It shows a lack of principle on the part of the very people who were elected to defend that principle.

Getting back to Ed O’Keefe’s report in the Washington Post, and I quote,

“The abortion bill pulled Wednesday night was strongly opposed by Democrats and women’s rights groups. But a similar version of the bill easily passed the GOP-controlled House in 2013 and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had vowed to bring it up for a vote.”

That just adds tragedy to the tragedy. You had the Senate poised to act on this bill if only the house sent it to them. And now you have the house leadership losing confidence in its own pro-life convictions out of fear of the political ramifications. Now you look at that and you say, that just might be relevant at least from a pragmatic perspective if this was a party headed into an election in coming days. But it isn’t heading into one; it’s heading out of one. And one that it won overwhelmingly on this very pledge and principle.

As Bill Chappell of National Public Radio reported yesterday, the house did approve a bill that would prohibit using federal money to pay for any abortion or for health benefits coverage that includes coverage of abortion. That bill passed by a vote of 242 to 179. It was called the ‘No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2015.’ Yes, no kidding, that’s the title of the bill. It stipulates and I quote,

“No funds authorized or appropriated by Federal law, and none of the funds in any trust fund to which funds are authorized or appropriated by Federal law, shall be expended for any abortion.”

That becomes a very necessary bill. It’s a bill made necessary by some government action subsequent even to the so-called Hyde amendment that supposedly prevented any taxpayer money going to abortion. The federal bureaucracy has found some ways to try nonetheless to cover some abortion coverage both in the United States and, in complicated ways, on American military bases overseas, and in some foreign aid funding. But this bill is important as it is a small comfort over against the larger and more important bill that never saw the light of day and never hit the floor of the house.

Writing about this in the Atlantic monthly David A Graham wrote an article entitled, Yesterday the Republican Party’s Abortion Bind. He began by writing,

“Mario Cuomo, who was one of America’s most prominent pro-choice politicians, liked to say that one campaigned in poetry and governed in prose. The Republican Party came face to face with this reality Wednesday—and on the issue of abortion, no less.”

He then wrote,

“It’s one thing to campaign on stopping abortion—it has been a largely successful GOP plank since Roe v. Wade, and one that helped create a juggernaut connection between evangelical Christians and the Republican Party. (Yes, there have been occasional hiccups.) But it’s a different and more complicated matter to actually institute sweeping restrictions successfully.”

Well, I would simply respond that it is of course different and more complicated, but it still comes down to a matter of principle and a matter of conviction. If indeed they believed the principles on which they ran, if they genuinely held the convictions they declared to voters in November, we would not be having this discussion; the bill would have hit the floor of the house, we would’ve found out through the democratic process how indeed that bill would’ve fared. The fact that the bill was withdrawn before it ever met the House of Representatives for a vote is full indication of the fact that in a sinful world, the sinfulness of humanity shows up often first in politics; disappointingly so. And with this we should note in this case, with nothing less than life-and-death hanging in the balance.

2) ISIS hostage situation presents Japan with issue demanding the wisdom of God

Next, many people around the world saw the ominous headline; it came in the New York Times with this headline, Online Video Shows Japanese Hostages Threatened by ISIS. You probably by now know the story. The Islamic State has captured, or has claimed to capture, two Japanese citizens it claims it will execute unless the Japanese government contributes two hundred million dollars to its cause; indeed to its coffers.

As Martin Fackler and Alan Cowell reported,

“A video posted online Tuesday showing a masked militant threatening to kill two kneeling Japanese men has confronted Japan with the same sort of hostage nightmare already faced by the United States and other nations. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to try to save the men, while also saying he would not give in to intimidation.”

The two reporters went on to say that the video was posted by extremists of the Islamic State,

“…showed the two Japanese men, identified as Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa, kneeling on a rocky hillside with the knife-wielding militant standing between them. The militant appeared to be reading a prepared statement, demanding that Tokyo pay a ransom of $200 million within 72 hours”

This leads to one of those excruciatingly difficult moral choices. Its more than a moral choice, it’s political, it’s economic, and it is also criminological; even as a crime is being promised or threatened, after a crime has already taken place in terms of the kidnapping of these two men. But more than anything else it’s irreducibly moral. And this presents the nation of Japan with an excruciatingly difficult decision; Does it pay the ransom and supposedly save these two men or does it refuse to pay, leading often to the execution of those the Islamic state has kidnapped?

From a Christian worldview perspective we have to recognize that a great deal is at stake here. And more than perhaps first meets the eye. Because from a simple viewpoint, looking at it superficially, all you would look at is the fact that it appears there’s an equation being offered here. On the one hand, the lives of two men, on the other, $200 million. Now given the Christian understanding of the dignity and humanity of the infinite value of human life – because it is indeed that which is given to us by an infinitely good and malevolent Creator who made every single human being in His image – we would be very quick to say, ‘look, in terms of the value of human life what’s $200 million for two lives?’ But it’s at that point that the realization of what we’re dealing with really comes.

American defense and security officials do not pay this kind of ransom. That’s the official position of the United States government. Why? Because as it turns out, paying this kind of ransom – here is the important moral lesson – actually incentivizes further kidnapping; it actually creates an enterprise, an economic incentive, for the kidnappings to take place. This is a major point of debate between the United States and some European nations including Italy and France. Those nations have paid ransoms and at least some of their citizens have been released. But the issue also points to the fact that even as some of their citizens have been released, every single one of their citizens now has an increased likelihood of being kidnapped. And there is a virtual kidnapping industry now – not only related to the Islamic state but is some other similar groups – when it comes to the citizens of those nations.

The moral stance of the United States is not that human life counts for less, but that paying people not to murder people is in the end a self-defeating moral proposal. Who is right in this? Are the French and the Italians right? Is America wrong? Or is America right? Are the French and the Italians wrong? That’s not a simple question to answer. This is one of those very difficult issues that points from the Christian worldview to the fact that in a fallen world there are some horrifyingly difficult questions to answer; horrifyingly difficult political, economic, moral questions. This is one of those questions.

One of the particular aspects of this news story is that the two citizens taken, kidnapped in this case, are Japanese citizens. Japan in the past has paid ransoms and there is a very real question now as to whether or not the fact that the Japanese have previously paid ransoms is why these two men are now being held by this group and their executions threatened if the ransom is not paid. So the current quandary that is faced by the Japanese government is, at least in part, as to whether or not they incentivized this new kidnapping. And furthermore, if they did pay this $200 million, it would actually lead to an expansion of the danger against every Japanese citizen who might be a target of being kidnapped by a group like the Islamic State.

In a world so affected by sin and its affects, the kinds of political decisions that are often demanded of political leaders and governments are not only excruciating, they’re almost impossible actually to know how to answer. Perhaps what comes to mind to Christians is 1 Kings 3, where King Solomon is presented with what seems to be an insoluble problem, and he responded, as you’ll recall, with an unusual and indeed legendary wisdom. It’s a humbling realization for Christians and others to recognize that in this world so affected by sin there are some dilemmas that seem to be virtually insoluble. That doesn’t mean a government doesn’t have to make a decision. It doesn’t mean that sometimes a parent doesn’t have to make a decision. It doesn’t mean that sometimes a leader isn’t forced into a situation where decision must be made. Perhaps the greatest example drawn from Solomon is the fact that what we need is wisdom; a wisdom not drawn from Solomon but as Solomon himself understood, a wisdom that can come only from God.

3) Hypocrisy of Davos forum evident in 1700 private jets used to discuss climate change

The World Economic Forum continues through the weekend in Davos, Switzerland and it does become something of a parable of our times; a parable of the elites doing their very best to act like elites. One of the things that was demonstrated in terms of even the onset of the World Economic Forum in Davos was the hypocrisy that is written into the very movement and the meeting. And it’s important sometimes to recognize that hypocrisy. But less the hypocrisy be expanded, let’s stipulate something upfront. Every single one of us is tempted to hypocrisy, and furthermore every single one of us at times falls into certain hypocrisy where we fall short of our own moral expectations. The worst form of hypocrisy is not the one you see in others, but the one you do not see in your selves. But sometimes it takes looking at hypocrisy writ large to understand just how close a danger it is.

How is this for headline? As Amelia Smith reports for Newsweek, 1,700 private jets descended on davos for the world economic forum, bringing members of the cultural, intellectual, political, and economic elites to a meeting where they would condemn using fossil fuels and such things as private jets. Whereas at least one media outlet suggested, that as many as 50 jets could’ve carried everyone coming to the meeting together along with their attendance. And even beyond that, just even a handful of jumbo jets could’ve covered the entire group. As it was 1,700 private jets descended on this small Swiss village; so many jets as a matter of fact that as Newsweek reported the Swiss Armed Forces opened up one of their military air bases for the very first time to try to accommodate the increase in jet traffic.

Even beyond the private jets this was a group that met to talk about the problem of income inequality; presumably believing that inequality is the problem. And yet they represent the top one percent, perhaps maybe the 1 to 2 to 3% of the top one percent of all the wealthiest people in the world. And as the event end this weekend there will be about as many private jets arriving to take people home as arrived to bring them there in the first place; taking them home from their very elite discussion about why people shouldn’t do what they just did.

4) Reading aloud to children decisive influence in child’s likelihood to read

Finally as we head into the weekend I want to share with you an article that appeared recently in the New York Times by Motoko Rich. The title is, Study Finds Reading to Children of All Ages Grooms Them to Read More on Their Own. This is actually what I would even call a sweet story because it tells us something that as families and as parents we certainly need to take to heart. It tells us what we already knew: that reading to our children is really important. But it backs up that argument with some very interesting statistics that might catch our attention.

First the bad news, Rich writes,

“Cue the hand-wringing about digital distraction: Fewer children are reading books frequently for fun, according to a new report released Thursday by Scholastic, the children’s book publisher.”

They are pointing back to a 2014 survey of children age 6 to 17; only 31% said they read a book for fun almost daily – down from 37% four years ago. So what is the good news? Well this article includes some very good news for parents and that is that parents often have a decisive role in whether or not children read. To put it more positively, when parents encourage their children to read, give their children time to read, model reading, and even more importantly, read aloud to their children, the children are far more likely also to read on their own and independently. As Motoko Rich writes,

“The finding about reading aloud to children long after toddlerhood may come as a surprise to some parents who read books to children at bedtime when they were very young but then tapered off.”

This article and the study behind it points to something really important and fundamentally interesting I would think to parents. And that is that children older than you would think both enjoy and benefit from being read to by parents. It turns out that when many parents stop reading aloud to their children it’s because they think their children can read on their own; because they can. But the fact that they can doesn’t mean that they will.

Furthermore, hearing a parent’s voice read a book aloud turns out to have an effect upon children that is just good in almost every way you can imagine it. And one of most interesting aspect of this study is one that many parents will find surprising – even older siblings will gather together to listen in when parents read to younger brothers and sisters. It turns out that we have a hunger to have things read to us. And there’s such an importance to story and hearing a parent’s voice reading a story that when it comes down to it you’ll even have older children, middle school children, who will be gathering together perhaps even a little surreptitiously to listen in as the parent is reading to a younger brother or sister. There’s something really sweet about that; something very affirming about the importance of parenthood and the relationship between parents and children. Some important about the reading of books and the fact that it is something passed down from one generation to the next. Something very important even about a mother or father’s voice reading a book aloud, modeling not only the capacity to read but the enjoyment of reading. Seducing in a very real sense children into the wonder of the word and the wonder of those words gathered between the covers of a book.

An interest comment that came from Maggie McGuire, she is the vice president at Scholastic, she said,

“A lot of parents assume that once kids begin to read independently, that now that is the best thing for them to do,”

It turns out evidently not, at least not on its own. It turns out that children want to hear a parent read aloud. From a biblical worldview perspective there is every bit of good news in that and every bit of affirmation of the importance, not only of the word, but more importantly the relationship between parents and children. Let that be an encouragement to us all; parents, grandparents, and furthermore those who one day maybe parents, reading aloud to our children, perhaps even our grandchildren really does matter. And it matters even to those you think could read on their own, because there is still something about your voice reading the book.

 

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

Downton Abbey — What Are Americans Really Watching?

Americans by the millions are still tuning in to watch Downton Abbey — now in its fifth season — eager to enjoy the continuation of the saga of the Earl and Countess of Grantham and their household. According to press reports, 10.1 million Americans watched the first episode, apparently quite ready to be transported by drama into another place and time. This season, one looming issue is the arrival of a socialist government in London.

But, do Americans have any idea what they are really watching?

The millions of Americans who are now devoted Downton fans are drawn, no doubt, to the story and all of its twists and turns. They are captivated by the historical drama and the grandeur of Highclere, the real-life estate of the Earl and Countess of Carnarvon and the setting for Downton Abbey. They are intrigued by the hierarchies of the noble house and its inhabitants, with the nobility upstairs and the servants downstairs. They are amazed by the lavishness of the estate, the period dress, and the class structure of the society. They enjoy the quality of the acting and the quaintness of the habits portrayed. They must appreciate the attention to historical detail, right down to the soaps used and the dishes served. Many are likely to be unrepentant Anglophiles ( I include myself amongst them) who enjoy the look into the history and drama of our English cousins.

The stories, captivatingly written by Julian Fellowes (also rightly known as Baron Fellowes of West Stafford), are quite enough to hold the attention of a vast American audience. Critics rightly suggest that some viewers watch for the storylines, and others, rather less interested in the soap opera character that also marks the series, watch for an escape into history. Whatever the reason, they keep watching.

And yet, most viewers are likely unaware of what they are actually seeing. They are not merely watching an historical drama, they are witnessing the passing of a world. And that larger story, inadequately portrayed within Downton Abbey, is a story that should not be missed. That story is part of our own story as well. It is the story of the modern age arriving with revolutionary force, and with effects that continue to shape our own world.

Downton Abbey is set in the early decades of the twentieth century. Though by season four King George V is on the throne, the era is still classically Edwardian. And the era associated with King Edward VII is the era of the great turn in British society. The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed a great transformation in England and within the British Empire. The stable hierarchies of Downton Abbey grew increasingly unstable. Britain, which had been overwhelmingly a rural nation until the last decade of the nineteenth century, became increasingly urban. A transformation in morals changed the very character of the nation, and underlying it all was a great surge of secularization that set the stage for the emergence of the radically secular nation that Britain has become.

Viewers should note the almost complete absence of Christianity from the storyline. The village vicar is an occasional presence, and church ceremonies have briefly been portrayed. But Christianity as a belief system and a living faith is absent—as is the institutional presence of the Church of England.

Political life is also largely absent, addressed mainly as it directly affects the Crawleys and their estate. This amounts to a second great omission. The epoch in which Downton Abbey is set was a time of tremendous political strife and upheaval in Britain. The Earl of Grantham would likely have been quite distressed by the rise of the Liberal Party’s David Lloyd George as Prime Minister. The right of women to vote was a recent development, and the political waters were roiled by high unemployment and a faltering British economy. The signs of the Empire’s disappearance were there for all to see, even if most among the elites did their best to deny the evidence. The great landed estates were draining their lordly title holders of precious capital, and the economic arrangements that allowed the nobility to live off of their estates would never return. That is why so many English lords looked for rich American women to marry. Some of these developments are addressed in the series, but not with the depth of concern that shook the British noble houses into crisis.

A great moral revolution was also in full sway. Birth control was increasingly available and openly discussed. In 1930, the Church of England would become the first major Christian church to endorse the use of contraceptives. Sexual morality was changing with a lessening of sanctions on premarital sex and adultery. Calls for liberalized divorce laws became more frequent. Many argued that the working class should have the same access to sexual liberty that the nobility seemed to allow themselves.

And yet, the secularization of the society was underneath it all. Christie Davies, author of The Strange Death of Moral Britain, gets right to the point: “Behind the strange death of moral Britain lies the strange death of Christian Britain. Even in 1900 the leaders of Christian Britain feared that such a decline might take place.”

Historians and theologians debate just how Christian the Britain of Queen Victoria really was, but the fact is that within the Church of England liberal theology was very much in control, with the Broad Church party setting the course. The literature of the late Victorian age and the age of Edward reveals ample evidence of what the poet Matthew Arnold would express in “Dover Beach.” In Arnold’s memorable words:

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore;

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

As historian Jose Harris of the University of Oxford explains, “A more common response, however, was not outright loss of faith but dilution, adjustment, or diversification of religious belief into something that was often much more nuanced and nebulous than had been common in the early Victorian age.” He also described the age as one marked by “the increasing vagueness and indeterminacy of religious belief.”

Rates of churchgoing fell—and they would fall further in decades ahead. The unspeakable tragedy of World War I seemed to add impetus to the loss of faith and theological certainties. A great spiritual void appeared in Britain long before the signs of such secularization would appear on American shores. But we can now see that the early decades of the twentieth century, including the so-called “locust years” in Britain between the two world wars, were a crucial turning time within that society. Those years set the trajectory that produced the Britain of today.

There are countless lessons for American Christians to observe as we watch Downton Abbey. But we ought not to miss the larger story of which tales like Downton are only a part. The world that was passing away was not only a world of footmen, but also of faith. Britain would never be the same again, and that loss of faith and certitude would eventually become a tide that would sweep across every aspect of British culture.

Of course, Downton Abbey did not stay in Britain, and that is true of the larger story as well. That larger story records a great shift in worldview, not merely a social transformation. The consequences of that larger story far exceed the story of a great English house and its inhabitants. In that sense, Downton Abbey is a parable of sorts—a parable that can teach us a great deal.

 

This is an updated version of an essay first posted on Friday, January 10, 2014.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler.

Christie Davies, The Strange Death of Moral Britain (London: Transaction Publishers, 2004), p. xxiii.

Jose Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit: Britain 1870-1914, The Penguin Social History of Britain (London: Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 171, 175.

The Briefing 01-23-15

Podcast Transcript

1) Congress drops abortion bill, providing lesson in pervasive sinfulness of humanity

 Abortion bill dropped amid concerns of female GOP lawmakers, Washington Post (Ed O’Keefe)

House Approves Bill That Would Bar Federal Funding For Abortions, NPR (Bill Chappell)

The Republican Party’s Abortion Bind, The Atlantic (David A. Graham)

2) ISIS hostage situation presents Japan with issue demanding the wisdom of God

Hostage Crisis Challenges Pacifist Japanese Public, New York Times (Martin Fackler and Alan Cowell)

3) Hypocrisy of Davos forum evident in 1700 private jets used to discuss climate change

1,700 Private Jets Descend on Davos For World Economic Forum, Newsweek (Amelia Smith)

4) Reading aloud to children decisive influence in child’s likelihood to read

Study Finds Reading to Children of All Ages Grooms Them to Read More on Their Own, New York Times (Motoko Rich)

Transcript: The Briefing 01-19-15

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

1) Supreme Court takes up same-sex marriage cases in political climate friendly to the issue

The announcement came at 3:30 on Friday afternoon. The United States Supreme Court straightforwardly announced that it will take up several cases on the issue of same-sex marriage. And as virtually every major media outlet announced almost immediately, this sets the stage for a groundbreaking, history-shaping decision.

We have been looking at this on the horizon for some time. What’s now expected is a decision on same-sex marriage tantamount to the decision on abortion the Court handed down in 1973, infamously the Roe v. Wade decision. But as Adam Liptak of the New York Times reported the story,

“The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to decide whether all 50 states must allow gay and lesbian couples to marry, positioning it to resolve one of the great civil rights questions in a generation before its current term ends in June.”

That’s just the way the major media and the elite culture want us to understand this issue and in particular this looming court decision, as the latest, the next, most likely the inevitable decision in a long line of civil rights decisions that they now identify as the great movement of history – the right side of history.

Just about everyone who was an informed observer of these issues understood that the decision was likely and that it had to come – in all likelihood – before the end of the month of January, setting up oral arguments in April and then an eventual decision to be handed down most likely in the very last hours of the month of June of this year.

2015 is going to be remembered for many things, but now we already know that 2015 is going to be a big year when it comes to the Supreme Court. It’s a big year when it comes to the Supreme Court and a looming challenge to the Affordable Care Act popularly known as Obamacare that’s likely to set the stage for a huge political and judicial controversy.

But the issue of same-sex marriage is going to have much longer lasting consequences as will the Court’s decision on this issue. When the Court punted on the issue back in November, it appeared to be trying to duck the issue. But all that changed after the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a decision sustaining several states, including the states of Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky in terms of their constitutional amendments or legislation against same-sex marriage.

That set up a situation in which there are now conflicting U.S. Courts of Appeals, and that leads to a situation that the Supreme Court almost always answers finally on its own authority. And that’s what changed. That’s what set the stage for this decision and the announcement of the court case that was handed down on Friday afternoon. But as you might expect, this is a very complicated story and the press was scrambling on Friday and Saturday – even yesterday – to figure out exactly what the Court might be doing or might be preparing to do.

Reading the tea leaves when it comes to the Supreme Court is a tenuous and almost assuredly frustrating matter, but in this case there are some breadcrumbs to follow, for example in the Windsor decision handed down by the Court in the year 2013, striking down the federal government’s Defense of Marriage Act. In his dissent, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia pointed specifically to this case – even though it didn’t exist yet – saying that when it came all that was necessary was for the other shoe to drop.

Other breadcrumbs were left by the Court in the way it announced its decision to take up these cases on Friday. The Court actually rephrased the question as presented to it by the lower courts, and that’s a very interesting issue. It doesn’t happen all that often, and when it happens, it happens for a reason. Now, the Court announced that it will be holding two and a half hours of oral arguments on these cases, and it announced two different questions.

The first question to have 90 minutes of oral arguments and the second exactly an hour. The first question to get 90 minutes of oral arguments is – as you will see – the more important question,

“Does the 14th amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex?”

That’s the fundamental issue. If the answer to that question is yes, it’s going to make the next 60 minutes of oral arguments largely unnecessary and moot. But the Court’s going to go ahead and have 60 minutes on the second question,

“Does the 14th amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state?”

So as you can see if the answer to the first question is yes, there won’t even be any relevance to the second question. But the fact that they’re taking up the two questions doesn’t necessarily indicate that there’s not a lot of momentum going towards answering yes for the first question, explaining why so many observers of the Court find it fascinating that the Court rephrased the question.

Liptak writes in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times,

“The Justices do not ordinarily tinker with the wording of those questions, but on Friday something unusual happened. In agreeing to hear for same-sex marriage cases, the Court framed for itself the issues it would address.”

He then wrote,

“Lawyers and scholars scrutinize the Court’s order with the anxious intensity of hypochondriacs attending their symptoms. Some saw an attempt by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to elicit a ruling that would stop short of establishing a nationwide constitutional right to same-sex marriage.”

That tells you something of what’s going on here. Indeed, observers of the Court on both sides of this question are trying to read every word that comes from the Court with the intensity of hypochondriacs attending to their symptoms and their medical charts.

As Liptak indicates, people on both sides – that is to say lawyers on both sides of this issue – tried to see whether the reframing of the words had something to do with indicating the direction of the Court’s intent. But one thing was very interesting. The Court rephrased the question to ask about the obligations of states. That in many ways indicates once again that the answer to the first question is likely to be yes. But as some observers have already noted, it does at least leave the room for a more narrow ruling to that effect.

Dale Carpenter writing for the Washington Post said,

“It looks like we will have a decision on same-sex marriage by the end of June.”

He says that many believe the outcome will very likely be the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage.

He says,

“I also think that outcome is now likely, but I want to amplify,” he says, “how the Court decides to reach that decision is also important. He then offered what he called a “pre-decision guide to a post-decision world.” He went on to explain that any way you look at it, a decision mandating all 50 states to recognize and to solemnize same-sex marriage is a huge history-bending decision.

But he’s exactly right on the point that it really matters how the Court reaches that conclusion because no court case exists as a vacuum. Every court case is attached to almost every other court precedent. Not only that, it leads to the interpretations that are made by lower courts who take their bearings from the U.S. Supreme Court. Carpenter says there are several routes to a decision for same-sex marriage.

The first he says is what’s called “sexual orientation discrimination.” He says the Supreme Court could clear up any remaining doubt by squarely holding that classifications based on sexual orientation are subject to a heightened or close or searching or intermediate scrutiny. That’s legal language, but it has to do with exactly what the Court will say – and I think Carpenter’s right on this – that the states must do when considering sexual orientation cases, not only when it comes to same-sex marriage or anything else.

If indeed the Court were to decide that sexual orientation is a suspect category,  that would have effects far beyond the question of marriage, as if by the way, the legalization of same-sex marriage will stop in terms of its effects with marriage.  In terms of religious liberty, that might be the most problematic argument, the most problematic route for the court to take in terms of the legalization of same-sex marriage.  Carpenter says the second argument might be animus. He says the Court could hold that the exclusion of gay couples from marriage rests on animus.  Now that’s exactly again what Antonine Scalia said Justice Anthony Kennedy was arguing in his majority decision in the Windsor Case in 2013, but also in the Lawrence case striking down all state sodomy laws in the year 2003.  Carpenter says animus analysis is very contextual and does not pronounce broad legal principles that commit the Court to future results, and that’s part of its appeal.  If the Court rewrote the question so that it could rule narrowly this might be one way of getting to a rather narrow ruling, but it’s also a way that was predicted in exact language by Antonine Scalia over a decade ago.

Third, he said the Court to get there by a rational basis argument. He says the Court could hold that there is no rational basis for excluding same-sex couples for marriage.  If the Court does that, it will be explicitly addressing the winning argument at the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals.   Remember, that’s the court decision by Judge Sutton that upheld state’s rights to regulate marriage and to limit marriage to the union of a man and a woman.  Judge Sutton said, in a brilliantly argued decision, that indeed the states did have a rational basis for limiting marriage to the union of a man and a woman. If the Supreme Court says there is no rational basis, that could lead to a broader decision that could have effects immediately far beyond the issue just of same-sex marriage.

But what’s really interesting is when Carpenter gets to the fourth argument, the fourth route by which the Court might get there. This is a fundamental right argument. What makes this really interesting is that this is exactly what the proponents and advocates of the normalization and legalization of homosexuality and same-sex marriage have been arguing from the get-go. There is a fundamental right to marriage that is held by not only men and women, but men and men and women and women.  But what’s really interesting, and Carpenters onto something here, now those who are arguing for same-sex marriage may shift their argument but they would do so because this would be a very narrow ruling, or at least could be a very narrow ruling having to do at least in terms of the Court’s thinking and decision only with the institution of marriage. This could avoid a host of other issues, at least in the very short term, but the Supreme Court in deciding to take up this issue can’t be concerned just with short-term effects.  The justices know that they are making history, that they are deciding history.

That also gets to a very interesting issue here.  The Court dodged the question in October.   It fundamentally dodged the question in the year 2013. Why did it take it up now?  That shows that the issue really isn’t just legal or judicial; it is not just constitutional.   The Court is highly political.   The Court now knows that public opinion has shifted, and as public opinion has shifted, as the culture has moved in a progressively more liberal and progressive direction on this issue, the Court evidently now finds the liberty to take this up.  Now, there is no way that the justices of the Supreme Court, being human beings, could be completely objective, completely apolitical.   But any claim that the judiciary is apolitical, nonpolitical in its essence, is put to lie by the very fact that the Court pondered on this question October.   It has taken this question up now because it evidently believes it can, at least enough justices decided that the time is politically, not just constitutionally, right for the Court to take of this question that they made the announcement that came at 3:30 on Friday.

The real surprise here, of course, is that it surprised no one. Christians must understand that as much as we are interested in the constitutional and legal issues, we are far more interested in the worldview issues at stake, and beyond that we’re far more interested in the effects of the redefinition of marriage on the culture at large, and specifically on our neighbors. It’s because of love of neighbor. After all, Jesus said that was the second commandment in the Law.  It is love of neighbor that leads us to believe that the redefinition of marriage will have damaging effects, not just on the culture at large, but on the lives of specific individuals including those who will celebrate the decision, including those who enter into same-sex unions that we’ll call marriage, and including millions of people whose lives will be fundamentally changed by the redefinition of marriage.   And of course, the religious liberty implications are simply massive.

2) Virginia Governor McAuliffe moves to define marriage without reference to a husband or wife

The vast change in the entire moral landscape of the culture that will be represented by the legalization of same-sex marriage was made very clear by the Governor of Virginia in recent days.  Gov. Terry McAuliffe announced that it will be his intention to change the way marriage is defined in the Commonwealth of Virginia so as to avoid the state using the words “husband” and “wife.”  As the Washington Times reported on Friday, the Governor asked the Virginia legislature on Monday of last week to remove all references to “husbands” and “wives” from state law books and replace them with the gender-neutral and politically correct word “spouse.”  As the editors of the Washington Times wrote,

“Mr. McAuliffe argues that changing nouns will create jobs in Virginia, ‘It does send a signal to the entire Commonwealth, to the nation, and the globe that Virginia is welcome to the members of the LGBT community.’”

Well, indeed, it might send that signal, but just consider the far more important signal it sends.  We now have an entire range of vocabulary, words that have been necessary to human society and human culture in various languages for as long as human beings have lived together.  We’re talking about words like “mom” and “dad.”  We’re talking about words like “husband” and “wife.”  We’re talking about words that are now going to be replaced with “spouse” but “spouse” is not a replacement for “husband”; is not a replacement for “wife” any more than mere “parent” is a replacement for “mom” or replacement for “dad.”   What we’re looking at here is a vast moral revolution, and its variants thing to note even the New York Times on Saturday recognized there is no precedent in terms of American history for a moral or legal revolution of this velocity.   I would expand that to say there is actually, in terms of a review of history, no precedent far beyond the United States and beyond our own times. We’re entering into uncharted territory, and Christians understand armed with the biblical worldview we’re entering into very dangerous territory.  It is dangerous for human happiness, for human flourishing, and for the most important institution of human society.

3) Pope sees limit to free expression for sake of freedom from being offended

Occasionally, it is important to look at the Roman Catholic Church and a look at the effects of the Pope, in this case, Pope Francis the First.   Every once in a while, he seems to get on an airplane and say something that gets the world’s attention. He did so in recent days, as he was on a plane in terms of his trip to South East Asia.  As the Associated Press reports,

“Pope Francis began his visit to Asia’s largest Catholic nation Thursday by wading straight into a debate about rights and responsibilities now raging in one of Europe’s largest Catholic nations. Referring to the Paris attacks, Francis said there are limits to freedom of expression, especially when it insults or ridicule someone’s faith.”

The article is written by Nicole Winfield and Teresa Cerejano.  It is really interesting because the Pope did indeed wade in the controversy.  Furthermore, the Pope’s statements, even though made by the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, deserve evangelical attention because they point to an issue that we really have to think about very carefully. When it comes to free expression, how exactly do we draw boundary lines.  I would assert that we can’t draw them where the Pope drew them.  Here is the honest paragraph from the Associated Press article, and it’s matched by an equally odd paragraph in just about every other major media article on the Pope’s statement because the Pope’s statement was itself odd.  Consider the Associated Press paragraph,

“Francis defended freedom of speech as a fundamental right, and even a duty to speak out for the common good. But he said there were limits to free speech, especially when confronting another equally fundamental human right, the freedom of religion.”

Well, this is a real problem. First of all, when you talk about something as a fundamental right, you can’t follow that just a few seconds later withdrawing a boundary on that fundamental right. Now, when it comes to free speech, Americans understand free-speech as other guarantees in our Constitution to be not granted by the Constitution, but respected by the Constitution. Furthermore, even in American history, there are cases that are very indicative of the fact that freedom of speech can’t have absolutely no limits at all.  The question is, even in a nation that famously and very zealously guards freedom of speech in the United States, what might those limits be?  One Supreme Court Justice once said,  “You can’t yell fire in a crowded theater.”  But actually, it’s hard to know whether or not, constitutionally speaking in the United States, you could or you couldn’t.  What makes the Pope statements particularly controversial is, of course, the timing.  What should be controversial is the content, the argument the Pope made.  The Pope said that freedom of speech is a fundamental right, but he said that there must be limits on it when it comes to the conflict with another fundamental right – religious liberty.  But then what he described, in terms of the problem, isn’t actually a matter of religious liberty but a matter of religious offense.

The Pope said, “You can’t speak in a derogatory fashion of someone else’s religion.”

Let’s think about this from an evangelical Christian perspective.  Should we speak derisively, arrogantly, caustically?  Should we speak in a way that makes fun of someone else’s religion or is intended intentionally to create harm or hurt feelings?  The answer to that is of course “no.” But that’s not a matter of religious liberty. That’s a matter of the fact that evangelical Christians understand that our responsibility is a gospel responsibility. We are seeking to win people to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and ridiculing their religion, in terms of derisive speech or cartoons are caricatures or something that is intended to offend, that’s not a way to be a winsome witness for the Lord Jesus Christ. But what if any conflicting truth claim argument is considered to be a matter of offensive to someone of another religion?  In that case there will be no intentional effort to offend, but let’s face it, when you’re talking about your deepest convictions, when two people get into a deeply convictional conversation, it’s never merely theoretical or theological. It’s always intensely personal. That’s what makes a conviction a conviction.

As I said in my book, The Conviction to Lead, a conviction is a belief, but it’s a belief that holds us, not merely a belief that we hold.  It is so central to our worldview into our entire understanding of truth that it’s indispensable. The problem with the fact that the Pope invoked religious freedom in this case is that religious freedom certainly does not mean the freedom from the risk of being offended.  Evangelicals have to remind themselves of that because there are times when evangelicals seek to avoid being offended rather than to understand that when we’re talking about matters of deep convictional consequence someone is going to be offended.  Here we come again to a crucial difference between Christianity, at least Christianity that’s biblically defined, and the common, ordinary, on the street version of Islam that shows itself in many of America’s closest allies,  a version of Islam that says very clearly that is the responsibility of every Muslim to protect the honor of Mohammed, the honor of the Quran, the larger honor of the Islamic religion.

As we discussed on The Briefing last week, some of America’s closest allies are involved in spending millions and millions of dollars to defend the honor of Islam, not only in their own nations where they are willing to go to extremes like flogging someone in Saudi Arabia who offended the religious establishment, but also in other nations as well. Charlie Hebdo was not infamous among Christians in America, at least it was hardly known even until the murderous attacks that recently took place. The reason for that is that Christians can absorb that kind of ridicule.  It doesn’t matter that the new atheists in the English-speaking world and elsewhere have been hurling their worst at biblical Christianity for years now, and they are preceded by a long list of other skeptics and those who were in previous generations called “infidels.”  The Christians have understood that our faith in its truth claims is to be shared, it is to be proclaimed, it is to be projected, it is indeed to be defended, in terms of rational biblical argument. It is to be defended in terms of the rights of Christians to share the gospel in terms of religious liberty.  The Christian right, as well as the right of every other American citizen, to free religious expression, but that’s a fundamentally different approach that the Pope took in the statement that he made on the airplane last week when he invoked religious liberty in conflict with freedom of expression. It was precisely the wrong understanding of religious liberty.  Let me state again, religious liberty does not mean the right not to be offended.

4) Potential 2016 presidential nominees display narrow pedigree of US politics

Finally, as the 2016 presidential race begins to take shape, a brilliant article, or at least a brilliant paragraph, appeared from Dana Milbank, columnist of the Washington Post in yesterday’s edition.   Here’s the paragraph.  I’ll just let it speak for itself.

“The likely slate of candidates will include the son of a governor and a presidential candidate, the son of a congressman and a presidential candidate, the wife of a President, and the brother of a President, son of a President and grandson of a senator.  Nearly two and a half centuries after rebelling against the monarchy, our presidential contest has all the freshness of the House of Lords, even the British royals have done a better job of bringing in new blood.  Kate, the future queen, was a commoner.”

So maybe America doesn’t have a royal family. Maybe it has royal families. Americans are going to be deciding over the next several months in both parties, whether that makes a difference when they think about electing their President.

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information that I have cited Albert Mohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to BTS.edu. For information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing

Transcript: The Briefing 01-22-15

The Briefing

 

January 22, 2015

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

 

It’s Thursday, January 22, 2015.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Anniversary of Roe v Wade reminder abortion still urgent issue of Christian responsibility

Today comes around as yet another anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. It was handed down on January 22 of that year – 42 years ago today. Since then approximately 57,000,000 American babies have been aborted in the womb. And since then it’s almost as if an entire world has changed.

In the 42 year since Roe v. Wade we’ve seen the world change in so many different ways. We’ve seen modernity progress. We’ve seeing issues of human rights debated. New context and new challenges have presented ominous threats – new threats – to human dignity and the sanctity of human life. But on this anniversary we come back again and again to the fact that it is abortion, more than any other single issue, that demonstrates just how much of the biblical life ethic has been lost in modern secular societies. Seen in that light, the last 42 years of been years have been years of incalculable loss; the loss of so many unborn children. The loss of so many different boundary lines when it comes to human dignity.

But we also need to note something to the contrary, the past 42 years have also seen the fact that the abortion issue has not gone away. In fact it has not only not gone away, it has resolutely remained on the American mind and in the American conscience. And one of the things we need to note is that actual progress has been made; some ground has been gain. More Americans believe that abortion is wrong in the year 2015 than said so in the year 1973. Far more evangelical Christians are aware of the issue of the sanctity of human life and the threats to human life presented by a disposable society than was true in 1973. Back in 1973 there were a good many Roman Catholic activists on the lines against abortion, but in the year 2015 evangelicals have now for decades been also on the front lines of the fight for the dignity and sanctity of every single human life at every point of development.

And one of the things we need to note, to note with appreciation, is not just that some ground has been gained in the culture but ground has been gained in the church as well. One of the things in retrospect we need to note is that evangelical churches were woefully unprepared to deal with this issue when it arose and exploded on the national scene with the Roe decision in 1973. At that point it’s clear most evangelical pastors had never actually spoken to the issue. Far too many evangelicals had been drinking deeply from the wells of human autonomy and had basically accepted abortion as yet the latest innovation in terms of America’s moral development.

Before criticizing the culture – that’s important as well – we need to first recognize that the church was at fault. That evangelical churches, evangelical pastors, were simply asleep at the switch – and sinfully so – when the issue of abortion was catapulted in the national prominence. Far too many evangelicals believe that it was someone else’s problem, that it was an issue that had no place in the pulpit, and that somehow it could be avoided lest there be the discussion of awkward issues or controversial questions from the pulpit.

These days that seems like a rather pathetic and hopeless naïveté and yet it was very common in the early 1970s, it was common in 1972; it was certainly common when the decision was handed down in 1973. Nothing immediately appeared to change, but there was an awakening in the evangelical conscience. Progressive and yet noticeable, it happened because there were some very brave prophets of human dignity who made very clear biblical arguments in the vacuum of so much evangelical silence. There were those who were willing to put their reputations on the line and to make the comfortable uncomfortable by raising issues that were of urgent biblical concern.

Over the past 40 years and more, evangelical Christians have learned to talk about a Christian worldview and the importance of worldview thinking; largely because of the catalyst of the issue of abortion and the sanctity of human life. More than any other single issue, this has awakened evangelicals to the fact that there are millions of people around us who do not believe what we believe and whose worldviews are shaped by very different fundamental assumptions. And furthermore, we’ve come to understand that those assumptions can mean the difference between life and death.

The Roe v. Wade decision did not emerge from a cultural vacuum. It emerged in an age in which not only the sexual revolution had made such progress in 1960s, but more fundamentally issues of human autonomy. The claim that every single human being is – more than anything else – an autonomous being capable and responsible for nearly unfettered choice became popular not only in the secular culture, but it had made very invasive inroads into evangelical thinking as well. Furthermore, a very dangerous and insidious form of moral pragmatism had emerged also in some evangelical circles. With some prominent figures – including some evangelical preachers – saying quite openly that in some sense, abortion just might be the lesser of other evils.

Finally while we are searching the evangelical conscience on this issue we need to recognize that racism also played a part. One of the reasons why many Americans – including no doubt many American evangelicals – at least subconsciously did not find such offense when the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down was because they believed, and had good reason to believe by the statistics, that the abortions that were likely to be carried out were the abortions of someone else’s children. The eugenic roots of the abortion movement – that is the roots of that movement in the ideology as Margaret Sanger, founder of what would eventually become Planned Parenthood  taught, ‘more children from the fit and less from the unfit’ – those eugenic roots are very clearly at the very base of the momentum towards abortion in an elite culture.  You put all that together and there is an enormous sense of evangelical culpability on the issue of abortion when we look back over the 42 years since Roe v. Wade.

As a matter of intellectual and theological integrity, I have to note that the Southern Baptist Convention in the years prior to Roe v. Wade had actually passed at least one resolution that seem to offer some explicit support for the legalization of abortion in some form. I say that with enormous shame. That is one of the issues that led to what was called the conservative resurgence in the Southern Baptist Convention. And in that resurgent there is no doubt that the issue of abortion played a very important part in helping people to understand just what was at stake, not only in terms of the sanctity of human life but the interpretation and the authority of Scripture.

Over the course of the past 42 years we’ve come to a deeper understanding of exactly what was happening in the Roe v. Wade decision. We know, for example, by the very journals of the Justice who wrote the majority opinion, Harry Blackmun, that the majority of the court was actually determined to find some way to legalize abortion. The legal argument actually came subsequent to that ambition. That becomes abundantly clear. The artificial argument that was put forth in this majority opinion, dividing human pregnancy into three different trimesters, was actually something invented simply to find some way to argue for a woman so-called right to choose when it comes to abortion.

Much ground has been gained in the church, and for that we must be exceedingly thankful. And the realization of how we got here should make us also considerably humble. But when we think about the culture there’s also reason for hope because some ground has been gained. As we have often discussed, the fact is that the images that are presented on American refrigerators, images of unborn children through ultrasound, those have become conscience changers in terms of the issue of the sanctity of human life. It has become far more difficult now to deny the personhood of that unborn child.

There have also been significant medical and scientific developments. There has been the acknowledgment of the existence of fetal pain and the so-called age of viability. The point of viability for the unborn child has been significantly reduced to younger ages. That’s why right now Congress has a bill before it to consider making abortion far more difficult to obtain after the 20th week of gestation.

Of course from a Christian biblical worldview perspective an abortion at 20 weeks is actually no more tragic and no more sinful than one at two weeks, but the issue is that ground has been gained. The argument, at least in some circles and to some extent, has been won. There is recognition among more Americans now than in 1973 that abortion is to be avoided whenever possible. And the number of Americans who identify as pro-life for the first time in recent years has been greater in statistical terms than those who identify themselves otherwise.

Even as ground has been gained there is much more ground still that is contested and our job is hardly over. Evangelicals have been in the front lines of developing ministries to women who are expecting children, women who otherwise might obtain abortions. Evangelicals have also been on the front lines of developing ministries that affirm and facilitate adoption; the adoption of children who also might have been aborted – but beyond that, the understanding that there are millions and millions of children who desperately need parents.

The evangelical conscience cannot be limited to the issue of abortion, but it cannot avoid the issue of abortion. Indeed a closer biblical consideration of the issue of abortion and the sanctity of human life points to the fact that it is one of those preeminent issues that simply, not only cannot be avoided, but must be embraced as a major issue of the evangelical conscience and furthermore as a major issue of evangelical responsibility.

Even as we celebrate the fact that some ground has been gained we understand that the challenge before us is absolutely tremendous and that nothing less than a bold evangelical witness is necessary; and not only verbal witness, not only the witness of communication, but also the witness of action – the witness of putting righteous deeds to accompany righteous words. And ultimately of course the evangelical conscience does not begin and end with the sanctity of human life but rather with the fact that the sanctity of human life is directly tied to the fact that a loving and sovereign benevolent creator has created every single one of us, at every single point of development, in his image and that is the reason why every single human life is precious.

But that points to another fundamental evangelical responsibility, and that is to develop a comprehensive biblical theology, a theology that is taught from the pulpits and taught by parents; a biblical theology that becomes the sum and substance of evangelical faith, a biblical theology that explains our obedience to the great commission and also our obedience to the Bible’s message of life. So on this 42nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade there is sad news, undeniable sad news, heartbreaking sad news; the death of over 57 million unborn children since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. But there is other news too; the reminder of our responsibility, the glad responsibility to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the message of life to a society that more than ever before desperately needs that message.

2) ‘Free-range’ parenting furor displays common grace of society concerned for welfare of children

Next one of the most important Christian theological categories is that of common grace something that is neglected by many evangelical believers. Remember that Jesus himself said that God causes the rain to fall upon both the just and the unjust. There is common grace that is extended to many people who will never come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Common grace explains why the restraint of law means that people do not do all the evil things they might otherwise do. Common grace means that the law that is written into the human heart by our creator is indeed a sign of God’s grace; He loves us enough to restrain us, even by that power we call conscience. Common grace is also seen in weather; the sun shining on crops and the crops bringing forth their fruit. Common grace is also seen in the fact that almost everywhere you find children, you find parents. And where you find parents and children, you find a bond that can only be described as love.

Evidence of this kind of common grace comes in a recent series of articles to appear in major newspapers including most especially, the Washington Post. And it’s a really interesting story on now what is called ‘free-range parenting.’ I know no better way to tell the story than the way that reporters Donna St. George and Brigid Schulte tell it for the Washington Post. As they write,

“Two days after the story of their children’s unsupervised walk home from a park became the latest flash point in an ongoing cultural debate about what constitutes responsible parenting, Danielle and Alexander Meitiv were still explaining their ‘old-fashioned’ methods of child-rearing.

They eat dinner with their children. They enforce bedtimes, restrict screen times and assign chores. They go to synagogue. More controversially, they let their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter venture out together to walk or play without adults.”

Danielle Meitiv said,

“How have we gotten so crazy that what was just a normal childhood a generation ago is considered radical?”

Well you surely heard about free-range chicken, now we’re talking about free-range children; it really is an interesting controversy.

As the post reports,

“The idea of free-range kids has been around since 2008, when New York journalist Lenore Skenazy set off a firestorm with a piece titled ‘Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone’”

It then developed into a huge controversy that is between the extremes of “helicopter parents” on the one hand – you recognize those from our cultural conversation – and “free-range parents” with their free-range children on the other side. The Post cites that author, also pointing out,

“In the past, children stayed out for hours, slept in backyard tents and wandered their neighborhoods. [Skenazy said] These are things we all did on our own, and now we don’t let our children do, and there is no real or rational reason except we’re fearful,”

Actually almost every major media source, including the Washington Post, has verified that point. For instance here’s one paragraph from the Post story,

“Federal statistics show that the violent crime rate has fallen dramatically from its peak in 1991 and is about what it was in the late 1960s but lower than in the early 1970s, when many more mothers were at home and children roamed freer.”

In a similar article Petula Dvorak, also in the Washington Post, says

“It’s a different world today, you say? Why, yes, it is. Since 1993, the number of children younger than 14 who are murdered is down by 36 percent. Among children ages 14 to 17, murders are down 60 percent. Fewer than 1 percent of missing children are abducted by strangers or even slight acquaintances, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.”

The Post then says,

“It only seems scarier because we know so much more. From across the nation, stories of missing children are delivered to the palms of our hands every day. In the old days, it seemed so much safer because the tragic stories were largely restricted to hometown papers and local newscasts.”

There’s really something of importance for Christians to note here. One is the controversy about free-range kids; the other thing is to note the very important clarification that’s coming in these major media outlets, and that is that even as parents are more fearful than ever before, the crime rates – undeniable in terms of the numbers – indicate that children are far less likely now to suffer from this kind of violence from a stranger than they were even in the 1960s or 70s. And furthermore the risk of any child actually being assaulted or abducted by someone who isn’t known to them, almost as a family member in most cases, is extremely remote. Horrifyingly enough there are such cases, but you know the reality is these articles are pointing – even in secular context – to the fact that many of us actually operate more out of fear than out of the facts. And when it comes to children there is no doubt that many of our own children are being shielded from the normal experiences of childhood because we’re simply afraid to let them out of our site.

As you might expect, when it comes to this Jewish couple and their children in Washington, DC it wasn’t long before they were brought up on charges. And here’s something else that’s kind of good news and bad news. It turns out that when you track the story down, they let their 10-year-old and their six-year-old walk home from a park, a woman – who doesn’t know the family – saw the children walking alone and was alarmed and called the police. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well in most cases you would say that is probably a good thing; it’s actually a good thing that a neighbor cared enough to do something when she was alarmed such as calling the authorities. On the other hand, it’s at that point that just about everything got out of hand because once the police were called they then had to investigate the case. And they turned it over to a government agency that seems to think that its job is to make certain that children are never alone under any circumstance.

Another reassuring thing, the Washington Post, one of the most liberal newspapers in America, is pushing back on this idea with not just one but a couple of articles in which they are pushing back on this age of anxiety and even on this government kind of intrusion. They are also noticing the fact that there’s good news and bad news here. We do have neighbors who are intrusive to call the police but they also care enough to call the police. We’re looking at police who are probably just pretty much doing their job, even as are looking at a government agency that seems to believe that it knows better than parents when it comes to whether or not children can walk home safely from a park.

And from a Christian worldview perspective, and especially for Christian parents, there comes another article; seemingly out of the blue, disconnected to those two articles in the Washington Post. This is an article that appeared in the January 20 edition of the New York Times; it’s about a similar issue. It’s by Jane E. Brody in the personal health column and its title, Giving Children Roots and Wings. You won’t be surprised; this article is about free-range kids. But it’s not just about little kids 10-year-olds and six-year-old, it’s about college students who raised this way can’t solve problems on their own.

Her article cites Peter Gray, a research psychologist at Boston College who’s written a book entitled “Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life,” No kidding – that’s one title. In an interview with the New York Times Dr. Gray said,

“If children are not allowed to take routine risks, they’ll be less likely to be able to handle real risks when they do occur.

Case in point: His college’s counseling office has seen a doubling in the rate of emergency calls in the last five years, ‘mainly for problems kids used to solve on their own,’ like being called a bad name by a roommate or finding a mouse in the room. ‘Students are prepared academically, but they’re not prepared to deal with day-to-day life, which comes from a lack of opportunity to deal with ordinary problems. Over the past 60 years [says Dr. Gray], there’s been a huge change, well documented by social scientists, in the hours a day children play outdoors — less than half as much as parents did at their children’s ages,’”

This is one of those story for which there is no black or white answer from a Christian biblical worldview. As I’ve said, it’s testimony to common grace how happy we should be that so many people care about the welfare of children; including so many parents, even parents who otherwise don’t agree on much, do agree that the welfare of children in this case is to be of paramount importance. But when it comes raising children it turns out there is no absolute biblical commandment when it comes to free-range children, yes or no.

I do know this; Dr. Gray is onto something when he says that kids who simply haven’t had the normal experiences of childhood and have never had to learn responsibility are incapable of making normal decisions and handling normal issues when they arrive on the college campus.

I’m not exactly sure what to do with the new cultural notion of free-range children, but I do know this, there’s good news in the fact that parents are thinking about their kids in this way and it is probably good reason to look at some of the little ones in your house right now and say, ‘it’s time to go outside.’

 

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